Quiet Neighbors (22 page)

“Oh, shut up your moaning,” Eddy said. “There's a minimum fare, isn't there? Right, well, there you go. Pay her, Jude. I'm nipping in fast, cos I'm busting.”

Her words brought Raminder back and Jude was lost again as they rolled up the side drive and parked at the front door. She paid the driver the modest minimum tariff and doubled it with a tip, then unloaded the bags and boxes by herself, without help. Eddy had not reappeared.

She was standing looking at the pile of luggage, wondering whether to take it round in loads or try to find the front door key when she heard a familiar voice and her heart sank.

“It's like Paddington Station round here today.” Mrs. Hewston was crossing the side lawn in her slippers with a half apron on top of her skirt and her sleeves rolled to the elbow. “I was at my kitchen sink, peeling spuds,” she said. “Was that a taxi? I thought you liked Digger's Cottage.”

“I do,” said Jude. “I'm just moving in to be here for Eddy.” She looked at the piles of books around her feet on the marble step and knew how unlikely it seemed.

“Is she near her time?” said Mrs. Hewston. “My goodness me, like mother like daughter, eh? But she'll be away to the hospital when it comes, won't she?” Jude nodded. “It's a filthy time of year to be having a baby, if you ask me,” said Mrs. Hewston. “Rotten time for getting nappies dry. It's like winter weddings. What are you supposed to do for flowers in your bouquet?”

Mrs. Hewston, thought Jude, seemed to live in a time warp where there were no such things as Pampers or global markets.

“Have you heard the news?” Jude said. Her head was reeling with suspicions of Lowell and half-formed notions of what might have happened here years ago, and all of a sudden, Mrs. Hewston, loyal to the doctor, scathing about his son, seemed like someone with good radar.
If
they were right.
If
the monstrous idea could possibly be right.

“About Jackie Mac?” said Mrs. Hewston. “Yes, terrible.” She pressed a hand to her chest. Her fingers were raw and pink-looking, as if she'd peeled the spuds in cold water.

“But she's in the best place,” said Jude.

“Well, you say that, but it's different these days. It's all about not getting sued these days. Nursing and medicine isn't what it was. And if it's a stroke she's had, maybe it's best she doesn't linger.”

Jude didn't know where to start. Mrs. Hewston had no idea whether it was a stroke or what it was. No one did. As quick as that, she changed her mind back again. She was just a daft old bat who lived half in the past and half in a dream world.

They both turned as the front door, creaking and yawning, was dragged open.

“Sorry,” said Eddy. “I didn't mean to—Oh.”

“Hello to you too,” said Mrs. Hewston. “It's nice to see that door open. When the doctor was alive that door was never closed. The vestibule floor was polished with linseed oil and there were fresh flowers in a vase on the hallstand every day of the year.”

“Polish it himself, did he?” said Eddy. “What a guy! And he did the flower arranging too?”

Mrs. Hewston ignored her. “But now look at it. The brasses not even shined and—Oh! Oh!” She pointed with a shaking finger. Jude followed her gaze with real alarm and then let out a huff of relief when she saw what had caused the problem. On the hallstand, in the vestibule, was a glass vase brown with old algae and completely dry, a few dead twigs sticking up in it. Mrs. Hewston tutted at it and then left them.

“That's a bit scruffy,” said Jude. “I'll clear it away.”

“Or you could leave it,” Eddy said. “Kind of just … leave it and sit and do some relaxation instead. It'd be a start. I'll help you.”

Jude's breath was knocked out of her. She stared at Eddy for a minute or two until the girl's eyes were wide with worry. “Thanks,” she said. “That means a lot, really. But one thing at a time, eh?”

She moved her bags and books into the hallway in relays. The bright start to the day had run out and clouds were rolling in across the water, a haze under them telling her they were dropping rain out there in the bay and their purplish colour, weighty and threatening, telling her they wouldn't be empty by the time they got to the coast.

It was beginning to feel normal to be able to look out for miles and see the weather long before it reached her. She could imagine getting used to it, becoming one of those people who found London cramped and confusing; becoming someone who, like Mrs. Glen, could keep fresh flowers in the house every day of the year. Once her belongings were under cover, she took the vaseful of Lowell's failure into the kitchen where Eddy was waiting.

