The House of Susan Lulham (Kindle Single) (10 page)

‘You’re saying he gave her the house out of…’

‘Pure spite? Not quite that simple but, in a way, yes.’

‘But the house was built out of—’

Merrily subsided. Anita looked away.

‘Absurd. Childish. Only in the cold light of day the reasons for it were far from childish. Is this starting to make sense? Should I go on?’

16. Diffident

Anita had a hand behind her head, looked twisted by regret.

‘I’d been divorced about a year, I had the freedom of being unattached. Care-free. I suppose… I suppose, to my shame, I thought it might be interesting to see what happened. That sounds awful. Christ, it
is
awful. I’m almost directly responsible, aren’t I?’

‘Something would’ve happened, sooner or later.’

‘But not necessarily
this!
’

‘Who knows.’

‘She… she’d wander down from her terrace sometimes, when he was away. With a bottle of wine. Get tipsy… there, where you’re sitting. She said Jonathan kept telling her he wanted a divorce. Which convinced her he was having sex with other women on all his courses and conferences. She thought if it did come to divorce she held the best cards. Pretty soon I wanted her out as much as Jonathan did. If the house was going to be a catalyst, then I wanted that to happen sooner rather than later.’

‘So you told her whose house she was living in.’

‘Yes. Yes, I did.’

‘Jonathan wanted you to tell her.’

‘He wanted
someone
to tell her. And nobody had. None of the neighbours like to talk about it. They’re not exactly proud of Susan Lulham or the house.’

‘So how did Zoe react when you told her?’

‘She asked me if Jonathan knew. I said I’d no reason to think he did. I’d always led her to believe we hadn’t known one another very well.’

‘She believed that?’

‘I don’t know. I thought she did, at the time. She certainly went home white-faced and tight-lipped that day, and we never spoke of Susan Lulham again.’

‘Last night… you said Zoe was telling him lies. Like she was pretending there was spooky stuff going on because he’d said he was going to leave her.’

‘Well…’

‘I got that wrong?’

‘No.’ A small squirm. ‘I mean, yes, I
said
that, but it wasn’t actually like that. He was waiting for
her
to say she wanted to leave. That she couldn’t stand to live there anymore. And then he’d say, Oh, don’t be ridiculous, you
wanted
this house, I’m not going to be driven out by insane superstition. He wanted
her
to go. Make the first move. I… wasn’t going to come out with all this last night, to a woman I’d just met for the first time.’

‘What did
you
want to happen?’

‘I just wanted them both to leave. Especially after Jonathan asked me - humorously, but it wasn’t - if I’d go away with him. I mean, for heaven’s
sake
… did he think I was crazy? Walk out of a failed marriage into the kind of appalling car-crash his was becoming? Anyway… they went on holiday soon after that. It was already booked. Florence.
His
kind of holiday. I think she’d have preferred Ibiza. I didn’t see much of her when they came back, but I don’t imagine there’d been a great reconciliation. I did notice she had a new hairstyle and was wearing bolder make-up. And clothes. Sharper clothes. As if she’d been influenced by Italian fashion. That was what I thought. Month or so later I met Jonathan in town, and it wasn’t jokey at all by then.’

‘In what way?’

‘Oh God, in every way. Since Susan’s suicide, everything up here had begun to seem darker. Just a general air of apprehension and anxiety. I thought it was me at first, becoming attuned to negative things amongst the neighbours - illness, another divorce. One couple had a son arrested for drug-dealing - he was at the cathedral school, for heaven’s sake, they thought they were immune. Even the people renting the house…’

‘The new house?’

‘There were two families in it. Polish. Very polite, evidently hard-working, came and went at all hours in two old vans. One of the women once told me they were working as hard as they could to get a place of their own, well away from here.’

‘She explain why?’

‘Didn’t ask. They were Catholics. They installed a crucifix above the door. Then one morning they were just gone. They’d actually moved out in the night, without a word. Then it was empty for four months, until the Mahonies came.’

Anita had moved to the main window and was staring out over the tree-shaded porch lights.

‘This had once seemed the most convenient and yet most protected place to live. Overlooking both city and countryside. It…’ She drew a breath through her lips. ‘A neighbour came to see me this morning and broke down. It wasn’t that she liked Zoe, but…’

Merrily said, ‘When you talked about Zoe with a new hairstyle and Italian fashion…’

‘What?’

