‘NO.’ LIBBY STARED AT Harry’s sardonic expression. ‘You mean Rosie, don’t you?’
‘Who’s a novelist.’ Harry leant back in his chair. ‘I said. She’s using you.’
‘But now the police are involved. She’d have to back off. Or confess. And she hasn’t.’
‘She’d be too embarrassed. And I don’t suppose she’s done anything illegal.’
‘What about the music? She’d need an awful lot of expertise to rig that, and she’d have had to break in, too.’
Harry sighed again. ‘Wake up, Lib. Think of the most obvious explanation.’
‘Which is?’
‘She says she knew it as a child. Described it. When you find out it actually is how she said, she has to make up some cock and bull story. But suppose she did live there? Suppose she actually owns it? The agents have been told to keep the ownership quiet, and have they confirmed that she visited a year ago, or whenever it was?’
‘Oh.’ Libby was conscious of a sharp sense of disillusionment.
‘Makes sense, doesn’t it?’
‘Unfortunately, yes.’ Libby emptied her glass. ‘But why hasn’t Ian seen through her? He’s the detective.’
Harry pushed the bottle towards her. ‘I told you. He’s actually found something but hasn’t told you. It may be that he’s sussed Rosie.’
‘Oh,’ said Libby, even more gloomily. ‘How dumb can you get.’
‘Oh, much dumber than you. Look at Jacob.’
‘Harry! That poor boy. It’s his first night and you were shouting at him. You’re not some foul-mouthed TV chef.’
Harry grinned. ‘Rotten, wasn’t I? It’s OK, I apologised, he’s coming back.’
‘Good. Poor lad didn’t know what to do.’
‘So, what are you going to do about your investigation?’ Harry waved a packet of cigarettes and gestured outside. Libby followed him into the back yard, where there were a few white cast iron tables and chairs for hardened smokers.
‘I shan’t do anything else, I suppose,’ she said, bending forward to Harry’s lighter. ‘Unless anyone asks me.’
‘But not Rosie.’
‘No.’ Libby shook her head. ‘Not Rosie.’
‘And will you tell Fran what I said?’
‘Yes.’ Libby sighed. ‘What I don’t understand is that Fran didn’t see through it.’
‘Look, I may not be right,’ said Harry, beginning to look uncomfortable. ‘I’m only saying what it looks like on the surface. But if I am right, why, Fran attends the woman’s writing class, doesn’t she? She wants to write like her. That would be bound to blind her to anything she didn’t want to see.’
‘Maybe,’ said Libby doubtfully. ‘But things come to her. She doesn’t ask them to. And she can’t block things on purpose, either.’
‘Oh, well.’ Harry shrugged. ‘I expect the dashing Inspector Connell will find out soon enough.’
‘Dashing?’
Harry grinned. ‘Well, he is. All that saturnine splendour. He’s like a Jane Austen hero.’
‘Is he?’ Libby was surprised. ‘What do you know about Jane Austen heroes?’
‘I’ve seen them on TV, haven’t I? He’s just like that.’
‘Yes, I suppose he is,’ said Libby. ‘Although he’s mainly angry, which is a bit off-putting.’
‘Go on.’ Harry blew smoke at her. ‘You fancy him a little bit.’
‘Of course I don’t,’ said Libby carelessly. ‘Anyway, he was after Fran, remember?’
‘Course I bloody remember. She was living upstairs here, wasn’t she?’
‘So she was.’ Libby giggled. ‘With two men after her.’
‘Lucky.’ Harry stubbed out his cigarette. ‘Well, that’s me. The washing up calls.’
‘It’ll be done by now,’ said Libby. ‘Don’t kid me.’
‘I sent Jacob and the boy home, and Donna’s going in a minute. I often do it on my own. Not so much washing up, that goes in the dishwasher, but there’s the rest of the cleaning. Elf-an-safety. They’ll close me down if they find a speck of dirt.’
‘Would you like some help?”
