Chapter One
‘Upon her tomb, we cast sweet flowers.’
‘Sweet flowers to her whom death from us hath parted,’ Two separate voices, but both concentrated on the same section of a tricky fugue, both working away, oblivious to each other, in different keys. Two cars arrived simultaneously at the short curving drive, the larger of the two reversing slightly to allow the rather battered old mini to precede it. The man was first out of the car, while the woman fumbled around collecting shopping, handbag, and briefcase, before following him up the path to the cottage.
It was a compact but pretty building, its windows small-paned and set low in the thick flint walls. The door was a masterpiece of age-blackened wood and iron studding, and the roof thatched. Built about two hundred and fifty years ago, the inside could not boast one level floor, and oddly placed low beams lurked to catch the unwary visitor. It was not a large home, but admirable suited to a childless professional couple. Small enough to be easily kept clean, its only demanding feature was the garden, which ran to a quarter of an acre, but which was tended twice a week by a jobbing gardener.
At the door they met, and the man juggled six library books into one hand to open it, and then followed her into the hall.
‘Good day, Ginny?’
‘Not bad. And you, Richard?’
‘Had some good finds at the library. Pity I can’t get stuck into them until after the weekend.’
‘Oh hell, yes,’ she replied. ‘I’d almost managed to forget about our forthcoming ordeal.’
‘Goodness only knows how,’ he commented, sinking into a deep-cushioned armchair and shedding his shoes.
Virginia, with the practised ease of long habit, walked over to a walnut sideboard and poured two brandies, holding one out to her husband, who took it, and stretched his legs out so that his feet rested on the beaten-copper fender. Lifting the glass, he looked at his wife and proposed a toast. ‘Let’s hope we knock six bells out of old Hector tonight,’ he said, and swallowed the fiery spirit in one gulp.
Richard Grainger was general manager at an engineering works during the day, and spent his evenings engrossed in every volume of detective fiction he could lay his hands on. He was forty years old, his hair already white at the temples, but with a face that still resembled that of a mischievous seven-year-old – slightly freckled, and with cheeky green eyes.
His wife, Virginia, was two years his junior, short and plump with long brown hair and eyes that exactly matched her husband’s in colour and expression. She ran her own consultancy, known professionally as ‘TroubleShooters Ltd.’ and spent her working life travelling from firm to firm advising on business strategy and – well, troubleshooting for them, like it said on her business cards and in her advertisements.
Some months ago, when the nights were long, dark, cold stretches, and the earth still slept, waiting for the warmth of spring, they had both been subject to a serious bout of boredom. This was an annual grip of discontent, and coincided with a contract for Virginia with a firm of Standchester accountants, where it had taken some time to sort out their problems and put them back on track financially.
Waller, Makepeace and Crichton had operated in an inefficient way for quite a while, and were really feeling the pinch. It had been a straightforward choice for them, either to rationalise and streamline their systems and staffing levels, or call it a day. Virginia’s remit was to give them the chance to get their heads above water and, hopefully, leave them not drowning, but waving. It had seemed vastly amusing at the time, that a firm of accountants should have difficulty balancing its own books, but if they took her advice, the financial scales should be levelled.
During this time, friendship flourished with one of the partners, and she and Olivia Crichton took to spending their lunchtimes together in The Wheatsheaf, a pub a few doors away from the offices. Over their half-pints of shandy and pasties, Virginia voiced her discontent and restlessness, and Olivia immediately suggested that she and Richard should audition for the local choral society. She and her current ‘friend’ Maurice Larchwood were both members, and would be happy to arrange everything.
So enthusiastic was she that Virginia was completely swept along with the idea, and it was not until she was driving home that night that the full realisation of what she had agreed to dawned on her. Olivia was going to arrange two auditions for the following Friday night, and now she would have to explain it all to Richard.
