Authors: Rebecca Tope
The absence of money, current passport, birth certificate, pension book, hairbrush, suggested she had taken a handbag with her when she last left the bedsit. Although the other residents might have helped themselves to cash, they would hardly have bothered with worthless personal items. Squatting back on his heels, the lino dusty beneath him, Drew slowly fingered the items again. If they were indeed the entire sum of the worldly goods of Gwen Absolon, he supposed he should be seeing it as pathetic. She was little more than a vagrant, lugging a battered assortment of
worthless articles from place to place, and going virtually unmissed for months after her last disappearance. But ‘pathetic’ was not the word coming to his mind. Rather he felt an admiration not much short of awe for someone who travelled so lightly through life.
He was getting the sense of a woman who knew where her priorities lay. A person with clear values and total self-sufficiency; a minimalism that liberated her to an extent that most people could barely dream of. She didn’t need a kitchen full of gadgets, or even a family. She was content with a series of intimate encounters which passed easily when the passion evaporated. Drew had a feeling that this Trevor was merely importunate, a nuisance because he didn’t know when to let go – though perhaps the fact that she had kept his letter contradicted this idea. Such affection as Trevor professed must have at least given her a warm moment. Had he turned up, as promised, and found her indifference so wounding that he killed her? If so, how would he, presumably a stranger to the area, have found Drew’s burial ground?
As he pondered, Henrietta Fielding poked her head out of her room. ‘Still there?’ she said. ‘Found anything?’
‘Nothing to say where she might have gone,’ he admitted. ‘Just a collection of odds and ends, really.’
‘Can I make you a coffee? I’ve got some free time now. Sorry if I was abrupt before.’
He got up, wincing as he straightened stiff knees. ‘Thanks very much,’ he beamed at her. ‘I could do with one.’
The bedsit was larger than he’d expected, with a high ceiling and generous light. A stainless steel sink and new-looking cooker occupied one corner. Henrietta’s computer hummed in the diagonally opposite corner, on a good-sized oak table. A scanner and printer were ranged alongside it, with a stack of floppy disks and CDs. The bed was narrow, and Drew had a vision of her large body overflowing its sides.
She moved economically, barely lifting her feet off the floor.
She must weigh over twenty stone
thought Drew. He wondered what it was like, carrying such weight around all the time, never escaping it, getting stuck in narrow theatre seats, glared at on trains, giggled at in the street. Her arms were huge, her neck invisible. Her heart must be quite an impressive engine, he mused, to keep such a monumental body functioning, day in, day out.
‘You said you thought she must be … dead,’ he said, trying to sound wary and nervous. Normal people could barely utter the word, and Drew was doing his best to come over as a normal person.
‘Well, it stands to reason,’ she said calmly. ‘Women of her age don’t go missing the way she did. They don’t run off with lovers or have bizarre midlife crises.’
‘She never acted like an old woman, though.’
‘But she must have been well over sixty, although she was very well preserved. Straight back, lovely head of hair. We never found any pills or potions anywhere, so I assume she was in perfect health. It’s funny, isn’t it – trying to guess at people’s lives. Especially when there’s so little to go on.’
‘I hardly remember what she looked like,’ Drew ventured. ‘She hadn’t gone white, then?’
Henrietta Fielding shook her head, her own pate only lightly sprinkled with silvery strands. ‘Not white,’ she demurred. ‘A lovely strong iron-grey. Long and thick. I admit I envied her that hair.’
Drew pulled a wry face. ‘I do remember she always had it long, but apart from that, I can’t really say—’
The woman made no attempt to finish his sentence for him, but watched him with an intelligent curiosity. Drew had an uncomfortable feeling that she was reading his thoughts. He struggled to keep the conversation going, and finally offered, ‘I know she travelled a lot.’
‘Indeed she did,’ came the ready response.
‘She was away for a month or so last winter and she told me she’d been overseas for much of the previous year. I saw her off on her spring trip, as it happens. She seems to have travelled very light. Didn’t bring much back with her, either.’
‘So – you last saw her during last summer? You say the landlady got worried in September? Would you be able to put a date on the last time you actually did see her?’
