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Authors: Ann Granger
Tags: Mystery
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headstones.
‘Who was he?’ I wasn’t really interested, just making conversation with her. She seemed reasonably sane today.
‘Smart young fellow,’ she said. ‘Stranger. Well set-up. He’d left his car over there . . .’ This time she pointed behind us to an open patch behind the buildings in the road beyond, accessible through a gap, which the Church of the Beauteous Day had cleared so that the Reverend Eli could park his purple transit van there.
‘I don’t like strangers. They keep coming these days and telling me I can’t live here any more. Where should I live? What about the cats? I’ve told them, I’ve got to look after the cats. So when he came through, I hid and watched him. He was up to no good.’
The hairs prickled on the back of my neck. ‘How do you know, Edna?’
‘He looked it. Dodging about from headstone to headstone, didn’t want to be seen. So busy hiding himself away, he didn’t spot me. I was over there.’ She waved at a jumble of overgrown bushes.
It didn’t surprise me the stranger hadn’t spotted her. In her dirty coat and with her amorphous outline, she blended perfectly into her surroundings. I’d often passed by her myself, and jumped out of my skin when she’d greeted me. She had a trick, like the cats, of sitting perfectly still and watching. I’d seen her sitting on the grass, quite surrounded by them, just blinking her eyes at them as they blinked back. I’d sometimes speculated whether they were the spirits of the dead buried in this place. That Edna could communicate with them didn’t surprise me in the least.
‘When was this you saw the man, Edna?’
She looked vague. Days were all the same to her. ‘Must’ve been yesterday,’ she said uncertainly.
I asked her if it had been morning or afternoon but she couldn’t remember. She wasn’t, however, completely out of touch. Unexpectedly, she asked, ‘Is that right the girlie hanged herself, dear?’ She peered at me with a flicker of interest in her rheumy old eyes.
‘That’s right, Edna.’
She puffed on the cigarette, staring ahead. It was impossible to say what she made of it. She didn’t seem surprised or frightened. Even her curiosity, now I’d confirmed the rumour, was cured.
It was hopeless. She may have seen the same fellow Ganesh saw. We’d never be able to establish it for sure.
She came to life and leaned towards me confidentially. ‘Got something to show you!’
My spirits rose briefly. What else had she found? I should have known better.
She took me to a corner of the graveyard and proudly showed me some new kittens, mewing blindly but safely inside a ramshackle stone tomb. The tomb’s inscription commemorated Josiah and Hepzibah Wilkins who’d died within a week of one another of the influenza in 1819, leaving seventeen children. There had been enough money to build them a decent monument so I suppose there’d been money to take care of the seventeen children. Perhaps the older ones had looked after the younger ones.
The fact remained that if anyone asked questions of Edna, they’d get nothing sensible in reply. She might or might not be a vital witness. Her only concern was for the cats and what would happen to her and to them, if the developers succeeded in levelling the surrounding monuments.
I gave Edna all the loose change in my pocket and she squirrelled it away in another hiding place in her grubby old coat.
‘Call again!’ she invited, as I walked away.
We were allowed to remove our furniture, such as it was, from the house. We ferried it over to the new flat in several lots, using the Patels’ van. Between us we manoeuvred it up the filthy staircase and staggered with it along open windswept balconies lined with unwelcoming doors. Some flats were abandoned and boarded up. Others, though still inhabited, were nearly as well barricaded, like medieval castles. It didn’t promise a spirit of neighbourliness.
The flat itself had been cleared and swept out, but
‘Who was he?’ I wasn’t really interested, just making conversation with her. She seemed reasonably sane today.
‘Smart young fellow,’ she said. ‘Stranger. Well set-up. He’d left his car over there . . .’ This time she pointed behind us to an open patch behind the buildings in the road beyond, accessible through a gap, which the Church of the Beauteous Day had cleared so that the Reverend Eli could park his purple transit van there.
‘I don’t like strangers. They keep coming these days and telling me I can’t live here any more. Where should I live? What about the cats? I’ve told them, I’ve got to look after the cats. So when he came through, I hid and watched him. He was up to no good.’
The hairs prickled on the back of my neck. ‘How do you know, Edna?’
‘He looked it. Dodging about from headstone to headstone, didn’t want to be seen. So busy hiding himself away, he didn’t spot me. I was over there.’ She waved at a jumble of overgrown bushes.
It didn’t surprise me the stranger hadn’t spotted her. In her dirty coat and with her amorphous outline, she blended perfectly into her surroundings. I’d often passed by her myself, and jumped out of my skin when she’d greeted me. She had a trick, like the cats, of sitting perfectly still and watching. I’d seen her sitting on the grass, quite surrounded by them, just blinking her eyes at them as they blinked back. I’d sometimes speculated whether they were the spirits of the dead buried in this place. That Edna could communicate with them didn’t surprise me in the least.
‘When was this you saw the man, Edna?’
She looked vague. Days were all the same to her. ‘Must’ve been yesterday,’ she said uncertainly.
I asked her if it had been morning or afternoon but she couldn’t remember. She wasn’t, however, completely out of touch. Unexpectedly, she asked, ‘Is that right the girlie hanged herself, dear?’ She peered at me with a flicker of interest in her rheumy old eyes.
‘That’s right, Edna.’
She puffed on the cigarette, staring ahead. It was impossible to say what she made of it. She didn’t seem surprised or frightened. Even her curiosity, now I’d confirmed the rumour, was cured.
It was hopeless. She may have seen the same fellow Ganesh saw. We’d never be able to establish it for sure.
She came to life and leaned towards me confidentially. ‘Got something to show you!’
My spirits rose briefly. What else had she found? I should have known better.
She took me to a corner of the graveyard and proudly showed me some new kittens, mewing blindly but safely inside a ramshackle stone tomb. The tomb’s inscription commemorated Josiah and Hepzibah Wilkins who’d died within a week of one another of the influenza in 1819, leaving seventeen children. There had been enough money to build them a decent monument so I suppose there’d been money to take care of the seventeen children. Perhaps the older ones had looked after the younger ones.
The fact remained that if anyone asked questions of Edna, they’d get nothing sensible in reply. She might or might not be a vital witness. Her only concern was for the cats and what would happen to her and to them, if the developers succeeded in levelling the surrounding monuments.
I gave Edna all the loose change in my pocket and she squirrelled it away in another hiding place in her grubby old coat.
‘Call again!’ she invited, as I walked away.
We were allowed to remove our furniture, such as it was, from the house. We ferried it over to the new flat in several lots, using the Patels’ van. Between us we manoeuvred it up the filthy staircase and staggered with it along open windswept balconies lined with unwelcoming doors. Some flats were abandoned and boarded up. Others, though still inhabited, were nearly as well barricaded, like medieval castles. It didn’t promise a spirit of neighbourliness.
The flat itself had been cleared and swept out, but
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