Murder My Neighbour

by Veronica Heley

  Thomas kept pace beside her, looking worried. ‘Midge isn’t going to be pleased if we introduce another cat into the household, is he?’

  ‘We’ll contact the Cats Protection people and find out who’s responsible for her, but it’s too late to do that today. We’ll have to keep her in my office or the dining room out of Midge’s way overnight and return her to her owner in the morning.’

  No, Midge wasn’t pleased. He was in the hall when they got back. He took one look at the tiny cat in Ellie’s arms and hissed in outrage, curving himself into an upside-down ‘U’ shape, his tail fluffing out to the size of a lavatory brush.

  The little cat burrowed her head under Ellie’s arm and squeaked in terror.

  ‘Oh, behave yourself, Midge,’ said Ellie, cross with him for once. ‘We all know you’re king of the castle, and nobody – and especially not this tiny morsel – is going to challenge you for that position. Rose!’

  Rose appeared, looking flustered. ‘Oh, there you are, I’ve been so worried. What kept you? And we’ve got Herself in the sitting room. I told her you wouldn’t want to be bothered tonight, but you know what she’s like. Oh, it’s never that stray cat again, is it?’

  ‘I’m putting her in the dining room for now. Have we a litter tray she can use? She was in the Pryce house, got in through the cat flap which hadn’t been fastened properly and . . . oh!’

  Diana was standing in the doorway to the sitting room. Dressed in black, as always. White of face.

  Rose tried to take the little cat from Ellie. She mewed piteously and clung to Ellie’s dress. Ellie tried to unhook her. Thomas tried to unhook her. Rose helped.

  Midge spat and hissed.

  Diana said, ‘Well, really!’ She exhaled and tried to help. And got scratched for her pains. ‘Ow! The little devil!’ She sucked her fingers.

  Rose managed to get the cat off Ellie at last and bore her away.

  Ellie shook herself down, eyeing her daughter with a jaundiced eye. ‘Diana, I don’t know what you’ve come for. If it’s to say you’re sorry, I’m ready to listen – in the morning. I’ve no time for you tonight, so please go.’

  ‘But I’ve got the most marvellous proposal to put to you. You can’t just—’

  ‘Oh, yes, I can.’ Ellie started to climb the stairs. ‘Goodnight, Diana. Thomas will see you out.’

  Thomas opened the front door, waited till Diana had made her exit, then shut and bolted it behind her.

  Rose hovered. ‘That little thing’s pretty wild. She’ll be up and down the curtains, I’ve no doubt.’

  ‘The cat, or Diana?’ said Thomas.

  ‘Both,’ said Ellie, from the landing above. ‘I’ve had today up to here. I’m hungry and tired and need a wash. I’m just going to change and I’ll be right with you for supper, Rose.’

  Sunday morning

  Thomas went to an early morning service at the nearby church. Ellie overslept.

  She got downstairs later than usual, in time to take a phone call from Thomas, phoning to say he’d been asked to visit an old friend who was ill, and could she manage if he didn’t get back till lunchtime? Of course she could.

  The kitten had ignored the improvised cat tray, peed on the carpet and torn a rent in one of the curtains. Midge was on sentry duty outside the dining room door, snarling whenever he heard the little cat mew.

  Ellie phoned the Cats Protection League, only to get an answerphone. Of course, it was Sunday. She tried to make a fuss of Midge, to assure him he was the most important person in the household, but he was having none of it. He knew what he knew, and he wasn’t going to compromise. He hunkered down outside the dining-room door.

  Ellie had to get Rose to come and hold Midge while she darted in to feed the kitten minced up beef and milk, which the little cat attacked as if she hadn’t been fed for a week – which was just possibly the truth. She was pathetically glad to see Ellie and didn’t want to be left alone. Ellie felt like a traitor as she shut the door on the appealing little face within. As soon as Rose released Midge, he settled himself back into the angle of the door, waiting for it to be opened again.

  What should they have for lunch? Mia and Rose laughed when Ellie asked them. What did Ellie think they’d been doing since breakfast time? A half leg of lamb was roasting in the oven and potatoes had been peeled, ready to be popped in later. As for fresh greens – how about some mangetout peas?

