by Sarah Rayne
By the time the doctor arrived it was mid-morning and Brenda Ford was deeply unconscious. An ambulance was summoned. Ella, crying real tears by this time, went in the ambulance, carrying a small bag with overnight things.
The bag was brought home unopened. Brenda Ford died that night from sepsis brought on, the doctors believed, by a ruptured appendix. There was a post mortem and an inquest, and everyone was very kind. Veronica’s parents asked Ella to stay with them, and Derek Haywood’s parents asked her to their house for meals or to spend a Sunday.
It was very tragic to lose a mother at such an early age. Everyone said so. What nobody said, because nobody knew, was that it was actually very liberating for Ella. She no longer had to worry about anyone knowing her mother was a murderess. Going through her mother’s papers after the funeral, she consigned everything to the fire. There must be no clues anywhere.
She was over eighteen and legally allowed to inherit the little house outright. Armed with a certificate for 120 w.p.m. shorthand and 60 w.p.m. typing, she got a job in the typing pool at the local education offices. She did not have much money but she had enough. There was a tiny insurance policy on her mother’s life, which helped, and she was able to whitewash all the walls in the house. Derek’s mother gave her some spare bales of curtain fabric.
Eventually Ella and Derek married. Ella sold the cottage and his parents gave them £2,000 as a wedding present towards a better house. Ella kept it spick and span, and everyone said she was a wonderful wife and Derek was very lucky. Life became placid and safe. It stayed that way for a great many years.
Until now. Until Jan Malik found an old newspaper article – an article Ella had not even known existed – and Amy, with the careless impetuosity of youth, started asking questions. It was becoming plain that Amy would have to be watched very carefully.
Chapter 30
Three murders, thought Ella. The man from St Anselm’s, Serena Cadence, and Clem Poulter. I committed two of them. My mother committed the third.
For the hundredth time she went over everything she had done, but she could not see that there was anything to trip her up. Clem’s death had been firmly put down as ‘Accidental’ and the file had been closed. Ella did not think the coroner’s verdict was likely to be re-examined. As for the two bodies, the police were said to be going on with their enquiries, but most people seemed to think the case would soon be closed. A man at Derek’s office said ‘Death of two unknown men’ would be the eventual verdict. Derek relayed this information to Ella and Amy.
‘It looks as if the excitement’s all over,’ he said. ‘I don’t think they’ve identified either of the bodies. Probably they were just a couple of tramps who were hiding out in the ruins.’
‘It’ll go down as a Bramley mystery,’ said Amy. ‘People will come on murder weekends and anoraks will try to solve it for years ahead. In about a hundred years’ time there’ll be television programmes, re-examining the evidence and invoking technology we’ve never heard of, and pronouncing who the bodies were.’
‘What an imagination you have,’ said Derek admiringly. ‘Ella, where does she get her ideas?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Are you both going to Poulter’s funeral? I can get an hour or two clear to come with you. I think I should. I’ve known him since we were all at school. I’d like to pay my respects to the poor chap.’
‘Of course I’m going,’ said Ella. ‘Amy’s coming as well.’
The funeral, which was held at the local crematorium, was a gloomy affair. Veronica said it was difficult to know how to behave, because it was so ghoulish, so utterly outside one’s experience. She could not stop thinking of Clem, happily stirring his fish casserole all by himself that night, planning how he would set the table for the guests who would never come.
When the coffin slid back behind the curtains and the organist struck up the final hymn, Veronica dissolved into a very showy spate of crying, which Ella thought displayed a shocking lack of self-control. Veronica always had to draw attention to herself, though. Several of the men went over to comfort her; Ella was glad Derek was not one of them.
After the service finished some people hung about hopefully, because generally at a funeral somebody would make an informal announcement about all mourners being welcome back at the house or the Red Lion to drink old so-and-so’s health. But for Clem, who had no family, nobody seemed to have taken on this responsibility. Ella was annoyed with herself for not having thought of it; she could have put on a very nice little buffet lunch – Amy could have helped – and Derek could have taken an extra hour from the office to hand round glasses of wine.
