Lucilla

by David A. Riley

Table of Contents, parts: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11

part 8

Next morning, tired from hardly sleeping most of the night, Miranda was relieved to see the children had already been taken to school by the time she wandered into the kitchen, partly drawn by the smell of coffee percolating. Bill was also gone.

Fresh from having just returned from the school run, Victoria was eating a bowl of muesli. She greeted Miranda with a cheerful smile. “I hope Daisy didn’t ruin your sleep.”

“Not at all,” Miranda lied. She poured some coffee into a mug. “Do you have any paracetamol?”

“Hangover?”

“No worse than normal,” Miranda said, acknowledging to herself that even before what happened she had begun to drink too much. Was this going to tip her over the edge, she wondered, into something worse? As well as being a wife-beater, their father had been an alcoholic. That he died from cirrhosis of the liver, was something their mother had never tired of lecturing them about whenever either of them took a drink or, God forbid, got drunk.

“I never start the day without one,” Victoria confessed. She reached into a drawer for a cardboard packet. “Ibuprofen usually sorts me out.” She passed Miranda two of them.

“Was Mother right?” Miranda asked. “Is it our genes?”

Victoria laughed. “You can’t blame everything on Daddy. I didn’t drink till Bill started to bore me senseless.” She shrugged as if it were nothing of importance. “It’s not his fault. He means well. But you’ve heard him, Miranda. Since the girls were born, it’s as if he’s aged. He’s more like their grandfather than their dad.”

“How was Daisy this morning?” Miranda asked, unsure if she should.

“Her usual self. Why? Did she worry you last night?”

“Not really. I’m not surprised she forgot I was in her room. She looked half asleep.”

Victoria laughed. “I think she was still a bit shamefaced about it this morning. Certainly made her quieter than usual.”

“Quieter?”

“She’s a bit of a chatterbox. Surely you’ve noticed? Never stops talking given half a chance. It’s a wonder poor Wendy gets a word in edgeways, poor mite.”

“Not today?”

“No, not today. Probably a bit off-colour. But you’ll see, she’ll be running on all pistons by the time she gets home. Natter, natter, natter. You’ll miss that peace and quiet then.”

Miranda hoped her sister was right as she swallowed her pills, washing them down with the last dregs of coffee.

* * *

Later that morning the doorbell rang. When Victoria answered it, she ushered in Sergeant Harridan.

“Sorry to disturb you,” the policeman said as he was shown into the living room. He sat down facing the two sisters. “I’m here to update you on our investigations so far.” He shuffled his feet for a moment, then said, “There’s also the matter of a discrepancy in what you told me on the phone several days ago, Miss Walters, when you denied any knowledge of where the girl Lucilla had gone after she left the Shelter. It’s obvious she was living with you, yet you told me you didn’t know where she was.”

Miranda had been expecting this. “I couldn’t tell you,” she said. “I was concerned about my job. I’d already told my boss she was gone.”

“Your boss being Mary Milligan. Who died from a heart attack two days ago?”

“Mary died?” Victoria asked, surprised. “You never said, Miranda.”

“With what’s happened since—”

“With what’s happened since,” Harridan said, “I suppose one more death is easy to forget.” He coughed into his fist. “There are several questions I need to ask about Mary Milligan.” The policeman leaned forward and looked Miranda in the eye with a shrewd, calculating expression which she found disconcerting. His previous friendliness seemed to be gone, and she was aware of an air of suspicion about him. “Like all the recent heart attacks, a medical examination of her body found her lungs had collapsed. The coroner is baffled. Other than this, Miss Milligan appears to have been in perfect health. No signs of anything that could have caused heart problems for her.

“Though there are a few things that bother me more. Even though she was found inside her car, we’re certain she did not die there. Fibres found on her clothes match those of the carpet inside your flat, Miss Walters. In fact, they’re spread over her clothes so much she must have been lying on it. We found strands of hair too — strands matching those of the girl Lucilla.”

Harridan paused for a moment, then said, “Did Mary Milligan die at your flat, Miss Walters? Did you and the girl move her body, carry it to her car then drive it to where she was found?” After a moment’s silence, he said, “There are fibres from your clothes inside the car. If we took samples of your hair would we find those, too?”

Realising it would be pointless to deny what the sergeant said, Miranda nodded. She heard Victoria’s astonished, disbelieving gasp. But what was the point of lying now? Lucilla was dead. Miranda knew her career at the Shelter was over. After what the police had discovered, she would never be allowed to work there again.

“Why?” Victoria whispered. “Why did you do it?”

Miranda wondered about that, too. It seemed madness now, though they might have got away with it if Lucilla had not been murdered, she thought. At which something she had hitherto tried to ignore came back to her: what was it that murdered her? What was it that smashed its way through the door into her flat and killed her?

“What attacked Lucilla?” Miranda said, knowing, for all her lies, there was nothing the police could use to blame her for anything that happened to the girl. “I might have been stupid in letting her stay with me and in lying to Mary — and to you — but I didn’t kill her.”

Harridan agreed. “You were stupid,” he said. “And you could have got yourself into a lot of trouble. But we know you didn’t kill her. Who did?” He shrugged. “And how did whoever killed her get into your room through the window?”

“It was like some kind of devil,” Miranda said, knowing she sounded ridiculous. Feeling ridiculous too.