  All Ellie had to do was praise and withdraw. And worry about what she should say to Diana.

  The doorbell rang, and it was – wouldn’t you know? – Ears, plus DC Milburn.

  ‘You left without signing a statement last night.’ Ears was trying to contain irritation without much success. He attempted a smile. ‘You must be aware you are not supposed to leave the scene of a crime without giving us all the information you have at your disposal. I could charge you with wasting police time.’

  ‘Surely you know as much as I do? If not more.’

  He breathed hard through his nose. ‘You have a reputation . . . possibly undeserved, but . . . I have to ask you what, if anything . . . In short, I would welcome any comments you might care to pass on.’ Through his teeth.

  DC Milburn stood behind him, her expression bland.

  Ellie tried not to giggle. Poor Ears! Had he been hauled over the coals again?

  ‘Well, you’d better come in and sit down. As you say, it is just possible that I may have heard one or two items of gossip which might be useful to you, although my poor brain does occasionally take off into flights of fancy. First of all; was the girl really Evangeline Pryce?’

  ‘How did you know it was her?’

  ‘I didn’t really. Only, Vera told me that Evangeline Pryce didn’t wear a bra or knickers, and neither did that girl.’

  Ears sucked in his breath. ‘That is not sufficient to—’

  ‘She was the only other young girl I could think of who had access to a front door key and might be searching for something in the house. Edwina Pryce – that’s the old lady’s stepdaughter – had a key to the house because she used to take food in for her. The victim obviously wasn’t a middle-aged woman, so it must be her daughter, Evangeline.

  ‘I don’t know anyone else who had a key to the front door –’ here she thought of Nirav and crossed her fingers behind her back – ‘except for the estate agents, and they wouldn’t be likely to pop in after hours in the dark, would they? Have you checked for fingerprints on the torch? Did it belong to her?’

  ‘Too rough a surface to hold prints, but her mother says she had one just like it.’

  ‘Did you have to get her mother to identify her?’

  He nodded, grimacing.

  DC Milburn murmured, in such a low voice that Ears could ignore her intervention if he wished, ‘Ms Pryce is distraught.’

  ‘I can imagine,’ said Ellie, wincing.

  Ears said, ‘Let’s get to the point. How did you know there was a safe in that room?’

  ‘Vera told me there was a safe in the house and she thought it was probably in that room. It made sense for it to be there because the room was panelled, which disguised the presence of a safe much better than merely hanging a picture in front of it. Vera didn’t know exactly where it was, she didn’t know the trick of opening the panelling, and she certainly didn’t know the combination.

  ‘I don’t know how long the safe has been there. If it had been installed by the late Mr Pryce, then his daughter would have known where it was, and she might well have told Evangeline. What’s not so clear is whether or not it still contains what it used to hold, which I believe is Mrs Pryce’s most valuable jewellery and possibly some other treasures. Have you had it opened yet?’

  ‘We’ve got a man coming in later on to get it open for us. You’re not implying that Edwina Pryce attacked her own daughter, are you?’

  ‘Certainly not.’

  ‘So what was the girl doing there?’

  ‘Yes, that’s the big question, isn’t it? Why now, after so long
? What has changed recently that made her decide it was worth a look?’ Ellie wanted to be quiet so that she could think this through.

  Ears was impatient. ‘It’s obvious she was going to see if there was anything left in the safe, right? We’ve recovered Mrs Pryce’s car, but there was no sign of her jewellery or other valuables. Presumably whoever took the car has disposed of everything they found in it. We’ve issued a description of what’s missing, but nothing’s turned up yet.’

  ‘I suppose,’ said Ellie, ‘it depends on whether or not Mrs Pryce had time to empty the safe before she died. Was Evangeline desperate for money, do you know? Surely she must inherit something from Mrs Pryce? Has the will been read yet? Ah . . . did they wait for the will to be read, were disappointed with its contents, and only after that became desperate enough to try opening the safe?’

  Ears made a chopping gesture and turned away.

