by Alice Castle
‘You must have been thinking about this, Mum. Who do you think would poison Alfie, and then have a go at you? You must have a suspicion.’
Beth looked closely at her mother, who still lay with her head back on the pillows. Then Wendy opened her eyes slowly and looked straight at Beth, with those eyes that were exactly the same changeable shade as her son’s.
‘Do you know, I really don’t like to think about it?’ Wendy said, at her most maddening. Then she closed her eyes again.
There was silence in the little room. The daylight had leached out of the sky, the windows reflecting back the navy blue of the Denmark Hill sky, twinkling with what looked like and passed for stars in south east London, but was really an amalgam of street and car lights piercing the night. It was beautiful if you didn’t look too closely.
Beth thought for the umpteenth time about the case and had to admit that she was stumped. There were too many suspects, or too few, depending on the way you looked at it. And there were rumours of motives, but nothing that one could put one’s finger on. Alfie’s daughter, for instance, presumably already had a home of her own somewhere, because she didn’t live here. Would she really kill to get her hands on a Dulwich cottage, even one which could bring in a healthy income? Mm, that was tricky. Beth herself had often passed the little row of houses on her way to see her mother, and had always imagined how lovely it would be to live there. She’d stop short at murder to get her dream, of course. But there were lots of people in Dulwich who were much more determined than her, and at this point in her career as an accidental sleuth, she’d frankly got people arrested on far wispier motives.
Beth needed to get a look at this daughter, and as soon as possible.
‘Do you know when Alfie’s funeral is?’ she asked, turning to her mother again.
Wendy had had her eyes open, but she shut them firmly in response to the question. ‘What makes you think that I’d have the faintest idea, cooped up in here?’ she whispered.
Beth immediately felt terrible. Wendy had been at death’s door; of course she’d be none the wiser.
‘Sorry, Mum, I don’t know what I was thinking of,’ she said in a softer voice, peering over at her mother’s still-wan complexion. She’d thought that Wendy was over the poisoning, but maybe it had more serious after-effects than she’d thought?
For a moment or two, there was silence in the room and Beth could hear Wendy’s breathing; regular, if a little shallow.
Then her mother said softly, ‘Tuesday after next.’
‘What?’ Beth was startled.
‘The funeral’s on the Tuesday after next. You did ask,’ Wendy said crossly, opening one eye and squinting at her daughter.
‘But how do you know? Who told you?’
‘Deidre, of course. There are such things as mobile phones, you know,’ Wendy said with dignity, looking towards her bedside table, which had now acquired a thick layer of essentials, from a rainbow of scarves to a selection of hand creams, lipsticks, and necklaces, and, Beth could just about see under the detritus, Wendy’s phone.
‘Why didn’t you say so? Oh, really.’ There was no point remonstrating with Wendy. And anyway, here was Ben, bursting back in with two teas, a suspicious white paper bag and, bringing up the rear, Harry York.
‘Look who I found in the canteen!’ the boy said, delighted, as he settled back in his chair at the back of the room and dragged out his phone to show the big policeman something. ‘Here it is, Harry, the game I was telling you about.’
Harry sidled in, his bulk immediately making the spacious room seem the size of a full-to-capacity lift, about to judder to a halt between floors. He raised his eyebrows at Ben’s game, greeted Wendy with a kiss on the cheek, which she sat up effortlessly to receive in queenly fashion, and then leaned over to ruffle Beth’s hair. She batted it back down quickly.
‘I didn’t know you were here?’
‘Oh, you know. Enquiries and all,’ he said laconically.
‘Have you found out anything? Like what Mum was given?’ Beth scanned Harry’s face. Immediately, it was as firmly closed as one of those boarded-up shops along the South Circular that wasn’t even going to bother turning into a charity store. She’d get no information there. Her shoulders sagged a little. How on earth was she supposed to make any progress, when her mother couldn’t help, and her boyfriend wouldn’t?
‘I sent you an email earlier,’ she said to him, a challenging light in her grey eyes. ‘Did you get it? Any thoughts?’
‘Mm,’ he said, at his most maddeningly non-committal.
