by Joy Ellis
As she spoke, Jon watched him, but the man made no move or change of expression until Kate mentioned his father by name, and then a tiny tic beneath his right eye caused the skin to quiver.
For some while Benedict did not answer, but Kate refrained from urging him to speak, and Jon could only imagine what thoughts must be going through his mind. Innocent or guilty, the memories the man must have were the stuff of nightmares.
As they waited, Jon watched the man intently, or more to the point he watched the space around Benedict. Then a chill moved down the full length of his spine. The air behind Benedict was thickening, and an uneasy feeling of apprehension began to fill Jon’s head. Although by no means fully formed, whatever had clung to Benedict during the last interview was with them again.
Kate was totally unaffected, but Jon felt tired, and for the first time since the team had been using his gift, he felt that the whole spirit thing was hindering rather than helping them.
The repugnant thing that clung to Benedict was distracting in the extreme, and although he needed to hear what Benedict was saying, he wasn’t too keen on sharing a small claustrophobic space with the shade of a man who had once been a murderer and a sadistic torturer of children. And he knew without doubt that it was Simeon Mulberry that was leeching the life energy from his son.
The air still felt polluted, but Jon directed every scrap of his attention to Benedict, and slowly the thing began to fade.
‘Yes, I was Benedict Mulberry. But I’d appreciate it, as a kindness, if you would continue to refer to me when we speak, as Benedict Broome.’
Kate nodded. ‘I can do that.’
The air suddenly seemed much clearer, and Jon gave himself a swift mental shake. He should feel elated; after all this was a huge step. They now knew who they were really dealing with. And it was a relief, but somehow he felt worse, because of the unspeakable things that had happened to the Mulberry children.
‘You know about the others?’ asked Benedict solemnly.
‘Yes, sir.’ said Kate. ‘But we felt it only right to discuss it with you first.’
‘That’s good, that’s good.’ The man sounded tired beyond words and seemed to have aged since they entered the room. ‘Philip, and probably Asher, you can talk to about this. Tell them that you know about us, and I have said it’s alright to be honest. They will understand that we have no choice, but..,’ He rubbed thoughtfully on his chin, ‘…if there is any way around it, please don’t confront Micah or our sister, not yet. Elizabeth couldn’t cope, and Micah, well, Micah is volatile.’ He looked at them. ‘As I’m sure you realize.’
They both immediately nodded. Volatile was as good a word as any, Jon supposed.
‘And Toby..,’ he continued, ‘…although he may seem tough as old boots, is as fragile as a butterfly wing. I know that you will have to do it, but I would ask you to be especially compassionate when you talk to Toby, Chief Inspector. He may be a sturdy farmer in the eyes of the world, but he is still a frightened child beneath that weathered skin.’
Kate gave Jon a swift look. Now Toby Tanner’s identity had been confirmed, she had no choice but to tell Benedict about what had happened.
‘Benedict, I’m afraid I have some bad news. A man’s body was found today, out at the old mill close to your old home at Alderfield. I’m very sorry, but we have reason to believe that the man is your brother, Toby.’
Benedict closed his eyes, then rested his elbows on the table and clasped his hands together as if in prayer. His voice was soft as he said, ‘Oh no, poor Toby. I always thought he would be the first to go, unless of course Micah lost his temper once too often and finished up killing someone.’
It wasn’t a figurative comment; it was a simple statement of fact. And it sounded callous, common-place even, but then Jon remembered that the Mulberry children had lived under the constant shadow of violent death. It was part of life to them.
‘Can I see him?’
‘Not just yet, sir.’ said Jon. ‘I’m sure you’ll appreciate there are formalities to be carried out. And he will need formal identification.’
‘How did he kill himself? A shot gun, I suppose? He had two at the farm.’
‘He chose to hang himself.’
‘Oh.’ Benedict tilted his head. ‘I’d have thought he would have used the gun.’
Like his father did on his mother, thought Jon.
