Rattling the Bones Read online

  ‘Just watch what you say!’ he ordered.

  ‘I know!’ I said irritably.

  ‘Yes, and I know you. It’s all that business about being an actor. Stick you in front of a mike or in front of that tape recorder there and you react like you’re on stage. Cut out the dramatic flourishes, right? You’re not auditioning for a part.’

  Morgan switched on her little gadget and it began to whirr softly. ‘Interview with Francesca Varady,’ she informed the room. She glanced at her wristwatch and added the time and for good measure, the location.

  I explained about seeing Edna and remembering her from the Rotherhithe days, about her running away from Duane and my attempt to follow him. I told her about the hostel and Simon and Nikki, about following Edna to Golders Green and meeting up with Duane Gardner again in the cemetery there.

  ‘I didn’t make any arrangements to meet him again.’ I finished. ‘I didn’t tell him of my connection with Susie’s agency. He shouldn’t have known anything about it. I had the shock of my life when I walked into Susie Duke’s office and found him.’ I hesitated and then repeated, ‘I only found him. I hadn’t arranged to meet him there. I told you, he shouldn’t even have known I could be reached through the agency.’

  ‘Yet you are assuming,’ Morgan pointed out, ‘that he had gone there to find you.’

  Ganesh joined in at that point to say, ‘Fran might be assuming that, but I’m not. Gardner was in the detection business and might have had half a dozen reasons to visit a colleague in the same line of work. He may have gone there to find Susie Duke because he wanted her help in some professional matter. That Fran turned up was just bad luck.’

  ‘You seem to have a lot of bad luck of that sort, Fran,’ observed Morgan, giving me a funny look.

  ‘I don’t ask for it!’ I snapped.

  ‘Perhaps you do, Fran,’ she argued reasonably and to my annoyance I could see, from the corner of my eye, Ganesh nodding agreement. ‘You take too much interest in what’s going on around, could that be it?’

  ‘I’m a concerned citizen,’ I told her. ‘We’re always being told to keep our eyes open for anything dodgy, aren’t we?’

  She nodded, ‘Of course, and if you should see anything, you report it straight away to the police, right?’ She had that minatory gleam in her eye that I knew so well of old.

  ‘Yeah, yeah,’ I said, ‘as if you’d have been interested in Edna.’

  ‘It’s always worth trying me,’ she replied. ‘I have a lot of respect for your intelligence, Fran.’

  Before I could recover from the shock of this unexpected endorsement, she added:

  ‘But I often don’t think much of your judgement. Before you do anything else, Fran, think!’

  She got up to leave at that point, abandoning her wine. ‘Here,’ she said, holding out a scrap of card. ‘You can reach me on this number, should you think of anything.’

  ‘See?’ said Ganesh smugly when Morgan had left. ‘I’m not the only one warning you. Do like she says, will you, in future? Think before you get into things!’

  ‘I’m thinking,’ I promised him. ‘I’m thinking.’

  I was too; I was thinking what I could do next about this business. I wasn’t going to let it drop and to do her justice, Morgan hadn’t asked me to do so outright. She’d known I wouldn’t and although she’d never admit it, I had come up with some pretty useful information in the past. If I read the signs right, then she was prepared to turn a blind eye to my activities over the next week or so, provided I didn’t tread too heavily on police toes.

  Or, at least, that’s how I chose to read it.

  I couldn’t do anything until Ganesh had also left and by that time it was too late to phone anyone. I had to wait until morning. I chose breakfast-time because I guessed that Duane and Lottie probably ran the business from their home address. I wanted to catch her before she went out for the day. There was a chance I’d only get a recorded reply but I was in luck.

  ‘Yes?’ That was all she said. She didn’t give the name of the business. In the circumstances she didn’t need professional enquiries just now. ‘Is that Lottie Forester?’ I asked.

