Murder on the Hour (17 page)

“She did? Look, I'm at Catrin's house on Thyme Close. Can you meet me here? No, it's okay. Forensics have finished. Ten minutes? Fine.”

I wonder what will happen to this house, Bethan thought. She examined the sideboard in the little dining area, opening and closing drawers. Old-fashioned table linen, with embroidered flowers in the corner, clean and pressed, lay waiting to be brought out for a meal that would never happen. A faded colour photograph of a wee girl in her mother's arms stood on the sideboard. She picked up the photo and examined it. The little girl with the tousled curls in the smocked dress squinted at the camera while the mother offered a forced smile on command of the photographer.

She went upstairs. The stairs creaked under her feet as if protesting her presence. We don't want you here, the house seemed to say. We're waiting for our girl to come home.

Bethan pushed open the door to Catrin's room. It was neat and orderly, the bed made, clothes hung up. A school girl's desk, now used as a dressing table, was covered with makeup, a few packets still unopened. She pulled out a few drawers and turned over the contents.

At the sound of a knock on the door, she went downstairs and let Penny in.

“So Dilys came to see you,” said Bethan. Penny nodded. Bethan got out her notebook and pointed at the sitting room. “We might as well be comfortable.”

When they were seated, Penny summarized the gist of the conversation. “She found the quilt in Mrs. Lloyd's front garden.”

Pen poised, Bethan smiled. “We've already done a door to door, but we didn't think to ask if anyone saw someone carrying a quilt. Mrs. Lloyd's front garden is round the corner and what, a three-minute walk from here? Five minutes at most?”

Penny nodded. “And Dilys said the side seam was ripped open when she found it. She said she didn't want to talk to the police. I'm really sorry, but I think you're going to have to talk to her, anyway, because I forgot to ask the most important question of all.”

“Did she see anyone between here and there?”

“That's exactly what I didn't ask her.”

Penny gazed around the room. Muted light filtered through the space where the curtains didn't quite meet, not because they hadn't been fitted to the window, but because someone hadn't closed them properly. Already, in just a few days, a light film of dust was starting to appear on the furniture.

“What do you think happened here?” asked Penny.

“We're still piecing things together. There was no forced entry, so she knew her attacker, or at least opened the door to someone she apparently had no reason to fear.

“And speaking of attacker, we weren't sure at first that she had been attacked. She died of head trauma—we thought she could have fallen for some reason and hit her head on the hearth. But the postmortem results indicated a different kind of head wound. DCI Davies asked for the fireplace tools to be examined forensically and although they'd had been wiped, traces of blood belonging to the victim were found on the poker.”

“The poker? Really?”

Bethan nodded and Penny groaned.

“That's really such an awful way to die. What a shame.”

“That's what I thought. It looks as if it was a spur of the moment kind of crime. I think whoever killed her wanted whatever was in that quilt.”

The two women sat in silence.

“About DCI Davies,” Penny said after a moment, “how is he doing?”

“Oh, he's fine, I guess,” Bethan replied. “I think he was hoping his life in retirement would be different, that you'd be a big part of it, but he understands how you feel.”

“I hope so,” said Penny. “The thing is, it's early days yet, but I've met someone. I really like him.”

“I wondered about that,” said Bethan. “It's that fellow who was injured on the trail, isn't it?”

“It is. Michael Quinn, he's called.” She said his name as if it felt like melted chocolate on her lips.

“Well, I hope it works out for you,” said Bethan. “What do you think of this house, by the way?”

“This house? In what way?”

“As a property. It'll have to be sold.”

“Oh, a property for you, you mean? Well, I don't know. I haven't really seen it.”

“Why don't you take a quick look around? I'd be curious to know what you think.” Penny stood up. “May I open the curtain?” Bethan nodded. “Probably a good idea. The forensics people close them sometimes when they're testing for blood stains or spatter.”

