Viridian Tears (23 page)

But if she wanted to know what Shirley had told her, why kill Shirley? Why not just ask her outright? They’d seemed to be the best of friends.

Had that been Vera on the phone? It hadn’t sounded like Vera, it had sounded like a man. Was she adept at modulating her voice or was someone else involved? Someone who would come after her if she told the police about the phone conversation she’d just had.

Michelle took a deep breath. What she needed was a third party. Someone who could investigate on her behalf.

Chapter 24

The door was not what Michelle had expected, a plain board door painted green with a polished brass letterbox and big, central knocker in the shape of an imp. The effect was slightly spoiled by the twin mortice and Yale locks on one side, and the two hand-painted signs on the wall to the right, one above the other. “The Herbage” was supported by “Witch’s parking only. All others will be toad.” Michelle barely smiled.

Reluctant to touch the grinning imp, she raised a hand and rapped on the door three times, filled with trepidation over what might emerge when the door opened. She took a step back at the sight. She hadn’t expected a dumpy, middle-aged woman with a mass of red hair that looked more suitable for a porcelain doll than a real person. Where was the battered old hag with more warts then yellow teeth? She was muddy all the way up one side, as well, as if she’d been lying in a grave. She realized the woman was staring at her, expectantly. “Can I help you?”

“Er…yes. At least, I hope so. Are you Meinwen Jones?”

“This is her house and I look like her, so, probably. Are you here about the drains?”

“Drains? No.” Michelle gathered her wits. “Michelle Browning. You may have heard of me?” She pulled a business card out of her purse and passed it over.

The woman frowned at it, turned it over and frowned again. “Spiritualist?”

“Tarot reading, tea leaves and séances.”

“Oh.” She put as much condemnation into that one syllable as the whole Book of Leviticus. “One of those.”

“I need your help, Mrs. Jones. I understand you do private investigator work on the side? I can pay a little.”

“On the side of what?” She opened the door a little wider. “You’d better come in. What’s the problem?”

“I’m being blackmailed.”

“Blackmail? Really?” She stepped to one side to allow Michelle to step into a small sitting room, mostly decorated in the style of chintz with horse-brass highlights. “I’m surprised you didn’t see it coming.”

“That’s hilarious. I don’t think I’ve ever heard that before.” Michelle stood in the center of the room with her back to the front door and window. The ceiling was low, only about seven feet from the floor with the black oak beams reducing that by a few inches. At five foot four she was fine but Graham’s six foot two would have had him bent double to protect his head. Ahead of her was an open doorway to a small room lined with bookshelves with a small, self-assembly desk in the middle. To her right three two-seater settees were arranged around a gas fire and to her left open wooden stairs led upward while two doors led to a kitchen and what looked like a conservatory.

Meinwen closed the door but remained next to it. “How exactly can I help with your blackmail problem? The best advice I can offer is to confess whatever secret the blackmailer has over you and be done with it.”

Michelle turned. “It’s not that easy.”

Meinwen sighed. “It never is. Would you like a cup of tea? Something else? I’d offer you a glass of wine but I suspect the fruit had gone off before they brewed it.”

“Tea would be lovely, thank you.”

“You’d better come through.” She turned to her left into a small galley kitchen and proceeded to fill the kettle.

“Your house is surprising.” Michelle hovered in the doorway, taking in the bunches of leaves and flowers hanging from a Victorian airer over the sink unit. “I expected it to be full of black velvet and goat skulls. Instead it’s stripped pine and flowery wallpaper.”

“Oak, I think you’ll find. It’s a rented house and I see no reason to make the landlord want to be rid of me. Besides, I think you do far worse things than I do in pursuit of your craft. Is Hannibal Lector your interior decorator?”

“Good heavens no. I’m a respectable spiritualist.” She managed to put the same emphasis on ‘respectable’ as the Archbishop might in regard to a newly appointed deacon. “I don’t dabble in the Black Arts.”

“You summon the dead and call it respectable?” Meinwen put two teabags in a pot and set out cups. “I do not think that word means what you think it means.”

“Only to talk to. Besides, it’s not doing any harm, is it? It’s only a bit of fun. If the spirit’s moved on you can’t contact them anyway so I just tell people what they want to hear and it settles their minds. Helps them to grieve for those who have passed on. Especially when it’s a little one. The death of a child is so sad.”

“Compared to the death of an adult?”

“I think so, yes.”

Meinwen poured the tea. It looked like water with a tinge of green from the rain barrel and Michelle was suddenly less keen to drink it. Was it rude to decline after the tea had been made? She couldn’t remember and elected to drink it rather than risk offence.

Meinwen handed her one of the cups and jerked her head toward the doorway on the other side of the kitchen. “Shall we sit in the conservatory? Watching thunderheads gather always helps me to think.”

“Sure, yes.” Michelle looked down at the cup and tried to control her revulsion. “That’d be lovely.” She followed the older woman through the doorway where a right turn brought them into the conservatory she’d glimpsed from the sitting room. It was, she was relieved to find, a good deal higher-ceilinged than the sitting room, with the roof clear of obstacles to the view of the sky. More bunches of herbs and, curiously, mushrooms hung from a clothes line stretched from one side of the room to the double doors at the far end. The L shape of the cottage made the conservatory square and easily the largest room of the house. A few succulents in pots graced the area at the front and a Swiss cheese plant the size of a small tree hogged the wall between kitchen and living room.

Meinwen led the way to a cafe-style table and sat, gesturing with an open palm to the second chair. “Now. Tell me about this blackmail and why you can’t defuse it.”

