Suspicion Points Read online

  ‘But you said you grew up on an estate a lot worse than this,’ Robert said. He sounded cautious.

  I nodded.

  ‘Then how were you lucky?’

  ‘The estate was vile, but the primary school I went to was exceptional. The headmistress wanted us all to get on in life and every morning at assembly she’d give us an anecdote, and that used to set me up for the day. The teachers made the lessons fun – specially our English teacher. The first thing we had to do every lesson was look in our dictionary for a word at least six letters long and write a sentence using the word to show we understood its meaning then read it out to the class. It had to be a word we didn’t know. She made a game of it. We had to take a letter out of the box – my first letter began with an S. I remember my very first word – it was substantiate. The teacher was impressed.’ I smiled. ‘I couldn’t pronounce it – but she was still impressed. So I was lucky to have inspirational teachers – maybe Bridget’s teachers didn’t care – just taught the basics and didn’t bother about anything else.’

  ‘Did you work hard at school?’

  ‘Not really. No more than I had to. I always did my homework and projects. I didn’t want to go to university or anything, but I was an average student. Anyway, back to the case. Phoebe’s clothes were divine. I know Bridget’s grieving, but her clothes are so . . . ’

  ‘Common? Tarty?’ he suggested helpfully.

  ‘Worse – they’re the sort of thing a prostitute down on her luck would wear.’ I sighed. ‘Can you think why Phoebe might have been friends with Bridget?’

  ‘She might have been trying to help her because she felt sorry for her. I agree that they’re unlikely soul mates. As you say they’ve got nothing in common except that they worked together. I’ve just had a thought – I can’t remember Phoebe saying she and Bridget were friends, can you?’

  I tried to recall the conversation. ‘No. Now you mention it, I don’t think she did. We’ll have to interview the people she worked with tomorrow and the manager . . . Elaine. And as soon as forensics have finished with the house we’ll look inside. I doubt we’ll find anything useful, but you never know.’

  We were heading towards St Austell when my mobile rang. It was Alice, the socialite.

  ‘I’m not sure if this is important, but I’ve remembered something.’

  ‘Are you at home?’

  ‘No I’m at work.’

  ‘What time do you get home?’

  ‘About five-thirty. I’ll be in all evening.’

  ‘We’ll see you then. Thanks for ringing.’

  I put the mobile back in my pocket. ‘Can we go somewhere quiet and talk? I need your background knowledge. Not a pub. We don’t want anyone listening. You can’t be anonymous here like you can in London.’

  I hoped he’d suggest going to my place or his.

  ‘Okay.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Let’s go for a walk.’

  So he was no where near forgiving me. He probably never would.

  ‘A walk? It’s freezing.’ I was too afraid of rejection to tell him we’d go to my house. I didn’t have a clue why I felt like this. I didn’t even like him. All my ex-boyfriends had a sense of humour. It was my stupid hormones that fancied him. My brain disliked him. He made me uncomfortable. He made me feel intellectually, culturally and morally inferior.

  Not only could he speak fluent German, French and Italian, he could write them too. Instead of going to university he had gone to Europe for four years, where he’d lived in apartments in Florence, Paris, Vienna and Berlin. He listened to classical music. He’d been to The Albert Hall and The Royal Opera House. He knew about art and who’d painted what.

  Until I’d moved to Cornwall I’d lived in Hackney all my life. The only thing we had in common was that I’d been a girl guide and he’d been a boy scout.

  He looked at the jacket I was wearing. Last year early April had been warm. This year it was cold. ‘You’ll need something warmer,’ he said. ‘I’ll drop you at your place.’

  I didn’t invite him in. He could wait in the car. Aware of my UPVC door and double glazing that Robert and his sort despised, I grabbed my padded jacket and woollen scarf.

  ‘You’ll need a coat yourself,’ I said when I got back in the car.

  ‘I’ll get one. There’s a lovely cove a short walk from my cottage.’

  While I’d been getting my coat he’d turned the radio on. I recognized the tune. ‘What’s that playing?’ I asked.

