An Unfinished Murder

by An Unfinished Murder (retail) (epub)

  ‘Nick,’ said Jess, ‘you’ve told us the why, more or less, but not the how and when. What exactly is it that Caroline believes you told her husband?’

  ‘What?’ Nick roused himself from some reverie into which he’d sunk. ‘Oh, right. So, we have to go back twenty years. It was a Saturday morning. Caroline had suggested I drive over for a game of tennis. You’ve seen the house. It’s much the same now as it was back then, when her parents were alive. One thing has changed, though, in the garden. The tennis court has gone. It was a grass court and it was located at the very back of the grounds, in a corner, surrounded by tall laurel hedges. There was a gap, like a gateway, for players to access it. The idea, I think, of the thick laurel bushes was to muffle the noise, so there was less disturbance for any other garden users. The trouble was, if a ball flew out of play, nine times out of ten it would disappear into one of the laurels. You had to burrow into all that greenery to try and find the wretched thing. It played havoc with your whites. When Caroline inherited the house, she dispensed with the court, had the laurels dug up.

  ‘However, there we were, that Saturday morning, having an enjoyable game. Suddenly, Caroline let out a pretty ripe oath and mis-hit the ball. She was staring out of the court towards the opening in the hedges. So I looked in that direction and saw Rebecca. She was standing there, framed by the dark green leaves, staring at us. It gave me a shock, because we’d understood from something Pete had said that Rebecca was going home for the weekend. It was her father’s birthday. Seeing her there wasn’t just a surprise, it was a bit creepy, too. She looked sort of… odd, very tense and determined. Her face was very white. It was as if she’d sprung out of some old Greek legend, a woodland spirit of some sort. The reason she’d popped up there, out of nowhere was, as we quickly found out, that she’d manoeuvred a showdown with Caroline.

  ‘I believe now that Rebecca had deliberately told Pete she was going to Bamford, so that she had a free hand to seek out Caroline. Perhaps she intended to travel on to Bamford later. That’s possible, I suppose. I don’t think she was particularly pleased to see me, or not at first. She’d imagined she’d find Caroline alone. But then she seemed to accept my presence. I suspect she thought I was insurance. Caroline was a strong character, and facing her all on her own might have seemed OK to Rebecca when she was planning it. But in reality, well, actually facing Caro and seeing the anger already on her face, perhaps Rebecca trusted that Caroline wouldn’t overreact with me there. But then,’ Nick added wryly, ‘she didn’t know Caroline well enough!’

  ‘What was the showdown about?’ prompted Jess when Nick fell silent again.

  ‘Pete, what else?’ He looked up in surprise. ‘Rebecca had decided to hang on to Pete. She had also realised that Caroline had her eye on him. She was a funny sort of kid, Rebecca. She was pretty enough in a mousy sort of way; and she seemed harmless. You know, one of those quiet little women with a will of iron? Caroline had certainly underestimated her, and so had I! Anyhow, she marched across the court and made an obviously rehearsed speech, facing Caro over the net. They were like a couple of finalists at the end of a Wimbledon match, only without the sporting congratulations and commiserations. Rebecca was telling Caro that she wasn’t ready to concede defeat. It boiled down to Pete being her boyfriend, and Caroline should keep her hands off him.’

  Nick shook his head ruefully. ‘She really ought not to have tackled Caro like that. It was never going to work. As soon as Rebecca paused for breath, Caro let fly with a riposte, I suppose you’d call it. And what a riposte! I don’t suppose Rebecca had ever heard anything like it or faced up to someone so furious. I remember, she stepped back as if a gale force had hit her. A gale force described Caroline all right.’

  ‘Did you try and intervene?’ asked Jess. Having earlier seen something of Mrs Malone when she lost her temper, she could well imagine the scene.

  ‘Hah!’ exclaimed Nick. ‘Some chance! I did manage a couple of words, but the pair of them didn’t want my opinion! They both brushed me aside. It was bloody awful!’ Nick’s voice throbbed with remembered embarrassment. ‘Talk about a catfight! And that’s what it became, because Caroline took a swing at Rebecca with her racquet. I jumped in and managed to deflect that. I even got the racquet off Caroline. But it didn’t help. They went from yelling at one another to trading punches.’

