The House With No Rooms

by Lesley Thomson

  ‘How was he murdered?’ Forgetting the locket, Chrissie pictured the Cat in the Hat pointing his umbrella like a gun.

  ‘His throat was slit. Don’t be telling your mum what I said, she’ll accuse me of giving you nightmares. You can bet that the robbers argued over the loot.’

  Chrissie shuffled along the seat and out of view of the mirror. Her foot caught something plastic. It had come from under the seat when her dad braked. She grabbed it. Inside were two bright pink flip-flops. Despite the stifling heat, Chrissie shivered. The flip-flops were the ones that she had lost on the day of the Addled Brain.

  ‘What’s that, Chrissie?’ her dad asked.

  ‘My flip-flops.’ She stared at the bright pink plastic.

  ‘I’ve been driving round with them for days.’ He slapped his forehead. ‘George, Mr Watson, says you left them at his. Didn’t you say you lost them when you was playing with your friends?’ He was watching her in the mirror.

  Goose pimples came up on her arms. ‘I can’t remember.’ Saying about Mrs Watson had happened without warning, she wouldn’t lie again.

  ‘I goes to George, didn’t she notice she had bare feet? He told me you took them to school and after the lesson you left them at his. What a chump, Crystal!’ At the sound of her special name, Chrissie felt heat return. ‘Remember now?’

  ‘Ye-es.’ Why had she taken them to school? They weren’t allowed to wear flip-flops there. The bag came from Boots the chemist. She had gone shopping there with her mum and Michelle. Maybe Mrs Watson had got it on one of her shopping trips.

  Chrissie laid the flip-flops on her lap. She had taken her flip-flops to school by accident and left them at Mr and Mrs Watson’s house and now here they were. The taxi picked up speed.

  ‘Put them on. They’ll be cooler.’ Her dad winked at her in the mirror.

  Chrissie undid her sandals and swapped them for the flip-flops.

  ‘That better, Crystal?’

  ‘Yes.’ If she had left the flip-flops at Mr Watson’s, it meant that she hadn’t gone to the house with no rooms and hadn’t seen the lady with gobstopper eyes or the Cat in the Hat. ‘Dad?’ she began.

  ‘Yes, lovey?’ Cliff Banks swung off Hammersmith Broadway and into King Street.

  She had left the flip-flops outside the house with no rooms.

  ‘Nothing.’ Chrissie gripped the seat as if she was in an aeroplane doing a loop the loop. The only way her flip-flops could have been at Mr and Mrs Watson’s house was if Mr Watson had put them there. It meant that he had been at the house with no rooms. That meant that he knew she had been there too.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  October 2014

  Stella was sitting in what she still caught herself thinking of as her dad’s kitchen although it was some years since Terry Darnell had died and had left the house to his only daughter. She was populating the Kew Gardens rota, adding in new recruits to work alongside her long-term operatives. She couldn’t afford for anything to go wrong. She pulled a face; things had gone wrong on her first morning: she had discovered the body of a murdered man.

  She usually worked in what, when she was a child, had been her bedroom, but tonight after supper – a cottage pie because Jackie said she ate too many shepherd’s pies – she had stayed downstairs. She rested her elbows on Terry’s pine table and regarded the spreadsheet with little comprehension. Beside her was a cooling mug of tea. Although she had had four showers over the last two days, she could still smell the stale smoke from in the Marianne North Gallery. When she tried to sleep she saw the dead man’s face, lips drawn back from his teeth, eyes staring into the far distance.

  An email pinged on to her screen. Subject heading, A good day for bad news! Lucie May. Howdy Agent Darnell, ‘Detective finds body and solves the case’. Call!

  Lucie May was ringing hourly on both her phones. She had put a note through the door. Stella kept the hall light off to discourage May and other press hounds from doorstepping her. It wouldn’t stop May.

  No word from Tina. Stella hadn’t told anyone she had gone to the hospice although she suspected that Jackie knew because when she had returned to the office, she had given her a mug of sugary tea and asked if she was OK. Stella had insisted she was fine. She told herself that she had to be fine because detectives couldn’t be squeamish and that if she was squeamish about anything, it was that the police had dirtied her clean floor. Stella blinked away the image of the staring old man. Cashman had said the victim must have known his assailant, for he had been trusting enough to turn his back on his killer. Haunted by the image, Stella turned the thermostat up to twenty-two degrees.

