The House With No Rooms

by Lesley Thomson

  ‘It was a long time ago. Christina will no doubt be missed.’ He didn’t suggest that he himself would miss her. He indicated for her to precede him into the hall. He said in a perfunctory tone, ‘My wife is happy with your cleaning.’

  Stella’s heart seemed to rip loose from her chest and bash against her ribs. She made a show of scribbling down the comment. Her pen froze. On the facing page was the timeline for the occupants of Kew Villa that she had made at Hammersmith Library. James Hailes had lived there from 1958 – the year she had stopped her search - until 1962. The name on the boarding pass she had found in the kitchen was ‘J. J. Hailes’. It was too much of a coincidence that a boarding pass with the name of Watson’s brother-in-law had blown in off the street. He had lied to her. Could it be Hailes that she had found in the Marianne North gallery?

  Follow the evidence, don’t try to pre-empt it.

  She rested a hand on the newel post. As she had noted already, the hall was immaculate. The glass on the longcase clock face was so clean she couldn’t see a reflection. The clock was stopped at eleven-forty-three. There were coats hung on hooks above an umbrella stand. She hadn’t noticed that the oak newel post was polished to a rich dark brown.

  That was it. When she had arrived, a woman’s coat – Mrs Watson’s presumably – had been slung on the post. It now hung with the others on the hooks. Who had moved it?

  ‘This has been helpful,’ she told Mr Watson. ‘Do contact us if you have any issues.’ She avoided the word ‘complaint’.

  ‘My wife will call if we require anything.’ Watson was tight-lipped.

  Outside on the path, cold air hit her face, numbing her cheeks. She zipped up her anorak and rummaged in her pocket for her gloves. As she started the engine, she looked up at Kew Villa. She saw a movement at one of the upstairs windows.

  ‘Do you see the problem?’ she asked Stanley as they drove past Kew Pond. When he didn’t reply, she said, ‘It’s freezing, so why didn’t his wife take her coat?’

  Had Mrs Watson been there all along?

  *

  Fifteen minutes later, she was at her desk in her old bedroom, sifting through the receipt bundles. She lingered over the taxi receipt. The flower motif was a four-leaf clover.

  There was no fare given on the taxi receipt; Stella guessed that, like Cliff Banks today, the driver had left it to Terry to fill in, assuming he would inflate his expenses. In a three-week period between 4 August and the 24th, Terry had bought and, Stella assumed, eaten, twenty pork pies and four sausage rolls. She searched his desk for any receipts that she might have missed, but found none.

  However, she did find Tina’s bag, where she had bundled it in the knee-space of the desk. She lifted it up and spilled the contents on to the desk.

  She had thrown a lot of things away when she moved into the Brentford flat. She supposed this had included the copy of The Cat in the Hat that Terry had given her. Flipping Tina’s copy open at random Stella frowned at a picture of a fish leaping out of a teapot and a toy boat wedged in cake with icing dripping on to the carpet. A milk bottle lay on its side, the milk spilt, and a book lay spine up, pages splayed. The cat sat against the wall regarding a bent rake with a baffled expression. Stella shuddered. As Jack had guessed, the story had made her anxious. Although at ten she was old enough to know it was just a story, whenever her mum went to buy food from the shop by Barons Court station, leaving her in the flat, Stella had worried that the Cat in the Hat would visit and make a mess.

  Her mobile phone rang. Martin Cashman.

  ‘All right, Stell!’ He sounded hearty.

  ‘Hi.’ She lined up the items from Tina’s bag and took a picture of each of them on her phone. She didn’t have a photographic memory, so wanted them to be easily accessible. She focused in on the pencilled figures scribbled under the botanical drawing. The two groups of three numbers – 766 and 764 – and the five numbers underneath: 34425. And the telephone number. Martin was talking:

  ‘...full on. Not going to make it tonight. Sorry. Another time, yeah?’ He spoke in abbreviated sentences, as if he was texting. Stella started to say that she had Jack coming and that she and Martin hadn’t arranged to meet, but it would sound churlish. He didn’t give her a chance.

  ‘Gotta go!’ The line went dead.

  Stella felt mild irritation that he had taken it for granted that he was coming over without asking. She had been thinking of telling him about Terry’s stakeout of Kew Villa and finding the boarding pass, but was glad that he hadn’t given her the chance. If she heard herself telling Martin, it would demonstrate how flimsy their so-called case was. He would laugh if she suggested he chase up the name Hailes in India on the basis of one boarding pass in a client’s kitchen. She didn’t mind that Martin wasn’t coming, she wanted to see Jack.

