Death in Disguise Page 25

  ‘But…don’t you analyse stomach contents? All that sort of thing?’

  ‘Only if there are suspicious circumstances. This obviously appeared to be straightforward. It’s a pity,’ he folded up the letter and placed it under a paperweight, ‘that you didn’t pass all these doubts on to the police straight away.’

  ‘What could I prove? The cremation had taken place before the inquest—they made sure of that. All the evidence literally gone up in smoke. Also, I thought that if you did take me seriously and started questioning people they’d be on their guard, clam right up and I’d get nowhere.’

  ‘Have you had any luck?’

  ‘No.’ His expression became dark and sombre. ‘Not a bloody whisper. I was very careful. I’d been there a month before I asked anyone anything. And then I was casual about it. Mentioned him only in passing. I thought this would be acceptable—even half expected. You know how curious people are after an unnatural death. I hoped it would be assumed my questions fell into that category. All I discovered was what he was like as a person, which I knew already.’

  ‘Did you find anyone reluctant to speak. Feel they were hiding something?’

  ‘No, damn it. I did wonder at one point if they were in it together.’ He caught the quizzical look of a rough grey brow. ‘It has been known.’

  ‘I’m aware of that.’ Barnaby, who had long since rested his pen, now put it and the pad aside. ‘Surely it’s a bit unlikely no one at the Manor House knew of your uncle’s medication and the possible side effects.’

  ‘I doubt it. The problem of alcohol wouldn’t come up. The place is dry, you see.’

  ‘Dry?’ The word, coloured red for horror, flew from the sergeant’s lips. Troy looked sternly round as if a fourth party were present, concealed perhaps in the filing cabinet, infelicitously interrupting.

  ‘You didn’t search his room by any chance?’

  ‘How did you know that?’ He looked briefly impressed.

  ‘You were heard.’

  ‘Oh dear. That’s bad.’

  ‘Were you looking for anything specific?’

  Andrew flushed. He looked awkward and for the first time since the beginning of the interview, insincere. He blustered for a moment then shrugged, turning his hands palms-upward in a gesture of exculpation. ‘This is going to sound awfully mercenary so soon after he died but yes. I was looking for a Will. He’d sold his house when he moved to the Windhorse. Nothing grand. A three-bedroom terraced in what years ago was the non-posh bit of Islington. Now of course there’s no such thing. He got a hundred and eighty for it.’ Troy gave a low whistle. ‘I went to Barclays where he always banked, but they weren’t holding a Will and they’d tell me nothing about his affairs.’

  ‘Perhaps he put it into the commune?’ suggested Troy.

  ‘That’s not how it works. You don’t have to buy in. People just pay their way. And in any case it’s not something he would have done. He didn’t have to take me in and bring me up, but once he did our attachment to one another was total. I was his next of kin and I know he would have left the proceeds from the sale of the house to me. Certainly in preference to a bunch of strangers.’ His voice rose again on the final words then he paused. Breathing slowly in an obvious attempt to calm down, he reached for a third cigarette.

  ‘Perhaps you’d let me have your address at Earl’s Court, Mr Carter?’

  Barnaby picked up his pen once more.

  ‘Twenty-eight Barkworth Gardens. Easy to remember because it’s my age.’

  ‘You say the morning of your uncle’s death you hung around waiting for a call till noon. Were you alone?’

  ‘Part of the time. Around half ten Noeleen—an Australian girl next door—asked if I’d like some coffee. We had it in her flat. The phone’s on the landing and she left the door open. Why do you ask?’

  Barnaby capped this question by another. ‘What are you going to do now your cover’s blown?’

  ‘No reason why it should be.’ He fielded two disbelieving looks. ‘There’s no newspapers, radio or telly at the house you see.’

  ‘It’s all over the tabloids, Mr Carter,’ said Troy. ‘Maybe display boards, too. You don’t have to buy a paper. Just be in the blasting area.’

  ‘I don’t know about that. I was in the village this morning and I didn’t notice anything. Anyway—it’ll be a one-day splash won’t it? All over by tomorrow. I think I’ll keep my mouth shut and my fingers crossed.’

