The Art of Murder (Harriet Quigley Mystery)

by Nicola Slade

  ‘Don’t be silly.’ She stalked into the room ahead of him and smiled at the rest of the group. ‘Sorry we’re late, Donald,’ she apologised as they made their way to an empty table. ‘We got talking and didn’t notice the time.’

  ‘Not a problem.’ Donald liked them both. ‘I’m just about to explain this morning’s project.’ He looked round at the group and nodded. ‘I’m glad we’ve all made the effort,’ he said quietly. ‘Let’s try to enjoy something new. This weekend was intended as a taster, after all, so that everyone would pick up some new ideas and techniques.’

  ‘I certainly have,’ Madeleine spoke up bravely and Donald’s smile broadened. ‘I’ve learned to be less uptight and nervous about the whole idea of painting and drawing and I’m really going to enjoy the art group.’ Her eyes widened. ‘It will go ahead, won’t it?’

  ‘Of course.’ Fiona was subdued but definite. ‘We’ll talk about it later. I’ve got everyone’s number and I’ll be in touch. Go on, Donald, what have you got for us today?’

  ‘I promised you could all use colours and that’s true, but you can put away your brushes and palette knives. Today you’ll be painting with ‘found’ objects.’

  An interested murmur put paid to the strained atmosphere as they all stared at him. He held up a pebble, a feather, a scrap of moss and laughed at their expressions.

  ‘That’s right, this is what I mean by ‘found’ objects; sticks too and some scraps of bubble wrap, stiff card and plastic. You might think it’s junk but it’s all usable. You should have seen the looks I got, picking up stones and feathers and twigs! I’ll dole them out and you can fish out your pads. I want you to paint this landscape, one photocopy between two of you. I’ll be doing the same thing at the big easel so do your best, try to have fun and shout if you get stuck.’

  *

  For the next hour Harriet tried to concentrate and make some kind of recognisable picture. At first tentatively, and then more in despair than hope, she slapped different colours on the paper and scraped it around. Any other time, she thought, this would have been fun but today there was too much going on in her head.

  Could Fiona be right about Linzi? Had she tried to speed up her recovery from whatever trauma she had suffered? If so, surely it had been the stupidest course of action imaginable. She tried to recall friends, relatives, who had been in a similar situation but it wasn’t easy. ‘We’re a hardy bunch,’ she thought, but hadn’t there been a maths teacher at her last school – yes, so there had. He’d had a transient ischaemic attack – a slight stroke – and it had taken him quite a while to get the right balance with his blood-thinning medication. She cast her mind back and thought he had been making fortnightly trips to the surgery for check-ups and adjustments which had carried on for nearly a year before he was settled.

  Linzi had been in Italy at the beginning of June which was presumably when she was taken ill, and this was nearly the end of September. Was that long enough to work out the correct levels? Say she was having fortnightly checks, how long would it be before the extra drug entered the system if she had started taking aspirin to speed things up? Would Linzi, a woman reportedly in control of herself at all times, be so reckless? To overdose on a blood-thinning medication that could lead her to bleed to death?

  The words in her head conjured up a vision of that midnight clean-up operation. Before she had spotted him, Hughie must have been literally up to his elbows in blood.

  Chapter 13

  Sunday, mid-morning

  ‘I never imagined painting with a stick,’ Sam surveyed his picture doubtfully. ‘I can’t say I’m doing it justice. I think the stick feels let down; it deserves better.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ Donald leaned over to take a look. ‘I expect sticks are pretty laid back, but you could try that feather or the clump of moss. It’s not intended to be an architectural drawing; you’re trying too hard. Loosen up a bit, you never know what you’re capable of, do you?’

  ‘No,’ Harriet caught his words and repeated them softly. ‘You never know.’

  ‘Harriet?’ Donald looked puzzled.

  ‘Oh, nothing.’ She managed a smile as he inspected her offering. ‘You needn’t say anything,’ she said, making a face, ‘it’s not going to win the Turner prize.’

  ‘Your heart’s not in it,’ he said soberly, ignoring her wry deprecation. ‘You got the full horror of it, pulling Linzi out, getting covered in blood, and so on. I’m not surprised your concentration’s shot.’

  ‘Fiona too,’ she reminded him. ‘Bonnie was on the spot as well. It completely turned her stomach, poor soul. She’s still shaky. Right,’ she pulled herself together. ‘I’ll try harder, Donald, I promise. I’ve really enjoyed my initiation into different techniques, you’re an inspiring teacher.’

