Murder by Suicide

by Veronica Heley

  Roy was hunting for her, looking strained. ‘Thought I’d been stood up.’

  She smiled at him. He really was like Frank in so many ways, hating to be kept waiting for a minute. Unlike Frank, Roy expected her to take an interest in his business affairs. Frank had been almost secretive about his finances, but Roy was forever reeling off facts and figures about his various projects.

  They walked together across the grassy island on which the church stood, and crossed the road to meet the estate agent in the drive of the old house. It had been on the market for years and looked as if it would be quite happy to disintegrate where it stood.

  Ellie shivered a little as the agent unlocked the mock-Gothic panelled door in the cavernous porch. ‘Dracula’s castle,’ she said, trying to lighten the atmosphere.

  ‘What?’ said Roy. ‘Can you smell the damp? Ought to have been pulled down years ago.’

  ‘The old lady who owns it is in a nursing home now,’ said the estate agent. ‘Needs a sale to fund her weekly bills. It’s for sale at a bargain price. Would make a splendid conversion into flats.’

  No, it wouldn’t, thought Ellie, negotiating the wide wooden floorboards of the hall. She suspected the house harboured woodworm, woodlice, dry rot and possibly mushrooms. Massive holes gaped where the original fireplaces and surrounds had been torn out by enterprising thieves.

  A sapling had thrust up through the derelict conservatory at the back, and the garden looked as if it were about to attack the house. Up the sweeping, creaking staircase they went, with the estate agent still talking in a falsely optimistic voice about the splendid height of the rooms. Paper drooped from the walls of the bedrooms, and the bathrooms – yes, there actually were three – looked like something out of a museum.

  ‘Ripe for redevelopment,’ said Roy, twitching aside a torn net curtain to assess the extent of the garden.

  ‘Just consider the position! Primary school opposite! Library, bus route, shops around the corner!’ said the estate agent with enthusiasm. He pushed a door wider to usher them into what had been the master bedroom. The door toppled off its hinges and fell sideways onto the floor.

  ‘I’ve got an appointment at the Town Hall to discuss planning permission,’ said Roy. ‘What do you think about pulling it down and putting something else in its place?’

  The estate agent’s smile wavered. ‘My client would prefer the house retained, perhaps turned into flats. I know she doesn’t want it pulled down.’

  Ellie shivered. ‘It isn’t a listed building, is it?’

  ‘Clever girl.’ Roy grinned at her. ‘That’s the crux of the matter. Are there likely to be any local objections to clearing away this building and putting up a two-storey block of flats with off-street parking? Or perhaps a row of town houses, integral garages, small patio gardens? What do you think, Ellie?’

  ‘I think I’m hungry and thirsty and getting cold. It’s even colder in here than it is outside. If you’re going to be some time, then I’ll just go home and wait for you to finish, shall I?’

  ‘Sorry, sorry. Didn’t think.’ And to the estate agent, ‘I’ll call in tomorrow, talk it over, right?’

  Ellie stamped her feet in the drive, waiting for Roy to have a final word with the agent. It was beginning to rain again. Of course.

  Roy was delightfully, boyishly, full of what they’d seen, as they had lunch at the Carvery. Did she like the idea of flats for the site, or town houses? He valued her opinion, as an old-time resident of the area. He didn’t want to put forward suggestions for redevelopment that might offend the neighbours. This particular site was the best he’d found so far, but if she felt it was wrong to pull down a Victorian building, however unworthy, then he would look elsewhere.

  ‘Of course I don’t mind,’ said Ellie, savouring the first mouthful of beef and Yorkshire pudding. ‘And if the owner is in a nursing home, it sounds as if she’d have to sell without strings. The house is an eyesore and in such bad repair I’m sure no one could object to your putting up something modern in its place – provided it fitted in with the neighbourhood, of course.’

  ‘That’s where your opinion is so valuable, my dear. You know what people would like, and what they wouldn’t. So, a Georgian-style terrace, perhaps?’ He raised his glass in a toast to her. ‘To our partnership.’

