The Skeleton Tree Read online

  Contents

  Cover

  Also by Diane Janes

  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

  November 2011

  Acknowledgements

  Also by Diane Janes

  The Black and Dod mysteries

  THE MAGIC CHAIR MURDER *

  THE POISONED CHALICE MURDER *

  THE MISSING DIAMOND MURDER *

  Fiction

  THE PULL OF THE MOON

  WHY DON’T YOU COME FOR ME?

  SWIMMING IN THE SHADOWS *

  STICK OR TWIST *

  A STROKE OF BAD LUCK

  Non-fiction

  EDWARDIAN MURDER: IGHTHAM & THE MORPETH

  TRAIN ROBBERY

  POISONOUS LIES: THE CROYDON ARSENIC MYSTERY

  THE CASE OF THE POISONED PARTRIDGE

  DEATH AT WOLF’S NICK

  * available from Severn House

  THE SKELETON TREE

  Diane Janes

  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 © Diane Janes, 2021

  All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. The right of Diane Janes 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: 978-0-7278-5019-5 (cased)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-78029-779-8 (trade paper)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-4483-0517-9 (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

  In Memory of

  Capulet Janes Esq.

  People talk about getting away with murder, but I don’t believe there’s any such thing as getting away with it. You certainly can’t get away from it. It’s always there, gnawing at you. Killing isn’t an end, it’s a beginning.

  ONE

  January 1980

  One school of thought has to be that the trouble began with the money. The root of all evil and all that jazz. There can be no doubt that the money changed all of their lives irrevocably.

  When Wendy walked out of the front door that cold January morning, the prospect of moving house had been in the air for a while. They had been living in Jasmine Close for six years by then. Jasmine Close, with its neat pairs of identical semis, had been the best they could afford back in 1974 and was adequate to their needs, with Tara still in primary school, Katie not much more than a toddler and Jamie yet to arrive. People described it as ‘a nice little estate’, a small development on the edge of Bishop Barnard, handy for the school and only a ten-minute stroll to the High Street, which in those days still boasted every shop the inhabitants of the village might need. All the roads on the estate were named after flowers: Laburnum Croft, Cyclamen Drive, Honeysuckle Grove and Magnolia Road. It was the sort of place where the younger children were out riding their bikes at the weekends, under the half-hearted supervision of car-cleaning dads, while the older kids headed off carrying riding hats or tennis rackets. The bay windows gleamed with Windolene and self-satisfaction. The wives, who had mostly become mothers before maternity leave and returning to work became the norm, held regular Tupperware parties and coffee mornings in aid of the NSPCC.

  Every household had at least one car to carry goods home from the out-of-town supermarkets, and it was easy to pop into the village for odds and ends. Wendy liked the walk, turning left out of Jasmine Close into Cyclamen Drive, then right into Magnolia Road, often pausing to exchange a word or a wave with someone who was busily shaving their lawn with the compulsory hover mower, or rehanging their net curtains, fresh from the sweaty labour of the ironing board; faces recognized from PTA meetings, or the night classes in cake decorating or Spanish for Beginners.

  The point where Magnolia Road formed a T-junction with Green Lane marked the end of the estate, and from there it was a left turn on to Green Lane, which ran in an almost straight line until it met the High Street. Unlike the estate, Green Lane had existed for centuries, its direction determined long before the existence of motorized traffic, when the quickest way to anywhere was also the slowest way and did not involve a bypass. Midway between Magnolia Road and the High Street, a gentle kink in Green Lane indicated the existence of some long-forgotten obstacle, a giant tree perhaps or a patch of boggy ground, long since felled, or drained, or otherwise eliminated. For many years it must have been lined by hedgerows, flanked to either side by open fields, but by the time the Thorntons moved into the village, Green Lane was lined with houses and bungalows. Unlike the neat little estate on the edge of the village, there was no uniformity to the dwellings in Green Lane, which had sprung up piecemeal as Bishop Barnard expanded southwards and represented a whole variety of twentieth-century fashions. Wendy liked to look at the different houses. There was one row of six rather dull semis, where a builder had evidently managed to acquire a substantial stretch of land, but most had been individually designed: mock-Tudor monstrosities which looked down on their neighbours in every sense, here a wrought-iron balcony serving a central upstairs French window, there a mini-mansion with art-deco curves and stained glass top lights.

