Echoes of Silence (21 page)

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Authors: Marjorie Eccles

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BOOK: Echoes of Silence
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‘Hope they're not counting on there being much left then. These nursing homes don't come cheap.'
‘I suppose that's why she wasn't so particular where she got her money from. Funny, you know, I'd never have associated her with having a sense of duty, or a conscience … but there you are. She's kept him in that nursing home for nigh on twenty years, and spent weeks at a time with him even though he didn't really know who she was. I've spoken to them and it seems she was due to go down there last week, but had to cancel when she had to go into hospital herself.'
‘That's why she went to all that rigmarole about Spain? Didn't want anybody to know where she was really going?'
‘Search me. But I suppose it could make sense in a way. If she'd felt so guilty about her brother she'd kept him secret all these years, it could have become a way of life.'
For once, and for no apparent reason, Richmond slept dreamlessly, and woke to a thick yellow sky, ready to release more snow on to the world below. Only this time it looked as if it meant business, not just an inch or two falling overnight, later to melt into slush and then freeze, turning roads and pavements into skating rinks. He made himself some bracing coffee. For all he'd slept without dreams, he didn't feel rested.
He drove straight to Roydholme. Its riverside situation had very likely saved the old mill from the fate of many of its satanic companions, he thought when he arrived, though its conversion had apparently gone through without opposition. Wholesale clearance of derelict properties, and some not so derelict, had taken place around it and now it stood in solitary splendour just below the road bridge, a car-park alongside, and young, hopeful trees planted where trees hadn't stood for many a long day. A large, foursquare building, five storeys with a twin-gabled roof and rows of long windows set at regular intervals on all its four sides. Nothing beautiful about it except a certain honesty of purpose, now gone by the board in pursuit of expediency, but what of that? Finding a present-day use for it had to be better than letting it rot.
The whole of the ground floor of the original woollen-spinning mill, plus its various outbuildings, had been converted by a firm of developers into a shopping area, designed in a carefully haphazard manner, with units of various shapes and sizes dealing in a variety of products. He walked down the middle of the concourse, past the craft boutiques, the flower and patisserie shops ranged either side, a couple of upmarket cafés from whence issued a smell of good coffee, a hairdresser and, not least, Ginny Katz's knitwear shop. Though slowly gaining popularity as its reputation spread, the enterprise was still uncertain, financially shaky, Richmond had heard, mostly owing to the high rents being charged for the units, some of which were still empty. Shopkeepers were reluctant to commit themselves,
cautious until they saw how things were going. If the price of the flat quoted in the details sent to him by Whiteley and Horsfall reflected other prices in the development, they had his sympathy.
There was a lift, but he chose to use the stairs to the top floor where Elvira Graham lived. He almost wished he hadn't. The extent of his puffing, by the time he reached there, was making him seriously reconsider how fit he was. The stairwell emerged into a central corridor, carpeted in a serviceable dark blue, the walls painted in a bland, neutral stone colour, with nothing to distinguish it from a modern hotel save the wood-stained, mock-Victorian front doors to each flat. He'd just about got his breath back by the time he was ringing the bell on the door marked ‘E. Graham'.
She held it open after he'd introduced himself. ‘Come in while I get the key.'
The winter sunlight, filtered through the snow-filled sky, cast an eerie light through the three big windows of the spacious apartment on to a spread of thick, soft carpet, on to smoothly plastered walls, tinted a pale honey colour. Her furniture was modern: comfortable chairs and sofas, a pair of low tables, dining furniture at one end, and little else apart from one or two judiciously placed pieces of metal which he took to be sculptures. One wall was dominated by a huge abstract painting in hot, vibrant acrylics slashed with black, which Richmond wasn't competent to judge, except that it seemed to him to be full of energy and not a little anger.
‘The Armitages' flat is exactly like this, most of them are,' she said, noticing his appraising glance as she came back with the key. ‘They've decided to live in Spain permanently now they've retired, which is why they're selling. They're over there now. Mrs A thinks it's better for her asthma,' she added, as though she might know better, inserting the key into a door two flats along from her own, right at the end of the corridor.
