Deadly Errand

by Christine Green

  ‘I don't understand, Margaret. How could it be yours?’

  She grinned then in triumph. ‘You're not as clever as you thought, are you?’

  I shrugged. ‘Explain it to me,’ I said.

  ‘The pass book … was in my name. Margaret Tonbridge.’

  I felt my mouth open in silent query.

  ‘Clever, wasn't she?’ said Margaret. ‘Months and months before, things were misplaced, letters, bills, even library tickets and then for a whole week Mother's pension book was missing. We blamed each other of course. I thought Mother was getting forgetful, she thought I was careless. Gradually, though, we found our bits and pieces and I forgot all about it. Until I found the pass book. Then it all clicked into place. So much for saintly Miss Byfield! She had used our personal things to open a bank account in my name. I could have killed her that very night. But I waited and waited. I made plans. I had to wait for the right time, didn't I?’

  I nodded dumbly.

  ‘And then the night before, I'd come home as usual on my break and Mum had said, “I think we should give those nursing books of yours to Jacky, don't you? After all, she's a proper nurse.” A proper nurse! She was a lousy nurse. All smarmy to the ones she thought had money or religion. I knew her little game. She didn't even like old people very much. If she could get by without actually touching them, she would …’

  Margaret abruptly fell silent, as though realising her outburst had gone too far. ‘I'm not saying any more. No one can prove anything, not you or the police. You haven't got a shred of evidence against me.’

  ‘That's true,’ I agreed. ‘But I do have some circumstantial evidence.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘Your connection with all four of the victims, the fact that you gave Mick his injections quite frequently, the fact that you were the only person to hear a car the night of the murder, the fact that you are light on your feet and can creep up on people, and, lastly, you were the only person not to have a coping mechanism.’

  Margaret smirked. ‘What's that supposed to mean? I cope. You call that evidence, do you? That's just guessing. What about real clues, fingerprints, forensic, witnesses?’

  ‘How do you cope, Margaret?’ I asked and when she didn't answer I said, ‘A coping mechanism is something people choose unconsciously to help them cope with the stress of life. For some, it's food or drink or sex or smoking or friendships or hobbies—’

  ‘I've got my sewing,’ she interrupted. ‘I enjoy that.’

  ‘Yes,’ I agreed. ‘But was that enough? You couldn't cope with your father, so he had to die—’

  ‘I want to talk about proper evidence. Not your stupid theories,’ she interrupted, her voice high and petulant.

  ‘Very well,’ I said. ‘There's the inhaler, the pass book – I'm sure you still have that, the library book – no doubt Mick's and your fingerprints will be on it. I expect the figurines will turn up in court too. Jacky sold them, you know. She had a lucrative little racket going.’

  Margaret didn't answer immediately, and I knew she was searching for a way out. Eventually she said, ‘I only picked up that inhaler. Kennie was watching Mick and me. I saw him looking through the crack in the curtain. I ran after him. The inhaler dropped out of his pocket. I shouted to him but he just ignored me and ran home.’

  ‘And you didn't think to put it through his letter-box? He lived almost next door.’

  Margaret dropped her eyes. ‘I didn't wish him any harm. He shouldn't have kept watching me.’

  ‘And Ada, what did she do wrong?’ I asked.

  ‘That was an accident. I didn't mean for her to die. I wanted her to come and live with us. She would have been company for Mum. She wouldn't come. She'd seen those figurines for sale but she said she wouldn't tell me where she'd seen them and when I said I wanted to buy them back, she laughed and said I shouldn't have sold them in the first place. When I told her my mother had given them to Jacky she became suspicious. I swopped her tablets so that she would get confused and people wouldn't believe what she was saying. I didn't plan for her to fall downstairs. The three of us could have been happy living here.’

  ‘And Mick? Where did Mick fit into your plans?’

  ‘Poor Mick,’ she said. ‘He only thought he fitted in. He wanted to marry me, you know. I made a mistake, though, I told him about Jacky. I had to talk to someone. After I'd told him … he …’

  ‘Threatened to tell the police?’

  ‘No, that was when he offered to marry me.’

