“Not necessary,” I said. “You’ve been wonderful. But could I ask you to look up when Oliver Swantry died?”
This took a bit longer. There was no record of his death. I was confused. This would make him well over a hundred years old now. Guinness Book of Records stuff.
Ursula Carling was outside the shop waiting for me to open up. She was whacking a folded newspaper against the side of her fawn pleated skirt and making little angry noises. She caught sight of me and hurried in.
“So this is what you’re doing instead of getting on with my case,” she snapped. “Chasing around the pier half the night after thieves. I hope it wasn’t in my time. I’m not getting it on my bill.”
Another short fuse.
“Of course not,” I said smoothly. “You’d better come inside, Mrs. Carling. I’ve got a lot to tell you. Not exactly about your case but in many ways, it’s relevant.”
I took the woman through to my inner sanctum. “Let’s have some decent coffee. They serve hot mud at the factory.”
“Factory?”
“The police station. I’ve just been there. I had quite a few things to check.”
“About me?” She sniffed.
“No, Mrs. Carling. Your case is confidential. No, it was in connection with your neighbour, Mrs. Swantry. Did you know she recently joined a religious order at the St. Helios Hospice, nursing terminally ill patients?”
“So what? The Beeches is a dreadful house and she’s let it go to pieces. That ramshackle garden … it’s a disgrace. Weeds everywhere, blowing over into my garden, and I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s vermin. That’s what breeds rats, you know, dirt and neglect.”
“She was an elderly lady on her own and she couldn’t cope. It was getting beyond her. It happens to all of us unless we are lucky enough to be within a loving family unit.” I let that item sink in. “I suppose you realised that she had been gradually shutting up the house and living in two rooms?”
“No, I didn’t. None of my business and I’m not interested. I have no communication with her except through my solicitors.” The look on her face changed gear. “Are you telling me that Mrs. Swantry’s been sending those vile things? I wouldn’t put it passed her.”
It was not hard to imagine anyone sending Ursula hate mail. I felt like sending her a few home truths myself. But women like her are blind and deaf. They cannot see their own flaws and they will never learn. They are so self-centered that nothing can shake the core of their total belief in themselves.
Perhaps that was the motive of the sender. To shake Ursula Carling’s cement-hard complacency and belief in her own righteousness. The messages had certainly shaken her, but not in that way. She was even more certain of her reserved place on the martyrs’ cloud. Something pale or pastel, of course.
“It could be a possibility,” I began carefully. “Why do you think Mrs. Swantry might have been sending you hate mail?”
“How should I know? I never did get on with the woman. So pious, so good, always going to church. Of course, even religious people can have twisted minds. And she’s absolutely adamant about not having the air-raid shelter demolished. Said it was there in case there’s another war. What rubbish. If there’s another war, it’ll be nuclear and we’ll all be blown to pieces in the first half-hour.”
She searched in her handbag and brought out a handful of envelopes. “I’ve brought you the latest batch, envelopes and all, just as you said I should.”
That blew away the Ellen Swantry theory. I looked at the postmarks. All posted after her death, and from different parts of Sussex, but mostly from Chichester. I couldn’t see Ellen as an active ghost. Ordinary brown envelopes, the kind that the Poundshop sell in bulk and there were a couple of pre-paid envelopes that come with junk mail. The sender had crossed out the printed address and written Ursula’s with the same black marker pen.
“Have you read them?”
“No, I remembered that you said not to. You can have the pleasure.”
“There might be fingerprints.” How was I going to get them fingerprinted? I had no idea. James might let me look at the Police National Computer once in a while but the entire fingerprint system and the Criminal Records Office of the force were not at my disposal. Unless I could get the dabs passed him on some other pretext. It was a pity I’d told him about the poison pen letters. I would have to come up with a different story.
“Are you feeling better now that you are no longer reading the letters?” I put the bundle away in the filing cabinet, out of sight. They felt contaminated. “You could just forget all about them. Why not go away for a holiday or something?”
“No, I can’t just forget all about it. I want Cleo caught. I want to see her punished.”