  ‘There was no one else at home on the property?’ asked Carter curiously.

  ‘Unfortunately not. I was stuck there, trying to be referee and in danger of getting clouted myself by both of them. And then—’ Nick broke off. His face and manner changed. He began to look wretched. ‘Something neither Caroline nor I had expected happened. Rebecca began to wheeze and cough and gasp for air. Her face became discoloured. She put her hand in her pocket and took out this little plastic gadget, an inhaler. I hadn’t known she was asthmatic and I’m sure Caro didn’t know, either. It… it got worse and Caro was still shouting at her and trying to grab her and shove her out of the tennis court area, but I could see that Rebecca was really in trouble. She sank down on to her knees, puffing the inhaler into her mouth and sounding… quite dreadful. I shouted to Caro to stop trying to wrestle with Rebecca, because something was really wrong.’

  Nick fell silent for so long this time, head down and staring at the tabletop, that eventually Carter said, ‘You have to tell us, you know. We understand it’s distressing. But we must know.’

  ‘Yes,’ Nick said dully. ‘Yes, I know you must. But it’s… it’s worse in memory than when it was real, somehow. At the time it was all action, no time to think. Now it’s all “what ifs” and “I should’ve”. Mostly, it’s what I didn’t do, rather than what I did. You see, Caroline was so quick; and I truly hadn’t imagined she’d do what she did.’

  ‘Which was?’ asked Jess.

  ‘She snatched the inhaler away from Rebecca and held it up in triumph. Rebecca stretched out her hand. She was pleading for it, but Caroline just stood there, holding it up out of reach. You know, the way bullying schoolchildren do when they’ve got hold of something belonging to their victims. I yelled at Caroline. What did she think she was doing? Was she crazy? “Give the girl the ruddy inhaler! She really needs it!”

  ‘“I know,” said Caroline. She had a dreadful smile on her face. “But I’m not giving it to her.” Then she… she laughed and… and she hurled the inhaler into the laurels.’

  Nick fell silent. The solicitor looked aghast.

  ‘You believe your cousin meant to kill Rebecca by withholding her medication?’ Jess asked carefully.

  ‘Oh, yes, that’s exactly what I mean. I now believe Caroline was crazy at that moment. Just as she was in the kitchen when she attacked me. Of course, I ran over to the laurels and tried to get the inhaler back. But it was a little thing, and dull-coloured. It didn’t show up like a tennis ball, and it hadn’t caught in the leaves. It had fallen to the ground somewhere and I couldn’t find it. I was panicking, too, because I knew how important it was. But I couldn’t… I couldn’t lay my hands on the damn thing! When I realised that, I backed out of the hedge and turned to see what the situation was with Rebecca. She… she was collapsed on the ground, lying motionless in a huddle. Caroline was standing over her, looking down at her with such an expression… I don’t know how to describe it.’

  ‘Satisfaction? Hatred?’ Jess suggested.

  Nick shook his head. ‘No, worse. Contempt. That’s what it was, contempt. I shouted out something, I couldn’t tell you now exactly what the words were. I wanted her to phone for an ambulance. But she just looked up and stared at me, and said, very calmly, “Don’t bother, Nick, she’s dead!” I rushed over there, because I couldn’t believe it. Rebecca’s eyes were open but not seeing me. I knelt down and tried to find a pulse, but I’m not a doctor, haven’t even got any first-aid training. She did appear to be dead. I told Caroline we still had to call an ambulance or a doctor. We weren’t qualified to say she couldn’t be resuscitated.’

  ‘“No,” sa
id Caroline, simply. “I don’t want her resuscitated. I want her dead and out of the bloody way.”

  ‘I told her, we still had to call someone. After all, you can’t just push a dead body aside and carry on with what you were doing before! At the very least, you’ve got to report it.’ Nick looked down at his clasped hands. ‘Caro said, I shouldn’t be a fool. How were we going to explain it? I said, why not just say she had an attack of asthma, a really bad one? It was the truth. The circumstances need not come out. But Caroline said she’d have her inhaler on her, wouldn’t she? Someone would be bound to ask about that. So, we both – Caro and I – went back to the laurels and hunted for that wretched inhaler.

