Murder My Neighbour

Plenty of built-in cupboards. Linen room.

Vera threw open one last door. ‘And this was her own bedroom, with its own wet-room en suite. She liked it because it overlooked the garden and caught the . . .’ Her voice tailed away.

Ellie followed Vera’s gaze. The room had been papered in a blue and white Chinese design of peonies. A handmade paper? A square of darker colour on the far wall showed where a large bed had once stood. The design of the wallpaper on either side was smudged.

Vera looked uneasy. Almost scared. ‘I don’t understand. Last winter she got bronchitis and had to stay in bed for a while. She was that rocky on her feet she upset her coffee over the wallpaper. I tried to clean it off, but the design was hand-painted, ever so old. Some of the colour came off and the pattern got smudged even though I tried my hardest not to spoil it.

‘She was distressed because her husband had done the room out for her special. That was the only time I ever saw her cry, but she wasn’t well, you know. I said she ought to have someone come in to look after her and what about her stepdaughter, but that made Mrs Pryce have a choking fit because Edwina only ever looked out for herself and her granddaughter was even worse, which I should have known better than to suggest. Mrs Pryce asked Pet if she’d come round in the evenings to get her some food, but Pet couldn’t as she had a second job in the evenings then, though it didn’t work out, which was a pity because they were saving as much as they could.

‘So I said I’d come like a shot if it weren’t for Mikey, who can be a bit . . . well, you know. So she said to bring Mikey and let him watch telly or a video downstairs, which I did and he was fine for about half an hour but then he came looking for me and the next thing I know he was up on the bed with her, going through her bits and pieces of jewellery, happy as Larry, and he was trying on her necklaces, and then putting them on her head like a tiara. And she got better after that.’ Vera scrubbed at her cheeks; removing tears?

‘So the paper got stained on the far side of the bed last winter. And this side?’

Vera rung her hands. ‘It was clean last I saw it, which was on the day before she left.’

Ellie bent down to the stain on the right. Something had been spilt on the paper all right, and someone had tried to clean it up. They hadn’t done a very good job of it. So, had more coffee been thrown at the wall on Mrs Pryce’s last night at home?

If it had been blood – which of course it hadn’t been – then the police would be able to detect it.

Ellie straightened up. ‘You mentioned her jewellery? Where did she keep it?’

‘The best bits – his family pieces and hers that were mostly Victorian and ought to have been in the bank really – she told me were kept in the safe. She had some favourites which she wore every day, and they were kept in a locked brown leather box on her dressing table over there . . .’ She pointed to the opposite wall. ‘She also had a lot of costume jewellery in a big tin from Harrods that had once contained biscuits. That was what she had on the bed beside her for Mikey to play with.’

‘So there’s a safe in the house?’

‘She didn’t say where it was, mind, but I thought it must be in the telly room downstairs, because that’s the only room that’s panelled and all the pictures have gone that used to hang on the walls and there’s no safe to be seen anywhere, is there?’

Vera’s face twisted. ‘Mrs Quicke, nothing’s happened to the old dear, has it? She dilly-dallied for ages about going into a home. I always thought – silly of me, maybe – that getting the wallpaper spoiled made up her mind for her.’

‘You’re probably right. Little things like that can be the last straw. I do think we ought to ring the police when we get back. This house needs searching properly from top to bottom, cupboards, cellar – if there is one – and all.’

‘There is a cellar that they used as an air raid shelter in the war, but Mrs Pryce said it was damp and she didn’t want anything put down there. The door to it leads off the boiler room.’

Vera led the way back to the landing. ‘She paid double for me to come in extra last winter but I’d have come for nothing, she was so good with Mikey. He really liked her, you know; never played up with her.’

At that point Ellie decided that Vera really had been fond of Mrs Pryce, that Mrs Pryce had been a nice person, and that Ellie would have liked her, too, if they’d ever had the good fortune to meet. She also wondered if Vera might be the very person to come in and help look after Rose if . . . when . . . Think about it another day.

Ellie looked round the landing. ‘While we’re here, let’s just check the top storey, shall we?’

‘There’s nothing up there. Oh, there was some junk, broken bits of furniture, that sort of thing; but she got rid of it all a couple of months ago, clearing out, ready to move . . .’

