The art of murder, p.4
The Art of Murder, page 4
He turned back to lift another brushwood pile, then stopped to whistle as he spotted the dogs making a waggy-tailed discovery. ‘Will you look at that!’
Deep inside the pole barn, now revealed through the narrow gap between the faggot piles, was a camouflaged dome tent.
‘A love shack!’ Mil pushed inside to investigate.
Phoebe’s phone rang before she could follow. It was Juno again. ‘Sorry to bother you, Freddy! Are you still too busy to talk?’
‘Just down by the river.’ She peered into the barn where Mil had unzipped the tent to reveal a bed of colourful blankets and cushions, along with a stove and LED lamps which he started switching on. ‘Turns out a load of faggots have been concealing a den of sin here.’
Juno gave a shocked intake of breath. ‘You can’t say things like that, Freddy!’
‘Den of sin?’
‘No – the F word.’ She whispered it in an appalled undertone.
Phoebe was mortified, realising that while Juno had been living in New York, her naughty humour given an inclusive modern edit, Phoebe herself had been buried in the sticks so long she utilised archaic vocabulary to describe… sticks.
‘I’m using it in its traditional British sense,’ she explained spikily.
‘Those revolting offal patties?’
‘Bundles of bound-together brushwood.’
‘Maybe call them that?’ Juno suggested cheerfully. ‘I’d Google a synonym, but I’m driving. I’m almost at Mum’s and need to check what time you’d like us to meet tomorrow?’
‘Tomorrow?’ Phoebe repeated faintly, watching Mil’s big shadow still poking round the glowing tent.
‘Did you not get my message saying Saturday? My phone went funny when I switched to a UK SIM card. Thing is, Mum’s got cash buyers for Church House but she still can’t decide between the two apartments for sale at Godlington Hall, so we’re coming over to look at them both together tomorrow, and I thought I could get a feel for the area at the same time?’
‘Of course!’ Phoebe wished she’d taken note of the date. Juno sent a lot of messages, many of them long and without punctuation, much like the way she spoke.
‘Everything’s complicated by the fact that Mum has a camera team at home this week filming some sort of culinary retrospective – her new gentleman friend talked her into it – and her schedule is crazy.’
Judy Glenn had once been a television cookery star, also a popular face on quiz shows and judging panels – on which she’d been outrageously pre-woke – although Phoebe couldn’t remember seeing her in anything for decades. She had to be in her eighties now.
‘I’ll treat you both to lunch.’ She peered into the barn, hoping Mil would agree to put it on Felix’s tab. He was now lying motionless on the makeshift bed in the tent pretending to be a corpse again, clutching a faggot stick as though it had impaled his chest.
Juno’s breathless, chatty voice was still talking in her ear, mistakenly believing Phoebe had invited them to lunch at Hartridge Court. ‘Mum would love to see round the house! I hope it’s okay, but her friend Dennis will be with us too. He’s a history buff so it’ll be right up his street too.’ The jollity developed a tense edge, dropping confessionally. ‘He’s way too smooth if you ask me. He used to produce The Big Bargain Hunt or Cash in the Cellar or some such and claims Mum’s a lost national treasure he’s polishing up. I don’t trust him one bit, Freddy.’
Sensing a monologue starting, Phoebe cut it off with: ‘Can you all be at The Barton Arms for 1 p.m.?’
‘We can try, but I—’
‘I’ll see you there.’ Pocketing her phone, she hurried into the barn. ‘Mil, come back to life! I need a lunch table tomorrow. And a crash course in Inkbury history. Also, do you know anywhere up for sale or rent round here, preferably thatched, costing less than a static caravan?’
He opened one eye with a chip-toothed smile. ‘Is this you officially recruiting me as your sidekick?’
‘Sidekick intern, maybe.’ She peered round the makeshift love shack. ‘Who do you think this belongs to? Teenagers?’
He sat up, forearms on his knees. ‘My guess is night angling. There are some whopping great Barbels along this stretch of river. Fishing rights belong to the estate, so we can come back later and catch them red-handed if you like? Have I passed the sidekick interview?’
‘Possibly.’
‘Specialist tent this.’ He lay back and admired its canopy. ‘Designed to withstand an Arctic blizzard. Who is it you know that wants a cheap place round here?’
