Forgotten Murder Read online

  Mrs Offord was still looking at her solicitously, but Jenny forced her hand not to tremble as she wrote down her notes. Twelve foot by ten. Adjoining door to next room. South facing, overlooking rear garden.

  It was a small achievement but Jenny felt as if she’d won a battle when she’d completed her notes.

  ‘Shall we,’ she said, again making an effort to sound as natural as possible, ‘go downstairs?’

  The downstairs rooms were, mercifully, free of shocks. The dining room, the living room and the conservatory were all explored, measured and noted down. There remained one more room, running along from the conservatory, which also looked out onto the garden. It had a tiled floor and was roofed in but open along two sides, a bright, fresh space on a day like this.

  The view, into the large garden with its sunlit lawn, bushes, flower beds and trees in the distance, was, in Jenny’s opinion, very nearly perfect.

  A man – the gardener presumably – was clipping a hedge at the far end of the lawn. Wood pigeons cooed in the cedar tree and sparrows chirped in the bushes.

  Jenny drew her breath in with sheer pleasure. ‘This is absolutely wonderful,’ she said impulsively.

  Mrs Offord was obviously pleased. ‘It is nice,’ she said. ‘Mrs Trenchard, she liked to come out here.’

  Jenny wasn’t surprised. If she lived in the house, she’d never tire of looking at the garden. That feeling she’d had when she came into the house, that feeling, very deep down, that everything was safe, secure and absolutely right, came back in full force.

  ‘Naturally, I’d see Mrs Trenchard was well wrapped up,’ continued Mrs Offord, ‘especially in the last year, when she was in a wheeled chair, poor soul. When the weather was warm, she liked to have her lunch here in the porch.’

  The porch? That didn’t sound quite a grand enough word for a house agent’s brochure. A porch, to Jenny’s way of thinking, was somewhere to keep macs and umbrellas, not somewhere to dine in beautiful surroundings, looking out onto the garden.

  ‘Could it be called a veranda?’ Jenny suggested. That was a better word than porch.

  Mrs Offord pursed her lips. ‘I suppose you could call it a veranda, Miss. Come to think of it, that’s what the Colonel always called it. He’d been in India and he said that’s what they called porches there. Mrs Trenchard though, she called this room the loggia.’

  Loggia. That was the perfect word. Jenny noted it down, together with the measurements (eleven foot by twenty) and shut her notebook with a snap.

  ‘How do I get into the garage?’

  ‘The entrance is on the other side of the conservatory, Miss. It’s this way.’

  Mrs Offord stepped down from the loggia, onto the path that ran along the back of the house. ‘I haven’t been in here for a good while,’ she said, as they came to the door set into the wall. ‘I’ve just looked in from time to time, to see everything’s as it should be. The Colonel, he used to come in here, but there’s steps down and my knees aren’t as good as they used to be.’

  She opened the door and Jenny stepped onto the little landing at the top of the garage steps, blinking her eyes to adjust to the dim light. The garage had been built on the lower side of the slope and the floor, some twelve feet below, had obviously been dug out to make a level surface.

  She was about to go down the steps, when a curious disinclination to do anything of the sort came to her.

  ‘You need to hold onto the rail, Miss,’ said Mrs Offord from behind her. ‘The Colonel, he had a nasty fall on those steps.’

  Jenny shook off the feeling and, holding the wooden banister, stepped down into the garage. Once in the garage, the uneasy feeling vanished. Honestly, what on earth was wrong with her? Mrs Offord was a comfortable sort of woman, but Jenny was beginning to think she had been more rattled than she cared to think about by her tales of a woman in blue. Perhaps it was because Mrs Offord was so ordinary, her story of a ghost had made such an impression.

  Garage; brick built, tiled roof, with workbench and space for at least two cars, measuring fourteen foot by fourteen. Nothing to get the heebie-jeebies about.

  She shut up her notebook and ran up the stairs to the waiting Mrs Offord.

  ‘I wish I could run up stairs like you, Miss,’ said Mrs Offord with a smile. ‘Would you be wanting to see the garden?’

  ‘Yes, please,’ said Jenny, shutting the garage door behind her.

