A Small Hill to Die On: A Penny Brannigan Mystery (9 page)

“What is it?” asked Penny. “What’s the matter?”

“He’s married.”

“Ah.”

“At first everything was wonderful and I was dying to tell you all about him, but then things just didn’t seem right, so I confronted him with it. And then he admitted he’s married and still living with his wife. He didn’t think it was a big deal, but I sure did. How could I have been so naïve and stupid? As soon as I heard that, I finished with him and came home.”

“And quite right, too. That kind of relationship is so dead end. Some women waste years on them. And he always treats the wife better. Makes you wonder.”

Victoria shrugged. “I probably wasn’t the first. Well, at our age most of the best ones are married, aren’t they?” She added as an afterthought, “Or widowed. Like Gareth. Well, whatever, we all come with a lot of baggage, I guess.”

Victoria was divorced and had invested her settlement in the Llanelen Spa.

“Well, enough about that. I don’t want to waste one more minute of my life on him. Tell me the latest on what’s been happening here. All the details. Don’t leave anything out. Your e-mails were a little sketchy. I want to know how that new nail place is affecting our business.”

So Penny began telling her what she knew of the new nail bar and tanning place.

“And when Eirlys dropped in, there were no customers. But I’ve seen a few young women, you know, in their early twenties, around town with that awful orange fake tan look. Honestly, do they think it makes them attractive? But anyway, here’s the really weird thing. Last night, when I was making our cash deposit at the bank, I noticed someone coming out of the nail bar, and he had a cash deposit bag, too. It was at least three times the size of ours. How can that be, I asked myself. If the place was practically empty when Eirlys was there, what’s the deal with all the cash? Where’s it coming from?”

“Yes, I see what you mean.” Victoria rubbed her chin. “Wait a minute. Have you seen a lot of men going in there? Maybe they’re offering other services besides just the nails and tanning.”

“You mean…?” She thought for a moment. “Well, it’s possible, I suppose, but no, I haven’t seen a lot of men going in there. Haven’t seen any, come to think of it, but there might be another door round the back, I suppose.” She stood up. “I’ve had an idea and you might not like it. At least not at first.”

“All right, let’s hear it,” said Victoria, as she took a sip of tea. “What?”

“Well, Mai, you know, the woman who owns the nail bar, was saying that she needed someone to come in and do a little light cleaning, and I thought that since she doesn’t know about you and hasn’t met you, that you could—”

“Oh, no,” Victoria interrupted. “No, a thousand times, no. Never. It’s not going to happen. No.”

“Well, hear me out,” said Penny. “I thought you could go up to the Hall for just an afternoon or two, and while you’re doing the dusting, you could hear what they have to say and get a sense of what they’re doing with their business. Where they’re going with it. Who their customers are. Because there’s something not quite right there and it could affect us. By us, I mean our business.”

“So, you’re suggesting a little industrial espionage.”

“Well, if you want to call it that. Just until we get a better sense of what she’s up to.”

“I’ll think about it. But I’m not sure I see the point. The people who live there aren’t even likely to be at home in the afternoon, are they?”

Penny didn’t answer. Instead, she scrabbled about in her bag. “I was in Llandudno the other day and you know that bargain shop at the end of Mostyn Street? I bought this for you.” She handed over an old-fashioned pinafore that British char ladies had worn for decades. In a blue and white check pattern, it slipped on over the wearer’s clothes, buttoned up the front and featured two large pockets.

Victoria eyed it with distaste.

“Do I have to?”

“Yes, you have to look the part, and we’ll have to do something about your hair. You look much too good.” Penny rubbed her hands together. “I know. We’ll tie a kerchief around it.”

“A kerchief! No one’s worn a kerchief since the Second World War. I’ll look like a land girl or like some woman you see in those old black-and-white documentaries working in a bomb factory.”

Penny laughed.

“And what if she asks for references?” Victoria asked.

“She won’t,” said Penny, “because she’s too desperate.”

“Well, thanks very much for that.”

“And anyway, I’ll be recommending you, so that’s a reference right there. So I’ll ring her and let her know I’ve just thought of someone who might be able to do a little light cleaning. Oh, and why don’t I say you’re really good at cooking, too?”

Victoria groaned.