Vera’s voice trailed away as she noted the cleaned path on the landing which led to another, narrower flight of stairs. Ellie led the way. On the top landing there were several closed doors and two half open. The cleared track encompassed almost half the landing. One of the half open doors gave on to a bathroom which gleamed from fresh scrubbing – and another to a separate loo, ditto.

Ellie went into the bathroom and turned on the taps. Water came out; clear water, which proved that someone had been using water up here recently. Water that’s been standing in a tank or pipes for a long time usually comes out rusty, with lots of burps and gurgles. She depressed the light switch and an ancient bulb glowed into life.

She inspected the window frames. Frosted glass, so that no one outside could overlook the servants washing themselves. Someone had recently tacked cardboard over the glass with drawing pins and removed them in a hurry. Two pins winked brightly from the lino on the floor, together with a fragment of card.

‘Can you smell shampoo?’

Vera sniffed and nodded. ‘Not Mrs Pryce’s. Will you look how clean the bath is? I couldn’t have done it better myself.’

Two more doors on the landing were closed, and no cleared pathways led to them. The cleared patch included just one more door. Ellie opened it and went in. A fair-sized room, glowing with sunshine. The one window was shut fast.

Vera sniffed. ‘Pizza?’

There was no furniture in the room, and it had been newly cleaned. No dust. No detritus, no drawing pins or scraps of paper.

Ellie clicked on the light switch. A bare lamp bulb glowed, and then shone brightly.

Vera was puzzled. ‘That’s one of those new long-life bulbs, isn’t it? But no one’s been living up here for years.’

Ellie inspected the window which, as she’d suspected, overlooked several gardens including her own. The window opened and shut easily. ‘Ah. See this, Vera? It’s the same in the bathroom and toilet. They took precautions not to be seen from outside at night but didn’t make a good enough job of clearing up after themselves. Now we know why the electricity was turned on again.’

Someone had driven not drawing pins but nails into the top and one side of the window frame. A fragment of thick black cotton still clung to one nail.

Vera examined it. ‘Was a curtain supposed to hang there?’

‘They used card in the other rooms, but this is better. It’s the sort of material which they used during the war in the blackout. My mother lined my bedroom curtains with it, because I couldn’t get to sleep in the light summer nights. Doing this meant they could have lights on inside at night without being spotted. Unlike the bathroom and toilet, which must always have been kept dark, this curtain could be lifted to one side during the day to let air in. They tore the material away when they cleared up, but left enough for us to see what they’d been doing.’

Vera thought it through. ‘Someone’s been living up here but it’s not the usual homeless man, who wouldn’t have bothered to clear up after himself. Could it be squatters? Someone who knew the house was empty, moved in, turned on the electricity and used the water?’

‘Squatters change the locks on the door, invite like-minded people to join them and spread themselves out over the best rooms downstairs. Why pick on one small room at the top of the house, unless they’re hiding from somebody or something? Let’s have a look at the back stairs. They go straight down to the kitchen area, don’t they?’

The two women inspected the back stairs. More dust. No footprints. They could hear Mr Abel in the hall, still talking on his phone. ‘Yes, yes. I’ll attend to it directly I’ve finished here, but . . .’

Ellie kept her voice low. ‘Whoever it was – possibly only one or two people – they must have had a key because there’s no sign of a break-in anywhere. Plus, you can see they let themselves in through the front door and left the same way. We probably disturbed them yesterday, and instead of standing their ground as squatters do, they cleaned up after themselves and scarpered. I wonder how they got hold of a key to the front door?’

‘Pet and I handed ours in to the office, who might have kept them, I suppose, hoping we’d get the contract to go on cleaning here when the house was sold.’

Ellie led the way downstairs. ‘Does Pet’s husband work in the cleaning line, too? No, wait a minute. You told me; he’s a hospital porter, works nights.’

‘I don’t think he ever met Mrs Pryce.’

Ellie held Vera back when they reached the landing. ‘You liked Mrs Pryce. I like what I’ve heard about her. It’s clear that Mr Abel knows less than we do, and lacking instructions from Mrs Pryce, he won’t do anything about, well, anything. We’ve no proof that something’s wrong, but . . . what do you think?’

Vera had been following a different line of thought. ‘Whoever it was that was living here recently must have had a car to take away their stuff in last night.’

‘Ah, right. This morning I spotted fresh car tracks at the front where someone reversed into the lawn.’

Vera grinned. ‘I bet they didn’t take all their trash away with them.’

‘Where . . . ?’