‘Oh, my word. That’s a tall order. I’d have to think about that one.’ She put a hand over her mouth, and stared hard at a point high on one wall for some moments. ‘I have no recollection of any particular encounter,’ she said at last. ‘Wendy just wasn’t there one day. I’m only guessing, but it must have been late July. The schools had broken up. You might have noticed there’s a big comprehensive just over the road.’ Drew shook his head sheepishly. ‘Well, there is, and they’re very noisy at break times. I think I do remember saying something to Wendy about the blessed peace of school holidays.’ Her face brightened. ‘And I asked her if she had any more travel plans in the offing. She said there was nothing definite, but she certainly wasn’t intending to spend the winter in England. Oh – I remember. I went away myself for a long weekend – early in August. Wendy wasn’t here when I came back.’
‘Do you remember the dates?’
‘Let’s see. I went to stay with my old schoolchum, Grace. It was her birthday – the 9
th
– while I was there. Something like the 7
th
to the 10
th
, I would imagine.’
Drew frowned. ‘It all sounds very worrying,’ he said, trying to assume the role of long-lost nephew. ‘Don’t you think so?’
‘I did worry a little, I must admit,’ she said. ‘I even toyed with the idea of reporting her missing to the police. But you know how it is. People come and go. If you live in a place like this, you expect a degree of transience. And Wendy travelled so light, and seemed to have so few ties, I persuaded myself that she’d just gone off on a whim.’
‘How long did she actually rent the room?’
‘Oh, years,’ came the surprising reply. ‘She arrived a few months after I did.’
Drew tried to think. ‘You said you thought she was probably dead,’ he reminded her.
‘Yes. When she didn’t come back for her bags by November or December, it seemed likely that she’d been in an accident or taken ill. Or something like that,’ she ended, with an imprecision that jarred on Drew’s ear.
He eyed her sternly. ‘In that case, you certainly ought to have reported it to the police. What if she’s been lying in a hospital all these months, and nobody knows who she is? She could have
had a stroke, or lost her memory in some way. And if she is – well – dead, there must be an unidentified body somewhere.’ He pulled himself up short, sensing thin ice.
Henrietta Fielding’s eyes twinkled incongruously. ‘It never occurred to me that I might be the person responsible for her,’ she said calmly. ‘I took it for granted that she had other friends and relatives who would alert the authorities if they were concerned.’
‘But they obviously didn’t,’ Drew responded. ‘Otherwise you’d have had the police here, examining her things.’
‘Whereas all I’ve got is you,’ she smiled.
Drew felt he’d reached an impasse. He’d also let his assumed persona slip, losing sight of his role as worried relative. He sipped his drink, playing for time and hoping Mrs Fielding hadn’t noticed his lapse. The coffee was good, and the biscuits with it were far from Sainsbury’s cheapest. Henrietta might be in reduced circumstances, but she wasn’t living like a poor person. She drank her own coffee without speaking, apparently quite content to let the silence continue.
‘Well, thank you very much,’ Drew said at last. He could think of nothing more to ask her, apart from a blurted ‘Did you murder her? Had she upset you in some way?’ – thoughts
he clearly couldn’t voice. The full extent of the undiscoverable background facts depressed him. ‘You’ve been very helpful.’
‘I don’t think you’ll find her,’ she said gently. ‘It’s been too long, and she’s evidently left too few clues. I hope you weren’t due for a big inheritance from her?’
Drew forced a laugh. ‘Oh no, I don’t think so. At least I can tell my wife I tried. I’ll just pop everything back in the cupboard.’
‘Don’t be silly. Take it. It’s no use to anybody else, and if she does turn up, we’ll tell her Peter Stafford took it all. She’ll know where to find it then, won’t she?’
Drew gulped and nodded. ‘She ought to,’ he croaked.
In the office, Maggs had run out of work by eleven o’clock. Although dry outside, it was overcast and uninviting – and besides, she had been instructed to stay close to the phone. She tried positive thinking – visualising a succession of customers, visiting and phoning, with at least three new funerals all booked and agreed by the time Drew came back. There could be no argument about the satisfaction level of the families of those few burials they had conducted so far – why hadn’t they passed the word to all their friends and relations? Though, she admitted to herself, even if they had, it would be unlikely that further deaths would yet have taken place in their immediate circle.
