The Hissing of the Silent Lonely Room (The Christy Kennedy Mysteries Book 5)

by Paul Charles

  Chapter 15

  Wednesday Week

  Wednesday 13th June

  I’VE JUST been downstairs for another of my ever-growing number of late-night treats with Higgy. I leave my door open and he leaves his door open, so I can hear if anything is wrong with Jens or Holmer, and we have a right royal charge at his bottle of sherry. I have to admit to feeling quite squiffy right now, so this will probably read like a bunch of sparrows have dipped their feet in ink and run riot over my page. And to think, I used to think he was a right old miserable bastard!

  He was very cold and snotty with me at the beginning, and if he did talk I couldn’t understand a single word he was saying, thanks to his thick Scottish accent. Actually he doesn’t talk, he shouts. He shouts because he’s going deaf and his hearing aid doesn’t work properly. He claims it never did work properly, not since the day he got it. I tell him to take it back and get it fixed or else get a new one, and he tells me it’s on the National Health and they might not take it back. He then proceeds to tell me how Thatcher ruined Bevan’s dream. I didn’t quite realise what he meant at first. Here was I thinking he’d a pervy friend called Bevan who was forever having an erotic dream about Thatcher but that she’d always ruin it – or something along those lines.

  Anyway, it turns out he was pissed off with me when I first moved in because he thought he was on a promise for my apartment. He claims the landlord told him he could have it when the old tenant moved out. He wanted the extra space for when his grandchild came to stay during their holidays. Apparently it’s not really his grandchild: it’s the child of this woman he’s been having an affair with for about twenty years. She’s a teacher and only comes with her child in the school holidays. She’s a lot younger than him. God, she must have been a child when they first got together. Anyway, when the landlord showed me the flat he asked me if I’d like to see the one downstairs because that was the one he preferred I took. I told him it was too small and the discussion ended there. So, it took some time for Higgy to forgive me. I don’t think he’ll ever forgive the landlord.

  Higgy is quite strange in his own way. A few times I’ve opened my front door and he’s just been standing there, doing nothing. Said I’d taken him by surprise and that he was just about to knock on my door. Every time I think about it, it gives me the creeps. But then he invites me to his flat for a sherry and I forget all about that because it’s company, and at the end of the day I need someone to talk to. You do, don’t you?

  Higgy’s great, he just lets me rabbit on and on. Maybe he turns off his hearing aid completely and joins Bevan and Thatcher in the dream. I hope he’s not imagining me in it. That would be too weird, wouldn’t it? But he’s got that look in his eyes. I thought old men couldn’t do it any more. But he certainly can, I can tell. When his teacher comes over, they go at it hammer and tongs. Hammer and tongs!!!?? – I’ve been in England too long. How can you go at it hammer and tongs? I’ve seen an English hammer and tongs and I can’t for the life of me see how they could go at it like that. They just don’t fit. Obviously Higgy does – fit that is – because I keep thinking he’s going to wake up the entire neighbourhood with all his grunts and groans. Mind you, that’s only ever on her first night. They’re as quiet as church mice after that. There I go again: church mice! Why would they be quieter than ordinary mice?

  Do you think a racket could be red? I love the idea of a red racket. I love red. I love the deep red of poppies, all that blood in those poor dainty little flowers. I dream a lot about poppies. Why? I told Higgy tonight about my poppy dreams. He seemed to pick up at that. You know the way people break temporarily out of their zombie-like state while watching television once the news comes on. They’ll pick up for a bit and then when the headlines are over, they’ll nod off again.

  Anyway, he asked me what I thought my poppy dreams meant? Blood. Must have something to do with blood, he said. But I hate blood, I told him. I love poppies!

  He then mumbled in his heavy accent again about Americans and football and cricket. He lost me to be honest, probably because I was quite squiffy. Now there’s a good English word. It describes the state perfectly. Anyway, so I thought I’d come up here, write and dream a bit more. Hopefully my dreams will be of poppies, fields of poppies, not Thatcher, not Bevan and not Higgy. Certainly not Higgy.

