The House of Women Read online

  The House of Women

  Alison Taylor

  Copyright © Alison Taylor 2014

  The right of Alison Taylor to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

  First published in the United Kingdom in 1998 by William Heinemann.

  This edition published in 2014 by Endeavour Press Ltd.

  For Aaron

  ‘- fortune is round like an orb, and, I need hardly

  add, does not therefore always fall

  on the noblest or the best.’

  Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) in a letter dated Vienna, 29 June 1801 to

  Franz Wegeler in Bonn

  Table of Contents

  FRIDAY, 17 AUGUST

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  MONDAY, 20 AUGUST

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  TUESDAY, 21 AUGUST

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  WEDNESDAY, 22 AUGUST

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  THURSDAY, 23 AUGUST

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  FRIDAY, 24 AUGUST

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  SATURDAY, 25 AUGUST

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  Author’s Note

  Extract from Shrine to Murder by Roger Silverwood

  FRIDAY, 17 AUGUST

  1

  HER IRRITATION INCREASING by the mile, Janet Evans drove back and forth three times between the roundabout by Safeway’s in Upper Bangor and the Antelope Inn by Menai Bridge before she found the name plate, all but hidden beneath a riotous growth of privet tumbling over a high brick wall beside the main road.

  Glamorgan Place was a short, hilly cul-de-sac, well-tended and suburban, quiet in the torpor of an August afternoon. She parked by the kerb half-way up the right-hand side, feeling heat sear her face and bare arms as soon as she stepped from the car, and looked up at the large, attic-windowed Victorian villa which was home to a Mrs Edith Harris. Overhanging beech and horse chestnut trees secluded the house from its neighbours, dropped leafy shadows on shrubs and wilting perennials and parched lawns, and darkened the short gravelled drive to the front door, where an overweight girl of uncertain years suddenly appeared, beads of sweat hanging like dewdrops from her hairline and a fat tabby cat clinging to her shoulder.

  ‘I’m Detective Constable Evans,’ Janet said, holding out her warrant card. ‘From Bangor police. The doctor called us.’

  The girl retreated into the hallway, treading in pools of coloured light which poured down the staircase from a stained glass window on the landing.

  Stepping in the same pools, Janet asked: ‘Are your parents in?’

  ‘Mama’s upstairs with the doctor.’ The girl’s eyes clouded and she hefted the cat to her other shoulder. ‘He came to see Uncle Ned, but he was too late. He’s dead,’ she added mournfully.

  Bathed in streams of the wonderful light on the elaborately carved staircase, Janet turned. ‘How d’you know?’

  ‘I saw him.’ The girl trudged off down the hall, the cat’s bright eyes looking over her shoulder.

  A faded, once pretty woman in a shapely dress hovered at the turn of the stairs, her skin and clothing vibrant with the same rich colours. ‘Did Phoebe tell you?’ she whispered, wringing her hands. ‘You can always tell, can’t you? Phoebe’s never seen a dead person before, but she knew, didn’t she?’ Her whole body shivered gently and Janet thought she must be of the same age as her own mother, marooned in that sterile time between biological redundancy and death. ‘I called the doctor right away, but he said the police would have to be told, and I can’t think why! Ned’s been ill for years, but the doctor won’t sign the death certificate.’ Her fingers snapped around Janet’s arm, cold and claw-like. ‘Can’t you tell him?’ she whispered urgently. ‘Can’t you make him sign it?’

  Pulling herself away, Janet went up the remaining stairs and along a wide landing towards the room at the end, where a thin, grey man, clad despite the heat of the day in a high, stiff collar, a faded silk tie and a suit, slouched in a dark plush chair ornate with curlicues and carvings. A pair of wire spectacles hung awry from the end of his nose, his mouth was clamped shut and his wide-open eyes stared blankly into hers.

  The doctor was ready to leave. ‘I can’t stay, and there’s nothing I can do, anyway, and although Mrs Harris would like nothing better, I can’t certify cause of death because I don’t know anything about the deceased.’ He shrugged on a pale linen jacket. ‘Edward Jones was one of Dr Ansoni’s patients and he’s on holiday until Monday.’