Penny pulled the curtains open, flooding the sitting room with light. Everything from the patterned carpet to the old-fashioned, heavy furniture to the flowered wallpaper seemed a dreary brown, with no splashes of colour to relieve the drabness. “You have to try to see beyond the furniture and wallpaper,” said Penny. “With new paint and light furniture it could be a lovely little room. I'll look at the kitchen now.”

She returned a few minutes later. “I don't think much has changed in there since the 1970s. Definitely needs a new kitchen. But the back door leads to a pretty garden.”

“I haven't seen the garden yet,” said Bethan. “Have a look upstairs, and then we'll check out the garden together.”

Penny disappeared up the steep, narrow stairs. She glanced at Catrin's room on the left, then entered the larger bedroom. It had two windows, one that overlooked the front garden and another that looked onto the neighbouring house. The slightly musty smell reminded her of her aunt and uncle's bedroom from many years ago, but they had had twin beds. You never see twin beds nowadays, she thought, but for some reason, when she was growing up, they were quite popular with married couples. Here again, the predominant colour was brown, relieved only by colourful bedding. This, she thought, was likely Catrin's touch in preparing the room for a potential lodger. It's too bad the lodging arrangement never came about. Perhaps the two women might have got on well together, had some fun, even, and brought a little life into the unending gloom of this abandoned place.

She opened the closet door. The trouble with these older houses, as she knew from her own cottage, was that they were built at a time when people owned fewer things, including clothes. There was never enough storage room in these old properties.

The closet was empty. She opened a drawer in the larger chest of drawers and it, too, was empty. Catrin must have cleared out the room ready for her new tenant.

She then crossed the little hall, if you could call it that, and entered Catrin's bedroom. The sloping ceiling made the sparsely furnished room look even smaller than it was; a single bed was pushed up against one wall and the flowery curtains were pulled back. On the school girl desk now used as a dressing table, surrounded by makeup, an old-fashioned silver-backed hand mirror and hairbrush seemed forlornly out of place. Her mother's, thought Penny. She admired the filigree work on the back of the mirror then picked it up and peered at her face. Thinking that the harsh light and the close up mirror were cruelly unforgiving to a fiftyish face, she replaced it and picked up the next item, a folded scarf in rich colours of deep greens and blues in a distinctive small floral pattern. She shook it open. Not a headscarf, but an accessory to be knotted around the wearer's neck or tucked into a collar. She knew exactly what it was but checked its little tag anyway: LIBERTY
OF LONDON
in sewn, not stamped, gold letters. Nice, thought Penny. Also her mother's, probably. She'd never seen Catrin wearing a neck scarf.

A quick look in the lavatory, with its peach-coloured fixtures and green linoleum floor, told her everything she needed to know.

“Well?” said Bethan when Penny rejoined her.

“Definitely new bathroom and kitchen. The bedrooms are so small, it might be an idea to make them into one decent-size room and have the whole upstairs as your bedroom with an en suite. Of course, that means you don't have a guest room, but if you were living here on your own, it might work.”

Bethan nodded and smiled. “Well, something to think about.”

“If you were to buy this house, with everyone in the family deceased, who would you buy it from?” Penny asked.

“Whoever inherits it,” said Bethan. “And that would be her closest relative who we've learned is her cousin, Evan Hughes.”

“I guess you've checked out his alibi,” said Penny.

“He says he was at the antiques show. We're still checking out CCTV coverage to try to verify that. It seems everybody in town was at the antiques show and yet we know at least two people who weren't. Catrin and whoever killed her.” She stood up. “Let's take a look at the garden.”

They stopped off in the kitchen long enough for Penny to suggest what a brand-new kitchen could look like. Bethan then opened the back door that gave onto a small garden and the two stepped out. At one time, the garden had been well cared for, but it was overdue for spring maintenance. Weeds were threatening to overrun the flower beds along each side of a wooden fence and had just about filled in the vegetable patch in the sunny spot at the end of the garden. A small glass house stood in one corner.

“Anyone who bothers to put up a glass house is really into gardening,” observed Bethan.