  ‘Then why kill him?’

  ‘Surely you can understand that!’

  ‘No. Tell me.’

  ‘He would have been able to use what he knew as a threat against me. I didn't love him anyway. He was kind, but stupid. And what about my mother? He wouldn't have wanted her as well. I couldn't have left my mother, could I?’

  ‘How did you do it, Margaret?’ I asked softly.

  ‘Kill him, you mean? It was easy. I tested his blood and the blood sugar was really low. Because of that he was already getting a bit aggressive, being hypoglycaemic can affect people that way. We began to make love and I said I'd give the insulin afterwards. I gave him a huge dose. He didn't even look as I gave it, and then I told him to have a sleep. I knew he wouldn't wake up.’

  Margaret slumped down into her chair as if confessing had further exhausted her. She closed her eyes again and at that moment I would have loved a coffee laced with brandy. I wanted to escape from Margaret and the house and her awful mother. I moved in the chair, uncertain about staying but feeling I ought, when Margaret opened one eye.

  ‘Stay where you are,’ she said. ‘I haven't finished yet.’

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  ‘I wasn't going,’ I said. ‘Just getting stiff.’ If things hadn't been so dire I would have laughed at that. I had a firm idea that Margaret might have had plans for me anyway. I could imagine her saying, ‘It was easy.’

  She sat forward and put a few lumps of coal on the fire using the tongs and then raked the remains of the fire with a poker. Grey smoke belched out, the flames doused by the coal. But Margaret continued to poke at the fire as though she could resuscitate it.

  ‘Tell me about the night you stabbed Jacky,’ I said casually as though we were discussing a recipe.

  ‘What do you want to know?’

  ‘You left Claudette, saying you were going for your break. Then what happened?’

  She stared ahead into the wisps of grey smoke still trailing from the fire embers. ‘I put some plastic gloves and a plastic apron in the pocket of my cloak. I knew Jacky had gone over to see Dr Duston in the main building. It was a question of timing. I had to be ready. My plans could have gone wrong. She might have been back on the ward by the time I returned. I had to be lying in wait for her, didn't I?’

  I nodded. ‘But why,’ I asked, ‘did you have to go home at all?’

  Margaret raised an eyebrow at my stupidity. ‘I had to check on Mother, didn't I? And I didn't have a knife.’

  ‘Of course,’ I murmured.

  ‘I went home as I told you,’ she continued, ‘and then I waited in the bushes for her …’

  ‘What knife did you use?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh, yes, the knife,’ she said absently. ‘It was a Kitchen Magic one, really sharp and long.’

  ‘And you went home on the bike and came back on the bike?’

  ‘Yes. I left it in the bike shed. Strange about that bike. Someone left it outside the other day. Children, I suppose.’

  ‘Then what happened?’ I prompted.

  ‘I just waited in the bushes, she always came that way if it wasn't raining, and then suddenly she was there in front of me. I told her I knew about the pass book and she laughed at me. She said religion had given her everything and then she laughed again, saying how easily people were conned. “Just a little kindness,” she said, “and they would give you anything.” She told me she was planning to leave Longborough and go into business. And then she turned and start
ed to walk away. I crept up behind her …’ Margaret paused and thrust the poker deep into the dead coals. ‘Like that,’ she said, demonstrating again. ‘Just the once, though, once was enough. I knew exactly where to aim. She fell down straight away, I think death was instantaneous …’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘What do you mean?’ she asked, as if that should have been enough.

  ‘What did you do with the knife?’

  ‘I had to think quickly. I'd worn surgical gloves and there was blood on those and on the knife—’ She broke off. ‘You'll never find the knife, you know, so what does it matter?’

  ‘Just interest, that's all.’

  She paused, still holding the poker and smiling as she played the poker tip over the coals. ‘I thought I managed things quite cleverly,’ she said. ‘I removed one glove and held that in my hand and then from my pocket I took a clean glove and with that hand I removed a pad from the packet. I couldn't afford to get any blood on the packet, could I? I laid the pad on the grass, pulled the knife from her back and placed it on the pad with the used gloves and apron. I then stuffed it all into my pocket.’

