Murder In Law

by Veronica Heley

  Contents

  Cover

  Also by Veronica Heley from Severn House

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Afterwards

  Also by Veronica Heley from Severn House

  The Ellie Quicke mysteries

  MURDER AT THE ALTAR

  MURDER BY SUICIDE

  MURDER OF INNOCENCE

  MURDER BY ACCIDENT

  MURDER IN THE GARDEN

  MURDER BY COMMITTEE

  MURDER BY BICYCLE

  MURDER OF IDENTITY

  MURDER IN THE PARK

  MURDER IN HOUSE

  MURDER BY MISTAKE

  MURDER MY NEIGHBOUR

  MURDER IN MIND

  MURDER WITH MERCY

  MURDER IN TIME

  MURDER BY SUSPICION

  MURDER IN STYLE

  MURDER FOR NOTHING

  MURDER BY SUGGESTION

  MURDER FOR GOOD

  The Bea Abbot Agency mysteries

  FALSE CHARITY

  FALSE PICTURE

  FALSE STEP

  FALSE PRETENCES

  FALSE MONEY

  FALSE REPORT

  FALSE ALARM

  FALSE DIAMOND

  FALSE IMPRESSION

  FALSE WALL

  FALSE FIRE

  FALSE PRIDE

  FALSE ACCOUNT

  FALSE CONCLUSION

  MURDER-IN-LAW

  Veronica Heley

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  First world edition published in Great Britain and the USA in 2021

  by Severn House, an imprint of Canongate Books Ltd,

  14 High Street, Edinburgh EH1 1TE.

  Trade paperback edition first published in Great Britain and the USA in 2022

  by Severn House, an imprint of Canongate Books Ltd.

  This eBook edition first published in 2021 by Severn House,

  an imprint of Canongate Books Ltd.

  severnhouse.com

  Copyright © Veronica Heley, 2021

  All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. The right of Veronica Heley to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.

  British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

  A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

  ISBN-13: 978-0-7278-9097-9 (cased)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-78029-777-4 (trade paper)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-4483-0515-5 (e-book)

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication arefictitious and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is purely coincidental.

  This eBook produced by

  Palimpsest Book Production Limited,

  Falkirk, Stirlingshire, Scotland

  ONE

  Friday morning

  Bring! went the doorbell.

  Susan ignored it.

  After many months of living in a one-bedroom flat, Susan, her husband and baby Fifi had moved into their spacious new home the evening before, and nothing was in the right place.

  Carpets were down, the curtains were nearly all up and most of the furniture had arrived in the right rooms, if not in the right places. The previous evening Susan had transferred provisions from cool boxes to the brand-new fridge and freezer and had made up beds so that they could eat and sleep in their new house.

  This morning Rafael had escaped to go to work, baby Fifi had been placed in her buggy for her morning nap, and Susan had started to tackle the chaos in the kitchen.

  Bring-bring!

  Bother! Whoever could it be?

  Susan was expecting a food delivery from the supermarket but not till the afternoon, and she had promised herself that her kitchen would be in working order before then. Susan was a great cook and believed that the application of good food helped to solve most problems in life.

  Brring-brring-brring!

  The kitchen window overlooked the drive. Was that a strange black car outside? And a woman standing at the front door?

  Susan had bright red hair and patience was not her strong point. Chuntering away to herself, she picked her way through the boxes in the newly extended hall to find …

  … the Wicked Witch of the North on the doorstep.

  Susan recoiled.

  Diana – aka the Wicked Witch of the North – was the only daughter of Susan and Rafael’s next-door neighbour, Ellie Quicke. Ellie was one of the most delightful, motherly people you could ever wish to meet. Diana, however, did not take after her mother.

  Susan had long ago decided that Diana was a grade one bully, to be avoided at all costs.

  The newcomer pushed a heavy, pink bundle into Susan’s arms and then took a half step back. ‘Oh! You’re not …? Where’s my mother? There’s no answer next door, so she must be with you. I need her. Now!’

  Susan blinked. Diana’s sledge-hammer tactics might keep Ellie wary of her daughter, but Susan was no relation and didn’t see why she should act the same way. She transferred the damp bundle back to its owner, saying, ‘Your mother’s not back from Canada yet.’

  Behind her, the landline phone rang.

  ‘What!’ Diana’s blood pressure rose. Her usually pale face turned pink and so, to Susan’s amusement, did the tip of her nose. ‘It seems’ – the words issued from between clenched teeth – ‘that you don’t recall who I am.’

  Susan managed a sweet smile. ‘Oh yes. You are Ellie’s daughter, Diana, who is married to Evan, the local estate agent. You have two children and a nanny and you live in a big house on the other side of the park.’

  Diana breathed through her nose, rather like a dragon snorting fury. ‘Then you know I am not to be trifled with. This is an emergency. I need someone to look after little Jenny today, and I need the keys to my mother’s house next door.’