‘I’m glad he chose the mill,’ said Benedict reflectively. ‘That mill was our quiet place. Somewhere we went as children when things got bad. If I were going to kill myself, DCI Reynard, I’d go to the mill, too.’
‘I’m afraid it was Asher who found him. We wondered how he knew where to go.’
Benedict let out a painful sigh. ‘Poor child.’
Jon thought of Asher, the man who slipped away from his pretty fiancé and into the arms of a prostitute, and couldn’t quite correlate the comparison.
‘What happened to Fleur?’
Kate’s quick-fire question even took Jon by surprise.
Benedict just sat, white faced, and said, ‘She died. She got sick, and died. Why on earth do you want to know about Fleur?’
‘Because we found her body in the chamber below Windrush.’
‘What! Our father said that she had been cremated!’ Benedict Broome pushed back in his chair and stared at them with wild, disbelieving eyes.
Jon didn’t take his own eyes off the man, and if he was acting, then it was Oscar material. ‘Fleur was one of the thirteen young women found there, Benedict.’
‘That’s impossible!’ the man cried, clasping his hands to his mouth. ‘Impossible.’
‘I think you should tell us about Windrush.’ Kate was ploughing on and not giving the man an inch. ‘It wasn’t really going to be some swanky retreat, was it?’
‘Oh, but it was, although not for others. It was for us.’ Benedict’s voice was now low and husky. ‘Our retreat! Our home; where we could be back together again, where we belonged.’ Emotion got the better of him. ‘And we were so close.’
‘And the bodies? All those dead girls, Benedict? Where did they fit in?’
‘I know nothing about them.’
‘Your brother Philip has been arrested for their murder. Did he forget to mention what he was up to beneath your precious retreat?’
‘Philip!’ Benedict roared with laughter. ‘Forgive me, but you are so wrong there.’
Jon listened to the man choking with mirth, and wondered if he had finally cracked.
‘Not Philip, DCI Reynard.’ Benedict swallowed and coughed to clear his throat. ‘He is the gentlest man I’ve ever met. I think the phrase “First do no harm” was written especially for him.’
‘He has confessed.’
‘I think you need to speak to him again, detectives.’ Benedict shook his head. ‘I can’t tell you why he’s done such a stupid thing, but believe me, Philip is not your killer.’
‘We are going to have to move our suspects to different stations, now we are aware that they are related.’ Kate gently touched her bruised face. ‘But from past experience and knowing what we know unofficially, I’m loath to let them out of my sight for even five minutes.’
She and Jon were waiting for Philip Graves, nee Mulberry, to be brought to an interview room.
‘No-one other than the team and the professor knows anything yet.’ Jon kept his voice low. ‘Let’s hang fire until we’ve spoken to Philip again.’
‘Ah good, I’m in time.’ Professor Daniel O’Byrne hurried along the corridor. ‘May I still sit in? We have permission from Mr Graves, eh, Mulberry.’
Kate lifted a finger to her lips. ‘It’s Graves, okay? And yes, we’d be grateful for your opinion, Professor. Just keep quiet and observe, that’s all.’
Philip Graves, Jon still found it hard to think of him as Mulberry, sat across the table from them. He looked hollow, as if the life had been drained from him and it was taking every ounce of his energy to remain sitting upright in his chair.
‘They had families, Philip, people who loved and missed them.’ Jon spoke softly.
‘No they didn’t, Sergeant.’ His voice never rose in anger; he just calmly stated his version of the facts. ‘If people had cared so much, their children would not have run away or been left so vulnerable that some man could take them, defile them and kill them. I was their real family. I loved them, and in the end, I was all they needed.’
‘How did you find them, Philip?’ Kate asked. ‘You don’t just find dead bodies.’
‘Whoever killed them left them in the old ruin on the marsh. In the small cellar room that leads to my tunnel.’
‘And who was that? You must have seen him leave the bodies. And he must have known what you were doing, mustn’t he? He dumps a dead body, then when he returns a few months later with the next one, abracadabra! It’s gone! Magic!’