“But there’s no proof it’s Cleo. You are only surmising that it’s your daughter and there isn’t a scrap of proof. It could be someone else.” I had to be tactful here. “It could be someone from your past.”
She stiffened, her cultured hair flying out in steel darts, eyes defused behind her thick glasses like a lighthouse beam in a fog. “I don’t have a past, young woman.”
“I didn’t mean that kind of past,” I said hastily. Wrong word. “I mean someone you used to know or had dealings with.”
“My life has been full and fruitful,” she bristled, still uptight. “I couldn’t possibly remember every person I’ve ever met. Are you telling me you can’t solve this case?”
“I am eliminating certain people. The letters you’ve brought me today will be really helpful. Not long now and it’ll be wrapped up and you can go on that holiday.”
“I don’t go on holidays.”
What a woman. I couldn’t make first base with her. One last question, the loaded one. “Mrs. Carling, how is it that you have been speaking about your neighbour in the present tense when you know she’s dead? And you went to Mrs. Swantry’s funeral even though you disliked the woman.”
Ursula was thrown by the abrupt question. For a second her body collapsed and then straightened itself again through sheer willpower. Her face blanched under her English rose Yardley make-up, leaving rouge like a clown’s splodges of crimson.
“I thought it was a neighbourly thing to do,” she said, recovering quickly. “I wondered if the estate agent offering her house might attend, or perhaps a prospective buyer so I could introduce myself. It never hurts to make the right contacts.”
Pathetic. Weak as last month’s dish water but I pretended to accept it. “Ah, I see. Being sensible, yes.”
Ursula Carling finished her coffee and made an excuse to go. I was glad. Her emotional swings were exhausting. A marshy-faced woman came in and bought the huge amber goblet. She said she was going to put potpourri in it and stand it on the stairs. Some people have nothing better to do.
I made a quick tour of the charity shops, found a few bargains. I was running short of stock. It was a confusing day. My notes covered several pages.
I caught the leaking warmth of the afternoon sun on the beach. The mini-train driver was making the last trip of the day. What a soul-destroying job, trundling three-quarters of a mile up and down the front with three wagon-loads of screaming kids dropping ice-cream everywhere or a party of merry ladies from London on a day trip to the coast and a liquid lunch. He wore a uniform of sorts with bits of braid. He gave me a weary wave.
I sat on my rock and watched the sun flushing the clouds strawberry pink and molten gold. Feathery clouds forked the sky like Royal icing. A long way out the black speck of a windsurfer was heading back to land before it grew dark. Black crows perched on the timbers of the groyne, watching my half-eaten apple with greedy eyes. The wind-swept chilling fingers from the sea and shadows grew in the nebulous gloom, slowly cooling the sand and the pebbles. Autumn was sinking into an early winter.
That house, The Beeches, haunted me even when I was away from it. The emptiness of the rooms and Ellen Swantry’s solitary existence gave me the creeps. Had I missed anything? I didn’t fancy going b
ack unless I wore a decent brimmed hat and passed as a prospective buyer.
The sea has such healing qualities. The soft swish, swash of the waves was an endless massage, relaxing muscles and nerves and spirit. Seaweed wafted its pungent vapour into my twitchy tubes, the gulls provided raucous music, their acrobatics a ballet for the eyes. And the deep blue and green of the sea… the colours of peace, quietness and calm.
So far neither of my careers had been an outstanding success. I wasn’t cut out for the police force, not even the brains department, despite my years in it. Too much of a free spirit. I said what I thought and that wasn’t always appreciated. FCI had hardly got off the ground, in fact it was bogged down. Finding Joey couldn’t be classed as an investigative wonder. More a lucky chance that he had survived being flattened by a 44-ton container lorry. My junk shop was doing better than FCI.
Twilight washed ashen and sent me back to the shop to open Ursula’s latest mail. I’d been putting it off. I felt dirtied by the stuff; the way porno films and magazines are a mental health risk. The damage was insidious.
