The Art of Murder (Harriet Quigley Mystery)

by Nicola Slade

  ‘Oh, Donald,’ Madeleine squeezed his hand. ‘What happened?’

  ‘Astonishingly little,’ he said. ‘I didn’t deserve it but it turned out that the kids were fond of me and the boy, the headmaster’s son, was known as a disruptive little sod. The school’s finances were on a knife edge and the last thing anyone wanted was a scandal and parents leaving in droves, so it was hushed up somehow. I had to leave, of course.’

  Sam said: ‘Thank you for telling us, Donald. I can see how traumatic such a thing would be. How long ago was this?’

  ‘About 25 years ago, back in the 90s.’ Donald took out his handkerchief and mopped his forehead. ‘Elin Bowles, as she was then, was working part-time in the Bursar’s office at the school so she knew all about it. As I told Madeleine the other day, I’ve spent the intervening time as a jobbing artist; anything I could find – evening classes, whatever. I haven’t had a drink for more than seven years, and then suddenly I heard that bloody woman hail me. Like a fool I thought she was being kind when she told me about this weekend and offered me the job.’

  ‘She wanted her pound of flesh?’ Harriet left the questions to Sam as Donald seemed to appreciate the man-to-man talk.

  ‘A kilo, more like,’ he rubbed a hand across his face. ‘I dread to think what she’d have wanted next if she hadn’t – if this awful accident hadn’t happened.’ His brown eyes opened wide and he looked horrified. ‘Dear God, I can’t believe what I’m saying here, but it’s such a relief that she can’t get at me ever again.’

  Harriet opened her mouth to speak but was forestalled by Madeleine who was pale but determined.

  ‘Please, Harriet, let me say my piece now I’ve steeled myself. You’ve probably wondered how I became the wreck I am now. I didn’t really need to own up to being a recovering alcoholic, I’m sure you already had me pegged. Still, here it is.

  ‘I had it all, everything. My life was perfect but I threw it away and I’ve only myself to blame. I had a good job in advertising and I married my boss, a lovely man. We had a big house and two beautiful little girls—’ Her voice shook but she made an effort and continued. ‘Mike travelled all the time, all over the world and I – there’s absolutely no excuse – I was lonely and to combat the loneliness I started to drink.

  ‘I drank when I was lonely and when he came home and raged at me about the way I was neglecting the girls I drank some more to blot it out. In the end I was drunk all the time and Mike paid for me to go to a clinic, but that was a temporary respite. I coped well enough to fool everyone and eventually Mike went off on a business trip to Rome. I thought I could manage but I had a … a one-night stand. I was invited for a night out with some friends and my neighbour offered to babysit, but somehow – I’ve no memory of it – I woke up in bed with a complete stranger. I was supposed to be home well before 11pm, but by the time I staggered home late the next day, my neighbour had taken the girls to her house and called my husband. He cut short his business trip and that was the end of it.’

  The tears overflowed but she kept talking. ‘Mike got custody of the girls and I … well, I lost most of the next year, which was about the stupidest thing I could have done because I ended up losing all contact with them. They didn’t want to know me.’ She wiped her eyes. ‘I don’t blame them in the least but I have to live with the guilt. I’ve lived with it for 20 years. I tried to see them but Mike took out an injunction against me. I’d been hanging round their school, trying to speak to them, so I gave up. It was frightening the girls and making me more and more suicidal.’ She wiped away the tears and said simply: ‘My daughters are both over 30 now and I don’t even know if they’re married, or if I have grandchildren, but I daren’t go looking for them. I don’t deserve to see them. I failed them and they’re better off without me but it still hurts. What I did to them. It hurts every day.’

  Donald had an arm round her. ‘That’s what Linzi was threatening to tell people?’

  ‘Of course,’ she gulped as she wiped her eyes on the tissues that Harriet offered. ‘She was very friendly with the neighbour, the one who babysat … Linzi knew everything, and she said she thought the good people of Locksley, that’s what she called them, sneering, you know … she thought they should be told what kind of tramp had moved into the village.’

