The Property of Lies Read online

  ‘Somebody told you wrong, then,’ she answered in a broad Brummie accent. She moved the door a fraction but, before closing it in his face, hesitated again. Giving his name, and maybe his easy, disarming manner, seemed to have mollified her somewhat. ‘Miss Catherall did live here, but I’m not her mother,’ she admitted at last.

  ‘She lodged with you?’

  ‘She was a paying guest.’

  ‘Oh, I see, Mrs …?’ He smiled.

  ‘Mrs Cooper, if that’s anything to do with you.’ A Brummie right enough. They were a sharp-witted lot, and not easily taken in, even by nice-looking young fellows with a pleasant manner.

  ‘Is Miss Catherall still in hospital, then? I’m anxious to speak to her – if she’s well enough, that is.’

  ‘Hospital? What do you mean, hospital?’

  Her suspicion was turning to alarm, and Joe thought it was time to show his warrant card. She inspected it but it did nothing to appease her. ‘You must be looking for somebody else. Miss Catherall would never do anything wrong, if that’s what you’re after her for.’

  ‘It’s nothing like that at all. We’re just trying to trace her in connection with something that’s happened to a friend of hers.’

  She looked hard at him, then up and down the street. It was deserted, but curtains might be twitching and he was the police. She swung the door wider and stood back. ‘I reckon you’d best come in.’

  He stepped into a hallway just wide enough for a narrow runner, with a six-inch surround of highly polished, parquet-patterned lino, and followed her into a small but equally gleaming front room, where three-quarters of the space was occupied by a bulbous three-piece suite in rust-coloured uncut moquette, protected by linen chair-backs embroidered with lazy daisies and crinoline ladies. He found a space to stand on the hearthrug.

  ‘What’s all this about Miss Catherall being in hospital, then? As far as I know she wasn’t poorly.’

  ‘Is that so?’

  ‘Healthy as you or I, last I saw of her. Getting into a taxi with her two suitcases, off to this new job – Maxfield or somewhere it was – and pleased as Punch over it.’

  ‘Maxstead Court.’

  ‘Yes, that was it. Maxstead.’

  ‘She never got there, Mrs Cooper.’

  ‘Oh, my God! Hospital, you said. Are you telling me she had an accident?’

  ‘Not so far as I’m aware. It’s a bit more complicated than that.’

  ‘Something tells me I’m going to need a cup of tea.’ But she had reined in her suspicions enough to add, ‘Sit you down and make yourself comfortable while I get it.’

  He was left to contemplate the cottage garden scenes on the chair-backs and the photographs and knick-knacks on every surface, and note that a wireless was playing somewhere in a back room, until Mrs Cooper returned with a strong brew and a plate of cake.

  She looked expectant when she’d poured and handed the tea. He took the cup from her, deciding that he would fare better with his questions if he first gave her an edited explanation of why he was here. ‘You must be wondering what all this is about, Mrs Cooper?’

  ‘It might have crossed my mind.’

  Gilmour accepted a square of lardy cake and began by telling her of the letter written by Miss Catherall to the headmistress at Maxstead Court, explaining that she was to have an operation, but was able to recommend another person to take her place.

  ‘I’ve told you, she never said nothing about any operation to me,’ she interrupted, but added doubtfully, ‘She isn’t one to give much away, however. I suppose she thinks it’s nobody’s business but hers – which it isn’t. It’s funny, though.’

  ‘I’m afraid it’s beginning to look like a necessary fiction, an arrangement to enable this woman to take her place.’

  ‘What? You mean she was telling lies? That’s not like her. What would she do that for?’

  ‘We don’t know yet.’ He paused. ‘Though in fact she might have been lucky in not taking up that post. I’m sorry to have to tell you that the other teacher – the one she recommended to replace her – has died, in rather suspicious circumstances.’ She looked shocked. ‘Did Miss Catherall ever mention anyone by the name of Isabelle Blanchard?’

