Dying to Write (6 page)

‘Ah,' she began, ‘got me promotion through at last. Imagine me sewing on all them stripes.'

‘I can: I can still see you sewing all those curtains up in my spare room!'

‘How's yourself, then, our Soph?'

I brought her up to date with my limited news.

‘And did you know as how Chris is back from India?' she asked. I could hear the grin in her voice. ‘Came back Sunday, he did.'

‘He wrote and asked me to meet him,' I admitted. ‘But I told him I'd be on this writing course. Wouldn't be able to get away.'

‘Oh, ah,' she said, the syllables signifying profound disbelief. ‘Any road, Ian Dale picked him up.'

‘Does he get any leave so he can get over his jet lag?'

‘Shouldn't think so. He said as how he wanted to have a couple of weeks' holiday there, when he'd finished with Delhi. Be a tourist, like.'

‘Good for him.' Better than a week at Eyre House failing to learn how to write. ‘So will he be taking on this case?'

‘What case?'

‘Sorry: I've got everything out of order. I'm on a residential writing course. Right? Out at Eyre Park.'

‘Back of beyond, that.'

‘Yes. Not very exciting. But one of my fellow students has just died, and the local police are very – relaxed about it.'

‘Any reason for them not to be?' Her voice was suddenly alert.

‘She wasn't old. She didn't threaten suicide. A doctor here reckons it's alcohol poisoning.'

‘Well, then.'

‘But so many people here hated her. I've just got a feeling.'

‘Feeling, my aunt Fanny! Soph, haven't you got nothing to go on?'

‘Nothing at all. I'd love to be proved wrong.'

‘OK. Tell me what our people have done so far.'

‘Nothing. The ambulance people took the woman away and then a kid in a panda turned up and went away again. Leaving her room open to the four winds. I just stopped the administrator here from giving the room a thorough clean.'

‘Jesus. OK. Seeing as how I know you, I'll have a word with Chris, shall I?'

She expected me to back down – she'd seen my efforts not to get emotionally involved with him.

‘Great,' I said brazenly. ‘Do that.'

Shazia was in the kitchen, making coffee for everyone who was up. There was some sort of emergency get-together in the lounge, and I ought to have been there. But I couldn't face the questions they'd want to ask, questions I'd want to ask in their situation, and I drifted out on the terrace. It had stopped raining, and I wanted some fresh air to clear my still foggy brain.

If I sat down on an inviting bench I might even go to sleep. It had been a real effort to respond to Shazia's frantic summons. Normally I'm up and working at raising my level in the Canadian Air Force Exercises by seven-thirty. How I should have slept through till nine, goodness knows. Every movement was still almost as much an effort as it was to think. And why had Shazia come to me? Ah, because she couldn't wake Kate, and she wouldn't want to alarm Agnes or her friends. Why me when Gimson was the logical choice? Perhaps Shazia wouldn't be able to think of a rational answer either.

Where should I meet Chris? How should I speak to him? I really do like the man. Like. I'm fond of him. Fond enough not to want to cause him pain. Because what he felt for me last time we met wasn't liking, but love.

I thought I'd rather meet him among other people. That way there'd be no opportunity for personal displays from either of us. A hug, a kiss, can't be neutral. Not in our circumstances.

It was time to return to the house. It was unfair of me to leave Shazia to deal with all the problems of breaking the news and deciding how much of the show would go on. But Shazia had Matt and Kate to call on. I was only a student, not a responsible, reliable member of staff. Not here. At college, maybe, but not here.

I took the long way back into the house – along the terrace, on to the gravel path at the side, and then via the drive. Through the umbilical corridor. Over the top, Sophie, I told myself grimly.

In the corridor outside the lounge the two girls were in half-resentful tears. They had each other. I looked into the library; the science-fiction student might never have heard of sudden death. One of the ladies – we still hadn't sorted out the menu for tomorrow, of course – was hurrying downstairs with an asthma spray like mine.

‘I've got Thea to lie down,' she said over her shoulder. ‘This is for Agnes.'

Time for you to be responsible, Sophie.

Then I heard the door from reception whoosh. Without thinking, I turned back. If I could deal with any problem without bothering Shazia I might as well.

