Jane Hetherington's Adventures In Detection Read online

  “Oh Jack,” Jane said. “I am so sorry. I really thought it was going to work out for them. Why they only went to that ball a few days ago? I remember thinking what a striking couple they made, both so young and attractive. I thought they looked made for each other – Johnny in his tuxedo, her in that lovely silk dress of hers.”

  Jane could still visualise them leaving for the annual Hairdressing Guild’s Ball. Johnny’s purple silk bowtie and cummerbund a perfect match for Charity’s 1930s-style purple dress. Their hair set into waves. His diamante cigarette holder complementing her diamante hair clip, earrings and necklace. “I told them they looked as though they’d just stepped off the Orient express to which Charity said, ‘Wish we were just about to step onto it!’”

  “Remember the faux fur stole she was wearing?”

  Jane nodded. Jack shook his head and pretended to slit his throat with his finger to indicate the stole no longer existed.

  “I took their photo,” Jane said.

  “I know. I’ve had to hide the camera. She wanted to reverse over it. It’s a shame really. I like Johnny, he’s fun. Never mind,” he said, philosophically. “First it was that bloke who never left the house except to buy Snicker bars, then it was the guy who kept calling at two a.m. because he was always locking himself out of his flat and now Johnny. Think she’d be better off with a dog?” he asked.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  MRS KIM

  I

  Jane called on Mrs Kim Lee-Youn the following morn- ing. Mrs Kim Lee-Youn was a tiny, immaculate Korean woman. She was dressed in a grey two-piece. A row of pearls lay around her neck. Her greying hair was pinned into place. Two of her three daughters-in-law stood either side of her, while Mrs Kim herself sat in the centre of the room, facing Jane. “Please, share some coffee with us, Mrs Hethering- ton?” Mrs Kim said, nodding towards a fully laid out tray, which sat on the coffee table between them. “I don’t want to put you to any trouble Mrs Kim,” Jane replied. “It is our pleasure,” she said, nodding at one of her daughters-in-laws who immediately stepped forward and began to pour the coffee. “Do you take your coffee black or with cream, Mrs Hetherington?” the daughter-in-law asked her. “Black please,” she replied. In many ways, this scene reminded Jane of Sam and Dawn Gray both politely offering her light refreshments in their immaculate houses, while all around them events escalated out of control.

  Jane took a mouthful of the coffee.

  “I’m very sorry to learn there is still no news of your husband’s whereabouts,” she began.

  Mrs Kim and her daughters-in-law nodded at these words, but showed no other outward emotion.

  “If there is anything I can do, then please ask. Anything at all. I know what it is like to suddenly be left without a husband, Mrs Kim,” she said. “Believe me.”

  Mrs Kim appeared to be genuinely confused by these words. Her daughters-in-law exchanged a glance.

  “I have not been left without a husband, Mrs Hetherington,” Mrs Kim senior replied softly. “I have not been told that my husband has abandoned me. I have not been presented with a body to bury. Until I am, then as far as I am concerned my husband has merely been unexpectedly detained on a trip from which he will soon return.”

  Few other words were exchanged from then on, and when Jane left Mrs Kim’s house shortly afterwards, she felt chastened. She was quite relieved when one of Mrs Kim’s daughters-in-law – Yunjin – called on her moments later.

  Jane invited her visitor into her drawing room.

  “I’m so glad you’ve chosen to call on me,” Jane said. “I hope I didn’t cause your mother-in-law any upset. I certainly didn’t intend to.”

  “On the contrary, Mrs Hetherington,” Kim Yunjin said. “My mother-in-law was concerned that she had been discourteous to you and said I must go straight round and apologise on her behalf.”