Michelle brushed dry leaves from the seat of the Edwardian iron chair. “I’m being framed for a murder.”

“Always unfortunate. Shirley Burbridge’s, I take it.”

“That’s right. How did you know?”

Meinwen shrugged. “It’s the only reported murder in Laverstone in the last few weeks, though I have my doubts about her husband drowning in the canal.” She crossed her right leg over her left and picked at a patch of dried mud. “There was another this morning but I doubt anyone would try to pin that one on you.”

“Who was murdered this morning?”

“An old man. A vagrant called Joseph Yanuk. I wouldn’t expect you to know him and the police haven’t released the details yet. It was me who found him.” She indicated the mud with a wave of her hand. “Poor old sod.”

“Was he a friend, then? You sound like you knew him well.”

“Not well.” Meinwen shook her head. “I doubt anyone knew Joseph well. Of the people who knew him at all I was probably the closest. He used to find fossils in the chalk and bring them to me to sell in the shop.” She frowned and wagged a finger at Michelle. “That’s where I know you from. You came in about six months ago to buy a Tarot deck and a pentagram necklace. Was that your first foray into the world of the supernatural? And now you’re a spiritualist?” She took a deep breath and picked up her tea. “Fancy that.”

“It’s not like it sounds.” Michelle stared at her cup of warm urine. At least that’s what it tasted like. “I have a natural gift. It’s my duty to share it with the world.”

“Of course it is. Do pardon my scepticism. I’ve been a witch for the last twenty years and still I barely scratch a living out of it.” The smile she gave Michelle looked as fake as she sounded. “Now, you’re being framed over Shirley Burbridge? I take it you were the one performing the seance last night?”

“I was in a trance when the murder occurred. I didn’t see a thing.” Michelle hands began to tremble and she put her tea down. “The first I knew of anything going wrong was Vera’s shout about seeing Eddie and Graham–that’s my spiritual guardian–putting the lights back on. I didn’t even realize she’d been stabbed until she didn’t get up and someone pointed out the blood covering her back.” She swallowed several times, trying to hold back the tears. “It was horrible. I tried to put on a brave face but it’s shocked me to the very core of my soul.”

Meinwen sat stone-faced, not at all the sympathetic confidant Michelle had been expecting. “So who’s blackmailing you, what do they want, what have they got on you and, most importantly, is it true?” She softened slightly, though only the creases at the corners of her eyes betrayed it. Michelle was good at reading people. It was what made her so good at the spiritualist game. Meinwen took a last swallow of the foul tea and put the cup down on the table. “You can confide in me. Whatever you say to me stays between you, me and her out there.”

“Who?” Michelle half turned to look into the garden, half-expecting to see some mad old woman staring in, but Meinwen was pointing at a stylized statue of a woman in the garden. Michelle heaved a sigh of relief. “Oh, the goddess?”

“Aye. Mab, or whoever you serve as listens.”

“I didn’t do anything wrong I swear it.” Michelle reached for Meinwen’s hand but the witch made no move toward her and it remained uncomforted. “I didn’t kill Shirley. Why would I have done? She was willing to have a session every week. We could have stopped worrying about money altogether.”

“But you Chattered about her death?” Meinwen’s lips tightened. She disapproved. “Not that I have Chatter installed, but I have a lot of friends online who told me all about it. You’ve made yourself quite popular, I hear. My friend Jennifer tells me you’re trending, though I confess I don’t know what it means. I understand it’s a popularity rating.”

“That’s right. The more you can trend the more followers you get and the more popular you are. More popularity means more readings and more readings mean I can have a better lifestyle than a poxy two-up two-down rented off the council.”

“Putting your popularity bid to one side for a moment, I believe you when you say you didn’t kill Shirley Burbridge. Who’s framing you for it and how?”

“Vera, Shirley’s friend. She was sitting next to her during the seance and it was her who shouted about the ghost.”

“But the police will have questioned her already.”

“What they don’t know, or perhaps they do, is that Shirley and Vera came to my house on Monday to have their tea leaves read. Vera brought a cake with her and naturally I cut it.”

“And the knife has gone missing.”

“That’s right. It was the murder weapon and it has my fingerprints all over it.”

“And Vera is blackmailing you? Just tell the police the truth. They’re not stupid. They’ll work out the angle of the blade and the strength of the blow.”

“Yes.” Michelle hesitated. “No. Well, not exactly. It was a man’s voice on the phone but it was one of those distorted ones like you see in films. Sort of Mickey Mouse meets Terminus Robot?”

“I know what you mean.”

“He said that if I didn’t tell him where Shirley had hidden the cash he’d leave the police an anonymous tip about the knife.”

“Wait, what cash?”

“I wish I knew. He seemed to think Eddie Burbridge had a fortune hidden away and Shirley knew where it was. He thinks she told me.”

“Or he thinks you can call up her spirit and ask her.” Meinwen’s smile pretended humour but her eyes were cold. It was a dig at Michelle’s ability but there was nothing she could do to gainsay it, short of proving her wrong and she couldn’t.

“I haven’t tried.” That was certainly the truth.

“Have you any idea what this fortune is? Or where it comes from?”

“Not a clue. Eddie Burbridge came to Laverstone from London and bought Enfield house for cash, so he wasn’t exactly short of money. He built up an construction company from scratch in five years and now it has as big a turnover locally as some of the multinationals.”

“The construction is a cover for money laundering then?”

“Maybe. I wouldn’t know.” Michelle shuddered. “What I do know is I wouldn’t have liked to get on the wrong side of him. You hear tales, you know?”