‘You’ll let me know how you get on with it?’ Beth asked.
‘Yup,’ he said, in the way that she now knew meant a most definite no. Great.
She gathered up her handbag crossly and looked over at Ben, who was scarfing an illicit doughnut. ‘Time to get home so you can finish off that homework properly. And have something sensible to eat.’ She raised an eyebrow at Harry. ‘Are you coming with us, or…?’ She hated having to ask in front of her mother and Ben, but with an arrangement as loose as theirs, nothing was a given.
Harry gave her the sort of on-off smile he’d give a member of the public who’d just stopped to ask him the time in the middle of an armed pursuit. ‘I’ll just be chatting to your mum for a while,’ he said.
She paused. Did that mean five minutes, so they should wait outside; or two hours, so they should go home without him? She looked at him again, willing him to be more specific, but just got that smile. She gave Wendy a perfunctory peck, thought better of it and leaned over for the sort of awkward hug that made her feel all elbows, then avoided kissing Harry and grabbed Ben’s bag and coat.
‘Off we go, then,’ she said to her son, her tone making it clear that this was a three-line whip, no arguments.
As soon as they were outside, Beth dropped Ben’s bag to the floor and pressed her ear against the closed door. Nothing. The NHS might be on its knees, but apparently it was still lavishing good money on sturdy doors. She got up on tiptoe to peer through the small square pane of glass high in the frame, and then plummeted down, having met Harry’s steady-but-amused gaze. He’d obviously been waiting for her to try that.
‘Mum, honestly. Spying?’ said Ben, as he pressed buttons on his game, not even looking up.
‘Come along now, Ben,’ she tutted as though she hadn’t heard. ‘And by the way, what’s happened to your new shoes?’
Ben looked down at the white half-moons scarring both toecaps and bit his lip. They clattered down the stairs without exchanging another word. At the bottom, Beth relented. The canteen was sort of on their way out, and they did exactly the sort of overcooked nursery food that Ben loved. Plus, eating there would mean Beth didn’t have to cook.
‘Want to get supper here?’
‘I thought we had to rush back for homework?’ Ben said a mite frostily, but seconds later he’d realised which side his bread was buttered or, in this case, deep-fried. ‘Yeah, let’s do that.’
He seemed a much happier bunny as they walked towards the smell of saturated fats. Surveying the menu, Beth wondered if the hospital was trying to ensure its supply of patients never dried up. It was chips with everything, including the chips themselves. Ben was in heaven. Even after a doughnut, he had a growing boy’s bottomless appetite.
She took two plates loaded high with delicious crispy beige food to one of the tables by the windows, which were now showing velvety black squares of night outside. She had a pang of doubt about the car. Colin would be in his default setting of deep unconsciousness; an extra half-hour wouldn’t hurt him. But was her parking ticket still valid? Fishing out her phone and blessing all these apps that did everything bar the washing up, she extended her time by paying roughly enough to buy the hospital a new defibrillator. There, all done. Now she could eat.
‘Where’s the ketchup, Mum?’
With a sigh, Beth got up and searched around. As she scanned the tables for a lurking sauce bottle, she did a double-take. Who
was that, over there? That piled-up salt and pepper coiffure, like a tsunami of hair about to break free of the spindly moorings of its hairpins? That scarf, rivalling Beth’s own mother’s in the way it looped and trailed? That worried look, directed now at the woman who sat beside her and was holding her hand so tightly? It must be, mustn’t it?
‘Regina? Dr Joyce?’ Beth said, placing the woman. ‘My mother was just saying that you’re a bridge player,’ she said.
Dr Joyce looked up, and immediately a hank of hair fell to her shoulders like a starling felled by an archer.
‘Oh! Oh, yes, it’s um, Bella, isn’t it? From the school?’
‘Beth, Beth Haldane from the Archives. Haven’t seen you around all term.’
‘Oh, well, I’ve been, erm, busy…’ said Dr Joyce vaguely, darting a look at her companion.
The woman next to her, Beth noticed, looked distinctly peaky. And also, a little familiar.
‘Ah,’ she said in a quiet voice. ‘So, you’re Wendy’s daughter?’
