‘We were up late last night,’ he said, giving her a slight smile. ‘What’s the hurry this morning? You could have used some extra sleep after yesterday.’
‘This could be another full day,’ she told him. ‘Do you think Radhika could fit Bogie in for a claw trim?’
‘I’ll take him in with me. Now stop changing the subject.’ He poured coffee for both of them. ‘Take off your coat and sit down.’
‘I was going to take the coffee with—’
‘Please sit. It might be a good idea to gather up thoughts from yesterday. We haven’t gone over it all, not properly. I don’t mean we need a point by point but we should be on the same page if we get asked questions.’
‘Always so sensible.’ She rested a hand briefly on his face, but quickly removed it and sat down. ‘Who is helping out at Green Friday – from the village, I mean? That house is big. They must need a couple of extra people. That’s usually the first line of intelligence from the inside.’
‘You make it sound like a military operation.’ He opened a bag of bagels, and chose a plain one. ‘I believe you do have the instincts of an investigator. I heard the Potter twins were going into Green Friday. The housekeeper hired them. They probably have professional grounds people.’
‘Don’t you want butter and jam or something? Cream cheese?’
‘I like ’em just like this. And we do need to talk. It won’t take long.’
Inside she felt jumpy, nervous. ‘Could we talk later? I want to do a couple of things before I go to the Dog.’
‘What things?’
‘Just things, Tony. That’s all. Things. Check out the mood in the village. Subtly, of course. See if there are any signs of media.’
‘Media … I was going to say they don’t show up for accidents like this but I’m forgetting who the dead woman’s brother is.’ Running his hands down his face, he fell back in his chair. ‘I wonder how quiet it’s been kept so far. All it takes is a word to someone who knows someone.’
‘Or can use a phone,’ Alex put in. ‘How many different versions do you think there are of what happened by now? We’ve had a lot of chatter among ourselves but no details except for the death. It must have been talked about constantly at the Dog. Probably a whole lot more after we left with the Quillams last night. You can bet everyone knows who was in St Aldwyn’s when Laura was found, and they’ll have found out the police spent hours at Green Friday last night.’
‘It isn’t the same as if the girl was known here.’
‘I don’t see why that makes a difference.’
Tony inclined his head. ‘There’s a more personal interest in people you know. At least, that’s the way it is for some.’
‘What did the police see at the church that we didn’t?’ Alex drank from her mug. Tony seemed determined to minimize what had happened. ‘Doc’s been closed-mouthed, too, but I saw how he reacted.’
‘Dad’s not a talker, not about his work,’ Tony said. ‘But I’m not convinced they saw anything we didn’t. The circumstances are bizarre. They could just be trying to get ahead of anything unexpected that shows up. They’re being cautious. And the church is still taped off as a crime scene.’
Multiple yips sounded outside the back door to the kitchen and Tony jumped up to let the dogs in. They both sat staring up at the table, their tongues lolling from their mouths, gulping loudly enough to encourage treats. Tony said, ‘No. You’re getting chubby, the pair of you.’
‘I haven’t forgotten what Elyan said last night,’ Alex told him. ‘We do get talked about because of what happened before. We forget sometimes that we’ll always be “the ones who found the bodies”.’
‘Lightning struck more than once in the same place – more or less. But this is different.’
‘If Laura died by accident, it’s different. But I was still the first one on the scene.’ Those horrible scenes jumped into her mind at will and she was helpless to stop them.
‘We don’t want to go into details, but I think we were side-by-side for …’ He shook his head. ‘Nope, we’re not going there, not again.’
‘O’Reilly and Lamb didn’t stay in Folly again last night,’ Alex said. ‘That could be a positive. If they don’t come back today, we can start breathing again. I hate it that Laura died like that, but for more reasons than one, I want it to be an accident.’ She wished this day were over.
‘You said Laura was singing blues,’ Tony said. ‘Elyan was going to play for her. He told us that. I wouldn’t have thought he’d do that.’
Neither would Alex. She flattened her hands on the table and pushed upright. ‘I can’t stand this. I’ve got to find out what’s going on in the village.’
