Untimely Graves (4 page)
Authors: Marjorie Eccles
Then, with an impetuosity worthy of her fellow inspector, Martin Kite, she blurted out: ‘That leak, to the press. I’d just like to say that – it didn’t come from me.’
He put down the pen he’d been clicking and regarded her steadily. ‘I never for a moment thought it had, Abigail.’
Whether he was speaking the strict truth or not, it sounded genuine – at least indicated he wasn’t saving anything up for some future occasion. She felt a rush of relief, unnecessary, for since when had Mayo ever been one to hold a grudge? You might get a right bollocking at the time, if you did the wrong thing, but he never bore malice. Bluntly north country, he said what he thought, and then forgot it. ‘Nothing more we can do here tonight. Go home, and have an early night, while you’ve got the chance.’
She heard herself saying, ‘No rush, Ben’s away at the moment.’
She hadn’t been fishing, honest she hadn’t, but now was the chance for him to suggest that since Alex was too, they could
grab a meal together, but he merely said, with a smile, ‘An even earlier night, then.’
grab a meal together, but he merely said, with a smile, ‘An even earlier night, then.’
She could have suggested the meal herself, of course she could, but she was, as always, wary that it might have been construed wrongly. The thought that she could easily, if she let herself, find him very attractive, was intermittent, but never all that far away. Nor was the thought that he was her best chum’s man. Rubbish! A quick meal with a colleague, what was wrong with that? Nothing, if the colleague wasn’t Mayo.
He said kindly, ‘You’re looking tired, lass. Do as I suggested, and get off home. And that’s an order.’
They just didn’t have any idea, did they, men?
‘I know the house is going to rack and ruin, my lovey, I know it is, but what can I do?’
Eileen Totterbridge poured Sam a mug of her thick, bracing tea, added milk, sweetened it the way she knew he’d always liked it and passed it across the kitchen table. Sam leaned his broad shoulders against the high-backed kitchen chair, raised his mug to her and sipped. Nectar! He never felt he was really home again until he’d been rejuvenated by Mrs Totty’s tea and entertained by her conversation. She was just the same, too, his lovely Mrs Totty, whom he’d known all his life. Burbling on, comforting, kind, her round face concerned as she tried to excuse the deteriorating condition of 16 Kelsey Road, even though it wasn’t remotely her responsibility.
‘You can’t do any more than you do,’ he reassured her. ‘Which is more than any of us have a right to expect in the circumstances.’
‘Oh, rubbish! If I can’t manage two mornings a week, after all these years, I don’t know what. I’d come in more, willingly, you know I would, but there’s my other cleaning job, and Joe, and there’s the grandchildren. Seven of’em, now, and their mums have to go out to work, Sam, you know how it is. Nobody can live on one wage nowadays, or nobody wants to, and that’s the truth.’
Sam reached out for a chocolate Hobnob and thought it wiser not to mention her increasing age, which must also be a contributing factor. She really ought to be retired altogether. Her fingers were knobbly with arthritis, and he’d noticed how much more stiffly she was moving, but he knew she hated the idea of not being as active as she had been all her life: she was into her seventies but she’d always said it would be the beginning of the end if she’d nothing better to do than discuss her ailments. Apart from that, she wasn’t looking a scrap different – her hair had been resolutely dyed and was as richly brown as ever, done up in a neat perm. The nylon overall over the checked, pleated skirt
and a pink, round-necked jumper, the little gilt studs in her ears and the scent of violet talc were reassuringly as they’d always been.
and a pink, round-necked jumper, the little gilt studs in her ears and the scent of violet talc were reassuringly as they’d always been.
‘I’m sure Dorrie’s only too glad you can come in at all,’ he said.
‘Yes, well.’ She looked as though she was about to say more, but hesitated, then changed the subject, smiling at him. ‘I must say, it’s grand to see you looking so well, Sam, dear. How’ve you got so brown, then, when they don’t have any sun down there? Come on, have another biscuit, you need feeding, a big chap like you, though you don’t look as though they’ve been starving you, I’ll say that! Isn’t it wonderful what they can do nowadays? Even down at the South Pole.’
