Indian Summer

by Sara Sheridan

  Mirabelle sipped. The champagne was refreshing. She wondered how much to tell him.

  ‘You haven’t given up on the case,’ he surmised. ‘The dead priest, that is.’

  The waiter cleared away their half-eaten plates of food.

  ‘No, I haven’t. I visited one of the nurses from the home this afternoon.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘The story doesn’t make sense. Father Grogan’s last hours, I mean. The sister comes to him before Vespers. She’s desperately concerned about something. She confides in him. After the service he comes to the children’s home. He and Sister Taylor go to the office and they argue for a long time. Nobody knows what they’re arguing about. He is poisoned at some stage either before or after this argument. Then Grogan leaves. Sister Taylor is upset. She leaves. He dies. She disappears.’

  ‘So, she poisoned him, right?’

  ‘I don’t know. She would have had to do it covertly, but she wasn’t a covert kind of person. And there’s no motive. What on earth were they arguing about?’

  ‘Lovers’ tiff?’

  ‘I doubt it. There’s no indication.’

  ‘So did she help you? The nurse?’

  ‘She wouldn’t let me in. She wasn’t expecting me. I almost felt as if they wanted to have a fight with me. There was something odd about it.’

  Mirabelle felt his leg pressing against hers. His eyes flashed. ‘I want to have a fight with you, Mirabelle. Then I want to make it up.’

  She was about to move her leg, then she realised she didn’t want to. She bit her lip and, slowly, she moved her hand underneath the table and laid it on his knee. Time stopped. He smiled. ‘God,’ he said. ‘At this rate we’ll never make dessert.’

  The steak arrived. The waiter spooned vegetables and potatoes on to the plates – little wedges in different colours that had been fried in butter. Chris ordered mustard. They began to eat. Conversation stopped. People will think we’re married, she thought. That I’m a doctor’s wife. The idea amused her. She had never been taken for a wife before, not even when she was with Jack. It had always seemed so obviously a lie when they booked into hotels together, or, at least, something bigger than just matrimony.

  When the steaks were finished, they drank the rest of the bubbly. Dr Williams’s gaze slid across her collar bones and down, into her lap.

  ‘Shall I get us a room?’

  Mirabelle stopped breathing momentarily. ‘Can’t we go home?’

  ‘My place is a real bachelor pad. It’s a mess. I live in a mews. We’re just round the corner from it, actually. But you’re a lady.’

  She liked that he knew he couldn’t come back to hers.

  ‘How many women have you taken to bed in this hotel?’

  He blushed.

  ‘Do you sign them all in as Mrs Williams?’

  ‘I can’t help that I’ve had women before.’

  ‘Let’s not do what you normally do.’

  This, she reasoned, did not mean that she didn’t intend to at least kiss him.

  ‘Would you like something else to eat?’

  She waved off the suggestion.

  ‘Coffee?’

  ‘Maybe. That would be nice.’

  The waiter was on his way when Mirabelle’s dilemma became theoretical. A plain-clothes policeman swung through the restaurant door, his profession obvious to anyone who had an eye for deduction. Mirabelle hadn’t seen the man’s face before, though she thought he must be a new detective constable. They’d taken on a few new people of late, she’d heard. The man approached the table.

  ‘Doctor,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry. There’s a body. Suspicious circumstances.’

  Chris looked crestfallen. ‘Really? That’s the second time this week. I’m on call, Mirabelle. I didn’t think there would be another death so soon. I’m sorry.’

  Mirabelle wondered if he would be able to work. He’d drunk the best part of a bottle of champagne, but then, his patient would be dead.

  ‘What happened?’ she asked the constable. ‘Is it the missing nurse?’

  ‘Yes, fill me in,’ the doctor said. It was an order and it made it feel as if discussing a case in public was normal.

  The young officer looked round. He lowered his voice and bent towards them. ‘The body was washed up on the tide. Two women found it. They screamed the pier down, practically – over by the aquarium.’

  ‘Is the victim female?’ Mirabelle couldn’t help herself.

  ‘It’s not the nurse. A man,’ the policeman said. ‘Early fifties. Apparently he’s in a pretty grim state. The body has been in the water a while.’

