First she had to try the scones, the jam and the creamily golden Cornish clotted cream. The trouble was that one just wasn’t enough. She couldn’t resist when he offered her another plus a second cup of tea. She also commented that the jam and cream were excellent.
He relished her approval and seemed set on eliciting more.
‘Note the sugar cubes. Cubes. Not that common granulated muck. One lump or two?’
‘I don’t take sugar.’
He looked at her as though she’d said something totally disgusting – like, how about we settle down for a game of Strip Jack Naked.
She flashed him her warmest smile. ‘I have to watch my figure. I’m getting married. Have to fit into the dress.’
‘Of course!’ He slapped his palm against his head as though he already knew. ‘Sorry, darling. I forgot. You want to look your best. White dress, bouquet of sweet smelling roses.’ His voice was dreamy. His gaze drifted to the floral display of soft pinks, blues and misty white and he began to hum the Wedding March.
Sensing something was terribly wrong Honey tensed, clutched her teacup and wished she hadn’t eaten that second scone. Scones slowed you down if you happened to be considering making a sharp exit. And she was!
What was all this about? He was speaking as though he were part of her wedding arrangements – arrangements she reminded herself, were far from finalised.
He couldn’t know that she was getting married. She’d never met him before.
Neither had she mentioned getting married to the neighbours.
What to do? Handle it. There was nothing else to it.
‘Excuse me. What did you say your name was?’
He looked affronted. ‘That’s very hurtful. You know very well who I am.’
Honey gulped. Humour him, she told herself. Just humour him.
‘This is a very lovely room.’ Her teacup rattled as she placed it back in its saucer.
‘Not as lovely as you.’
He slid forward in his chair so that his knees almost touched hers.
‘About the wedding car...’
‘I think a white Rolls Royce. All brides should have a white Rolls Royce. I won’t have any disagreements on that point. It has to be a white Rolls Royce.’
‘You saw it, did you? The white Rolls Royce that Mr Clifford used to keep in the garage to the rear of your garden?’
‘Oh yes. Do you like it?’
‘I’ve never seen it, and besides, that’s what I’m here about. It’s been stolen.’
The face of her host set like concrete.
‘Who says so?’
Honey thought it an odd thing to say. ‘Mr Clifford reported it missing. He left it outside the garage and when he came back to collect it, it was gone. Look, she said, delving into her bag. ‘Do you know this woman?’
This time she’d fetched out the right picture. The man, who had fed her the best scones she’d ever tasted, took a long look and shook his head. ‘No. Is Miss Evans here?’
He looked at her aghast, drawing his chin in like a pelican retrieving his craw.
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Geri Evans. This is her house isn’t it?’
‘Does this look like her house? That disgusting woman who sleeps all day and keeps all hours?’
‘I don’t know what her house looks like.’
‘Of course you do! Everyone knows she doesn’t wash the windows from week to week and certainly doesn’t have the place decorated. As for the garden...it’s a disgrace.’
The truth batted her round the head in one swift strike. She was in the wrong house.
‘I’m sorry. You mean this is number eight?’
‘Number eight. That indeed is the number of this little old house of mine! A nice even figure.’
‘So is number six – an even figure I mean.’
Judging by his pained expression, he was about to put her straight on that.
‘It is painfully obvious to any sane person that number six is not even in the way that number eight is even. Number six only has one circle. Number eight has one at the top and one at the bottom. That’s why the Chinese consider it lucky. Two concentric circles joined together. It means you can never lose.’
Honey stared at him. Reg and Vera had warned her not to enter number eight on pain of not getting out again – not in a hurry anyway.
She sprang to her feet. ‘I need the bathroom.’
The teacup rattled in the saucer and the saucer tottered on the plate as she returned them to the tray.
‘Up the stairs, first on the left,’ he said. ‘Whilst you attend to that, I’ll get out the wedding planner and we can decide the final details. Now. Where did I put them?’
Even before he was on his feet and rummaging in a highly polished bureau, Honey was out of the door and up the stairs, leaping them two at a time.
By the time she’d locked the door she was breathless.
Think! Think, she urged herself.
The bathroom was white. More white. The whiteness was blinding her.
Feeling a sense of rising panic, she closed her eyes and tried some deep breathing exercises she’d learned to do at a First Aid class. They were said to keep you calm in an emergency.
This is an emergency, she told herself. Nevertheless, the deep breathing didn’t seem to be doing much.
What had Vera said his name was? She couldn’t think.
Think, think, think!
Something here wasn’t quite right. In fact something was very wrong. The man downstairs had seemed polite enough...the man! What the devil was his name? Then it came to her. Blinded by her own preconceptions, she’d stumbled into the wrong house. She’d assumed the occupant of the scruffy house to be a man, the neat house to be a woman. She’d been hopelessly wrong. She was in house number eight; the man had said so himself, and it was the man at number eight that Reg and Vera had warned her against.
She could hear Doherty’s voice ringing in her ears. ‘Sloppy work, Driver.’
She couldn’t argue with that. She hadn’t asked him and she hadn’t checked the number on the front door.
