Paternoster Page 14

  Her mind chased its tail for a moment. So much had happened, she didn’t know who he meant.

  ‘At the singles club,’ Aidan added. ‘Donna something.’

  ‘Donna Small?’

  ‘She’s dead in the bottom of my trench.’

  The traffic was light and Eden had an easy journey across town to the Park School. Aidan ran towards her as she bumped over the muddy verge and clambered out of the car. He waved at the blue lights flashing at the building site.

  ‘They told me to get out of the way,’ he said. ‘They’re going to interview me later. Do I need a lawyer for that?’

  ‘Did you kill her?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then you probably don’t need a lawyer. Not yet, anyway.’ She paused, a thought occurring to her. ‘You found her, and you knew her, so you’re prime suspect.’

  ‘But I didn’t …’

  ‘You have an alibi, remember? You were with me last night.’ When they’d left the club at about eleven, Donna was boogieing with a group of women, her jewelled handbag banging against her hip.

  Eden hurried over the grass to the trench, where a policeman yelled at her to keep back, there was nothing to see.

  ‘There’s everything to see!’ she muttered under her breath, trudging back a few yards and craning her neck to see what was going on. It was useless: the site buzzed with police uniforms. She itched to get a glimpse of the crime scene, see the orientation of the body, but it was invisible beneath the lip of the trench.

  Frustrated, she walked back to her car. ‘Tell me what happened,’ she said to Aidan.

  His face was grey and stunned. She recalled her own first experience of violent death – the shock, the guilty relief it wasn’t her lying there, the fear she’d never scrub away the smell. Softly, she touched his arm. ‘You OK?’

  He nodded. ‘Just a bit … I never imagined there’d be a … she was just lying there.’

  ‘I know. How did you find her?’

  ‘I got here first thing, and saw her lying on her front in the bottom of the trench. I thought she was hurt, so I jumped down and turned her over. That’s when I realised she was dead, and that I recognised her.’

  ‘Then what?’

  ‘I called the police, and then I called you.’

  ‘I wish I could have seen her before the police got here.’ Eden chewed the skin around her thumb nail. ‘The crime scene can tell you a lot that the police won’t.’

  Aidan slid his hand into his pocket. ‘I thought you’d say that, so I took some photos while I waited for the police to arrive.’ He handed over his mobile phone. ‘They won’t be great – my hands were shaking, but it’s the best I could do.’

  Eden gazed up at him. ‘You knew I’d want to see the crime scene?’

  ‘It’s by way of an apology,’ Aidan shrugged. ‘I’m really sorry about dumping that stuff about Lisa on you this morning.’

  ‘You know flowers and chocolates are more traditional peace offerings?’ She opened up the folder and scanned the photographs.

  Aidan turned his head away. ‘I can’t look at them,’ he said. ‘It was bad enough finding her.’

  She squeezed his hand. ‘You did really well, Aidan.’ She skipped to the next photo. ‘Any marks on the body?’

  ‘A purple mark around her neck.’ Aidan put his fingers to his throat.

  ‘This is how you found her?’ She showed him a photo of Donna face down in the mud. He shuddered.

  ‘Pretty much. I turned her over, realised she was dead, dropped her, and she just sort of flopped back on to the soil.’ He sucked in a breath. ‘God, her eyes, open like that, frightened the life out of me.’

  Eden nodded. ‘It’s all right.’ She skimmed through the photos again. Aidan had zoomed in on Donna’s body from various angles. ‘Her skirt was ruckled up like this?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Not shoved right up? Exposing her bottom?’

  ‘No, just a bit … disarranged?’

  She showed him one of the pictures. ‘Her shoes were like this? One off, one on?’

  ‘Yes. I didn’t touch anything apart from her shoulders.’

  ‘Did the police ask if you knew her?’

  ‘They asked me if I recognised her. I told them I’d met her at a singles bar.’

  ‘Did you give them her name?’ Eden asked.

  ‘I told them her name was Donna.’

  ‘You didn’t give them her surname?’

  ‘I don’t know her surname. She just told me her name was Donna.’

  ‘Good.’ Eden let out the breath she was holding. ‘Say that to the police.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘She was murdered, strangled from what you said about the mark on her throat, and she knew my client who also died in suspicious circumstances,’ Eden said. ‘At the moment the police have nothing to identify her. As soon as they know who she is, they’ll be all over her home and I won’t be able to get in. I want to have a look round first.’

