The Bones in the Attic (9 page)

“And Colin something?”

“Doesn't ring a bell. Remember, his family could have moved there after I left to be married. I probably wouldn't have had anything to do with him when I went back, in that case. . . . There's someone else . . . another girl . . . some name like Caroline. . . . A bit fey, if you know what I mean, and a worrier. Lived in the Willows . . . I did
see
her when I went back, and I remember being concerned for her.”

“Concerned?”

“As if she was losing her grip on reality. But I didn't know her well, and so . . .”

“Can I ask just one more question?”

“Yes, you can.”

“You mentioned your mother coming to visit you in Australia. When was that?”

“That's easy. That was when Leona was born. The winter of sixty-nine. And now it's time for
you
to answer some.”

“It's just—just incredible. Mum, living there all those years, and up in the attic—”

“We don't absolutely
know
the bones were there in your mother's time.”

“You seem pretty much to have decided. I went up there, you know, when I went back in seventy-six. I got down the four or five tea chests that were there, to pack things for the move.”

“Was that all there was up there?”

“A few games and jigsaws that I gave to the Catholic orphanage across the road.”

“That's gone now. It's a cheap private estate of doll's houses. So you were only in the main part of the attic—the bit with the proper flooring?”

“Yes. There was nothing to go into the other bit for—or so I thought.”

“Going back to your mother's trip to Australia. Could you tell me exactly when that was?”

“That's easy, Leona was on time, end of July. Mum had been here about a fortnight, I guess. She came on the
Canberra,
so she must have left England the second or third week of June. She stayed four months—poor Mum, she missed out on a summer that year. If it had been Sydney or Brizzie she'd have had a winter better than any good English summer, but not in Tazzie.
Anyway, she left in November, by one of the old Strath boats—the
Stratheden,
I think. They took forever. She had Christmas on the boat, and got back home on New Year's Eve.”

“That was a long time away.”

“Yes. Well, it was hardly worth making the trip unless you stayed awhile.”

In the silence that followed Matt had the impression that she was holding back on him. He decided to jump in.

“Was someone house-sitting, or making sure everything was all right?”

“I was trying to work out whether to tell you . . . I suppose I have to now. The house was empty, but Marjorie Humbleton was looking after it. Mum trusted Marjorie. I would have too.”

“And what was she supposed to do?”

“Just check it hadn't been broken into, then go in the evenings and put lights on—different ones each night. I don't suppose it would have fooled anyone who really kept a watch on the house, but Mum was worried about burglars and squatters, so she paid Marjorie a pound a week or something to do that. Marjorie's family wasn't terribly well off, so she was glad of it.”

“I see.”

“I can hear from your voice you think Marjorie did it, put it up there. I'm sure it wasn't in her. I knew her well—”

“Till she was about ten.”

“Well, yes. But still . . . she was a lovely child. It just wasn't in her to do something like that.”

“People do terrible things in terrible situations. Going by some of the things that happen these days, and if it had been much younger, I'd wonder if she hadn't killed her own newborn child.”

“Oh!” wailed Rosamund Scimone. “But Marjorie wouldn't!”

“Anyway, it
wasn't
newborn, and I'm not accusing Marjorie.”

“You sounded as if you were.”

“No, I'm not. Children are human. Just to take one possibility: if she was looking after the house for six months, she must now and then have given the key to someone else, when she couldn't do the switching on and off of the lights herself. I'm not jumping to the conclusion that because she had the key she dumped the
child's body herself. In fact, I'm not even making the most obvious and easy assumption.”

“What's that?”

“That it was while your mother was in Australia that the body got into the attic.”

In the intervals between bulletins he first drew a rough diagram of the houses. Then, after getting his notes into some kind of order, he went through them chronologically, entering the names of the children and their families as he had learned them. Then finally he entered the names of the families currently occupying the houses, though there he had to leave several blanks. He wondered whether he had been a bad neighbor, or whether they had.

Early afternoon he rang Charlie.

“I've got something I'd like to show you, if you're not busy.”

“I'm busy until four, then I'm definitely off. It's our first wedding anniversary. Why don't you come round for a drink?”

“Oh, you'll want to be alone. I wouldn't want to intrude.”

“You won't be. Come and see the daughter and heir. We've got a baby-sitter coming at seven-thirty, then we're going for a meal to La Rascasse. Are you free before then?”

“At five-fifteen.”

“That's fine. The address is thirteeen Wellington Terrace, Headingley. See you there.”

So by six o'clock Matt had found the Peaces' flat, made the acquaintance of Felicity and Carola, played silly games with Carola and her rattle, and then settled down with a whiskey and water, but a very small one because he was conscious he was drinking with a police officer. He and Charlie sat on either side of a coffee table, papers spread out in front of them. Felicity was in and out of the sitting room, getting ready for the evening, but she kept close tabs on what was being said.

