Death At Willows End

by A. B. King

  “Don't try being clever with me; what about my car?”

  Exercising my superior intellect I swiftly divined that this was the ex-boyfriend whose car she had, ah, 'borrowed'. I confess I had a certain degree of sympathy with the fellow. I stood by, hoping to be introduced.

  “What about your car?” she asked archly.

  “You know damned well what I mean; I demand that you pay for everything, the damage, the salvage, and the sheer bloody inconvenience!”

  “Ever tried whistling?” she enquired, seemingly not in the least intimidated by the fellow.

  “You bitch,” he stormed, “I'll sue you, you see if I don't!”

  “Now calm down Benny,” she advised as if endeavouring to soothe a fractious child and not an irate ex boyfriend, “you are being rather tiresome. If you want to sue me, then I can't stop you, but then neither can you stop me telling your wife about your, shall we say, interesting extra-curricular activities?”

  “What the hell are you talking about? We never got up to anything you could tell her about; that's why you ran out on me remember? All you can do is make up lies; you can't prove a thing!”

  “That is very true, Benny dear,” she cooed, “only I wasn’t talking about me; you seem to have forgotten all about poor Charlene.”

  “Charlene, how-?”

  “We had a nice long chat, and she let me have some extremely interesting photographs,” Danny purred. “You should have remembered that I told you when we first met that I never play second fiddle to anyone.”

  “You wouldn't dare!”

  She smiled at his furious face, seemingly still not in the least bothered by his threatening attitude. “Why not try me?” she asked.

  He raised his arm as if to strike her across the face, and I decided that enough was enough. I took a stride to get between them before matters got really out of hand. “Maybe you should go home and think about it?” I suggested helpfully.

  He glowered at me ferociously. “Who the bloody hell do you think you are?” he demanded, “Maybe you should +*£$^* off!”

  “There's no call to use language like that in front of a lady,” I said primly.(Like I said; I’m a bit of a square) “Just back off and cool down a bit or you will blow a fuse; I'm sure all this can be sorted out without too much hassle.”

  It seemed I guessed wrong, and that he was firmly of the opinion that 'hassle' would answer all his problems. Uttering a couple of expletives not often heard in a nunnery he swung his right fist at me. Luckily I had done a bit of time in the gym as a younger man, and as I have mentioned, I took up amateur boxing for a while at uni. It was quite instinctive to block the hay-maker with my left, and before I could think of the consequences I sunk my right into his midriff. He immediately doubled up, and as his chin obligingly came down I could not resist finishing matters with a left hook to the chin. He promptly collapsed onto the ground in a most untidy heap, and I immediately felt sorry for hitting the poor chap so hard.

  “Here,” I said contritely, taking hold of a flailing arm and pulling him back on his feet again, “sorry about that, I hope your teeth are ok?”

  My solicitude didn't seem to impress him much as he stood there swaying unsteadily on his feet. If looks could have killed I would probably have turned into a cinder pretty quickly. “I'm going to report this unprovoked assault to the police,” he gasped, and a fleck of blood spurted from his mouth.

  “You do that,” Danny said calmly. “This gentleman was only acting in self defence. I will vouch for that, and in case you think you could argue about it, don't forget that security camera just above your head that recorded the whole incident. Think yourself lucky that I'm not preferring charges against you!”

  The man called Benny looked from her to me and then back at her again.

  “Good bye, Benny,” she cooed meaningfully.

  He growled something I didn't catch, spat some more blood on the ground, and turned to stagger off out of sight.

  “Now, where was I?” Danny said as if nothing particular had happened, “Oh yes, coffee. Shall we go?”

  Chapter Eleven.

  Danny had indicated that she was quite well heeled, but when I discovered that she lived in the penthouse flat that must have cost at least an arm and a leg, if not indeed the better part of a whole torso I have to admit that the wind was really taken out of my sails. I suppose I had always imagined that she had been exaggerating a bit, one look inside her home brought me down to earth with a bit of a bump. Up to that point I had been entertaining wild dreams about sooner or later making it with her, yet after one look at what was hers I knew I was not, and never would be, in the same league. It was all a bit depressing really; she was the employer and I was just the hired help. Perhaps she was looking on me as a bit of rough? Attractive as I found such a prospect, I didn't want her that way; well, not completely that is. The stupid thing was, if she had been available in the first place I would have jumped at the chance, but now? Oh well, the dream, however brief, had been nice while it had lasted.

  “Make yourself at home,” she called out over her shoulder as she crossed the huge lounge and vanished into another room, “won't take me long to get coffee organised.”

