What Lies Beneath

Chapter 20

The Present

Clem Poulter’s little dinner parties could no more be avoided than the sun could be prevented from rising each morning. Even if you were not on the guest list, it was impossible not to hear about them. Meeting Veronica in the supermarket, Ella was not best pleased to learn from her that Clem was in the planning stage of one of his evenings.

‘It’s next Friday,’ said Veronica, who this morning was wearing what Ella considered an impossibly inappropriate outfit, consisting of leather trousers, a woollen jacket and a quantity of gold jewellery. The fact that the gold was almost certainly genuine did not make it any better. In fact, Ella thought it rather vulgar of Veronica to be flaunting nine carat in the middle of Sainsbury’s halfway through the morning.

Everyone knew, without the parade of gold necklaces and nappa leather, what a very good thing Veronica had made out of having two husbands. The first had been discarded via the divorce courts and the ceding of a five-bedroomed house into Veronica’s name, and the second had died from a perforated stomach ulcer, leaving behind what Derek referred to as ‘an entire battalion of insurance policies’. At the time he had said he could very easily visualize Veronica checking the insurance policies with one hand and stirring arsenic into the coffee with the other. Ella had thought this remark in very poor taste, but the Operatic Society had been rehearsing Così Fan Tutte at the time, in which there was apparently a lot of arsenic-quaffing, so the remark could be partially forgiven.

Veronica cornered Ella to say Clem had phoned her last evening to invite her to the dinner party. Oh, Ella had not been invited? Well, doubtless Clem would get round to it. He had meant to have it a couple of weeks ago but he had had that shocking cold, so he had postponed. The invitation was seven thirty for eight, and Veronica had decided to wear a trouser outfit because Clem said there were to be games afterwards. She had a brand-new one – silk, with satin lapels on the jacket – and when she tried it on in the shop the assistants had all said how youthful and sexy and elegant she looked.

‘If there’re games, at least he won’t be forcing his dreadful music on the guests,’ said Ella, because once Veronica got onto the subject of being youthful and sexy and elegant they would be here all morning.

‘No, but I wouldn’t put it past him to stage a session of Murder or Sardines,’ said Veronica, and went off to the wine section.

Ella watched her for a moment, seeing how the vain creature teetered along the aisles in her absurd high heels and paused to ostentatiously examine the labels on wine bottles. She would be hoping people were looking at her and speculating on who would be drinking the wine with her. As if, thought Ella crossly, anybody gives a damn. Ella certainly did not give a damn who drank special-offer Pinot Noir in Veronica’s over-furnished house, nor did she give a damn about Clem’s stupid dinner party with its even more stupid games, whatever they might be. She and Derek would probably not be able to go anyway; as well as The Mikado, Derek was very busy with some sort of audit at the council offices. Amy said he was looking quite haggard, poor old Gramps, but to Amy’s generation anyone over forty looked haggard.

If anyone was entitled to look haggard at the moment, it was Ella herself, what with all the worry about whether Clem and Veronica would keep their nerve if questioned about the body found at the lodge. She was not sleeping very well, and in the ragged sleep she did get she saw the dreadful face peering over the ruined tumble of bricks in Cadence Manor. Sometimes she saw Serena Cadence with her staring dead eyes and ravaged face, and sometimes Serena’s face turned into that of Ella’s own mother, with the scars livid and ugly on her skin.

She had no idea if the police had identified the man’s body yet, or if they had found her watch with the damning initials, E. L. F., and the date of her birthday. Initials and date together would show she had been inside Cadence Manor during the two days between her birthday and the closing of the village. It was what Derek would call ‘a very small window of time’.

Ella was annoyed with Derek. She thought she might reasonably have expected him to notice she was preoccupied, but he had not, though she did not want him asking awkward questions. Amy had noticed. That very morning she had asked if Gran was all right, because she was looking a bit moth-eaten. Ella took this to mean slightly unwell in Amy’s vocabulary, and said she was perfectly all right – well, maybe a bit tired, what with one thing and another.

‘What things?’

‘All sorts of things. You don’t realize what a lot I have to do,’ Ella said. ‘There’s the running of this house – all the shopping and washing and ironing.’