“Be fair,” she said. “This must have been sitting there for—”

“Months,” said Eddy. “That's forsythia. It's out in the spring.” She picked a little twist of something dead off one of the branches and rubbed it to crumbs between her fingers.

“Well, aren't you full of surprises today!” Jude said.

“Nah, it was Mum's favourite,” Eddy said. “One of them.”

Jude set the vase down amongst the bills and batteries that littered the top of the long dresser and rubbed her hands on her jeans.

“If we're serious about suspecting Lowell and I'm serious that there's a clue somewhere in all those books,” she said, “I better get them out of sight before he comes home.”

“Put them up in my bit,” said Eddy. “He never comes up there. I told him I wander about naked and he nearly poked his eye in with his fountain pen just thinking about it.”

“Smart,” said Jude. “Okay, I will then.”

She had only spent a few days in these rooms, but that was long enough. Seeing them again, with Eddy's magazines lying around and Eddy's shoes kicked off at the top of the stairs, made her feel as if she'd cleaned a toilet with her bare hands and now she was licking her fingers. And Eddy's kindness had sent the portcullis rattling up so high she couldn't reach it to bring it down again.

“I'm not here. I'm not—” she began. Then she sighed. “Except I am.”

It was crazy. She knew that. It was crazy to feel sick because there were shoes on the floor of a flat she'd slept in last week. Like it was crazy to move to Cataloguing, bored senseless but surrounded by clean new books and away from the readers with their snot and chocolate. It was crazy to say she wouldn't have children because snot and chocolate weren't the half of it. She knew no one blamed Max for what happened. Poor Max. What could he do when his wife was crazy?

When she was finished ferrying the books upstairs, she took her clothes and toilet things into one of the first-floor bedrooms. Then, wondering, she went back to the kitchen.

“Do you want me to sleep up top with you?” she said. “I could make up a kind of whatsit with sofa cushions.” They stared at each other.

“Are we really serious?” said Eddy. “We're really saying Lowell abused his position at the care home. That his dad knew. That Mrs. Hewston knows. That Jackie collapsed when you brought the memories back?”

Jude sank into one of the kitchen chairs. Carting boxes up and down was part of it, but really she felt bowed under the weight of too many mysteries, too many switchback changes.

“There's too much … ” she said, and Eddy shouted with laughter. It was a sound, Jude thought, she had picked up from Lowell in the time she'd been here.

“You're telling me!” Eddy said. “There's my shit and your shit and then there's all this shit! Where are we supposed to start, eh?”

“We don't need to start with my—”

“Shit,” said Eddy.

“—because there's nothing to do except sit tight and see what happens.”

“You're a machine,” Eddy said. “I couldn't do that if you paid me.” She put a mug of tea on the table in front of Jude and opened a packet of biscuits, sawing through the wrapper with the breadknife.

“And you've dealt with your … situation, haven't you?”

“How'd you mean?” Eddy said. “Oh, telling him about Liam and Terry, like? Well, sure, but that's only half of it, isn't it? That's only the future. There's still the past. Fuckadoodledoo is there ever the past.” She took a biscuit out of the packet, dipped it in her tea for longer than Jude thought was feasible and then held it over her open mouth until the soggy half moon sloughed off and dropped. She closed her lips with a smack. “But I'm on it. I nicked his toothbrush,” she said. “Sent away for a DNA test. That's my way, see? Rip off the plaster and see what's under there.”

“But I thought you were sure he wasn't?” Jude said.

Eddy dropped her eyes to her cup and a new biscuit. “I am. I don't see how he can be. Cos of the dates. She'd never lie about my star sign and birth date. All that woo woo. Birthstones are crystals, man. Powerful stuff. Burying them at the foot—” She stopped.

“What?”

“Nothing. Getting myself mixed up. It's liver and lights you bury, right? Full moon, for a bumper crop. So, like I was saying, I've dealt with it. When the DNA comes back, I can either tell him and skedaddle or not tell him and stay.”

“And wonder forever who your real dad is?”

