A Little Local Murder

by Robert Barnard

  ‘I think your father’s right, Cressida,’ said Parrish slowly. ‘Why would a little girl like you do a thing like that to her mother?’

  ‘I’m not a little girl. I’m twelve, and quite big for my age. I did it because I hated her.’

  ‘Now that’s nonsense, Cressida – ’

  ‘It’s not nonsense.’ Suddenly the whole body of the child seemed to be shaken by the passion in the eyes, and a furious energy seized her. Her hands clasped and unclasped themselves, as she tried to find words. ‘Nobody’s ever hated anyone as I hated her. She was cold and selfish and – disgusting!’ The body shook with frustration that she could bring out no better word than that. ‘She never cared a bit for me, or for Daddy. Only for herself. She thought of herself all day. She never even spoke to me if there was no one around, except to sneer – because I liked reading and writing, because I loved Daddy, anything she could think of. She just used me to do things, to do the cooking and all that kind of thing. She pretended to Daddy I’d just helped. Helped! As if I were a baby! She hated Daddy and me. She hated seeing us together. She was saying filthy things about us when I killed her – as if there was something wrong in loving each other. I’d kill her again. I wish I could. The main thing is that she’s dead. I don’t care about anything else, so long as she’s dead.’

  The little chin went up, and the eyes still blazed.

  ‘What did you do after that?’ asked Parrish.

  ‘Well, we sat around, and discussed what to do with her.’ There was something monstrous about this new life and vitality in the child. She talked as if what she was remembering was the cosiness of the discussion, the conspiring together with her father – and it was how to get rid of her mother. ‘Daddy was upset at first, so I had to take the decisions. I decided we should wait until later, when we could be sure everyone was asleep, then put her somewhere where she wouldn’t be found till next day. Obviously we couldn’t just leave her there. Luckily the plastic table-cloth was the only thing with blood on, and there wasn’t too much. We wrapped her in it, and Daddy drove as near as he could to the bluebell woods, and then dumped her.’

  Dumped her. There was relish in the voice. The egotism of this terrible, imaginative child came from her mother. The only thing that mattered to her was that she had felt rejected, and had had her revenge. It was an equation with all the brutal simplicity of childhood. No other calculations entered into it, just transgression and retribution.

  ‘Then we tied stones to the table-cloth, wrapped it round the cutlet bat, and sank it in Wilcher’s bog. Daddy thought of that. He said it was forty foot deep, and the things would never be found. Then we came home and Daddy slept a bit. I had to think about things, and I made sure he got up next morning and went to London as usual. After that he became quite good at lying. Because he was doing it for me, you see. It would have been different if he had been doing it for himself. We lied to you all the time, of course. We had to. He was lying just now. Because I killed her. She was dead when she hit the table. I’d thought of doing it for ages. Absolute ages.’

  She looked straight at Parrish, the expression on her face one of obstinate self-congratulation. She seemed to be almost challenging him to deny what she said. Looking at her, at the strength and energy and passion, Parrish could not deny it. This, he felt sure, was the truth. But with a heavy heart he turned and arrested Arnold Mailer.

  CHAPTER XV

  AFTERWARDS

  Naturally the murder was the main topic of conversation in the saloon bar of the Lamb that Sunday lunch-time. Murder was one of those subjects that drew everyone together, like inflation, or Enoch Powell.

  ‘I’d never have thought it,’ said Dr McGregor, sipping his whisky, ‘not in a thousand years. Not at all the type.’

  ‘Not writing those letters,’ said Mrs Leaze from her table. ‘To think of a quiet type like ’im writing filth like that.’

  ‘Still waters run deep,’ said Mrs Brewer sagely, as if she had just thought of it.

  ‘He didn’t write the letters,’ said Jack Edgar. ‘He’s only accused of the murder, not writing the letters.’

  ‘Well if ’e didn’t, ’oo did?’ said Mrs Leaze with finality. Everyone saw the force of her argument.

  ‘Course he did,’ said Val Rice. ‘I think he must have fancied me, you know. I expect he needed the warmer type.’

  ‘She was cold,’ said Mrs Leaze.

  ‘Terribly cold,’ agreed everyone.

  ‘I expect she’d been unfaithful,’ said Jack Edgar. ‘Eh, Tom?’

  ‘Yers,’ said Tom Billington, looking furious.

  ‘Parrish was at the Withenses’ on Saturday morning,’ said Mrs Brewer. ‘What price she and Ernest had been having it off?’

  There was a general guffaw.

  ‘There’s one mercy,’ said Mrs Buller. ‘It’s no reflection on the town. Because they weren’t locals, were they? He was a nice chap, but he was never one of us. Nor was she.’

  They nodded sagely over their glasses, conscious of being of the elect.

