An Untidy Death Read online

  Contents

  Cover

  Also by Simon Brett

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Also by Simon Brett

  The decluttering mysteries

  THE CLUTTER CORPSE *

  The Fethering mysteries

  BONES UNDER THE BEACH HUT

  GUNS IN THE GALLERY *

  THE CORPSE ON THE COURT *

  THE STRANGLING ON THE STAGE *

  THE TOMB IN TURKEY *

  THE KILLING IN THE CAFÉ *

  THE LIAR IN THE LIBRARY *

  THE KILLER IN THE CHOIR *

  GUILT AT THE GARAGE *

  The Charles Paris theatrical series

  A RECONSTRUCTED CORPSE

  SICKEN AND SO DIE

  DEAD ROOM FARCE

  A DECENT INTERVAL *

  THE CINDERELLA KILLER *

  A DEADLY HABIT *

  The Mrs Pargeter mysteries

  MRS PARGETER’S PACKAGE

  MRS PARGETER’S POUND OF FLESH

  MRS PARGETER’S PLOT

  MRS PARGETER’S POINT OF HONOUR

  MRS PARGETER’S PRINCIPLE *

  MRS PARGETER’S PUBLIC RELATIONS *

  * available from Severn House

  AN UNTIDY DEATH

  Simon Brett

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  First world edition published in Great Britain and the USA in 2021

  by Severn House, an imprint of Canongate Books Ltd,

  14 High Street, Edinburgh EH1 1TE.

  Trade paperback edition first published in Great Britain and the USA in 2022

  by Severn House, an imprint of Canongate Books Ltd.

  This eBook edition first published in 2021 by Severn House,

  an imprint of Canongate Books Ltd.

  severnhouse.com

  Copyright © Simon Brett, 2021

  All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. The right of Simon Brett to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.

  British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

  A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

  ISBN-13: 978-1-78029-128-4 (cased)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-78029-805-4 (trade paper)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-4483-0543-8 (e-book)

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is purely coincidental.

  This eBook produced by

  Palimpsest Book Production Limited,

  Falkirk, Stirlingshire, Scotland

  To

  Frankie Fyfield,

  with love

  ONE

  ‘My mother’s going to kill herself,’ announced Alexandra Richards on Littlehampton Beach.

  I was quite taken aback. I knew that Ingrid Richards had a problem – otherwise her daughter would not have been consulting me – but I didn’t realize it was that serious.

  ‘That is,’ Alexandra went on, ‘if I don’t kill her first.’

  This somehow made things better. Just standard-issue mother/daughter conflict …?

  Perhaps I should explain the basics. My name’s Ellen Curtis. I run a company called SpaceWoman. No, nothing to do with astronauts. My job description, printed on my cards, invoices and the Skoda Yeti which is my work vehicle, reads: ‘Decluttering and Interior Restyling’. I help people when they’ve got too much stuff … or when the stuff they’ve got gets too much for them.

  Alexandra Richards was a typical client. I don’t know how she heard about my services, but she contacted me through the SpaceWoman website and asked to meet. Her mother lived alone in a situation of ‘increasing chaos’ and Alexandra was ‘worried about the Health and Safety issues, apart from anything else.’

  I don’t have an office where clients can visit me. Very few have ever come to my home, only when it’s been an emergency. I live in a three-bedroom house on the northern outskirts of Chichester, and I try to keep my personal and work lives separate. Though I can’t compartmentalize my brain quite so easily – I’m always thinking about my clients – I do try to keep the house as my own space. My two grown-up children are, of course, always welcome there. My daughter Jools, busy working in London, rarely visits. But my son Ben, studying graphic design at Nottingham Trent University, often comes to Chichester during vacations or in times of need.

  Normally, I’d visit a new client at their home, but Alexandra Richards lived in Hastings, way off my regular patch. That patch, incidentally, goes along the south coast from Portsmouth to Brighton and to the north as far as Petersfield or Horsham. So, Alexandra and I had to fix somewhere to meet. I first suggested her mother’s flat, the scene of the crime, as it were, but she was adamantly against that. No surprise to me. In a lot of cases, the hoarder is totally unaware of the enquiries being made on their behalf – and would indeed be deeply affronted to know there were any such enquiries. One of the common qualities of hoarders is complete unawareness that they have any kind of problem.

  Obviously, a lot of my work is highly confidential and over time I have compiled a list of suitable venues for private meetings. Depending on the season, I’ll suggest a coffee shop one can sit outside or a pub. A busy pub is often an ideal place for an intimate discussion. Everyone’s too preoccupied with themselves to consider eavesdropping.

  If the weather’s good, I prefer to suggest meeting outside. There are all kinds of quiet places in the Sussex countryside. Private places to sit and talk. Even better, private places to walk and talk. Best of all from my point of view, private places to walk and talk by the sea.

