Murder My Neighbour (14 page)

Ellie led the way downstairs. ‘Does Pet's husband work in the cleaning line, too? No, wait a minute. You told me; he's a hospital porter, works nights.'

‘I don't think he ever met Mrs Pryce.'

Ellie held Vera back when they reached the landing. ‘
You
liked Mrs Pryce.
I
like what I've heard about her. It's clear that Mr Abel knows less than we do, and lacking instructions from Mrs Pryce, he won't do anything about, well, anything. We've no proof that something's wrong, but . . . what do you think?'

Vera had been following a different line of thought. ‘Whoever it was that was living here recently must have had a car to take away their stuff in last night.'

‘Ah, right. This morning I spotted fresh car tracks at the front where someone reversed into the lawn.'

Vera grinned. ‘I bet they didn't take all their trash away with them.'

‘Where . . . ?'

‘The dustbins are outside the back door in the covered way. Except that the dustbin men don't call on empty houses, do they?'

Mr Abel met them as they descended into the hall. He looked worried. ‘At Hoopers we do most earnestly request our clients to turn off the gas, water and electricity at the mains before they leave. I don't know how it has come about that this has not been done, but I do not think it wise to leave this house with water dripping from taps and electricity connected. Now I've managed to locate the fuse boxes in the kitchen corridor and turned off the electricity, also the gas. I'm not sure where the water enters this house, but it must be in the kitchen quarters somewhere.'

‘I'll show you,' said Vera, leading the way.

Ellie went into the panelled television room. Vera had said a safe might be concealed in this room. If so, there was nothing obvious to show where it might have been. Dust lay uniformly on every ledge. No one had been in this room since Mrs Pryce left. Disappointing. But what else had she expected?

There was a lot of banging and clattering going on. Footsteps backwards and forwards in the hall. Ellie walked along the panelling, rapping here and there. She couldn't detect any change in sound. If a safe was hidden there, it was not going to be found easily.

She drifted back to the hall as Mr Abel and Vera emerged from the kitchen quarters.

‘So sorry to leave you,' said Mr Abel, who had transferred a considerable amount of the dust in the house to his forehead and whose shirt was now very much the worse for wear. ‘I had to fetch a wrench from my car to turn off the water, and then I tried to get the cellar door open, but it'll need an electric drill to break that down, it's rusted solid.'

Strike the cellar from a list of possible places to hide a body.

He attempted and failed to brush dirt from sodden shirt sleeves ‘So, what are your first impressions, Mrs Quicke? A truly magnificent house, isn't it? Just waiting for someone like you to wake it from its sleep, har har. Now may I show you the grounds? Extensive, very. Greenhouses, pond, rose beds, vegetable garden.'

‘Thank you, but I've seen enough for one day. I need to think about what you've shown me so far, and perhaps come back another time.'

‘Ah. Right. Now, may I offer you a lift anywhere?'

Mr Abel collected the stack of post to be redirected and ushered them out of the house, still talking. Ellie smiled and said she didn't need a lift home, thank you, you've been most helpful. Mr Abel eeled his way into his car and drove off.

It was going to be another hot day. Ellie put her dark glasses on.

Vera said, ‘While he was getting the water mains turned off, I popped into the backyard to check there'd been no rubbish left there. And there wasn't. On my way back I looked for the spare back door key that always hangs on a hook in the cupboard over where the fridge was, and it isn't there.'

‘Really?' Ellie was amused. What did Vera think they were going to do – break into the house through the back quarters some moonlit night and search the house with torches? ‘Well, I suppose Mrs Pryce took it when she left.'

Ellie walked out on to the pavement and looked up and down the road. ‘Which day of the week do they collect the rubbish around here? What's today? Wednesday. Ours is collected today. Do you think this road's the same? We have to leave our rubbish just inside the drive for collection and not on the pavement, and not before seven in the mornings because if we leave it out overnight the foxes and the crows get at it. Now if our “squatters” wanted to get rid of their rubbish last night, would they dump it just anywhere and hope it's not ripped open by morning or . . . ?'

‘Could that be theirs?' Vera pointed to where a couple of bulging black dustbin bags had been left under a tree two houses down from where they stood. The foxes or a cat had been at one of them, but not too badly.

Ellie went to have a closer look only to freeze, hearing the clang and clamour of the dustbin lorry somewhere close.

Vera pounced on the torn bag. ‘Aha! A pizza box. That would attract the foxes all right.'

Ellie lifted the other. ‘Heavy.'

‘Wet rags would make it heavy, if they used them for wiping down the floorboards and cleaning the bathroom and toilet up top.'

‘We should ring the police . . .'

The refuse lorry turned the corner into their road. ‘They're coming!'

‘If we leave them . . .'

The binmen were walking along the road in their Day-Glo jackets, collecting black plastic bags from the driveways, piling them into a heap in the road for collection by the lorry as it moved slowly along.

‘Take those for you, missus?' A dustman, large, black and smiling.

‘Oh, no. Thank you, but I've put something in the trash, something valuable. I shall have to go through . . . You understand?'

‘Ah. Never mind, then. If you find it, just put the bags in the next road for us to collect, OK?'

‘OK.'

Ellie and Vera picked up one bag each and started to walk down the road away from the binmen. Vera gave way to the giggles. Ellie did, too.

Vera said, ‘What
do
we look like?'

‘Bag ladies,' said Ellie as hers slipped from her grasp. She stooped to get a better hold on it, and her glasses fell off.

‘Let me.' Vera took Ellie's bag from her.

