The Bones in the Attic (8 page)

“I'm wondering if your maiden name was Marsden.”

An indefinable look—was it caution?—wafted over her face.

“Ye-e-es.”

“I think we may have known each other many years ago.”

“Oh?”

“I wonder if I could come in. There's something I'd very much like to talk to you about.”

There was a definite moment of hesitation—no reason why there shouldn't be, with a strange man asking admittance, even one who in a sense had just been in her living space by the wonder of television. The hesitation, though, was momentary and was succeeded by a decision. She stood aside and let him in. Matt thought it probably was the status generated by his television appearances, combined with his suggestion that they had known each other. They went through to an overfull and shabby living room.

“Like a drink?”

Matt was about to refuse when it struck him that
accepting one might start the forming of bonds between them.

“That would be nice.”

“Gin? Or I've got lager.”

“Lager's fine.”

While she fetched a can and a glass, pulled the tab open and poured, Matt looked surreptitiously at her face. Very puffy and blotched red, but the same small, unattractive mouth, now with a strong expression of discontent and disappointment.

“You say we've known each other in the past,” Lily Fitch said, sitting down, her glass of gin on one arm of her chair, clutched but not sipped at.

“I think so. A long time ago, when I was a little lad.”

“Oh? When was that?”

“The summer of sixty-nine.”

This time the expression of wariness that came into her face was palpable.

“Would that be the matter the police were here rabbiting on about?”

“Yes,” admitted Matt. “I've just moved into Elderholm, one of the stone houses on Houghton Avenue, and I found the skeleton of a small girl in the attic there.”

“Nasty for you.” She looked at her glass as if she needed a deep draft but didn't feel she ought. “And was it there that we knew each other?”

“Yes. I was staying with my aunt Hettie, a couple of streets away from here. I was seven, and I came up and played football with all you children from Houghton Avenue.”

She thought for a bit. Was she trying to remember, or trying to decide what to say?

“Don't remember you. Kids came and went.”

“Of course. Naturally. I think you let me join in because I was very good at football for my age. Otherwise you'd have told me to scram. I later became a professional.”

“Nice.” She gave the impression that she would have liked to cast an appraising and sexual eye over him, but was holding herself back. “I don't see yet what this has to do with me.”

“We think the child, or its body, may have been put in the attic about that time: the summer of sixty-nine.”

The face briefly screwed up, as if she didn't like that phrase.

“I still don't see what it has to do with me.”

“No, of course not. We were just children, weren't we? But all the old house owners have died or moved away. You're the only one we know about still in the area—but the children will mostly be alive, won't they, even if many of the parents will have died or gone into homes?”

Uncertainty about what to say was obvious in her long pause.

“The only one I can remember, Eddie Armitage, died, I think. I remember reading about it in the
West Yorkshire Chronicle.”

“Yes, you mentioned him to the police, and they've established that. He died a few years ago in the Halifax area. Isn't there anyone else you can remember?”

“No—I'd have told the police if there were.”

“Surely you'd remember the other children in the other houses, the ones you played with?”

“Who says I played with them?” Her voice momentarily became strident with the strain of maintaining the lie. “I don't think I did much, except may be in the school holidays.
Mostly I went around with others from my school. I was at Armley High, but a lot of the kids in those houses went to the Catholic schools.”

“I see.”

Perhaps she sensed a degree of skepticism in him, because she said: “Wait a minute. There was a family called Best, or Beest—”

“Beeston?”

“That's it. There was a daughter a few years older than me, and she married an Iti waiter and went to Australia.”

“She'd have left quite a bit before 1969, wouldn't she?”

“May be. I'm no earthly good with dates.”

“When were you born?”

“Nineteen fifty-six.”

“So you'd be about thirteen when I knew you?”

“If you did. That's right.”

“Which house was it you lived in?”

“Sundown. Just next to the one where you turn as you come round the lane.”

“I see. Were you an only child?”

“Yeah. And my parents were killed in a pileup on the M1 when I was eighteen. I suppose that's why I married that no-hoper Mickey Fitch. Can't think of any other reason. I thought I needed someone to protect me.”

“The marriage didn't last?”

“Last?” She laughed harshly. “It lasted a bloody sight longer than it should have done. There's a kid, somewhere. It was ten years before I got up the courage to chuck him out—Mickey, I mean, not the boy. Christ, life's a bitch. A fully fledged, paid-up bitch. Here, have another lager.”

But Matt stood up. He wasn't going to get anything more out of her now.

“My lot will be back from the cinema soon. Their mother's away. I'd better get home and get them something to eat. Look, here's my card. I'm sure there are things lurking around in the back of your memory. I'd like to have another chat if anything, however small, does surface. Just give me a call, at home or at Radio Leeds, and I'll be round.”

