Chapter Twenty-Seven
Before Jane and Dexter leave the handsome man in the Vale of Health, Jane turns back to ask him one last question. “Is there anyone else around here? Anyone we could talk to who might know what happened to Daisy? Who knows the family?”
“Not really,” says the handsome man. “People come and go, anyone who might have known the family probably left years ago, and the people who’ve stayed didn’t know the family.
If anything, you hit the jackpot with George.
He knows Daisy better than most people. But there is a woman—she lives just around there, up that path, Larch Cottage—and I know she sometimes used to collect Daisy from school and bring her home, sit with her for a while. ”
“Oh! Amazing! What’s her name?”
“Jane, I think.”
“Same as me!”
“You’re called Jane?”
“I am.”
“Well, nice to meet you, Jane. I’m Spencer.”
“Nice to meet you, Spencer.” Jane shakes his hand, feels a hit of something pleasantly scintillating in the touch of his skin against hers, thinks: Down, Jane, down, and then says goodbye.
The Other Jane comes to the door of her tiny clapboard cottage.
She is small and pretty and wears her silver hair in a bun, and lots and lots of eyeliner.
She looks about sixty-five. Behind her Jane sees a strong aesthetic message: clashing patterns, rampaging wall art, bright colors, chandeliers. “Hello,” she says, “are you Jane?”
“Yes.” The woman smiles warmly, quite happy, it appears, to see randoms on her doorstep at four thirty in the afternoon. “What can I do for you?”
“I wonder,” says Jane, “if you happen to know anything about Daisy Black, the girl who lives up the lane? My stepson went to school with her and he’s trying to track her down for a reunion. But nobody seems to know where she lives these days. And the nice man around the corner, Spencer—”
“Oh yes, I know Spencer. Lovely man. Him and his lovely boy.”
Jane nods and makes a mental note of the fact that there doesn’t appear to be a Mrs. Spencer in the picture. “Well, he told us that you sometimes used to collect Daisy from school? When she was small? I wondered if maybe you’d kept in touch with her at all?”
Jane looks beyond Jane and Dexter, from left to right, as though there may be others lurking out of sight in this silent, deserted backwater. “Why don’t you come in?” she says. “If you have time?”
They follow her through the tiny door and straight into her cozy living room, which smells of scented candles and expensive furniture polish. She gets them each a glass of water and invites them to sit side by side on two small tapestry poufs.
At the back of the room, French doors open out onto a tiny courtyard garden crammed with potted plants.
Jane spies a black cat curled up in a shaft of sunlight.
She thinks: This is nice, small, manageable.
She thinks: I could live here. And then she remembers that she has four huge dogs and sighs softly.
“Daisy Black,” says the Other Jane. “Gosh. I mean, where to start. Such a funny little girl. Grumpy. Very grumpy. And then of course she went to big school, and I barely saw her again. But you”—she glances at Dexter—“you went to school with her?”
Dexter shrugs and smiles. “Well, not for that long.”
“No, because she left, didn’t she? Early?”
“That’s right,” Dexter rejoins smoothly.
“Just after lockdown. I never really saw her again after that. And we’re having a reunion, and someone asked if I could invite her.
I couldn’t remember her address to send her an invitation, but I did remember what her house looked like.
The man who lives there wasn’t very helpful, though. ”
“Well, no. That doesn’t surprise me.”
“So, who exactly is that man? He said his name was Stuart?”
“Yes. Stuart. I feel that he might be some kind of carer? I know he took over looking after Daisy when she was about ten. Didn’t see so much of the mother after that.
I never really see anyone coming and going anymore.
And you know, that dog of theirs? It walks itself.
You’ll see him, just there”—she gestures toward the far end of the Vale where Thornwood meets the crook of the Heath—“just snuffling around. He gets picked up sometimes by people who think he’s a stray, taken to that posh vet in the village, and they say: Oh, that’s just Hugo. And someone drops him home.”
Jane is taken aback. “So nobody walks him?”
“No. And I mean, he is getting a little old now, I suppose. But still. I do feel a little sorry for him.”
“Do you have any idea where I could find her?” asks Dexter. “Daisy, I mean? Or would you be able to pass on the invitation for me? If you have a number?”
She shakes her head. “I lost touch with Daisy a long time ago. I can’t even remember the last time I saw her. I assume she still lives here, but then again…”
“The boy around the corner,” says Dexter, “George. He said he thought she might have moved out.”
“Well.” The Other Jane shakes her head gently. “That doesn’t surprise me at all. I can’t imagine it was a heap of fun living in that house as an only child.”
“What was it like in there?”
“I never went in. The mother would come and collect Daisy from here. Or the grandmother.”
“The grandmother?”
