“I didn’t know that! He told me the money was going towards his son’s drug recovery.”
Nathaniel flushed while Gregory appeared utterly nonplussed. “I don’t have a drug problem.”
Crystal swivelled on her heel, pointing her finger at his chest. “You certainly didn’t have a problem selling them to young men and women. What habit were you feeding if it wasn’t drugs?”
The young man sat back in his chair, crossing his arms over his chest. “It wasn’t like it was meth or heroin. I just gave them a few pills to help them study if they needed it. No biggie.”
“Big enough to get you kicked out of school.”
Dr Attica was staring at Gregory so hard Emily expected laser beams to shoot out of his eyes. She caught Cynthia’s glance, and a cup went skidding along the floor to land at the doctor’s foot. A signal they’d worked out earlier. Crystal turned to the man.
“You were the one pressuring the boy to keep selling more pills, weren’t you? If it hadn’t been for your bad influence, he wouldn’t have lost his place at university.”
The doctor snorted, looking unperturbed. “You’re not blaming this on me. I prescribed the drugs to treat the boy’s symptoms. I do my due diligence but it’s not like I can run every young man or woman over the coals when they turn up with an obvious problem.”
“An obvious problem that you’re not qualified to diagnose. Or did you become a psychiatrist when the town wasn’t looking?”
Dr Attica crossed his arms, nostrils flaring as he turned his glare onto Crystal. “The boy already had a diagnosis from a psychiatrist. It’s on file at my office.”
“Of course, it is. Nobody’s accusing you of being unintelligent. I’ve no doubt at all you covered your tracks.”
“I don’t need to—”
Crash!
While they’d been talking, Cynthia had moved over to the line-up of chairs. With crockery running low on her side, she’d picked up a handful of broken pieces and dropped them, letting them shatter again on the floor.
“Stop it! Stop it! Stop it!” Sariah stood up, hands once again over her ears. Tears streaked her face and a bubble blew out of one nostril. “I’m sorry. I sold stuff and fiddled the reports. Please let me pay it all back. If it takes me another decade, I’ll do it. I’ll do anything. Just let me out of this place!”
Emily stood up, her guilt at the young woman’s distress overcoming her need for revenge. “Come with me,” she said in a soft voice, taking her by the elbow. While Cynthia rolled her eyes and poked a finger into her mouth, Emily walked the younger woman to the door.
“I hope you mean it about changing your behaviour,” she said as Sariah staggered outside like a man freed after a thirty-year sentence. “You cost me a week’s income and caused an enormous rift between me and my boss. If you’re serious, I’d appreciate you coming to explain the situation to Pete Galveston tomorrow. Our charity runs three battered women’s shelters from Pinetar to Christchurch. Your theft causes them actual harm.”
Sariah nodded, backing up from the door while her eyes stayed fixed to Emily’s face. Only when her heel caught in the gravel, twisting her ankle, did she turn away. “I promise,” she said in a whisper. A second after she freed her foot, the woman ran, her heels striking sparks off the footpath as she ran up the road.
As Emily returned to the interrogation, Crystal was still haranguing Gregory. “Explain how you came to be at the base of the stairs, hands covered in her blood.”
“Cynthia, don’t!” Emily called out the warning as the ghost stood poised, a knife glinting in her hand. “Surely, you know this young man loved you. He didn’t push you down the stairs. The blood got on his hands because he was the first one to reach you.”
Mrs Pettigrew turned, frowning. The knife lowered, from above her shoulder, to chest height, to her waist, to her thigh.
“Except, he wasn’t the first to reach you, was he?”
Crystal took a step back, ceding the stage to Emily.
With a nod to the medium, she ran a hand through her grey curls, inhaled a deep breath, and turned to the true suspect.
“Gregory’s never been the first to anything in his life, has he, Hilda?”
Chapter Twenty-Four
The housekeeper pulled back in her chair, her face a mass of confusion. “Pardon me?”
For a second, Emily felt the flutter of doubt in her chest. Before today, she’d never given the housekeeper a second thought. Like herself, Hilda had reached the age where nobody noticed her, even when she stood right in front of their nose.