  A pause. ‘Yes,’ the girl repeated. Her voice sounded young and guarded. She’d been dealing with the police. Perhaps now she thought I might be a reporter from a local rag. If a private investigator is murdered, the greenest cub reporter sniffs a good story. It wouldn’t surprise me if she hadn’t had a reporter or two knocking at the door already and, if not, she certainly would do soon.

  ‘My name is Fran Varady,’ I said. ‘Did Duane mention me to you at all?’

  ‘Yes.’ The reply hadn’t changed but her tone had, gaining a note of hostility. Was she going to blame me for what had happened to her boyfriend?

  ‘I’d like to come and see you,’ I said. ‘I think we need to talk, Lottie. I realise it’s a bad time and I’m really sorry about what’s happened, but it’s not going to get better for a while. This can’t wait that long. We both want to know the same thing, you and I, don’t we? We want to know who killed Duane.’

  I thought I might get the standard affirmative reply but instead she said crisply, ‘Come this morning. Can you get here by half past ten?’

  ‘Make it eleven to be sure,’ I said. ‘I’ve got to find you.’

  ‘We’re in the A-Z,’ was the terse reply. ‘You can get a suburban train out of Waterloo. Get off at Fulwell station. We’re near the golf course.’ She hung up.

  It occurred to me, as I did so, that I was intending to call on someone in mourning and almost certainly in deep shock. To describe my proposed action as tactless was an understatement. But I didn’t have time on my side. The police might already have told Lottie not to talk to anyone. I wasn’t just anyone: I was the person who had found the body. But if she had time to think about it, and time to recover some composure, she might clam up on me and I’d get nothing.

  I thought wryly that perhaps I’d missed out on a career with the brasher end of the tabloid press world. Their reporters work on the same principle. Get in quick or you’ll get no story. I felt ashamed but still determined. ‘Bonnie,’ I addressed her aloud and she cocked an attentive ear, ‘Susie thinks I’m a natural for the detection business but really, I’m not. I’m too sensitive.’

  ‘Like how . . .’ Ganesh’s voice seemed to echo in my ear in an unpleasantly sarcastic tone.

  ‘I’m misunderstood,’ I told Bonnie.

  This time even Bonnie’s expression seemed to say, ‘Oh, yeah?’

  She wasn’t at all as I’d expected although, to be honest, I wasn’t sure what I’d thought she’d be like, other than understandably distressed. From her voice she’d sounded young and educated. On the other hand, from my brief acquaintance with Duane I’d imagined his partner would be someone a bit freaky like him. You have to be fairly tough to deal with the day-to-day seediness of life seen from the private detective’s viewpoint. Susie used blond curls and a bouncy personality as a weapon. But Susie wasn’t Duane’s type. I imagined someone in unisex clothing, with cropped hair and smoker’s complexion.Yes, that would be more in Duane’s line.

  When she opened the door to my ring I found myself looking at a young woman not a great deal older than I was, certainly no more than twenty-six or -seven. She was very pretty, contrary to all my expectations. Poor Duane had been no hunk. But this girl was almost beautiful and if her eyes hadn’t been reddened from weeping and shadowed underneath from lack of sleep, she would have been stunning.

  She put me in mind of a Botticelli painting, with long abundant reddish hair which kinked naturally and if cut short would have curled. Her face was oval and her greyish-green eyes thickly lashed. She was slim and wore a full cotton skirt in three contrastingly patterned tiers, gipsy-style. With it was teamed a figure-hugging black top with three-quarter length sleeves and a deep V-neck. Her tiny feet were shod in tightly-fitting pointed black fashion boots with very high heels. It was almost as if she stood on tip-toe and the resu
lting effect reminded me of pictures I’d seen of women with bound feet in old China.

  I wore clean jeans and a top and because I had my A-Z booklet together with a notepad with me, I also had a little black leather backpack, contrary to my usual habit. So far so good, plain but professional (I hoped), but I did wish I’d had time to do something about the colour of my hair, its crude red dye contrasting unfavourably with Lottie’s natural auburn curls.

