The Skeleton in the Closet Read online

  They ran up enormous taxi bills going round the sights from Buckingham Palace to the Tower and St. Paul’s Cathedral. The final taxi deposited them at Piccadilly Circus where they stood like two children, looking round. Fell bought a street map and suggested they walk to Covent Garden. “I once read a book where it mentioned an old restaurant called Rules. It’s supposed to be the oldest restaurant in London.”

  Maggie had forgotten about the robbery, about Melissa. All she was aware of was the glory of walking through the summer London streets with Fell.

  In Covent Garden, they walked through the chattering crowds and turned in to Maiden Lane. “There it is,” said Fell.

  “I wish I had dressed up,” said Maggie, suddenly nervous. She was wearing a blue cotton dress and Fell was in an open-necked shirt and jeans. “It’s the tourist season,” said Fell. “They’ll be used to people dressing casually.”

  The woman at the desk smiled at them, and said they were lucky. A cancellation had just come in. She led them to a table, smiled at them again and handed them large menus. Maggie looked around at the gleaming brass and mahogany and at all the oil paintings on the walls.

  “I read that King Edward the Seventh used to bring his mistresses here,” said Fell. “He had a special staircase built to the rooms above so he could sneak them in.”

  The food turned out to be of the stick-to-your-ribs variety and beautifully cooked. They talked and talked, swapping reminiscences about their working days at the Palace Hotel, drinking wine and chattering away.

  Finally Fell called for the bill. The waiter smiled down at them as he took Fell’s payment and generous tip. “On your honeymoon, sir?” he asked.

  “No,” said Fell. “Let’s go, Maggie.”

  They walked down to the Strand and caught a cab to Pad-dington Station. As they swung round Trafalgar Square, Maggie looked out at the lions at the base of Nelson’s Column and wished with all her heart that they really were on their honeymoon. But it had been a day to remember, and the Maggies of this world took such days as they came and photographed them in their minds and pasted them in the mental photo album to take out and look at when the days were dark.

  The last train to Buss had gone, so they took a train to Worcester and a taxi from there to Buss.

  “Must remember we’re going to Melissa’s tomorrow,” said Fell as he unlocked the door.

  How could I ever forget, thought Maggie. Damn the woman!

  ♦

  Fell said the following day that he wanted to go out on his own to do some shopping. Maggie guessed that he would be nervously looking to see if he could find anything better to wear than he had got for the all-important evening ahead.

  To soothe her feelings, she decided to bake a tray of small sponge cakes. She had not baked anything since her teens. She opened a cookery book she had bought recently and set to work.

  Fell arrived back after an hour, empty-handed. He had cruised the shops but had decided at last to wear his new suit. To buy yet another suit seemed indecent. Habits of thrift die hard.

  “Nice smell,” he said, walking into the kitchen.

  “I’m trying my hand at some sponge cakes,” said Maggie. “They’re nearly ready. Isn’t that someone at the door?”

  Fell went to answer it. Two young men stood on the doorstep, one lugging a camera bag. “Buss Courier, ” said one cheerfully. “I’m Peter South and this is my photographer, Derek.”

  “What’s happened?” asked Fell nervously.

  “Nothing drastic. Our editor said you were looking into the old train robbery and were hoping to write a book about it.” Peter eyed Fell shrewdly. He felt sure if he told Fell the truth, that it was a quiet time for news and that the editor had asked him to see if there was a story in Fell’s investigations, this nervous man might back off, so he said, “Our editor took a fancy to you and thought you might like some help in your research.”

  “Come in,” said Fell.

  They both walked into the living room. The cameraman put his bag on the floor, opened it and began to take out camera and lenses. “What’s all that for?” asked Fell.

  “Just a photograph for our files,” said Peter soothingly.

  Maggie came in from the kitchen. Fell introduced the newspapermen and explained the reason for their visit.

  “I’ve just made some sponge cakes,” said Maggie. “Would you like some?”

  “Love some,” said Peter, smiling at Maggie. She smiled back, liking his round, pleasant face and mop of curly hair.