  He pronounced it in the English way, mainly because he was embarrassed at the thought of attempting the correct pronunciation – he’d been more occupied in drawing cartoons in the back of his school exercise book than learning to speak French – and partly because he thought that was how she might have been known to Mrs Cooper if ever they had met, but she looked mystified and said she’d never heard mention of that name. Then it dawned on her what he’d just said. ‘What do you mean, suspicious?’

  He had to tell her.

  ‘Oh, my God!’ After a minute, she admitted, ‘Well, I must say, I have been wondering about her, Miss Catherall, I mean, since she left. We’d got used her being here, you know, and she said she’d let us know how she was getting on, but there’s been no word, not even a card on Norman’s birthday, which it turned out was the same as her dad’s, so she wouldn’t have forgot.’

  ‘Well, she seems to have gone to ground.’ He hoped she’d take that as just a figure of speech and not one with the connotations that jumped to his own mind as he said it. ‘It’s important we find her in view of what’s happened to her friend, you do understand that?’

  ‘I’d like to know what’s happened to her for her own sake. After what you’ve just told me.’

  ‘What can you tell me about her?’

  The news had shaken Mrs Cooper, although now that she’d got over the shock, she seemed more inclined to believe what he was telling her about her lodger – her paying guest.

  Phoebe Catherall had been with them for about two years, she said, but they had never got to know her intimately, not really. ‘We got on all right, I won’t say we didn’t, but she was inclined to keep herself to herself, you know. We never came all that close, but I liked her – we both did, my hubby and me. He’s an invalid and can’t get out and she used to bring books from the library for him. She didn’t seem to have any other interests but reading. She was a big reader and I think she was lonely. No friends, though she was nice. Quiet, but nice.’

  He could still hear the wireless in the background, with Norman, presumably, listening to it. His being an invalid was probably the reason why they took in lodgers to supplement their income.

  ‘She didn’t seem to have much to go on with, but she was very well spoken, you know. What it was, I reckon, she’d come down in the world since she lost her mother and father in the war, when they all lived in France. I always thought she was a cut above what she did.’

  ‘Teaching’s not a bad profession to have,’ he said, wondering what Ellen Reardon would have said to that view of her work.

  ‘Oh, no, she wasn’t a teacher. She only had a bit of a job playing at the picture house of an evening, see. The Springfield, down the Stratford Road it was; accompanists they’re called, aren’t they? Though she used to say she’d soon be out of a job, with all these talkies coming. And Saturday mornings she played for the dancing lessons they give in the ballroom upstairs. It wasn’t much, was it? Didn’t bring in much, neither. I was that pleased for her when she told me she was leaving because she’d got a job as a French teacher in that posh boarding school. I don’t think she was qualified, mind you, but she once told me that though her father was English, she’d lived in France all her life and of course she spoke French like a native, so I don’t suppose it mattered. Anyway, if she could teach French as well as she played the piano – neither of us is that musical, you know, but she’d play the old joanna for us, sometimes. Lovely, it was, to hear it played properly, though it did get on my Norman’s nerves a bit sometimes, all that classical stuff, I mean.’

  An upright piano stood squeezed into the corner, polished to perfection, the repository for a garish pottery vase of indescribable ugliness, set on a tasselled runner. Gilmour recognized the piano was only there as a
handsome piece of furniture that signalled their ability to afford it. He’d have put money on it that it had never been opened since their paying guest had left.

  ‘It’s important that we find Miss Catherall, you understand. Is there anything else you can think of that might be useful?’ She shook her head and he closed his notebook. ‘Well, thank you for talking to me, Mrs Cooper. I’d just like to take a look at her room before I go though, if you wouldn’t mind.’

  ‘I don’t mind at all, except there isn’t nothing to see. When she left, it gave me a chance to spring clean and do it over, ready for my next guest. I’m a dab hand at papering, though I do say it myself.’

  ‘I’m sure you are,’ he smiled. Mrs Cooper was still spry and active and women did seem to enjoy hanging wallpaper, his Maisie included. Gilmour himself was relegated to paintbrush duties.