But, driving home, he felt pretty sure that, however much she might want to, she would not be calling him. Her behavior was all of a piece, and it had nothing to do with her memory. For the police's benefit she had come up with one name, knowing the man was dead. Faced with his incredulity that her memory could be as poor as it seemed to be, she had produced another name, knowing the woman was in Australia, and had gone there long before the events of sixty-nine.

On the other hand, if she knew nothing about the events, this lady who had married an Italian, she must have known a lot about the families who lived around her as she was growing up. And she would have no reason to conceal her knowledge.

Because that was what Lily Fitch had been doing, Matt was quite sure. The near-total loss of memory about the children who lived around her told him that. Whether she rang or not, he felt sure he would be speaking to her again, or hearing about her and her activities.

Charlie nodded.

“Rosamund Scimone. Yes. Difficult for us to justify spending time on her, since she was in Australia at the time, but she might spill the beans on background stuff if you approached her in the right way.”

“Could you spell the surname?”

“S-C-I-M-O-N-E.”

“How did you get it?”

“We looked up Mrs. Beeston's funeral notice in the
West Yorkshire Chronicle.
”

Matt pondered, ignoring signs of impatience in Charlie, who was on the way to a job.

“I've been thinking about this daughter. Lily Fitch said she was a few years older than her, but it must have been quite a few. Her mother was born in 1900, so at the least she was born by the early forties—during the war, in fact.”

“Babies did get born in the war,” Charlie pointed out. “All I know about it I got from the television, but if the husband was older than her, which husbands usually were then, he'd most likely be doing civil defense or ARP work, not be away fighting Rommel in the desert.”

“That's true.”

“There were several brothers and sisters named before her in the funeral notice. Probably she was an afterthought, conceived in a comforting cuddle while Jerry was overhead trying to pulverize Armley.”

“Did the report say anything about where this Rosamund lived?”

“Oh, yes—Tasmania. That's the island at the bottom, isn't it?”

“Yes . . . And Lily Fitch said her husband was a waiter. I just wonder whether they mightn't have gone there, set up a restaurant, and stayed there. I suppose Hobart would be the first place to try.”

“Sounds like sense. Wherever they are, with a name like Scimone you're in with a chance,” Charlie pointed out. He looked at his watch, raised his hand, and was gone.

When Matt rang 153, though the operator said there
were no Scimone R's in Tasmania, she said there were two Scimone L's in Hobart.

“That'll be the husband,” said Matt, “and probably a child. Could I have both?”

He waited until the children were well in bed and asleep before he made the call. It seemed odd to be ringing somewhere where it was already the next morning.

“Hobart 746981,” said a woman's voice, strongly Australian.

“Is that Mrs. Scimone?” Matt asked tentatively.

There was a moment's silence.

“Well, not exactly. I am married, but I kept my maiden name, so I prefer Ms. Scimone. I mean, who'd want to be called Stopes, especially a Catholic? Who's calling, please?”

“My name's Matt Harper. I'm wanting to talk to the Rosamund Scimone who grew up in Houghton Avenue, Bramley, in Leeds.”

“Oh, it's Mother you want.” Matt thought he should have known that from the moment he heard the voice. Charlie would have realized the voice wasn't old enough for the mother, but Matt was new to the detection game. “Is it anything to do with Dad's death?”

“No, it's not. I'm sorry to hear he's died.”

“Just a coupla months ago. Mum's still devastated. Keeps the restaurant going all right, but it's like she's on autopilot. They'd been married thirty-five years.”

“I wondered if they'd opened a restaurant.”

“First Italian restaurant in the whole of Tazzie. Before they came ‘spaghetti' meant a tin of spaghetti in tomato sauce on toast. Mother learned all the tricks of the trade at Uncle Aldo's restaurant in Melbourne, then they came here and opened La Terrazza. Beaut little place.
Dave and I are wondering whether to go in with her. It's a good earner, no mistake, and it would mean it would carry on after Mum decides to chuck in the sponge.”

“Are you an only child?”

“Oh, no. I've got a brother, Carlo—Charley, he calls himself. He lives in Sydney and is into computers. He'd eat his meals off the screen if he could. If we don't take it over it'll be sold. What did you want to talk to Mum about?”

“Well, it's sort of about her childhood, and—”

“That's all right, then. It'll take her mind off Dad. She needs that at the moment. Any little thing just sets her off. So keep to the early days and you'll be all right. Got her number?”

Matt checked that he'd got the right number, and then rang.

“Hobart 767323.”