Amy said, ‘But you’ve got a washing machine. And a dishwasher. And there’s someone in Lower Bramley who does an ironing service. She’s put a little poster up in the library. She’ll collect and deliver, and it’s not very expensive.’

‘It’s not just that,’ said Ella quickly. ‘There are all my various activities. I lead a very busy life, you know. A very fulfilled life,’ she added hastily, in case this sounded grumblesome.

‘Oh, I see,’ said Amy, in the blank voice of someone who did not see at all.

Walking round the supermarket, trying to keep a distance from Veronica, Ella remembered Amy’s words and suddenly wondered if other people were thinking she seemed moth-eaten. She could not risk anyone wondering if she had a secret worry. People were so gossipy, and she was quite a well-known figure in the district, what with helping Derek’s operatic people on their social nights, what with the Gardening Club and the library group, and helping in the Oxfam shop for an hour on Friday mornings.

At this point she caught sight of herself in a mirror display. She did look a bit drawn, although supermarket lights were invariably unfriendly. Still, it would not hurt to book a hair appointment when she got home. Quite apart from looking moth-eaten, standards had to be maintained and Ella liked to look smart. And even without silly dinner parties with childish games (to which she would not go, even if Clem asked her), in her busy and fulfilled life there was generally something to look forward to.

Clem Poulter was pleased to have one of his little dinner parties to look forward to. Everything had been so dreary of late, what with his cold and the horrible chemical mist hanging over Priors Bramley, and the unpleasant discovery of the body. He was a bit worried about that, but only a very little bit. What had happened all those years ago had been the purest accident. They certainly had not deliberately pushed the man into the ruined chimney shaft. Clem had wanted to go down there in case there was something they could do for him, but the church clock had already been striking twelve and they had known the plane with its sinister cargo would be approaching.

A bit of frivolity would go down very nicely at the moment. Some of the things he wrote in his Jottings were often quite frivolous, even a bit quirky; the trouble was that people did not always understand that kind of quirkiness, which was why Clem got stupid rejections for his articles, with magazine editors and feature writers politely saying they did not think his work was quite what they wanted at the moment.

He always blew a mental raspberry at the people who sent him these letters, and planned that one day he would assemble his Jottings into a book and everyone would marvel at his powers of observation and acuity of character-drawing. This last phrase pleased him so much he hunted out his spiral notebook to write it down before he forgot it. His father had been a great one for writing your thoughts down; diaries and journals were the very cloth of history, he used to say.

Clem thought that one day his own diaries and essays might receive the acclaim they deserved. They would give future generations an insight into the last half of the twentieth century and the first part of the twenty-first, and researchers would say things like, ‘We’d better consult Poulter on that point.’ Academics would argue the merits of the Poulter Journals against other learned sources.

But in the meantime, and since the library was not very busy this morning, Clem spent a happy half-hour drafting out the menu for his party. There would be eight people – ten if he included Ella and Derek, which he supposed he would do in the end; it was not worth Ella’s ice-queen sulking if he left them out. In any case, he wanted Amy to come, partly because he enjoyed her company, but also because he suspected Amy might be a good lure for Dr Malik. To have Dr Malik as a guest would be a real coup.

Ten people meant extending both leaves of his table and he would have to borrow two chairs from Mrs Williams next door. But ten was a satisfying number and Clem enjoyed cooking. He was just frowning over the advisability of a seafood starter – you could depend on it that someone would claim a shellfish allergy – when Amy scooted across to his partitioned cubbyhole to say there were two policemen asking to see him.

This was faintly alarming, but when Amy brought them in Clem waved them to chairs and asked how he could help.

‘I dare say it’s this wretched business of the – um – body you’ve found, is it?’ Which was a ridiculous thing to say, because what else would it be?

But they took it at face value, and said it was indeed, sir, and very puzzling.

‘And there’s now an added complication,’ said the older of the two men.

They had told Clem their names and ranks when they came in, but he had been in too much of a fluster to take it in properly, other than to register which was the inspector and which the detective sergeant.

‘Complication?’

‘There’s a second set of remains been found,’ said the inspector.

‘What kind of— You mean another body?’ said Clem.

‘I do. This time inside the manor itself.’

