Embroidering Shrouds (19 page)

‘Yes.'

‘She knew him and feared him, still does fear him. She thinks he'll come back even though his great-aunt is dead. That, Mike, should tell us something about Christian Patterson.'

They were disturbed by the phone. Joanna picked it up and listened without comment, Mike watching the expression on her face change, only when she finally replaced the handset did she allow herself a wide grin. ‘That was Longton Police,' she said. ‘They've picked up a young woman for stealing an old lady's purse after tricking her way into her home. The little thief's name is Carrie Foore and she's asked for thirty other thefts to be taken into consideration. One of them was in Leek. Ms Foore has long, naturally blonde hair and her gran lives next door to Jane Vernon. The net, Korpanski, is beginning to tighten and I can feel some little fish wriggling inside it.'

‘The question is', Mike replied dourly, ‘have you got a big fish in there too?'

‘I think so.'

Although the weather was cool it was also blustery. A few hardy yachtsmen were sailing their dinghies around the lake, their sails making bright triangles against a backdrop of dark trees which flung their branches around in the wind. Beyond were the hills of the moorlands prettily divided up on the lower slopes by a neat patchwork of fields, marked out by the dry-stone walls so typical of the area.

Quills looked a little prettier today with a brief burst of autumn sun to brighten it but the mud hadn't dried from the rains of the last few days, it would still be a mucky approach. This time they left the car outside the gate and advanced on foot. Lydia must have been watching through the window, she met them on the top step.

Her face looked thinner, older and more tired, saggy. New lines had appeared in the days since her sister's body had been discovered. She might not mourn her but she could not deny she was affected by her death. She greeted Joanna and Mike warmly, as though glad of some company. Quills gave the impression of being a home little visited by humans. There were only the animals to keep its occupant from solitude. Joanna had thought that was how Lydia Patterson had liked it. Not any more.

‘Inspector. Sergeant.' And they both sensed that this time she wanted them to enter.

She shooed the hens down the steps, squawking their protests noisily. ‘Get out of the way, Sam. Not there, Ella,' before giving them a sardonic smile. ‘Funny, isn't it?' she said. ‘I used to think I was so bloody witty, calling the hens Sam ‘n' Ella, the lamb Mint Sauce and the pig Bacon.' She sighed. ‘It just doesn't seem so funny anymore. Joke's fallen flat.'

Again Joanna caught the sense that since her sister's death Lydia Patterson's life had altered in some great way.

‘Come in. Come in. Sit down.' She paused, suddenly awkward. ‘Look, I was about to make some tea.' There was an air of desperation in the invitation which again puzzled Joanna. She felt that they
should
accept.

While Lydia Patterson was clattering noisily in the kitchen, humming some unrecognizable tune, Joanna prowled, policeman like. Mike, as always, stood in the doorway, arms folded, watching her silently.

It was the surface of the desk that drew Joanna towards the window. It overlooked the miniature farmyard outside. And as though the animals were aware of her interest the woolly coated sheep lifted its head and stared at her, so did the hens lately evicted from the house, and the duck. Idly, Joanna wondered what the duck was called. Orange? She smiled, then her eyes dropped to the surface of the desk scattered with sheets and sheets of paper, an exercise book, tightly handwritten, and a couple of skilled line drawings of the animals outside. The hens and sheep were instantly recognizable, so too were the pigs and the goat. But when she lifted the drawings, expecting more to be underneath, she found some sepia photographs. Joanna picked one up: heavily posed, children from some vague time between the wars. A tall boy, sausage suited, dark eyes staring at the camera. He held a hoop in his right hand, a stick in the other. Either side of him stood two solemn-faced girls in spotless white pinafores, one about ten, the other maybe five. They too stared at the camera, dark-eyed, solemn-faced. And between the three children there was no hint of the animosity waiting in the wings.

The photograph was more than sixty years old but there was no need to ask who they were. They were posing on the front steps of Brushton Grange, the picture taken from quite a few yards away. There was an expanse of flat, croquet lawn in front of the three children.

The photographer must have been standing roughly on the spot where Nan Lawrence would build her home.

