Asking For Trouble (21 page)

‘You are sure you’ve got money for the bus fare, dear?’

I promised her I had. I was feeling as guilty as sin by now, but the deception was in a good cause. Plus she drove off with the glow that comes from having done a good deed.

I jumped on the Abbotsfield bus, reckoning that I’d be home before Jamie. I knew he planned on leaving Winchester at four that afternoon and I knew how long it had taken us to drive there. Arithmetic told me what time to expect him home. And sure enough, there was no sign of his car at the Astara Stud. I looked in the garage. Empty. I’d cut it fine, but I’d done it.

I wanted to know who else was out and about in the vicinity because I didn’t want to be observed when Jamie got back. I walked over to the stableyard. It had a sleepy late afternoon look about it. I wondered where Kelly was. As I stood at the entrance, looking around, a horse whinnied inside a loose-box near at hand, a male voice cursed it, and a moment later, Lundy came out.

He saw me and stopped. ‘Can I help you?’ The words contrasted markedly with the way they were expressed. The only help he wanted to give me was help on my way out, probably with his boot.

I told him, I was looking for Kelly. I didn’t particularly want to find her and get into conversation, because I hadn’t to miss Jamie’s return, but I had to give Lundy a reason for hanging about there.

‘She’s not here.’ He came closer and instinctively I took a step back. That was a bad tactical move because it encouraged him to think he’d got me at a disadvantage.

‘I want a word with you,’ he said ominously.

‘What about?’ I stood my ground although my instinct was to run. He couldn’t harm me, I told myself. I was Alastair’s guest.

‘What are you doing here?’

‘Looking for Kelly,’ I repeated nonchalantly.

‘Don’t mess me about!’ He pushed his ugly mug at me. ‘I don’t mean in the bloody yard. I mean here – at the Astara. What’s your game, eh?’

‘I’m a visitor!’ I said grandly.

He spat to one side, expressing his opinion of that.

‘Ask Mr Alastair if you’ve got doubts’, I added.

His pebbly little eyes bored into me. ‘Clever, think yourself, I dare say. Well, you be careful. I got my eye on you!’ I was aware of it, both of them.

I chose to say nothing, largely because I couldn’t think of anything. He seemed satisfied he’d delivered his warning and turned away, going back into the loose-box and cussing the unfortunate horse in it again.

I scurried away and hid in the tangle of buddleia bushes by the garage. The sweet smell was overpowering and reminded me of honey. There were any number of butterflies fluttering about the mauve blossoms and perched on them. A small bird of a kind I didn’t recognise (I can only recognise sparrows) was darting about catching the butterflies and gobbling them up. I felt sorry for the butterflies but admired the agility of the bird.

He hunted. I waited, camera ready. I was a hunter, too.

Jamie didn’t stand me up. He turned up about ten minutes later than I’d estimated. Perhaps he’d waited a few minutes in Winchester, at the carpark, to see if I was coming home with him. The car swept up to the garage and he got out. I took a snap of him closing the car door. Then he walked round the car to inspect the muddy marks left by our encounter with the cattle. That gave me a chance for another couple of shots. Then he looked back down the drive which gave me a beautiful profile.

I was getting careless by then and must have moved because the buddleia rustled and Jamie’s head snapped round. I held my breath. But my little friend, the hunting bird, chose that moment to fly out. Jamie relaxed and set off towards the house, whistling.

I waited a few minutes and then followed, entering the house through the kitchen. Ruby was there, mixing batter. A woman I’d never seen before was tackling a pile of ironing in the corner.

‘Hullo, my dear,’ Ruby said. ‘You came back with Mr Jamie, then?’

‘No, I came earlier. I was finished in town.’ I glanced curiously at the other woman, who hadn’t looked up from her work or shown any sign she was aware I’d come in.

She was a shapeless sort of person, looking rather as if she were made of dough. Her straight grey hair was parted centrally and pinned back with a couple of kirby grips and she wore the sort of wrap-over apron I hadn’t seen in years.

‘Mrs Lundy,’ said Ruby, nodding towards the woman. ‘She comes over a couple of times a week to give me a hand.’

Assuming Mrs Lundy would acknowledge the introduction, I said hullo. But she carried on ironing without any reaction at all, although Ruby had spoken in a normal voice.

‘Is she, I mean, is it—’

‘Joey Lundy’s wife,’ Ruby anticipated me. ‘They live in the bungalow, behind the yard.’