  ‘Have you identified him?’

  The policeman shrugged. He looked at Mirabelle sideways, clearly uncomfortable with her level of involvement. She cursed herself for pushing him too far.

  ‘They have all the details at the scene,’ he said to the doctor.

  Chris motioned for the bill. He thrust money at the waiter.

  ‘You’ll need a taxi,’ he proffered a note across the table.

  ‘I’ll be all right,’ Mirabelle said.

  ‘Please. Take it.’ He propped the money next to the salt.

  The waiter brought the doctor’s coat and Chris leaned in and kissed her cheek. ‘I’ll ring you,’ he whispered. ‘I’m sorry.’ His hand lingered on her arm. She watched through the window as he made for his car. The scene was so close it was hardly worth driving to it, but then, she thought, he would need to go back to the morgue. The young detective constable slid into the front seat. When the car had disappeared completely, Mirabelle ordered a whisky with her coffee and drank both quickly before asking the waiter to fetch her stole. A woman on one of the other tables eyed her with pity before slipping her arm through her boyfriend’s and laughing loudly. It was always the same in a restaurant if you were a woman on her own. As Mirabelle swept out, the waiter held the door for her.

  Outside, along the front, Mirabelle pulled the stole around her shoulders and made for the vantage point of Marine Parade. Chris was already on the beach when she got there, his car abandoned outside the aquarium, the young officer nowhere to be seen. Two ambulances had drawn up on the pavement and several police officers in uniform were directing the public on to the other side of the road. A clutch of policemen hung around the railings at the top of the pebbles, smoking and staring down at the scene unfolding on the beach.

  As Mirabelle crossed the road and made for the huddle of vehicles, a young officer on the cordon tried to stop her.

  ‘Press,’ Mirabelle said with authority. ‘Superintendent McGregor said it would be all right. He asked for our help, actually, in appealing for information. I have a deadline to make.’

  The boy hesitated and then stepped back. They really didn’t train officers properly these days, she thought. At the railings an older policeman peered at her, recognition glimmering. She didn’t meet his eyes, instead turning to stroll across to the parked vehicles. ‘Hello,’ she smiled, offering one of the ambulance drivers a mint from her purse. He took it gratefully.

  ‘It’s a man, I heard,’ she said, striking up a conversation. ‘Been in the water for a while.’

  The driver shrugged. ‘You from the Argus, then?’ He sounded petulant.

  She shook her head. ‘I lied,’ she whispered conspiratorially. ‘I was only passing. I used to drive one of these old things during the war.’ She slapped the side of the vehicle as if it was familiar. It was another lie, but she told herself it was justified. ‘It was scary driving in the blackout during the Blitz. We ate all our carrots, I tell you that. You get an instinct for it. When I saw something going on, I couldn’t stay away. Poor soul, eh? Him down there on the pebbles.’

  ‘The fish have eaten the soft parts, one of the guys told me, but they know who he is. Jerry Bone. Bad Luck Bone.’

  Mirabelle noted the name. She’d never heard of him. ‘Drowned, I suppose?’

  The man pouted. He didn’t know. It occurred to her that nobody but Chris knew. Not yet
.

  ‘Two suspicious deaths in Brighton inside a couple of days,’ Mirabelle kept the conversation going. ‘I don’t know what the world’s coming to.’

  ‘Two?’

  ‘There was a priest died in Hove. Poison.’

  ‘I heard that. One for heaven and one for hell, eh?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, the priest – I assume – is in heaven. Bad Luck Bone on the other hand …’

  ‘You knew him?’

  ‘Lots of people knew him. Why do you think there are so many coppers about? Bad Luck by nickname, bad luck by nature. He was a bad lot. It won’t be natural causes, let me tell you that.’

  Mirabelle stood on tiptoes and craned to see what was happening on the stones. In the darkness it was difficult to make out much detail other than the shape of the huddle – Chris and a couple of officers and the body laid out, mostly obscured from view.

  ‘I expect the police doctor is down there,’ she said vaguely.

  The ambulance driver acquiesced. ‘I wish he’d hurry up. It’s parky at night. It’s September, after all.’

