by Morag Joss
All of which, Sara thought, once she had parked at the far end of the crescent and was walking to within sight of number 11, made it hard for her to admit that she could not be altogether uncurious about the basement flat. But probably her interest lay in the fact that a peep at the basement flat would also be a glimpse into Andrew’s world, albeit one in which she had no more right of occupancy than she had in his marriage. And then, what was so morally superior about feigning a lack of curiosity about what happened to other people?
So it was galling that as she walked slowly past the railings on her way to the door there really was nothing to see. The windows of Miss Bevan’s sitting room shone on the still-watered plants in the area; through the polished glass Sara could see the feet of well-behaved furniture standing in the conventional places. She marched straight up to James and Tom’s place, reminding herself what she was really here for.
AS SHE was preparing to leave, she looked round the flat, newly aired and spruced up for Herve’s arrival. After making up the bed there had been little to do in the way of cleaning, because Peggy, who ‘did’ for James and Tom, was still coming in once a week. Sara had brought fresh flowers and filled two vases, one for the drawing room and a small one for the bedroom. She had stocked the fridge and brought one or two of her own illustrated books on Bath, a street map and the current issue of Bath City Life. The last, being a glossy monthly mag, did not carry the story of Imogen Bevan’s demise in the flat below. Not that she would keep it from him should it crop up, but there was no need to shove it in his face moments after he had crossed the threshold. She left the books, map and magazine on the coffee table, along with a bowl of fruit and a bottle of champagne with a label saying ‘Welcome’. Looking round, she bit her lip. Perhaps, after all, she had made the place look like a hotel. Dammit, she might as well go and fold the loo paper into a little point, she was so ridiculous. Locking up behind her, she very much hoped he would not think her corny. She hoped he would feel touched, and by her rather than by her efforts.
Coming down the stairs from the first floor Sara saw that the door that led down to the basement flat at the end of the hall was ajar. She approached it tentatively. It could be the police, although she thought she remembered Andrew saying that they had finished ‘at the scene’ the day after the death. Perhaps the place was being burgled. But surely burglars would have closed the door to get on with a quick burgle in peace? Could it be family? She knew also from Andrew that Miss Bevan had had none. Squatters? Whoever it was, it was plainly none of her business, and all the more irresistible for that.
She paused in the doorway and looked down a flight of empty crimson-carpeted stairs. Just then the sharp warble of a tremulous female voice intoning ‘Nearer My God to Thee’ floated up to her ears. Sara’s first crazy thought was that this was Miss Bevan soliloquising a little hysterically, it being indisputable that she (and only she) could claim, since the afternoon of the bank holiday, to be nearer her God to Him. She shivered. The wailing voice continued. Sara didn’t believe in ghosts, but some people did. Perhaps it was religious fervour that was edging this strange voice slightly out of control, and what she was overhearing was an exorcism. Sara had never been at an exorcism, but something told her that to announce herself from the top of the stairs with a ‘Coo-ee! Only me!’ in the middle of the opening hymn was unlikely to lead to an invitation. Instead, she tiptoed silently down the stairs and followed the voice through an open door on the left.
Standing singing in the middle of the very tidy sitting room, facing the window that looked out onto the front area, was a woman with hair of a wild red who was clutching a handkerchief tightly in one hand and a pair of spectacles in the other. She stopped singing and swung round, staring and open-mouthed, while benign but total incomprehension shone from her blinking eyes. She raised one hand and put on her glasses, through which she continued to peer at Sara. She looked quite irretrievably bonkers.
‘But I’ve got your Beethoven,’ she said, with the relief of sudden enlightenment. ‘Haven’t I? Good God. You’re what’s-her-name. The cellist.’
‘Oh, er . . . er, no. No, but I look like her. I must do. People are always saying—’
‘Sara Selkirk. Yes, you are. On Deutsche Grammophon. That really isn’t you?’
There was a silence. Sara felt a complete fool. Should she own up, offer to sign something and just go?
‘Are you sure? Well, you’re very like her. Anyway, I’m Dotty,’ the woman said finally.
Sara was not sure what to say to this.
