Murder by Suicide Page 4

  ‘He knocked on my door. Got the number of the house wrong. I’ve met types like him before.’

  Ellie frowned. ‘What type do you mean?’

  ‘Second-hand car salesmen.’

  Ellie laughed, and knew her laughter sounded forced. ‘Oh, really, Kate! Roy’s an architect, taken early retirement, house in Surrey, was visiting relatives locally, came to church and that’s where he met me.’

  Kate added more sugar to the mix, and licked the spoon. ‘He doesn’t strike me as being a regular churchgoer. There’s something too devilmay-care about him. A bit like Martin Kemp playing the baddie. His Jaguar’s four years old. Good suit, though. I bet he makes a reasonable living at it … selling second-hand cars, I mean.’

  She laughed as Ellie threw a piece of potato peel at her.

  ‘Seriously, though,’ said Ellie, putting the potatoes on to boil and checking the chops cooking in the oven. ‘What do you really think of him?’

  ‘Seriously?’ Kate refilled their glasses with sherry, and then tipped some into the dessert. ‘How serious do you want to be?’

  Ellie sighed. She was in a tangle about Roy. He had started off by saying he needed her advice on neighbourhood properties. Fine, as far as it went. But she couldn’t be mistaken in thinking he was also sexually interested in her. She still wasn’t sure how she felt about that. Most of the time she thought it was ridiculous, so soon after Frank’s death.

  On the other hand, she’d felt so bruised, so ‘joggled’, since Frank died, that any distraction was welcome, and she had to admit it was soothing to be appreciated by a personable man. She told herself that she had to build a new structure into her life, and if Roy wanted to take her out on a friendly basis, well, why not? Provided she kept it light.

  Then again, he didn’t half talk too much about himself. And too little about her. A long-term relationship was right out. She’d had enough of that sort of behaviour in the long years of her marriage to Frank.

  Perhaps she would have told Kate all this, if only Kate hadn’t been so rude about him. As it was, perversity took over.

  ‘I must say, it’s very pleasant to be taken out to dinner at a good restaurant and worry about which dress to wear, to take trouble with my hair and make-up. Roy is excellent company.’

  ‘Mm.’ Kate dipped her finger into her mix and licked it. ‘I realize I ought to be pleased for you. And I suppose I am.’

  ‘But?’

  ‘Mm. A speck more sugar, I think. Shall I put the sprouts on?’

  ‘But?’

  ‘Dunno.’ Kate sighed. ‘A feeling. Feelings don’t count, do they? “Give me the facts, ma’am.” Where does that come from? What are the facts, Ellie? He says he’s a widower. Is he? Or is he going through a messy divorce and looking for sympathetic company? What do the relatives say? Do we know them?’

  ‘I don’t think so. I got the impression they lived some distance away. He doesn’t want to be a burden on them – I gather they’re pretty ancient – so he’s putting up at that big hotel opposite the tube station.’

  ‘What’s wrong with his house in Surrey?’

  ‘He felt restless after his wife died, wanted a change. He took early retirement, but accepted a roving commission from his firm to find new projects for development. After he’d visited his relatives he drove around to get a feel of the area and spotted the potential for development of four or five big old houses around here. That’s why he wanted my advice. How would the neighbourhood feel if a developer moved in? He’s particularly interested in that big house opposite the church that’s been empty for ever. This week he’s been making enquiries about planning permission, etc. It makes it a lot easier if he’s on the spot. It’s all quite above board.’

  Kate stretched out long limbs and yawned. ‘If it were all above board, Ellie, you wouldn’t be asking my advice.’

  ‘I’m not asking your advice,’ said Ellie, getting cross.

  ‘Mm. You helped me through a bad patch when my darling hubbie was doing my head in last year …’

  ‘Not to mention beating you up …’

  ‘No, we don’t mention that, nowadays. We’re very, very careful about not referring to that, and he really is on his best behaviour.’

  ‘Long may it last!’ said Ellie in a sour tone.

  Kate dimpled. ‘Yes. Long may it last. And if it doesn’t, I’ll move out again and take him for every penny he’s got in a let-it-all-hang-out divorce. As head of department in a high school, he can’t afford that, can he? Not to mention that, with the bonuses I’m getting, I can buy him a top-of-therange car and treat us to expensive foreign holidays. So he’s being very careful of my feelings – and my skin – at the moment.’

