Bricks and Mortality: Campbell & Carter 3 (13 page)

Kit was approaching with a tray on which three mugs, painted with cats, were balanced. ‘I don’t do teapots,’ she said brusquely to Jess. ‘I make the tea straight in the mug with a tea bag, so I hope you weren’t expecting something more elegant. I’m the Persian, Petra has the Siamese. Yours is the tabby.’

‘It’s the way I make it at home. At work it comes from a dispenser. That looks very nice, thanks.’ Jess took the mug illustrated with a truculent tabby cat of the sort usually called a mouser. That’s me, she thought ruefully. The sisters each have an elegant pet on their mugs. I’ve got the everyday, working model.

‘I was explaining to Inspector Campbell that I didn’t expect Gervase would come here,’ Petra told her sister, although Kit had clearly overheard. ‘But that I was relieved, not upset, at seeing him. He didn’t stay long; so don’t get hot under the collar, Kit. I would have told you when the moment was right. Probably about now when we’d got our coffee!’ Petra gave another of her placating smiles. ‘But Inspector Campbell arrived before I did.’

‘I hope he’s not going to come anywhere near me or Mother,’ snapped Kit. ‘He’ll get a dusty reception if so. He is amazingly thick skinned, but we’d make it clear to him just what we feel.’

‘Kit …’ Petra murmured warningly.

‘It’s all right,’ said Kit. ‘I’m not going to threaten him before a witness. Nor, Inspector Campbell, did I decide to burn down his house. I’ve had years in which I could have done that and haven’t. What do you want to ask Petra? Just if she’d seen him? Have
you
seen him, by the way?’

‘Yes,’ said Jess briefly. ‘But I didn’t realise he’d been here. You would have known him when he lived at Key House. We are, of course, investigating the fire and the discovery of a body in the ruins. That has brought Mr Crown back to England from his present home in Portugal. He doesn’t appear to have visited much over the years. Have you, either of you, been in any other contact with him during that time?’

‘No!’ chimed both sisters indignantly.

‘I understand he was responsible for the car crash in which you were injured.’ Jess gestured apologetically at the crutches. ‘Forgive me mentioning it.’

‘He was and remains responsible for everything,’ declared Kit.

‘I carry my share of blame,’ Petra objected unexpectedly. ‘I got into a car with a young man I could see was drunk. I suppose I was a bit tipsy myself. Stupidity’s not blameless, Inspector. I should have known better. I was very young, but I wasn’t a child. Also, I knew Gervase had already been involved in one smash. No one was killed or seriously injured that time, but, well, it was a sort of signpost to the possibility of another one some day. So please don’t apologise for mentioning my sticks!’

Had Petra confessed to a moment’s teenage foolishness in getting into a car with a drunken Gervase, wondered Jess, to defuse any suspicion she harboured a desire for revenge? More likely because she’s had time to think it over and she’s honest. What’s more, Petra Stapleton isn’t stupid, far from it. She has more insight than her sister.

Aloud she asked, ‘Does either of you know, or can you guess, why he didn’t sell Key House before now? Apparently he didn’t want to live in it.’

‘To sell it would have made sense,’ agreed Kit, ‘but Gervase isn’t strong on common sense.’

‘I think it was a complicated thing,’ Petra said slowly. ‘It had been his childhood home. He didn’t need to sell. I don’t think we can criticise him for not selling if he didn’t have to. In the end, it’s none of our business, is it?’

The words were spoken pleasantly, but there was steel behind them. Jess glimpsed the determined young woman who had fought back against her injuries to make a new life.

Kit sniffed loudly but said nothing.

‘Does either of you know if he ever applied for planning permission to alter it, turn it into something he might want to live in?’ asked Jess of both of them.

They stared back at her in a united front. ‘Why on earth should he tell us, if he did?’ Kit asked. ‘We haven’t been in contact with him, Inspector. We’ve told you that. From the time of the accident and what followed, until he walked into my sister’s studio yesterday, we’ve had nothing to do with him.’

She paused. ‘As for the planning permission, if he’d ever asked for it, that would depend on what he wanted to do. Certainly he’d have been told there were limits to any changes or additions he might want to make and they’d have insisted he didn’t overstep the rules. Even my sister’s cottage here …’ Kit waved a hand to indicate their surroundings. ‘We had to draw up very careful plans for this place. It was a stable before. Admittedly the planning people are often more concerned about the outside of a building than the inside. They’re keen to preserve the look. But in the case of Key House, the inside mattered. It was historic, you know. All the staircase and panelling were original to the house, and they’d have wanted to preserve that. I agree it was gloomy, lots of dark wood, and I wouldn’t have wanted to live in it. But generations had. There was even a local tradition about a ghost, a child who stood by visitors’ beds and pulled the bedcovers off them. I’ve never met anyone who saw it.’ Kit smiled unexpectedly and it lit up her face. Suddenly she was an attractive woman, but one under strain.