  • • •

  Sunday was a day of rest and recuperation for Timothy Jimson, and he screamed for peace at every sign of noise or activity from his family. This was his way of reasserting himself after the damaging lack of respect shown him by Sergeant Feather. But by Sunday he had regrouped his forces, had marshalled a high degree of self-righteousness to come to the aid of his self-importance, and had grafted on to these an entirely new element, namely that hitherto much despised thing, a social conscience. His experiences with the police were to be the start of a new campaign, one to protect the ordinary citizen, inform the general public of the abuse of power taking place under their noses, and alert the media in order to bring the maximum of publicity to bear. He was very insistent on these last points: alert the media; the maximum of publicity.

  After Jean and the children had finished the big wash-up following Sunday lunch, she found Timothy sitting in his armchair, his fingers intertwined over his little stomach, planning plans.

  ‘It seems to me we ought to start with The Times,’ he said. ‘Always a good place to start, provided you take the right tone. I’d aim at a simple, sober statement of fact, nothing shrill: the inquisition, the forced overnight stay to soften me up, the outrageous use of my bank account.’ He realized he was becoming shrill, and lowered his voice. ‘Then perhaps we could use the radio and TV. Yes, definitely. Appeal for other people’s experiences to compile a dossier from. What could we call it: the black book?’

  ‘The idea’s been used,’ said Jean.

  ‘Yes, well – that’s a detail. Obviously we can orchestrate the campaign from here. Get in the letters, file them, make them public in bursts, every few months, to keep the topic on the boil. Show the public they have certain rights vis-à-vis the police.’

  ‘Aren’t there other bodies?’ said Jean. ‘The Civil Liberties people, for example?’

  ‘Really, Jean,’ said Timothy. ‘They hardly helped much in my case, did they? They’ve been going for decades, but the same bullying and prying still goes on. Obviously we need a completely new body, one that concentrates on the one thing, being a watchdog on the police. There’ll be acres of correspondence, of course. I do so wish you were a typist, Jean. It would mean I didn’t have to do all the work myself.’

  ‘Oh, I shan’t be here,’ said Jean. ‘I’m leaving you.’

  Timothy was much too taken up with his plans to understand.

  ‘Jean, really! What a time to go away. It’s no time at all since you went to your mother’s last. Though, there again, it might give me a bit of peace from the children . . .’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Jean. ‘Permanent peace. I shall be leaving for good.’

  Timothy looked at her disbelievingly. ‘This isn’t the time for a joke, Jean. You know I’m still emotionally upset by this whole business. Shattered, in fact. I’m afraid I’m not finding it funny.’

  Jean knew Timothy hated her using literary clichés, but she coul
dn’t find any other way of saying it.

  ‘I . . . am . . . leaving . . you . . . for . . . good.’

  ‘But that’s nonsense,’ said Timothy. ‘You’ve never given the slightest hint of this before. We’ve always been perfectly happy. What possible reason could you have?’

  ‘I haven’t been happy. I find you selfish, pompous and conceited. If you’ve been happy it’s because your big need is for someone you think you can despise and bully. Other than that, you won’t notice if we’re not here. Those are the reasons. I shall be leaving by tomorrow night.’

  And she left the room.

  Timothy still didn’t believe it. Of course she must have been upset by this silly business. Surely she couldn’t have believed that ridiculous letter? She’d get over it, anyway. Women are basically silly creatures, Timothy thought, but eventually they get over whatever was bothering them. Meanwhile he wasn’t going to let it spoil his afternoon. Radio Broadwich were putting out This Is Twytching at three, and that was something to look forward to. He would just sit down and think about that.

  • • •

  ‘You’re still unhappy about the case, aren’t you?’ said Betty Underwood as they sat in the smoky atmosphere of the police station with the afternoon sun streaming in the windows.

  ‘Of course I’m unhappy about it,’ said Parrish. ‘Do you think I like arresting the wrong man?’

  ‘You can’t be sure about that,’ said Feather.

  ‘Not one hundred per cent sure, anymore than you could be that Charlie Crippen murdered his wife,’ said Parrish. ‘But you saw the little girl yesterday, Stephen. I expect you thought exactly what I thought.’

  Stephen nodded.

  ‘It’s a really hideous thing, if so,’ said Sergeant Underwood.

  ‘Oh it’s hideous, all right. So hideous that no jury would believe it if they had an alternative. But it’s a much better story than her father’s. I never did believe in these quiet complacent husbands who suddenly turn round and kill their wives – not unless there’s sex involved. “Some sort of pure rage came over me,” Arnold Mailer said. That was something he’d read, not something he’d experienced. Left alone the thing would have simmered for a week or two, Mailer would have had a new lock put on his briefcase, and that would have been the end of it.’

  ‘Do you think he was as blind to the sort of woman she was as he says?’ asked Stephen.