  ‘And then you went back to the ward?’

  ‘Yes. Outside the ward I planned to put the package at the very bottom of the soiled rubbish bag. But I thought the police might search there so I went back into the day room, through the French windows, and once I was in the ward I simply slipped the lot under a patient's mattress. I knew the police wouldn't search there. Later, after I'd been questioned, I retrieved it and put the stuff in my bag underneath my sewing and brought it home and put it with the rest of our rubbish. It was …’

  ‘Easy?’

  ‘No, I was going to say, over. And it was, until you came snooping and raking over the past.’

  ‘Talking of raking, Margaret, the fire's gone out.’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ she said. ‘So it has.’

  For a moment she stared down at the poker and then after she had replaced it in the brass coal-scuttle, she looked at me with dull, defeated eyes.

  ‘What happens now?’ she asked.

  ‘That's up to you. The police do have another suspect at the moment. I'm sure you wouldn't want an innocent man to go to prison in your place.’

  ‘No, I suppose not,’ she said slowly. ‘What really made you suspect me? I thought I'd been so clever, so careful.’

  ‘That pocket in your cloak was odd. It worried me. You didn't need it. You had your sewing bag, why should you need a pocket in your cloak? And I thought Jacky may have been blackmailing you about Mick, perhaps threatening to tell your mother.’

  We sat in silence for a moment and then the bell rang upstairs. This time it was me who shuddered at the sound.

  ‘Come and say goodbye to Mother,’ she said, which sounded ominous, so I followed Margaret up the stairs, reluctant to turn my back on her. Each step I took was a slow and measured one, as if each leg had suddenly been weighted and needed to be dragged along by pure effort of will.

  I stood by the bedroom door while she approached her mother's bed and began to stroke her mother's hand. The old lady's mouth moved and her tongue slicked out as she tried to communicate.

  ‘Come and say goodbye to Mother,’ said Margaret as she beckoned me with one finger, a finger that now seemed as compulsive as a snake and twice as deadly.

  Slowly I moved to the top of the bed, feeling for the high wooden bedpost and holding on to it for support. ‘Nice to have met you again, Mrs Tonbridge,’ I managed to mumble. ‘I've just come to say goodbye.’

  Margaret leaned over her mother as if to kiss her on the mouth and I looked away for a second in sickly embarrassment. From the corner of my eye I saw a flash of blue, the raised arm, and then the flash of red. As I turned and moved forward the spurting fountain of blood stopped. The room seemed to swirl in a mass of red and I saw the head on the pillow of blood: the blood on the ceiling, on Margaret's hands, on the eiderdown.

  ‘I went for the carotid,’ she said. ‘I got it right, didn't I?’

  Her arm was still raised, the blade of the scalpel glinting like a diamond in its pale blue holder.

  ‘You certainly did,’ I managed to say, as I swallowed hard and tried to ignore the haze of red and the smell of blood and concentrate on the position of that shining steel blade. ‘I should put that scalpel down now, Margaret,’ I said, aware that my voice had become high and squeaky with shock. ‘You might cut yourself.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, smiling. ‘But cutting doesn't hurt – look.’

  The blade flashed again – downwards – slicing at her arm, the blood seeping through the navy sleeves and running over her forehand and through her fingers and dripping on to the floor. She too seemed hypnotised by the blood, watching the relentless drip, drip, drip, on the floor.

  I took my chance then, trying to grab her arm but she was too fast and she stepped back, the scalpel high in the air, too high for me to reach. And she was laughing.

  ‘You don't think you're going to get out alive, do you? This is the house of the dead. We're all going to die!’

  She slashed at her other arm then but this time I had moved back, trying to edge my way to the door. And I knew I had to keep talking if I wanted to live. God help me, God help me, I prayed over and over again as waves of nausea began to torment me and my stomach twisted in agonising knots.

  ‘Please don't, Margaret,’ I croaked. ‘Think of your mother – think of the mess. She wouldn't have approved, would she? She liked a tidy, clean house, didn't she?’

