‘Dancing?’
‘That was the best he could do for a description. Sort of jogging about, apparently, as if to music. But there was no music. He’d knocked over a small table, but didn’t seem to have noticed. Jeffers spoke to him, but he didn’t hear him, just went on with his dance. So Jeffers fetched me. I tell you, Jennifer, it was a most eerie sight. Terrifying, really, when you know how well-controlled Mark usually is. He behaved as if he were quite, quite mad. I spoke to him, and he heard me and whirled about and began to talk about all the colours.’
‘What colours?’
‘We’d been talking earlier about the colours of the various function rooms of the extension we’re going to build out the back. All in keeping with the house, you understand, even to using old reclaimed stone . . . ’ He stopped. ‘That’s not relevant, of course. Sorry. Then he went on dancing about. That’s when I called you.’
‘And then called Calgary.’
‘What?’ He looked at her. ‘Oh, yes . . . but he was out. So then I rang your private number. I hesitated, knowing you were unwell, but I thought Dr Gregson would be there, you see. I was most surprised when you answered.’
‘Dr Gregson was out, too,’ Jennifer said. Out like a light, more like it, she thought. My fault, again.
There was another sudden cry from the direction of the river, this time a savage howl that shook them both. Frances, coming back down the steps, crossed herself involuntarily. ‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph,’ she muttered. ‘The Hound of the Baskervilles.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Jennifer snapped, although her own reaction was much the same. The whole situation was so bizarre. Was she supposed to believe this was staid, sedate Mark Peacock, whooping and screaming in the dark? It didn’t make sense. ‘What happened after you called me, Basil?’
‘I went back into the lounge and tried to get him to talk to me sensibly, but he wouldn’t. He talked, my goodness, yes, he talked as if he’d just discovered his voice – but it made no sense, and came out so quickly, there was no way of following what he was getting at. I sent Jeffers away, I was so . . . embarrassed for Mark. We’ll have to get new servants, of course,’ he added, half to himself. Obviously the situation was telling on him, as well. ‘At any rate, about five minutes ago, he suddenly turned rather nasty, called me names, called his poor dead mother even worse names, screamed dreadful things about women and . . . about you . . . and then shot off outside. If I’d been able to stop you coming, then, I would have . . . but by then, I discovered . . . ’
‘That the phone is out of order,’ Frances said. ‘I just found that out myself.’
‘Yes. Mark pulled it out of the wall,’ Basil said.
‘Isn’t there another phone, perhaps in the kitchen or servants’ quarters?’ Jennifer demanded.
‘No – we’re waiting to have it put in. We never had need of it before . . . never had live-in servants before . . . ’ He straightened up. ‘That’s it, we’ll send one of the servants into town for the police. Jeffers! Jeffers!’ He shot off into the darkness, the light from his torch bobbing up and down over the lawn. After a moment, it disappeared around the far wing of the house.
‘Do you ever suppose they keep gin in that house?’ Frances asked. ‘I had a quick look, but I couldn’t spot it.’
‘It’s a drug,’ Jennifer said.
‘I know, but I’m not proud at the moment,’ Frances said.
‘I meant Mark. It’s a drug reaction, it has to be. Or such a violent recurrence of his mania that the maintenance dosage of his usual drug simply wasn’t sufficient to cope.’
‘Fine,’ Frances said. ‘Let’s find the gin. You can play Dr Kildare later on, when they’ve got him tied up hoof and mouth.’
‘It’s almost as if he were on a trip,’ Jennifer went on.
‘Well, if he is, he’s not gone far. You can still hear him laughing, down by the river,’ Frances said, nervously.
‘I’m going down there,’ Jennifer said, turning back to the car and rummaging in her bag. ‘If I can get close to him . . . ’ She filled a hypodermic syringe by the light from the front door.
‘Holy Mother of God, are you as crazy as himself?’ Frances demanded, becoming more Gaelic with every moment.
‘I’ve dealt with drug abuse cases before, in London,’ Jennifer said, calmly. ‘Once you realise what the problem is, it’s not frightening any more.’