  I had fixed to meet Alexandra Richards on the beach at Littlehampton. Just by the East Beach Café. That’s a multi-award-winning building designed by Thomas Heatherwick, which looks like the rusty shell of some primeval mollusc. It’s one of the town’s proudest boasts, another attempt to smarten Littlehampton up. But the resort’s ingrained tackiness has always resisted the march of gentrification. The Waitrose that opened there didn’t last long.

  There’s a car park next to the café. Alexandra and I agreed that we’d discuss her problem as we walked along the front, then maybe have a coffee on o
ur way back to the cars.

  She looked somehow faded. I would have put her in her forties, maybe early fifties, getting on for my age. No wedding ring, and she made a point of telling me, almost as soon as we’d said hello, that she lived alone, she’d never been married and didn’t have any children. She needed to get that one out of the way quickly.

  The she gave me a short résumé of her life. She’d been a teacher, an experience which she gave the impression she hadn’t enjoyed much. A legacy from her grandmother had enabled her to give that up and now she did some charity work. Unspecified charity work.

  Tall, slightly lumpy, with a pale freckled face and biscuit-coloured hair that didn’t quite qualify as auburn, Alexandra Richards wore the kind of clothes that had been chosen not to draw attention to herself which, perversely, made her look slightly eccentric. And drew attention to her. A beige raincoat, though it was a warm May day, and almost-masculine brogues.

  The tide was low. The beach at Littlehampton slopes very gradually. High water reduces it to hillocks of uneven shingle, while low tide exposes acres of cement-coloured sand. Swimmers have to walk out a long way before the water reaches even their waists.

  Had it been high tide we’d have walked along the promenade, bordered by a strange piece of artwork made up of wooden slats, some painted in bright colours and claimed to be the ‘longest bench in the world’. But that time of day we could go on to the sand. I suggested to Alexandra that we walked to the right, towards the mouth of the River Arun.

  Her appearance had made me suspect she might be shy, but she turned out to be very forthright. Almost dogmatic.

  ‘It’s got to a point,’ she said, ‘where I realize I have to do something about my mother.’

  ‘How old is she?’

  ‘About to be seventy-five.’

  ‘Does she live with you?’

  ‘God, no.’ The thought actually made her shudder. ‘She lives on her own.’

  ‘How is she mentally?’

  ‘All marbles in place. Or perhaps I should say that she’s as sane as she’s ever been.’ The line was deliberately ambiguous.

  ‘And your father?’

  ‘I’ve never seen much of my father.’

  ‘Ah.’ There was a whole history there, but it wasn’t the moment to investigate it. ‘Where does your mother live?’ I asked.

  ‘Brighton. Well, “Hove actually”, as everyone says.’

  I knew the reference. When asked where they live, residents are reputed to say, ‘Hove, actually’, to distinguish them from their more raffish neighbour.

  ‘A flat in Hove,’ Alexandra went on. ‘That’s where she’s ended up.’

  ‘Implying that she has lived in a lot of different places?’

  ‘You could say that. All over the bloody world.’

  ‘Does that mean you had an unsettled childhood?’

  ‘Why do you ask?’ Alexandra demanded sharply.

  ‘Something in your tone of voice,’ I suggested.

  ‘Huh. Look, this isn’t about me. It’s about my mother.’

  ‘Of course,’ I said, hiding my scepticism. In my line of work, I often learn as much about the person who draws attention to the problem as I do about the one who actually has the problem. Alexandra Richards seemed to fit neatly into that box.

  ‘She’s always collected paper,’ Alexandra went on. ‘Books, magazines, newspapers – particularly newspapers. She claims she has some filing system for them, but so far as I can see, they’re just piled up randomly. And she chain-smokes.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘Gauloises. Those terrible French cigarettes that smell like tyres burning. Can’t get them in England now. But, needless to say, Ingrid has an ex-lover in Paris who keeps her supplied.’

  Interesting, that she referred to her mother by her first name. As I do with mine.

  ‘And,’ said Alexandra, with an air of resignation, ‘she drinks.’

  ‘I see. So, you’re worried that …?’

  ‘I’m worried that one night, halfway down a whisky bottle, she’ll forget to stub out one of her Gauloises properly, pass out and …’

  I nodded. She didn’t need to spell it out. ‘And you’re consulting me about her safety in the flat?’

  ‘Exactly that.’

  ‘From what you say of her, it doesn’t sound as if your mother would welcome my intrusion into her life.’

  ‘You’re right there. She’d hate it.’

  I wasn’t fazed by that. It wasn’t unusual. ‘Is she reclusive?’

  ‘God, no. Rather the reverse. Gregarious to the point of depravity. Any excuse for a party – and if there is one she’s always the centre of it.’

  ‘She sounds like quite a character,’ I said. It’s a description I rarely use as a compliment.

