Minette Walters - The Ice House

"No."

"What was their surname?"

"I think you should ask them that."

He passed a weary hand across his face. "Well, of course, I can, Miss Cattrell, and that will simply drag out the agony for everybody. We will find out one way or the other."

She looked out of the window, over his shoulder, to where Phoebe was pinching the dead-heads off the roses bordering the drive. She had lost her tension of the previous evening and squatted contentedly in the sun, tongues of flame curling in her shining hair, nimble fingers snapping through the flower stems. Benson sat hotly beside her, Hedges lay panting in the shade of a dwarf rhododendron. The sun's heat, still far from its peak, shimmered above the warm gravel.

" Jefferson," said Anne.

The Sergeant made the connection immediately. "Five years each for the murder of their lodger, Ian Donaghue."

Anne nodded. "Do you know why the sentences were so lenient?"

"Yes, I do. Donaghue buggered and killed their twelve-year-old son. They found him before the police did and hanged him."

She nodded.

"Do you approve of personal vengeance, Miss Cattrell?"

"I sympathise with it."

He smiled suddenly and for a brief moment she thought he looked quite human. "Then at last we've found something we can agree on." He tapped his pencil on the desk. "How well do the Phillipses get on with Mrs. Maybury?"

"Extremely well." Surprisingly, she giggled. "Fred treats her like royalty and Molly treats her like muck. It's a stunning combination."

"I expect they're grateful to her."

"The reverse. I'd say Phoebe is more grateful to them."

"Why? She's given them a new home and employment."

"You see the Grange as it is now but when I moved in nine years ago, Phoebe had been managing on her own for a year. She was shunned by everybody. No one from the village or even Silverborne would work for her. She had to do the gardening, the housework and house maintenance herself and the place was like a tip." A stone lurched sickeningly in her mind as memories struggled to get out. It was the stench of urine, she thought. Everywhere. On the walls, the carpets, the curtains. She would never forget the terrible stench of urine. "Fred and Molly's arrival a couple of months after us changed her life."

McLoughlin stared about the library. There was a good deal that was original, the carved oak bookcases, moulded plaster cornices, the panelled fireplace, but there were other things that were new, the paintwork, a radiator under the window, secondary glazing in white stove-enamel frames, all certainly under ten years old.

"Have the local people changed their attitude to Mrs. Maybury now?"

She followed his gaze. "Not at all. They still won't do any work for her." She flicked ash from her cigarette. "She tries from time to time without success. Silverborne's a dead duck. She's been as far as Winchester and Southampton with the same result. Streech Grange is notorious, Sergeant, but then you already know that, don't you?" She smiled cynically. "They all seem to think they're going to be murdered the minute they set foot in the place. With some justification, it would seem, after yesterday's little discovery."

He jerked his head at the window. "Then who put in the central heating and the double glazing? Fred?"

"Phoebe."

He laughed with genuine amusement "Oh, for God's sake! Look, I know you're on some personal crusade to prove that women are the be-all and end-all, but you can't expect me to swallow that ." He got up and strode across to the window. "Have you any idea how much glass like this weighs?" He tapped a pane of the double-glazing and drew the unwelcome attention of Phoebe outside. She looked at him curiously for a moment then, seeing him turn away, resumed her gardening. He came back to his chair. "She couldn't begin to lift it, let alone set it professionally in its frame. It would need at least two men, if not three."

"Or three women," said Anne, unmoved by his outburst. "We all lend a hand with the lifting. There are five of us after all, eight on the week-ends when the children come home."

"Eight?" he queried sharply. "I thought there were only two children."

"Three. There's Elizabeth, Diana's daughter, as well."

McLoughlin ruffled his fingers through his hair, leaving a dark crest pointing towards the ceiling. "She never mentioned a daughter," he said sourly, wondering what other surprises lay in store.

"You probably didn't ask her."

He ignored this. "You said Mrs. Maybury also did the central heating. How?"

"The same way plumbers do it, presumably. I remember she favoured capillary joints so there was a lot of wire wool involved and flux and soldering equipment. There were also numerous lengths of fifteen- and twenty-two-millimetre copper piping lieing around. She hired a pipe-bending machine for several weeks with different sized pre-formers to make S-bends and right angles. I got a damned good article on women and DIY out of it."

He shook his head. "Who showed her how to do it? Who connected up the boiler?"

"She did." She was amused by his expression. "She got a book from the library. It told her exactly what to do."

Andy McLoughlin was intensely sceptical. In his experience, a woman who could connect a central-heating boiler simply didn't exist. His mother, who held unenlightened ideas about a woman's place in the home, rooted herself firmly in the kitchen, scrubbed and cleaned, washed and cooked and refused adamantly even to learn how to change an electric plug, maintaining it was man's work. His wife, who by contrast had claimed enlightened ideas, had enrolled as a temporary secretary and called herself a career woman. In reality she had idled her days away, painting her nails, playing with her hair, complaining constantly of boredom but doing nothing about it. She had reserved her energies for when her husband came home, unleashing them in a fury of recriminations over his long hours of work, his neglect of her, his failure to notice her appearance, his inability to be the admiring prop her insecure personality demanded. The irony was that he had been attracted to her in the first place because his mother's kitchen mentality appalled him and yet, of the two of them, his mother had the brightest intellect. He had come away from both relationships with a sense, not of his own inadequacy, but of theirs. He had looked for equality and found only an irritating dependence.

"What else has she done?" he demanded curtly, eyeing the professional finish on the rag-rolled emulsion. "The decorating?"

"No, that's mostly Diana's work, though we've all lent a hand. Di's also done the upholstery and curtaining. What else has Phoebe done?" She thought for a moment. "She's rewired the house, made two extra bathrooms and put up the stud partitions between our wings and the main body. At the moment, she and Fred are working out how best to tackle a complete overhaul of the roof." She felt the weight of his scepticism and shrugged. "She's not trying to prove anything, Sergeant, nor am I by telling you. Phoebe's done what everyone else does and has adapted herself to the situation she finds herself in. She's a fighter. She's not the type to throw in her hand when the cards go against her."

He thought of his own circumstances. Loneliness frightened him.

"Were you and Mrs. Goode worried about Mrs. Maybury's mental condition after twelve months alone in this house? Was that your real reason for moving here?"

Could reality be quantified, Anne wondered, any more than truth? To say yes to such a question from such a man would be a betrayal. His capacity for understanding was confined by his prejudices. "No, Sergeant," she lied. "Diana and I have never had a moment's concern over Phoebe's mental condition, as you put it. She's a good deal more stable than you are, for example."