‘What was it you wouldn’t tell me yesterday?’
Bogie was already making motions to go with Alex. ‘It was just a flash, something I saw for a few moments.’ It could be very important, but if it was, she might hold the key to someone else’s fate. She dropped into the chair again, with a thump. ‘I’d like to scream. It’s all happening again. I do need to talk to you about something I saw, or thought I saw, but it could be nothing. We’re bound to be interviewed – I’m surprised they didn’t talk to us yesterday except they probably ran out of time and we’re hardly flight risks. But you heard O’Reilly say we’d all be interviewed. I’m going to have to speak up.’
‘What did you see?’
‘I should have gone straight to O’Reilly and told him. But I don’t know who it was, not for sure. I sort of guessed later but it’s so far-fetched. I knew if I told you, you’d try to make me tell the police right away and I wasn’t ready. There.’ She crossed her arms but nothing felt settled or even reasonable.
‘Alex,’ Tony said and he stood up. ‘Come on! You can’t leave me on the edge like this.’
‘All right, all right. While I was in the churchyard, I thought – no, I did see someone walking away from the church. Tallish, I think. A man. I only got a quick dekko at him. He seemed to be heading for the rectory but he moved out of my sight. I thought it was Reverend Ivor. It couldn’t have been because he’s away. Sybil would have no reason to make something like that up … Would she?’
‘Have a bit of my bagel.’ He held it to her mouth and she automatically took a bite. ‘Are you ready yet?’
The piece of bagel turned chewy and she swallowed with a gulp. ‘I saw that man walking away from the church. Ever since I’ve tried to reconstruct the time. Remember, I wasn’t thinking, not really thinking about the singing. Enjoying it, yes, but I had my mind on other things. But I’m sure it was after the singing had stopped when I saw him. So, was Laura sitting at the piano then, or already passed out, or just standing there?’
‘If she was sitting there, she wasn’t pushed down. That wouldn’t have been how she got the blow to her head. It was too severe.’ He scratched Katie’s head absently. ‘Wouldn’t she have cried out? While she was falling or as she hit the music stand or whatever?’
Staring at him, Alex let the possibilities roll over. ‘She should have screamed, or shouted. I know I yelled when I fell. That stone floor hurts a lot when you hit it.’
‘Back to the man you saw. Are you sure he was coming from the church?’
‘The church, I think, yes.’ Each time she put the pieces together, the possibilities shifted. ‘Unless he was on the other side of the church and walked around to the path, then over past the rectory.’
‘It could be significant, though,’ he said, meeting her eyes. ‘I understand why you’d think twice about saying who you thought it was. That’s heavy.’
‘Tony, I’m saying this to you and only to you for now. Think about it and see if you think I’m completely mad, and remember I thought I was seeing Ivor initially. Ivor’s got really red hair!’
Light, sparking off the kitchen taps at the sink, caught his attention and he glanced away. ‘This man didn’t have red hair?’
‘No.’ She squinched up her eyes, visualizing. ‘I would have seen that but I didn�
��t. We aren’t going to say this unless we discuss it first and agree?’
He nodded, then winced. ‘That could be a discussion we don’t want to have. But we do have to report the sighting.’
Alex looked behind her. She lowered her voice. ‘We would have to do a lot of homework before we ever suggested this again.’ With both hands on one of his wrists, she said, ‘I’m sure I’m wrong but I’ve thought about Elyan.’
ELEVEN
‘Don’t usually see you around the shops this time of day,’ Darlene Murray said cheerfully. ‘Seems like yesterday my Cynthia was nagging me for that bike.’
‘Lunch has died down at the Dog so I decided to practice riding before things get busy again. Don’t want to make a spectacle of myself in front of too many people. Bogie likes it, see?’ She’d had a hard time waiting all morning for an opportunity to test the village waters for useful whispers, or any whispers at all about what was going on. Concentrating on anything but what she’d said to Tony about Elyan was almost impossible, but she had to carry on.
‘I think that dog of yours would like anything so long as he’s with you,’ Darlene said. ‘You rode down from the Dimple? I don’t think I’d do that.’
