Grave Concerns

by Rebecca Tope

  ‘I wonder if I could have a look at it?’ he said.

  Again the extended finger. ‘Can you prove you’re a relative?’ she demanded.

  ‘Not really. My name’s different from hers. I could describe her. That would prove I knew her. I wouldn’t want to take the things away – just have a quick look through them, in case there’s a hint as to where she is now.’

  The huge woman eyed him closely. ‘Couldn’t you just show me?’ he cajoled.

  She melted without warning, shuffling backwards to allow him ingress. ‘Come on, then,’ she said. ‘I don’t see any harm in it. Everyone’s so suspicious these days, expecting the worst. If you turn out to be a burglar or a conman, the laugh’ll be on me won’t it. Fat lot I’ll care about it, either.’

  ‘I’m harmless, I promise,’ he laughed. ‘My name’s Peter Stafford. My grandmother was Gwen Absolon’s sister.’

  ‘Great-nephew, then,’ she remarked, giving him no time to regret the dishonesty he had just perpetrated. ‘A bit remote, isn’t it? I wouldn’t know any of my great-nephews from Father Christmas.’

  ‘How did you come to be living here?’ he asked, before he could stop himself. Her change of manner was seductive, her warm intelligence a sudden surprise that only fuelled his curiosity. ‘If it isn’t a rude question. I mean – how did you come to be looking for something like this?’

  ‘No harm in asking,’ she replied calmly. ‘It’s a sorry tale of bad planning, in essence, combined with bad luck. What happened to me could have happened to anybody, at least in theory. My husband and I bought a large house with a huge mortgage, at the wrong moment. With hindsight it’s obvious we were too old to take on such a loan. He fell ill, the value of the property plummeted. We had to sell at a massive loss, abandoning life insurance in the process. When he died, I found I’d got virtually nothing. If I’m careful and don’t live too long, the residue will see me through here. It’s surprisingly comfortable, actually. Very liberating, in a strange way. Do you know what keeps me going?’

  Drew shook his head, guessing she’d say something banal like television or stamp collecting.

  ‘The internet,’ came her astonishing reply. ‘I bought myself a computer, and made sure I rented a place with its own phone – and now I’m in touch with the whole world. There are wonderful newsgroups and special interest forums. You interrupted me, as it happened, just as I was talking to a man in Zimbabwe.’

  ‘But isn’t it very expensive?’ Drew wondered. ‘Like being on the phone all day long?’

  She smiled, her broad face oddly impish. ‘It pays for itself,’ she said. ‘I’ve always been a quick learner, and now I can create websites better than a lot of people. Never judge by appearances,’ she added tartly, noticing Drew’s expression. ‘The internet is the great leveller, in case you didn’t know.’

  ‘But it doesn’t earn enough to get you out of this—’

  ‘Hovel?’ she supplied. ‘Because I’m not stupid enough to think it’s going to last. I’ve a nice little niche at the moment, but people are quickly realising they don’t need someone like me. It gets easier all the time, and they can do it for themselves. But we’re digressing. The cupboard’s there, look. It isn’t locked. I think I’m going to leave you to it.’

  ‘I really appreciate your help,’ said Drew. ‘And it’s been very nice to meet you. I didn’t catch your name. Mrs –?’

  ‘Henrietta Fielding. Good luck finding your aunt. Personally, I think she’s probably dead.’ Before Drew could react to that, she had gone into her room, through a door halfway down the passage, and closed it firmly behind her. Why did she say that? he thought.

  In the cupboard were three Sainsbury’s carrier bags, two pairs of shoes and a small pile of loose books. One bag contained clothes, neatly folded and rammed down hard; another held papers, mostly letters, but also including brochures for Nile cruises and a reporter’s notebook. The third was heavier and more angular, the sharp corners of the contents threatening to break through the plastic. Emptying it carefully in the shadowy passage, Drew found a framed photograph; an alarm clock; a prickly tropical seashell; two pebbles; a bag of small stones with runic symbols engraved on them; a carved wooden box containing a few pieces of cheap jewellery; a sterile medical pack containing syringes, needles, dressings and swabs; and an impressive Swiss army knife. It took him a few moments of inexplicable joy before he understood that the act of unpacking the bag was powerfully reminiscent of opening his Christmas stocking as a child. Every item seemed to glow with a kind of magic. The runestones carried an atavistic thrill, the pebbles might have come from the most enchanted spots on earth. The photograph was of a teenage boy, head flopped oddly to one side and a hostile look in his eyes, despite the half smile on his lips. The unfortunate Nathan, Drew presumed.