  The DC replied, ‘We understand from her mother that Evangeline had borrowed a large sum against her expectations and spent it on a deposit for a flat and a sports car.’

  Ears took a chair and sat, his knees rather too close to Ellie. ‘But you know all that, don’t you?’

  ‘Me? No. Why?’

  The DC pressed on. ‘You’re sure you haven’t heard?’

  ‘Absolutely. Go on.’

  ‘Evangeline found she’d only inherited five thousand pounds, which wouldn’t cover what she’d laid out. So, yes, she might well have been desperate for money and decided to see if some of Mrs Pryce’s valuables were still in the house.’

  Ellie was puzzled. ‘I don’t understand. Whatever was in the safe would be the property of the estate, and she had no right to it. Ah, I’m being naive. She was doing a spot of burglary on her own account?’

  ‘Possibly,’ muttered Ears.

  Ellie tried to work it out. ‘Let’s see now; she took her mother’s key to the front door of the house – it was on a string round her wrist, wasn’t it? And she also took a torch because she knew the house was empty. And, because her mother had been in and out of the house during the last week of Mrs Pryce’s life, Evangeline knew the services were supposed to have been turned off. She didn’t have any tools with her, which indicates that she knew where the safe was and how to open it.’

  Ears bent closer. ‘So who killed her? An accomplice?’

  ‘The assailant must have been a big man, don’t you think, to have done such damage to the girl?’

  ‘Who are you pointing the finger at?’ said Ears. ‘How about the gardener, Fritz? A no-good boy, if ever I saw one.’

  EIGHTEEN

  Sunday morning

  Ellie flushed with irritation. ‘Certainly not Fritz.’

  ‘He’s put up his hands to theft from everyone he’s ever worked for—’

  ‘And will any of his employers prosecute? Of course not. It wasn’t Fritz who killed Evangeline.’

  ‘Come on then,’ said Ears. ‘Give us a full description of the killer: height, weight, colour of hair and eyes, with name and address, including both Christian names. You know you can do it.’

  She thought of saying that sarcasm didn’t become him, but resisted the temptation. ‘Have you considered her uncle, who works as a school caretaker somewhere?’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous!’ snapped Ears. Then he softened. ‘No, we did check, but he was at a poetry reading in a bookshop until late and, let’s face it, he’s a bit of a weakling and hasn’t the guts or the strength to knock a healthy young girl about like that.’

  ‘Have you considered Mrs Pryce’s window cleaner, whose name is Jack? I have no idea where he lives or what he looks like, though someone told me he was a big, hard man with lots of muscle. There was something else I was told about him, but no . . . it’s gone. Ms Milburn can find him for you by asking around the neighbourhood. There can’t be that many window cleaners around. He must have a van or car that he takes his ladders around in. Perhaps someone saw it there a couple of nights ago?’

  ‘Come on! A window cleaner!’

  The DC tried to say something, but he overrode her. ‘Why would a window cleaner want to kill Evangeline?’

  Ms Milburn looked agitated.

  Ears stopped prowling and barked out, ‘What!’

  ‘The window cleaner was close to Mrs Pryce because, if you remember, he inherited something under her will.’

  ‘Oh. Ah.’ He didn’t like to say he’d forgotten, but turned on Ellie again. ‘It doesn’t sound at all likely to me that a window cleaner would want to kill Evangeline. How like you to smear the reputation of an honest man who keeps his nose clean and has never strayed from the straight and narrow.’

  ‘Well, yes. Except that I think you’ll find he has a record and has spent time inside.’ Also, Fritz didn’t like him; Ellie would trust Fritz’s judgement on this.

  Shock, horror. Hadn’t they checked Jack out? Incredible!

  Ears breathed hard. ‘So tell me why a window cleaner would want to kill the girl?’

  ‘I don’t suppose he wanted to. I suppose they were both after the same thing – the contents of the safe.’

  ‘You’re saying he was an accomplice of hers?’

  ‘Certainly not. All she had with her was the torch, no tools. She expected to be working in the dark, but knew where the safe was and how to open it. If they’d been in it together, he wouldn’t have had to wreck the panelling to find the safe, because she would have told him where it was. He must have brought a crowbar or some such with him, intending to tear the panelling apart till he found the safe.