This visitor was oriental, but not Japanese.

I'm not very good on racial types. Japanese people I'm generally OK with, and I even have a misleading amount of the language. I can greet people convincingly and I can call in a rabbit and swear when it messes the carpet, a form of specialised communication which would have been no use at all in yesterday's encounter with Brontë-man. This is a result of a live-in relationship with an angora rabbit and his associate, a serious-minded man called Kenji, now long departed to write a doctorate on the dietary habits of sumo wrestlers.

I smiled at our visitor. He nodded.

‘I want to see Mrs Compton immediately,' he said, in accented but excellent English.

‘Mrs Compton?' Who the hell was that? It'd been first-name terms all round, hadn't it? And it seemed a long time since I'd typed that list.

‘Now.'

This was clearly a job for Shazia. I'd still no idea who Mrs Compton might be.

I produced a smile my dentist's receptionist would have been proud of. ‘If you'd care to wait here, sir, I'll see what I can do.'

He started to follow me.

‘Would you be kind enough to wait here, please.'

He continued to follow me.

I stopped; he tried to push past.

‘I will go and ask Mrs Compton if she wishes to see you. Wait here, please.' This was the formula – and the frigid tone – I use with unwelcome visitors at college. I'd at last placed the name. Mrs Compton was Nyree.

He tried to push past again. Then he heard the sounds of feet on gravel, turned and, with all the doors whooshing in sympathy, dashed through the front door, colliding violently with the new arrival as he did so.

So Chris Groom and I were absolutely alone for our first meeting for five months.

I had the advantage of him; I'd seen him first, spinning on his heel to yell at our departing visitor. I'd taken in how thin he was, how the sun had dried his skin into a dull red with no hint of a tan. There was the start of a stoop about his neck and shoulders that might have been fatigue but was more likely in his case to be stress.

Then he saw me: heavy-eyed, certainly. And Shazia had been so distressed when she woke me I'd had no time to apply make-up or brush my hair. The T-shirt and jeans he'd expect.

I wonder how much he noticed after all. Perhaps he was too busy controlling his own face to see anything wrong with mine.

‘Hi,' I said, too brightly, as he stood irresolute on the threshold. ‘Come along and have a cup of coffee and I'll tell you all about our murder.'

At last, however, he managed to gather the shreds of protocol, and he said, his voice almost under control: ‘I think I ought to talk to the administrator first. And, of course, you realise the officer who came earlier thinks you're wrong.'

I smiled. ‘I hope I am wrong, Chris. Because if Nyree has been murdered, I might be one of the suspects.'

I would use that as my exit line; it was time to fetch Shazia. I did no more than put my head round the lounge door to summon her. Then I introduced them briefly and watched them retire to her office. One of them shut the door quite firmly.

Duty called me back to the lounge. I'd have to face them sooner or later. I slipped in quietly. And my ploy worked. I had ten uncomfortable minutes not enduring their questions, as I'd feared, but listening to their complaints about Kate and Matt. And I began to feel that they might after all have some justification. Now Shazia was no longer in the room to support them, they needed someone with some authority. Not me, as I reminded myself again. At least I had enough initiative to do something. Maybe if I rousted them out before an official deputation demanded they get up and teach, I'd defuse the situation. So I slipped out as quietly as I'd gone in, and headed for the staff corridor.

As I crossed the hall I nearly collided with Matt, hurtling down the stairs.

‘Where's Kate?' he demanded.

‘Still asleep, I suppose,' I said. ‘Matt, there's been –'

‘No, she isn't. I've just checked her room.'

‘But it was locked.'

‘Still is, for all I know.'

‘Then how –'

‘The bathroom doors connect, and no one's got round to finding a key. Found that out a couple of courses ago when I locked myself out. That was before Shazia's time, of course – I can't imagine ever having to tell her anything twice. Ah, here she is. Shazia, my love, I have something to confess!'

Shazia was plainly concerned; but then she remembered something of much greater importance.

I wondered if they both realised that Chris, from the office door, was listening and watching.

‘Matt,' she began, ‘something terrible has happened. To Nyree.'