As it was, Derek, who had come in his own car, went back to his office to deal with some cock-up somebody had apparently made over the planning budget, and Amy thought she had better devote what was left of the afternoon to working on one of her holiday projects. Veronica was standing in the car park, explaining to anyone who would listen that she had not driven here because she had known she would be far too upset to drive back afterwards, and ostentatiously looking up the number of the local taxi firm on her mobile phone. Ella felt bound to offer her a lift. They dropped Amy off, then went on to Veronica’s house.
‘Have you got time for a cup of tea or even something stronger?’ said Veronica. ‘We should at least raise a glass to Clem, shouldn’t we?’
In Veronica’s too-warm sitting room, drinking tea, Ella felt better. Life was gradually but surely sinking back into normality. Clem was out of the way with an unthreatening verdict of Accidental Death pronounced on him, and it sounded as if the police investigations into the bodies at Priors Bramley were petering out.
Veronica had finished her tea and was drinking vodka and tonic, which Ella thought a bit louche at three o’clock in the afternoon. She suddenly set down her glass and said, ‘Ella, there’s something rather strange about Clem’s death.’
A prickle of alarm scudded across Ella’s skin. ‘What?’
‘And the more I think about it, the stranger it seems.’
Every nerve-ending in Ella’s body jangled like alarm bells, but she said, ‘What kind of strange?’
Veronica appeared to take a moment to organize her thoughts, then said, ‘It’s Clem’s diaries. They’ve vanished.’
The alarm bells screeched through Ella’s entire body, momentarily blotting out every other sensation. Then, making a massive effort, she said with a little laugh, ‘Oh, Clem’s famous diaries. But they were only ever part of Clem’s fantasies about becoming a writer.’ Careful, she thought. Don’t be too sneery. You’ve just been to the man’s funeral: you ought to be awash with sentiment. So she added, ‘Dear old Clem and his journals and jottings. But we all knew they didn’t actually exist.’
‘But they did,’ said Veronica.
‘Are you sure?’ said Ella. ‘How do you know?’
‘Because he showed them to me one night. It was only two or three weeks ago, actually. I was quite flattered. He was usually as secretive as MI5 about anything he wrote.’
‘Why did he show the diaries to you?’
‘We were at his house – he was thinking of having his kitchen refitted and I was advising him on colours. Some people say I have quite a good eye for colour, you know. Oh dear, poor Clem, now he’ll never have his grand new kitchen. Anyway, we had a drink or two,’ said Veronica. ‘Well, we had more than one or two. He got a bit maudlin and talked about how he’d been an observer of life since he was a child. He’d always lived life from the sidelines, he said. But he didn’t mind, not really. He saw himself as a – what was that man’s name who wrote those famous diaries hundreds of years ago?’
‘Samuel Pepys?’
‘That’s the one. He took me up to his spare bedroom. Honestly, Ella, I’ve been in a few bedrooms in my time, but that’s one I never expected to go into, not that it counted, because Clem was hardly—’
‘You saw the diaries?’ said Ella. ‘You actually saw them?’
‘Yes. L
eather-bound notebooks, all stacked in date order. They certainly weren’t fantasies, I promise you. He said they were his life’s work and he talked about how he would live on through them when he was dead.’
‘Did you read any of them?’ demanded Ella, then realized her voice had been much too sharp.
But Veronica did not seem to notice anything wrong. She said, ‘No, I didn’t, but I’d have liked to, because I’ll bet there was some juicy stuff in them. You remember what a shocking old busybody his father was. Always listening to people’s conversations and sneaking peeks at letters if he came to the house. I remember once, my parents invited him and Clem for Christmas, and my mother said afterwards she was sure he had gone into the bedroom when he went up to the loo and looked through my father’s bank statements. I bet he told Clem all kinds of things, and I bet Clem wrote them all down.’
‘Such as?’
