Homicide in Herne Hill

by Alice Castle

  For a second, she hesitated, but then decided to cross the road so she could saunter right past the house. Why not? She did actually have a reason to be curious, unlike most of these people. Wait a minute, she knew that PC at the gate. He was the one who’d questioned her at Wyatt’s that time, and now that she was effectively dating his boss, she decided they had even more of a bond.

  The yellow and black crime scene tape, draped from one square box hedge to the other, looked incongruously like the sort of clever, edgy designer tinsel that Letty might well have bought, and Beth was forced to remember, yet again, that she’d done precisely nothing so far on the Christmas front. But it was coming, and the goose from the old rhyme was now so obese it could barely waddle. She’d have to get her head around it. For now, though, there were more important things on her mind.

  She said a carefully casual hello to the policeman, who smiled awkwardly, while she peered past him through the open gate to the big windows of the house. There was no attempt here to hide behind blinds. The tall hedges on all sides acted as solid green net curtains, but once you were within the front garden the place was like a doll’s house. She could see the spectacular staircase, the deserted living area, and the cavernous hall.

  ‘How are you?’ asked Beth, pretending fascinated interest, though all the while she was edging forwards until she was through the gate and peering over the policeman’s shoulder, like a social-climbing guest at a duff cocktail do. The PC shuffled his feet and looked awkward. She was now on the wrong side of the tape, and he didn’t really want to have to remind her of that. Not when the boss was so smitten, and all. He was just clearing his throat when the front door of the house was flung open, and Letty rushed out.

  Beth’s inadvertent prediction earlier was spectacularly confirmed. Letty looked amazing in black, her silver-blonde hair flying as she rushed forward and, to Beth’s consternation, spat in her direction.

  ‘What are you doing here, you bitch? You drove him to it,’ Letty screamed.

  Beth couldn’t help it. She looked over her shoulder to check whether someone who actually deserved this treatment had loomed up behind her. She herself had done nothing, nothing to warrant this. But apart from a short, startled businessman, briefcase in hand, who’d been peering in their direction and now hurried by as quickly as he could, there was suddenly no-one else in sight.

  ‘I don’t understand, um, Letty, I hardly knew your husband. I just came by, well, to see if there was anything I could do…’

  ‘Don’t lie, you’re curious like the rest of them. Worse than curious, you’re a vulture. You’re disgusting, disgusting, and you’re to blame,’ Letty shrieked, throwing herself to the gravel and covering her face with her hands. If she hadn’t just been widowed in horrible circumstances, Beth would have sniggered at her audition for the part of Lady Macbeth and urged her not to give up her day job. Not that she had one.

  Unfortunately, the commotion brought two of the tiny Potter children to the front door, their usually radiant little faces blotched and red with crying for their daddy. Beth felt terrible for causing them more grief with her crass gate-crashing. And then she felt worse still, as Harry himself emerged from the house and gave her a long, level look in which pleasure at seeing his inamorata lagged an awfully long way behind disapproval, anger, and even a dash of disgust.

  ‘I’ll talk to you later,’ he said to her with a significant stare, and carefully helped up Letty Potter. The distraught woman leant her lissom frame against him, wound her arms around his neck, and allowed herself to be gently guided back into the house.

  Beth suppressed a harrumph. She realised it wouldn’t go down well with anyone, not even the PC, who usually had a twinkle for her. She strode away from the house as quickly as she could and was soon outside Nina’s door.

  ‘You look a bit crushed,’ said Nina, as the familiar and comforting sights and sounds of her flat rushed out to envelop Beth – a combination of chips and cartoons which, though it wasn’t going to make Ben into the lean intellectual warrior she should be fashioning, at least had kept him safe and happy these past few days. She contrasted the life and cheeriness of Nina’s home with the super-stylish yet chilly look Letty seemed to go for. She hadn’t been inside Letty’s house yet, but she was willing to bet it was all angles, just like the woman herself.

  ‘Bloody Letty Potter only shot out of her house and accused me of all sorts as I was passing,’ said Beth, disgruntled. Ben looked up briefly from his beached-whale position on the well-stuffed sofa, but the demands of the plot of this particular cartoon dragged his attention straight back, possibly because it was a Japanese animation that seemed to have cut and pasted its voiceover wholesale from Google Translate.

