Bricks and Mortality: Campbell & Carter 3 (17 page)

‘But you don’t need an excuse!’ she told him. ‘Of course you didn’t want to part with it. It must have been a wonderful old place, full of history.’

He looked alarmed, took one hand from his pocket and waved it at her to silence her. ‘No, no, you’ve got it wrong. I didn’t keep it because I loved it. I kept it because I hated it. That sounds crazy, I know. I can’t explain. It was my family home, but it wasn’t wonderful to me. I don’t have particularly good memories of being here, but I’ve never been able to bring myself to make the break. I’m afraid I specialise in making wrong decisions.’

‘Whatever your reasons,’ Sarah told him, ‘you didn’t want to sell and it was your decision. Anyway, it was only because it was empty and in need of attention that Matt thought we might be able to afford it. Perhaps if – if the fire hadn’t happened, if Matt had been able to go back and talk to Foscott again … if Foscott had got in touch with you again and you’d changed your mind … But it’s all “if”, isn’t it?’

‘Yes,’ he agreed soberly. ‘It is all “if”, as you say. If I hadn’t done a number of stupid things in my life, and one in particular, this house wouldn’t have been standing empty. It’s a shame we can’t go back and rewrite everything.’ The silence lengthened until he said, ‘I really think we ought to go outside before something else drops on our heads.’

‘I’m trespassing,’ Sarah said to him, as they picked their way over the rubble to the open air. ‘Perhaps you’re offended.’

‘You can spend as much time here as you like, as far as I’m concerned. But the condition is rickety now, as was demonstrated.’ He indicated the interior, and the fallen cupboard, behind them. ‘The cops don’t like people walking about in here because of it.’

‘I realised it was risky.’ Sarah didn’t add that she now felt she had so little to lose, without Matt and their future together, that a lump of falling masonry would seem to offer nothing more than release. ‘But I couldn’t keep away,’ she mumbled.

He studied her averted face briefly and then looked away himself, back at the house. ‘No more can I, and I should, if anyone should. Only about an hour ago, I was talking to someone who knew me in the old days, when I lived here. She wishes I hadn’t come back. As soon as she left, I got in the car and drove here. Crazy, really.’

Sarah looked at him curiously and opened her mouth to speak, but their conversation was interrupted.

Another voice, harsher and accusing, shattered the air.

‘So, there you are! I heard you’d turned up like a bad penny – the same bad penny you always were!’

Gervase Crown spun round and Sarah moved to be able to see the newcomer more clearly. She saw a short, sturdy elderly woman with spectacles, wearing a strange bright yellow outfit of waterproof trousers and jacket.

Crown obviously recognised her. ‘Well, well, Muriel, as I live and breathe!
You’re
still living and breathing, obviously, and not a bit changed! Still your old jolly self, I see.’

‘Don’t you “well, Muriel” me!’ snapped the woman. ‘And spare me your twisted sense of humour. Who is that?’ she pointed at Sarah.

‘This is Miss Sarah Gresham, Muriel. Tragically, Sarah’s partner lost his life here.’

‘Oh,’ Muriel looked discomfited. She dropped her stare and, addressing Sarah, said in a gruff voice, ‘I’m sorry for your loss.’

‘Thank you,’ Sarah said.

‘And this,’ Gervase completed the introductions, indicating the yellow-clad woman for Sarah’s benefit, ‘is Muriel Pickering, a native of this parish. I dare say she’s another one who wishes I hadn’t returned.’

‘Yes, I am a native of this part of the world and proud of it!’ shouted Muriel at him. ‘My family has lived here over one hundred and fifty years!’ She turned to Sarah again. ‘Time was,’ she announced, ‘when my family owned chunks of the land around here. Now we don’t own any but my house and the garden.’

She nodded towards Gervase. ‘His family turned up when his father came along and bought Key House, this house. They had no links with the area and he still doesn’t.’

‘I hesitate to correct you, Muriel,’ Gervase told her quite mildly, ‘but before he bought Key House, my father grew up and lived not twenty miles away. We were and are a Gloucestershire family.’

‘Twenty miles away isn’t here!’ yelled Muriel. As if in reply to the sound of her voice, something else inside the house clattered to the ground.

Sarah was beginning to look alarmed again, and Gervase hastened to reassure her, ‘Don’t worry about Muriel. She can’t help it. Her parents forgot to invite the wicked fairy to her christening, so it turned up and cursed her. Be glad that you and your partner didn’t buy Key House and move in. Muriel would have been your nearest neighbour, and you will have gathered she doesn’t like newcomers.’

