Vera crossed the room to throw open a door on the far side. ‘This was the billiard room, which she never used. She managed to sell the table, and it took eight men to lift it, would you believe!’
It didn’t look as if any of these rooms had been entered since Mrs Pryce left.
The two women returned to the hall to find Mr Abel with his sleeves rolled up and his shirt showing damp stains. He was trying to make notes while at the same time juggling with his mobile phone. And still perspiring. ‘Ladies, I’ll be with you in just a minute . . .’ And into the phone: ‘Yes, I’m out there now, but we’ve only just started.’
‘Don’t worry about us, Mr Abel,’ said Ellie. ‘You’re being most helpful. Do you happen to know if your agency was asked to keep an eye on the property after Mrs Pryce left?’
‘I’m not sure, I’ll just check.’ And into the phone: ‘If could just hold on a minute.’ He riffled through his paperwork, still holding his phone. And of course dropped everything again.
‘Never mind for now,’ said Ellie, graciously. ‘I’ll get right back to you when I’ve seen everything. What about the kitchens, Vera?’
Vera threw open an unobtrusive baize-lined door. The kitchen area wasn’t as grand as the reception rooms. There was a back staircase – dusty. A sitting room set aside for the off-duty use of live-in staff – in the days when live-in staff were available. The kitchen itself was not all that large, though there was a pantry, a larder, a boiler room, a drying cupboard and a utility room leading off a corridor beyond.
‘Everything,’ said Vera, ‘was updated a couple of years back: new wiring, new plumbing, new fitments.’
More dust. No footprints. No one had been this way recently.
‘I did ask if I could buy her microwave,’ said Vera, sorrowing as she looked at the gaps in the fitted units, ‘but she sold it with the fridge, the washer, the drier and the oven. The whole lot went to a private buyer she found through an advert in the local paper. Even the big freezer from the garage.’
Ellie remembered that she’d thought she’d heard a motor purring into life when she’d been in the covered way. Would that have been the freezer? No, it couldn’t be, because Vera said it had been sold.
Anyway, she couldn’t have heard the freezer working because the electricity had long since been turned off. Hadn’t it? She depressed the light switch by the door, and LED spotlights came on in the ceiling above.
‘Wasn’t the electricity turned off when she left?’
Vera looked up, surprised. ‘Yes, it was. She won’t like it if her electricity bill is still being run up.’
‘You didn’t see Fritz turning off the water and electricity?’
‘She was still using it, the last time I saw her. I thought she’d asked Fritz to do it but maybe he forgot.’ Vera was puzzled. ‘Do you want to bother with upstairs?’
Mr Abel was still on the phone as they passed him in the hall. The banister felt gritty under Ellie’s hand, but someone had recently swept the treads. No, not swept. She’d be able to see brush marks if a broom had been used. The treads had been wiped clean with a cloth; but apparently it hadn’t been necessary to clean the banister. Which argued that a young person, who didn’t need to hold on to the banister, had been using the stairs recently . . . and wanted to hide the fact that he or she had done so.
Not Mrs Pryce, who’d had trouble with her knees and would have needed to hold on to the banister.
Was it possible that these young people – or perhaps just one of them – were still in the house?
EIGHT
Ellie followed Vera upstairs, taking the path which had been cleaned through the dust. This path led across the landing and to a second flight of stairs, but Vera wanted to show off the first-floor bedrooms first. Lots of spacious bedrooms with big windows, most en suite. Lots of dust, no footprints. Again, there were darker patches on the walls showing where pictures and large pieces of furniture had once been. Unexpected additions bellied out from the larger bedrooms, which Ellie thought must be in the turrets that decorated the building.
Plenty of built-in cupboards. Linen room.
Vera threw open one last door. ‘And this was her own bedroom, with its own wet-room en suite. She liked it because it overlooked the garden and caught the . . .’ Her voice tailed away.
Ellie followed Vera’s gaze. The room had been papered in a blue and white Chinese design of peonies. A handmade paper? A square of darker colour on the far wall showed where a large bed had once stood. The design of the wallpaper on either side was smudged.