“I don't think it would take much to knock this garden back into shape,” said Penny. “It's well laid out and it hasn't had enough time to get really wild. I suspect that the parents were keen gardeners but Catrin couldn't be bothered.” They peered through the panes of glass streaked with dirt and bird droppings. Clay flower pots, some of them stacked and others tipped on their sides, a trowel, and a few seed packets were strewn about on a narrow wooden worktable. A battered cardboard box had been shoved roughly under the worktop.

Because the glass house was too small to accommodate both of them, Penny stepped aside to allow Bethan to enter. She pulled out the box and peered into it, then pulled it closer to the door. Penny leaned in to get a better look. The box was filled with items that looked as if they had been set aside as donations to the charity shop. A jumble of men's ties, smaller boxes, a couple of books, picture frames, and on the very top, a long narrow leather case.

Bethan picked it up, and slid the clasp open, and unfolded it. It contained a pale blue leather apron, with insignia. She tipped the case toward Penny.

“It's a Masonic apron,” Penny said. “I haven't seen one of those since I was a girl. My uncle was in the Masons but he was always very secretive about it.”

Bethan rooted around in the box, flipping pages of the books, turning things over.

“I think I know what that box is all about,” said Penny. “Catrin cleared out her parents' room to get it ready for her perspective tenant and she didn't know what to do with some of the stuff. It's a problem. You don't really want it, but you can't really throw it out, either. I mean, what do you do with Masonic stuff?”

“Take it to the Masons' place and see if someone else can use it?”

Penny shrugged. “Well, I guess all this is her cousin's problem now. He'll have to clear out all the personal possessions and then decide what to do with the property.”

Bethan rummaged through the contents of the box one last time and then straightened up. “Well, I don't think there's anything more to see here,” she said.

“Wait a minute,” said Penny. “That photo you've just brought to the top of the box. May I see it, please?”

Three familiar faces, this time on a grey and white postcard, looked back at her, almost as if they had been waiting for her to discover them. “This photo,” she said, “Alwynne and I are trying to find out the names of the soldiers.” She squeezed her way into the glass house and Bethan took a step back.

Penny put the photo on the worktop, image down.

“Do you think it would be all right if I removed the photo from the frame, just so I can see if there are any names written on the back?” she said. Bethan scanned the implements on the worktop and held out a spoon, handle toward Penny, that had been used to fill the clay pots with potting soil. Penny pried up the tacks that held the photo in place and then removed it.

“Yes!” she said. Written on the back was
Herbert Bellis, before he left for the front. 1914
. “The problem is,” said Penny, “it doesn't say which one is Herbert. Oh, well, maybe Alwynne's learned something more by now and she can work that out.” She glanced at Bethan before putting the photo back together. “I guess Herbert would have been Catrin's great-grandfather. Her father's grandfather.”

Bethan set the photo back in the box and took off her jacket.

“This glass house is getting hot.”

Penny immediately stepped outside and Bethan followed.

As she took one last look around the garden a break in the wooden fence caught her eye. Her head turned toward the back door and then she looked at Bethan.

“Was the back door unlocked when you found Catrin's body?” she said.

“I'm not sure,” Bethan replied. “I'll have to check the case notes.”

“I think it was,” Penny said. “And the reason nobody saw anyone on Thyme Close, out the front, is because the assailant left by the back door, and escaped through this little gate. You can barely notice it in the fence. It's been cleverly concealed. The passageway there leads to Rosemary Lane. And look,” she said, pointing, “you can see the roof of Mrs. Lloyd's house from here. I think whoever killed Catrin grabbed the quilt, ripped it open to take what whatever was inside it, then dumped it in Mrs. Lloyd's front garden.”

Her eyes wandered over the windows of the houses that backed onto the passageway. “You need to do your door to door along here. Someone could have seen this person out one of those windows.”

She took a step toward the fence.

“Don't take another step,” said Bethan, punching numbers into her phone.