Olivia’s Luck (2000) (58 page)

“The very thame.”

“I see,” I gulped. “And did you have any particular place,” I gripped the sofa hard, my legs feeling odd and my head woozy, “any particular corner of my beloved, much-treasured home or garden in mind for excavation, officer? Or are you just going to dig away indiscriminately at the whole lot?” I managed to raise my chin defiantly.

He took my point, but his eyes slithered away. He wasn’t interested in whether or not he was violating my precious home. He wasn’t even interested, it seemed, in my garden. His eyes didn’t slither that way, you see, to my herbaceous border, for instance, burgeoning over as it was with late lupins and asters, or to my rockery, thick with alpines and heather. Nor did he gaze beyond, down to the cedar tree, to the marshy banks of the river, nor even beyond that, to the caravan on the other side. No, no, Baldy’s eyes were trained somewhere much more proximate. On the doorway, in fact, behind me. The doorway which led, via a small passageway, through into the new kitchen, and more specifically, those eyes were trained on something at the far end of that room. I glanced around.

“Yeth,” he said softly, slowly making his way past me in that direction, “yeth, we do have a particular corner in mind.” He stopped, just beyond me, in the doorway. “You thee we believe, Mrs McFarllen, that she’s embedded in concrete.”

“Concrete!”

“Yes, or to be more precise, in a concrete plinth. A concrete plinth commonly built to support a heavy, free-standing, cast-iron, range.” He turned to face me in the doorway, his nose almost touching mine. “In fact it’s our belief, Mithith McFarllen, that Violet Turner is buried underneath your thtove.”

I gaped. “My…thtove?”

“Your Aga, Mrs McFarllen.”

I jumped – then stared incredulously past him to my new kitchen. To my shiny pride and joy at the far end of the room, surrounded at it was by Portuguese tiles, edged with dados and doo-dahs, with its pine shelf above brimming with pretty plates, antique jugs and Mary Berry cookbooks; where I stood every day, frying the bacon, prodding Claudia’s fish fingers, turning occasionally to warm my bottom, contentedly cradling a mug of coffee, chatting on the phone…and all the time…yes, all the time, stretched out beneath it, face up perhaps, hands clasped across her bosom, or maybe in a black bin liner, curled up in a foetal position, eyes shut, or possibly even wide and staring…

As the dawn came up I gasped in horror, as simultaneously a stab of pain seared straight through my abdomen. My hand clutched vainly at my stomach, but I had white lights flashing before my eyes now. My ears roared, my brain sizzled, my fingers slipped from the back of the sofa, as with a little gasp of “Shit!” I collapsed, insensible, at Baldy’s feet.

“B
est thing you could have done,” said Hugh, dunking a soldier into his son’s boiled egg.

“What?” I raised my head feebly from their breakfast table.

“Faint like that, last night. Makes it so convincing, so much more obvious that you had nothing to do with it.”

“She didn’t have anything to do with it,” snapped Molly, opening her dressing gown and clamping Flora firmly on to her left bosom. “What – you think she might actually have assisted in some way, Hugh? Bundled the body under the Aga in a bin bag and arranged the feet neatly whilst Mac and Alf stood poised, ready to pour on the wet cement mix?”

“Oooh,
don’t
,” I groaned, dropping my head like a stone again.

“No, all I’m saying is that when the police rang and asked us to come and get her, it looked pretty good,” said Hugh. “You were still out for the count, Liwy, flat out on a sofa and completely away with the fairies, whereas poor old Lance and Spiro were shifting about pretty nervously, I can tell you.”

“I still don’t quite understand how they came to ring you,” I said bleakly, opening an eye from the stripped pine table.

“Apparently Lance suggested us when the police said they wanted you out of there,” said Hugh. “Presumably they couldn’t cope with you doing the dying swan all over the place when they had a house to excavate and a body to exhume. I must say I was hugely intrigued. Those guys had bloody nearly shifted that stove when I got there. I reckon she was damn nearly out! I hovered about a bit and tried to play for time by pretending you weighed a ton and that I was having difficulty lugging you off the sofa, then staggering e-ve-rso slo-wly to the door – ” Hugh got up to demonstrate – “then coming back for your handbag which happened to be, oops, in the kitchen, then – ooh yes, better pop upstairs and get your nightie, and then, damn it, just as I was popping back for your toothbrush, that bald chap sussed me and hustled me away. Shame. I reckon two more minutes and they’d have had the old bird out.”

“Hugh!” Molly slammed a milk bottle down.

