An A-List for Death Read online

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  PAMELA HART is an award-winning, bestselling author of more than 40 books. She writes the Poppy McGowan mystery series as well as historical novels; The Charleston Scandal is her most recent historical story, set in 1920s London.

  As Pamela Freeman, she is well known as a beloved children’s author and fantasy writer. Her most recent children’s book is a non-fiction picture book, Dry to Dry: The Seasons of Kakadu. Her adult fantasy series, the Castings Trilogy, ended with the award-winning Ember and Ash.

  To be kept up to date about the next Poppy McGowan story, you can subscribe to her newsletter at pamela-hart.com/newsletter; you even get a free story!

  www.harpercollins.com.au/hq

  To all the editors who have made each one of my books better than it was.

  CONTENTS

  About the Author

  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

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Acknowledgements

  CHAPTER ONE

  Four weeks ago

  Aunty ‘I’m dying, you know’ Mary said, ‘I’ll be perfectly all right on my own. I’m fine!’

  When Mary discards the hypochondria, you know things are serious. In this case, it was a looming knee replacement.

  ‘Poppy will look after you when you come out of rehab,’ my mother proclaimed. ‘She doesn’t have a family to worry about. She’d be happy to do it.’

  Sure. It’s not like I had a job or a boyfriend or a life to get in the way. Well, okay, I had the job and the boyfriend. A life? Not so much. I was living with my parents while I renovated my place in Annandale. I had expected it to take only a couple of months, but as anyone who has ever renovated will tell you, the more you do, the more needs doing.

  Aunty Mary looked at me and I smiled reassuringly. What else could I do?

  If Mary didn’t think she was dying, she really did need me.

  Sunday

  So here I was, four weeks later, letting myself into Aunty Mary’s flat after taking her Yorkshire terrier, Cocoa, for a long walk.

  ‘Is that you, Daisy?’

  Old relatives’ voices cut right through brick walls and straight into the ‘I must have done something wrong’ part of your brain. But I hadn’t done anything wrong, so I closed Aunty Mary’s door behind me and led Cocoa through to her bedroom.

  ‘It’s me, Aunty Mary,’ I said. Cocoa jumped up on the bed and I took off his leash. ‘Hasn’t Daisy come?’

  Yesterday, Daisy had arranged to come and do Mary’s hair this morning while I took Cocoa out. Which was a nicer way of saying she’d be aunt-sitting to make sure the aunt in question didn’t overtask herself, which she was prone to do.

  ‘It’s not like her,’ Mary said, peering past me as though her friend Daisy would suddenly appear. ‘Go and see if she’s all right.’

  ‘Maybe she’s forgotten—’

  ‘She wouldn’t forget. Go and see. Number 37.’

  I resisted the urge to curtsey and say, ‘Yes, ma’am!’ and dutifully went down the corridor to knock at Daisy’s door, the next along from Mary’s.

  Daisy Montgomery was Mary’s oldest friend, a figure of mythic proportions in my family. She had been Aunty Mary’s bestie since Mary had gone to London in the days when Carnaby Street was the fashion centre of the world. Younger than Mary, Daisy had been a model, a singer, a much-photographed girlfriend of famous musicians, cool, hip and immoral—a strange friend for strait-laced Aunty Mary. She’d inspired the songs ‘Darling Daisy’ and ‘Daisy Chains’, which were still played on the golden oldies radio stations. I’d met her for the first time yesterday when I’d brought Aunty Mary home from the rehab facility.

  I knocked.

  No answer. I waited. Knocked again. No answer.

  She’s forgotten, I thought. People forget things. But it seemed odd. She’d been pretty clear about coming over when she talked to me.

  I went back to Mary.

  ‘She’s not there—’ I started.

  ‘Of course she’s there! She said she’d come over. Something’s happened to her.’ Mary was really worried—flustered, which was extremely unlike her. ‘Here.’ She scratched through her bedside drawer and held out a bunch of keys. ‘Make sure she’s all right.’