  She put Tina’s things back in the Boots carrier. The book, the black shoe with a silver buckle, the silver locket, the photograph. She hesitated over the drawing. It was of the parts of a eucalyptus. The tree could be significant and the numbers mean nothing –Tina might have had nowhere else to write them at the time. She reread the name on the drawing. George Watson. According to the Richmond electoral roll he had lived at Kew Villa since the early sixties. According to Cliff Banks he had given Chrissie drawing lessons in a huge house Jack told her Tina had pretended to her friends was where she lived. Kew Villa. The house outside which Terry had conducted a three-week stakeout in 2010.

  Stella jumped up and, with Stanley at her heels, ran down to the kitchen. She opened the freezer and got out two shepherd’s pies. As she ripped off the packaging and pierced the cellophane tops, Stella reflected that it wasn’t much of a leap to work out that the two cases were one!

  Chapter Fifty

  November 2014

  Jack came out of Kew Gardens station. The True Host was nowhere to be seen. He had hung back when Watson got off the train – he had to be careful since the man knew him now. Watson was more than capable of taking out anything Jack did on Bella.

  A few metres away, outside Lloyds chemist, he saw a familiar face. It wasn’t George Watson. It was Cashman. He was with Stella.

  Jack ducked out of sight behind a tree, his heart doing cartwheels in his chest. He broke into a flop sweat. Then the heat vanished and his teeth began chattering with cold.

  He was furious with himself for lurking behind a tree trunk as if it were he who had something to hide. He should go over and say, ‘Hey!’ When he had recovered a semblance of equilibrium, Jack snatched a look.

  Cashman was kissing Stella. They were making a thing out of it, like teenagers. Stella, usually private and discreet, didn’t seem to care who saw her. Jack fought the urge to scurry back into the station, over the bridge and far away. It was dusk; Cashman and Stella stood outside the light from a lamp-post, as indistinct as phantoms.

  He should confront them. Not confront, he corrected himself, Stella could go out with whom she liked; he had no right to mind. He could shake Cashman’s hand to reassure Stella that he was pleased for her. But the Jack who could do that, warm and friendly with an open heart, didn’t exist. Somewhere in the dark, the True Host was watching him.

  Hunting and hunted, Jack shook with emotion; hands rammed in the pockets of his coat in imitation of a flâneur out for an evening stroll, he wove between the parked cars and returning commuters homing in on the loving couple.

  ‘Fancy seeing you here,’ he exclaimed, furious at the crass line, however ironic.

  ‘Sorry, mate.’ Cashman made as if to step aside.

  In all his fantasies of an encounter with Martin Cashman and Stella, Jack hadn’t envisaged that the detective would pretend not to know him. He was dismayed. He had expected that, however much he despised Jack, Cashman would play fair. Desolation enveloped him. He was a tiny boy crouched beneath a statue in a clearing, numb to traffic sounds and the cold concrete pressing into his back.

  ‘Oh, it’s you.’ Cashman didn’t smile.

  ‘Yep.’ Jack found he c
ould hardly speak. He turned to Stella. ‘OK?’

  The woman wasn’t Stella. Jack never forgot a face. The woman holding Cashman’s hand was his wife. Cashman had been kissing his wife.

  ‘I thought you were Stella,’ Jack said without thinking.

  ‘Stella who?’ his wife asked Cashman.

  ‘Stella Darnell. Terry’s daughter, you know. This is her friend.’ Cashman glared at Jack.

  ‘Jack.’ Jack shook her hand and was momentarily caught off balance as his knuckles crunched in her grip. ‘Stella has said what friends you both were to her dad.’

  ‘Coppers – try prising them apart! Karen. Nice to meet you.’

  Jack avoided Cashman’s furious face. Hating himself he said, ‘I’ll tell Stella I’ve seen you. Both of you.’

  Cashman muttered something unintelligible and, moving away, stepped on a discarded fruit drinks carton lying on the kerb. It squirted out the remainder of its contents on to his shoe.

  Then they were gone.

  It was properly dark. Jack caught his reflection in the chemist’s window. Indistinct in the lamplight, tall and pale, he was a man in the crowd. No sign of the True Host.