  Amongst the papers were letters from the Inland Revenue, an old passport, confirming her identity as Gwendoline Absolon, and two folded newspaper cuttings. Both described a shooting a short distance from the Great Pyramid in Giza, near Cairo on 12th April of the previous year. A young married woman had been killed. Her name was Sarah Gliddon and she had been pregnant. She was twenty-seven, and had been the youngest member of a tour party led by an independent British guide specialising in such tours. The party in question had spent two weeks visiting the oases of Egypt, and were on the last day before flying home. The shooting had been the work of a single terrorist, suicidally foolish, given the presence of a dozen or more armed tourist police. The gunman had been killed before he could do any further damage. Mrs Gliddon had been the only casualty. The Egyptian Government claimed it as a vindication of their policy of high security, even though desperately regretting the death of the young woman. They pointed out that on the same day a tourist had fallen off a Nile cruiser and drowned, and another had suffered a fatal dose of sunstroke in Luxor. Drew snorted at this strange logic, while sympathising with the authorities plagued by such determined acts of destruction.

  There were two hand-written letters, which Drew unfolded, and read, as he sat back on his heels in the gloomy corridor. The first was from a man called Trevor.

  Luxor, 18 July.

  Adorable Gwen,

  When are you coming to see me? I’m missing you terribly. In fact, I’m planning to come to the UK in a couple of weeks’ time, so I hope I’ll see you. Will you be off on one of your jaunts, I wonder? I’ll turn up at your address, anyway, and hope for the best.

  Remember you read my runes last time you were here, even though I asked you not to? I think you put the Evil Eye on me, telling me there’d be health problems and setbacks of all kinds. I blame you entirely for what’s been happening here. You’re a witch – you know that.

  Did that bloke get off your back? Just say the word and I’ll settle his hash for you. Nobody would ever connect him with me, would they?

  I’m writing this on the deck of Sammy’s felucca – remember those long evenings we spent up here? I’m in a sentimental mood. Ignore me. I don’t know what I’m saying. There’s nobody here to talk to tonight.

  I will come and find you, lovely Gwen. Don’t go away.

  Trevor.

  If it hadn’t been for the postmark smudgily showing the date as less than a year previously, Drew would have assumed this was a letter from Gwen’s distant past. Knowing the recipient to be seventy, he read it carefully again; then with a glance over his shoulder, he slid it into his pocket. It didn’t take a detective of unusual powers to work out that here was another candidate for involvement in the woman’s death. A recent lover had to be included in the equation. And who was the mysterious ‘bloke’?

  The second letter was still in its envelope, bearing a second-class stamp, but the postmark was illegible. Inside, however, was a crisply lucid communication, dated early January of the previous year.

  Dear Mrs Absolon

  Further to our discussion last month, I would like, please, to take up your offer of a place on your next trip to Egypt. I trust that it will inclu
de at least two oases, as well as a chance to explore the Great Pyramid and other sites near Cairo. I am glad you agree with me that this arrangement has the virtue of satisfying both our needs. I look forward to receiving confirmation of dates in the near future. You can reply to the above address without any anxiety.

  Yours truly

  Sarah Gliddon (Mrs)

  The return address was in Salisbury.

  Drew held the sheet of paper in his hand for some moments. This was from the girl who’d died in the terrorist attack. Her stilted use of English, the strange references to ‘both our needs’ and ‘without any anxiety’, made him wonder if there was a hidden subtext. He tucked it into his pocket with the first one.