  ‘What a shock it must have been to both of them to find the other there! I imagine there was an argument; perhaps she threatened to call the police, and he assaulted her in order to stop her leaving and raise the alarm. She was dragged around the place and punched until she lost consciousness.’

  The DC said in a soft voice, ‘Edwina Pryce admitted they did know where the safe was, but says she didn’t know the combination. She says Mrs Pryce did give it to her once, a long time ago. She says she wrote it down on that year’s calendar, which has since been thrown away.’

  An unlikely tale, thought Ellie. Edwina throw away the combination to the family’s safe? Pull the other one.

  As for Evangeline, from what Ellie had heard about that young lady, she’d certainly not have passed up a chance to memorize it, or to write it down somewhere.

  ‘Evangeline presumably took her mother’s front door key . . . We’ll have to check on that,’ said Ears. ‘So how did this mythical window cleaner get in?’

  ‘Well, I suppose there are two scenarios. The first is that he spotted Evangeline going into the house and pushed his way in after her. That’s very possible. There was another way. He didn’t have a front door key, but he’s had access to the house for years and knew the layout. He was in and out of the house on that last day when the utilities were turned off. He was there to put padlocks on all the outside doors – and incidentally, he didn’t hand over all the keys to the padlocks, but kept some for himself so he could get into the yard at any time he liked.

  ‘Now the back door key, which usually hung on a hook in the kitchen, is missing. I think he took it. You’d better check whether or not it got handed in to the estate agents, but my guess is that it wasn’t. Once inside the yard, using the keys he’d kept to the padlocks, he had access to the house through the back door.’

  ‘Why would he want a back door key to an empty house? And don’t tell me he was after the contents of the safe on the day she moved out, because at that point everyone thought Mrs Pryce had gone off with all her bits and pieces.’

  ‘Well, not everyone, perhaps. Those who were involved in her demise would have known better. But, getting back to Jack; an empty house is an open invitation to people with contacts in the building trade. Good fireplaces and plumbing fixtures go missing from empty houses all the time. Jack hasn’t a good reputation. The only puzzle to me is why he waited so long to go in.’ There was something else in the back of her mind
about that, too, if only she could remember it.

  ‘Oh,’ she said, with a little jump. ‘Have you checked to see if the back door was jemmied open?’

  ‘No sign of a break in.’

  Ellie sighed. ‘Oh dear, it does look as if it was Jack, and that he planned to rob the place right from the start.’

  ‘So you say,’ said Ears, heavily sarcastic.

  Ellie pursued her own line of thought. ‘When he got in through the back door, the first thing he did was to turn the electrics on. He must have done this after the girl arrived and before she got as far as the safe. If she’d noticed that lights had been turned on in the house she wouldn’t have gone in, would she? It must have been a shock to her when the place lit up.’

  ‘All right; she knew where the safe was. What makes you think she knew the combination to it?’

  ‘I don’t think Edwina has been straight with you. What, throw away the combination to the family’s safe, when she knew that a number of valuables had been stored there over the years? Of course she didn’t!’

  ‘Then why is she pretending that she did?’

  ‘She’s dissociating herself from her daughter’s attempt at burglary. I suppose you can’t blame her for that. But the idea that Evangeline would have come to the house armed with nothing but a key and a torch is a giveaway. She must have known the combination.’

  ‘You think Edwina gave her the key and the combination, that she was in it with her?’

  ‘I really don’t know. It could be that, or it could be that Evangeline had the combination all along and took her mother’s key, acting on her own initiative. There wasn’t any blood in the television room, was there? The man must have caught her in the hall, perhaps as she came through the front door. The blood spatters tell us it was a hard fight with lots of blood shed. Have you checked to see if all the blood was hers? Maybe she managed to scratch him as he threw her around. She tried to get out of the front door at one point, didn’t she? Finally he knocked her out and left her lying on the floor at the bottom of the stairs. He went off to work on the panelling, but once he’d found the safe, he couldn’t open it. She was still alive at that point—’