  Diana tried to pass the damp bundle back to Susan, but Susan wasn’t having it. She retreated half a step and reached behind her for the front door, saying, ‘Sorry. I have my own daughter to look after, and your mother is not expected back till next week.’

  ‘What?’ Diana sagged. ‘But … she must be. It’s on my calendar. The end of the month.’

  ‘If you’d kept in touch you’d know that the Reverend Thomas, your stepfather, was invited at short notice to speak at a conference in Ottawa. It’s true that your mother had originally planned to return this week but there’s been a hold-up with the plumbing next door and the house still isn’t ready. It made sense for your mother t
o stay on and return with him in ten days’ time.’

  Diana turned a sickly shade of green. However, she hadn’t been nicknamed Deadly Di for nothing. Her eyes switched left and right as she worked out what to do.

  Susan, savouring her victory, tried to close the door on the invader but Diana was too quick for her. The bundle, which had been wailing gently to itself, was thrust back into Susan’s arms and Diana started back to her car saying, ‘Well, you’ll have to help me out instead. Jenny needs changing and feeding, and you’ll have to fetch Little Evan from the nursery at noon. I’ve got a few of their things here which I’ll leave with you. I have to get to the hospital, now!’

  Her voice was high-pitched. At any moment now she was going to burst into flames.

  ‘What? No way!’ said Susan, as the bundle wept gently to itself in her arms. And yes, it was damp underneath. ‘I can’t—!’

  Still talking, Diana opened the back door of her car and swung various packages on to the driveway. ‘I’ll have to move into my mother’s part of the house till—’

  ‘What? No, you can’t!’

  Diana sent her voice up a notch. ‘The. Police. Turned. Us. Out. There’s blood, everywhere. They only let me fetch a few of the children’s things, and the ambulance has taken Evan to Ealing hospital.’ She got into the car. ‘I’ll ring you when I can.’

  The car door slammed. Wheels spat gravel as Diana turned into the road without checking for oncoming traffic. A passing taxi swerved on to the wrong side of the road to avoid her.

  And then there was silence.

  Susan was left holding the baby. She shook her head to clear it. She was still in bed. She was dreaming. This was not happening!

  How dare Diana dump her child on Susan! Who did she think she was!

  They had never been friends. Susan had enabled Ellie and Thomas to stay on in a house which was far too big and expensive for them simply by paying her rent for Ellie’s upstairs flat on time. Diana hadn’t approved of Ellie having a lodger and had been a thorn in Susan’s side from the start.

  Susan was a loving and giving person. She had grown very fond of Ellie and Thomas, and they of her. Susan loved to cook and to try out her recipes on Ellie and Thomas. In short, Susan had endeared herself to the older couple – and vice versa.

  In due course Susan had left to marry her half-Italian businessman, Rafael, who had also come to care for Ellie and Thomas. It was Rafael who had come up with a possible solution to the problem of the older couple living in such a big house.

  Some years before, Ellie had inherited money with which she had founded a charitable trust to provide affordable housing for those in need. Rafael suggested that Ellie should turn the big house over to the trust, so that it could be remodelled into two, smaller, more manageable houses: one for Ellie and Thomas to live in rent free for life, and the other which Rafael and Susan would rent from the trust.

  It was arranged that Susan and Rafael would project manage the rebuild and live in Rafael’s bachelor flat while Ellie and Thomas went on an extended visit to his daughter and her family in Canada.

  Everyone except Diana thought this an excellent idea. Diana was always short of money. She’d wanted her mother to downsize to a small flat and hand the difference over. Diana said Rafael and Susan had brought undue influence to bear on their mother to let the scheme go through but gone through it had, despite a host of minor irritations such as the plumbing in Ellie’s part of the house throwing up more problems than Vesuvius.

  Diana had not helped the project along. No way!

  And now, after months of ignoring Susan, Diana had dumped her child on her!

  Inside the house, the landline phone rang again, accompanied by a wail from a newly wakened child. Fifi’s morning nap was over and she required attention.

  The phone stopped ringing. A message was being left.

  Susan dithered. What should she deal with first?

  Jenny was quite an armful, a chunky child who must be nearly two years old by now. And not potty-trained. And miserable.

  Susan looked around for someone, anyone, to help. The work to divide the large Victorian house into two semi-detached houses had been going on for nearly a year. The scaffolding had been taken down but work continued inside. Usually there’d be a workman or two hanging around whom Susan could ask to help her, but today … silence.

  There wasn’t even any sign of the plumber, who was supposed to be working next door to fix the latest leak.

  Jenny wriggled in Susan’s arms.

  Automatically Susan went into Mummy mode. She pulled the child on to her hip and stroked her wispy fair hair. Jenny took after her big-boned, fair-haired father, who had a beak of a nose and a sense of entitlement which didn’t endear him to those he considered of little importance – which was almost everyone who didn’t belong to the golf club and employed indoor staff.

