A Question of Guilt

by Janet Tanner

  As I dumped my crutches and sat down, a young girl emerged from a beaded curtain that hung over a doorway behind the counter. She was wearing a frilly apron and carrying a buttered teacake and a pot of tea, which she placed on the table of the woman in the beret.

  ‘Here you go, Brenda. Anything else I can get you?’

  ‘No, that’ll do me nicely, thanks,’ the woman responded, and the girl approached me.

  ‘Morning.’

  ‘Morning.’ This wasn’t going according to plan. I’d expected Lisa to serve me. But I could hardly say that. ‘Could I have a coffee please?’

  ‘Americano? Espresso? Cappuccino?’

  That surprised me. It sounded more like a Starbucks than a small-town teashop and café.

  ‘I’ll have a cappuccino.’

  ‘And a pastry?’

  ‘Oh, no thank you.’

  ‘I can recommend the teacakes.’ The woman in the beret had no qualms about butting in. ‘Lisa makes them herself, or Paul does. You couldn’t get fresher or better.’

  ‘I’m sure,’ I said politely, ‘but I don’t think . . .’

  ‘Oh go on! Spoil yourself! You could do with a bit of feeding up!’

  I eyed the teacake on her plate. After one of Mum’s farmhouse breakfasts, I was far from being in need of sustenance, but it did look tempting, nicely browned and oozing butter, and besides . . . this woman was obviously a regular at the café. If I wasn’t going to be able to speak to Lisa, she was the next best thing – or maybe even better. She seemed exactly the sort of person who would know the answers to a lot of my questions, and be only too happy to gossip.

  ‘You’ve talked me into it,’ I said.

  The young waitress headed for the kitchen with my order.

  ‘You look as if you’ve been in the wars, my love,’ the woman called Brenda said, shifting her chair around her table so that she was even closer to me. ‘What have you been up to?’

  ‘Oh, a skiing accident,’ I said, hoping it wouldn’t put her off. She didn’t look like the sort of person to have ever been on a ski slope, and might dismiss me as a Hooray Henrietta. Not Brenda.

  ‘Well I never!’ she said, shaking her head. ‘Rather you than me. I slipped down on a patch of ice outside my back door last year and broke my wrist. That’s the closest I want to get to skiing – or skating, come to that. So when did this happen?’

  By the time I’d told her the story we were chatting like old friends, and I was managing to eat an undeniably delicious teacake.

  ‘So you come in here a lot, do you?’ I asked, licking melted butter from my fingers.

  ‘Regular as clockwork.’ Brenda poured a second cup of tea from her miniature bone china teapot. ‘Have done ever since they opened. We should all support local businesses, I reckon, and Lisa deserved to make a success of it after what she went through.’

  ‘The fire, you mean?’ I said disingenuously.

  ‘Oh, a terrible do, that was!’ Brenda shook her head and huffed to emphasize her point. ‘That wicked, wicked man! Trying to burn those two poor girls in their beds!’ She huffed again.

  ‘Brian Jennings, you mean?’ I said.

  ‘That’s him. I always knew he wasn’t right in the head, of course. But to go and do something like that! Well, at least he’s locked up now, thank the Lord, where he can’t get up to any more mischief. And it all turned out well for Lisa in the end.’

  ‘She married the baker who rescued her, I understand,’ I said.

  ‘She did that. And a lovely couple they make too . . . Oh!’ she exclaimed suddenly, ‘here she is. Hello, Lisa my love.’

  A young woman had emerged from behind the beaded curtain and even if Brenda hadn’t more or less introduced her, I’d have recognized her from her newspaper photographs. Lisa Curry – or Lisa Holder as she now was – was short, stocky and rather plain, dark hair cut in a short bob that didn’t particularly flatter her rather coarse features. She was wearing a red jumper that strained over a hefty bosom, black trousers, and a large blue cook’s apron, folded down at the waist.

  ‘Brenda,’ she said, not sounding exactly delighted, but it would take more than a lukewarm greeting to put Brenda off.

  ‘I was just saying, Lisa, what a lovely job you’ve made of this place. That fire was a terrible thing, but it was a blessing in disguise. Just look how it’s turned out for you.’

  ‘To be honest, I’d rather not talk about it,’ Lisa said shortly.

