by EJ Lamprey
‘Those are awful.’ Vivian said sympathetically. ‘I remember having one at the last Christmas party. Couldn’t remember which apartment I lived in.’
‘That was brandy.’ Edge said rudely, and smirked. ‘And that was payback for the comment about my shoes. Can you join us, Kirsty?’
‘I’d love to, but we’re at full stretch today, two officers off sick and the town heaving with visitors. Oh, here we go.’ A very young constable entered the tearoom, solicitously ushering an elderly frightened-looking woman in a purple hat and scarf.
‘Morning, ladies, I think this lady here is one of your group?’
‘Nope.’ Both Vivian and Edge smiled reassuringly at the frightened woman and Edge took her parcels off the spare chair invitingly, ‘but if you’d like to join us for a cup of tea and relax, you’ll soon get your bearings back. Tea? Or do you prefer coffee?’ The other sank onto the chair obediently and tried to smile in response, her mouth trembling.
Edge got up, winced as her feet protested sharply, and said quietly to Kirsty, ‘If she still can’t remember anything by the time we have to leave, should we walk her to the police station?’
Both police Airwave units crackled again, with slightly more urgency than before, and Kirsty hesitated only briefly before nodding and leaving on the heels of her colleague. Edge ordered another round of tea and scones and limped back to the table, where Vivian was relaxing their new companion with a gentle flow of chatter about the reindeer visit.
‘Don’t forget to tell her about the dog bed.’ Edge said cheerfully and turned to her, holding her arms wide. ‘This big! Vivian has a lovely dog which sheds all over my apartment so I decided to buy a dog bed for when they visit. The only one Vivian declared would be big enough was the size, I swear, of a double bed. Took both of us and the stall-holder’s assistant to carry it back to the minibus, Heaven knows where we’re all going to sit with our shopping bags, going back to the Lawns. We decided we needed a cup of tea before we even start thinking about that. Vivian may have to walk, her fault for picking such an enormous bed.’ The lively flow had the intended effect of engaging the older woman and making her laugh. She relaxed further as she drank her tea and nibbled on a scone, even commenting admiringly as Edge brought out a hand-knitted cashmere jersey she’d bought at one of the stalls to show them both. Finally she sat back against the back of the chair and sighed, making both women look at her expectantly.
‘I’m in Onderness, aren’t I?’ She looked from one to the other. ‘You’re both very kind. That was really frightening, but I remember now. I’m here with the family, but they wanted to go to the funfair, I said I’d find a place to have a cup of tea instead. How stupid of me to go blank. Do you think they’ll be worrying?’
‘There are only two tea-rooms,’ Vivian said reassuringly ‘they’ll check both before they start to worry, they’ll probably arrive any minute. So you don’t live in Onderness, then?’
‘No, I’m from Stirling. And my daughter, the family, stay in Falkirk, the grandchildren wanted to see the reindeer so we came through for the day, but the crowds are very tiring, aren’t they? Are you two—er—with the police, that they brought me to you?’
‘It was your scarf and hat.’ Edge told her, grinning. ‘They’re purple. We’re at Grasshopper Lawns.’ She patted her own chest, where her purple scarf was pinned in place by a neat grasshopper pin, and nodded at Vivian, who pointed at the grasshopper icon sewn on her purple jersey.
‘Oh, of course. Purple. But I don’t have a grasshopper?’
‘Not everyone does,’ Vivian said comfortably, ‘but it is a tradition to wear a bit of purple on our outings. Just a bit of fun but very comforting, when you’re in a strange place, especially if it’s crowded, to see a flash of purple and realize you belong in that group, even if you can’t remember for the moment who they are.’
Their companion started laughing. ‘Ken, from the old purple hat joke! I get that all the time from my daughter because of this hat, but I love it. I’ve heard of Grasshopper Lawns, you’re all eccentric geniuses aren’t you? My niece handles the finances of some of the residents. Helen Spencer, do you know her?’
Vivian, sipping tea, choked and needed a few impatient thumps on the back from Edge before she dried her streaming eyes and wheezed that she was recovering. Edge frowned at her and smiled at their new friend. ‘Helen, did you say? My finances are with Fitzpatrick & Fellowes but I know her by sight. Although I don’t think I’ve seen her about lately?’