Joanna picked up a second photograph. One of the girls was much older now. It was impossible to tell which it was, both were so altered – Nan by the blows of death, Lydia by the wads of fat which padded her cheeks. But one of the girls then had been very pretty, Jo peered closer, more than pretty, beautiful – with smooth cheeks, large eyes and hair cascading down her back. And on the girl's face there was the vaguest hint of a smile, a pleased, self-satisfied smile.

Lydia bustled back into the tiny room carrying a Formica tea tray and some chipped mugs. Sugar spilled from a glass dish. She handed round a packet of chocolate Hob Nobs with a rueful glance at her bulging stomach. ‘Weakness of mine,' she said, stuffing two of the biscuits in her mouth. Today she was wearing a flowered smock which billowed out at the waist. Her eyes picked out the sepia photograph in Joanna's hand. ‘Nan,' she explained quietly. ‘Just after she was engaged. Lovely picture, isn't it? I've been looking at them.'

Joanna nodded, replaced the picture on the desk and moved forward to take the mug of tea.

Lydia Patterson aimed a coquettish smirk at Korpanski. ‘Surely you're not going to stand in the doorway
all
the time you're here, Sergeant?'

Mike grunted, accepted the tea and refused a chocolate Hob Nob. Lydia offered one to Joanna who took it.

‘Why have you come here today?'

‘Just to talk to you, Miss Patterson.'

‘And you think just talking to me will help you find my sister's killer?'

‘Maybe. Maybe not.'

Lydia Patterson's eyes gleamed intelligently. They followed Joanna's glance across at the table. The picture of Arnold with his two sisters was now on top. She gave a deep, heartfelt sigh. ‘Times,' she said.

‘Your father,' Joanna began.

Lydia laughed. ‘Was a crusty old thing,' she said. ‘But he was clever.'

‘I've been thinking about his will,' Joanna continued. ‘He left your sister land she had no use for. He left your brother the family house he didn't want. What did he leave you, Miss Patterson?'

The eyes appraised her. Lydia stood up, her huge arms quivering with emotion. ‘That was the best of it all,' she said, moving towards the desk. ‘The very, very best bit. My father –' Her hand rested on the sheets of paper smothered with words and sketches. ‘I don't know how much my brother's told you or whether you'd understand anyway. His gifts, you see, were not gifts but Trojan horses meant to be indicators of our weaknesses. I was fifteen years old when my father died. It was 1945. The end of the war and my father's death are, to me, blurred into one event. I remember Victory parties and somewhere in the middle a wake. I recall flags waving and a day of sombre clothes. Which came when I have no idea, it's all such a long time ago and I didn't mourn my father anyway. Even as a child I felt little affection for him, I was wary of him. His death was almost certainly much much less important to a fifteen-year-old than the fact that the soldiers came home and people felt glad.' She dropped her eyes, wiped her face with the flat of her hand. ‘Nan was twenty and Arnold a handsome and wonderful soldier returning from faraway lands. He was my hero.'

Joanna could not reconcile this vision with the bent old man who lived surrounded by such decay. Could time really be such a destroyer, to turn Nan, the dark-eyed beauty filled with such self-satisfaction, into the battered
thing
she had seen on the floor of Spite Hall?

Time and spite, an effective eroder. But age had not withered her so much as her character. She listened to Lydia's account, feeling as though the years were peeling away.

‘I do remember the day the solicitor came to the house to read the will.' Lydia swallowed. ‘Arnold was given the house – which as you rightly say he didn't want. He always hated Brushton Grange. When he came back from the war he threatened to pull it down given half the chance. Father used to mutter, “Over my dead body.” ' Lydia gave a sour smile. ‘Just a phrase. Anyway, Nan was given the land which you observed was no use to her, she was no farmer.'

‘Her husband was though. Why didn't David Lawrence farm the land?'

‘He had all but died in the war. He was like a baby when he came home; he couldn't have managed a farm. He had been wounded by a sniper's bullet, but more than that his spirit was broken, his mind destroyed. He couldn't believe he wouldn't be shot at if he ventured out in the fields, so he stayed indoors and allowed Nan to run his life as she found fit. And me? You asked what my father had left me? It was the cruellest gift of all, they laughed when my portion was read out, I was told my legacy was my intelligence.'