‘I don’t dislike people,’ said Muriel calmly. ‘I just have no time for you. I don’t know what you do with yourself over there in Portugal. I can’t imagine it’s anything worthwhile. And you’re perfectly right in saying I regret your decision to return. However, in the circumstances, I suppose you had to.’

There was a movement and a small shape appeared, half hidden by Muriel’s yellow legs.

Gervase peered past her. ‘What on earth is that?’

Muriel’s face, already red, turned an alarming shade of purple. ‘You know perfectly well he’s a dog. That’s my dog, Hamlet!’

The dog in question confirmed this with a sharp bark.

‘He’s warning you,’ said Muriel triumphantly. ‘He’s sussed you out. Knows you’re a wrong ’un.’ She turned to Sarah. ‘Watch out for him, young Crown, I mean.’ She pointed at Gervase. ‘Rotten apple.’

‘Muriel has never liked me,’ Gervase told Sarah in a stage whisper, ‘as you’ll have realised by now. But, bless her cotton socks, she’s never pretended otherwise. I, myself, am rather fond of her.’

Muriel gurgled alarmingly. Hamlet yelped.

‘I think I’d better go,’ said Sarah hurriedly. ‘Nice to have met you both.’ She crunched across the cinder-strewn ground, pausing only say, ‘Hello, Hamlet.’

Muriel’s expression softened. ‘All my dogs have been named after characters in Shakespeare’s plays.’

She and Gervase waited until the sound of Sarah’s car had faded away.

‘I hope,’ said Muriel, ‘that you are not now going to mess up that young woman’s life, as you’ve messed up another’s.’

‘It seems by not selling Key House I may have helped to mess up Sarah’s life already,’ Gervase said quietly. ‘You really are a dreadful old bat, Muriel. But there is something strangely reassuring about your not having mellowed with time.’

‘I see you’ve learned nothing and forgotten nothing, like the Bourbons,’ retorted Muriel.

‘That’s right, Muriel. I have forgotten nothing.’ Gervase walked towards her. She stood her ground and, as he passed by, he stooped and whispered in her ear, ‘I know where the body’s buried, Muriel!’

Hamlet began a furious barking,

‘Wretch!’ spat Muriel at Gervase and struck out at him with the hand holding the coiled dog’s lead.

He grinned down at her. Then he told Hamlet warningly, ‘You keep your distance, pooch!’

He walked away, leaving Muriel in possession of the field and Hamlet bouncing up and down on the cinders in rage, raising clouds of ash dust. His hysterical yelps split the air.

Carter went alone to pick up Millie that evening. He fancied Millie looked a little disappointed at seeing him arrive without company. Monica made no reference to Jessica and although he found himself on the receiving end of several meaningful looks from his daughter, he suspected Monica had instructed her not to ask questions, either. That, of course, would make Millie all the more avid for information. As soon as he could, he got Monica on one side.

‘You haven’t seen anything of Gervase Crown, here in Weston St Ambrose, I suppose?’ he asked. ‘He’s staying at The Royal Oak here.’

If he’d hoped to surprise Monica with the news, he failed. ‘I heard he was back,’ Monica said blandly.

Carter was the one who was startled. ‘Who told you? You’ve seen him?’

‘No. Stephen Layton told me, Dr Layton. I saw him last night, about nine in the evening. I went out for a stroll round the village before turning in. I met Stephen in the street about three or four yards down the road from The Royal Oak. It’s not the first time I’ve run into him on my evening strolls. I think he likes to have a whisky in the bar there before he turns in. But yesterday evening he was avoiding the place. He said he had run into Gervase, right outside, on the evening following the fire. Gervase had just got here from Portugal and taken a room there. That gave me a bit of a shock. I understand it had given Stephen Layton a shock, too. Stephen was Sebastian Crown’s doctor, you know, and golf crony too, I fancy, but he didn’t know Gervase very well. In fact, at first Stephen hadn’t recognised him. Gervase had been standing in the street outside The Royal Oak, smoking a cigarette. Stephen thought he was just an out-of-season tourist, until Gervase called out to him and reminded him who he was. He told Stephen he’d just arrived back and meant to stay there at The Oak. Stephen took that as fair warning and has stayed away since.’