Sam smiled his slow, attractive smile and stretched his long legs. He hadn’t exactly been living on the fat of the land recently, while working as a geophysicist, part of an inter-disciplinary research unit on the Polar Ice Cap, but life had been reasonably civilised, the food had been quite amazing, considering. ‘There’s a lot more sun down there than up here, sometimes, and no, we haven’t been living on whale meat and pemmican, exactly.’
‘I can see that – oh, it’s grand to have you back, my lovey, we’ve all missed you, especially Dorrie. She’s been like a dog with two tails ever since she heard you were coming home, and no wonder. It’ll do her the world of good to have you here. Three years, it’s a long time when you’re knocking on, like we are.’
He smiled, wondering what his Aunt Dorrie would think of that comparison. Mrs Totty could give Dorrie ten years, though despite that, and her hard life, she’d come out better on the whole. Dorrie had changed, not physically, but in some other, indefinable way … she was still the same odd, eccentric little person he’d always known, soft floppy hair pulled back from her face into a knot, a thick fringe falling over her eyes and seriously interfering with the big, round, owlish glasses. Still with the same soft, slow, solemn way of talking, and the sudden smile that, had he known it, echoed his own. A sweet contentment had always seemed part of her, though sometimes he thought he’d detected faint echoes of sadness. A regret, perhaps, for something that had never been, but it was hard to say what, so faintly and so occasionally was it glimpsed. Missed opportunities perhaps.
Dorrie had never had a career, never married, never, so far as he was aware, even had a love affair.
Dorrie had never had a career, never married, never, so far as he was aware, even had a love affair.
Sam Leadbetter had been orphaned at an early age, and though he’d spent most of his time at boarding school, the house in Kelsey Road was home to him, the place he’d always come back to in the holidays, back to Dorrie. His beloved aunt, his mother’s sister, was his only living relative, the person he’d loved most in the world, despite realising, as he grew older, that she wasn’t quite like other people. The amused glances that followed them whenever they went out had first told him that, Dorrie looking like a bag lady in a haphazard collection of garments, with her hair escaping from its knot into straggling wisps round her face. Sometimes wellingtons on her feet with an old cotton dress, if she’d forgotten to change them after gardening, or dressed up in ancient finery, as if for a garden party, to go and buy vegetables. Her mother’s tatty old musquash fur coat and her strange hats. The indulgent way the shopkeepers treated her, the way the vicar humoured her because she was more than generous with her donations to church funds – but also, Sam had come to believe, because he was fond of her as well. Anyone who really knew Dorrie couldn’t help loving her. Old Dorrie Lockett, mad as a hatter.
But no, even as a child he’d known that wasn’t right, and fiercely defended her against anyone who even hinted at it – just living on another plane, but even so quite often able to cut through the conventional ways of looking at things that hampered other people, and to give one a sharp glance and a surprisingly wise judgement. Not mad. Just someone happy not to live her life by other people’s prescribed rules.
Was she still happy, though? Coming home again after a long absence, Sam had immediately sensed a jitteriness that was foreign to her, a worry at the back of her eyes, an uncertainty that surely hadn’t been there before he went away. She’d never mentioned in her letters that anything was troubling her, though, and he’d read nothing between the lines of her almost impossible to decipher backward script.
‘Though of course,’ said Mrs Totty, as if a party to his thoughts, ‘there isn’t as much for me to do as there used to be. Sensible, if you think about it, though, shutting most of the place up. Who needs all that space, living on their own, when all’s said
and done? Better live in two tidy rooms than in twelve like a pigsty I say, though I’d never let her come to that, not me, never, you can bank on that, Sam.’
and done? Better live in two tidy rooms than in twelve like a pigsty I say, though I’d never let her come to that, not me, never, you can bank on that, Sam.’