‘I don't understand.'

‘At the time', Lydia said, ‘I was considered – Oh, these days they would have realized I was dyslexic, possibly through the traumas, the worry of war. Maybe it was lack of good teachers – they all went to the front, you see, or maybe it was simply the way my father tried to destroy what fragile confidence I possessed. I was not subnormal, but nobody knew. They were all too busy with the war effort and afterwards with celebrating. But then no one spent any time with me. There were no nice, tidy labels. I was considered thick.'

She picked up some of the sheets of paper, let them scatter over the desk. ‘But the last laugh was on me. David Lawrence, returning from the war, left with little of his physical strength had plenty of time to teach a girl to read. I adored him,' she said simply. ‘He unlocked the –' She wiped away a tear that had formed in the corner of her eye. ‘Do you know what these sheets of paper are?'

Joanna shook her head.

‘I write books,' Lydia said. ‘Oh, they're just children's stories. I didn't find a Stephen Hawking level of intellect. They're just life as I know it.' She peered out of the window at the animals grazing contentedly. ‘Tales of a smallholding, squabbles between animals, that sort of thing. Shamelessly anthropomorphic, but they sell. Kids like them.' There was more than a hint of defensiveness in her attitude. ‘Since the middle nineteen sixties I have made a reasonable living out of my stories.' She gave a lopsided smile. ‘My father would have been furious, quite furious. He would hate to know how he had been thwarted, outwitted, and by David Lawrence of all people. He had no time for him. Here.' She tugged a drawer open and pulled out a couple of books, gaudily covered paperbacks, one with a hen on the front, the other a sheep, both had humanoid expressions on their faces.

‘Take them home. Give them to your kids. Who knows. I might even gain a couple of new fans.'

Mike caught his. ‘Thanks.'

It was with a shock that Joanna caught hers and realized that by now she too had a ‘kid' at home. It was an unwelcome thought.

Joanna and Mike spent the first part of Friday afternoon reading through statements, Joanna delaying the moment when she should return home. At the same time she acknowledged that wherever Eloise Levin was would not feel like home to her. The antagonism between them was far too tangible because she blamed Joanna for the break-up of her parents' marriage. In her most depressed moments Joanna wondered whether she was right. Counsellors might protest that there was only room for a mistress in an imperfect relationship, but Jane and Matthew would have muddled along somehow, like many couples. Besides, what quality of relationship did she and Matthew have now? Not perfect. It was flawed every time Eloise's name cropped up and her physical presence was a thousand times worse. Eloise was acute enough to sense Matthew's guilt and play it for all she was worth. It was her trump card – constantly overplayed. Joanna's biggest dread was that the girl would one day ask to come and live with them permanently and Matthew would not say no. She gave a big sigh which Mike quickly picked up on.

‘I can guess what you're thinking about,' he said, ‘and it's nothing to do with the case.'

She gave him a rueful glance.

‘How long's she staying?'

Joanna shrugged.

‘Well, don't ask me how to get rid of unwelcome guests,' he said. ‘I'd hardly qualify to give you any advice. Can't manage it myself, Jo.'

It brought the faintest of smiles to Joanna's face. ‘She's still with you then?'

‘We've tried everything', he said ‘in turns. Being nice. Being horrible. Talking. Not talking. Listening to her advice. Ignoring it completely – and her. I tell you what, Jo. Life was good before she came, only we didn't appreciate it, we didn't know how good we had it until it had gone.' He pushed his fingers through the jet black hair and stared gloomily at her. ‘I'd give anything to get back to our place and see her cases packed and in the hall. Anything.'

‘I know the feeling.'

They felt close, bonded by common enemies. Silently but companionably they worked through the piles of statements, looking up every ten minutes or so to exchange grins and comments. ‘Found anything?'

‘No.'

‘Me neither.'

At five-thirty they were disturbed by the telephone. It was the desk sergeant, Bill Tylman had called in asking whether they had found out anything new about the case, did they want to speak to him?

‘Hang on a second.' Joanna smothered the mouthpiece and eyed Mike. ‘I only spoke to Tylman this morning, what's he “dropping by” for?'