The Bones in the Attic

by Robert Barnard

“Even Mum, I wrote to her, rather than rang her. She came out when Leona was born, and I went back when she moved out of Elderholm, to help with the arrangements. Then it was just for the funeral. Useless, that—I should have gone when the cancer was diagnosed. But Leo and I were—well, we were just everything to each other.” Her voice cracked. Danger sign, thought Matt. “Our lives, our restaurant, all the things we did together . . . everything else became like a dream. Including all our lives before we met, Leo’s in Parma, mine in Leeds. I had a good childhood, though my dad died when I was little, but somehow it’s hardly even a part of me now. It’s me before I became what I am. Does that make sense?”

  “I think so. It’s not really about your childhood I wanted to talk to you about, Mrs. Scimone. It’s the families in the other houses.”

  “Oh? The two terraces?” There was silence as she thought about this. “I suppose I remember most of them, though I haven’t thought of them for years. Some of the families were still living there when I went back in seventy-six.”

  “It’s the children I’m particularly interested in. Could you tell me about the ones you remember?”

  There was a brief pause, which brought Matt’s heart to his throat.

  “I suppose so . . . I’ll not ask why you want to know, but I can’t see as it would do any harm. I left when I was twenty-three, that was in 1966, and there were quite a lot of youngchildren around then. Let’s see, just at random: well, there were Peter and Sophie Basnett—lovely children.”

  “They were brother and sister, weren’t they?”

  “Oh, yes. Their father was something in local government—the finance department, I think. They lived in Dell View. They were still there when I went back, but Peter seemed changed. But then, you do change between ten and twenty, don’t you? Adolescence doesn’t come and go without leaving traces.”

  “What sort of change did you notice?”

  “He’d been such an open, confident, happy child. He was more thoughtful, almost morose.”

  “And Sophie?”

  “Quite a little madam. She’d have been seventeen or eighteen by the time I went back. Boys, boys, boys, and getting the means of having a good time. A real little go-getter and good-time girl. I felt quite sorry for the Basnetts.”

  “Anyone else?”

  Again there was a pause before her reply. She had to wrench her mind from her dead husband.

  “There were the Pembertons in Ashdene. I wasn’t very fond of them. They were on the way up, and made no bones about it. Everyone in the other houses was a sort of stepping-stone, or they were discarded if they couldn’t be of any use. There was a boy, let me see . . . Rory. I suspect he was an accident. I always felt a bit sorry for him, though the children who lived around were too young to see. He sort of bought his way into things. Had no family life to speak of, though he tried to hide it. . . . And then there was Marjorie Humbleton.”

  “That would be Marjie, I suppose?”

  “That’s right. Such a pity. They always shorten names here in Australia, and it’s usually Marge, which is worse. . . . We never use margarine in the kitchen at La Terrazza—that was the first thing I was taught. . . . But Marjorie was a lovely girl—always cheerful, and enterprising, and into things.”

  “Was she still around when you went back in seventy-six?”

  “No. Either Peter or one of her parents told me she’d got a job in London. The Humbletons were still there in Sandringham, next door to Mum, and they missed her, I remember that. But she was a youngest child like I was, and they did have several other children in the area, and grandchildren.”

  There was a pause as she thought. Matt thought it best not to interrupt her.

  “Ah, yes: a girl called Elizabeth, or Lily. The parents, the Marsdens, died in a horrible motorway pileup. Not a little girl I liked. Rather cunning, sorry for herself, doing things in a sort of underhand way. Parents weren’t generally liked either. She was married to a garage worker by the time I went back. That was unusual and commented on: respectable girls didn’t get married at eighteen in those days.”

  A longer silence told Matt that it was becoming more difficult for her. Matt knew he had been unable to conjure up the whole gang of children he had played with, and perhaps it was the more personality-lacking ones that she too was having difficulty with.

  “I’ve heard talk of a boy called Eddie Armitage,” he said at last.

  “You’re right,” she agreed, but hesitantly. “Eddie. Aquiet boy. Lived next door in Linden Lea. Parents ran a fish shop. Do you know, that’s all I can remember of him.”

