MOUSE (a psychological thriller and murder-mystery)

by D. M. Mitchell

  The wind buffeted her as she bent down to the headstone and pulled up weeds from her mother’s grave. Devereux Towers had its own private graveyard, surrounded by a rusted iron fence, leaning in places as if it too had been tumbled by the wind. It was the last resting place of many a previous occupant. It should have been the last resting place of her father, beside her mother and two sisters, but Laura had refused him his one last wish. The plot he’d reserved next to his wife remained empty.

  The graves of her mother and sisters were lined up in the same order as the photographs on her father’s desk. He’d been very careful with the placement. There was no room for Laura’s grave; she would have been edged out, as she’d been edged out of their life when they were alive. He didn’t want her buried here amongst them, next to him.

  She rose on hearing the faint sound of a car round the front. Laura wiped her muddy hands down her skirt, brushed back her wind-ruffled hair and painted a dirty smudge on her forehead in the process. She listened nervously, the wind at her back eager to push her towards the sound. She went around the side of the house to check.

  Parked out front was a police car. She felt her legs buckle and her stomach screw itself into a tight ball. As she approached, two police officers got out of the car, putting on their caps and screwing their eyes up against the rain.

  ‘Laura Leach?’ one of them asked.

  ‘That’s correct. Is there anything wrong?’

  ‘Nothing wrong, Miss Leach. We’d like to ask you a few questions, is all.’

  For a sickening moment she froze to the spot, unsure what to do.

  ‘Are you feeling alright, Miss Leach?’ said the other officer.

  ‘Yes, yes, perfectly well. I suppose you had better come inside, out of the rain.’

  She led them into the entrance hall and closed the door on the worsening weather. ‘This is some place you have here,’ Miss Leach, the officer said, looking about him, genuinely enthralled. ‘Reminds me of some kind of movie set.’

  ‘I think it’s what father intended,’ she said flatly. ‘How can I help you?’

  ‘We believe you knew Monica Andrews.’

  Laura thought about it for a moment. ‘You mean Monica the cleaner?’

  ‘That’s right. We understand she used to do work for the family.’

  ‘For my father, yes, when he became too ill to clean for himself. Before he went into a home. He kept her on whilst he was away from Devereux Towers, and she was here after his funeral. I kept her on for a little while but then I fired her.’

  ‘Why was she fired?’

  ‘She wasn’t doing the job properly and she wasn’t a nice person to have around. I also prefer not to have strangers in the place. Why do you ask all this?’

  ‘Are you aware that Monica has gone missing?’

  She shook her head. ‘I’ve had nothing to do with her since she left, nearly two years ago. I wasn’t aware she’d gone missing. What has that got to do with me?’

  ‘We’re chasing up any leads we can. Did she mention any other places she worked, any friends or contacts? Please think carefully – any shred of information might prove crucial in finding her.’

  ‘We never talked. I knew nothing about her, nothing at all. I can’t help you there, officer, I’m sorry.’ She stared at him. ‘Is that all you’ve come for?’

  The officer glanced at his colleague. Raindrops glistened like little pearls on the dark material of their uniforms. ‘You said she wasn’t a nice person to have around – what did you mean by that?’

  ‘Just that. She wasn’t nice to talk to. She had a way about her that I didn’t take to.’

  ‘You live here all alone, Miss?’ said the other officer.

  ‘What has that to do with anything?’

  ‘Nothing, Miss. An observation. Have you noticed any strange people hanging around recently?’

  ‘Strange? Define strange.’

  ‘Strangers, should I say. People new to the area, perhaps.’

  She hesitated. ‘I don’t see anyone much. I don’t go out that often. Practically everyone in Langbridge is a stranger to me, officer.’

  The officer smiled. ‘Thanks for your help, Miss Leach. Sorry to bother you; we’ll leave you alone now. If you do think of anything else…’

  ‘I’ll call,’ she said.

  She let them out of the door. The wind and the rain saw them hurry to the police car. She closed the door but watched the car through the window, all the way down the track till it was obscured by trees.

