One to Six, Buckle to Sticks (Grasshopper Lawns Book 11)

by EJ Lamprey

  Kirsty dutifully admired the purples and mauves of the darkening sky, winter trees sketched in sharp silhouette on the Bathgate hills, and tried not to shiver—the hall had been very warm, and with the sun going the temperature on the stairs was plummeting. Edge seized her arm again and marched them both down the stairs.

  ‘Sylvia is the most inquisitive person on the planet, but she admits it so readily, and says she can’t break the habits of a lifetime at this late stage, so I find it best to just be ready for her. Best defense is a good attack, and unlike Betsy she does give up stories of her own and they’re cracking ones. Probably not true, but the point is not so much having an interesting past as being an interesting person, or even just a person to whom interesting things happen. Your lovely policeman will know where to look for you, I imagine, if we go straight back to the apartment. Oh, right, he’s not your lovely policeman. How is your lovely Rory, then?’

  Kirsty flushed—Edge had never cared for Rory and just lately Kirsty was beginning to agree with her, but out of loyalty she lied that his latest job was going well and seemed to be exactly what he’d been looking for.

  ‘Well, I’m certainly glad to hear that.’ Edge said approvingly. ‘There comes a time when you have to settle to one thing, and he is, what, thirty, already? Great fun singing in a band of course but after ten years you have to accept that hanging around between gigs is time that could be spent working on a future. Just in case. Now, if you’ll just open up the kitchen and make us tea I’ll get the lights on and the curtains drawn; it’s been a lovely day but there’s a definite nip in the air now.’

  At first glance the apartment was a well-proportioned rectangular room generously fitted with cupboards and bookshelves. In fact the doors on the left wall weren’t cupboards at all. One led into a sleeping alcove, and, through that, a walk-in box-room. Another led into the fully-fitted bathroom. Kirsty, with the ease of long familiarity, heaved on the two central cupboard doors which swung out on noiseless wheels to reveal themselves as pantry doors.

  The space they enclosed held a well-planned kitchenette with sink, fridge, caravan-size oven and two hot plates, plenty of storage and even a pulley shelf suspended from the ceiling. Although Edge insisted she was no cook it was certainly possible to prepare basic meals there. These were the smallest apartments available, and usually claimed by male residents, but each came with a sheltered tiny verandah and a private raised planter, and Edge had always declared herself very comfortable.

  Betsy Campbell’s unit, by contrast, was the designated studio apartment, the first time Kirsty had been inside one of them—one main room divided from a well-fitted kitchen by a short passage, from which branched a walk-in wet room facing a walk-in closet. The kitchen door opened onto the covered walkway, with, beyond it, a sketchy shrubbery flanking the little service road that led to the garages and the bungalows. The main room, Kirsty remembered, had French doors opening to the gardens.

  ‘What are the bungalows like, Aunt?’ Kirsty asked idly as she busied herself making them a pot of Rooibos tea. ‘I was just thinking that Betsy Campbell’s place was so completely different to this.’

  ‘The bungalows are different again.’ Edge agreed. ‘Bigger, and the layout is more conventional. Big lounge-dining area, one big bedroom, a conservatory running the whole length of the building at the back, and space to park your car in front. They even have tiny back gardens. They are nice, I’ve been inside a couple of them, but I don’t know that I’d buy one and they rarely come up for rent.’

  ‘I thought you said all the apartments were rented?’ Kirsty brought over the tea tray and poured for Edge—lemon, no sugar—put her own onto the African walnut side table and settled into the visitor chair. She resisted the impulse to kick off her heavy official shoes and tuck her feet under her.

  ‘The apartments are rented from the Trust.’ Edge nodded. ‘You can buy the bungalows. Ideal for someone like Olga, my neighbour—she bought one, and lived there for a while, but now she’s moved into the studio apartment and the rent she gets for the bungalow covers her studio and occasional house meals. On the other hand there are only six bungalows so they don’t come up for sale very often. One will be coming up soon, my neighbour but one, Mose McKenzie, also owned one and rented it out. He died recently so his apartment is empty, and now Betsy’s, I’d better be getting myself back on the applications board. If they let in someone like Betsy there’s no knowing who they’ll let in next.’