‘The dustbins are outside the back door in the covered way. Except that the dustbin men don’t call on empty houses, do they?’

Mr Abel met them as they descended into the hall. He looked worried. ‘At Hoopers we do most earnestly request our clients to turn off the gas, water and electricity at the mains before they leave. I don’t know how it has come about that this has not been done, but I do not think it wise to leave this house with water dripping from taps and electricity connected. Now I’ve managed to locate the fuse boxes in the kitchen corridor and turned off the electricity, also the gas. I’m not sure where the water enters this house, but it must be in the kitchen quarters somewhere.’

‘I’ll show you,’ said Vera, leading the way.

Ellie went into the panelled television room. Vera had said a safe might be concealed in this room. If so, there was nothing obvious to show where it might have been. Dust lay uniformly on every ledge. No one had been in this room since Mrs Pryce left. Disappointing. But what else had she expected?

There was a lot of banging and clattering going on. Footsteps backwards and forwards in the hall. Ellie walked along the panelling, rapping here and there. She couldn’t detect any change in sound. If a safe was hidden there, it was not going to be found easily.

She drifted back to the hall as Mr Abel and Vera emerged from the kitchen quarters.

‘So sorry to leave you,’ said Mr Abel, who had transferred a considerable amount of the dust in the house to his forehead and whose shirt was now very much the worse for wear. ‘I had to fetch a wrench from my car to turn off the water, and then I tried to get the cellar door open, but it’ll need an electric drill to break that down, it’s rusted solid.’

Strike the cellar from a list of possible places to hide a body.

He attempted and failed to brush dirt from sodden shirt sleeves ‘So, what are your first impressions, Mrs Quicke? A truly magnificent house, isn’t it? Just waiting for someone like you to wake it from its sleep, har har. Now may I show you the grounds? Extensive, very. Greenhouses, pond, rose beds, vegetable garden.’

‘Thank you, but I’ve seen enough for one day. I need to think about what you’ve shown me so far, and perhaps come back another time.’

‘Ah. Right. Now, may I offer you a lift anywhere?’

Mr Abel collected the stack of post to be redirected and ushered them out of the house, still talking. Ellie smiled and said she didn’t need a lift home, thank you, you’ve been most helpful. Mr Abel eeled his way into his car and drove off.

It was going to be another hot day. Ellie put her dark glasses on.

Vera said, ‘While he was getting the water mains turned off, I popped into the backyard to check there’d been no rubbish left there. And there wasn’t. On my way back I looked for the spare back door key that always hangs on a hook in the cupboard over where the fridge was, and it isn’t there.’

‘Really?’ Ellie was amused. What did Vera think they were going to do – break into the house through the back quarters some moonlit night and search the house with torches? ‘Well, I suppose Mrs Pryce took it when she left.’

Ellie walked out on to the pavement and looked up and down the road. ‘Which day of the week do they collect the rubbish around here? What’s today? Wednesday. Ours is collected today. Do you think this road’s the same? We have to leave our rubbish just inside the drive for collection and not on the pavement, and not before seven in the mornings because if we leave it out overnight the foxes and the crows get at it. Now if our “squatters” wanted to get rid of their rubbish last night, would they dump it just anywhere and hope it’s not ripped open by morning or . . . ?’

‘Could that be theirs?’ Vera pointed to where a couple of bulging black dustbin bags had been left under a tree two houses down from where they stood. The foxes or a cat had been at one of them, but not too badly.

Ellie went to have a closer look only to freeze, hearing the clang and clamour of the dustbin lorry somewhere close.

Vera pounced on the torn bag. ‘Aha! A pizza box. That would attract the foxes all right.’

Ellie lifted the other. ‘Heavy.’

‘Wet rags would make it heavy, if they used them for wiping down the floorboards and cleaning the bathroom and toilet up top.’

‘We should ring the police . . .’

The refuse lorry turned the corner into their road. ‘They’re coming!’

‘If we leave them . . .’

The binmen were walking along the road in their Day-Glo jackets, collecting black plastic bags from the driveways, piling them into a heap in the road for collection by the lorry as it moved slowly along.

‘Take those for you, missus?’ A dustman, large, black and smiling.

‘Oh, no. Thank you, but I’ve put something in the trash, something valuable. I shall have to go through . . . You understand?’

‘Ah. Never mind, then. If you find it, just put the bags in the next road for us to collect, OK?’

