by Rosie Harris
Once again they drew a blank. The caretaker informed them that she’d vacated the flat the previous day, and that she had not left any forwarding address.
‘That makes her one notch higher on our list of suspects,’ commented Paddy.
‘She did tell us that the lease was up, and that she would have to leave the flat quite soon,’ Ruth reminded him.
‘She should have told us where we could contact her, though.’
‘Maybe she will in a day or so, when she has settled in at her new address. In the meantime perhaps we should talk to Mrs Patterson.’
Sara Patterson was in her early thirties and slim, with clean-cut features, vivid blue eyes, and dark hair sculpted to her head. She was dressed in dark-blue jeans and a stylish blue and white striped shirt. Quite composed, despite her recent ordeal, she invited them into her sunny lounge and insisted on making them all coffee before she sat down to answer their questions.
She’d been married to Brian for twelve years, she told them, and they had two daughters. Alice was ten, and Jane was almost eight. They both attended Benbury Junior School. She could throw no light on why Brian had been killed.
‘He was very late leaving the Masonic hall on the night in question,’ murmured Ruth.
‘Almost the last, according to the caretaker,’ confirmed Paddy. ‘Weren’t you worried when he was so late coming home?’
‘I wasn’t here.’
Ruth and Paddy both looked surprised.
Sara Patterson’s colour rose but she offered no explanation for her absence from home.
‘So Mr Patterson was in no hurry to get home because he knew you were out?’ Paddy said thoughtfully.
‘He intended to stay on after the meeting to talk to your superintendent. I thought you would have known that,’ she answered pertly.
‘We do have that information, but we don’t know why he wanted to talk to Superintendent Wilson. Do you?’
‘Brian was to have become master at the next meeting,’ she said diffidently. ‘James Wilson is the present master, and there were several things Brian wanted to know, so after the main meeting was over seemed to be a good time to talk to him. Brian is . . .’ She paused and bit down on her lower lip. ‘Brian was a stickler for details, and very anxious to do everything properly when he was installed, you see.’
‘But you were away from home, Mrs Patterson,’ persisted Ruth.
‘Yes!’ As if conscious that her tone had been abrupt to the point of rudeness she repeated her affirmation in a more moderated voice. ‘Yes, I was away.’
‘And your children?’
‘They were staying overnight with my mother.’
‘So your husband knew there would be no one at home when he returned.’
‘Yes. Of course he did. He didn’t expect his meeting to end until quite late . . .’
‘Does this mean you weren’t returning home until sometime the following morning?’
‘Morning . . . early afternoon . . . I hadn’t made any firm plans except to be home in time to pick the two girls up from school,’ she said with some asperity.
‘Where did you say you were staying, Mrs Patterson?’
‘I didn’t.’
‘I’m afraid we will have to know.’
Sara Patterson looked annoyed. For a moment Ruth thought she was going to refuse to answer.
‘If you must know, I was visiting my sister,’ she snapped.
‘In Benbury?’
‘No, of course not! She lives in London.’
‘And was this a social visit?’
‘A shopping trip actually. I needed something special to wear at Brian’s Ladies’ Night.’
‘That won’t be for quite some time, will it?’ Paddy frowned. Although not a Freemason himself he knew enough about the ritual to know she wouldn’t be attending her husband’s inauguration.
‘I thought it would be one less thing for him to worry about if he knew I had the right dress.’
‘So it was a shopping spree to London?’
‘Yes.’ Her reply was terse, and she seemed nervous.
‘Would you let us have your sister’s address and telephone number, Mrs Patterson . . . so that we can check out the information you have given us,’ murmured Ruth.
Sara’s blue eyes widened in astonishment. ‘You mean you don’t believe me?’
‘It’s not a question of believing or disbelieving. In a case of this kind we have to double check every detail.’
Aware that Sara Patterson could hardly contain her anger, Ruth switched the line of enquiry. ‘Going back to your husband, Mrs Patterson,’ she said smoothly, ‘do you know if he had any enemies?’