“Unless the other shit we've still got to work out explains it all,” Eddy said. “If he's a loony, that's why she kept me away. If someone else from that summer is my real dad, that's why she sent me back. She told me I was his so he'd take me in. Or, she sent me back to bring something to light that she'd left hidden.”

“So where do we start? What do we think? What do we know?” said Jude. “What are the uncontested facts?”

Eddy opened the drawer in the kitchen table—the knife drawer it was called, although it contained napkins and a corkscrew and a little dust pan and brush for sweeping away crumbs in between courses. It also contained a pad of paper Lowell used for working out knotty crossword clues, and Eddy drew that out and turned over to a fresh sheet.

“Shoot,” she said.

“I received an anonymous note,” said Jude, “tying together the deaths of Todd, Archie, Etta, Norma, and Elsie. Todd Jolly put his wife in a home—the home Lowell worked at? Let's find out—and was very keen not to follow her. Auntie Lorna McLennan died two weeks after going into a home. Again,
the
home? Let's find out. Mrs. Hewston has some kind of hold over Lowell, and Todd wrote in one of his books
I will tell Dr. Glen enough is enough
. Then Lowell left the home and Dr. Glen retired and took an interest in the bookshop, a place he'd always hated and disapproved of. He organised the Fiction rooms, you know.”

Eddy caught up and stopped writing, then bent over again and added a thick blot like a bullet point beside each of the lines. “Jesus,” she said. “When you write it all down like that, it's pretty bad, eh?”

“And in the present day. Jackie warned me off face-to-face. Someone warned me off in a note. But it wasn't Lowell or Jackie. But Jackie did speak to Lowell before she collapsed. Did she speak to someone else? We don't know because someone related to Etta Bell stopped us finding out.”

Eddy turned over a page, scribbled a little more, and then threw the pen down. “This is too hard to organise,” she said.

“We need lists,” said Jude. “We need a timeline. What happened when.”

“Right,” said Eddy. “Names and dates. On it.” She pulled her phone out of the capacious pocket of the afghan coat and started clicking.

“Archibald Patterstone, 21st of June, 1984,” she said, scribbling. “Here, Jude, read these out to me, will you?”

Jude clicked through the pictures and read off the names and dates ending with Henrietta Bell who had died only weeks before Todd himself. “But Todd didn't die in the nursing home, did he?”

“And the rest did?” said Eddy.

“Presumably,” Jude said. “And we can surely find out. I mean, there must be relatives of them all still around. Some of them anyway.”

“I can go round and ask Billy,” Eddy said. “It'll be easy to get him talking about family at a time like this. I'll go tomorrow.”

“And I'll ask Maureen from the Cancer!” said Jude. “Maureen
Bell
. If I slip round and see her when someone's collapsed, I'm sure I could get the conversation onto going suddenly or lingering. Who she knew that popped their clogs different ways.”

“You'll be a right wee ray of sunshine,” Eddy said. “But you'll have to hoof it, cos it's nearly five now.”

Twenty-Two

Those purple clouds had
arrived and the wind dropped as soon as they reached Wigtown, leaving the clouds there driving cold spikes of rain straight down at the ground, battering flat the last of the flowers in Lowell's garden, making Jude hunch over under her hood as she hurried through the empty streets.

She fell into the charity shop, gasping and shaking herself. Maureen was counting up the change, with a bundle of notes already sorted and bound with a rubber band.

“Ocht!” she said. “Whatever you're after, you can take it and owe me till tomorrow.”

Jude pushed her hood back and used the edges of her hands like windscreen wipers to sweep the worst of the weather from her face. “Lowell's got the car in town with him,” she said. “He could give you a lift home, if I shout over.”

Maureen narrowed her eyes. “I live upstairs,” she said. “I thought you knew that. So, how can I help you?”

“Eddy said there was a jigsaw puzzle,” said Jude, spying a row of them on a high shelf behind the counter and thinking it was a safe bet. “Oh, what did she say it was of? I'll remember if I take a look.”

“Lowell's daughter Eddy?” said Maureen. “She's never been over the door. Try again, you're on your last go.”