‘As if she’d been influenced by—’

‘Don’t.’

Anita spinning round.

‘Don’t
what
?’ Merrily stepped away from the island unit, irritated now at the way they were circling something, looking down at it then looking away. ‘Where are we going with this, Anita? What do you want from me?’

‘I know what you were going to say.’ Anita was toying nervously with an end of her scarf. ‘Yes, you might’ve thought for a moment that she was turning into Susan. She was even losing weight. Much plumper when they moved in.’

‘I didn’t know that.’

‘Look,’ Anita said, ‘it’s not that I reject… whatever you believe. I suppose I’m like most of them here, don’t even think about it. We’re all… I don’t know … doctors, lawyers, accountants, CEOs, IT-consultants… Or retired from one of the above. We attend funerals for the sake of appearances, and other than that it isn’t part of our lives. Younger people can’t even remember when it was ever relevant. I…’

Anita stared out through the inky window where the reflections of the globular lights hung. There was a twitch at the side of her mouth, and she was lightly sweating.
I do admire you
, she’d said last night, quite smugly.
Can
’
t be easy
.

And getting harder all the time. It was clear that the other doors on the estate would always remain closed against people like Merrily. That she would not be meeting any of the doctors and the lawyers, the business people or the IT consultants - as representative a sample of the diffident, secular society as you could hope to find now in the posher suburbs of any British city.

She felt a sudden, quite devastating sense of loneliness, desertion.

Without really thinking about it, she was moving over to the pulled-down roller blind, taking hold of the wooden knob on the end of the cord, pulling it sharply. Stepping back as the blind went into its rapid spin and then, with a snap, let the house of Susan Lulham into the kitchen.

Like Susan Lulham might be her only real friend here.

Anita flinched.

In the shadows at the far end of the kitchen, a door swung open.

Merrily spun round and saw a man in a dark suit stood, stooping slightly, in the doorway.

17. Last Chance Saloon

She walked back to the Freelander in the next road and switched on her phone. One missed call: Bliss’s mobile. She ran the engine for warmth and called him back.

‘All checks out, Merrily. John Morgan, formerly of Villa Farm, Aylestone Hill, Hereford, is now living at Stoke Prior, near Leominster. And there was a suicide verdict, September 1969, on Harold Clifton, architect. Will that do?’

‘Yes. Thanks, Frannie. That was good of you.’

‘What you wanted to hear?’

‘Don’t know.’

What did it add up to, really? What
did
it add up to?

‘Whenever I think I’ve gorra crap job,’ Bliss said, ‘I always think of you and feel better.’

‘Ta, Frannie.’

Pause.

‘The Mahonie house is evidently built on land once owned by Morgan, correct?’

‘Mmm.’

‘You’re there, aren’t you?’

‘Well… close.’

‘Why do you
never
friggin’ —?’

‘Thing is—‘

‘No, forget it. I never asked.’

‘How’s Zoe?’

‘Quiet.’ Pause. ‘Anything you feel guilty about not telling me?’

‘Really don’t think so. None of it relates to the Mahonies, just the place. No history of great happiness. As you must’ve gathered. The CPS will turn away with its hands over its ears.’

‘The CPS’ve studied the early psychiatric reports. And the medical stuff, which suggest her wounds are so insignificant and strategic that nobody could think she wanted to cause herself serious harm. She’s mostly sullen, occasionally belligerent and, as things stand, they don’t see why we shouldn’t charge her with murder sooner rather than later.’

‘I see.’

‘So let’s not complicate things, eh, Merrily?’

* * *

‘You’ll be the death of me, lass,’ Huw Owen said.

TV-light was shivering behind the big windows of the estate homes. She’d driven round to park in front of Anita’s gate, where she’d told him the secret history: Harry Clifton, the Morgans, all that.

‘Don’t know what to do, Huw. I think I’ve been set up.’

‘Again?’

‘I’m not kidding, and it’s not self-pity. They don’t have a residents’ association up here - too posh for that stuff - but there’s been a discreet little gathering of neighbours to discuss, you know, things they don’t believe - things they can’t
possibly
believe - but which still don’t make for a healthy night’s sleep.’

‘A house which seems to want blood.’

‘Which is nonsense, of course. But it’s still… like a contaminant.’