The voice was quite English, with a dash of Yorkshire still. It was not so much old as tired.

“Mrs. Scimone? I've just been talking to your daughter.”

“To Leona? Yes, there's a lot of confusion.”

“It was you I wanted to talk to. You see, I've just bought Elderholm, in Bramley—”

“Oh, really! The old home! Does that mean Mr. Farson is dead?”

“He's in a nursing home. The son has powers of attorney, and he sold it to me.”

There was silence. Matt could hear her thinking of the changes time made in families.

“I never knew him well. Even people I did know well I've lost touch with. Australia's a lovely place to be, but the distances
mean that old ties become frail. Thirty years ago you didn't ring home at the drop of a hat.”

“I suppose not. I hadn't thought of that.”

“Even Mum, I wrote to her, rather than rang her. She came out when Leona was born, and I went back when she moved out of Elderholm, to help with the arrangements. Then it was just for the funeral. Useless, that—I should have gone when the cancer was diagnosed. But Leo and I were—well, we were just everything to each other.” Her voice cracked. Danger sign, thought Matt. “Our lives, our restaurant, all the things we did together . . . everything else became like a dream. Including all our lives before we met, Leo's in Parma, mine in Leeds. I had a good childhood, though my dad died when I was little, but somehow it's hardly even a part of me now. It's me before I became what I am. Does that make sense?”

“I think so. It's not really about your childhood I wanted to talk to you about, Mrs. Scimone. It's the families in the other houses.”

“Oh? The two terraces?” There was silence as she thought about this. “I suppose I remember most of them, though I haven't thought of them for years. Some of the families were still living there when I went back in seventy-six.”

“It's the children I'm particularly interested in. Could you tell me about the ones you remember?”

There was a brief pause, which brought Matt's heart to his throat.

“I suppose so . . . I'll not ask why you want to know, but I can't see as it would do any harm. I left when I was twenty-three, that was in 1966, and there were quite a lot of young
children around then. Let's see, just at random: well, there were Peter and Sophie Basnett—lovely children.”

“They were brother and sister, weren't they?”

“Oh, yes. Their father was something in local government—the finance department, I think. They lived in Dell View. They were still there when I went back, but Peter seemed changed. But then, you do change between ten and twenty, don't you? Adolescence doesn't come and go without leaving traces.”

“What sort of change did you notice?”

“He'd been such an open, confident, happy child. He was more thoughtful, almost morose.”

“And Sophie?”

“Quite a little madam. She'd have been seventeen or eighteen by the time I went back. Boys, boys, boys, and getting the means of having a good time. A real little go-getter and good-time girl. I felt quite sorry for the Basnetts.”

“Anyone else?”

Again there was a pause before her reply. She had to wrench her mind from her dead husband.

“There were the Pembertons in Ashdene. I wasn't very fond of them. They were on the way up, and made no bones about it. Everyone in the other houses was a sort of stepping-stone, or they were discarded if they couldn't be of any use. There was a boy, let me see . . . Rory. I suspect he was an accident. I always felt a bit sorry for him, though the children who lived around were too young to see. He sort of bought his way into things. Had no family life to speak of, though he tried to hide it. . . . And then there was Marjorie Humbleton.”

“That would be Marjie, I suppose?”

“That's right. Such a pity. They always shorten names here in Australia, and it's usually Marge, which is worse. . . . We
never
use margarine in the kitchen at La Terrazza—that was the first thing I was taught. . . . But Marjorie was a lovely girl—always cheerful, and enterprising, and into things.”

“Was she still around when you went back in seventy-six?”

“No. Either Peter or one of her parents told me she'd got a job in London. The Humbletons were still there in Sandringham, next door to Mum, and they missed her, I remember that. But she was a youngest child like I was, and they did have several other children in the area, and grandchildren.”

There was a pause as she thought. Matt thought it best not to interrupt her.

“Ah, yes: a girl called Elizabeth, or Lily. The parents, the Marsdens, died in a horrible motorway pileup. Not a little girl I liked. Rather cunning, sorry for herself, doing things in a sort of underhand way. Parents weren't generally liked either. She was married to a garage worker by the time I went back. That was unusual and commented on: respectable girls didn't get married at eighteen in those days.”

A longer silence told Matt that it was becoming more difficult for her. Matt knew he had been unable to conjure up the whole gang of children he had played with, and perhaps it was the more personality-lacking ones that she too was having difficulty with.

“I've heard talk of a boy called Eddie Armitage,” he said at last.

“You're right,” she agreed, but hesitantly. “Eddie. A
quiet boy. Lived next door in Linden Lea. Parents ran a fish shop. Do you know, that's all I can remember of him.”