A Species of Revenge

by Marjorie Eccles

  ‘It’s locked.’

  She whipped round. A man stood in the doorway. Mr Fitzallan, I presume. She had a feeling he’d been standing there for some time, and she was distinctly put out to know that guilty colour had flown to her cheeks, to hear herself stumbling apologies like an adolescent schoolgirl. He had, after all, given his permission for the flat to be inspected. If not by her.

  ‘I – didn’t hear you coming up the stairs.’

  He inclined his head, not deigning to reply to this fatuously obvious statement. Mrs Burgoyne’s warning had conjured up an elderly fusspot, a cantankerous, intolerant person. Looking at him, she saw no reason to change her opinion, except in regard to age. In his mid-forties, maybe, over six foot, wide-shouldered with tousled dark hair, wearing a beautiful slate-blue silk shirt and an unstructured suit in cream linen, polished loafers. Casually cool and elegant in a loose-limbed way, making her aware of every crease and crumple collected on the hot, sweaty journey here.

  Boardroom and top management, every inch of him – and living here?

  Sarah looked into a face as dark as the thunderheads piling up outside, saw a square jaw, a strong nose, felt a sense of harsh purpose. Their eyes met and held, hers wide and brown, his a brilliant and unexpected grey under lowering brows. For an instant, she thought she saw a hint of trouble behind them, in the lines of pain drawn down towards the mouth, but quickly decided it was simply general disagreeableness.

  ‘I’m sorry, I don’t usually trespass without invitation,’ she admitted, his lack of response to her warm smile transferring itself to her and making her unusually stilted. ‘I was curious about that big window ... Mrs Burgoyne says you can see the Rotunda from it. I saw it from the garden, the window, I mean.’

  He stood aside for her to pass. ‘It’s hard to miss, Mrs Voss.’ He didn’t offer to show her the view.

  ‘Good heavens, I’m not Mrs Voss! I’m just living with Dermot for the time being.’ Realizing what she’d said, Sarah laughed and an explanation was on the tip of her tongue when the expression of either acute disinterest or disapproval, the one raised eyebrow, brought her to a halt. Her smiled died. No sense of humour, either. A spark of antagonism cracked across the space between them.

  ‘I’m very sorry,’ she repeated, and turned to go. There was nothing for it other than that, a dignified exit and as graceful an apology as she could muster. He made no attempt to detain her, and she escaped.

  And hoped, as she fled down the stairs, that his elegant silk tie might choke him on a sweltering day like this, and thought the other tenants were certainly going to be interesting to meet, if this was Mrs Burgoyne’s idea of ‘the right sort of person’.

  She’d just filled the kettle ready to make tea the moment Dermot got back – the girls would love a picnic out in the garden, sandwiches and Granny’s jam tarts, never mind the wasps or the possibility of thunderstorms – when there was a knock on the back door. The woman who stood there was plump and pleasant, in her early forties, her hair done in a top-heavy mop of curls over her forehead, otherwise shorn into a short back and sides, like a man’s. She introduced herself as Doreen Bailey.

  ‘Oh, do come in and sit down; Mrs Burgoyne mentioned your name.’ Not intending to make the same mistake twice, Sarah this time made it clear who she was.

  Mrs Bailey smiled and settled her ample figure with the ease of familiarity on to the ugly fifties vinyl-covered banquette seat which someone had once mistakenly fitted in a half-hearted attempt to modernize the kitchen. Sarah rummaged in the picnic basket. ‘I’m just about to make some tea, if I can sort some cups out. Hope you don’t mind plastic.’

  ‘Better than Mrs B’s cast-offs, I’ll bet. She said she’d leave one or two mugs and plates for you to use while your stuff was being unpacked, but I should use your own – anything she hasn’t taken, it won’t be worth much, I can tell you. She’d cut a currant in two, that one.’ She laughed and got up to open a cupboard next to the sink, sniffing. ‘As I thought! Chipped, and cracked, what cheek! Only fit for the dustbin. She tell you I’d be willing to come and help out with the cleaning a couple of mornings a week?’ she continued, without pause. ‘I work afternoons at the checkout down at Safeway’s, but I’ve come to Edwina Lodge twice a week, mornings, getting on for twelve years. I’d be willing to carry on, if that’s all right with you.’

