Corpse in Waiting Read online

  ‘We were divorced for a while. Round about then, obviously.’

  Elspeth, Patrick’s mother, had told me when Patrick and I got back together again that there had been a few ‘girlfriends’ during the interregnum, as she had smilingly referred to our separation, a couple of whom he had brought to stay for the occasional weekend.

  ‘So I take it he was invalided out of the army and—’

  I carved her up. ‘No, Patrick was promoted to Lieutenant-Colonel after working for MI5 for a while and then resigned his commission. He’s now with the Serious Organized Crime Agency as an adviser.’

  ‘So what does that make him?’ she wanted to know.

  ‘Mostly a policeman.’

  ‘Oh.’

  I had chosen what I wanted from the buffet and now went over to a table near a window. She followed and seated herself with a satisfied sigh, her gaze going across to Patrick. I took a good look at her. She was older than I had first thought, perhaps mid-forties, and I had to admit was attractive – in a hard sort of way.

  ‘Is he going to stand talking to that old bore all night or join us?’ she said. ‘He trapped me earlier as we were waiting to go into the Roman Baths, telling me how his wife had recently died. I was forced to abandon – I simply can’t stand other people’s hard-luck stories.’

  Fortunately, or not, Patrick ended his chat and, after helping himself to something to eat, came over. He then went away again to fetch a couple of glasses of wine from the bar – he had not yet been cleared by his specialist to drink alcohol after being drugged. Watching him carefully I noted that he was not exactly devastated by the arrival of Alexandra, giving her a broad smile.

  ‘It’s lovely to see you again,’ she said, turning in her chair so as to slightly have her back to me. ‘You haven’t aged at all really, just a few grey hairs. Men who have a good head of hair always look distinguished when it starts to go grey.’

  The man in my life happily soaked this up, smiling at her again before saying, ‘You haven’t changed either. I seem to remember we met in a pub in Plymouth.’

  ‘No, that must have been someone else, darling. Perhaps it was that little brunette you were with. No, I found you at the Savoy. There was a charity fashion show – royalty and all – and there you were.’

  ‘That’s right. I remember now.’

  He didn’t.

  There was a little silence and then Alexandra said, ‘Is your brother – Harry, is it? – well?’

  ‘Larry. No, he’s dead.’

  ‘Oh, I’m terribly sorry.’

  ‘He was killed a while back. We adopted his two children, Matthew and Katherine, Katie.’

  She nodded understandingly. ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘And we’ve three of our own,’ I said brightly before the bloody woman could say anything that might embarrass him.

  Elspeth, having mentioned the ‘girlfriends’ had also said that there had been no creaking floorboards after lights out. Clergy family or no she had not fixed the sleeping arrangements so they shared a room having thought that the divorce was mostly Patrick’s fault, actually not true. She had nevertheless been hoping and praying that we would get back together again. But she had been concerned for him too having been informed by the army medics that his injuries included the genital region. So the no creaking floorboards situation had probably not eased her mind at all. The catalyst had been the arrival on the scene of the patient’s ex-wife, the magic boosted by the spell-maker preparing a camp-bed for him in a cobweb-loaded box room with no heating, the spare bedroom unaccountably being ‘not in use’, while I was given his. And no, I had not run in to him with twigs in my beak, the man had finally cracked, carted me off into the warm and practically raped me.

  All he had needed was practice.

  ‘Are you still working as a PA?’ Patrick asked.

  ‘I was never a PA, darling. You’re mixing me up with someone else again. I was a model – that’s how we met at the fashion show – but not now. God, no, I’d had more than enough of the catwalk. I run an agency now which I’m transferring down here. London’s a truly ghastly place these days.’ She was drinking her wine rather quickly.

  ‘A modelling agency?’ I said, thinking perhaps I ought to take a bit more interest.

  She rounded on me. ‘No, haven’t I just said I was sick of that life?’ She did not quite add, ‘stupid’.

  ‘So you’re living in Bath now?’ Patrick said quickly.