‘OK.’

Ellie and Vera picked up one bag each and started to walk down the road away from the binmen. Vera gave way to the giggles. Ellie did, too.

Vera said, ‘What do we look like?’

‘Bag ladies,’ said Ellie as hers slipped from her grasp. She stooped to get a better hold on it, and her glasses fell off.

‘Let me.’ Vera took Ellie’s bag from her.

‘We’re destroying fingerprints,’ said Ellie. ‘I’m sure we’ll get into trouble about this.’

‘You can talk us out of it,’ said Vera.

How nice to be appreciated! What a splendid girl Vera was!

‘Not stole. They were put out for the binmen to collect. They’d been out overnight and the foxes had torn one open but—’

‘Give me strength. You picked up two bags off the street, without any idea where they might have come from—’

‘The squatters – if that’s what they were – had been eating pizza. We could smell it, and one of the bags had an empty pizza box in it.’

‘And what, may I ask, makes you think that the police are going to waste their time chasing up squatters who exist only in your fertile imagination?’

‘It’s true that they’ve gone now, but don’t you think it’s worth investigating since Mrs Pryce never arrived where she said she would? And her car’s missing.’

‘So she changed her mind and booked herself into a luxury hotel somewhere. Have her family complained? No. Have you checked the hospitals to see if she had a traffic accident? No. Give me one piece of evidence—’

‘We thought you’d find something in the bags. We’ve gloved up so we don’t destroy any fingerprints.’ Ellie was rather proud of the phrase ‘gloved up’, which she’d learned from watching crime programmes on television. The bags were on the kitchen table at that very moment, being investigated by Vera and Rose. Midge the cat was keeping an eye on everyone from his perch on top of the fridge.

Heavy breathing from Ears. ‘No doubt you’ve found detonators and plastic jelly for making explosives, and this is a plot to blow up the Houses of Parliament. You’ll be telling me next that you’ve seen little green men in the attic and unidentified flying objects circling round the chimneys. I am trying,’ he said, enunciating each syllable, ‘to work out how we can spare a detective to investigate this mythical plot of yours, but at the moment – if you’ll forgive me – we have more important things to attend to.’

The phone crashed down.

Ellie winced.

Vera giggled. ‘Prince Charming he is not, by the sound of it.’

Ellie held up her hands and let them drop. ‘He’s got reason, I suppose. I mean, what have we got that would convince the police there is a case to answer?’

‘Apart from masses of J-cloths which have been wetted and used for wiping dust off from wherever it is they’ve been hiding?’

‘We can’t prove any of this came from the Pryce house.’

‘Who else would leave their rubbish out on the pavement under a tree, instead of just inside their gates? And how about this?’ Vera spread a fine black scarf with a frayed edge out on to the table. It had been much used and had a hole in it, which was probably why it had been discarded. ‘Of course, lots of women wear scarves, though not in this hot weather. But Muslim women cover their hair all the time when they go out, don’t they? Plus it stinks of cheap perfume. Yuk!’

Ho hum. Ellie considered a possible scenario. ‘Rose, I wonder if that’s who you saw at the window? Suppose a Muslim girl had been hiding up there – which someone certainly was – and she tied her head round with a black scarf as they do, and looked out of her window, wouldn’t it have looked as if her face was floating in mid-air?’

‘Another thing,’ said Vera, ‘they only wear scarves if they have to go outdoors, but if she had lots of very dark hair hanging down on either side of her face—’

‘You mean I really didn’t imagine it? Well, praise be!’

‘Hello, where’s the keys to the Pryce house, then?’

‘Mm? Oh, Mr Abel’s gone out there with a customer, someone with money to burn.’

‘You mean someone’s actually taking an interest in the White Elephant? An Arab, maybe?’

‘Nah. English. An old dear who made a fortune in the property market and might want it to turn into flats for sale and make another fortune. The boss is furious, has only just found out she’s interested, says he should have taken her round himself. But he wasn’t around yesterday when the appointment was made, so Mr Abel got the job. He says the place is in a right mess, our sign’s been taken down, the lawns not cut.’

‘Mr Abel had better get our “For Sale” sign back up, pronto. And who was supposed to be keeping the lawns cut?’

‘The boss said not to bother with the lawns when the Pryce woman took the house off the market—’

‘Use your head. If there’s a potential buyer in sight, she won’t be quibbling over that, will she?’