‘Don’t be daft. Go and drink the rest of your wine. I’ll be out in a while and I’ll walk you home.’
Libby began to protest, but he pushed her before him into the restaurant, and she went back to the table to finish her wine. Most of the other customers had gone by now, and Donna came past buttoning a jacket. She waved and Libby lifted her glass. The remaining two customers stood up and stared at her as they left the restaurant. Libby looked the other way.
After a while, Harry came back with his jacket over his arm.
‘There’s no need to walk me home, you know.’
‘It’s late. Ben would have my guts for garters.’
‘I always used to walk home on my own before I met Ben.’
‘But you don’t now. Come on. Pete’s away with Ben, anyhow, so there’s no one waiting for me.’
‘That sounds vaguely illicit.’
Harry grinned down at her and tucked her hand through his arm. ‘While the cat’s away, eh? Well, you did tell me Ben was jealous of me.’
‘Yes, odd that.’
‘No, it isn’t. You use me like a girlfriend and talk to me. Not the same way that you talk to him.’
‘I do now,’ said Libby. ‘I think part of it was because he was always so against me doing things on my own, I didn’t want to discuss them with him.’
‘Not so much doing things on your own, as investigations on your own.’
‘Yeah, I know.’
The village was quiet. A few cars swished down the high street, but all the lights were out in the shops and the pub. Somewhere on the other side of the road, the little river Wytch trickled along its deep gully towards the dewpond near Steeple Farm, after which it disappeared underground and eventually joined the creek near Creekmarsh. Libby and Harry turned the corner by the vicarage, where the great lilac tree overhung the wall.
‘At the risk of sounding even more illicit,’ said Libby, ‘do you want a nightcap?’
‘Thought you’d never ask.’ In gentlemanly fashion, Harry took the key from Libby and opened the front door. Sidney glared from the third stair.
‘Hello, walking stomach,’ said Harry.
‘Scotch? Or wine?’ Libby turned on lights and went into the kitchen.
‘Scotch, please.’ Harry followed her. ‘Still happy here in Bide-a-wee?’
Libby turned to him smiling. ‘I love it. I can never thank you enough for finding it for me.’
‘It seemed to suit. Pete and I looked at lots for you, but this one struck a chord. Still not going to Steeple Farm, then?’
‘No.’ Libby carried the bottle and glasses into the sitting room. ‘It doesn’t feel like home. And Ben’s accepted that now.’
‘I know. But I do wonder what will happen in the future.’
‘What do you mean?’ Libby handed over a glass and offered a jug of water.
‘Steeple Farm is Pete’s and James’s when their mama dies, so that doesn’t come into it, but what about the Manor?’
‘Oh.’ Libby shifted uncomfortably. ‘I don’t know. We’ve never discussed it.’
‘Won’t he expect you to go and live there when Greg and Het shuffle off?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t want to think about it.’ Libby took a healthy swallow of whisky and coughed.
‘No. So what do you want to talk about? Grisly murder?’
‘Don’t be daft.’ Libby added water to her whisky. ‘There haven’t been any, but…’
‘But what?’ Harry heaved a theatrical sigh. ‘Come on. You’ve got a theory.’
‘Well, I just wondered…’ Libby thought for a moment. ‘Suppose some of those bodies, even though they do belong to the sanatorium, shouldn’t be there? Suppose there were mistakes in medication? Or people were used as guinea pigs?’
Harry stared at her. ‘You know, you’ve got the most unpleasantly fertile imagination.’
‘No, but it could be, couldn’t it? After all, they haven’t been buried in consecrated ground. I always thought that was illegal.’
‘I don’t think so. I think you have to get permission to bury someone in the garden, but I don’t think it’s illegal, exactly.’ Harry shook his head. ‘What a conversation.’
‘Well, you must admit it’s odd. Especially back in the fifties. I mean, most people had a normal funeral in those days, didn’t they?’
‘I suppose it’s possible,’ said Harry. ‘But if the body Ian dug up had something wrong with it he’d have noticed, surely?’