  I’d found the house easily enough. It was a thirties-built detached suburban villa with a double-bay frontage and garage to the side reached by a weed-pocked gravel drive. It was only a short walk away from a golf course which turned out to be a private one. In this part of the world a house like this would cost a fair bit of money. People with that kind of income don’t swing a golf club with any old Tom, Dick or Harry.

  I had stared up at the frontage. Although it could do with some paint and TLC, it didn’t appear to be divided into flats or to have suffered the even worse fate of being turned into student bedsits. You can tell such places by the mismatched curtains and rooms obviously in some use other than that originally intended; bottles of washing-up liquid propped on bedroom windowsills. There were no battered bikes in the neglected forecourt and no name cards by an array of bell-pushes. The absence of all that surprised me. I wouldn’t have thought Duane and Lottie could have afforded to rent the whole place, unless the detection business was doing exceptionally well in this nook of suburbia. As to having a mortgage on it, that didn’t bear thinking of. A pair of city high-flyers with no dependants might manage it but not a youngish couple of hand-to-mouth amateur ’tecs.

  ‘You’re Fran?’ She pushed a selection of Indian bangles up her left arm with her right hand as she spoke. It was a gesture full of ill-suppressed tension. Her voice was sullen and her gaze hostile.

  I’d been worrying about this moment. Sobbing women are out of my competence. This girl was hopping wild, raging against life’s - and death’s - unfairness. I could have told her about that; but realising I was gawping at her, I hastened to identify myself and thank her for agreeing to see me.

  ‘I nearly didn’t,’ was the blunt reply. ‘Do you think, at a time like this, I want to talk to nosy strangers? I’m only seeing you because I want to know what swine did that to Duane. He mentioned you to me. He said you were a ruddy nuisance. Perhaps that’s all you are but you’d better come in.’ She gestured inwards.

  I followed her inside and she shut the door behind us. The hall was long and narrow with a parquet floor in need of a good polish. There was a majolica jardinière, I guessed Victorian replica and probably worth quite a bit, if those TV antiques programmes were anything to go by. The plant in it was a straggling fern of neglected appearance. It hadn’t been watered in a while, its thin leaves browning, and someone had stubbed out a cigarette in the compost. It was an unloved plant unworthy of the jardinière. I wondered if it had been inherited. Plants are sometimes passed on when property changes hands. A steep staircase faced us running up to a mezzanine landing furnished with a similar potted plant on a stand. I can take or leave healthy houseplants but expiring houseplants are definitely out.

  I glanced round quickly, my curiosity more than usually intrigued. Also in the hall was an old-fashioned hatstand with some outdoor clothing hanging on it, an oval mirror with a heavy carved frame and a couple of nice watercolours of the bridges of Paris with Notre Dame showing in one of them. On a table with barley-twist legs stood a blue and white porcelain bowl that looked old to me, older than the Victorian pot plant holders. What appeared to be car keys rested in it. Everything was rather dusty but it was good stuff: not, however, quite the sort of things I’d have imagined a young couple buying. I wondered how they’d come by it all and whether either Lottie or Duane had any idea how much some of this might be worth.

  Lottie was marching ahead of me down the hall, gipsy skirt swinging from side to side, the high heels of the boots clattering on the parquet and scoring further dents and scratches on it. She ignored a door to the left which must lead into a front parlour and opened another door halfway between that and a further door at the rear of the hall leading into what must be a room at the back of the house. Spacious accommodation downstairs doubtless matched by corresponding roominess upstairs. That was a lot of area for just Duane and Lottie to rattle round in.

  The room beyond the opened door was small and had been fitted out as an office. It all looked very efficient and I was impressed. A fireplace with a black-lacquered hood and aquamarine tiled surround was the only sign that this had once been part of a domestic setting, probably what used to be called a breakfast room. Now it housed a modern computer station, a fax machine, a typist’s chair, two black-leather swivel chairs and a low pine table. The contrast between this obviously fairly recently renovated room and the state of the rest of the place I’d seen so far was striking. It underlined the shabbiness of Susie’s office and Whitehall throw-out furniture.