She was small and dark and he thought she might be clever. The slightly backward tilt of her head that some short people were inclined to adopt lifted her decisive little chin, giving her an air of alertness, or maybe watchfulness would be a more appropriate word. Nothing given away by those intelligent, almond-shaped eyes. She was dressed in a smart woollen suit in
winter-white, chunky gold costume jewellery and black tights. Without comment, she showed him what the flat had to offer: a good-sized bedroom, a smaller one, a bathroom and an efficiently equipped kitchen, a living-room with a view along the valley.
‘It looks smaller than your flat,' he commented.
‘It's not, really. Just this poncy clutter makes it seem so.' A wave of the hand dismissed the obviously expensive furniture, the thick Chinese carpets, silk cushions, pictures and the plethora of highly decorated porcelain and glass objects with a casual wave of the hand. ‘Worth pinching, though. That's why Lance Armitage is paranoiac about not leaving keys all over the place. I used to work for him, so he knows he can trust me. Have you seen all you want to see?'
‘Yes, thanks. It's a very attractive proposition. I'll think about it,' Richmond said, though knowing he'd already made up his mind that, stripped of its shiny wallpaper and fancy carpets, the place would suit him to a T. The price was a bit of a facer, but he was earning a respectable salary, he'd done a lot of DIY on the small house he'd had in Bristol and sold at a profit. The housing market round here wasn't exactly booming; maybe he'd be able to do a bit of horse trading with Mr Whiteley. He reflected in passing that Steynton Fine Art must be doing well for Elvira Graham to be able to afford such prices.
‘Thank you for showing me around. But before I go, I'd like to have a word with you about something else.' He produced his warrant card but she didn't look at it.
‘I know who you are. Polly told me you were back.'
‘Then you obviously know why I want to talk to you.'
‘Not here,' she said abruptly. ‘My place.'
He remarked, when they were sitting opposite each other on matching blond leather sofas, ‘You're not what I expected.'
‘What did you think I'd be like? Someone twee and twittery? People do, you know, once they hear that name, which I hate, by the way, and don't answer to now. They called me Elf when I was little, and that's so bloody patronising to a grown woman! Though I don't suppose they mean it, it's just habit – with Ginny and Polly, anyway. Freya meant it, though. She hated my guts.' She paused, evidently to give him the opportunity to ask why.
‘Why was that?' he obliged.
‘She couldn't do anything with me when I was little. Frankly, I was a bit of a problem. Plus, she didn't like children very much, even her own. Except Peter, of course, because he danced to her tune.' She paused. ‘You know I was a poor, penniless little orphan, brought up as part of the family?'
‘Tell me about it.'
‘My parents died when I was a baby and I was brought to live with the Denshaws. Dot Nagle was sent for to come and help out at that time, which I gather was a condition of my being taken in. As I said, bringing up children was never Freya's scene. Just as well, seeing I was such a horror.'
She smiled mockingly, but he had a sense of something not quite right. The heavy irony was overdone, and didn't sit right on her. She was talking too much, telling him more than she needed to, an information spiel so pat he guessed it was automatic; given so many times she scarcely heard it. It was basically the same explanation Polly Winslow had given him and Elvira had obviously decided to stick to it. How much had been omitted, or embroidered upon?
‘And when I was growing up,' she was continuing, watching him covertly, ‘she thought I was going to take her precious Peter from her.'
‘But you didn't.' He was developing an unpleasant hunch, not sure yet whether it was viable, but one he'd pursue. Time and experience had taught him that women
could
hate their own children. However unnatural or inconceivable it was to most people, it happened, especially if their birth was an embarrassment or an inconvenience. Did it apply here? It could be, of course, that he was barking up the wrong tree, but if he was right, it would explain why Freya Denshaw had been alarmed at any developing intimacy between Peter and Elf.
‘No, I didn't.' She was suddenly serious, dropping the flippant manner, leaning forward, clasping her hands around her knees. The thought of Isobel, who had eventually taken him away from Freya, lay between them, unspoken. She said abruptly, ‘I won't mention this again, but I just want to say I'm sorry about what happened to Beth. She was a super kid.'