The truth got scarier when she realised she hadn’t given him her name. So what was all this stuff about wedding dresses? There was no denying that the house resembled the inside of a bridal shop, all white and pink roses. He also favoured a white Rolls Royce for the bride.
‘Shit!’ The prospect of reintroducing her cussing jar raised its head, one bad word and in went a pound coin. Amazing how quickly the last jar had filled up.
It was as though somebody had suddenly tipped a bucket of cold water over her. Her time in the bathroom turned out to be worthwhile thanks to drinking two cups of tea.
Before pulling the flush, she gratefully pulled her mobile phone out of her pocket.
Doherty’s number was there, but...what should she tell him? That a man with no name had invited her in for tea and scones? That she’d failed to ask his name?
She could imagine what he would say. ‘Very unprofessional.’
She couldn’t phone him until she’d done the sensible thing and faced the man who had plied her with refreshments. Nigel Brooks! The name came in a flash. So did the possibility that he was the killer. It wasn’t up to her to prove the point. She’d leave that to the police.
Taking the deep breaths she’d learned to take at those first aid classes on a winter’s night in a draughty church hall she prepared herself to face the man downstairs.
It seemed a good idea to take a good look round. Leaving the door ajar, she crossed the landing. The carpet was oatmeal coloured – like pale porridge before the sugar is added. The same carpet covered the floor of the master bedroom, which was dominated by a brass four-poster bed. It had a floral bedspread. The hangings were floral too. Roses. No surprise there.
If he was the murderer she was being stupid hanging around, but she had to do something.
She glanced towards the small front bedroom; carpet the colour of clotted cream, walls the
same, curtain...
And something else.
The door was only slightly ajar; one or two more footsteps – OK – perhaps three, and she could peep inside. That something else, a whitish blob intrigued her.
If Nigel Brooks, the man downstairs should hear her, the door to the room was right next to the stairs; she’d be down in no time.
One, two, three footsteps. She was there, but somehow at the wrong angle. The door needed to open just that bit more so she could see exactly...
Using just two fingers, she gently pushed the door open, then blinked and blinked again.
The bridal dress was the biggest meringue of a dress she’d ever seen, unless the room wasn’t a room but a broom cupboard, a box room as it was commonly called.
It was definitely a wedding dress. There was also a veil, a great heavy train seeded with pearls.
What was it doing here? Did this man, whoever he was, deal in bridal wear?
If that was the case there would be more hanging on a long rail running the length of the room – such as it was. It occurred to her that he might have more wedding dresses elsewhere in the house. Plenty more to fit all ages, sizes and shapes of brides.
Her blood chilled. Doherty had to be told. After that, she was out of here, back downstairs and hot foot it out of the front door as quick as her feet could take her. Luckily she was wearing flat shoes today. Running would have been out of the question if she’d opted for high heels.
First hide your tracks. She nipped swiftly back to the bathroom, pulled the flush and closed the door noisily – just so he knew she was on her way.
Nigel Brooks was waiting for her downstairs standing at the entrance to the milk white front room.
‘I’m cooking lamb chops for dinner. Unless you’d like to go out?’
Lamb chops! Was he mad?
Very likely. She only prayed that the front door wasn’t locked and she wouldn’t end up as his prisoner. Homemade scones and lamb chops were no substitute for the freedom to be a slob whenever you wanted.
It seemed a shame to puncture that hopeful expression, but this was a nightmare – like when Alice fell down the well. In Honey’s case she’d entered a house she’d been warned not to enter.
‘Mr Brooks isn’t it?’
‘You know it is.’
He looked a trifle confused.
‘Yes. I know you’re Nigel Brooks. Your neighbours told me so. I’m here on behalf of the police to ask whether you saw anything suspicious over the back the night before last. Principally, did you see anyone stealing Mr Clifford’s white Rolls Royce.’ There was no way she was going to mention the wedding dress upstairs or the fact that both dead women had been wearing wedding dresses. That way could lead to trouble.
The face of the man in front of her suddenly lost the soft pastiness of a man happy to oblige her. The dent in his chin quivered like a peach about to burst open.
‘What are you doing in my house?’
It took a lot of courage to remain calm and sound confident. ‘I told you, Mr Brooks. I’m asking questions about the Rolls Royce Mr Clifford keeps in the garage at the back there. He didn’t put it away the other night because he’d left the garage keys behind. He had to leave it out all night and in the morning it was gone.’
She stopped herself from saying anything about the circumstances of it being found. She didn’t want to mention the dead woman in the back and the fact she was wearing a wedding dress.
‘Are you accusing me?’
His jovial tone was totally absent.
‘No, I’m just asking...’
‘She sent you here, didn’t she? That tart next door. That’s why you were asking about her. Geraldine!’ He said her name as though he were chewing on lemons.
‘No. I told you, I’m here on behalf of the police...’
‘I know nothing. Tell the police that. I know ABSOLUTELY NOTHING!’
‘Many thanks for the tea.’