Vera looked uneasy. Almost scared. ‘I don’t understand. Last winter she got bronchitis and had to stay in bed for a while. She was that rocky on her feet she upset her coffee over the wallpaper. I tried to clean it off, but the design was hand-painted, ever so old. Some of the colour came off and the pattern got smudged even though I tried my hardest not to spoil it.
‘She was distressed because her husband had done the room out for her special. That was the only time I ever saw her cry, but she wasn’t well, you know. I said she ought to have someone come in to look after her and what about her stepdaughter, but that made Mrs Pryce have a choking fit because Edwina only ever looked out for herself and her granddaughter was even worse, which I should have known better than to suggest. Mrs Pryce asked Pet if she’d come round in the evenings to get her some food, but Pet couldn’t as she had a second job in the evenings then, though it didn’t work out, which was a pity because they were saving as much as they could.
‘So I said I’d come like a shot if it weren’t for Mikey, who can be a bit . . . well, you know. So she said to bring Mikey and let him watch telly or a video downstairs, which I did and he was fine for about half an hour but then he came looking for me and the next thing I know he was up on the bed with her, going through her bits and pieces of jewellery, happy as Larry, and he was trying on her necklaces, and then putting them on her head like a tiara. And she got better after that.’ Vera scrubbed at her cheeks; removing tears?
‘So the paper got stained on the far side of the bed last winter. And this side?’
Vera rung her hands. ‘It was clean last I saw it, which was on the day before she left.’
Ellie bent down to the stain on the right. Something had been spilt on the paper all right, and someone had tried to clean it up. They hadn’t done a very good job of it. So, had more coffee been thrown at the wall on Mrs Pryce’s last night at home?
If it had been blood – which of course it hadn’t been – then the police would be able to detect it.
Ellie straightened up. ‘You mentioned her jewellery? Where did she keep it?’
‘The best bits – his family pieces and hers that were mostly Victorian and ought to have been in the bank really – she told me were kept in the safe. She had some favourites which she wore every day, and they were kept in a locked brown leather box on her dressing table over there . . .’ She pointed to the opposite wall. ‘She also had a lot of costume jewellery in a big tin from Harrods that had once contained biscuits. That was what she had on the bed beside her for Mikey to play with.’
‘So there’s a safe in the house?’
‘She didn’t say where it was, mind, but I thought it must be in the telly room downstairs, because that’s the only room that’s panelled and all the pictures have gone that used to hang on the walls and there’s no safe to be seen anywhere, is there?’
Vera’s face twisted. ‘Mrs Quicke, nothing’s happened to the old dear, has it? She dilly-dallied for ages about going into a home. I always thought – silly of me, maybe – that getting the wallpaper spoiled made up her mind for her.’
‘You’re probably right. Little things like that can be the last straw. I do think we ought to ring the police when we get back. This house needs searching properly from top to bottom, cupboards, cellar – if there is one – and all.’
‘There is a cellar that they used as an air raid shelter in the war, but Mrs Pryce said it was damp and she didn’t want an
ything put down there. The door to it leads off the boiler room.’
Vera led the way back to the landing. ‘She paid double for me to come in extra last winter but I’d have come for nothing, she was so good with Mikey. He really liked her, you know; never played up with her.’
At that point Ellie decided that Vera really had been fond of Mrs Pryce, that Mrs Pryce had been a nice person, and that Ellie would have liked her, too, if they’d ever had the good fortune to meet. She also wondered if Vera might be the very person to come in and help look after Rose if . . . when . . . Think about it another day.
Ellie looked round the landing. ‘While we’re here, let’s just check the top storey, shall we?’
‘There’s nothing up there. Oh, there was some junk, broken bits of furniture, that sort of thing; but she got rid of it all a couple of months ago, clearing out, ready to move . . .’
Vera’s voice trailed away as she noted the cleaned path on the landing which led to another, narrower flight of stairs. Ellie led the way. On the top landing there were several closed doors and two half open. The cleared track encompassed almost half the landing. One of the half open doors gave on to a bathroom which gleamed from fresh scrubbing – and another to a separate loo, ditto.
