Paternoster (30 page)

‘And when she was ten,’ Ian interrupted. ‘Gone for twelve hours, just walking around, sitting on the swings.’

Eden glanced from Susan to Ian and chose her words carefully. ‘Why did she run away?’

Ian shrugged. ‘Because she’s an ungrateful little madam,’ he volunteered. Susan winced.

‘We’ve done everything for her. I don’t know why she would run away. She seemed happy. She’s been really happy the last few months.’

Since Chelsea met Zamir. He made her feel special, she saw a way to escape this smothering house, and then one day, she simply disappeared. True love story? Or cynical grooming? The line between them blurred as Eden’s eyes travelled round the room, taking in Ian and the mute TV, Susan and her worried eyes, the stultifying atmosphere in the house, and she knew that if she’d been Chelsea, she’d run away, too.

Eden stood. ‘I’m still making enquiries,’ she said. ‘I’m chasing up a few leads at the moment, and I’m happy to share them with the police if they become involved.’ She hoiked her bag on to her shoulder. ‘I just wanted to check that you were doing OK. I’ll see myself out.’

On her way back home, she picked up a text message from Aidan. There was no point going back to his flat. He’d be prostrate for the rest of the day if previous migraines were any indication. The afternoon was hers, so she headed to a place where she knew that chaos reigned and she’d be able to forget her problems in an atmosphere of absolute bedlam. Judy’s.

The house was a Victorian terrace a stone’s throw from the town centre, a handkerchief of front garden separating the house from the pavement. It took three rings on the doorbell before Judy answered. Eden knew she was in, because she could hear shrieks from inside when she was within twenty feet of the house. At last the door swung open, and there was Judy, an Amazon framed in the doorway. She stepped forwards and enveloped Eden in a rib-crushing hug.

‘Please say you’ve come to take me away from all this,’ Judy declared.

‘No, but I have brought a box of chocolates.’

‘That’ll do. Come in. Please excuse the mess. I’ll clear it up in fifteen years when they’ve all gone to uni and I can have my sanity back.’

Eden stepped into the tall, narrow hall, the stairs stretching up steeply before her. From upstairs came the sound of boys squabbling. Judy rolled her eyes. ‘Marcus bought them a new computer game,’ she said. ‘Where’s lovely Aidan?’

‘In bed with a migraine.’

Judy pulled a face. ‘So you’re slumming it with me?’

‘Yep,’ Eden said, laughing.

Judy ushered her into the open-plan sitting-dining room. The dining table was heaped with laundry, and an iron hissed steam on a board by a window that looked out over the long, pinched garden. She took a seat at the table as Judy picked up the iron.

‘You don’t mind if I carry on with this, do you?’ she said. ‘Only it’ll have its own postcode if I don’t keep on top of it.’ She smiled at Eden and asked, ‘So, what’s new with you? Can’t believe you skived Zumba. I hope you’ve got a good excuse and a note from Matron.’

‘A pretty good excuse. I told you I was with my client when he died?’ Eden said. ‘Well, turns out he was poisoned, and it looks like murder. Then the day after he died, a woman he’d had a relationship with was found dead. Strangled. There are lots of connections between them, but nothing that would seem to add up to murder. And then I’m trying to trace a missing schoolgirl, and it smells to me like a grooming case, only I’ve got no evidence yet.’ Eden paused for breath. It felt good to get it all off her chest, but when she glanced at Judy, she saw she was holding the iron aloft, staring at her while steam gushed on to the shirt she was ironing.

‘Blimey,’ Judy said at last. ‘That’s what passes for small talk these days, is it? I was hoping for “Judy, I’ve seen these shoes that I simply must have but they’re expensive. Please persuade me I must buy them”.’

Eden wrinkled her nose. ‘I don’t like shopping for shoes.’

Judy waved the iron about. ‘Handbags? Lampshades, even, not “Judy, everyone’s being murdered this week”.’

She didn’t know the half of it, Eden thought ruefully. Little Jimmy murdered, Hammond’s hallmarks, a car that tailed her home. Goosebumps shivered over her skin.

‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘Shall I open the chocolates?’

‘Good idea.’ Judy threaded a new shirt on to the ironing board. ‘So, tell me about this client of yours.’

‘He was a nice man,’ Eden said. ‘I liked him, but there are too many people who could have wanted him dead.’

‘Bloody hell.’ Judy’s eyes bulged. ‘Seriously? Like who?’

