Would Marcy be able to say who might have been smoking in Diana’s house? She’d been on duty there every weekday.
And that set up another train of thought.
SIXTEEN
Monday, late afternoon
Susan called Evan and Fifi into the house. Evan helped Fifi over the lawn, encouraging her to walk. She moved unsteadily because she was dragging Hippo along and the clumsy size of him unbalanced her.
Susan caught Fifi up and kissed her. And then hugged and kissed Evan, who responded with a fleeting caress of his own. Ah, the first sign that he cared for her! Susan thought her heart would burst for joy!
She brought in the stool she’d been sitting on, closed and locked the French windows.
She was not particularly surprised to find that Midge had sneaked into the house while her back was turned. He’d decided to move in with them, hadn’t he? What would happen if Jenny went for him again? Mm. Susan wondered who would come off best and decided it would be Midge. Well, Jenny would have to learn to treat him with respect.
Now, what to do? Ah, yes. A cookery session. Fifi loved to lick the spoon when Susan made her chocolate cake with black treacle. It was one of the few times Fifi didn’t mind getting dirty.
Coralie brought Little Miss Crosspatch Jenny to sit at the kitchen table with them. Jenny was still tired from her activities at the nursery, but Coralie coaxed her to drink some milk and play with her tablet.
The policewoman loomed up, unsmiling. It was odd how she seemed to occupy more space than she did in reality. She was like a large black cloud, dampening everything in sight. Maybe she wasn’t at her best with children? She said, or rather proclaimed, ‘DI Millburn’s been discharged from hospital. She’s supposed to take it easy but she says she’ll pop in here later. It’s ridiculous. She’s been taken off the case but won’t let it rest.’
There was more than a suggestion here that DI Millburn was making a bad situation worse by interfering in a case which was no longer hers.
Susan stood up for her aunt. ‘I always like to see Lesley. She’s family, you know, and has always been very good to me. Now, I’m going to start a chocolate cake for tea and a beef stew for us oldies for supper. Then I’ll bake some biscuits so that the children can have fun with the dough. Will you be joining us for supper?’
The woman went all thin-lipped. ‘I expect to be relieved before that.’
Susan shrugged. She’d tried, hadn’t she? And now, to cook and bake and forget about bad men and even badder women.
Of course the landline phone would ring as soon as Susan had started to knead the dough for the biscuits. The protection officer took the call, relaying the message to Susan. ‘It’s that woman from next door. The cleaner. Wants to know if she can hire a polisher for the hall floor.’
‘Tell her yes,’ said Susan, thinking she’d got the mixture a trifle too moist for the children to handle yet.
‘And,’ said the protection officer, ‘she says that Cal, the gardener from her old place, has been round asking if there’s any work here. She says she doesn’t think much of him, but he might be up to clearing the conservatory out for you, and she’s suggested he pop round to see you.’
‘Definitely,’ said Susan, thinking he’d be the answer to a maiden’s prayer, even if she were no maiden.
The doorbell rang and there was a clatter as Evan slithered off his chair and dived under the table. Jenny stared, open-mouthed.
Fifi, safe in her highchair, tried to see where Evan had gone.
Susan froze.
The protection officer finished relaying the message and clicked the phone off.
Susan said, ‘No! No, it couldn’t be! Or … Evan? Evan, darling!’ Her hands were covered with sticky dough. She tried to clean them. She said to the officer, ‘Don’t let him in! Do you hear me? Don’t let him … No, wait a minute. Arrest him!’
‘What?’ The protection officer looked at Susan, open-mouthed.
‘He’s the killer. No, perhaps not. But he’s involved. He’s come for Evan because the child recognized him. Whatever you do, don’t let him in!’
‘Don’t be ridiculous!’ The woman looked out of the window. And there, with his good-looking profile presented to them, standing at the front door, was a young man with dark hair, wearing a sloppy T-shirt and jeans. Cal, the gardener from Diana’s house.
Susan had never seen him before, but she knew the type. Superficially attractive, vain, he would have left school without taking any exams. He spent money on trainers and haircuts. Unreliable.
