The Dead Lie Down (51 page)

Odd that Cecily didn’t think to name the building after Martha instead of herself.

I’m about to close the magazine and put it back in the pocket behind the driver’s seat when my eye is drawn to another name, at the bottom of the last page.
No. It can’t be.
I look at it, half expecting it to disappear, but it doesn’t.
Goundry.
The name is there, but the context makes no sense. A prickly sensation starts to creep along my arms, up my back and neck and behind my knees, as if I’ve got pins and needles in my skin.

I re-read the paragraph. Goundry’s not a common name. If it were Wilson or Smith, I wouldn’t have noticed. I drop the magazine, open my bag and pull out the sales list Mary gave me. There’s the name again: Mrs C. A. Goundry. An address in Wiltshire. My heart judders an irregular, drawn-out beat as something else leaps out at me from the page. I didn’t read the addresses before; I was too stunned by the nine names being there, looking so innocent and not at all mysterious—the people who bought paintings from Aidan’s 2000 exhibition.

The address given for Ruth Margerison, who bought a painting called
Who’s the Fairest?
, is Garstead Cottage, The Avenue, Wrecclesham. Mary’s cottage. I stare at the handwritten list. I know that writing, the curly ‘M’ of Margerison . . .

Disorientated and panicky, I clear my throat. ‘Excuse me?’

The driver turns off the radio. ‘Yes, miss?’

‘There’s something here about a talent contest. In the magazine. ’

‘That’s right. They have it every year, first Saturday after Valentine’s Day. There’s a lot of pressure on Villiers to go co-ed, but the head and the board are determined not to. All the statistics show that it’s easier to educate girls when there are no boys around, but try telling the girls that. And some of the parents—a lot of them take the attitude, if their daughter wants boys, they expect boys to be provided, like good school lunches and private bedrooms in the dorms.’ He laughs. ‘I reckon I get to hear more of their complaints than the head does. Not a lot I can do to help them—I’m only a cabbie. Most of them assume they can buy anything, and normally they can, but the board have dug their heels in over the single sex issue. They know who’d get an earful the minute the results took a dive.’

I want to scream at him to get to the point.

‘Valentine’s Day tends to bring the bad feeling to the fore, as you can imagine,’ he says, scratching the back of his neck. ‘The contest’s a bit of fun, designed to make the girls forget about the cards that never arrive because hardly any boys know they exist, tucked away in the middle of the countryside. It’s a shame, really. But they all love the contest—it’s the only one where the boarding houses go up against each other, you see. Usually the competitions are against other schools and the girls have to present a united front. They have that drummed into them from their first day: Villiers is one big happy family, and it demands absolute loyalty. And it is happy, to be fair. I wouldn’t have minded sending my daughters. Not much chance of that.’

The boarding houses.
I read the paragraph again: ‘This year, for the first time since our Valentine’s Day Talent Contest was launched in 2001, Goundry was the winning house, with a massive total of 379 points. Well done, Goundry! The traditional slap-up victory breakfast will take place on Saturday 1 March in Goundry’s dining hall, and we’ll have no girls (or house mistresses or masters) from other houses trying to sneak in, thank you very much—we know that’s gone on in previous years and this time we’re cracking down!’

It’s crazy, but I’m going to ask him. ‘You don’t happen to know how many boarding houses there are, do you?’

‘Course I do. There’s not a lot about Villiers I don’t know. I’ve been—’

‘How many?’ I focus on his pink neck, try not to think beyond it.

‘Let’s see, now.’ He starts to tap the steering-wheel. I count the taps, feel a numb disbelief take hold of me when they stop at nine. ‘Nine in total.’

‘What are they called?’

Amiably, as if reeling off his children’s names—the daughters he couldn’t afford to send to Villiers—he begins to list them, unaware of the horror that burrows deeper into my mind with each one. ‘Abberton, Blandford, Darville, Elstow, Goundry—that’s the house that won this year’s talent contest. Caused an uproar, that result. Goundry’s a sporty house. Darville and Margerison are more intellectual. Winduss is your drama and your singing, so of course they expect to win every year.’