  ‘What a malicious bitch.’ Harriet hugged Madeleine. ‘I think you’ve suffered enough; there’s no need for anyone else to hear about this, or your trials and tribulations, Donald. Sam and I won’t say a word and anyway. I imagine you’ve both spent the intervening years in expiation.’ She looked at her watch. ‘Heavens, look at the time. Come on, Donald, you’ve got one last try to make silk purses out of Sam and me, but I’m afraid we’re the proverbial sows’ ears!’

  *

  Harriet pulled herself together for the final session of the weekend and scraped industriously at her picture, using the credit card-sized piece of plastic to mark out a wall, a cottage and a stream. She felt inadequate as she watched Donald wielding a feather and a sponge, alternating between them to create trees and foliage behind a cottage that would have graced any estate agent’s window.

  ‘Are you still punishing that stick?’ she asked Sam, leaning nosily over to look at his efforts. ‘I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m no better with a stone or a feather than I was with a brush or charcoal.’

  ‘I’ve let my stick roam free,’ he sighed. ‘I chucked it on Hughie’s compost heap and I’m tempted to dip this pebble into the paint and throw it at the picture. Can’t make it any worse. It’s been fun though, hasn’t it?’ His face creased into a rueful grin. ‘Well, apart from … you know…’

  He tried the effect of pressing a square of bubble-wrap on a patch of green paint and lifted it off. ‘Hmm, wish I could say it looked like a field of new-mown grass but it looks more like a load of cabbages with blight. Still,’ he tried the effect of scratching at it with the end of his feather, ‘as regards this whole weekend thing – messy and upsetting as it’s been – at least you’ve managed to get through it without breaking any bones or being held up at gunpoint.’

  ‘There’s still time,’ she said absently, then stared at him in dismay.

  Chapter 14

  Harriet looked at her painting with dissatisfaction, but soon gave herself up to the puzzle posed by the eventful weekend. What would Miss Silver do? Harriet had always preferred Patricia Wentworth’s governess-turned-professional detective to the sage of Saint Mary Mead. First of all, she thought, I’d better make a list of suspects, along with motive and opportunity. Sam was busy. Donald had done a circuit of the room and was back at his easel, so she made notes on a scrap of paper.

  Name: Motive: Opportunity.

  ‘Whoa there…’ a thought struck her: ‘… opportunity to do what, exactly? Scatter rogue bits of stone on the steps to the pond? Or do I mean the stalking nuisance beforehand? If I’m suggesting that someone deliberately set a trap to make her stumble, I must also believe that it was part of a plan. As for the steps, we were all out in the garden at lunchtime yesterday and Hughie pottered in and out to pick herbs and vegetables. He’d never have missed stray pebbles or stones in the wrong place.

  ‘Do I really believe that Fiona Christie, a close friend for more than 20 years, has been playing games with phone calls, anonymous notes, disgusting tricks with wasps and bottles of pills? It’s not possible, even though Linzi got up her nose with her high-handed ways or because a teenage boy had a crush and maybe was seduced by her. That wouldn’t send Fiona off on a mad rampage. No,’ she paused, ‘Fiona is calm and ordered; if she wanted to punish someone she’d do it much more logically and efficiently. It’s not Fiona …’

  The Yarrows made no attempt to paint. George hunched silently in his seat, glaring occasionally at his wife who stared gleefully round the room. Watching her, Harriet had a sour taste in her mouth as she realised that Linzi’s death was the reason for Clare’s excitement.

  They’d been in her thoughts a lot, the Yarrows, with that
bitter resentment and envy on Clare’s side and her husband’s fanaticism about his precious garden. ‘Greed and rancour could lead to murder,’ she sighed, ‘it’s happened time and again, but would Clare actually get off her backside and do anything?

  ‘George, though. What about George?’ She recalled Linzi’s laughing comment about George being a dedicated gardener. Was he really the kind who would chop down a rogue tree if it dropped a leaf into his garden? A zealot who would take an axe to his neighbour? ‘It happened,’ she winced. ‘It happened all the time and it was usually a man in late middle-age who went berserk. A man like George.’