‘Oh no, you wouldn’t have. I’m Amelia Spencer, by the way. I should have said earlier.’
Edge performed their side of the introductions quickly—Vivian, still wheezing, hadn’t got to the point of easy speech yet—and went back on the trail.
‘She can’t possibly have retired, she’s far too young. What’s she up to now?’
‘Gone abroad.’ Amelia patted her lips and eyed the last scone a little wistfully. ‘Very excited about it—she got a bit of a windfall and was going to blow it on a trip, said she needed a bit of a holiday. That’s the best part about her kind of work, you know, she can pick up and go at a moment’s notice, half the time she doesn’t even tell us about it but as it happened I rang her, couple of weeks ago now it was, and she told me she was planning it. Just as well, too, as she didn’t bother to tell anyone else, just took off. Very nice for her, a chance to escape the winter weather for a break.’
‘Very nice.’ Edge echoed. ‘Where to, lucky girl?’
‘Oh, somewhere in Spain,’ Amelia was a little vague. ‘Costa something. Sol, I think. I’ve not been abroad, myself, they all sound the same to me.’
‘And she’s enjoying it?’ Vivian, still a little hoarse, re-entered the conversation and Amelia puckered her brows.
‘We haven’t heard from her, actually. But that’s Helen for you—she went abroad for five years a while back, and we barely had so much as a Christmas card. Even married when she was over there, her name’s Webster now, but it didn’t take, she came back alone. She’s still Spencer professionally, naturally. Used to have her own accountancy business but there was some slight misunderstanding—’ she hesitated, as if belatedly aware of saying too much, and finished with some relief, ‘och, there are the family now, looking for me! Ladies, this has been a pure pleasure, I’m very glad I was wearing my favourite hat and scarf today. And thank you very much for looking after me. What do I owe you for the tea and scones?’
‘Oh, nonsense, always a pleasure to make a new friend,’ Edge said firmly, ‘and we’re about to leave, keep the table, they’re probably really ready to sit down for a while.’
~~~
‘Where now?’ Vivian glanced back at the table where their new acquaintance was listening to both grandchildren talking excitedly at once. ‘Off to see the reindeer again? Or walk down to the police station?’
‘Back to the minibus, of course. What a malicious streak you have! I’m not walking a single step more than I have to, I can phone Kirsty from home and tell her what we just learned. So your Helen is a bit of a con-artist, even with her own family?’
‘Handles resident finances,’ Vivian snorted. ‘I very nearly died, my sinuses are still tea-stained. But actually I do believe the accountant part, I told you she wasn’t at all your regular kind of cleaner. I would have accepted her as an accountant without question if we’d met under other circumstances.’
‘A very dodgy one.’ Edge hobbled gratefully up to the minibus in the supermarket parking lot, and climbed inside with a groan of relief. ‘That slight misunderstanding was probably full-blown embezzlement. Do you believe in the holiday, or was that just an excuse to leave town quickly?’
‘An excuse, definitely. And the very last place you’d find her is on the Costa anything. She’ll have moved to England or something, and be working as a cleaner there.’
‘Well;’ Edge wriggled back against the comfortable car seat thoughtfully. ‘It seems odd that she’d run. The whole thing is odd. Did she sabotage
Mose’s buzzers, then cut one of them off to make it obvious there was something wrong with them all? Let herself into Betsy’s studio, kill her, which we’ve already agreed she probably couldn’t do, being half her size—and then dash off into hiding? She’s definitely about to lose her job and get into a whole bunch of trouble. In her place, what would you do?’
‘Not go to the Costa del Sol.’ Vivian said stubbornly. ‘If there really was a windfall, which might just have been a story for the family, I’d keep it to support myself until I’d found a new set-up. And write off the inheritance as too risky to claim, and move as far away as I could, pick a new name, and get another menial job. Maybe even go back to the Helen Spencer name so at least I could claim benefits—but no, that would bring the police straight to my door. Hmm. She would have to have a National Insurance number to get a job, wouldn’t she? So she’d need to buy a new fake identity, and keep low.’
