False Wall

by Veronica Heley

  ‘Was there ever any proof that her husband was lost at sea?’

  A sharp note entered Zoe’s voice. ‘Whatever are you on about now? Certainly he was lost at sea, and she obtained official notification of his death when he’d been gone for nine years. Believe me, Sir Leon wouldn’t have bought the house if the title hadn’t been clear in her name.’

  ‘I have never been round the house or into the garden, but I believe you may have done so, when supervising the builders. Is that correct?’

  ‘Yes. But—’

  ‘As you say, Leon was thinking of cutting a door in the wall between his garden and mine. I suppose that has sometimes happened before between neighbours who are on good terms. Was there ever a door between Leon’s garden and the Admiral’s house next door?’

  ‘Certainly not. It had been bricked up years ago.’

  ‘But there had once been such a door? You saw the archway, and a difference in the brickwork?’

  ‘I believe so. Now, if you don’t mind—’

  ‘One last question. Was the purchase made through one of Leon’s companies? Was his interest in the house kept secret as long as possible?’

  ‘Naturally. We didn’t want the price being hiked because he was known to be a wealthy man. And now, if you please …’ Zoe clicked off.

  Bea discovered that Oliver and Hari were both looking at her. She said, ‘We’ve been looking for the wrong man. Ten to one, those bones belong to the Admiral’s family, and not to that of Queen Mary.’

  Dressed in a high-necked black sweater, jeans and trainers, Bea followed in Hari’s footsteps as he led the way down her garden, delicately avoiding the worst of the rubble. She waited while he cut the barbed wire along the line of the original wall, and let her through into the Admiral’s plot.

  She looked to the left into Leon’s garden, to the trench from which a body had been removed, and the pits where the dogs had once lain.

  She looked ahead and to the right, and found herself staring over the low balustrade at the ceiling of Mona’s sitting room. As she moved stealthily forward, she could see more and more of it.

  A standard lamp of the old-fashioned variety was the only illumination, apart from the bluish light of the television screen. It wasn’t a large flat screen, but it was at least new enough to show a picture in colour. Some murder mystery, perhaps?

  Hari signed to her to proceed and she did so, carefully stepping in her trainers across the garden which had harboured the marquee only two nights ago. She came to the low wall which prevented people from falling down the steps into the basement area. Facing her on her left was a blank, unlighted window … possibly giving on to the indoor gym to which Leon had been taken? Then came a door with a transom window above it, which would lead into the corridor bisecting the basement area. To the right lay the French windows which gave access on to Mona’s sitting room.

  The evening was warm and the French windows had been left open a crack. The sound of a gunshot drifted out, echoed by one from above Bea’s head.

  Bea looked up. One floor up, a window had been left open and the sound came from there. The Admiral and his wife were watching the same cops and robbers programme as Mona.

  Hari nodded to Bea.

  She knocked on the French windows, opened them wide, and entered the room.

  FIFTEEN

  ‘Good evening,’ said Bea. ‘I’m your neighbour, Mrs Abbot. I thought it would be a good idea to make your acquaintance … Mrs …? Lady …? I’m afraid we haven’t been introduced and I’m not sure of your title.’

  Identical looks of astonishment from Rollo, slumped in an armchair with his feet up on a coffee table, and from the comfortable-looking, grey-haired woman sitting beside him.

  Mona Barlow didn’t bother about dieting or makeup, bought her clothes from Marks & Spencer and washed her hair in the shower. She hadn’t had Botox and her ankles had swollen in the heat. If she’d presented herself to the Abbot Agency in search of a job, she’d have been snapped up immediately as one of those capable women who dealt with difficult family situations without fuss. She was a Treasure, a Super Nanny. Her dress identified her as a poor relation, but she hadn’t the apologetic air of one who expected to be overlooked.

  Struggling out of her seat, Mona said, ‘Mrs Abbot? Do come in. How nice of you to call. Yes, I’m Mona Barwell. Rollo, turn off the telly. If you want to watch that programme, you can go upstairs. Do sit down, Mrs Abbot. I understand you were taken ill at the party the other night? Is that right? I’m afraid I was out, but I heard something …’

  She indicated a comfortable chair and, as Rollo was being slow to obey, twitched her finger at him. ‘Now, Rollo! Mrs Abbot, a cup of tea?’