  From further along, she noticed the older uniformed officer still watching her. It wouldn’t take him long to remember who she was, and she didn’t want to cause a fuss, so she said goodbye to the driver and retreated to the other side of the main road, where the public were congregating. Most people had been on a night out, it seemed, and the chat among the crowd was the same you’d hear in a bar. A man passed round a hip flask. A woman sang a snatch of a song, slurring the words – The party’s over, it’s time to call it a day, They’ve burst your pretty balloon, And taken the moon away …

  The man beside her put an arm around her shoulder. ‘That’s it, just like Doris Day,’ he said.

  A few minutes later, two policemen carried up the body on a stretcher, covered with a grey woollen blanket. People strained to see. It was odd, Mirabelle always thought, the bleak impulse to see mutilation up close. She stood as far back as she could – there was no point in rubbernecking and she didn’t want the doctor to spot her. There wouldn’t have been much that Chris could do in the dark, she thought.

  Inspector Robinson arrived, the siren on his Black Maria sounding, the last pulse of it a long moan as the car drew to a halt. Mirabelle shifted and turned sideways on to the street. It was easy to camouflage herself among the crowd. A man offered her a cigarette and she took it. The ambulance driver was right about the chill, she thought, as she puffed, watching the doctor return to his car, walking with Robinson, gesticulating as he went. He was so very good-looking that she felt a flush of pride. She relished watching him like this, without him knowing.

  As he ducked into the driver’s seat, she ground out the cigarette under the toe of her shoe and fumbled with her peppermints. The ambulance drove away and the doctor followed in his car. Robinson pointed in the direction of the beach and several of the uniformed men set off to search the pebbles.

  Mirabelle pushed her way through the clutch of bodies. It was a straight walk along the front to get home. The crowd thinned as she crossed at the bottom of Old Steine, walking westwards. But then, when she got as far as the Old Ship Hotel, she paused. The doorman recognised her and tipped his top hat.

  ‘Taxi, madam?’

  ‘Yes. All right.’

  He drew a whistle from his pocket and sounded it.

  ‘It’s a cold night. If you’d like to wait inside?’

  ‘I’m fine.’

  The whistle worked quickly and within a minute a cab pulled up. The doorman ushered Mirabelle into the back seat. ‘Where to, madam?’ he asked.

  Mirabelle didn’t hesitate as she slipped him sixpence. ‘Tell the driver West Drive,’ she said. ‘Number seventeen. Right beside the park.’

  Chapter Fourteen

  Grief is the garden of compassion

  You wouldn’t think there was a murderer on the loose, Mirabelle thought, as the cab glided off silently. A woman in a yellow dress with a ruched underskirt ran across the street ahead of the cab, laughing. Turning left at the pier, a teenager pelted up the road trying to catch a bus, cigarette in his hand, his heavily Brylcreemed quiff static as the rest of him hammered along. In front of the aquarium, the crowd had thinned now the ambulance was gone. In a doorway a couple pressed their bodies together. It was getting late. Beyond St James’s Street, the roads were darker. Lights glowed behind the curtained windows. The bins had been collected. Mirabelle noticed a football under one of the lampposts, abandoned by a child earlier in the day. The cab drew up on West Drive. ‘Drop me over there. By the gate to the park,’ she said.

  The wrought-iron gate was locked. Mirabelle paid hurriedly and scrambled on to the pavement. The whisky and the champagne had gone to her head. It was almost as if she had drunk on an empty stomach. The taxi pulled off and left the street silent. Across the road, number seventeen lay in darkness. An owl hooted. Mirabelle’s heels echoed as she crossed the road and crept up the path. The cat, she noted, was nowhere to be seen.

  Gingerly, she set off down the short alleyway that ran down the side of the house. The wooden gate at the bottom was bolted. She shook it as quietly as she could and ascertained the bolt was fitted on the other side and halfway down, where it was impossible to reach. The gate fitted snuggly and there was no manipulating it.

