The Sculptress

by Minette Walters

  *

  This impression was forcibly confirmed when Mrs Hopwood rattled her safety chain into place and opened the front door. She eyed Roz with deep suspicion. ‘Yes?’ she demanded.

  ‘Mrs Hopwood?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Roz had planned a simple cover story but, seeing the hard glint in the woman’s eyes, decided to abandon it. Mrs Hopwood was not the type to take kindly to flannel. ‘I’m afraid I bamboozled your daughter and your husband into giving away this address,’ she said with a slight smile. ‘My name’s—’

  ‘Rosalind Leigh and you’re writing a book about Olive. I know. I’ve just had Geraldine on the phone. It didn’t take her long to put two and two together. I’m sorry but I can’t help you. I hardly knew the girl.’ But she didn’t close the door. Something – curiosity? – kept her there.

  ‘You know her better than I do, Mrs Hopwood.’

  ‘But I haven’t chosen to write a book about her, young woman. Nor would I.’

  ‘Not even if you thought she was innocent?’

  Mrs Hopwood didn’t answer.

  ‘Supposing she didn’t do it? You’ve considered that, haven’t you?’

  ‘It’s not my affair.’ She started to close the door.

  ‘Then whose affair is it, for God’s sake?’ demanded Roz, suddenly angry. ‘Your daughter paints a picture of two sisters, both of whom were so insecure that one told lies and cheated to give herself some status and the other was afraid to say no in case people didn’t like her. What the hell was happening to them at home to make them like that? And where were you then? Where was anybody? The only real friend either of them had was the other.’ She saw the thin compression of the woman’s lips through the gap in the door and she shook her head contemptuously. ‘Your daughter misled me, I’m afraid. From something she said I thought you might be a Samaritan.’ She smiled coldly. ‘I see you’re a Pharisee, after all. Goodbye, Mrs Hopwood.’

  The other clicked her tongue impatiently. ‘You’d better come in, but I’m warning you, I shall insist on a transcript of this interview. I will not have words put into my mouth afterwards simply to fit some sentimental view you have of Olive.’

  Roz produced her tape-recorder. ‘I’ll tape the whole thing. If you have a recorder you can tape it at the same time, or I can send you a copy of mine.’

  Mrs Hopwood nodded approval as she unhooked the chain and opened the door. ‘We have our own. My husband can set it up while I make a cup of tea. Come in, and wipe your feet, please.’

  Ten minutes later they were ready. Mrs Hopwood took natural control. ‘The easiest way is for me to tell you everything I remember. When I’ve finished you can ask me questions. Agreed?’

  ‘Agreed.’

  ‘I said I hardly knew Olive. That’s true. She came here perhaps five or six times in all, twice to Geraldine’s birthday parties, and on three or four occasions to tea. I didn’t take to her. She was a clumsy girl, slow, impossible to talk to, lacking in humour, and, frankly, extremely unattractive. This may sound harsh and unkind but there you are – you can’t pretend feelings that you don’t have. I wasn’t sorry when her friendship with Geraldine died a natural death.’ She paused to collect her thoughts.

  ‘After that, I really had very little to do with her. She never came to this house again. I heard stories, of course, from Geraldine and Geraldine’s friends. The impression I formed was very much along the lines you set out earlier – a sad, unloved, and unlovely child, who had resorted to boasting about holidays she hadn’t taken and boyfriends she didn’t have to make up for unhappiness at home. The cheating, I think, was the result of her mother’s constant pressure to do well, as indeed was the compulsive eating. She was always plump but during her adolescence her eating habits became pathological. According to Geraldine, she used to steal food from the school kitchen and cram it, in its entirety, into her mouth, as if she were afraid someone would take it away from her before she had finished.