  Mrs Kim had three adult sons, and the woman standing in Jane’s front room was married to the eldest of them, Kim Bain-Li. A Korean native, she’d been educated in England and she spoke English fluently, better than her mother-in-law. “We don’t know what has happened to my father-in-law and naturally my mother-in-law is very upset. My mother-in-law is a very strong woman and she will not accept that her husband is not coming back until he tells her this himself, or until she is presented with a body. Korean men are not like some British men. They do not suddenly abandon their families and start again elsewhere. I will tell you something that only my family and the police know, Mrs Hetherington. My father-in-law is elderly, nearly eighty. He was becoming confused before he disappeared. My husband and his brothers noticed it. We all did. Mrs Hetherington, it is quite possible that my father-in-law may not even know he’s missing.”

  “I hope you find your father-in-law soon, alive and well,” Jane said.

  “I’m sure we will,” Yunjin replied, smiling. “Please call on us again soon, Mrs Hetherington,” she said, before she left.

  Jane still felt uneasy. She hadn’t seen the Kim’s since a few months before Hugh’s death, and hadn’t realised how much Mr Kim’s health had deteriorated. It was a bad situation and she could only hope there’d be a satisfactory outcome, but feared there wouldn’t.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  JANE RECEIVES GOOD NEWS

  I

  Jane decided to spend the rest of the morning in her greenhouse preparing for spring by sowing her sweet pea seeds. This annual pea growing ritual began the year she and Hugh bought the Pink Cottage and had con- tinued ever since. She placed cardboard tubes she’d collected throughout the year from used toilet and kitchen rolls side-by-side in a seed tray and fi lled them with compost. Because she’d forgotten to soak the seeds overnight to soften the seed coat, she removed a slither of each seed coat in turn with her gardening knife, and after pushing a couple of seeds into the compost in each tube, she watered them and left them standing on an upturned seed tray where they would catch the most light. This job done, she inspected her dahlia tubers, removing any that showed signs of rotting. The time fl ew by and it was nearly lunchtime when she closed her greenhouse door behind her, holding the garden waste in a plant pot. She certainly felt more relaxed for the morning spent there. Jane loved gardening, and although she now employed a gardener part-time to do the jobs she no longer had the time or the strength to do, she always tried to do as much as she could. Her garden gave her an enormous pleasure, and as she washed her hands under the garden tap, she allowed herself to admire it. The berries on the bushes, the catkins hanging from trees and the snowdrops pushing their way through the green lawn, gave it what winter colour it had. Soon it would be spring and she could plant out her bedding plants, still safely in her greenhouse, and watch them flower alongside her bulbs and perennials, bathing the garden in colour. The gardener had spent the morning hoeing up the winter debris and this was piled up by the side of the garden. She discarded the greenhouse waste on top of it.

  She reached her back door to discover a couple of jars of marmalade left by her gardener which were a gift from his wife. The gift was a thoughtful and much appreciated one, for in the Hetherington household, the January marmalade-making ritual had been Hugh’s responsibility, and one which Jane couldn’t bear to take over.

  Before making her way to her study, Jane picked a couple of tiny lemons from the lemon tree in her conservatory. These she halved and dropped into a cup of hot water. The miniature tree was a gift from Charity to thank her for keeping Jack company. It was waist height, and produced tiny lemons, which were so sweet and succulent they were edible. She liked to dice them up to use in cooking, or sliced in two and dropped into sparkling mineral water, with an ice cube or two, or, as now, covered in hot water.

  She took it with her to her study. Maria, a young Estonian girl whom Jane employed as a cleaner, was vacuuming while singing what sounded like My Yiddisha Mother, although Maria informed her it was in fact, an old Estonian hymn sung by the women of the village while they washed their clothes by the river. A likely story, Jane thou
ght, turning on her computer to discover an e-mail from her daughter.