He sadly shook his head. ‘I never saw him, and I have no idea what he thought about the missing girls, if indeed he even realised. You saw that derelict building, Sergeant. As far as I could judge, he opened the door and pushed them through into the darkness.’
‘I’m sorry, Philip, but I suggest that you did know who it was. You may not have seen him, but you knew from the things he did to those girls, exactly who was the killer.’
The man sat and stared silently down at the table top.
‘Come on! You are an educated man, Philip. You and your brothers and sisters..,’ Kate placed a slight emphasis on the word, sisters. ‘..suffered terrible, terrible hurt at the hands of your parents. You knew that one of your brothers was so damaged that he had the capability to kill, didn’t you?’
‘You were just cleaning up after him, weren’t you? Protecting him, like you and Benedict have always done.’ Jon added.
‘I did not know who killed my lovely girls, and I did not want to know. I simply took them home and gave them back their dignity.’
‘And is that what you did to Fleur? You took her home?’
Philip’s eyes flew wide open and his head snapped up so sharply that Jon thought that he heard his neck crack. After a moment of silence he said, ‘I saw him. I saw our father digging the hole.’
‘Beneath the rose arch.’ murmured Jon, not looking directly at Philip but slightly to the left of him, and absentmindedly rubbing at his arm, at the place where the white handprint had been. Because standing next to her brother was the beautiful teenager. Fleur Mulberry. Jon had thought he wouldn’t see her again, but it was the clearest he’d seen her, and as he watched, the girl’s lips broke into an angelic smile.
And Philip was still sitting there, staring at Jon, not asking how he knew about the rose arch, but just nodding sadly. ‘I went there as soon as he had finished filling in the grave, and I told Fleur that I’d take her home one day. I told her that she’d sleep in soft sheets, in a proper bed, with sweet smelling flowers at her side. That she’s never spend another night on the cold floor of a stinking cage.’
Jon glanced across at Kate, who was forcing back tears.
Why would you dig up a body? Gary had asked. And now he knew. ‘And you did go back for her, when you knew that Alderfield was going to be bull-dozed?’
‘I went back as soon as Benedict acquired Windrush. I was going to do it earlier, but I had no-where to take her that was safe and permanent.’
‘You did it alone?’
Philip mumbled ‘Yes, alone. I had never told the others about her grave.’
‘Why not? As siblings you were all so close, surely they would have understood?’ asked Jon.
‘I couldn’t add to their distress. How could I give them more heartbreak to carry on their narrow shoulders? They had been told she had become ill and died. It was a blessed release. That was enough, especially for the little ones. Only I knew that she had died at our father’s hand. And that was a burden for me alone to carry.’ Philip looked directly at Jon. ‘Each of us has secrets, Sergeant. Each of us is troubled. We are different to others. That is why we needed to have a place of our own. Somewhere where no matter what we did we would not be judged, somewhere the world would be safe from us, and we would be safe from a world that could never comprehend what our parents had turned us into. Windrush was to be that sanctuary.’
Kate’s eyes were full of confusion. ‘But you went through university! You are a veterinary surgeon, Philip. That takes a lot of doing, it’s a big achievement. You are a professional, incredibly intelligent, full of compassion and..,’ She ran out of words.
‘What you say is true, and I’m not an evil man, or I hope I’m not. I grew up in a house of evil, so I think I know the difference. But I’m still a freak, Chief Inspector, and I recognise that fact.’
‘If you didn’t kill those girls, what about those name tags over the beds! How did you know their names and their dates of birth? How did you know they were all born on a Wednesday?’ The voice Jon used was cold, and his sudden deviation from the conversation about Fleur even seemed to shock Kate, who stared at him unblinkingly.