  Letting out a long-held breath she put a hand to her stomach and doubled-up, wanting to be sick. She choked it back, but not before it burnt her mouth. When she looked at her hands she was horrified at how they shook and she could do nothing to stop them save clasp them together.

  She didn’t leave the window till night fell; till she was certain the police weren’t coming back.

  ‘Is it so wrong, to want to be loved, to want to love?’ she said to herself, and recoiled in alarm, because that is exactly what she’d said to Nurse Bradshaw in Bartholomew Place.

  ‘There is nothing wrong in that,’ Nurse Bradshaw had replied. ‘But it is what you have done in the name of love that is so wrong.’

  ‘I did not plan it,’ Laura said tearfully. ‘It just happened.’

  ‘Nothing simply happens. You played a wilful part in things, Laura.’

  ‘Please let me out of here, Nurse Bradshaw. I don’t like it here and I am not like the others in this place.’

  ‘It is not within my power to grant.’

  ‘Do you think I am a bad person, Nurse Bradshaw?’

  She thought hard upon it, and then said, ‘My opinions do not matter.’

  ‘They do to me!’ She made as if to grab the nurse’s arm but she pulled away from Laura. ‘I’m sorry. Don’t look at me like that. I’m not a bad person.’

  ‘I have to go,’ she said. She turned at the door. ‘Don’t fight things, Laura, that’s my advice. And I don’t think you are a bad person, but I do pity you.’ She lowered her head. ‘I can’t do anything for you, so please stop pestering me or I will have to avoid seeing you. You don’t want that, do you?’

  Laura gave a rapid shake to her head. ‘Where is Alex?’ she asked quietly. ‘No one will tell me.’

  Nurse Bradshaw’s face hardened. ‘You mustn’t mention that name ever again. You must forget all about Alex. You will have to resign yourself to the fact that you will never see Alex again.’

  Laura remembered screaming till she felt as if her throat had been cut by scissors, yet she ignored the pain and did not stop till they restrained her with leather belts and jabbed another needle into her arm; till her brain felt as if it had turned to thick sludge inside her skull and she didn’t know why she was trying to scream or who she was screaming for. They tried for years to erase Alex from her mind, and in the end she pretended they had succeeded and stored the name deep inside that far corner of her head where they or their insidious treatments could not reach.

  Laura listened to the rain. It intruded on her thoughts, washed away the sad memories. She could not remember the last time she ate. She should feel hungry but she did not. In any case, what was that tiny emptiness compared to the emptiness of her very soul?

  Neither did she feel the cold. It was as if her body were turning itself off by degrees and soon all that would be left of it would be the smouldering embers of her tortured mind. One day, even that must burn out, use up its limited store of energy like a star in the cold vastness of space, collapsing in on itself, feeble, exhausted, dying.

  She wandered aimlessly though the rooms of Devereux Towers, imagining she heard the voices of her mother and sisters, her father, feeling their presence filling up the place with life again. But now they were only sad echoes only she could hear, reverberating through her mind, fading into the silence of the grave.

  Her father’s study. Cloaked in darkness. The twisted, angry masks staring at her from the walls. The array of tribal weapons sil
ently mocked her and dared her come closer.

  She tore herself away and went to the tower – Laura’s Tower – taking the stairs and pausing outside the blue door. She lifted the key that hung around her waist and shed a tear for all that could have been. But she did not enter, for she felt too weak. So she went to her bedroom and lay on the bed without undressing. She could not sleep. The rain hit the glass and made a sound like tearing calico.

  Must I be punished forever, she thought? Have I really been so bad that you send me even worse torment to endure?

  Yes, she thought; you must take whatever is sent, whatever pain is thrust upon you, because that is the price of sin. Her father had decreed it and so she heard his voice say it still.

  Laura did not know how long she had been asleep, but she awoke with a start. She thought she heard a noise coming from downstairs. She strained to hear more through the hiss of silence. The house made all manner of queer noises at night, she told herself. But this was a thump loud enough to penetrate her light sleep and wake her.