‘You’re not suggesting I show her this?’
‘I might know somewhere short term.’ He gazed up at her winningly, the battered face all smiles. ‘If I’m allowed to be your sidekick. Your friend a classy bird like you, is she?’
Phoebe hadn’t seen Juno for years, and they’d never been bosom buddies, but she’d always struck her as trustworthy, albeit scattily so. ‘Friendly. Funny. She sings and plays piano – you could ask her to gig in the pub. And don’t call women birds, Mil.’
‘She single?’ The dimples deepened. ‘Asking for a mate.’
‘My age.’
‘In her prime, then.’
Accustomed to his well-meaning flattery, Phoebe ignored this, whistling for the dogs, who shot out of the faggot pile one after the other, wagging and scrapping, joyfully lawless. Just as Felix adored his naughty, wilful short-legged terriers, so he loved raucously loyal friends with an appetite for wine, women and song. She knew it was good of Mil to look out for her when he was away. The pranks, double-entendres and bear hugs from a thirty-something rugger bugger were her compensation while Felix called the shots in Hungary with his latest sexy young assistant in tow.
Watching Mil shoulder another stack of sticks to put in the barrow, she remembered her burning dilemma. ‘Tell me, Mil, speaking in your sidekick capacity, do you think it would be easier to drown an unconscious woman hidden in a brushwood bundle or burn her?’
He didn’t seem to hear, staring at the river. ‘Well, I never.’
Following his gaze, she spotted a large, dark object floating in it. A log maybe? Except it was too smooth, too corpulent, glossy black as though tightly wrapped in bin liner plastic.
‘It’s human!’ she gasped.
‘You’re not wrong.’ He laughed, dropping the faggot pile into the barrow.
‘I don’t see how it’s funny. That’s a dead body out there!’ She raced to the bank.
He followed. ‘Since when did you see a dead body floating upstream?’
A head popped up, wearing tight swimming goggles and a nose clip, water dripping off an impressive moustache. This human walrus then resubmerged to torpedo onwards.
‘That’s Oscar Davis out leading his wild swimming ladies.’ Mil pointed downstream where several colourful bathing hats were bobbing far in his wake. ‘He has quite a fan club.’
‘He is one of the antiques dealers with big personalities who just got burgled?’
‘Well remembered. That’s an odd thing, though,’ said Mil. ‘Speaking in my capacity as your new sidekick, if I’d had a break-in, I don’t think I’d join my weekly wild swim, would you?’
‘I would just never go wild swimming, Mil. Never.’
He chuckled again. ‘I can’t believe you thought he was a corpse. That’s hilarious! I can see where I’m going wrong now. Just you wait ’til next time.’
‘Please do not pretend to be a dead body in the river, Mil.’
‘Felix said you’d be hard to fool.’
Taking out her vape to puff on, Phoebe looked across the river again, eyes narrowed, thinking again about Holly and the faggots. Or rather, Holly and the piles of bound-together brushwood sticks.
5
JUNO
The house where Juno had spent most of her childhood was in the North Wessex Downs, riding high on the small ridgetop hamlet of Uffcombe, five furlongs adrift of a legendary hillside chalk horse. A conceit of wood and glass built around the ruin of a deconsecrated Anglo-Saxon church in the modernist 1970s, it had been her late father’s brainchild. Howard Glenn had adored his eccentric open-plan family home with its jaw-dropping views right up until the day he’d died there. Ten years later, it wasn’t remotely suitable for his elderly widow, who now lived on the ground floor, its open staircase and tower turret inaccessible to her.
When Judy Glenn had finally made the heart-breaking decision to downsize, she’d resisted her estate agent’s advice to tidy up, reduce the personal items, air it or bring in a cleaning and gardening hit squad. Instead, she’d started filming a retrospective television special in the big, messy kitchen that had once made her a household name.
Nevertheless, Church House had gone under offer before the brochures were even printed.
It was obvious to Juno that, subconsciously, her mother didn’t want to leave at all. She felt the same.
Climbing through the lanes towards it in her budget hire car, Britpop blaring, Juno felt nostalgia’s grip tighten to strangulation point. Yesterday she’d waved farewell to the modest little colonial Bay Ridge House that had been her home for the past two decades. Now she was returning to the one she’d grown up in, her Valhalla. As Church House’s tower came into sight, all the teenage parties, the Christmases and homecomings played in her head. Tears pricked. This magic door to her past would also soon have a new keyholder.