  ‘You’re going to have the fourth estate crawling out of your Tudor woodwork any minute now,’ said Barnaby, ‘what with the murder and Gamelin’s death. No point in telling them your name’s Christopher Wainwright.’

  ‘Hell. I suppose not. Then of course Trixie might have seen it. If she comes back —’

  ‘Comes back? What do you mean?’

  ‘She’s run off.’

  ‘What!’

  ‘We discovered it just before lunch.’

  ‘Why on earth didn’t you notify us?’

  ‘Oh there’s nothing sinister. She went of her own free will. Taken all her things.’

  ‘It’s not for you to decide what’s sinister and what isn’t!’ shouted Barnaby. ‘You were all instructed not to go anywhere without informing the police.’

  ‘It’s not as if she’s involved—’

  ‘She’s a witness in a murder inquiry, Mr Carter. And a possible suspect.’

  ‘A suspect…but isn’t…I thought…’

  ‘The case is still open.’ He watched that sink in. Saw the implications take root and his visitor’s subsequent alarm.

  ‘I must get Suze away. I’ll tell her the truth. She’ll understand. Why I had to pretend, to lie. Won’t she?’ He sounded uncertain. ‘I’m not bothered what the others think.’

  ‘That’s a foolish and careless attitude, Mr Carter,’ said the chief inspector. ‘If your suspicions regarding the death of your uncle are correct—and I tell you frankly that I would not be at all surprised if they were—then someone at the Manor House has already killed two people. And they’ll not hang about, I assure you, if they feel a need to make it three.’

  ‘But why should anyone want to kill me? I haven’t discovered anything.’

  ‘Then it might be sensible to publicise the fact. And also,’ concluded Barnaby, ‘to watch your back.’

  In the kitchen the Beavers were clearing up after lunch, Heather washing and wiping, Ken (hop, rest, ‘aah!’ hop) attempting to stack.

  ‘When I think of all that sprout timbale.’ She sounded quite peevish.

  ‘You haven’t thrown it away?’ Ken was naturally aghast. Throwing away was the irredeemable sin. Everything, even the contents of the vacuum bag, went on the compost heap—which at the Windhorse obtained to an almost iconic status. It was lovingly tended, dampened, activated by Garotta, forked sides to middle, gee’d up with a little lime and gently compressed by Arno’s wellies. Worms were thought specially beneficial and many was the lumbricus going modestly about its day-to-day affairs that would suddenly find itself tenderly whisked from terra firma and sent flying through the air to land, like as not, on a heap of rotting egg shells.

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ Heather now replied. ‘We can heat it up for supper.’ She tipped the Ecosudz down the sink. This, too, was not wasted. All water, bar that from the loo, was diverted via an elaborate ganglia of tubes and hoses to the herb garden which remained ungratefully sodden-rooted and spotty-leaved. ‘Oh—do be careful. Here—let me…’

  Ken, balancing as best he could to put a stack of plates away had almost toppled over. ‘Sorry…a myriad thanks. A bit difficult getting earth-centred today.’

  Pouring out the hyssop tea, Heather reintroduced a topic which had kept them awake and chatting the previous night well past sleepy-bye time. ‘Have you thought any more,’ she said, ‘about what we’re going to do if…’

  Ken shook his head. He drank a little tea, lifting and stretching his top lip in a rabbity fashion to keep his moustache dry. ‘Something mig
ht turn up today.’

  There was no need to elaborate. They both knew that ‘something’ meant a Will.

  When the matter was being discussed earlier, Ken and Heather had looked very higher-planeish and disapproving, being drawn in, they made clear, quite against their own selfless and delicate inclinations. But later, à deux, they had to admit that facts were facts no matter how the nut roast crumbled. And that uncertainty had entered their lives in a big way.

  They were very contented at the Windhorse and had become deeply attached to the idea of sleeping beneath a solid roof, washing in hot water and staying fairly warm. Neither wished to rejoin the hipoisie of which their memories were keen. Both recalled sharply lurching about the country in leaky caravans and filthy buses. Hounded and moved on none too gently by the police, or hard-faced, granite-hearted landowners for whom the words ‘care and share’ might never had been invented. Wearily shifting from one smoke-filled bivouac to the next, crouching round a listless fire surrounded by snapping ribby dogs and whining children. Breaking ice on cattle troughs to make tea, shoplifting—Ken had especially hated shoplifting—and outbreaks of violence at dead of night if the local barbarians sussed their arrival. Heather had been woken once by the roar of motorcycles to find fiery rags burning on her pillow.

