David Mitchell - Slade House

Tall purple flowers swayed. “Do you have a dog?”

“No. I find dogs rather … slavish?”

“Slavish or not, they’re better security than a ‘wire clasp thing.’ I’d get a triple mortice lock fitted top, middle and bottom, with a steel frame. People forget a door’s only as tough as its frame. It’ll cost you a bit, but a burglary’ll cost you more.”

“A ‘triple mortar lock’?” Chloe Chetwynd chewed her lip.

Jesus Christ the rich are bloody hopeless. “Look, down at the station we use a contractor. He’s from Newcastle-on-Tyne so you’ll only catch one word in five, but he owes me a favor. Chances are he’ll drop by in the morning if I give him a bell tonight. Would you like me to?”

Chloe Chetwynd did a big dramatic sigh. “Gosh, would you? I’d be so grateful. DIY was never my forté, alas.”

Before I could reply, footsteps came pounding down the side of the house. Two kids were about to appear, running at full pelt, and I even stepped onto the lowest step, to give them a clear run …

… but the footsteps just faded away. Must’ve been kids next door and some acoustic trick. Chloe Chetwynd was giving me an odd look, however. “Did you hear them?”

“Sure I did. Neighbors’ children, right?”

She looked unsure and nothing made sense for a moment. Her grief’s turned her into a bag of nerves, I figured. Inheriting a big old tomb of a house like hers can’t have helped. I regretted not handling her a bit more gently earlier, and gave her my card. “Look, Mrs. Chetwynd, this is my direct line, in case of … anything.”

She gave my card the once-over, then slipped it into her gardening trousers. Against her thigh. “That’s extremely kind. I–I feel safer already.”

The red ivy stuff shivered. “Grief’s a bastard, it really is — pardon my French. It makes everything else harder.” I couldn’t decide what color Chloe Chetwynd’s eyes were. Are. Blue. Gray. Lonely as hell.

The woman asked, “Who did you lose, Detective?”

“Ah, my mum. Leukemia. A long time ago.”

“There’s no such thing as ‘a long time ago.’ ”

I felt all examined. “Did your husband die in an accident?”

“Pancreatic cancer. Stuart lived longer than the doctors predicted, but … In the end, you know …” The evening sun lit the softest fuzz on her upper lip. She swallowed, hard, and looked at her wrist as if there was a watch there, though there wasn’t. “Gosh, look at the time. I’ve detained you long enough, Detective. May I walk you back to the offending door?”

We walked under a tree that’d shed lots of little leaves shaped like fans. I plucked a waist-high weed from the side of the lawn. “Golly gosh,” sighed Mrs. Chetwynd, “I’ve let this poor garden go to wrack and ruin, haven’t I?”

“Nothing a little elbow grease couldn’t put right.”

“I’ll need industrial quantities of the stuff to tame this jungle, alas.”

“I’m surprised you don’t employ a gardener,” I said.

“We did, a Polish chap, but after Stuart died he left to pursue other career opportunities. With a brand-new Flymo.”

I asked, ‘Did you report the theft?”

She looked at her nails. “I just couldn’t face the kerfuffle. There was so much else to see to. Pathetic of me, really, but …”

“I only wish I’d known. So I could’ve helped.”

“That’s very sweet.” We passed under a trellissey-thing with purple and white flowers hanging down. “If it’s not nosey of me,” she asks, “were you in Slade Alley on police business when you found the door? Or were you just passing through, by chance?”

Famous Fred Pink’d slipped my mind the moment I set foot in the garden. “Police business, as it happens.”

“Gosh. Nothing majorly unpleasant, I hope.”

“Majorly daft, I suspect — unless the names ‘Norah Grayer’ or ‘Rita and Nathan Bishop’ mean anything to you, on the off-chance?”

She frowned: “ ‘Norah Grayer’ … no. Odd name. Are the Bishops that husband and wife team who present the breakfast show on ITV?”

“No,” I replied. “Not to worry. It’s a bit of a saga.”

We’d come to the end of the stony path but instead of showing me out, Chloe Chetwynd sat down on a low wall by a sundial. “My frantic social calendar just happens to be empty this evening,” she said, a bit foxily, “if you’re in the mood for telling me the saga, Detective?”

Why hurry back to my poky flat? I got my smokes out of my leather jacket. “May I? And would you?”

“Yes you may; and yes I would. Thank you.”

So I joined her on the low wall, lit one for her, one for me. “Okay, Part One. Rita and Nathan Bishop were a mother and son who lived over near the station, and who disappeared in 1979. Enquiries were made, but when the investigating officer found out that Rita Bishop was up to her eyeballs in debt and had relatives in Vancouver, it was assumed she’d skipped town, and the case sort of petered out.” A light breeze blew the woman’s cigarette smoke into my face, but I didn’t mind. “On to Part Two. Six weeks ago, a man named Fred Pink woke up in the coma ward of the Royal Berkshire Hospital.”

“Now him I do know,” said Chloe Chetwynd. “He was in the Mail on Sunday: ‘The Window-Cleaner Who Came Back From the Dead.’ ”

“That’s the man.” I tapped ash onto the top of the wall where a few ants were crawling around. “When not enjoying his fifteen minutes of fame, Fred Pink was down the town library, catching up on the local papers. Which is where he came across an article about the Bishops’ disappearance — and lo and behold, he recognized them. Or thinks he did. Says he even spoke with Rita Bishop, the mum, out there”—I nod at the small black iron door—“in Slade Alley, around three o’clock, October twenty-seventh, 1979. A Saturday.”

Chloe Chetwynd looked politely astonished. “That’s precise.”

“It was an unforgettable day, for him, you see. After Rita Bishop had asked him if he knew where ‘Norah Grayer’s residence’ was, Fred Pink lugged his ladder out of Slade Alley onto Westwood Road, where a speeding taxi knocked him into his nine-year coma.”

“What a story!” Chloe Chetwynd’s sandal, dangling from her big toe, dropped off. “But if this ‘Norah Grayer’ character really is minor gentry, she can’t be that difficult to track down.”

I made a gesture of agreement. “You’d think so, but our searches so far have only drawn blanks. Assuming she exists.”

Chloe Chetwynd inhaled, held the smoke in her lungs, and breathed out. “Well, if she did exist, and did live around here, she’d probably live in Slade House — our house. Mine, that is. But Stuart and I bought the house from people called Pitt, not Grayer, and they’d lived here for years.”

“Since before 1979?” I asked.

“Since before the war, I believe. And as for me, in 1979 I was a History of Art postgrad living in Luxembourg and finishing a thesis on Ruskin. Of course, Detective, you’re more than welcome to bring in the sniffer dogs, or dredge the pond, if you think it’ll help …”

A squirrel darted across the clumpy lawn and vanished into a rhubarb patch. I wondered who the hell Ruskin was. “I don’t think that’ll be necessary, Mrs. Chetwynd. After everything Fred Pink’s been through, my chief super thought we should do him the courtesy of following up his lead, but to be honest, strictly between you and me, we’re not expecting anything to come of it.”

Chloe Chetwynd nodded. “That’s decent of you, to show Mr. Pink you’re taking him seriously. And I do hope that the Bishops are alive and well somewhere.”

“If I were a betting man, I’d put a sizable chunk on them being alive, well and solvent somewhere in British Columbia.” The moon was above the chimneys and TV aerials. My imagination opened one side of its dirty mac and showed me a picture of Chloe Chetwynd squirming on her back, under me. “Well, I really ought to be off. I’ll tell the contractor to come round the main entrance, shall I?”