Death Trap (13 page)

‘Leave it to his lawyer, Kate,' Barnard had insisted, knowing that what Kate was alleging was all too close to the truth as relayed by Eddie Lamb. ‘Don't get involved, Kate. Please.' Kate put the last bit of her sandwich in her mouth and pushed her chair back angrily.

‘So you won't help. Thanks a lot, la.' And she had spun on her heel and out of the coffee bar without a backward glance leaving Barnard alone and discomforted.

Even now, approaching Marie and Tess's flat wearily at the end of the day, she was still feeling annoyed. She had few illusions about the vice squad and Barnard's own involvement in dubious financial transactions in Soho. But she had hoped that he would show the same level of interest in gross miscarriages of justice even when the victim did not happen to be her brother. But apparently not. The motive for helping Tom evidently was not injustice but a way of ingratiating himself with her and she realised she was being hopelessly naïve to expect otherwise.

It had been a gloomy day of overcast skies and drizzling rain and as she approached the house she glanced down the area steps and was surprised to see no light on in Cecily Beauchamp's basement flat. She hesitated at the top of the steps for a moment peering into the gloom beneath the steps up to the main front door. She could not be sure, but it seemed to her that Mrs Beauchamp's door stood slightly ajar. Cautiously she opened the gate at the top of the steps and went down to find that she had been right, the door was slightly open and the room beyond in darkness. She hesitated for a moment and then tapped gently on the glass panel in the door and called out. There was no response.

Seriously anxious now she pushed the door open and felt around the wall inside until she found a light switch. The dim light from the single bulb only half illuminated the room and at first Kate could see nothing untoward. Cecily Beauchamp's dusty treasures lay untouched on the mantelshelf and shelves and tables, just as she remembered them, an open book lay on the small table in front of the electric fire, which was not switched on, the door to the kitchen was half open and the door which Kate assumed led to the old woman's bedroom facing onto the garden at the back of the house was closed. Feeling slightly foolish Kate hesitated, thinking that maybe Mrs Beauchamp had gone out and accidentally left her front door open. Then she decided that as she had intruded so far she might as well make sure that she was really out and not in any sort of trouble elsewhere in the flat.

She pushed the kitchen door wide open and found the tiny room empty and then tapped on the bedroom door, just in case Mrs Beauchamp was innocently asleep inside, no doubt ready to be appalled by her intrusion. There was no response and again she opened the door only to find the cramped bedroom as empty as the rest of the flat, the bed neatly made with the sheets turned down ready for its occupant, and the bathroom beyond tidy and apparently undisturbed. Baffled she stood in the living room for a moment and then remembered Mrs Beauchamp saying that she enjoyed her access to the overgrown garden at the back of the house. She looked round for a door and then realised that at the far end of the kitchen there was an alcove with a heavy curtain serving no obvious purpose. Behind it she uncovered a wooden door which, when she tried the handle, she found again to be unlocked. Peering out into the gathering dusk she could see trees and overgrown flower beds and not much else until she spotted, lying on the paving a few yards from the door beneath a dirty glass veranda and alongside a rusting garden chair, a huddled and unmoving human figure.

Her heart thumping, she ran the few yards to find Cecily Beauchamp sprawled face down on the paving, wearing only a light dress and cardigan, which were sodden. When she reached out tentatively to touch her hand it was so cold in the chilly air that she knew at once that Mrs Beauchamp must be dead. She sat back on her heels for a moment, feeling the shock taking over and wondering if she could get back to her feet. She could see no sign of blood or injury on the old woman's body as with shaking hands she turned her over hoping to see a flicker of life still in her eyes. But there was nothing, only a bruise on her temple, no more than she could have acquired if she had fallen from the chair, but still no sign of anything worse.

Breathing heavily and on shaky knees she got back to her feet. There was nothing more she could do for Cecily Beauchamp except phone the police and report her death. As she went back indoors to look for a phone she was startled to hear someone else coming down the area steps and tap on the half-open door, and surprised when she half recognised a woman's voice calling for Mrs Beauchamp. She hurried to pull the door wide and found herself face to face with Mrs Chamberlain, the antique dealer from Portobello market to whom she had relayed a message on Saturday morning.

