False Wall

by Veronica Heley

  ‘I don’t know what else you could have done. Sophy, have a seat, and I’ll tell you exactly what happened …’

  And she did. In detail, starting from the moment the wall had come down, recounting the Admiral’s calls to their neighbours to lay the blame on her, progressing to the invitation to the party, their separation into different rooms, their being drugged, the scraping of Leon’s cheek and their blundering escape into the garden.

  Sophy’s eyes and mouth grew wide. ‘You mean …’ She waved her arms about. Turning to look out over the gardens, she said, ‘That’s evil! But … why!’

  ‘That,’ said Bea, ‘is what I’d like to know. There’s a number of theories going around. First, it’s something to do with Sir Leon’s selling his overseas assets. The Admiral has shares in a lot of companies and he’s short of money—’

  ‘The skinflint!’

  ‘Yes. So he might easily be persuaded to take part in a plot to discredit Leon and interfere with the markets for monetary gain.’

  ‘But why target this house?’

  Bea pressed both hands to her head. ‘I’ve been trying not to think that way, but yes, as you say, why should anyone want to wipe out me and my agency?’

  Sophy hesitated. ‘Those youngsters, they’re way out of line. The way they were acting, off their heads laughing, not caring who saw them—’

  ‘I’m with you. I think that Admiral and Lady Payne hatched a plot to discredit Sir Leon and me but that, when the youngsters took a hand, it passed out of the control of the senior members of the family. I think the youngsters fired my house for kicks! But, there were no witnesses to the arson, and I can’t go to the police with what I know till I can ensure Sir Leon’s safety.’

  ‘But you won’t let them get away with it.’

  ‘No, Sophy, I won’t. But I must confess I feel as if I’m continuously being hit like a punchbag. No sooner do I try to rebound from one thing than the next blow descends. Hari thinks they’ll try to cut off the water supply tonight and possibly try another attack through the garden. And I haven’t had time to sit down and work out why this is happening.’

  ‘It doesn’t make sense.’ Sophy looked out of the window over the devastation below. Bea joined her.

  A ginger cat appeared at the top of what remained of a neighbour’s wall. A good place to sit and groom himself.

  Nothing moved in Leon’s back garden. The rays of the setting sun were reflecting light from the newly cleaned windows of his house.

  There was a stir in Bea’s garden below. Winston, balanced on a pile of logs, eyed the distance from where he was crouched to the remaining part of the right-hand wall. He made the leap, and disappeared down into the next garden. Business as usual. Bea wondered how the neighbour’s bridge party had got on that afternoon.

  The dumpy figure of an elderly woman came out of the basement flat into the Admiral’s garden. Bea checked with Sophy. ‘That’s not Lady Payne. Is it her elder sister, the one who lives in the basement?’

  ‘Her? She come out to ask us if we’d like a cuppa when we arrived to set up for the party. Said she always goes to see an old friend on Friday evenings, but that we could use her toilet if we needed, sooner than go up into the house. She was nice. We thought she was the housekeeper. She don’t look much like Lady Payne. You sure they’re sisters?’

  Agreed, they didn’t look much like one another. Bea watched as the woman – Mona, was that her name? – picked her way across the garden to the tumbledown shed in the corner and knocked on the door. The young lad – Rollo? – pushed his head out. She said something to him, upon which he returned to the house with her.

  ‘That’s the youngest member of the family,’ said Bea. ‘Is she saying there’s a phone call for him?’

  Sophy said, ‘“Supper’s ready?” I didn’t see him at the party. What’s he doing in the shed? Having a quick fag?’

  Bea wondered, ‘Do you think Mona might be worth talking to?’

  ‘How would you get past Her-that-rules-the-roost, like?’

  Bea wanted to say, ‘I’ll get the police to ask her some questions,’ and realized she couldn’t talk to the police. Not yet. Which meant it was up to her to get at the truth.

  And from one second to the next, she was paralysed with fear.

  She had to force herself to breathe in and out. In and out.

  Panic!