  Neither of them had any idea of course, in those far-off Gandalfian days, that they harboured such a multiplicity of psychic gifts. Yet, now, here was Ken chosen to be a channel for one of the greatest minds the world has ever known, and Heather visiting Venus and being sent back with outstanding powers of healing.

  It was mainly because of their work that they were anxious to retain the Windhorse base. They saw it as a haven where the ailing and spiritually bereft could come and be succoured. Should the house prove to have been deeded to some unsympathetic stranger or, worse, be enclosed by Government fisc, where would these poor souls go? Where, come to think of it, would Ken and Heather go? Property was theft, of course, but even if that were not the case they had no savings with which to buy. And no children to qualify for council housing—Ken, on top of the leg, having a quite minuscule sperm count.

  Even ordinary day-to-day expenses might prove to be a problem. The DSS, when first approached for Income Support a year ago, had been especially unimaginative. In vain had Heather explained the importance of their work: the ripple effect (a loving smile in Uxbridge warms a heart in Katmandu) and the thousands of pounds her ministrations saved the NHS. The department had been equally short-sighted over Ken’s claims for a disability allowance, rapping boringly on about the need for a conventional examination plus X-rays.

  ‘That’ll be the day,’ Ken had retorted defiantly, ‘when I trust my body to some chemical-dispensing allopath and his cancerforming rays.’

  Heather had proved loyal in support, crying, ‘Why not just send him to Chernobyl and be done with it?’

  Good old Heth. Ken watched her now, languidly taking the mugs to the sink, rinsing them out. She was wearing a cheap white cotton boiler-suit through which the outline of her homely black-knickered bottom clearly showed. Having removed the crystal, her forehead rose naked, high and bumpy—giving a quite erroneous impression of towering intellect.

  ‘Far be it from me,’ said Ken, lowering his voice, ‘as you know. But I couldn’t help wondering if Suhami will still want to give her money to The Lodge now the Master’s gone.’

  ‘Oh, I do hope so!’ cried Heather. ‘Even if one manages to remain personally non-corrupt, unearned wealth is still the most enormous barrier when mutating to harmonal soul-rule.’

  ‘Right.’ Ken reached for the bread bin. ‘Is there any jam left?’

  ‘I’ve just put it away.’ She crossed to the cupboard. ‘And you sat there and let me.’

  ‘Sorry. Do you want a slice?’

  ‘I shouldn’t.’ Ken sawed off one more. ‘Funny, Trixie running away like that, don’t you think? After Guy Gamelin died. I wondered if…well…if they might have been in it together.’

  ‘They didn’t even know each other.’

  ‘She said that afterwards but May saw them driving off together the afternoon he arrived. Before he’d supposedly met any of us.’

  ‘Probably after a bit of rumpy-pumpy.’

  ‘Ken, honestly!’ Heather applied a slab of pear and rhubarb stick to her bread. ‘For a highly graded planetary light-worker you can sometimes be awfully coarse.’

  ‘Human nature, Heth. Who are we to judge?’

  The telephone rang. There were three: one in the office, one in the kitchen and one on the hall table. Heather let it go saying: ‘It’ll be business of some sort. May’s in the office.’

  But if May was, she did not respond and eventually Heather, sighing, ‘As if I didn’t have enough to do,’ picked it up.

  Ken watched and listened, becoming more and more intrigued by his wife’s disjointed and seemingly harassed response.

  ‘…but she’s not here…not at the moment… I really couldn’t say…oh I wouldn’t have thought so…no, no—it’s not at all that sort of place. We…well, I was present myself as a matter of fact…Heather Beavers. Writer. Healer and Priestess…priestess. MPFS… I’m not trying to spell it—those are my qualifications… Gosh I’m not sure about that. We live communally here you see. Talk everything over together… Really? That’s not long…will you? I could ask—hullo? Hullo?’

  She rattled the receiver before hanging up and turning to Ken, her face stretched taut by the muscular effort needed to conceal the intensity of her reaction.

