The House of Susan Lulham (Kindle Single) (7 page)

Merrily waited. Sophie was listening patiently to someone on the phone.

‘Custody sergeant thought it was a bit of a funny signature,’ Bliss said. ‘Didn’t look a lot like Zoe. Or Mahonie.’

‘No, she’s in a meeting,’ Sophie said into the phone. ‘And then I believe she has to… No, if you just listen to me for
one moment
… I gather she’s made a statement through the Three Counties News Service, which is all she’s able to say at the moment. I’m sure you can understand that.’

Merrily said drably to Bliss, ‘Did the signature say Susan Lulham?’

Bliss said it didn’t.

‘No, that’s all I can tell you,’ Sophie said. ‘Thank you.’

‘How about Suze?’ Merrily said unhappily. ‘Just Suze.’

Rain was hissing on the window overlooking Broad Street.

‘Correct,’ Bliss said. ‘Just Suze. On a slant. Nice and bold.’

10. Keys

Sophie put down the phone.

‘Sky News.’ She stood up. ‘Despite my best efforts, they’ll be calling back. Have a cigarette if you like.’

Merrily stared at her.

‘I’m sorry…?’

Did she even hear that right? Normally, even with a window open…

Sophie was silent. She’d unplugged the phone. Never done that before, either. Merrily stared at the desk, listening to the crackle of the rain, wanting the recriminations over. She took a breath, looked up.

‘I didn’t have a choice, OK?’

Sophie had the kettle on. Her voice came through the hiss.

‘Evidently.’

‘She rang several times last night, she—’

‘I apologise,’ Sophie said.

The colour of the room seemed to change. Teapot in her hands, Sophie was gazing past Merrily out of the window. She put the teapot down on the dresser next to the sink. Merrily half-rose.

‘I’m sorry?’

‘You evidently did the right thing. If not soon enough.’

‘Oh.’

‘And if that was my fault—’

Blimey…

‘
No
. No, absolutely not. Huw Owen said the same. Leave her alone. Don’t go near. I was resigned to not going near. It made sense.’

‘I think,’ Sophie said, ‘that we all misjudged Mrs Mahonie. It’s not simple, is it? Or perhaps not as simple as the police might think.’

‘In their terms of reference, it couldn’t be simpler. The razor killed Jonathan, she was holding it. For me, it might be all still very much in the air,
but what does that matter? That’s all bollocks anyway, isn’t it, to them? And it’s their case now, and I get disparaged and humiliated, but what’s that matter, there’s a man dead.’

God, she really wanted that cigarette, but no way was the packet coming out now.

Something else had happened.

‘Have you talked to Bernie?’

‘He’s asking the Archdeacon to oversee this matter. For the time being.’

‘Sian.’

Canon Sian Callaghan-Clarke. Ex-barrister. One day she’d be a bishop. Not here, but somewhere, within the next few years. If she was careful.

‘The Bishop thinks she’s probably the best person to help you,’ Sophie said. ‘As he won’t be here when it… I’m to arrange for you two to meet. Soon.’

‘I—’ Merrily spun round in her chair at the sound of a police siren down in Broad Street. In fact it was an ambulance and on its own. ‘We both know what Sian’s going to say.’

‘She’ll suggest you get on with your job.’

‘As Vicar of Ledwardine.’

‘Yes.’

‘Suspending me, in other words, from… this.’

‘That word is unlikely to be used,’ Sophie said.

‘No. Makes sense, obviously.’

‘Merrily…’ Two mugs came down, with unnecessary force, on the dresser. ‘For God’s sake…’ Steam rising around Sophie, her face momentarily as white as her hair. ‘…
stop
saying what makes
sense
. Do you really want to go back to Ledwardine and wait for… for…’

‘Wouldn’t that be the Christian thing to do?’

‘Don’t be bloody stupid.’ Sophie put out an open hand, its nails bluntly manicured. ‘Car keys.’

‘Sorry?’

‘Give me your keys. I’ll move your vehicle down to the public car park near the swimming pool.’

‘Why?’

‘Because I’m suppose to arrange a meeting between you and Sian Callaghan-Clarke, and I might have difficulty getting in touch with you. If you aren’t answering your phone to avoid the media. Or that’s what I can say to stall Canon Clarke. But if someone tells her they’ve seen your car in the palace yard …’

‘What if she comes in here?’