  There didn’t seem to be much point in seeing the room. He’d have bet a week’s pay that house-proud Mrs Cooper wouldn’t have left cupboards and drawers unemptied and unscrubbed, but he decided while he was here he might as well take a look.

  ‘Looks nice, doesn’t it?’ she said proudly, pushing open the door of a good-sized upstairs room at the back of the house, still smelling of new paint and paper. Although it overlooked the back yard, it backed on to the park, and at some distance beyond the fence he could see trees and a stretch of grass, a sparkle of sunlight on water, a glimpse of greenery that made for quite a pleasant prospect.

  As he’d anticipated, the spotless room was devoid of any obvious trace of its previous occupant. ‘You’re sure she didn’t leave anything behind, then?’ he persisted hopefully, in case Mrs Cooper had found something forgotten tucked in a cupboard and decided to keep it should her ex-lodger ever request it. But, sure enough, Phoebe Catherall had taken all her possessions with her when she took herself off. Clearly, she had never had any intention of returning, and Mrs Cooper must have known this. Still, she asked him as he was leaving, ‘You’ll let me know if you hear anything of her, won’t you?’

  He promised he would, but before he went he said, ‘One thing I haven’t asked: what about her visitors?’

  ‘She didn’t have any, that I was aware of. Except the once.’

  His interest sharpened. ‘When was that?’

  ‘A month or two back, I couldn’t say exactly.’

  ‘Did she by any chance have red hair?’

  ‘I didn’t say it was a woman.’

  ‘A man?’

  ‘Well, it weren’t a grizzly bear.’

  He laughed. ‘Sorry. Stupid question. What was he like?’

  She shrugged. ‘I didn’t get much of a look. Tall, youngish, I suppose, but everybody’s getting to look young to me nowadays. I let him in and called out to her she had a visitor. She asked if she could take him into the front room, here,’ she said, stressing the words to indicate there’d been no impropriety, and adding, ‘He only stopped about fifteen minutes, before I heard him leave.’

  ‘I don’t suppose he gave you his name?’

  ‘No,’ she said, ‘he didn’t. And I didn’t ask.’

  Reardon was waiting for the call which had been put through to the police at Metz, in the hopes of locating the school where Isabelle Blanchard had taught. The dubious honour had fallen to him since he was the only one at Folbury Police Station who spoke a little French. He was by no means fluent, but he had just about enough to get by, having been taught by Ellen before their marriage. It was how they had met: she the teacher, he the adult pupil.

  He still approached the task with some trepidation, knowing there was every chance he might be put on to some German speaker, one who spoke French as hesitant as his own, in view of the fact that Alsace-Lorraine, with its turbulent history, had been the subject of a tug-of-war between France and Germany for centuries, annexed first by one nation, then the other. Then he reminded himself optimistically that people living there in Metz must of necessity have become used to switching from one language to the other. He pushed back his chair and waited.

  Adjacent to the almost finished science lab, a room designated for eventual use as a storeroom, but not yet completely fulfilling its purposes, was where they were parking themselves for the time being. A cheerless little space it was, a room scarcely bigger than a cubbyhole, with a table and some chairs pushed in, somewhere they could talk to people away from the school’s main activities in between their journeys back and forth from Folbury. But by no means to be considered an office. Miss Hillyard had, however, gone so far as to allow a temporary telephone extension to be set up. The room was adequate enough, notwithstanding that it had only a very small window with a view dominated by the scaffolded east wing and the blank space where the demolished part had once stood. From where Reardon sat with the telephone, the fatal door in the wall couldn’t be seen properly, but he knew it was there and it was uppermost in his thoughts and speculations at this moment, a still unanswered question, while he waited for his connection.

  In the event, when at last he was put through, he found the gods had smiled on him and he was speaking to someone who had a very fair command of English. He need not have bothered making a list of ready-translated questions; his enquiries were fully understood and soon helpfully met. There was not much he wanted to know, anyway – he simply needed to obtain a little information about the school where Isabelle Blanchard had taught, and how he could contact them.