  It would have been easy to overlook number thirty-seven altogether, because it stood much further back from the road than all its fellows and was mostly hidden by the overgrown hawthorn hedge which separated the front garden from the pavement. Apart from the brief interval it took anyone to pass the front gate, you couldn’t see the house from the road at all. Even the gate itself was different to every other garden gate in Green Lane, having the appearance of a farm gate, sturdy, rectangular and always closed. A rectangle of wood had been fixed to the gate at some point in the past, with the name of the house burned into it. It had been there so long that the wood had weathered until the whole piece was almost as dark as the name itself, but it was still just possible to make it out: The
Ashes. At some stage the house number had been added to one of the gateposts. A three and a seven, barely noticeable; the sort of small wooden numbers that could be obtained cheaply from a hardware shop. The numbers had once been black, but had long since acquired a greenish tint like the gatepost itself, and the screws or nails which secured the numbers had gone rusty. Everything was in need of a good clean-up and a lick of paint.

  Wendy knew next to nothing about architecture, but even she could tell that the house was old, probably the oldest building on Green Lane. It was built of brown brick – smaller bricks than its modern neighbours, bricks which belonged to an earlier age – and it had a grey slate roof. She guessed that it must once have stood alone, probably the only dwelling on what would then have been a quiet country lane. In fact, it seemed to her that the house had remained a little bit aloof, as if it had never quite come to terms with having neighbours.

  From the very first time she saw it, the house had intrigued her. Its front aspect looked like a house in a child’s drawing, with a central front door, flanked by two downstairs windows, taller than they were wide, with a pair of matching windows on the first floor. She had probably walked past it a hundred times, holding Katie by the hand, pushing Jamie in his pram, then holding his hand, and eventually walking on her own once he had started school. But whenever she passed, she invariably glanced over the gate and down the drive, which ran along one side of the plot and presumably continued along the side of the house, though the view was obstructed by a pair of head-high wooden gates which stretched from the side of the house to the perimeter fence. Above the gates, she could see that the side wall of the house continued for some distance, suggesting that the building went back quite a long way. The front garden clearly needed more attention than it ever received, and as the years went by the whole place achieved an increasingly neglected air.

  The occupant or occupants were a complete mystery. She had never seen any signs of life, though whenever she glanced down the drive after dark she could see the glow of an electric light behind the closed curtains of one downstairs window – always the one to the right of the front door. It was the sole indication that anyone lived there at all.

  Much later she would remember how she had drawn the children’s attention to The Ashes on a couple of occasions when they were all walking down to the village together. On the first of these she had declared that she would love to see inside the house.

  ‘It looks pretty decrepit,’ Tara had commented. ‘Helen at school says some old relic lives there, all by herself.’

  On the second occasion, Wendy had asked Katie if she wouldn’t like to live in a house like that.

  ‘Oh no,’ Katie said. ‘There might be ghosts.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ Wendy said. ‘It looks to me like the sort of house where you might have an adventure.’

  Katie wasn’t having it. ‘It just looks spooky to me.’

  By the summer of 1979, the area behind the hawthorn hedge bore little resemblance to a garden. The grass, which had not been cut at all that year, had grown knee-high and run to seed, while the stone sundial which had once been clearly visible in the centre of the lawn was so overgrown with brambles that it might not have been there at all. A coterie of nettles had risen beside the wooden gateposts, impudently poking their heads out and leaning across the pavement, while bindweed snaked its way all over the cracked concrete of the drive. The onset of autumn and winter only increased the sense of dereliction. Plants and weeds turned brown, drooped, rotted, then frosted. The house maintained its expressionless air.

  The arrival of the ‘For Sale’ board that bitter January day stopped Wendy dead in her tracks. The wind was stinging her face, so she had her head down and was level with the gate of number thirty-seven before she saw the board, but its presence had the most extraordinary effect on her. It was almost as if someone had delivered a blow to her chest, leaving her gasping for breath. All her impotent longing to see over the house surfaced in a rush.

  Viewing by appointment only, the board said. Well, why shouldn’t she make an appointment? It wasn’t really right, said a voice in her head. She would only be wasting someone’s time. It was true that they were planning to look for another house – a bigger house – but not one like this. This was a detached, double-fronted property, sitting on a large plot of land. She knew perfectly well they weren’t in that league.

  The board belonged to a local firm of estate agents who had an office in the High Street. She searched their window display in vain for the house, but it was not on show. As she stood there, she could hear Bruce’s voice in her head. Her husband shared most people’s healthy scepticism when it came to estate agents. “‘Quaint” means old and poky, “spacious” means draughty and impossible to heat, “deceptively spacious”, on the other hand, means it looks small and it is, while “would suit first-time buyer” translates as no one who isn’t blind with love, or green as grass, is going to touch this with a barge pole.’