‘We're destroying fingerprints,' said Ellie. ‘I'm sure we'll get into trouble about this.'

‘You can talk us out of it,' said Vera.

How nice to be appreciated! What a splendid girl Vera was!

Ears shrieked down the phone at Ellie. ‘You
stole
two bags of rubbish! Tell me this isn't happening!'

‘Not
stole
. They were put out for the binmen to collect. They'd been out overnight and the foxes had torn one open but—'

‘Give me strength. You picked up two bags off the street, without any idea where they might have come from—'

‘The squatters – if that's what they were – had been eating pizza. We could smell it, and one of the bags had an empty pizza box in it.'

‘And what, may I ask, makes you think that the police are going to waste their time chasing up squatters who exist only in your fertile imagination?'

‘It's true that they've gone now, but don't you think it's worth investigating since Mrs Pryce never arrived where she said she would? And her car's missing.'

‘So she changed her mind and booked herself into a luxury hotel somewhere. Have her family complained? No. Have you checked the hospitals to see if she had a traffic accident? No. Give me one piece of evidence—'

‘We thought you'd find something in the bags. We've gloved up so we don't destroy any fingerprints.' Ellie was rather proud of the phrase ‘gloved up', which she'd learned from watching crime programmes on television. The bags were on the kitchen table at that very moment, being investigated by Vera and Rose. Midge the cat was keeping an eye on everyone from his perch on top of the fridge.

Heavy breathing from Ears. ‘No doubt you've found detonators and plastic jelly for making explosives, and this is a plot to blow up the Houses of Parliament. You'll be telling me next that you've seen little green men in the attic and unidentified flying objects circling round the chimneys. I am trying,' he said, enunciating each syllable, ‘to work out how we can spare a detective to investigate this mythical plot of yours, but at the moment – if you'll forgive me – we have more important things to attend to.'

The phone crashed down.

Ellie winced.

Vera giggled. ‘Prince Charming he is not, by the sound of it.'

Ellie held up her hands and let them drop. ‘He's got reason, I suppose. I mean, what have we got that would convince the police there is a case to answer?'

‘Apart from masses of J-cloths which have been wetted and used for wiping dust off from wherever it is they've been hiding?'

‘We can't prove any of this came from the Pryce house.'

‘Who else would leave their rubbish out on the pavement under a tree, instead of just inside their gates? And how about this?' Vera spread a fine black scarf with a frayed edge out on to the table. It had been much used and had a hole in it, which was probably why it had been discarded. ‘Of course, lots of women wear scarves, though not in this hot weather. But Muslim women cover their hair all the time when they go out, don't they? Plus it stinks of cheap perfume. Yuk!'

Ho hum. Ellie considered a possible scenario. ‘Rose, I wonder if that's who you saw at the window? Suppose a Muslim girl had been hiding up there – which someone certainly was – and she tied her head round with a black scarf as they do, and looked out of her window, wouldn't it have looked as if her face was floating in mid-air?'

‘Another thing,' said Vera, ‘they only wear scarves if they have to go outdoors, but if she had lots of very dark hair hanging down on either side of her face—'

‘You mean I really didn't imagine it? Well, praise be!'

NINE

V
era held up an empty shampoo bottle. ‘We smelled shampoo in the bathroom, didn't we? And here's some twists of black hair – from her hairbrush, I suppose, yuk!'

‘Thirteen, fourteen.' Rose counted sets of plastic knives and forks. ‘How long has she been living there?'

‘Hello!' said Ellie. ‘Here's a disposable razor. His or hers?'

Vera held up another, larger one. ‘His AND hers. There were two people living there.'

Rose pried apart a stack of plastic food containers. ‘Mostly salads. For two.'

‘They didn't use the kitchen so they didn't cook anything.' Ellie set aside an empty box which had once contained paper tissues. ‘The cheapest supermarket brand.'

Rose was back to counting again; this time flattened pizza boxes. ‘Seven, eight, nine. All vegetarian, no meat dishes. I suppose he brought them in hot.'

He? A man and a woman? Perhaps she'd been a prisoner there, and he'd taken in food for her.

Midge the cat decided this was where he took part in the proceedings and leaped on to the table.

‘Off!' yelled Ellie. Midge flattened his ears, but evaded Ellie's hand to sniff at the food containers. ‘Rose, can you shove them back into the bag, or he'll have the lot on the floor.'

‘Look what I've found.' Vera pulled out a stack of glossy magazines.

‘Mm,' said Ellie. ‘So the woman is young, possibly a Muslim, certainly a vegetarian. A prisoner, or a squatter?'

‘Lots more cleaning rags,' said Vera.

Ellie pounced. ‘Torn up receipts for credit card payments.' She laid them out on the table and began to piece the scraps together. ‘Someone's been buying petrol and foodstuffs at the big Tesco's on the A40. Bottled water and toiletries. They also bought cleaning materials, toilet rolls, foodstuffs, mostly salads. We must keep these. If we can get the police interested, the man can be traced by his credit card number.'

‘He definitely had a car, because he bought petrol for it.' Vera liked this game.

Ellie smoothed out another torn-up bill. ‘Now here's something different; he – or possibly she – visited a hardware store, but it's in Hayes, further away, and the date is . . . over a month ago.' She thought about it. ‘The hammer and nails were to fix up curtains over the windows. I wonder where he got the black material from? Perhaps it was a cheap skirt she had. At the same time he bought an electric kettle and two long-life lamp bulbs. Luckily the paperwork wasn't in with the wet cloths for long, or it would be unreadable.'