*   *   *

“Yes, she could start Monday morning,” Penny said on the telephone a few minutes later. “Yes, she knows the way. Right, I’ll tell her. Be there at nine.” She pressed the button to end the phone call.

“You don’t waste much time, do you?” said Victoria.

“Try the pinafore on,” said Penny. “Go on, I want to see how you look in it. After all, it cost me five pounds, although I suppose that technically I could claim it as a business expense.”

*   *   *

On Monday morning Victoria lifted the silver dolphin on the back door of Ty Brith Hall and gave two firm taps. A few moments later a small Asian woman opened the door and gestured Victoria inside. “Come in. The kitchen’s this way.”

Victoria, who had been to the house before and knew exactly where the kitchen was, said nothing and followed. “You can start by cleaning up the kitchen,” Mai said, “and then dust and tidy up the downstairs rooms.” Victoria looked around. The last time she had been in this room, back when Gwennie had worked at the Hall, the large, beautiful, country house kitchen had been immaculate. Trixxi’s bed had been beside the Aga, a trug filled with freshly picked vegetables from the kitchen garden had been set down just over there, and the whole room had been filled with the delicious aroma of warm ginger biscuits.

Today, the room smelled of stale cigarette smoke. On the table, crushed cigarette ends spilled from an overflowing ashtray, and beside it was a tattered newspaper with a piece torn out of it. The rubbish hadn’t been emptied for days, and the counter was littered with dirty dishes.

I don’t need this, thought Victoria. This is disgusting. I don’t have to be here and I don’t have to do this.

She was about to tell Mai that she had changed her mind and would not be staying when a small, wiry Asian man entered the kitchen, followed by a tall, man with handsome, delicate features. His blond hair was combed back from his forehead and was all the same length, just scraping his collar. He sat at the table and gave Victoria a beaming smile, displaying unusually good teeth.

“Any chance of a cup of coffee, love?”

Before she could reply, Mai answered. “She’s not here to make coffee for the likes of you, Bruno. She’s here to tidy up. So leave her alone. She needs to get on with things.”

“Well, you could help her out, then, by telling Derek not to smoke in the house. Where is he, by the way? Haven’t seen him around lately. Not been up to anything he shouldn’t, I hope.”

The Asian man said a few words to Mai in a foreign language. She seemed to ignore him, replying to the blond man. “Where do you think he is? You’re his best mate, Bruno, you should know. He’s where he always is. Bloody great useless prat. Either in bed, down the pub, or at the bookies.” The Asian man said something else that seemed to get Mai’s attention. She turned to him, gestured at the blond man, and replied in what sounded like the same language.

Bruno smiled at Mai, shrugged, and then inclined his head in the direction of the Asian man. “He’s your brother, love, and he runs the show. I just work for him.”

As the two men prepared to leave, Mai turned her attention to Victoria. “I’ve left your money in an envelope on the counter. When you’ve finished tidying up in here, please see to the front hall and the back corridor. They’ll need mopping and the sitting room needs dusting. Do not go upstairs. Do not go into any of the outbuildings. There’s nothing there that need concern you. Do you understand?”

Victoria nodded. “Good, well, you should be finished here by noon. You can let yourself out. Can you come back tomorrow? For the same number of hours? There are so many rooms here, it’s impossible for me to look after them all, what with, well, everything. The dining room needs dusting and the main reception room at the front of the house. Could you do those tomorrow?”

To her surprise, Victoria heard herself agreeing to come back. She collected a few dirty dishes from the table, rinsed them, and squeezed them into the dishwasher. The ones on the counter would have to wait until the next load. She found some dishwasher powder under the sink and filled the little plastic compartment. She closed the door of the machine, locked it, and was just setting the dial when she heard voices in the downstairs corridor leading to the back door.

“The new gardener will be arriving tonight. Make sure you’re here to let him in, and for God’s sake, keep Derek well out of the way. Mai’s asked me to go to Birmingham to check up on Tyler, so I’m not sure when I’ll be back. I don’t even know if I’ll be able to find him. Keep an eye on Mai. Make sure she deposits the money. In fact, meet her at closing time and walk her to the bank. We wouldn’t want anything to happen to it.” That’s the Vietnamese man, thought Victoria, Mai’s brother. The accent was the same as Mai’s but thicker, as if he hadn’t tried as hard to learn English. Or maybe he hadn’t been in the country as long. By now they were too far away for her to hear clearly what was being said, and then there was the faint sound of laughter just before the back door closed.

