14 Lofty Foster at Home

Christie’s Detective Agency Two part 14 THE BODY IN THE LIBRARY

Lofty Foster groaned as he tried to stand up. He’d taken a fancy to a cup of tea, his mouth felt as dry as the bottom of a parrot’s cage, but these days the kitchen and the kettle always seemed so far away.

He’d hoped, when he was younger, that his old age would be a gentle affair, with sister Lauren always there to help him. She’d always been there for him in the good old days of innocence and laughter. And he knew even back then that he’d need someone when he could no longer seek the protection of youth and his imperfect limbs stopped behaving as he wanted them to. They’d talked about it, she with a smile, knowing his problem. Born with cerebral palsy, walking had never been a guaranteed achievement, and not even back then had he been able to walk for far without needing a break. It was one of the curses life had bestowed on him, that and an almost instinctive need to put things right if he perceived them as being wrong.

Lauren tried to understand, and when they, as nippers, made plans for the future it had always been with the understanding that she’d be around to help him. Although a couple of years younger than him, she knew. She understood. She was an angel, she always would be.

Then she’d got that boyfriend, and he’d found himself being increasingly pushed out. That hadn’t mattered, though: she’d have to live a life of her own after all. He’d always known that, encouraged her, done little things to add to her confidence taught her about sex, showed her pictures in a book he’d found.

But the wretched fellow she’d set her heart on, the swine Ian Pritchard, had been a wash out. He’d let her down, and not just in a small way. He’d let her down big time, left her waiting in the church, with she not knowing that he’d buggered off with that awful Bonnie Fancee who he’d met and been beguiled by virtually overnight. And Bonnie Fancee had clearly thought all the money he’d inherit one day would be enough to provide her with what her parents had never had because he had a farming father with a lot of fields. And she’d dream of more than just wealth, but comfort of the sort they’d never dream of, because they lived in a rotting trailer parked in the woodland that separated Chickencoop from Duckcrop. They had nothing, never had.

But that had all been the better part of a lifetime ago.

Now he wanted a cup of tea and the kettle was too far away. He’d never reach it without staggering into something dangerous.

And the door bell rang.

One thing he did every day was grumble to hell with safety and robbers and the like and leave the door unlocked. If somebody called, and the odd official person did, to check that he was being a good boy and not in any trouble … good old man, more like … then he could just shout come in and not have to put additional strain on his poor old legs. And it worked. After all, nobody was likely to risk robbing a poor man like him when they remembered his reputation. Murder and arson… though that last was a lie and he had been sent back to prison to pay for someone else’s sins. He hadn’t been too bothered. He was used to a cell and the wide world of freedom had become a problem.

“Come in!” he bellowed. Though bellowed wasn’t quite the right word. Once he’d had a powerful pair of lungs, but now, well into his seventies, even they were letting him down.

A pretty young woman came into his sparsely but tidily furnished front room, together with a younger man, more like a teenager than a man, he thought, and he automatically found himself apologising.

“Sorry about the mess,” he said, “but my legs hardly work and I can’t do much.”

“That’s all right,” said the woman, “let me introduce us: I’m Jennifer Marple and this is Horace Sorsse. We’re in no way official, just private eyes trying to work out who killed your sister.”

“What? Our Lauren? Killed… No! She ain’t been killed! I won’t have it! I simply won’t! She was the light of my life… though I ain’t seen owt of her since I came out of Brumpton jail.”

“You haven’t?” asked Horace, “I thought you were close…?”

“Close? Oh, we were! I even clobbered that scumbag who let her down at the altar all them years ago. Aye, and I paid for it too, half my life behind bars for taking that piece of s**t off the planet! But you see, I’m not so mobile. Never was, in truth. They said I set light to their farm and the truth is I’d have had all on walking half way there, and I never could drive. So I never did that, but they locked me up for it anyway.”

“You mean,” said Jenny, trying to smile warmly, “that you hadn’t heard about your sister Lauren?”

“I’m stuck here, misses, stuck here and can’t go far. The corner shop’s my limit, and they charge the Earth for delivering to me. It’s criminal what they charge, and they’re not five minutes away at the speed I walk, but I can’t carry stuff back… But you say Lauren, sweet Lauren, nose in her books, you say someone’s done her in?”

Horace nodded. “And nobody told you?” he asked.

“Nobody’s bothered with me and how I feel!” he croaked, “I sit here, day in and day out, sometimes some fellow from the law comes to see that I haven’t popped out to kill someone or burn their houses down… as if I would or could.”

“Don’t you take a paper? It was in the Echo, in detail,” suggested Jenny.

“Me? Papers? Who’s going to deliver papers to me, what with my reputation and, I dared say, roguish looks?” asked Lofty.

And suddenly as if a film had been played in her mind, Jenny saw the tragedy that was this old and crippled man. He had no motive for killing his sister, she already knew that much, but the ability? He could hardly step outside his own house, he had no vehicle of any sort, would never even be able to operate something as simple as a push bike… no, he wouldn’t and couldn’t have done it.

“I’m so sorry to have brought you such tragic news like this,” she said quietly, “is there anything I can do for you before we go?” she added gently.

“A cuppa tea… I can’t easily get to the kettle… a cup of tea would be nice,” he almost whispered.

Jenny found her way into his kitchen. She looked round. He didn’t have much in there, but what he had he evidently kept clean. But it was so wrong that a man of his age, crippled and unable to do much for himself, should be left in isolation like this. So she put his kettle on and made him a cup of tea.

“Here you are,” she said, offering him a cup on a saucer and placing it on the coffee table in front of him.

“Aren’t you having one?” he asked.

She shook her head. “I’m sorry, but we must go,” she said quietly, “but I’ll keep you in touch with how the enquiry’s going. We must bring the person who killed your sister to justice.”

“Is there anything of hers, a picture, a photo, that sort of thing? She was so sweet. Younger than me, you know, and an angel…”

“I’ll see what I can do,” murmured Jenny, “come, Horace, we’ve work to do, Mr Foster needs time to absorb what we’ve told him…”

Lofty watched them go, and uncomfortably to him, his eyes watered almost as if he was crying.

Which was something he’d never do.

© Peter Rogerson 08.10.21

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