  Rollo, chewing his lip, turned off the telly. Rollo’s eyes were sliding all over the place. Their hostess, however, seemed oblivious to his unease. Perhaps he was never at ease in society?

  Bea summed up Mona Barwell as a genuine person, and innocent of wrongdoing. No, she couldn’t be! Surely she must know what had been going on? It wasn’t possible that she had no idea! Was it?

  ‘Your sister, Lady Payne, kindly brought me down here on Friday and made me a cold drink. Unfortunately it disagreed with me, and I passed out. Rollo managed to find and return some of the property I mislaid at that time. I am truly grateful to you, Rollo.’

  Rollo mumbled, ‘’S’all right!’

  Mona might not care about her appearance, but she was no fool. Her eyes were robin-bright. ‘I understood there was a problem, but that all’s well that ends well?’ Yet there was a slight frown between her eyes. Either she had entertained some doubts about what had happened, or was concealing guilty knowledge? Which?

  Bea said, ‘I must apologize. I borrowed one of your young relation’s kimono and flip-flops to get to the hospital. I’ll have them cleaned and returned to you.’

  Mona sat upright. ‘Hospital? I hadn’t heard about that. Rollo?’

  ‘I wasn’t here. I d-don’t know anything. I f-found some of their stuff upstairs when the others had gone off c-clubbing, and I gave it back to Mrs Abbot. That’s all.’

  Mona’s frown intensified. ‘Their stuff? Whose stuff?’ She didn’t take her eyes off Rollo. Bea could feel the message sent from one grey head to the youngster … Just you wait till I get you alone!

  Bea said, ‘Sir Leon Holland’s shoes are still missing. I understand you’d gone out for the evening, Mrs …? Lady …?’

  Rollo’s head twitched. ‘She’s g-got a title but she d-doesn’t use it. Drives Dad mad.’

  ‘That’s right. I’m Mrs Barlow,’ said Mona. ‘Come to think of it, I found a pair of men’s shoes when I was cleaning the gym earlier today. I’ll get them for you.’ She disappeared. Rollo said something inarticulate, switched the telly on, shot a frightened look at Bea, changed his mind and switched it off again.

  Bea let her eyes wander around the room. There was an old-fashioned dresser with an array of mismatched blue and white plates on it; rather charming in its way. Also charming was the heavy, old-fashioned crystal vase containing fresh flowers on the coffee table.

  Mona reappeared, holding up a pair of shoes. ‘I’ll put them into a bag for you, shall I?’ She went into the kitchen next door, found a clean plastic bag, put Leon’s shoes into it, and handed it over. ‘Is that everything, Mrs Abbot?’

  Bea asked, ‘Mrs Barlow, how much do you know of what’s going on?’

  Rollo squirmed in his chair. ‘Honest, they never tell her anything. She’s not the one who … Anyway, it was me that pulled the ivy off the wall!’

  ‘I know,’ said Bea. ‘I saw you. You climbed a ladder and started pulling off the ivy, without realizing that the roots had locked into the bricks and worked their way under the footings.’

  Rollo said, ‘They were all on at me for b-being useless and I thought if I c-could clear the ivy from the wall and rebuild the shed, they’d let me have it to practise my g-guitar in. I didn’t mean any harm.’

  ‘No, I don’t s
uppose you did,’ said Bea, thinking that a lack of good judgement was probably the theme running through Rollo’s life. ‘You aren’t a gardener. A gardener would have known that the best way was to cut the ivy off at the root and then let the plants die so that they’d release their hold on the mortar between the bricks. Then, in time, the ivy could have been picked off without tearing the wall down. But, as Rollo pulled it away, the roots took out all the mortar and there was nothing to hold the bricks together.’

  ‘It wasn’t my fault!’

  ‘I’m afraid it was. Your weight on the ladder ensured that the wall fell away from you, and that’s why it fell on the tree in my garden and brought that down, too. But the insurance people will deal with all that.’