Still looking hostile, Sara Patterson shrugged. ‘Not as far as I am aware. As a solicitor he dealt with the affairs of a wide range of people, so I suppose there could have been someone who might have had a grudge against him.’
‘Do you mean one of his clients?’
She frowned. ‘It could have been someone he’d defended in court, and they’d lost their case . . .’ Her voice trailed away uncertainly. She shrugged and spread her hands. ‘I really don’t know. I’m just hazarding a guess.’
‘Was your husband a friend of either of the other two men who have been killed in Benbury?’
Some of the colour drained from Sara Patterson’s face. ‘Not really. He knew them both. Sandy Franklin was in the same Masonic lodge. Surely, you must know that since Superintendent Wilson is the master of their lodge,’ she added caustically.
‘And John Moorhouse?’
She shrugged. ‘He was at school with Brian. We hardly ever saw him or Marilyn though. John wasn’t in the Masons, or in the same social circle as us.’
‘Why was that?’ Ruth looked at Sara Patterson enquiringly, encouraging her to explain more fully.
‘The Moorhouses were into amateur dramatics, and parent/teacher fund-raising events, that sort of thing. Marilyn was tied up with the Cubs, and all sorts of charities. Do-gooders, I suppose you’d say they were!’
‘Not your scene?’
‘I support various charities, and Brian gave a great deal of his time, and money, to Masonic charitable concerns,’ she retorted sharply.
‘On a slightly different level, though.’
She shrugged again. ‘Yes, you could say that. Brian also belonged to the Benbury Golf Club, and we had quite a busy social life.’
‘And John Moorhouse didn’t play golf?’
She shook her head. ‘If he did, he didn’t belong to the Benbury Club. Mind you, it’s not all that easy to become a member. Sandy Franklin has been trying for years . . . I don’t suppose it matters now,’ she ended abruptly.
‘Did you and your husband see very much of Sandy Franklin?’
Sara Patterson’s face tightened. ‘Only at Masonic events. Brian avoided him socially.’
‘Really! Why was that?’
Sara Patterson looked uncomfortable. ‘I’m not sure.’
‘I’ve heard he was something of a ladies’ man,’ commented Paddy. ‘Would you say there was any truth in that, Mrs Patterson?’
Sara Patterson bit down on her lower lip but didn’t answer.
‘Did your husband prefer that you shouldn’t be in Sandy Franklin’s company because he was afraid Mr Franklin might be tempted to make a pass at you and—’
‘What utter rubbish! How dare you make such an accusation.’ Sara Patterson’s face was livid, and her vivid blue eyes flashed angrily.
‘Please, Mrs Patterson,’ Ruth intervened quickly, ‘Sergeant Hardcastle was only trying to establish if there was any foundation for the rumours about the sort of man Mr Franklin was.’
Although Sara Patterson remained silent she appeared to be uneasy, despite the inspector’s intervention, and avoided their eyes.
‘Is there anything further you can tell us that might help us with our enquiries?’
‘No. Nothing at all.’
‘Any other link between Moorhouse, Franklin, and your husband, other than he was th
e same age as them, and that he also went to Benbury Secondary School?’ persisted Ruth.
Sara Patterson looked at her watch. ‘I’ve told you all I know, and now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to collect my girls from school.’
Purposefully, she walked through into the hall, selected a jacket from the hall stand, and picked up her keys, leaving Ruth and Paddy no alternative but to follow her.
Her car was on the driveway. As she unlocked it, Paddy solicitously held the door, waiting until she slid behind the wheel before closing it.
Sara Patterson felt uneasy as she drove her red Astra towards Benbury Junior School to collect Alice and Jane. She wished she hadn’t told the two detectives that she had been at her sister’s. She should have said London and left it at that.
When they’d insisted on knowing where she’d stayed overnight she could have named a hotel, not given them Yvonne’s address and phone number. That had been a stupid thing to do, and if they did phone to check on whether she had stayed the night there Yvonne certainly wouldn’t be very pleased at being involved.
