The House With No Rooms

by Lesley Thomson

  If the True Host was called Matthew Ayrton, who was George Watson? Jack realized he had never seen him. When Stella was talking about meeting him at his house, he had pictured Ayrton.

  Bella’s eyes glittered. ‘Let’s slip Kew Mix into Matthew’s Martini!’

  ‘“Kew Mix”?’ It was the second time Bella had referred to it.

  ‘It’s for preserving specimens. Ethanol, glycerine and the one that would finish him off: formaldehyde. If you think Wing C in the Herbarium is full of ghosts, Jack, visit the Spirit Collection in the basement!’ She was teasing him. ‘Or there’s Abrus precatorius – cute little red and black beans – just five of them ground up into his coffee will make Matthew extinct!’

  Jack was too attracted by the idea. Hastily he asked, ‘Have you met Rosamond Watson?’ He needed to lock down facts. So far he had been way off.

  ‘Once.’

  ‘When?’ Their theories were becoming extinct too.

  ‘We were kids. She answered the door once when Emily and me went with Chrissie to her lesson. We didn’t meet her. Chrissie made sure of that. I did see her though.’

  ‘Have you met her as an adult?’

  ‘No. George says she’s a sociophobe. She hasn’t got any friends and is dependent on him. Shoot me if I get like that!’

  Jack hadn’t noticed the arrival of the main course. The man he had seen on the stairs in Kew Villa had been George Watson. He wasn’t a visitor who left in a taxi. The man he had seen in the sixth car and followed from Kew station was Matthew Ayrton. He had called on Watson, probably to make him redo the watsonii plate. When Bella had described him as harmless, she hadn’t meant Ayrton, whom Jack had mistaken for Watson, she had meant Watson. Today she had called him spineless. Jack was stunned. Watson wasn’t a True Host. That changed everything.

  Was his wife alive? The case was in tatters. Numbly Jack traced the root of his mistake. When the Herbarium receptionist had told him that George Watson was upstairs, he had assumed that Watson was the man who had caught him looking at a specimen. In fact that was Matthew Ayrton.

  He had defined True Hosts as those who had murdered, or would murder. He spotted them intuitively, a skill based on early experience, but his focus had been narrow. Murder wasn’t only about the extinguishing of life, but of killing all hope.

  His conclusions were based on erroneous assumptions. Matthew Ayrton had been in the sixth car when Jennifer Day had collapsed and died. Jack had thought it impossible that, as a True Host, he hadn’t been instrumental in her death. But sometimes situations were what they seemed. Jennifer Day had suffered a cerebral aneurism. No one had murdered her. The botanist had lingered briefly because True Hosts were drawn to the proximity of death. He had then left because his sort didn’t waste their lives helping members of the public or the police.

  ‘A penny for them?’ Bella probed.

  ‘Rosulabryum andicala was there all along,’ Jack said quickly. He couldn’t share his real thoughts. ‘Without a name, something doesn’t have a place in a taxonomic system. Botanically it doesn’t exist. Yet it does exist. We invent classifications and then we reinvent them. Names change. They make up our reality. If we lose our name, our identity, we don’t exist.’

  ‘Chrissie said something about not existing the last time we saw her.’ Bella piled creamed potato on to her fork. ‘After she apologized for running off when we were kids.’

  ‘That was honest.’ Jack couldn’t imagine the hard-nosed lawyer capable of being so frank. Another fundamental error.

  ‘When people get a life-threatening illness, I guess they go all existential and consider the meaning of life.’ Bella ripped off a piece of olive bread and mopped it in the jus. ‘She showed us this cupboard in the Marianne North Gallery where she had hidden from us. It’s still there. I said I’d’ve found her straight away.’ Puffing up with ill-concealed pride, Bella gathered more potato on to her fork. ‘S’pose that was a bit mean,’ she remarked placidly.

  ‘That’s when she saw the murder? Hiding in a cupboard.’ Jack chopped a sliver of meat off one of his lamb cutlets and nibbled it.

  ‘She didn’t tell me. It was her secret with Emily.’ Bella rolled her eyes. Jack guessed that this still irked her.

  ‘She did tell you that she had cancer.’ Although she didn’t need it, Jack felt an urge to bolster Bella’s feelings.

  ‘She claimed we were the only ones she told, not her family or someone called Stella. Not even her dad. Emily met him at the funeral. She said that he was upset about that.’