“Yes, Daisy lived with her mother and her grandmother. There used to be a grandfather, and an uncle too, at one point, I vaguely recall. But they both seem to be out of the picture now.”
Jane blanches, thinking of the older man who picked her up in a bar when she was twenty-nine. “What was the grandfather like?”
“Oh, not terribly pleasant, very full of himself, thought he was a cut above. I think the wife, Daisy’s grandmother, I think she threw him out in the end, and I didn’t blame her.”
Jane nods. Of course, she thinks, good for her.
“There were au pair girls, too, from time to time. But I don’t know what happened to them.”
“Au pair girls?” Jane feels something cold creep down her spine.
“Yes, when Daisy’s mother was a young girl. There were often girls staying there. Some foreign, some British, all very young. They never stayed long.”
“Gosh, it sounds like the Bermuda Triangle in there!”
“Ha,” says the Other Jane, “I suppose it was, a little bit. But you know, an area like this, it’s strange.
It’s a village, so everyone knows everyone, but also, it’s London, so people keep themselves and everyone else at arm’s length.
You only have half the information you need about people to work out who they are, to work out what they’re up to.
And if you’re nosy, like me, you just make things up to fill in the gaps.
I have stories for all the neighbors, believe me!
But that family…” She pauses and sighs. “It’s hard to know where to start. ”
“Spencer told us that the police visited there a few years ago?”
“That’s right,” says the Other Jane. “It was during lockdown, Covid time, I think. So many weird things happening back then. I just thought maybe they’d done something wrong, broken one of those stupid rules.
But the police were there most of the day, some cars, blue lights spinning.
I looked it up on the internet for days afterward trying to find a story, nosed around the few neighbors I was able to talk to, but nobody knew anything. Total mystery.”
“Well,” says Dexter, “I guess that’s a mystery I’ll have to solve if I want to find Daisy.”
“I suppose it is. But you know, Daisy used to tell me the strangest things. She told me her mother had told her there was a ghost that lived in their attic and it hated little girls, that she told her never to go up there. Daisy said she heard it sometimes, at night, banging on the ceiling to scare her. She also said her uncle had run away with the circus. I mean, come on, what strange things for a little girl to say!”
“What was her uncle’s name?” Dexter asks. “She never mentioned him.”
“Jasper, I think. Funny little chap. Gave me the creeps.” She shudders slightly. “Oh well. Sorry I haven’t been much help. Leave me your number, and if by any chance I ever see or hear anything from Daisy again, I’ll let her know you were looking for her, tell her there’s a party. When is it?”
“Oh,” Dexter replies breezily. “Not until Christmas. But you have to plan these things early.”
“Yes,” says the Other Jane. “Yes. You do. And if you happen to find her, do send her my love. She was a strange little girl, but I did always have a soft spot for her. I really do hope nothing bad’s happened to her.”
It’s gone five o’clock when Dexter and Jane leave the Other Jane’s cottage and head into the warm edges of the late afternoon. “I’ve got some cans,” says Dexter, pointing at his gigantic canvas shoulder bag. “They might not be very cold by now though.”
“What flavor?”
Dexter peers into the bag and reads the cans. “Er, Gin and Tonic. Grapefruit Margarita. Dark Rum and Passionfruit.”
“Sounds great,” says Jane. “Let’s go and find a nice bench.”
They follow a dry path at the bottom of the Vale that leads them eventually toward the busier parts of the Heath. Schools are out, and the Heath is full of mothers and kids, schoolchildren and dogs. They open the cans and Jane toasts Dexter.
“You were amazing, little one,” she says. “Fearless and fleet-footed. I was in awe of you.”
Dexter smiles and clicks at the ring pull of his can with a bitten thumbnail. “If the dancing career doesn’t work out, I could always come in with you.”
“ ‘Trevally and Stepson,’ ” says Jane, forming quotation marks around the phrase with her hands. “Wouldn’t that be fun?”
“You know”—he turns to face her—“it actually really would be amazing. Genuinely. I think you could rock being a private eye. I could totally see you doing it.”
“Thank you, darling.” Jane sighs and rests her can on the grass at her feet. “But a real private eye would have some sort of a plan and currently I have nothing. So, what next?”
“Well, we need to find out what happened with the police back during lockdown. And we need to find this uncle who joined the circus: Jasper.”
Jane nods. “Yes, absolutely. Should be a breeze with a name like that.” She pulls out her phone and taps her thumbs against the screen. “Hm,” she says, “a tech DJ, looks about twenty-five, maybe not. And… aha, a character from The Walking Dead. And… nope, wrong color… Wrong age… No… not him.”
Dexter sighs. “Might need a bit more of a heavyweight approach,” he says. “Might be time for Dad’s people.”