‘Dorothy Price. I’m the executor, I’ve got this lot to sort out.’ She turned, and waved the hand still clutching the hanky around the room.
Turning back, her hand dropped and her face relaxed into a genuinely warm smile. ‘I wasn’t really expecting anyone just to walk in, least of all a cellist. Or a cellist look-alike, rather. It was all a little surreal for a minute there. Are you a neighbour? I suppose this is Neighbourhood Watch in action.’
Sara extricated herself from having to admit to pure, dumb curiosity by explaining about borrowing the flat upstairs and getting it ready for a friend. She found herself lying about coming down to see if whoever was down here needed any help, or tea. Or anything.
‘I mean, I just thought, it must be upsetting, having to see to a person’s things. Someone who’s died.’
Dotty smiled sensibly and looked embarrassed. ‘Well, yes, it is. You’re right. Because it was such a horrible way to go. It did rather come over me when I first came in. That’s why I was singing. I always sing a hymn. One of my favourites. That always stops me crying quicker than anything. Although the way I sing might start everybody else off. Do forgive the row.’
Sara smiled and repeated her offer of tea. This wailing woman was almost certainly extremely sane. The eyes behind the standard, middle-aged, gold-rimmed glasses had a look of intelligent patience. She was wearing a belted dress of light wool, printed in floralish, dusty colours, and fashionless but good shoes of the flat sort favoured by English women who walk everywhere very fast. The springy red hair, although cut in a style designed to look after itself, appeared to have strong ideas of its own. Sara put her age nearer sixty than forty.
‘Do you know, I’d love some tea. I did bring some bags and milk, but I forgot that the kettle’s useless. So if we could use yours—but use my teabags, they’re in the kitchen. Now if you wanted to do that, I could make a start on these books.’ Not only was she sane, she was clearly used to organising people.
Dotty turned to the bookcases while Sara went into Miss Bevan’s kitchen where, it seemed, any few minutes that had ever gone into the preparing of food had been insignificant in comparison with the hours spent cleaning up afterwards. A smell like coal tar mixed with Brillo pulsed out of every surface and archaic object, a smell as outdated and all-pervading as the belief from which it arose: that a thing was not properly clean until it had been scrubbed to oblivion. The enamelled cream bread bin, with BREAD painted on it in green, sat crumbless, alongside matching tins for TEA and SUGAR, on a cream worktop which looked clean enough to operate on. Opposite, a rack of painted shelves held a set of sky-blue 1950s china and two small biscuit tins. The stainless steel sink was unstained and gleaming despite its age, the draining board was empty, the brown plastic plate rack upended to dry off. A white cloth was folded over the polished arch of the cold tap and a metal scourer sat in a little green saucer on the windowsill next to a Cornish ware jug holding a washing-up mop with a wooden handle. Not only were the chrome rings round the four burners of the stove next to the sink perfectly polished, but not one trace of any burned-on anything spotted the coiled electric elements. This was a cooker on which not a single sausage had ever dared to spit.
Dotty’s teabags and Tupperware container of milk stood in front of the bread bin next to the electric kettle, an old-fashioned and highly polished model. It looked from the outside to be quite serviceable, but following with her eyes the thick black snake of flex stretc
hing from the back of it, Sara saw that the plug had been gnarled by fire into a melted little fist of black rubber. Traces of smoke from the single socket a few inches above the worktop lay in greasy grey licks across the wall, where the paint had begun to blister. Sara lifted the kettle lid. The crusted black element sat surrounded by flakes of burned limescale that had been seared off the insides.
‘Found the bags?’ Dotty was in the doorway. Her eyes rested on the kettle and she sighed. ‘Awful, isn’t it? I can’t bear to think about it.’
‘What happened to it?’
Dorothy Price sighed again. ‘After the explosion she somehow managed to get out of the door here and up the steps, and someone found her right outside by the railings. She was hysterical, in the end she collapsed on the pavement. According to the police, she must have had the kettle on, because by the time the woman ran back in here to call an ambulance, it had boiled dry and a fire was starting in the socket. The kettle doesn’t switch itself off, you see, it’s so ancient. Luckily she managed to deal with it all right, apart from the mess on the wall. If poor Imogen had made it any further along the crescent and the woman had phoned from somewhere else, the whole place could have gone up.’