If she’d given them a false address, though, that would have looked even worse if they’d checked it out and then found she’d been lying.
As she sat outside the school waiting for the children to come out she went over in her mind all the things she had told DI Morgan and DS Hardcastle.
And the things she hadn’t.
Trust Brian not to be around when she needed him. He would have known what to say. That was if she could have brought herself to tell him.
It was like some dreadful nightmare, she thought apprehensively. She really ought to make a note of what she’d said to the police. It wouldn’t look good if they questioned her again, and she changed her story. And somehow she thought they might.
The detective sergeant had looked at her as if he thought that she might have been the one who killed Brian. And if he ever found out that she hadn’t stayed the night at Yvonne’s, he might start digging deeper.
Anxiously, she rummaged in the glove pocket of the car for a biro and some paper to write on.
She couldn’t find a pen, but there was a stub of yellow pencil belonging to one of the girls and a discarded supermarket bill. That would have to do, she decided. She’d write on the back of it. With so much on her mind at the moment she couldn’t afford to trust to her memory.
FOURTEEN
The car belonging to DI Morgan and DS Hardcastle was parked in the roadway outside the Patterson’s house, and they were still sitting there discussing the outcome of their interview with Sara Patterson when she drove out of her driveway.
‘She has a red car,’ observed Paddy as the red Astra sped past them. He handed the inspector a small crumpled piece of paper. ‘This parking ticket is from the Meadway car park, which is the public car park right alongside the Masonic hall. The date is smudged, but it should still be possible to verify if her car was parked there the night her husband was murdered.’
Ruth frowned as she smoothed out the fragment of evidence. ‘You removed this from her windscreen. Does this mean you think Sara Patterson may have murdered her husband,’ she said, in a surprised voice.
It was a statement rather than a question, and Paddy grinned. ‘I was trained to believe that everyone is a suspect until proved otherwise, ma’am,’ he replied blandly.
‘Even if she did kill her husband, she could hardly be held responsible for the other two murders!’
‘No, perhaps not,’ he conceded. ‘We won’t know that for certain until we’ve checked upon her movements. I don’t think she was telling the truth about her visit to London.’
‘She was rather evasive, I quite agree.’
‘And if she isn’t in any way connected with the other two murders then this could have been a copycat murder. What better way than to use the procedure established by some other killer so that they would also be suspected of the murder you have committed.’
Ruth looked at him mockingly. ‘Your theory sounds far too convoluted to be the work of Sara Patterson. She’s petty, and snobbish, but I hardly think she has that sort of cunning. Anyway, we have no evidence.’
‘A red car was seen outside John Moorhouse’s place the night he was killed.’
‘That was a Ford Escort.’
‘Was it? The woman who reported it couldn’t be sure what make of car it was, only that it was red.’
‘Sara Patterson said her husband rarely saw anything of John Moorhouse . . .’
‘She didn’t mention whether she ever saw him or not.’
‘Are you suggesting that not only did Sara Patterson murder her own husband, but she was also having an affair with John Moorhouse, and possibly murdered him as well?’
Paddy shook his head. ‘I don’t know. It’s a possibility worth considering. She had every opportunity. And she doesn’t seem to be overly distressed by her husband’s demise.’
‘She might be trying to bear up because of the children,’ Ruth told him tartly. ‘Or it might be delayed shock.’
‘I don’t think she told us the entire truth about her trip to London,’ he repeated stubbornly.
‘She gave us her sister’s name and phone number . . . We can always check.’
Paddy shook his head. ‘Her sister will vouch she was there. I’m quite sure about that. She’s probably provided an alibi countless times before.’
‘You mean Sara Patterson regularly goes to London for something other than to see her sister or go shopping?’
‘Yes! That is if she even goes to London. It’s more than likely that she simply uses her sister as an alibi.’
‘In case her husband should try to contact her for some reason?’
‘Right!’ He gave a dry laugh.
‘So who looks after the children overnight?’
