The Skeleton Tree by Diane Janes (reading women TXT) 📕

of wood, of which there were very few. Only half-a-dozen and none of them loose … But of course, Peter would have nailed the board back into place … and here was a length of board no more than a foot long if that, held in place by nails which were much shinier than those holding the adjacent boards in place. As she headed down the attic stairs in search of Bruce’s tool basket, that strange laughter came again, sounding uncannily as if it was coming from within the attic itself, though she knew that it must really be seeping in from outside.

Peter had done his work well and Wendy found it impossible to extract the nails, which had been hammered home flush with the wood. Next she attempted to work the prongs of a claw hammer into a tiny gap at the end of the short board, but there wasn’t enough room and eventually she had to use a narrow metal file, which dug painfully into her hands as she attempted to prise the end of the board up. When the nails eventually loosened their grip, the board jerked upwards so suddenly that Wendy was all but thrown backwards. Once she had recovered her balance, she held up the end of the board with one hand while holding the torch in the other, angling it so that it shone into the little cavity where Peter had almost certainly located the photograph of Johnny. She was astonished to see that he had missed something. It appeared to be a string of beads. She reached in and picked it up in order to get a proper look, expecting something dulled with time, another keepsake given to Dora by her forbidden boyfriend.

‘No …’ She whispered it. It was hardly a word, more of a groan.

The beads had lost none of their modern brightness. She stood the torch on the floor and used a finger of her spare hand to twist them until they lined up the right way round and spelled out their owner’s name: Leah.

‘Oh God, oh God,’ she whispered.

Leah Cattermole had gone missing while Peter had been working on their house. He had hidden the necklace in their attic. He had already been acquitted of murdering Leanne Finnegan through lack of evidence. Now she was holding the evidence that would convict him of murdering Leah.

A board creaked ominously behind her. She jumped and turned, almost expecting to find Peter himself behind her, but the attic was just as empty as before.

She ought to go straight to the police. But what about the children? What about the house itself? The police would be sure to want to take the place apart, searching for more clues showing Peter’s involvement. Perhaps they would dig up the garden, searching for the girl’s body. That would be horrible – and totally unnecessary as Peter couldn’t possible have buried anything in the garden without her noticing the freshly disturbed ground when she had been working there herself. Bruce would be furious. And he would blame her … Oh yes, he would perceive it as all her fault for failing to convey Mrs Parsons’ original warning.

Why on earth had Peter hidden the necklace in their attic at all? She had read somewhere that rapists and killers sometimes retained trophies, but what would be the point of hiding such a thing in a house which belonged to someone else? She fingered the beads, twisting them so that the letters of the girl’s name appeared and disappeared. If Mrs Parsons was right, Peter had been a suspect in the first murder and might have realized that he would be a person of interest in the second case too. Perhaps he had initially planned to keep his trophy then, realizing the police might get a search warrant but unable to bring himself to discard the necklace completely, he had decided to hide it in a place where he knew it was unlikely to be discovered by anyone. Except that she had discovered it. Thanks to the photograph. Almost thanks to Dora. Was one victim pointing the way to justice for another?

A police investigation would very likely create problems in trying to get a house sale through. Once the police became involved, the press might get hold of it too. Prospective buyers might be put off by the notoriety or the second-hand association with a murder. She twisted the beads until all the letters were hidden against her palm. Peter had already got off on one charge. She didn’t know any details, but he must have very clever lawyers. How would anyone be able to prove that it had been Peter who had placed the necklace in the attic? In handling it, she had probably smudged any fingerprints. He would say that someone else must have put it there. Good grief, he might even say that Bruce could have put it there! And what about Katie and Jamie, who were already a bit funny about the attic? How could it be kept away from them that a bad man had put a dead girl’s necklace just above the ceilings beneath which they slept?

She recalled Joan’s final advice to her: to rejoin her husband as soon as possible. More than ever, she wondered if rediscovering that photograph today had been a sign. If it hadn’t been for her smashing the photo frame, she wouldn’t have found the necklace. Someone, something, maybe even The Ashes itself, had wanted to warn her about its presence, but even so she now wished that she had not found it. Ignorance is bliss. The answer was to put it back, pretend she had never seen it, say nothing to Bruce or indeed anyone else. She replaced it carefully and slotted the board back into place, stifling her conscience with the thought that her silence on the subject did not have to be permanent. A point might come, at some stage in the future, when she was able