  He felt he was getting to know Gwen Absolon, little by little. He wished he could have met her; she sounded quite something. The bag of runestones intrigued him, and he fingered them curiously. ‘Telling the runes’ could, of course, have been a cynical little party trick, designed to break the ice in her tour groups, or to give herself an aura of mystery. The reference to them in the letter from Trevor did at least tell him that she used them, and usually carried them with her when she travelled.

  He flipped quickly through the reporter’s notebook from the second bag, noticing that it was half full of jottings: lists, mostly, with a few addresses and odd lines of description. One page contained a list of six names, amongst which was that of Sarah Gliddon, headed by the dates 31 March to 13 April. Beside Sarah Gliddon’s name, the word Free was inserted, in brackets.

  The absence of money, current passport, birth certificate, pension book, hairbrush, suggested she had taken a handbag with her when she last left the bedsit. Although the other residents might have helped themselves to cash, they would hardly have bothered with worthless personal items. Squatting back on his heels, the lino dusty beneath him, Drew slowly fingered the items again. If they were indeed the entire sum of the worldly goods of Gwen Absolon, he supposed he should be seeing it as pathetic. She was little more than a vagrant, lugging a battered assortment of worthless articles from place to place, and going virtually unmissed for months after her last disappearance. But ‘pathetic’ was not the word coming to his mind. Rather he felt an admiration not much short of awe for someone who travelled so lightly through life.

  He was getting the sense of a woman who knew where her priorities lay. A person with clear values and total self-sufficiency; a minimalism that liberated her to an extent that most people could barely dream of. She didn’t need a kitchen full of gadgets, or even a family. She was content with a series of intimate encounters which passed easily when the passion evaporated. Drew had a feeling that this Trevor was merely importunate, a nuisance because he didn’t know when to let go – though perhaps the fact that she had kept his letter contradicted this idea. Such affection as Trevor professed must have at least given her a warm moment. Had he turned up, as promised, and found her indifference so wounding that he killed her? If so, how would he, presumably a stranger to the area, have found Drew’s burial ground?

  As he pondered, Henrietta Fielding poked her head out of her room. ‘Still there?’ she said. ‘Found anything?’

  ‘Nothing to say where she might have gone,’ he admitted. ‘Just a collection of odds and ends, really.’

  ‘Can I make you a coffee? I’ve got some free time now. Sorry if I was abrupt before.’

  He got up, wincing as he straightened stiff knees. ‘Thanks very much,’ he beamed at her. ‘I could do with one.’

  The bedsit was larger than he’d expected, with a high ceiling and generous light. A stainless steel sink and new-looking cooker occupied one corner. Henrietta’s computer hummed in the diagonally opposite corner, on a good-sized oak table. A scanner and printer were ranged alongside it, with a stack of floppy disks and CDs. The bed was narrow, and Drew had a vision of her large body overflowing its sides.

  She moved economically, barely lifting her feet off the floor. She must weigh over twenty stone thought Drew. He wondered what it was like, carrying such weight around all the time, never escaping it, getting stuck in narrow theatre seats, glared at on trains, giggled at in the street. Her arms were huge, her neck invisible. Her heart must be quite an impressive engine, he mused, to keep such a monumental body functioning, day in, day out.

  ‘You said you thought she must be … dead,’ he said, trying to sound wary and nervous. Normal people could barely utter the word, and Drew was doing his best to come over as a normal person.

  ‘Well, it stands to reason,’ she said calmly. ‘Women of her age don’t go missing the way she did. They don’t run off with lovers or have bizarre midlife crises.’

  ‘She never acted like an old woman, though.’

  ‘But she must have been well over sixty, although she was very well preserved. Straight back, lovely head of hair. We never found any pills or potions anywhere, so I assume she was in perfect health. It’s funny, isn’t it – trying to guess at people’s lives. Especially when there’s so little to go on.’

  ‘I hardly remember what she looked like,’ Drew ventured. ‘She hadn’t gone white, then?’

  Henrietta Fielding shook her head, her own pate only lightly sprinkled with silvery strands. ‘Not white,’ she demurred. ‘A lovely strong iron-grey. Long and thick. I admit I envied her that hair.’