  Cashman had gone back to his wife. Jack was sure that Stella didn’t know this. He was due there in half an hour. He texted her: On my way.

  Chapter Fifty-One

  November 2014

  ‘I’m seeing Martin Cashman.’ Stella held a mug, wisps of steam rising up from the drink like smoke in the night air.

  ‘You’re seeing him?’ Jack took the hot milk from her and closed the front door. Stanley usually greeted him – Jack looked forward to the fuss – but there was no sign of him. Was his fuss now reserved for Cashman?

  ‘He’s left his wife. They’ve left each other.’ Stella was walking up the stairs. ‘It’s amicable; they ran out of steam. He’s really quite nice.’ For Stella this was praise indeed. Jack got a glimpse of her feelings about Martin Cashman. They were stronger than she knew herself.

  All the way to Stella’s house he had wrestled with how to tell Stella that he had seen Cashman kissing Karen Cashman. He see-sawed between saying nothing because he didn’t want her to be hurt to concluding that she would be hurt anyway so he should tell her. He had wondered if Stella was aware that Cashman was back with his wife and didn’t care. She shunned any partner who wanted her full-time attention so Cashman, in CID and married, was potentially perfect for her. But Stella had always been clear: she would be no one’s mistress. From Karen Cashman’s response, Jack had gathered that she didn’t know about her husband’s liaison with Stella. Sitting in what was now the study, sipping his drink, Jack was equally certain that Stella didn’t know about Karen Cashman.

  ‘So that’s that.’ Stella sat down at the desk and wheeled herself closer to it. She indicated he pull up his chair and join her. ‘I’ve had a hunch about Tina’s text.’

  The subject of Cashman, barely opened, was closed.

  Stella pushed her Filofax towards him. ‘It was talking to Beverly that got me thinking.’

  Preoccupied by his encounter with Cashman, Jack made himself concentrate. He read the transcribed text on the notes page, written in Stella’s careful script.

  ‘“Please never shed fruit was sleet, how dear hehe No Kesto Mar”.’

  ‘You told Beverly?’ They had a rule not to share information with other people unless they both agreed. He didn’t mind that Stella had shared information with her office assistant, but was faintly ashamed by his surprise that Beverly had given Stella a hunch.

  ‘She spotted a typo on Mum’s database that alerted me. I reckon most of this text is wrongly spelt. Tina dictated everything, emails, documents, letters and texts. It was quicker.’ Stella opened the Message app on her phone.

  Jack nodded slowly. ‘I remember you saying.’

  Stella pointed at a symbol of a microphone by the space bar. ‘By the end her speech was slurred. The voice-recognition software offers the most likely words, like predictive texting. When she texted me, Tina would have been very unwell.’ She bit her lower lip. ‘She was dying. She probably didn’t check the message before she sent it. We have to work out what she actually meant.’

  Jack frowned. ‘Shame we can’t use Google Translate.’

  ‘I’ve had several goes. It’s difficult to say the words wrongly and in a different voice. So far I’ve only got a fresh load of gobble-degook.’

  ‘You dictated the message into the phone in a disguised voice?’ Jack was delighted.

  ‘Then I tried being Tina, but I was doing her when she was well.’ Stella didn’t notice Jack’s excitement. ‘She didn’t sound the same in the hospice. I was about to try a different accent when you arrived.’

  ‘Go on then.’ Exuberant, Jack settled into his chair.

  Stella cleared her throat and, without a trace of self-consciousness, the phone held to her mouth, she growled into the microphone speaking in an accent that reminded Jack of Dariusz Adomek.

  ‘Perleese never shed frowt wasss sleet, how dear hehe Nooow Kesto Ma.’ Heads together, Jack and Stella peered at the result on the screen.

  ‘“Please never shed throat was sleet, how dear hehe no Bisto Ma”,’ Jack read out the sentence. ‘Something about the weather in there?’

  ‘“Police”!’ Stella banged the desk. ‘Not “please”. I’m being dense.She was dictating. “Kesto Ma” is “Question Mark”. It’s a question!’

  ‘Could “sleet” be “slit”, do you think?’ Jack pondered.

  ‘It’s a contender,’ Stella agreed. ‘“Throat was slit” makes more sense.’

  Jack grabbed a pen from a pot of pens and pencils on the desk and began to write out the revised sentence.