Like herself, Hilda was more capable than society expected her to be.
“You take blood pressure medication, don’t you?” A guess, but a reasonable one. Abraham had said as much when they arrived earlier to find Hilda cowering from the attacks in the kitchen.
“A lot of people my age take blood pressure medicine.”
So true. Perhaps why Cynthia connected it so strongly with being old. The reason why she’d rejected the idea a doctor had ever prescribed the medication for her.
“When Crystal said she knew you from felting club and might be able to convince you to show us the coroner’s report, I thought it was a long shot.” Emily glanced back at the medium who had her hands laced over the expanse of her belly, a worried smile on her face. “But then, I didn’t know at the time you’d engineered most of that report to match the facts of the case. You must’ve been so happy to present that to us. Anything to have us doubt the idea of murder.”
“How was I to know you thought someone had murdered Mrs Pettigrew?” Hilda jerked her chin up higher. “Why would I ever think that? You were just some lady from the charity shop, poking her nose in.”
“But I told you.” Crystal frowned—the crease in her brow aging her ten years. “When we discussed it, I said my friend was convinced it was a murder rather than an accident.”
“Did you?” Hilda shook her head. “If you did, I’ve forgotten. Are you sure that’s what you said?”
“Dr Attica. Do you know the penalties of lying to the coroner?”
Emily turned her head around sharply, catching the man on the verge of drifting into a reverie.
“Eh? What’s this?”
“Your name is all over the coroner’s report. Prescribing medication to Mrs Pettigrew and signing her death certificate. A strange thing to do, considering she wasn’t a patient of yours.”
“Well, not now. She’s dead.” The doctor tilted his head back and looked down his nose at Emily. “I’m not sure you understand how these things work but Cynthia enrolled at my clinic the moment she came to Pinetar.”
“Something both you and the ministry of health forgot to inform her actual doctor. I checked with his practice and she’s still enrolled there. Nobody even bothered to tell them she’d died.”
“It’s a mistake.” Dr Attica stood. “This evening has been a waste of my time.”
“And yet you came.” Emily planted her hands on her hips, mimicking the ghost standing beside him. “That’s a bit odd, isn’t it? A gardener turns up out of the blue asking you to come along to a house, with no real explanation of why. What did you tell him?” she asked, turning to Abraham.
“I said the family had questions about Cynthia’s death. He turned pale, then bright red, then stammered an excuse why he couldn’t, then followed me along to the car.”
“Your behaviour’s a bit odd, isn’t it? For someone who was just the woman’s secondary GP?”
“Primary. And no, I assumed the family needed help through their grieving process. It’s a big part of a rural doctor’s repertoire, helping the community come to terms with death.”
“Nothing to do with Gregory’s false prescriptions?”
Dr Attica scowled. “I’ve already said I know nothing about that. I’ve just been doing my job and if this family took advantage of my services, that’s on them.”
“Did you put the pills into her hot chocolate?” Emily said, switching her gaze ba
ck to Hilda. “Cynthia raved about the drink and insisted we try it. You must’ve laughed about that in the past, getting all that cream past her diet radar. How easy, to fill it up with pills to get your own back.”
“You insisted she have a drink that morning,” Gregory said, perking up at the words. “I remember Mummy said it was too hot, but you kept nagging.”
“I did no such thing,” Hilda said with a scowl. “You’re misremembering things as usual. You’re the one with the dodgy drug history. If anyone slipped medicine into Cynthia’s drink, it was you.”
“Except Gregory wasn’t the one feeling ill from the side effects, was he?” Emily took a step toward the housekeeper, piercing her with a hard gaze. “You felt dizzy and she wouldn’t even let you take the day off work, would she? Did you pop it into her mug to teach her a lesson? I’m sure it’s no more than she deserved.”
“Hey!” Cynthia’s voice sounded wounded. “I am standing right here. You can choose your words a bit more carefully, thank you.”
