Rattling the Bones (19 page)

‘Well, yes, he is, Edna,’ I floundered.

‘Oh,’ she said, but it didn’t seem to mean anything much to her one way or another.

I debated how much more I might tell her safely. If I told her Jessica had been at the hostel seeking Edna herself and acting on behalf of another party also seeking her, then there was a very good chance Edna wouldn’t return to the hostel that night or, indeed, ever again.

I took a leaf from her book and simply dropped the subject. ‘Simon and Nikki are about to begin cooking the supper,’ I said.

‘Baked beans,’ said Edna gloomily. ‘Macaroni cheese is better. They don’t eat any meat; they’re vegetarians. I don’t mind that because I don’t like eating animals. I wished they cooked chips. But they keep telling me chips are unhealthy. She makes a pie with aubergines and tomatoes. That’s not bad.’

This digression on the menu at the hostel had led to quite a lengthy speech. I decided to build it.

‘Come on, Edna, I’ll walk to the hostel with you.’

We proceeded back down the pavement. The cat followed up along the top of his wall until it ran out, then settled down to watch us.

‘You are comfortable at the hostel, though, aren’t you, Edna?’

Edna mumbled indistinctly.

‘Simon and Nikki do care about you. I care about you. What we all want is for you to take care of yourself.’

‘I’ve been doing that,’ said Edna starchily, ‘for forty years. Why should I suddenly be unable to take care of myself? I’m not potty. I know my way around.’ She stopped and looked up at me with a perfectly lucid gaze. ‘I’ll tell you something, dear. You remember it. You never have any trouble as long as you’re looking after yourself. It’s when other people start thinking it’s their business to take care of you that all the trouble starts. You mark my words.’

‘Edna,’ I said quite humbly, ‘I’m not trying to meddle, honestly.’

‘And the worst ones,’ retorted Edna fiercely, ‘are the ones who are doing it all out of the kindness of their hearts. If they want something to take care of, they should get a cat!’

We reached the steps and found them untenanted. Edna climbed to the front door and rang. It was opened after a moment by someone I couldn’t see from where I stood. I thought it might be Sandra if she hadn’t yet been called to duty in the kitchen. Edna didn’t greet whoever it was, just plodded indoors without a backward glance to bid me farewell. The door shut. She was safe inside for the night.

As for me, I’d been well and truly told off. But it didn’t mean I was going to stop looking out for Edna. One thing had been confirmed for me. She could be perfectly coherent if she wanted and, what was more, she was a bit of a battleaxe. All that dottiness was a shield! I fumed. It didn’t alter the fact that she was still vulnerable, whether she wanted to admit it or not, the cantankerous old bat.

I set off back to my flat because I’d left Bonnie with Erwin that morning. He would probably be getting ready to go out soon if he was playing at a gig that evening.

Erwin had company. I could hear laughter, Erwin’s infectious high-pitched whoop and female giggling which sounded a little familiar. I hesitated. I’d barged in on a private meeting at the hostel. It seemed I was about to do so again. I had no wish to be indiscreet and bust up a romantic twosome. Perhaps I ought to wait a little.

But Bonnie had already heard me. She would have been listening for me the whole day. I heard her whimper on the other side of the door, then bark. Claws scrabbled at the wood.

The door was pulled open. ‘Hi!’ beamed Erwin. ‘Come on in, girl!’

I trotted inside to behold Susie Duke comfortably seated on Erwin’s sofa. She waved a mug at me with one hand and a funny-looking cigarette with the other.

‘Hullo, Fran, love! Where’ve you been?’

‘Out to Fulwell, Teddington way,’ I said, sounding to my own ears primly disapproving, not unlike my old headmistress. ‘I’ve been following up enquiries. I got held up on my return. Sorry to have left my dog for so long, Erwin, and thanks for taking care of her. I’ll take her back now.’

‘No, problem,’ said Erwin happily.

‘Hang on,’ cried Susie, lurching to her feet. ‘I came out here to find you. Don’t scarper now. Thanks for the coffee, Erwin, and the . . .’ She gave me a hunted look and surreptitiously ground out the spliff.

‘Any time,’ said Erwin, the perfect host.

‘How long have you been waiting?’ I asked when we got back to my room where the atmosphere seemed in contrast rather boring.

‘Not long, honest.’ She transferred herself to my sofa. ‘He’s a nice bloke, isn’t he? He was telling me about his band, how hard it is to get people to hire them. It’s nearly as difficult to make a living as a musician as it is being a private investigator, by the sound of things. How did you make out at Teddington?’

I resisted the temptation to reply that I hadn’t made out as well as she had with Erwin. Instead I gave her a summary of my visit to Lottie. When I told her about Les, Susie became more serious.

‘Well, that tells us how Duane found out about you sometimes working for me. Thing is,’ Susie’s brow puckered, ‘how did Duane get into the office? You reckon Les did lend him the keys?’

‘If he did, then they would still have been on Duane when I found him,’ I replied, ‘unless the killer took them. I wish I’d had the nerve to search his pockets before the cops turned up.’

‘I don’t like that idea much,’ said Susie slowly. ‘I don’t want anyone, let alone a killer, running round London with my office keys. Well, I have to get the lock changed anyway. I won’t give Les the new keys, that’s for sure. I think it’s unlikely he lent them to Gardner but well, better safe than sorry, eh? He won’t be surprised if I don’t give him the new keys, not in the circumstances.’

‘Did you know he worked for other agencies?’ I asked her.