  Sometimes the old-fashioned methods trumped a modern lock and key. She’d have to climb over. Securing her handbag under one arm, Mirabelle found a foothold in the bricks of the gatepost and pulled herself up. Then she peered over the top into the back garden. It wasn’t what she had expected. While dark to the front, one or two lights were lit at the rear of the house – just enough to illuminate the patch of land beyond. The vivid red at the front was unusual, but the planting at the back was extraordinary. Even in the half-dark, it boasted a riot of colour.

  Mirabelle squinted. There were plants she recognised – irises, lilies and roses. There were more, however, that were unfamiliar on the stretch of lush green, which was punctuated by purple, yellow, red and orange flowers, banked against the high walls. Closest to her, an overgrown herb patch was surrounded by a carefully trimmed, low bay hedge. Clouds of clary sage and pennyroyal in flower covered almost one side of it. In a small glasshouse, a bright burst of peacock flowers grew up a brick wall. The air was scented – was it lilac, she wondered.

  Mirabelle stopped to take it all in. The effect was beautiful – tropical almost. From her vantage point she could see over the boundary fence where the neighbours had planted square stretches of lawn and tidy flowerbeds, carefully weeded. She pulled herself further up to get a better look when, ahead of her, she saw Uma, barefoot, coming out of the open French doors and into the little jungle which, Mirabelle surmised, she had created.

  She wore a pink sari, which moved enticingly over her hips as she walked. Her hair was plaited and tied. The light around Uma’s frame brightened as a lamp turned on at the back of the house and the blonde woman followed her into the thick of the garden. The other woman wore dark slacks and a white shirt. Her hair was cut in a bob, shiny in the low light. Surrounded by flowers and leaves and herbs, the women kissed, holding each other. Their arms intertwined like vines, growing together. The scene had an ethereal beauty, almost as if the figures were living statues.

  Mirabelle found herself entranced. It was seldom there was another place – something so different. This sense of peace was broken when Uma looked up and Mirabelle couldn’t dodge her gaze. There was a moment during which the nurse took in what she had spotted and then her eyes lit with fury.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ she shouted.

  The blonde woman spun around.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Mirabelle started. ‘I …’ She tried to think why she had come all the way out here in the middle of the night. But there was no explanation except her curiosity and a desire not to go home. The questions that kept niggling. And, she supposed, a mixture of champagne and whisky. As she twisted at the top of the wall,
her handbag tumbled into the planting below and disappeared into the lush foliage. She pulled herself up to climb over and retrieve it.

  ‘Don’t come down. You’ll hurt the plants! Don’t touch them!’ Uma sounded furious or, maybe, Mirabelle realised, panicked. ‘Go back over the other side,’ she said, gesticulating. ‘I’ll open the gate.’

  Mirabelle slid back on to the path. There was the sound of the bolt pulling back and then the two women appeared in the frame. They looked like negatives of each other, one dark and colourful, the other blonde and monochrome. The blonde held out Mirabelle’s handbag.

  ‘You can’t come here, like this,’ she spat. ‘In the middle of the night. Spying on people. What the hell’s wrong with you?’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Mirabelle repeated. ‘I didn’t know you were in. The house was dark at the front.’

  The blonde snorted. ‘So you intended to break in? Is that what you’re saying? That would be fine, would it?’

  ‘I only want to ask some questions,’ Mirabelle objected. ‘That’s what I wanted all along. I’m sorry if it’s an intrusion. I didn’t mean it to be. It’s just some questions, that’s all.’

  The blonde took in a sharp breath as if she was about to launch into a tirade, but Uma laid her hand on the woman’s arm. ‘Ellen,’ she said, ‘it’s all right. I might as well.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  Uma nodded.

  The blonde glared at Mirabelle, but she relented. ‘Uma has told the police everything, you know. She’s cooperated fully.’ Her tone remained firm.

  ‘And you are?’

  ‘I’m Ellen Simpson.’ The woman held out her hand.

  ‘I’m not the police. But I have some questions. Mirabelle Bevan.’

  The women stepped back from the gate to allow her to enter.

  ‘Simpson? I understood you were married to a Dr Simpson, Uma? But …’

  The white woman laughed. It was the kind of weary laugh that escaped Vesta’s lips sometimes when people made assumptions about the colour of her skin. ‘I’m Dr Simpson,’ she said. ‘We both use the surname, that’s all.’