  She heard it again. Someone was downstairs.

  She slid off the bed and padded silently to the light-switch, flicking it on. The bright glare caused her to squint, but instead of making her feel better it only accentuated how exposed she felt, and emphasised the dark void on the other side of the bedroom door. The spiral staircase leading downwards was in almost complete darkness.

  Laura crept silently down the stairs, finding the light switch at the bottom. The entrance hall was lit up brightly. There wasn’t anything out of the ordinary here. She picked up her father’s walking stick – the very same she’d beaten Katherine with – and moved quietly towards the dark archway that led to her father’s study. She froze on hearing a faint noise emanating from it.

  ‘Who is that?’ she said, her voice uncomfortably loud. ‘I’m armed!’

  She didn’t move for a full minute, but heard nothing more except the rain at the windows. Cautiously she went to the study door, turned the handle and pushed at the solid oak. The room was in complete darkness. Her hand crept around the doorframe and found the light-switch. She flicked it on.

  Nothing. There wasn’t anyone here.

  The curtains billowed a little and she went over to the sash window. It was open by a fraction of an inch and the wind puffing through the tiny gap was cold on her hand. She slammed it shut and drew the curtains against the night, her own reflection in the glass looking like a spirit standing out on the gravel.

  A chill embraced her. She looked about her. ‘Father, is that you?’ she said in a whisper. ‘Have you come to haunt me?’ She was greeted by silence and she rubbed her shoulder to keep warm. ‘Well you can go to hell!’ she said.

  As she turned to leave she paused by the collection of war clubs, straightening them. She ran her hand over one of them and felt its hardness, imagining the severe pain it had possibly inflicted.

  There was nothing to be afraid of, she thought. It was just the wind taunting her. She took a war club from off the wall, carried it up to her bedroom and laid it on the bed beside her, listening to the driving rain outside.

  * * * *

  31

  A Close Secret

  It was mid-afternoon and yet the light was as dull as dusk. It had been raining heavily all day, and had not let up once. Today it had reached monsoon proportions, or what Leonard Kimble presumed must resemble a monsoon as he’d never actually seen one, never been further than Somerset. He wanted that ignorance to change. One day he’d see the world, finally escape this dead hole of a place with its small minds and petty, provincial ambitions. Never more so than on a day like today, when the wind whipped off the levels and drove on unchecked through Langbridge, its cramped streets awash, the fields hereabouts sodden.

  Dreary, he thought as he paused on the stone bridge that spanned the swollen river. He’d never seen the Lang so high or rushing so fast, its swirling, muddy waters carrying along huge tree limbs and other detritus, thrashing its earthen banks like a petulant child in a tantrum lashing out at its mother, great chunks of earth being dislodged and swept into the churning depths. Some said, fearfully, that if it carried on like this it would break its banks altogether, like it did back in 1947. What did the morons expect, thought Kimble? The damned place was built on a drained floodplain. Anyhow, that was just people getting wound-up, like they always did around here. They see a shooting-star and they get all superstitious. There were still those who practised wassailing at Christmas, clanging their pots and shouting like mad around an apple tree, and then pouring a jar of perfectly good cider onto its roots. This was 1976, for God’s sake!

  The sign was dripping wet. The Sedgemoor Retirement Home. It was an uninspiring grey box of a building erected some time in the late-1950s; it was functional, plain, and constructed at a time when building materials were in short supply after the last war. The stopping-off place for pensioners on their way to kicking the bucket. It reminded him of a concrete coffin, now he thought about it, and that was rather fitting.

  He rang the bell at the front door and a woman in a pale-blue uniform covered over with a red cardigan answered.

  ‘I’m here to see Mrs Bradshaw,’ he said. ‘I’m expected.’

  ‘Ah, yes,’ said the woman, ‘the man from The News of the World.’ She invited him in. ‘Shocking weather we’re having,’ she said apologetically, as if she were responsible for the rain. ‘We get a lot of this in this part of the country. Is it raining where you came from?’ She led him to the front desk where he signed a visitors’ book. ‘You look very familiar, Mr Hemmingway. Have you been to Langbridge before?’