She nodded. ‘Lots of people use him. I know you don’t like him much, Fran, but Les is good at what he does. I’ve never thought he was likely to talk out of turn, tell anyone else what I was doing. He never told me what anyone else who used him was looking into. You’re cross because he didn’t speak up and tell you he recognised Gardner from the description you gave us. But I reckon he was right to keep quiet. He didn’t know what Gardner was doing but he wasn’t going to blow his cover by letting us know Gardner was a PI.’

We decided by unspoken agreement to leave it at that. ‘Well,’ I said, ‘what’s brought you out to see me? Just asking how I’m getting on?’

‘It’s a bit more than that, Fran, love,’ she said, leaning forward. ‘Things are in an awful mess back at my office. Well, truth to tell, I can hardly say I’ve got an office at the moment! The police have sealed off the whole place and the staircase as well. No one can get in to consult me and no one can get upstairs to Michael’s tattoo parlour, come to that. He’s really upset and seems to think it’s all my fault.’

There was a silence. ‘The cops are treating it as murder, then,’ I said at last.

‘Looks like it, don’t it?’

More silence. ‘There’s something else,’ I said and told her about my visit to the hostel and meeting with Jessica Davis.

Susie shook her head. ‘You need help on this one, Fran. I’d offer but I don’t know any more about this than you’ve told me. It seems to me the person you ought to make common cause with is Lottie Forester.’

‘I don’t think she wants to see me again,’ I said. ‘She sort of seems to hold me responsible for Duane’s death. I can’t blame her, not that I had anything to do with it. I didn’t invite the idiot to go tracking me down. But he did die because he was looking for me and I did find him.’

‘All the same,’ said Susie. ‘I reckon you should give that girl out at Teddington a bell and arrange to have a chat with her. She’ll want to find out who bumped off her boyfriend and she’s the one who knows who hired him to follow your old bag lady.’

‘Yeah, you’re right, of course,’ I said. ‘I’ll phone her tonight. I just hope she’s there. I told her to ask the police for protection and if she is a material witness they may just have whisked her off somewhere nice and private already.’

But Lottie was at the Fulwell address when I phoned later that evening.

‘I’ve got to make a living, haven’t I?’ she snapped when I asked whether she was planning to move out temporarily. ‘I’ve got to be here to deal with enquiries. If clients try to reach me and can’t, they won’t try again. I’m in business on my own now, aren’t I? I can’t just hand everything over to some secretary. I haven’t got one!’

‘All right, all right,’ I said hastily, cutting into this flow. ‘Then can I come and see you?’

‘Yes.’ Her voice was crisp. ‘We do need to talk. I’ve been thinking about things since you left. I want to know who did this to Duane and I’m not sitting around here just brooding about it. I want to bloody do something.’

A girl I could do business with.

The weather was treating us to a fine drizzle when I set out the next morning. The temperature had dropped several degrees. Teddington looked damp and grey; even the Fulwell golf course was bedraggled.

Lottie had taken my strictures to heart. Although she knew I was coming, when I rang the bell she replied by hanging out of an upper window to check who it was.

‘Hang on a sec!’ she called down.

She was all in black today, tight black pants and a top made of some flimsy material which floated about when she moved. Perhaps this signified mourning. She still wore the boots. Her manner was slightly friendlier. She had decided we had something to trade and was ready to do business. At least, I hoped I was reading the signs rightly.

I thought she’d take me back to the office but instead she led me to the far end of the hall and opened the door into a large comfortable kitchen.

‘We might as well sit in here,’ she said. ‘We can have a coffee and it’s a bit warmer. The office is cold without any heating on.’

She busied herself making our coffee while I sat and took in my surroundings. The original kitchen had been enlarged by the addition of a glazed extension. It led to a garden which must have been pretty once, in Granny’s day, but was sadly neglected now. Roses rambled in wild profusion over trellis work which sagged and needed a prop and a few nails to keep it from inevitable collapse. The lawn was in need of a trim and between the patches of long grass the bright green cushions of moss were visible. Weeds sprouted between the flags of a pathway. There were a couple of large glazed pots but nothing now grew in them except more weeds. Even so, this was still a highly desirable property and if the detection business didn’t prosper, Lottie could sell the place for a tidy sum and have the funds to take her time thinking what she did next.

The furniture in the kitchen was mostly pine of a style which was fashionable years ago when people living in urban areas wanted to pretend they lived in a Cotswold cottage. Every worktop was cluttered: dishes and pots, paperwork, bottles and a tiny television set. Dusty bunches of dried flowers dangled from hooks. Copper pots in need of a rub decorated the walls. There could be no greater contrast to the office I’d seen previously. That had been meticulously tidy but, professional surroundings aside, Lottie was no housekeeper.

I’d been thinking about my grandfather’s studio portrait recently and now my eye was taken by a collection of what I assumed to be family photographs framed and hung in a careful display on one wall. Some looked old. One was of a stout man in very formal dress with a watch chain draped across his waistcoat. He had a square face with a bulldog expression and glared at the camera. I was rather glad I had never met him. There were a couple of wedding groups and a pretty baby sitting on a rug in a garden.

‘You?’ I asked, pointing at the picture, as Lottie returned with the mugs.

She looked vaguely surprised and stared at the portraits as if she’d forgotten they were there. She probably had. They had been there all her life.

‘Yes,’ she said.

‘Who are all the others?’

Lottie walked to the collection and I followed her pointing finger. She indicated the ferocious old fellow with the watch chain first. ‘My great-grandfather.’

‘Oh?’ I said rather feebly. There wasn’t much I could say. My own grandfather’s portrait had possessed a certain rakish charm. This old bloke, a generation older certainly, didn’t suggest any charm.

Lottie had moved to the wedding groups. ‘This later group shows my parents and the earlier one shows my grandparents.’

‘That’s the grandma who left you this house? Was she your dad’s mother or your mum’s?’