  Donna knew more about Paul Nelson than she’d let on. They’d had a relationship and it’d ended acrimoniously. Maybe there were clues to Paul’s death in Donna’s house.

  Eden sped through the photos again. ‘Spot what’s missing?’ she asked.

  Aidan shook his head.

  ‘Last night, Donna had an expensive jewelled evening bag. It’s not on her body and it’s not in the trench or nearby, so where is it?’

  A quick search of the online phone directory supplied Donna Small’s address. Eden rang the coroner using the hands-free set in her car while she drove there.

  ‘Eden Grey, Cheltenham General,’ she said, in the brisk tones of the harassed hospital doctor. ‘A patient of mine had a post-mortem yesterday, what was the result? Paul Nelson. Yes, I’ll hold.’

  She listened to some manufactured music that bore a passing resemblance to Vivaldi’s Four Seasons – surprisingly upbeat for a coroner’s office – then a man’s voice came on the line. Eden could hear rustling paper as he spoke to her.

  ‘Dr … er …?’

  ‘Grey.’

  ‘Dr Grey, that’s it, you’re asking about Paul Nelson?’

  ‘Yes. Presented with severe abdominal pain, diarrhoea and vomiting,’ she said. ‘Later convulsions, disorientation and coma.’

  ‘We PM’d him and ran a full tox screen. Funny one, this. Cause of death was poisoning.’

  A momentary lacuna when her thoughts stilled to silence. ‘Poisoning? With what?’

  ‘Abrus precatorius.’

  ‘Say again?’

  A chuckle on the end of the line. ‘That was my reaction. Abrus precatorius. Also known as the lucky bean or the love bean. Not so lucky for this chap. That do?’

  ‘Yes, thanks, that’s helpful. Hang on a minute, when did he ingest it?’

  ‘Difficult to say. I had to look this one up. Reaction times vary from several hours to three days.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  She repeated the name of the poison over and over to make sure she didn’t forget it. Some sort of bean. Could Paul have taken it by accident? Twelve hours ago she would have accepted that explanation, just, but now that Donna was also dead – strangled – she distrusted the coincidence.

  This. Deliberate. Tried to kill me.

  Gut instinct told her that whoever killed Paul also killed Donna, and somehow, she’d find out who, and why.

  CHAPTER

  ELEVEN

  Cheltenham, August 1795

  Daphne remained silent about what happened that evening at Greville House, the evening when she was removed from the debauchery and taken through the tunnels. Despite persistent questioning from Rachel, she refused to reveal anything further about the tunnels, where they were, or what happened in them. Each time Rachel pressed her, she turned her face away and her mouth trembled.

  ‘What’s she got to be so secret about?’ Rachel complained to Emma, as she brushed out her hair and plaited it one night. ‘It’s not like we haven’t seen and done a hundred thing
s together before.’

  ‘You’d never seen that living table before,’ Emma commented, reminding her of Daphne’s pale body layered with jellies, oysters and fruit to be nibbled at by the gentlemen. Emma nudged her. ‘Might be you next.’

  ‘I wouldn’t be able to stop giggling,’ Rachel said. ‘I bet it tickles.’

  ‘Who were the men at that party, d’you suppose?’

  ‘Rich, anyway,’ Rachel said. ‘But not the quality.’ She snorted. ‘What passes for quality in Cheltenham, anyway.’

  ‘Might be your ticket out of here.’

  ‘With one of them?’ Rachel knotted a scrap of ribbon round the tail of her plait, calculating for a moment. ‘Maybe. But not an old one. Or anyone ugly.’

  ‘That’s most of the men counted out,’ Emma said, hitching up her nightgown to clamber into the high old bed. Her legs flashed palely in the candle light. ‘Did you see them taking the waters the other day? So many wrinkles it reminded me of an elephant.’

  Rachel sighed. She used to love visiting the Tower to marvel at the elephants and lions. The most exciting thing she’d seen in Cheltenham was a flock of pigeons jabbing at the slurry in the gutter.

  Rachel caught Emma looking at her out of the corner of her eye. She knew that look.

  ‘What?’ she asked.

  ‘Seen how much money Daphne’s got all of a sudden?’

