Sophie Hannah - A Game for All the Family

I don’t want to live at Speedwell House anymore. I don’t want Ellen sleeping in Perrine Ingrey’s old bedroom, or whatever the murderous murdered child’s real name was. It’s all I can do to keep my mouth shut so that I don’t blurt this out.

“You all right, darling?” Alex asks me.

I nod. Now would be too soon to say anything, even to ask more forcefully to see Ellen’s story. I need to know, first, that I’m not wrong. The detective I hired should be able to find out if the family living at Speedwell House during the 1980s had three daughters, one of whom was murdered.

A well-known local secret. Don’t tell the stupid Londoners—let them buy the doomed house so we can laugh at them behind their backs.

The doorbell rings. And carries on ringing. There’s an index finger pressing hard. It stops after nearly five seconds of solid noise. Figgy, who was asleep under the kitchen table, starts to bark ferociously and scoots out of the room toward the front door.

“Early-morning harassment,” grumbles Alex as I get up to go and see who it is.

I have to find Figgy’s leash and attach it to his collar before I can open the door, or else he’ll be off and we might never see him again. This takes several minutes, during which time there are two more short rings of the bell.

I find a policeman in uniform on the doorstep. He’s middle-aged with a scrawny neck, stick-thin legs and a fat middle section in between. His face is red with dozens of small purple flecks from broken veins. It reminds me of a terrine.

“Well, it was a toss-up which was going to happen first,” he says. “Me calling on you or you calling on me. I’m glad I beat you to it—saves you the bother, too. I’m here now.” His Devon accent is stronger than I would have believed possible. He bends down and pats Figgy on the head repeatedly. “Hello, little fella!”

Figgy lowers his head and slides out from under—a sensible reaction to being treated like a drum by an irritating stranger.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I say. “If DC Luce has delegated me to you, please tell him I don’t find that acceptable.”

“Euan Luce?”

“Yes. Has he sent you? About the phone calls I’ve been getting?”

“Ah, you know Euan then, do you?” He seems to think this is a pleasing coincidence. Fancy that: me, a person, knowing DC Luce, another person who probably lives less than a mile away—who’d have thought it?

“What phone calls are you talking about, Mrs. . . . ? Mrs. . . . ?” He turns his head and offers me his ear, as if I’m trying to tell him my name and he can’t hear me.

“If you’re not here about phone calls, why are you here?”

“About the signs.” He nods as if he’s said something profound and makes the shape of a square with his fingers.

“What signs?”

“ ‘What signs?’ says she! You ought to know, since you’ve got one yourself. I expect you’ve not been out yet this morning, with it being so early. If you’d care to step outside, you’ll see what I’m talking about.”

“I’ve got nothing on my feet. Can you please explain what you mean?”

“You don’t have to come far. It’s right here.” He points at the wall in front of him, next to the front door. He must mean the stone plaque with the house’s name on it. Does he really want me to come outside and inspect it? I know very well what my own home is called.

“Wait a second,” I say. None of my shoes are near the door. My flip-flops are nowhere in sight, even though I left them right here last night. Moving necessary footwear to untraceable locations is Figgy’s favorite hobby. There’s a pair of green boots—Alex’s. I pull them on and step out into perfection that even the policeman’s presence can’t spoil: the dew-soaked grass sloping down to the ranks of leafy evergreen trees; the gorgeous winter sun; the sound of oars brushing water aside; the smell of the sea.

For a moment I forget what I’m doing out here with the policeman. Then I remember and turn and look at the house sign. Over the words “Speedwell House,” someone has stuck a colored, shiny plastic . . . thing. I don’t know what to call it. A sticker, I suppose: big and square. The background’s purple and the writing on it is turquoise. It says “ Tide Glider, ” and completely covers the house’s name.

“You’ll want to peel that off,” says the policeman. “Yours is the only one this side of the river, far as we can work out, but you should see ’em over Dartmouth side. Houses on the boats, boats on the houses. Imagine if your doggy got lost and someone read his little silver medallion to see where to bring him back to—you don’t want them delivering him to a dinghy over by the jetty, do you? I’d be peeling right now, if I were you.”

This man might have many talents, but using words to convey meaning is not one of them. “Can you please tell me what you’re talking about in a way that makes sense?” I say. “ Tide Glider is . . . the name of a boat, I assume?”

“Oh yes. Last night, while you and I were getting our shut-eye, someone was awake playing silly beggars. They must have planned it, cuz I’ve seen nearly thirty of those big plastic sticker things so far, and that’d take time to do. Seen ’em on houses and seen ’em on boats, I have. Swapped! House names on all the boats attached to the jetty this morning, with the signs covering up the boats’ proper names—including your one, Tide Glider .”

“I don’t have a boat called Tide Glider ,” I tell him through gritted teeth. “I’ve never owned one, sailed in one or heard of one. Never heard the name until I read it just now.”

“I wasn’t saying you did.” He widens his eyes at me. “I’m saying there’s boats all over the show with their names covered up with house name stickers: The Old Forge, Lilac Cottage, The Laburnums, what have you. Speedwell House is on one of them, which is why I come here. I wondered, see. Meanwhile, there’s a fair few houses—the ones whose names I’ve mentioned, and others besides—with boat names stuck over their signs: Oh, Buoy! , Watersprite , Wave Weaver . Local paper’s doing a piece about it. I think the photographer’s over at the jetty now, snapping the boats. If you want to pose next to your new sign, give the paper a bell.”

I claw at the “ Tide Glider ” sticker with my fingernails but can’t prize loose a single corner. The policeman tries to help and ends up bashing his fingers into mine. I push his hands away and he shrugs as if to say, “No pleasing some people.”

“Let me get this right,” I say. “You’re honestly telling me that during the night, someone has gone out with a load of these big industrial-adhesive stickers and put boat names on houses and house names on boats? And all these names belong to actual houses and boats—they’re not made up?”

“Oh, no, they’re all real. And yes, you’ve hit it on the nail. That’s what’s happened. As to why, I couldn’t tell you. There’s always a practical joker out to commit mischief, isn’t there? I take it you heard nothing during the night—because someone was stood right here at some point, weren’t they? Sticking it on.”

Her name arrives in my head as the obvious answer: Anne Donbavand. Outside my house at two in the morning, her nasty fingers smoothing down the sticker . . .

“It might be more than a joke,” I tell the policeman.

“How so?”

“Someone wants to create confusion about which house is which and which boat is which.”

“Now why would they want that?”

Because they’re unbalanced.

Isn’t there a Bible story about houses being marked for some kind of attack? I shiver.