‘Thank you.' He wanted to believe she meant it and thought she did, sensing something deeper than a conventional expression of sympathy. He was somewhat disposed to like this stiff,
aggressive, abrupt and opinionated little person. ‘You were the last one to see her,' he said, taking his cue from her own directness.
‘Yes. I helped her build that snowman.'
‘Tell me what happened that day?' he asked gently.
‘Don't you
know
?'
‘Yes, of course, but I'd like to hear it in your own words, as you recall it now.'
‘We-ell … then.'
She repeated the statement she'd made at that time, recalling it almost word for word, how she and Beth had made the snowman together, how she'd gone indoors to find the finishing touches. How, when she came out again, she saw Peter turning in at the gates and found that Beth had gone.
‘It was terrible,' she said. ‘We were running about like headless chickens. I'd been gone longer than I thought because I couldn't find a hat for the snowman. I thought I knew where there was an old bowler we used to use for dressing up but I couldn't find it. I wasn't gone longer than fifteen or twenty minutes at most, though. It just wasn't
possible
she'd disappeared into thin air. For a while we thought she was hiding. We all used to do that when we were kids, Low Rigg isn't short of hidey-holes, whatever else. We searched every nook and cranny. Which took some time, as you'll imagine. Then Eddie Nagle took his car and the dogs and drove out looking for her. We thought she might have wandered off, set out to meet her mum. She'd had a watch for Christmas and it was still a novelty. She was keeping tabs on the time, looking at it every few minutes.'
Her first watch, his own present to her. An inexpensive, fun thing he hadn't expected to last five minutes, but despite frequent over-windings and adjustments, it had still been working by January.
‘If she'd set off down the road to meet her mother, Peter Denshaw would have met her on his way up.'
‘We thought maybe she'd got lost … or slipped and fallen into a snowdrift.'
The snow had been thick that year. A terrible winter it had been, starting with a white Christmas, snow blanketing the hills, blocking the roads over the tops, blowing into ten-foot high drifts in places, with freezing temperatures and no signs of a
thaw for weeks. They had wakened that morning to a fresh, heavy fall, virgin snow under a brilliant, cloudless sky. The world had looked so innocent.
‘When did you call the police?'
‘After an hour or so, when we'd exhausted everything else, when Eddie came back without having found any trace of her. He'd driven right down beyond the main road but there was no sign.'
And that was when he knew how it had been done. So easy. Everyone panicking, the big old house being searched from attic to cellar, then Nagle taking her, already dead and stuffed into the boot of his car, down to East Park. Using his dogs as an excuse for being in the park, letting them loose to frolic in the snow while he put her body under the bandstand, covering his tracks. Tracks which had been covered in any case by later snow. So, had Nagle killed Beth himself or had Peter Denshaw, as Dan Brearley had at first believed, arrived earlier than he'd said? Twenty minutes Beth had been alone. Twenty minutes for some sort of quarrel to start up, in which Beth had been killed, and arrangements made with Nagle to dispose of her? It was possible, but an unlikely supposition, and it had been the point at which Brearley had stuck.
Why had the possibility of Nagle as a suspect been overlooked, his car not examined for traces? Another sloppy oversight, Brearley fixated on Peter Denshaw as the culprit? Doubtless, there had been reasons at the time. With hindsight, it was hard to see just what they'd been. Rarely could there have been a bigger cock-up.
‘In the end we rang the police and went indoors and waited,' Elvira was saying. By then the snow would have been well and truly trampled over, any hope of finding traces of Beth's abductor gone. ‘Philip ordered Dot to pull herself together and make some tea. She'd laced it with whisky, I remember, and it tasted horrible, but I suppose we needed it. We were all frozen, as well as shocked. Philip … He'd always thought such a lot about Beth – yet he was the one who took charge and got us all organised.' The admission came out reluctantly.
Philip Denshaw. An unknown quantity, as yet. An old man, even then, a kind old uncle figure for Beth. With whom any connection with Wyn Austwick, at least, seemed remote. Wait a
minute, though. She'd sung in a choir, hadn't she? How many choirs in Steynton? In fact, only one came to mind, and it was the one Philip Denshaw conducted, the rather grandly named Steynton Choral Society.

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