  *

  Irvine was as keen as Kennedy to get the investigation into gear. Like Kennedy he was convinced that Esther Bluewood hadn’t committed suicide. Which meant, of course, that someone must have killed her. The more they stood around debating, ‘did she or didn’t she take her own life?’, the most time the killer had to cover up his – or her – tracks.

  Esther Bluewood’s downstairs neighbour, Edward Higgins, was a fifty-six-year-old Scot who’d been living in London for just over thirty years. His hearing had been seriously impaired after a childhood accident. Apparently, in his early teens, his brother had leaned a shotgun on his shoulder ‘to get a steadier shot’, and the repeat of the gun had done irreparable damage. He just about managed to decipher Irvine and Allaway’s questions, thanks to his archaic hearing aid. He’d checked himself out of the Royal Free Hospital that morning, against the doctor’s wishes. Higgins claimed he’d recoup better in his own home. There was a lot to be said for that. Generally people do recover better in their own homes, but Higgins had no family to tend to him.

  He was still feeling queasy when the police came calling. He brought them into his small living room, where he returned immediately to the comfort and safety of a bed he’d made up for himself on the sofa, pulling it closer to a cosy fire.

  The room was bright and the walls uncluttered. It was sparsely furnished with a sofa, one armchair and a small coffee table. A television set and an old valve radio sat precariously on a wickerwork basket, which had been adapted for use as a shelving unit. This haphazard arrangement was propped up in the centre by a four-by-two plank and every available inch of space covered with copies of the Standard, The Telegraph, and the “Culture” section of the Sunday Times. No books or records, no CDs or cassettes, no paintings or pictures, not even a photograph. A room to watch the telly in and, by the stains evident on the coffee table, Edward Higgins had had his fair share of telly dinners in front of the flickering screen.

  Allaway, glowing from his recent promotion, was being caring and considerate. Did Higgins need anything? He didn’t. He couldn’t keep anything down, he claimed. ‘Just water,’ Higgins added as he patted the bottle of Ballygowan beside the sofa.

  Irvine thought Higgins looked impatient for them to begin, recalling that, while under the weather, he too preferred only his own company.

  Higgins continued, ‘It’s a terrible shame about Miss Bluewood, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes. Yes, indeed it is,’ Irvine replied.

  ‘When was the last time you saw her?’ Allaway asked.

  ‘Sorry lad? You’re going to have to speak up a bit,’ Higgins replied.

  ‘I said, when was the last time you saw her?’

  ‘Yes, there’s no need to shout. I can hear you clearly now. I saw her at the window on Sunday afternoon. She had that faraway look in her eyes. Do you know what I mean?’ Higgins said to a red-faced Allaway.

  ‘Yes,’ Irvine replied, ‘I think I do. You didn’t actually speak to her on Sunday, then?’

  ‘No. I’m not sure she even noticed me, to be honest. We had a wee sherry together on Friday evening. We’d do that now and again. I have to admit, at the beginning, when she moved in, I was a bit standoffish. Well, I mean, she’d nicked my flat, really, hadn’t she? Aye, she had. Our trusted landlord had promised me that when the previous tenants moved out I could have their flat. It’s bigger you see, bigger than this one. That’s why I’ve never done much in here. I’d always been planning to move into the bigger place. The problem is, I’ve been planning for going on nine years now, and I’m still here. Anyway, I heard the old couple were moving out. Nice people, in their sixties, very quiet. Kept themselves to
themselves. The O’Sullivans, yes, that’s it, the O’Sullivans. They were moving back to Wexford. His father had died. Ninety-three he was. That’s great, isn’t it. Ninety-three and apparently sharp as a needle the day he died. Aye, anyway, they told me they were expecting to get the house and it had always been their dream to move back. So I went to see the landlord and he said fine, no problem, as I’d always paid my rent on time, I could have it. But then in the middle of it all, Esther had her own opinion. I think he wanted her to take my place but she felt it was too small. Esther was quite persuasive, you know, in a very quiet way, and before I had any say in the matter she had moved in upstairs.’

  ‘So you weren’t exactly friends at the beginning?’ Irvine smiled, sympathetically.

  ‘Well, no, not really to be honest. Then I realised it wasn’t exactly her fault. She was looking after her own. Holmer was only a baby then.’

  ‘Was Paul Yeats not around?’ Irvine asked.