  ‘Harriet Blake, for example?’ Her aunt laughed, then looked astonished when Kirsty nodded through her mouthful of shortbread.

  ‘Oh no. That’s not possible. Why, it’s absolutely ridiculous! I mean I have nothing against her, she’s competent and pleasant enough but—no, Kirsty, I am going to investigate this. And I am absolutely getting back on that applications board. Apart from anything else she can’t work here and be a resident, that’s a clear conflict of interest—’

  ‘Whoa!’ Kirsty held up a frantic hand ‘Heavens, Aunt, calm down a bit! I didn’t mean Harriet Blake will be moving into either of the vacant places, I just meant she told us she’s on the list.’

  ‘That’s not much better.’ Edge was only slightly mollified. ‘Applications are checked by two members of the Trust team and one resident, and I want to find out who rubber-stamped hers.’

  ‘She told us it was all the Trust team and five residents.’ Kirsty remembered and Edge nodded and topped up both their cups from the teapot.

  ‘There are ten people at any one time available to check applications. But they only need to be signed off by two from the Trust team and one representative of the residents, and that’s why I will get involved again. It’s an awful bore, which is why I gave it up, but if people like Betsy and Harriet are sneaking in under the radar then I have to step back up to the podium.’

  ‘You owe it to Grasshopper Lawns,’ Kirsty agreed solemnly, and grinned when her aunt shot her a suspicious glance.

  ‘You may laugh;’ Edge said with dignity, ‘but the balance in a place like this is incredibly important. Bossy domineering people can so easily become bullies, and we’re all on our own without families to step in if bullying starts. Applicants have to strike the balance between timid and overbearing, be happy on their own but not too reclusive, and of course—’

  ‘You’ve convinced me!’ Kirsty threw up a hand again to stop her and they both started to laugh.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Friday – dinner with Patrick

  ‘Well, it’s definately murder.’ Iain said soberly. ‘She was suffocated. The SOCO found the velvet cushion that was used, and the tech guys have confirmed it. Not very nice. I also got hold of Angus’s solicitor; all his money, quite a lot actually, was left to the Trust. Betty Taylor had nothing to leave, she had her own pension and a widow’s pension but died owing the Trust two month’s rent, I got that from the Bursar at the Trust, who ended up handling the paperwork for her. And I’ve left a message for Mr McKenzie’s solicitor, who also handled Miz Campbell’s stuff—just across in Linlithgow—so we’ll find if there are any clues in either will.’

  ‘Can I tell my aunt? She’s absolutely thrilled by the whole thing, has already asked me if we’ve found anything out yet. And she really is very discreet, despite the way she talks. She’d never breathe a word passed on in confidence?’ Kirsty asked diffidently and Iain pulled a face at her.

  ‘Normally I’d say no, no matter how discreet she was, but you’ve not seen the paper.’ He flipped the Chronicle across the desk towards her. ‘I bought it on my way in. Front page news. Somebody tipped them off, obviously. That Missus Blake will be having a fit.’

  ‘Oh dear, oh dear.’ Kirsty skimmed the story under the bold headline ‘Pensioners murdered in their homes’. The reporter, with modern disregard for the actual facts, had said sweepingly that a series of recent deaths should be re-examined in the wake of finding that Betsy Campbell, a popular member of the community, had been found murdered in her flat after a desperate
call to the police for help.

  ‘Cheeky bugger! She won’t be the only one having a fit. We can expect a few heated phone calls from upstairs, I’m thinking. Bloody Sandy of the Chronic Ill, he hates us, never misses a dig. Amazing no one has taken a velvet cushion to him yet, if you ask me. Oh, you may laugh,’ she glanced up at Iain severely, ‘but you’ll feel just the same soon enough!’

  Her personal mobile phone beeped politely and she snatched it up, half expecting a call from Rory, who hadn’t been in touch since they quarrelled four days earlier. She’d been exasperated when he handed in his notice at the new job because they wouldn’t let him take unpaid leave to go on tour with his band, and hadn’t been able to hide it.