Knowing what was coming did nothing to prepare me. New sweat sticks my shirt to my back.
I don’t know who they were. They never told us. Isn’t that funny?
I’d forgotten Mary saying that until now. ‘Us’: the pupils. The girls weren’t told who the nine boarding houses were named after. Real people, presumably.

‘Where did I get to?’ says the driver. ‘Oh, yes. Goundry. Then there’s Heathcote. Margerison, which I mentioned—one of the more academic houses. Rodwell and Winduss—or Luvvies, as it’s known unofficially—those are the last two.’

The traffic has started to move, slowly but picking up speed all the time. The gaps between the cars are growing wider. ‘Looks like we’re on our way,’ he says.

‘Stop. Please,’ I say shakily. Everything has changed in the time it took him to list nine names.

‘This is a motorway, miss. I can’t stop. Are you all right?’

‘Can you pull over?’

‘I can do, if you want me to.’ For the first time, he leans out of his seat and turns to look at me. The skin of his face is as pink as the back of his neck, puffy around his mottled cheeks. He has a white moustache that covers the whole space between his mouth and his nose, and a grey beard. His would be a good face to paint; it has more colours and textures than most.

My mind swings back to Mary’s portrait of Martha Wyers, to the different textures and colours death gave her face: the white-encrusted lips, the blotchy chin . . .

I pitch forward and grab the headrest in front of me, breathing fast and hard as certainty rushes in. The picture of Martha . . .
oh, my God
.

‘Are you all right, miss?’

‘Not really. Can you stop on the hard shoulder?’

‘It’s a bit dangerous, is that. There’s services coming up. I’ll stop there for you.’

The discoloured patches on Martha Wyers’ chin.
I assumed they were bruises, or some kind of bodily fluid that had come from her mouth—vomit or blood. I shied away from the specifics because they were grotesque.

Maybe there was some blood or bruising, but there was something else as well: a pale brown smudge below Martha’s lower lip, shaped like a child’s drawing of a dog’s bone. A birthmark.

I think of the paint splashed over the pile of cut-up paintings, of the cows mooing in the fields beyond Garstead Cottage. Mary walking in a slow circle around the heap of debris in her dining room, letting out a low moan, an animal sound . . .

‘Do you have a mobile phone?’ I ask the driver. ‘I need to borrow it. I can give you some money.’

‘Don’t be silly,’ he says. ‘You’re welcome to it.’ He passes it through the gap between the driver and passenger seats. ‘Don’t you have one? I thought everyone had one these days.’

‘Not me,’ I say. Not Aidan either. It was one of the many things we found we had in common early on; both of us hated the idea of having our privacy invaded by ringing wherever we went.

I dial directory enquiries, and, lowering my voice, ask to be put through to Lincoln police station. I expect to hear a recorded greeting, but a woman answers. ‘Good evening, Lincolnshire police. How can we help?’

I ask for PC James Escritt, steeling myself for bad news: his shift ended an hour ago; he doesn’t work there any more; they have no idea where he is now.

I can only ask him, no one else. If he isn’t there . . .

‘Hold the line,’ says the woman, and a few seconds later I hear a voice I haven’t heard for years. He sounds no different.

‘It’s Ruth Bussey,’ I tell him, knowing he hasn’t forgotten me any more than I’ve forgotten him.

I wait for him to ask me how I am, make small talk. Instead, he says, ‘I’ve heard the news.’

‘News?’

‘Gemma Crowther’s death.’

‘I didn’t kill her,’ I tell him. The taxi swerves slightly to the left.

‘I know that,’ says Escritt.

‘I need to ask you a favour,’ I say. And then, not caring how odd it sounds, either to him or to the man whose phone I’m using, I ask if he’d be willing to check my gardens. Not all of them—there are too many for that. Only the ones that appeared in magazines, the ones I won awards for. There are three of them. I give him the addresses. After a short hesitation, I say, ‘And Cherub Cottage.’

Escritt doesn’t ask for a reason, or quibble about the strangeness of my request. ‘What am I looking for?’ he asks.

‘I want to know if any of them have been interfered with in any way. Destroyed.’

‘You mean by new owners?’ he says. ‘Ruth, you can’t expect—’

‘No, that’s not what I mean. I’m talking about attacks on the gardens. Have any of the owners reported any criminal damage last year or this year?’