‘Hello, dear,' the woman said. ‘Is Cecily in? I've got a little something for her. I got a good price for the jewellery she gave me. It went very quickly. She'll be really pleased.'

Kate pulled her inside. ‘I was just going to make a phone call,' she said. ‘I'm afraid Mrs Beauchamp has had a fall. In fact I think she's dead. She's lying out in the garden soaking wet and quite cold. I wanted to help her but there was nothing I could do  . . .' Kate suddenly found herself with tears in her eyes and she sat down abruptly on a sofa close to the dead electric fire, shivering uncontrollably, her teeth chattering.

‘Sit there, dear,' Mrs Chamberlain said. ‘I'll go and see if there is anything I can do for poor Cecily and then I'll make you a nice cup of tea and we'll get some help. Here, put this round you so you keep warm.' She took off her coat and wrapped it round Kate's shoulders and by the time she came back with the promised cup of tea, liberally sugared, the shivering had stopped and she sipped it gratefully until she began to feel more normal.

‘Where is Cecily's phone dear, do you know?' Mrs Chamberlain asked.

‘I don't know, Mrs Chamberlain,' Kate said, looking round the cluttered room vaguely. ‘Perhaps she hasn't got one.'

‘Call me Vera, dear,' she said almost absent-mindedly. ‘Come to think of it, she never asked for my phone number. Until just recently she used to walk down to see me with her little treasures.' She tut-tutted in irritation. ‘You know that son of hers has never looked after her properly. He just wants what he can get out of the property. And now look what's happened. She was diabetic, you know. That's not very nice, all those injections, they say. And she was getting very frail, and not seeing very well either.'

‘He's trying to sell the house,' Kate said gloomily. ‘He's trying to get the rest of the tenants out of the house, sending round people with dogs, making threats.'

‘Is he now? I wonder what he had planned for his mother then. Her cat was poisoned recently, you know. She found it dead in the area out there. She was very upset about that. I helped her bury it in that wilderness out the back.'

‘I shouldn't think Mrs Beauchamp would be very pleased about the house being sold,' Kate said.

‘She wouldn't,' Vera said. ‘I know that for a fact.' Her eyes gleamed. ‘Do you think he's bumped her off to get her out of the way? To stop her making a fuss about the house? I wouldn't put it past him.'

Kate looked at her for a moment, horrified. The possibility was not one that she felt able to cope with. ‘There's a phone in the hall upstairs,' she said quickly. ‘We can telephone from up there.'

The two women went upstairs together to call 999, and then went back to the basement flat to wait for the police and ambulance as instructed, and it was not long before Kate realised quite what a fertile imagination Vera Chamberlain harboured behind her dumpy, bundled-up exterior. She began pacing round the flat, picking up items from the shelves and opening and closing drawers.

‘She's still got enough stuff stashed away here to attract burglars,' she said. ‘But I don't know where she kept her jewellery. When she wanted to sell something she always had it neatly wrapped up if she came to my stall or out ready for me if I came here.'

‘It doesn't look as if anything's missing,' Kate said. ‘The place looks exactly as it normally did.'

‘You'd never know, dear, would you? There's so much clutter. Didn't you say the front door was open?'

‘Yes, it was. That's why I came in. I knocked on the door but couldn't get any reply.'

‘Someone could have come in and frightened her to death,' Vera said complacently. ‘This isn't a very nice neighbourhood any more. After all there was a murder just this Saturday down Portobello, just round the corner from the market. Did you hear about that? Some street girl. Mind you, they're asking for it, a lot of those little tarts. They're quite happy to go with black men. Disgusting, I call that.'

She pursed her lips in bitter disapproval and Kate bit her tongue, wishing that the police officer who had taken her call had not asked both of them to stay at the flat until officers arrived. They seemed to be travelling very slowly from Ladbroke Grove, she thought. Perhaps an old woman lying dead was not a high priority any more than the persecution of her neighbours upstairs by thugs with Alsatians had been. The police, she thought, seemed to be a law unto themselves in London, and she did not exclude Harry Barnard from that judgment.