  ‘This is my first time,’ Kimble said. ‘Can I see Mrs Bradshaw, please?’

  She took the lead down a maze of corridors, the air stifling with the radiators being set to high. Bland prints were hung on bland walls, and all the lights had been turned on to fend off the encircling darkness outside the rain-blurred windows. Every now and again a fresh squall threw more water at the panes. The woman paused at a door and knocked.

  ‘Ellen – Mr Hemmingway is here to see you.’ She turned to Kimble. ‘They’ve just had their afternoon tea and Mrs Bradshaw normally likes to take a nap at this time, so she could be a little tired.’ A faint voice told them to come in and the woman opened the door for Kimble. ‘I’ll leave you to it. Just call at the desk when you’re ready to be let out.’ She trotted off brightly down the corridor.

  Ellen Bradshaw was sitting in a well-padded armchair facing an electric fire, its twin bars blazing orange. She had a friendly face, thought Kimble, if there really is such a thing; rounded, heavy jowls, watery blue eyes, thinning grey hair moulded into a mass of curls.

  Leonard Kimble had been doing some digging. He’d searched the microfiche in the Gazette office, looking for any past article concerning Bartholomew Place, particularly where they mentioned ex-employees. He stumbled across a few leads but most people had either died or left the county and he’d no idea how to begin to trace them. He found one, though, and she had been a nurse at Bartholomew Place – Ellen Bradshaw – who had been living under his nose all this time, here at The Sedgemoor Retirement Home over the bridge and on the outskirts of Langbridge. He contacted her and was surprised at how eager she was to speak to him, and even more so when she heard he was from The News of the World. She said she had something she wanted to tell him, something she needed to get off her chest. That suited Kimble just fine. He couldn’t believe his luck.

  ‘Good afternoon, Mrs Bradshaw,’ he said politely, closing the door behind him. The heat inside the room was almost unbearable, but the woman had a thick blanket spread over her legs, and she wore a hefty, hand-knitted cardigan.

  ‘Mr Hemmingway?’ she asked.

  ‘That’s right. Call me Ernie,’ he said.

  ‘Please, do take a seat,’ she said, pointing to a chair by the fire. She looked faintly nervous, her eyes saucer-wide and unblinking. ‘Forgive me for saying, but you look rather young.’

  He
smiled. ‘I’m older than I look, Mrs Bradshaw,’ he said. ‘And The News of the World has invested in a raft of young reporters learning their craft; it is a modern, forward-thinking newspaper.’

  ‘A national paper,’ she said.

  ‘Yes, famously so.’

  ‘That is good. That is what’s needed.’

  Kimble sat down and took his wet coat off. He hung it on the back of his chair and removed a pad and pen from the coat pocket. ‘I won’t keep you,’ he assured. ‘I just need to ask a few questions about Bartholomew Place.’

  ‘And I need to tell you a few things about it. It’s time I let people know about some of the things that went on inside there. Not just there but in other similar places too. It’s not right; people’s lives have been ruined.’

  He was taken aback by the outpouring. ‘Ruined? I’m not sure what you mean, Mrs Bradshaw.’

  She stared at him and for a moment he feared she had seen through his deception, but she shifted her attention to the fire. ‘I am ill, Mr Hemmingway. You get to a certain age and you are beset with all manner of illnesses you never dreamt about as a young person. But such things are inevitable. So many changes happen to you as you grow older. It’s like feeling the cold, for instance.’ She pulled the blanket further up her legs and appeared to shiver. ‘Or seeing things in a different light. Seeing things how they really are – were.’ She turned back to him. ‘I’m nearly seventy-seven-years-old,’ she admitted, in that way older people sometimes do when fishing for compliments about how they don’t look their age. Kimble found that the majority not only looked their age but in fact looked far older, in his opinion.

  ‘You don’t look it,’ he said, playing the game. ‘I’ve no idea what you’re doing in a retirement home – surely you’re far too young?’