‘The cutter-up would, not Ian himself. And if something had gone wrong, I doubt if it would show after all this time. All they were looking for was a modern body, and it wasn’t.’
‘I assume you mean the pathologist?’
‘Couldn’t think of the word. Yes, him. Or her.’
‘So will you tell Ian your new theory?’
‘I don’t see how I can. Unless he gets in touch with me. With us.’
‘And you think he won’t?’
‘We-ell, he sort of said he would this afternoon. Just have to wait and see, I suppose.’
‘And you’re not exactly good at that, are you, Mrs S?’
‘No.’ Libby made a face. ‘Let’s talk about something else.’
Half an hour later after Harry had left, Libby turned on the laptop and typed “TB treatments” into the search engine. It soon became apparent that although TB was still around today, for some years it had not been considered fatal and, apart from the increasingly outdated “fresh air” treatment, was treated very successfully with antibiotics.
There were other stories, she found, similar to the one Cameron had told her, of people being virtually incarcerated in hospital for months. And descriptions of the operation to collapse a lung, and the more frightening descriptions of tuberculosis of other parts of the body. Tales of doctors who worked in these isolation sanatoria who had the disease themselves and had the shortest possible prognosis. After a while she switched off, thoroughly depressed at the thought that there were still millions of cases diagnosed every year, and frequently those cases were also HIV sufferers.
Nevertheless, it looked as though there were no recorded treatments of TB that could have been either unethical or illegal, so that particular theory bit the dust. Libby turned off the laptop.
On Sunday morning, feeling distinctly on edge, she forced herself to concentrate on the abandoned painting on the easel in the conservatory. Routine, that was the ticket. Forget all about weird buildings, ghostly music and exhumed bodies. Unfortunately, all that happened was that she began a new watercolour of a weird building, a ghostly piano and an exhumed body.
It was almost twelve o’clock when the phone rang.
‘Libby?’
‘Terry! what’s happened? Is Jane OK?’
‘It’s a girl!’ Terry Baker sounded exhausted.
‘Oh, Terry!’ Libby found herself unexpectedly close to tears. ‘How big? When? Is Jane all right?’
‘Six pounds eleven ounces, this morning at about nine. Jane’s fine, but it was a long time.’
‘When did you go in?’
‘Actually, she went in on Friday afternoon on her own.’
‘I knocked on Friday. Wish I’d known. Don’t say she was in labour since then?’
‘Not really. Her waters broke. So she called an ambulance. I met her there, but nothing happened until yesterday evening.’
‘Oh, it’s terrific, Terry. When will she be home? Oh, and what’s her name?’
‘Imogen, and they’ll be home tomorrow. I’ll get her to give you a ring.’
‘You do that. Lovely name. And I’d go home and get some sleep if I were you. Have you phoned Fran?’
‘No, she was next on the list. Will you do it?’
‘Course I will. Give Jane and Imogen lots of love.’
Fran was at Guy’s shop.
‘Will we go and see them?’ she asked.
‘After Jane’s rung us. They’ll have enough to do getting themselves settled, and they’ve got to deal with Jane’s ma. Do you think she’ll mellow with a grandchild?’
‘Goodness knows. I’m not sure I did.’
‘You used to look after them in London, though,’ said Libby.
‘Of course, and I love them, but Lucy used to take advantage of me. She doesn’t now, and Jane said she didn’t want to rely on her mother, didn’t she?’
‘Have to wait and see, I suppose,’ said Libby. ‘Heard anything from Ian or Rosie?’
‘No. Have you?’
‘Well, in a way.’
‘Oh? What have you been up to?’
‘I went exploring.’ Libby took a deep breath, feeling guilty. ‘Yesterday. I went to Cherry Ashton.’
‘To White Lodge?’
‘Yes, but first I went to the village.’ Libby recounted her adventures of the previous day, including meeting Mr Vindari and Ian. ‘And I went to see George at The Red Lion on the way home.’ She told him what George had said.
