I’d never had a hangover like this.
It got much worse when the first person I was able to focus on turned out to be Sergeant Scrub.
I must have done something seriously bad in a previous life.
At least she came into focus gradually. One must be grateful for small mercies. I registered the big slightly coiffed bob, then the standard police issue ‘smart’ suit jacket, the sensible grey skirt. Her eyes were still large and still slightly doleful, but as I struggled up to consciousness they sharpened fully.
I must have let something slip because Scrub sighed and said, ‘If it’s any consolation I don’t want to be either.’
I squinted and blinked. What was Scrub doing in my flat?
‘How you feeling, Sleeping Beauty?’ she asked sounding untypically concerned about the answer.
I propped open one eye and looked around the room. It was rather bright and rather white. Not my flat. Not Septimus’s bedroom either. Oh no, I thought! I’ve died. And I never managed to snog Sam.
Another male voice rumbled, ‘Has she got brain damage, ma’am?’
There was an ache at the back of my head. I reached round and felt through my hair several bumps, a couple of which were crusty. It smelled a bit and hadn’t been washed.
I opened my other eye and asked, ‘Am I alive?’
Scrub smiled, but not like she was enjoying herself. ‘More than ever,’ she said. ‘But any more of that champagne and you’d have slept another week or so.’
‘Another week?’ I said, pleased to have my continued existence on the planet confirmed but unsure and a bit screwy on what day or time it was.
‘You’ve got concussion,’ Scrub explained. ‘Been out for a while.’
I thought about sitting up a bit but became aware that I was in some kind of puritan babydoll outfit that was gaping round my back so pulled the duvet up over me. Except it wasn’t a duvet. It was a sheet. With a horrible blanket on it
‘Where am I?’ I said trying to read the name printed on it.
‘Litchenfield General,’ said Scrub very very calmly.
She was sitting in an armchair. There was another tall shape lurking at the end of my bed, who I eventually identified as PC Dennis Bean, or ‘goofy police guy’ as I had politely labelled him.
‘Oh my God!’ I said, and sat up. The room tilted and swam and I got those weird flashes of light you see in front of your eyes when you do stuff too fast. I sat back against the pillows and waited for the world to stop spinning. ‘Edward de Vere and his daughter. You have to arrest them. They were trying to kill me!’
‘We know,’ said Sergeant Scrub. Again very calm.
‘And, oh my God, they killed Reg Rainer. Edward said! I’m sure that’s who they were talking about. Did his head in with a shovel and then cut it off. Jesus!’ I paused to draw breath as the memories came stumbling back. ‘Oh God! And my grandmother Ethel-Rose. Edward said he killed her. And, Minty said she drove Celeste off the road,’ I said recalling the next revelation with horror. ‘Celeste. Who,’ I chewed the moment over, ‘who Minty said was my mum.’
My mum, I thought. No Celeste was my aunt. They’d got it mixed up. Everything was muddled up.
But Scrub said again, ‘We know. And we’ll get through all of that in due course, but right now …’
‘Hang on,’ I said and held my hand up, then winced at the movement. There was a great deal of aching going on around the shoulder area. ‘How do you know?’
Scrub slipped off her suit jacket and rolled up her shirtsleeves. It was still very muggy. ‘Well,’ she said and flicked through her notebook.
And it suddenly occurred to me that I didn’t know how I got here either. I tried to sit up properly once more but my head was still rather weighty. A big cloud of dopiness was hanging around it.
‘We’ve statemented the de Veres. When my colleagues arrived they both seemed eager to accompany them. Your aunt I believe.’ She glanced at her notebook, let out a kink of a smile and then coughed to disperse it. ‘A Barbara Cockaday, and a Cerise Tempest …’
‘My friend,’ I filled in.
‘Yes. They alerted Control to what was going on. We had a police car in the area anyway, as it’s been something of a crime blackspot of late,’ she narrowed her eyes and smirked. ‘So they were able to reach the scene quickly. When they did they found you unconscious on the floor of the shed, doused in petrol, and Edward de Vere and his daughter Araminta fastened into two garden chairs with what appeared to be human hair extensions and bonding glue.’
I was beginning to see why Edward and Minty might have been so keen to help the police with their enquiries.
‘Edward de Vere has confessed to the manslaughter of Reg Rainer,’ she said and smiled. ‘So, you’re off the hook. Not that you were ever really on it. But there was a perceived element of foot-dragging regarding the bodies in the murder pit, amongst some of us. We thought a little pressure might spur you on.’
I nodded, winced at the sharpish pain in my neck and felt a bandage on it. A memory of Minty holding a blade to my throat reared up and had me shuddering into the hospital linen.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Scrub. ‘Procedures weren’t followed properly.’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ I answered rather breezily, though I thought that there was a possibility that I might actually not be as happy about it later down the line, when I was less drugged up and foggy. ‘You said Edward confessed to manslaughter? Why not murder?’
‘He said it was self-defence.’
