Dead Woman's Shoes: 1 (Lexy Lomax Mysteries) (21 page)

“Right, here we go.” Lexy strode to the long-suffering cabin door and yanked it open.

The earnest-looking girl began to speak in hushed tones.

“Er, sorry, but would you mind...”

“Yes – well done!” yelled Lexy. “It’s me, Alexandra Warwick-Holmes, twenty-nine years old, thief, conspirator, perverter of justice, separated, disguised, in hiding and now you’ve found me – congratulations, have a cigar!”

“Erm,” said the girl, looking apprehensively at the camera crew behind her. “It’s just that we wanted to take some pictures of the Costello’s warbler, but I think it’s flown off now.”

“Uh?” said Lexy.

“It’s just that it’s the first time it’s been seen in this part of Britain for sixty years. It’s seriously endangered, because of habitat erosion.” The girl had a lisp.

Lexy swallowed. “Grey, is it?” she asked, weakly. “About yea big?” She opened her hands several inches. “With a marbled back?”

The newcomer nodded encouragingly. “It’s got a mate here, too,” she added. “It might even be nest-building, which would be brilliant.”

Oh, yeah. That would be just dandy. An extremely rare, endangered bird deciding to build its nest in her back garden. She’d have every twitcher in the country camped outside for... but Lexy was so insanely relieved that her new visitors weren’t reporters that even this prospect was bearable.

“So is it OK if we...?”

Lexy waved limply towards the garden. “Help yourselves. Just forget the stuff I said earlier, OK?”

“What stuff?” asked the girl, distractedly. She wasn’t joking. The other bird-botherers had surged forward on her signal. Two disappeared behind gorse bushes and the one Kinky had seen off earlier crouched behind the same birch trees, now shouldering a telescope as large as a highland caber.

“What we’re really hoping is that they’ll breed on our bird sanctuary,” the girl breathed, her cerulean eyes shining. “It’s lowland heath, like you’ve got here – one of Europe’s rarest landscapes, constantly under threat.” A shadow passed across her face. “If we want to ensure the warblers breed and survive, we need to raise the funds to buy much more land like this.”

Lexy stared at the girl. “Bird sanctuary?” she said, slowly.

The girl fished out a leaflet from her khaki jacket. “It’s just the other side of Clopwolde. Why don’t you come and visit us? I’m Gillian, by the way. Ask for me and I’ll show you around.”

“I will, Gillian. I promise I’ll do just that. Must go now, but I’ll definitely be there.”

Lexy ducked inside and closed the door, sliding her back down it until she was sitting. She and Kinky exchanged a glance.

“So that’s what it was,” she said. “A Costello’s warbler. I’m glad we’ve established that, because, you know, I thought I didn’t recognise it. Oh, Kinky.” She ruffled the dog’s head, light-headed with relief. “Thanks for being a hero back there, mate.” Kinky wrinkled his nose modestly. “Lucky you didn’t catch him, though. I reckon I’m in enough trouble already without getting GBH to a twitcher added to my rap sheet.”

She grabbed her bag. “Right, pal, you and I are going to visit Edward de Glenville now, and I’m going to swallow my pride and ask him to lend me twenty quid. Then we’ll go and get you some more of those dog biscuits you like so much. And something nice for me, too.” Seeing as the dinner she had been relying on that night was reduced to a smouldering pile of ashes following her call to DI Milo.

Lexy and Kinky left by the steps going down to the beach to avoid disturbing the bird paparazzi and, after a hot trudge across the shingle, up the rickety private steps, through the graveyard and across the parched lawn, Lexy finally hauled on the rope outside the iron-studded front door. But the bells jangled in vain, and the large door remained firmly shut.

She walked around to the back of the building. No maroon Jaguar, or any other sign of Edward. Damnation. She had assumed that as it was Sunday morning he would be lounging around at home, drinking coffee and reading the papers.

Then she remembered Sheri-Anne, writing on the chalk board outside the village hall the day before. There was a full rehearsal for
South Pacific
today, starting at ten. She looked at her watch. It was a quarter to eleven. Even Edward would be there by now.

She led Kinky, tail drooping, back down the steps to the beach.