In the end two police cars arrived, one the familiar Z car, though it was not the much fancied Fancy Smith who got out but two equally heavily built officers who waited on the pavement for a man in plain clothes to disembark from an unmarked car which had drawn up close behind. Kate went to the door and ducked out from the alcove under the main steps of the house and called up to them.

‘She's down here,' she said and as the three men swung towards her she realised that the man in plain clothes was the sergeant Eddie Lamb she had already met. He came down the area steps first and seemed surprised to see her.

‘Is this where you live?' he asked.

‘The top flat,' Kate said.

‘You seem to be attracting a lot of attention to yourself,' Lamb said sourly. ‘Where's this old biddy then? Friend of yours, is she? Had a fall?'

‘I don't know what's happened,' Kate said. ‘But she's certainly been lying out in the cold and wet for a long time.'

‘You'd best show me then,' Lamb said. ‘I've sent for the police doctor.' He followed Kate into the living room, closely followed by one of the uniformed officers while the other took up station in the area by the door where he was sheltered from the drizzle.

‘Who are you exactly?' Lamb asked rudely when he spotted Vera Chamberlain inside.

‘I'm an old friend of Cecily's,' Vera said sharply. ‘I popped in to see her and found Kate here in a bit of a state. She'll tell you all about it I expect.'

There was no mention of the money Vera owed Cecily for her jewellery, Kate noticed, and she guessed there never would be. The two women soon found themselves pushed aside and told to wait to make statements as the doctor arrived and went outside with Lamb and the uniformed officer. They did not seem to spend much time examining Cecily.

‘Natural causes, I should say,' the doctor was saying to Lamb as he came back through the living room. ‘I can't see any sign of foul play. She's no spring chicken. I'll organise the mortuary but I don't think there's anything for you, Eddie. Her heart was probably a calamity waiting to happen.'

‘She was diabetic, you know,' Vera Chamberlain said.

The doctor looked at her without enthusiasm and shrugged at Lamb. ‘There may be insulin here somewhere,' he said to the sergeant. ‘Could have a bearing, I suppose. Although not all diabetics have to inject.'

‘I'll see what I can find,' Lamb said.

‘And talk to her own doctor. He'll know the score. Next of kin should know who he is.'

Sergeant Lamb nodded. ‘Thanks, doc,' he said. ‘Now, Miss O'Donnell. Perhaps you can fill me in on how you came to find Mrs Beauchamp. What made you come into the flat and how exactly did you get in? Shall we start from the beginning?'

In the end it did not take long for either Kate or Vera Chamberlain to explain the events of the previous half hour, although Kate noticed again that Vera did not bother to explain that she had come to pay Cecily what she owed her. By the time they had both finished and made their way back up to the street, a van had arrived to take away the body and an expensive-looking car had also drawn up outside from which a middle-aged man, sleek and expensively dressed but running to fat emerged and looked around in some apparent irritation. He glanced up at the full three stories of the dilapidated house and then down into the gloomy area, apparently spotted the uniformed policeman below pavement level and made his way down the steps.

‘That, presumably, is our mysterious landlord, Cecily's son,' Kate said in a low voice to Vera. ‘Who may or may not be trying to get us tenants out, and quite probably his mother as well.'

‘A bit too convenient if she's popped off just now then, if you ask me,' Vera said. ‘Cecily mentioned her son once or twice, Miles he's called. He reckoned she had to live down in that damp basement because there was no family money left. But he doesn't look exactly strapped for cash if he can drive a Jag like that, does he, dear?'

‘The doctor said there was no sign of foul play,' Kate said dubiously.

‘You wouldn't need foul play if you just took her insulin away, would you?' Vera said.

Kate shuddered. ‘We've no evidence for that,' Kate said and turned up the steps to the front door. She distrusted her own propensity for jumping to conclusions and certainly didn't want to encourage Vera's.

The antique dealer hesitated for a moment and then turned down the street towards Portobello Road. ‘I'll keep in touch with the police, dear, anyway,' she said. ‘She was a game old bird, was Cecily, in spite of everything. She didn't deserve to die like that all alone.'