Free Murder by Mistake by Veronica Heley Page B

ours.’
    ‘Why would he want to rent one of our houses? Oh.’
    Ellie sat down with a bump, because she, too, could think of a very good reason why Denis might want to rent one of her houses.
    Stewart was silent. She could imagine that he was thinking Diana had already been well provided for. When she’d married Stewart, her father had given them the money to buy a house, which had been sold at a profit when they divorced. Diana had used that money as deposit on a big house down here in London, which she’d divided into flats for sale, retaining the best one for herself. On top of that, when Ellie had inherited her aunt’s big place the previous year, she’d made Diana a present of the semi-detached house in which she herself had lived for so many years . . . and which Diana had immediately rented out. Diana had done well out of what she’d been given, but had never been satisfied with what she’d got.
    Ellie couldn’t defend her daughter’s past record, but she could excuse her present conduct to a certain extent. ‘She says her present flat is too small for her and Denis together. I may be imagining things, of course, but suppose Denis is behind the let. Suppose he’s trying to rent the property under a false name. Once he’s moved in, he might think I wouldn’t dare to turn my own daughter out. He could break the terms of the agreement by subletting, and naturally he wouldn’t bother to pay any rent. He’d be well away, living in a six bedroom house in a good part of Ealing, while the Trust would be down the drain for thousands of pounds, when we might have let the house out to someone who really needs it.’
    Stewart sounded as worried as Ellie. ‘I’m sure you’ve nothing to worry about, but tomorrow morning I’ll check the tenant’s references and follow them up. I’ll also get on to the bank to see that the cheque the tenant gave us hasn’t bounced. It may be perfectly genuine.’
    ‘I know. Put my fears down to old age.’
    ‘I’d go back to the office and start on it now, except that Maria’s yelling that supper’s ready and Frank wants me to read him a bedtime story.’
    ‘You do that, Stewart. This can wait.’
    She put the phone down and rubbed her forehead. Of course Stewart was right, and there was nothing in it. She’d just got a ‘down’ on Denis, that was all.
    Now to deal with something else; she must get her house guest to talk about her mother, see if their stories tallied.
    She was going back into the hall to collect her shopping when there came a knock and a ring on the front door. She hesitated. Would Rose hear it? Nobody was mentioning it, but Rose liked to have the volume on her television turned up rather too loudly nowadays. ‘For company,’ she said. Or maybe because she was getting a little deaf?
    Ellie opened the front door, only to have a large wreath of red roses thrust into her arms. ‘Sign here.’
    ‘We haven’t ordered—’
    ‘You want them taken to the crematorium? You should have said.’ An elderly man, delivering in a florist’s van. He checked his clip board. ‘It says, “For Mia.” This is the right address, isn’t it?’
    Ellie signed and took the wreath through into the kitchen quarters. Luckily neither Rose nor Mia was there. The wreath had been beautifully made from the new flower shop that had just opened up in the Avenue, but there was no way Ellie was going to let Mia see it. She put the wreath in a black plastic bag and dropped it outside the back door.
    First lilies, then roses. It was harassment, wasn’t it? Ellie retreated to her study, shut the door, and rang the police station. Needless to say, the DI was not available, but Ellie left a message with the dependable – she hoped – DC Milburn, asking her to collect the wreath and to investigate.
    She looked through the pile of correspondence Pat had left for her, checked the latest emails, and tried to concentrate on work, while all she could think about was Mia.
    Where was