  ‘She’s that all right,’ said Alexandra in a resigned voice. ‘When Ingrid walks into a room, she immediately monopolizes all of the oxygen.’

  We stopped for a moment. There still weren’t many people on the beach, dog-walkers, pensioners taking their daily ration of exercise.

  ‘The thing is …’ Alexandra continued, as if sharing a great confidence, ‘and this makes everything somehow more complicated … my mother’s quite famous. I don’t know if you can imagine what it’s like growing up with that …?’

  ‘Oh,’ I said. ‘I think I can.’

  ‘Are you sure you won’t have another drink?’ asked Fleur.

  ‘No,’ I said wearily. ‘I’ve told you many times. I can’t risk losing my licence. I need the car for my work.’

  ‘Huh,’ came the predictable response. ‘I’m sure you could get work in places you could walk to. There must be an enormous demand for cleaners in Chichester.’

  I didn’t rise to it. I’d heard it too often. Why my mother constantly downgrades my career from decluttering to cleaning, I have no idea, but she’d been doing it so long that I no longer give her the angry response she so craves. She had always diminished me and played down my achievements. In most mother/daughter relationships, the analysis would be that the older woman was jealous of the younger, but in this case, there was nothing for her to be jealous of. She had a level of celebrity, I was just a working widow. And although she’d never take this on board, there was no area of her life in which I had any desire to be competitive.

  In her time, Fleur Bonnier had been a moderately successful actress – no, sorry, her current taste for the politically correct would demand that I say ‘actor’. And perhaps I’m being mean to put the ‘moderately’ in there. She was successful. There were a good few months of which she was the flavour. Perhaps, to be fair, years. She was still to be seen in ancient British movies screened at strange hours on television. Never playing the lead … the flighty friend, the earlier lover rejected in favour of the female star, the murderer’s wife, that kind of part. But she did them well. Fleur Bonnier was a trouper.

  Unfortunately, those months or years of her success had coincided with my childhood. Once her theatre friends had stopped praising her ‘bravery’ in having a child out of wedlock, Fleur rather lost interest in me. Evenings she was on stage, daytimes she was filming for movies or television. I got used to being farmed out to more or less unwilling relatives and friends. I got used to not letting it get to me.

  As I got used to calling her ‘Fleur’. Her idea, obviously. Initially, to give the totally false impression that we were girlie chums. Later, because a galumphing teenager who claimed her as a mother didn’t do much for the age she was trying to live down to.

  Fleur always blamed any shortcomings in her mothering skills on the demands of her profession. Though I don’t think it would have made that much difference if I’d seen more of her, if she’d been a stay-at-home mum. Her consuming obsession with herself didn’t leave any excess affection available for something like a daughter. She had always given me the impression that her life would be more convenient if I wasn’t part of it. Apart from anything else, having a child did rather interfere with her com
plicated romantic entanglements.

  I don’t want to imply that Fleur and I were permanently at daggers drawn. I had long since lowered my expectations of what might be expected from her as a mother and learned not to respond to the permanent trickle of salt with which she dressed my wounds.

  She was currently in one of the more settled periods of her life. Hardly acting at all – she’d had her moment in the sun – Fleur Bonnier was now married to a Chichester solicitor called Kenneth, who spent his weekdays in the office and his weekends playing golf. He gave her free run of his gold card and she suggested – often in public and embarrassingly – that he was rewarded by a sex life beyond his wildest imaginings. Like many of my mother’s boasts, that was one I took with a whole cellarful of salt.

  I had agreed to have Saturday lunch with her in the café at Goodwood Hotel and Health Spa, where her morning had been spent in variegated Lycra having a gentle gym workout. She calculated that this justified a boozy lunch. As ever, she wanted me to match her, Chardonnay glass for Chardonnay glass and, as ever, I had to remind her of the importance of keeping my driving licence. It was a conversational square dance whose steps we had shuffled through many times before.

  ‘Have you heard from Jools recently?’ Fleur asked.

  ‘Not for ten days or so, no.’

  ‘I had a call from her last night.’ There was smugness in the statement. Fleur prided herself on her closeness to her granddaughter, with the implication that I wasn’t as close to my daughter. Which was quite possibly true. Family tragedy had made Jools shut up like a clam. I couldn’t get her to have a serious conversation with me. She was much happier engaging in shallow banter with her grandmother. Together, the pair of them giggled like schoolgirls, Fleur claiming empathy with the younger generation. And again, there was the implication that I was something of a sourpuss, not showing any interest in the world of disposable fashion which my daughter inhabited.

  Though we’d never talked about the subject, Jools knew I disapproved. I’m afraid – though I don’t know why I should apologize for it – that doing what I do has only strengthened my green principles. And I find it hard to forget the statistic that 300,000 tonnes of garments are burnt or buried in the UK every year. Most of it the kind of clothes that Jools prizes and writes about.