  ‘The “hehe” could be a hesitation, rather than mean a joke. Try crossing out the second “he”. Tina found it hard to get her words out. She might have repeated it. “No” could be “know”.’ Jack was enjoying this.

  Stella read out the result. ‘“Police never shed throat was slit, how dear he know?”’

  ‘“Police never said throat was slit, how did he know?”’ Jack flung down the pen. ‘Stella the Wonderhorse!’

  ‘How did who know what?’ Stella asked. ‘Let’s leave this for now.’

  ‘How come you have this?’ Jack picked out a scalpel, the blade sheathed in plastic, from the pot of pens and pencils.

  ‘It’s not mine, it was Terry’s.’

  ‘How come he had a scalpel?’ The metal handle flashed in the light of the anglepoise lamp.

  Stella shrugged. ‘It’s always been there.’

  ‘What you mean “always”?’ Jack asked.

  ‘It was in that pot when Dad died.’

  ‘Another question for our list: “Why did Terry have a scalpel?” The man who isn’t Joseph Hooker was killed with a scalpel.’

  ‘He had lots of tools,’ Stella said. ‘They’re in the cupboard under the stairs.’

  ‘Precisely. Why is this on his desk? What would he use a scalpel for?’ Jack held the implement up to the light of the lawyers’ lamp. ‘Detectives get into the role; they inhabit the mind of the killer. This scalpel was a prop. So far our prime suspect for a crime we haven’t identified is George Watson.’

  Stella nodded. ‘You could be right. Dad was staking out the house of a man who is a botanist. And that’s not all – look at this.’ She had laid the collection of things that Tina Banks had left her on the desk. ‘In that article that Lucie May gave you, it said that an item stolen from the Ramsay house was a heart-shaped locket.’ She pulled forward the silver locket from between Watson’s botanical drawing and The Cat in the Hat.

  ‘So it could be the same one.’ Jack wanted to tell her how he had actually come by the cuttings. He couldn’t find the courage.

  ‘The initials on the back are “G” and “R” which could stand for “Gerald Ramsay”. Tina was a criminal lawyer, she might have represented the burglar who stole this. For another crime, obviously, as she wasn’t born when the ro
bbery took place. When I found this on the carpet in her office, Tina insisted that it wasn’t hers.’ She laid photocopies of the articles on the desk and placed the locket on top of them. ‘I’ve started establishing links.’ She flipped over the page in her Filofax. Each item was written on the page, in the same order as she had arranged them on the desk, a circle was drawn around them. Outside the circle she had printed the word ‘Articles’ and drawn an arrow from it to the locket. Further along the page, also outside the circle, she had put names: George and Rosamond Watson; Harold and James Hailes. Arrows from these pointed to ‘Kew Villa’. Another arrow connected Kew Villa to ‘Botanic Drawing’ written inside the circle, as did an arrow from Botanic Drawing to George Watson.

  ‘Tina went for botanical drawing lessons with George Watson.’ Stella pulled forward the picture of the Eucalyptus gunnii. ‘That’s why!’ She sat back, arms folded.

  ‘What’s why?’

  ‘Hailes is the name of Rosamond’s brother. It comes up on the electoral roll. It was her maiden name. Then she married George Watson and he moved into Kew Villa. When I was at Watson’s house, I found a boarding pass from Madras belonging to a J. H. Hailes. Watson said it wasn’t his.’

  ‘That was true, I suppose.’

  ‘He said it had been blown inside by the wind. Why bother with that detail? It would have to be a strong wind to lift it off the pavement, blow it up the steps and into the house. I checked with Donette and she didn’t find it when she was cleaning. That means Watson or his wife left it on the kitchen table. James Hailes is Rosamond’s brother, so what’s the bet that J. H. Hailes and James Hailes are the same?’

  ‘So Watson lives at Kew Villa.’ The man he had seen on the stairs had been visiting and had left in a taxi. It began to make sense. When he had seen Watson go to Kew Villa on the night Jennifer Day died, he was going to his own house. The man on the stairs was possibly Hailes, the brother visiting from India. Jack said nothing; he couldn’t discuss this with Stella.

  ‘I’ve put this chart together.’ Stella jiggled the mouse and the computer screen was filled with a colour-coded spreadsheet of names and dates. ‘Watson’s been in Kew Villa since 1962 when he married Rosamond Hailes. She was living there with, and I’m guessing this, her father Harold and brother James. There was no Mrs Hailes back to 1958 when I stopped.’