  ‘Now, you would interpret this behaviour, I imagine, as a symptom of a troubled home background.’ She looked enquiringly at Roz, who nodded. ‘Yes, well, I think I’d agree with you. It wasn’t natural, and nor was Amber’s submissiveness, although I must stress I never witnessed either girl in action, so to speak. I am relating only what I was told by Geraldine and her friends. In any event, it did trouble me, mostly because I had met Gwen and Robert Martin when I went to collect Geraldine on the few occasions she was invited to their house. They were a very strange couple. They hardly spoke. He lived in a downstairs room at the back of the house and she and the two girls lived at the front. As far as I could make out, virtually all contact between them was conducted through Olive and Amber.’ Seeing Roz’s expression, she stopped. ‘No one’s told you this yet?’

  Roz shook her head.

  ‘I never did know how many people were aware of it. She kept up appearances, of course, and, frankly, had Geraldine not told me she had seen a bed in Mr Martin’s study, I wouldn’t have guessed what was going on.’ She wrinkled her brow. ‘But it’s always the way, isn’t it? Once you begin to suspect something, then everything you see confirms that suspicion. They were never together, except at the odd parents’ evening, and then there would always be a third party with them, usually one of the teachers.’ She smiled self-consciously. ‘I used to watch them, you know, not out of malice – my husband will confirm that – but just to prove myself wrong.’ She shook her head. ‘I came to the conclusion that they simply loathed each other. And it wasn’t just that they never spoke, they couldn’t bring themselves to exchange anything – touches, glances – anything. Does that make sense to you?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ said Roz with feeling. ‘Hatred has as strong a body language as love.’

  ‘It was she, I think, who was the instigator of it all. I’ve always assumed he must have had an affair which she found out about, though I must stress I don’t know that. He was a nice looking man, very easy to talk to, and, of course, he got out and about with his job. Whereas she, as far as I could see, had no friends at all, a few acquaintances perhaps, but one never came across her socially. She was a very controlled woman, cold and unemotional. Really rather unpleasant. Certainly not the type one could ever grow fond of.’ She was silent for a moment. ‘Olive was very much her daughter, of course, both in looks and personality, and Amber his. Poor Olive,’ she said with genuine compassion. ‘She did have very little going for her.’

  Mrs Hopwood looked at Roz and sighed heavily. ‘You asked me earlier where I was while all this was going on. I was bringing up my own children, my dear, and if you have any yourself you will know it’s hard enough to cope with them, let alone interfere with someone else’s. I do regret now that I didn’t say anything at the time, but, really, what could I have done? In any case, I felt it was the school’s responsibility.’ She spread her hands. ‘But there you are, it’s so easy with hindsight, and who could possibly have guessed that Olive would do what she did? I don’t suppose anyone realized just how disturbed she was.’ She dropped her hands to her lap and looked helplessly at her husband.

  Mr Hopwood pondered for a moment. ‘Still,’ he said slowly, ‘there’s no point pretending we’ve ever believed she killed Amber. I went to the police about that, you know, told them I thought it was very unlikely. They said my disquiet was based on out-of-date information.’ He sucked his teeth. ‘Which of course was true. It was five years or so since we’d had any dealings with the family, and in five years the sisters could well have learned to dislike each other.’ He fell silent.

  ‘But if Olive didn’t kill Amber,’ Roz prompted, ‘then who did?’

  ‘Gwen,’ he said with surprise, as if it went without saying. He smoothed his white hair. ‘We think Olive walked in on her mother battering Amber. That would have been quite enough to send her berserk, assuming she had retained her fondness for the girl.’

  ‘Was Gwen capable of doing such a thing?’

  They looked at each other. ‘We’ve always
thought so,’ said Mr Hopwood. ‘She was very hostile towards Amber, probably because Amber was so like her father.’

  ‘What did the police say?’ asked Roz.

  ‘I gather Robert Martin had already suggested the same thing. They put it to Olive and she denied it.’

  Roz stared at him. ‘You’re saying Olive’s father told the police that he thought his wife had battered his younger daughter to death and that Olive then killed her mother?’

  He nodded.

  ‘God!’ she breathed. ‘His solicitor never said a word about that.’ She thought for a moment. ‘It implies, you know, that Gwen had battered the child before. No man would make an accusation like that unless he had grounds for it, would he?’