  Both women laughed, because, although Armand had a wicked temper, there was no doubt that if it came to a battle of brains, he would lose out to Kate.

  ‘Well, then,’ said Kate. ‘Your looking after me last year gives me the right to tell you to “Watch it”. I don’t trust smoothies. Shall I run a financial check on him for you?’

  Ellie hesitated, sipping sherry. Kate was something in the City and it made sense to check on Roy’s background, but it felt like spying, didn’t it?

  ‘That’s tacky. Taking me out is just his way of passing the time while he’s away from home. He’s not close to his relatives. He’s at a loose end … the weather’s foul … no particular friends in the area … he’ll be off again soon, I expect.’

  ‘Meanwhile, you enjoy making your old friend the church warden, jealous?’

  Ellie giggled. ‘Poor Archie.’

  ‘Ellie, you astonish me! Can it be that you actually enjoy having two men fight over you?’

  ‘You think I’m being pursued by two separate men because I’m a reasonable cook and own my own house?’

  ‘I wonder,’ said Kate, in an unusually diffident tone, ‘whether the news has got out somehow that you’ve been left very comfortably off?’

  ‘Ouch,’ said Ellie, sitting down with a bump. ‘And here was I thinking it was for the sake of my blue eyes and sympathetic nature.’

  ‘That too, I shouldn’t wonder,’ said Kate.

  When Ellie had discovered that Frank had left her a small fortune, her solicitor had advised her not to tell anyone about it. But Bill Weatherspoon had been unavailable on so many occasions recently, that Ellie had asked Kate to help her with an investment which had fallen due.

  So far as Ellie knew, no one but Bill and Kate were aware of her good fortune. Certainly not her greedy daughter Diana. It was a horrid thought that perhaps Archie and Roy were asking her out just because she had money.

  Ellie rallied. How could they possibly know? No, they couldn’t. Archie had a good income and wanted a new wife to cuddle. As for Roy … no, the idea was absurd. He was interested in her, yes. But not for her money, because he didn’t know about it. He hadn’t tried to kiss her or anything like that. Yet.

  She wouldn’t have let him kiss her, anyway. It was too soon after Frank’s death.

  ‘A-a-a-choo!’ Kate fumbled for a tissue.

  ‘Feed a cold and starve a fever.’ Ellie dished up.

  Ellie did a little shopping every day in the Avenue, but every now and again Kate would put a large order through to Tesco’s on the Internet for her. Loo paper, bottles of sherry, pasta and potatoes – anything too heavy or too bulky for Ellie to carry back easily.

  Ellie was slowly, very slowly, coming to terms with Frank’s word processor, but the Internet still frightened her and, as she didn’t drive, this was the easiest way to get her supplies in. The next order was delivered just before noon on Thursday. Ellie unpacked the bags, humming along to the radio. This in the freezer, that in the fridge. These in the cupboard. Have they forgotten the plain flour? No, it’s here.

  Something was not quite right, though.

  She thought they’d forgotten the ice cream, but it was there after all. Everything checked out on the list. Ellie stood at the kitchen window and looked down her garden, ac
ross the alley and up towards the church.

  The wind was getting up and it was still spitting with rain. The trees around the church were tossing around, reminding her of unpleasant Channel crossings before Eurostar came into being. Long live Eurostar.

  There was a light on in the church.

  Really?

  She pressed her face close to the glass. It was a dark day. Yes, there was definitely a light on in the church.

  She checked the clock. Noon. Thursday. There was a flower-arranging class at the church hall on Thursday mornings, which usually finished about now. Soon Mrs Dawes would come along the path by the church, into the alley, and turn right on her way up to her own little house.

  It was none of Ellie’s business. Perhaps Timid Timothy the curate was in the church practising for his next sermon. Or … who knew?

  Thieves, perhaps? There’d been reports in the papers about thieves breaking into churches and stealing candlesticks, old tables, anything that wasn’t actually nailed down.

  Ellie thought about phoning the police. No, stupid. You couldn’t phone the police just because there was a light on in the church. There could be a hundred good reasons why it was on.