‘I am. And you’re… her next-door neighbour, Mrs Pink, isn’t it? I’m sorry, I didn’t recognise you out of context,’ Beth said with a broader smile.
‘And, of course, Wendy and I haven’t exactly been the best of friends over the years,’ said the woman with a wry smile. ‘When her fence blew over for the third time and she didn’t get it fixed, well…’
Beth tried to look as neutral as possible. She didn’t know the ins and outs of the matter (though she’d heard Wendy fulminating at length about how unreasonable her neighbour was), but nor did she think it was good form to badmouth her mum while she was upstairs getting over an assassination attempt. And Ben was not far away, eavesdropping again for all she knew.
‘Mum’s never been much of a one for gardens. Yours is lovely, though, Mrs Pink.’
It was the right thing to say. The woman visibly swelled with pride, a little of her missing colour coming back at the compliment.
‘Do call me Helen…’
‘Anyway, we mustn’t keep you,’ Regina Joyce broke in. ‘You’ll be getting tired, Helen,’ she added sternly.
‘And I think my son is going to waste away if I don’t find some ketchup for his chips,’ said Beth, looking over to where Ben was staring at her a little crossly.
‘Here, take ours,’ said Regina, and Beth felt rather as though the woman was trying to fob her off with the scarlet bottle and get rid of her.
‘Thanks. Well, see you soon,’ she said. The women looked at her, Helen Pink with a smile, Dr Joyce with an enigmatic stare.
Beth wandered off, deep in thought, and plonked the bottle down on the table in front of Ben. ‘Eat up. We’d better go and see how Colin is getting on. He’ll be so bored, we’ve been gone nearly two hours,’ said Beth, glancing at her watch. She didn’t have to tell Ben twice. He was shovelling in chips as though there was no tomorrow.
‘Can we eat here every night?’ he mumbled.
‘Definitely not,’ said Beth. She could hardly feel his enthusiasm was a compliment to her own cooking, or even the ambience of their house. The harsh neon lighting, clatter, and pungent smell of the canteen were not exactly redolent of home comforts. But still, novelty counted for a lot with boys, she reassured herself.
Later, at home and with a mildly put-out Colin having been thoroughly aired round the block and even up and down the main drag of Dulwich Village as a treat after his long incarceration, Beth was hunched over her laptop, desperately trying to collate her rambling thoughts on the Alfie Pole case, if she could even dignify it with that title.
What did she have so far?
One dead pensioner. Alfred Pole, in his later years, widely liked, in possession of a lovely home. Hobbies: bridge, gardening. Some sort of dispute with the allotment society? Daughter keen to inherit?
One attempted murder. Wendy, in her fifties though you wouldn’t have guessed it, also with a lovely home, but with a neglected garden that was a source of conflict with at least one neighbour. Hobbies: bridge, not gardening. Son and daughter wouldn’t mind inheriting but not inclined to hasten the day. Son with cast-iron alibi, as he was perpetually out of the country, and the daughter had no murderous inclinations. Or none that she was willing to put into practice.
Other suspects: the entire Bridge Club, the entire Dulwich gardening world. More specifically, there were the people who’d been dummy at the time of Alfie’s murder, and therefore also at the time of Wendy and Beth’s ill-advised reconstruction which had led to the second poisoning. Regina Joyce looked too cack-handed; Peter Tilley had a broken arm; Dr Kendall was, well, a doctor. Though he was retired, the Hippocratic oath still stood, didn’t it? Beth made a mental note to Google that. Christina Smith had done something to her leg. Could she have injured it gardening? And there was someone else, too, though Beth couldn’t think for the life of her who it was. She scrolled to the ‘sent’ file of her email account, hoping to chase up the email she’d sent Harry, but it wasn’t there. Damn. She must have used her school account.
It was all so frustrating. Beth stared at her laptop with increasing irritation. Even Colin’s regular snores, usually an oddly comforting sound, were tonight a jarring distraction. Why did she feel as if there was something she was missing? Had someone said something to her that she ought to have written down here? She replayed snatches of conversation in her head.