‘They’re asking for your assistance?’

‘But only in a discreet back-handed kind of way. They don’t believe in mumbo-jumbo. They’re busy people with busy lives. This is the secular world.’

‘This is the future,’ Huw said. ‘For a while, anyway. It’ll get worse, then it might turn around. And this has come through the woman next door?’

‘And an elderly man, Geoffrey Unsworth, a veteran estate agent who, the first time we met, didn’t happen to disclose his address.’

‘They want some kind of closure,’ Merrily said to Huw. ‘But obviously they don’t want to be involved in the process.’

‘Except this old feller.’

How long have you been here?
She’d said to the man in the shadows.

Approaching forty years
, Mr Unsworth had told her.

‘He’d told me everything this afternoon except that he’d bought one of the first houses himself. For bugger-all, presumably, seeing Lang/Copper had been the agents for the estate.’

‘So Sophie Hill’s husband…’

‘Was, presumably, approached by Geoffrey Unsworth, in a roundabout way to get word back to me through Sophie. I doubt Sophie knew about it, she’d have told me.’

‘Estate agents always like to go round the back,’ Huw said. ‘So he must’ve known the Lulham woman, too.’

‘His house is almost opposite the New House. He was there the night she died.’

‘What’s the woman like? The next-door neighbour.’

‘Anita Wells? Heart’s in the right place. I think.’

‘And the bottom line?’

Merrily remembered something Anita had said last night:
I don
’
t believe in ghosts, but I
’
d still hate to live there
.

‘Disturbed house. Infected. What will it do next? Well, who knows? What if Zoe comes back… I mean soon? What if she’s bailed? These things do happen nowadays. Even conspicuously dangerous people get bail because we’re running out of places to put them.’

‘What’s the Bishop say?’

‘Not a lot. He’ll be gone before Christmas. I guess if I rang him now he’d tell me to walk away and stay away. The owner of the house is not here.’

‘And cops still have possession.’

‘They’ve finished. They’ve even had it cleaned up, apparently.’

‘But you can get in, anyway.’

‘Ah…’

She looked up at the New House, a greasy moon kissing the row of tooth-like windows between the dark conservatory and the flat section of roof. In Anita Wells’ kitchen, extra lights had been put on. Through the window, she saw Anita and Geoffrey Unsworth both looking out towards her.’

‘Anita Wells has a key.’

‘Bugger.’

‘Jonathan gave it to her when they went on holiday, in case anything needed attention.’

Huw said, ‘You want me to come over?’

‘Hell, no, I’m not dragging you across the Beacons at—’

‘At my age?’

‘At this time of night. Because it might be nothing.’

‘It always might be nothing, lass.’ Huw’s laugh was slightly unhealthy. ‘It might
all
be nowt more than a condition in our heads. It’s the agony we live with.’

‘What the bloody hell have we become?’

‘We’re what we’ve always been.’ Huw said. ‘The last-chance saloon. Happen I’ll open up me church. Light a few candles. Backup.’

‘You mean I should do it? With these people? Oh hell, I’m sorry that sounds—’

‘You’re saying you’d rather have a bunch of cross-waving evangelicals who think you’re God’s handmaiden?’

She started to laugh bleakly.

‘Aylestone Hill,’ Huw said. ‘I’ve looked it up on t’ map. Where it stands in relation to the cathedral and the other hills.’

‘It’s all built over. You can’t really tell it’s a hill.’

‘Use the cathedral,’ Huw said. ‘Bring it closer. Use the city. As for the house…’

‘Exorcism of place?’

‘You need a focus.’

‘Susan Lulham.’

‘Happen.’

* * *

She got out of the Freelander, followed the pavement to a turning circle and a tree-draped gap in the housing with a view over the lights of Hereford. She stood for a while, regulating her breathing.

The hum of night traffic. A prayer.

She raised her head, saw a thin band of amber in the sky, but the cathedral was invisible in the blackness between the lights.

18. Travelling light

‘It would, essentially, be a funeral,’ Merrily said.

Three stools around the island unit. More coffee. She’d reminded them that funerals were not what they used to be. Cremation could be a conveyor-belt, with a priest like some duty GP in a clinic knowing little more about the customer than was on his computer.
Very small, very swift
- Sophie on Suze’s dispatch.
The eulogy brief and dishonest. What else could they do under the circumstances?