Philip swallowed. ‘I, uh, well..,’
‘I’ll fill in the gaps, shall I?’ said Jon, leaning forward towards Philip Graves. ‘You are the mender, aren’t you? You are the healer. And you know everything there is to know about your brothers. You knew exactly who couldn’t help himself, and you knew why. But this time you couldn’t mend him. As he grew up, he became more and more dangerous, didn’t he?’ Jon’s eyes bored into Philip’s. ‘And he was fixated by girls, little ones and older ones, as long as they were born on a Wednesday, like he had been, and his twin sister, Fleur.’
Kate was still staring at him, obviously wondering where the hell this was coming from. Jon saw confusion and anger in her eyes, but there was no way he could have prepared her, because he’d only just found out himself, from the beautiful girl that stood so close to Philip.
He looked at Kate, touched his temple and pointed to his arm, and the fresh white hand impression burnt into his skin.
Kate drew in a surprised breath, then nodded in understanding.
Jon turned back to Philip. ‘Toby killed them, didn’t he? He wasn’t fragile like Benedict would have us believe, he was psychotic and an incredibly dangerous predator.’
‘He made Micah seem like a teddy bear.’ Philip heaved a sigh and Jon thought it was tinged with relief. ‘You have to understand that Toby suffered more than any of us, other than Fleur. I knew that he would never integrate back into society, and although Benedict only suspected what Toby may be capable of, we worked constantly to bring him back under our wing. Micah lived at the farm in order to watch out for him, but we needed to get him to Windrush, and we were almost there.’
He looked at Jon, tears in his eyes. And it was not false emotion, they were no crocodile tears. ‘And now he’s dead, and it’s the answer to a prayer. I’d like to believe that he is up in heaven singing for his Maker, but I doubt that very much.’ He sniffed. ‘You asked me before if I sing, and I do, we all could, but Toby had a voice that would make angels weep. Sadly that was the only thing about Toby that was beautiful. I would have put him out of his misery years ago. After all, I have the knowledge and the wherewithal, but I didn’t have it in me, can you believe that?’
Jon thought about the flowers. Yes, he could believe it.
Jon left to get Philip some water, and Kate asked Philip about Asher, and his pretty Barbie Doll fiancée.
‘Asher? He is not a bad boy really; somehow he came out of our personal hell with a sort of mixed-up, old-fashioned moral code intact, even if he does have a problem with sex. He adores his girl friend and respects her wishes, but because of his obsession wi
th sex, he regularly pays for the services of prostitutes.’
‘And goes to sex clubs?’
Philip stiffened. ‘No. Not Asher. The clubs were Toby’s hunting ground.’
‘Can you tell us anything about them, Philip?’ Kate asked, then for the sake of the tape, added the DS Summerhill had just come back into the room.
‘Not really, other than a few old locations. I tried to stop him, but he was too secretive. He would get texts and calls, then he’d go off with strangers.’ Philip sighed. ‘I just prayed that none of the girls he met were born on a Wednesday.’
Kate decided to bring the interview to a close, and told him that he would be charged with something, but it wouldn’t be murder.
Philip didn’t seem to care one way or the other. He seemed to have shrunk almost to nothing, and as they stood up to leave, the husk of a man said, ‘What will they do with my sister?’
‘Fleur? When it’s over, she will be buried, Philip, properly and with dignity.’
‘That’s good. And Chief Inspector, my other sister, Elizabeth, is she safe?’
‘She’s in a psychiatric hospital. Yes, she’s safe.’
‘She self harms. That’s her problem. But Benedict looks after her.’
‘Of course.’ Kate let out a small sigh. ‘Those long sleeves pulled tightly down to her hands. That full-length skirt, reaching right down to her ankles, even though the hospital room was almost stifling hot.’ She shook her head. ‘I should have known.’ She stood with her finger on the tape recorder button. ‘Philip? How much did the others know? Especially Benedict.’
Philip looked up, ‘About?’
‘The Children’s Ward? The abductions? The drugging of Wednesday’s Children? And what Toby did to them in that caravan out on the marsh edge?’