  “Now,” said Peter, turning to Fell, “you’d better tell me how far you’ve got.”

  Fell gave him a carefully edited story, omitting the visit of Andy Briggs and the mysterious money in the cash box. Maggie came in with a tray and passed round sponge cakes and tea.

  “I say,” said Peter enthusiastically, “these are as light as a feather.” He beamed at Maggie, liking what he saw. Peter’s dream was of finding a nice girl to look after him. He loved the fact that Maggie’s newly slim figure was wrapped in a flowery apron. He hadn’t thought women wore aprons any more. He liked her shiny hair in its feathery cut and the wide-eyed friendly look of her large green eyes behind the thick glasses.

  “You two are engaged, right?” he asked.

  “Er, um, yes,” said Fell reluctantly and a shadow crossed Maggie’s expressive eyes.

  Oho, what’s this? thought Peter. And at least they’re not married. Wonder if Maggie might meet me sometime for a drink?

  He ate three of the sponge cakes and then said, “Now, if you two would like to pose for pictures.”

  “Why?” asked Maggie sharply.

  “Just for the file. Like I told Fell here, it’s a quiet day and our editor’s taken a fancy to you and thinks I might be able to help you with your research.”

  “Oh, in that case…Is it all right if I take off my glasses?”

  “Go ahead,” said Peter. Maggie removed her glasses. She blinked a little, looking feminine and vulnerable.

  Fell and Maggie stood side by side while the photographer, Derek, banged off several pictures.

  “I think that wraps it up,” said Peter cheerfully. “I’ll start off by going through the old newspaper files and I’ll copy anything I think you might have missed and bring it round.”

  “That’s very good of you,” said Fell.

  “Here’s my card.” But Peter handed it to Maggie.

  Fell ushered them outside into the sunlight. “Forgot something,” said Peter and dived back into the house, leaving Fell standing outside with the photographer.

  Maggie was clearing away the teacups. “Any chance of meeting me one evening for a drink?” asked Peter.

  “Maybe,” said Maggie.

  “Well, you’ve got my card. Phone me if you’re free.”

  When he had gone, Maggie stood, blinking in surprise. How odd. He knew she was engaged and yet he had asked her out. She should have reminded him sharply that she was engaged. But she wasn’t really, and there was Melissa, after all.

  ♦

  That evening, after having tried on about everything in her wardrobe, Maggie dismally decided to settle for comfort rather than style. She felt she could not possibly compete with Melissa, no matter what she wore. She settled on a green silk blouse and a long black velvet skirt. The velvet was worn in places at the back of the skirt, so she steamed it with the iron and convinced herself that the worn places no longer showed.

  There was a dark pit inside her as they both got into her little car. Fell seemed to be lit up from within. “What a beautiful evening,” he sighed.

  “It hasn’t started yet,” said Maggie sourly, letting in the clutch.

  Fell was silent on the short drive to Melissa’s house, but out of the corner of her eye Maggie saw the nervous clasping and unclasping of his long fingers.

  They parked in front of Melissa’s house. “What a beautiful place!” exclaimed Fell.

  “It’s just a villa like the one Rudfern lives in,” said Maggie.
“Come along, Fell, and don’t stand there gawping.”

  “You would think we had been married for years,” snapped Fell, and Maggie felt close to tears.

  When Melissa opened the door to them, Maggie, who had thought it could not be possible to feel any more miserable, found that, yes, it was indeed possible. Melissa was wearing a slinky black silk trouser suit and her face was expertly made up.

  Melissa led the way into a sitting room. Maggie glanced quickly around. It looked as if it had been put together by a professional interior designer, but some time ago, when dried flowers and shades of brown and cream had been all the rage.

  One again, Maggie felt sure Melissa was after Fell’s money. Melissa lifted a bottle out of an ice bucket on a sideboard and wrapped it in a white cloth. “I thought we would have some vintage champagne,” she said. She poured out three glasses and handed one each to Fell and Maggie.

  Maggie took a sip and her eyebrows raised. Working at the Palace Hotel had given her a knowledge of wine, and she was suddenly sure that what she was drinking was certainly not vintage champagne.