‘Don’t be a brat, Juno,’ she quoted Jay, who had never let her forget how lucky she was to have spent her childhood here. Lucky to still be alive here, she reminded herself. Checking her privilege was as customary as checking her breasts for lumps these days. Yet as she drove closer, she found she couldn’t talk down her emotions. It had been an overwhelming few days. She craved the hug from her mum that would be waiting, along with red velvet cake and strong tea in her favourite ‘I Shot JR’ mug.
By the last bend, she was so stupidly tearful she swung into the drive in a blur of Blur, Damon Albarn singing ‘Country House’ through her Bluetooth, a stepping-stone back to her happiest years.
The driveway was crammed with vehicles. Juno had to park the hire car on the grass beside an outside broadcast van, smaller and higher tech than the many which had parked there in Judy’s glory years, but still recognisable to Juno, who had tripped over cables and crews throughout childhood.
Centre stage on the drive was a metallic red Range Rover with a personalised ‘DDL’ number plate, Dennis de Lacy’s statement chariot. Tight beside it was Judy’s rarely used orange runaround, and beyond that a very clean black Citroën Berlingo with magnetic signs on each rear door that read:
TIDY MIND
Professional de-clutterer Sukey Smith
Juno sat in her hire car, trying to tidy her own mind enough to go in. Judy’s move was happening faster than her children had anticipated, the decision to live in Godlington Hall worryingly sudden. Whilst it was true that she’d occasionally toyed with the idea of joining great friend Pam in Inkbury in her dotage, Judy had just as often claimed to be tempted by the Balearics where her son lived, near Juno in New York and even India ‘like that wonderful Maggie Smith movie’. Then Pam – a resident in Wexshire’s luxury retirement village since it first opened – had introduced Judy to its gym-regular, widow wooer and possible-wife-murderer Dennis de Lacy.
Blur had reached its bridge, and Juno wanted to wail along to ‘I am so sad!’ out loud, especially when she mopped her eyes with her sleeve and spotted Dennis himself throwing open Church House’s heavy arched door to greet her.
‘Willkommen, bienvenue, welcome!’ He had a bottle in one hand, crystal flute in the other.
Dennis was a peacock of a man, tanned the colour of cheap pine furniture, with swimming pool-blue eyes and thick, sculpted white marble hair that never moved. He was dressed in a gold-buttoned blazer and red cravat, looking more like a flight attendant than the ones who’d been offering Juno tiny drinks and snacks all night.
‘My dear girl!’ He air-kissed loudly before she was even on the doorstep, Miles Davis tooting through the Sonos speakers behind him. ‘Your dear mama’s in the loo,’ he stage-whispered, adding, ‘she’s been in a very excited state about you coming,’ as though the two were directly connected. ‘You do like Krug, I hope?’
‘If you’re all out of scrumpy, I’ll make do, Dennis…’ Juno lugged her case and flight bag in past his plume of Acqua di Parma before accepting the glass and three more air kisses. She then stooped to greet her mother’s elderly Shih Tzu, Dally, who was scrabbling at her legs and pulling yellow-toothed smiles.
‘You’ve just missed the crew. We wrapped at midday.’ Dennis strode onto the kitchen to set down the bottle, turning to pose in front of the island, hands resting on its polished stone, smile luminous. ‘I have brought your dear mama and her spotlight back together for a roasted swansong! Doesn’t it look marvellous in here? Total camera candy!’
Juno beamed back, playing for time, trying not to think of his three dead wives.
When she’d asked tech-whizz son Eric to deep dive Dennis’s history recently, she’d anticipated a few skeletons; tax avoidance, speeding points, an xHamster user account perhaps. But nothing had prepared her for her son discovering that the first Mrs Dennis de Lacy had died in a house fire, the second of food poisoning and number three fell off a hotel balcony. It couldn’t be a coincidence.
Juno had been party to this information for just over a week and still didn’t know quite what to do with it, apart from lose sleep and panic. Was Dennis planning to make her mother victim number four?