In the office, I tidied, swept, dusted, made strong black coffee. I rearranged the window displays and put a chipped shepherdess figurine in the space left by the departure of the amber goblet to its fragrant future.
Wearing surgical gloves (nicked from the hospital on my visit to see Cleo) — I thought this was permissible since I was working in her interests. I cut the envelopes open with a knife. They could determine DNA from saliva though I wasn’t sure about dried saliva mixed with cheap glue.
It was the usual mixture of abuse though I detected a slight shift in emphasis as though the sender was growing weary of the game and wanted it brought to a head. And I thought the messages had begun to take on a personal vibe as if the sender knew I was reading them.
This change was disturbing. Perhaps I should warn Ursula to take more care than usual. I rang her number but there was no answer. The phone rang and rang. It seemed ominous. Didn’t she say something about playing bridge in the evening? Or was it the kind of thing she might say and not do?
As soon as I put down the receiver, the phone rang. I picked it up, hoping thought transference had reached Ursula. But it was Joshua and I certainly hadn’t been thinking about him.
“Hello, heroine,” he said. He was a sweetie. I’d always liked Joshua and had known him for years. He was some sort of inventor for a tool firm, working from home. I never quite understood what he did. He ambled through life, always desperately short of money, somehow surviving but slowly going downhill like some exhausted hairy mammoth.
“What a brave girl, getting herself in the newspapers,” he went on. “I knew it was you straight away. If you feel like any more flying tackles, you could always practice on me.”
I laughed. He could always make me laugh.
“I wasn’t really brave. I just happened to be there at the right time. Anyone would have done it.”
“Not me,” said Joshua, who, despite his size, hated violence of any kind. “I’d have merged with the background. Jordan, darling, you need a break after all these heroics. Do you fancy a couple of days at my place? No strings, your own room. We could walk a few lanes, talk, watch a few old videos.”
It sounded idyllic. Joshua lived in a rambling, run-down sort of cottage in a village the other side of the Downs that was un-spoilt with genuine sheep-spotted fields and twittering birds.
“Sounds a wonderful idea. I need to get away from the case I’m on at the moment. It’s bogging me down. I might come back with some decent ideas. Will you meet me at the station?”
“Sorry, Jordan. You’ll have to get a taxi. I’ve been in bed all week with a viral infection and I don’t think it would be wise to drive yet. Antibiotics, y’know. They make you drowsy. And could you bring in the odd shopping? I’m running short of a few things. Write this down, will you?”
He was running short of a lot of things. The list grew. As I wrote down cheese and butter, bread, coffee and tea and eggs, my brain stopped being compliant, easy-going and amiable. It went razor-sharp and suspicious. I was being used. Joshua didn’t want my delightful company. He wanted a nursemaid. He wanted someone to cook, clean-up and do a week’s laundry. I wasn’t going for a nice, relaxing weekend. It would be a sink and stove slog from beginning to end.
“Viral infection?” I repeated, trying to get the right tone of regret into my voice. “Oh dear, I can’t come then. Remember my asthma? I might get really bad if it went on my chest. Sorry, Josh dear, not this time. I’ll phone your local grocer and get them to deliver the goods. Perhaps you ought to add a few tins of nourishing vegetable soup.”
I felt his disappointment coming in waves over the phone. He’d planned the manoeuvre with all the cunning of a general at war. I said lots of encouraging things about looking after himself and taking care to put the phone down with a pang of sadness. Poor Joshua. Why did I get landed with these low grade men? Was it something in my nature that attracted them? The weak to my strength; the indecisive to my determination; the wimpish to my resolution? I had my faults and plenty of them but I needed a man who would be caring of me, not the other way round. Someone like DI James, when he wasn’t so tired.
I opened the last of the letters. It was longer than the rest. Same black marker pen and written on the back of an offer for cut-price double glazing.
“YOU EVIL BITCH. LEAVE CLEO ALONE. I KNOW WHAT YOU ARE TRYING TO DO. IF YOU HARM HER AGAIN, I’LL KILL YOU. AND I MEAN IT. I’LL TORCH YOU.”