‘And,’ said the sergeant, ‘it looks as if it’s from the same era as the first one. Fifty years old, is our guess.’

Clem felt as if he had been punched in the face. He stared at the two men, then realized his mouth was gaping open as if he was the village idiot, and said, with an effort, ‘You mean there’ve been two bodies lying there in Priors Bramley all these years? Two?’

‘Two,’ affirmed the sergeant, pulling out a notebook.

‘And that being so, Mr Poulter, we’d like to find out a bit more about the history of Priors Bramley,’ said the inspector.

‘History? I’m sorry, I don’t quite see—’

‘I should have said Cadence Manor’s history,’ said the inspector. ‘The family who lived there and so on. Local people who might have been involved with them – helping out on a domestic level at the house, maybe. A bit feudal, I know, but it’s how life was in village communities, even as late as the 1940s and 1950s. Between ourselves, Mr Poulter, we’re having trouble enough identifying one body, never mind two. We’ve scoured the missing persons lists, but they haven’t yielded anything helpful so far. And so, you being the local librarian, we thought you might put us onto some archive stuff.’

‘We’ll be looking at the old newspapers as well, of course,’ put in the sergeant.

‘You’ll find a lot of those here,’ said Clem at once. ‘It’s always been my pride to keep a copy of every issue of the Bramley Advertiser. I like to think of myself as keeper of the area’s history, you know.’

‘Do you indeed, sir? Very admirable. And I hear you’re mounting an exhibition of Old Bramley, so very likely you’ll have unearthed a lot of quite useful stuff already.’

‘Well, yes, I have,’ admitted Clem. ‘At least, Amy – that’s Amy Haywood, who’s helping out – has done.’ He peered over the partition to see where Amy was and waved to her to come over.

Amy, listening to the inspector’s explanation, was horrified to hear another body had turned up. ‘It’s surreal, isn’t it? Like a whodunnit where the author chucks a new corpse in every twenty pages in case the reader’s getting bored,’ she said. ‘I don’t mean that to be disrespectful, but the bodies are from pretty far back, aren’t they?’

‘About fifty years ago, we think, miss. We’re waiting for forensics before we can be sure, though.’

‘Well, I’ve got a ton of boxes that I’m sorting through,’ said Amy. ‘But there’s a million more in the basement.’

‘We’ll take a bit of a look at what’s in the basement, if that’s all right, sir.’

‘Inspector, you can have the run of the entire library, as far as I’m concerned,’ said Clem. ‘If you want to go down there now you can have the keys.’

‘You keep the cellars locked, do you, sir?’

‘Yes, on account of security and fire hazard,’ said Clem, who had been on a Health and Safety course. ‘You never know who might sneak down there during the day when you aren’t looking. There are peculiar people around, Inspector, even in Bramley.’

‘Especially in Bramley, if two murders were committed fifty years ago and nobody knew about them,’ said Amy, as Clem rummaged in his cabinet for the cellar keys.

‘We don’t know that it was murder,’ said the inspector. ‘There could be an innocent explanation.’ He took the keys and nodded his thanks to Clem. ‘The cellar door’s in the hallway, isn’t it? I thought I saw it. There’s no need to come down with us, Mr Poulter. We’ll find our own way. No need to put you to trouble.’

‘It’s no trouble,’ said Clem earnestly.

Amy said, ‘Clem, I think the inspector’s trying to say tactfully that they’d prefer to do their own delving.’

‘Quite right, miss,’ said the inspector. ‘Although if it does turn out to be murder, Mr Poulter’s not likely to be the killer, not with both bodies having died over fifty years ago.’

Clem managed a nervous laugh and said, well goodness, he was hardly likely to have been murdering people when he was only nine.

‘You’d be surprised at the things some children get up to, though,’ said the inspector. ‘None of us will ever forget the Jamie Bulger case. And there have been other cases of child murderers.’

Child murderers. But what they had done that day had not been murder. There was nothing to worry about. Clem watched the two men descend to the cellars, then returned to his cubbyhole and retrieved his plans for Friday evening. He would not dwell on all this police stuff. Instead he would concentrate on his menu and on the games his guests might play.

Veronica generally found games at dinner parties boring.