Jude felt her colour change and didn't even try to hide it. “Caught me,” she said. “Okay. Did you hear about Jackie?”

Maureen's face grew pained and she shook her head. “Poor soul. I've been praying all day.”

“She always seemed so well,” said Jude.

“She takes a lot of heart pills,” Maureen said. “But she's years younger than Billy and his lungs are away.” She scraped the change into a cotton sack with a bank logo on its side and gave Jude an expectant look. “Is that all you're after then? Telling me about Jackie? I never had you down as a gossip.”

“I met your cousin at Jackie's house,” Jude said. “She was on an emergency call to see to Billy.
She's
got me down as God knows what.”

“You were at the house?” said Maureen and now she looked very searchingly at Jude, who couldn't blame her. It was impossible to explain. It was just as impossible to start up a casual conversation with someone who was itching to get home after a long day's work, when your first two attempts had been seen through.

“I upset Jackie yesterday,” Jude said at last. “But I don't know how. I came round to ask if you could help me work out what it was I said because I can't stop thinking about it.”

Maureen put her head on one side, with a small smile. “Well, why didn't you just say that? It'll not have been anything.” She put the cloth bag down and leaned her elbows on the counter. Jude moved away from the door and took a couple of steps towards her.

“We were talking about her Auntie Lorna, because I found one of her old books in the shop.”

“O-ho!” said Maureen. “Still trying to move the mountain, are you?”

“And I asked about another couple of names I'd come across and she didn't seem to want to remember them.”

“Oh?”

“One of them was Henrietta Bell. I wondered if she was a relation of yours.”

“Distant,” said Maureen. “Some kind of cousin. What about her?”

“Well, this is going to sound mad but, before she died, was she in a nursing home or old people's home or anything, or was she still in her—Maureen? What is it?”

“Oh no!” Maureen said. She wasn't leaning on the counter now. She had stood up as straight as a tin soldier and was glaring at Jude. “No way. Not this. Where'd this come from?”

“Maureen, I don't know what you mean. I just wanted to ask about Archie and Etta and—”

“Aye, aye, Norma Oughton and Elsie Day. Now, listen to me, that was a terrible time and it's behind us. So leave it there.”

“I don't know what you mean,” said Jude. “I'm just asking a simple—”

“Out!” Maureen said. “Go on. Get out. Why are you stirring this up again? Who are you really? A journalist? A muckraker? If I Google you, what will I find, eh? And what's your whole name anyway? You've come slinking in here, getting round us all, and what do we really know about you?”

Jude had her hand on the door to leave before half of this was said. Her heart was thrumming and she knew she was pale, but still she stopped with the door half open. “Maureen, I'm sorry,” she said. “And I'm worried. I don't understand what's going on, but I'm worried for all of you.”

“Are you threatening me?” Maureen said.

“
No!
” said Jude. “But I'll tell you this: someone threatened me last night. Someone put an anonymous note through my door.”

“And you're accusing me?”

“No! For God's sake. I'm trying to warn you.”

“Out!” said Maureen, louder. “Get back to London where you belong.”

Jude stumbled outside and started to run back to Jamaica House, her hood down and her jacket unzipped, feeling the cold rain sting her eyes and the hot tears prick at them. She was streaming with water, her hair plastered in cold hanks to the sides of her face when she got there, bursting in at the kitchen door, not noticing Lowell until she had started talking.

“It's real!” she began and then stopped.

“No shit, it's real,” said Eddy. “Look, don't go nuts, okay? I told you what I'm like. Rip off the plaster and worry about it later. I did tell you, didn't I?”

“What do you mean?” said Jude.

“I thought of something.” Eddy nodded at Lowell. “So I just out and asked him.”

Jude blinked the rain out of her eyes and stared at Lowell, expecting to see anger or perhaps a wry amusement there, but his face was more solemn than she had ever seen it.

“It's about the photographs,” Eddy said. “You know how I said they were creepy but harmless? Well, I thought of a way they could be creepy and anything
but
harmless. So I asked him. I asked if any of his rare Victorian ‘figure studies' were . . . old people that he worked with.”

“Oh God,” said Jude. “They're not, are they?”