  ‘No,’ Higgins stated firmly. ‘She moved in by herself. Yeats was on a tour of America. I didn’t even see him until about three months later. Then he’d be back for a time and then he’d be off again. In the middle of all of this she became pregnant with Jens, and I think she was worried about being by herself. So, I mean she’d always been polite and friendly to me, but she seemed to start to make an effort to get through to me. As I said, I realised it hadn’t been her fault. I’d been stiffed by the landlord. So what’s new, eh? Anyway I suppose eventually we warmed to each other.’

  ‘That would make Friday the last time you spoke to her?’ Allaway asked, somewhat more at ease now that his blushing had subsided.

  ‘Yes, Friday evening. Quite late it was, maybe eleven o’clock. Yes, I think it was about eleven o’clock because it was during the last part of The Late Late Show, you know, with that guy who thinks he’s as good as Gaye Byrne, but he’s not. It’s on RTE but is broadcast here on cable. And I remember, sometime later, hearing the end music as we were still chatting.’

  ‘How did she seem to you?’ Irvine asked.

  ‘Well, you have to realise that Esther was never as jolly as Mrs Merton, if you know what I mean.’ Higgins replied, seemingly proud of his comparison.

  ‘Yes, she’s a bit of a hoot isn’t she, old Mrs Merton,’ Irvine responded, wondering whether all of Higgins’ reference points were going to come from television-land.

  ‘But she said she was happy. She was a songwriter, you know, so she could be a bit up and down. She’d apparently just finished work on some new songs, which she was very happy about. Aye, she was very proud of her new songs,’ said Higgins, staring off into space, as if trying to recall the scene.

  ‘I could never quite work that one out,’ he continued. ‘I’d see her after she’d just written a new song and she’d be buzzing, walking on air. Then, other times she’d be very down. Like when the songwriting wasn’t working out. I’d remind her about other songs she’d mentioned to me that she was so proud of, hoping she’d allow herself to take some solace from them, but she was a bit like a fisherman in that respect – once the fish are in the nets it’s the next catch that’s the important thing.’

  ‘I see what you’re saying,’ Irvine replied, wondering whether songwriters were also like fishermen in that the ones that got away were always the biggest ever, ‘but would you say her mood was dark?’

  ‘Nah, not at all,’ Higgins grunted. ‘She was like the rest of us. Well, not really like all the rest of us. To all intents and purposes she was a single parent. Yeats was off being intellectual somewhere or other. That was his bag. He liked to project the image of a college professor. Have you met him, yet?’ Irvine and Allaway shook their heads. ‘You’ll see what I mean when you do. He even dresses like a professor. He’s got this permanent pose. Even when the kids are weeing, he’ll be standing close by, very pensively, arms folded, one hand supporting his chin, studying the action intensely as if the meaning of life was going to emerge instead of some smelly urine.’

  Irvine was starting to view his fellow countryman somewhat differently. The older man was dressed well in grey flannel trousers, a check shirt, blue (possibly old school) tie, and a royal blue V-neck sleeveless pullover. He had the classic pregnant male look – small frame with a protruding beer belly. Irvine was always amused at how men like Higgins never seemed to add weight anywhere else apart from on their stomach. Perhaps it came from too much drink and not enough food. Mind you, Irvine thought, if it was a beer belly, Higgins’ skin was remarkably clear for a drinker. He had a good head of brown hair, cut army style; short back and sides with a sharp parting. His eyes were blue and uninteresting, but it was his eye for character which Irvine found intriguing. His impression and description of Paul Yeats had been spot on.

  ‘Was it usual for you and Esther to go a weekend without seeing each other?’ Allaway enquired.

  Higgins battered his museum hearing aid and cocked his ear in Allaway’s direction.

  ‘I said…’ Allaway repeated uninvited.

  Higgins banged again, then jumped with apparent shock. ‘Aye that’s it. It’s back again. Sorry, what were you saying?’

  Allaway smiled, unflustered. Promotion will do that for you, Irvine guessed; put you above things that would normally niggle.

  ‘I was wondering, were there many weekends when you wouldn’t see each other?’ Allaway asked through his smile.