  Neither Jenny nor her older brother, Little Evan, took after Diana, who normally dressed in black, and whose cap of smooth black hair and sharp manner had earned her the nickname of Deadly Di.

  Susan tried to put Jenny down.

  ‘No!’ Jenny resisted, clinging to Susan’s ample frontage. Susan melted; the poor little mite must be bewildered at being plucked from her home and her nanny and handed over to a stranger.

  First things first. Babies needed attention, and Susan was programmed by nature to give it. It was beginning to drizzle, but Susan left the pile of bags on the driveway in order to deal with the children. Kicking the front door to, she shifted herself and Jenny back into the hall.

  She’d left Fifi in her baby buggy while she slept, but yes, the child was now wide awake. With her spare hand, Susan undid the straps that held Fifi safe, and lifted her on to her free hip. ‘There, there. Now what am I going to do?’

  Fifi blinked at the strange child occupying some of her space. ‘Fifi’ wasn’t her official name. She had a string of first names on her birth certificate. But when her father had first taken her from the midwife’s arms, he’d said, ‘Hello, Fifi,’ and ‘Fifi’ she’d remained.

  Fifi took after Rafael in looks. She was Jenny’s opposite in every way, being black of hair and eye, with every movement quick and neat, whereas Jenny was chunky, fair and slow.

  The two children stared wide-eyed at one another.

  Jenny looked up at Susan. ‘Nanny? Where my Nanny?’

  ‘I don’t know where she is, love.’

  The front doorbell rang again, sharply. Two sharp rings.

  ‘Thank heaven for that,’ said Susan, trying once again to put Jenny down on the brand-new wooden floor – and failing.

  This time it was her husband, Rafael, who swept in, towing three of the bags which Diana had left on the driveway. He took in the situation at a glance. ‘I rang you a couple of times. The plumber’s been on to say he’s off sick and won’t be working today. When you didn’t answer, I thought I’d better drop round to see if you were all right. Er, whose child is that? We haven’t grown another overnight, have we?’

  ‘Diana’s. She didn’t know Ellie had extended her stay in Canada and expected her mother to take her and her children in. When I told her Ellie wouldn’t be back for a while, she dumped Jenny into my arms with instructions to look after her. It seems there’s some trouble at their place and Evan’s been taken to hospital.’

  ‘Nanny?’ said Jenny, on the verge of tears.

  Rafael assessed the problem. ‘You cope with the kids. It’s starting to rain. I’ll bring the rest of the bags in.’ He set off to do this task with his usual efficiency.

  Susan took the children through into her brand-new kitchen. It was going to be a lovely place to work in, once she’d found places to put everything. Again, she tried to detach Jenny from herself, with no success at all. Fifi, on the other hand, began to make huffing noises to remind her mother that it was time to be fed.

  Susan somehow managed to pull up her T-shirt and, kicking a stool free of the central unit, lifted Fifi on to her breast. Fif
i wasted no time in getting down to it.

  Jenny watched, wide-eyed. Tears spurted. She yowled. She was hungry too, wasn’t she?

  Susan managed to transfer Jenny, awkwardly, on to a nearby chair, praying she’d not fall off. She reached for the biscuit tin. Opening it one-handed, she handed Jenny a piece of shortbread which she hoped would keep the child going till she could be attended to properly. Yes, that did the trick.

  Fifi suckled and Susan relaxed.

  Susan wondered if Diana had ever breast-fed her children and answered her own question: No, of course not! Deadly Di would have handed her two over to a nanny from birth.

  Susan recalled Ellie saying that Diana was at least a good mother to her babes. Susan had taken leave to doubt that at the time and had seen nothing to change her mind about it since. Fancy dumping her daughter on a comparative stranger!

  Rafael dropped bags into the hall and said he’d push the Beast into the garage and come back to help. ‘The Beast’ was his pride and joy, a humungous great motorbike which he used for work purposes, being faster in London traffic than the stately limo which he’d purchased when Susan became pregnant. But it was the Beast who had the privilege of shelter, while the limo was parked outside in all weathers.

  On his return, Rafael shed his leather jacket, saying, ‘Diana has a nanny, hasn’t she? What’s happened to her? Meantime, what does the cuckoo child eat?’

  Susan couldn’t think straight. She told herself to calm down, or her milk supply would fail. ‘An egg? Bread? I brought some with us when we moved in yesterday, didn’t I? There’s a supermarket delivery arriving this afternoon … or there may be some food in the bags Diana brought. She went off to the hospital. She said Little Evan has to be collected from his nursery at noon but I haven’t a clue where that is. Nor do I have Diana’s mobile number, or her home number. What are we going to do?’

  She burped Fifi and changed sides.

  Rafael had been well trained by Fifi and knew exactly what to do. ‘We feed their faces, and ours. Breakfast seems a long time ago. Scrambled eggs on toast for all of us. I’ll make it. Then we check with the hospital.’