As the almost empty house settled into an uneasy silence, she glanced out the kitchen window that overlooked the car park and gardens and then carried on with her work.

Eighteen

“I think you’re right. There may be something going on up there,” Victoria said to Penny over a late lunch of supermarket sandwiches in Penny’s office. “He said something about a gardener arriving tonight, and making sure Mai deposits the money. From the nail bar, I guess.”

Penny wiped her hands on a paper napkin and reached for her glass of water. “That’s interesting about the gardener. Earlier this week I went to see the former head gardener at the Hall. He mentioned the word ‘gardener,’ too, and then got quite agitated when his sister started telling me about Juliette Sanderson.” Penny described the visit to Dilys Hughes and her brother.

“Still, I’m not sure we really learned anything or if there was any point to your actually going up to the Hall today. What did Mai say, by the way, when you told her you wouldn’t be coming back tomorrow?”

“Ah, well, that’s the thing.” Victoria grinned a little sheepishly. “I told her I would be back tomorrow. She told me not to go into certain areas of the house and grounds, but I thought maybe if I go back I might be able to build a bit of trust and see what’s happening.”

“You do surprise me,” said Penny. “I never would have expected you’d want to go back.”

“Just curious, that’s all.” She started gathering up the wrappers from the sandwiches. “I’ll put the kettle on, shall I, and then I’ve got a ton of e-mails to answer. Have you spoken to Gareth? I wondered what’s the latest on Ashlee.”

“I don’t think that investigation’s going very well. He’s been looking into the family’s affairs in Birmingham. He’s coming back tonight, so maybe he’ll have some news.”

She thought for a moment.

“You know, the first day that Mai came here Mrs. Lloyd said something interesting. She couldn’t understand why a family like that would buy Ty Brith Hall. They’re not farmers, so it can’t be the land they were after. I don’t know if Mai has lady-of-the-manor pretensions, but she seems too busy running the nail bar and tanning place to be worrying about all that.”

“Oh, you mean like in Victorian times when the lady would go visiting the poor with a basket over her arm, doling out jars of calf’s foot jelly and meaty broth?” Victoria laughed.

“Yes,” said Penny. “And opening the summer fete in a big flowery hat. But I haven’t heard that they’re active in the church or any other aspect of the community. Mrs. Lloyd says people really haven’t taken to them at all. It’s not that anyone’s been rude or racist, but just not invited them anywhere or asked them to join anything.”

“Well, why should people take to them? They live up there, pretty much on their own, with a son who’s run off back to Birmingham and a murdered daughter whose killer hasn’t been found.” Victoria summed it up.

“And really, it’s none of our business what they get up to, is it?” asked Penny.

“No, I suppose it isn’t.”

“So we should probably just leave them alone.”

“Yes, I expect we should. We’ve got a business to run. We’ve got better things to do.”

A little silence fell over them as they mulled this over.

“Well, I’m still going back tomorrow,” said Victoria. “In a funny kind of way I found it really interesting being there, listening to them talking amongst themselves. They took no notice of me. I’ll see if there’s anything to find out, and then I’ll pack it in.”

“Well, if you like it so much, why don’t you leave it open, then?” suggested Penny. “In case you want to go back there later. Just tell her you can’t come in for a bit, but don’t actually quit.”

Nineteen

“Now then, Eirlys, you’re looking a little down today. Not your usual cheerful self. Everything all right?”

Eirlys shook her head and went on placing a few new bottles of nail polish on the shelves. She moved the bottles around, lining them up just so, paying attention to the order of the colours. She liked to group like with like, so all the corals were in one spot, the pinks in another, the novelty colours together, and so on.

Penny stayed where she was and gave Eirlys a few moments to get herself together.

Finally, she turned around and sighed.

“I don’t know what to do, Penny. I can’t tell my parents, but I think my brother is stealing. He’s suddenly got new electronics and video games that he couldn’t possibly afford. My parents haven’t really noticed because they’re so busy, but I’m very worried about him.” Her eyebrows knit together. “I know you’re friends with that policeman, so please don’t tell him. I wouldn’t want to get Trefor in trouble.”