  ‘What? That’s so weird. What did she say?’ Nina’s brows knit together in the centre of her smooth forehead.

  ‘She seemed to blame it all on me! I mean, I know she’s in shock and everything, but that’s so bizarre, isn’t it? I mean, I hardly know either of them really. Knew. Oh, you know what I mean,’ said Beth thoughtfully.

  ‘Really strange. But then, Letty is, isn’t she? Gives me the willies. Always has done. The way she’s always lurking behind Belinda MacKenzie, with that little smirk like she’s perfect and you’re not. What’s she even got to accuse you of?’

  ‘She said I’d driven Potter to it. But how could I have done? I’d only just met him.’

  ‘That makes it sound like you might have done, if you’d known him better,’ Nina pointed out with the ghost of a smile. ‘Maybe it’s that thing, protesting too much.’

  Beth looked at her, arrested. ‘You could be right. I thought of Lady Macbeth, but maybe it’s Hamlet after all. There’s definitely something rotten in the state of that house.’

  ‘Nah. It’s new-build, in’t it? Under guarantee.’ Nina bustled around in the tiny kitchen area, getting everything sorted out for the supper.

  Beth raised her eyebrows but said nothing, starting to clear the tiny table so they could all sit, knees jammed up together as usual. She stopped abruptly. ‘Sorry, have you got enough for us? I was making an assumption…’

  ‘You’re all right, babe. Always enough for you two.’ Nina turned back to the cooker, and missed the tears springing to Beth’s eyes.

  Whatever happened, she’d managed something over this holiday that she’d always found a struggle before – she’d made a friend. And that was worth so much, particularly as she could feel her phone vibrating with angry texts, which she had to assume were from Harry. It was like having a pocketful of bees. She didn’t want to read them, to feel their sting. For the moment, she could do fine just imagining his irritation. And just when they’d seemed to have sorted things out, too. She cursed herself for poking her nose in again. But if she didn’t, things might never get untangled. An injustice might be done. And she couldn’t have that. She just couldn’t.

  As Beth settled in bed later that night, Ben safely tucked up along the corridor, she realised she’d come to something of an impasse. Without access to Harry, she had no idea how the police investigation was progressing. And if the one text she’d worked up the courage to read was anything to go by, at the moment that access was definitely denied for the foreseeable future.

  She had her own ideas about Potter. She was absolutely certain now that Nina had been right in her suspicions. Something illegal had been going on, for quite some time, in that little office. Potter was certainly guilty of that much. Would that corrosive emotion, coupled with the fact that it had not been enough to shore up the great edifice of expenditure that was his showy Dulwich life, have been enough to push him into suicide? Maybe. And trying to polish off his family first? Well, it did happen. Beth had to concede it was all possible.

  Maybe it was time to do what Harry had so forcefully said. Just duck out of the whole business and concentrate on things that did concern her. At the moment, unfortunately, that was a welter of undone Christmas chores, enough to make even Santa and his full team of elves fe
el a little daunted.

  But there were ways to make everything fun, and having an excited ten-year-old at your side was perhaps the easiest way to inject some joy into Christmas shopping. Beth decided that central London would be a step too far, so they set off the next morning for the shopping centre at Bromley.

  Beth knew from previous less-than-festive pre-Christmas experiences that taking the car would mean waiting in a queue snaking around central Bromley until someone else got bored with shopping. The alternative was a quick train journey – but from Herne Hill Station. She had no wish to keep on passing the office, the scene of so much unpleasantness, but in the end it was fine. They stayed on the other side of the road, and Ben was so bubbly that they’d passed it before she even had a chance to start dreading it.

  Bromley’s shopping centre was the closest Beth’s pocket of south London got to a mall, unless you counted the Lewisham Centre which, with the best will in the world, was not really possible.

  This place had a tendency to switch names, seemingly at random. For a while it had been The Glades, rather reminiscent of air freshener; then lately it had become InTu, a little like Sainsbury’s clothing range; but now it was back to The Glades again. Though the name seemed wildly inappropriate for a large chunk of concrete set in the middle of a dual carriageway, Beth remembered that years ago it had been chosen by Bromley residents in a competition, maybe harking fondly back to prehistoric times.

