“It isn’t. None of it is. The solicitor is dragging his feet over Lydia’s will, not that Lydia had much in the way of liquid assets. They were mortgaged up to the eyeballs on this house. But she and Tom each had life insurance policies. I was named as the contingent beneficiary in the one she took out on Tom, which is just as well since I now have Hannah to take care of, but that’s been delayed as well.”
“It’s fortunate Lydia had the foresight to take precautions in the event the worst happened,” Helen sympathised.
Paula Simmons nodded doubtfully. “I’m going back in to get some of my daughter’s belongings, which I know she would have wanted me to have.”
While Tom's parents were in Berkshire, Rex noted to himself.
“Her collection of Sade CDs and French recipe books,” she added. “Just stuff of sentimental value.”
Rex nodded in understanding, though he could not help but notice a jewellery case and silver figurines tucked in among the stuffed toys and children’s books in the first box. “Can I be of further assistance?” he asked.
“You’d better not come in.” Mrs. Simmons didn’t know he had been inside the house the night before for the séance. “But if you could perhaps wait at the door and help me with the box when I come out?”
“Of course.”
“I won’t go in Tom's study or the upstairs bathroom.” She shuddered before passing under the blue-and-white tape, which Rex lifted for her once again.
He walked with her up to the door while Helen stayed behind by the car. They waited patiently while Paula went in to load her second box. In the meantime, Rex mulled over what she had said about the life insurance policies. Presumably the insurance carrier wanted to know more about the circumstances of death before disbursing the funds to Lydia’s estate. They might not pay out on suicide, especially if the policy was less than a year old. Since Paula Simmons was struggling financially even before she had care of Hannah, it could suit her from a practical standpoint to have Tom’s death ruled accidental or malevolent so she could collect. Chances were she wasn’t named anywhere in the policy he had held on Lydia. In the event she died as well, his immediate family would benefit.
It was growing colder as evening approached. While Helen walked back and forth along the pavement to keep warm, he stamped his feet on the bristled outdoor mat. He finally heard something heavy land on the other side of the door, and the downstairs lights went out shortly afterwards. The door opened and Mrs. Simmons appeared, her face flushed from exertion, her stiffly sprayed hair-do yet still in place. Rex reached inside the hall for the box and lifted it and its contents, which shifted about under the closed flaps.
“Sorry to keep you,” she said, locking the front door. “I tried to be quick. My neighbour is minding Hannah for an hour. It really is so kind of you to help.”
“Not at all. I never had the pleasure of meeting your daughter,” he said as they returned to her car, “But Helen tells me she was a remarkable young woman, quite the wit and belle of the ball.”
“My daughter did have a wicked sense of humour. She was very clever, and strong-willed. An only child. Her father, may he rest in peace, doted on her.” Paula Simmons let out a deep sigh. “Lydia and Tom both had dominant personalities.” Another woeful sigh. “I truly believe it’s her behaviour that got her killed.” She looked back at the house with a look more of curiosity than distress.
“How do you mean?” Rex asked. For a woman who had recently lost her only child, she seemed peculiarly in control of her emotions.
“Carrying on with Tom's uncle to get her own back, for one thing,” Paula Simmons replied. “Playing with fire, she was.”
“Get her own back for what?” he asked, taken aback. Why would she talk about her dead daughter as though her death were her own fault, and even served her right? He placed the loaded box beside the other in the car.
“Tom was seeing his ex-wife, if you follow my drift. Yes,” Paula Simmons said upon noting Rex's surprise, and Helen’s. “They were cheating on their new spouses with each other. If you ask me, Tom couldn't bear to see Natalie married to someone else, someone with ‘Doctor’ before his name, even though he divorced her for Lydia. She followed him one afternoon, waited outside Natalie’s house for almost an hour, and watched him leave, cocky as you please, with half his shirt buttons undone. Probably in a hurry to get away before the husband returned from his dental practice. I warned my daughter that tomcat might cheat on her. Tigers don’t change their stripes, I told her. Or is it leopards changing their spots? Of course, she never listened. But cheating with his uncle… That was a slap in the face, and she knew it.”
That’s exactly what Daniel Gladstone had said, Rex recalled. “So who do you think was responsible for your daughter’s death?” he asked.
“Who do you think?” With that, she gave Helen a brief hug, thanked Rex again for his help, and got in her Mercedes. The car rumbled to life, executed a laborious U-turn, and took off down the road.
“Imagine that!” Helen exclaimed watching the retreating taillights. “Tom and Natalie, and Lydia and Uncle Rob!”
“Keeping it in the family.” Rex started walking. “We might never have known but for Paula divulging that wee bit of gossip… Do you think it’s true?” But even as he asked, he remembered Cheryl telling him about Tom’s extended absences when picking up and dropping off Devin. And why would Lydia’s own mother make up such a thing—unless she was making excuses for her daughter’s affair?
“I think in retrospect it might be true,” Helen replied after a pause, linking his arm as they made their way back to her house. “Perhaps the chumminess wasn’t so forced, after all. At least, not on Natalie and Tom’s part.”
“It must have been very hurtful for Lydia when she discovered the truth,” Rex said. “By the sounds of it, our jolly Dr. Purvis remains in ignorant bliss, until Paula opens her mouth to him. Wonder what Tom really thought of her. Not sure I’d want her as a mother-in-law.”
He thought hauling off the family silver when Tom’s bereaved parents were in Berkshire was a bit underhand, though he had never met the elder Mr. and Mrs. Gladstone and could not know what Paula’s relations with them were like. Eluding him too was why Lydia had not mentioned Natalie by name when writing about Tom’s affair. She would surely have recognized the expensive perfume she alluded to in her journal as belonging to the first wife. Women tended to be attuned to such details.