She still spoke quite normally, clearly audible to the ironer, and still Mrs Lundy took not the slightest notice. She paused long enough to sprinkle water from a small basin on to her ironing, then carried on. It occurred to me she might be deaf.

As tactfully as I could, I lifted a hand, tapped my ear and raised my eyebrows.

‘Oh, no,’ said Ruby cheerfully. ‘There’s nothing wrong with her hearing. She’s not one for chat. A bit slow on the uptake, but a good worker. Makes ironing a real art.’

An awful thought struck me. ‘Kelly, the stablegirl, she’s not their daughter, is she?’

‘Oh goodness, no!’ Ruby chuckled. ‘She just lodges with them.’

Lodging with the Lundys must be about as comfortable as a Tudor traitor would have found himself in the Tower.

Ruby tapped her spoon on the edge of the mixing bowl. ‘There, that’s done!’ She began to spoon the contents over a Pyrex dish part-filled with stewed fruit. Then she handed me the wooden spoon with batter smeared on it. ‘Do you want to lick it clean, or are you too grown-up for that? Theresa, when she was little, she always did hang round to scrape out the bowl. And when she grew older, too!’

‘I’m not too grown-up!’ I took the spoon. ‘I used to do this when my grandma made cakes. She used to make a wonderful chocolate cake.’

Ruby put the dish in the oven and began to clean the worktop. Mrs Lundy folded a pillowcase, put it on a pile of finished ironing and took another from a daunting pile of dampwash. Ironing might be an art with her but it appeared to have turned her into a zombie, or living with Lundy had. But she wasn’t deaf and, despite what Ruby had said, she might understand more than expected, enough to repeat anything I said to her husband. On the other hand, it was a good opportunity to talk to Ruby. I just had to gamble.

‘Ruby,’ I said carefully, ‘you know I shared a – a house with Terry, Theresa, don’t you?’

‘So they told me.’ Ruby straightened up, expelling breath with an ‘ouf!’. Her face was kind but her eyes were sharp. ‘Was she in some kind of trouble, poor lass? Because seems to me, she must have been.’

‘I don’t know, Ruby. If she was, she didn’t talk about it. Honestly, I’d tell Alastair if I knew.’

‘She was headstrong,’ Ruby shook her head. ‘Mr Alastair and Mrs Cameron, they both doted on her. But she made life very difficult for them. They’re getting on in years, you see. They couldn’t cope with the sort of problems young people have. Not today’s youngsters, anyway. It was beyond them. They wanted to help, but they didn’t know how, most likely.’

‘What sort of problems?’ I asked guilelessly. Mrs Lundy splashed water and ironed on accompanied by a faint hiss of steam. It was a pity she was there, but it couldn’t be helped.

Either Ruby had remembered Mrs Lundy or she wasn’t going to gossip with a stranger, and that’s what I was. ‘Bless you, don’t ask me!’ was all she said.

She wasn’t going to say any more. I thanked her for letting me finish the batter and walked past Mrs Lundy out of the kitchen. As I passed by her, she looked up. I had a fleeting impression of a flat, vacant face, heavily coated with face powder. But no lipstick or any other effort to make herself presentable. It seemed odd. I smiled at her and she looked down again at once, but not before I’d seen a momentary reaction in her eyes. Not any return of greeting. But fear.

I had plenty to think about as I went upstairs to my room. Once there, I set about adding to my photographic record. I snapped a view of the room, showing the toys on top of the chest of drawers. Then I snapped the rabbit, showing his back pulled open the way I’d done it to find the letter inside. Then I snapped both pages of the letter, although probably the writing wouldn’t come out well enough to be legible, and returned it to its hiding place inside the book wrapper.

When I’d done all that, even though the film was far from finished, I ran it on to the end, took it out and rolled it up in some cottonwool from the make-up drawer. I wrote a note to Ganesh, telling him to get it developed by the one-hour service locally and take it straight away to Inspector Janice, because it would back up what I’d told them both on the phone. I especially wanted him to study the photos of Jamie to see if he could identify him as the man he saw hanging around the house the day Terry died.

When I’d done all that, I stepped out into the passage.

There was a gasp. Mrs Lundy was outside the room, standing by my door. I’d opened it suddenly and she stepped back, looking so confused and frightened that I automatically assured her, ‘It’s all right!’

She shuffled her feet. ‘I been to the linen cupboard,’ she said.