  For once I didn't have a semi-witty riposte to fling back at her, I just gazed round that room, looking at the signs of opulence on all sides, and the cumulative effect was to make me feel quite depressed. I'd been born to lower working-class parents, and the nearest we had ever come to riches was when my mum had won fifty quid at bingo. Maybe the penury of my background had turned me into a sort of inverted snob, for the sight of so much wealth swilling round just made me feel cheap. Well, I am cheap; I just don't like anything that reminds me of the fact. Judging by what I could see, this girl could light her fags with fifty pound notes, only as far as I knew she didn't smoke. Well, it would be a real lucky fellow who got her to the altar, and good luck to him! Poor old Benny must have known what he was losing; just his hard luck that he had been rumbled whilst playing perhaps a bit too fast and loose! I suddenly felt sorrier than ever that I'd hit him.

  I mooched round the room, looking at priceless ornaments, fascinating pictures and furniture that wouldn't have known what a flat-pack was! My feet sunk into a pile carpet that must have cost a king's ransom, and the concealed lighting made my energy-saving bulb look a bit, well, a bit! No wonder she thought my humble abode something of a come-down; the only mystery to me was why she had ever wanted to stay there in the first place. I was glad in a way that I had insisted on her coming home; at least I wouldn't now fall even deeper into the impossible pit of dreams that had been yawning so invitingly before me. With my cursory inspection complete I eventually collapsed into a luxurious sofa that seemed almost to envelope me in its sensuous depths, and presently she returned into the room bearing a tray with a silver and porcelain coffee service on it. I also noted that she had found time to change out of her clothes and into something she would probably call 'more comfortable'; a sort of white silk and lace negligee that certainly didn't make me feel 'more comfortable' at all!

  “Did you really have to hit poor Benny so hard?” she enquired as she placed the tray on an antique coffee table and sat down on the sofa beside me, “I thought for a moment you'd broken his jaw.”

  “I was worried he might hit you,” I answered defensively, “he looked a bit wound-up to me.”

  “Oh, Benny knows better than to try anything like that,” she responded lightly. “He only attempted it once; he's a quick learner is Benny. Pity he didn't tell me he was married though, he could be quite good fun. I might even have forgiven him that, but like I said to him, I don't play second fiddle to anyone, hence good-bye Benny.”

  My mind shied away from imagining what might have constituted 'fun' between the pair of them.

  “Do you think he will sue?” I asked.

  She just laughed, “He's all talk,” she said airily, “he'll get over it.”

  “Might take him longer to get over the garage bill
when he sees it.”

  “Oh, do stop worrying about Benny; I'll send him a cheque to cover it. Now, as I remember, you don't take sugar in coffee, do you?”

  She poured out my coffee and handed it to me without waiting for an answer, then poured one for herself.

  “Look, Danny,” I said after a couple of moment’s debate with myself. “About tomorrow.”

  “What about it?”

  “Well, you don't have to do all the running around in Willows End. You are paying me good money to do that, and-”

  “But I want to do it.”

  “Maybe you do, only I don't understand why?”

  “I keep telling you; I have to know what's happened to my sister.”

  “Which doesn't explain why you want to do the running around you are paying me for! If it is that important to find out what happened to her, with the sort of money you are paying me you could have got yourself a real top-flight agency to do the job for you. There's something you are not telling me?”

  “You think so?”

  “I'm sure of it.”

  “Well, if you are that sure, you figure out what it is, you're the detective.”

  One look at the set of her jaw and I knew not only was there something she hadn't told me, I also knew that she wasn't going to tell me what it was either. I took a swig of my coffee and tried not to think of the negligee and even less about what was in it.

  “Do you have any pictures?” I asked as I put my cup down.

  “Pictures?”

  “Of you and Dian.”

  “Well, yes, I do have some; do you think they will help?”

  It might 'help' to keep my mind of the negligee, I thought. Aloud I said; “They might; it's worth a try.”

  She stood up from the sofa and glided over the carpet to a highly polished cabinet, and after rummaging inside it for a few moments she pulled out a photograph album. This gave me an opportunity to observe more closely what was for ever going to be beyond my reach. She moved with the grace that is often associated with the feline species, and it just so happens that even though I do not own one, I'm very fond of cats. I suppose you could say that my problem in essence was that this 'cat' was accustomed to living in luxury, and also possessed very sharp claws. A tiny part of me wondered why she was still single, or why at least she was not paired off with someone on a semi-permanent basis. Maybe she just liked to play the field? If that was true, then why look at me? I wasn't in her sort of 'field' at all, more in a dingy backyard she had inadvertently stumbled into. If only she wasn't so stinking rich I would have given my back teeth to have known her better. Ethereal visions of what life would be like if she and I were an item flooded through my mind, and I was still fantasising when she came and sat down directly beside me. The desire to put my arm round her very trim waist required superhuman strength to resist.

  “Here we are,” she said, opening the album as if I was an old family friend instead of an inwardly seething and highly frustrated testosterone-stuffed would-be stud.