She did not, however, find games in the bedroom the least bit boring, particularly with the new and exciting man with whom she had so unexpectedly and so thrillingly become entangled. It was a relationship that had considerable promise, so Veronica was going to acquiesce to any requests he might make. Well, within reason.

When, over the Pinot Noir, he broached the possibility of a little role-playing, she said at once she had an open mind.

‘I don’t think anything is wrong between two people who…’ She paused. Better not use the word love, not yet, at any rate. ‘Between two people who understand one another.’

He nodded, and looked pleased.

‘I wouldn’t do anything actually pervy, though,’ said Veronica, who thought it as well to make this clear at the outset, even though it was not possible to think of him wanting to do anything in the least pervy.

But he said at once, ‘No, of course not. I was thinking of something like slave girl and master?’ It was said with a diffidence that Veronica found endearing, but the diffidence was somewhat counteracted by the admiring glance he sent over her figure. ‘I think,’ he said, ‘you could carry a slave-girl costume off very well. Lots of silk veils and gold bangles.’

‘And not much else?’ said Veronica, with a giggle.

‘Of course not. I’d very much like to see you in silk veils, Veronica.’

‘I’ll go up and get changed,’ said Veronica, delighted.

‘Shall I see you in the bedroom in fifteen minutes?’

‘Make it ten.’ There was no point in being coy, not after their other evening together, and he would like her to be enthusiastic; men always did.

He smiled. ‘And when I come upstairs, you’ll be Berenice?’

Last time, he had told her that the name Veronica was a corruption of Berenice. ‘I’d like to call you Berenice sometimes,’ he said. ‘It could be our private name.’

Veronica thought this was really brilliant, because once you got into private names it meant you were well on the way to a real commitment.

So when he suggested the slave-girl thing, she instantly said she would love to be Berenice tonight.

It was strange how the name made her feel entirely different. Berenice was quite a wicked wanton lady; Veronica had a feeling Berenice might be capable of all kinds of excesses.

In the bedroom she undressed quickly and foraged in the dressing table for suitable slave-girl accessories. There were two or three silk scarves – good ones, bought in Italy – which she draped around her body. And she had some chunky gold bracelets which she put on, fastening one round her ankle. What else could she do to heighten the image? How about that gold luminous eye shadow bought years ago for a ladies’ night at her second husband’s masonic lodge. At the time her husband had thought it a touch vulgar, the miserable old killjoy, so Veronica, in those days wanting to be a good wife, had not worn it. But it was still in the cupboard, and she smoothed it on her eyelids. It smelled a bit musty but it looked wonderfully exotic.

‘Berenice?’

He was coming up the stairs now, and hearing him whisper the name made the fantasy spring into life. He had an extraordinary way of saying ‘Berenice’, almost purring it. Veronica, languorously arranged on the bed, waited for him to come in and tell the slave girl what she must do. Here he was now, smiling with pleasure at the costume she had fashioned, nodding with approval at the soft light from the bedside lamp she had switched on.

‘Berenice,’ he said softly, and stood in the doorway for a moment, savouring what he was seeing. Then he moved to the bed.

It was extraordinary the heights to which his imagination took them. Veronica remembered how, on their first evening together, he had almost seemed to become a different person. It was happening again tonight, and it was exciting and just a tiny bit frightening.

The veils worked tremendously well, although it was annoying to find her eyes beginning to sting from the eye shadow. She tried, a bit furtively, to see her reflection in the mirror over his shoulder in case her eyes were red. She would throw the shadow out and buy some new stuff in case they played this game again.

They might play other games as well. Perhaps she could be a saucy French parlourmaid to his squire of the manor. There was a black miniskirt in the wardrobe from years ago; she could fluff it out with lots of frilly petticoats. Black stockings and her highest, spikiest heels, of course. She smiled, thinking how sexy she would look and how he would not be able to resist her.

‘Something’s amusing you?’ he said, turning his head on the pillow.

‘I’m planning another fantasy for you,’ said Veronica, wriggling with delighted anticipation at the prospect.

‘What is it?’

‘It’s a surprise. I’m still working out the details of my costume,’ she said, wondering if she could fashion a cap from a couple of lace doilies, and trying to remember if Sainsbury’s sold feather dusters.