‘What happens to a ghost when the building it haunts has gone?’ asked Petra thoughtfully.

‘It gets pretty frustrated, I imagine,’ Kit told her sister. She turned back to Jess. ‘Amanda, that’s Gervase’s mother, did her best when she lived there. We were only kids at the time, but I remember a lot of white leather furniture and table-lamps everywhere. There were polished parquet floors. Probably the original flagstones were underneath, but the Crowns had laid parquet over it.’ Unkindly she added, ‘They were that type of people. You know, buy a period property for the upmarket look and then tinker with the inside because it’s old fashioned. Amanda would have wanted something that resembled a picture in
Homes and Gardens
.’

‘I expect the old flagstones were cold,’ Petra said and Kit had the grace to look as if she regretted her last remark.

However, she rallied quickly. ‘I suppose there’s irony in their putting down the wooden floors, because the parquet would have burned in the recent fire and the old stone flags wouldn’t have done.’

‘The parquet did burn,’ Jess said quietly. ‘We have wondered whether the arsonist knew that, was familiar with the house.’

Both sisters looked upset.

‘How do you remember it?’ Jess asked now of Petra. ‘Your sister remembers it as dark and gloomy.’

‘The panelled hallway was quite dark. But I don’t remember the rest of it as gloomy. As Kit said, the interior was a bit like a picture in a magazine. But one wouldn’t have expected anything less. Amanda was very elegant herself,’ said Petra a little wistfully. ‘I thought, when I was a kid, that she looked like a film star.’

Kit’s assessment was more robust. ‘Did you? I thought she was a freak, all that warpaint and silly high heels.’

‘Does either of you know why she left her husband?’

‘Because she couldn’t stand him, I suppose,’ said Kit. ‘Neither could I.’

‘But she didn’t take her child with her,’ Jess pointed out.

The sisters looked at one another. Kit spoke for them both. ‘We all felt sorry for Gervase then, when he was a kid. But it doesn’t excuse how he turned out.’

‘We were children, too,’ Petra added. ‘We didn’t know the circumstances of Amanda’s leaving. It wasn’t the sort of thing discussed before us.’

Jess recognised she wasn’t going to get any further with that line of questioning. A door had been closed, just as it had been closed over the matter of the sale or non-sale of Key House. Both times Petra Stapleton had closed it. Kit was free with her opinions, but Petra got her own quiet last word. She changed the subject. ‘Does the name Matthew Pietrangelo mean anything to either of you?’

They shook their heads. ‘Who’s he?’ asked Kit.

Jess produced one of the photos given to them by Sarah Gresham. She held it out. The sisters stared it.

‘Never seen him!’ declared Kit, taking it from Jess and then handing it to Petra.

Petra said quietly, ‘He looks a bit like Gervase.’ She raised her eyes from the photo to Jess’s face. ‘Is he the one who died in the fire?’ she asked. ‘Did he die because someone thought he was Gervase?’

No, Petra wasn’t stupid. She was very smart! ‘We think it’s possible that is the dead man,’ Jess began. ‘We’re awaiting the result of tests and dental checks—’ She was cut short by the sound of yet another car drawing up outside.

Kit went to the window and peered out. ‘Bother, it’s the woman with a funny-looking dog. I think it’s that dog you’ve agreed to do a portrait of, Petra.’

Petra put a hand to her mouth. ‘I forgot! I arranged that Muriel Pickering would come today with Hamlet, so that I could do some preliminary sketches!’

Jess cursed mentally.

A heavy hand bashed the brass horseshoe against the door. Kit went to open it. Petra smiled at Jess and whispered, ‘I don’t suppose you’ve met Muriel Pickering? She lives locally.’

‘I have, as it happens,’ Jess replied in a similar low voice.

‘I don’t have to prepare you, then! I hope you like Muriel because she really is very good hearted … Come in, Muriel!’ Petra raised her voice. ‘Good dog, Hamlet! Let’s have a good look at you!’

The pug dog came in first, grunting to itself. Its slightly bandy legs gave it a rolling, nautical walk. It gave Jess a suspicious look, ignored Kit and went to Petra. It sat down in front of her and looked expectant.

‘He’s waiting for a biscuit,’ said Muriel’s voice from the door. ‘You gave him one last time and Hamlet never forgets.’