‘Well, I know what it is and I’m that scared to death my legs think I’ve left them behind,’ Frances mourned. ‘Indeed, I wish I had. And myself with them.
‘Wait here.’
‘I will not.’
‘Then come along – and bring your legs with you.’
They started down the lawn, past the mounds of building materials looming in the dark. Once beyond the glow of the lights from the manor the night was pitch-black, cold, and still. As they drew closer to the river they could hear the gurgling of the water. And another sound. Giggling, purling laughter, as continuous and meaningless as the flow of the river itself.
‘Mark? It’s Jennifer,’ she called
The giggling continued. There was a thrashing in the bushes, first on one side, then on the other. They froze there, not knowing which way to go. The lights of the manor seemed very far away. ‘Maybe you’re right about leaving it to the police,’ Jennifer said, suddenly regretting her decision to come out here unescorted save by Frances, who was quivering like a jelly.
‘Definitely,’ Frances agreed. ‘In fact, I think we should go for them right now, myself.’
‘I agree,’ Jennifer said, and they turned as one and ran back up the lawn. In the dark, they lost track of one another, largely because Jennifer dodged around a hole in the ground, and Frances fell into it.
Jennifer heard Frances yell and turned back, stumbled and fell against a tarpaulined mound of what felt uncomfortably like bricks or stones. She picked herself up, and felt a stab of pain in her thigh. Reaching down, she touched a sticky patch that hurt like hell. She began to curse, feeling, even as she did so, the first stiffening of the wound. She was so annoyed at her own clumsiness as she limped on towards the light that she never even turned at the sound of the footsteps behind her. She assumed it was Frances. ‘I think what you’ve got is catching,’ she grumbled.
And then the arm encircled her neck and she heard the low vicious voice in her ear. ‘Bitch, bitch, bitch . . . ’
She screamed.
And began to struggle.
As she struggled, she heard the roar of a car engine starting up. She supposed Frances had reached the car, and prayed that she would go for help. ‘Mark, Mark . . . please, let me go . . . please,’ she gasped as she wrenched herself away.
She had taken a course in self-defence years ago, while still a medical student, as she was thinking at the time of going into psychiatric work. The first month on the wards had dulled that particular ambition, but the course had left her with some memories. She tried to put them to use. Unfortunately, her instructor at the time had been co-operative.
The man she was fighting was not.
‘Mark . . . please . . . it’s Jennifer . . . ’ she said as he grabbed her again. She sidestepped into a mound of sand that shifted under her feet, throwing her off balance.
She staggered, and fell with a heart-stopping suddenness into one of the trenches. For a minute she lay, winded, at the bottom. Then a dark figure loomed above at the edge of the trench, outlined by the lights from the manor, and she could see the blade in his hand. He bent as if to jump down to her.
Jennifer scrambled backwards down the trench, clawing the sides as she struggled to her feet. There was a thump, and she knew he was there, in the trench, with her. No one could see them, no one could hear them.
They were alone.
In the distance she could hear police sirens, but oh, so far away. She backed off, her feet slipping
in the loose earth. She could hear him, panting like an animal as he came after her. And though it was invisible, she knew the knife was there, too, in front of him. Coming closer and closer to her.
‘Mark, listen to me, you must listen to me, dear . . . you must let me help you. Please let me help you.’
He laughed. It was a low, intimate chuckle, as if over a shared secret. And the secret was that there was no help for him, or for her. He liked what he was. He was a killer. He was going to kill her. He knew it. She knew it. Jennifer felt sweat pouring down her body, despite the coldness of the night. The sweet stifling smell of freshly dug earth was all around her.
Like a grave.
Abruptly, as she backed away, she became aware that the ground was sloping up to the end of the trench. As soon as she realised it, she turned her back and began to claw and drag herself up the slope. She felt a hand close on her ankle, and she kicked involuntarily, freed herself, and struggled on. He was only inches behind her, so close she could almost feel his breath on her. But she gained the surface once again, and began to run, dodging between the heaps and mounds, desperately trying to avoid falling into yet another trench – into another grave.