‘She never comes in here. It’s the one place she doesn’t feel fully confident. When she was chairperson of the Diocesan deliverance panel, that didn’t exactly work out particularly well, did it?’

‘OK.’ Merrily stood up. ‘What’s happened?’

‘Happened?’

‘Jesus, Sophie…’

‘All right.’ Sophie left her hand fall. ‘Two things have happened. Firstly…I discussed it with Andrew.’

Her husband.

It was like a confession. When you worked with Sophie, a whole new depth of meaning attached itself to the phrase
cathedral close
.

‘In his capacity as senior partner of Andrew Hill Associates.’

Architects. Sophie’s husband was semi-retired now, took his golfing shoes to the office.

‘He knows the estate agent who handled the sale of that house. And who sold it more than once. Geoffrey Unsworth of Lang/Copper in Bridge Street.’

‘And?’

‘Mr Geoffrey Unsworth, who’s been there all his working life… knows some history. And will talk to you about it this afternoon. Mr Unsworth hasn’t worked mornings since he turned eighty.’

‘And he’d tell me… what?’

‘Better to hear it from him. You might wish you’d known it before you… Although what difference it would have made I’m not sure. It doesn’t….’ Sophie shook her head in exasperation and bafflement. ‘Sometimes I think these things are not supposed to make to make sense, only to confuse us. Make us realise that we aren’t in control.’

Merrily said nothing. She’d known few people who were more in control than Sophie.

‘The second thing - about half an hour before you came in, I had a call from a woman. Is this the exorcist’s office? I asked her what she wanted. She said she wanted to tell the so-called exorcist that she was a phony and a sham. And should be arrested for the murder of Jonathan Mahonie.’

Merrily found she’d sat down.

‘Hysterical nonsense. Didn’t give me her name. Said it was a disgrace that we were offering a so-called service we were too weak to expedite. She didn’t use those words, but that was what she seemed to be saying. About ten minutes later, there was a second call, I think from the same woman. Perhaps hoping you would answer this time. When she heard it was me again, she just laughed.
They
laughed. Two or three of them, I think. And then they were gone. Mobile, I imagine.’

‘I see.’

‘I rang 1471. They hadn’t bothered to conceal the number.’ Sophie slid a square of paper, a Post-it note, across the desk. ‘That’s the number, in case.’

‘Of what?’

‘I don’t know.’ Sophie’s hand was out again. ‘Keys.’

11. Bang!

Lang/Copper weren’t the biggest estate agents in Hereford. Their office in Bridge Street, a three-minute walk from the cathedral, had darkwood furniture and just the one small window halfway up the wall, with old pictures of farms, mostly. Doubtless the same office they’d occupied when young Geoffrey Unsworth joined the firm in the 1950s. Maybe some of the same pictures, brown as cave-paintings.

Mr Unsworth wore a dark suit with a waistcoat. A pocket watch with a chain might have completed him.

He pushed the yellowing particulars towards Merrily. He’d had them ready.

A unique, architect-designed detached house in a third of an acre of secluded grounds, yet close to Hereford city centre
.

‘It really
was
secluded back then,’ Mr Unsworth said. ‘So much more woodland overlooking the city in those days.’

He didn’t look eighty. His flat hair was still mainly brown, his face oddly unlined. Maybe the sepia air in here had mummifying qualities. He brought out a name.

‘Harry Clifton?’

Merrily shook her head.

‘Architect and property developer. Mostly commercial buildings. Look rather awful now, the ones that are left, all that concrete and glass and sliding metal doors.’

They were alone in the office, although there was a second, smaller desk with a woman’s coat over the chair back. Mr Unsworth tilted a smile.

‘I haven’t seen that house lately. Well, not inside. Is it wearing well?’

‘Erm… I’d say it probably was.’ The house grinned savagely in her mind; she stiffened against a shudder. ‘I don’t even know what it’s called. I was just told to look out for the new house. Which, of course, it isn’t any more, but…’

‘That’s right.’ Mr Unsworth leaned back in his armchair, in a headmasterly way. ‘That’s what it was called. The New House.’

‘Oh.’

‘Harry Clifton came here from Birmingham in about 1960. Very much on the make. Thought he could put one over on the Hereford yokels. Bought a lot of barns for conversion, re-sold them with residential plans.’

‘The fashion for barns… I suppose it would be in its early days back then.’