  ‘Not yet, I’m house-hunting, right here in the city,’ Alexandra replied. ‘I’ve just decided that’s where you come in, darling. Someone to tell me about the pitfalls, what to look out for. I mean, I’ve always rented before and wouldn’t have the first idea what dry rot looks like but you must have had lots of experience with your parents living round here.’

  ‘You can get dry rot everywhere,’ Patrick pointed out. ‘In cities and the countryside. I take it you want an old house then?’

  ‘Ancient and with masses of character,’ she cried triumphantly, causing a few heads to turn.

  Rising damp, I thought gleefully, wet as well as dry rot, woodworm, death-watch beetle, bats, spiders, woodlice, rats, mice . . .

  ‘D’you remember that old place that was for sale in the village wherever the rectory was that we went and had a look at? Like that.’

  I willed him not to tell her.

  ‘Hinton Littlemoor. We’re living there as well now,’ Patrick said. ‘It was the old mill cottage and well on the way to falling down if I remember rightly. You wouldn’t recognize it now – they had to spend a fortune to get it right.’

  ‘Oh, I’ve got money. That’s no problem. I just need a guiding hand.’ Here the woman simpered at him in little-girl fashion that caused my hands to clench into tight fists.

  ‘I’m afraid I work in London. This is just a week’s break Ingrid and I are having.’

  ‘I’ve arranged to see several places tomorrow. Or have you made other plans?’

  Patrick looked across at me and I remained as inscrutable as a herd of sphinxes.

  ‘Yes, it would be interesting,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘Would you rather go shopping while we do that, Ingrid?’

  ‘No, I love looking round houses,’ I replied, quite truthfully as it happened. But was I going to leave him alone with this harpy? No.

  Alexandra pouted but made no comment. Then she said, ‘D’you remember on that weekend when we went to Bath races and that enormously fat woman sat down in a plastic café chair and it collapsed and she went hurtling backwards into a flower bed? I don’t think I’ve laughed so much in my life, although you got annoyed with me and said we ought to try not to let her see us.’

  Patrick grinned reflectively and then uttered a hoot of amusement. ‘No, what really made us laugh was the owner of the café rushing out, demanding they pay for it and the woman’s husband punching him on the nose so he ended up in the flower bed too.’

  The pair howled with laughter.

  We had not brought our car with us – with Bath’s traffic it made no sense to do so – but Alexandra had hired one and we arranged that she would pick us up outside our hotel at nine thirty the next morning. She apparently ‘didn’t do mornings’ but her first property appointment was at ten, a flat somewhere on Lansdown Hill. I was hoping she would be fit to drive by then as the wine had flowed freely at the Roman Baths afterwards and she had taken full advantage of it.

  I was still doing my sphinx thing.

  ‘Fancy seeing her again after all this time,’ Patrick said musingly as we went up to our hotel room.

  ‘Yes, fancy,’ I heard myself respond, graven image-like.

  I felt, rather than saw, the sideways look he gave me.

  ‘Surely you don’t blame me for having girlfriends while we were apart.’

  I looked him right in the eye. ‘No, of course not. I just don’t like women who call a man darling in public when they haven’t seen him in years and he’s obviously with someone else. It’s just plain bad mann
ers.’ Even uttering the words made me feel an old fogey.

  ‘Alex is like that,’ Patrick said with a reflective smile.

  ‘As well as being a binge drinker?’

  ‘That’s not like you, and cruel,’ he shot back at me.

  ‘No, actually this is me being your consultant,’ I countered. ‘You know, the one on the other end of the phone when things go a bit tits-up for you? Dispassionately, and I might add soberly, I’m telling you that that woman will make trouble for you.’

  ‘Look, I’m only going to look round some houses with her.’

  ‘She’s well on the way to ending up a booze-soaked old buzzard.’

  ‘Now you’re being ridiculous.’

  ‘Did you sleep with her?’

  ‘Yes.’

  I was being ridiculous and I knew he was lying, a shock in itself, and it came to me a little later that we had not had an exchange of words like this since just before we were divorced.