  ‘She must have trusted you.’ But Bella wasn’t listening.

  ‘My father’s family didn’t tell me that he was dead until months afterwards, and only then to find out if I wanted a pair of crappy cufflinks. I told them where they could stuff them!’

  ‘Did Tina mention George Watson? Jack was in a fog, feeling his way. ‘I mean apart from when he taught her as a child.’

  Bella dabbed her mouth with her napkin. ‘She said his wife makes good chocolate cake and that I should suggest that he brought some into work.’ She laughed. ‘Funny what makes an impression on kids!’

  Jack gave up pretending to eat and set his knife and fork together on the plate.

  ‘Have you asked him? To bring in her cake?’

  ‘I wish I hadn’t! When I said what Chrissie told me, George behaved as if I’d hit him. At her funeral he looked in pieces. Did you see him with that flower?’ Bella signalled to the waiter and made a sign for the bill. ‘Matthew said the Rolex George wears is one of the originals. It’s worth thousands and he wears it as if he bought it on the high street. Matthew’s obsessed with it. I felt like saying to George: Give Ayrton your Rolex and he’ll name ten species after you.

  ‘Emily said on the phone last night that she had remembered more about the secret that Chrissie told her – about the murder she claimed to have seen in the Marianne North Gallery. She was so frightened that she rushed out without her flip-flops. Chrissie spun Emily some tale that a taxi driver picked her up from her drawing lesson and had been given them by her mum. We guessed that the taxi driver was her dad and, since I worked out who lives at Kew Villa, her supposed mum had to be Rosamond Watson. Chrissie told Emily that it didn’t make sense. She had left the flip-flops in Kew Gardens so how had “the lady” got them? A consummate liar sprinkles their lies with truth, but it’s such a convoluted story, we think it might all be true. Chrissie did see something in the gallery. Not a murder obviously since there was no body.’

  ‘The lack of a body doesn’t mean she didn’t see a murder.’ Jack flipped open his wallet. ‘What colour were her flip-flops?’

  ‘Bright pink, since you ask!’ Bella handed her debit card to the waiter and asked him to split the bill. ‘I had the same ones in blue.’

  Included in the Boots bag that Tina had left for Stella was a pair of pink flip-flops. And included in the burglary at the Ramsay house in the 1950s was a Rolex watch.

  Chapter Fifty-Four

  November 2014

  ‘You mustn’t say anything, Jack. Do keep out of it.’ Jackie put a plate of chilli down in front of him. ‘Eat!’

  ‘How can I face Stella knowing that Cashman is two-timing her?’ Jack wailed.

  ‘It’s frustrating, but not your business.’ Jackie sat down at the table with him, nursing a bulbous pottery mug of camomile tea.

  Jack had gone to Jackie’s to get her advice about Cashman, but as soon as she had welcomed him into her terrace house in Chiswick, he knew he had come home.

  Jackie sipped her tea. ‘You’ll upset her.’

  ‘Upset who?’ Graham, a mild-mannered man in suit trousers and shirt sleeves, with glasses pushed up on his forehead, wandered into the kitchen. He replenished his mug from the cafetière on the counter.

  ‘Stella. Her policeman’s gone back to his wife.’ Jackie pushed a carton of milk across the table towards her husband.

  ‘Nice enough bloke, but he wasn’t good enough for her,’ Graham commented.
r />   ‘No one is, in your eyes!’ Jackie said.

  ‘Nor yours,’ Graham replied.

  Jack would normally have minded that Jackie had told his secret – not that it was his secret – to someone else. But Graham was family. Sitting in the Makepeaces’ cosy kitchen savouring chilli doused in tzatziki and tucking into a fluffy baked potato (Jackie always did an extra one) he was sanguine.

  ‘I can’t lie to Stella.’ He had received a text from her an hour earlier suggesting the identity of the little girl that Terry had spoken to. Burdened with his knowledge about Cashman and his secret visit to Kew Villa he had yet to reply.

  ‘It’s not lying. Has she talked to you about seeing Cashman?’

  ‘She told me yesterday. I didn’t know what to say.’

  ‘That would have been hard,’ Jackie agreed.

  ‘Someone needs to tell her before she finds out.’ Jack mashed chilli into his baked potato.

  ‘Remember what happens to the messenger. Don’t even go there, mate!’ Carrying his mug of coffee, Graham left the kitchen.