  Mona patted Rollo’s shoulder. ‘Worse things happen at sea.’

  ‘They certainly do,’ said Bea. ‘Death came to your neighbour’s husband at sea, didn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, poor Penelope. That dreadful storm, I’ll never forget it. I sat up with her all that night, waiting for news. His body was never found. It happens, sometimes.’

  ‘Indeed it does. How did your own husband die?’

  ‘Knocking around in the Caribbean, car accident.’

  A tingle went up the back of Bea’s spine. ‘You have proof?’

  A frown. ‘What is this? Of course we did. My brother-in-law got the details. We’d been divorced for ever so there didn’t seem any rush to … What is this? Why are you asking?’

  ‘I’m wondering whose bones have been dug up next door.’

  Mona produced a strained smile. ‘Well, obviously not my ex-husband’s.’ But there was some thought in her eyes which cleared the smile away. She shifted in her chair. ‘I suppose it will be some vagrant or … a hundred-year-old skeleton, I expect. Someone who passed away when they lived in that house years ago. Long before Penelope was born. It was her family’s home, you know. She was an only child, and her parents lived to a ripe old age. It can’t be anything to do with them.’

  Bea waited.

  Mona shook her head at whatever she’d been thinking. No smile, now. She looked straight at Bea, ‘I think you should explain yourself. Why are you here, and what makes you think you have the right to ask us questions?’

  ‘I’m here because your family has involved me in your problems. In the past, you and your family lived on one side of the wall, and I on the other. Then your friend Penelope set off a chain reaction by selling her house. When did she tell you who had bought the house and what he planned to do with it?’

  ‘She swore me to secrecy, and of course I understood why. Sir Leon didn’t want everyone to know till the sale had gone through.’

  ‘Neither you personally, nor Penelope, were worried about the garden next door being dug up?’

  Mona told her lips to smile, but couldn’t quite make it. She was going to lie. ‘Well, of course there were the dogs’ bones, and it wasn’t really nice to think of them being dug up. Penelope did ask him to respect them, and he said he would try and it depended where they were, but that he did need to put a water pipe in for a fountain and to cut a door in the end wall. Naturally, Penelope had no say in the matter, once she’d sold.’

  ‘Am I right in thinking there was once a door between your garden and Penelope’s?’

  ‘Yes, but we had it bricked up.’

  ‘Your sister covered up for you?’

  ‘Covered up what?’ Mona reddened and her fingers pleated the skirt of her dress. ‘The accidental death of your husband? Or was it murder?’

  Mona laughed. A good attempt, but not convincing. ‘I’m sorry, but … No! Why on earth would I …? No, really!’

  Bea said, ‘You didn’t kill him to protect your family? To profit from his estate? No, I can see you didn’t. Could you bear to tell me about it?’

  Mona said, ‘I have nothing to hide.’ But her eyes betrayed a dawning horror. She was beginning to question … to wonder … to surmise!

  ‘Tell me,’ said Bea, in her softest voice. ‘What was his name?’

  ‘But … No, you’ve got it all wrong. I was married twice, you know. The first time was when I was very young, to a business partner of my father’s. He was such a lovely man, much older than me, but we were very happy. We weren’t able to have any children, a great sorrow, but then he had a heart attack and died, leaving me this house and a good income. I wasn’t trained to work – in those days we girls weren’t, you know – and I had nothing to do. I was so lonely, you can’t imagine. It was then that I met Penelope and we became good friends.

  ‘Then along came Magnus. He had a title and plenty of charm, but no money. What he did have was a lost and bewildered little son who needed mothering. I suppose I fell in love with the boy, rather than the father. Magnus’s first wife had left him, you see. Penelope warned me he wasn’t good husband material, but I didn’t listen. When his divorce came through, we got married, and Malcolm stopped having nightmares and began to laugh again.’

  Mona was explaining far too much. What she said had the ring of truth, but perhaps not the whole truth?

  ‘It was about that time that a door was cut in the wall between your two houses?’