  ‘Wendy said that the Facilities Manager at Kew gave Clean Slate a ninety-eight per cent rating for your first morning. But for the small business of there being a corpse in the Marianne North Gallery, he’d be a happy man!’ Jackie had said.

  ‘What was the two per cent?’ Stella had asked.

  ‘That’ll be his margin for improvement. In the circs that’s impressive.’

  Stella had spent the day in her office deep in spreadsheets and emails. She decided again that when Cashman gave the all-clear for the galleries, she would continue cleaning them. It wasn’t fair to ask anyone else, at least until the murderer was caught. Why would someone want to kill an old man? Who was he? The murderer must be caught. She imagined Beverly’s cry in the office, ‘Life should mean life!’

  Stella’s eye fell on what nowadays she thought of as Jack’s chair. Long ago it had been her mum’s. Her tea was cold. Putting it in the microwave she noticed Terry’s coaster stuck to the bottom. She prised it off and set the timer for twenty seconds.

  Drinking the tea, she flipped the coaster between her fingers and the words ‘Botanic Gardens’ caught her attention. ‘“The Fire Tree” No. 764. Marianne North Collection.’ Out of nowhere she remembered that after Terry’s death she’d had to cancel his Friend of Kew membership. She had considered it odd that he was a friend – of any organization other than the police – but certainly of Kew. Her dad had liked trees – he had once bought her a book about British trees – but she couldn’t see him strolling around the Palm House. Or the Marianne North Gallery, come to that. At the time, she had supposed he was preparing for retirement. Now she doubted this. Whatever had made Terry buy a pass for Kew Gardens and a coaster of a Marianne North painting, it hadn’t been because he was winding down.

  Stella sat back in her chair. He had just renewed the membership when he died. Jackie had urged her to transfer the pass into her name, wander in the gardens in the spring evenings after work, but she never had. Now that Clean Slate had the cleaning contract, to go there would feel like work.

  Terry had been a detective until the last day of his life. She held the coaster to the light. Why had he bought it?

  There was a huff from the floor by the fridge. Stella looked down. Unlike Jack, she didn’t believe in ghosts, but the back of her neck tingled as if she was being watched. She had only recently lost the sensation that Terry had just left the room. It wasn’t a ghost, of her dad or anyone else. It was Stanley stretching in his bed. He was fast asleep on his back; paws poking up to the ceiling, he looked in rigor mortis. Stella banished the association. She was getting like Jack.

  There was a bang on the door. Stanley flew out of his bed and, claws skittering, hurtled along the passage giving ear-splitting barks.

  ‘Sssh!’ Dogs were a giveaway. Lucie May would know she was here. Stella hoped that despite the noise, she could pretend to be out. She peeped around the door jamb at the front door. Stanley was leaping about under the letter box, barking shrilly.

  Jackie had said that Stanley might put off intruders. Looking at his small furry form she doubted that he would put off anyone. Except Lucie May, who had no time for pets.

  A shadow filled the glazed panels in the door.

  Her phone signalled a text, the loud beep another giveaway. She snatched it from her trouser pocket. Jack.

  Are you there?
/>   The old man’s murder had made her jittery. Only one person visited so late; she kept milk in the fridge ready.

  ‘Woo-woo-woo!’ Stanley kept up his clamour. Jack was his best friend.

  Stella headed down the hall. Jack’s brand of topsy-turvy would get them both back on track. As she opened the door, it struck Stella that Stanley never usually barked when Jack called.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  July 1976

  ‘What are you doing in here?’

  Chrissie whirled around. Mr Watson was in the doorway. Her mind raced as she tried to think of an explanation for why she was in his bedroom and said the first words that came to mind: ‘Mrs Watson asked me to fetch her...’ Her eye fell on the chair tucked into the dressing table over which was slung a cardigan or a shawl, she couldn’t tell. ‘This!’ She snatched it up. ‘She’s cold.’