  Drew pulled a wry face. ‘I do remember she always had it long, but apart from that, I can’t really say—’

  The woman made no attempt to finish his sentence for him, but watched him with an intelligent curiosity. Drew had an uncomfortable feeling that she was reading his thoughts. He struggled to keep the conversation going, and finally offered, ‘I know she travelled a lot.’

  ‘Indeed she did,’ came the ready response. ‘She was away for a month or so last winter and she told me she’d been overseas for much of the previous year. I saw her off on her spring trip, as it happens. She seems to have travelled very light. Didn’t bring much back with her, either.’

  ‘So – you last saw her during last summer? You say the landlady got worried in September? Would you be able to put a date on the last time you actually did see her?’

  ‘Oh, my word. That’s a tall order. I’d have to think about that one.’ She put a hand over her mouth, and stared hard at a point high on one wall for some moments. ‘I have no recollection of any particular encounter,’ she said at last. ‘Wendy just wasn’t there one day. I’m only guessing, but it must have been late July. The schools had broken up. You might have noticed there’s a big comprehensive just over the road.’ Drew shook his head sheepishly. ‘Well, there is, and they’re very noisy at break times. I think I do remember saying something to Wendy about the blessed peace of school holidays.’ Her face brightened. ‘And I asked her if she had any more travel plans in the offing. She said there was nothing definite, but she certainly wasn’t intending to spend the winter in England. Oh – I remember. I went away myself for a long weekend – early in August. Wendy wasn’t here when I came back.’

  ‘Do you remember the dates?’

  ‘Let’s see. I went to stay with my old schoolchum, Grace. It was her birthday – the 9th – while I was there. Something like the 7th to the 10th, I would imagine.’

  Drew frowned. ‘It all sounds very worrying,’ he said, trying to assume the role of long-lost nephew. ‘Don’t you think so?’

  ‘I did worry a little, I must admit,’ she said. ‘I even toyed with the idea of reporting her missing to the police. But you know how it is. People come and go. If you live in a place like this, you expect a degree of transience. And Wendy travelled so light, and seemed to have so few ties, I persuaded myself that she’d just gone off on a whim.’

  ‘How long did she actually rent the room?’

  ‘Oh, years,’ came the surprising reply. ‘She arrived a few months after I did.’

  Drew tried to think. ‘You said you thought she was probably dead,’ he reminded her.

  ‘Yes. When she didn’t come back for her bags by Nov
ember or December, it seemed likely that she’d been in an accident or taken ill. Or something like that,’ she ended, with an imprecision that jarred on Drew’s ear.

  He eyed her sternly. ‘In that case, you certainly ought to have reported it to the police. What if she’s been lying in a hospital all these months, and nobody knows who she is? She could have had a stroke, or lost her memory in some way. And if she is – well – dead, there must be an unidentified body somewhere.’ He pulled himself up short, sensing thin ice.

  Henrietta Fielding’s eyes twinkled incongruously. ‘It never occurred to me that I might be the person responsible for her,’ she said calmly. ‘I took it for granted that she had other friends and relatives who would alert the authorities if they were concerned.’

  ‘But they obviously didn’t,’ Drew responded. ‘Otherwise you’d have had the police here, examining her things.’

  ‘Whereas all I’ve got is you,’ she smiled.

  Drew felt he’d reached an impasse. He’d also let his assumed persona slip, losing sight of his role as worried relative. He sipped his drink, playing for time and hoping Mrs Fielding hadn’t noticed his lapse. The coffee was good, and the biscuits with it were far from Sainsbury’s cheapest. Henrietta might be in reduced circumstances, but she wasn’t living like a poor person. She drank her own coffee without speaking, apparently quite content to let the silence continue.

  ‘Well, thank you very much,’ Drew said at last. He could think of nothing more to ask her, apart from a blurted ‘Did you murder her? Had she upset you in some way?’ – thoughts he clearly couldn’t voice. The full extent of the undiscoverable background facts depressed him. ‘You’ve been very helpful.’

  ‘I don’t think you’ll find her,’ she said gently. ‘It’s been too long, and she’s evidently left too few clues. I hope you weren’t due for a big inheritance from her?’