A strong, sweet scent invaded the kitchen through the open window.
Under the table, Evan sneezed. Jenny, sitting perched on a cushion on her chair, waved happily at the sight of the newcomer. Both children knew him.
Susan took a deep breath. Told herself not to panic. Wished they had thought to put up a blind to shield anyone in the kitchen from the gaze of people who came to the door.
The protection officer was not amused by Susan’s reaction. ‘I thought you wanted a gardener. Judging by the state of this place …! Look, this lad’s nothing like the man who tried to take Evan this morning.’
‘I know, I know!’ Susan frantically ran her hands under the tap. ‘He’s not … oh dear, I know what I know, or rather, Evan knows … What am I to do?’
‘You’ll have to speak to him,’ said the protection officer, being ultra-reasonable with a woman who’d gone to pieces. ‘You agreed he should call.’
‘No,’ said Susan. ‘Don’t let him in. Tell him to go. Tell him I’ve changed my mind, tell him anything but get him to go. Only, yes, first get his name and where he lives so that you can pick him up later.’
The woman sniffed. ‘Don’t you think you’re being rather unreasonable?’
Cal was becoming impatient. He tried the bell again.
Evan whimpered.
Cal tapped on the kitchen window. Susan turned away from the glass, presenting him with her back view. She knew it was childish, but she didn’t know what else to do.
Cal rapped louder. The window was open. He was getting annoyed. She sneezed. That scent!
He said, ‘Hey, missus! Open up! Macy said you had some work for me.’
And she had. Yes, she had. And then Evan, frightened at the sight of him, had slid under the table.
The protection officer took her time getting to the front door. Susan heard her open it, and say, ‘So sorry. It seems it’s not convenient today. Give me your details and I’ll see they contact you tomorrow.’
He was not amused. ‘She asked me to call.’
‘So sorry. Not today.’
‘I’ll be round tomorrow morning, then.’
‘Suit yourself. Where can they contact you?’
‘I’ll be here, on the dot of eight. Right?’
The front door shut. The man crunched away over the gravel drive.
Susan sat on a chair and pulled Evan out from under the table and into her arms. ‘There, there. Nasty man’s gone away.’ She rocked him to and fro. He was rigid with fear.
Finally, he relaxed and gave a long, long sigh. She continued to cuddle him on her lap. Susan looked at the protection officer. ‘I’m going to ask Evan some questions. Want to tape his answers?’
‘Really?’ The woman rolled her eyes, but set her phone to record.
Susan said, ‘Evan, it’s all right. Cal’s gone and I’ll make sure he doesn’t come again. Now, your mummy doesn’t like people to smoke in the house?’
He shook his head.
‘But sometimes people do, when she’s out?’
He nodded.
‘Lucia doesn’t mind it?’
A nod. ‘Lucia likes the smell.’
‘I suppose Cal smokes when he comes in for his elevenses?’
A nod. ‘Lucia likes him.’
‘She likes the smell, too?’
Another nod. ‘I don’t. It makes me sneeze.’
‘You smelled him just now, didn’t you?’
‘
Lucia opens the doors and window when he goes because Mummy doesn’t like the smell.’
‘It’s a strange smell. Sort of … sweet?’
He nodded. ‘Can I do some cooking now?’
The protection officer drew in her breath. ‘You mean, the gardener smokes cannabis? Yes, well. I thought I smelled it, too. Perhaps it’s best if you don’t have him work for you.’
Evan looked at her enquiringly. He didn’t know the word ‘cannabis’.
Susan said to Evan, gently, ‘The night your father was fighting the bad men, you came down to the first landing looking for your mummy and saw a man in black. He told you to go back to bed.’
Evan hesitated. He didn’t want to talk about that, did he? Susan felt bad about pressing him to do so, but if he could only feel safe enough to say what he’d experienced, the whole horrible matter could be put to bed. At last, Evan nodded.
‘He spoke to you and you smelled that same sweet smell? You knew who it was?’
Evan closed his eyes and went stiff in her arms. Susan cuddled him, stroking his head, telling him what a good, brave boy he was.