‘You’ve had to clear everything up, then?’
‘How do you mean?’
‘In here. After the explosion, the fire and all the breakfast things, her teapot, whatever. It’s all been cleaned up. It’s all immaculate, except for the kettle.’
‘Oh, no, that’s just Imogen for you. The neighbour wiped round after the fire, I suppose. And the police came after that and cleaned up the worst of the, er, you know, the evidence. They went through everything, even the rubbish bin. All they found was breakfast debris, of course, and I don’t see how that’s supposed to help.’
‘Well, I suppose they look at everything. But they haven’t any idea who did it yet, I suppose?’
‘No. Oh, no. Imogen fought plenty of little battles, but nothing serious. Or so I used to think. But, no, I’m sure it’ll turn out to be a random thing.’
‘How, random?’
‘You know, like these nutcases you hear about. Like that fellow with a grudge against Sainsbury’s, for instance. Setting off bombs. I think it’ll be someone like that. Wait and see. Meanwhile, the police go through waste bins.’ She sighed.
Sara, for a reason she did not quite understand, decided to keep her friendship with the detective chief inspector to herself, even though it prevented her from defending him.
Dotty went on sadly, ‘So she’d finished breakfast, and with Imogen that meant everything was instantly washed and dried and put away. She was like that. I worked for her, you know, until she retired. She was headmistress of Combe Down Academy, you know, the girls’ boarding school? We’ve dropped the ‘for Young Ladies’ now, of course. I’m still there. Bursar now. I was just the admissions secretary in Imogen’s day.’
‘Is that when you became friends?’
‘Heavens, no, I was much too young and scared of her then. No, it was long after she’d retired, about six years ago. I believe I ran into her in Waitrose. I got the impression she was a bit lonely. So I called in to see her from time to time after that, regularly.’
‘I am so sorry. It must be awful losing a good friend, especially like this.’
Dotty prevaricated. ‘Oh, well. Yes, and now there’s the funeral to arrange, and one wonders what she would have liked. I’ve asked Canon Hart-Browne to officiate. Do you know him? Adam Hart-Browne, at Bathford. Not her parish, but he knew her years ago.’ She sighed. ‘Yes, it’s hard, having to guess what she would have liked. I suppose we were friends, although I think I always thought of her as the headmistress. She had her faults, of course, who doesn’t? We’re not here to judge. I suppose we can all be difficult, can’t we? You know, I should get back to the books. Are you getting us that tea?’ She disappeared.
When Sara returned ten minutes later from upstairs with two mugs, Dotty flopped into one of Imogen Bevan’s armchairs and rubbed her eyes. Neither her purposeful banging of dusty books, nor little exclamations over funny titles, nor her tidy, organised piles could dispel the air of redundancy surrounding the things that a dead person has no further use for.
‘I’m not taking any of this away, of course. We haven’t got probate yet, the valuers haven’t even been in. I was just curious to see what there was. It’s mine now, you see. She’s left me all the contents.’
Sara looked round the room. The books, such as fill secondhand, rather than antiquarian, bookshops, took up two bookcases. There was a nest of little tables, a small cabinet containing several paperweights of Caithness glass, a set of four cranberry glasses and one small decanter. There were ornaments of brass over the fireplace, two blue and white plates and one doleful Staffordshire dog whose broken ear appeared to have been glued back on with a small spadeful of toffee. There were a few fairly pleasant pictures, a practical clock. The matching furniture was well upholstered in disastrous sage Dralon, in excellent condition and unprepossessing. There were no sentimental reminders of a lifetime’s teaching, no hideous, well-loved, handmade offerings from any one of the thousands of children who must have passed through her hands. Nothing in the room spoke of any quirkiness or irrational taste, no inspired or impulse buy, not a single crazy moment in seventy-four years when Imogen Bevan had said to herself, Gosh! I must have that, and it will remind me of this wonderful day for ever and ever. Sara felt sorry for Dotty. While there was nothing wrong with any of the stuff, it seemed to her entirely resistible, merely an unlooked-for responsibility. You just wouldn’t want nearly all of it.