  ‘That’s right. It was convenient because Penelope’s husband, Renard, had these dogs but couldn’t take them sailing, so Penelope and I used to walk them twice a day. When she went sailing with him – which wasn’t often but it did happen – then I would go in to feed them, and take them out for walkies. Malcolm was afraid of the dogs at first, but he got used to them in the end, and he and Hugo – that’s my sister’s little boy who often used to stay with us in the holidays, too, because they – my sister and brother-in-law – were stationed all round the world … Anyway, the boys were in and out of the two gardens all the time. Eventually they grew up and the dogs died, as did Penelope’s husband. But I still went through the door to have tea with my friend every Friday afternoon, and sometimes more often.’

  Oh. Bea winced. She’d been utterly, horribly wrong. This woman was a genuine do-gooder. ‘So what happened to Magnus, your second husband?’

  ‘I got him a job through a friend of my first husband’s. The boys – Malcolm and Hugo, my sister’s child – went away to school and came to us in the holidays. They got into the usual sorts of mischief but nothing to keep me awake at night, the young limbs.’ And here she smiled, remembering. ‘I soon learned that Magnus wasn’t much good at managing his money and that he needed constant top-ups. He’d suggested we have a joint account at the bank but he was overdrawn so often that I soon stopped that, and I kept the house in my name only. It was second time round for both of us, and we … adjusted.’

  ‘Was he faithful?’ A stab in the dark.

  Mona shook her head. ‘He liked to spread his charms around, but I’d married him for better or worse, and little Malcolm was the light of my life, so we jogged along all right, with me turning a blind eye if Magnus came home a little the worse for drink now and then, or smelling of perfume. It didn’t seem very important.’

  Definitely too much information. She’s talking too fast, giving too much detail.

  Mona said, ‘Then it all came crashing down. Magnus was arrested for fraud. He wanted me to bail him out, but it would have meant selling the house and, well, everything. I was putting Malcolm through university at the time. Hugo, too, because it wasn’t fair that I should spend money on a child who was none of my kin, while Hugo was my very own nephew. So money was tight. I talked it over with my solicitor and Penelope, and I decided that, however painful it was, I couldn’t let the rest of the family suffer for what Magnus had done.

  ‘So, he went to prison …’ a sigh ‘… and I divorced him. Malcolm was desperately upset. Well, we all were. But poor Malcolm … he couldn’t bear to finish his degree. He went off on a gap year around the world, ended up in Australia and married a girl out there. Like his father, he had a title but no money. Unlike his father, he knew how to put in a good day’s work. He dropped the title and started up his ow
n business. I only had to help him for a couple of years and he’s really made good now. I’m so proud of him. We still keep in touch, of course, and I look after his sons in the holidays because they’re both in universities here. How time flies.’

  Rollo’s head was sunk between his shoulders. He muttered, speaking to his shoes, ‘They treat her like a c-cash c-cow. They get her to p-pay for everything – their schooling and university fees. If they’re ever short, they come to her for a hand-out. When G-Gideon and Venetia got into trouble she bailed them out, using the money she’d planned to spend on the house, and were they grateful? No. They still treated her like dirt.’

  ‘Now, now.’ Mona tapped Rollo’s knee. ‘It’s what I’m here for, isn’t it? What would I do with all that money in this great big house, if I hadn’t got my family to look after? And I know it’s some time ahead, but maybe I will be able to help you with your music when you grow up.’

  Bea tried to get back to basics.

  ‘So what happened to Magnus? How long was he in prison?’

  ‘Nine years and seven months. I’d almost forgotten about him, so much was going on, because my sister and her husband made this house their base when they were in the UK, and then Hugo got married, too. Suddenly the house was filled with growing children again. I got such a shock one day when I opened the door and saw Magnus standing there. He hadn’t written to me at all. I hadn’t had any idea he was being let out early. He said he’d missed me and wanted me to take him back, but I suspected – hard-hearted creature that I am – that what he was really after was money. Fortunately, my sister was staying with me at the time. She called out to ask who it was, and then she came, and … what a scolding she gave him! Told him to keep away, or else! Then my brother-in-law joined in. He was on shore leave – he wasn’t an Admiral then, of course – he was stationed somewhere, so many places around the globe.