Doodling idly, she let her thoughts turn to Drew and Karen’s new baby. It worried her, the way they hadn’t bothered to make proper provision for Stephanie. The best outcome now would be if Karen gave up work altogether and stayed at home to look after her own babies. If Drew had more time to himself, to get on with doing the job properly, there was every chance that Peaceful Repose would take off in a big way. Maggs could think of a dozen sidelines they could offer, if only they could get themselves better organised. Eventually, they should aim to build a chapel of some sort, so people could have a proper ceremony – not necessarily religious – in comfort. As it was, they had the option of using the village church, only three hundred yards away – but that didn’t suit the majority of their strictly secular customers. They wanted a place to gather, out of the rain, with somewhere to plug in a tape or CD player. Despite the clear proscription of any such building in the field, according to the terms of their Planning Permission, Maggs had every confidence that there would be some way around that in the future.
Petty bureaucracy
, she decided, dismissively.
At half past eleven, she had a visitor. The sound of a car engine alerted her, in time to see a woman getting out of a minicab. The car didn’t drive away; apparently the passenger had asked
the driver to wait for her. Maggs met her at the office door. ‘Hello again,’ she said.
Caroline Kennet looked very uncomfortable, she glanced up the sloping field towards the infamous grave. ‘Oh – er – hello,’ she faltered. ‘I hope you don’t mind—’
Maggs was wary. ‘Didn’t bring the policeman with you this time then?’ she challenged.
‘No – he said he wouldn’t be needing me any more. I didn’t turn out to be very useful, I’m afraid. He seemed to want me to be so
certain
– and I just kept getting less and less sure. I came back to see if I could remember anything on my own. Do you mind if I just have a little walk around?’
Maggs considered this with deep suspicion. The story of the buried woman was still very unclear to her, and this visit from the only witness seemed distinctly significant. Why couldn’t she leave it alone, especially as she’d been given the brush-off by the police?
‘All right then,’ she nodded. ‘Can’t see any harm in it.’
She went slowly back into the office, taking care to keep watch on the woman through the back window. Mrs Kennett went directly to the grave, much more confidently than she had when in company of the policeman. The minicab waited patiently, and Maggs wondered how much it had
cost to come here again. Unless Mrs Kennett had an extremely dull life, it seemed quite a bit of trouble to go to in the circumstances.
Had she perhaps invented the story of being a mere witness to the burial taking place, when she was actually much more closely involved? And now was she having one final check to make sure there were no incriminating details to be found? Perhaps on her previous visit she’d noticed something that could give her away. Maggs’s imagination began to run riot, as it often did, and she continued to watch the woman carefully, wishing she had her glasses with her. When Caroline bent down, reaching her hand to the grass at her feet, Maggs had no idea what she was doing.
‘Damn it!’ she muttered to herself. She was tempted to run up for a closer look, but it would be too late. Whatever the woman was doing, she’d have finished by the time Maggs got there. She was already leaving the site of the grave and walking slowly up to the fence by the railway, as she had before. Crossly Maggs withdrew her scrutiny and tried to get back to her work. She was writing busily when the woman tapped on the office door.
‘See what you wanted?’ Maggs enquired.
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ said the woman worriedly. ‘It’s all so difficult. But those trees’ – she pointed
at the tall oaks on the roadside – ‘they do look very much the same as I remember.’
Maggs shrugged. ‘Difficult,’ she agreed.
‘Well, I must get on,’ Mrs Kennett said fussily. ‘I’m supposed to be visiting my Aunt Hilda, but when I got to the station, I decided to come here again. The minicab’s costing a fortune, but I wanted to put my mind at rest. By the way—’ she added, ‘there’s a very nasty smell up there. I think there’s a dead animal or something. Near the railway line. It’s quite strong.’
‘I’ll go and look,’ Maggs promised. ‘Not the sort of thing we want. Who knows what people are going to think?’
