The Haunt (15 page)

‘Does there have to be a reason?’

‘An anniversary? A birthday, perhaps? In recognition of a favour?’

Piper said sharply, ‘It was a kind thought. May I know what this is about?’

‘Certainly sir. A local shopkeeper has been found dead on his premises, the till broken open and rifled. Miss Gascoigne, by her own telling, was one of the last – could have been the very last – person to see him alive. I am trying to establish the facts and clarify the situation.’

‘Oh Mr Piper!’ cried Mildred, ‘I am sorry, it’s all my fault. The shopkeeper wasn’t there when I went back to buy the paperweight – at least I couldn’t see him – and I was in a hurry to catch the bus. I left the money and a note saying I’d taken it – the paperweight, I mean – I knew what it cost because he had already told me – I didn’t know he was under the counter – dead …’

Mildred dissolved, literally Piper thought, into tears. They coursed down her cheeks: surprising how much liquid small ducts could secrete. He said, ‘Is this a murder enquiry?’

‘That,’ said the officer, writing in his notebook, ‘is a matter of opinion. A technicality. The deceased was known to have a chronic heart condition. Threatened by an assailant with
a knife he might have died of fright. One thing is clear: somebody knew he was dead and took advantage of the fact to break into the till.’

‘Why would I do that?’ cried Mildred. ‘Why would I leave my name and address and money for the paperweight if I was going to rob the till?’

The policeman scratched his nose with his biro and suggested, ‘To divert suspicion?’

Detecting a ribald undertone, Piper said sternly, ‘As a professional psychologist, and student of human nature, I assure you this lady is incapable of such duplicity—’ and encountered Mildred’s drowning look of gratitude. ‘I suggest you give serious thought to some more likely suspects.’

‘Well, we’re not short of mischief around here.’ The policeman’s biro ran dry. Vexed, he snapped it in two.

‘What’s up?’ said Clapham, coming into the lobby as the policeman crunched away down the drive.

Whey-faced, Mildred stammered, ‘I – it’s nothing—’

‘A computer error,’ said Piper.

*

‘When do you want me to sit?’

‘Sit?’ Charlie, in the garden, was sketching Eashing, slumped in his chair.

‘For my portrait. I shan’t be here forever.’ Senga leaned over Charlie’s shoulder. ‘That’s not bad.’

‘I shan’t need sittings, the way I’m going to do yours.’ He was feeling none of the usual eagerness to get started on it: was conscious of something like technophobia. ‘Head
and shoulders –’ head certainly, get through her carapace, resolve the maculae – ‘it has to be different, not just what Joe Soap sees. I want to take an inward look. There’s no such thing as whole truth; doing Nina’s portrait showed me that. The most I can hope is to reveal what no one else has seen.’

‘And if I don’t want it revealed?’

‘I’d like to do it as a strip cartoon. Be different, wouldn’t it?’ Her skin darkened: he was intrigued to see the freckles merge to produce an overall colour, just short of puce. ‘No offence: the cartoons I’m thinking of aren’t comic pictures, they’re preparatory drawings, working designs. I see your portrait as design.’

‘I’ll look like wallpaper. Why don’t you paint Piper?’

‘Why should I?’

‘To illustrate the biop I’m writing. I’ll need a good likeness. Look, why not come back with me, to London? We could stop on the road, make a night of it.’ Her stare, luminous as a cat’s, held him and he thought, I should paint her from a mouse’s eye view.

A car swept through the gate, spitting gravel. A woman got out, legs followed by a leisurely unwinding until she was revealed, one hand on the car roof, the other on her hip, sales-effective, like girls in car adverts.

‘Nina!’

She was wearing champagne colour, a dress of some clinging stuff which the breeze pinned on her like a second skin. Charlie told Senga, ‘This is private,’ and tried to move away from her.

‘She can stay.’ That was Nina imperious. ‘Obviously she has your interests at heart.’

‘I have to talk to you.’

‘I have a puncture, it’s why I’m here, so you can fix it, Charlie.’

‘You know I’ve never changed a wheel.’

‘Darling, it’s simple. I’d do it myself but I’m not dressed for the part. I’m on my way to give a talk to the Pennyworthal Conservationists.’

‘What about?’ said Senga.

‘Disappearances.’

‘Which ones?’

‘Threatened species.’ She turned to Charlie. ‘Suddenly the steering went puddingy, which suggested a puncture.’