  ‘Well, that’s understandable, my love. But it’s true, all the same. Every cloud has a silver lining, you could say. Now.’ Brenda reached for her scarf, hanging over the back of her chair, and wound it round her neck. ‘I suppose I’d better be seeing about getting home, or Mother will be wondering wherever I’ve got to. I’ve got my mother living with me, you see,’ she said to me, ‘and she gets in a right state if she’s left on her own too long.’

  ‘Oh . . . right . . .’ I said lamely.

  Brenda turned her attention back to Lisa.

  ‘If I could just have my bill, my love . . .’

  ‘Pot of tea and a teacake?’ Lisa scribbled on a little notepad and put the tab on the table in front of Brenda, who paid, and gathered her shopping bags together.

  The two young mothers had left while Brenda and I had been talking, and the little waitress had disappeared. When Brenda left too, Lisa and I were alone. This was too good an opportunity to miss, I thought, especially since Brenda had conveniently raised the subject of the fire with Lisa.

  ‘It must have been awful for you . . . the fire, I mean,’ I said, trying to sound suitably sympathetic. ‘Did you lose everything? All your precious belongings?’ It was a pretty crass question, but the sort I thought a nosy stranger might ask. I didn’t want to put Lisa on her guard.

  ‘Pretty much,’ Lisa said shortly, piling Brenda’s plate and cup and saucer together.

  ‘You know I don’t think I could bear to stay here, where it happened, if I were in your shoes,’ I went on. ‘Do you still live upstairs, in the flat?’

  ‘No, we don’t,’ Lisa said in the same short tone. ‘And anyway, there’s no danger of it happening again. Brian Jennings is behind bars, where he belongs.’ She looked pointedly at my empty cup. ‘Can I get you another coffee?’

  ‘No, I’m OK thanks.’ I didn’t want to risk her going off and leaving her young assistant to serve me. ‘So you think the police definitely got the right man?’ I persisted.

  ‘Well of course they did!’ It was almost a snap.

  I risked it. ‘His sister doesn’t think so.’

  Lisa snorted. ‘She wouldn’t, would she?’

  ‘I suppose not . . . but . . .’

  ‘Brian Jennings was obsessed with Dawn,’ Lisa said vehemently. ‘Everybody knew that. The nights we looked out of the window and saw him, just standing there, staring up. If Dawn went out, he followed her. She was frightened to death of him. She reported him to the police, but they never did anything about it.’

  ‘But it’s what put them on to him, I suppose.’

  ‘I suppose.’

  ‘It must have been really scary for you, too, before they caught him,’ I said. ‘You must have wondered . . .’

  ‘Wondered what?’ Her tone was slightly aggressive now.

  ‘Well . . . it might have been you the fire raiser was targeting . . . not Dawn . . .’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous!’ Lisa snapped. ‘Why would anyone target me?’

  ‘You didn’t think somebody might have had it in for you?’

  ‘It never crossed my mind. Dawn was the honeypot. When she was around, she was always the one who was the centre of attention.’ There was something that might almost have been resentment in Lisa’s voice now.

  ‘But she’s not around any more?’ I said tentatively.

  ‘No, she’s not.’ Lisa was whisking away a few odd crumbs from the table where Brenda had been sitting, using an old-fashioned wooden crumb brush and tray.

  ‘Where is she now, then?�
��

  ‘I haven’t the faintest idea. We’re not in touch.’ Lisa stopped what she was doing and fixed me with a baleful look. ‘Look, I don’t know what your interest in all this is, but it’s pretty morbid. So if there’s nothing else you want . . .’

  ‘No, there’s nothing else.’ And nothing else I was going to learn today, either, I thought. Unless I owned up to the real reason I was asking questions, and possibly not then. But I wasn’t ready to come clean yet in any case. I wanted to be able to sniff around a bit more first without people clamming up on me.

  ‘I’ll get your bill,’ Lisa said, fetching the same pad she’d written out Brenda’s bill on. But instead of waiting for me to get out my purse, she carried the used china into the kitchen beyond the curtain, and it was the little waitress who came to take my money.

  I didn’t see Lisa again. I’d upset her, I knew. But it was more than just that. I was left with a vague but persistent feeling that there was something she had not wanted to tell me.