As she scrunched along the firmer line of shingle left by the receding tide, she brooded over the previous evening’s unexpected encounter with Hope Ellenger, wondering how the poor woman had felt when she came to. Would she remember what had taken place? Probably – she had been fairly coherent before she’d passed out – but would she be relieved or mortified to realise that she’d finally broken her silence on her father’s death? A silence that had protected her brother for twenty-four years.

Small wonder she and Guy hadn’t been able to move on emotionally. It certainly explained why Hope had become so distraught when she started to receive the anonymous letters. How sinister to discover that someone else knew their secret.

And how did Guy really feel when he opened Avril’s last delivery to the surgery, the one that asked why his mother drowned herself? Did Guy think Avril knew the truth? If so, he had a very strong motive for wanting her out of the way permanently. But despite this, Lexy was still convinced he wasn’t her killer. He hadn’t panicked, as Hope did. He
knew
that only two people living were aware of the truth – himself and his sister.

So, where did that put Avril? Did she just make a lucky stab in the dark?

Lexy came to an involuntary stop. That could be it!

Kinky, a few feet behind her, started dragging a very dead flounder from the shallows.

Lexy thought rapidly. She now knew, thanks to Roderick Todd, that his wife had done most of her research by going back through the local papers and talking to people who had lived in an area all their lives.

What if she then took a guess that there was more to a death or suicide than met the eye? After all, a lot of families had secrets.

Take Edward. Avril had obviously found out that de Glenville senior had fallen off the cliff last year and died. She could have read about it in any local paper at the time. Then a few months later, she sent Edward a single-line letter:

I KNOW WHO KILLED YOUR FATHER.

The single line conveyed a lot. If Edward did have something to hide, it would be downright threatening. Even if he didn’t, it would be frighteningly suggestive.

Then to ram the point home, a few weeks later Avril sent a second one.

HE WAS PUSHED, WASN’T HE?

It implied much the same as the first letter. Lexy thought back to Edward’s reaction when he opened it. Without any perceptible hesitation he had laughed aloud about it, carelessly handed it to her to read, made light of it. But Lexy remembered the way he’d torn it up and binned it. Avril might have twitched his chain a bit more than he let on.

Had she not been cut off in her prime, she might have sent another letter, before moving in for the final thrust – blackmail. That would be the test of Edward’s guilt.

She’d used the same technique with the Ellengers, Lexy thought with growing conviction. All she really needed were the bare facts. Their father died falling down the stairs during a family argument, and their mother committed suicide soon afterwards. She could, as Guy had said, have easily discovered that from local newspapers in the library. Even without the supplementary whispers of scandal that Lexy was sure some local people had been willing to supply, Avril had made a leap of faith and landed on a safe ledge. Hope, with her longstanding burden of guilt, had obligingly read more into the statements than even Avril could have dreamed of.

Guy must have done the same, although he kept his head and confronted her. But what exactly had he said to Avril that Friday afternoon? And why had he really set up that alibi for himself for the evening she’d been killed?

Lexy stared out at the dove-grey ocean, her mind running up and down little corridors of possibilities. She screwed up her nose a couple of times, subconsciously noting a humdinger of a smell coming from somewhere.

There was a way to check what the vet had been up to that evening, but she’d have to box clever. She didn’t want to get on the wrong side of Guy Ellenger. He’d protected his secret for a very long time, and she wasn’t sure which way he might jump if he learned it was out. She needed to make sure he didn’t jump on her. Not in the hobnailed boot sense, at any rate.

Lexy glanced down at a familiar sound, to find that she was hemmed in on all sides by chihuahuas, one of them reeking of the dead flounder he had just rolled in.

“Morning,” said Guy Ellenger, looking grave, and reaching into his inside pocket. “Hoped I’d run into you. I meant to give you this yesterday.”

Lexy flinched, but instead of the imagined gun, Guy withdrew several ten-pound notes and handed them to her. She stared down at the money, her heart in her throat.

“But I can’t...”

“Listen, if you find that cat it will be worth a lot more to me than the cost of Kinky’s treatment. Look on this as expenses. I’m sorry – I’ve got to rush because I’m meant to be at an am-dram rehearsal – Maurice is going to kill me –
and
I need to get some stuff from the chemist for my sister. By the looks of it, she’s not going to be well enough to make the rehearsal at all. Anyway, I’ll see you soon.”

He sniffed the air, grimacing. “Beach is a bit whiffy today, isn’t it?”

