The Oxmarket Aspal Murder Mystery (3 page)

A while later, I watched the daylight strengthen on her sleeping face.  Her hair lay tangled round her head and when she woke, even before she opened her eyes, she was smiling.

“Good morning,” I said.

“Morning.”

She moved towards me in the big bed.

“What time is it?”

“Nearly eight.”

“Good job it’s Saturday,” she commented.

“I’ve still got to work.”  I said sadly.

“Like some breakfast?” She offered.

“I’d love some,” I said. 

“Take a shower, while I’m getting it ready.”

I did as I was told and dressed and refreshed walked into the kitchen of her apartment to find her busying away preparing breakfast.  I sipped the freshly made percolated coffee and watched her slice the ends off a grapefruit and placed it on one of the cut sides.  Using a small sharp knife, cut off the peel and pith, working her way around the fruit.  Next, she cut the membranes to release the segments and put them in a salad bowl along with any juice that had collected on the board.  She then did the same thing with some oranges.

She smiled at me as she removed a melon from the refrigerator and cut it in half and scooped out the seeds.  Sliding a knife between the flesh and the skin she chucked out the skin before cutting the melon flesh into small pieces.  She added the melon to the citrus fruits and scattered over some grapes and mint leaves.

Finally she cut the remaining orange in half, squeezed out the juice and poured it over the salad, tossing it lightly and then serving it with low-fat natural yoghurt.  Kimberley called it her wakey-wakey breakfast and it certainly was.

“What case are you working on at the moment?”  She asked suddenly.

I gave her a brief outline and she remained in situ until I had finished.

“I knew Marcus Dye.”

“Did you?”

“We worked briefly together a few years ago before I joined
Bio-Preparations
.”

“What was he like?”

“Quiet, unassuming and definitely not a murderer.”

“That’s what I’ve got to prove.”

“I don’t like the idea of you staying away.”

“I’ve got no choice with this one, darling.”

“Where are you staying?”

“At the Bellagamba Guest House.”

Kimberley laughed endlessly and wouldn’t tell me why.

4

With great distaste, I looked round the room in which I stood.  It was a room of gracious proportions but there its attraction ended.  I drew a suspicious finger along the top of a bookcase and found immediately what I had suspected – dust!  I sat down gingerly on a sofa and its broken springs sagged depressingly under me.  The two faded armchairs were, as I knew, little better.  A large fierce-looking dog growled from his position on the moderately comfortable fourth chair.

The room was large, and had faded wallpaper and engravings of unpleasant subjects hung crookedly on the walls with one or two good oil paintings.  The chair covers were both faded and dirty, the carpet had holes in it and had never been of a pleasant design.  A good deal of miscellaneous bric-a-brac was scattered haphazardly here and there.  Tables rocked dangerously and one window was open, and no power on earth could, apparently shut it again.  The door, temporarily shut, was not likely to remain so.  The latch did not hold, and with every gust of wind it burst open and whirling gusts of cold eddied round the room.

Now I knew why Kimberley had laughed at me for so long.

The door burst open and the wind and Mrs Bellagamba came in together.  She looked round the room, shouted “What?” to someone in the distance and went out again.

Mrs Karen Bellagamba had red hair and an attractively freckled face and since I had arrived was usually in a distracted state of putting things down, or else looking for them.

I sprang to my feet and shut the door.

A moment or two later it opened again and Mrs Bellagamba reappeared.  This time she was carrying a plastic bowl and a knife.

A man’s voice from some way called out:  “Karen, that cat’s been sick again.  What shall I do?”

“I’m coming darling,” she called.  “Hold everything.”

She dropped he bowl and the knife and went out again.  I got up again and shut the door, cursing under my breath.

A car pulled up, and the large dog leaped from the chair and raised its voice to a crescendo of barking.  He jumped on a small table by the window and the table collapsed with a crash.

The door burst open, the wind surged round the room and the dog rushed out, still barking.  Karen’s voice came, upraised loud and clear.

“Eric, why the hell did you leave the back door open!  Those bloody hens are in the larder.”

Fucking hell
, I thought angrily,
I’m paying two hundred and twenty pounds a week for this shit!

Then the door banged to with a crash. Through the window came the loud squawking of irate hens.  Then the door flew open again and Karen Bellagamba came in and fell upon the basin with a cry of joy.

“Couldn’t remember where I’d left it.  My memory is so bad.  Would you mind if I sliced the beans in here.  The kitchen stinks horrible at the moment.”

“Fine,” I shrugged, admitting that since my arrival, it had been the first time in twenty-four hours that I’d had any chance of a conversation of more than six seconds long.

Karen Bellagamba flung herself down in a chair and began slicing beans with frenzied energy and considerable awkwardness.

“I do hope that everything is to your liking?”

“Yes,” I said politely.  “It’s a shame you haven’t got anyone else to share the burden of running this place.”

“I did have,” she exclaimed with a squeal.  “She was brilliant.  Unfortunately she was murdered.”

“That would be Faith Roberts?” I said quickly.

“It was.  God, how I miss her.  I can’t cope.”

“You got on well then?”

“She was so reliable.  She came Monday afternoon and Thursday mornings – just like clockwork.  She like to snoop around a bit but she was harmless.  Now I have that Stratton woman from up by the golf course.  Five children and a husband.  Naturally she’s never here.  Either the husband’s ill, or the children are ill.  With Faith, she was never ill. The first time she never turned up, she was dead.”

The face of Eric Bellagamba appeared at the window.  Karen sprang up, upsetting the beans, and rushed across to the window, which she opened to the fullest extent.

“Look here,” he displayed a colander full of greenery, “is this enough spinach?”

“Of course not.”

