Rattling the Bones (23 page)

The girl wasn’t just short but tiny. Her long fair hair fell dead straight like a mermaid’s over her shoulders and down to her bust. Like me, she was pretty flat in the chest department. She wore a T-shirt with bunnies gambolling across it. It looked like a kid’s garment but, given her small size, she could probably wear stuff intended for bigger kids. Yet she had a woman’s face, for all the baby-blue eyes and pouting little mouth. Men probably curled up and rolled over before her.

I shook Adam’s proffered hand and then held mine out to the girl. She leaned across the table, took my fingers in her limp little mitt and gave them a consolatory squeeze as if I were the bereaved, then drooped back into her chair.

Lottie had joined us. She indicated a chair to me and put a glass down in front of me. I sat. I felt very much the odd one out. It wasn’t just that they were all so good-looking, or obviously well heeled, or even that they knew one another so that I was heavily disadvantaged. Friends communicate in ways outsiders don’t even notice. Chiefly, though, I felt the outsider because they simply came from another world.

At my private school, during my brief stay there, I’d brushed shoulders with lots of kids like Lottie and Becky. They hadn’t liked me then and I suspected that, deep down, these two girls didn’t really like me now. Lottie had some sort of an excuse for her dislike. She connected Duane’s death with my appearance on the scene. I didn’t know what the boy thought of me. I reminded myself to call him a young man. But he looked the sort who could turn on personal charm - and turn it off again if he thought it was being wasted on an unprofitable target.

Lottie poured me a glass of the white. It was Chardonnay, I noticed. I’m not keen on Chardonnay but this wasn’t the moment to start a discussion of the fine points of different wines. It had to be better than the dreadful white plonk I’d served poor Morgan.

‘Lottie tells us,’ Adam Ferrier began. He sounded a trifle pompous. ‘That you’ll be helping her out in her business for a while, until things are settled.’

This wasn’t quite what Lottie and I had agreed, but as it was obviously what she had told them, I went along with it and nodded.

He looked a little less sure. ‘I suppose that’s all right. I mean, when I contacted Lottie and Duane on behalf of our grandfather, I hadn’t anticipated another person getting to know our private family interests. You’ll understand?’ It was a question.

I assured him I understood. ‘I’ve been in this business for a little while myself,’ I said. ‘I’m an associate of Susie Duke who runs the Duke Detective Agency. I fully understand the need for discretion.’

There is a difference between saying you understand the need for discretion and a promise not to talk about things with other people, but I was banking on the Ferriers not picking that up. Instead, Adam had picked up something else.

He glanced nervously at Lottie, who had taken her seat at the table with us and was twirling her empty wine glass.

‘The Duke Detective Agency,’ he said. ‘Isn’t that where poor Duane . . .’

‘Yes, that’s right!’ I said in a bright, businesslike tone.

Lottie said, without looking up at any of us, ‘Fran found his body.’

The Ferriers stared at me. Adam’s eyes gained a calculating expression.

Becky spoke in a curiously cultivated little-girl voice which gave me the heebie-jeebies. ‘Are you investigating his death?’

‘No, of course I’m not!’ I said sternly, giving her a look which I hoped told her I’d appreciate it if she could try and talk like a regular adult human. ‘That’s for the police.’

‘Are they including you in their investigations?’ asked her brother more sharply.

‘I gave a statement about finding him. Other than that I have no knowledge of what the police are doing. Lottie probably knows more about it than I do.’ I was putting down my markers with a firm hand. I wasn’t going to discuss anything with these two other than the matter of Edna. I wanted information from them. I wasn’t about to give them any.

‘They say they are treating his death as suspicious,’ said Lottie dully. ‘I really hate that word. Why can’t they just come out and say murder?’

I opened my mouth to say there was a procedure in these matters but it wouldn’t do to sound too knowledgeable. ‘I only found him,’ I repeated. ‘My bad luck.’

‘How awful,’ breathed Becky, batting her eyelids. She reminded me of one of those dolls with the long-lashed eyes that close when you put them flat, and open again, disconcertingly bright blue and glassy, when you sit them up. ‘You must have been really scared.’ Blink, blink.

Yuk! Help! ‘Yeah, well,’ I mumbled, finding myself unexpectedly stuck for a reply. ‘It was sort of weird.’

‘Bloody awful!’ boomed Adam suddenly with unexpected energy and far too loudly so that I jumped.

So was this. I’d stumbled back into
Alice in Wonderland
, this time at the point of the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party. Lottie was presiding like the Mad Hatter himself - for hat read bandanna - and Adam, who I fancied was developing an odd gleam in his eyes, was the March Hare. I sipped my wine and hoped Becky, like the dormouse, would soon fall asleep with her head resting on the saucer of pistachio nuts. She looked as if she might have as little to contribute to our conversation.

I looked round the kitchen desperately for some topic of conversation which would get us away from the image of Duane’s dead body and me standing over it which was occupying all our minds just at the moment.

My gaze fell on a series of pale oblong shapes on the wall opposite my seat. I frowned.

‘You’ve taken down the family photos,’ I said to Lottie.

She was hunched over her glass of wine and cast a dismissive glance up at the area.

‘I can’t settle to anything,’ she said. ‘I just think about Duane all the time. I thought, perhaps I’d make a start on redoing this kitchen. I could paint the walls and it would take my mind off it all. I went to Homebase and got a couple of tins of emulsion.’

‘What colour?’ asked Becky, showing a flicker of animation.

‘Sort of duck-egg blue.’

What colour jelly . . .?