  As Donald’s long face flushed with pleasure the door opened and Eve put her head round.

  ‘I’ve set up the coffee things out on the terrace. We might as well take advantage of the good weather.’

  There were some nervous glances at the new greenery screening the pond, but Harriet began to relax as she poured her coffee. Bonnie was behind her in the queue so she made an effort and smiled pleasantly.

  ‘How do you like yours, Bonnie? Black? Here…’ She sat down on the low wall and sipped her own coffee. ‘Are you feeling better today? How’s your aura? Can you read it when it’s your own or is it just other people?’

  Bonnie blinked at her in surprise, clearly not sure whether Harriet was making a joke at her expense. ‘You don’t believe in all that,’ she said.

  ‘No,’ Harriet admitted, ‘but you do, and that means it’s important to you. I was too hasty before, I’m sorry. So, how are you feeling?’

  ‘Much better, thank you, Harriet.’ Bonnie accepted the apology with quiet dignity. ‘And thank you for that; most people wouldn’t have bothered. As to my own aura, I can’t see it, but if I could it would be very dark, very troubled.’ She gave Harriet a sudden wintry smile. ‘Yours, on the other hand, is looking a clear blue now apart from the shadows that come from all that’s happened here.’

  ‘You were right about me,’ Harriet told her. ‘The summer was quite eventful but I’m okay now.’

  ‘I’m not a psychic but the auras are real to me,’ Bonnie said. ‘I do see them and Sam’s is clear too.’ She gazed across the lawn to where Sam was talking to Seren. ‘He doesn’t have eyes for anyone else, does he? You can tell she’s still there beside him.’

  ‘They were very happy,’ was all Harriet could say, quietly, while Bonnie took off her glasses to wipe her eyes.

  Harriet turned a gasp into a cough and got up to fetch a refill. It had been a fleeting moment only but it was enough for her to see that Bonnie’s eyebrows had been tattooed on to a hairless brow. It was a skilful job but clear enough to someone sitting at such close quarters. The luxuriant eyelashes too, could be artificial, and it probably explained the consistently immaculate hairstyle. I’m willing to bet that’s a wig, she thought. That poor woman, it must be chemotherapy or alopecia; how absolutely terrible for her.

  She sneaked a glance at Bonnie and wondered about her. Could the silent, anguished woman be a stalker? If you looked at the group, one by one, not one of them looked like a potential killer. She shook her head and felt slightly sick. It could be any one of them. It could be Bonnie but – here she hit the same stumbling block every time: Bonnie hadn’t known Linzi before yesterday, had she?

  Sam was nowhere to be seen so she ambled over to sit by Seren and Tim who looked very much an item now. Quick work, she thought, but why not? They’re both single; each, as it transpires, with a teenage child, and each looking for a house in the country. A conversation with Sam, a couple of weeks earlier, suddenly sprang to mind. ‘I wonder,’ she thought, and watched them.

  ‘For goodness sake!’ Nina’s sharp voice rang out into the peaceful garden as she looked round at them and threw down the magazine she had been reading. ‘Are we going to carry on as though n
othing happened? We all hated the woman, don’t try to pretend otherwise. I’m sick of all this whispering in corners and people jumping out of their skin if a door so much as slams. Maybe it’s time to talk about it.’ She quivered as she sat there, lacing her fingers in and out, with a feverish glitter in her eyes. Harriet tightened her lips anxiously. It looked as though the volcano was about to erupt.

  ‘I’ll start the ball rolling.’ Nina burst into speech, while they all sat in uncomfortable silence. ‘I’m sure it’ll come as no surprise to anyone to know that I loathed the bitch. There’s no need to pretend you’re shocked, I don’t give a toss what you think. I’m glad she’s dead; it’s a happy accident, but I’m amazed she wasn’t bumped off years ago. If I’d had the guts I’d have killed her myself. I’m surprised I didn’t. As to why, most of you know why, but I might as well spell it out.’ Her voice cracked in the awkward silence.

  ‘Linzi Bray was a man-eater and she ate my man, swallowed him up whole, and she would have spat him out any day now as it’s been a while since she made her move on him.’ She drummed her fingers on the table. ‘He put up no resistance. It’s not a word in his vocabulary and anyway, he has a terminal disease – he can’t keep his fly done up. My granny would have called him a philanderer, but he’s my philanderer, and I strongly objected to Linzi snatching him from under my nose.’