“Seems like a bloody load to me.”

“It’ll be about a teaspoonful when it’s cooked.  Don’t you know by now what spinach is like?”

“Oh bollocks!”

“Have you got the fish out of the freezer yet?”

“Well, you’d better go and do that now, otherwise that won’t be thawed out in time.”

“What about the spinach?”

“I’ll get that.”  She leaped through the window, and husband and wife moved away together.

I crossed the room and closed the window as nearly as I could. The voice of Eric Bellagamba came to me borne on the wind.

“Who is the new guest, Karen?  Looks a bit dodgy to me.  Bloody London accent. What’s his name?”

“John Handful, I think he said.”

“I have seen him somewhere.”  He said.  “Better get the money out of him, quick.”

The voices died away.

I picked up the beans from the floor where they scattered far and wide.  Just as I had finished, Karen Bellagamba came in again through the door.

I presented them to her politely.  “There you go.”

“Thank you.”

I went past her and shut the door.

“Sorry, I’m always leaving doors open.”

“I’ve noticed.”  I joked.

“That bloody door never shuts.  This house is practically falling to pieces. Eric’s Mum and Dad lived here and they weren’t well off and they never tried to renovate the place.  And then when we came home from Tuscany to live here, we couldn’t afford to do anything either. It’s fun for the children in the holidays, though, lots of room to run wild in, and the garden and everything.  Having paying guests here just enables us to keep going.”

“Am I your only guest here at the moment?”

“There’s lady upstairs.  Been here a few days now.  Never comes out of her room. Eats in there.  Doing some sort of research.”  She paused for a moment before resuming in a slightly artificial voice.  “I wonder if you’d mind paying the first week’s rent in advance.  I take it you are staying for a week?”

“Perhaps longer.”  I took out my wallet and handed over the cash.

Karen Bellagamba gathered the money up with avidity.  “My husband says he recognises you from somewhere.”

“I’m a private detective,” I said slowly.  “I was on the television and in the local newspapers last year after I had solved a high profile case.”

“So, what brings you to Oxmarket Aspal?”

“I am investigating the murder of Faith Roberts.”

“Ouch,” she said.  “I’ve cut my hand.”

She raised a finger and inspected it.  Then she stared at me.

“Are you serious?”  She said.  “They arrested that Marcus Dye.  He’s been tried and convicted and everything.”

“He didn’t do it.”

Karen Bellagamba’s attention diverted from me to the bowl in her lap. “I’m bleeding all over the beans. Not too good as we’ve got them for dinner.  Still it won’t matter because they’ll go into boiling water.”

“I forgot to tell you,” I said quickly, “I won’t be here for dinner.”

5

              “I don’t know, I’m sure.”  Sarah Young said.

              She had said that three times already.  Her natural distrust of private detectives was not easily overcome.

              “It’s been a nightmare,” she went on.  “With Auntie Faith being murdered and the police and all that.  Stomping around everywhere, ferretting about and asking questions.  With the neighbours nosing about.  I didn’t think at first we’d ever here the end of it.  And my mother-in-law has been the bitch from hell about it.  Nothing like that ever happened in her family, she kept on saying.  What about my poor aunt?”

              “And supposing that Marcus Dye is innocent after all?”

              “That’s rubbish,” she snapped.  “He’s as guilty as sin.  I never did like the look of him.  But Aunt Faith said he was very obliging and gave her no trouble.  Well, she know better now, doesn’t she?”

              I looked thoughtfully at her.  She was a big, plump woman with a healthy colour and a good-humoured mouth.  The small house as neat and clean and a faint appetising smell came from the direction of the kitchen.

              Di Silver had gone into the financial background of Mr and Mrs Young and had found no motive there for murder, and the Detective Inspector was a very thorough man.

              I sighed, and persevered with my task, which was the breaking down of Sarah Young’s suspicion of private detectives.  I led the conversation away from the murder and focused on the victim of it.  I asked questions about her aunt, her health and her habits, her preferences in food and drink, her politics, her late husband, her attitude to life, to sex, to sin, to religion, to children, to animals.

              Whether any of this irrelevant matter would be of use, I had no idea.  I was looking through a haystack to find a needle.  But, incidentally, I was learning something about Sarah Louise Young.

              Sarah did not really know very much about her aunt.  It had been a family tie, honoured as such, but without intimacy.  Now and again, once a month or so, she and her husband Michael had gone over on a Sunday to have midday dinner with Aunt Faith, and more rarely she come over to see them.  They had exchanged presents at Christmas.  They’d known that Aunt Faith had a little something put by, and that they’d get it when she died.

              “But that’s not to say we were needing it,” Sarah Young explained with rising colour.  “We’ve got savings and we made sure that Aunt Faith got a good send off.”

              Aunt Faith had been fond of reading and loved
Strictly Come Dancing
on the television. She didn’t like dogs, they messed up a place, but she used to have a cat – a ginger.  It strayed away and she hadn’t had one since, but the woman at the post office had been going to give her a kitten.  Kept her house very neat and didn’t like litter.  She made a nice little living out of her cleaning, especially from the Brooks-Nunn’s. Rolling in money they are.  Tried to get Aunt Faith to come more days in the week, but she wouldn’t disappoint her other clients because she’d gone to them before she went to the Brooks-Nunn’s, and it wouldn’t have been right.

              I mentioned the Bellagamba’s.

              Oh yes, Aunt Faith went to her – two days a week.  They’d come back from Italy and Mrs Bellagamba didn’t know a thing about the house.  They tried to market-garden, but they didn’t know anything about that, either.  When the children and grandchildren stayed the house was just pandemonium.  But Mrs Bellagamba was a nice lady and Aunt Faith liked her.