Although Standchester was very picturesque, boasting a trio of Gothic-revival churches, an old market cross, and genuine Roman remains, it was also fifteen miles from their cosy weather-proof home in Little Marden. A fifteen-mile drive through a wet spring dusk after a hard day’s work, for a seven thirty start, was a pastime vastly over-rated in Richard’s opinion and, at first, he was opposed to the idea. It took quite a bit of persuasive talk, and the use of her feminine wiles, to win him over, but he was bored too, and the thought of escaping on Friday nights from the almost deserted off-season ghost town on the outskirts where they lived, was quite an attractive one. A new challenge would invigorate them both, he decided, as he finally consented to the venture.
As Little Marden is a seaside town, it only really has two seasons in its year. Summer lasts from May to September, when the narrow high street and the beach seethe with sweaty incomers, seemingly embalmed in Factor 15. October to April is the off-season, when the misty coastal rains drift like lazy curtains through the almost empty streets where many of the shops are locked and shuttered, their proprietors as seasonal as their customers. It always seemed ironic to Virginia that those who feel they must live by the sea cannot get near it in the warm weather, while the foul weather of winter, and the frequent spring and autumn storms, kept them by their own firesides, away from the crashing grey of the salty waves and the straggling piles of rotting seaweed.
And now, escape loomed on Friday evenings, along with the challenge of a completely new pastime – choral singing. Both of them were reasonably musically competent, and enjoyed the shared use of the ancient baby grand in their study, but both felt almost paralysed with embarrassment at the thought of singing solo at an audition.
That first evening, the hall seemed bigger than anything they had imagined: the stage held a full choir of up to a hundred. For performances, an apron at the front would accommodate a full orchestra, and the rest of the hall could hold an audience of several hundred.
They were allowed to take a place in the choir for this rehearsal, taking a stab at which parts they might be assigned to if they were invited to join, but at nine thirty, when all the other singers were on their way home, they remained behind to face their fears alone.
Oh, the loneliness of that stage, ‘ah-ah-ah-ing’ to major and minor scales and arpeggios, was like being the only person left alive in the world. Virginia sang her audition piece, her voice shaking slightly with fear held barely in control, her legs mirroring the tremor to such an extent that she felt she would keel over. The piece took centuries to sing. The chandeliers became undying stars set in the great dome of the hall, and it would never end. Next came sight-singing, and she knew she would have to sing and tremble until the end of time, when the universe would be no more, and the rising and falling melody would accompany her into the void. And then, suddenly it was all over. ‘Welcome to Standchester Choral Society, Mrs Grainger,’ said the secretary, extending her hand in congratulation. ‘You start next week as a first alto.’
The first half of her ordeal over, she went into the foyer, to wait while Richard did his bit. ‘Oh, God, I hope he gets in.’
‘Of course he will. Stop worrying,’ soothed Olivia, in a voice like that used to calm a child frightened of the dark.
‘But he’ll never forgive me if I get in and he doesn’t – dragging him all this way to be humiliated. We should never have come. I should never have listened to you.
‘Don’t be a berk,’ muttered her friend, straightening the seam of one of her fishnet stockings to the obvious appreciation of her companion Maurice, as Richard sang his final notes, and the music was replaced with speaking voices, muffled and made unintelligible by the large swing doors that separated them.
Silence. An eternity of silence, and then he bounded out of the hall, grinning all over his face. ‘First bass,’ he announced, sounding like a baseball commentator, and whisked the others off for a triumphant drink, while the other three hopefuls auditioning that evening went through their nervous paces.
Almost next door to the hall was a pub with the unusual name ‘The Cat and Footstool’, and there they raised glasses to wet their parched vocal chords, and toast the two newest members of the Standchester Choral Society. ‘Who were the other poor sods suffering the tortures of the damned?’ asked Virginia, after downing her half of lager in a few swift gulps.
‘Don’t know two of them, but one’s an old member – name of Silkin.’
‘What, old Dave?’ asked Maurice. ‘Poor old bugger. He’s had some really rotten luck the last year or so.’
‘Well, if he’s an old member, how come he has to audition, then?’ asked Richard, puzzled.
‘If you’re missing for any length of time now, they make you re-audition.’