  Jackie shook her head at the closing door.

  ‘You said he was Stella’s “Mr Right”.’ Jack scraped his plate.

  ‘Did I?’ Jackie looked sceptical.

  ‘Stella said you did.’

  ‘I know my memory’s bad, but I’m sure I didn’t. Stella decides what I’m thinking and is, without exception, wrong. It’s how she makes difficult decisions: she puts them on to others. We all have our strategies. If they had met in their twenties, Cashman might have suited her. Unlike Suzie, Stella doesn’t need constant attention, and he’s like her dad, always working, which allows her to work too. I may have said that once. But Cashman sets too much store in family to leave and start again. Karen probably asked him to pick his socks off the floor and he took that as grounds for divorce. Stick that in the dishwasher,’ she said as Jack took his plate to the sink.

  ‘She will be upset.’ Were it him, he would be ripped to shreds.

  ‘She will,’ Jackie agreed. ‘Then she’ll lick her wounds and move on.’

  ‘Anyway, he hasn’t dumped her, he’s still seeing her.’ Jack slammed shut the dishwasher door. Filling a mug with milk, he put it in the microwave. Tonight, as he often did when he was here, Jack wished he lived at Jackie’s. Then he wouldn’t have to stay perfectly still in dark corners of the homes of strangers as their secret guest. Here he was legitimate. But, he reminded himself, he was welcome in the Makepeace home because he was visiting. Although they treated him like one of the family, he was a cuckoo and this was not his nest. Still, if anything happened to Jackie, he didn’t know what he would do.

  ‘I nearly hit him yesterday, right outside Kew Gardens station,’ Jack confessed as he stirred runny honey into the steaming milk.

  ‘Best not clobber a police officer in a public space,’ Jackie advised. ‘Stella will miss talking with Martin about the case. Still, she’s not in love.’

  ‘Could Stella be in love?’ Jack pondered aloud.

  ‘Oh yes.’ Jackie got up and fitted her mug on the crowded top rack of the dishwasher. She began laying the table for breakfast with the efficiency of a nightly routine. Jack’s routine was driving a train at precise times or cleaning for Stella. His nights were open to chance.

  Jackie placed a tablet of soap in the dishwasher and set it going. ‘Stella wouldn’t admit it to herself, but she’ll have appreciated emerging from her dad’s shadow and being Martin’s sounding board. She’ll have been solid gold for him. Have you seen him on the telly? Rabbit in headlights. He’s no nearer to finding who killed that man, poor lad.’ She placed a jar of muesli on the table beside a packet of cornflakes. ‘You and Stella are a good team.’ She rinsed out the cafetière and put it by the kettle.

  ‘Stella is thinking that the little girl Terry spoke to might have been Tina.’ Jack tried the idea out on Jackie.

  ‘Tina sought Stella out, remember. She apparently wanted to buy her flat, but there were others on sale in the block and Stella hadn’t advertised. Have you thought that Tina came to Stella because of Terry?’

  ‘Why didn’t Tina just tell Stella about the murder? Buying her flat and taking out cleaning contracts was a complicated and expensive route to her.’

  ‘Tina Banks needed a flat and a cleaner.’ Jackie put out bowls and spoons. ‘I suspect she wasn’t ready to tell her. She wanted to, but couldn’t, but unconsciously she did the groundwork.’

  ‘She was using Stella!’ Whatever else, Jack had come to think that Tina had liked Stella for herself.

  ‘No. She genuinely liked her. But she had to be sure that she could trust her. Then she got ill and things came to a head.’ Jackie spoke over the hum of the dishwasher. She put out mugs and a bottle of vitamin C tablets. ‘Stella was round here a few times asking me if she could trust Tina. She knows how to look after herself.’

  Jack shouldn’t have been surprised that Stella had confided in Jackie. The evening when Tina Banks had come to the flat, she had said she wanted to buy it, but spent most of the time quizzing Stella about the Rokesmith case. Jack had assumed she hoped to get Stella onside with flattery, not knowing that Stella was impervious to such tactics. But had she actually wanted to know about the case?

  Jackie was filling tumblers with water from a filter jug on the counter. ‘It could have been Tina that Terry spoke to. She was exactly Stella’s age and they got on because they were alike. Terry probably saw that.’ She pinched fluff off Jack’s sleeveless pullover. ‘Give that to me when you go, I’ll handwash it. You can borrow one of Nick’s; he’s about your size.’ She tapped the jar of muesli. ‘Your favourite.’