I owed it to Edna not to let myself be outmanoeuvred by this trio. To be fair to them, it was that individual worry thing again. Lottie’s worry wasn’t what colour to paint the walls; it was who killed Duane and what this meant to her future. The Ferriers worried, I deduced, about old Mr Culpeper. But much as people try to seduce you into sharing their problems, mine was still my old ex-bag lady. I said as much and they turned to me.

Lottie was staring at me with mild interest, as if struck by a sudden thought. ‘Have you got a boyfriend or partner or anything?’

‘Not even an anything,’ I told her. ‘I’ve got a very good friend. We leave it at that. Why mess with an arrangement that works?’

Her expression changed and she leaned towards me with real seriousness in her face. ‘That’s so right,’ she said. She pointed at the denuded wall. ‘I’ve got a really nice pic of Duane. I thought I might have it enlarged and hang it there. What do you think?’

I didn’t share what leapt into my mind which was an image from that film,
Friendly Persuasion
. A Quaker farmer finds himself visiting a hillbilly cabin. Above the hearth, surrounded by a wreath, is a picture of the late head of the house, a grim-looking black-bearded type. Politely the visitor points heavenward. Firmly the widow responds by jabbing the stem of her pipe downwards. I saw the film on afternoon TV not long ago. I like old films. So I couldn’t help but wonder if Lottie would decorate Duane’s portrait with a silk bow and evergreen leaves. No, of course she wouldn’t. It was just my imagination behaving badly. I couldn’t control it, though I did my best.

‘Nice,’ was what I actually said aloud.

Adam Ferrier was growing restless. He probably feared this was going to descend into girl talk.

‘Lottie says you want to meet my grandfather.’

‘Yes, I do, and as soon as possible.’

‘That rather depends on his health on a given day. Some days he’s able to cope with strangers and some days he finds it all too much. Give me a phone number and I’ll call you.’

I gave him the number of Ganesh’s mobile. ‘I appreciate your grandfather has dodgy health,’ I told Adam, ‘but I do still need to see him asap.’

‘Will do,’ he said laconically.

It seemed we could only leave it at that. I had no wish to sit here with the gruesome threesome and they probably wanted to see the back of me. I stood up. ‘I’ll be in touch,’ I said sternly to Adam, just to let him know I wouldn’t be sitting around waiting for that promised call. If it didn’t come, he’d have me pestering him.

He reacted with a really antagonistic look. ‘I told you,’ he said coldly, ‘I’ll arrange it when it’s convenient.’

‘Great,’ I said and left.

You know how it is when you feel you’ve been dismissed? The French have a wonderful phrase about the ‘wit of the staircase’. It’s that clever reply you think of on your way out but unfortunately failed to think of when it was required. All the way back to North London I came up with various snappy quips to put Adam Ferrier in his place. By the time I got back home I was really frustrated.

Whether I did Ferrier a disservice or whether he realised I’d be a regular pain in the neck until he did what I wanted, he rang me late the following morning.

‘My sister has been to see our grandfather and it appears he’s able to meet you this afternoon. If you’re free, I’ll stop by and pick you up and take you there. Where do you live?’

I told him and he said, ‘Then it won’t be far. Just give me time to get to you.’

I remembered Lottie had told me he had a flat in Docklands. ‘Fine,’ I said. ‘I’ll be waiting.’

‘Two o’clock!’ he said crisply, swatting me again.

I tried to remember all the witty put-downs I’d worked out the previous evening on my way home and found I’d forgotten them all.

Adam turned up on time in a BMW. Perhaps the small car I’d seen at the house had belonged to Becky.

‘Flash wheels,’ I observed as I climbed in and buckled myself into the passenger seat.

‘Company car,’ he said briefly.

Why is it that once you are pretty well off, people start giving you things?

‘Are we going back to Teddington?’ I asked as we picked a way through the traffic.

‘No, not that far.’

I tried again. ‘Has your grandfather some particular medical problem or is his problem age-related?’

‘He’s recovering from surgery,’ Adam said in that clipped way and didn’t elaborate.

I didn’t ask further. He didn’t want to chat. Fair enough. When I met Grandpa I’d see for myself.

When I saw the place I gasped. It had that kind of effect on the first-time viewer. Normally I like to play it cool, but this house was really something. It was an old place, at a rough guess mid-Victorian, with weathered brickwork and elaborate stonework and carved gables. It was the kind of house that if it hadn’t been so beautifully maintained might have ended up looking spooky, as if either the Munsters or the Addams families might suddenly issue forth from the front door. But this was spick and span and so were the grounds. I realised the back garden must run down to the Regent’s Canal and probably had private mooring. The front drive was protected by a high electronically operated security gate. A burglar alarm stood out prominently on the façade of the house and the windows downstairs had those security grilles that concertina back and forth.You’d need to ram-raid this place to break in. Adam had been right in saying that location-wise it wasn’t far from me. But in social and financial terms we might as well have travelled to the Moon.

Adam glanced at me and allowed himself a little grin.

Smug bastard!
I thought. ‘Nice place,’ I said aloud, trying to retrieve my loss of poise, ‘worth a bit.’

He didn’t reply to that, just operated a remote control device. Slowly the gate slid to one side to admit us.

I knew Ferrier wasn’t the sort who thought it vulgar to discuss money. People like Adam talk money all the time. He knew to the last penny what the current market value of this house was. I guessed at least a couple of million. Perhaps more? Was he hoping to inherit it? Or were he and his sister to be joint heirs? And, more to the point, was the fact that Grandpa was worth a mint a relevant factor in all this? And where the hell did a bag lady come into it?