An Unholy Mess Page 20

  ‘I see. And did Margaret know about all this?’

  Julie flushed. ‘Not about the Spanish thing. I don’t think so anyway. But I think she might have guessed about me and Sean. She was always so nasty to me. It drove Mum wild.’

  Jim bet it did. But Joan’s alibi was airtight. Everybody at the party said she was in plain sight when the shot was fired. Pity. Because if ever a woman had murder in her, it was Joan Dix, Jim mused.

  ‘I see. And tell me again where you were when the shot was fired?’ Jason prompted.

  Julie looked at him bleakly.

  ‘You think I did it, don’t you?’ she queried flatly. ‘Because of Sean, and because I don’t have an alibi. But I was in my flat, changing,’ she shrugged, obviously too exhausted to care, for the moment, whether or not they believed her.

  ‘And Sean never talked about killing his wife?’ Jason pressed her, watching her head snap up, a look almost of near-scorn crossing her face. ‘Or of hiring someone else to do it for him?’

  ‘Don’t be daft,’ she said bitterly. ‘Why would he? Never heard of divorce, Inspector? It’s far more simple and much less risky,’ she said scornfully, and with a sudden show of spirit. ‘Besides, the greatest stroke of cunning Sean ever pulled off was renting a safety deposit box and skimming off enough money every week and stashing it away in order to afford the villa without Margaret knowing about it. I think he was dead scared that you’d find out about it and discover the money and his passport and other stuff, and arrest him for the murder.’

  Which explained why Sean had reacted so badly to the mention of Margaret’s safety deposit box, Jason suddenly realized. He must have assumed we’d got our wires crossed somehow, and had discovered his little secret stash instead.

  Eventually the interview was over, and outside, Jim sighed heavily.

  ‘Well, they both tell the same tale, sir,’ he pointed out.

  Of course, Franklyn had neglected to mention the safety deposit box, but they could soon run the truth about that down to earth.

  ‘Yes, but if they were in it together, they would be careful to get the details right, wouldn’t they?’ Jason said flatly. ‘Anyway, check and see if they really did have flights booked, and this villa they were on about all paid for and on the up and up.’

  Jim rubbed the back of his head. It was getting on for the wee small hours now, and he wanted his bed.

  ‘It wouldn’t be the first time a husband and his mistress got together to get rid of an unwanted wife, would it?’ he said. ‘And if there were two of them in it, it might have made the logistics of the thing easier.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Jason said. ‘But I’ve got a feeling, when you check out their story, that it’ll all gel.’

  ‘They might have still gone through with that, sir – the Spain thing I mean – as a getaway, like,’ Jim said, but his heart wasn’t really in it.

  ‘Rather obvious, though, don’t you think? Margaret gets killed, and her husband and a young female resident of the house disappear at the same time. It’d be like sticking a big notice on their foreheads saying “We did it!” Besides, it’s not as if you can’t get extradited from Spain, is it?’

  ‘Oh I’m going to bed,’ Jim said crossly. Like his boss, he didn’t really see Julie and Sean as the killers, but he was too damned tired to worry about it now.

  Jason grunted, not unsympathetic with his sergeant’s sudden bad mood.

  ‘Good idea Jim. We’ll pick it up again in the morning,’ he agreed. And yawned widely.

  CHAPTER 16

  Jason arrived at the vicarage at a little after nine the next morning, and as he locked the car door, his sergeant pulled in behind him. When they walked into the incident room, John and Vera rose quickly from a pair of chairs where they’d been waiting, the nervous but resolute looks on their faces instantly putting Jason on the alert.

  ‘Good morning. Is there something I can do for you?’ he asked pleasantly, taking a seat behind his desk. Jim sat where he was able to see both their faces, and got out his notebook.

  John cleared his throat, then abruptly sat down as Jason gestured him back into his chair. Vera did likewise.

  ‘We,’ John shot the plump blonde woman beside him an anxious look, and plunged right in. ‘We’re rather worried about Pauline,’ he said bluntly.

  Whatever Jason had been expecting, it wasn’t that. ‘Oh? Why?’

  Again John shot Vera a look, and she obligingly took over.