  Chrissie clutched it and began to edge to the door. Mr Watson didn’t move out of the way.

  ‘How can she be cold in this heat?’ he asked with apparent curiosity. ‘What did she say exactly?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Chrissie replied miserably, covering both his questions. She herself was boiling hot.

  ‘Then you must take it to her.’ He stood aside. ‘We don’t want her catching her death,’ he said. ‘Christina.’

  The girl stopped on the stairs.

  ‘Do ask Mrs Watson not to keep you too long. We have lots to do today.’

  Chrissie nodded dumbly and continued down the stairs.

  ‘Christina.’ He was on the landing above her.

  ‘Yes.’ The locket was like a lump of stone in her pocket.

  ‘Tell Mrs Watson that...’ His voice was faint.

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘On second thoughts, leave your tea and come up now.’

  ‘Mrs Watson will be cross if I don’t finish her cake,’ the girl said with no conviction. She returned to the landing clutching the scarf.

  Mr Watson giggled. It made Chrissie think of a girl at her new school. He put a hand on her shoulder and guided her ahead of him up to the studio. Inside he picked up his scalpel and began sharpening a pencil. He spoke so softly that Chrissie only just caught the words:

  ‘We both know that Mrs Watson won’t be cross, don’t we, Christina?’

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  October 2014

  A dark shape loomed on the path. Stella was about to slam the door shut when the faulty lamp-post opposite flickered to life and in the watery glow she recognized Martin Cashman. She nearly hugged him with relief.

  ‘It’s very late!’ Adrenaline flooded her system. As a child – in this house – she had been told never to answer the door or the telephone without an adult beside her. Grown-up, she had modified the rule to: ‘Never answer the door after dark’. In winter this was after four o’clock. The exception was Jack who might appear at all hours.

  ‘Sorry!’ Cashman put up his hands.

  ‘Come in.’ Stella left the door for Cashman to close and returned to the kitchen. Stanley hung back, his eye on the detective as he took off his coat, shook it and hung it with care on one of the hooks. He kept close company with Cashman’s trouser bottoms along the passage. Back in the kitchen he jumped into his bed, but remained alert and, his chin resting on the cushioned rim, fixed Cashman with a wary stare.

  ‘Tea, coffee, hot milk?’

  ‘Hot milk?’ Cashman pulled a face.

  ‘It’s just some people like—’

  ‘Coffee’d be grand.’ He rubbed his hands with apparent relish and grabbed ‘Jack’s chair’, swinging it around and sitting astride it.

  Cashman, like Jack, had chosen the position that gave him a view of both exits, through the house and out to the garden.

  She hadn’t replied to Jack’s text. She would wait until Cashman had gone. She hoped that Jack wouldn’t turn up now with Cashman here; she didn’t want to deal with them sparring with each other. She flicked the switch on the kettle.

  ‘I want to run stuff by you, chew the cud,’ Cashman said.

  ‘What stuff?’ Unpractised at entertaining, she didn’t have biscuits.

  ‘Our body in the Marianne North Gallery.’ Cashman spoke as if she should know. ‘I wondered if anything had come to mind. However small?’

  Our body. She opened a jar of instant coffee and, digging into the solidified mass, loosened some granules. She felt a flicker of relief that the ‘cud’ wasn’t his failed marriage. Perhaps he’d sorted it by now. Her parents were always breaking up and making up. Until they broke up and got a divorce.

  ‘Nothing has.’ She wouldn’t mention the figures in the mist, the crunch of non-existent gravel or the geese; she put them down to her state of mind. ‘Isn’t stuff on the case confidential?’ She shouldn’t have pointed out an error of judgement.

  ‘It is confidential.’ He flashed her a look. ‘But you’re Terry’s girl. Family!’ He tipped the chair forward as if urging a horse forward.

  Shrugging off the implication that she was anyone’s girl, Stella got down a mug from the cupboard and, opening the fridge, frowned at the three milk cartons in the door shelf. Jack hadn’t been round for a while.

  Not true. Jack had been round very recently. She had given him hot milk and he had left without finishing it. Tina. Stella told herself that Tina’s illness was a glitch which she would sort and move on. Stella ripped the tab off a milk carton with her teeth and sniffed it. OK, but another day and she would have to throw it away.