‘His ex-wife, who stands to be trustee for a fund worth three and a half million pounds. His ex-lover, who was pretty pissed off when he dumped her, except she’s been killed, too. Then there’s an employee he had to sack for fraud. And then there’s an art theft he was starting to work out, but I don’t think that’s what got him killed.’

‘And they poisoned him?’ Judy said. ‘What with? Cyanide?’

Eden snaffled another chocolate from the box. ‘No, it was something unusual. Even the coroner hadn’t come across it before. Some sort of bean.’

‘How do you get hold of it?’

She shrugged.

‘What does truth according to the internet say?’ Judy’s eyes widened. ‘You haven’t looked it up yet? Wait there!’ She propped the iron on its end and dashed to the door, popped her head back into the room and said, ‘If anyone under five feet tall asks for something, the answer is no. Back in a mo.’

Eden picked up the iron and pressed a couple of school uniforms, listening to the bickering upstairs. After a few minutes, feet clumped back downstairs and Judy burst into the room clutching a laptop.

‘Got it! Marcus is going to take them to the park.’ She shoved the laundry aside and plonked the laptop on the table. Eden folded a pair of grey trousers and reached for a polo shirt.

Judy looked up from the laptop, her eyes dancing. ‘Right. What was this called again?’

‘What are you doing?’

‘Checking what it looks like. I don’t want to find it growing in my beautifully tended oasis of calm.’

They both glanced down the garden, at the jungle of plastic swings, bolting spinach and dead clematis.

Eden hid a smile. ‘It’s called a lucky bean or love bean. I can’t remember the Latin name.’

Judy clicked a few keys and frowned at the screen. ‘There’s a lot of filth out there,’ she said, mildly. ‘Ah, here we are. Also known as Paternoster pea.’

‘What?’ Eden put down the iron and slid into the seat next to Judy. ‘Show me.’

Judy tilted the laptop so Eden could see the screen. She scrolled down the page. ‘It’s quite pretty, isn’t it, Eden? Eden?’

Eden couldn’t speak. Her mouth was dry as she gazed at the photograph. Suddenly she knew who had killed Paul. Trouble was she didn’t know why, and she couldn’t prove it.

Not yet, anyway.

‘I should never have let you go,’ Darby said, twirling a strand of her hair around his finger. Beads of sweat glistened on his chest.

Rachel heard her heart bump. ‘You did, though.’

‘I was a fool. I should have stood up to my father and refused to let you go.’

‘Too late now.’

‘Is it?’

She sat up, the sheet clutched to her chest, suddenly vulnerable. A customer grunted in the room next door; the wall rebounding with the crash of the bedstead. ‘Isn’t it?’

‘I had to let you go because I lost my money and my father insisted I give up everything I loved,’ Darby said, his fingertips tracing a line down her arm. ‘Now I have money again, and I’m about to be a very rich man.’ He nipped her shoulder with his teeth. ‘It would be as if we’d never been apart.’

‘What would?’

‘If you were mine alone. In a house, with fine furniture and a maid, and a carriage at your beck and call.’

‘A house where? In Cheltenham?’ She was
not
going to stay in this backwater. The king had visited to take the waters, but that didn’t make the place exciting. For a start, it was crawling with sick people, and though there were fine houses, it was a dull place, with as many churches as shops springing up everywhere. And Cheltenham people would never accept a woman like her, a mistress, not like in London, where people understood what was what. Only the other day, a woman hawking a basket of bread had spat at her in the street.

‘Not Cheltenham,’ she said firmly.

‘If you like,’ Darby said, airily. ‘Perhaps London?’

She rounded on him. ‘London or nothing.’

Darby laughed. ‘Then London it is.’

‘With my furniture back, and a carriage, and a maid.’ She bit her lip as she remembered Kitty. The girl wasn’t much good but even so Rachel winced to think of her toiling in the Australian sun. How could Darby set the thief-taker on a scrap of girl like that?

‘Not your own furniture, that’s gone, my sweet, but new furniture, better furniture.’

‘And a carriage.’

‘Everything.’ He nuzzled the hollow beneath her collarbone. ‘Tell me you’ll come back to me.’

She considered. ‘When you’ve made your money,’ she said. ‘And don’t say anything to Mrs Bedwin beforehand.’ No point complicating matters.

‘You’re mad,’ Emma said, in their room later. ‘He’s already thrown you over once, and now you want to give him the chance to do it again.’

She was brushing Rachel’s hair and plaiting it ready for bed. The bristles scraped Rachel’s scalp and she winced as it grated against the sores there.

‘What’s the matter?’ Emma said. ‘Is it a knot?’