  She didn’t have a key to the church, but Mrs Dawes did. And here came Mrs Dawes, head down, dark green windcheater over heavy coat, National Trust golfing umbrella buffeted by the wind.

  Ellie seized her old gardening anorak and went down the steps into the garden to intercept Mrs Dawes. ‘Mrs Dawes, am I being very stupid? There’s a light on in the church. Have we got the workmen in again, or … ?’

  Mrs Dawes turned, awkwardly manoeuvring the umbrella between herself and the wind. She looked back up at the church, her eyebrows twisting with the same anxiety which had prompted Ellie to take action.

  ‘No,’ she said, pulling her windcheater closer round her neck, and raising her voice to be heard over the wind and the rain. ‘Nora was practising. I heard her at it earlier, when I went up to take the flowerarranging class. I expect she’s gone home and forgotten to turn the light off.’

  ‘That’s not like her.’

  Mrs Dawes shifted her bulk from one foot to the other. ‘I’m not going into that church by myself. Finding one body there was bad enough.’

  Ellie felt a tingle go down her spine. ‘You think she’s in there, dead?’

  ‘Of course not. What an idea!’

  ‘I haven’t got any keys, or I’d check myself,’ said Ellie, trying to feel as brave as she sounded. ‘But I’ll come in with you if you like.’

  Ellie took Mrs Dawes’s arm and steered her back up the path to the side door of the church. There the two women stopped to listen. No sound came from within.

  Sighing, Mrs Dawes felt around in her pockets for a loaded key-ring, selected one particular key and opened the door into the church. Still there was no sound.

  Ellie went through into the nave. The light was on in the organ loft above and to one side of the altar, but nowhere else. ‘Nora, is that you?’

  A listening silence. A stealthy movement that might have been caused by someone sliding off the organist’s bench.

  A hard-breathing silence.

  ‘Nora, it’s me. Ellie Quicke. Are you all right? We saw the light on and wondered if you’d been taken ill or something.’

  Nothing. Except for a hint of something dark in the corner of the organ loft. Ellie was not tall, but she could see that no one was seated at the organ. Perhaps Nora was hiding in the shadows beyond, where a door let onto the stairs?

  But perhaps it wasn’t Nora, after all. Perhaps it was some stranger who had broken into the church and …

  ‘Keep away from me!’

  That was Nora, all right. She sounded so like a frightened child that Ellie automatically assumed a motherly tone of voice. ‘Nora, are you not feeling well? Shall I come up?’

  ‘No!’

  There was the scrabbling sound of someone climbing steep stairs. The short flight up to the organist’s loft continued on and up to a narrow gallery under the roof.

  Ellie darted back to Mrs Dawes. ‘What do you think?’

  Nora was crashing along the gallery, uttering little cries of distress.

  ‘Nora, it’s all right!’ called Ellie. ‘Mrs Dawes, do you think we should fetch the curate?’

  ‘It’s not the curate she wants.’

  ‘No, but …’

  Nora screamed. The sound resounded around the stone vaulting of the roof. A large and heavy object plummeted down from the gallery and landed in the pews with a thud which would echo in Ellie’s mind for weeks.

  ‘Oh, God!’ whispered Mrs Dawes.

  Ellie froze.

  Nora was lying jack-knifed between two pews with her legs over the one in front and her head over the back of the one behind. She had lost a shoe. She had broken … Ellie didn’t know how many bones, but she looked like a rag doll. And she was still conscious.

  Nora mewed like a kitten, and tried to raise her head.

  Mrs Dawes began to shake. Ellie said, ‘Sit down, Mrs Dawes. Don’t look. I’ll phone for an ambulance.’

  ‘Don’t you dare leave me here with her! I’ll go. You stay with her.’

  ‘Can you manage? My back door’s open. You know where—’

  ‘Yes. Oh, my God!’

  On shaking legs, Mrs Dawes fumbled her way out of the church.

  Ellie would have given anything to have followed her. This is not real, she thought. In a moment I’ll wake up. She forced herself to touch Nora, to brush the hair out of her eyes.

  ‘Hold on. Mrs Dawes has gone for help.’