  Ellie laughed, and clinked her glass against his. It was fun to be consulted. Frank had never done that. And perhaps she could be of assistance to Roy in this, having lived in the neighbourhood for so long.

  ‘Penny for them?’ said Roy.

  ‘Mm. No good thinking about the past.’

  The roast potatoes were not, perhaps, quite as good as those she cooked herself, but the beef, the cabbage and carrots were delicious. And perhaps a portion of apple pie to follow? Lucky she had worn one of her old skirts with an elasticated band at the back.

  ‘So you’ll come with me to the estate agents tomorrow?’

  ‘Wish I could. I’ve got to be at Nora’s flat by ten o’clock. They’re coming to collect the good furniture. Then in the afternoon I’ve got the house clearance people taking the rest. Which reminds me: do you remember the silver photograph frames in the old man’s bedroom?’

  Roy dropped a piece of roast parsnip and swore. Ellie didn’t mind a mild swearword now and then. Frank had used far worse words than that.

  ‘You may not remember them, but they’re probably worth something, and the antique dealer who’s taking the rest of the good stuff hasn’t got them down on his list, so I suppose I shall have to make myself unpleasant about them tomorrow.’

  ‘As if you could ever make yourself unpleasant!’

  Ellie sighed, putting knife and fork together with reluctance. That had been an exceptionally good meal. ‘Well, if I have to, I will. I can’t let Aunt Drusilla be cheated out of the price the frames would fetch, can I?’

  ‘No, of course you can’t. But Ellie, if anyone’s to be called to task for the missing frames, then it’s me. I know a bit about silver, and I thought the antiques chappies offered far too low a price for them. So I said I’d take them to a friend of mine and send the cheque direct to Miss Quicke.’

  Ellie was immensely relieved. She had been thinking, no, fearing … well, it was all perfectly above board. ‘I thought there must be an explanation. Frank would have been on the phone to the antique dealer, shouting about incompetence.’

  ‘And that’s really not your style, is it?’

  Ellie shook her head, smiling at him. What a nice man he was. So kind and thoughtful. ‘And how much did you get?’

  ‘Can’t remember, exactly. Two hundred and something. I’ve got the receipt back in the car, I think. Miss Quicke should be pleased, anyway.’

  ‘Miss Quicke is never pleased, as I think you may have realized by now.’

  Roy refilled her glass. ‘Fancy a sweet?’

  Ellie had a sudden unwelcome memory of one of the silver-framed photographs. She thought she had only given them a passing glance, but now it seemed that she remembered one particular picture only too well. A smiling, middle-aged man holding a young girl of perhaps eight years of age. The girl was standing on the parapet by the river and he was holding on to her, making sure she didn’t fall. Nora and her father. Ah me.

  ‘You’ve gone away from me again,’ said Roy.

  ‘Who was it who said that the saddest words in the English language are “if only”? I was thinking of poor Nora’s unhappy life. I hope that when I die, I shall have had more happy memories than her.’

  ‘I’ll drink to that.’ He put his warm hand over hers.

  After a moment, she removed her hand to pick up the menu. He really was going rather too fast for her. Flattering, of course, but …

  And there it was on the mat, waiting for her when she got back home.

  6

  Midge bumped his head across her legs as she bent to pick up the envelope. He was trying to pretend he had been waiting inside for her to come home, but his fur was wet, so she knew
he’d been out. She also knew she would be unable to do anything else until she’d fed him, so she left the envelope on the kitchen table while she dished him up some duck-and-turkey mix.

  It smelt horrible, but Midge seemed to like it. All the time she was thinking, there’s no Sunday delivery. No stamp. Hand delivered. Her name written in large, wobbly capital letters.

  Ellie hadn’t seen any of the envelopes the poison-pen letters had come in, but she guessed that this was one. She knew in her bones that there was something extremely nasty lurking inside that envelope. She was half-inclined to tip it straight into the bin. She wondered if Nora had felt like that, too.

  She gulped a bit and made a dash for the envelope. She tore it open and out fell a lilac-coloured piece of paper with a message in the familiar, large capital letters.