She knew she was between her attacker and the house, knew that she was visible while he was not. She tried to hide, but there was nowhere safe. And she could not summon the courage to run towards the river again. Into the dark. Into the whispering shadows.
He kept on coming. It was uncanny, as if he could see in the dark. Wherever she moved, he moved, as if they were connected with an invisible thread, as if she were a fly in his web and he could feel every movement, every trembling of her terror. She couldn’t see his face, he was a black, panting presence in the night – except for the flash of the blade in his hand. She looked back, once, and saw it catch the light. A short, angled blade, gleaming.
And all the while, muttering and cursing her in a hoarse, animal voice, vicious hate pouring out of him like poison, he came on. ‘Bitch, she-dog, with your dirty body and your dirty ways, sucking and vile, stinking and soft . . . ’ On and on, words she knew, some she didn’t. She ran on, her chest filled with pain, her throat closing, trying to get out of the light . . . but the light followed her, which didn’t make sense. The light followed her wherever she went.
And then she realised the light came from the headlights of a car – her own car. Bearing down on them, faster and faster, weaving nimbly between the huge mounds of sand and rock, rounding the small bulldozer that stood beside them, coming closer and closer, the horn blaring all the while. Jennifer kept on running and the panting thing ran after her – but not fast enough.
Jennifer felt herself struck by a glancing blow, screamed as she fell, face down into suffocating sand. At the same time, there was a harder, heavier thud, and a thin, fading cry of ‘Bull’s-eye!’
There was a roaring in her ears. As she turned over, she was just in time to see her new Maestro bounce off a bush, scrape the support out from under a corner of the scaffolding, and plunge its front wheels into a trench with a terrible rending of metal.
As it went over the edge under a cascade of iron piping, she saw it was Frances at the wheel. Frances, who had driven her car across the lawn and straight into a pedestrian. Frances at her worst. Only this time, this time, she had meant to do it.
Jennifer stood panting on the lawn, dazed, looking around her as men ran up with torches, flashing them over, under, and around, like searchlights in a wartime sky. They fell on the car, out of which Frances climbed. She teetered for a moment on the edge of the trench and then righted herself with a triumphant wave.
‘Wasn’t that driving, then? Can I not do it when I have to, I tell you?’ she shouted, staggering forward. Then she stepped, cheering, on to a sheet of tarpaulin that lay on the ground. It lay over a hole. Slowly, still waving, she descended out of sight. And slowly, very slowly, the tarpaulin slid in after her.
The lights of the torches found Jennifer, who was standing there, bleeding and shaken, not sure if this was a drug-dream or the reality that Frances had warned her about, a hundred years ago.
The lights also fell on a still figure that lay on the lawn some distance from her, arms outstretched, legs at a peculiar angle.
‘I got him, I got him,’ came a shout from the direction of the river. Some of the beams of light turned to the sound, and into their glare came a giggling Mark Peacock, held firmly in the burly arms of Fred Baldwin. ‘I got the bastard for you,’ he shouted. ‘I’ve been waiting for him to show himself and here he is.’
Paddy had extricated Frances from the hole and was brushing her down, holding her close, listening to her laughing and crying explanations. Luke was by Jennifer, almost afraid to touch her, for she was as rigid as a statue, staring down at the broken body of Basil Taubman.
And at the knife that lay inches from his outflung hand.
Chapter Thirty-six
‘You can’t blame the media for their deaths – only for the manner of their going,’ Luke said.
It was the evening of the next day – a day that Jennifer and Frances had slept away, that Luke and Paddy had worked through.
Dr Wally, Aunt Clodie, David Gregson and Jennifer sat with Luke in the lounge of High Hedges. They were fresh and curious, he was weary and sad. His voice was growing harsh, but he wanted them all to know the truth before he let go of this case.
Paddy had taken Frances off to celebrate her triumph, a heroine at last, deserving, he said, of a wonderful meal, wonderful wine, and anything else that occurred to him. It was left to Luke to explain.
‘Taubman’s only intention, for a long, long time, had been to kill his wife,’ Luke went on hoarsely. He took the brandy Uncle Wally proffered, and sipped it, wincing. ‘Bit by bit he worked out the where, and the when – he’d always known the why – but the how had remained unsettled. Sometimes it was poison, sometimes strangulation – he passed many a happy hour thinking about it.’