Matt began by telling Charlie about his conversation with Rosamund Scimone. Then he turned to the papers. “I've made a little map of the houses. With the names of the children who were there in 1969—I know next to nothing about their parents, but I suppose I'm going to have to find out. Let's start down my own end with Linden Lea. This is the house currently owned by the Cazalets.”

“The ones you're not keen on?”

“That's it. Creepy type. Mrs. has not yet shown. Thirty years ago it housed Eddie Armitage. He's a boy Mrs. Scimone
has no memories of apart from the name. I have no memories at all. Not much information on the parents except that they owned a fish shop.”

“Bit of a blank so far,” commented Charlie.

“Right. Next, Elderholm. Center of our interest. No children resident but its owner Mrs. Beeston was away in Australia throughout the second half of 1969, to be with her daughter, Rosamund, who was having her first baby.”

“Ah!”

“Then next door is Sandringham—owned by the Humbletons. Daughter Marjorie or Marjie, whom I remember well. Lovely girl, I thought, as a not particularly worldly-wise seven-year-old. Still, Rosamund Scimone agrees, and so did her mother. Marjorie had the key to Elderholm all the time Mrs. Beeston was away.”

“Really? Why?”

“Switch on lights at night to deceive potential burglars and squatters, and generally keep an eye on the place.”

“Makes sense, I suppose. This gets more interesting.”

“Last house in this terrace, the Willows, currently owned by the Goldblatts. Then home to a girl called Caroline, surname uncertain. Mrs. Scimone thought she had a failing grip on reality. Mrs. Goldblatt encountered what she described as a madwoman who seemed to have a particular interest in Elderholm.”

“Not in her own home?”

“No. Interesting. Next terrace: Ashdene, currently owned by the Maylies. Then owned by the Pembertons. House seems to attract the socially ambitious. Rory Pemberton is said by Mrs. Scimone to have been generally neglected by money-conscious parents.”

“That's the boy you told me about yesterday?”

“Right. I told you about Peter and Sophie Basnett too. They lived in the next house, Dell View. I have happy memories of him. In the ten years Mrs. Scimone was away he seems to have become morose, and Sophie a teenage sex kitten.”

“Pretty natural progressions, both.”

“Cynic. Next Sundown, with Lily Marsden, now Lily Fitch, whom we both know. Neither she nor her family generally liked. Then the last house, Mapledene. I've got nothing on that. Possibly the home of Colin, the only child I've got a name for but no location. Or possibly a childless house. There do seem to have been an awful lot of houses with children in them at the time.”

“May be not surprising,” said Felicity, doing up buttons on her dress at the door to the sitting room. “Those houses are quite expensive now, Charlie tells me, but at that time they may have seemed a bit dated and tatty—just the thing for a young family who wanted something other than your standard semi.”

“Quite apart from the fact that the birthrate's much lower today,” said Charlie.

“Could be, I suppose,” said Matt. “But anyway, there's got to be some children from elsewhere.”

“Why?”

“We used to play five-a-side. We've only got eight so far.”

“Fair enough,” said Charlie. He had got up and was changing his shirt for a natty purple-check one. “You know, I'm surprised about one thing.”

“What's that?”

“All those children, all that publicity, and yet so far not a single communication from any of them.”

But that was about to change.

“Oh, Matt,” said that corncrake voice that managed to sound so different when it went on air. “What gives in the baby-bones saga?”

Matt flinched, and didn't bother to hide it.

“The baby-bones saga? You have sweet ways of describing things, Liza. Actually, not much.”

“You haven't given up on it, have you? We should be thinking of a follow-up.”

“We can't think of a follow-up unless we have something to follow up with,” said Matt, “and so far, beyond a firming-up of the date we've got very little.”

“The date's been firmed?” pounced Liza. “When to?”

Matt kicked himself.

“Well, around 1969, but that's very provi—”

“Oh, no, that's marvelous! That gives us something much more solid to go on.”

“The people who used to live in those houses have been so much dispersed,” said Matt cunningly, as he thought, “that I think it would probably be more useful to go national now.”

“Super idea!” said Liza, with terrible enthusiasm. “We'll film an interview, and I'll get on to the ‘Crimewatch' people and get a slot there. I've got a friend on the program.”

Whatever TV program came up, Liza invariably claimed to have a friend on it. She had no notion of making her lies likely ones.

“May be, Liza, may be.” Matt cast a hurried glance at his watch. “Look, I've got to go. I'm on in two minutes.”

“Oh, Matt—on
your
program they can just play a record.” Another of Liza's amiable characteristics was that she never let the fact that she was after a favor get in the way of getting in a good kick on the shins if the opportunity arose. Matt comforted himself with the idea that this would prevent her getting very far up the greasy pole, but he wasn't entirely convinced. Still, if he was being considered for greater things, it would be sweeter still if it was at the expense of the brutally dismissive Liza Pomfret.