  ‘Perhaps he just shared our disbelief that Olive could kill her sister.’

  Roz chewed her thumbnail and stared at the carpet. ‘She claimed in her statement that her relationship with her sister had never been close. Now, I might go along with that if I accept that in the years after school they drifted apart, but I can’t go along with it if her own father thought they were still so close that Olive would kill to revenge her.’ She shook her head. ‘I’m damn sure Olive’s barrister never got to hear about this. The poor man was trying to conjure a defence out of thin air.’ She looked up. ‘Why did Robert Martin give up on it? Why did he let her plead guilty? According to her she did it to spare him the anguish of a trial.’

  Mr Hopwood shook his head. ‘I really couldn’t say. We never saw him again. Presumably, he somehow became convinced of her guilt.’ He massaged arthritic fingers. ‘The problem for all of us is trying to accept that a person we know is capable of doing something so horrible, perhaps because it shows up the fallibility of our judgement. We knew her before it happened. You, I imagine, have met her since. In both cases, we have failed to see the flaw in her character that led her to murder her mother and sister, and we look for excuses. In the end, though, I don’t think there are any. It’s not as if the police had to beat her confession out of her. As far as I understand it, it was they who insisted she wait till her solicitor was present.’

  Roz frowned. ‘And yet you’re still troubled by it.’

  He smiled slightly. ‘Only when someone pops up to stir the dregs again. By and large we rarely think about it. There’s no getting away from the fact that she signed a confession saying she did it.’

  ‘People are always confessing to crimes they didn’t commit,’ countered Roz bluntly. ‘Timothy Evans was hanged for his confession, while downstairs Christie went on burying his victims under the floorboards. Sister Bridget said Olive lied about everything, you and your daughter have both cited lies she told. What makes you think she was telling the truth in this one instance?’

  They didn’t say anything.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ said Roz with an apologetic smile. ‘I don’t mean to harangue you. I just wish I understood what it was all about. There are so many inconsistencies. I mean why, for example, did Robert Martin stay in the house after the deaths? You’d expect him to move heaven and earth to get out of it.’

  ‘You must talk to the police,’ said Mr Hopwood. ‘They know more about it than anyone.’

  ‘Yes,’ Roz said quietly, ‘I must.’ She picked up her cup and saucer from the floor and put them on the table. ‘Can I ask you three more things? Then I’ll leave you in peace. First, is there anyone else you can think of who might be able to help me?’

  Mrs Hopwood shook her head. ‘I really know very little about her after she left school. You’ll have to trace the people she worked with.’

  ‘Fair enough. Second, did you know that Amber had a baby when she was thirteen years old?’ She read the astonishment in their faces.

  ‘Good Heavens!’ said Mrs Hopwood.

  ‘Quite. Third . . .’ She paused for a moment, remembering Graham Deedes’ amused reaction. Was it fair to make Olive a figure of fun? ‘Third,’ she repeated firmly, ‘Gwen persuaded Olive to have an abortion. Do you know anything about that?’

  Mrs Hopwood looked thoughtful. ‘Would that have been at the beginning of eighty-seven?’

  Roz, unsure how to answer, nodded.

  ‘I was having problems of my own with a prolonged menopause,’ said Mrs Hopwood, matter of factly. ‘I bumped into her and Gwen quite by chance at the hospital. It was the last time I saw them. Gwen was very jumpy. She tried to pretend they were there for a gynaecological reason of her own but I couldn’t help noticing that it was clearly Olive who had the problem. The poor girl was in tears.’ She tut-tutted crossly. ‘What a mistake not to let her have it. It explains the murders, of course. They must have happened around the time the baby would have been due. No wonder she was disturbed.’

  Roz drove back to Leven Road. This time the door to number 22 stood ajar and a young woman was clipping the low hedge that bordered the front garden. Roz drew her car into the kerb and stepped out. ‘Hi,’ she said, holding out her hand and shaking the other’s firmly. Immediate, friendly contact, she hoped, would stop this woman barring the door to her as her neighbour had done. ‘I’m Rosalind Leigh. I came the other day but you were out. I can see your time’s precious so I won’t stop you working, but can we talk while you’re doing it?’