‘Lots of ironing.’ There wasn’t much I could say to this poor creature.

She still seemed to think I was going to scold her for being in the wrong part of the house. ‘I come upstairs to take it all to the linen cupboard,’ she repeated. The flat face looked into mine, then she turned and hurried away.

But not before I’d had time to realise the reason for the layer of face powder. Beneath it, her doughy features were puffed and bruised. Joey Lundy was a wife-beater.

I walked slowly down to the kitchen. I knew I was very angry but I felt quite calm. Ruby was at the table, enjoying a quiet cup of tea and looking at cookery pages in a woman’s magazine, waiting for her own fruit sponge pudding to be ready to come out of the oven.

‘Joey knocks his wife around,’ I said. ‘Why doesn’t anyone here do anything about it?’

She looked up from the brightly coloured pictures of perfect cakes and complicated desserts. ‘One can’t come between husband and wife,’ she said reproachfully.

‘Rot.’

She flushed. ‘Mr Alastair has spoken to Lundy about it. Lundy’s a good worker.’ She leaned forward. ‘Would you want Mr Alastair to sack Lundy?’

‘I’d throw him off the premises!’ I told her.

‘Yes, you would. And then what? He’d blame that poor creature, take it out on her. She wouldn’t leave him. Wherever he went, he’d drag her along with him. Away from here, it’d be worse. Mr Alastair, he keeps an eye on things. There’s a limit. Lundy knows it. Leave it to Mr Alastair, dear.’

She was right, of course. Lucy had been bright, articulate, young, and she’d found it hard to break away from a violent husband. Mrs Lundy was never going to be able to make the break. Here the situation was controlled. It was the best to be hoped for. I hated to admit it but there didn’t appear to be any way out of it.

I asked Ruby if she had any stamps and an envelope, preferably a strong manila one. It didn’t have to be new. I could strike out the old address.

She did better. She found a little padded Jiffy bag. I bought two first-class stamps off her. Out of her sight, I put my letter to Ganesh and the roll of film in the bag and stuck it all down with Sellotape. Then I slipped out of the house and grounds and walked down the road to where I’d noticed a brick postbox by the roadside.

I posted the package with relief. Once it had left my fingers and fallen down inside the postbox, there was no way Jamie could get it back, even if he found out about it. It was on its way to Ganesh and, all going according to plan, from Ganesh to Inspector Janice.

As a detective, I was improving. I was at least getting a bit more organised.

Tomorrow, I’d tackle the farm. I knew now what time the cows pitched up for milking and I’d avoid that. I hoped Nick Bryant would be there at other times. I had an idea I could talk to Nick . . . and to his wife as well, of course.

There was an hour to go before dinner. I didn’t want to go back into the house just yet and, anyway, there was something else I had to do.

I didn’t really want to do it, but it had to be done. I walked on down the lane, turned into the main road and set off back to Abbotsfield. Now that I knew the way, it didn’t seem so far. It took me a quarter of an hour. I went straight to the churchyard and sought out the corner where recent tombstones indicated the modern burials were taking place.

Theresa’s was very recent and they hadn’t got a stone fixed up yet. Instead there was a white-painted wooden cross with just her name and the date of her death. There were flowers on the grave, fresh ones.

It was getting late and the churchyard deserted and very quiet. Occasionally a car went past up on the road but it made little impression here. It was timeless. The white cross had slipped slightly to an angle. The soil was settling. That was partly why there was no stone yet. It seemed to be suggesting a time limit to me, as if I had to get this all worked out before the soil was finally packed down enough for the permanence of a marble slab. Right now the grave was neither one thing nor another, neither new nor established but half way in between. Unfinished business, I thought.

A curious feeling ran over me, as if I weren’t alone. It felt as though someone stood behind me, had perhaps been behind me for some time, watching. I whirled round. But there was no one.

‘Imagination again, Fran!’ I said aloud. I glanced at my wristwatch. Time to go back.

‘Don’t worry about it, Terry,’ I said to the white cross. ‘I’ll find out who it was and I’ll see he gets what’s due him!’

I hoped I could keep the promise. Even more now, because I couldn’t do anything about Lundy’s treatment of his wife. So many things were wrong and I had to be able to put at least one of them right.

Moreover, I was remembering the bruises on Terry’s body to which Janice had drawn my attention. Until this moment, I’d been concentrating on Jamie Monkton. But Joey Lundy liked beating up women.