‘I don’t think so. Not the way he told me. Sounded like he wanted to stop Reg Rainer digging up the grave. Oh God! The grave,’ I said as I remembered who was down there. ‘That’s where he said the body was buried. Of Ethel-Rose!’
‘Yes,’ she nodded. ‘We have a team excavating the rings of roses.’
‘Good, good. Hang on,’ I said as the words resonated in my brain. ‘What did you say?’
Scrub frowned. ‘We’re looking at the alleged burial site.’
‘Ring a ring of roses …’ I said, recalling the strange note cobbled together from cut out letters from magazines and newspapers, that Carmen had shown us in her garden just the other week. And then, in my head, saw once more the rings of the flower bomb. Wow. The two were connected. ‘She fell down,’ the letter had read. Could ‘she’ have been my grandmother? Could the note, rather than being a threat, have been a clue from the only person that de Vere himself said might have known what had taken place? An employee, gardener to the Lord of the Manor, torn between his loyalty to the family who gave him work, and the grieving bewildered family of his victim?
Had to be.
Scrub was looking at me like I’d lost the plot. ‘That’s right,’ she said. ‘It’s a couple of rings of rose beds. Yes, a bit like the nursery rhyme.’ Then she cleared her throat and made her voice a bit softer. ‘But, Rosie, we’ve already ascertained that his story is true.’ She darted a quick look at Goofy who immediately dropped his gaze to his feet and started shuffling them.
‘You have? That’s great,’ I said though murder wasn’t really great. But like I said – I wasn’t firing on all cylinders.
‘Edward seemed to want to make a clean breast of a number of things,’ she said in a measured way. ‘It seems that the family had quite a few secrets to hide. Although they didn’t seem particularly bothered about the nature of them,’ she added. ‘He directed us to a back room in the summerhouse.’ She paused and glanced down at her notepad. ‘It was here we found an old chest. When we opened it we discovered’ – the gaze came up, direct and firm – ‘three mummified heads.’
She waited a moment for the meaning to roll out and sink in.
It didn’t so much as sink, rather punch me in the stomach. ‘Yes?’ I said, disregarding the pain there and my neck as I sat up. Fully this time.
‘One of them was your grandmother’s.’
‘Oh my God!’ My hand flew to my mouth. ‘What a dreadful thought.’ It better have come off post-mortem. ‘Why did he do that?’
‘Presumably for the same reasons his forefathers did – to try and obscure the identity of the victim should she ever be found.’
‘His forefathers?’ For a moment I couldn’t follow her train of thought.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘We’re at an early stage but we think the other two belong to the bodies in the murder pit.’
‘Oh my God!’ I said again. ‘The de Veres murdered them too? Why?’
‘Their ancestors we presume. We were hoping you and your curator might be able to shed some light on that.’
I thought about the strange dream I had had during my coma-like sleep – being in the Seven Stars, then surrounded by men and stabbed in the side by a sword. Had that been connected? Wasn’t it just a dream?
‘But, they aren’t really our priority at the moment. Obviously, Reginald Rainer’s homicide is the most pressing issue. His family are incredibly upset as you can imagine. We need to get a statement from you about what de Vere reported?’
I nodded and flinched again.
‘I’m afraid, I need to ask you for a DNA sample,’ she said and stood up. ‘To ascertain the identity of the woman we think may be your grandmother.’
I nodded. ‘You’re testing her head?’ And as the words popped out of my mouth I had a vision of our Madam Zelda fortune teller machine. ‘A dangerous coupling,’ it had warned. ‘But I couldn’t have known,’ I said, more to myself than anyone else. ‘Back then. Couldn’t have understood the dream? Could I?’
Scrub motioned for me to open my mouth and dabbed around the inside of my cheek. ‘Of course not. There was no way you could have had a clue about what happened all those years ago,’ she said soothingly.
But that was not what I meant.
The sergeant motioned for Goofy to take her place.
‘Dennis will help you with the statement, if that’s all right with you. I’ll be back to collect it later. Then when you’ve finished with that, you’ve got a few visitors here.’
‘Oh good,’ I said as she handed a sheaf of paper to her constable. I really needed to talk all of this through with Sam.
‘So,’ said Goofy and took a recording device out of his pocket. ‘Do you want to start at the beginning?’
I wasn’t sure where that was really. I thought about the first flower bomb back in April but then remembered I’d promised Tone Bridgewater I wouldn’t mention him. So I started with what the young lad had told me about his granddad. I think by the time I’d reached what happened by the shed, I’d lost focus and was falling back to sleep.
When I woke up next, Cerise and Auntie Babs were buzzing around me like two angry wasps. I think there was some competitive caring going on.
‘She needs a bit of lippy before she sees him,’ Babs was saying.
‘But not that shade. She don’t do purple.’
‘I think I’m well aware which colour lipstick my niece prefers thank you very much Cerise.’
‘Well, that’s two things you got wrong there then, Barbara …’
I heard an audible in-take of breath and then a, ‘Sorry. That was out of order.’