  ‘Oh, yeah. Quite a lot. Most weekends she would take Jens and Holmer over to Islington and base herself there. Occasionally she might come back by herself to do some entertaining,’ Higgins replied. He appeared to be discreet to a fault and didn’t embellish or pepper his information.

  ‘Do you know who it was she entertained?’ Irvine asked, quickly picking up the point.

  ‘Oh, a few friends,’ Higgins replied simply.

  ‘Male friends?’ Irvine pushed.

  ‘Well, yes, why wouldn’t she? Yeats was shacked up in their cottage with his piece. Esther…ah, Miss Bluewood I mean, she was young. She was beautiful. She was very beautiful. She could be good fun and let her hair down when she wanted to.’

  ‘Would you recognise any of these “friends”?’ Irvine asked.

  ‘Oh, come on. Really.’ Higgins roared with laughter. ‘Do you see me as being one of those old biddies who sit staring out from behind the curtain, watching all who come and go? It was none of my business.’

  Irvine decided to change tack. ‘What about Esther’s health?’

  ‘She was fine the last time I saw her. She seemed to catch an awful lot of colds and doses of the flu, but then again lots of our American visitors do. This wet weather, you know?’

  ‘Aye, you’re not wrong there,’ Irvine replied. He paused now seeing how uncomfortable Higgins was becoming. ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘To tell you the truth I’m feeling a bit queasy again,’ Higgins replied with great effort.

  ‘Just a few more questions and then we’ll leave you in peace. We’ll make them quick,’ Irvine promised.

  ‘Thanks,’ was Higgins’ simple reply.

  ‘On Sunday night last, did you notice anything suspicious?’ Irvine asked.

  ‘No, with my hearing I tend to have to turn the telly up a bit. I had an early tea myself and settled down here about seven o’clock for a night with the television. Sunday night’s not as good as it used to be, but I’ve got cable and there’s always something to watch.’

  ‘So you didn’t hear anything upstairs?’

  ‘Sorry, son?’ Higgins replied, dismissing Allaway’s rank and recent promotion with one word.

  ‘What about front doors opening and closing?’ Allaway continued, wings now slightly clipped.

  ‘Sorry, nothing but the television. I’d love to help, I really would. If someone else has hurt Esther, I’d like to help you find them.’

  ‘Someone else?’ Irvine asked, immediately picking up on what the man had just said. ‘You just said, “If someone else has hurt Esther.” What did you mean? Someone other than whom?�
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  ‘Than herself. I meant anyone other than herself,’ Higgins replied, annoyed at having his word questioned. Or maybe he knew something he wasn’t passing on. Irvine couldn’t work out which it was.

  ‘So you think she killed herself?’ Irvine asked.

  ‘Well, that’s what they’re all saying,’ Higgins replied, looking out the window in the direction of the crowd of diligent fans who were keeping vigil outside.

  ‘Do you believe that’s what really happened?’ Allaway asked.

  ‘I find it very hard to believe that she’d take her own life, with the kids and all. But you never really know about folks do you? You think you know them. You see them every day and you discuss the price of fish one day and the state of the universe the next, but you never really know what’s going on in their heads. My uncle’s wife committed suicide when I was growing up and I remember all the family being in total shock because no one had expected it. In those days it was a big disgrace to have someone in your family do that, you know, take their own life. It was as if there was something wrong with the family. But with Esther, are you now saying that she didn’t commit suicide? It’s just that, Judy, you know, the nanny, she said Esther put her head in the oven and gassed herself. Is that not what happened?’ Higgins asked, looking intrigued.

  ‘Well, that’s why we’re continuing our investigations, Mr Higgins, to try to ascertain exactly what did happen,’ Irvine said, rising to his feet. Allaway followed suit. ‘If you think of anything, anything at all, just give is a call at North Bridge House,’ Irvine said, scribbling the number on a piece of paper. ‘You might not think it’s relevant, but no matter how trivial you think it is, please give us a shout, won’t you?’

  ‘Yes. Oh yes, of course,’ Higgins replied, seeming evangelised, testifying to his maker, or just happy that they were finishing their questions.

  ‘We’ll leave you in peace,’ Irvine nodded, and he and Allaway let themselves out of the house and made their way through the growing, but orderly, crowd outside.