  ‘Mum, I’m pregnant!’ Adele wrote. ‘I took a test this morning. I was going to ring you up straight away and tell you, but with the time difference, I thought I’d better e-mail instead! I’m 37, thought if I wanted another one, I’d better get on with! It’s early days – I’m only a week late, but the test is positive. I had such an easy time with Amy that I’m not worried. I hope it’s another girl. I’m going to call her Poppy if it is. I haven’t told the unborn one’s father yet because he hasn’t returned my call. Typical! By my cal’s, it’s due mid-October. Can you come over then? I have to go, Amy’s crying. We’re away for a few days. I’ll ring you when we get back.

  Love Adele

  xxx.’

  To her surprise, Jane began to cry.

  “Mrs Hetherington!” Maria squealed. She quickly turned the vacuum off, and ran into the room, putting her arm around her employer’s shoulders. “What is it? Why do you cry?”

  While Jane wiped her eyes, Maria read the e-mail from Adele. She gave a whoop of delight. “This is good. I can teach you Estonian lullabies.”

  Jane’s tears were not only of joy, but also of pain. However happy her daughter’s e-mail made her, it also made her present situation all the more painful. She was well aware that emigration was best for the family, but for her and Hugh it was devastating. She missed her daughter and granddaughter to hell and the news just reminded her how much. Hugh would have loved the news that he was going to be a grandfather for the second time, but would have been as saddened as she was that the child was to grow up far away. Knowing this just brought it home to her that Hugh was no longer here with her and never would be again.

  Her daughter’s e-mail ended with a postscript:

  ‘I really wish Dad was still alive for this.’

  “So do I love,” Jane said.

  II

  With the passing of the years, it was as though she and Hugh had literally become one body, one half of each other; and then one day, without anything like enough warning, they’d been torn asunder.

  “But he hardly drinks,” Jane said after the oncologist informed them that the pain in Hugh’s right-hand side was pancreatic cancer.

  Her comments were truthful, for her husband was not a heavy drinker.

  “Sometimes it occurs anyway,” the oncologist said. “I’m afraid the prognosis isn’t good.”

  They left the hospital numb but composed and remained that way until inside their own front door, where they could no longer control themselves. They collapsed into each other’s arms, sobbing and clinging to each other and praying for a miracle, which wasn’t to materialise.

  III

  The final weeks of Hugh’s life were spent in a hospice. Jane spent nearly all her time at his bedside. She stayed late into the evening and they spoke of the things they normally did before he became ill – news stories, family, friends, neighbours, her magistrate’s work, something that one of the nurses or other patients had told one or other of them. They ate their meals together. They watched the TV together and listened to the radio together, and when he became too weak to turn the pages of the newspaper, she read articles from it to him. Sometimes she climbed into bed next to him, just to hold him in her arms, and feel his body next to hers. If she could hear him breathing, he was still alive.

  Adele, Lee and little Amy flew in from the States. Although no one said so, they’d come for the end. Amy’s attempts to learn to walk assisted by one or other of the parents, or Jane, delighted Hugh and allowed everyone in the room to forget why they were there. One afternoon, after Amy fell over while attempting to walk unaided and was being comforted by her father, Hugh started to cry. Soon everyone but Lee was in tears. He picked up his young daughter.

  “Come on,” he said to Adele, extending his arm in her direction and leading her out of the room.

  Alone with her husband, Jane had lain on the bed next to Hugh. Her tears weren’t only of sorrow, but of anger that her husband was to be taken from her when he was only sixty-four. When she was able to stop crying, Jane said, “I can’t bear this.”

  She climbed off the bed and walked over to the room’s wash hand basin and splashed her face with cold water. Jane could see Lee and Adele in the garden outside. Lee was pushing Amy in her pushchair, while Adele sat on a bench quietly sobbing. Jane dried her hands and face. She dampened the towel and returned to her husband’s bedside. There she gently washed and dried his face. A few days later, he was gone.

  IV

  Jane re-read her daughter’s e-mail and it made her cry all the harder.

  “I make you a nice pot of tea,” Maria said hurrying out of the study.