  I hesitated. What if Daisy was out and came home to find me in the middle of her apartment? What if she was in the bath, or on the toilet, or just hadn’t wanted to answer the door?

  ‘For God’s sake, Poppy! Don’t just stand there. This is why I’ve got a key—in case she doesn’t show up one day. She’s got one of mine, too.’ The grumbling voice was a shield; Mary hated to admit she was old.

  I took the keys.

  Even so, I knocked loudly a few times before I let myself into Daisy’s apartment. The lights were on. That was odd. I flicked switches off as I went through to the lounge room.

  It was beautiful. I’m always astonished at the difference decoration can make. Daisy’s place was exactly the same size and shape as Mary’s, but it was a different world. She had painted it a deep rose, with white woodwork, feminine and sophisticated at once, and the furniture was French Provincial antiques (real ones). I was ready to bet that the artwork was real, too—even the small Degas drawing over the sideboard and the dark green Tang horse on the desk. The only thing that seemed out of place was a cricket bat hung on a plate holder on the wall. I could make out some kind of signature on it. One of those collector’s items. Her dead husband’s, maybe.

  I checked instinctively to make sure my shoes were clean and wouldn’t mark the pale cream carpet. Then I stood, indecisive. I so didn’t want to be there. I felt like an intruder, like a sneak thief. But—

  If Daisy were in trouble, she was probably in the bedroom.

  The bedroom was Wedgewood blue and white, and perfectly tidy. The bed had been made. There wasn’t so much as a tissue out of place.

  Most household accidents happen in the bathroom and the kitchen. The bathroom was across the hall from the bedroom, just as it was in Mary’s flat. I pushed the sliding door tentatively, but it stuck. There was something behind it. I pushed harder and craned my neck to see in. Oh, shit. A foot. Wearing a pink and black slingback—the shoes Daisy had been wearing yesterday.

  ‘Daisy? Daisy, can you hear me?’

  Nothing. Oh God, don’t let her be dead. I crouched down and felt her ankle. Cool, but not cold. There was a pulse spot in the ankle, wasn’t there? Then I realised I had to stop wasting time. Her other foot was jamming the door, stopping it from sliding. I reached in as far as I could, put my hand under her foot and lifted it up. The door slid open.

  Oh God. Her head was covered in blood, the fine, fair hair matted and dark. But the blood was still oozing, slowly, onto the carpet. That was good. Right? Blood flowing meant she wasn’t dead. The thought seemed to set me free of paralysis. My phone was in my bag still, back at Mary’s. I ran down the corridor to the phone I’d seen on the desk, next to the Tang ho
rse.

  I dialled 000, got connected to the ambulance and stammered out the details. They told me to take something back to Daisy and put pressure on the wound. Towels would be good.

  Okay. I took the phone with me, the nice ambulance lady talking soothingly to me, grabbed a pale blue towel and pressed it gently onto Daisy’s head. Could she breathe? Her face seemed pressed into the carpet. I rolled her carefully onto her side. Recovery position. I knew about that. I’d done a first-aid course. With prompting from the lady on the phone, I started to remember what to do.

  ‘Keep her warm,’ the phone said. I pulled two more towels from the rail and tucked them around her. She was so pale. The blue bathroom carpet was soaked.

  ‘Is she breathing?’ the phone asked.

  ‘Yes, yes, she’s breathing.’ I resisted the impulse to put the phone to Daisy’s lips so they could hear for themselves.

  ‘That’s good, dear,’ the phone said.

  Yes. Good. I kept up the pressure on Daisy’s head and it worried me that she didn’t wince or react. Surely it must hurt. The bath was in front of me, to the right as I’d come in the door, and I saw there was blood on the edge. She must have fallen and hit her head. Falls were the second most common cause of accidental death, after car accidents. Particularly among the elderly. So why was I so surprised? Daisy had seemed so sure on her feet, so graceful. Poised, which just meant ‘balanced’, after all. But accidents happen.