  ‘It’s not anything definite,’ she began. ‘By that I mean it’s not any one thing we can put our finger on. It’s sort of complicated.’

  ‘To begin with,’ John chipped in, ‘she’s been going around saying that she noticed the bloodstains on the stairs when she went back to her flat to get some fruit, on the day of the murder. Now we know that can’t be right, because, according to her, she was in her flat when she heard the shot. So what would bloodstains be doing on the stairs then?’

  Jason shot a startled glance at Jim. This was the first he’d heard about this. Why hadn’t Pauline been talking to them about it?

  ‘So of course, we didn’t really take much notice of her,’ Vera picked up the baton. ‘Pauline has a way of bragging, just to make you take notice of her. Personally, I think she’s just lacking in self-esteem.’

  Jason didn’t give a fig for Pauline Weeks’s self-esteem. He was, instead, going over what he knew about the couple in front of him. According to what research on their background had picked up, they’d only met when buying their respective flats at the vicarage. But both had been single, never having married, both were self-employed in a creative field, and had evidently hit it off and were now more or less an established couple. There wasn’t so much as a hint of any criminal activity in either of their backgrounds, and so far neither of them had any connection to Margaret Franklyn that the police had been able to discern. They seemed to be a pair of responsible, intelligent people, and since they were well down on his suspect list, he was inclined to listen to their evidence with an open mind. Quite why they should have been watching Pauline Weeks so closely, he wasn’t yet sure.

  ‘Of course, even though we quickly learned what she was like,’ Vera carried on, ‘it still worried us that she was going around saying things about the murder, and what happened that day. I mean, it could be dangerous, couldn’t it? If the murderer happened to hear her?’

  Jason’s slightly puzzled frown cleared. Ah, so that was it. And they were quite right – it was a very dangerous thing to go around claiming knowledge when a murder had been committed. They’d have to speak to the divorcee as a matter of urgency.

  ‘So when she called me up last night and tried to pump me about clothes, well, then I became really worried,’ Vera swept on.

  ‘What’s this about clothes?’ Jason interrupted sharply. As far as he was aware, it wasn’t yet common knowledge within the vicarage that the ashes from the bonfire site had contained articles of clothing.

  ‘Pauline rang me up last night and, it was weird, but I’m sure she was trying to pump me for information without letting on exactly what it was that she wanted to know about,’ Vera said, somewhat ungrammatically. Aware she was being somewhat less than clear, she made an effort to marshal her thoughts, and pushed a hand nervously through her hair, and tried again. ‘Let me try to make it clearer,’ she said. ‘The first time she mentioned something about clothes to me was when were both putting some rubbish out. But it was very vague – she just said something was niggling at her, but she didn’t know what. Then, last night, I was sure she was trying to find out if I’d noticed if somebody at the party had been wearing a different shirt or blouse later on in the day. She was full of things like, “do you remember the colour of Joan’s blouse. Wasn’t it a ghastly pink?” And then I’d say something about being sure it was pale yellow, or whatever, and then she’d skip to something else, but then come back to a question about somebody else’s clothes. She almost went through the entire group of us who were there, trying to get
my take on what they were wearing.’ Vera shrugged helplessly. ‘As I said, I thought it was strange, and after she hung up, I called John.’

  ‘And I told her we should see you first thing,’ John put in bluntly. ‘You see, we’ve both come to think of this place as our safe haven,’ he explained, blushing a little as he admitted to such sentimentality. ‘You know, Vera and me meeting here and all. And at our time of life. It was like we were blessed. It seems so ideal, that we think of it as our bit of paradise.’ He looked across at the cook, who smiled back at him. ‘So when poor Margaret was killed, everything seemed to be in danger of falling apart somehow. And then this thing with Pauline sounded so … well … risky. Odd. So we thought we’d better bring it to you, to see what you make of it.’

  Jason nodded. ‘I’m glad that you did. I think Jim and I will go and speak to Mrs Weeks now and get this thing cleared up once and for all.’

  Vera beamed in relief. As they all left, Vera and John to go back to his place, Jason and Jim to the stairs, a rare cloud passed across the sun, briefly darkening the interior of the big house. But when the two policemen got to Pauline’s flat, there was no answer. As he knocked on the door for the third time, Jim restlessly stirring beside him, Jason began to get a bad feeling about the whole thing.