‘Indeed. A man ahead of his time. How all
this
came about… he did some work for a rather cash-strapped farmer, Johnny Morgan, who owned land backing on to Aylestone Hill. Johnny thought he’d get permission for a small amount of housing on some ground on the lower fringe. Tide him over his cash-flow sort of thing. Thought planning was in his pocket and commissioned Clifton to produce quite detailed plans. But there were local protests and - quite shocking in those days - planning permission was unexpectedly
not forthcoming
.’

‘Gosh.’

‘Johnny Morgan had jumped the gun and was left owing Clifton a considerable amount of money. Which he didn’t have. Clifton was, of course, unsympathetic. Forced Johnny to pay, as it were, in kind.’

With a hint of professional relish, Mr Unsworth recounted Clifton’s hard bargain, which had led to him acquiring, as settlement, a few acres of what he knew would one day prove to be prime building land.

‘
Well
. Considerable bitterness, Mrs Watkins.
Considerable
bitterness. Part a farmer from land he has no wish to sell and you don’t make a friend. Certainly not in this case. Been in his family for centuries, you see.’

‘But if he planned to put housing on it…’

‘Oh no, no, no… not
that
land. No, the field he’d earmarked for housing was on the flatter ground below. But Clifton, canny chap, wanted this smaller area, up on the hill itself, overlooking Johnny’s farmhouse. Where he knew he’d probably get immediate permission for a house because, you see, there’d been one there
before
.’

‘You mean on the site where the New House…?’

‘Where that sixties abomination now stands, there was a previous house. Or, at least, the shell of a house that was never finished.’

‘Oh… Why, er…?’

‘Ha! Well. It
was
to have been the home of Johnny Morgan’s grandfather, Grenville Morgan. Grenville… had also been the victim of some unwise investment. Not to mention personal difficulties. His wife had left him, you see, and he was rattling around in the farmhouse… so he decided his son and his young family should have it, and he’d build himself a smaller house. Something farmers often do, and the planners are always sympathetic. So work started in the top field on what would be a sort of eyrie, where Grenville could watch the farm. You know what farmers are like.’

‘At their worst in retirement?’

Mr Unsworth beamed.

‘You know your way around then, Mrs Watkins.’

‘My grandad was a farmer. In North Herefordshire.’

‘Oh, really?’ Mr Unsworth raised an eyebrow. ‘What was his name? No, no, tell me later, I’ll lose my thread. Yes, Grenville Morgan - he was before even my time, but my father knew him - seems to have been a somewhat
abrupt
sort of man. Hairline fuse and free with his fists, especially after a few drinks. Wife left him as a result of domestic abuse, as it would be called now. Well… what we think of as abuse now, in those days was simply a matter of giving the wife a clip around the ear if your dinner was unsatisfactory. In this instance, one clip too many, apparently. Evidently came as quite a surprise when she actually moved out. Children long grown-up by then.’

‘Pre-feminism, too. Gosh.’

‘Cost him money, even then. And a bad harvest, that year. Had to stop work on the new house. Four walls but no roof when he took his shotgun in there.’

‘Oh.’

‘A proud man, you see, Mrs Watkins. And an aggressive man. Came to abrupt decisions, and no going back. Certainly not this time. Was probably just after a rabbit or something when, I imagine, a wave of rage and despair
overtook him. The sheer injustice of life. Bang! Both barrels.’ Mr Unsworth’s eyes actually gleamed. ‘Don’t know whether it’s true, but it was said they found bits of… brain and bones and whatnot outside the walls.’

Merrily winced. Mr Unsworth looked over his glasses, mouth drooping in mock-regret.

‘Sorry about that. Andrew Hill did say I should tell you everything I knew. On the instructions of his good lady.’

‘Andrew didn’t know Harry Clifton, then.’

‘Before his time as an architect. And Clifton’s dead now.’

‘Did he ever live at the New House?’

‘Oh, for a while, yes, with some woman or other. Houses and women, always the same. Never together long. In this case, Clifton knew that once one house was built up there, it was only a matter of time before permission was given for more. But, the way things turned out, building
that
project took rather longer than he expected. He’d demolished the remains of Grenville Morgan’s house, but nothing much seemed to happen for quite some years. Talk of arguments with builders. Bad workmanship. At one point he started again, put in new foundations. Small hitches, perhaps, but… nothing seemed to go right.’

‘As if the place didn’t want to be built on? Sorry…’ Merrily feeling herself blush. ‘I get carried away sometimes.’