  Nora’s eyes wandered around the church, perhaps only half-aware of her surroundings. Perhaps saying goodbye to a place in which she had been someone of importance, the church where Gilbert had befriended her. The pallid lips moved.

  ‘What is it?’ said Ellie, bending closer.

  ‘It was taking too long … I didn’t think it would take so long …’

  ‘What would, Nora?’

  ‘… dying …’

  So she had meant to jump, thought Ellie. She had meant to kill herself.

  This is terrible. Dear Lord Jesus, help her. Help me to say the right thing. The poor, deluded creature.

  How much longer would the ambulance be?

  Nora’s lips moved and again Ellie bent to listen. ‘I wanted you to have Midge, but they killed him, you know.’

  Rambling, thought Ellie.

  Nora closed her eyes.

  The old building waited. Ellie imagined that it was looking down on them, holding them safe, saying that it had seen worse than this in its hundred-odd years of life, and that this too would pass.

  The ambulance team arrived with a clatter of normality. The paramedics gave Nora oxygen, immobilized her on a board and took her away. They asked Ellie if she wanted to go with them. Mrs Dawes was nowhere to be seen.

  Ellie recollected that her own house was open, that she had only a light anorak on to stave off the cold, that she was shivering, thirsty, and had a headache coming on. She also realized that someone was going to have to turn off the lights and lock up the church. And tell Gilbert. No, tell the curate. Both.

  ‘I’ll lock up here, get my handbag, and come along as soon as I can.’

  She climbed the stairs to the organ loft, feeling stiff and unwell. Nora’s bunch of church keys and her handbag were lying on the bench. The handbag was open and inside was a large white envelope addressed to ‘The Coroner’.

  A suicide note?

  Now what? The police?

  But no. Nora wasn’t dead yet. Perhaps she was not badly injured, after all. Suppose she recovered. She would be given treatment for her depression, and as soon as she felt better, she would want to tear up the letter. It would be best to take the handbag to the hospital, and leave it with Nora.

  Ellie’s little house was a haven of warmth and light. Mrs Dawes was in the living room, with a glass of sherry. ‘Thought you wouldn’t mind my helping myself. I saw the ambula
nce team carry her off.’

  ‘Good idea.’ Ellie poured one for herself. ‘I’ve got her handbag here. I’ll take it along once I’ve got warm again.’

  Mrs Dawes slurped sherry. Poured herself a second glass. ‘Stupid girl! Couldn’t even kill herself neatly. Mark my words, she did it this way to cause the maximum trouble for Gilbert.’

  Ellie thought of the letter in Nora’s handbag. ‘She isn’t dead yet. Perhaps she’ll be all right.’

  ‘If she thinks that trying to kill herself will bring Gilbert running to her bedside …’

  ‘Won’t it?’

  Mrs Dawes gulped more sherry. ‘Well, what I say is, that it ought not to. But there, he’s that kind-hearted, he might … drat the woman!’

  Ellie tipped the last of the bottle into her own glass.

  Sitting in Casualty, Ellie wondered how the nurses could be so cheerful. She looked at her watch for the umpteenth time and thought that if she drank any more coffee from the machine, she’d be sick. And then the nurses would have to look after her, as well.

  Eight o’clock. Nine o’clock. One of the nurses approached her. ‘You were waiting for your friend? May I have a word? The paramedics say she was conscious and talking when they found her, but she’s drifted off and we’re having difficulty rousing her. In the ambulance she said something about not wanting to be pumped out. Do you know if she’s taken something? The injuries from her fall are severe, but if she’s taken something as well, then … is that her handbag?’

  Ellie guessed what this meant. ‘Oh dear. She has been under a lot of stress lately.’

  Nora’s handbag was large, scuffed, smelling of menthol. It bulged with the detritus of a solitary, unhappy life. The envelope gleamed white amid a chaos of unpaid bills, tissues, a couple more poison-pen notes written in capital letters on coloured paper, two bunches of keys, cough sweets, a make-up pouch with a torn plastic cover, pencils, rubbers, hair grips, a packet of Rennies, and an empty packet that had once contained paracetamol.

  The nurse pulled out the envelope, read the superscription and sighed. She weighed the empty packet of paracetamol in her hand. ‘If she’s taken more than a couple of these …’