“Tell Jude what you told me, Lowell,” said Eddy. “He just said this the minute before you walked in.”

“I didn't mean to be so mysterious that I worried you,” he said. “It's just that some people find my pictures … upsetting.”

“Tell Jude what you just told me,” said Eddy grimly.

“My dear child, don't distress yourself,” Lowell said. He turned to Jude. “I told young Eddy here that some of the photographs are of the elderly, some children, some adults, and some are a mixture.”

Jude sat down, dropped like a coal sack into a chair, and stared at him. “A mixture?” she said. “The elderly?” She turned to Eddy, who had tears in her eyes.

“See?” said Eddy. “It's a motive. His dad knew and the relatives knew and everyone covered it up. Well, you would, wouldn't you?”

“My dears,” said Lowell. “What are you talking about? I assure you I've been most discreet about my collection.”

“But you're not just a collector, are you?” said Jude. “You're a photographer. You took pictures in the care home, when you worked there. You took pictures of Mrs. Jolly, and Todd knew.”

“What?” said Lowell. “Of course, I didn't. Why would I? No, my dears, that particular custom had fallen quite out of favour long before my time.”

“Custom?” said Jude, her voice rising. “
Custom?
”

“Tradition, fashion,” said Lowell. “Call it what you will. It was in its heyday when photography was still very young.” He smiled at them both. “Itinerant photographers had their rounds like publishers' reps today. I know a little about all that. Once upon a time, LG Books was going to be much more than the glue factory for old nags it turned into. Well, and so if dear old Grandma or little Lizzie or poor baby George popped off before the chap came with his Box Brownie … I mean to say, needs must. ‘In Memoriam' photography, it's called.”

“Wh—Wha—?” Jude asked, then took an extra breath. “You're saying you collect pictures of dead people in their coffins?”

“Not necessarily in coffins,” said Lowell. “They posed them, rather ingeniously. Sometimes in family groups.”

“Dead families?” said Jude. “Whole families?”

“Not dead families,” Lowell said. “Just families with one of them appearing for the last time.”

“Oh. My. God,” Eddy said.

“And because the families didn't make a point of recording the harsh fact—made a point, rather, of trying to
hide
the fact—for a long time the photographs passed as normal portraits, you see. And the poor child standing there covered in powder and paint would just be thought of as not particularly photogenic.”

“Fuck-a-duck!” said Eddy.

“Or so one might have expected,” said Lowell darkly. “But it's usually the reverse. The first one among my collection, that is to say, the first one among my photographic collection that I successfully identified as ‘In Memoriam' was a group portrait that had always troubled me. It was a couple with a teenaged child, and the couple—merchant-class, lots of whiskers and ruffles—looked like ghosts. Rather indistinct and not quite there.”

“The poor kid!” said Eddy. “No way that was her idea!”

“She, on the other hand, was crystal-clear and sharp-edged, staring straight out of the picture.”

“She must have been freaked! No bloody wonder she was staring!” Eddy said, but Jude had taken a few steps ahead of her.

“Oh no,” she said.

“What?” said Eddy.

“Indeed,” said Lowell, nodding. “Exposure times were lengthy and during this one, the parents had moved. Perhaps they were shaking with emotion. The child, on the other hand, was perfectly still and therefore in focus.”

“Oh, shit!” said Eddy. “That's
wrong
!”

“Exactly my point, my dear child,” Lowell said. “It's an inversion of nature. The dead should be gone and the living remain.”

“You said that to me once before,” Jude said. “But I didn't know why.”

“And so I collect them and take them out of circulation, away from prying eyes and the digital Sodom and Gomorrah, where they would be clicked on and sniggered at. But I'm sorry I kept it a secret from
you
two.”

Eddy and Jude exchanged a glance.

“S'all right,” Eddy said.

“I'm glad now everything is out in the open,” Lowell said. “It's my vocation and it's come to seem like my duty, but I don't speak of it for fear of shocking people, as I see from your faces that I have shocked you. I am truly sorry.”

“Dad,” Eddy said, “we thought you'd abused five old people in the nursing home and killed them to cover it up. So, you know, we kind of forgive you.”