Ellie went into the bathroom and turned on the taps. Water came out; clear water, which proved that someone had been using water up here recently. Water that’s been standing in a tank or pipes for a long time usually comes out rusty, with lots of burps and gurgles. She depressed the light switch and an ancient bulb glowed into life.
She inspected the window frames. Frosted glass, so that no one outside could overlook the servants washing themselves. Someone had recently tacked cardboard over the glass with drawing pins and removed them in a hurry. Two pins winked brightly from the lino on the floor, together with a fragment of card.
‘Can you smell shampoo?’
Vera sniffed and nodded. ‘Not Mrs Pryce’s. Will you look how clean the bath is? I couldn’t have done it better myself.’
Two more doors on the landing were closed, and no cleared pathways led to them. The cleared patch included just one more door. Ellie opened it and went in. A fair-sized room, glowing with sunshine. The one window was shut fast.
Vera sniffed. ‘Pizza?’
There was no furniture in the room, and it had been newly cleaned. No dust. No detritus, no drawing pins or scraps of paper.
Ellie clicked on the light switch. A bare lamp bulb glowed, and then shone brightly.
Vera was puzzled. ‘That’s one of those new long-life bulbs, isn’t it? But no one’s been living up here for years.’
Ellie inspected the window which, as she’d suspected, overlooked several gardens including her own. The window opened and shut easily. ‘Ah. See this, Vera? It’s the same in the bathroom and toilet. They took precautions not to be seen from outside at night but didn’t make a good enough job of clearing up after themselves. Now we know why the electricity was turned on again.’
Someone had driven not drawing pins but nails into the top and one side of the window frame. A fragment of thick black cotton still clung to one nail.
Vera examined it. ‘Was a curtain supposed to hang there?’
‘They used card in the other rooms, but this is better. It’s the sort of material which they used during the war in the blackout. My mother lined my bedroom curtains with it, because I couldn’t get to sleep in the light summer nights. Doing this meant they could have lights on inside at night without being spotted. Unlike the bathroom and toilet, which must always have been kept dark, this curtain could be lifted to one side during the day to let air in. They tore the material away when they cleared up, but left enough for us to see what they’d been doing.’
Vera thought it through. ‘Someone’s been living up here but it’s not the usual homeless man, who wouldn’t have bothered to clear up after himself. Could it be squatters? Someone who knew the house was empty, moved in, turned on the electricity and used the water?’
‘Squatters change the locks on the door, invite like-minded people to join them and spread themselves out over the best rooms downstairs. Why pick on one small room at the top of the house, unless they’re hiding from somebody or something? Let’s have a look at the back stairs. They go straight down to the kitchen area, don’t they?’
The two women inspected the back stairs. More dust. No footprints. They could hear Mr Abel in the hall, still talking on his phone. ‘Yes, yes. I’ll attend to it directly I’ve finished here, but . . .’
Ellie kept her voice low. ‘Whoever it was – possibly only one or two people – they must have had a key because there’s no sign of a break-in anywhere. Plus, you can see they let themselves in through the front door and left the same way. We probably disturbed them yesterday, and instead of standing their ground as squatters do, they cleaned up after themselves and scarpered. I wonder how they got hold of a key to the front door?’
‘Pet and I handed ours in to the office, who might have kept them, I suppose, hoping we’d get the contract to go on cleaning here when the house was sold.’
Ellie led the way downstairs. ‘Does Pet’s husband work in the cleaning line, too? No, wait a minute. You told me; he’s a hospital porter, works nights.’
‘I don’t think he ever met Mrs Pryce.’
Ellie held Vera back when they reached the landing. ‘You liked Mrs Pryce. I like what I’ve heard about her. It’s clear that Mr Abel knows less than we do, and lacking instructions from Mrs Pryce, he won’t do anything about, well, anything. We’ve no proof that something’s wrong, but . . . what do you think?’