  ‘That was the Daily Pitch.’

  ‘Earth-bound profaners,’ said Ken automatically.

  ‘Oh yes—of course. They wanted to talk to Miss Gamelin—Suhami. I said she wasn’t here.’

  ‘Quite right too. Thank God someone caring took the call.’

  ‘We must protect her, Ken. That’s vital.’

  ‘Evoke the crystalline hordes.’

  ‘Trouble is…après moi le déluge, ducky.’

  ‘Ay?’

  ‘That’s what this woman said. This reporter. We’re going to be absolutely besieged.’

  ‘Tory lackeys.’

  ‘Absolutely.’ Heather looked around the empty kitchen and spoke more quietly. ‘They’re so slick. After she’d kind of trapped me into admitting that I was there when the murder took place she began talking about an exclusive. Start counting your noughts my love—all that sort of thing.’

  ‘Christ.’ His voice had gone quite pale.

  ‘I know.’ Heather locked her fingers in a vain attempt to control a shudder.

  ‘What a load of shites. You’d never feel clean again… would you?’

  ‘I should say not,’ agreed Heather, painedly studying the interlacing digits. ‘On the other hand… I got to thinking, Ken. Like—you know—what are we about here?’ She waved at the honest home-made loaf and sturdy jam. ‘What are we into?’ Her husband screwed up his eyes sternly and frowned. ‘Cooling the ego—right? Thinking of others, putting them first. Now here’s an opportunity to protect a bereaved sister—we could speak to them and draw the flak from her on to ourselves who are better able to bear it.’

  ‘Ohhh…’ Ken groaned, mangling his crust in self-abnegation. ‘Sorry sorry sorry… Of course you’re right. Poor Suze. Once again Heth you show the way.’

  ‘And it would mean more merits for our karma.’ Her husband laughed and shook his head. ‘Seems it’s impossible to get away from the ego entirely. Look—how would it be, just to reassure both of us, if I checked it out with Hilarion?’

  ‘She’ll be ringing back in a minute.’

  ‘A minute is all it takes.’ And Ken straightened his spine, crossed his eyes, concentrated on the tip of his nose and tuned in to the Intergalactic World Brain.

  May had not answered the telephone because she was upstairs starting on what she had already recognized would be a lengthy and most formidable task. Nothing less than the reclamation of the soul of Felicity Gamelin. May had started simply at the
most basic level, for physical strength must first be restored.

  Now, stroking Felicity’s thin hand and holding her in the light, May poured all her energy, (hardly at its peak after the last two days), into the pale motionless figure. She was working quite alone for Felicity seemed to have no will at all. She simply lay, dull eyes staring at the ceiling, looking as if she were about to shrivel up and die.

  May’s gentle consoling voice had been rippling on for half an hour when Felicity suddenly turned and looked at her. May saw cold, hard stones resting in ivory sockets.

  ‘I hated him.’

  ‘Ssshh.’

  ‘I hated him. So why aren’t I glad?’

  ‘Because it is not in your true nature.’

  May had seen that straight away. The aura, though tattered, was surprisingly well balanced. Quite a lot of pink and green, even a little blue. Not at all like that young policeman with red flickers everywhere. What a way he had to go, poor boy. May laid her hand on Felicity’s brow, picturing divine love flowing down her arm, through her fingers, and entering Felicity’s body to heal and comfort.

  ‘Danton called him my mid-life Croesus.’

  ‘Is Danton a friend?’ asked May.

  ‘No.’ A ghostly thread of sound. ‘Not at all a friend. Just someone I used to know.’

  These few words seemed to exhaust her but she murmured something else before rolling her head away again. It sounded like ‘chaos’.

  ‘Our Master used to say that there is an order within apparent disorder, and I’m sure that is true. Just be still my dear and quiet, and all the mud—all the unhappiness—will settle and things will become clear and bright. You have lost your way Felicity, but together we will find it again.’

  Felicity lay back on the pillow, her hand resting in May’s. Gradually she felt stealing over her a most delicious lethargy. Her limbs felt so heavy they might have been melting through the mattress. May’s voice came and went: deep, rhythmical and soothing like the ocean’s tide. Felicity slept.