  She shivered and went on with the list in her head. ‘Better not write it down after all. Jess’s husband Bill was – possibly, though not proven – up to something shady at work. I can see Jess getting carried away with the stalking idea,’ Harriet mused, ‘but she’d surely be more theatrical? Sepulchral voices on the phone and colourful threats. She’s so noticeable too. If she’d lurked around Winchester following Linzi she’d have been unmistakeable. As she would if she’d gone near the pond to scatter pebbles on the steps.’

  It was the business with the steps that gave Harriet pause every time she reached this point in her meandering thoughts. ‘There had been a deliberate attempt to cause an injury and that, even without the tragic outcome, was a criminal offence. Jess Tyndall was a highly experienced nurse, a woman accustomed to coping in a crisis, not a woman to give way to impulse. But – this was a campaign, not a spur-of-the-moment affair. Could it be Jess?’ She closed her eyes, not wanting to think about it, so she ticked off some more names.

  Tim and Seren? Already they had tentatively acquired the status of a couple and she thought they seemed well-suited, though time would tell. Tim came over as gentle and civilised. Was his tale of Linzi’s bullying enough to make him resort to injury, let alone melodrama? She had probably given him up as a bad job anyway, after his father’s death.

  Seren too, poor girl. How sad, how ironic, to come face-to-face with the mother you had never met, only to have her die before you had time to introduce yourself, and on top of that to discover that she was so heartily disliked. Seren hadn’t wanted Linzi dead, quite the reverse. She’d wanted to talk, to ask questions, perhaps to establish some kind of relationship. Whatever the truth of the early morning fall, Harriet found it impossible to see Seren as a crazed fantasist. Even Sam had given up on that idea.

  Why did people commit murder anyway? Frowning, she listed the reasons: lust, greed, envy, all the rest of the deadly sins. Were they here in this room? Love and fear too, surely two of the most powerful of motives? Would someone kill to remove a threat, to acquire money, to get their own back? Could it be revenge? Was this whole business to do with vengeance? And if so, who …

  ‘Harriet? Are you in a trance?’ Fiona was on her feet at the other end of the room and everyone was staring at Harriet, who came to with a start.

  ‘What? Oh sorry, I was miles away.’

  ‘I was just saying we’ve come to the end of our weekend,’ Fiona told her.’ ‘We can’t ignore what’s happened but I’ll be in touch as soon as I hear about the inquest. I don’t know what the procedure will be, whether all or any of us will be needed, but I promise I’ll keep you posted.

  ‘Apart from that, I’d just like to say that several people have expressed the hope that the group will carry on, and I want to reassure everyone that Jess, Nina and I – the remaining committee members – will definitely keep to the plan. The barn isn’t ready yet but Sam says he’s sure he can find us a warm corner up at the farm meanwhile.’

  She glanced across the room and smiled. ‘I’m sure we’re all agreed that you’ve been an inspiration, Donald. We’ll have to have a vote, but I know a lot of the other members are worried about not having a regular teacher. Will you join us at least as an honorary member? We don’t want to lose you.’

  There was a chorus of approval and a ragged round of applause, leaving Donald red-faced and overcome with emotion.

  ‘You can’t know what this means,’ he managed to say before pulling out a handful of tissues and blowing his nose.

  ‘That’s settled then.’ Fiona was brisk. ‘It only remains for me to thank you all for taking part, particularly the new members who’ve joined in so enthusiastically. I have your details, so I’ll be in touch about dates and venue for our first session. Finally, Eve and Hughie have treated us royally and I’d like to thank them for looking after us all so well, and to remind you to post glowing reviews for Tadema Lodge on all the review sites.’

  Sunday lunch-time, departure

  As Harriet hoisted her suitcase into the car boot, Sam stopped to chat to Tim and Seren.

  ‘Look, you two,’ he said, ‘Harriet and I have come up with an idea; something you might like to mull over, but there’s no hurry.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Tim looked intrigued.