He was far from happy later in the day when, preparing to stand in for a two-twenty news summary on BBC Two, he heard his name on Liza Pomfret's show.

“I don't know if you remember the item we had on a week or two back—the gruesome discovery of a child's bones in a house in Bramley. Chills the cockles of your heart, doesn't it? That was a house bought by Matt Harper, the former Bradford City footballer, now our own Matthew Harper, newsman and sports reporter. Well, I was talking to him earlier today, and he tells me that the date the poor little thing died is now put at around 1969. Well, we're going to go national on this, but here's a chance for all you older listeners to get in first. Have you any memories of those old stone houses in Houghton Avenue, Bramley, that could be of use to the police or of interest to us? Get in touch—”

Matt shut the studio door on her voice. She made it sound as if they were running some kind of competition to get on air, like “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?” He began to think how, should the need arise, he could go about getting further publicity for the case without involving Liza Pomfret.

But Liza had her uses, though he would never in a million years admit it. Among his mail at the studio next morning he found a letter without a signature. It just ended “with best wishes,” and he didn't think that was due to an oversight. Such letters were not unknown. He had had amorous propositions—suggesting times and places for them to meet but not vouchsafing names. He sometimes got letters objecting to items he had read in the course of duty on news bulletins, and sometimes—particularly if they were from racists or religious nutters—the authors jibbed at giving him their names. He generally just considered them sick, and as often as not simply put the letters in the wastepaper basket unread.

He looked at the envelope. Neither expensive nor cheap—standard chain-newsagent stuff, addressed by computer. He unfolded the letter again. It too eschewed handwriting or typewriter. Computers, someone had learned, were difficult to trace back to their user. Or perhaps the writer was just computer-bound, like so many.

Matt sat looking at the two sheets of paper in front of him. Then he read through them again. Something in the letter was ringing a bell. A memory was struggling deep down in his subconscious to surface, to make itself felt. It was only in fact at the end of his shift, as he came out into the sun and was making toward his car, that it came forward and took hold of him.

He had to steady himself with a hand on the roof of his Volvo. Then, after a minute or two, he got into the car and drove off, possessed by memories.

“You stay in the dry,” she said. “Matt will get wet enough when he has to go home.”

So she knew him, had accepted him as part of the group.

“You didn't think much of that game, did you, Matt?” said Marjie, who had been watching him.

“Not much,” said Matt, who had childish honesty. “Even Chinese checkers is better than
that.
Anyway, I like to
do
things.”

“Do things?”

“I mean, not just sit.”

“Well, why don't you start training to be a footballer?” suggested Peter. That interested Matt. He had thought you just
became
a footballer, because you were good at it. “We could start with some limbering-up exercises.”

There was lots of room in Dell View's big living room. They could never have done exercises in any of the rooms in Matt's home in Bermondsey. They did limbering-up exercises, with Peter telling him that this was to loosen up the upper body, this was to strengthen the thighs and calf muscles. Matt went along dutifully, but was conscious of feeling ungrateful.

“We do this sort of thing at
school,
” he said at last.

He was aware of Peter casting his mind around for some routines that he wouldn't yet have done at school. Probably both of them were relieved when they heard the back-door bell. Marjie went to open it, and brought back the boy called Colin, and another boy of about his age. Concentrating, the grown-up Matt could not put a name to him yet, but he could put a face. He was one of the footballers, but not a boy who put himself forward.

“We've been watching,” announced Colin.

“Careful,” said Peter in a low voice. “Remember we've got Jack-the-lad here.”

“She went there,” said Colin.

“Who?” Marjie asked, her voice scarcely rising to the level of a whisper. Colin mouthed his reply.

“Lily.”

They thought they were being very clever, but Matt understood. He wasn't just a pair of nimble legs.

“What do they
do
?” asked Sophie out loud. There was a pause. Peter, behind him, mimed the taking off of clothes, starting to pull his open-necked shirt sexily off his shoulder. He thought Matt couldn't see him, but he saw in the long hall mirror. The little boy looked at Sophie. The girl's eyes were avid with interest. But when she spoke her tones were scornful.

“Fancy someone paying for
that,
” she said.

“I don't think she earns much,” said Marjie, still whispering.

“I should think not,” said Sophie.
“Lily!”

“She looked pleased an' all 'appy-like as she went up toward the 'ouse,” said the other boy.

“That's Lily, Harry,” said Peter with a sigh. “You don't know her like we do. She's pleased with
herself.
”

“You'd have to be,” said Sophie, “to think it's worth getting paid, to show off
that.
”

“Watch it,” said Peter. “Remember Young Whippersnapper.”