  ‘No. How much?’

  Emma whispered, ‘Twenty guineas.’

  ‘Twenty guineas!’ Rachel was indignant. ‘Where did that flat-faced whore get that sort of money?’

  ‘Shh! Mrs Bedwin will hear. It’s supposed to be a secret, but Daphne keeps on counting it out.’

  ‘When did she get it?’ Rachel asked, but she knew. The other night, at Greville House. She, Emma and Roseanne had only been palmed two guineas for the whole evening. Daphne, the stinky puss, got twenty guineas a trick, did she? She had to know why.

  She attached herself to Daphne and wheedled herself into the girl’s affections.

  ‘You know what would look lovely on you?’ Rachel said, under pretence of delousing and ragging Daphne’s hair one evening. ‘An emerald green shawl. It would set your hair off beautifully.’

  ‘I don’t have a green shawl,’ Daphne said.

  ‘Really?’ Having raked through Daphne’s box, Rachel was only too aware of the fact. She cracked a flea with her thumbnail. ‘Then you must get one. They can be got quite cheap, and it would look so pretty.’

  ‘But where?’

  ‘There’s a shop in Cheltenham. I saw it the other day when I was out walking.’ Rachel gripped Daphne’s shoulders and spun her round to face her. ‘We could go together, and look at the fabrics and try on bonnets! Would you like that?’

  ‘Ye-es.’ Daphne didn’t seem to realise the great honour that Rachel was bestowing on her, condescending to traipse about dreary Cheltenham shops and counterfeiting an interest in Daphne’s scrawny appearance.

  Undeterred, Rachel pasted on her brightest face. ‘Then we’ll go tomorrow,’ she announced.

  The next day, they tramped into a mercer’s shop on the High Street, where Rachel set about bossing the assistant to fetch shawls and bolts of fabric and lengths of ribbon and lace. She held up each item to the light for scrutiny before assessing it against Daphne’s muddy skin.

  ‘Too bright. Too tawdry. Too cheap. Now this one is right for you. Very subtle.’ It was a bolt of sprigged muslin. She heard the shopkeeper mutter the price and pulled a face. ‘Oh, but it’s very dear,’ she said disingenuously, and made to return it to the counter.

  ‘No matter,’ Daphne said, foraging in her reticule. ‘I can afford it. If you truly think it suits me, Rachel?’

  Rachel’s eyes clamped on to Daphne’s purse, as she scrabbled in it and drew out a bank note. Rachel watched the note’s journey across the counter to the shopkeeper’s twitching fingers, and saw a sudden spark of interest flare in the man’s eyes.

  ‘You’re flush,’ she said, lightly.

  Daphne blushed.

  ‘Got a sweetheart, have you?’ She elbowed Daphne in the ribs.

  ‘No.’ The blush deepened to an ugly rash over Daphne’s neck and bosom.

  ‘Go on! Look at you; you’ve got a special gentleman, spoiling you. Eh?’

  Daphne fastened her eyes on the fabric as it was measured and cut. Rachel knew when her quarry had bolted into a hole, and feigned fascination in a box of buttons on the counter. While she turned them over in her hands, the shop bell rang and a couple of ladies entered. Rachel cast them a glance, dismissing them for their dowdy dress and red cheeks hatched with broken veins.

  But something one of them said to the other caught her attention, and though she continued to riffle through the buttons, her whole attention was fixed on what the women were saying.

  ‘A disgrace, that’s what it is. We shan’t be going.’

  ‘No, nor us. Mr Proudfoot was most insistent that we should not go.’ A wistful tone crept into the woman’s voice. ‘Though I should love to see the wallpaper. I heard it was specially printed.’

  The other woman snorted. ‘Greville House wallpaper! You’d sell your soul for a glimpse of Chinese print!’

  ‘Well, no, but I hear the gardens are a sight.’

  The other woman puffed up her chest. ‘To think that such people should do such things in Cheltenham.’

  ‘Quite.’ A pause. ‘What things? Exactly?’

  ‘You must have heard the rumours. Though I never attend to gossip myself.’

  ‘No, of course not, one would never think of doing such a thing. Mr Proudfoot spoke in such chilling terms about Greville House, but he didn’t specify.’

  Heaving-bosom leaned closer to her friend. ‘You have heard of the Hellfire Club?’