‘Indeed?’ murmured Carter.

‘Well,’ went on Monica complacently, ‘I’m as curious as the next woman. I also thought you might like me to pick up any gossip, am I right?’

‘You’re right,’ Carter said.

‘And Stephen wanted to chat. Or that was the impression I got. He was intending to try the pub at the other end of the village and invited me along. We all know that’s not much of a place. So I asked him if he wanted to come back here for a nightcap. I’m old enough to be able to ask a gentleman that without it sounding like a proposition!’

‘And did he come?’

‘Yes, he did. He stayed nearly an hour. We had a small whisky apiece – actually, I had one and he had two. I told him my ex-nephew-by-marriage – you – was investigating the case with Inspector Campbell asking all the questions. I thought I should tell him, in case he later told me anything he might not have told me, if he had known of my relationship to you. Do you follow me?’

‘I follow. Very prudent of you, if quite the reverse of the police caution.’

‘So then he told me he’d certified death at the scene of the crime and had met and chatted with young Jessica. We agreed it was a pity the old house had gone for good. Stephen said Gervase now looks like an actor in a film about pirates. He’d commiserated with him about the loss of Key House, but Gervase had been very ungracious about it all. Stephen said he’d no wish to hang around talking to him, so he left him there in the street outside the hotel. So, for all my effort to glean a vital nugget of information for you, I didn’t, I’m afraid.’

‘All the same,’ Carter said thoughtfully. ‘Thank you for telling me.’

‘Where is Jess?’ asked Millie as they were driving home. Her tone was suspiciously nonchalant.

‘She had things to do,’ he told her. He glanced up at the mirror, which reflected Millie sitting in the rear clutching MacTavish. Their eyes met and he looked away quickly, telling himself to concentrate on the road ahead. Not, of course, to avoid the accusing gleam in hers.

He reflected that perhaps it had not been such a good idea to take Jess along with him to Monica’s last time. It had seemed fine when the idea sprang into his head. Moreover, Jess and Millie had appeared to hit it off. But that presented its own problem. If they hadn’t got along, the question of inviting Jess to another meeting with his daughter wouldn’t arise. Now Millie obviously expected to see Jess again and yet for Carter to invite her again made it look as if … well it was tricky.

‘What things?’ asked Millie, a touch of steel entering the nonchalance.

‘How, what things?’ asked Carter, playing for time.

‘You said Jess had things to do. What things?’

‘I don’t know, Millie. She didn’t tell me. Private matters to deal with.’

‘Oh, private,’ said Millie scornfully. ‘That’s what grown-ups always say when they want to shut you up.’

‘I’m not trying to shut you up, love!’ he protested. ‘I honestly don’t know what Jess is doing this evening.’

‘Well, you should have asked her!’ said Millie.

‘That would be very rude of me,’ said Carter virtuously.

Millie hissed in exasperation. After a moment she said with a carelessness that would have fooled no one, ‘MacTavish liked her.’

‘Good …’ said her father unhappily.

Jess would not have described her evening as full of things to do. Not that the sight of her flat, when she let herself in that evening, did not suggest a list of useful chores. It was undeniably in need of a thorough dusting. There was a small stack of newspapers and magazines, some dating back a couple of months, that required putting out for the recycling collection or being taken to the nearest recycling centre, but somehow got overlooked every time. She was short of groceries, as she discovered on opening the fridge door. There was half a packet of sausages but they were already past their sell-by date. In the door of the fridge, however, was a bottle of Pinot Grigio with a glassful left in it. She retrieved it, poured out the wine and retreated to the sofa with the wine and Simon’s latest letter.

She had already read her brother’s letter at least twice but reading it again put him there in the tiny sitting room with her. He was in Africa working, as he had done for many years in various parts of the world, with a medical charity. His letters were rare and often written over a period of weeks. Thus he would begin to describe something and then there had obviously been an interruption so the writing broke off and the tale taken up at a much later date by which time something else had happened and the original account never really got finished. She kept all her twin’s letters carefully in a folder because one day, when Simon got back home for good, he might want to write up his experiences. Or he might never come home, the correspondence cease, and all she and the family would have were these scribbled incomplete accounts scrawled by poor light late at night in a tent somewhere. It was not just the bugs and germs and unfriendly wildlife that threatened. The men with guns carried the danger. They did not like foreign medical workers any more than they welcomed foreign journalists observing the havoc and misery they wrought.