The protection officer regarded her with amazement. ‘You cannot be serious!’
‘I am. Deadly serious. The gardener smoked cannabis. Lucia knew it. Evan knew it, though he doesn’t know its name. Evan smelled it the night his father died. He heard the man’s voice and he knew who it was. The criminals knew that Evan could identify them and that’s why they tried to kidnap him this morning.’
The protection officer’s colour rose. ‘And you really want me to tell the DI that you’ve identified the gardener as a killer because a small boy dislikes him smoking around the house?’
‘It’s not as simple as that.’
‘I should think not! Look, I’m trying to make excuses for you, but you are trying your hand at being an amateur sleuth without knowing the first thing about it. You do realize that what you have just done has contaminated any evidence the boy might have been able to give us? You’ve asked him leading questions which means his replies are meaningless. What’s more, you didn’t always ensure he spoke when he answered you. There’s nothing I’ve recorded which I can use.
‘And another thing. You’ve dreamed up this scenario whereby the gardener killed his employer for some unknown reason, but you haven’t explained why that woman and her son were connected with the crime. Was it the gardener who tried to kidnap the boy? No. Of course not. That was a simple attempt at kidnapping a wealthy woman’s child. Admitted, they bungled it, but in my lengthy experience of criminals, they often do bungle it. Ten to one, you’ll never hear from them again.
‘Please, leave police work to those who are trained for it. If you’ve decided you don’t want to employ that lad because he smokes cannabis then that’s your problem, but police work is about proof and this’ – she waved her phone – ‘is not proof.’
Susan felt her eyes fill with tears. She had thought she had stumbled on the truth, but perhaps she had let her imagination run away with her. Perhaps she had led Evan on.
The protection officer loomed over Susan. All three children looked on in amazement. What was the woman so cross about?
Jenny’s mouth was open. Perhaps the child was getting a cold?
The protection officer patted Susan’s shoulder in a modified form of assault. It was not meant to encourage or console, and it certainly didn’t.
‘Come on, now. No harm done. Naturally you’re upset, with someone trying to lift the boy this morning. Let’s get you back to what you know about. You are a stay-at-home woman, who keeps house and likes to cook, right? Now, you were going to show the children how to make biscuits? Well, why don’t you get on with doing that, and we’ll forget your little attempt at being a police officer, shall we?’
Susan nodded. What else could she do? It was true that she didn’t know anything about the laws of evidence, and she had led Evan on to give her the answers she thought fitted the problem. She ought not to have done that. A trained policewoman would have known better. She’d done more harm than good.
She hid her distress and got out a blunt knife to divide the dough into smaller pieces. She gave one to Fifi to play with, found a rolling pin and an empty bottle so that Evan and Jenny could flatten their lumps of dough.
Coralie helped. Jenny even abandoned her tablet in order to play with some dough. Finally, Susan helped the children cut out shapes and lay them on baking trays. She decided to use her top oven for the biscuits, as the chocolate cake was now ready to be taken out, and the stew was already cooking in the bottom one.
Coralie suddenly said, ‘Jenny! No! Stop it!’ Jenny had shot a lump of dough at Evan and laughed when he ducked. Evan gave her a long, thoughtful look and moved around the table to be next to Fifi, who pawed his arm with her sticky fingers and crowed. He liked that. It cheered him up no end.
A phone call took the protection officer into the hall. Coralie sidled up to Susan and said, very quietly, ‘I don’t care what she thinks. I think you’re right. My dad’s always said to steer clear of boys who smoke grass.’
Susan said, ‘Thanks, but she’s right, you know. I shouldn’t have interfered.’ She took the tray of misshapen biscuits out of the top oven and set them aside to cool. ‘I jumped to conclusions. It’s true, the gardener smoking cannabis doesn’t mean anything. Evan probably did smell it that night, but that doesn’t mean it was the gardener. At least, I don’t think so.’
Coralie helped Susan to clean up the mess, and they fed the children soft-boiled eggs and soldiers for tea, with a small slice of chocolate cake, one of their own biscuits and some fruit for afters.