  Ten minutes later, he had hung up the receiver and was contemplating the blank space where the answers should have been.

  There was no school going by the name of Lycée Honoré de Balzac in Metz, nor anywhere else in the area that the police officer knew of. The name Blanchard had likewise received no recognition. Both of which, he supposed, explained the references Miss Hillyard had failed to receive, but left him still with a big question mark, and even more frustration.

  ‘Tell me about that door,’ he said later to the man who sat facing him. ‘Why it was left like that?’

  Michael Deegan, the late builder’s site manager, looked down at his hands. Large and well shaped but not looking used to manual labour. He didn’t in fact seem like a building worker at all. Well dressed, with a head of unruly dark hair combed into part-submission, nice suit and tie, but then, he had come to Maxstead for an arranged meeting with Miss Hillyard, hoping for a future commission to continue the abandoned work on the school. He had been very shocked when he’d learnt what had been discovered on the site where the firm had recently been working, and still didn’t appear to have recovered. He appeared to be going over the news in his mind and it took him some time to answer the question.

  ‘The door?’ Reardon prompted.

  Deegan found his voice and, once started, gave the information readily enough. ‘Due to be bricked up that day, the day Mr Broderick didn’t turn up and we got news of what had happened to him. The men were upset because they’d all liked Frank, but they naturally wanted to know what was going to happen about their jobs, and of course the wages they were owed, and one fellow started to get a bit nasty about it all. O’Byrne, it was. There’s always one, isn’t there? But I could do nothing to help and the result was they packed the job in. Walked off. I couldn’t stop them and to tell the truth I didn’t blame them.’ He raked his fingers through his hair, upsetting its equilibrium. ‘The fact is, it hasn’t been a happy job. We Irish, you know, we’re a superstitious lot. Things were found and rumour got around that the job was unlucky.’

  He didn’t look particularly Irish, any more than he looked like a builder, though given his name it was hardly surprising. No accent, well-modulated English public school, rather. Not handsome, but pleasant looking with an open face. Pale complexioned, and smoke grey eyes that lit up when he smiled. A crooked smile he used often, and a charming manner. He was tall and looked fit. The sort of chap that always seemed to set the ladies’ hearts beating, even – or perhaps especially – this group of spinsters? They couldn’t encounter many like him in the course of their day. He was
older than Reardon had at first thought. There were laughter lines at his eye corners and a slight fullness under the chin. His thick hair might well conceal a few threads of grey.

  ‘You found things? What sort of things?’

  ‘A child’s shoe, a broken rosary, a bunch of ancient keys. It’s not unusual on a job like this. You’d be amazed what you come across, and not only the bits of old glass and pottery, coins and suchlike that you might expect. This lot had all been there for God knows how many years, but it was the rosary that did it.’ He pointed through the window to where a number of old stone slabs of varying shapes and sizes were leaning against one of the walls. ‘The half we’ve already pulled down was one of the oldest parts of the house, older than the rest of the wing by a couple of hundred years maybe, but it was stone-flagged like all the downstairs rooms. It’s good stone, and it’s intended for paving the courtyard here when – if – we finish off. But none of the stuff we found meant anything; you find similar bits and pieces in any project of this nature, in these very old buildings. The rosary was found somewhere under those pavers, been there for centuries, more than likely. I think the chaps were afraid of coming across a skeleton, but of course we never did.’

  ‘The men walking off – was that the reason the door wasn’t bricked up, as intended?’

  ‘The section adjoining it had only gone down a day or two before, yes – but I had fastened the door up securely myself.’

  ‘You mean you nailed it up? Are you sure?’

  ‘I’d hardly forget a thing like that.’ Deegan looked indignant.

  ‘I don’t suppose you would,’ Reardon said appeasingly. ‘You can’t be too careful, I dare say, this being a school.’

  ‘True, although those little girls weren’t supposed to come near here.’

  Some of them not so little, Reardon thought. And in his experience even little girls could be as adventurous, not to say as disobedient, as boys, given the opportunity.