  SLUT!

  OPENING YOUR LEGS FOR ANYONE WHO ASKS!

  Trembling, Ellie let herself down into a chair.

  How dared they!

  She was so angry she could have bitten a piece off the table. She

  crunched the letter into a ball and threw it into a corner of the kitchen, narrowly missing Midge, who was too intent on his meal to notice. She was breathing so hard she almost didn’t hear the telephone ring. She let it ring on and on. And on. Finally the answerphone clicked in. She couldn’t think straight.

  Shock. Hot chocolate? Tea with sugar? She wanted to cry. Her face was so hot that she ripped open the neck of her top to get some air.

  Did people really think … that … about her?

  It was intolerable. She hadn’t given them the slightest reason for thinking that.

  Well, she supposed she had, rather. Totally innocently, of course. Roy had made a dead set at her and needed someone to talk to. So she had fallen into the habit of accepting his invitations, using them as a sort of defence against thinking too much about Frank and how much she missed him.

  There was no one else. Well, there was John from the shop. She’d had him to lunch, but only with Rose. She had asked his wife, but his wife hardly ever accepted invitations, so it was understood that John occasionally went out without her.

  This was ridiculous! They had made her feel guilty, and she was quite, quite innocent.

  They would be saying next that …

  No, she would not even allow herself to think it. They were quite wrong!

  Midge jumped up onto her lap. Ellie bent her head down into his soft fur, and breathed deeply. He began to purr, but she was too distraught to be calmed so easily.

  She jumped up, tipping Midge into the chair on which she’d been sitting, and went to make herself a cup of tea. She must phone someone up and tell them about it, have them laugh about it with her.

  She put her head out of the back door, to see if Kate were by any chance having a rare bout of housewifery, perhaps cooking in the kitchen. Then Ellie would pop round there and they could have a good laugh about it. There was no light on in Kate’s kitchen, and – she checked on the street side of the house – her car was not there. She sometimes had to work at weekends, of course. But why now when Ellie needed her?

  It was still raining, though not as hard as before. She would go out for a walk. Yes, that’s what she would do. Tramp round the park. Feed the ducks or something. Perhaps she’d meet a friend, someone from the church – anyone. And then they could have a good laugh about how absurd it all was.

  How cringe-making, though. Suppose she met the redoubtable Mrs Dawes and told her? Suppose Mrs Dawes didn’t laugh, but took it seriously? That would be awful.

  Perhaps other people were gossiping about her. ‘And with Frank not in his grave four months …!’ Suppose dear little Tod heard about it – or his mother. Tod would never be allowed to come near her in future. Or perhaps … had she heard already, and that was why he hadn’t been round lately? It didn’t bear thinking about.

  She could ring up Gilbert.

  No, not on a Sunday, the busiest day of his week. Besides, people might think that if she ran to Gilbert with this, well, he’d always been fond of her, and perhaps Liz might not like yet another silly little woman phoning him at all hours with stupid notions, wanting him to spend yet more of his precious time with them. It wasn’t even as if she was one of his parishioners any more. He had a whole new parish to deal with now.

  The winking light of the answerphone caught her eye as she went to fetch her walking shoes. She pressed ‘Play’ and heard the fruity voice of her bête noire, the church warden Archie, wanting to know if she were at a loose end and fancied a night out at the cinema, ‘or if you prefer to be cosy, come and sit with me by the fire and we’ll open a bottle of something good’.

  She recoiled. She’d forgotten about Archie. Come to think of it, he had been making rather a nuisance of himself since Frank died, wanting to hold her hand and pray with her and take her out. His attentions had been pointed. She had always declined his invitations, but it was possible that a number of people knew about them, while not realizing that she’d declined. Especially people at church.

  She felt herself going hot again … and then cold. Menopause? She pulled on a thick winter coat and a warm hat and scarf. Key. Umbrella, just in case it turned out worse than it was at present. Out of the house. The wind fair took your breath away on a day like this. She had forgotten her gloves. Well, she wasn’t going back for them.