  Mrs Proudfoot’s hand crept to her mouth. ‘No!’

  A sage nod. ‘Women brought in from London. We can imagine why.’

  ‘Can we?’

  ‘Gambling. Drinking. The worst excesses. Human sacrifice and cannibalism!’

  Daphne’s head snapped round at this. So you’ve been eavesdropping, too, Rachel thought, and softened a little towards Daphne.

  ‘Men with money and influence, the highest in the land, and they behave like animals!’ Heaving-bosom declared. ‘A disgrace. We certainly shall not be going.’

  ‘No, certainly,’ Mrs Proudfoot echoed, and she stroked a bolt of printed cotton and sighed with something that sounded suspiciously like regret.

  Rachel could barely wait until they were out of the shop before she rounded on Daphne. ‘Men with money and influence, the highest in the land – who were they the other night?’ Rachel demanded.

  Daphne sighed. ‘Sons of dukes and earls, a foreign count, the sons of politicians, and men of fortune.’

  Rachel made a swift calculation. ‘But there were only four of them there. You’re talking as though there were dozens and dozens.’

  ‘There was,’ Daphne said. ‘Later. In the tunnels.’

  But more than that, she wouldn’t say.

  Rachel sprawled on one of the sofas in the seraglio and calculated how she would spend twenty guineas. The stagecoach back to London for a start, then some swish new gowns and a room somewhere while she let it be known she was seeking a new keeper. She was out of the game, stuck here in fusty old Cheltenham surrounded by sick people guzzling water. A girl like her should be at the heart of the action.

  Her designs were interrupted by squealing and shouts from the room above. Roseanne and Daphne were dealing with a group of schoolboys, by the look of them, who’d bundled in and announced it was some fellow’s birthday and it was time he became a man. They wouldn’t take long.

  Mrs Bedwin poked her head round the door and tutted. She’d taken the boys’ money before they even clapped eyes on the girls. And charged them double for wine and cakes, addressing them as ‘gentlemen’ the whole time. They were so busy giggling and shoving each other in the ribs that they never noticed the gleam in her eye. When s
he’d allowed them into the boudoir, they’d chosen Daphne for her youth and Roseanne for the novelty. From the expression on Roseanne’s face when one addressed her as ‘the blackamoor’, Rachel suspected that Mistress Pain would take control upstairs. Serve the upstarts right.

  A sedan chair had called for Emma that morning, and jolted her away to a ladies’ bathing party. Goodness knew what that meant, Rachel shuddered. But Emma seemed to enjoy them. She’d been fetched before, and always came back looking like the cat that got the cream. And so Rachel was alone with her thoughts.

  The mythical twenty guineas was almost spent in Rachel’s mind when a clatter on the stairs announced a new customer. Rachel draped herself artfully over the sofa as a man of about twenty-five shuffled into the room.

  ‘Good afternoon,’ he said, with a little bow. ‘I wonder, are you free?’

  Rachel sat up. ‘Not free, but very reasonable, sir,’ she purred.

  ‘What? Oh yes, very good. Hem.’

  ‘Do you wish to choose me, sir?’

  ‘You’re very pretty.’

  ‘Then come sit by me a moment.’ She patted the sofa. ‘Would you care for wine and cakes?’

  Mrs Bedwin slid into the room and put down a tray of small cakes and a bottle of wine. She extracted money from the man and said, ‘Use the pink boudoir.’

  Rachel took his hand. He was trembling. ‘There’s no need to worry, sir. Rachel will look after you.’

  She poured his wine and he gulped it down. She refilled his glass and sipped delicately at her own.

  ‘What’s your name, sir?’

  ‘Rodney Paige.’

  ‘Mr Paige. That’s nice. Are you here for the waters?’

  ‘Oh no, nothing wrong with me. Fine and hearty.’ A bit of wine went down the wrong way and he choked. She thumped him on the back until he caught his breath. ‘I’m here to make my fortune. I hope.’

  ‘Really?’ Rachel eyed him over. Fair curly hair, worn long and giving him the appearance of a small boy. Big brown eyes, gentle and soft. They gazed at her now as if she were a water sprite who’d vanish if he startled her.

  She led him upstairs to the pink boudoir. Through the wall came muffled giggling and shouts of ‘Go on, Horace!’ as the bed springs creaked.