It didn’t need saying. The kitchen here, though so old-fashioned it might qualify for a Heritage award, was spotlessly clean, as was the bathroom, and the two bedrooms still in use. The bright and sunny former morning room Dorrie had chosen to live in was untidy, as anything around Dorrie was bound to be, but hoovered and polished within an inch of its life by Mrs Totty. But he had been shocked all the same, to see how bad a state of repair the rest of the house was in when he’d gone poking around, searching for his own left-behind belongings on the morning after his arrival. So familiar he hadn’t noticed anything untoward before he went away, but impossible to miss now, with the furniture sheeted up, the pictures removed. Broken cornices, peeling wallpaper, wet and dry rot, mice scuttling behind the wainscotting. It didn’t need Mrs Totty to tell him it had slid into neglect, and he was ashamed he’d never really looked at it seriously before; it couldn’t have reached that stage so quickly. But those few years had signalled for him the passing of the borderline into more responsible attitudes: before then, he’d never noticed such things, and in any case, leaving England so precipitously, so preoccupied with his own troubled mind, he’d been in no state to be thinking about the house, so far were his concerns fixed on other things, or at any rate, on one other person …
‘She’ll have to sell, you know, sooner or later, she’ll have to give in. The school keeps pestering her, they’ve offered her a good price, and she could get herself a nice little bungalow, one of those retirement homes up by the rec …’ But even Mrs Totty’s optimism faltered at the idea of Dorrie away from Kelsey Road, living in a bungalow. ‘Well, maybe not,’ she admitted with a sigh. ‘It’d be too much to expect of her, wouldn’t it?’
‘So why
are
the school so anxious to buy?’
are
the school so anxious to buy?’
The house backed on to the playing fields of Lavenstock College, the minor public school whose Victorian buildings could be seen in the distance, surrounding the chapel and its clock tower. A familiar, well-loved view. Across the sweep of green turf, the irregular yet orderly grouping of buildings looked serene, peaceful and traditional, especially when a cricket match
was in progress, though in truth more pleasing from afar than they did on closer inspection. Once, at a time when the Butterfield-style, polychrome, brick-and-stone-banded school had just been built in the High Victorian Gothic tradition, when the great horse chestnuts surrounding the playing fields were new, Lavenstock College had stood with its back to open fields, the town and its industry falling away below it to the river; now the town had crept upwards and outwards and spread itself around the school, a new housing estate having filled in the last empty space to complete its encirclement.
was in progress, though in truth more pleasing from afar than they did on closer inspection. Once, at a time when the Butterfield-style, polychrome, brick-and-stone-banded school had just been built in the High Victorian Gothic tradition, when the great horse chestnuts surrounding the playing fields were new, Lavenstock College had stood with its back to open fields, the town and its industry falling away below it to the river; now the town had crept upwards and outwards and spread itself around the school, a new housing estate having filled in the last empty space to complete its encirclement.
He’d asked Dorrie the same question last night – why did the school want to buy? – but she’d shrugged and evaded a proper answer. Mrs Totty, on the other hand, could hardly wait to inform him. ‘Well, you know, they’ve already bought three of the houses either side of here – oh yes, they have, starting when him at number 12 retired and put his house on the market! When the folks next door to him saw what price he’d got from the school, they weren’t slow to follow suit, I can tell you! The school bought that as well, and made an offer for this and for number 18, which 18 jumped at – but not Dorrie! A real thorn in their flesh, she is!’ she finished, not without satisfaction.
Sam, too, felt indignant on Dorrie’s behalf. She’d been born in the house sixty-odd years ago, and had lived there with every expectation of staying there until she died. Why should pressure be put on her to move if she didn’t want to?
‘What it is, you see, lovey, once they’ve got all four, they mean to have them down, to make a new entrance for the school. That new estate that’s been built either side the Tilbourne Road, see, near the present school entrance, well, it’s lowered the tone! Don’t want the posh parents in their Rolls Royces and their Bentleys having to drive through
that,
do they? They want to make a new entrance along here, and then put up some schoolrooms or whachoumaycallems where the present entrance is, to screen the estate.’
that,
do they? They want to make a new entrance along here, and then put up some schoolrooms or whachoumaycallems where the present entrance is, to screen the estate.’