  He tried the door, surprised to find it open. He shot Jim a quick look. His sergeant had gone a slightly greener shade of pale.

  ‘Mrs Weeks,’ Jason called, pushing open the door and looking in. ‘It’s Chief Inspector Dury. Are you decent?’

  They stepped into the hall, and Jim pushed open the door nearest to him. It was the master bedroom, but the bed hadn’t been slept in. Jason walked the length of the short vestibule, and pushed open the door to the lounge. In the doorway he stopped, heaved a heavy sigh, then moved quickly but carefully forwards.

  Pauline lay almost exactly in the centre of the room. She was sprawled, face down on the carpet, her blonde hair making a stark contrast against the grey and blue colour scheme. Jason put two fingers to the side of her neck and pressed, feeling for a pulse as Jim looked at him pale-faced and questioning. Briefly, Jason shook his head.

  ‘Get the team in,’ he said flatly.

  When Jim had left, Jason stood staring down at the dead body at his feet, feeling both guilty and angry. Damn it, why hadn’t she come to him sooner? There was no need for her to be dead. If only she’d told them what she’d known.

  The question was – what had she known? And was it all just a sad coincidence that Vera and John had come to him just that little bit too late?

  Graham accepted a cup and saucer from Mrs Vera Marsh, and carefully took a sip of the tea it contained.

  ‘Hmm, lovely,’ he said, smiling brightly at the comfortably padded, middle-aged woman beside him.

  He’d called on baby Venus’s parents one last time in order to make a final attempt at changing their minds about her name, but his presence at the Marsh family home was obviously causing a bit of puzzlement. Best to get on with it, he thought ruefully.

  ‘So, you’re hoping to get a place of your own soon?’ he asked Linsey conversationally, but it was Mrs Marsh, the proud new grandmother, who replied.

  ‘Well, that’s easier said than done, isn’t it?’ she asked grimly. ‘It’s tragic, it is, the way youngsters have trouble getting places to live nowadays.’

  Graham’s face clouded. ‘Yes, I know,’ he said, in genuine sympathy.

  ‘Biscuit, vicar?’ Mrs Marsh asked, thrusting a packet of ginger-nuts under his nose.

  ‘Lovely.’ He took one – although he wasn’t fond of them – then turned once more to Linsey. ‘So, we’re all set for Saturday then?’

  ‘Oh yeah,’ Linsey said, obviously wondering why the vicar had called around.

  And Graham, sensing her puzzlement, cleared his throat. Last night he’d made up a list of all the unusual girls’ names he could think of, since it was obviously the strange and unusual that attracted Linsey, and wondered now how best to dangle the bait under her nose. Taking a deep breath, he launched his gambit.

  ‘I was talking to a friend of mine the other day, who has a parish in Oxford, and he was telling me how he’d recently christened a child called Pandora Gwendolyn. I thought that was really pretty.’

  ‘Yeah, it’s OK,’ Linsey agreed grudgingly.

  ‘Of course, nowadays, unusual names are very popular,’ Graham tried a bit of reverse psychology, ‘and everyone’s looking for individualistic names for their children.’

  Mrs Marsh, who was nobody’s fool, caught on quickly and shot the clergyman a grateful glance, confirming his guess that she was probably none too happy to have a granddaughter called Venus either.

  ‘Mind you, there’s only one name I came across in an old parish registry that I’d never heard of before….’ He took a sip, saw Linsey’s head turn interestedly his way, and summoning up a mental list of names, picked one at random. ‘And that’s Halcyone.’

  ‘Halcyone,’ Mrs Marsh said cautiously. ‘Oh, I don’t know that I like that much.’ Her eyes, however, were twinkling, giving Graham quite a start. The old girl was already one step ahead of him! Of course, Mrs Marsh’s disapproval was all the encouragement that Linsey needed.

  ‘Mr Noble, that’s really great! It sounds like a heroine from a comic strip. Halycone the Hellcat or somethin’. Yeah, I really like that! It’s great. Steve, whaddya think?’

  Steve, well trained, quickly nodded. He never argued with either his mother or Linsey if he could help it.