“Well, it would have been fascinating, Moll. I’ve never seen a dead body before, and don’t forget, I’ve been there in spirit. Would have been great for research.”

“Macabre,” shuddered Molly. “And to think you’d been
cooking
there, Liwy, and all that time she was – ”

“Oooh, stop it!” I moaned. I raised my head feebly. “I really don’t know how Alf and Mac could have
done
that to me!”

“Well, to be fair, Liv, they never meant for you to find out, and as long as you were none the wiser, so what?” said Hugh, reasonably. “They had to put her
somewhere
, and actually I think it was a jolly good idea.” He frowned. “Can’t help feeling she might have got a bit hot, though. Maybe even gone a bit – you know – whiffy.”

“
Hugh!
” Molly was pink. “God, you are
so
distasteful. Poor Liwy here is
distraught
, and so would I be if I found a dead woman under my cooker! Christ, it’s gruesome!”

“All right, all right,” he muttered. “God, you’re so flaming genteel, Moll. I just think it’s incredibly exciting, that’s all, to be suddenly slap-bang in the middle of a murder like this. Talk about street theatre.”

“I told you,” I growled, “it wasn’t a murder.”

“Well, OK, whatever you call a pissed-off husband knocking off his shrewish wife with a swift hammer blow to the head and then squirrelling her away under some kitchen appliances. Rather an apt ending, I feel, for a harridan of a housewife? Back to her roots, as it were?” His eyes gleamed. “And it gives a whole new dimension to the old Aga saga, eh?”

Molly gave a exasperated little cry and pointedly swivelled round in her chair, turning her back on her husband. “Liv darling,” she said gently, leaning forward and taking my hand, “d’you remember much about last night?”

“Not much,” I said miserably. “Just coming round in the back of Hugh’s car, that’s all…shouting a bit, I think.”

“Shouting a
bit
!” spluttered Hugh, spraying egg everywhere. “Jesus, you were screaming blue murder! There you were, flat out and comatose on the back seat, quiet as a mouse, when suddenly – “GET ME OUT OF HERE – DON’T LET THEM PUT ME IN THE BIN BAG – OH GOD NO NOT THE BIN BAG SOMEBODY HELP ME!!!” Then the next thing I knew you were crawling over into the front seat with these mad, staring eyes, like something out of a Hammer Horror movie, trying to get me in an arm lock and turn the wheel at the same time. You damn nearly drove us off the road! Christ, I had to stop the car. I was scared witless I can tell you!”

I groaned. “Sorry,” I muttered, shaking my head. “God, I’m so sorry, Hugh, I had no idea. I really wasn’t with it. When I woke up I just couldn’t think where the hell I was!”

“Of course you couldn’t,” agreed Molly staunchly, closing her dressing gown and putting Flora over her shoulder to wind her. “Frankly, I’m surprised you’re as
compos mentis
as you are now! If that had been me I’d be on that phone right now, booking myself into the Priory for the next couple of weeks I’d be so unhinged. And what about those two bastards who dropped you in all this? Why aren’t they sharing the angst, Mac the knife and Alf the half-wit? Where are they while all this drama unfolds? On the Marrakesh Express or something?”

“I don’t know,” I sighed, “and, Molly, I know it sounds crazy, but they weren’t really bastards. Just a couple of hard-working guys who got caught up in a horrific domestic drama and then – well, then did the wrong thing. Ran, instead of facing up to it.”

“All the best murders happen like that,” observed Hugh, sagely, wiping Henry’s eggy mouth. “Ninety per cent are committed within the family, which makes a copper’s job something of a doddle really, doesn’t it?” He scratched his head and affected a dim PC Plod. “Er, so what d’you reckon, Sarge, shall I ‘ave a word wiv the relatives?”

“So why do they still want to speak to me then?” I said, suddenly fearful. “If it all hinges on the relatives, why ring me here, at the crack of dawn this morning, and ask me to present myself down at the station!”

“Just routine they said, remember?” soothed Molly. “Nothing to worry about. What time did they say they wanted to see you?”

“Ten o’clock,” I said, glancing at the clock. My heart was hammering. “In half an hour. I must go soon.”

“D’you want me to come with you?” She squeezed my hand.

I shook my head. Gulped. “No, I’ll – be fine. You’ve got Flora to see to and your mother’s still asleep and – ”

“Well, Hugh’s not doing anything today. He could easily take you.”

“No, no really, I’m sure you’re right,” I said quickly. “I’m sure it’s nothing to worry about.”