The words chilled me with their intensity. I felt the venom pouring out of them like a river of prurience. The writer really hated Ursula. If you harm her again. Had Ursula something to do with Cleo’s fall?
But the writer had given himself away. He knew that Cleo had been injured and was in hospital. This could only mean one thing. He was the man who had stood at the end of the bed and stared at her.
There was no way he could have known I’d also visit Cleo in hospital that morning, or that the ward sister would tell me about his odd visit.
He did exist. He was real. And he was becoming dangerous. Someone was going to get killed.
Ursula? Cleo? Hell… was it going to be me?
CHAPTER TEN
Warning bells about Ursula were ringing. My imagination saw burning rags and petrol bombs pushed through the door. The hate mail had changed gear, gone up a notch in hatred. These were death threats now.
But I couldn’t go to DI James again. He’d think I was paranoid, show me the door. And I didn’t feel like sleeping outside her house. I wasn’t hired to protect the woman. All I could do was make sure she was warned.
I got on my bicycle and sped to Lansfold Avenue. Wheels, wheels, where art thou? I was sick of cycling everywhere. Perhaps my handy friend Rick, could put a vehicle my way. I wasn’t proud. A vintage 1920 Dodge would suit me, black upholstery and hood, yellow bodywork.
Ursula’s house was in darkness; so was The Beeches. The glass porch was one of Ursula’s additions and totally out of keeping with the mock Tudor frontage. It was filled with plants and knee-high stone ornaments. Both doors were of patterned glass etched with some kind of drooping lily. I suppose she wanted more light in the hall.
I pushed my hastily written note through the letter slot in the door and it dropped into one of those little wire boxes. Saved wear on the carpet. The note warned her to be very, very careful, to stay in and not to take unnecessary risks. Without frightening her, I tried to say that the writer might be changing his tactics.
Ursula was still hiding something from me. She’d been secretive about Cleo and again about Ellen Swantry. What else wasn’t the lady telling me? How could I sort this out for her if she blocked my way by not giving me all the facts?
What I really needed was a look round her house, to ferret out her secrets. I was shocked at myself. Jordan Lacey, tut-tut, not breaking and entering again? An empty house is one thing but someone’s home is definitely not kosher.
Still I tri
ed a few windows round the back, mostly out of habit. She had burglar locks on them. None of them would move and I was not prepared to break a window. There were limits.
A Victorian-style conservatory was tacked onto the side of the house, very ornate; another of Ursula’s illuminating ideas. I dragged an oak garden seat close to the house, stood on it and then balancing on its sturdy back, heaved myself up onto the ironwork construction which seamed the roof of the conservatory to the wall. My trainers gave me a good grip and I shuffled along the top edge, holding onto the ledges of the bedroom windowsills.
She had not drawn the curtains but it was too gloomy to see inside. The bathroom window had frosted glass but something else drew me to look at it again. The glass was steamed up. I put my hand against it. The glass was warm. Then I saw an eddy of steam filter out of the air vent. Now I knew what it was I heard. It was water. And it was running amok.
What should I do? Ursula might be lurking behind the curtains in the darkness, not wanting to be seen. Perhaps she always took a bath in the dark due to excessive modesty. That would follow. But the bath could be overflowing, soaking the pale carpet on the stairs, flooding the pastel hallway, leaving a nasty tidemark. One thing for sure, if she had an immersion heater switched on, she was running herself up a hefty heating bill.
It was not easy to decide what to do. My WPC training took over. Gingerly, I climbed down from the conservatory roof onto the garden chair, picked out a fair-sized stone from the rockery and smashed a glass pane in the kitchen door. I covered my hand with a handkerchief, reached through the jagged hole. I found a bolt and pulled it back, then turned the door handle.
I held my breath, waiting for the burglar alarm to go off but there was nothing. Not exactly silence, for I could hear the sound of rushing water. Perhaps Ursula had forgotten to set the alarm when she went out. But that was not like her.
Jordan Lacey Mystery 01 Pray and Die Page 11