  Sarah said, perhaps unwisely on such short acquaintance, but she’d taken one of her immediate likings to Mrs Bailey, ‘I’m sure Dermot would be delighted if you could manage it.’

  Mrs Bailey gave a satisfied nod and, having drawn breath, went on, ‘I do for Miss Kendrick and her brother as well – they live at Simla, next house along. Makes a change from the supermarket – I feel like a battery hen there, sometimes, and the housework gives me a bit of exercise, besides helping with the mortgage. I was determined we should go for one of the houses in the Close when they went up, but it’s a struggle, sometimes.’

  Sarah assumed she was referring to the cul-de-sac of newish houses which lay between this house and the next one in Albert Road, the one she’d called Simla. ‘Ellington Close, you mean? That’s convenient.’

  ‘That’s right. They pulled a big old house down and built our houses on the site. Heath Mount, the house was called the Kendricks had lived there all their lives, their great-grandfather or some such built it, but you know what it’s like trying to keep places like that going. They sold it in the end and moved into Simla. Bit of a comedown for them, but I shouldn’t waste your breath feeling sorry for them, they couldn’t have done so bad out of the deal, my Bob says, and he’s in the building trade, painter and decorator, so he should know. Two sugars, m’duck, I know I shouldn’t but I use a lot of energy.’

  ‘What are they like?’ asked Sarah, grabbing the opportunity to speak as Mrs Bailey paused to take possession of her tea.

  ‘The Kendricks? All right. Bit on the snooty side. Clever, highbrow, you know. College types – Cambridge, I think it was. He writes books. And of course there’s Mrs Loxley, the other sister.’

  ‘What sort of books does he write?’

  Mrs Bailey was vague. ‘About art, and that sort of stuff. His study’s full of pictures, not that I’m allowed in there, except to take him his coffee when his sister’s not there. She teaches maths at the Princess Mary – the girls are all terrified of her, but they respect her, if you know what I mean. She’s strict, but fair – got my niece through her maths GCSEs, and that’s saying something! Patti’s a lovely girl, and bright with it, but not when it comes to figures.’

  Doreen Bailey’s flow of chat was interrupted by the arrival of Dermot, Lucy hanging on his arm, Allie a step behind. ‘Do I smell tea?’ he demanded, smiling engagingly at the older woman who, in turn, was gazing admiringly at the handsome man with the tanned skin and the smiling blue eyes that exactly matched his open-necked shirt.

  Damn, thought Sarah, who’d sensed a rich vein of information waiting to be tapped in Mrs Bailey, now I shall have to wait to find out more about the tenants – though the obnoxious Mr Fitzallan could go and jump in the lake for all the interest she had in him.

  2

  St Nicholas’s church, Lavenstock, was tolling its single melancholy note for eight o’clock communion as Harry Nevitt arrived at his council-owned allotment the next morning. The thunderstorms of the previous day had cleared the air, and it was a little cooler, though there was promise of returning heat later on. Meanwhile, the morning sparkled. Everything appeared clean and new-washed. Ruby beetroot leaves gleamed, celery stood erect and waved its bright green fronds, cabbages were diamond-studded. The earth was warm and damp and Harry was anxious to get cracking with the hoe, put paid to the weeds that would have come out in full marching order.

  He considered himself lucky that his allotment was in one of the prime positions, in a coveted spot which not only had the best of the sun but also allowed him to park his car nearby, since it ran alongside the narrow dirt road that cut through the middle of the
site. He’d worked it for twenty-odd years, getting the soil into good heart and growing prize-winning onions and chrysanthemums, and now he was retired, and a widower, he happily spent most of his day here. He lacked nothing: tea-making facilities and a radio, his daily paper and a deck chair in the little green hut where he kept his tools and his garden supplies. Even a much-disparaged mobile phone which his daughter insisted on him carrying around. Today, he’d also brought writing materials; he was working on yet another petition to the council to do something about repairing the road behind his allotment.