‘On this occasion, her husband was out at a Masonic meeting, so it was her mother,’ he reasoned.
‘Yes. She did tell us that,’ agreed Ruth thoughtfully.
‘Leaving that point in abeyance for the moment,’ Paddy went on, ‘did you notice any change in her manner when we spoke about Sandy Franklin?’
Ruth frowned. ‘She appeared to colour up, and she looked embarrassed. Rather reluctant to talk about him, in fact.’
‘Exactly!’ Paddy sounded triumphant. ‘It’s my conjecture that at some time or other Sara Patterson has been involved with Sandy Franklin. Had an affair with him!’
‘But surely—’
‘Believe me, I’ve been working this patch for a long time. I started as a constable in Benbury, and that was almost twenty years ago. The affairs Sandy Franklin has had in that length of time have been legion. He put a girl in the family way even before he left school.’
‘You really think that Sara Patterson would become involved with a man like that?’
He shrugged. ‘You never can tell. She’s very attractive; you could hardly say the same for Patterson.’
Ruth frowned. ‘Even so, as a solicitor he has a reputation to uphold, and he’d hardly tolerate his wife becoming involved with one of his clients.’
‘I wasn’t suggesting she still was involved, and she certainly couldn’t have been seeing him the night her husband was murdered, not unless she was visiting him in the morgue.’
‘Precisely! Sandy Franklin was already dead, so is there any point in discussing it? We’ll need something far more concrete than conjectures of that sort if we are going to keep Superintendent Wilson happy,’ Ruth pointed out a trifle sharply.
‘You have to admit, though, that she was certainly very uneasy when Sandy Franklin’s name was mentioned,’ insisted Paddy.
‘Maybe it was the blunt manner in which you broached the subject,’ Ruth told him caustically. ‘I would have used a more subtle approach.’
Paddy looked annoyed. His mouth tightened, and his square chin jutted angrily. ‘What line of enquiry do you wish to proceed with next, ma’am?’ he asked in a clipped tone.
‘I think we should get back to the s
tation and phone Yvonne Duran, and see if she can tell us anything useful about her sister’s shopping trip to London, don’t you?’
The journey was made in strained silence.
Although she welcomed the opportunity to follow her own line of reasoning without interruption, Ruth was sorry she had upset Paddy.
He probably does know far more about the local people than I do, she reflected. Nevertheless, their enquiries must be done according to the book, not as the result of mere intuition, or the personal quirks of local personalities.
It would be all too simple to let Paddy influence her judgement with hearsay and speculation. And she had no doubt that Superintendent Wilson would take a vindictive delight in pointing out the error of her suppositions if she concocted a case on such superficial evidence.
This was not an easy investigation, but she was determined to find the murderer, or murderers, and prove to both Paddy Hardcastle and James Wilson that appointing a woman as the CID Inspector had not been a retrograde step for the Benbury police. She suspected that, although he tried not to show it, Paddy resented both her appointment and her methods of investigation. He probably found it hard to accept that techniques had changed, and that his pedantic methods not only lacked finesse, but that they’d been superseded by a sharper, more scientific mode.
It was understandable. He’d been in the Benbury police for almost twenty years, and had risen from the ranks, and not had the benefit of transferring to Police Training College straight from university. Doubtless, however, he must have anticipated that after all his years of valuable service, and his satisfactory work as a detective, he’d be the next CID Inspector.
She shot a surreptitious sideways glance at him. His anger showed in every fibre of his bearing. From the way he gripped the steering wheel, so that his knuckles shone like white ivory, to the set of his jaw.
She studied him covertly. His anger, far from detracting from his good looks, seemed to enhance them, she reflected with grim amusement. As well as exceptionally broad shoulders, he had the muscular physique of a man who spent a great deal of time keeping fit. His thick fair hair, brushed back from his deep forehead, framed clean-shaven cheeks that gleamed with health; the only blemish was a faint scar to one side of his square jaw. When he smiled, his amiable grin showed a row of strong white teeth.