‘Got the DTs, has she? Delirium tremens,' he added, as if Shazia might not understand the term. ‘Serve her bloody right.'

‘Nyree's dead, Matt,' I said quickly. ‘Shazia couldn't wake her this morning.'

He stared at me and rubbed his hands over his face. ‘None of this is making sense,' he said at last. ‘I need a coffee. Then perhaps you can start at the beginning and tell me what's happening.'

Chris stepped forward, nodding at Matt without apparent interest. Matt might have been deceived. I introduced them briefly. Neither seemed much impressed by the other.

For some reason I led Chris not to my room but into the grounds. We soon found a bench where no one could overhear us. Perhaps it was the sun, now quite warm, but I couldn't stop yawning; I felt as if I'd had a heavy night of it, but I counted back and couldn't total more than a glass of wine and half a finger of Nyree's cherished scotch. You wouldn't call the air here relaxing, as if it were some genteel spa. It wasn't any different from the air I always breathe, down the road in Harborne.

Chris too seemed subdued.

‘Jet lag,' he said briefly when I showed concern. And then he half turned to me as if he were imparting bad news. ‘I really do think you're overreacting, Sophie. I've spoken to young Speller, who's nobody's fool.'

‘The PC, you mean?'

He nodded. ‘And then I had a word directly with Gimson. He struck me as the sort of man who might say one thing to a woman and something slightly different to a man.'

I beamed; this sort of distinction had seemed beyond Chris's range when we first met, and I wondered if my influence had made him think more subtly. I hoped so.

‘Overreacting?' I repeated, though with undue fire.

‘After the spring. Trauma of the sort you experienced must take its toll one way or another. For you even to consider coming on a course like this –'

‘Like what, Chris?'

‘You know – poetry, writing … I wouldn't have associated you with anything like it.'

‘Please, DCI Groom, sir, I teach English. For my living.'

‘But it's not the same as writing it,' he said.

And again I was surprised by his perceptiveness. I might shock him by agreeing for once.

‘You're right, Chris. But to get back to our
moutons
, Nyree does seem to have attracted a lot of attention from us students and from outsiders. And I'm alarmed at some level I can't make sense of that no one knows where Kate is.'

‘So you think Kate might have killed her and run?' he said. The serious tone was belied by the crow's-feet of amusement he couldn't conceal.

‘No. She'd have run in her car, surely, and it's still in the car park. Are you going to take it away for forensic examination?'

‘Not until we have grounds to believe a crime's been committed. Or should we be alerting all forces to look for a serial killer?'

I wished he'd try to be serious. Or perhaps he was. ‘No. I don't know. God, I hope not. Jesus, Chris –'

‘Slow down. I was joking. Tell me, why did that Asian woman – what's her name?'

‘Shazia.'

‘Why did she call you?'

‘No idea. I don't even know why she went into Nyree's room in the first place – do you?'

‘To call her to the phone,' he said briefly. He probably shouldn't have told me.

‘Chris, she must have acquired enemies like other people attract mosquitoes. Please, don't just assume it was an accident.'

He looked at me, holding my gaze for longer than I found comfortable. ‘OK. There has to be a PM. I'll get them to prioritise her. Get the results through quickly.'

He was doing it to indulge me, not because he believed it was necessary. Today it was easier to let him.

‘And, just to be on the safe side, mind, I'll get the room sealed. So if necessary the SOCO –'

‘Sorry?'

‘Scene-of-crime officer, Ms Rivers. So he can have a ferret-round if necessary.'

He grinned and got up. We walked to his car in silence.

‘What will you do for the rest of the day?' he asked at last, as he slipped the key into the ignition.

‘Go back to my room and try to write,' I said. ‘And pray the shock's unblocked me!'

Although lunchtime took a long time to arrive, when we gathered in the dining room people were able to talk with remarkable verve. Some played the
nil nisi bonum
game, but there was a good deal of enthusiastic bitching going on too. Normally I would have joined in gladly, but it was dawning on me that Nyree could not have been a happy woman, and that I had made very little effort to stop her drinking – except, of course, to help share her booze. The other thing that worried me was Kate's continued absence.