  The young woman shrugged as she resumed her clipping. ‘If you’re selling anything, and that includes religion, then you’re wasting your time.’

  ‘I want to talk about your house.’

  ‘Oh, Christ!’ said the other in disgust. ‘Sometimes I wish we’d never bought the flaming thing. What are you? Psychical bloody research? They’re all nutters. They seem to think the kitchen is oozing with ectoplasm or something equally disgusting.’

  ‘No. Far more earthbound. I’m writing a follow-up report on the Olive Martin case.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘There are some unanswered questions. Like, for example, why did Robert Martin remain here after the murders?’

  ‘And you’re expecting me to answer that?’ She snorted. ‘I never even met him. He was long dead before we moved in. You should talk to old Hayes’ – she jerked her head towards the adjoining garages – ‘he’s the only one who knew the family.’

  ‘I have talked to him. He doesn’t know either.’ She glanced towards the open front door but all she could see was an expanse of peach wall and a triangle of russet carpet. ‘I gather the house has been gutted and redecorated. Did you do that yourselves or did you buy it after it was done?’

  ‘We did it ourselves. My old man’s in the building trade. Or was,’ she corrected herself. ‘He was made redundant ten, twelve months ago. We were lucky, managed to sell our other house without losing too much, and bought this for a song. Did it without a mortgage, too, so we’re not struggling the way some other poor sods are.’

  ‘Has he found another job?’ Roz asked sympathetically.

  The young woman shook her head. ‘Hardly. Building’s all he knows and there’s precious little of that at the moment. Still, he’s trying his best. Can’t do more than that, can he?’ She lowered the shears. ‘I suppose you’re wondering if we found anything when we gutted the house.’

  Roz nodded. ‘Something like that.’

  ‘If we had, we’d have told someone.’

  ‘Of course, but I wouldn’t have expected you to find anything incriminating. I was thinking more in terms of impressions. Did the place look loved, for example? Is that why he stayed? Because he loved it?’

  The woman shook her head. ‘I reckon it was more of a prison. I can’t swear to it because I don’t know for sure, but my guess is he only used one room and that was the room downstairs at the back, the one that was attached to the kitchen and the cloakroom with its own door into the garden. Maybe he went through to the kitchen to cook, but I doubt it. The connecting door was locked and we never found the key. Plus, there was an ancient Baby Belling still plugged into one of the sockets in that room, which the house clearers couldn’t be bothered to take, and my bet is he did all his cooking on that. The g
arden was nice. I think he lived in the one room and the garden, and never went into the rest of the house at all.’

  ‘Because the door was locked?’

  ‘No, because of the nicotine. The windows were so thick with it that the glass looked yellow. And the ceiling’ – she pulled a face – ‘was dark brown. The smell of old tobacco was overpowering. He must have smoked non-stop in there. It was disgusting. But there were no nicotine stains anywhere else in the house. If he ever went beyond the connecting door, then it can’t have been for very long.’

  Roz nodded. ‘He died of a heart attack.’

  ‘I’m not surprised.’

  ‘Would you object to my taking a look inside?’

  ‘There’s no point. It’s completely different. We knocked out any walls that weren’t structural and changed the whole layout downstairs. If you want to know what it looked like when he was here, then I’ll draw you a plan. But you don’t come in. If I say yes to you, then there’s no end to it, is there? Any Tom, Dick, or Harry can demand to put his foot through our door.’

  ‘Point taken. A plan would be more helpful, anyway.’ She reached into the car for a notepad and pencil and passed it across.

  ‘It’s much nicer now,’ said the self-possessed young woman, drawing with swift strokes. ‘We’ve opened up the rooms and put some colour into them. Poor Mrs Martin had no idea at all. I think, you know, she was probably rather boring. There.’ She passed the notepad back. ‘That’s the best I can do.’