  ‘You’ve probably heard that alongside my clerical duties I work part-time at the farm at Locksley but you might not know that the family there own several properties that are let out. One of the long-standing tenants died last month and his widow has already given notice that she’s leaving at Lady Day, 25th March next year. What might interest you is that in the past the house was divided into two, rather like my house and Harriet’s. The farm needs to raise capital for various improvements and we’re thinking of selling this particular property as two semi-detached houses. You might like one each so if you’d care to take a look, I can give you first refusal. I don’t expect a decision immediately, there’s building work needed before the sale. Give me a ring and we’ll take it from there.’

  Harriet watched George and Clare Yarrow drive away. Still fretting about why anyone would be driven to harassment, let alone murder, she stared after the car. Anger, she thought, and resentment; both of them full of it, but George at least seemed to have lost the simmering rage that had hung over him. Instead, he almost radiated a cheerful decisiveness. ‘I wonder what he’s up to,’ she frowned.

  Across the lawn Harriet spotted Bonnie Mercer fiddling with her weekend bag. She pursed her lips. ‘Grief could – and did – tip people over the edge and there’s more than enough grief and despair there,’ she thought with a sigh, remembering that Bonnie was a stranger to Linzi. ‘Was she though? I’m going cross-eyed, trying to see the truth.’ She shook her head and thought again about the seven deadly sins. Not gluttony or sloth and Bonnie came across as neither greedy nor proud and you could probably discount lust. The strongest impression she had picked up from Bonnie was one of everlasting sorrow. Would anguish that deep make you kill? And why?

  Harriet muttered impatiently to herself: ‘I think it’s George.’ She aired the theory and frowned. ‘Nobody else seems to have the right combination of opportunity, intensity and anger, so why do I have this nagging doubt? It can’t be Bonnie, can it? Because she was originally Welsh, like Linzi? That’s nonsense.’

  Tim and Seren were still talking to Sam so Harriet decided to take a last wander round the lovely garden. ‘I doubt I’ll ever come here again,’ she sighed – and froze – as a hand fell heavily on her shoulder.

  *

  Sam waved goodbye to Tim and Seren but when he looked round to boast about his subtle match-making, he saw that Harriet had been button-holed and would probably not escape in a hurry. An idea that had been nudging at him suddenly surfaced so he decided to check it out. He made himself comfortable on the bench by the dahlia border, pulled out his tablet, and typed in dates and names.

  *

  Harriet was anchored to the spot until—

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ she pulled herself together, ‘this is a farce! Nobody’s going to attack me 30 yards away from Sam and the others. She whirled round to face the woman behind her.

  ‘What the—?’ Her shoulders sagged with relief at Bonnie’s startled expression and, feeling a complete fool, she snapped: ‘What are you playing at? You nearly gave me a heart attack.’

  ‘I’m
sorry. I didn’t mean to frighten you. I didn’t want to attract anyone’s attention. I’m sorry …’ Bonnie looked dreadful, despair etched on her drawn face, her voice a mere echo of the breathy gush of a day or so earlier. ‘Have you got a minute? I have to talk to someone and I think you’re the best person.’

  ‘Not Sam?’ Harriet could have bitten her tongue.

  ‘No,’ the reply was a sad whisper.’ ‘Sam is a wonderful man but no, I can’t talk to him. I’ve been watching you all weekend and I can tell you’re used to keeping secrets.’

  ‘Secrets?’ Harriet narrowed her eyes, then looked round for a secluded spot, surprised to see Sam engrossed in something on his iPad. She took a deep breath. ‘Let’s sit here, I’m sure Eve and Hughie won’t throw us out. What can I do for you, Bonnie?’

  ‘I’ve done something terrible.’ The words were spoken so softly that Harriet had to lean in to listen. ‘I’ve done something wicked, so wicked that I’ll burn in hell.’

  ‘I don’t believe in a vengeful God.’ Harriet felt sick and her chest felt tight. It was Bonnie. She spoke quietly, feeling her way. ‘I think heaven and hell are part of the human experience, aspects of what we go through on this earth, not some fairyland with harps or somewhere black and burning. Whatever it is you’ve done, Bonnie, I think you’re in hell now, never mind the afterlife.’

  ‘I can’t agree,’ Bonnie looked puzzled at Harriet’s concept. ‘It’s beside the point anyway. I think you might understand if I tell you my story first.’