  ‘Beethoven’s Emperor.’

  He parked and I followed him to his cottage. At the front door he pulled out his wallet and gave me a ten pound note. ‘See that fish and chip shop? They’re the best in the area. I’ll have plaice and chips. I’d recommend it. The haddock’s excellent too. So is the cod. Tell him it’s for me. I won’t be long.’

  What a neat way of keeping me out of his cottage. The man in the shop was friendly. He became even more friendly when I mentioned Robert. He took each piece of fish, dipped them in batter and cooked them individually.

  ‘I’ll have salt and vinegar, please,’ I said as he began to wrap up my order.

  ‘No. Not if you’re eating this with Robert.’

  When I began to protest he grinned. ‘No. You’ll see why.’

  His smile was so warm I didn’t argue. By the time I came out of the shop Robert was standing outside his cottage wearing a navy Barbour and a scarf, with a canvas bag slung over his shoulder. He was carrying a tartan rug. I insisted on giving him money for my share.

  On a hot day the cove would have been a great place for a picnic. He spread the rug, which had insulated backing, over the sand. From his bag he produced two bottles of fizzy water, wooden salt and pepper grinders, a small bottle of white wine vinegar, a lemon cut in quarters and paper towels. I stopped myself from saying how posh he was. He was right about the fish and chips. They were delicious. I could taste the difference between the sea salt, black pepper and white wine vinegar and the ordinary stuff. But I didn’t tell him.

  ‘Our problem is,’ said Robert, ‘that all the neighbours could have done it. Only Phoebe and Stuart had alibis and you’ve shown that even they had time to do it.’

  I tried to look cool, but praise from Robert was heartening.

  ‘I’ve just had a thought,’ he said. ‘The baby.’

  ‘What about him?’

  ‘We’ll have to check and make sure he was normal.’

  ‘Normal? Oh, you mean Bridget might have killed him because he had Downs Syndrome or cystic fibrosis?’

  He nodded. ‘It wouldn’t be the first time.’

  ‘She could have had him adopted. I would.’

  ‘Would you?’

  ‘Yes. I’d want a healthy baby.’

  To my relief he wasn’t looking at me as if I was unfeeling or unnatural. He looked pensive. ‘There’s a lot of pressure to keep them . . . attitudes have changed,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, but the condition is the same.’

  He nodded. ‘An extra chromosome. They used to be put in special homes.’

  ‘Whatever pressure was put on me I wouldn’t keep it. I couldn’t. But would Bridget kill her husband too?’

  ‘They might have had an argument. We’ll have to find out more about their relationship. How they met, were they happy?’

  ‘We know already,’ I said. ‘They both lived on the same estate.’

  ‘But how did they meet? Church, social club or – ?’

  ‘Sorry, I see what you mean.’

  He finished the fish and chips and took two apples out of his bag. ‘Want one?’

  I wanted a doughnut, but I took the apple and thanked him. ‘Bridget had the car. What if one of the neighbours, or all of them, thought the house was empty because the car wasn’t there?’ I bit into the apple.

  ‘The thing against that line of thought is why risk burning down a house and destroying things they valued . . . the front door, original windows – ’

  ‘Unless,’ I said, ‘the French blok
e – ’

  ‘Yves.’

  ‘Right, him. Was he lying about the man ringing his doorbell? Did he start the fire and make up the story about the man waking him? He raised the alarm early so the house wasn’t destroyed.’

  ‘But what would they achieve? Insurance would pay for the damage and Bridget and Declan would get the new windows and doors even sooner.’

  ‘A warning? They hoped they’d give up and move?’

  He stared out to sea. ‘Yves might have been so frightened about Bridget telling his parents that he was driven to murder her . . . but again, while I can see him or Craig murdering Bridget, I can’t see them murdering a baby.’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘Neither can I. The only thing that makes sense is if they didn’t know the baby was inside.’ We were discussing murder, but I was happy. Robert and I were talking like allies not enemies.

  ‘And,’ he said, ‘I’m sure if any of them killed someone they’d feel remorse and none of them looked stricken.’