She waited for the woman to leave, and then went to investigate. It was true – there was inescapably the whiff of putrifaction. She followed it determinedly, until finally discovering the source.
‘Yuk!’ she gasped, holding a hand over her nose. ‘Wait till I tell Drew about this!’
On his way back from Henrietta Fielding’s, Drew remembered his promise to Maggs and called her from a phonebox. She took some time to answer and when she did, she was breathless. ‘Too busy to answer the phone?’ he demanded. Answering the phone was an absolute priority in their line of work.
‘You could say that,’ she puffed. ‘It was as quiet as the you-know-what until an hour ago, and then things started to happen. The police are here just now, because somebody’s made a complaint about us. Some nutcase accusing us of paganism and witchcraft. Your friend PC Graham Sleeman came with some other bloke. They’re not bothered – it isn’t against the law, anyway, to be pagan. But I had to show them round. Oh – and that Kennett woman came back again. I don’t know what she wanted, but she said there was a smell, and I found a stinking dead cat wrapped up in a sheet, up by the railway line. Remember those two men with the spade that I chased away a couple of weeks ago? It must have been them that left it there.’
‘What have you done with it?’
‘Nothing. I thought Jeffrey could deal with it, next time he’s here. The stink’s awful. Very bad for business.’ She went back to one of the earlier topics. ‘Why do you think she’d come back again? It seems a bit fishy to me—’
‘Can’t you do it?’ Drew interrupted her, evidently still focused on the dead cat. ‘It won’t need much digging.’
‘I might,’ she said unhelpfully. ‘I’ll see how I feel. Oh, and that Jarvis chap phoned. Wouldn’t tell me anything. Patronising git.’
‘Sounds like a busy morning,’ Drew said
brightly, hoping to divert her. ‘But nobody wanting a funeral?’
‘Not a soul,’ she told him. ‘When will you be back?’
‘Mid-afternoon, I should think. I’m going to collect Stephanie and report my progress to Genevieve. I’ve got some more questions for her.’
‘Well, enjoy yourself,’ Maggs said with a burst of irritation, and slammed the phone down noisily.
Drew sat in the van with a large jotter pad on his lap. He had bought it specially at a nearby stationer’s. He tried a flowchart, starting at the top with Gwen Absolon, alias Wendy Forrester, and following threads downwards, via Genevieve, Willard, Dr Jarvis, the Egypt shooting, Sarah Gliddon, Trevor, Henrietta Fielding and Brigid. He knew he was merely feeding in every name he’d come across so far, with little or no resulting enlightenment. He wrote:
Jealousy/suicide/blackmail
alongside the listed names, and then added ‘
runestones
?’ next to Trevor. Consulting Gwen’s notebook, he added the names from the list that he guessed was the tour group she’d taken to Egypt. Steven and Felicity Fletcher, Maggie Dobson, Janet Harrison, Karl Habergas. He supposed he should try to trace them all, and ask them when they last saw Gwen, discover whether
they could throw any light on where she might be now. He was confident that he hadn’t left anything out, but he was no further forward.
The pressure of the imminent burial – or reburial – of what he now firmly believed was Gwen Absolon’s body made Drew’s head hurt. In his mind, it was a deadline (a word he’d learnt not to use in the funeral business), and he badly wanted to solve the mystery before the burial took place. He couldn’t waste time sitting in the van trying to think. He’d already spent half an hour staring at the jotter, struggling to build a picture of the dead woman from the conflicting comments he’d heard.
Hair colour?
he had written, underlined twice. Henrietta Fielding had said it was dark grey – the woman in the grave had white hair. Of course, it might have lost pigment while in the ground. He’d heard stories of dark-haired people turning ginger after they’d been buried for a few months – but understandably, there was little hard evidence. The white had been so white – he’d seen it for himself, and it had been mentioned prominently in the newspapers. It was definitely something he would have to ask Genevieve about.
Although not as final as a cremation, the bureaucratic hassle of disinterring a body for further forensic examination was enough to make it a highly unusual occurrence. Drew didn’t
think he could face the idea of that – more police presence in his burial ground, more suspicion and bad publicity. If there was to be any increased police interest, following new facts or leads, then it was in his own best interest to produce it within the next few days.