‘If you’re worried I could drive you to Pennyworthal,’ offered Senga.

‘
I’ll
drive her,’ said Charlie.

‘Not in my car, darling.’ Senga tweaked his ear fondly. ‘Besides, I’d like to hear that talk. Hold on while I fetch my keys.’

They watched her go, Leda and the Swan rioting as she went. Nina said, ‘She hasn’t the legs for shorts.’

‘Let’s take your car and go before she comes back.’

Nina looked at her watch. ‘It’s too late now.’

‘I don’t believe you were going to Pennyworthal or wherever. You came to check on me.’

She closed her eyes as if she had reached the end of an interminable tether. ‘I’m a conclusively married woman. The days of wine and roses are over.’

Thinking he heard a note of nostalgia he hastened to turn it to advantage. ‘There’s nothing between her and me – how could you think there was?’

‘I’m not remotely concerned with your amourettes.’ She slid into the car.

‘Nina, wait!’

Sending a kiss off the palm of her hand, she drove away.

*

Eashing wrote to his solicitor: ‘I have found a girl. She was, you might say, under my nose – like the object of most searches – having been employed in this hotel until she was dismissed for breaking crockery. She is not well washed, but she is strong, and by nature vegetal, she will do nicely for the short while I shall remain here. Fellow guests are supportive, but I do not enjoy being wheeled about like a helpless infant, I prefer to retain a degree of control over my exits and entrances.’

‘I could shave you,’ Bettony had said. ‘I shave my grandad. He’s warty but I’ve never bled him. I’ll do you if you want.’

‘Thank you, no. I’m letting my beard grow.’

‘It makes you look old.’

‘I am old.’

‘Not as old as my grandad.’ It sounded like a shortcoming. She sat down beside him with a sigh which threatened to empty her body of breath.

‘What’s the matter?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Would you like to read the paper? There’s an article on
the woman’s page about the moral refreshment to be derived from sweeping a room.’ Eashing smiled grimly.

She accepted the newspaper and he went back to his book. When he looked up again she was rolling the paper into a tube. She held it to her eye. ‘Nelson!’ Eashing couldn’t remember ever before seeing her laugh. The eye watching him from outside the tube glistened with fun, her mouth opened to reveal big crooked teeth.

‘Perhaps you’d prefer the magazine section.’ He retrieved his newspaper and was unrolling it. ‘Or a work of fiction?’

She shook her head.

‘Don’t you like to read?’

‘Can’t.’

‘You can’t read?’

‘Nor can’t my grandad.’ Manifestly, the pride in her voice derived from the old man, occasioned by him. He was her exemplar.

Eashing said carefully, ‘I’m sure he manages well enough without. But times have changed, it’s different for you. Without some basic literacy you will find yourself severely inhibited in the workaday world.’

She declared from under a beetling brow, ‘I can work!’

‘Of course. But books not only add to the quality of life, they define it,’ a point he would have liked to make, but could see she wasn’t taking it. He could hardly expect her to.

‘She is uneducated and taciturn,’ he wrote. ‘They are recommendations. I shall not be exposed to the tedious chatter of semi-literates.’

He forbore to mention the fact which had come to light
by chance: she scorned literacy, but loved being read to How much she realised of
Oliver
Twist
–
Eashing’s holiday choice – he had no way of knowing, but she hung on the words and when Eashing closed the book and asked, ‘Did you like that?’ she had uttered again the prodigious sigh which seemed to squeeze the breath out of her. This time it was an exhalation of pleasure. Eashing, too, had enjoyed the reading; it was a shared experience (something he had little of nowadays), besides being edification of a mentality sadly in need.

His decision was not reached so much as imposed. Even if it made only limited sense, it would relieve him of the irksome business of interviewing females whose qualifications did not warrant their travelling expenses.

An escape clause was essential, and Bettony would, he thought (not unkindly) be willing to go back to her grandfather any time he wished to be rid of her – reimbursed, of course, in excess of whatever the Claphams had paid her.

When he asked would she consider acting as his ‘companion help’ – a quaint way of putting it, he couldn’t think of anything else as precise – she blinked, passed her tongue round her lips. The effort to comprehend was proving painful. ‘It need not involve you greatly, just to help me in and out of my chair, wheel me to the beach or along the lane, fetch anything I need from the shops, be generally handy.’ Eashing smiled. ‘Read
Oliver
Twist
with me.’