  Wandering the wide, shiny walkways, Beth realised that she could judge the passage of Ben’s childhood by the shops they now sprinted past. Build-a-Bear Workshop, where he had once thrown a rare tantrum when she’d declined to buy his teddy a skateboard – ‘I’m a deprived child,’ he’d yelled at her – and the Disney shop, which he now seemed not to see at all, had once absorbed ridiculous amounts of pocket money. She’d thoroughly resented them. Now she looked at them rather fondly, and spent her time trying to finagle him out of Game and HMV instead.

  ‘We’ll never find a present for Granny in here,’ she said firmly at last, and frog-marched him to the more fertile hunting ground of the toiletries aisle of Marks and Spencer. Just when Ben was about to expire with boredom, it was lunch, and she let him choose, even though another burger was probably the last thing he needed, nutritionally speaking. At least at Byron they did put a slice of tomato and a scrap of lettuce beneath their buns. She wasn’t particularly surprised to see Ben weeding these carefully out and laying them on the side of his plate, as carefully as a pathologist at a post mortem.

  With a last stop for Christmas cards, their bags were satisfyingly bulgy by the time they got back to Herne Hill. This time, the morning’s exuberance having worn off, Ben was full of tired questions. ‘Why aren’t you working at Nina’s office any more? Don’t you like Mr Potter? Are we going to Wilf’s?’

  Beth thought hard. She knew that, in this mood, he wouldn’t really be listening very hard to her answers, it was more his way of showing his exhaustion. But, nevertheless, she wanted to answer him as honestly as she could.

  ‘I won’t be working there any more, Ben. That job has finished, so Nina will be looking for something else, too.’ It was the first time this point had occurred to her and she realised, with a stab of guilt, that her friend had been thrown into a very difficult position which she just hadn’t considered before.

  ‘And we’re not going to Wilf’s. We’ve got loads of wrapping to do, all this lot,’ said Beth as brightly as she could, shaking her bags with their rolls of robin-infested paper poking up into the chilly air.

  ‘Oh great,’ said Ben, echoing Beth’s own gloomy thoughts.

  ‘We can put on a nice Christmassy movie, get ourselves in the mood, and have a carpet picnic, too,’ Beth said encouragingly. For some reason, eating on the floor always cheered them both up.

  But as she fitted her key into the lock and swung the door open, all thoughts of Christmas, food, and presents flew from her head. On the tiled floor, right in front of them, was Magpie, lying on her side, very still, near a pile of cat vomit.

  ‘Oh my God,’ said Beth, darting forward and stroking Magpie’s head. She scanned her anxiously for signs of life, wishing beyond anything that Ben was not with her, seeing this.

  ‘What’s this?’ said Ben, picking up a small golden tin of incredibly fancy cat food. It was even pricier than Magpie’s usual, and the sort that Beth privately suspected was only bought by ladies who loved their pussies that bit too much.

  ‘Don’t touch it!’ said Beth – too late. Ben obligingly dropped the tin and gobbets of food went everywhere, adding to the rich smell of vomit in the air. Magpie made the cat equivalent of a groan. ‘Can you get her carrier, darling?’ Beth said urgently.

  Normally, getting Magpie into her deluxe wicker basket involved both Beth and Ben working as a tag team, and wearing gardening gloves into the bargain. All four of Magpie’s limbs would move in wildly different directions as she clawed frantically at her hapless humans. Today, Beth lifted her in tenderly in a few moments, and they ran for the car and sped down to the vet’s. Luckily, it was still open, and Beth double-parked outside, her hazard lights flashing. There was no time to waste. They rushed in and Beth plonked the carrier on the counter, the tell-tale smell wafting up.