  ‘When you cycled to the gallery did you notice anything unusual, even inconsequential?’ Cashman asked in his detective’s voice.

  ‘Everything was unusual.’ Stella handed him his coffee. ‘It was the first time I’d been in Kew Gardens at half five in the morning.’ She poured hot water on to a Brooke Bond teabag and mashed it against the side of the cup. Sloshing in milk she returned the carton to the fridge and joined him at the table. ‘I told that woman detective all I know.’

  When he joined the force, Martin Cashman had been mentored by Terry. Now in his forties, he had until recently resembled him, but with a new trendy haircut and swish suit he had lost about five years. Stella had seen this happen with men who split up from their partners. Since her dad’s death, Martin Cashman had always said he was ‘there for her’. She hadn’t thought he meant so late at night. Whatever, he had ‘been there’ more than once and she wouldn’t forget.

  Cashman had taken his jacket off and rolled up his shirt sleeves. When she had first met him, after Terry’s death, Stella blamed him for his part in shortening Terry’s life. Her mum said Terry spent more time with his mates in the force than with his family. Jack had pointed out that Stella spent most of her waking hours at work. But with three solved cases under her belt, Stella had begun to tentatively think of herself as a detective. Since he was prepared to share information about his case with her, perhaps Cashman did too.

  ‘Nice coffee, Stell.’ He raised the mug in a toast and took a gulp. It would be scalding, but Cashman was the kind of man – as Terry had been – who treated the smallest domestic action as a danger faced down. He had called her ‘Stell’. Only Jackie and her family did that. And Jack.

  Cashman was speaking. ‘...creepy in the dark by yourself. You should clean in pairs.’

  ‘It’s not economical and anyway Kew Gardens is safe.’ She bristled at his advice, although she had decided this herself.

  ‘Someone’s been murdered there!’

  ‘The police patrol the streets by themselves.’

  ‘They’re trained in self-defence; they carry truncheons and radios. You can’t combat a mugger with a mop and bucket.’

  Stella considered listing the chemical sprays in her armoury, but saw a flaw in her defence. Kew Gardens required compliance with environmentally sustainable cleaning materials; nothing she used for the Marianne North Gallery would incapacitate an assailant. Nevertheless, she settled back in her chair, unconsciously comforted by Cashman’s concerns.

  She retur
ned to the murder. ‘Did the staff who locked up the gallery the night before see anything?’

  ‘The woman in charge said she couldn’t have missed the body. She checks all the rooms.’

  ‘Did she look down?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘She’d be checking for punters looking at pictures, not men sprawled on the floor.’

  ‘Good point.’ Cashman nodded approvingly. ‘Thinking like your dad!’ He looked about him. ‘Please could I have sugar? One advantage to single life.’ He chortled. ‘I can eat what I like!’

  ‘Married or not, your teeth will rot!’ Stella regretted the admonishment; it wasn’t her business. She said hastily, ‘You can do what you like.’ It sounded like permission granted. She rummaged in the cupboard and found a packet of sugar behind a tin of beans. It dated from Terry’s time and, like the coffee, was rock solid. She bashed it on the counter and loosened some crystals.

  ‘My teeth are a medical wonder. No fillings, see?’ He bared his lips. Stella agreed; his teeth were brilliant white. Probably because he hadn’t had sugar for years. Handing the packet to Cashman with a spoon, she sat down again.

  Cashman heaped a teaspoon into his tea, then another. ‘We have the time of death: it’s a narrow window between four and six a.m.’ Drinking his coffee, he sighed appreciatively.

  ‘It was someone with access to the gardens and to the gallery after hours,’ Stella surmised.

  ‘Right, but the gallery staff have alibis. Most were in bed – luckily for them not alone and also lucky that they were with their partners, except for a young man, hardly out of the playpen. He was on the phone from five ten to five forty. We triangulated his mobile, and he was, as he claimed, at his parents’ home in Palmers Green. That’s a schlep from Kew so he’s out of the frame.’

  ‘He could have been giving the murderer directions,’ Stella said.