‘I drove down and parked this time but I’m going to try the hill on this when I feel confident enough.’
A dark green MG drove by toward the High, coming a little too close to Alex and she jerked the bike from the gutter to the pavement. ‘I’m still pretty unsure of myself,’ she said, patting Bogie who didn’t look at all ruffled.
Darlene was arranging a couple of boxes of local produce, tomatoes, still a bit green, very early peas that would be sweeter now than at any other time, several small punnets of strawberries and some gooseberries. She also had a bucket of tantalizing white and gold daisies, the bunches rubber-banded together. Folly’s post office did duty as a bit-of-everything shop but Alex wondered how Darlene made a living even with her merchandising ingenuity.
The pungent scent of the gooseberries made Alex’s mouth water. ‘I’ll take some gooseberries and two tomatoes. I love them green.’ As a child she’d frequently got into trouble for picking unripe tomatoes and not leaving enough to ripen the way Lily wanted them to.
Darlene put the tomatoes in a slightly crumpled white bag and rolled the big yellow-green berries in a newspaper cone. Alex looking longingly at the daisies but she needed to perfect the art of bicycle shopping before loading down too much. She paid from a coin purse she carried in her pocket.
‘Now what?’ Darlene said in a voice that suggested she was enjoying herself. ‘You’ve got Bogie in the basket. He’ll squash these.’ She had smiling blue eyes in a bony face some would have called very brittle. High cheekbones, a narrow-bridged nose and an uncompromising chin. Her blonde hair held back with a brown velvet headband was her softest feature.
Alex laughed, planted her feet more firmly and held the bike steady. ‘I’m not used to this yet.’
‘Looks as if he is. And the helmet’s very fetching on you, I must say.’
‘Down,’ Alex told Bogie who had been sitting up like a hood ornament, looking around with what appeared to be a satisfied smirk. With a short chain, Alex had clipped his collar to the basket. He gave her a reproachful glance but scrunched into the bottom of the basket. ‘Now stay,’ she ordered.
Dubiously, Darlene put Alex’s purchases on top of Bogie, who sighed and rolled his eyes toward Alex. When he let the lids droop shut it was a sign of surrender.
Not one word did Darlene say about yesterday, or anything that might have happened yesterday, but Alex hovered, pretending to study merchandise in the single shop window. Eclectic had real meaning here. The post office carried whatever Darlene came by in job lots at the local markets, or from people who stopped by with something they thought she might be interested in selling. Thus the small quantities of fruit and vegetables in front of a rack of newspapers, with several handmade baby hats looped by their ties to a pack of half a dozen colored plastic-covered wire hangers, and hung where they would have to be moved by anyone wanting a paper.
‘You had some nice coloring books and crayons,’ Alex said, getting desperate to expand the conversation just in case Darlene had heard something. If anything was being said in the village about Laura Quillam’s death, the news would reach Holly Street and particularly the post office, in no time.
‘I don’t think I have any left but I’ll look around and let you know. What do you want those for, then?’
No hesitation about asking questions here. ‘Um, I thought it would be nice to have something around for when children are in the forecourt or the restaurant.’
Holly Street ran behind the High and friction persisted over the Holly shopkeepers wanting large signage to their establishments at the junction with the High where Holly Street forked away. The shopkeepers on the main street preferred not to draw attention away from their own businesses.
‘Any progress with the sign?’ Alex asked, feeling only slightly mean for raising the local hot topic of the moment.
Darlene pulled out a copy of the Telegraph. She insisted the papers be folded to hide the main news of the day. Her theory was that people wouldn’t have the nerve to put a copy back after they’d pulled it from the rack and flattened it to see the headlines. How wrong could you be – but she kept on trying.
‘I don’t think anyone’s much interested in our poor little sign at the moment,’ she said. ‘Take a look at this.’
‘Mystery Surrounds Death of Pianist Elyan Quillam’s Sister.’
‘Nobody was supposed to say anything and certainly not to the papers?’ Alex said and closed her mouth. But it was too late, she’d shown she already knew about the death.