Honey made a dash for the front door, fully expecting him to reach out, knock it closed, or grab her shoulder and drag her back in. Then he might make her take her clothes off and put on that wedding dress. A dreadful thought. Big skirts like that giant meringue just didn’t suit her!
As with the garden gate, the door hinges were well-oiled so one turn of the lock and it flew open. Like Motorhead’s Bat Out of Hell, she flew through it.
Breathless she sat in her car, phone pressed to her ear.
Doherty listened. ‘Stay there. A car is on its way. Are you parked outside this bloke’s house?’
‘No. A few doors up. But get here quickly. I’m scared.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Nigel Brooks stood at the door, his jaw set and his eyes glittering. Every woman wanted to wear a white wedding dress didn’t she? Even after the wedding ceremony when everything was perfect, the dress perfectly white, the bouquet a mass of beautiful blooms, it didn’t mean to say that they could never – or should never – wear that dress again. It didn’t even matter if the dress they had worn on that special day had rotted away long ago, or that they had outgrown the actual dress; there was nothing to stop them wearing another white dress. And that’s where he could help them. He had lots of white dresses, not just the one she had worn; his wife. He had other dresses up in the attic. Not that he allowed every woman he came across to wear one of his dresses. They had to be special. They had to look like Audrey.
Audrey had been a beautiful bride, but then she’d run away. She’d said that marriage didn’t suit her. She said their marriage was a farce and that their wedding was a farce. To him it had been sweet and sacred, but not to her. Never to her. She’d preferred her pet Labrador, a big smelly thing called Roberto to him.
His head was reeling when he turned from the door, a cold sweat breaking out on his forehead and trickling down his back. His footsteps were soft on the carpet because he wore no shoes. He never wore shoes in the house.
Only once he was back in his beautiful front room, a shrine to his beloved Audrey, the white, creamy softness of it rousing memories of that special day when she’d worn a bridal gown, the fabric seeming to float on air; just like her. And the bouquet! Roses and cornflowers and frothy stuff that he didn’t know the name of.
He’d thought it was mostly over, the torture, the anger and the thirst for revenge. Apparently it was not.
The woman asking about the car had upset him. Everything had been going smoothly until she’d come asking about the car. He needed to calm down. He needed to get outside of himself, to become somebody else if only for an hour. So he did what he always did when he wanted to feel happy. He went upstairs and into the box bedroom.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
The Zodiac Club was in full swing, but not everyone was feeling groovy and looking happy. Doherty was pissed off. He was sitting at the bar with his chin resting on his hand staring into space. He shouldn’t have been there at all, but he’d had a shit day. For a mind blowing moment, it had appeared that the case of the murdered brides was solved. Nigel Brooks was up for it. Plain sailing, so it seemed.
The first sign that things might not be quite so simple occurred when Nigel Brooks was arrested dressed as a blushing bride, in fact they’d had trouble loading him into the back of the police car due to the layers of net in the dress he was wearing.
Notwithstanding the bridal gown, it would have brightened his day if Nigel Brooks, the man who collected wedding dresses, had not had a cast iron alibi. On the night when stipulated by the pathologist as being the time Marietta was murdered, Nigel had been at a cross dressing function. Everyone there agreed he’d been the high spot of the evening wearing the meringue of a dress he kept in his box room. One of the witnesses gushed that he’d been unforgettable!
Back to square one with the case in hand was bad enough, but on top of that Lindsey had forwarded him an email.
I’ve got your mother. Marry that copper and the old lady’s for the chop.
Shortly afterwards Honey had phoned him.<
br />
‘Can you believe this?’
Doherty had groaned. All this business with marriages and brides was giving him a headache. The smooth road to marrying Honey seemed to be climbing up a monkey-puzzle tree. He’d received the news with disbelief especially when the kidnap victim was supposedly her grandmother. Who would want to kidnap Gloria Cross? More to the point, how were they coping?
Honey’s mother was a nuisance. She’d always been a nuisance. He found himself almost pitying whoever had kidnapped her.
Honey herself had sounded hesitant on the phone as though she too didn’t quite believe it. Kidnappers had a preference for abducting calm, submissive people worth a small fortune. Gloria was comfortably off, though not a millionaire. Besides that she was awkward, interfering and annoying. To say she was likely to be uncooperative was putting it mildly. She did tantrums. Her way was the right way and whoever had been stupid enough to take her was going to have their work cut out.
‘I don’t believe it,’ he’d muttered.
On the other end of the phone, Honey was more or less thinking the same thing. Lindsey had suggested she was just trying to attract attention. ‘What with you and your plans to marry Doherty. You know she wasn’t pleased when you told her.’
‘I’m going round to her flat to check it out. There has to be a clue there somewhere. I’ll catch up with you later.’
OK, he didn’t exactly get on with Honey’s mother. She was too overbearing, too fond of poking her nose into her daughter’s love life. If she had her way Honey would now be comfortably married to somebody with a big car, a big house and a very big bank account.
On top of that, Gloria Cross was so active! For goodness sake, the woman was in her seventies but refused to believe it. She wouldn’t even admit to being a grandmother, insisting that her granddaughter, Lindsey, called her by her first name, Gloria.
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