  Up the path, round the corner, across the road and into the park. It was a truly nasty, cold, wet day. Branches whipping around. Sludge edging over the sides of the paths. Hardly anyone about.

  Slut!

  She wasn’t. She really wasn’t. Oh, Frank! Why did you have to die so young?

  She’d been angry with him so often since he’d died. She’d told herself she was better off – which she was financially, of course. In some ways it had been good to be able to order her days according to her own wishes. Yes, she had to acknowledge that she had enjoyed a new feeling of independence, having people to lunch, buying little treats for herself and making plans for the house and the garden.

  It didn’t stop a hollow ache inside. And now this!

  She could scream, she really could. Except that people would think she was being extremely odd, walking around the park in the rain, screaming.

  She put up her umbrella and tried, distractedly, to turn her mind away from the letter. She tried to pray. Please, dear Lord … you know how much I miss Frank. This hurt is unbearable … am I really guilty of a crime, just having lunch with a friend … friends? Please, Lord. Help me. I’m not going to be able to cope with this.

  She remembered that Jesus had suffered far worse from his enemies. That made her laugh. A little.

  She was getting things out of proportion. She would ignore the letter, but be more careful about accepting invitations in future.

  A pity, that. In spite of certain misgivings about him, she had enjoyed being taken out by Roy, and she had also enjoyed the feeling that she was of importance to someone else. She wondered if perhaps she had been getting too fond of him, on the rebound, so to speak, from Frank’s death. Widows in Charles Dickens’s novels were always remarrying in what seemed to the modern reader to be indecent haste. She had never understood it, before. Now perhaps she was beginning to understand.

  Well, the letter had certainly made her reassess her relationship with Roy. A nice man, she thought. Kind, helpful. Very like Frank in some ways. She could see how it was that she had allowed herself to become fond of him. But …

  She pulled her mouth into a grimace. There was something inside her which had refused to fall down and yield everything to Roy. If she dug around in her mind enough, she would be able to track it down.

  He had homed in on her as if she were the answer to all his dreams. That was ridiculous, considering their age and the short length of their acquaintance. He was very self-centred, assuming that she would always fall in with his plans, which were usually delightful, though not necessarily what she would have chosen for herself.

  The
re was a certain steely quality in Roy, neatly masked with urbanity. She could understand how he had been so successful in business, but once or twice she had wondered what would happen if she crossed him in a major decision. She sighed.

  She had been leaning on the bridge over the river which wound its lazy way through the park. Today, though, the river was swirling under the bridge, carrying the usual detritus found in London parks – tin cans, plastic bags, underwear, condoms, general yuck. Plus branches torn from the trees which bordered the river. She realized she was wet, in spite of the heavy coat and umbrella. And she was cold.

  She began to retrace her steps. There was something at the back of her mind which Roy had said … She shook her head. She couldn’t quite recall it now. No doubt it would come back to her later.

  She decided to cool her relationship with Roy. And if she got a cold as a result of this excursion in the park in driving rain, she would curse the anonymous letter-writer.

  She did get a cold. She made herself attend choir practice on the Monday night, even though her voice had almost gone. Everyone else was out of sorts and out of tune. Ellie felt she ought to make herself inconspicuous in a corner all evening, but no one seemed to be casting meaningful glances in her direction, so it seemed that no one else knew about the letter she had received.

  No one referred to Nora. There was an exchange of views about which builder Ellie ought to use for her projected new conservatory, and that was about it.

  Ellie struggled through the following days attending to the clearing of Nora’s flat, and seeing none of her particular friends. The weather might have accounted for that, being as nasty as February gales usually are. But of course they might be avoiding her, if the gossip hinted at in the letter had been circulated. She tried not to think that this might be the case, although the suspicion lingered at the back of her mind.

  The cleaners used by Aunt Drusilla were troublesome, because Ellie insisted that they wait for the pest control people to deal with the cockroaches before they could start on the kitchen. They made veiled remarks about never having had this problem with the man who usually managed the letting of Miss Quicke’s flats. It was tiresome, soothing them down, listening to their troubles.