  She could not – could not! – could not! – enter that house again.

  Too much had happened to her there.

  She’d been drugged, tossed around like a rag doll, been searched, her property had been stolen …

  No, she could not … She winced away from the thought. It was too much! She couldn’t be expected to … the humiliation, the way she’d been forced to hide and … to have to bribe her way out of the situation! No, no, no!

  Let someone else do it.

  Oh? Who?

  Anyone else. The police.

  You know that if you hand this over to the police, Leon will be pilloried for something he didn’t do.

  Am I my brother’s keeper? Well, yes, I suppose I am. True, he ran away, and left me to deal with the problem, but does that mean I’m the right person to deal with it?

  You’ve always known you were stronger than him.

  What! What was that?

  You’ve always known you were stronger than him.

  No. No!

  Face facts. You’re stronger than him.

  Oh. Yes. Perhaps.

  She closed her eyes. Dear Lord, I can’t … not even with you backing me up … I’m too tired … You can’t ask this of me.

  I am always with you. Remember that I am already there … before you … behind you … around you … I am in the light. I am the Light. But, I am also in the dark.

  She opened her eyes. ‘I suppose I’d better go over there and have a word with her.’

  Now it was Sophy’s turn to be uneasy. ‘You won’t go alone?’

  ‘I’ll wait till she’s by herself, and no: I won’t go alone.’

  Miguel and Sophy departed with renewed admonitions to Bea to take care of herself. She tidied up in the kitchen, and boiled kettles to wash the dishes. Miguel hadn’t managed to isolate the circuit in the basement but, courtesy of the generator, they now had a light – from a table lamp – in the blacked-out kitchen, and could run the kettle, the fridge, the freezer and the microwave.

  Oliver remained bent over his laptop, now and then making notes on a pad of paper. Hari swooped up and down the stairs, carrying cables and tools. The generator muttered away to itself in the garden.

  The early evening faded slowly, imperceptibly, to dusk.

  Bea had another try at getting through to Leon, and ended up in voicemail again. Ah well. Better than nothing. He needed to know what was going on; how helpful so many people had been; how they’d propped her up when she’d felt low. She tried to keep her report as short as she could. Leon had enough to worry about where he was, without her going into details about insurance claims and reporters. Nevertheless, it was good to be able to share her worries with someone, if only by voicemail. Perhaps he’d ring back tomorrow.

  Feeling slightly refreshed, Bea went to find Hari, who was doing something complicated with wiring in the new office. ‘Hari, I want to have a quiet word with an old lady, name of Mona Barwell, who lives in the basement at the Admiral’s house, but I don’t particularly want to bring the rest of that crew down on me.’

  Hari said, ‘Let’s have a look-see.’ He shut off the table lamp he’d been working by, led the way to the window, and lifted the blackout curtain. ‘Why do you want to talk to her? She’s their cook-cum-housekeeper, isn’t she? Look, she’s in the big kitchen on the ground floor now, cooking a meal, while the young lad is setting the table for her. How many is she expecting to feed? Six, seven? The Admiral and his wife are watching television in their sitting room next door. They’re not lifting a finger to help, are they? I can’t see the lad’s parents.’

 
‘My informant said they have to work at weekends. By the way, what do you fancy for supper yourself?’ She peered over his shoulder. ‘Are the youngsters still around? Ah, I see them.’

  The three of them were in one of the bedrooms at the top of the house. Venetia was rolling around on the bed with the older boy, while his younger brother recorded the event on his phone.

  There was an indrawn breath from Hari as the younger brother took his turn with Venetia.

  It surprised Bea that Hari would be shocked. Surely he must have come across promiscuous youngsters before? Yes, it had shocked her, but she’d thought him unshockable. It was rather endearing. She said, ‘A pizza do you for supper?’

  Hari said, ‘Don’t that lot ever draw their curtains?’

  Bea switched her eyes back down to the Admiral’s kitchen. ‘Do you think the youngsters will condescend to eat the food their elderly relative has prepared, or will they go straight out drinking? There are seven people in the house at the moment. Not good odds. And I’d rather not come across the youngsters. They’re unpredictable.’