  The ambos buzzed and I whipped to the door to let them in, then set a chair to keep the door open and rushed back to Daisy again. The blood was starting to come through the towel. I wasn’t sure if I’d helped or made it bleed more freely.

  A minute later the ambos were there and they gently slid me out of the bathroom and set to work. I wasn’t needed in there.

  Then I remembered Mary.

  ‘I—uh—I just have to tell my aunty—’ I said. ‘I’ll be right back.’

  As I ran out I saw that I had left bloody footprints right across Daisy’s beautiful carpet. It made me want to vomit. I wiped my shoes off on the doormat outside the front door before I rushed down the corridor.

  ‘What’s happened? What’s happened? Where have you been?’

  ‘She had a fall in the bathroom,’ I gabbled. ‘Hit her head. But she’s alive. I called the ambulance. I have to go with her to hospital.’

  I grabbed my bag and turned away.

  ‘Wait!’ Mary said, struggling to get out of bed. Cocoa pranced around the bed, barking with excitement. This was why I was here—she could hobble around with a walker, but she needed help to get in and out of bed.

  ‘Oh, no, you don’t,’ I said. I pushed her back. ‘There’s nothing you can do. I’ll go, and I’ll ring you from the hospital.’

  She was pale from the pain of moving, but she didn’t want to give in.

  ‘There is something I can do. I can ring her son. Go and get me her box. In the middle drawer of the desk in her study. That’s got all her papers in it. It’ll have her address book.’

  It would be better for Mary if she had something to keep her busy. And Daisy’s family should be told. So I ran again, stopped Cocoa from following me out the door, then checked the bathroom where the ambos were talking on their radio to the hospital, warning them that Daisy was coming in. I opened the desk drawer, took out a beautiful Chinese lacquered box with a picture of a deer on it, and raced it back to Mary.

  She accepted it with a stony face, but then she softened. ‘Thanks, Poppy. If you hadn’t been here …’ Her voice was shaky. I kissed her on the cheek, but she couldn’t resist a parting shot as I went out the door: ‘I told you there was something wrong!’

  They were wheeling Daisy out on a stretcher when I got back and somehow a small crowd had gathered, fronted by a pigeon-chested, small-footed man with a receding hairline. He had black hair, though, not grey, and he couldn’t have been more than forty-five, so what was he doing here?

  He stuck out his chest even further and demanded, ‘What’s going on here?’

  The ambos didn’t bother to answer. They were carefully manoeuvring the wheeled stretcher out of the doorway. I didn’t see why I should answer, either.

  ‘I am the village manager!’ he declared, his face turning red. ‘I demand to know what’s going on!’

  Malouf. That was his name. Aunty Mary had talked about him. She didn’t like him, and I could see why.

  ‘What d’you reckon’s happened, mate?’ the female ambo said. ‘She’s had a fall.’

  The other spectators, both older women, tut-tutted sympathetically and craned their necks to get a look inside Daisy’s flat. I slid through the doorway and half closed it to keep her privacy, then found Daisy’s purse. I emptied out the money and credit cards into the desk drawer, but I knew the hospital would want identification, so I took everything else: Medicare card, seniors card, health fund card, driver’s licence, reading glasses. I stuck her keys in my pocket, locked the door behind me with shaking hands and joined the ambos in the lift.

  Or tried to. Malouf blocked my path.

  ‘Who are you?’

  ‘I’m Poppy McGowan, Mary Ashton’s niece.’

  ‘What are you doing here?’

  What a numpty. I sidestepped him and went to the lift. ‘I’m staying with Mary until her knee is better. She sent me to check on Mrs Montgomery.’

  Malouf spluttered as though I’d said I was an axe murderer. ‘No one is supposed to be living in the village without registering with my office! Mrs Ashton is in breach of by-law 13C—’

  I stepped into the lift and hit the door-close button.

  Malouf was still ranting. ‘You haven’t heard the last—’

  ‘Arsehole,’ the woman ambo said as the lift descended. Couldn’t agree more.