  If the tour could lead to bigger things, she’d have been able to share some of his bounding optimism, but when all was said and done, the band had been together twelve years and had managed only the tiniest of ripples in the music world. Being booked as a support act for an X Factor runner-up who had managed to convert fifteen minutes of fame into ten bookings across the country wasn’t, in Kirsty’s opinion, a breakthrough. It certainly wasn’t a reason to give up the first halfway decent job he’d managed to land in all the time she’d known him. Rory had taken the huff and nothing further had been said before he left for Manchester.

  Excusing herself to Iain she went outside to take the call, which was from the girlfriend of one of the others in the band. Estelle had been fully supportive and even excited, but had also heard nothing. After reassuring her that her Jason was unlikely to be besieged by groupies (Jason was balding, a mediocre guitarist, and about four stone overweight, with as much charm as musical talent, but it was touching that to Estelle he was groupie catnip) she hesitated, then rang her aunt to pass on the confirmation that Betsy had been murdered.

  ~~~

  After a highly enjoyable blether on the phone with Kirsty, Edge stared unseeingly out the window at the garden, her coffee cup drooping forgotten in one hand. Murder. For all she’d said she suspected it, it was still a surprise that something so dramatic had touched tranquil Grasshopper Lawns.

  She lifted the phone to call her best friend, remembered they would shortly be meeting up for their exercise class, caught sight of herself in the mirror and tutted. When Kirsty rang she’d been in the middle of attempting a fairly complicated chignon, and her shoulder-length hair was making determined efforts to escape the new style. Longer hair was an indulgence, this close to sixty, but she’d been blessed with a serene abundance of the stuff which had held its colour well into her fifties, then obligingly faded gently into an indeterminate red-gold which her hairdresser streaked very naturally every six weeks or so. It was usually piled in an casual bun on top of her head, or coiled into a neat chignon at the back, but with a renewed onslaught and slightly aching arms she completed the new style and pushed the last pin into place. From the front, it was nothing remarkable but from the back it looked sleek and stylish.

  She was pleased with it, but the novelty of creating a hairstyle also gave her an idea which she examined from different angles as she finished dressing. She completed her exercise outfit—a black tracksuit over an ageing rust-coloured leotard—with a lime-green sweat band and matching wrist bands, grinned wryly at her reflection, and picked up the phone again. Pressing the third speed-dial option rewarded her almost immediately with a cultured Irish accent wishing her a good morning.

  ‘Patrick, darling!’

  ‘Now then, Beulah;’ Patrick responded cautiously and Edge huffed with annoyance

  ‘You know how I hate that name, Patrick. You’d otherwise be my absolute favourite Irishman.’

  Patrick broadened his accent plaintively. ‘Tis my only frail shield against your terrifying charm, my lovely. And when you’ll be calling me darling I know you’ll be chasing me for favours.’

  ‘Quite right, my darling. I need to pick that incredible brain of yours. Will you take me out for dinner or do you want to eat here?’

  ‘Will you be cooking?’ Patrick asked with renewed caution. After some negotiation they agreed on a particularly good local restaurant and Edge, smiling, hung up to pull on her trainers. With a quick glance out the window, where the wind was still howling, she also took her reversible all-weather cape from its hook behind the door. It was one of the staple requirements of The Lawns that all residents—and for that matter the staff—took part in regular exercise. Edge, after initially complaining, had become a complete convert.

  Every day the young and very competent matron hosted a gentle but comprehensive t’ai chi and yoga-based workout followed by a rather more challenging option. Edge normally went three times a week and very occasionally stayed for the second session. Fridays, with line dancing, wasn’t normally her favourite but with a lavish dinner coming up, she decided to put in the extra work. She grimaced as she opened the door to the hungry wind and hurried along the walkway, gasping as she rounded the corner and her cape billowing around her as she headed towards number seven. Vivian was letting herself out as she arrived and the wind urged them on together to the main house.