“If I wasn’t a confirmed materialist, I might agree with you,” the policeman said. “Except there are traces of DNA: scraps of material, some of it skin, splinters that might have been claws. They’re all being investigated. We should have results soon that will tell us what it was.”

“What it was?” Victoria said.

Harridan looked embarrassed for a moment. “A slip of the tongue.”

The two sisters exchanged glances, and Miranda could see Victoria was far from convinced it was a slip at all.

“From what my sister has told me,” Victoria said, “it was more like some kind of animal. What else could have done it?”

Harridan frowned. “I can’t speculate. Till we get some evidence, I know no more than you. All I would ask,” he said to Miranda, “is that if you know anything about the girl — who she was, where she came from, who she associated with — tell me. We’ve checked her DNA and her fingerprints, but nothing’s turned up yet. We’ve still no idea who she was.”

“Nor do I,” Miranda said. “She wouldn’t talk about herself.”

“But you allowed her to share your flat?”

Miranda shook her head. “I know, I was crazy. I don’t know why I did it. I really, really don’t.” Which she didn’t, she knew. It was as if she had thrown caution to the wind, trusting her home, her possessions, her career to a girl who shared nothing of herself with her. Why she had trusted her she did not know. It was madness.

Almost as mad as the way in which Lucilla was killed.

“If you do remember something,” the policeman said, “contact me. We’re trying to help. And anything you tell us might help catch whoever did it.”

Though Miranda wondered whether even Detective Sergeant Mike Harridan really believed that.

* * *

After he had gone, Victoria went for the vodka. “I know, it’s ridiculously early, but I need it today,” she said as she placed two glasses on the table.

Her nerves jangled by the policeman’s visit, Miranda was only too glad to agree. “What about the girls?” she asked. “Aren’t you supposed to pick them up at three?”

Victoria pouted. “I’ll walk. It’ll do them good to use their legs for once. It’s less than two miles anyway. Not exactly a marathon.”

Miranda wondered whether her sister would feel the same way when she had to trek it.

In the end they had two glasses each before Victoria decided to make some lunch. While they drank and ate, Miranda unfolded more of what had happened over the past two weeks, telling her sister far more than she would have said had Bill been there. For the most part, Victoria seemed to accept what she heard at face value, only interjecting now and then for a more detailed explanation, or expressing anything like scepticism.

When it came to what happened when Lucilla was killed, Victoria asked how sure she was of what she remembered.

“Couldn’t someone have broken into your flat without you realising it? Could that have happened?” Victoria asked.

Miranda shook her head. “Not if what I remember is right.”

“You were asleep, Miranda, probably half-cut from the wine you’d been drinking, in a state of shock at the window being broken and what happened next. How much can you rely on what you remember?”

“Put like that, not much,” Miranda said, trying to clarify her memories, but as each day passed, they seemed to be more blurred, jumbling into nothing clearer than the recollections of a nightmare. Look at last night, she thought. When she had been wakened by Daisy after drinking only a few glasses of vodka, she could have sworn the girl spoke with Lucilla’s voice. Even worse, she’d been certain for a moment it really was Lucilla who was talking to her, even though she could see who it was, as if sight and sound had their own separate realities. As if her own mind was creating its own realities, she added, knowing this was probably nearer the truth.

“The best thing now,” Victoria said, “is to put all this behind you. Find yourself a new job, a new flat, a new life.”

Easier said than done, Miranda thought, but she said nothing, just nodded her head. Perhaps her sister was right. How long would it take her, though, with more visits from the police and more questions to be answered — or evaded?

* * *

At half two, Victoria said she had better set off for school to be in time to meet the girls when they came out. She asked if Miranda would like to go with her. It was a fine day, the air cold but clear, with a powdery blue sky and barely more than a breeze.

“It’ll do you good,” Victoria said.

At the prospect of idling inside the house on her own with only daytime TV as a poor companion, Miranda said, “Why not?” She felt befuddled from the drinks they’d had, and some fresh air would help clear her head.

Donning coats and gloves, they set off at a brisk walk, Miranda finding she was actually enjoying the exercise. A fresh start, she thought. That really is what I need. Less booze as well, half-regretting already the vodkas they’d drunk.

She could still remember the papery yellow skin of their father in the final months of life, his liver useless by then. She was never sure whether most of his anguish was over the imminence of his death, the pains and illness of his body, or his inability to drink anymore. He had often begged her to bring him some whisky. “Just a small one, girl, that’s all I need.” Till in the end she did.

He died the next day. Another layer of guilt on her conscience, to which she had added how many more in the past two weeks?

It was a relief when they finally saw the school. It had been a good walk, though the air was a tad too chill for them to talk much on the way. Now the grey stone walls and black-painted iron railings of St Paul’s Primary School were only a block away. Cars were already parked along the road as mothers and sometimes fathers, too, arrived for their offspring.

A lollypop lady tried her best to control the traffic, but some parents were too impatient to reach the disappearing parking spaces around the school, and Miranda was amazed no one was killed. “Is this what you have to put up with every day?” Miranda asked.

“Crazy, isn’t it? We’re all as bad as each other, though. Me included,” she said with a grin.

Somewhere, muffled by thick stone walls, a bell began to ring.

“Here they come,” Victoria said. “There’ll be bedlam now.”

* * *

Proceed to part 9...

Copyright © 2022 by David A. Riley

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