Hilda tilted her chin even farther up in the air. A few more centimetres and she’d be staring straight at the ceiling.
Emily held her hands out to each side. “I’ve only had to deal with her hanging around for a few weeks. I can’t imagine putting up with her scorn and her harshness, day in, day out. Nobody will blame you if you just wanted to give her a taste of what it was like for you. It’s still an accident, after all. Just a tumble down the stairs because the side effects made her dizzy.”
“Is this true, Hilda?” Cynthia stepped closer to the housekeeper, poking a finger at the woman’s chest.
“Ow.” Hilda jerked away, her face turning frightened.
“Did you change the label on your own medication and pass it off as Mrs Pettigrew’s?” Emily had already surmised that must be what happened but was glad when the woman gave the slightest tilt of her head. Hilda probably wasn’t even aware of the gesture.
“What did you say to Dr Attica to make him help you cover up your tracks?” Emily stepped to the side as the ghost blocked her view of the housekeeper. “What did you have on him?”
“Yeah, what?” Cynthia poked Hilda in the arm.
“What’s going on?” Hilda jerked to her feet with such violence, the chair overturned behind her. She turned in a complete circle. “What do you have rigged up in here? What tricks are you playing?”
“No tricks,” Cynthia said giving a quick jab in Hilda’s ribs. The woman bellowed in pain, doubling over though the blow didn’t seem very hard. “That’s just the feeling of Karma in action.”
“This isn’t a trick.” Emily held out her hands and looked over to Crystal, who did the same. “We’re not touching anything or controlling anything. Mrs Pettigrew is the only one acting out. We’re just following her lead and asking the questions she can’t give voice to.”
“No.” Hilda sobbed and ran over to the door leading to the kitchen. She pulled it open and Cynthia slammed it in her face.
“You’re not getting away from me that easily!”
“Please, just admit to what you’ve done,” Emily pleaded. “We can’t control what the ghost will do to you. If you explain and beg her for mercy—”
“Beg her? Beg her!?” Hilda whirled back to face them. “I spent the last fifteen years begging that woman. For a decent wage, for time off, for her to raise her stepson so I didn’t have to. I’m not begging anyone, anymore.”
Hilda tipped her head back, scanning the ceiling, the walls, the floors, the staircase. “You hear that, you foolish, simpering woman! I’m done asking you for anything. I put the pills in your coffee. I thought you’d enjoy being the one too ill to do her work for a change.”
Gregory and Nathaniel gasped, but Hilda didn’t react. Her gaze continued to sweep the room, giving a cry of triumph as she spotted a levitating plate. She roared like a bull and charged toward the ghost.
Mrs Pettigrew didn’t have to stand aside. The housekeeper sprinted straight through her. When she smacked into the far wall, Hilda turned and limped toward the apparition again.
“When you fell down the stairs, I thought, I can’t believe I’m this lucky! The foolish woman who made my working life a misery has just killed herself. Serves her right!”
Cynthia howled and threw the crockery in her hand at the housekeeper as hard as she could. Hilda sidestepped neatly, the grace of a dancer contained in the move.
“Then I reached you and saw you hadn’t hurt anything worse than your pride. A few bruises that would heal in a week. You cheated me.”
Hilda raised her hand in a fist, shaking it at the empty air in front of her. “You should have had the decency to die in the fall. Instead, you opened your eyes and yelled at me to help you up.”
The ghost took a step backward, her features turning into a caricature of distress. “I remember. You just stood over me gawping.”
Emily opened her mouth to relay the message when Hilda gave a scream of frustration.
“Gawping, you said! I came over to help and you couldn’t resist, could you? Any chance to toss me an insult, and you’d take it. You were a miserable, rotten cow and I couldn’t live with you a minute longer. If I had the opportunity to do it all again, I wouldn’t change a thing.”
Hilda paused for a second, panting heavily. Then she grinned, exposing her sharp eye-teeth. “The sound your head made when I cracked it off the bottom stair is the most beautiful music I’ve ever heard.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
Dr Attica tried to leave the house before the police got there, but to Gregory’s credit, he stopped him at the door. “I don’t think Hilda’s the only one the cops will want to talk to.” He dragged the man back into the room by his arm. “You have a lot of explaining to do.”