  ‘Yeah, I think I’ve changed my mind. We’ll call her Halycone. Halcyone Venus Pandora,’ Linsey said, with real enthusiasm.

  Graham inwardly winced, but decided a partial victory was better than none at all, and began to make getting-ready-to-leave gestures. In the hallway they heard the baby crying in an upstairs room, and Mrs Marsh quickly excused herself, leaving Linsey to show him to the door.

  ‘Any news about the murder then, Mr Noble?’ Linsey asked blatantly, and Graham sighed and shook his head.

  ‘I’m afraid not.’

  ‘It gave me the creeps, it did,’ Linsey said, walking with him to the garden gate. ‘To think I’d been there that morning, and might have passed the killer, waiting in the bushes or something.’

  ‘Of course. Your appointment was at lunchtime, wasn’t it?’ He opened the gate and stepped out onto the pavement.

  ‘Yeah. Then we came back here. We took Venus, I mean Halycone, out in her pram, she was grizzling so. Couldn’t take her to the fair like that, could we? Besides, we didn’t have the dosh to spend to make a real proper day of it anyway. Far better to stay home, I thought. I said so to Steve. Save our pennies.’

  ‘A good idea,’ Graham sighed. And one that a lot of people seemed to be adopting nowadays. Then, when Linsey looked at him with disconcertingly shrewd eyes, he smiled in apology. ‘Sorry. I was thinking of the appeal for the church bells.’

  ‘Not going well, huh? You oughta ask that bloke who drives a big fancy jag for a touch up then. He must have a quid or two,’ she advised.

  ‘Jag?’ Graham mused thoughtfully. He knew several people who drove Jaguars.

  ‘Yeah, a big blue one. One minute we was walking down the path, moaning about not being at the fair, and the next minute, this mouth-watering car comes cruising past us and disappears up the road.’ And she pointed vaguely towards the road behind her. ‘All right for some, ain’t it?’ she added with a sigh.

  Graham, however, was still looking up the road she’d indicated, a puzzled look on his face. The Marshes had a little house in the square, and the road Linsey indicated petered out onto a dirt track that lead to nowhere except to Chandler’s Spinney. But why on earth would a car go up there?

  Once he left the Marsh household, and still in blissful ignorance of the grim discovery that had just been made back at his vicarage, he drove instead to a town not too far away.

  Trisha Lancer answered the door quickly, unaware of how gaunt she looked.

  �
��Hello, vicar. Thanks for coming,’ she said listlessly. She’d called him first thing that morning, asking him if he might call around, but such was her state of gloom, she’d been half-expecting him to either put her off, or simply not show up at all.

  ‘That’s all right,’ Graham said, successfully hiding how shocked he felt at her haggard appearance. ‘You know I’m always only a telephone call away.’

  He stepped inside, and followed her through to a neat and cosy lounge, done out in pale oranges and blues. He noticed, with a pang, that there was a large square dent in the carpet, probably where a cabinet had once stood. Were things so financially dire for the Lancers that they were reduced to selling off bits of furniture? Graham rather thought that they might be.

  Once he was settled comfortably in an armchair, he tentatively broached the subject they both knew he’d come to discuss.

  ‘I’ve had a chat with that therapist friend of mine I told you about,’ Graham began, and pulled out several leaflets issued by self-help groups from his pockets. ‘I was surprised how common this problem is,’ he continued gently. ‘Your husband isn’t alone in his addiction, I promise you.’ Trisha took a deep breath and reached for the leaflets.

  ‘He’s an insurance agent if I remember rightly?’ he asked conversationally.

  ‘Yes, Wilkins & White.’

  The name of the big insurance company rang a bell, but Graham couldn’t quite place it.

  ‘You have a nice place here,’ he said softly, looking around, and realized at once that it had been the wrong thing to say. Trisha shot him an agonized look and her lower lip began to wobble alarmingly.

  ‘Yes, if we can keep it,’ she said, her voice cracking.

  ‘Trisha,’ Graham said gently, leaning forwards and looking her levelly in the eye. ‘If you can persuade your husband to come to the six-a-side football and fête at Middleton Barrow tomorrow, I can arrange to be there too. I can start a conversation with him, apparently purely by chance, and—’