‘Well, I don’t know. Local scandals, I expect, and don’t say there haven’t been any, because there are scandals everywhere. Things about us, I dare say. Certainly things about me.’ She gave the stupid coy giggle that always rasped on Ella. ‘And there’d be things about our parents, I imagine, and your mother. In fact, very likely quite a lot of things about your mother. She was supposed to have been a bit of a girl, wasn’t she?’
‘No, she wasn’t,’ said Ella at once. ‘People were unkind about her, that was all. Just because she lived on her own and my father died when I was a baby and nobody in Upper Bramley ever knew him—’
‘Oh, Ella, even if you were illegitimate what does it matter?’ said Veronica, sounding slightly exasperated. ‘There’s no shame in it these days. Good Lord, the word’s almost vanished from the dictionary.’
‘I was not illegitimate,’ said Ella angrily. ‘And anyway, how do you know Clem’s diaries weren’t found?’
‘Because I’m the executor of his will,’ said Veronica. ‘Didn’t you know that?’
Ella stared at her. ‘I didn’t, as a matter of fact,’ she said. ‘So?’
‘So I went into the house with the solicitor straight after the inquest. The house will have to be sold, of course, and most of the money goes to various charities – education of illiterate adults and that kind of thing, mostly. But they’re going to see if they can trace any relatives first. I think there’s a distant cousin in Australia. The solicitor’s an executor as well and he’ll do most of the work, I expect, but I’m supposed to know what’s going on and agree to things.’
Ella wanted to scream at the stupid woman to stop talking about trivialities, but she said, quite calmly, ‘And what about the diaries?’
‘They weren’t in the house. I looked absolutely everywhere and they’d gone.’
‘Why were you so keen to find them?’ said Ella.
‘Well, partly because I thought they might make spicy reading – I told you that already. But also I thought the local history society or something might have been interested in them. So I wanted to make sure the coroner’s people hadn’t thrown them away by mistake. Clem would have hated it if his precious diaries had been consigned to some municipal rubbish tip, you know that.’
‘Yes,’ said Ella. Would the silly prattling bitch never come to the point?
‘I asked the solicitor about them and he checked with the coroner’s office. They’d been through the house before the inquest – not a police-type examination, but they had to make sure there was nothing suspicious, nothing that might make it necessary to actually set up a police investigation.’
‘Yes?’
‘At first they thought I meant just a day-to-day diary,’ said Veronica. ‘Addresses, dentist’s appointments and stuff like that. The coroner’s man had found one of those by the phone. But I said no, there were at least twenty leather-bound books, and I told him where they’d been. But he said there definitely hadn’t been anything like that, he’d have remembered, and he certainly wouldn’t have let them be destroyed. They’re not allowed to destroy anything without the executors’ permission in that situation.’
‘It is a bit odd,’ said Ella, after a moment. ‘Probably there’s a perfectly ordinary explanation, though.’
‘I think it’s more than odd,’ said Veronica. She was watching Ella. ‘I think it’s extraordinary and quite thought-provoking that those diaries seem to have vanished. Specially since you were the one who found Clem’s body that morning. That’s the really thought-provoking thing.’
As Ella drove away from the over-heated, fussily furnished house, her mind was in turmoil. She was not overly worried that a solicitor and a coroner’s official apparently knew about the diaries; what worried her was Veronica’s sly hints that it might have been Ella herself who had taken them. Did Veronica think Ella was worried that Clem might have recorded what had happened in Priors Bramley all those years ago? If so, it was odd she had not said so. But she could not suspect Ella of anything worse than taking the diaries. She could not possibly suspect her of killing Clem. What motive would there be?
Still, it might be as well to find out exactly what was in Veronica’s mind, although it was to be hoped Ella would not have to deal with Veronica in the same way she had dealt with Clem.
It had been a bit naughty to tease prim, correct Ella, Veronica acknowledged that. She did not really think Ella had pinched Clem’s diaries and destroyed them – there was no particular reason for her to do such a thing, although it was still peculiar that the diaries had vanished.