  TWO

  The morning brought a murky sky with darker, thunder-grey clouds on the horizon. Later, as we stood on the pavement outside the hotel I heard the first rumbles and, cursed with flippancy even in bad moments, it occurred to me that this could be the backdrop for a scene in a rather tacky movie. Even our surroundings, one of the finer terraces in Bath, would have had a locations manager bouncing up and down with joy.

  And here stood the hero and heroine, I thought glumly, still not at ease with one another, he thinking she was silent on account of the presence of an old flame, or damp squib, whichever way you looked at it, she desperately wondering how to break the stalemate.

  We were still standing there fifteen minutes later, getting restless, the storm coming closer, when Patrick’s mobile rang. It soon became obvious that it was Commander Michael Greenway, his boss. Nothing too exciting by the sound of it, just making contact. The call ended.

  ‘Good of him to ring,’ I commented.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did he say anything about any job he might have for you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘How long do you think we ought to wait here?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘She’s probably still asleep.’

  A grunt.

  We lapsed into silence again.

  At seven minutes past ten, large spots of rain beginning to thunk on to the pavement, I was just about to give up when a Ford estate car roared up to us and screeched to a halt.

  ‘Morning!’ Alexandra shrieked out of the driver’s window, following this with ‘Shit!’ as she stalled the engine.

  I was directed to the back seat, ‘So Patrick can show me the way,’ and duly shifted various items to make space for myself; a thin leather document case, open and stuffed full with papers that were spilling out everywhere, road maps, two umbrellas and a large make-up bag. The car jerked away before I had settled, throwing me into the seat. I mulled over how I would be safest; with my seat belt fastened or not, and then discovered that they all appeared to be trapped behind the upholstery where the seats had been folded down to make room for carrying a bigger load in the rear.

  ‘You need a left here,’ Patrick was saying, having to raise his voice above a downpour as the storm arrived.

  A horn blared and the car slewed to a standstill. I had just prevented myself from being thrown forward when Alexandra delivered, full volume, an amazing string of obscenities at someone through her hastily opened window. She then swore again as she got wet.

  ‘But you do have to give way,’ Patrick added, and then laughed.

  Never having been a very good traveller I fought down nausea.

  We rolled back a little, someone behind us leaned on their horn in panic and then we rocketed off again.

  ‘This is a horrible little car!’ Alexandra raved. ‘I have a Porsche at home, you know.’

  ‘Did I hear you say you were being given the keys to one of the houses?’ Patrick asked.

  ‘The second place we’re looking at. I called in for them on the way over to pick you up. Where to now?’

  ‘Just bear left and follow the main road. What’s the address?’

  ‘God knows but it’s on the particulars. They’re in the left hand pocket of my jacket. Have a rummage.’

  The female then commenced to wriggle, uttering little giggles, as he put a hand in her pocket and truly, if she had not been driving I would have battered her over the head with anything heavy that was to hand.

  He found the folded sheet of paper.

  ‘Nineteen, King’s Court,’ he read out.

  ‘That’s just along from where James Carrick used to live,’ I said. ‘Up here, on the left.’

  Lightning zipped and thunder cracked and we had to pull over for a couple of minutes as it was impossible to see clearly for the rain even with the wipers going flat out. Finally, when it was easing off, we found the place, actually a large mansion that had been converted into flats. Someone from the estate agent’s was waiting to show us around, the owners being abroad.

  The flat was on the ground floor, spacious but in need of decoration. Alexandra studiously ignored my presence, asking Patrick about paint, wallpaper, plumbing, heating; subjects about which he has never had time to acquaint himself having been content to leave all that kind of thing to his wife. I could have answered most of her questions but neither of them bothered to consult me so I am afraid Patrick had to flounder. As it was I thought the flat a fair price and with quite a lot to recommend it being quiet, very private and with rooms that had lovely proportions.