  I thought back to the scene in the socialite’s kitchen. ‘One thing I think that’s a bit odd, is that they all looked perfectly groomed. Both Craig and Yves wore silk dressing-gowns, their hair was combed – ’

  ‘Hang on,’ said Robert. ‘They hadn’t been in bed very long. If they left the party at Pengelly House at eleven, they had to get home, maybe have a bath – ’

  ‘I would have thought they’d have a bath or shower before they went to the party,’ I said realizing that they also would have shaved. ‘No, forget what I said – I was thinking aloud. If Bridget’s telling the truth then I guess that the two blokes were in one house and the two girls in the other – not that it means anything, I suppose.’

  When Robert finished his apple he said, ‘Although you’ve shown that Phoebe or Stuart could have done it, when we first saw Phoebe, she thought Bridget was dead. She didn’t have to tell us about their animosity.’

  ‘Yes she did, because someone else would have told us. And that would have looked bad for her.’

  ‘Hardly.’ He threw his apple-core into the sea. ‘They thought they had an unbreakable alibi. They’d been up all night, she could have said she was too tired to think.’

  ‘We’ve got to establish what the motive was,’ I said. ‘Once we know that it’ll make things clearer. It could have been a random arson attack, but I doubt it. The only thing that points away from Bridget or Declan being the target is the fact that the murderer could have pushed them under a bus or truck. They would have at least been sure they killed the right person.’

  Robert shook his head. ‘Murder by setting light to a house is haphazard, but a confrontation is avoided. Most other methods require close contact with the person and that involves the risk of being caught in the act.’

  ‘Poison?’

  He shook his head. ‘I doubt anyone we’ve interviewed has any knowledge of poisons. And it’s risky. If someone gave their potential victim a box of chocolates with one of the chocolates laced with cyanide or arsenic there’s the risk that someone else might eat it.’

  ‘Bridget’s so thin she’d be unlikely to have been able to put up much of a fight if she’d been attacked, so if Yves was desperate enough to kill her, he could have gone into her house during the day when she was at home and bashed her over the head or stabbed her.’ I hurried on before Robert could argue. ‘He would have run the risk of being seen from the upstairs windows, but if he wore camouflage . . . ’

  ‘Maybe they kept their back gate locked,’ Robert said. ‘But I agree that a direct attack would have got the right target. The evidence points to Bridget being the target, but we don’t know for certain. There is also the problem of leaving DNA at the scene, no matter how careful you are.’

  ‘What did you think of Bridget?’

  He looked quizzical. ‘In what way?’

  ‘Did you like her?’

  ‘No. Did you?’

  I shook my head. ‘She admits that she and Elaine were bullies – although, if asked, she’d probably deny they bullied anyone – the blame would lie with Phoebe and the others for failing to do what they were told. She’d say she was doing it for the good of the hospital or something like that. Why don’t you like her?’

  ‘For the same reasons as you.’

  ‘She seems to have lots of friends on the estate.’

  ‘The only reason she didn’t betray them because she was never in a position to do so. I bet if they’d worked with her the friendships would have been broken.’

  ‘How do you know Ethel?’

  ‘She’s a friend of my grandmother’s.’

  ‘Is that how you know so much about Pengelly House?’

  ‘No. My grandmother used to live there.’

  ‘What? At the commune?’

  ‘No. She was born there, she grew up there.’

  I should have guessed that his family were one of those aristocrats who moaned about taxes and raged when some chancellor in a Labour government in the seventies said he wanted to squeeze the rich till the pips squeaked. It’s a wonder they didn’t try and assassinate him. My dad was always going on about how great Harold Wilson was. He wouldn’t have encouraged people like my mum and dad to buy their council house. My dad wouldn’t have been made redundant and their house wouldn’t have got repossessed and we wouldn’t have had to move to an estate that was even worse than the place where we’d grown up.

  Robert’s family must have been forced out of Pengelly House. They must have been too proud to endure the thought of opening their home to commoners who’d come in droves and pollute the air with working-class accents. But I wanted to hear it from him.