‘There is such a splendid surprise in store to welcome you home!’ Dennis promised. ‘I just love them, don’t you?’
‘Adore them!’ Juno’s smile just about held firm, mind whirring, hoping her surprise was edible. She’d expected him to be here, of course, because she’d been told they’d be filming all day. But there was no crew, no food and – most alarmingly – no Judy.
‘Mum’s in the loo, you say?’
‘She takes a while these days,’ Dennis said in a discreet undertone.
‘There’s a de-clutterer’s car outside? Suzie or Sukey something?’ Her brain fog was thickening.
‘Yes, she’s upstairs taking photographs.’ He waved a hand in the vague direction of the ceiling. ‘Lovely girl. Came highly recommended by the Godlington team. Doing my place too, but I’m very straightforward. Lots of specialist knowledge will be needed to sort through everything here, she says, so she wants to list it and get in touch with the right people early on.’
He means Dad’s stuff, Juno realised with a jolt, not pausing to think why the de-clutterer might do Dennis’s house too. Upstairs, her father’s study and studio – almost untouched since his death – were crammed to the rafters with musical instruments, recordings and oh-so-many scores and books. It would all need to go when Judy downsized, but where? Juno hadn’t yet found anywhere to buy or rent and her brother Sean lived a small Ibiza cabana crammed with vinyl and surfboards.
We’ll work something out, she reassured herself. That’s why I’m here to help. Nothing to tax the tidy mind of poor Suzie or Sukey. There were only so many hurdy gurdies, harps and psalteries that fitted in a Citroën Berlingo en route to Oxfam.
‘Marvellous this place sold so quickly, isn’t it?’ Dennis asked.
Juno mmm-ed, appreciating that it was probably less stressful on her octogenarian mother to be spared all the open house days she’d recently endured in Brooklyn, where her beloved little house had taken months – and a 10 per cent price drop – to sell.
‘Boppa’s in the pink,’ Dennis told her.
‘Boppa?’
‘My pet name for your dear mama. You must know the Beach Boys song?’ He started singing a repeated phrase of Judys and boppas, arms and hips twisting. ‘And Boppa calls me Doobee.’ He launched into the intro to Blondie’s ‘Denis’, doobedooing around the kitchen.
The Glenn family were big on personalised endearments, especially Judy, who still called children Sean and Juno ‘Penguin’ and ‘Pusscat’ in their fifties. If she had granted Dennis his own pet name, that meant he was firmly part of the inner circle. Juno felt another cold blade in her heart.
The retired daytime television producer was just Judy Glenn’s type: charming, boozy and urbane. They’d got on famously from the start, sharing a passion for food and the arts, and a mutual outrage that they had both had been put out to pasture by the BBC before they were ready.
A favourite in the eighties and nineties, Judy Glenn Cooks the Books had taught millions of viewers how to poach, griddle and sauté good British ingredients at home, many episodes filmed here at Church House. By the millennium, her brand of wine-slugging, booming bonhomie had made way for younger pretenders bish-bash-boshing their way into primetime favour. Although she’d survived another decade on daytime and specialist food channels, her television career had all but died by the 2010s, despite a brief flurry of excitement when Bake Off called. They’d decided she was too edgy, she’d told her family afterwards, jealously striking Prue Leith off her Christmas card list.
Now she’d found her swansong Svengali. Having originally learnt his trade directing glossy television advertisements in the eighties, Dennis boasted a passion for reinvention and repackaging, for propelling forgotten brands back into the limelight, crowned by his long career showcasing antiques to BBC audiences. No sooner had he offered to come out of retirement to shoot a final cookery special than Judy Glenn declared herself in love and ready to spend her golden years ‘amongst my tribe in Godlington Hall’. Ibiza, Brooklyn and The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel were hastily rejected; the Dunnett Valley’s opulent little retirement community and spa would be her new realm: ‘Dennis says I will be queen there.’
Juno feared that – megalomania aside – her mother was being lined up for financial entrapment at best, a cold-blooded mariticide plot at worst.
Church House’s big statement kitchen – far cleaner and less cluttered than usual – was set up with studio lights, furniture cleared away to make space for cameras and sound crew, just like the old days. Juno endured another pang of sentimentality, wondering how it was possible to come home and yet still feel homesick. Or was it sick with fear?