  The state of it after the heavy rain proved his point. He’d had to park his car as near as he could get, which wasn’t near enough. Swearing at the potholes in the surface, and because the half-hundredweight polythene bag of fertilizer he’d picked up at the allotment store – where they bought in bulk for economy – was slippery and awkward, and heavy for a seventy-four-year-old, he made his way clumsily towards the hut. He wasn’t as nippy on his pins as he had been, and it was a wonder he didn’t trip over the prone form and join it where it lay right across his path.

  "Ere,’ said Harry. ‘What d’you think you’re playing at?’

  He wasn’t an imaginative man, but it didn’t take him long to realize this wasn’t just a drunk still sleeping it off after a Saturday-night binge, nor was it a tramp, that the man was lying with his head in one of the rain-filled potholes and certainly wasn’t going to stand up and apologize for getting in Harry’s way. He looked pretty dead to Harry, and he’d seen a few corpses during his war service, but he put down his fertilizer sack and tentatively took hold of the outflung wrist. Then he picked up the bag again and carefully deposited it in his hut before getting out the despised phone and punching in 999.

  The church bell stopped tolling just as the Town Hall clock began to strike eight.

  ‘Dead for roughly twelve hours, probably less, that’s as near as I can tell you at the moment. And that,’ pronounced the pathologist, pointing to the shallow puddle of clay-coloured water, ‘is almost certainly what killed him.’

  The body had already been photographed in situ, and the video cameramen and the SOCO team were now busy on the surrounding area. The police surgeon, automatically summoned to what was an unexplained death and having done his duty of pronouncing an obviously dead body officially dead, but seeing grounds for suspicion, had given his opinion that his eminent colleague, the Home Office pathologist, Professor Timpson-Ludgate, who fortunately lived in the area, should be called in. He was now working on the body, speaking into a small tape recorder hung around his neck as he worked, a photographer in attendance to take close-ups at his instructions.

  Familiarly known throughout the police as T-L, the pathologist glanced up at the detective inspector from his kneeling position, his bulk obscuring the body. ‘He’s been roughed up more than a bit, but I can tell you he died from drowning, unless I’m very much mistaken.’

  Abigail Moon nodded. She knew it was perfectly possible to drown in two inches of water. ‘Drunk?’

  ‘No smell of drink on him, no vomit. Tell you better when I’ve opened him up.’ He lifted the recorder from round his neck. ‘He’s all yours, meanwhile, and the best of British. Not a pretty sight, I’m afraid.’

  The professor was a big, jovial man of Falstaffian appearance, a bit of a throwback, Abigail thought him, quite aware that under the nod to equality he privately thought feminism had gone too far, still had quaint, old-fashioned notions that women should be at home having babies and looking after their menfolk, rather than doing hard, difficult and often distasteful jobs. He gave her a quizzical glance as he spoke but he should have known her well enough by now to know that she wasn’t about to have the vapours at the sight of a dead body. Not even ones much more horrible than this was likely to be. It didn’t mean she didn’t mind. Only that she’d trained herself to look, without actually looking. She’d already seen this one, anyway, when she’d first arrived at the scene.

  ‘He’d been fighting, you say?’

  ‘Well, these aren’t love bites he’s got. There’s bruising to the jaw and cheekbone, a cut lip and a black eye, consistent with the sort of injuries you might expect from fighting, though they’re superficial, and if he hit back there’s no bruising or broken skin on his knuckles to show it.’

  The morning was warming up by the minute. Abigail pushed her heavy bronze hair behind her ears and frowned. ‘If he didn’t fall down drunk, how did he drown? Running away from a fight, fell, knocked himself unconscious? He must have been unconscious or he’d have rolled away.’

  The pathologist peeled off his gloves and levered himself to his feet, not without difficulty. He was carrying more weight than he should and knew it, but like most doctors, he didn’t always follow his own advice. ‘But there’s this, too, which is what interests me more than anything.’ Saving the best for last, he turned the body slightly and indicated a nasty-looking wound on the back of the head. ‘I’ll reserve judgement until I can take a closer look at him, but off the record, there’s not much doubt it would at least be the cause of him losing consciousness.’