Remembering the newspaper articles about the shooting in Egypt, Drew wondered whether there was any sense in trying to locate Gliddon, husband of the dead Sarah. He should probably visit the widowed man and ask if he’d ever met Gwen – and whether he knew why
Free
had been written alongside his wife’s name in Gwen’s list. The assumption had to be that she would have visited him to offer her condolences after Sarah had been killed, or at least attended the funeral of her slaughtered charge. He needed to know whether she had seemed depressed or unstable – anything that might support Dr Jarvis’s suggestion of suicide. Given Genevieve’s volatile nature, and the past tragedies that the whole family shared, he found it entirely credible that Gwen had been prone to mood swings, at the very least. Had she perhaps talked about anyone threatening her or causing her concern? The long list of questions was wearying, and he put the jotter down on the long seat beside him and turned the key in the ignition.
Throughout the day he had repeatedly felt
impelled to go back to Genevieve’s house. He wanted to be sure she was taking proper care of Stephanie – but just as much he wanted to lay eyes on her again. There was a quiet thrill at the prospect. Even better, his researches of the morning had thrown up a lot of genuine progress, and he now had more than enough to talk to her about. Whether she had ever heard of Trevor, in particular. Had Gwen actually spoken to her about the Egypt tragedy? Had Willard acted especially oddly during August? Questions galore – but much more importantly than that, he wanted to look into those grey eyes again.
By two o’clock, he was driving into her village’s main street. He promised himself he would work that evening – telephone the Gliddon man, reread all the papers he’d taken from the bedsit. He wanted Genevieve to get value for her money. And if he stayed at her house long enough, he might witness the return of the elusive Willard, and perhaps assess for himself whether the man could be a murderer.
In fact, neither Genevieve nor Stephanie seemed particularly pleased to see him. They were in the back garden, despite the cool April weather, cuddled together on a rug with a book. Drew saw them as he went to the side door, and savoured the tableau before they became aware of him. His
sturdy little daughter was cradled in the pregnant woman’s arm, as Genevieve reclined gracefully against a contraption apparently designed specifically to prop you up as you read a book in the garden. The intimacy was not merely physical: both heads bent over the book in rapt attention. Genevieve’s long black hair was loose, and hung in wavy hanks over her shoulders. Trevor’s letter, with the word
witch
, flashed into his mind.
‘Hello!’ he said heartily. ‘You two seem to be getting on very well.’
Both faces turned towards him, oddly alike in expression. Neither smiled. Both pairs of eyes seemed preoccupied with whatever they’d just been doing. ‘You’re early,’ said Genevieve. ‘Case solved already?’
‘Far from it, I’m afraid. But I haven’t come back empty-handed. I need to ask you a few things before I can go any further.’
She made no move to get up. Unprompted, Drew felt a wave of longing rush through him, a huge desire to kneel down beside her and hold her in his arms. Gritting his teeth, he held his ground, eight or ten yards away, and focused on murder, dead bodies, unofficial graves. For something to say, he told Maggs’s story of the cat.
‘Just after you came to the burial ground, Maggs saw two men running away. They were carrying spades. Well, now she’s found a dead
cat in the hedge, where they were hiding. I guess that’s one little mystery solved.’
‘Oh?’
‘Well – I assume they wanted to bury it somewhere. Maybe they live in a flat or something. Like the man and his wife with the labrador. They said they hadn’t got anywhere to put it. Cheeky of the cat people, though. I could have charged them for the service.’
‘Doesn’t a dead cat make you think of anything a bit more sinister than that?’ she asked him, her head on one side. He met the beautiful eyes full on. A harmless pleasure, surely.
‘Um – no, I don’t think so. What did you have in mind?’
‘It doesn’t matter. It’s my fevered imagination. We’ve been reading this, look.’ She held up the book, and Drew recognised
Where the Wild Things Are
from his own childhood. ‘It’s going down very well. I think we’ve been through it six times so far. I know it off by heart.’