She appeared in the room. It was the first time Jess had seen her not dressed in her yellow oilskins. She wore corduroy trousers and a hand-knitted sweater with holes in both elbows. Without her yellow hat, her hair could be seen to be iron-grey and irregularly chopped into a sort of pageboy, probably by her own hand. A thick fringe reached down to the rims of her glinting spectacles, through which she fixed a belligerent gaze on Jess.

‘Hello,’ she said, ‘you again. You pop up everywhere.’

‘I might say the same thing of you, Mrs Pickering,’ said Jess.

Muriel blinked at that and retorted ungraciously, ‘I suppose you’re still investigating, but you certainly leave no stone unturned, do you?’

‘That’s the idea,’ Jess told her. From the corner of her eye she thought she saw Kit Stapleton exchange a wry look with her sister. ‘I might even come and visit you at Mullions, Mrs Pickering.’

‘Welcome, I’m sure,’ said Muriel carelessly.

Now, thought Jess, is that the first lie that’s been told to me during my visit here? Or have I been comprehensively led up the garden path from the start?

Kit followed Jess out into the gravelled forecourt, leaving Muriel to expound on Hamlet’s finer points to Petra.

‘I hope you can sort this out quickly,’ she said, ‘because until you do, Gervase Crown is going to hang around. Nobody hereabouts wants that and certainly my family doesn’t.’

‘He seems to be aware of his unpopularity, or that’s the impression I got when I spoke to him,’ Jess told her.

Kit pulled a face. ‘He’d be even thicker skinned than I thought him if he wasn’t. I’m not surprised he didn’t stay here to live in Key House. He wouldn’t have been made welcome in the community.’

‘But he didn’t sell it,’ Jess returned to the matter of the non-sale of Key House. ‘I still find that hard to understand.’

Kit shrugged. ‘So he didn’t sell it. Perhaps he’s just hung on to it to annoy us all. I don’t know. Who knows what does go on in Gervase’s mind? Anyway, I’m not his greatest fan so don’t listen to me …’ She put her head on one side and smiled at Jess. ‘I didn’t attack that unfortunate guy with the Italian name because I thought he was Gervase. I didn’t burn the house down.’

‘I haven’t accused you of either crime,’ Jess told her mildly.

‘No, but you must be compiling your list of suspects. I noticed, when you showed us that photo of the victim back there, that the poor chap looked a little bit like Gervase. I wasn’t going to say so in front of my sister, in case I was the only one who thought it. I didn’t want to worry her. But Petra noticed it too anyway. You’ve seen Gervase. Do you think it? Does he look like the victim?’

‘It did strike us that there is a similarity,’ Jess had to admit. ‘But we’re not reading anything into that yet.’

‘Really?’ asked Kit disbelievingly. ‘Well, good luck with your enquiries.’ She gave a laconic wave and turned to go back into the cottage.

Jess got into her car and drove away slowly. Since she was so close to the murder scene, it would be a good idea to go and take another look at it, if only to check that sightseers hadn’t been trampling across it.

But Key House was as she’d last seen it, standing desolate and in ruins. The smell of charred wood still hung in the air. Puddles spotted the scene where the fire brigade had returned to dampen down the site as a precaution against a hotspot breaking out again in flames. Gervase Crown would not be rebuilding this, she thought, and no one could reasonably expect him to.

Her mobile phone jangled as she climbed back into her car. She put it to her ear. ‘Phil?’

‘Just to let you know,’ came Morton’s voice, ‘that Gervase Crown flew in to Heathrow late on the day immediately following the fire, on an Air Portugal flight. The ashes of his house would still have been hot, so he didn’t waste time. He picked up a hire car, a BMW, at the airport and drove straight down here and took a room at The Royal Oak that night.’

‘So he didn’t set the fire himself,’ Jess murmured.

‘What’s that, ma’am? Oh, that’s right. He didn’t start the fire. He could still have hired someone to do it. He might even have hired Pietrangelo. Didn’t Pietrangelo’s girlfriend tell you that he had no work in hand at the moment and new commissions were slow coming in for him? They wanted to buy a house. He needed to earn a few quid.’

‘We’d have to establish that Crown knew Pietrangelo. When I showed him the photograph of the victim he denied it. If he hired him to set the fire, then of course he would deny it. But his reaction struck me as genuine at the time. However, it’s a thought, Phil. We’ll add it to the list of possibilities. Oh, and we now know that on the morning following his arrival, Crown’s first action was to go early to what was left of Key House and check it out. After that he paid a call on Petra Stapleton, the young woman so badly injured in the car crash that resulted in his being given a prison sentence. It left Petra in a wheelchair. In the afternoon he came to see us.’