  ‘Caro wasn’t so confident any more. I think she realised the possible consequences of what she’d done. She wasn’t sorry for poor Rebecca, lying there. She was still angry with her. But she realised we were in a fix. She, Caro, kept muttering about that “blasted girl” and “bloody nuisance from the start”. But we couldn’t find the inhaler. I was in a flat spin by then, I don’t mind admitting, and that didn’t help. We kept bumping into one another. We got scratched. We had to give up. Caroline was getting more and more furious, and most of it was directed at me now. “I don’t know why you insist on wasting time like this!” she said. “We’re not going to find it and I’m getting filthy!”

  ‘I said it was still not too late to call the ambulance, even if we hadn’t found the inhaler. But Caroline bit my head off again, and told me I was a fool. How would we explain the delay? I’d had enough, by then, of Caro haranguing me, as if I’d done something shameful, and not her. Worse than shameful, criminal. She’d known what would happen if she kept the inhaler from Rebecca and we didn’t get help. I asked her, how about she came up with some positive ideas instead of insulting me?

  ‘She thought for a moment, then a big smile crossed her face. “No problem!” she said. Her solution was simple. We should get rid of the body. Of course, I asked how? I thought it was a damn stupid suggestion. But Caro is very level-headed, well, most of the time, except when she has freaked out on a couple of occasions – like the day of Rebecca’s death, and yesterday. That Saturday she’d been raging at Rebecca, then she’d had a moment’s panic, and finally she turned her guns on me. But after that, once she’d got it all out of her system, she was as cool as a cucumber.

  ‘She took charge, just as she did when we’d played games as kids. We’d put the body in my car, she decided. We’d drive out into the countryside and just tip the poor kid into a ditch. She’d be found by someone, eventually. “Dog walker, probably,” Caro said. “It always seems to be people walking their damn dogs.”

  ‘She wouldn’t be missed for a while, because Pete had told everyone she’d gone to Bamford to visit her family. She’d probably told others, students in her hall of residence, the same thing. It would be Monday before she was missed. So, so stupidly, I went along with it. It was cowardly of me,’ Nick admitted, looking shame-faced. ‘But Rebecca was dead and I couldn’t help her now. I could help protect my cousin. Family, and all that, you know. So, I did. But it didn’t work out the way Caro suggested.

  ‘We put Rebecca into the back of my car and drove off. But we’d barely turned on to the road, only gone a few hundred yards, when Caro ordered me to stop. There was a pickup truck parked on the verge, under some trees. No sign of the driver. It was just past a pub called the Feathers. That’s still there, by the way. “Look!” Caro said. “We can put her in the back of that! The driver must be in the pub. He won’t know. He’ll drive off and be miles away, with luck, before he finds he’s got a passenger!” I was appalled. I asked what on earth she thought the poor bloke was going to do? “Not our problem!” said Caro, as if it really wasn’t.

  ‘So, it’s what we did. “Bye, bye, Rebecca!” Caro said as we threw her in and dragged a tarpaulin over her. “You won’t get in my way any more!” She was as pleased as punch, really cock-a-hoop! She even wanted to go back and finish the game. I told her, “No, thanks!” and went home. I never played tennis with her or anyone else on that court again.’

  There was a silence. ‘That’s it,’ said Ellsworth. ‘I’ve never regretted anything so much in my entire life. I’m very sorry. The worst of it is, if we’d called an ambulance, even too late, we’d have brazened it out somehow. There were no witnesses to what had happened, the fight, and so on. Pete… Pete would have been horrified and shocked. But he’d be alive today.’ Nick looked up, a picture of misery. ‘Wouldn’t he?’

  ‘We can’t know that,’ Jess said, knowing that it didn’t help.

  ‘I do. There’s… there’s something else.’ Nick was staring past them at the far wall. ‘I wasn’t going to tell you this bit, but I will. It makes me sound like some sort of ghoul. But I might as well come clean. The whole tawdry business has preyed on my mind for years. After – after Rebecca’s death, I felt physically ill for weeks. I couldn’t sleep. My work suffered. My parents thought I was having a breakdown, and perhaps I was. Caro didn’t appear to worry about it at all. She wouldn’t. Eventually, I managed to shove it to one side and get on with life. I met Cassie. We have the kids. I didn’t forget, but I managed not to worry so much about being found out, because no one found Rebecca. No pickup driver came forward to say a body had turned up in his vehicle. That seemed inexplicable to me, but it did seem as if we’d got away with it. Caro saw it as proof we’d done the right thing in dumping the body the way we did. She was able to dismiss it.