‘But not murder Betsy. That’s always seemed so unlikely, damnit. Unless she had every intention of brazening it out, went to talk to Betsy, heard her on the phone talking about murder and panicked? Remember Betsy didn’t know about the inheritance, but Helen could have thought she not only knew about it but had jumped to the conclusion Helen had killed Mose?’
‘Which takes us straight back to why, oh why, was Betsy phoning the police about a murder?’ Vivian said gloomily, before being shaken by a fit of rumbling coughs which left her breathless. She was still wheezing and shaken by the aftermath as the others returned in ones and twos to the van, followed last of all by Joey, groundskeeper, driver, handyman and general odd-job man.
‘Ladies, gents, I’ve just been hearing the weather forecast.’ He opened the driver’s door and hung inside, his lugubrious face more doleful than ever. ‘It’s a shocker—very bad moon rising. Have you all got everything you’d need to get through a week of being snowed in, if it happens?’
‘Never snows before Christmas,’ Major Horace boomed confidently but the others started a quick rummage through their shopping bags.
‘I won’t have enough milk,’ Vivian wheezed and Edge nodded.
‘Me neither, I’ll go get for us both, but I’ll need your shoes?’ To the vast amusement of Major Horace and Sylvia they swopped shoes and Edge, Jamie and Matilda hurried into the supermarket to stock up on basics.
‘What a partnership, eh?’ Major Horace greeted Edge as she climbed back into the minibus. ‘Just been saying to Vivian here what a team you are. Couldn’t wear each other’s clothes, though, eh? Eh?’ He slapped his knee in appreciation of his own humour, met two very frosty glances and subsided a little sulkily.
‘He was rabbiting on like that all the time you were in the supermarket, it did make me think of one thing,’ Vivian said quietly under the buzz of conversation in the minibus as Joey started back to Grasshopper Lawns. ‘What if Helen was working with someone? Someone big enough to sort Betsy out, for a start.’
‘My head hurts.’ Edge said firmly. ‘I’m absolutely fed up with the lot of it. Bad enough turning murderer for five thousand pounds, now you want a whole gang sharing the proceeds?’
They sat in silence for a few minutes, then Vivian said meditatively, ‘There is one other possibility. That Betsy tried to blackmail Helen. And that would serve her right because she tried it once herself, you know. Blackmail, I mean.’
‘Helen did?’ Edge hooted. ‘On you? With your spotless past?’
‘Not on me, and mine isn’t that spotless, you make me sound a complete prude. But don’t you remember Josie suddenly telling the whole world about her sordid past? Helen found some old newspaper story about Josie and suggested she make it worth her while to keep quiet. Not as blunt as that, but I gather it was pretty clear. Typical Josie, her immediate reaction was to tell all, but she came to warn me, because of course we both had Helen as a cleaner, to lock away any little secrets that I had. It was ages ago, I’d forgotten all about it. But how ironic would it be, if she in her turn got threatened with exposure?’
‘Good grief, a blackmailer with us and our hundreds of little secrets wouldn’t be a good thing at all. I wonder if she tried it anywhere else? I’ll have to ask Kirsty to check if she was only banged up for forgery, or whether there was blackmail in it as well, because that opens up a whole new bunch of motives. Think about it, Vivian—there’s somebody with, oh, let’s pick a popular one, a child pornography addiction, which the computer-clever Helen finds. She’s pocketing the cash and staying quiet but suddenly Betsy starts braying that she knows a blackmailer, yes she does, she’d never tell who but she knows, she knows. True Betsy style.’
‘And maybe our pornbroker thinks she knows all and silences her. Okay. That would certainly give Helen the reason to run like a hare. Her little source of income has turned to murder once, he has nothing to lose by turning to it again, that’s quite good, actually. But;’ Vivian was violently shaken by another coughing fit and Edge, suddenly noticing that Sylvia was listening intently, hushed her when the fit ended with an expressive roll of her eyes in Sylvia’s direction. What could she have heard? Edge ran their conversation back through her head and was satisfied that their voices had dropped low enough that all Sylvia could have picked up was her own laughing comment about Vivian’s spotless past. Enough to tune in her radar, to be sure, but she couldn’t have heard the rest over the conversation of the others and the car radio. Not even with, Edge thought slightly maliciously, her spy training—
~~~
‘Oh, Vivian;’ Harriet Blake came down the stairs as the shoppers hauled their bags out of the mini-van. Joey the driver, looking like an enormous mushroom under the new dog bed, had already set off across the lawn towards Edge’s little verandah. Harriet shot his departing back a sharp look, then turned back to Vivian. ‘We’ve got a cleaner we used to have, Parker, coming back to work here. I was wondering if you would be prepared to have him back?’
