R Raichev - Assassins at Ospreys

No – too complicated – too much bother.

How about scaring Lily – having him roughed up a bit by way of a warning? More than just a bit. Lily did do crazy things, but he was not really a brave man. Throw a plastic bag over his head – give him a black eye, split his lip, rip off part of his ear, bust his nose, crack a rib perhaps, fracture a finger or two in a lingering kind of way… Yes… That would show him what might happen if he tried something. A single phrase whispered in his shell-like ear should do the trick. Next time it would be much worse, so don’t try anything funny. Something on those lines. It needed to be done soon after Lily had emerged from Ospreys, while the thought of death was still fresh in his mind… That would be the right psychological moment… Yes…

Robin rose slowly and once more he stood before the mirror, empty glass in hand, examining his reflection… He wouldn’t do it himself of course… Certainly not. He would be nowhere near the scene of the incident… Perhaps he could have a word with Eric? It was some time since he had seen Eric.

(Why was it that he always thought of Eric when he was drunk?)

A Splash of Red

The sinner’s way, Father Lillie-Lysander murmured, is tortuous, hazardous, marked by violence, dark, dangerous and insecure.

He picked up one of the pillows off the bed. Ralph Renshawe went on rambling. Now it was something about Ospreys and Beatrice Ardleigh.

‘I have an idea it may be her kind of house. She may decide to keep it and have it renovated. She may enjoy living in it.’

‘It’s an extremely interesting house,’ Lillie-Lysander said.

What was that on the bedside table, on Ralph’s right – long and sharp – a knitting needle? Yes, it belonged to the damned nurse. He had seen her knitting.

Lillie-Lysander paused, the pillow poised in his hands. For some reason he found the sight of the needle unsettling; it made him feel a trifle queasy. It also had a somewhat mesmeric effect on him. A knitting needle would make a messy murder weapon – it would be madness to use anything like that.

He thought he heard a noise from the direction of the garden and looked towards the open french windows. He imagined he caught a movement. No, nothing. Rooks. Circling over the garden, screeching their heads off in their unfathomable way. Ugly creatures -

Why were they so agitated? Had something alarmed them?

The grandfather clock in the hall chimed the half-hour. Half past ten.

Time for Father Lillie’s tea. It was always at half past ten that Nurse Wilkes made it. She had been sitting in the kitchen, her headphones on, listening to Madonna sing ‘Material Girl’, leafing through the latest issue of Hello! and daydreaming what she would do if she had big money. Nathan, her boyfriend, did the lottery every week, so far without success. Well, if she ever got a lot of dosh, she’d buy Nathan a Porsche, that was what he talked about all the time, and then they would get married and go on a cruise around the world, with her mum and dad and his mum and dad, only Nathan would probably be bored because he didn’t like foreign countries much. But he’d like the Porsche. Oh yes, she’d also buy one of those super-large plasma TVs, so that Nathan could watch his football big. He would like that very much, but then she wouldn’t be able to get him off the couch!

Nurse Wilkes filled the electric kettle with water, then turned it on.

She had tried to knit earlier on only to discover one of her knitting needles was missing. Could she have dropped it in Ralph’s room? She’d been sitting beside his bed when it had looked as if there might be another attack coming, but that proved to be a false alarm. She didn’t want to disturb Father Lillie, so she hadn’t gone back to look for her needle. She liked knitting. Nathan laughed at her and said it made her look like an old woman. She didn’t mind. She was an old-fashioned girl at heart. The jumper was going to be for Robin Renshawe. She had promised him. Even if he didn’t like it, it’d amuse him. She hadn’t said anything about it to Nathan. Nathan might be jealous.

China tea. Leaves, not teabags. No milk. Father Lillie was most particular about things. He always had Lotus tea. Bone china, he had specified, since it released the fragrance in a way no ordinary china could, apparently. He had taken a fancy to one of Ralph’s Spode cups, so that was the one she was using. The cup was the colour of ivory, extremely pretty.

Did Ralph really have so much to confess that he needed a priest so often? Nurse Wilkes had read somewhere that some people made things up to keep the priest busy, or because they felt guilty if they had nothing to confess, or because they liked the attention. Once she’d squatted by the door with her ear to the keyhole but she had heard nothing. Not a word. Well, Ralph’s voice was like the whispering of dry leaves.

The tea, once brewed, looked weak and bilious and smelled faintly fishy, like something that had started rot-ting, or like somebody’s unwashed socks, but every man to his poison. This reminded Nurse Wilkes of the morphine that had disappeared so mysteriously. Where could the ampoule have gone? She had looked everywhere… It couldn’t have been Father Lillie, could it? Well, who else was there? Linda was the only one of the two cleaners who was allowed to go into Ralph’s room, but it couldn’t be her. Out of the question. That left Father Lillie. What would Father Lillie want with an ampoule? Well, he was an odd one. Nathan had decided he was a poof when she told him about him.

No sugar. No biscuits. No cake. No bread and butter even – Father Lillie never had anything to eat. Why was he so fat then? There was something about Father Lillie that actually gave her the creeps, she couldn’t quite say what..

She wished there was a proper staff, but it was only her and the two women who came to clean three times a week. When Ralph had first bought Ospreys, there had been at least six servants and a gardener, she had been told. But once he got cancer and became a Catholic, he’d dismissed everybody. Stupid thing to do – a house of that size! Most of the rooms were shuttered – well, hardly anyone ever visited. Ralph had pots of money in the bank, real big money, but he clearly regarded it as sinful, keeping a large staff. Something he didn’t deserve. That kind of malarkey. Robin thought the dismissal of the staff an unwise thing to do, but then Robin’s opinions didn’t cut any ice with his uncle.

Ralph disapproved of Robin on ‘moral grounds’. She had heard him use the phrase. That was interesting, given that when he first moved into the house, Ralph had had a live-in mistress, apparently – a big Thai woman with glittering black eyes and a name no one could pronounce. Madame something-or-other, that lawyer, Mr Saunders, had called her. Ralph sent Madame away when he became ill and got religion, but she had become so attached to him that she didn’t want to go, or so the story went. Apparently she made a terrible scene. She got really vio-lent, screaming and smashing things, so they had to call the police! Some of the woman’s stuff was still in the house. There were several boxes. Nurse Wilkes had taken a peep.

Some extremely colourful outfits, of the kind people wore at carnivals. Joss sticks. A fan made of peacock feathers. Plastic flowers. A rook rifle. (Apparently Madame had liked taking pot shots at the rooks!) A feather boa. Several Barbara Cartland paperbacks, the more difficult words underlined in purple ink and the Thai translation penned in the margin. A love-making manual that looked really dirty. (Nathan said he wanted to see it.) A bronze statuette of Buddha. Ten pairs of silk stockings. Handcuffs. Three old-fashioned garters. A stuffed monkey and a bottle of Grecian Ivory Number 2 make-up.