My gritty eyes opened.
The room was darker than before. But I was still alive which was good. ‘I can hear you both, you know.’
Their heads moved apart. Beneath her make-up Babs started to flush. Cerise put her lips into a firm straight line.
My aunt flapped round to my pillow and began stroking my hair. ‘Rosie, darling,’ she said. ‘Oh thank gawd you’re all right, love. We’ve been so worried, you know.’
‘I’m okay.’
‘Chick,’ said Cerise. ‘You well don’t look okay. That’s why we’ve been trying to fix you up. Before himself gets in here.’
‘Himself?’ I said and felt my heart chug a smidgen faster. ‘Sam?’
‘Oh, he’s been in a right state, Rose. Really he has.’ Babs rolled her eyes. ‘Been blaming himself for not paying enough attention to what you’ve been up to with your nan and that.’
Cerise clicked her tongue. ‘Well that’s something we agree on.’
‘Where is he?’ I pushed up onto my elbows, and felt my head throb.
‘Outside.’ Cerise nodded at the door.
‘We thought we better get in first and just give you a freshen-up,’ said Babs. ‘Seriously, you look better than you did when we found you.’
Cerise nodded. Her previously immaculate hairdo was looking quite uneven. ‘I was thinking you was going to be a goner. If that mental chick – you know the one that looks like a trucker with a hair helmet –’
‘Araminta de Vere,’ Babs nodded. ‘Or whatever her name is. She was married once I believe.’
‘If she’d got there with that lighter before us, babe, you would have gone up like a nylon nightie.’
‘But she didn’t, did she,’ Babs said soothingly and darted a look at Cerise. ‘Your friend here saw to that.’ She leant over and patted Cerise on the shoulder. ‘Well done, love.’
I tried to smile at my friend. ‘How did you do that?’
Cerise shrugged. ‘Tripped her over and sat on her.’
The pair of them exchanged a glance which told me that this was their story and they were sticking to it. I’m sure the truth would out eventually. It was doing so with everything else.
‘The old bloke,’ Cerise tore her gaze away from Babs and continued. ‘He got some nail varnish in his eyes. Don’t know how that happened.’
Babs started fussing with my hands. ‘How are yours? Oh yes. Quite chipped. Need a bit of a polish. I’ll sort them out next time. Now, Cerise managed to get some foundation on you before you stirred.’
‘Natural Sand Beige,’ my friend detailed.
‘But you could do with a touch of blush,’ Babs went on and produced a small brush. ‘Got a nice Russet Rose here …’
‘I’d go for Apricot Adoration,’ said Cerise.
Babs’ lips clenched. ‘All right then,’ she compromised, then got to work on my cheekbones.
While she was applying the orange powder I asked, ‘So did you hear what Araminta said about Celeste?’
And Babs stopped mid-circle.
Cerise looked at her then back at me and nodded grimly.
‘Well?’ I said to Babs and caught her hand. ‘Is it true? Do you know?’
She opened her mouth then shut it then put her bum on the bed and said, ‘Your parents will be down to see you tomorrow.’
‘Oh fuck, it’s true,’ I said.
Cerise said, ‘Don’t think about it now, babes.’
‘How the hell did this happen?’ I bleated. ‘Why did no one tell me?’
‘You need to speak to your parents about it, love.’ Auntie Babs tried out her soothing voice again. ‘They had the best intentions.’
I could see she wasn’t going to say any more and I was feeling tired and wired all at the same time but without the energy to see it through.
‘How did you know I was there anyway?’ I said.
Cerise made a sucking noise with her lips. ‘I heard you say “Tone Bridgewater” when you woke up. Didn’t think nothing of it but when Babs showed up to see you and you weren’t answering your phone we went looking.’
Babs shuddered at the memory. ‘Those awful people. I was expecting to get maybe a cup of tea and peek at the Manor or something. Not that. Poor Wosie,’ she said and flattened my hair.
‘And poor Ethel-Rose,’ I moaned.
About half an hour later Babs and Cerise left. When Sam came in, I did something very uncharacteristic: I burst into tears.
It was all getting a bit too much and I was tired and emotional and actually really upset about everything.
I know I’m a tough cookie, as they say these days, but I’m human too. And sometimes you have to give in to your softness and let it all wash over you.
And I wanted to tell Sam that I was grateful for him coming and that really, I was feeling crazy because suddenly everything had changed, and that I felt like I was on a ship at sea, cast off its anchor and left to the currents of the ocean to toss and pop like a cork. That, right then, I felt like he was the only constant and truth in my life, my North star, and that I appreciated him. That I needed him and that also I really needed to be weak.
But I didn’t manage a word.
I just held my arms out.
And he got onto the bed and wrapped himself around me.
I put my head on his chest and felt his heart beat.
And then I wept for my grandmother, for Septimus, my mum and Ted and Celeste, awful Reg Rainer, the bodies in the pit – everyone involved in this sad and tragic story. But most of all, at the end, I finally wept for me.