  I looked dutifully at a series of picture that in the main meant little or nothing to me. Pictures of her parents who appeared to be a very happy couple, pictures of various family members, pictures of an assortment of places visited on holiday, and then in pride of place a picture of a young Mrs Fortescue proudly holding a couple of babies.

  “That's me,” said Danny as she pointed at one of the infants, “and that's Dian.”

  “Marvellous,” I exclaimed dutifully, “You are alike as two peas in a pod.”

  Just for the record, I've never actually studied peas in a pod, and for that matter only once out of a pod when I had to closely investigate a bag of frozen veg as I pursued an escaping aspirin tablet hiding inside. On the other hand I had seen many babies, although I have never felt the slightest desire to study them because, frankly, they all looked vaguely alike to me, but then I suppose that's a male thing?

  As she turned the pages I looked at the various snapshots and portraits, and as the twins came out of babyhood even I could see that they were truly identical; in fact the only difference I could detect lay in the expressions. Dian always looked full of mischief, whereas Danny always looked a bit straight faced or even worried. It was obvious that, even as Danny had said, up until the accident it had been Dian that had taken the lead in everything. I wondered about that as she turned the pages, and eventually came to the conclusion that something had always held Danny back. I wondered if perhaps she had always lived in the shadow of her twin, and when that twin vanished, in some strange way she had become liberated. Ok, so it was only a theory, but certainly, if her tales and the pictures were to be believed, that terrible accident had completely changed her character.

  She carried on turning the pages, and I could see the twins growing before my eyes. Not only were they maturing into a pair of incredibly attractive youngsters, they were exact duplicates of each other in absolutely everything, including dress. I commented on that fact to Danny.

  “Yes, I noticed that as well,” she admitted. “Mum told me that I refused to wear anything if it wasn't what Dian was wearing. She always gave in the end.”

  “With the pair of you being so alike, and both dressed the same, it must have made problems for other people at times,” I remarked.

  “Particularly at school,” she agreed, “or so mum said; I still don't remember anything about any of that. It gets very frustrating at times.”

  “Yes, I suppose it must.”

  She turned another page. “Ah,” she exclaimed, “Now here's one where you can tell us apart.”

  I looked down and saw the twins standing side by side, Dian was laughing and pointing at her sister who looked distinctly unhappy, her face all puffed up and angry looking.

  “Why on earth is she pulling a face like that?” I asked.

  “She had an abscess under one of her teeth, or so mum said. She had just come back from the dentist.”

  “No wonder she looks so puffed up and out of sorts, did they take the tooth out there and then?”

  “No, I think she had a filling, and they treated the abscess with antibiotics.”

  She turned another page and showed me more pictures until she went a bit quiet as she stopped to look at a picture that was all alone on the page.

  “This is the very last picture we ever had taken together,” she said quietly, “I guess it is my favourite.”

  I looked at the picture and saw a couple of young girls on the very threshold of beautiful young womanhood standing arm and arm, proudly wearing their Girl Guide uniforms, complete with badges and flashes. For once, both girls were smiling and looked so very full of life. If Danny was right, and her sister had died by something other than an accident, it left me wondering how anyone could be so heartless as to deliberately snuff out the life of such a beautiful and innocent child. Presently Danny closed the album and set it carefully down on the coffee table, and then she turned to look at me with a serious expression that I hadn't seen before.

  “I have to know what happened, Neil,” she said quietly. “I have to lay the ghost or I shall never know peace. It's like, well, like I am both dead and alive. I never thought about it very much until I met my cousin, and since then I can't get it out of my mind. It's like, oh, I don't know, like she is calling to me to find the person who took her life away. Maybe if I can do that, she will rest in peace, and then maybe I can be my own person at last?”

  “And you really think I can do this for you?”

  “I knew it the moment I first set eyes on you. No, don't ask me how I knew, I don't understand it myself, I just knew that somehow you were the only person in this whole rotten world who could free me of this overpowering urge to find out what really happened. Believe me, if you can do it the money is peanuts to the bonus you will get.”

  That word 'bonus' sunk me. I didn't doubt that she meant what she said, yet it drove home even deeper the fact that I was just the hired help, and suddenly I wished that I had never set eyes on her. I
didn't want her money; I wanted her! She must have detected something of what was in my mind because she stopped talking suddenly and just looked at me.

  “What is it?” she asked at last.

  “Nothing,” I lied. “I was just thinking it was time I went home.”

  She held my gaze steady. “Do you really want to go?” she asked.

  “No,” I admitted candidly, “but I think I should, and for the same reason I didn't think it a good idea that you should spend another night in my flat.”

  “I see,” she said slowly. “Well, it’s a real shame. I was going to ask you to have dinner with me.”

  “I'm scarcely dressed in a suitable manner to take you out on the town,” I answered in a slightly bitterly tone, “although possibly acceptable for the local chippy.”