  ‘Would you mind if the gardener showed you round, Miss?’ asked Mrs Offord. ‘I’m expecting the butcher’s boy to be along soon and I don’t want to miss him. The gardener is George Meredith from the village and he can show you everything you need to see. I’ll just call him, shall I?’

  She raised her arm to wave to the gardener, but Jenny stopped her. ‘I can show myself round, Mrs Offord,’ said Jenny. ‘I don’t want to disturb the gardener if he’s working.’

  That was true, but what she really wanted was some time alone, to explore this deeply peaceful place and to try and make sense of her impressions of the house.

  Mrs Offord was pleased by Jenny’s consideration. ‘That’s very thoughtful of you, Miss, not that George would mind in the least. You’ll find the gardens are very well kept. The new people will probably want to keep him on, as he’s a good gardener, even if he is getting on a bit. He keeps everything very nice, but you have to be careful underfoot near the stream. Follow the path round and you won’t get lost.’

  Mrs Offord turned back into the house as Jenny set off into the garden.

  There was a flight of stone steps leading onto the lawn and a pathway off led to a vegetable garden, set to one side. Beyond the vegetable garden, the path led down, winding between the trees at the bottom of the garden.

  Under the cool whispering shade of the beech trees, Jenny felt as if she was entering an enchanted wood. Under the soaring green of the beeches, she felt very small but safe. Safe? That was an odd word, but so exactly right.

  The path led down to where a shallow stream, shifting silver in the sunlight, gurgled over rocks. There should be a bridge. A small stone bridge with a stone handrail, hiding just out of sight. A fairy bridge, she thought with a smile. That would be just perfect …

  And there it was.

  Jenny shrank back. Of course there’s a bridge, she told herself. It’s obvious there’d be a bridge here.

  Yes, but why was the bridge so exactly as she’d imagined it? There’s only so many sorts of bridges, she told herself, conscious of fighting down a feeling close to panic. Was it her imagination? Was she dreaming things, seeing stuff that wasn’t there?

  She stepped onto the little bridge, drawing a ridiculous amount of reassurance from the very real feeling of the rough stone of the balustrade under her hand. The bridge was real.

  She looked over into the clear water, two or three feet below. There was a little sandy bank by the pile of the bridge, where the water gently rippled, as if resting before going under the bridge.

  The bank was a perfect place to sail a toy boat from. A white boat with a red sail. She could see it …

  She brought herself up with a shock. The picture of a little white boat with a red sail and a red painted anchor sprang sharply into her mind. Once again, the feeling that she’d had looking at the blue tiles and the cornflower wallpaper swept over her.

  Suddenly the wood, the enchanted wood, didn’t seem so safe. A fairy bridge? There was danger in fairyland.

  ‘I must get a grip on myself,’ she said, hardly realising she’d spoken the words out loud. She was in a Surrey garden on an ornamental Victorian bridge, the like of which she must have seen in dozens of parks and gardens. That was all it was. Nothing else, and she should have more sense. Her friends would think she was loopy if they knew how jittery she’d got about wallpaper, tiles and bridges. Either that or laugh. Betty would laugh, wouldn’t she?

  As a matter of fact, she probably wouldn’t, thought Jenny. So what would Betty say? She’d probably tell her to calm down and have a cup of tea or som
ething.

  Well, she couldn’t manage a cup of tea, but she could calm down and have a cigarette at least.

  She wouldn’t smoke in front of Mrs Offord – she suspected she would disapprove of girls smoking – but Mrs Offord was safely in the house.

  She fumbled in her bag, pulled out her cigarette case, and lit a cigarette, willing her nerves to steady. That was better. She leaned on the bridge for a good few minutes, feeling her heart stop racing. Calm. She was calm.

  She finished her cigarette and, tossing the stub into the water, watched it float away. She’d thrown sticks between the rails of a bridge just like this.

  There it was again. That dreadful feeling that she’d had when she looked at the wallpaper. This time, Jenny was cross with herself. For Pete’s sake, she needed to stop imagining things.

  Shaking herself, she walked over the bridge, following the path under the trees as it climbed back up towards the lawn where the cedar tree stood, its broad, fan-shaped canopies of leaves spreading dappled patches of shade in the sunshine.

  She couldn’t deny it, it was something of a relief to be out from under the trees, back in the sunlight.

