Tigerlily's Orchids (33 page)

What she had found was Stuart's blue leather case and if there was any doubt there were his initials –
SF
– on its lid.

*

M
olly's first reaction was not anger or sorrow or even wonder. It was terror. Sweat broke out on her upper lip, yet she was shaking. Her hands were shaking so much that they had become almost useless. What you were supposed to do in this situation was take deep breaths. She took deep breaths. She clenched her hands and released them. There was something else in the bag, something wrapped in rags, but she was afraid to unwrap it. Taking it in her now steadying hands, she felt through the cloth the outlines of a large knife.

She knew exactly what all this meant but still she remained sitting there, holding the small blue suitcase in her hands. Without putting it down she struggled awkwardly to her feet. Carl would soon be back. She knew what she must do before he came, call the police, find her mobile and call the police. She could see it on the dusty cluttered mantelpiece. Standing now, taking a tentative step, then another, she reached for it and found it – dead. It had been all right when she'd phoned Duncan but that had been the last of the battery before it needed recharging.

The suitcase was still in her arms when she heard Carl's feet on the stairs. She kicked one bag after another in front of her and took refuge between them and the window. He walked in, said, ‘Give me that, bitch.'

Afterwards she thought how amazing it was that strength and energy came to you when you needed them, when it was a matter of life and death. She bent down, grabbed the box of china and hurled it at him. It struck him on the head, making him duck. She flung up the window sash, threw the suitcase out and leapt after it.

He was half out of the window when she pulled the sash down, trapping him, his head and arms held like a man in the stocks.

Down on the pavement she could see Stuart's suitcase, saw
a woman come out of a house, pick it up and look up at her. ‘Call the police,' she shouted. ‘Call them now.'

A crowd began to gather. A crowd always does. When he saw them Carl retreated back into the room, letting the window fall shut. Molly went slowly down the ladder, crying now, making little moaning sounds. At the bottom, another woman, big, blonde, motherly, stepped forward and took her in her arms.

‘You poor dear, you poor lamb, and look at your poor face.'

D
uncan had dreaded this happening but when it did and he got used to it he liked it. Molly came for one night, then for two, sleeping in the big spare room with the view and putting her bath essence and body lotion in the bathroom. But there his imagined scenario ended and when she started cooking for him and making real coffee for visitors he said he didn't see why she shouldn't stay on and be his lodger while her course lasted.

Carl Rossini and Walter Scurlock came up in court at much the same time, but Carl's appearance in the magistrates' court on a charge of murder was only a preliminary hearing which would lead eventually to his trial at the Central Criminal Court. Wally, who was charged on several counts in connection with indecent images of children, went to prison for a year and had his name put on the sex offenders' register.

Richenda took no special interest in the trial and its outcome beyond reading about it in the
Daily Mail
where there was a triple-column picture of Wally being led between two policemen past a baying crowd, a bag over his head.

‘Hope they tie a string round it and pull it tight,' said Richenda to one of the ladies she cleaned for in Hereford House.

Later that same day she was standing on the opposite pavement chatting to Duncan about the empty flats in Lichfield
House, all those For Sale notices on poles sprouting like
trees
in the front garden, when a taxi drew up outside and a woman got out. The taxi driver followed her, making two journeys to drop large suitcases on the doorstep. She was a large woman. Someone less dignified or with less perfect posture would have been called obese. About forty-five years old, she wore garments which could be taken for a uniform, though they were not, a small black hat that might have had a peak but did not, a black suit with epaulettes and brass buttons, a mid-calf-length skirt and sensible lace-up shoes. The taxi driver was tipped – not generously if his expression was anything to go by – and the woman lifted the cases one by one into the hallway. When the automatic doors had closed behind her, Richenda said, ‘That will be Mrs Charteris.'

‘And who's she when she's at home?' Duncan asked in his facetious way.

‘She's at home now. She's the new caretaker, that bastard's replacement. And she wants to be called Mrs, not whatever her first name is. We'll see how long that lasts.'

‘Caretaker, is she?' said Duncan. ‘She's got no one to take care of.' And he went indoors to where Molly was making a cassoulet for their dinner from a Nigella Lawson recipe.

But gradually the new occupants came, a married couple, an unmarried couple, two girls sharing, a single woman, a single man and a single mother with a small girl. Duncan watched them from his front windows, imagining lives and dramas for them that bore no relation to reality.