‘He told you all this?’ Aunt Clodie asked.
‘We haven’t really been able to stop him,’ Luke said, drily. ‘He’d worn out two stenographers before tea, and was starting on a third when I left.’ And thank God for Bennett, who seemed to have summoned reserves of energy and enthusiasm from somewhere and had taken over the interrogation. Not that he had to ask many questions.
‘Taubman is crazy, I suppose – we’ll leave it to the psychiatrists to decide that – he sounds insane to me,’ Luke said. ‘Apparently he didn’t fall in love with Mabel Peacock – he fell in love with Peacock Manor.’
‘Ideal match,’ David Gregson said, in an ironic tone. ‘It would never talk back, never walk away.’
Luke smiled, just. ‘Apparently he met Mabel at some party in London. Thought she was rich, played up to her mostly out of habit. He came down on a weekend – would go anywhere for a free meal, he said – and became obsessed with the house on sight. He married Mabel Peacock simply to get into the line of inheritance, not realising then that the house belonged to Mark. When he found that out, he knew he had to work another way. It was his idea, planted very skilfully, to turn the house into a conference centre. It was his idea to go into partnership with Mark, once Mabel was dead.’
‘But why kill Win Frenholm, then?’ Uncle Wally asked.
‘Oh, she was in his way, too,’ Luke said. ‘She was carrying Mark’s baby. Or, at least she claimed it was Mark’s baby. And if Mark married her, or even acknowledged paternity, the question of inheritance would have become a rather muddled one. Actually, you know, it was Mark’s. We’ve proved that with blood tests. Mark has a rather rare blood condition called thalassemia, inherited from his mother’s side of the family. It usually occurs in people of Mediterranean stock, and his maternal great-grandfather was Italian, apparently. And comparative scans on the genetic fingerprints made it absolutely certain.’
‘So Mark had an affair with her,’ Jennifer said.<
br />
‘In August, apparently.’
Aunt Clodie nodded, sagely. ‘While Jennifer was away in London.’
‘But not only Mark,’ Luke said. ‘There were others. She simply decided that Mark was the best man to nail with the paternity. She rather liked the idea of being lady of the manor. Her ambition crossed Taubman’s.’
‘You said the media could be blamed for the manner of their going,’ David Gregson said.
‘Yes. You have a very good local reporter, and some rather loose-mouthed local coppers.’ Which won’t happen again, he thought, grimly. ‘The reporter published all the details he could get – and they were quite a few – on the death of Beryl Tompkins. Taubman read the report in the local paper, and decided this was the time to put his Great Plan into action. He only intended to kill his wife, even then, but Win Frenholm came along. She had been phoning the manor all evening, getting progressively drunker and angrier each time she was told Mark was out.’
‘Where was he?’ Uncle Wally asked.
‘At the Woolsack, arguing. Apparently the landlord has a large circle or friends and elastic views on closing time,’ Luke said, in a neutral tone.
‘So he does, so he does,’ Uncle Wally said, smiling reminiscently. ‘Good old Bomber.’
‘How did Basil come into it?’ Aunt Clodie asked, with an indulgent look at her husband.
‘Well, the last time she rang it was quite late and she got Basil, who had been told of her repeated calls and was the only one still up. Basil has a way with women – even on the phone. He got the story out of her – or at least enough of it to set his internal alarm bells ringing. He arranged to meet her.’
‘On the towpath?’
‘Yes. She was too drunk and angry to be cautious. Anyway, as far as she knew, he was a “gentleman”. On the other hand, she must have had second thoughts a bit later, and therefore called Baldwin. Unfortunately, she didn’t give him enough time, and Taubman was quick, too. He simply walked across the lawn and over the bridge. He listened to her story, and then – killed her.’ He paused, thinking back to Taubman in the hospital, making his statement, cold as ice, as quiet as the blade of the knife he had used. Just an ordinary lino-cutter, found in a tool box. ‘He said it gave him an opportunity to practise the technique.’
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