  It took me a good ten minutes to walk down the High Street to the town square where Compton Properties had their office, twice as long as if I hadn’t been on crutches. But in any case, I wasn’t hurrying. I was busy taking in just how much Stoke Compton had changed in recent years.

  I passed the turning to the church hall, where I used to come for ballet classes when I was a little girl – that hadn’t lasted long; ballet really wasn’t my thing. On the corner was the shop that used to be what Mum called ‘the confectioners’, a wondrous Aladdin’s cave of sweets in rows of jars behind the counter and tiered stands full of chocolate bars. Mum used to take me in to buy ‘a treat’ after I’d endured my ballet class, and I’d always taken ages choosing between the Cadbury’s Roses, the stripy mints, creamy fudge, or a sherbet fountain. The sweet shop was no more – it had been turned into a barber’s according to the logo on the window: ‘Haircut £8 – No Appointment Necessary’.

  A little further on I came to what had used to be Grays’ the hardware shop, another place that had always fascinated me. There had always been merchandise spilling out on to the pavement – trays of bulbs and sacks of seed potatoes, baskets full of odd china and even the odd oil heater or stepladder. But it was the smell when you stepped inside that I could remember so clearly even after so many years – a smell like no other, a mixture of all the things Mr Gray sold, I suppose. The hardware shop was gone now, though, and in its place was a pound shop. Their goods were spilling out on to the pavement, too, but weren’t nearly as interesting as Mr Gray’s had been. Nostalgia tugged at me; the town shouldn’t have changed while I wasn’t looking!

  The post office, at least, was still where I remembered it. I passed it, heading for the Square at the end of the street, and was trying to spot Compton Properties when a voice spoke from just behind my right shoulder.

  ‘Well, hello again!’

  I turned my head sharply, almost causing me to lose my balance, to see Josh Williams drawing level with me.

  ‘Hey – careful!’ His hand shot out to catch my elbow, steadying me.

  ‘You made me jump,’ I said, feeling a little foolish.

  ‘Sorry about that.’

  ‘It’s OK. And I must admit I was far away.’

  ‘Anywhere interesting?’

  ‘Not really. I was revisiting my past. Looking at how the Stoke Compton I used to know has changed.’

  ‘Used to know?’

  ‘I grew up round here, but I’ve been away for a long time. I wouldn’t be here now if it wasn’t for . . .’ I nodded my head in the direction of my crutches. ‘I came home for a spot of TLC.’

  ‘And you thought you’d do some work on your thesis while you’re here.’

  ‘My thesis?’ For a moment I couldn’t think what he meant, then I remembered – the story I’d invented for the benefit of the receptionist at the Gazette. ‘Oh yes . . . my thesis,’ I said lamely, and felt myself begin to blush.

  We’d reached the corner of the Square.

  ‘Well, good luck with Lewis Crighton,’ Josh said, his tone slightly ironic, I thought. ‘I take it that’s where you’re headed.’

  ‘How did you know?’ I asked, startled.

  ‘Just guessing. If I was investigating the fire, it would be one of my first ports of call.’

  Investigating the fire . . . Not really the way you’d talk about a thesis . . . I had the uncomfortable feeling Josh hadn’t been taken in by my story at all. And, in reality, why would he be? I was a good bit older than the average uni student, after all – something I hadn’t thought of when I’d come up with my spur-of-the-moment excuse.

  ‘This is me, then.’ Josh was now jiggling a set of car keys; there was a sharp click nearby and lights flashed briefly on a blue Peugeot estate standing in one of the few parking spaces in the Square.

  ‘So –’ His eyes, dark hazel flecked with gold, met mine – ‘how about I take you for a drink this evening and you can tell me how you got on?’

  To say I was taken by surprise would be an understatement. More to the point, I was speechless.

  ‘I’m quite harmless, I promise,’ he added in an amused tone.

  ‘I’m sure you are,’ I managed. ‘But . . .’

  ‘But you have other plans.’

  ‘Um . . . yes.’ It was a lie, of course – another lie! – but it was a whole lot easier than turning him down flat, or explaining that I had broken up with my long-term boyfriend only yesterday, and was nowhere near ready to date anyone, least of all someone I’d exchanged only a few brief words with.