As if she had read her mind, Dotty said, ‘I don’t think I even want it. Poor Imogen. It feels odd, sizing up her things. I keep thinking she’ll pop up and tell us off for our impertinence. She was quite a character.’
‘She had her faults, you said.’
Dotty gave a resigned smile. ‘Well, yes, but it’s a little late for all that, isn’t it? I think we all just accepted it when she was head; it was only afterwards I started to notice. She always had some squabble or other going with someone—with a shop, or one of the neighbours or the Oxfam lot. Always something. I think it kept her going, just like the school did before she retired. I suppose she needed to control everybody. I didn’t come as often as I could, but I don’t think anybody else came at all.’
‘But she saw other people, didn’t she? Didn’t she do lots of things?’
‘Oh, plenty. She did lots. But I don’t think she had proper friends, except me. I was amazed when she asked me to be her executor. When I agreed to it, I had no idea what was in the will.’
Sara tried not to look curious and failed.
‘Imogen left the house contents to me, but she’s left everything else to the school. The lot, mainly the proceeds from the flat. It’s to set up a trust for a sixth-form travel scholarship.’
Dotty’s voice began to thicken. She fished out her hanky and pushed up her glasses, dabbing at her eyes.
‘From her, of all people. A travel scholarship. But I suppose that’s where her heart was, in her school. She wasn’t easy, but the thought of someone harming her like that—it’s so cruel. Imogen never meant to be cruel, she was just single-minded. They’ve got to catch him, whoever he is. He’s got to be punished. Poor, poor Imogen.’
‘Why would the kettle be on,’ Sara asked abruptly, ‘if she’d had breakfast?’
Dotty looked up, surprised. ‘The kettle? What does it matter now? A little socket fire won’t affect the value of the flat. Look, thank you for the tea, very welcome. I expect that was all Imogen was doing, making herself another cup of tea.’
Sara didn’t think so. Imogen Bevan did not sound like a person who would have allowed herself unscheduled refreshment so soon after breakfast. But she thought, a little sadly, that she might easily have been boiling a kettle to attend to some pressing item of domestic control: clearing the sink with soda or scalding a colony of ants on the patio to assist them ou
t of this world and into the next, perhaps. And she would almost certainly have been a cloth boiler. What an epitaph: Here Lies the Body of Imogen Bevan, Now She’s Boiling Cloths in Heaven. But as Sara took her leave, she refrained from making this observation to soft-hearted Dotty, not because she seemed anxious to get on, but lest it provoke a new outburst of hymn singing.
CHAPTER 9
THE NEXT DAY, Sara felt it was suddenly possible, even imperative, to talk to Andrew—her Andrew, not the near stranger who had met her at the airport. The need to hear his voice had nothing to do with the Bevan enquiry, less still to do with Herve’s arrival in Bath in two days’ time. Possibly it was just that: a need to hear his voice. She called him at work.
It was like having a second chance. It was so easy, so lovely, the way he had immediately taken her call and spoken so eagerly in his burry voice. She loved how he could be at once so relaxed with her, even when speaking from his office, as if nobody else existed and nothing else but his conversation with her were of any importance. She asked about progress in the Bevan case.
‘There’s a piece going in tonight’s Chronicle. We’re getting somewhere. It definitely looks like the animal rights brigade: a nasty revenge attack, though probably not meant to be fatal. We’ve got to find the guy and of course he’s done a runner. Could be anywhere, but we’ll get him.’
He was absurdly touched that she had rung. ‘Thanks for asking. Sara, about the other night—’
She stopped him from apologising by trying to apologise herself. He wouldn’t let her, so then she tried to stop him stopping her. They ended up laughing.
‘All right, then, it was your fault,’ he said. ‘All your big-cellist-superstar fault. Absolutely.’
‘Oh no, you’re the cellist. You’re a great cellist. For a detective, that is.’ There was a brief pause during which they both realised that he would be coming over the minute he could get away.