  Jane took out a photograph album from one of her corner cabinets and returned with it to the living-room couch. She put on some background music, and began to flick through the pages of the album. The photographs in it represented the happiest days of her life – photographs of her own childhood, as well her time with Hugh and Adele – times she would always look back on with fondness and pride. She hadn’t meant to become maudlin when she opened it – she thought the photographs would comfort her – yet when Maria walked into the room with a tea tray, Jane was in floods of tears, with the photograph album still open in her hands.

  “I made English breakfast and camomile,” Maria said, setting the tray down. Two white china teapots stood on the tray. Maria sat down next to Jane and put her arm around her. She looked at a photograph of Jane and Hugh standing with their daughter in their back garden.

  “A handsome man, your husband,” Maria said, “and your daughter is very beautiful.”

  “Thank you,” Jane said.

  Jane blew her nose on a paper handkerchief and wiped her eyes.

  “Maybe you should have a lie down, Mrs Hetherington? I’ll finish up here and let myself out.”

  Jane followed Maria’s suggestion. She took the pot of camomile tea upstairs with her, where she sipped the soothing brew until she found she could no longer keep her eyes open. She woke up after a deep sleep, feeling a lot better for it. The house was silent. Maria must have left.

  She went downstairs and turned the radio on, only to wish she hadn’t. It was bad news. Unfortunately Yunjin Kim’s optimism had proven unfounded. A witness had come forward, following a plea by the police for more information about Mr Kim’s disappearance. The witness described taking a short cut through Newton Park on the evening of Mr Kim’s disappearance. The witness had seen a man, who he’d identified from photographs as being Mr Kim, behind the wheel of a blue Citroen, driving towards a lake in the centre of Newton Park. He’d remembered part of the numberplate, and the police confirmed it matched the numberplate of Mr Kim’s missing blue Citroen. Although the police were not saying so officially, unofficially they were now looking for the body of a man who had committed suicide by driving into a lake.

  Jane turned the radio off. Her own theory, based on her knowledge of Mr Kim, was that he simply could not face the inevitability of a slow and steady decline in his health. Jane closed her eyes. Mrs Kim was the same age as she was. Her second son was the same age as Adele. Mrs Kim was now going to have to come to terms with the loss of someone she’d spent most of her adult life with, as Jane herself was having to.

  In her rage, she threw a cup across the room. It hit a kitchen cupboard and shattered into pieces.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  THE POLICE DRAG THE LAKE

  I

  Jane didn’t sleep well that night. The news about Mr Kim upset her so much that whenever she dropped off, she woke with a start almost immediately. When she fi nally got up, having hardly slept at all, she was tired and irri- tated and her sciatica was playing up. She looked out of her window. At least it looked as though the day was going to be dry. She decided to go outside into her back garden to try some stretching exercises, to relieve the pain. Using her back door as a support, she bent and straightened her knees a number of times, trying to keep her b
ack as straight as she could. The intense pain was shooting up and down her left leg. She raised the leg up in front of her and lowered it again, as many times as she could manage, until the pain made her stop. She’d raised her arms above her head and was stretching down to her left, when Jack stuck his head over the fence and asked her if she was all right. “Don’t get old, Jack,” she said, bending and straight- ening her legs again.

  “Heard the latest about Mr Kim Moo-Hyun?” Jack asked.

  “Unfortunately I have, Jack, yes,” she said, sadly.

  “His car’s been found at the bottom of the lake in Newton Park,” Jack said.

  This Jane didn’t know.

  “They found it late last night.”

  “Was his body in it?” Jane asked.

  He shrugged.

  “Dunno. They’re dragging the car out of the lake this morning. I’m on my way there to watch. I’m meeting friends there,” he said, as though he was on his way to the cinema.

  II

  His friends had managed to secure a good vantage point, by the time he arrived. Jack joined them and they sat in a row at the top of a grass embankment, which overlooked the lake. From there the boys could see everything. Jack looked at the lake. Chains ran from the back of the large police recovery van parked on the lake side, into the water.