  Harriet slid a glance sideways and caught Sam at the same trick. They both looked away and said nothing, waiting. Nina had more to say,

  ‘Anybody got a good word to say about her? I’ll tell you something that might surprise you; even Fiona’s been harbouring vengeful thoughts about her all summer. No …’ as the other woman rose angrily to her feet, ‘… don’t deny it. Linzi has kept the two of them on a string, hasn’t she? My Phil for when she wanted some grown-up action and your young Thomas when a spot of adulation was required. How far did it go, do you know?’

  ‘That’s quite enough, Nina!’ Fiona’s voice was icy. ‘Thomas had a teenage crush on Linzi, that’s all. There’s no more to be said and it’s certainly none of your business.’

  She looked at her watch. ‘I’m going upstairs and I’ll see you all when we reconvene. Let’s have another 20 minutes, please, Donald, we’re all a bit on edge.’

  ‘Well!’ Clare Yarrow’s face glowed crimson with excitement as she stared at the door that Fiona had shut behind her, not with a slam but with deliberate care. ‘We shouldn’t be talking like this, not with a death in the house but …’ her eyes gleamed as she looked round at the others, ‘… I never liked her, that Linzi. She made no attempt to be a good neighbour, quite the reverse. At least her husband would give you the time of day, but when we heard he’d gone off abroad I called in to offer my condolences, and she was downright rude. You don’t expect that from a neighbour and I—’

  ‘That’s enough, Clare!’ George Yarrow surprised them all but most particularly his wife who stared at him open-mouthed as he stood up. ‘You watch your spiteful tongue.’ He picked up his model aircraft magazine and headed towards the door. ‘I’m getting out of here too, I want some peace and quiet. As for that Bray woman the world is a better place without her.’

  Jess Tyndall had been trying her phone again but was scribbling in a notepad by the time Harriet moved away from the heated group. Nina had apparently shot her bolt and subsided on to a garden chair in angry silence.

  ‘Inspired, Jess?’ she asked. ‘Plenty of Arthurian drama around here at the moment, though it’ll blow over soon, I hope.’

  ‘What? Oh yes.’ Jess glanced down at her scribbled notes. ‘I’ve been jotting down ideas – you know, words, phrases, that kind of thing – all through this weekend. It’s turning out rather apocalyptic, actually.’

  ‘This weekend?’ Harriet could only agree but Jess shook her head in reproof.

  ‘No, silly. My poem. What do you think of this as a first line: ‘Torn velvet, broken rainbow, woe-lorn knight a-riding by…’

  ‘Woe-lorn?’

  ‘One of my own crafted words,’ Jess said modestly. ‘Like love-lorn but rather more intense.’

  ‘It’s an intriguing … um … opening,’ Harriet offered and was rewarded with a grateful smirk as Jess put down her pencil and prepared to read out her poem.

  ‘Excuse me, Harriet, could I have a word? Sorry to interrupt,’ Sam smiled at Jess.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Nothing, I thought you needed rescuing,’ he grinned and they found a couple of chairs set slightly apart from the rest.

  ‘Did you know Bonnie wears a wig?’ she said in a low voice. ‘And she’s got no eyebrows either.’

  ‘Yes, I knew,’ he said.

  ‘Sam! You didn’t tell me. It might be important.’

  ‘It’s none of my business, nor yours either,’ his voice had a slight chill. ‘We needn’t descend to gossip, surely?’

  ‘Everything is important!’ she snapped. ‘Never mind, what I’m wondering is who could have put aspirins into that bottle. I’m sure it must have been someone here. One of us, in other words.’

  ‘Oh, for Pete’s sake!’Hee shook his head then sighed. ‘I suppose you won’t shut up till I take you seriously,’ he conceded. ‘Go on, Miss Marple, tell me what you’ve concluded so far.’

  ‘Don’t be sarcastic,’ she said mildly, now she’d got her own way. ‘First of all, suppose we take it as a given that somebody here did exactly that, substituted aspirin for the herbal tablets. Who among us has access to drugs?’

  ‘It’s only aspirin, Harriet,’ he said wearily. ‘That means we all have.’