  The air was sweet with flower scents, and dusty with the odour of old books and papers stacked in piles everywhere about the room. Beneath the open window stood a huge desk, littered with more books and documents, an ancient typewriter, and a scattering of pens and pencils and paperclips. Stepping around teetering columns of books, Janet placed her fingers on the dead man’s neck, eyes averted from his watery stare, and wondered fleetingly if the image of God were imprinted on his retina, as her father would claim. Striated with weals and marks, the cooling flesh was still beneath her own, undisturbed by any pulse of blood or twitch of life. He smelt of fresh air and ivory soap and death, and she felt suddenly nauseous.

  ‘You don’t need to check,’ the doctor said gently. ‘He’s definitely dead, even if I can’t say why, although it’s more than likely to be natural causes of some kind. Anyway, the autopsy will tell us.’

  ‘When did he die?’ Janet asked.

  The doctor glanced at his watch. ‘A couple of hours ago at most, say between two and two thirty. Now I really must be off, so I’ll leave you to it.’

  She heard his feet pound down the staircase, crunch over the gravel and away, then close behind her, felt Edith’s short panting breaths lift the hairs on her neck.

  ‘Did he sign it?’ Edith demanded. ‘Shall I call the undertaker?’

  Edging her out of the room, the cloying smells sickening, Janet said: ‘I’m sorry, Mrs Harris, but we’ll have to inform the coroner. The doctor can’t determine the cause of death.’ Closing the door on the dead man’s eyes, she added: ‘Is he your brother? Only your daughter called him “Uncle Ned”.’

  ‘Of course he isn’t! And why do you have to involve the coroner?’

  ‘It’s standard procedure in cases of unexplained death,’ Janet said, wearily. ‘And the forensic team will have to examine the room. Nothing’s been disturbed, has it? They’ll need to know.’

  ‘Disturbed?’ Edith’s voice rose. ‘Of
course it hasn’t!’ She paced the landing, then back, and stood close beside Janet, breath rasping, eyes hectic. ‘And don’t take any notice of Phoebe! She’ll make a mountain out of a grain of dirt!’

  ‘She hasn’t said anything, except that he’s dead.’

  ‘She will!’ Edith insisted. ‘Believe me, she will!’ She laughed, a sound like a horse in pain. ‘She’s already said somebody must have killed him. Isn’t that completely ridiculous?’

  2

  ‘The ground’s sweating,’ Dewi Prys observed, elbows on the window sill of the CID office. ‘It smells like that tramp we had in the cells a few years back.’

  ‘So?’ Janet asked.

  Watching a clutch of women fighting to board a bus, laden with plastic carrier bags from the new German supermarket, he added: ‘So, arguably, the earth’s a big body crawling with people the way we’re crawling with microbes.’

  ‘That’s hardly an original thought.’

  ‘It is for me.’ He swiped at a dead wasp, curled elliptically on the white paint, then unfastened another shirt button. ‘There’s not a breath of wind, everything’s covered in dust, and if the weather doesn’t break soon, we’ll run out of water.’

  ‘Oh, don’t be ridiculous!’ Janet snapped. ‘God, I wish you’d stop moaning. You get on my nerves! You’ll be complaining about the cold in a couple of months.’

  ‘Probably,’ Dewi agreed. ‘Christmas isn’t far away, is it? Has your pa written his Yuletide sermon yet?’

  ‘I wouldn’t know. I haven’t seen him since I came back from holiday.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because I haven’t.’

  ‘Seen your mother?’

  ‘She gets on my nerves almost as much as you. Nothing but questions, one after another! “Been anywhere nice, dear?”, “Met any nice people, dear?”, “Got anything planned, dear?”’

  ‘Your pa probably puts her up to it.’ Dewi smiled. ‘You should give her something worth reporting.’

  ‘Such as?’