I wasn’t entirely sure I could cope with Hugh wise-cracking his way to the police station with yet more corpse jokes, because actually, suddenly, I felt very scared. I wished I could just hole up here in Molly and Hugh’s tiny, warm, chaotic kitchen with its airer groaning with bibs and babygrows, and Flora sucking away contentedly at her mother’s breast, and Henry eyeing me carefully from his high chair, thumb in mouth, not entirely sure if I was generally present at his breakfast table.

“So what happens next?” said Molly softly, as if reading my thoughts.

I grimaced. “You mean, what am I going to do?”

She nodded.

“Well, sell the house, of course.”

“Of course,” she agreed quickly, shooting Hugh a look as he opened his mouth to protest.

“And move, I suppose, but God knows where. I’ll have to decide soon, thoughj because Claudia’s term starts in September. You know she’s been offered a place at St Paul’s?”

“No! In London? Blimey!”

“I know. I’d forgotten I’d even put her down for it, must have been ages ago, in an ambitious moment. Haven’t had many of those recently.”

“But that’s seriously hot stuff, Liwy. Places like that are
fought
over! God, about two hundred girls going for twenty places!”

I sighed. “I know, can’t think how she managed it, although apparently she did rather well at her interview. They asked if she had any hobbies and she said, rather disdainfully, ‘Certainly not’ – you know Claudes. And then they said, ‘Well, do you collect anything, dear?’ And she said, ‘Yes, money’.”

Molly giggled. “That’s my girl. No shrinking violet, eh?”

“Hardly. But do we really want to live in London, Moll? And a day school too – not really what she’d had in mind.”

“A
brilliant
day school, though,” said Hugh through a mouthful of toast. “Hell of an opportunity. She’d probably end up Prime Minister or something equally bloody frightening.”

“True,” I sighed again. “Anyway, I’m going to have to think about it.” I hauled myself out of the cosy Windsor chair. “Right now, though, I have to gird my loins for my chat with Shiny Suit and Baldy. Perhaps it’ll be Pentonville for me, with Claudia on visiting rights.”

“Don’t be silly. It’s quite obvious you were just an innocent bystander,” Molly protested. Nevertheless, I noticed, rather nervously, that they both followed me to the door and that Molly still had her arm round my shoulders when we got there.

“You’re welcome to stay here as long as you like, you know that, don’t you?” She gave me a squeeze. “A year if you want, whatever it takes.”

“Thanks.” I forced a smile. “But it’ll only be a few days. We wouldn’t want to cramp your style.”

“We don’t have a style,” announced Hugh loftily, sticking his chest out. “Makes life so much simpler.”

“Speak for yourself,” muttered Molly, “I wouldn’t mind a bit of style.”

“Nonsense, my dear, you’re totally à la mode as you are, modelling for us this morning this season’s must-have basic, the cheesy dressing gown with baby puke down one shoulder and – Oops! There she goes again!” He caught Flora’s sickly projection and grabbed Molly’s muslin to mop it up as the baby proceeded to do another mouthful.

“She keeps doing this,” said Molly anxiously. “I’m getting terrible
déjà vu
. I keep waiting for her to actually take aim and get my mother in the face, like Henry used to.”

“Henry’s grown out of that,” I soothed. “Flora will too.”

“Ah, but you haven’t seen Henry’s latest trick,” said Hugh proudly. “Irritated that he can no longer hit Molly’s mother in the eye with a stream of puke, he’s taken to dropping his trousers, presenting dear Millicent with his bare backside, then letting rip with the most almighty fart.” Hugh sighed, wistfully. “Something I realise that I, too, have long wished to do myself.”

“Hugh!” Molly scolded.

“Well, I can’t see this little angel doing anything as gross as that,” I said fondly, stroking his daughter’s cheek.

“She’s going to be a stunner,” he agreed.

“And talking of stunners,” Molly rearranged Flora and looked me in the eye, “I heard about Imo.”

“Ah.” I scuffed my toe on the doormat. “That.”

“Flaming cheek!” she said hotly. “You were well in there first!”

Hugh cringed. “Well In There? Is that how you speak of us gentle menfolk?”

I sighed. “Yes, but while I was making up my mind, Moll, Imo saw a gap and went for it. And who can blame her?” I added ruefully.

“Saw a gap and…? Good heavens,” gasped Hugh faintly, clutching the doorframe for support. “We’re just a mere line of traffic now, are we? With gaps! Whatever happened to romance?”

“What indeed?” I agreed ruefully.

“And, anyway, I don’t know why all this comes as such a big surprise to you girls,” he went on. “If we’re intent on using disgusting analogies, if you ask me, she wormed her way in long ago.”