  “It is hot,” Melissa was saying. “Let’s carry our drinks out into the garden.” She smiled at Fell and led him towards the open french windows.

  Maggie followed, deliberately leaving her handbag behind. As they were about to sit down in white garden chairs in front of a white wrought-iron table, Maggie said, “I’ve left my handbag. Excuse me a moment.”

  She walked swiftly into the sitting room and picked up her handbag. Then she veered slightly to the left, to the sideboard, out of sight of Melissa and twitched back the cloth covering the bottle. Effervescent cider! Cheapskate.

  Maggie joined Fell and Melissa just in time to hear Fell saying, “This is very good champagne.”

  Fool, thought Maggie. Wait until I tell him. And then realized that was something she must not do. Fell would simply accuse her of spying again.

  As she joined them, she noticed Melissa had a hand on Fell’s knee and was saying, “Have you thought any more about my little business proposition?”

  “I’ve been a bit taken up with other matters,” said Fell, “but it does seem a good idea. Don’t you think so, Maggie?”

  “Yes,” said Maggie with well-manufactured enthusiasm.

  “Fell and I are a bit naive about business, Melissa, so we’ll probably discuss the matter with the lawyer and bank manager – you know, get them to evaluate the profits of your business and all that.”

  For one moment, Maggie and Melissa locked eyes. Then Melissa said with a light laugh, “Oh, we’re friends, aren’t we? We don’t need to be fussed with all that sort of stuff.”

  “No, not at all,” said Fell, who couldn’t take his eyes off her.

  Over dinner, Melissa chattered on, telling stories about people who came into the shop, discussing alternative medicine, and Fell hung on every word like a man bewitched. The table was bathed in soft candlelight. The sitting room had been lit by two lamps. Maggie wanted Fell to see Melissa in a strong light so that he would realize just how old she was. She gave her handbag, which she had placed open at her feet, a hard kick. “Oh,” said Maggie, “I’ve upset my bag and I keep everything in there. No, don’t move. I’ll pick the things up.” She moved quickly to the light switch and snapped it on. Before she bent to retrieve her belongings, she had a glimpse of Melissa’s face, cruelly exposed in the overhead light. Surely Fell would notice the pouches under the eyes, the grooves down the sides of the mouth, the wrinkles on the upper lip? But as soon as she had stuffed everything back into her bag, Melissa rose with one fluid movement and switched the light off. In the candlelight, Maggie noticed that Fell’s eyes were as adoring as ever. Fell saw only what he wanted to see.

  Maggie began to talk about a book she had just read, recounting some of the more amusing scenes. She talked well, but Fell did not listen. He only wished with all his heart that he were alone with Melissa. He had a longing to tell her that he was not really engaged to Maggie.

  His moment came after dinner, when Melissa asked him to help her stack the dishwasher and told Maggie that one helping her was enough and Maggie could go out to the garden and relax.

  As Maggie sat in the garden, Melissa’s voice came faintly to her ears, accompanied by Fell’s amused laugh.

  Fell was battling with himself. He longed to tell Melissa that he was not really engaged and yet loyalty to Maggie held him back. He could not really tell Melissa anything like that until he had discussed it with Maggie first. Then Melissa gave him an intimate smile and said, “I don’t think your little friend trusts me.”

  “Maggie? Why?”

  “All that talk about bankers and lawyers.”

  “She had no right to say that. It’s my money.”

  “Perhaps we really ought to discuss it on our own.”

  “That would be better,” said Fell, his senses quickening at the thought of having a date with Melissa. With such a woman on his arm, he’d be the envy of every man in Buss.

  “Why don’t I take you for dinner to that French restaurant on Friday,” he said.

  “Good idea. What time?”

  “Eight o’clock.”

  Her eyes caressed him. “I’ll see you there.”

  When they joined Maggie in the garden, Maggie’s radar picked up that they must have come to some arrangement that did not include her, for Melissa now seemed anxious to be rid of them. She pointedly yawned several times and Maggie said, “You do need your beauty sleep.”