There’s silence as Escritt wonders why I think anyone might want to vandalise work I did years ago. He knows my answering silence means I’d prefer not to explain.

‘I’d say no to most people,’ he says eventually.

‘Thank you.’

‘It might take me a while. Can I reach you on the number you’re calling from?’

‘For a bit. I’m not sure how long, but . . . yes. I know it’s a lot to ask, but can you try to be quick? If anything
was
reported . . .’

‘I’ll ring you,’ he says curtly.

I clutch the phone. The driver doesn’t ask for it back. He doesn’t say anything. I pull my diary out of my bag and find Charlie Zailer’s number. After my conversation with James Escritt, I want to talk to someone else who knows who I am, who will call me ‘Ruth’ instead of ‘Miss’.

There’s no ringing, only a recorded voicemail message. She must be talking to someone else, or have her phone switched off. ‘It’s Ruth Bussey,’ I say. ‘Ring me back as soon as you get this message. The number’s . . .’ I break off.

‘07968 442013,’ says the driver. His voice carries no trace of his former bonhomie. It’s full of apprehension, or disapproval; I can’t tell which.

I repeat the number and press the ‘end call’ button, then lean forward and drop the phone onto the passenger seat. ‘Thank you.’

‘Services coming up. Are we still stopping?’

‘We’re going back,’ I say. ‘To Villiers. Drive along the hard shoulder if you have to—just get me there as quick as you can.’

Charlie had hoped things would be winding down by the time she got to the Spilling Gallery, but the party seemed still to be in full swing at nearly nine o’clock. The lit interior was dark with bodies, and she heard the noise as soon as she got out of her car: laughter and clashing voices.

She’d rung Saul Hansard at home first, having found his number in the phone book. His house was listed by name: The Grain Store. That’s right; she remembered him mentioning the dilapidated building he and his wife had bought and converted. Charlie knew Saul from an initiative she’d been in charge of last year to combat business crime. Most of the local shop-owners had been involved; Saul had been among the least obnoxious and demanding.

Tonight there was a private view at the gallery, Breda Hansard, Saul’s wife, had told Charlie. The windows were so heavily misted that you could hardly see the pictures on display. As Charlie walked in, she was hit by the competing smells of wine and sweat. Now she could see the paintings; they were of local scenes, made prettier by unrealistically bright colours and what looked like pieces of gold tin-foil stuck to each one to represent the sun, or yellow flowers growing beside the road. Twee. Just the sort of thing the people of Spilling were bound to love.

Saul saw Charlie, and broke off from the group of people he was talking to. ‘I’m glad they sent you,’ he said. ‘Let’s go through to the back.’

‘Glad who sent me?’ Charlie pulled off her coat and draped it over her arm. The gallery was uncomfortably hot with the thick, moist heat that could only be generated by too many people crammed into too small a space.

Saul hadn’t heard her, so Charlie repeated her question.

He looked puzzled. ‘You’re not here because I phoned?’

‘No. Who did you phone?’

The back turned out to be a large room that might have belonged to an inspired but undisciplined child with artistic leanings. Marker pens were scattered everywhere, on every surface and on the floor; Charlie’s foot rolled on one as she walked in. There were large sheets of white cardboard with paint splashes on them leaning against walls, paintings both framed and unframed in tottering piles, aerosol paint cans with dried paint dribbles down their sides that had spilled on-to the table, tissue paper, mainly torn, occasionally screwed up into uneven balls, wood shavings, glue . . .

‘I wanted to talk to someone,’ said Saul, fiddling with his red braces, the same ones he always wore. ‘I’ve had all sorts of police in and out yesterday and today, asking me questions. They wouldn’t answer any. I was worried. I think some people I care about might be in trouble, or missing, and . . .’

‘Would those people be Ruth Bussey, Aidan Seed and Mary Trelease?’

Saul looked satisfied, briefly, then anxious. ‘You’re also here to ask about them?’

‘Unofficially.’

‘Mary Trelease isn’t a person I care about,’ he said thoughtfully, as if reluctant to declare himself unconcerned. ‘Though of course, I wish her no harm. She’s a very strange lady. Difficult. I lost Ruth because of her. You know Ruth used to work for me?’

‘Ruth told me about her row with Mary. It happened here, didn’t it?’