  They had been friends for fifty years, the friendship often spanning half a world but surviving distance, husbands and wildly differing interests and lifestyles. Vivian had, in her day, been a traffic-stopper, taller than most men, with a smile that dropped them in their tracks at twenty yards, and a hair-raising lifestyle which she had abandoned without a second thought when she married a short, stout, passionately devoted international financier. After the death of her husband at fifty, she had become placid and slow-moving, content, as she put it, to let the world turn by itself while she withdrew into a gentle twilight.

  Not long after Edge applied for Grasshopper Lawns, she’d persuaded Vivian to do the same and they’d moved in within months of each other. The gentle twilight had been ruthlessly banished as Vivian was towed firmly back into mainstream life by her energetic friend. If she sighed for the lost days of reading and TV and sleeping ten hours a night she never said so, and after nearly three years at The Lawns she’d shed some of the weight inertia had slung about her hips and shoulders, and her famously dramatic cheekbones were re-appearing under her enviably good complexion. At least part of her improved health could be put down to the regular exercise, but that didn’t stop her grumbling gently from start to finish. Edge couldn’t pass on Kirsty’s nugget of news as two of their neighbours were also forging their way through the wind towards the house, but she suspected Vivian would be perturbed rather than intrigued, anyway. Not because she had liked Betsy, just because she was a nicer person—

  The workout sessions were held in the Sunday room, because it had both space and a lavish supply of chairs, but only Olga, Sylvia and Edge were left to start the extended class when the others had left. Even Harriet, one of the few who exercised to the full every day, slipped away murmuring something about work piling up, but then with all the paperwork that must follow even a routine death coming across her desk, it wasn’t totally unexpected. Vivian never stayed for the extended sessions, and Edge, glancing around the emptying room, suggested spontaneously that they cancel the line-dancing for the day in favour of aerobics. Matron was having none of it, and got them firmly to work, keeping a critical eye on Edge’s performance and working them harder than usual.

  She walked back with her Russian neighbour Olga who, as usual, had barely broken a sweat and who was rumoured to start every day with two hours of exercise before even walking across for the class. Thirty years in Britain, most of that spent in Scotland, hadn’t perfected Olga’s vocabulary or done much to lighten her heavy Russian accent. As usual Edge spent more of their conversation nodding and playing the words back in her head to puzzle out their meaning, rather than responding. Today, for instance, she had, with a sidelong smirk at Edge’s flushed cheeks, remarked that Matron was putting up her play.

  ‘Upping her game?’ Edge guessed, and Olga grinned.

  ‘Da. It is that choreographer, he has put her on her—mettle?’ Ed
ge had a suspicion she was being enigmatic on purpose but didn’t have time to work out what Olga could have meant by ‘choreographer’—there certainly wasn’t one at The Lawns. Although they usually had coffee together after an extended session, her new hairstyle hadn’t survived the workout. Even if it could be revived it wouldn’t be smart enough for the evening Edge had in mind. There would barely be time to grab a quick shower and phone the hairdressers if she was to catch the Lawns mini-bus as it prepared to head off to library, supermarket and town centre with the usual gaggle of shoppers.

  Edge kept a car but was planning to sell it—there were fewer garages than apartments at the Lawns, and her car spent most of its time parked in the open, or at an inconvenient distance under the covered parking. Thanks to the daily mini-bus facility she rarely used it anyway, because the bus was both more convenient and more sociable, and the few times she did use her car it would probably, across the average year, be cheaper to use a taxi. Money wasn’t a worry, luckily, but wasting it on unnecessary luxuries irked her Scottish soul.

  ~~~

  Patrick Fitzpatrick was a well-known and popular accountant in all three small towns surrounding the restaurant, and their progress to his preferred table at the back was interrupted more than once by greetings from other diners. He was perfectly aware that Edge, looking elegant and very expensive in an absolutely simple flattering red dress, was attracting a good deal of attention and was complacent and proprietal by the time they were seated. Edge, who had over-dressed deliberately with just that result in mind, bit her lip and let him order for her, widening her eyes with admiration.

  ‘I’m getting nervous.’ Patrick said frankly when the waiter had gone. ‘This must be one hell of a favour. Did I tell you that you look lovely tonight?’