  Lottie gestured to me to take one of the swivel chairs, her Indian bangles chinking softly. I slipped off the backpack and sat down. She took the opposite one and rested her hands on the arms. She began to twist to and fro on the central spindle, all the time assessing me with no attempt at disguise. It was difficult to read in her face what she was making of me. The green eyes were as bright and expressionless as a cat’s. Her full well-formed lips were nicely lipsticked in a flattering mauve shade. Possibly keeping her physical appearance together helped her keep her mental state from disintegration.

  ‘Nice place,’ I ventured at last because her silent scrutiny was beginning to unsettle me. ‘Are you sole tenants?’

  She shrugged. ‘It’s my house. I own it.’

  Now I was impressed and must have looked it.

  ‘My gran died and left it to me!’ she said impatiently. ‘Duane and I were already together and she wanted us to have a proper place to live.’

  That explained the old-fashioned furnishings out in the hall and the withered potted plants. Lottie and Duane had moved in and kept all of Gran’s furniture except in this room. Granny had been well off. Lottie looked and sounded privately educated. (I was too but I don’t sound it.) I wondered if her full name was Charlotte and also if she’d keep the business going now she didn’t have Duane to do the legwork. Susie had kept her business going without the late Rennie but I couldn’t imagine the girl in front of me trawling grubby pubs and hanging out on street corners keeping observation.

  ‘What happened to Duane?’ she charged suddenly, eyes like green ice.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘But I want to. How long were you two together?’

  For the first time the grey-green eyes evaded mine. She didn’t want me to see her pain. ‘Nearly six years. He was a bloody good detective, you know.’ Her voice shook slightly.

  ‘Yes, I do know,’ I told her. ‘Lottie, did he go to the Duke Detective Agency looking for me? If he did, how did he know he might find me there? Or at least, that they could tell him where to find me? I didn’t tell him about it.’

  ‘I told you,’ Lottie said impatiently. ‘He was a good detective. He didn’t buy that story of yours about knowing the old lady ages ago in Rotherhithe. Someone had to be paying you to find her, and that meant you had to work out of some agency. So he asked around. He drew a blank at first but eventually someone told him you worked out of a place in Camden.’

  ‘I asked about him,’ I retorted, ‘but nobody knew him. I’m surprised he found someone who knew me. Who was it?’

  She gave a mocking little smile. ‘Confidential,’ she said.

  Now, where had I heard that before? I didn’t bother to argue with her about my reasons for taking an interest in Edna. She wouldn’t believe me; especially since she and Duane had found I’d a connection, however tenuous, with the Duke Detective Agency.

  ‘Someone was and probably still is paying you and Duane to find Edna and more,’ I said. ‘Who’s your client? What does he want with Edna?’

  She op
ened her mouth but I forestalled her.

  ‘Don’t say confidential, all right? This business has got Duane killed. Unless he had a heart condition or something like that. Did he?’

  She shook her head. The tip of her tongue ran over her lower lip. She wasn’t as in command as she appeared. How could she be? She’d had a terrible shock and lost not only her business partner but boyfriend of six years. She must be a little older than she looked, perhaps twenty-eight or -nine. I’d placed Duane in his thirties. She was doing pretty well dealing with the situation, all things considered. She might still crack at any moment. I felt cruel at harassing her at such a sensitive time but circumstances didn’t leave me any option, as I’d told myself before setting out.

  ‘Lottie,’ I said, ‘I don’t know what kind of work your agency handles. But I bet it hasn’t involved dealing with murderers before now, right?’

  She blanched. ‘Who says he was murdered?’

  ‘As far as I know, no one yet. But it has to be on the cards, Lottie, so let’s assume, as a basis for our immediate future plans, that his investigations got him killed.’