Vera had been following a different line of thought. ‘Whoever it was that was living here recently must have had a car to take away their stuff in last night.’
‘Ah, right. This morning I spotted fresh car tracks at the front where someone reversed into the lawn.’
Vera grinned. ‘I bet they didn’t take all their trash away with them.’
‘Where . . . ?’
‘The dustbins are outside the back door in the covered way. Except that the dustbin men don’t call on empty houses, do they?’
Mr Abel met them as they descended into the hall. He looked worried. ‘At Hoopers we do most earnestly request our clients to turn off the gas, water and electricity at the mains before they leave. I don’t know how it has come about that this has not been done, but I do not think it wise to leave this house with water dripping from taps and electricity connected. Now I’ve managed to locate the fuse boxes in the kitchen corridor and turned off the electricity, also the gas. I’m not sure where the water enters this house, but it must be in the kitchen quarters somewhere.’
‘I’ll show you,’ said Vera, leading the way.
Ellie went into the panelled television room. Vera had said a safe might be concealed in this room. If so, there was nothing obvious to show where it might have been. Dust lay uniformly on every ledge. No one had been in this room since Mrs Pryce left. Disappointing. But what else had she expected?
There was a lot of banging and clattering going on. Footsteps backwards and forwards in the hall. Ellie walked along the panelling, rapping here and there. She couldn’t detect any change in sound. If a safe was hidden there, it was not going to be found easily.
She drifted back to the hall as Mr Abel and Vera emerged from the kitchen quarters.
‘So sorry to leave you,’ said Mr Abel, who had transferred a considerable amount of the dust in the house to his forehead and whose shirt was now very much the worse for wear. ‘I had to fetch a wrench from my car to turn off the water, and then I tried to get the cellar door open, but it’ll need an electric drill to break that down, it’s rusted solid.’
Strike the cellar from a list of possible places to hide a body.
He attempted and failed to brush dirt from sodden shirt sleeves ‘So, what are your first impressions, Mrs Quicke? A truly magnificent house, isn’t it? Just waiting for someone like you to wake it from its sl
eep, har har. Now may I show you the grounds? Extensive, very. Greenhouses, pond, rose beds, vegetable garden.’
‘Thank you, but I’ve seen enough for one day. I need to think about what you’ve shown me so far, and perhaps come back another time.’
‘Ah. Right. Now, may I offer you a lift anywhere?’
Mr Abel collected the stack of post to be redirected and ushered them out of the house, still talking. Ellie smiled and said she didn’t need a lift home, thank you, you’ve been most helpful. Mr Abel eeled his way into his car and drove off.
It was going to be another hot day. Ellie put her dark glasses on.
Vera said, ‘While he was getting the water mains turned off, I popped into the backyard to check there’d been no rubbish left there. And there wasn’t. On my way back I looked for the spare back door key that always hangs on a hook in the cupboard over where the fridge was, and it isn’t there.’
‘Really?’ Ellie was amused. What did Vera think they were going to do – break into the house through the back quarters some moonlit night and search the house with torches? ‘Well, I suppose Mrs Pryce took it when she left.’
Ellie walked out on to the pavement and looked up and down the road. ‘Which day of the week do they collect the rubbish around here? What’s today? Wednesday. Ours is collected today. Do you think this road’s the same? We have to leave our rubbish just inside the drive for collection and not on the pavement, and not before seven in the mornings because if we leave it out overnight the foxes and the crows get at it. Now if our “squatters” wanted to get rid of their rubbish last night, would they dump it just anywhere and hope it’s not ripped open by morning or . . . ?’
‘Could that be theirs?’ Vera pointed to where a couple of bulging black dustbin bags had been left under a tree two houses down from where they stood. The foxes or a cat had been at one of them, but not too badly.
Ellie went to have a closer look only to freeze, hearing the clang and clamour of the dustbin lorry somewhere close.
Vera pounced on the torn bag. ‘Aha! A pizza box. That would attract the foxes all right.’
Murder My Neighbour Page 10