  He grinned. ‘A red-hot intrigue with Mr McKenna?’

  ‘That’s not funny!’ She flushed.

  ‘You fancy him, though. Don’t you?’

  ‘You’re unbelievably adolescent!’

  ‘Methinks the lady doth protest too much,’ Dewi taunted. ‘Or whatever the saying is.’ Drifting away from the window to straddle a chair, he gazed at her thoughtfully. ‘Mind you, that bitch Denise probably put him off women for life. Why doesn’t he get a divorce and get shut of her properly?’

  ‘You’re needlessly nasty about her. She could be well rid of him, for all we know.’ She pushed aside her report on the demise of the old man in Glamorgan Place, and stretched. ‘Is he expected in today?’

  ‘Don’t think so. He’s just back for Griffiths’s retirement do.’

  ‘I hope he gets the promotion.’

  ‘It’s supposed to be a foregone conclusion.’ He admired the arch of her body as she stretched again. ‘And as soon as he moves up the ladder from Chief Inspector to Superintendent, there’s room for an enterprising detective constable like me who’s passed his sergeant’s exam.’

  ‘The questions must have been particularly easy that day.’

  ‘You’re bitchier than usual at the moment,’ Dewi said, rising from his seat, ‘so I presume it’s that time of the month. Anyway, I’m off to see a man about a car. Ring me if you want anything.’

  ‘You’re buying a new car?’ she asked, trying to ignore the jibe. ‘What sort?’

  ‘One that doesn’t blow its guts apart every time I try to start the engine.’ Lingering by her desk, he scanned the half-written report, then asked: ‘How was Edward Jones related to Edith Harris?’

  ‘Third cousin twice removed, or somesuch. He was a sort of lodger.’ She brushed away a tiny withered leaf which had drifted through the window and settled on the desk. ‘It’s a shame his own GP’s on holiday, because the locum obviously couldn’t certify cause of death. Mrs Harris was really upset when I said we’d have to notify the coroner, and I thought she was going to throw a fit when uniform arrived with forensics.’

  ‘Can’t be helped,’ Dewi said. ‘D’you think they’ll find anything?’

  ‘It’s probably natural causes. Heart attack, or something. He wasn’t young.’

  ‘No signs of violence? Nothing suspicious?’

  ‘According to Mrs Harris, he didn’t have an enemy in the world.’

  ‘People say things like that when they’re trying to pull the wool over your eyes.’

  ‘That’s almost exactly what her daughter said.’

  Retrieving her pen, Janet added: ‘She’s called Phoebe.’

  ‘And why should Phoebe say that?’

  ‘Because she likes drama, apparently, and a natural death is far too prosaic.’ She shuddered gently. ‘She gave me the shivers. She’s fat and sort of lumpy, and she dresses like a bag lady, and she’s got these really strange eyes which look right through you, so if the old man was murdered, she probably did it.’

  3

  Draughts of hot air riddled with the smell of exhaust fumes billowed through the car’s open windows as McKenna waited for a break in the traffic hurtling down the road outside the main gate of the police headquarters.

  ‘I’ll never see this place again unless I drive by specially,’ Owen Griffiths commented, craning his neck to look back at the tall grey building roofed with a forest of antennae. He wiped a bead of sweat from the end of his nose. ‘I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.’

  ‘Either’s good medicine at the right time.’ Beside him on the rear seat, Eifion Roberts unfastened his collar button, loosened his tie, and fanned himself with the ends. ‘Mind you, you’ll have a laugh taking that cheque to the bank. How much did you get?’

  ‘More than enough for two holidays.’

  ‘Then somebody’s pleased to see the back of you, because at one time, you’d only have got the gold clock, whereas you got both.’ Prodding McKenna’s back, Roberts said: ‘I’ve never understood why folks get clocks when they retire. Do you?’

  ‘It’s a subliminal message,’ McKenna offered. ‘“Watch this space, your end is nigh.”’