  Thinking of trees, the cedar tree in the middle of the lawn really was magnificent. When she’d seen the cedar from the bedroom window, she’d thought how perfect it would be as a place for afternoon tea. It seemed to call out to have a table underneath it, set with a white cloth with plates of tiny sandwiches and delicious cakes. There would be men in striped blazers and straw boaters and ladies in Edwardian dresses sitting on white-painted, iron garden chairs.

  Why Edwardian? It just seemed right, somehow. Women in short dresses and bobbed hair with cigarettes in long holders would have seemed strangely out of place under the tree. No; the picture she imagined – it seemed oddly real – definitely belonged to before the war.

  Smiling to herself, she walked forward to stand under the shade of the branches, idly imagining herself as one of those Edwardian ladies. It wasn’t actually so very long ago, she supposed. It was only twenty years or so, but a huge gulf separated then from now.

  She reached out to touch the tree’s thick, square-cracked bark.

  And screamed.

  TWO

  ‘Miss! Miss!’

  The words seemed to come out of a long black tunnel. There was horror in the tunnel.

  ‘Miss!’ the voice repeated. The tunnel faded. The voice didn’t belong to the horror.

  Jenny fought down her panic. She took a tight grip on her senses and blinked her eyes open. There was a canopy of leaves above her, tingeing the light green. An old man’s face, kindly and concerned, was close to hers.

  She was lying on the grass under the cedar tree.

  Hardly daring to believe where she was, she moved her head cautiously, looking for the horror.

  A great wave of relief washed over her. The horror was gone.

  It was gone and she was lying flat on her back. The grass was damp and she had a twig poking into her back. She stretched her hand out and grasped a handful of grass in her fingers. That was real.

  She reached up and laid a hand on the man’s arm, feeling the muscles of his arm under the coarse prickle of his flannel shirt. That was real.

  She could see the man’s worried brown eyes, the stubble on his chin. She could smell him, a mixture of earth and grass and old pipe tobacco. That was real.

  The horror receded but it had been there.

  The man – he must be George Meredith, the gardener – wiped his palm on his corduroy trousers and gingerly put his hand under her back, helping her to sit up.

  Jenny tried to scramble to her feet, but the gardener stopped her. ‘You just sit still for a moment, Miss. You’ve had a nasty turn and you need to just get your breath back.’

  Jenny wasn’t sorry to take his advice. She peered past him, dreading what she might see, but there was nothing but the garden, bright with sun, fringed with flowerbeds and the sound of birdsong.

  It was a peaceful garden; a beautiful garden. But the horror …

  She pushed the thought of it away. That couldn’t have been real, could it? Of course it wasn’t, she told herself sternly. What on earth was the matter with her? Ever since she’d set foot in the house, she’d been plagued with ridiculous imaginings. And this, too, on the first day that she’d been given real responsibility.

  If Mr Lee found out, she’d be sacked. Her stomach twisted at the thought. She wanted her job. She needed her job. She mustn’t get a reputation for seeing things. Especially horrible things, things that weren’t human.

  She drew a shuddering breath and managed a smile. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said weakly. She still couldn’t quite believe the horror was gone.

  Mrs Offord came out of the house. ‘George?’ she called. ‘George? What is it? I thought I heard a noise.’ She broke off with a little cry as she saw Jenny lying on the grass.

  ‘The young lady fainted,’ said George. ‘Nothing to worry about. I expects she just needs a cup of tea and perhaps something to eat.’ He turned back to Jenny. ‘Do you think you could stand up now?’ he asked.

  Jenny nodded. ‘I’m really sorry,’ she said as he helped her to her feet. ‘I don’t know what came over me,’ she added, lying valiantly. She knew exactly what she’d seen and why she’d collapsed but it wasn’t something she could tell the gardener.

  Mrs Offord came across the lawn and between them, Jenny got back into the house where she sat down gratefully on a chair in the kitchen.