‘Oh, Alex,’ Darlene said. ‘It was you there. You’re the one who found her. They don’t give a name for the person but I hoped this wasn’t another of your bodies.’
Your bodies. They weren’t her bodies. And why did she have to be the one to come upon grisly scenes that shouldn’t even be dreamed of in a gentle-looking village like Folly-on-Weir? Repeatedly, her suspicions about Elyan, and telling Tony about them, came back with stomach-turning force. He couldn’t have been responsible for his sister’s death.
‘Was it really bad?’ Darlene asked. She crossed her arms and shivered. ‘Terrible thing. So young, too. Only twenty-three and she’d already had all that illness. I’ve seen him, the pianist. Very handsome young man. Did she look like him?’
‘No, she didn’t.’ Alex looked skyward and gave herself a mental kick. All she had to do was be polite and get away, not keep tying herself to Laura Quillam’s death. ‘I’ll take the paper.’ She’d rather not, but it would be better to go somewhere quiet and read the article than go back and get the one at the Dog in front of everyone there.
She paid for the paper and rode away with a jaunty wave that almost landed her – and Bogie – on the rough road.
What would the article say? Darlene had guessed she was the unnamed person written about. Why wouldn’t everyone else? They probably already did. Where Holly Street dead-ended, a lane to the right led to a children’s play area. It had been started with grand notions of expensive custom-built equipment and finished with two picnic tables, a seesaw, a row of swings and a small roundabout with a red plastic toadstool poking up through its center.
But the grass was kept mowed although few people went there, especially while most children were in school.
Alex got off the bike and pushed it through the gate. Her purchases went on the nearest picnic table and she lifted Bogie from the basket. He raced off to explore at once, ears flapping, stump of a tail wagging and all feet flying.
The table was under an acer with red-gold leaves and Alex was grateful for the shade. She took off the helmet, ruffled her hair and slid to sit on a bench where she could spread the Telegraph on the splintery, grey wood tabletop.
The article was horrible. Impersonal yet sensationalized. What did they say, ‘If it bleeds, it leads?�
� Well apart from hooking readers by dropping Elyan’s name – and printing a picture of him – they had certainly painted a more or less accurate picture of Laura on the cold stone flags at St Aldwyn’s with blood seeping from a head wound. She, Alex, was ‘unnamed, first on the scene, the woman who called the police’, which she hadn’t. Doc had. Who, Alex wondered, had run to the press?
Getting at the personal histories of well-known people must be easy and fast. Elyan’s father, Percy Quillam, had first been married to Laura’s mother, soprano Audrey, an heiress, who died of a heart condition. Now he was married to Elyan’s mother Sonia, once a promising violinist, and had been since shortly after Audrey died. The bones, Alex decided, got well and truly picked. All family members apart from the deceased had close ties to classical music and opera, and with the exception of Elyan’s, their careers had come to a halt, including Percy’s.
And about all that, Alex thought, she knew very little.
What she hadn’t expected to read was that despite there being no final post-mortem report as yet, the police would be asking someone in particular to help with their enquiries into the details surrounding the death. That bit could have been put in to add drama – as if there wasn’t already enough.
Barking out his warning pitch, Bogie rushed toward her and she turned around. A thin man was leading a little, dark-haired girl through the gate. The child pointed at Bogie and from the man’s reaction, Alex could tell he had only just noticed she was sitting under the acer.
The girl held the man’s hand with both of hers and leaned close. Alex noted she was small, her dark hair curly and reaching below her shoulders, and she wore glasses with light, green-flecked frames.
To bury her head in the newspaper again or to give a polite greeting, that was the question.
‘Good morning.’ He raised a hand in a wave, dealing with her dilemma, and carried on toward the swings.
Alex returned the wave and continued to read. This was definitely more about the famous pianist and his conductor father – who had put his own career on hold to concentrate on guiding his son’s development – and Percy’s (this approached slyly) reputation as an eccentric and a connoisseur of beautiful women, than the death of an unknown young woman, no matter how horrible the circumstances.
Melody of Murder Page 9