Sam could see now what the school was after. Kelsey Road was generally regarded as one of the best roads in Lavenstock, quiet, tree-lined, unassuming, houses of different styles and ages mingling easily together, some of them substantial properties with big gardens, some less so. A school entrance leading off Kelsey Road would form a very pleasant and dignified approach
to the school. On the other hand, buying four houses to pull down simply for that purpose was going a bit over the top. Wasn’t it?
to the school. On the other hand, buying four houses to pull down simply for that purpose was going a bit over the top. Wasn’t it?
‘ … but you know, Sam,’ Mrs Totty was going on, ‘those Tilbourne Road houses
aren’t
an eyesore, they’re lovely, really. Wouldn’t mind one myself, anyway.’ She sighed. ‘Chance’d be a fine thing, eh?’
aren’t
an eyesore, they’re lovely, really. Wouldn’t mind one myself, anyway.’ She sighed. ‘Chance’d be a fine thing, eh?’
So it would, Sam thought, with Joe Totterbridge, her useless husband, around. Bone idle before he became entitled to his state retirement pension, he did virtually nothing now except sit on his backside and watch television.
‘It’d break Dorrie’s heart to leave this house, Mrs Totty.’
She paused in the act of picking up the teapot, and stared at him. ‘Sam, I’m as fond of you as I am of my own, but I’ve always said it and I’ll say it again. There’s nobody so daft as a man when he doesn’t want to see what’s right in front of his eyes!’
With this Delphic utterance, she raised her own eyes to heaven, leaving Sam, for the moment, at a loss, until she went on, ‘Break her heart? Lord love us, she hates this house, always has done, and it’s nothing but a burden to her now! The only thing it’d break her heart to leave is her garden, and I’d like to see the one who could make her do that!’
Sam blinked and turned a disbelieving regard on the jungle outside the window. At one time, Joe Totterbridge had kept it in reasonable order, until superannuation from his job as a storekeeper down at the glassworks had signalled his abdication from almost any form of physical activity except walking down to the pub. It came as a shock to see what even such a relatively short spell of neglect could do – if a prime example of exponential growth was needed, look no further. It hadn’t been tidied up before the winter and looked forlorn, pathetic and abandoned. Dead herbaceous stems stuck up like witches’ brooms and withered grasses waved in an unending prairie. A rotting pergola had collapsed under the weight of a great, unchecked rambler. Willow herb that was rosily beautiful in summer was ominous in its spread and the threat of its feathery seed heads. Brambles had taken over entirely in one corner. The paths were invisible.
But even as he surveyed this scene of desolation, determined to set about and tackle it the very next day, he realised Mrs Totty wasn’t speaking of Dorrie’s garden. She meant Dorrie’s
garden,
a
different proposition altogether: the other garden, where once a wide drive and a double coach house had existed, a sunken plot constructed on the site of a shallow bomb crater, the result of a bomb dropped on Lavenstock during the war. Jettisoned at random by a crippled, home-going German bomber after the raid on nearby Coventry, less than twenty miles away, on the infamous night when a beautiful, medieval city centre and its cathedral had been reduced to rubble, this particular bomb had landed, injuring no one, while Coventry already mourning its dead and injured, was in flames.
garden,
a
different proposition altogether: the other garden, where once a wide drive and a double coach house had existed, a sunken plot constructed on the site of a shallow bomb crater, the result of a bomb dropped on Lavenstock during the war. Jettisoned at random by a crippled, home-going German bomber after the raid on nearby Coventry, less than twenty miles away, on the infamous night when a beautiful, medieval city centre and its cathedral had been reduced to rubble, this particular bomb had landed, injuring no one, while Coventry already mourning its dead and injured, was in flames.
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