  ‘I think my cat’s been poisoned,’ said Beth, and promptly burst into tears. Ben, at her side, buried his head into her jacket but she could tell he was crying, too.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Beth had to hand it to the vets. They were amazing. As she sat and sniffled, with Ben at her side doing the same, behind the closed door she knew important stuff was going on which she certainly couldn’t bear to watch. She gazed at the posters about dog biscuits and vaccinations, not seeing anything except Magpie as a kitten, jumping in their back garden to catch insects. She’d been amazing, leaping so high in the air, her zebra-crossing coat so striking against the shabby green of the shrubs. Then Magpie as a teenage cat, pretending to be stuck up a tree so that Beth would risk life and limb to rescue her, only to climb up to the same spot again immediately afterwards. And Magpie, every day, providing the company and counsel that Beth had so badly needed, alone with her boy. Even in the past few tremulous weeks, with Harry on the scene, Magpie had had secrets whispered into her fur that Beth never wanted to say out loud. She was part of their family. She was their family.

  The door to the surgery opened and the tired-looking vet put her head round the door. ‘Mrs Haldane?’ she said.

  Beth scanned her face, trying to work out what to brace herself for. Ben made to get up with her, but she pressed his arm and asked him to wait, keep an eye on her things, then followed the vet, taking a deep breath.

  On the table in the centre of the room lay Magpie, still and quiet. Beth ran over and stroked her fur, so silky and warm. She bit back a sob. ‘Is she…?’

  ‘She’s going to be fine. She’s had a very lucky escape, though,’ said the vet, shaking her head. ‘I hate to see things like this. It’s so worrying.’

  Beth put her hands up to her face and the tears came, unbidden, washing hot over her fingers. ‘I’m sorry. It’s the relief, I think.’

  The vet pressed her shoulder. ‘I understand. Don’t worry. We’ll keep her in overnight. I’m going to put her on a drip just in case; she’s lost a lot of fluid. Let’s talk in the morning.’

  ‘Can my son just say hello?’

  ‘Of course,’ the woman smiled.

  She opened the door and said, ‘Ben?’

  Beth had never seen Ben look so bereft, and that alone brought a fresh wave of tears. He stared up at her, seeing her distress, and his face crumpled. ‘No, darling, she’s going to be fine, look, I promise,’ said Beth, leading him over to Magpie, docile for once. They both stroked her, and Ben got a tiny tickle from her whiskers, making his smile spread from ear to ear.

  Beth felt dazed by the time they stood outside on the street – all the more so when she saw the car that was double-parked behind her Fiat, still merrily flashing it
s hazard lights into the night.

  ‘You know, you really can’t park here,’ said a familiar voice, and then she was engulfed in a hug from a big, navy blue pea coat. Ben was swept up, too.

  ‘How… how did you know we were here?’ Beth was bemused.

  ‘A little bird texted me,’ said Harry, his eyebrows up in his hairline.

  ‘Ben? What? How did you do that? And when?’

  Ben looked at his shoes, a mass of scuffs one term into the school year. ‘While you were in with the vet. I thought it was a police matter,’ he said defiantly. ‘It could have been a murder.’

  Beth shook her head. Time for her to change her phone password. But on the other hand, she was so glad Harry was here. She didn’t have the heart to be cross. And Ben was so right. It could have been the end of their Magpie. Now that the shock and fear were wearing off, anger was rushing in to take their place.

  ‘This has to stop, Harry.’

  ‘I couldn’t agree more, darling. Let’s get you home. Then we’ll get everything sorted,’ he said, reminding her with a look not to say more in front of Ben.

  Beth, suddenly feeling warm to her toes, thought what pleasure a single word could give.

  As they sped back to Pickwick Road, a quick glance at the Potter house showed that the crime scene tape was still fluttering in the breeze, but the place looked dark, deserted. Beth stored up yet another question to ask Harry, the moment Ben’s head touched the pillow.

  In fact, after the alarums and excursions of the evening, including a quick and unpleasant clear-up operation in the hall, it wasn’t until late that bedtime was finally achieved, and then only by Harry eventually reading Ben into submission with his dullest Captain Farty Pants book. Beth, listening to Harry snort with laughter upstairs – the oeuvre was still a novelty for him, if not for her – smiled and poured them both huge glasses of wine, and sat down for a moment on the sofa by the fire. She woke up, three hours later, with a rug tucked round her and a note from Harry propped on her chest saying he’d be back when he could, and that he’d taken the cat food for testing.