A Good Girl's Guide to Murder (A Good Girl's Guide to Murder #1) - Holly Jackson Page 0,71
man she was with? What he looked like?’
The woman’s face muddied and she stared at Pip, her eyes darting right and left, a blink marking each change in direction.
‘No,’ she said shakily. ‘No, it wasn’t five years ago. I saw this girl. She’s been here.’
‘In 2012?’ Pip said.
‘No, no.’ The woman’s eyes settled past Pip’s ear. ‘It was just a few weeks ago. She was here, I remember.’
Pip’s heart sank a few hundred feet, a drop tower back into her chest.
‘That’s not possible,’ she said. ‘That girl has been dead for five years.’
‘But, I –’ the woman shook her head, the wrinkled skin around her eyes folding together – ‘but I remember. She was here. She’s been here.’
‘Five years ago?’ Ravi prompted.
‘No,’ the woman said, anger creeping into her voice. ‘I remember, don’t I? I don’t –’
‘Grandma?’ A man’s voice called from upstairs.
A set of heavy boots thundered down the stairs and a fair-haired man came into view.
‘Hello?’ he said, looking at Pip and Ravi. He walked over and proffered his hand. ‘I’m Henry Hill,’ he said.
Ravi stood and shook his hand. ‘I’m Ravi, this is Pip.’
‘Can we help you with something?’ he asked, darting concerned looks over at his grandmother.
‘We were just asking your grandma a couple of questions about someone who stayed here five years ago,’ said Ravi.
Pip looked back to the old woman and noticed that she was crying. Tears snaking down her tissue-paper skin, dropping from her chin on to the printout of Andie.
The grandson must have noticed as well. He walked over and squeezed his grandma’s shoulder, taking the piece of paper out of her shaking grip.
‘Grandma,’ he said, ‘why don’t you pop the kettle on and make us a pot of tea? I’ll help out these people here, don’t worry.’
He helped her up off the chair and steered her towards a door to the left of the hall, handing the photo of Andie to Pip as they passed. Ravi and Pip looked at each other, questions in their eyes, until Henry returned a few seconds later, closing the kitchen door to muffle the sound of the boiling kettle.
‘Sorry,’ he said with a sad smile. ‘She gets upset when she gets confused. The Alzheimer’s . . . it’s starting to get quite bad. I’m actually just cleaning up to put the place on the market. She keeps forgetting that.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Pip said. ‘We should have realized. We didn’t mean to upset her.’
‘No, I know, course you didn’t,’ he said. ‘Can I help with whatever it is?’
‘We were asking about this girl.’ Pip held up the paper. ‘Whether she stayed here five years ago.’
‘And what did my grandma say?’
‘She thought she’d seen her recently, just weeks ago,’ she swallowed. ‘But this girl died in 2012.’
‘She does that quite often now,’ he said, looking between the two of them. ‘Gets confused about times and when things happened. Sometimes still thinks my grandad is alive. She’s probably just recognizing your girl from five years ago, if that’s when you think she was here.’
‘Yeah,’ Pip said, ‘I guess.’
‘Sorry I can’t be of more help. I can’t tell you who stayed here five years ago; we haven’t kept the old records. But if she recognized her, I guess that gives you your answer?’
Pip nodded. ‘It does. Sorry for upsetting her.’
‘Will she be OK?’ said Ravi.
‘She’ll be fine,’ Henry said gently. ‘Cup of tea will do the trick.’
They strolled out of Kilton station, the town just dimming as it ticked into the hour of six and the sun slumped off to the west.
Pip’s mind was a centrifuge, spinning over the shifting pieces of Andie, separating them and putting them back together in different combinations.
‘Weighing it up,’ she said, ‘I think we can confirm that Andie stayed at the Ivy House Hotel.’ She thought the bathroom tiles and the woman’s time-confused recognition were proof enough of that. But this confirmation loosened and rearranged certain pieces.
They turned right into the car park, heading for Pip’s car down at the far end, speaking in harmonized if s and so s as they walked.
‘If Andie was going to that hotel,’ Ravi said, ‘must be because that’s where she met Secret Older Guy and they were both trying to avoid getting caught.’
Pip nodded in agreement. ‘So,’ she said, ‘that means that whoever Secret Older Guy was, he couldn’t have Andie over at his house. And the most likely reason for that would be that he lived with his family or a wife.’