  Margaret paused to watch the blood of her fresh wound and said nothing but I didn't wait for her answer. I turned and ran to the door. Even as I slammed the door she was behind it. I held on to the doorknob, my arms and neck and back straining in my desperation to keep the door closed. My strength wasn't enough, she won. As the door opened, her hand clutching the blade appeared through the crack in the door, slashing and cleaving the air and my upper arm. I managed to hold on to her wrist and pull her thumb back viciously. The blade dropped to the carpeted floor without a sound. As it did so I lost the momentum of my hold and she yanked open the door. Abruptly my fear became rage and I grabbed her arm, pulled her from the room into the hall and hurled myself into the bedroom, leant against the door and locked it.

  With my shoulder still pressed to the door I waited. My breath rose and fell in judders and I tried desperately to breathe more normally so that I could hear what was happening outside the room. Margaret and the blade were still there, but now I was at least locked in. She couldn't get to me, not for a while anyway.

  There was silence for a while in the hall and then I could hear Margaret begin to whisper tearfully, ‘Mummy, Mummy, Mummy,’ over and over again. I stood for a long time, my ear pressed to the door listening to that pathetic lament, and then I left the door and walked over to the bed.

  Mrs Tonbridge's head lay back on the pillow; her eyes were closed but her throat was open, wide open, cut from ear to ear. There was no doubt that she was dead.

  My stomach began then to tighten and twist and I could feel the saliva rise in my throat. I swallowed it, but my mouth was dry and I could hear a buzzing noise in my head. I stood for a while trying to breathe myself calm. Telling myself that I must do something.

  I went back to the door and listened again. Margaret was quiet now and I could hear water running. I unlocked the door and opened it a fraction; there was a pool of blood on the carpet and smeared blood on the walls, but no Margaret. I didn't hesitate. I ran past the open bathroom door without looking, down the stairs and into the hall. Dreading Margaret's reappearance I watched the stairs hawk-like as I dialled Hubert's number, trying as I did so to control my trembling fingers.

  ‘Please come quickly,’ I whispered, frightened Margaret would hear and come out of the bathroom. ‘I'm at the Leys. I'll be standing in the road. It's at the back of St Dymphna's. Get someone to call the police but get here first – please.’

  ‘I'm on my way,’ said Hubert.
r />   Hearing his voice so calm, calmed me a little. Even so, I couldn't stay in the house. I knew I should, but courage had deserted me. I rushed out into the road and stood on the edge of the pavement.

  Outside the world seemed to have changed. It was bright and crisp and clean. I began to tremble as I stood there waiting as if in a trance, without my coat and without my car keys.

  Hubert arrived within minutes. He said nothing but wrapped me in a blanket and once I was in the car handed me a pocket flask of brandy. I managed one swig but it made me heave.

  ‘Try not to puke on the seats,’ said Hubert.

  Back at Humberstones, Hubert helped me up the stairs to my office. That was where I wanted to be when the police arrived. In place of the old floral armchair and my hard office chair were two softly upholstered swivel chairs in dove grey.

  ‘Very classy, Hubert, thank you,’ I said, trying hard to force a smile. ‘Can I try them out?’

  He took my arm and I sank gratefully down on to the nearest, and he swivelled me round, just the once.

  ‘I've had a terrible experience, Hubert,’ I said, trying to choke back the tears.

  ‘Did you crack the case?’

  ‘I think you could say that. I thought perhaps you might have turned up in the nick of time to save me.’

  ‘Saved yourself, didn't you?’ said Hubert. ‘Apart from that cut on your arm. I would have come, only the chairs turned up and I had to unpack them.’

  ‘Never mind,’ I said wearily, pushing up the sleeve of my jumper to reveal a long, but not deep cut on my upper arm. And for the first time I was aware of just how much it hurt. Hubert busied himself with water and antiseptic liquid that smelt like something you clean drains with, and began to dab timidly at my wound.

  Later the police rang to request the pleasure of my company.

  ‘How's Margaret?’ I asked guiltily, aware that perhaps I should have stayed, tried to help her.

  She was in hospital, the police told me. It had been close: she'd lost a lot of blood and would be transferred to a mental hospital. She'd probably never be fit to plead. I hoped they would be kind to her.