‘New rule.’ Maurice completed the explanation.
‘Good grief! Did you hear that, Richard?’ spluttered Virginia.
‘Yes,’ he replied, ‘and I also just heard the bell for last orders. Anyone for another?’ Three glasses were held out to join his own, and he headed once more for the bar.
The Graingers had joined the society at a good time. A new work was started on their very first rehearsal night – Hector Berlioz’s Romeo and Juliet – a work that only one or two other members had performed before, and it was, therefore, as new to them as it was to Virginia and Richard, who were in great trepidation, having to sit and sight-read amongst so many old-timers, some of whom had been there for over twenty-five years.
The accompaniment for the rehearsals was provided by an excellent grand piano and the frenzied fingers of Lloyd Fenton. A short, stocky individual, he darted from place to place when not metaphorically chained to his music stool, with all the energy of a human firework, his large dark eyes twinkling mischievously. He was the most outrageous punster, and knew all the choral in-jokes, as he had been a member for eighteen years, most of them as a singer. Sometime later he had been promoted to paid piano accompanist, and knew just how to spark off the dry wit of the chorus master, Karl Dzhanovich.
Dzhanovich was physically the complete opposite of Lloyd, being a gaunt six-and-a-half feet tall, about sixty years old, and with a thatch of white hair which stuck up in clumps where he ran his hands through it, in either thought or frustration. With his habit of stooping his head between his shoulders, and surveying the tiers of singers with his cold blue glare, he bore more than a passing resemblance to an undernourished vulture. The son of an Albanian refugee, he had settled in England to launch a fairly distinguished musical career, and had ended up here, in semi-retirement, doing what he enjoyed most at a pace of his own dictation.
Virginia and Richard settled in quickly, and it was a month later that they were introduced to one of the society’s quarterly get-togethers. ‘They’re known as “social suppers”,’ explained Olivia, as the two couples, now a regular foursome, drove over to Standchester. ‘I call them ‘SS flings’: the nights of the long knives.’
‘Watch it, Olivia,’ called Maurice from the front seat.
‘Don’t be silly, Maurice. You know how some of those old cats go straight for your shoulder blades. If my dress is in the physical tatters that their sharp tongues will metaphorically reduce it to, I shall be going home naked tonight.’
‘Give over. She’s exaggerating, Virginia. Don’t listen to a word she says.’ Mentally resolving to erect her slander shield, Virginia dredged up a cheery smile, and assured Maurice that she would take absolutely no notice of her friend’s warning.
The usually bare ante-room of Assembly Hall had a long run of tables stretched down its centre, all of which were covered with plates of little goodies – expensive little goodies, in fact. All in attendance had paid five pounds per ticket, and value must be seen to be given. The hall was already half-full of chattering groups, most of which were congregated down the north side, where tables and chairs had been placed. Maurice and Richard headed for the bar, while the two women grabbed a table by the simple action of reserving it with their jackets, and then stacked their plates with soggy biscuits (‘Hide them under your napkin, dear’) topped with smoked salmon and asparagus (‘Get a good load. For what we have to pay, they always go first, then the old cats scandalise about who was seen to help themselves to the most’).
The high point of that first social evening was provided by one of the second altos, Dorothy Everton. Known privately as ‘Everton Outsize’, she was a large woman, who no doubt secretly owned a state pension book, but would not allow either her mind, or her body, to acknowledge the fact. Tonight her bulky figure was squeezed in to a sequinned tube of a dress, now sadly misshapen by the unexpected but novel bulges of her figure, and set off by a trailing ten-foot feather boa. (In fact, she looks just like a badly stuffed sausage, out for a night on the tiles, thought Virginia, then chided herself for such uncharacteristic bitchiness.)
