‘And there was never any mention of the time she lived in the city?’ The female detective’s voice had taken on a softer note as she registered Cynthia’s distress.
Cynthia shook her head. ‘No.’
‘It may just be a coincidence.’ The male detective carefully re-capped his pen. ‘But the young lady Miss Tizard used to share a flat with in London disappeared under strange circumstances too. Unfortunately no trace of her was ever found. Are you completely sure Miss Tizard never mentioned this to you?’
‘Quite, sure.’ Cynthia collected herself, straightened her spine. ‘How dreadful. Do you suppose the same person.?’ She shuddered eloquently, pressing a handkerchief to her lips.
The female detective shrugged. ‘It was several years ago. Perhaps, as my colleague said, a coincidence.’
Numbed and troubled by this ghastly event in her life, Cynthia Peeling started sleeping badly. She had horrifying and revolting dreams, which left a sour taste in her mouth, but the details of which she had difficulty recalling. The only one she could remember was that in which she had witnessed a coarse and brazen Emma Tizard violently making love with Mr Peeling. To make it worse, Cynthia had enjoyed the dream. Her waking self found sex rather ridiculous and unnecessarily messy. Rodney Peeling had been puzzled by the peculiar looks his wife had given him over breakfast on Thursday morning.
The police could not solve the mystery of Emma’s death. During the next week, television reconstructions of Emma’s supposed last movements, and flashes of telephone numbers which people could contact to give information served only to remind Cynthia of the grotesque horror of her neighbour’s murder. The tabloid press found out about the occult angle, and lurid headlines suggested the dead girl’s involvement in Satanism, inferring she had been the victim of a ritual killing. Everyone on the estate who had known Emma agreed that the occult stories were rubbish.
The day of the funeral dawned unexpectedly dull and overcast, after a week of sunshine. A sizeable group of Willowdale Farm residents gathered in cars around Wren’s Nest to escort the funeral cortege to the crematorium. Emma’s mother and father, who introduced themselves as Ruby and Steven, had arrived the night before. Ruby Tizard was a frumpy sparrow of a creature who wore grandmotherly hats. The Peelings had kindly offered them accommodation for the night, because Mrs Tizard was obviously too upset to spend it in her dead daughter’s bed, the only one available in Wren’s Nest. The Tizards were strangely reluctant to enter the bungalow at all. Cynthia supposed that was because of their grief, and was sorry she couldn’t offer them more comfort. She wondered whether she should comment on the newspaper stories, and make it clear how wrong they were, but decided it was too soon to broach such an intimate subject.
To make things worse, the funeral, which should have been a dignified occasion, was fraught with minor mishaps and irritations. The minister whom the Tizards had especially wanted to lead the service telephoned at the last minute to tell them with unctuous apology that a family emergency prevented him travelling south. A quick replacement from the local church proved unsatisfactory, since the man knew nothing of Emma, save what he’d read in the papers, which didn’t give him much scope for a moving, personal sermon. As he swayed before the congregation, singing the praises of a girl he’d never met, the lights in the chapel flickered, threatening a total failure that never quite happened and the public address system, which should have carried his voice to the furthest ear, spluttered and buzzed, reducing the earnest tones to a wobbling fart. Halfway through the service, Lily Treen’s young son began to scream inexplicably. When Lily took him into the hall outside, he threw up with gusto on to the marble tiles. Everybody must have heard. Mrs Tizard began to cry. Afterwards, when questioned and consequently disbelieved, the child gabbled incoherently about a nasty lady who had put out her tongue at him. From what the adults could gather, the tongue had been black
The following morning, Cynthia Peeling offered to accompany the Tizards to Wren’s Nest to look over Emma’s belongings, so they could decide what they wanted to keep once the police had finished with everything. Cynthia thought this was the most forlorn and depressing of post mortem tasks.
Mr Tizard opened the front door of Wren’s Nest and the three of them shuffled inside. This was only the third time Cynthia had ever set foot in the place. Emma had often popped over to share a quick coffee with her neighbour, especially in the summer, but reciprocal invitations had been non-existent. It certainly couldn’t have been because Emma was ashamed of her home. The walls were papered in the most modern, expensive prints that money could buy and the furnishings bore the stamp of a top interior design house.
‘What a peculiar smell!’ Mr Tizard exclaimed as he went into the lounge. Cynthia Peeling followed him and sniffed.
‘What is it?’ queried Emma’s mother querulously from the hall.
‘Nothing alarming!’ Cynthia was conscious of her voice being too loud and jolly. ‘Some kind of perfume. A bit stale, that’s all. The windows have been closed.’ The smell was strange. It caught at the back of the throat, half pleasant, half noxious. Had Emma Tizard been burning incense of some kind? Cynthia firmly dismissed a rising sense of unease.
‘She was such a tidy girl,’ Mrs Tizard said, standing pathetically in the doorway, holding her handbag in front of her. The place didn’t look lived in. No ornaments, no books, no magazines, no sense at all of occupation.
It looks like a show home, Cynthia thought. She examined the gleaming hi-fi system and television. It appeared they had never been used.
‘I don’t think she lived in this room much,’ Cynthia said.
Moving close together, the three of them advanced into the dining-room. Here, the same clinical tidiness prevailed. In a drawer, Mr Tizard discovered a stainless steel cutlery set still wrapped in plastic. ‘Emma didn’t entertain much, it seems,’ he said.
‘No, she never brought friends home, not that we saw,’ Cynthia Peeling said. She eased herself past the Tizards and went quickly through the dove grey and pale lemon kitchen that bristled with factory-new appliances. ‘Perhaps we’ll find more sense of her in her workroom.’
When Cynthia opened the door to Emma’s workroom, all three of them uttered shocked sounds. Not because of anything unpleasant exactly, but just because of the contrast between the workroom and the rest of Emma’s home. There was a choking stench of stale cigarette smoke and alcohol. Thick blue velvet curtains were drawn across the window. Cynthia quickly went to open it, craving fresh air. She threw back the curtains. Beyond them, the window was frosted. It was not a big room, perhaps partitioned off from the bathroom. There was barely space for the large, ancient desk under the window and the huge cupboard against the far wall. Bookshelves lined the walls from floor to ceiling, apart from a place opposite the door where a huge, gilt-framed mirror hung. Papers were strewn everywhere; ashtrays overflowed on to elderly coffee-mug rings; an easel stood folded in a corner draped with rags. Empty gaps in the clutter suggested items which had been taken away by the police.
’Yes, well, I certainly think we have a sense of Emma here,’ Mr Tizard said dryly.
‘You think so?’ Cynthia Peeling was not so sure. What they had found here had little link with the girl she’d thought Emma to be. It was so sloppy, almost aggressively so. Books leaned everywhere on the shelves; there were volumes on mysticism, erotica, occultism and a pile of cheap, tawdry novels. Cynthia shook her head. She picked up a small book that had been lying open on the desk. A chapter entitled ‘Higher Levels of Awareness’ had been heavily underlined in places. ‘Polarity disposition. Ritual dissimulation and embodiment.’ It made no sense but still disturbed her, made her skin prickle. Unpleasant thoughts were starting to form and, superstitiously, Cynthia had no wish to think ill of the dead.