  ‘Even if you tore the whole place apart there’d still be a bad feel to it,’ Alexandra was saying in ringing tones when I returned from a quick tour of my own, the estate agent, also finding himself superfluous, waiting patiently for us in the hall. ‘I mean, their taste is execrable. I’d never be able to get things like those bloody awful curtains out of my mind. No, this isn’t the home for me.’

  We left.

  The next property was empty and because of this we were going to be permitted to look at it on our own, the other appointments Alexandra had during the afternoon. It turned out to be a small terraced Georgian house of some charm, clematis coming into bud around the front door, a narrow front garden overgrown and neglected. The building had been on the market for a long time, over a year, and was in a dire state; peeling paint, cracked glass in some of the rotten sash windows, slipping slates. It would cost a fair bit to restore but I reckoned that if it was done properly one would end up with a real gem.

  ‘I’d concrete over all this and park the car off the road,’ said Alexandra as we walked up the path, waving one elegant hand in the direction of the dripping garden.

  ‘You wouldn’t be allowed to,’ I told her. ‘These old properties are almost all Grade One or Two listed.’

  ‘Oh, I’d soon see to that. Money talks, you know.’

  The old-fashioned keys grated in the locks of the front door and we went in. It was gloomy inside and smelt of damp. Alexandra grabbed Patrick by the hand and towed him off towards the rear of the house leaving me to wander into the gloomy living room to the left of the narrow hallway.

  It was obvious that no one had lived here for a long time either. The lack of light was due to plants having grown across the windows, which were thick with dirt. I gazed around, trying to work out how much this room alone would cost to restore. I thought not a huge sum even though the floorboards appeared to be rotten along one side and there was a crack in the wall over the fireplace, suggesting a one-time chimney fire. On the positive side there was a very attractive fireplace, which no doubt Alexandra would have removed, and what looked like the original cornices and central ceiling rose. A long and narrow cupboard to one side of the hearth was locked but there were several small keys on the ring still in the lock of the front door, one of which, I quickly discovered, fitted.

  There were only two shelves, towards the top, which held dust and dead spiders, plus one large and very alive one which, upon seeing daylight
for the first time since heaven alone knew when, raced out of confinement at my nose height startling me before tumbling down on to the floor and rattling off into the grate. It had probably survived by sucking the life out of the others and then become too fat to get through the crack in the door. I’m not a fan of big spiders, nor anything on this planet, come to think of it, with attitude and that number of legs.

  I could hear Patrick telling Alexandra about dry rot and so forth and all at once felt depressed and even more superfluous, just as she had intended. To join them and start throwing my weight about seemed juvenile in the extreme, to stay where I was might be construed as sulking. I left that room, crossed the hall and went into the front room on the other side. This was virtually a mirror image of the first but with window seats in the bay and no cupboard.

  ‘Don’t you want to see the back?’ Alexandra called, appearing and sounding offended.

  ‘In a minute,’ I answered.

  ‘There is dry rot in the kitchen,’ Patrick reported, his voice sounding muffled as though he was half inside a cupboard under the sink. ‘Probably mushrooms of it under the floorboards.’

  ‘We could always have them on toast for lunch,’ I murmured and went up the stairs.

  It was much brighter and lighter here, the two bedrooms and tiny box room charming with faded flowery wallpaper. There was a distant view of hills. I began to fall in love with the place. My imagination blossomed and created a staggeringly wonderful idea. This was a perfect writer’s retreat, a winter snug or summer garden cottage where I would not be constantly having to share my workspace with up to nine other people. The box room was just about large enough for a corner shower, hand basin and toilet, one of the living rooms on the ground floor could be made into a study and a simple but modern kitchen installed at the rear.

  I went off into a world of my own for a while, gazing out of a window that overlooked the small overgrown back garden, redesigning it in my mind’s-eye and for some reason feeling really happy for the first time in ages. Finding my mobile phone I decided to take a photo of it but just as I pressed the button Alexandra walked into shot. She did not see me and I withdrew a little and waited until she went back indoors before taking another. Then I heard footsteps behind me.