‘I’ll have him,’ said Edge firmly, before Vivian could reply ‘Rather than Marjorie? Come on, Harriet, I’d take a mass-murderer sooner than Marjorie.’
‘A mass—what?’ Harriet looked taken aback, then smiled thinly. ‘Oh. You heard about Helen’s past, then? The agency were very apologetic, very apologetic indeed. So you’d be okay with having a male cleaner? I know not everyone likes that, but I think Vivian was happy enough with him, weren’t you?’
‘I suppose so.’ Vivian bent to put down her heavy bags. ‘I’m not that fussed about Marjorie.’
‘Did he talk constantly?’ Edge demanded with heavy irony. ‘Get under your feet the whole time?’ Vivian shook her head and Edge nodded at Harriet ‘I want him.’
Vivian started to cough again and Harriet shot her a concerned glance. ‘You sound awful, hen. Leave your bags, Joey will bring them over, just get yourself tucked up in bed and I’ll ask Matron to stop by this afternoon. Get those lungs inside as fast as you can, do you want a wheelchair back to your flat?’
Vivian, still unable to speak, shook her head violently and Harriet hurried back up the stairs to go for Matron. As Edge picked up her parcels in one hand and put the other under Vivian’s elbow the first lazy flakes of snow began to fall.
‘So, Parker?’ she prodded, as much to keep Vivian distracted as out of real interest, as they started down the covered walkway.
‘Well, he pinches things, food, and bits of cash—never anything valuable, he wasn’t that obvious, but leave a handful of cash lying around and you can be sure there’ll be less of it when he’s been. I dropped my Mont Blanc pen, a really good one, behind my chair one night and couldn’t be bothered to start moving furniture at midnight. Then I forgot, and by the time I wanted to do my crossword the next night it was too late, he’d been and it was gone. I was really annoyed about that because it was a gift.’
Buster exploded from the apartment as she opened the door, and described an exuberant circuit of the lawn before finding a tatty branch and bearing it proudly back to Vivian, who started to laugh and had to brace herself against the d
oorframe as her cough overtook her again. ‘Damn, he needs to be walked.’
‘He doesn’t really, we took him for a walk this morning before we went into town, remember? He just needs a comfort stop in the drying area and if you’ve got some baggies on you, I’ll pick up after him. Harriet’s right, you have absolutely got to take a break. And no, I’m not coming in, because you’ll rush around being a hostess if I do. Go in, sit down, and when Buster’s finished—look, he’s back already. Told you. Give me the baggies and get your feet up, woman, before you do yourself a mischief.’
~~~
Once back in her apartment, and with the offending shoes thrown crossly into the back of her wardrobe, Edge couldn’t settle. She dragged the new dog bed in from the verandah, found a spot for it between the visitor chair and the fire where it didn’t crowd the room too much, and sat down opposite it to study the effect. Her new library books looked boring, the television seemed choked with sport and the small amount of tidying that her apartment needed only took a couple of minutes. Putting up her simple Christmas decorations—a tree with built-in shimmering lights, and a Tiffany-style mural in the window—took minutes and did nothing to make her feel less restless. Vivian, exhausted by her first outing in a week and her chronic coughing, had agreed to have a nap and Edge had promised to collect Buster after tea and walk him, but in the meantime she was completely at a loose end and not in the mood to switch on her computer and check her social media. She peered out at the leaden sky, still issuing fitful individual flakes, and grimaced. On an impulse she put on her new jersey and her cape, found her comfortable old Clarks, and strode decisively up to the house to look for company. The big hall, with lunch well over and an hour to go before teatime, was now festively decorated but, annoyingly, empty for once, and Megan was pinning up the new cleaner rota on the noticeboard. Edge came up behind her to read it over her shoulder and tutted loudly.