  “Don’t I just,” laughed Melissa, ignoring the sarcastic edge in Maggie’s voice.

  ♦

  They got into the car outside. There was not a breath of air. “We need a thunderstorm,” said Maggie.

  Fell stared straight ahead for a moment, then he said, “You know, Maggie, I don’t think there’s really any need to bring in lawyers and accountants if I want to go into business with Melissa.”

  “Why?”

  “Well.” Fell gave an awkard laugh. “You can tell she’s got money and that means she must have a flourishing business.”

  “How do you mean, you can see she’s got money?”

  “It’s a big house and expensively furnished and then she went to the trouble to serve vintage champagne.”

  All Maggie’s good resolutions to go carefully on the subject of Melissa vanished in a wave of jealousy.

  “That wasn’t vintage champagne, for a start,” she said. “It was effervescent cider.”

  “Nonsense.”

  “I looked at the label, Fell.”

  “You were spying!”

  “No, I thought it didn’t taste like vintage champagne, so I had a look. And the furnishings were expensive years ago, all that brown and cream.”

  “It is just as well I am meeting Melissa on her own for dinner on Friday,” snapped Fell. “How can I keep a clear mind on the subject when you’re always snooping and spying?”

  “That’s unfair!”

  They went into the house in stony silence. Maggie went up to her room, her face flaming. She sat down on the edge of her bed. Now she’d done it. Fell had not asked her to leave, but he might in the morning. She would need to do something to heal the breach. She washed and undressed, but sleep would not come. Even with the window wide open, the bedroom was hot and stifling. Her feet throbbed and ached. Out of her small savings she had bought a new pair of high heels to wear that evening. They were very high indeed. Suffering for vanity, she thought, punching the pillow, which suddenly seemed to have become as hard as a brick. If only she could think of something to restore herself to favour. Something about the robbery. She was just falling asleep when an idea struck her. Fell, Fellworth Dolphin. The couple in the garden in front of the big house. What if they had named him after the house? Maggie resolved to go straight to the library in the morning.

  ♦

  The next morning when she went downstairs, it was to find a curt note for her placed on top of the electric kettle, saying, “Gone for a walk, Fell.�
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  Maggie looked at the clock. Only nine and the library did not open until ten. She decided to go out somewhere and have breakfast. She did not want to risk another quarrel with Fell.

  As she walked off down the street in the direction of the centre of the town, the close heat of the day surrounded her, an exhausted heat redolent of car fumes. The sky above was covered in a milky haze. A few dried leaves, loosened by the hot summer, fell down from the plane trees on the street and dropped wearily onto the ground at her feet as if the very leaves, like the people of Buss, had become exhausted by this odd, seemingly never-ending dandelion summer.

  She went into a café for coffee and a croissant and watched the population of Buss walk slowly by. No one wanted to hurry in this heat.

  When she had finished her light breakfast, she walked to the library. She found a section with books on country houses in Worcestershire, took several out and sat down to look though them. No Fellworth. And yet, if there was some connection between the railway station and the couple on the photograph, it figured that one of them might have used the station. Then she thought, the Gloucestershire border is close. She returned the books and took out three on houses in Gloucestershire. In a small battered volume, in the index, the name ‘Fellworth’ seemed to leap up at her out of the page. She turned to the item in the book. It was only a small paragraph. No photo. “Fellworth Manor,” it said, “is an undistinguished Victorian manor house, rebuilt on the site of the original Elizabethan manor house in 1895. Even at that time, the destruction of the old manor roused public feeling, but the Fellworth family claimed they wanted a more convenient modern building. Situated near the village of Ablington outside Cirencester.”

  Maggie felt triumphant. Here indeed was news to take Fell’s mind off Melissa. She had the relevant page photocopied and hurried home.

  Fell was watering the garden, the spray from the hose setting rainbows to dance over the flowers. The ‘grave’ meant for Andy Briggs had been filled in.

  She ignored the hostile look in his eyes and waved the photocopy at him. “Look what I’ve found.”

  Fell took the paper from her. His hostility fled and his eyes lit up. “How on earth did you get this, Maggie?”