  ‘What about the schoolboy?’

  She shrugged. ‘He did return some of our stolen property, which argues he isn’t involved in what the others are up to.’

  ‘One of the advantages for us of their switching on the lights inside but never drawing the curtains, is that they can’t see what’s happening outside. Especially when it gets darker. Ah …’

  Bea looked where he was pointing. The youngsters were changing clothes. One was towelling himself down after taking a shower. Were they preparing to go out for the evening? Were they going to join the grown-ups for supper?

  If the young lad had laid the table for six or seven, it looked as if they were all going to eat in. So, Bea would get her household something to eat, too. She couldn’t go visiting till things calmed down. ‘Supper, then?’

  Hari said, ‘I’ll finish blacking out your windows after supper. If we’re not showing any lights, they’ll assume we’ve deserted the place and that’ll give them confidence to try something else … that is, if they’re still intent on mayhem.’

  The three of them ate in the kitchen office, not talking much. Now and then Hari leaped up the stairs to peer out of the ‘new’ office window to keep track of what was happening as the Admiral and his family moved around their brightly lit house.

  The youngsters joined the seniors for supper in the big kitchen. Afterwards, Admiral and Lady Payne retired to their ground-floor sitting room and turned the telly back on.

  Mona and the young lad, Rollo, filled the dishwasher and set it going. Rollo slipped out into the garden, put a padlock on the door of the rickety shed and smoked a fag.

  Mona turned off the lights in the family kitchen and retired to the basement. On went some side lights there, and then came the flicker of her television. Rollo finished his cigarette and joined Mona in the basement, slumping into a chair beside her. She made them mugs of tea or coffee. He commandeered the remote and flicked through programmes on the telly. She tapped his wrist and took the remote off him. He shrugged, and settled down to watch whatever it was she wanted to see.

  He was a misfit in that house, wasn’t he? Neither fish, flesh, nor fowl. But at least Mona was looking after him.

  The youngsters hung around for a bit in their rooms at the top of the house, changing clothes yet again. They were going out for the evening? To the pub? It looked like it. They dis-appeared from the top floor, reappeared briefly in the sitting room downstairs to have a word with their grandparents, and vanished from view. They had left all the lights on at the top of the house. Typical. They didn’t have to pay the electricity bill, did they?

  Hari said, ‘Two in the basement, two on the ground floor. Give them all a while to settle down before you sneak across to have a word with the old lady. Take care not to turn an ankle as you go. Perhaps take a walking stick to negotiate the barbed wire and the rubble of the wall? I’ll come with you and hover in the shadows when you go into the house. It will be like a stage set. I shall be able to see everything that happens inside, but they won’t be able to see me, in the audience. One peep out of them, one word from you and I’ll be right there with you.’ He gave her the once-over. ‘You’ll be all right.’

  She didn’t feel all right.

  She felt wobbly and fearful and there were so many thoughts running across her head that she couldn’t disentangle any single one of them, except for the voice shouting at the back of her head that she did not want to go over there!

  Hari had no doubts.

  She had far too many.

  She began to pace.

  Just give me the facts, ma’am.

  There was a shortage of facts. A lot of information – too much information? – but a shortage of facts.

  Think Cluedo. Who did what to whom, in the library? Or, in this case, in the garden of Leon’s house, which hadn’t been his at the time, but which had belonged to a gaga elderly lady who dressed like the late Queen Mary and carried a charity box around with her. Said charity: for those lost at sea. Because, her husband had been lost at sea. And then, she’d got Alzheimer’s and was now living in a home somewhere.

  Question: what happens to the property of someone who’s not capable of looking after their own interests? Doesn’t the law provide a guardian of some kind?

  Who signed the bill of sale for the house?

  Leon hadn’t mentioned any problem in that direction. Presumably, therefore, there hadn’t been a problem.

  Bea beat one hand on the palm of the other. ‘This is irrelevant.’

  And went on pacing.