  “And Colin something?”

  “Doesn’t ring a bell. Remember, his family could have moved there after I left to be married. I probably wouldn’t have had anything to do with him when I went back, in that case. . . . There’s someone else . . . another girl . . . some name like Caroline. . . . A bit fey, if you know what I mean, and a worrier. Lived in the Willows . . . I did see her when I went back, and I remember being concerned for her.”

  “Concerned?”

  “As if she was losing her grip on reality. But I didn’t know her well, and so . . .”

  “Can I ask just one more question?”

  “Yes, you can.”

  “You mentioned your mother coming to visit you in Australia. When was that?”

  “That’s easy. That was when Leona was born. The winter of sixty-nine. And now it’s time for you to answer some.”

  So Matt had to come clean to Rosamund Scimone—about the finding of the bones, about his own brief involvement with the children in Houghton Avenue back in the summer of sixty-nine, and about the little that had emerged since. Mrs. Scimone was obviously knocked for six. If it took a lot to take her mind off her dead husband, murder—the murder of a small child—certainly did it.“It’s just—just incredible. Mum, living there all those years, and up in the attic—”

  “We don’t absolutely know the bones were there in your mother’s time.”

  “You seem pretty much to have decided. I went up there, you know, when I went back in seventy-six. I got down the four or five tea chests that were there, to pack things for the move.”

  “Was that all there was up there?”

  “A few games and jigsaws that I gave to the Catholic orphanage across the road.”

  “That’s gone now. It’s a cheap private estate of doll’s houses. So you were only in the main part of the attic—the bit with the proper flooring?”

  “Yes. There was nothing to go into the other bit for—or so I thought.”

  “Going back to your mother’s trip to Australia. Could you tell me exactly when that was?”

  “That’s easy, Leona was on time, end of July. Mum had been here about a fortnight, I guess. She came on the Canberra, so she must have left England the second or third week of June. She stayed four months—poor Mum, she missed out on a summer that year. If it had been Sydney or Brizzie she’d have had a winter better than any good English summer, but not in Tazzie.Anyway, she left in November, by one of the old Strath boats—the Stratheden, I think. They took forever. She had Christmas on the boat, and got back home on New Year’s Eve.”

  “That was a long time away.”

  “Yes. Well, it was hardly worth making the trip unless you stayed awhile.”

  In the silence that followed Matt had the impression that she was holding back on him. He decided to jump in.

  “Was someone house-sitting, or making sure everything was all right?”

  “I was trying to work out whether to tell you . . . I suppose I have to now. The house was empty, but Marjorie Humbleton was looking after it. Mum trusted Marjorie. I would have too.”

  “And what was she supposed to do?”

  “Just check it hadn’t been broken into, then go in the evenings and put lights on—different ones each night. I don’t suppose it would have fooled anyone who really kept a watch on the house, but Mum was worried about burglars and squatters, so she paid Marjorie a pound a week or s
omething to do that. Marjorie’s family wasn’t terribly well off, so she was glad of it.”

  “I see.”

  “I can hear from your voice you think Marjorie did it, put it up there. I’m sure it wasn’t in her. I knew her well—”

  “Till she was about ten.”

  “Well, yes. But still . . . she was a lovely child. It just wasn’t in her to do something like that.”

  “People do terrible things in terrible situations. Going by some of the things that happen these days, and if it had been much younger, I’d wonder if she hadn’t killed her own newborn child.”

  “Oh!” wailed Rosamund Scimone. “But Marjorie wouldn’t!”

  “Anyway, it wasn’t newborn, and I’m not accusing Marjorie.”

  “You sounded as if you were.”

  “No, I’m not. Children are human. Just to take one possibility: if she was looking after the house for six months, she must now and then have given the key to someone else, when she couldn’t do the switching on and off of the lights herself. I’m not jumping to the conclusion that because she had the key she dumped thechild’s body herself. In fact, I’m not even making the most obvious and easy assumption.”

  “What’s that?”

  “That it was while your mother was in Australia that the body got into the attic.”