  Daisy was still shockingly pale. They’d laid her on her side, bandage around her head, and they’d given her a drip—saline solution, the bag said.

  ‘She’s lost a lot of blood,’ the man said. ‘But she’s stable.’

  They let me go in the ambulance and it wasn’t until we’d rushed through emergency and gotten Daisy to a doctor that I had to explain to someone—the admissions clerk—that, no, I wasn’t her daughter, just a neighbour. But I had all the right cards, so they let me fill out the forms anyway.

  ‘Do you think she will want to be admitted as a private patient?’ the clerk asked.

  ‘Absolutely,’ I said. Being a private patient in an Australian hospital doesn’t get you one skerrick of better medical care in an emergency, but it does get you a private room if one is available, and I was pretty sure Daisy would want that.

  ‘You’ll have to wait outside,’ the clerk said, pointing to the waiting area beyond the glass-fronted desk. ‘We’ll call you if there’s any change. Can you inform the next of kin?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, suddenly exhausted. ‘My aunt is calling her son.’

  The clerk nodded and I could see that all the boxes had been ticked to her satisfaction and she could turn her attention to the next case. It was petty of me to resent that. She was just doing her job, and the next case would need her help as much as I had.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said.

  I collapsed onto one of the hard plastic chairs in the waiting room and dug my phone out to call Mary.

  ‘She’s with the doctors. The ambos said they’d take her up to X-ray straight away, probably. Do a CT scan. But she’s stable.’

  ‘Thank God,’ Mary answered. Her voice was wobbly. ‘I’ll get Mary MacKillop onto it.’ My family had switched, en masse, from praying to a whole variety of saints to praying only to the new Australian one. They swore by St Mary of the Cross MacKillop, and I have to say, she was a pretty efficient woman when she was alive, so maybe it would prove a good choice.

  ‘Did you contact her son?’

  ‘I left a message,’ Mary said. ‘It might take him a while to call.’ There was something in her voice—something held back. Was Daisy’s son in prison or an institution? Somewhere
it was hard for him to call whenever he wanted? I shook my head. My imagination was in overdrive. More likely Daisy’s son was just tied up in a meeting or something.

  ‘I’ll stay here until we know more,’ I said. ‘I put your name and number as the contact person on the hospital forms.’

  ‘Good. Good. That was sensible.’

  ‘And I’m ringing Mum.’

  ‘There’s no need to do that! I’m perfectly capable of looking after myself—’

  I let Mary’s protests roll over me, soothingly familiar. After a while she ran out of steam.

  ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘and I’m still ringing Mum.’

  It was comforting to tell Mum the whole story and send her off to Mary’s.

  Then I had to wait. Frustrating. Wanting to do something useful, I sent a text to Patience Carter, checking in, because I hadn’t heard from her in a couple of days. Patience was a teenager who had come to me for help a few months ago and had stayed a while with a friend of mine. She’d ended up going back to her parents and had been doing okay, but a recent court case had brought up all the old upset again and I’d been keeping an eye on her, her parents being of the ‘children should be seen and not heard’ variety.

  She didn’t answer, which was unusual. Maybe she was in Bible group, or whatever religious activity her parents were forcing her into. I’d check again tomorrow.

  So I waited, along with the family with the vomiting child and the wife of the man who had sliced his hand open with a chainsaw and a sweet young police constable who had to wait for the all-clear from concussion after a bolshie drunk had bonked him on the head with a beer bottle. They were short of beds, so they’d hoicked him into the waiting room. ‘Which probs means I’m fine, right?’ he said.

  I didn’t have a book, and my phone was low on charge so I couldn’t read an ebook or play a game. I had no defences against the ‘I must tell you my life story’ urge which seems to ambush perfect strangers when they sit next to me. Tol says I look too interested and it encourages them.

  My own theory is that I simply listen—and no one in the whole history of the world has ever had enough attention paid to them. Attention is the most seductive thing in the world.