Normally a formidable character with an acid tongue, Dorothy was well-mellowed by drink and, after an hour of keeping the barman company, she tottered precariously from her high stool across to where Karl was engrossed in earnest conversation with Lloyd. No one really noticed, when she insinuated herself into the chorus master’s company, but when voices began to be raised, the buzz of other conversations across the hall decrescendoed. As almost all the assembled company had been awaiting something of the sort (not the first time she had caused a drunken scene, and more than likely not the last either), it was as if the whole hall held its breath. Through the only remaining sound, the clink of glasses from the bar staff, she began to speak again, or rather to slur.
‘No, I will have my say, Karl – Mr Dzhanovich. I hope you don’t mind me addressing you.’ She broke off here, as if she had lost track of what she was saying, and then, with a whoop of glee, she continued, ‘It’s much better than undressing you though, isn’t it. Couldn’t possible publically expose your lily-whi –’
Pat Reid, the society’s secretary, who had been standing near the chorus master, shot into action, accidentally-on-purpose throwing her drink at the inebriated woman, and then escorting her from the hall, while she still squawked her protest at the clumsiness of the ‘accident’.
Olivia’s head was on the table, her shoulders shaking with laughter, her mass of curly hair resting on her crumb-strewn plate. Finally, she felt capable of speech and, lifting her head, said, ‘Lily-white bum – that’s what she was going to say. I just know it; I can feel it in my water. What does she know about Karl’s lily-white bum that we don’t?’ and then she dived back towards the table, but this time her mirth was cut short. Maurice was starting to fizz and spit.
‘What are you going on about Dzhanovich’s lily-white bum for? Have you been fantasising about it? Do you want to see it for yourself? Or perhaps you already have, and you don’t want to believe that obese old cat is having a good old ogle too.’
It was only then that they noticed that Dorothy was not the only one who had had too much to drink. Maurice, of whose jealousy Olivia had often confided to Virginia, his face suffused an angry purple, eyes staring wildly, was gripping the edge of the table as he spoke. ‘Maybe you’ve laid your hands all over him, run your cheating little fingers over his naked skin. Maybe you know more than anyone in this room about that old lecher’s emaciated body. I’ve seen him eyeing up the women, and some of the men as well. Has he been giving you more than just the eye? Is he knocking you off?’ His voice rose with his temper, and was mirrored physically, as he got slowly and unsteadily to his feet. Many pairs of eyes were swivelling towards their table, fascinated by the possibility of another embarrassing scene.
‘Shut up, Maurice. You’re talking rubbish, and you know it,’ hissed Olivia, her mirth gone, her face now white.
Virginia had never before witnessed her friend’s lover in the grip of this violent emotion, and instinctively moved her chair back an inch or two. Richard put a hand on Maurice’s shoulder to restrain and calm him, but this action had completely the opposite effect to that which he’d intended. ‘Take your hands off me. Do you take me for a fool? I realise now what’s been going on. Does the old foreign fart satisfy you, my dear sweet whore? Eh? Eh? Well, be warned. If I ever get him alone, I’ll lay my own hands on him – right round his scraggy old throat, the bastard.’
Following Pat Reid’s earlier example and, with a remarkable aim for one now so thoroughly rattled, Olivia drenched him from head to toe with the contents of the water jug. Caught unawares, he slapped her brutally across the face, knocking her sideways, and almost making her lose her balance. Gasping from the blow, she tried to reassure him. ‘Maurice, this is utter nonsense, and you know it. Why do you have to act like this, when you know it’s you I want? I don’t know whether this is just the drink talking, or whether you’re actually mad,’ this last uttered in an undertone. The four had made their exit after that, supporting a now profusely apologetic and unsteady Maurice between them.
Richard drove home, while Olivia tried to explain away his behaviour. ‘I should have kept a better eye on him. One drink too many, and one wrong word from me, and he’s off on one. At least you’ve seen for yourselves what he can be like, now.’
‘But that was ridiculous,’ replied Virginia. ‘You and Karl? It’s so irrational.’ Maurice snored noisily in the back seat, while Olivia continued, a trifle smugly, ‘I know, and worth a dozen red roses and a champagne supper, when he sobers up. If it weren’t for his charming apologies, and his whopping great bank balance, I’d have given hi. . .
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