‘No, my skin’s sore, that’s all.’

‘Here, let me see.’

Before Rachel could stop her, Emma had parted her hair and was moving her fingers through it as though searching for lice. ‘What is it, a spot? Flea bite …’

Her fingers stilled.

‘Is it bad?’ Rachel whispered.

Emma dropped the hank of hair. ‘Yes, it’s bad. Have you bathed it?’

‘Of course I have. It doesn’t make no difference.’ Rachel snatched the hairbrush from Emma’s hands and flung it against the wall. ‘I’ve been drinking that foul water, too, trying to make it go away.’

‘You need the mercury cure. You know that, don’t you?’

Tears burned at the back of Rachel’s throat. She refused to let them fall. ‘Hardly got the money for that. Besides, who’s going to do mercury here? I need to be back in London.’

‘It’s twenty guineas every time you do … you know … at Greville House,’ Emma whispered. ‘That would give you enough, wouldn’t it?’

‘If Mrs Bedwin let me do it again.’ None of the girls had gone through the tunnel more than once. Once was enough, they agreed, speaking amongst themselves in frightened whispers. ‘I can hardly tell her I need the money for the pox cure, can I?’

‘You could have a sick relative you need medicine for. Or tell her you’re going to have a baby.’

Rachel snorted. ‘She’d just come at me with a knitting needle, not let me earn the money for the baby farmer.’ She sighed and rubbed her face with her hands. Her eyes were sore and dry. Emma pulled her against her shoulder and stroked her back like a fractious baby.

‘Maybe one of your young men, Rodney or Darby, would give you some money.’

‘I can’t hardly tell them, either, can I?’

Emma studied her face, her eyes dark with compassion. ‘Which one are you going to choose?’

Rachel shook her head. ‘I don’t know. Whichever one gets rich first, I suppose.’

‘Rodney’s your favourite, though, isn’t he?’

‘He’s kind and sweet, and Darby threw me out on the street before. But you know what they say. Beggars can’t be choosers.’

‘You’re not a beggar,’ Emma said, planting a kiss on her forehead.

‘Will be soon, if I don’t get rid of this pox.’

The way back into Greville House, it turned out, was to drip poison into Daphne’s ears about cannibalism and devil worship, the blood drinking and baby sacrifice going on there, until the mere mention of Greville House was enough to send the girl into hysterics.

Mrs Bedwin slapped Daphne’s face. ‘Stupid girl, whose tales have you been listening to?’

‘They were talking about it in the town, Mrs Bedwin. Everyone knows what horrors go on there.’

‘Hm.’ Mrs Bedwin’s eyes snapped round the room. ‘Rachel, you’ll have to go. I’m sure the money will persuade you.’

‘Yes, Mrs Bedwin,’ she said, meekly, dropping a curtsey. ‘I’ll do my best.’

Mrs Bedwin wasn’t taken in and clouted her for her cheek. Clutching her face, Rachel ran from the room and went to dress for the evening at Greville House.

There was no anticipation and excitement as she was led through the tunnel. Not like last time. Now she knew what was to happen, her neck shuddered with fear. This time there were five girls chained up in the chamber: three she recognised from last time, their clothes ragged and dirty. Two of them had black eyes. The newcomers’ clothes were cleaner, but their legs and arms were mottled with bruises, and one girl had lost her front teeth.

‘You again,’ one of the girls said.

‘Me again.’ Rachel shivered. ‘Where’s the other girl, the one who was with you last time?’

‘Not seen her.’ The girl’s voice was hoarse, as though she’d been screaming all day and all night. Perhaps she had.

‘Got some new friends?’ Rachel twitched her head at the new girls.

‘For now,’ the girl said. Her eyes were huge and dark, the pupils cavernous.

As last time, they were led into the temple, to the men with masks over their faces. Rachel recognised Mr Ellison’s voice in charge of the proceedings, high priest and king, the ram’s head mask terrifying in the candle flames. When the initiate stepped forwards, she recognised his walk, the shape of his shoulders, the angle he held his head.

‘Darby!’ she breathed. He was wearing a lion mask, but she knew him. He glanced in her direction just for a moment, before turning back to the figure in the centre of the circle.

Ellison held out a small box, and Darby selected a bean, which he dropped into a goblet of wine.

‘Let’s see if this one makes it,’ one of the chained girls muttered.

‘What do you mean?’ Rachel hissed back.

‘The bean’s poisonous. If he survives, he’s passed the test. If he dies …’ She shrugged.