  The next morning, while the children were getting for themselves all the healthy things they ate for breakfast and washing them down with pop, Matt went out into the back lane, hoping everyone in the two terraces was similarly occupied with breakfast, and walked along from the point where the lane turned on its way to Houghton Avenue. Then he walked slowly back and noted down in his memory the names of the houses in order. Those in the farther terrace ran: Mapledene, Sundown, Dell View, and Ashdene, the first and last being end houses with only one shared wall. His own terrace ran: The Willows, Sandringham, Elderholm, and Linden Lea. Once back inside he made a list of them, and put it with all the notes he had made during and after the conversations he had had in the last couple of weeks. He took the bundle of papers with him when, having got the children off on the way to their buses, he drove off to his early shift on Radio Leeds and “Look North.”In the intervals between bulletins he first drew a rough diagram of the houses. Then, after getting his notes into some kind of order, he went through them chronologically, entering the names of the children and their families as he had learned them. Then finally he entered the names of the families currently occupying the houses, though there he had to leave several blanks. He wondered whether he had been a bad neighbor, or whether they had.

  Early afternoon he rang Charlie.

  “I’ve got something I’d like to show you, if you’re not busy.”

  “I’m busy until four, then I’m definitely off. It’s our first wedding anniversary. Why don’t you come round for a drink?”

  “Oh, you’ll want to be alone. I wouldn’t want to intrude.”

  “You won’t be. Come and see the daughter and heir. We’ve got a baby-sitter coming at seven-thirty, then we’re going for a meal to La Rascasse. Are you free before then?”

  “At five-fifteen.”

  “That’s fine. The address is thirteeen Wellington Terrace, Headingley. See you there.”

  So by six o’clock Matt had found the Peaces’ flat, made the acquaintance of Felicity and Carola, played silly games with Carola and her rattle, and then settled down with a whiskey and water, but a very small one because he was conscious he was drinking with a police officer. He and Charlie sat on either side of a coffee table, papers spread out in front of them. Felicity was in and out of the sitting room, getting ready for the evening, but she kept close tabs on what was being said.

  Matt began by telling Charlie about his conversation with Rosamund Scimone. Then he turned to the papers. “I’ve made a little map of the houses. With the names of the children who were there in 1969—I know next to nothing about their parents, but I suppose I’m going to have to find out. Let’s start down my own end with Linden Lea. This is the house currently owned by the Cazalets.”

  “The ones you’re not keen on?”

  “That’s it. Creepy type. Mrs. has not yet shown. Thirty years ago it housed Eddie Armitage. He’s a boy Mrs. Scimonehas no memories of apart from the name. I have no memories at all. Not much information on the parents except that they owned a fish shop.”

  “Bit of a blank so far,” commented Charlie.

  “Right. Next, Elderholm. Center of our interest. No children resident but its owner Mrs. Beeston was away in Australia throughout the second half of 1969, to be with her daughter, Rosamund, who was having her first baby.”

  “Ah!”

  “Then next door is Sandringham—owned by the Humbletons. Daughter Marjorie or Marjie, whom I remember well. Lovely girl, I thought, as a not particularly worldly-wise seven-year-old. Still, Rosamund Scimone agrees, and so did her mother. Marjorie had the key to Elderholm all the time Mrs. Beeston was away.”

  “Really? Why?”

  “Switch on lights at night to deceive potential burglars and squatters, and generally keep an eye on the place.”

  “Makes sense, I suppose. This gets more interesting.”

  “Last house in this terrace, the Willows, currently owned by the Goldblatts. Then home to a girl called Caroline, surname uncertain. Mrs. Scimone thought she had a failing grip on reality. Mrs. Goldblatt encountered what she described as a madwoman who seemed to have a particular interest in Elderholm.”

  “Not in her own home?”

  “No. Interesting. Next terrace: Ashdene, currently owned by the Maylies. Then owned by the Pembertons. House seems to attract the socially ambitious. Rory Pemberton is said by Mrs. Scimone to have been generally neglected by money-conscious parents.”

  “That’s the boy you told me about yesterday?”