  Since the house was not among those advertised in the window, she decided to go inside and enquire. There couldn’t be any harm in it. Half the people who go to view houses are just timewasters, satisfying their idle curiosity, she told herself.

  The receptionist greeted her with a smile straight out of a toothpaste advert.

  ‘Good morning,’ Wendy said. ‘I want to enquire about viewing a house called The Ashes.’

  The young woman smiled. ‘Of course,’ she said. She rose from her desk and crossed to the rear of the office, opening one of the filing cabinets and clicking through the dividers until she reached the section she wanted, then produced a single printed sheet, which she handed to Wendy.

  A mature detached property set in a large garden in need of extensive renovation but offering a rare opportunity to provide a house of character.

  ‘We’re asking for offers in the region of twenty thousand pounds,’ the young woman said, as if twenty thousand pounds was well within anyone’s budget. ‘But prospective buyers need to bear in mind that the property will require at least another ten thousand spent on it, depending upon what is required.’

  Some sort of reaction was evidently expected, so Wendy nodded and said, ‘Yes, of course,’ in a knowing sort of way, as if she had a sock full of fifty pound notes at home, which would make such a proposition even remotely possible. ‘What are the major things that require attention?’ It was surprisingly easy to keep up the pretence, she thought, once you’d embarked on this fantasy persona of a woman who could afford to acquire a mature detached house of character in need of extensive renovation. ‘Is it possible to make an appointment to see round the house?’

  The woman smiled again. ‘The property has generated considerable interest, so we have decided to open it up for two general viewings this week, firstly on Thursday afternoon between one until four and then on Saturday morning from ten until twelve.’

  ‘So anyone can just turn up between those times?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  For a woman who was only going to have a nose around a house she didn’t have a cat in hell’s chance of buying, Wendy felt ridiculously excited.

  She waited until they were all sitting down to tea that evening before she announced, ‘You’ll never guess! That old house on Green Lane – you know, the one I’ve always liked – is up for sale. They’re holding some open viewings and there’s one on Saturday morning. Why don’t we all go and have a look?’

  ‘Whatever for?’ asked Bruce. ‘We couldn’t possibly afford to buy it.’

  ‘Just out of interest,’ Wendy said. ‘I’ve always wanted to see inside.’

  ‘What for?’ Bruce asked again. ‘Jamie, don’t reach across like that. Ask your sister to pass the sauce, if you want it.’

  ‘Didn’t some scary old woman used to live there?’ queried Tara.

  ‘What happened to the scary old woman?’ Katie wanted to know.

  This stymied Wendy completely. She had taken it for granted that the elderly occupant
had died. That was the usual reason for a long-neglected house suddenly appearing on the market, but she was reluctant to introduce that idea – she seemed to recall that Katie had already raised the possibility of ghosts and she badly wanted them all to like the house, even if there was no realistic prospect of it ever actually becoming theirs.

  ‘We don’t know anything about who lived there before,’ she said. ‘And anyway, that doesn’t matter. The great thing is that it’s a good chance to see inside the house. Once it’s sold there may never be another opportunity.’

  ‘I still don’t see the point,’ said Bruce. ‘It sounds like a complete waste of time to me.’

  Wendy turned to Tara, hoping for some support but receiving none. ‘Yawnsville,’ her eldest said, theatrically patting her hand against her mouth.

  ‘Well, all right.’ Wendy laughed off their indifference. ‘I’ll go up there myself, on Thursday afternoon.’

  Wendy spent Thursday morning busying herself with what Bruce jokingly referred to as her housewifely chores. At lunchtime she sat at the dining table for a solo lunch of crispbread and cottage cheese, and after that she went upstairs to exchange her jeans for a smart skirt, selecting a bag that matched her shoes. Somehow it felt important to dress the part of someone who could actually afford to buy The Ashes.

  She was relieved to find Jasmine Close and Magnolia Road deserted. Friendly neighbours might ask where she was going, all dressed up on a weekday afternoon, and now that she was actually on her way it suddenly felt silly to have smartened herself up merely in order to go nosing around someone else’s house. Her own family clearly thought so. When she had mentioned the viewing to Bruce that morning as he left for work, he’d just laughed and warned her to look out for dodgy floorboards. ‘Otherwise, you might find yourself having an unexpected look around the cellar.’ Afterwards she’d wondered whether it was a roundabout way of letting her know that she was putting on weight, hence the cottage cheese lunch.