  ‘So some other person was definitely involved, then?’

  ‘Since the wound’s on the back of the head, yes. Unless, of course, he fell, then rolled over before he lost consciousness. Remote, but possible. And in the absence of anything obvious he could have fallen against...’ He shrugged his big shoulders. ‘No point in speculating. The PM will resolve which it was, fall or a blow. In the meantime, it looks as though we’re into your department, Inspector. Find me a rock or something similar, that fits the injury, preferably one with blood and hairs on it.’

  ‘Could the same fall – supposing he did fall – account for his other injuries?’

  ‘Not a chance. Take it from me, he’d been in some sort of rough-house. I’ll do the PM as soon as possible, since I know you’re impatient for a result. Not today – maybe tomorrow.’ He made it sound like a favour. ‘No one would think it, but we are allowed to have social commitments,’ he added, squinting with disfavour down at his ruined, light-coloured trousers.

  You and who else? thought Abigail, seeing her own day disappearing, fast, down the drain.

  ‘I’m snowed under with bodies just now,’ the professor saw fit to add, explaining with a lugubrious smile, ‘Why they all seem to come at once, I don’t know, you tell me, but they’re dying like flies at the moment. Must be something in the water.’

  ‘I’ll take care to stick to the bottled sort,’ Abigail said as he finally departed, picking his way back between the puddles to where he’d left his distinctive vintage Rover. Water might be all she’d get the chance of that day. She was officially off duty and had planned a grand slam on the domestic chores, the afternoon working in her garden, and a deliciously relaxed evening with Ben Appleyard, intending to astonish him with the virtuosity of her cooking and a bottle of wine. Alas! As a newspaperman, editor of the local newspaper, he understood and forgave these sort of emergencies better than most men would, but even his apparently inexhaustible patience must have its limits. This wasn’t the place to examine what those limits were, however. She gave the SOCOs the nod that it was their turn with the body. Cameras began flashing again and ex-Sergeant Dexter came forward and began his task with his usual thoroughness and practicality. The Scenes-of-Crime department had recently been civilianized, but Dexter had liked his job so much he had quit the Force in order to carry on. She was glad he was the one to be assigned to this case; he was moody, sometimes, could be taciturn if he was that way inclined, but he was knowledgeable, unflappable and meticulous to a degree. If Dave Dexter didn’t find evidence, it usually wasn’t there.

  While he was occupied with searching for anything foreign to the scene, collecting trace evidence – hairs, fibres and dust samples from the victim’s clothing in addition to those already taken from the surrounding area – bottling water samples from the puddle, she used the time to talk to the elderly man who’d found the body. He was
sitting on an upended bale of peat inside his hut, a tall, thin man, smoking, drinking a mug of tea and looking blankly out over the neat rows of vegetables, the serried ranks of dahlias and chrysanthemums for cutting. If he was shaken, he wasn’t showing it. All the same, the sort of discovery he’d made was a facer for anyone and he wasn’t young any more. She went carefully with him.

  ‘We’re going to need an official statement from you, Mr Nevitt. I’ve a car coming to take you down to the station, but to give me something to be going on with, perhaps you could just tell me now how you found him – that is, if you feel up to it?’

  He took another drag on his cigarette and assured her he was all right but there wasn’t much more he could say, other than that he’d all but fallen over the body when he arrived at the allotment first thing. ‘What I can tell you is, he wasn’t there at half past eight last night. That were a heavy old thunderstorm we had around tea-time and I come down here, after, to see whether my chrysanths was still standing. What with one thing and another, I was here best part of an hour.’

  ‘This road – is it used a lot? By people other than the allotment-holders, I mean?’

  ‘It’s a short cut through from Colley Street to the Leasowes.’ He pronounced it ‘Lezzers’ in the time-honoured local way. ‘That and the path at the back. We get a fair number of them joggers coming through, and kids on bikes and that, but the road’s too bad for folks as don’t have to, to risk their car suspensions. We’ve complained and complained to the council about it – what’s the use of having a road if we can’t use it? – but you might as well save your puff. They reckon there’s no money for it, these days.’