  ‘My word,’ exclaimed the housekeeper. ‘You look white as a sheet.’ Jenny nodded dumbly. ‘Now you just sit there,’ she said, reaching for a cup and saucer. ‘I’d just brewed a cup of tea and you need one, I daresay, and with plenty of sugar in it. Tea for you, George? I’ve got your mug here. What was it, Miss?’ she asked sympathetically as she poured the tea. ‘Do you suffer from dizzy spells? My aunty, she was a martyr to fainting fits, but that was years ago. Ladies, they did use to faint all the time, and it was corsets that caused it. Terrible tight, my aunty’s corsets used to be – they were in those days – and the doctor, he said to her, “Now, you loosen your corsets, and you’ll soon feel better”.’

  George Meredith, mug of tea in hand, looked alarmed at the mention of corsets and said he’d take his tea outside.

  ‘Is it corsets?’ asked Mrs Offord, once George had gone. ‘I can see you wouldn’t want to say so in front of a man. Not that,’ she continued, looking at Jenny’s waistline critically, ‘I would’ve thought that was the cause.’

  Even though she still felt horribly shaken, Jenny couldn’t help smiling. ‘No, it’s not corsets.’

  ‘It must be lack of a good breakfast then,’ said Mrs Offord firmly. ‘I know how there’s this craze for being thin – ladies now, they’re all skin and bone – but it’s not right to deprive yourself of food, especially breakfast.’

  ‘It’s not …’ began Jenny, remembering the porridge and toast she’d had for breakfast, then changed her mind. If she even hinted to Mrs Offord what she had seen – what I thought I saw, she corrected herself – then there would be gossip without a doubt and it would be all over with Wilson and Lee. No one wanted to employ anyone who saw things. Horrible things. Things that just couldn’t be there.

  She had to tell the housekeeper something and she’d rather be thought to have fainted from lack of food rather than seeing things.

  ‘I expect you’re right,’ she said weakly.

  ‘There now!’ said Mrs Offord with an air of triumph. ‘You young ladies are all the same. It’s these magazines that do it, always telling us what we should look like. You’re as God made you, I say, and we ought to be glad of good food with no silly fads and fancies and I expects your mother will say the same when she finds out.’

  ‘My mother died five months ago,’ said Jenny. ‘But I think you’re right.’

  Mrs Offord clucked with sympathy. ‘Your mother’s passed away? You poor dear.’ Her plump face drooped in concern. ‘It’s grief t
hat’s put you off your food, and no wonder, but you must eat properly. She’d want you too, I know. She wouldn’t want you to waste away now, would she? I’ll just cut you a slice of bread and butter and there’s some madeira cake which I made yesterday.’

  The housekeeper’s concern was like balm to Jenny’s spirits. In intervals of offering more food she ‘just had handy, like’ – Jenny thought she wouldn’t have to eat for a week – she heard all about Jenny’s childhood in Yorkshire – ‘Now that is a fair way off, my dear’ – and how much she missed her parents.

  Mrs Offord was doubly sympathetic when she learned that both Jenny’s parents were dead. Under the housekeeper’s gentle questioning, Jenny found herself pouring out details of her family life. It had been Dad’s dearest wish that Martin and Eric should be doctors, just like him, but it did mean that money was very tight.

  But that, as Mrs Offord said, was the way of the world. She quite understood that Jenny really needed her job.

  By the time Jenny was able to leave, Mrs Offord was completely on her side and promised faithfully not to breathe a word to anyone about Jenny’s collapse in the garden.

  It had been really nice, thought Jenny, as she walked back to Wilson and Lee, to talk about Mum and Dad. No one else in London had known them or knew her. Actually, that wasn’t quite true, she corrected herself.

  Betty had known Mum and Dad. She’d once spent two weeks of the summer holidays from school with Jenny in Yorkshire and liked them very much. Betty had been really sorry to hear about Mum and Dad. So should she tell Betty what had happened? Or would Betty think she was just imagining things? After all, to be frightened of toys and wallpaper was bad enough, but that horror in the garden … It sounded mental.

  Mental? Jenny stopped dead. That couldn’t be it, could it? But what else could you call it when you saw things that weren’t there? Mental. It wasn’t real, what she’d seen. It couldn’t be real. Mental. Was she mental? She shuddered. Maybe this was just the beginning. The start of her becoming a lunatic.

  She didn’t really know how she got through that afternoon at the office. She seemed to be operating on two levels. The top level was professional and enthusiastic, the other was a cringing turmoil of emotions.