As they waited, a flash from the stairs startled them. Footsteps ran back along the landing, and the sound of a man escaping from an upstairs window could clearly be heard.
“I guess that’ll be the headline in the paper tomorrow,” Emily said with a raised eyebrow at Crystal. “If they don’t openly apologise, the press should at least move your expose to an inside column.”
The medium grabbed hold of Emily’s arm and gave a shriek of pleasure. Despite the torn emotions of everyone else in the house, Crystal appeared to be having the time of her life. “Wasn’t that exciting?” she kept saying, whether anybody was listening or not.
Cynthia sat on the bottom step of the staircase, staring glumly at the point where her dead body had once lain. Peanut wandered over, twirling in and out of her legs until he finally jumped into her lap. She stroked him, her face still as blank as it had been since Hilda’s final revelation.
“We recorded the entire confession,” Emily explained to the sergeant when he arrived to take Hilda into custody. “I don’t know if it will stand up in court, but in addition to all these people’s testimony, I hope it’s evidence enough to reopen the case.”
The sergeant lifted the digital recorder and peered at it as though it were a troubling foe. After a minute, he clicked his fingers and one of the attending PCs opened up an evidence bag. He tagged it and sealed it, looking disappointed all the while.
“What’s the deal with the doctor, then?” the sergeant asked Emily after they moved Hilda out to the car.
“At the very least, he falsified evidence presented to the coroner. I think if somebody goes back through his clinical records, they might find a lot of incidences like that.”
“We’ve got someone else down at the station, talking about you and your little soiree this evening.” Sergeant Winchester said with a frown. “Sariah Channing. She’s insisted on confessing to a long list of theft offences. Chief amongst them is swindling you and your charity out of about eight grand.”
Emily felt a rush of concern. “I don’t suppose you could let her work that off, could you? If you lock her up, we might lose the chance to recover that money, forever.”
“No, you won’t.” Nathaniel Pettigrew stepped forward, looking a decade ol
der than when he’d arrived at the house. “I’ll pay any shortcomings out of my pocket. Since she handed the money straight to me, it’s sitting in my bank account.”
The sergeant raised his eyebrows but withheld any comment.
“Just a word of warning,” Emily said, in the spirit of sharing. “We think a reporter was listening in to the whole confession, upstairs. There’s a good chance it’ll be in the paper tomorrow. If Crystal’s house is anything to go by, that’ll mean a clutch of reporters lying in wait at the station.”
“We’re used to that. I’m sure one of my PCs will be only too happy to keep moving them along.” He sighed. “They’ll keep coming back but it’ll give one of those lads from the front desk something to do.”
“Other than laugh at me.” Emily still held a pocket of resentment for how they’d treated her when the ghost first appeared.
“Nobody will be laughing at you, tomorrow, I can guarantee that.” He pushed a hand through his hair, deep creases radiating out from his eyes. “Besides, didn’t I say, bring me evidence and I’ll look at it?”
“Yes, you did.” Emily wrinkled her nose. “It just wasn’t in quite that tone.”
“If anyone’s interested in what I have to say, I can tell you to lock Hilda up and throw away the key.” Cynthia stood up from her place on the stairs, clutching Peanut tightly to her. “What a nasty, vindictive woman. If only I’d known sooner, we could’ve been friends.”
Emily stared at her for a second, then burst out laughing, much to the policeman’s astonishment. Perhaps sensing volatility, Gregory pulled the sergeant away and led him over to where the doctor sat.
“Don’t get me into trouble,” Emily scolded. “Not when they’ve just started to show me some respect.”
“That’ll be fleeting enough.”
Crystal skipped over to join them, her cheeks flushed and eyes twinkling. “Oh, my. I can’t exactly say that was fun, but…”
Cynthia rolled her eyes. “Not so much fun from this side of the afterlife.”
Charity Shop Haunted Mysteries Page 17