  ‘Picky,’ she sniffed. ‘All right, who among us has medical knowledge and would know about the perils of mixing aspirin and blood-thinning medicine? I’ll tell you—’

  ‘I had a feeling you would,’ he sighed, with a theatrical yawn.

  ‘Jess is a nurse,’ Harriet ignored his interruption. ‘Clare is a former dental nurse and you said Bonnie was shacked up with a vet at one time?’

  ‘What?’ he sat up with a snort of laughter. ‘You think she dosed Linzi with horse pills?’

  She rolled her eyes. ‘You also said she used to be a carer visiting elderly people in their homes, and who’s to say she’s not still doing that? The importance of not mixing medicine would be impressed on someone like that, bound to be.’

  ‘Is that it?’

  ‘Seren’s an osteopath – she’d have medical knowledge and,’ Harriet sat up straight, ‘her husband was ill for a long time, she said she nursed him.’ She warmed to her theme although Sam was eyeing her with considerable scepticism. ‘Tim lost his elderly father recently; again, he’d have learned a bit. I did myself, when Mother was so ill those last months.’

  She caught her breath as she spotted a minefield up ahead and was about to change the subject when Sam said it for her.

  ‘So did I,’ he said quietly. ‘If you’re being scrupulous about including everyone, I had to bone up on quite a lot of medical stuff.’ He stared at a robin perched on the rose arch. ‘You’ve left out Madeleine and Donald, George Yarrow and the Pagets. Got nothing on them?’

  ‘Not yet.’ She tried to sound dignified. ‘Oh, Sam, I’m only trying to make sense of something I don’t understand. I hate a mess and a muddle, it offends me.’ She caught his sly grin as he looked down at his feet. ‘I know my house is untidy, that’s different. Oh, by the way, Fiona caught me just before we came out to the garden. She’s been on to the police this morning and told them about Linzi’s medication and she mentioned all the stalking business. The chap she spoke to said he hadn’t heard anything about it and would look it up. Oh, and there won’t be post mortem today because there was an almighty fatal smash-up on the motorway in the small hours.’

  ‘So,’ Sam pursed his lips, relieved he need not contact the police himself, ‘that’s it? We can go home soon? Will we be wanted for the inquest, I wonder? I’ll be glad when we’re shot of it. As you say, it’s a mess.’

  ‘Come and sit with us,’ Donald h
ailed them, looking at his watch. ‘We’ve got just over ten more minutes and there’s something I want to say.’

  ‘Not sure I want to know any more secrets,’ Harriet muttered under her breath but she pinned a smile on her face and sat down with the others.

  ‘I think Nina could have been less …um … harsh,’ Donald was serious. ‘But she does have a point. We ought to lance the boil and I’m going to start. Do you mind, Harriet? Sam? I’ve asked you two, as well as Madeleine, because I suspect you’re both used to hearing confessions, one way or another, and I’d respect your opinion.’

  They made soothing, affirmative noises and Madeleine tucked her hand through Donald’s arm.

  ‘Here goes,’ he said, taking a deep breath. ‘I was never one of the lads, knocking back pints or drinking in clubs. My wife and I drank socially but not to excess and we were happy enough until we decided to try for a baby. That was the beginning—

  ‘It was my fault.’ his face drooped. ‘It turned out that I hadn’t a hope in hell of fathering a child. We talked about adoption and IVF, of course, but there wasn’t enough left between us to keep the marriage afloat. It was difficult, particularly as I was a housemaster at a prep school and we were surrounded by gorgeous healthy children, all conceived with scarcely a thought, and there we were, trapped in a house that went with the job.

  ‘I’ve never blamed her. She found a man who had what it took; they’ve got four children now.’ He winced and his face flushed. ‘And yes, of course it hurt; it still hurts and when my wife walked out on me I took to the bottle. Oh, I managed to get by for a few years; a surprisingly long time now I look back. You know how it is. You fudge it somehow – plead an allergy, take a sickie or two, suck a lot of peppermints – but of course it all went tits up.’

  His long face was melancholy. ‘I usually left before I was sacked and I was teaching at a third-rate prep school outside London when it happened. I was in charge on a field trip. Well, it was called that but it was still within the school grounds. Anyway, I got the kids painting by a river and naturally one of the silly little devils fell in. Of course you’ve guessed – I was pissed nearly out of my mind. By the mercy of God a couple of the older boys jumped in and grabbed him just in time but it was only because they knew about CPR that he survived. He’d have died if it had been left to me.’