  Jack looked properly at the table. Jackie had set three places. There were three glasses of water for bedtime. He felt a glow of happiness. He was staying the night.

  *

  In bed that night, Jackie lowered her book and told Graham about her conversation with Jack. ‘I wish Jack and Stella would sort themselves out.’

  ‘Careful what you wish for.’ To wind down, Graham Makepeace – a surveyor for Hammersmith Council by day – designed buildings on a computer-aided design app loaded on to his mini iPad. He placed a green-planted roof on to the sustainable three-bedroomed house.

  ‘I am careful.’ Jackie took up her book and proceeded to read the same page for the third time.

  Chapter Fifty-Five

  November 2014

  Cashman’s knock was tentative. Had Stanley not succumbed to a tirade of barks, Stella wouldn’t have heard it.

  ‘You’ve seen your friend Jack?’ he demanded gruffly when Stella opened the door. ‘You know he was questioned by one of our officers for the Kew Gardens murder? He was in the vicinity of the gardens the following night.’

  ‘Jack does night shifts; he frequently walks home afterwards.’ Jack hadn’t told her.

  ‘He had no alibi for the morning of the murder.’ Cashman stamped his feet on the mat in the hall.

  ‘Is he a suspect?’ Stella called a halt to Stanley’s barking with a tip of the hand. Instant quiet. The dog remained close to Cashman, eyes black with suspicion.

  ‘We can’t rule him out. You saw him last night.’ It wasn’t a question, but she gave a nod of confirmation.

  ‘Did he say he saw me?’

  ‘No.’ His question told her everything. Jack must have seen Cashman with his wife. Cashman had worried that Jack had told her. She had noticed that Jack was silent when she told him about seeing Cashman. And now Cashman had come to explain. He had left it twenty-four hours so she’d have had time to digest the information and would perhaps not be so angry.

  Stella flicked the switch on the kettle. ‘Tea, coffee?’ She had forgotten which he preferred.

  ‘Neither – I can’t stop. Things are hotting up. We’ve got a print at the gallery. It’s in the back yard, at the side of the tap.’

  ‘Is it on the system?’

  ‘Yes! You’re not going to believe this. It came up on a robbery round the corner fr
om here in St Peter’s Square!’

  ‘When was that?’ Before he died, suspecting an intruder in Rose Gardens North, Terry had changed the locks. The houses in St Peter’s Square were bristling with grilles, CCTV and state-of-the-art alarms.

  ‘Nineteen fifty-six!’

  Stella moved Tina’s bag, which was on the table after her visit to Lucie May, on to the floor out of sight as a truth began to dawn.

  ‘Police thought the job was done by boys and orchestrated by a Fagin-type character. This was fifty-eight years ago so add another sixteen or so years and the owner of the print would be in his seventies. Perfectly able to wield a scalpel. This is the break we needed, Stell!’

  Stella imagined the Ramsay locket burning a hole in the bag. She didn’t speak. Now was the time to mention the James Hailes boarding pass. She remained silent.

  ‘There’s more!’ He sat astride ‘Jack’s chair’, leaning on the back rest, his usual position. ‘We’ve found more footage of the man from the gallery alighting from a Piccadilly train at Chiswick Park and boarding a District line train to Kew Gardens. He leaves the station in the direction of Leyborne Park. We’ve got him crossing at the zebra on the South Circular and going up Forest Road, then nothing.’

  ‘That’s not the way to Kew Gardens.’

  ‘Like you said, he probably met someone and went there with them.’ It was the way to Kew Villa. Stella didn’t say this.

  As was typical if she wanted him not to touch something, Stanley began nosing around the bag. Stella snatched it up and put it on the counter. She remembered what Jack had said about hiding something in plain sight and hoped it would work.

  Perhaps Cashman thought that discussing the case with her would be a good lead in to finishing with her? He would have to do it by himself. Perhaps Lucie was wrong and he hadn’t gone back to Karen Cashman. She remembered the look in Jack’s eyes and this slim hope died.

  ‘I must go.’ Cashman leapt out of the chair and swung it around with one hand, tucking it under the table. ‘I wanted to keep you in the loop.’ He wasn’t going to say anything. Where Lucie May would have been enraged by Cashman’s cowardice, Stella was faintly relieved. It made her plan easier.