  ‘Why doesn’t she live there now?’

  ‘She left home when she was seventeen and became a nurse in London. When the war broke out she joined the Air Force.’

  ‘Why did he sell the house?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Her father.’

  He unscrewed the bottle of water too fast. It spurted all over me. ‘Sorry.’ He handed me a paper towel. ‘Whose father?’

  ‘Her father. Your great-grandfather.’

  He actually smiled. It was only a little one, but it was definitely a smile. ‘He didn’t.’

  I was puzzled. ‘But you said the owner of Pengelly House died without heirs.’

  ‘He did. He had three sons, but they were killed in the first world war. Well, that’s not strictly true. One was a conscientious objector. His parents disowned him and made him leave. He couldn’t get a job and he was hounded by the people in the nearest village. He went to London and stayed with his sister – she was a lot older than he was. When he received a summons from the court he committed suicide.’

  No wonder Robert was so controlled, having such awful ancestors. He must have been too frightened to smile for fear of doing it at the wrong time.

  ‘His sister never forgave her parents and that’s why she went to New Zealand,’ he went on. ‘In spite of a search the lawyers couldn’t find any descendants she might have had. They were able to trace a marriage to an Australian, but his surname was Jones. It’s possible that there are heirs somewhere who haven’t got a clue what they’ve missed.’

  ‘They might not have wanted a huge place like that with all the taxes and upkeep they’d have to pay. Still I guess they could have sold it to a developer.’ As I spoke I wondered how I would react if I discovered I had a huge inheritance.

  ‘And the house would have been pulled down – instead it’s being looked after,’ said Robert. ‘And, as you said, it’s better that a lot of people live there rather than just one family.’

  Then something struck me. ‘Hang on. If they can’t find her or her children aren’t you the heir?’

  ‘The heir to what?’

  ‘Pengelly House. Oh dear. Did your grandmother disgrace herself and get disinherited?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Was she illegitimate or adopted or something?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then how come you’re not
the heir . . . if your great-grandfather owned the place?’

  ‘He didn’t.’

  ‘But you said your grandmother was born there.’

  ‘She was. Her parents lived in one of the estate cottages. Her father was the head gardener.’

  When we were walking up the path of Alice’s house in Farrier Way, Robert stopped and stared at her door as if was made of solid gold and the stained glass was encrusted with diamonds.

  ‘What is it?’ I asked.

  ‘Nothing.’

  But I knew something had struck him. Whether it was anything to do with her house or not I didn’t know.

  Alice, looking smart in a suit with perfect hair and make-up, took us downstairs into the kitchen. To my surprise the clothes designers, their wives and Phoebe and Stuart were sitting at the table, which was set for afternoon tea with a tea pot, mugs, cakes and biscuits. I was going to say we didn’t want anything, but Robert said yes to tea and sat opposite Phoebe. Stuart looked as if he had been painting. His jumper was old and it had smears of paint on it. He smelt faintly of turpentine – an accelerant.

  The pregnant girl fidgeted and looked uncomfortable. Just as I was trying to remember her name Alice inadvertently came to my aid.

  ‘Are you all right, Fleur?’

  She smiled and nodded. ‘It just kicked me.’

  ‘Kate, would you like more tea?’

  Fleur’s pink maternity dress flouted the current fashion of having her bump on show and her belly button protruding. Apart from the colour, it was the sort of style I would wear, and I guessed that Craig and Yves had designed and made it. Thinking back to Bridget’s accusations, which I thought were true, I looked at the girl’s fingers. Both wore wedding and engagement rings and the men wore wedding rings.

  A door that had been closed the morning of the fire, was now open. It was a formal dining-room with an antique table and eight chairs.

  Alice got to the point as soon as she had poured Robert’s tea. ‘Not long after Bridget and Declan moved in, there was an almighty row. Phoebe and Stuart had invited all of us to dinner. I could hear shouting as soon as I came out of my front door and started walking towards their house. Craig and Fleur and Yves and Kate had just come out of their houses and we all stood on the footpath. It was disgraceful.