space was tight someone had even driven one of them onto the lawn, leaving gouges in the sodden grass like a mistreated billiard table.
I slid the bike into a gap near one of the elegantly proportioned bay-fronted windows, and killed the motor, pulling off my helmet. Into the quiet that followed came the raucous squeal of children at war. Somewhere upstairs, a baby cried relentlessly.
The front door stood open as usual beneath a fanlight made from delicately-coloured glass in leaded panes. The matching panels in the door itself had long since fallen victim to one set of angry fists or another, and now consisted of reinforced safety glass. My boots echoed on the faded black and white tiles as I walked down the hallway, calling a hello as I went.
Ailsa stuck her head out of what was supposed to be their private sitting room and beckoned me through. When I went in I found Tris squeezed into a corner, trying to read a book on William Blake. Nearly all the other available chairs were taken up by a bedraggled-looking woman with bruised eyes and four young children.
“Hi Charlie,” Ailsa said brightly, subsiding her generous frame onto a seat, her loose Indian cotton dress billowing around her for a moment like a collapsing big top. “Won't be a moment. We're just trying to sort out these forms from the Social. Be a dear, Tristram, and put the kettle on.”
Out of his wife's line of sight, Tris sighed, carefully inserted a bookmark as he rose, and disappeared into the narrow kitchen. When I couldn't stand the scruffy round-eyed stares of the kids any longer, I went to join him.
Tris was standing at the sink, staring out into the garden at the lines of terry nappies, flapping like pennants. He was absently trying to dry a teapot with a towel that was too wet to make any difference.
“D'you want a hand?”
“Hmm?” He took a moment to bring his mind back on track. “Oh, yes please, Charlie. Sorry, miles away there.”
Ailsa had cut his hair again, I noticed. It looked like she'd done it with blunt nail scissors, by candlelight. There was a chunk missing over one ear, and half his fringe stood straight up in the air. Ailsa had all the hairdressing aptitude of a bottle-nosed dolphin, but Tris was too good natured to complain.
Left to his own devices he would have favoured something more in the romantic poet style but, he once explained to me with a weary smile, the proliferation of unwashed small children about the place made head lice a very real concern, and a short haircut a necessity.
He was still wearing his working uniform of a short-sleeved white tunic over black trousers, and he smelled of lavender, and orange blossom. When what had once been the drawing room hasn't been commandeered as an overflow bedroom, Tris uses it for aromatherapy massage.
The kettle on the hob began to scream and I lifted it off the heat with a slightly scorched oven glove. Between us we managed to load a tray with all the required equipment for tea and were manoeuvring our way back into the sitting room when the door into the hall swung open again.
A small boy in a football jersey shoved his head through the gap. “'Scuse me, Aunty Ailsa,” he said, a vision of angelic politeness, “but the filth's here.”
Ailsa smiled at him, taking the news of the arrival of the police without undue surprise. For one reason or another, they were regular visitors at Shelseley.
“OK love,” she said to him. “You'd better show them in. Oh, hello Tommy,” she went on when the first of two uniformed constables edged into the room, taking off their hats.
The young officer she'd addressed manfully stifled a blush at her familiarity, and tried to ignore a derisive glance from his colleague. The other man was the older of the two, though that wasn't saying much. Neither of them looked old enough to drive. Wasn't that supposed to be another sign that advanced age was creeping up on me? My God, I wasn't expecting that when I'd only just hit my quarter-century.
“Now then,” Ailsa said briskly, “what can we do for you this time, Tommy?”
From his expression, Tommy's dearest wish was that she'd stop calling him Tommy, but he decided to let it pass. It was his mate who spoke up instead.
“Actually, Mrs Shelseley, it isn't you we wanted to speak to today. It's Miss Fox.”
I'd been halfway through pouring a cup of tea, and the guilty start I gave at the mention of my own name sent a splatter of hot brown liquid over the table top. I glanced up quickly while Ailsa rescued her forms from the flood and sent Tris for a cloth.
I helped mop up, glad of the pause so I could rack my brains to try and come up with a suitable reason why the police were after me. The first thought that popped up was that it might be something to do with the hooky lap-top Terry had given me.
“Yes, that's me,” I said. “Why, what's the problem?”
Tommy's mate ignored the question. “Is there anywhere we can talk in private, Miss?” he asked.
Tris offered use of the drawing room and led us through, frowning. The room was huge. Clean and bright, with his massage couch set up in the centre and a stack of clean dark green towels on a rattan sofa to the side. Tris hastily shifted the towels so we had space to sit down, and left, still looking pensive.
“So, what's the problem?” I said again when I was alone with the policemen.
Tommy's mate ignored my question a second time. He was really starting to become quite tiresome. Instead, he posed an unexpected one of his own. “Were you at the New Adelphi Club in Morecambe on Saturday evening?”
“Yes,” I said, feeling suddenly cold. I sank down onto the sofa Tris had cleared, and clamped my hands together in my lap.
Even as a kid I've always been more afraid of getting into trouble than of getting hurt. I frantically tried to think back over the weekend's events. I knew, logically, they couldn't possibly be here because of Terry's computer, and I couldn't find anything else that would call for two coppers to be tracking me down at work and giving me the third degree. “What's this all about?”
I'm always wary of the police. You ride a motorcycle and it tends to colour your view of the boys in blue. Still, I suppose it was a nice change to be greeted by a uniform whose opening gambit wasn't, “Are you
I looked from one to the other. Tommy sat down at the other end of the sofa and tried a reassuring smile, but the other one paced round the room, poking along the bottles of Tris's essential oils and making little snorting noises to himself as he read the labels. “Look at this lot, Tom,” he said. “Frankincense, chamomile, ylang-ylang.” He picked one of the bottles off the shelf, turned it in his hand. “Sandalwood. What's that for, then?”
I dredged through my memory for Tris's explanations. I knew sandalwood was calming, a sedative and an aphrodisiac, but I wasn't going to tell him that. It also had antiseptic properties, and was good for dry skin. “Acne,” I said shortly.
He was still young enough for the terrors of rampant spots to be too close for comfort. He put the bottle back on the shelf quickly.
“Look,” I said, “I very much doubt you two are here for a guided tour of aromatherapy oils, so why don't we just cut to the chase?”
They glanced at each other and the younger one, Tommy, pulled out his pocket book. “According to reports we've received, you had a bit of an altercation with a woman at the New Adelphi Club on Saturday night. A Miss Susie Hollins?”
So that was it. “Altercation isn't quite the word I'd use to describe it.”
“And what word would you use, exactly?”
I didn't like the tone, it was too quiet, too tactfully noncommittal.
I sighed again. “She clouted a friend of mine,” I said. “All I did was hold her off until the management arrived. She started it, as any one of a number of witnesses should be able to tell you. If she's telling you I jumped her, she's lying through her teeth. Is that why you're here? Is that what she's saying?” I looked from one to the other, seeking confirmation, but they were giving nothing away.
“Oh, she's not saying anything, Miss Fox,” the older policeman said.
That chill again. “Why? What's happened?”
“I'm afraid Miss Hollins is dead,” he said. It was obviously the most thrilling bit of news he'd had to impart since he left police training college. He was trying hard to put the right subdued note into his voice. “Her body was discovered yesterday morning.”