  “Right. I told you about Peter and Sophie Basnett too. They lived in the next house, Dell View. I have happy memories of him. In the ten years Mrs. Scimone was away he seems to have become morose, and Sophie a teenage sex kitten.”

  “Pretty natural progressions, both.”

  “Cynic. Next Sundown, with Lily Marsden, now Lily Fitch, whom we both know. Neither she nor her family generally liked. Then the last house, Mapledene. I’ve got nothing on that. Possibly the home of Colin, the only child I’ve got a name for but no location. Or possibly a childless house. There do seem to have been an awful lot of houses with children in them at the time.”

  “May be not surprising,” said Felicity, doing up buttons on her dress at the door to the sitting room. “Those houses are quite expensive now, Charlie tells me, but at that time they may have seemed a bit dated and tatty—just the thing for a young family who wanted something other than your standard semi.”

  “Quite apart from the fact that the birthrate’s much lower today,” said Charlie.

  “Could be, I suppose,” said Matt. “But anyway, there’s got to be some children from elsewhere.”

  “Why?”

  “We used to play five-a-side. We’ve only got eight so far.”

  “Fair enough,” said Charlie. He had got up and was changing his shirt for a natty purple-check one. “You know, I’m surprised about one thing.”

  “What’s that?”

  “All those children, all that publicity, and yet so far not a single communication from any of them.”

  But that was about to change.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  A Voice

  from the Past

  The next morning Matt bumped into Liza Pomfret in the corridor of Radio Leeds. Well, not so much bumped into as sidled past, trying to bury his head in the notes he had made for his usual morning slot of “Why doesn’t the council do something?” and “Why do these so-called refugees have to come here ?”—the usual morning mix of the genuinely bemused or confused and the congenital whinger.“Oh, Matt,” said that corncrake voice that managed to sound so different when it went on air. “What gives in the baby-bones saga?”
>
  Matt flinched, and didn’t bother to hide it.

  “The baby-bones saga? You have sweet ways of describing things, Liza. Actually, not much.”

  “You haven’t given up on it, have you? We should be thinking of a follow-up.”

  “We can’t think of a follow-up unless we have something to follow up with,” said Matt, “and so far, beyond a firming-up of the date we’ve got very little.”

  “The date’s been firmed?” pounced Liza. “When to?”

  Matt kicked himself.

  “Well, around 1969, but that’s very provi—”

  “Oh, no, that’s marvelous! That gives us something much more solid to go on.”

  “The people who used to live in those houses have been so much dispersed,” said Matt cunningly, as he thought, “that I think it would probably be more useful to go national now.”

  “Super idea!” said Liza, with terrible enthusiasm. “We’ll film an interview, and I’ll get on to the ‘Crimewatch’ people and get a slot there. I’ve got a friend on the program.”

  Whatever TV program came up, Liza invariably claimed to have a friend on it. She had no notion of making her lies likely ones.

  “May be, Liza, may be.” Matt cast a hurried glance at his watch. “Look, I’ve got to go. I’m on in two minutes.”

  “Oh, Matt—on your program they can just play a record.” Another of Liza’s amiable characteristics was that she never let the fact that she was after a favor get in the way of getting in a good kick on the shins if the opportunity arose. Matt comforted himself with the idea that this would prevent her getting very far up the greasy pole, but he wasn’t entirely convinced. Still, if he was being considered for greater things, it would be sweeter still if it was at the expense of the brutally dismissive Liza Pomfret.

  He was far from happy later in the day when, preparing to stand in for a two-twenty news summary on BBC Two, he heard his name on Liza Pomfret’s show.

  “I don’t know if you remember the item we had on a week or two back—the gruesome discovery of a child’s bones in a house in Bramley. Chills the cockles of your heart, doesn’t it? That was a house bought by Matt Harper, the former Bradford City footballer, now our own Matthew Harper, newsman and sports reporter. Well, I was talking to him earlier today, and he tells me that the date the poor little thing died is now put at around 1969. Well, we’re going to go national on this, but here’s a chance for all you older listeners to get in first. Have you any memories of those old stone houses in Houghton Avenue, Bramley, that could be of use to the police or of interest to us? Get in touch—”