  Sophy said the Queen Mary lookalike had been around and playing bridge with her friends until recently.

  Well, OK, Alzheimer’s could strike at any time and its progress varied from one person to the other. Her house had been sold, Leon had put in his builders and …

  Had the previous owner told Leon about the dog cemetery in her garden?

  Bea stopped pacing. She spoke aloud. ‘Yes, she did. Leon told me so. He said he was going to have the garden landscaped when he’d finished with the house. He’d wanted to have an outside tap and, yes, a fountain. He’d planned to cut a door through the wall into my garden. All of which meant …’

  She noticed that Hari and Oliver had suspended whatever they were doing to listen to her. She shrugged, tried to smile. Told herself to keep her mouth shut.

  Now, suppose Queen Mary’s husband had not been lost at sea, but for some reason had been buried in his own garden?

  Mm. Let’s follow this line of enquiry. Is it possible that Queen Mary went on living there, grieving, setting up a charity in his memory and playing bridge … which is not a game for the mentally handicapped? Would she do that, if she’d buried him in the garden? No, she wouldn’t. If she’d killed and buried him, she wouldn’t have wanted to draw attention to the fact by perpetuating his memory in a charity for those lost at sea. Could she have done so out of guilt? But then … to sell the house, knowing that Leon planned to dig up the garden? No, it wasn’t feasible.

  Conclusion: Queen Mary didn’t know about those bones!

  Of course, they might have been there a hundred years or more. These houses were old enough. The bones wouldn’t have been from a plague victim. No. Too early. These houses were only just being built when the plague last hit London. In any case, for reasons of hygiene, plague victims were buried away from the houses, usually in special pits. They were not interred in someone’s back garden.

  So, the bones belonged to a recent victim of crime?

  Or, of course, Queen Mary might just be so far round the twist that she’d killed her husband and remained in denial about it ever after.

  This is irrelevant! What have those bones to do with Leon … or with the Paynes?

  Sometimes, if you’re doing a jigsaw puzzle and can’t see where the pieces fit, you turn it round and look at it the other way up. So, suppose you did that. It would mean that the bones meant somethin
g to Bea. Which was nonsense.

  It also meant that the focus of investigation passed from Queen Mary to the Paynes. Now that did make sense in a way.

  It meant that one husband going missing was sheer carelessness, but that two husbands going AWOL was …! Ah. Another husband had gone missing, hadn’t he? Went off to Australia, according to Lady Payne. Went to Miami, according to Tippi.

  Lady Payne is a liar, of course. Lady Payne had said that Queen Mary had Alzheimer’s. That single fact could be checked.

  Bea found her mobile and tried to get through to Leon. He wasn’t picking up. Bother! But it wasn’t going through to voicemail, either.

  The dulcet tones of his annoying PA came through. ‘Mrs Abbot? I observe that you are trying to communicate with Sir Leon—’ infuriating chit! – ‘but he has instructed me that he cannot take any calls for the moment. May I take a message?’

  ‘I’m sure you can give me the information I need. When Sir Leon bought his house, did he deal direct with the owner? I’ve been told a rather strange tale: that she has Alzheimer’s and therefore wasn’t responsible for—’

  ‘What nonsense!’ A snort. ‘I was with him when the papers were signed and we all had lunch together afterwards. The seller was moving into a flat nearby. I can assure you she was perfectly compos mentis.’

  One strike against Lady Payne, who’d said the QM had gone gaga. ‘I’m sure she was. She told you about the dogs which had been buried in her back garden?’

  ‘Most unsanitary. They do things differently nowadays. Two Labradors and a retriever of her husband’s, which he himself buried in their garden years ago. Sir Leon said would she mind if he had the remains removed and cremated. She agreed, of course. He was also toying with the idea of installing a fountain and he wanted to cut a doorway through the end wall into your garden. He didn’t need to ask her permission, but he wanted her to feel comfortable about what he planned to do. Naturally, she understood that once she’d sold, he might do as he wished. But she made no objection, I assure you.’