Veronica had only been having a bit of mischievous fun, although on reflection perhaps she ought not to have mentioned Barrack Room Brenda. That might have been going a bit far and Ella had looked quite upset when she left. Veronica would phone tomorrow and apologize. She would say she had been a bit squiffy on account of drinking in the middle of the afternoon, and that Clem’s funeral had upset her. It would not actually be a lie, and Ella would understand and forgive her.
Meantime, there was an early evening guest to prepare for. Veronica, washing up the teacups and the vodka glass, felt a little thrill of excitement. He would be here around six – cocktail hour, if they wanted to be posh, although it sounded as if posh was the last thing they would be.
They were going to have one of their games; he had suggested it when he phoned yesterday. What he thought was that he would pretend to be an unsuspecting caller at her house – there for some innocent ordinary purpose – and she would be the sex-mad housewife luring him in to have her evil way with him.
‘D’you mean like here to read the gas meter?’ suggested Veronica, who was quite getting into the spirit of these games and had read a couple of fairly raunchy books to get a few ideas on her own account. ‘Or mend the washing machine? Or sell insurance?’
‘Whatever you like, Berenice,’ he said, letting his voice sink into a lower key over the name.
Shivers ran all over Veronica’s body. Really, this was the most extraordinary, unexpected thing that had ever happened in her life.
She had dashed out early that morning to buy a low-cut scarlet top, and after Ella had gone, she put it on. She had a black skirt which was a bit tight nowadays, but which exactly fitted the role he wanted her to play. Industrial strength make-up, and a slash of really vivid lipstick. Dangly earrings and some clunky necklaces, and she was ready. She positioned herself at the window to watch for his arrival.
Here he came now, walking up to the front door. Veronica, watching fondly, thought you could almost say the sun came out and cast a rosy glow on the whole street, just because he was here.
The game went brilliantly well. Veronica adopted a breathy, slightly accented voice, and they made love up against the washing machine, and then again on the sofa.
As he got washed and dressed afterwards, he said it had been marvellous, and she had been wonderful, really tarty and exciting. She played the slut to absolute perfection, he said. Veronica thought this was a remark a lot of people would have considered insulting. Coming from him, it was nothing of the kind, of course. It was said from insi
de their private world, the vivid exciting make-believe world he could create. It was a world where different rules and standards applied.
Chapter 31
Edirne, 1912
‘The rules are different here,’ said Gil as he and Crispian stood in a corner of the courtyard, horrified at the sentence just pronounced on Jamie. ‘There’s a war raging and we’re in the East, and this is the old Eastern way of tailoring the punishment to the crime. In some areas if you’re caught stealing they cut off your hand. But for them to do this . . . this mutilation to Jamie without a proper trial, without letting him even try to defend himself . . .’
‘Raif, what do we do?’ said Crispian in a low voice, his eyes on the men around the table, who were now in earnest conclave.
‘There’s nothing any of us can do,’ said Raif, but he looked shaken. ‘Even if we could call out the entire military personnel from the fortress, by the time they got here it would be too late.’
‘They said sunset. That’s more than an hour away. Surely there’s time to get help? Can’t we at least try?’
Raif frowned, then said, ‘Yes, all right. You two had better stay here, though. I’ll go faster on my own and I might be able to get in to see one of the Pasha’s aides. But don’t hope for too much. Also,’ he said, ‘while I’m there I can collect some medical supplies to bring back.’
‘Raif, if we don’t free him – if they carry out this sentence – will they drug him first?’
‘I don’t know. They probably would do if the crime was anything other than spying. Or perhaps if he wasn’t a foreigner. I’m sorry,’ said Raif, ‘but being English won’t have helped him.’
Gil, seeing Crispian’s expression, said, ‘You can’t blame them. Imagine how we’d feel if England was about to be invaded and someone from Turkey or Greece sold military secrets to the enemy. You wouldn’t fall over yourself to rescue him and nor would I.’ He looked at Raif. ‘Do the best you can,’ he said.