  ‘Oh yes, I think so. Probably that was one of the things that drove the daughter to desperation. Of course he loves her too, worships her, obviously. And when he saw what she’d done, he leapt straight in and made sure he was implicated to the hilt. But that sort gets adept at sentimentalizing. Things have to be as they ought to be: mothers and daughters must love one another – it’s nature. But, in fact, to Alison Mailer her daughter was a bore and a bind.’

  ‘Such a clever little girl too,’ said Betty.

  ‘Clever? Clever as a waggon-load of monkeys. Did you see those tears in the eyes when we first mentioned those fictitious Easter walks with her mother, Stephen? But of course Alison didn’t necessarily like clever people, far from it. And in Cressida, well, there you have another little monster of egotism. The two egotisms clashed. She felt the hatred and contempt flowing from her mother, and she nursed up this intense, fierce, passionate hatred. It’s a terrible thought, but we all say that children are growing up earlier these days, and that means they’re beginning to get all sorts of adult emotions early, not just the sexual ones. They’re exposed to the adult world all the time, in one way or another. We think that someone who does this sort of thing has to be a Glasgow tough, or someone like that, but kids all over are subject to the same sort of pressures. They drove this one inside herself, bottling up all sorts of hatreds and jealousies and hopes of revenge.’

  ‘I can’t say I like the thought of sending her to relatives,’ said Sergeant Underwood. ‘Couldn’t you make it stick?’

  ‘In the normal course of events I could,’ said Parrish. ‘But with the father standing up there and saying he did it, with a perfectly good motive, and all the evidence at least as good for him as for her – well, no jury on earth, or no magistrate, would do anything about the girl. As it is, the best we can do is get Mailer on a manslaughter charge – reduce the sentence a bit. He sure as hell was an accessory, and there’s just a chance she wasn’t dead when he hit her. As justice it’s pretty rough and ready, but sometimes in this job “the best we can do” is what we have to do. You’ll learn that, I’m afraid, both of you.’

  ‘It doesn’t seem fair,’ said Betty, ‘him getting the full works and that monster Deborah Withens going back to queening it over the town as if nothing had happened.’

  ‘It wasn’t fair,’ said Parrish. ‘Necessary, but not fair. I had to make the bargain or the thing would have dragged on till kingdom come. Still, I don’t think I’ll ever be able to look Ernest in the eye again.’

  ‘But you gave him his chance,’ said Stephen. ‘You told her you’d tell him about the letters, you gave him a hold over her. It’s up to him to use it – assert himself.’

  ‘That’s like those bloody pirates who shove people off in an open boat with a crust of bread and a glass of water and say, “Isn’t it nice of us not making you walk the plank? We’ve given you a chance.” The only way he’ll be rescued from that woman is by death. And I’d bet it won’t be hers. Would you take on a bet who’ll be cooking the breakfast tomorrow morning?’

  But Stephen wouldn’t take him on.

  ‘So now we go back to being the same sleepy, nasty little town – damn!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The programme’s started. We’ve missed five minutes of it.’

  ‘Lucky old us,’ said Betty Underwood, turning on the radio.

  For the next fifty minutes all was silence: they sat through an impressionistic rendering of a typical British pub at closing-time; they sat through a typical British fish and chip shop on a Friday night; they sat through swelling oceans of cliché from Hank on the concern of the British for their senior citizens. They sat through ‘Because’, sung by Mario Lanza, through the Dance of the Little Swans, through Bing Crosby singing ‘If I Can Help Somebody’, and through ‘An English Country Garden’.

  ‘I hate to think it,’ said Parrish at the end, ‘but I’m awfully afraid Timothy Jimson has missed the bus. It doesn’t seem to be his weekend.’

  • • •

  ‘That, Ernest,’ said Deborah Withens settling herself back in her chair, ‘that was exactly the sort of programme I have been wanting. Exactly what I’ve been working for. I think we can be proud, proud and happy. We’ve put our best foot forward, and presented the world with a model little community. Most gratifying!’

  She tapped her spoon on her saucer.

  ‘Another cup of tea, I think, Ernest.’

  by the same author

  DEATH AND THE PRINCESS

  DEATH BY SHEER TORTURE

  DEATH IN A COLD CLIMATE

  DEATH OF A PERFECT MOTHER

  DEATH OF A LITERARY WIDOW

  DEATH OF A MYSTERY WRITER

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  Copyright © 1976 Robert Barnard

  First published in the United States by

  Charles Scribner’s Sons 1983

  www.SimonandSchuster.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

  Barnard, Robert.

  A little local murder.

  I. Title.

  PR6052.A665L5 1983 823'.914 82-23027

  ISBN 0-684-17882-6

  ISBN-13: 978-1-4767-1624-4 (eBook)

  Copyright under the Berne Convention.

  All rights reserved. />
  No part of this book may be reproduced

  in any form without the permission of

  Charles Scribner’s Sons.