It was all very mysterious, and seemed to be getting more so, the more she worked away at it. Surely this hadn’t happened before. In retrospect, it seemed that every previous case that she’d been involved in – or more accurately, stumbled into – had unfurled obligingly like a brand-new umbrella. This time, the more she fumbled with it, the more the enigma refused to budge, instead looping itself around her like one of her mother’s maddening scarves. And why did that image stick in her mind particularly?
Beth flipped down the lid of her laptop in fury, then immediately reopened it to make sure she’d done it no damage. She put it aside on the sofa and wandered into the kitchen to make herself a mint tea. Sometimes this soothing process helped calm her mind and drag some useful idea to the fore. But when she returned to the sitting room, she found that Magpie had settled her capacious fluffy body right on top of the still-warm computer and was not at all willing to shift. It seemed to be the universe’s way of telling her to abandon her quest for the night. She gave Magpie a hard stare, which was returned with interest by glinting green eyes. Then she snapped off the light and went upstairs to bed.
Passing Ben’s room, she peeped in quickly and saw her son sprawled on top of his duvet. She’d always loved the way his sleeping face harked back to the blankness of babyhood. Now, in the light from the landing, she could see that his nose was sharpening and his cheekbones were taking shape. It was as though the man he would one day be was already peering at her from inside the child she’d known and loved. It was disconcerting. She gently put a blanket over him.
In her own room, with the comfort of her flowery duvet pulled over her nose, she had space for a final brace of questions before sleep claimed her. Would Harry be coming over? And, if he did, would he tell her what, exactly, he’d discussed with Wendy?
Chapter Sixteen
Beth got her answers the next morning. No, and no. She woke up with Harry’s side of the bed unrumpled and her own stock of certainties still as scanty as ever. And as soon as Ben was downstairs at the breakfast table, the negatives continued to rain down on her. No, he didn’t want toast. No, he hated that cereal. No, he hadn’t finished his homework last night. And no, he wasn’t going to explain why.
Beth had a sudden feeling of dread. Years ago, she’d watched a comedy sketch where a delightful twelve-year-old boy had turned, on the stroke of midnight, into a ghastly monosyllabic teenager – spotty, uncooperative, a nightmare in every way. Was this now being re-enacted in her own home?
She had a stalled investigation, a job she could never quite get down to, a book idea she for some reason wasn’t able to commit to paper, a
n on-off boyfriend who now seemed definitely off, and on top of everything, a horrible son. Could things get any worse?
She pushed up from the table, intending on shoving her bowl and mug into the sink, and immediately stood in something squishy and warm. She didn’t want to look down. ‘Magpie! What have you been eating?’
Ten minutes she could ill-afford later, she’d cleaned the cat sick off the floor, changed her socks and jeans, and scrabbled everything into her bag. Ben was long gone, having loped off on his own, not bothering to conceal his glee at having evaded a parental escort this morning.
‘Colin, you’re staying here today, I can’t cope with anything else,’ said Beth sternly as the old Labrador advanced slowly towards the front door, his tail banging into one side of the narrow hall and then the other. But as she wrestled herself into her coat and met his liquid chocolate eyes, full of trust, hope and expectation, her heart melted. Magpie had been known to pay her back for even thinking about buying cheaper cat food, but Colin wasn’t holding even the tiniest bit of a grudge against her for leaving him in the hospital carpark for far too long last night.
In a tricky world, there was something about the love of a chap like Colin that helped her keep on believing everything would turn out for the best in the end. ‘All right, then. You win. But just don’t tell anyone what a ridiculous softy I am,’ she sighed, clipping on his lead and ushering him out of the door. As he passed, he brushed her hand gently with his cold wet nose, and it felt like a benediction.
Janice pounced on her as soon as she arrived at the school. ‘Beth, I just need to talk to you right away, it’s really urgent,’ she said, her voice squeaky with what sounded like panic.
‘Is it Ben?’ Beth asked immediately, tying Colin’s lead around the railings guarding the pristine lawn, and allowing Janice to draw her quickly past the heavy brass-trimmed front door and into the plush reception area.