  ‘God, you’re cynical!’ Roberts commented. ‘Still, it’s as well, ’cos if your masters’ smiles and sycophancies were anything to go by, you’ll be filling Owen’s boots come Monday.’ Smirking, he went on: ‘You’ll look more fetching in uniform, so you might score once in a while. I’m told women find power a real turn-on.’ He nudged Griffiths. ‘Isn’t that a fact, Owen?’

  ‘I wouldn’t know.’ Griffiths’s voice was plaintive. ‘A purple past must be nice, though, mustn’t it? Something secret and special and all yours to think back on.’

  ‘See?’ McKenna felt himself prodded again. ‘Owen won’t be the only one missing nearly every boat to set sail. Get yourself a life while you can. You must be so short of the necessary your guts turn somersaults every time a bit of skirt passes by.’

  ‘Oh, be quiet!’ McKenna snapped, ‘and stop bouncing on the seat. I don’t have reinforced suspension!’

  ‘I’m on a diet, I’ll have you know.’

  ‘About time, too!’

  ‘As I’ve said before, I’ll find vinegar in your veins when I come to cut you up,’ Roberts said. ‘And fag smoke invading every cell in your body.’

  ‘And what makes you so sure you’ll have the pleasure of me on your mortuary table?’

  ‘Because I’ve calculated the amount of fag smoke gunging up your innards already, so don’t get cocky just because you’re younger than us.’

  ‘You two bicker like children,’ Griffiths said irritably. ‘And always about the same things. It’s very boring!’

  ‘Excuse us!’ Roberts winked at McKenna in the rearview mirror. ‘We’ll try to confine our puerility to the beach. We should be there soon.’

  ‘And why are three grown men going to the beach?’ Griffiths wondered. ‘What’ll we do there?’

  ‘Well, I�
��m going to buy myself a bucket and spade, and play in the sand,’ Roberts said.

  ‘And I could paddle, couldn’t I?’ Griffiths added.

  ‘You could even take off your shoes and socks first,’ McKenna suggested.

  ‘And what will you do, Michael?’ Roberts asked. ‘I’ll watch,’ McKenna replied, turning off the expressway towards Llandudno.

  *

  Bedazzled by the glitter of water against a sky of almost tropical blue, McKenna sat cross-legged on a tartan rug from the car, Griffiths beside him with sand encasing his wet feet and clinging to the fuzz of grey hair on his shins, and a white handkerchief, knotted at each corner, covering his pate. Near the water’s edge, Roberts dug vigorously with a yellow spade, gouging a channel to carry the tide into the moat around his lop-sided edifice. Every so often, he smiled winningly at the two near-naked young women stretched out nearby.

  ‘He’s quite brazen, isn’t he?’ Griffiths said. ‘Still, I suppose seeing so much raw flesh still on the move is bound to get him over-excited.’

  McKenna grinned. ‘He’s in his element.’

  ‘Second childhood, more like,’ Griffiths commented. He looked down at his own disarray and smiled ruefully. ‘You might say we’re both in our dotage.’ He sighed. ‘But I’ve had my day, I suppose. A short one, but sweet in its own way. It’s just a pity it seems so distant and hazy, like childhood.’

  ‘I can imagine you both as kids,’ McKenna said. ‘Dressed in sailor suits and sun-hats, playing on some beach half a century ago.’

  ‘Eifion, perhaps, but not me.’ Griffiths smiled gently. ‘My parents couldn’t afford holidays, so I was sixteen before I saw the ocean. I saved every penny from my job shifting cinders at the railway yard and took a cycling trip to Devon and Cornwall.’

  ‘You must have had days out. Your place was quite near the coast.’

  ‘Summers went by bringing in the harvest, then battening down the hatches and praying for a kind winter. We didn’t travel the way people do these days, and anyway,’ he added, grinning, ‘we only had a tractor, and I don’t think my mother would’ve taken to arriving at the beach in the trailer my dad used for his muck-spreading.’ Watching the pathologist’s castle collapse into its moat, he asked: ‘Your ancestors worked the land too, didn’t they?’