When her father arrived in his taxi to take his daughter home, Coralie didn’t want to go. ‘I don’t like leaving you. Suppose that gardener comes back?’
‘Another officer is supposed to relieve this one, and Rafael will be back soon. We’ll let the children run around the big room and keep an eye out for intruders.’
Coralie sighed. ‘I suppose that’s all right. Ring me if anything happens and you need me, right? What a day! What a lot I have to tell the family!’ She departed.
Susan was sorry to see her go.
Rafael drove up on the Beast and put it in the garage. Susan felt safer when he arrived, and even better when he gave her a kiss and a hug and wanted to know how she was feeling. She managed to smile and say she was fine, and to tell him what the kids had been up to that afternoon. That worked. The lines of strain on his face vanished and he went off to greet the children, throw them in the air and catch them again, and finally to listen to their detailed account of what they’d done that afternoon. Fifi sat in the crook of his arm and contentedly chewed on Hippo’s ear. That tooth was a long time coming through, wasn’t it?
The surly protection officer came off the phone to announce that there’d been some kind of glitch and her replacement would arrive in half an hour or so. And, as she’d been on duty now for twelve hours, she was going to leave as the master of the house was home. And leave she did.
Susan didn’t know if she were glad or sorry to see the woman go, but soon she and Rafael were caught up with the business of getting the children in and out of the bath, into pyjamas, reading them bedtime stories, and finally tucking them up in bed with a prayer.
Evan asked for the prayer to be said twice. Evan wasn’t going to sleep well that night, was he? Susan still hadn’t solved the problem of putting three beds and a cot into the nursery. Fifi was being remarkably good-tempered about sleeping in her buggy top, but how long would that last? Ah well, she’d see to it tomorrow.
Monday, supper time
Downstairs, Susan closed all the windows, drew curtains and turned herself back from being a mother-of-three to being the wife-who-is-always-welcoming when her hunter-gatherer-husband returns from earning a crust.
She could see he was hungry, so she dished up supper and made small talk. She asked if he’d contacted their builder about putting on a porch, and mentioned she’d li
ke to have a blind or shutters made for the kitchen so that they had some privacy. But even as she ladled the first helping of stew on to his plate, the doorbell rang.
No, it wasn’t another protection officer. It was Lesley, wearing a neck brace. She looked pale and rather the worse for wear. She said, ‘Are the children all right? Not suffering from the nasty fright they had this morning? May I come in for a bit? And is that stew I can smell?’
‘Do you need to ask?’ Susan got another plate out of the cupboard, ran it under the hot tap to warm it. There was nothing worse than putting hot food on cold plates. Susan didn’t ask why Lesley didn’t want to go home to her husband. They all knew he wasn’t any kind of support to her in her demanding job. Ellie had been anxious about that marriage from the beginning but had hoped it would settle down.
If he were running true to form, the dear man would have been thinking – even if he didn’t actually say – that it was inconsiderate of his wife to get herself injured and therefore unable to provide him with the care and attention due to the Head of the Household. He would probably be at the cricket club tonight, or out drinking with his mates. It was best not to enquire after him.
Lesley eased herself gingerly on to a chair. She looked as if she had a headache. She said, ‘I’ve been signed off work for a week, but I couldn’t rest. I’ve heard you’ve lost your protection officer, shortage of staff, but someone will pass by in a car several times a night to make sure you’re all right. Oh, and the news from the hospital is good. I understand Rafael identified the girl who was assaulted behind the shops in the Avenue last night. They say she’s probably going to pull through but she isn’t well enough to talk to officers yet.’
Susan and Rafael made appropriate noises and got down to the food. As did Lesley, who ate two helpings of stew with steamed vegetables, followed by two pieces of Susan’s famous chocolate cake. With cream.
Some colour came back to Lesley’s cheeks and eventually she sat back and patted her stomach. ‘That’s better. Can’t remember when I last had such a good meal. So what’s new?’ She ignored Susan and looked to Rafael, the Man of the House.
Murder In Law Page 22