  ‘Some other time then, maybe?’ He didn’t look a bit abashed by the rejection; I guessed it would take a great deal more than that to faze Josh Williams.

  ‘Yes, maybe . . .’

  ‘Take care then.’ He gave a wicked nod in the direction of my crutches, opened the door of his car, and got in.

  Feeling totally flustered, I made my way across the Square in the direction of Compton Properties.

  The estate agent’s office was a tall, double-fronted building of the same grey stone as most of the town centre, with a ladies’ hairdressing salon on one side and a charity shop on the other. The windows either side of the door were packed with display boards of properties for sale in Stoke Compton and the surrounding area, and there was a model layout showing a small development of new houses out on the bypass. I gave it the briefest of glances, pushed open the door, and went inside.

  In the airy, open-plan office two girls were seated at desks. One was on the telephone, the other working on her computer. Both looked like glamour models, or cosmetic consultants in a department store. They were out of exactly the same mould as Dawn, if the photographs of her that I’d seen were anything to go by. Lewis Crighton had certain criteria where his employees were concerned, it seemed.

  I didn’t think either of them was Dawn, though. The girl on the telephone was a redhead, and a natural one at that, judging by her creamy complexion and light dusting of freckles, whilst the other was very dark – the coffee-coloured skin and glossy black hair that suggested she may be of mixed race. She looked up as I entered the office, flashing me a practised smile.

  ‘Good morning. How may I help you?’

  I crossed to her desk, and noticed that an identification brooch pinned to her jacket that read ‘Sarah’.

  ‘I understand you run an auction house,’ I said.

  ‘We organize auctions once a month, yes,’ she corrected me.

  ‘I have a couple of items I’d like to sell,’ I said. ‘I was wondering if maybe you could help me.’

  I balanced one of my crutches against the client’s chair, across the desk from where she was sitting, slid the box of apostle spoons out of my pocket and set it down on the desk. The candle snuffer and tray followed.

  ‘It’s very old, I think,’ I said.

  ‘Yes.’ She was eyeing the discoloured pewter doubtfully; though I’d done my best to clean it up, both the tray and the snuffer itself did look a little the worse f
or wear.

  ‘And you’d like Mr Crighton to include them in the next auction?’

  ‘I think so, yes. Can you give me some idea of what they might fetch?’

  Sarah made no attempt to pick up the items. In fact, her disdainful look gave me the impression she wasn’t happy to have them on her desk even, and certainly wouldn’t want to soil her perfectly manicured hands.

  ‘I can’t do that, I’m afraid. You’d need to speak to Mr Crighton.’

  This was exactly what I’d hoped for.

  ‘Could I do that, please?’ I asked.

  ‘I’ll see if he’s available.’ She lifted a telephone and pressed a single digit. ‘Mr Crighton?’ There was something quite old-fashioned in the formality – surely it was all Christian names in the workplace nowadays, just as everywhere else? – and something almost reverential in her tone as she spoke to him. ‘Would you be able to speak to a lady about a valuation of some items for the auction?’

  I couldn’t hear his reply, but Sarah nodded as she put down the telephone.

  ‘Mr Crighton will be with you as soon as he’s free.’

  At least she hadn’t used the ubiquitous ‘in a meeting’. And it gave me an opportunity to talk to her while I was waiting. I decided to plunge in at the deep end.

  ‘Does Dawn Burridge still work here?’ I asked.

  ‘Dawn Burridge?’

  ‘Yes. She used to, didn’t she, before the fire at her flat?’

  ‘I really couldn’t say. I’ve only been here a short while,’ Sarah replied coolly, but I noticed the other girl, who had finished her telephone call, was listening intently.

  ‘I was here at the same time as Dawn,’ she said. ‘Were you a friend of hers?’

  ‘Not exactly . . .’ I hesitated. ‘I do want to talk to her, though. Do you know where she is these days?’

  The girl’s eyes widened for a moment; she looked startled, shocked even, and on the point of saying something. Then her eyes flicked past me. I turned automatically, following her gaze, and saw a man on the staircase that led upwards from a corner of the office. He was wearing a dark grey suit that looked expensive, a pink striped shirt and a bold tie. His soft suede shoes had made no sound on the staircase, nor did they as he crossed the woodblock floor.