“I don’t know,” Lucy said slowly, sitting on the sofa beside Sylvia later that evening. “I honestly don’t know, Mr Frost. It did feel like there was some sort of residue around her body when I saw her in the surgery. But that’s all. It felt like there’d been magic done, I suppose? It sounds so stupid when I say it out loud like that, doesn’t it? But…there was this sort of…cloud of gluey stuff that was around her. As if…as if…oh darn it! It’s so hard to explain. Like the echo of cobwebs, perhaps? I’ve noticed it before when magic’s happened.”
Walter watched Frost watch her. He was careful with her, as he’d been all along, even when he was arresting her for murder. Coaxing answers out of her, letting her think her way through her memories without guiding her down any particular pathway.
That focus and attention to detail would be something in bed, Walter found himself thinking and then rapidly unthinking. No, no, no, Walt. No bedding the policeman.
He’d messed up, this morning. Too defensive and he’d gone off with a pop. It was a shame he’d spoilt things like that, lashing out half-cocked. There hadn’t been any need. Somehow his fears had got the better of him there for a while. It was a long time ago, now—and it had served him for a while, got him where he needed to be in the army, exchanging the odd suck-job for protection from old Lewis. He hadn’t hated it, Lewis had been very good about it, all things considered. He could have turned Walter in when the man first realised he had tits instead of a cock. Instead he’d helped him settle into the medical section and if one or two of the other corpsmen had realised he wasn’t quite what he seemed, well, they’d kept quiet about it.
Walter sighed, half tuning out of the conversation around him. Bloody hell. He was happy here. At least, contented. Sylvia had turned into something like a sister to him over the last few months—that inconvenient fixation he’d developed on her had morphed into something easier and less difficult to carry. Lucy as well—she was young enough to be his daughter and he felt like he’d got the best family he could have, really, all things considered. He went and saw his mother occasionally now his dad had died; but he couldn’t really let go of the way she’d let Dad cut him off when he managed to join up. At least she’d stopped the old man coming and getting him, he supposed. That was something. But he felt much more at home here in Bradfield than he did when he went back to Stepney.
He’d resigned himself to never having a partner after Chris died, someone just for him who knew the real Walter and accepted him, warts, tits, and all. He drifted off into a little fugue of memory about Chris and Royaumont and the whole damned mess of the war, only brought back to himself by realising they were talking to him.
“What do you think, Walter?” Lucy was asking with the patient tone of someone who was repeating herself for the umpteenth time. “Did you feel anything, when you first saw the body?”
For a second he had an uncomfortable overlay of past and present…why would she be asking about his feelings when he saw Chris there on the table? And then he realised she was asking about Mrs Fortescue.
“Oh,” he said. “Er. Anything peculiar? I don’t think so?” He frowned, casting his mind back. “I wasn’t looking for that sort of thing, though. I wasn’t expecting anything like that. I’m not as good as you at picking it up, anyway.”
She shook her head. “I didn’t feel anything specific that might help us work out what went on. But I didn’t get close to her, really. There might have been some sort of particular residue clinging round her I suppose, but if there was, I didn’t realise when I went into the examination room to tell Sylvia I’d made tea. I just felt the sticky cobweb-stuff. And like you, I wasn’t looking for it. I was just so shocked to see her there at all.”
She looked over at Frost. “Did your police chap do an autopsy?”
It sounded ridiculous, a Bright Young Thing talking like that.
Frost obviously thought the same, because there was a short pause before he replied, “No. He seems very clear that the cause of death was the small wound on the back of the head.”
“Perhaps it was.” Sylvia said in her deep voice as she ground out her cigarette in the ashtray on the low table beside the settee. “It’s possible. But that still doesn’t solve the mystery of who or what killed her.”
“Something from the séance,” Lucy said. “The thing I saw. Could it have come back? That’s what we’re all thinking, aren’t we? That when they had another try once we’d gone home, something went wrong.”
Frost nodded. “That’s what I was thinking,” he said. “Something that sounded close enough to a woman’s voice or could mimic one to be mistaken for you? Did they call something up?” He frowned doubtfully. “This isn’t my area at all. I don’t know anything about it. I’ve never been to a séance, think it’s a whole load of rubbish.”
Sylvia made a harrumphing noise. She was fiddling with another cigarette but hadn’t lit it yet. “I don’t think it’s rubbish exactly,” she said. “I’ve seen some odd things in my time—figures in mortuaries, that sort of thing. But I don’t see that anything good comes of sitting down and trying to call them up from wherever they are. And now I know there are things that will turn up from somewhere else regardless of who you’re trying to talk to…” She let it tail off as she lit her cig.
“…it’s an even worse idea,” Frost finished for her.
“Yes,” she concluded emphatically.
“So…” Frost went on. “I’m looking for a mystery woman who came to Lilac Villa on Tuesday night, who sounds enough like a young woman to be mistaken for Miss Hall-Bridges by Mrs Leamington. And who frightened the deceased so much that she fled through the French doors onto the terrace and down to the village green in her stockinged feet, where there was some sort of fight that gave her defensive wounds and she fell and hit her head, and died, before falling into the duck pond.”
“That’s about it,” Walter confirmed. Sylvia and Lucy were nodding as well.
“All right,” Frost said. “That’s…it’s not perfect, is it? Because it’s so unlikely. Who comes to someone else’s house at that time of night?”
Lucy shook her head. “Honestly,” she said, “I suppose it might have happened like that? We might be making mountains out of molehills and it’s just a boring, ordinary murder.”
Frost flinched and she looked at him apologetically. “Sorry, Detective,” she said. “I didn’t mean it like that, I know it’s not a game.”
Frost inclined his head in acceptance. “It’s not, Miss. You might not have liked her…I don’t think I would have, if I’d met her in life, judging by her friends. But it’s my responsibility to find out what happened to her. To prevent it happening to someone else, too. That’s my job.”
He was a decent man, Walter thought. A thoroughly decent man.
“Shall we go to the pub?” he said on the back of that thought. “For that drink we talked about? And to see whether anyone else in the village heard or saw anything?”
“Unless there’s anything else you can think of that would be helpful?” Frost looked at the ladies enquiringly.
Both of them shook their heads. “Nothing springs to mind,” Sylvia said. “Lucy?”
Lucy shook her head. “No,” she said. “I’m so sorry. I feel completely useless. You’re right, Detective Frost. I really didn’t like her very much…sorry, Sylvia, I know she was your childhood friend, but people change as they grow up, don’t they? And I’m very grateful I’m not being accused of killing her any longer and feel as if I should be able to help in some way, that I have a moral obligation, simply because I didn’t like her and you thought it was me and it wasn’t. Isn’t that strange?” She frowned in puzzlement. “Anyway. There it is. There might be a completely banal explanation. Perhaps there’s a murderess wandering round the village that we don’t know about.” She paused for breath again. “But I can’t think of anything that’s actually useful, I’m so sorry.”
Sylvia patted her knee. “No-one’s expecting you to have an explanation, my dear,” she said. “You’ve told Detective Frost the truth about what you saw that night and it’s his job, not yours, to work out who, or what, killed her. And if it was something from beyond the border…well. We’ll deal with that when it comes. If it comes.”
She looked over at Walter, rising. He and Frost automatically stood at the same time. “Are you going down to The Swan?” she asked.
Walter nodded. “I thought I’d introduce Detective Frost around. It’s payday. It’ll be busy. Someone might have seen something.”