‘None of that is any use, is it?’ said Fran. ‘And if Ian’s still investigating he won’t want us poking our noses in.’
‘No,’ said Libby slowly. ‘And there’s something else.’
‘What?’ Fran sounded resigned.
Reluctantly, Libby told her Harry’s theory about Rosie. ‘And I said if that was the case you’d have seen through her,’ she concluded.
There was silence at the other end. ‘Fran? You still there? Are you offended?’
‘No, I’m not offended, I’m thinking. Is Ben still away?’
‘He comes back this evening. I’ve put something in the slow cooker for him.’
‘Are you going to Harry’s for lunch?’
‘No, I told you, I went last night instead.’
‘Would you like to come here? Only for a snack. Or we could go to Mavis’s.’
‘You want a chat?’ Libby grinned to herself. ‘Yes, love to. What time?’
Having settled on half past one, Libby cleaned her brushes and left the conservatory to go and get changed. Despite herself, she felt happier, her interest in White Lodge rekindled, yet she knew it shouldn’t be.
At half past one, parked behind Mavis’s Blue Anchor cafe at the end of Harbour Street next to The Sloop inn, Libby wandered down to meet Fran, who appeared from her own front door.
‘I’ve just left some sandwiches for Sophie and Guy,’ she said. ‘We’ll have our roast this evening.’
Libby turned, and they made their way back to the Blue Anchor. Mavis appeared with a tin ashtray and nodded at them before returning inside the cafe. Bert and George weren’t there this morning, both being out on their boats, the Dolphin and the Sparkler, taking holiday makers round Dragon Island in the middle of the bay, or along the coast to the less populated beaches.
‘So,’ said Libby. ‘You’ve had some thoughts?’
‘Yes.’ Fran stared out to sea. ‘What you said about Rosie.’
‘Well, it was Harry who said it, really,’ said Libby hastily. ‘It just made me think a bit.’
‘Yes.’ Fran turned to look at her. ‘And I really wondered if I’d missed something. When you look at the facts it’s quite hard to escape them, isn’t it?’
‘Yes,’ said Libby, feeling uncomfortable, ‘but don’t forget we’ve already been back and challenged her about it once. And she admitted it.’
‘She admitted everything we challenged her with,’ said Fran. ‘What if we went back and challenged her again?’
Libby frowned. ‘But I really don’t know why she’s done it, if she has. And if she has, why? And would we be in danger?’
‘No idea. But I think we ought to.’ Fran’s mouth set in a hard line.
‘This has upset you, hasn’t it?’
‘Bloody right it has. I don’t like being taken for an idiot. And even if she doesn’t own it, she’s used us to a degree anyway.’ Fran looked at Libby. ‘And what about Andrew?’
‘What about him?’
‘I wonder if she really didn’t know him? Or if he’s been in on the scheme from the beginning?’
‘Oh, surely not,’ said Libby. ‘And we don’t know that there is a scheme, anyway. Or if there is, what it’s for.’
‘I wonder,’ said Fran slowly, ‘if it really is what you said at first? She’s using us to plot one of her novels?’
‘Bit bloody manipulative if so,’ said Libby, smiling up at Mavis who slammed a menu in front of her. ‘Just a bacon sandwich, please, Mavis.’
‘It was manipulative even if all she’s done is what she admitted to the second time we went to see her.’ Fran frowned. ‘Sorry, Mavis. Ham sandwich, please.’
‘Why don’t we just ignore what Rosie’s said or done,’ suggested Libby, ‘and take it from there? Ian’s interested in something, after all, and whoever’s doing it, someone’s using that music to scare people off.’
‘And yet it’s such a crude method of doing it,’ said Fran. ‘More suited to the fifties and sixties than the high tech noughties.’
‘I see what you mean. Yes, almost like the Victorians’ fake séances.’ Libby sighed. ‘Oh, bum. I wasn’t going to get involved any more.’
Fran laughed. ‘You can’t help it. And this is a proper mystery. With no nasty murders getting in the way.’