“Yeah. Must be that rotting... oh great...” Lexy began dragging Kinky towards the sea. “Is Hope all right, by the way?”

He turned back. “Fine. Just a headache.”

Yeah, I’ll bet it’s a real mother, too, thought Lexy, watching the vet and his leaping carousel of chihuahuas disappear out of sight between two beach huts. After she had sluiced the indignant Kinky down, she counted the money Guy Ellenger had given her.

“Fifty pounds,” she said, incredulously. “Here, Kinks, you don’t think this is hush money, do you? Perhaps Hope told him what happened last night. Told him that I know his secret.”

Kinky was too busy shaking himself dry to offer an opinion.

“No,” she reasoned, “if he was going to bribe us to keep shtum, he would have given us a lot more than fifty quid.”

Having cleared up that point, Lexy and Kinky went straight to the fish and chip shop in the village.

They ate in the church square, Lexy munching chips in silent appreciation, while Kinky tackled a sausage longer than he was.

Lexy compiled a mental shopping list that didn’t include brown rice. And, she reminded herself, noticing a sign for a ‘nearly new’ sale in the church hall, now she was above water again, she could get something to wear that would be suitable for a job interview. Nothing too dressy, just one grade up from ripped jeans and an old t-shirt. She grinned. Last time she went shopping for clothes it was in Harrods.

The church clock struck twelve-thirty.

“Come on, pal. We’ve got things to do.” Lexy stood up and fished Kinky out of a flower bed.

They went into the church hall sale, and minutes later Lexy came out with a carrier bag. A pair of serviceable black jeans and a couple of decent tops. Perfect. They headed into the village centre. Lexy tied the chihuahua up outside the small Internet café. Time to start earning her expenses.

When Lexy emerged fifteen minutes later, she wore a self-satisfied smile.

“Thought so,” she said to Kinky. “But I’ll need to make a few calls when we get home. Let’s head for the newsagent and get a paper.”

Unfortunately, Kinky was intent on heading in the opposite direction, straight for a burly, unsuspecting English bull terrier. By the time Lexy caught up with him and subdued the other dog’s owner, she found she was right outside the village hall. The heavy door was slightly open, and piano music and raucous singing drifted through it.

The song was instantly recognisable.

Lexy slipped in. A handful of people were singing on stage, Edward among them. He spotted her and did a theatrical double take, then gave an exaggerated wave as he proceeded to inform everyone that Bloody Mary was the girl he loved. In the background, Lexy saw Guy Ellenger and Sheri-Anne huddled together, heads close. She frowned.

After the number there was a loud hand clap.

“Super. Super, Edward – all of you, in fact. Let’s leave it there. Stop on a high note,” shouted a slim, dapper man. “Debrief in ten, so don’t go away.”

Lexy watched the actors disperse into small groups. She saw Sheri-Anne Davis, dressed in a short blue sarong and little else, jump gracefully from the stage, and pull a packet of Marlboro from some mysterious place on her person.

Edward also made his way across the stage, leaping down in front of Lexy.

Raising his expressive eyebrows, he leant towards her, lowering his voice and intoning, somewhat inaccurately, “It’s been handbags at dawn today and no mistake! Tammy Caradoc left the stage well before cue earlier. Right in the middle of a scene, actually. I know she’s overwrought about that precious lost moggy, but I...”

“Princess Noo-Noo,” supplied Lexy, craning her neck slightly to watch Guy Ellenger operate a lever at the back of the stage.

Edward gave her a surprised look. “Yes – that’s the one. Fancy you knowing that. You get around a bit, don’t you, dear?”

“Their Missing Cat posters are stuck on every vertical surface in the village,” said Lexy smoothly. “What do you think happened to the thing?”

Edward shrugged. “No idea, sweetie. If it had any sense it probably went off in search of a new home, although I don’t know who’d give it one, poor creature. It’s certainly not something I’d want gurning at guests in my humble abode.”

“Humble abode,” snorted Lexy.

He grinned at her irrepressibly. “Anyway, to continue,
I
think that Tammy C was more upset by the fact that she had to surrender her accustomed lead role to madam.” He jerked his head at the athletic form of Sheri-Anne, who was now irritably tapping out a message on her mobile. A well-built young man in a rugby shirt hovered nearby with uneasy longing. Sheri-Anne glanced up and noticed both Edward and Lexy looking over at her. She gave them an impertinent stare back.