That registered, she nodded vigorously, biting back the chuckle of a child invited to mischief, and dodged under the arm of Mrs Clapham who was bringing Eashing’s tea.

It was all the answer he was likely to get, and when Mrs Clapham demanded, ‘What’s
she
doing here?’ he said, ‘I have just engaged her as my companion help.’

In the ensuing confrontation, Mrs Clapham declared Bettony to be the Devil’s drab, catspaw, jinx, witch and trouble-maker extraordinary. She vowed she had known not a moment’s rest while the girl was on the premises.

Eashing said mildly, ‘She has a simple mind, incompatible with life in this day and age. But there’s no harm in her.’

‘Simple she may be, pure she is not.’

‘This is an ad hoc arrangement which should not incommode you. We shall take walks and make such excursions as can be organised, and she will be available to do errands for me in the village.’

‘I swore I’d never have her under my roof again!’

‘I trust,’ Eashing said, still pleasant, ‘that as a guest – a paying guest – I may be permitted to provide the little extra assistance I need for myself?’

*

Elissa had asked Mrs Latimer’s son to take over the heavy work in the garden. Privately Owen was glad to be rid of the chore but deplored their dependence on Mrs Latimer. ‘I don’t like the woman, she’s a mischief-maker.’

‘She’s a conscientious cleaner, rare these days, and her stories do enliven our coffee breaks.’

‘You’ve developed a taste for gossip. I call that pretty radical.’

‘Why?’

‘You said you haven’t changed since coming here.’

‘You’re trying to change the subject. To get back to the one under discussion, old bones can’t sustain prolonged physical toil.’

‘My bones are still perfectly sound. I happened to set too fast a pace.’

‘I have no intention of standing by while you do yourself permanent damage and end in a wheelchair for our remaining years. Mrs Latimer is a countrywoman: she tells me that the first cut of such long grass should be by hand, but there’s a knack to be acquired in the use of a scythe, it’s not recommended for novices. Apparently the local doctor sliced through the calf of his leg while working on his allotment and had to bind it with rhubarb leaves to stop the bleeding.’

‘Rhubarb leaves are poisonous.’

‘Only when they’re boiled.’

*

At first sight he did not look like a wielder of scythes or any such archaic tool. He arrived on a motorbike with blaring exhausts, a sort of computer screen on the handlebars, and a fire-breathing dragon rampant on his T-shirt. He pushed up his crash helmet and lifted his goggles, revealing the cherry-lipped face of a teenager. ‘Latimer, Kevin, IFO – Identified Flying Object.’

Owen said, ‘What happened to the mountain bike?’

‘Gave it to the old lady.’

‘Your mother?’

‘I’ll be giving her this –’ he revved the engine – ‘soon as I get me a car.’

‘Very filial.’

‘You kidding? She can’t wait to ride it.’

Owen suspected he would be the loser in their exchanges, and turned to the garden. ‘Do you think you can manage this?’

‘No problem.’

‘What will you use?’

Kevin tipped his helmet over his face. ‘Be back tomorrow with a couple of goats.’ A kick-start exploded to a shattering roar and he was away.

‘I haven’t much hope of Mrs Latimer’s progeny,’ Owen told Elissa, ‘he’s a whippersnapper.’

‘She says he’s jokey, it’s the only thing she’s got against him.’

‘I don’t like his attitude.’

‘If he’s as good a worker as his mother we can overlook the rough edges.’

‘He’s no horny-handed son of the soil.’

Elissa shrugged. ‘Drive me into Truro tomorrow?’

‘What for?’

‘The curtains we brought from Wimbledon aren’t right here. I must find something different.’

‘He’s coming to cut the grass tomorrow.’

‘You don’t have to be present: better if you’re not. Your attitude is prejudicial.’

*

When they returned from Truro the next afternoon, Owen stopped the car and sat staring. Where there had been a blossoming prairie was a rectangle of shorn grass encompassed by a naked fence: a suburban patch.

‘Happy now?’ said Elissa.

‘I prefer the prairie.’

She slammed the car door and went into the house. Owen thought about the fence. Half obscured, it had been both barrier and ethical factor: stripped and fully revealed it looked uncommonly like a pen for penning animals.

Kevin Latimer was raking up the spent grass. ‘Get yourself a little Flymo and you’ll be able to keep this lot down.’