  ‘She had a clear field to target Pete, and got her man. They were married. Her mother passed away; a couple of years later her father died, too. He left her the house, and she and Pete moved in.

  ‘As I told you earlier, she had the tennis court obliterated. It was almost the first thing she had done when they took over the house. It was because of what had happened there, I’m sure. Perhaps I’m wrong in thinking she’d completely put it out of her mind. Anyhow, I happened to drive over to the house on the day the work was being done. Morbid curiosity made me walk down to the spot and watch the landscapers at work. They were taking out the laurels and the branches were stacked up, all those big green glossy leaves. The ground where they’d been rooted was well churned up. I looked down at it casually, not searching or anything, but there it was. I saw it lying in the earth. So I picked it up and put it in my pocket. I’ve still got it at home. It’s rolled in a piece of tissue paper. I keep it in the little box I stash cufflinks and bits and bobs in. You’ll find it there, if you look.’

  ‘Find what?’ asked Carter, surprised.

  ‘Rebecca’s inhaler. It was so muddy it was hardly recognisable, more like a lump of earth than anything. It was the purest chance I spotted it. I picked it up, because I couldn’t really believe it for a moment. I examined it and there could be no doubt. No one else, no one in our family, used one. You know? It was as if the poor kid spoke to me. I couldn’t throw it away again. I put it in my pocket. Some things are meant, aren’t they?’

  * * *

  ‘So, the lab’s got it,’ Carter said later, speaking to Markby on the phone. ‘I’ll be sending a report to Trevor Barker. Now we have to wait and see. Any DNA on the inhaler will be degraded but the mud and laurel roots protected it over the years. Possibly enough DNA might be retrieved to show that it was handled at least by Rebecca, which puts her at the spot. If our luck is really in, there may even be a trace of Caroline’s DNA. That would really clinch the case against her. She’s not denying anything, by the way. She doesn’t seem to care any more. She still blames her cousin for her husband’s suicide. Nick Ellsworth handled the inhaler when he picked it up while the landscapers were at work, so his DNA is going to be on it. However, at least he preserved it as he found it, all carefully wrapped in tissue and put away. He never unwrapped it, he says. He didn’t want to look at it again. He kept it, because he couldn’t bring himself just to throw it away. It’s still got dried mud on it. He didn’t do as your young friend, Dilys Browning, did, and polish the life out of
the thing!’

  ‘What’s happening about Mrs Caroline Malone?’ asked Markby. ‘I understand you’ve arrested her.’

  ‘She’s being assessed to establish if she’s in a fit state to stand trial. When she attacked Ellsworth, it was only two days after her husband committed suicide. She’s as sane as you or me!’ Carter added darkly. ‘But she’s got a bloody good lawyer!’

  Chapter 22

  Dilys was back, as Nina Pengelly kept reminding everyone, and they were gathered for the celebration tea party. There was a cake, with ‘Welcome home, Dilys’ iced unevenly across the top. There were paper napkins, because Nina intended everything to be done ‘properly’. For that purpose, she had taken her own mother’s best tea set from where it usually resided in a display cabinet. The guests were Alan and Meredith together with Tanya Morris, who had been invited as a thank you for rescuing Nina from the flames.

  Bobby was bouncing around in his cage, swinging vigorously on his perch and twanging his bell. But he wasn’t allowed out to fly round the room. ‘Too many of us here,’ explained his owner.

  ‘Mrs Pengelly going into the burning house is a great story,’ said Tania.

  ‘So is yours, dragging both Nina and Fred out,’ Meredith told her.

  ‘You’ve got to take a few risks if you want a story,’ Tania replied calmly. She leaned towards Dilys and lowered her voice to urge, under cover of renewed activity from the cage above their heads, ‘But the papers will also pay for a good human interest story like yours, Dilys.’