Spiking the Girl by Gabrielle Lord Page B

swinging on her frail wrist. Gemma pulled out her music and set it up on the piano while her teacher made herself comfortable in her cane chair.
    ‘That pendant,’ said Mrs Snellgrove, ‘it’s very unusual. The empty centre, I mean.’
    ‘It’s supposed to have a stone there but I lost it when I was on holidays.’
    Mrs Snellgrove patted her shoulder and looked at the piano. ‘So I don’t suppose you’ve had much time to practise “Jungle Drums” and “Gingerbread Cakewalk”?’
    ‘Not really.’ Gemma felt about eight years old as her music teacher sighed and shook her head.
    ‘Well, then, let’s just start them again, shall we? Now, right hand first. Nicely curved fingers. One, two, one, two.’
    When the lesson was finished and Gemma gathered up her music, Mrs Snellgrove hovered. ‘Gemma, my dear. I wonder if you could help me?’ she asked.
    ‘I’d be delighted.’ Gemma had become very fond of Mrs Snellgrove and her eccentric, loving ways.
    ‘My mother asked me, actually.’
    Gemma recalled that Mrs Snellgrove’s mother still ‘did’ for herself in her small apartment at Dover Heights.
    ‘She’s ninety-two, you know, and almost blind. But she’s very active, knows her way round her flat, and we’re all agreed that the best thing is to support her in her own little place as long as possible.’ Mrs Snellgrove adjusted her pearls. ‘She lost her old pussy cat recently and I think she’s lonely and imagining things.’
    ‘Like what?’
    ‘She keeps insisting that there’s some sort of animal in her apartment. Ethne and I go there once a week to visit and do a quick whip around, although Mother really is quite able. We’ve checked the place out thoroughly. There’s simply nowhere for an animal to get inside. It’s a second-floor apartment. But Mother is adamant about this animal! She says she can feel it touching her legs.’
    ‘What do you think?’
    Mrs Snellgrove’s face became very still. ‘I think it’s the beginning of the end,’ she said. ‘The doctor wants her to go into a nursing home. She says that once old folk start seeing and hearing things, we just have to accept that the time has come.’ Mrs Snellgrove’s voice was sad. ‘Anyway,’ she added, brightening up, ‘Mother read about you in the papers and she knows you’re one of my students. She was very taken with the idea of one of those cameras you use. She told us that if you put a camera in her flat, she reckons it will prove there is an animal in there.’
    ‘We could do that for her,’ Gemma said, ‘and keep an eye on her.’
    The look of relief on Mrs Snellgrove’s face as she nodded made Gemma smile. ‘Mother said that if you could keep an eye on men who were playing up, you could certainly find out what animal it is that’s bothering her.’
    ‘Let me know when you’re next visiting your mother,’ said Gemma, ‘and I’ll come along and set up the camera myself.’
    •
    Gemma spent most of the weekend keeping busy, trying not to think about Steve. On Saturday, she checked out Netherleigh Park’s website, searching the net for references to the disappearance of Amy Bernhard and making notes.
    Sunday morning she went for a run around the cemetery, pausing at her mother’s grave and picking a bunch of wild yellow daisies that flowered around the graves in early summer. She lay them next to the headstone and stood there for a few moments before resuming her pace.
    Later in the afternoon, she took herself to the movies, recalling the last time she’d been at the Ritz only a few weeks ago, with Steve sitting beside her, his arm around her shoulder, his hand stroking her neck.
    She did some piano practice and watched television before going to bed, wanting to be up fresh and early for the start of the new week.
    After breakfast—toast and the last scraping of the honey jar—the next morning, Gemma introduced herself on the phone to the mother of Claudia Page, making a time to see Claudia, best