It seemed everyone involved held one tiny piece of the puzzle and, until all the pieces were put together, no clear picture could emerge.
Chapter 17
After dinner, Rex called Cheryl to ask if she knew about Tom’s affair with his ex-wife, and she said she hadn’t. She sounded shocked.
“When did you speak to Paula?” she enquired after he told her that Mrs. Simmons had revealed that information. “She’s probably lying.”
“Earlier this evening. Helen and I decided to take a walk when we saw her car in the cul-de-sac. We assumed she had business at Lydia’s house.”
“And?” Cheryl gasped over the phone.
“She had gone in to collect some items.”
The young woman gave a short laugh. “She always was a scrounger, that one, crying poverty to Tom and Lydia and asking for money, which Tom would refuse and Lydia would pay behind his back. Paula’s late husband didn’t leave her much, and her salon is in trouble. She can’t seem to keep her hairdressers and nail techs for long.”
Obviously, Cheryl was no fan of Paula’s. She added that Lydia hadn’t mentioned Tom’s affair with Natalie in her diary, just alluded to an anonymous affair. “It isn’t an intimate diary, as I said before, except for her secret assignations with Tom’s uncle. It’s mostly factual, like what she did each day: Appointments, engagements, and such, though she records ‘firsts’ with Hannah, like her tying a ribbon, and all those endearing things, or not so endearing, like putting Tabs in the dryer. And she bitches on about Tracy, convinced the nanny steals her things an
d tries on her clothes when she’s out of the house, and how she gets all moony in Tom’s presence. Makes me wonder why she put up with her. Then there are pages about Paris when she got back. Presumably she didn’t take her diary with her. It almost reads like a sightseeing guide, but for the romantic dinners and nights of amour at their ritzy hotel. Wait a sec while I get it…”
Rex listened to the soft thud of steps running up carpeted stairs at Cheryl’s end. “Here’s a typical entry dating back to mid-January,” she resumed, sounding out of breath. “People are mostly referred to by their initials. It says, ‘Hannah stayed in with a cold. T. has the symptoms again and is feeling run down. Had to phone N. to tell her it would be better not to risk Dev catching anything. She was pissed because she and Matt had already made plans. Met R. for lunch and a quickie at his place.’ That would be Rob Gladstone,” Cheryl explained as though Rex couldn’t guess.
The thing that struck him most about the entries he’d heard were how unemotional they were. “By the way, why do you suspect Rob Gladstone?” he asked Cheryl. “That’s what you told me when we first met.”
“He’s the only person in the family capable of murder. He’s very driven. Daniel isn’t ruthless. And I can’t see someone outside the family, friend or colleague, doing it. I’m positive they were murdered. Lydia never mentioned any enemies at work. Even if she didn’t tell me about Natalie—if that’s true—she told me if she was having problems at the office. And we had the same circle of friends. I can’t for the life of me think of one who would have wanted to kill her and Tom.”
“And the poisoning wasn’t a spur of the moment thing,” Rex said. “At least, Tom’s wasn’t.”
“Right. It had been going on for some time, if that’s what his flu-like symptoms were. Lydia refers to his condition throughout. She says he was unable to shake his flu in early January and went to the doctor. Then he seemed to get better, and by the time they went to Paris he had recovered, and was still fine a week later at the party. And then the symptoms came back.”
“Fatally this time,” Rex said.
He thought it significant that Tom had been well in Paris; presumably because the poisoner had not had access to him there. It was a shame the doctor hadn’t diagnosed antifreeze poisoning. And yet, why would he? The symptoms were very similar to those of the flu, which was prevalent at this time of year. Had the doctor suspected, he could have prescribed Antizol, an antidote to ethylene glycol. Rex had prosecuted a murder a few years ago where one teaspoon a day of the poison over a period of ten days had proved lethal. “Do you happen to know what his GP prescribed?” he asked Cheryl.
“No, but there’s something else… Lydia describes an incident where they’re both watching telly and Tom fell asleep.”
“I remember you telling me that. And?”
“Well, I kept my TV guide from Christmas and looked up the programme they’d been watching, and discovered it was about a murderer in the States lacing green jelly with antifreeze.”
“Jell-O, as they call it over there.”
“That entry is from the third of January. A friend of mine remembered watching that true crime episode while staying over at her sister’s.”
“And you think someone watching the same show might have derived the idea of antifreeze poisoning?” Rex asked.
“Well, it is a bit of a coincidence, isn’t it, that it was aired just before Tom became ill?”
Rex agreed that it was. “Now, going back to their last night, can you remember anything from your phone conversation with Lydia after the family returned from Chatsworth House that you may have omitted to tell me before?”
“She just said they were all exhausted. Tom was ill and she had driven them home. She joked she was about ready for another drink. That’s when she dropped the phone and I heard Tom make a remark. That’s the last I ever heard from her,” Cheryl said with a sob in her voice.
“You mentioned before about Tom making a joke. Can you remember what he said?”
“It sounded like, ‘What's your poison, sweetheart?’ There was a piano plinking in the background, I think coming from the TV, so I could have misheard.”
Then Tom must have been in the foreground, between the TV and Lydia, Rex surmised. “Do you know what Lydia was drinking?” he asked.
“Probably wine.”
“Not Absinthe?” Rex had noticed the almost empty bottle in Tom’s study.
“It’s possible. She was drinking that at Tom’s birthday party. Why?”
“Absinthe is the colour of antifreeze.”
“You think someone added antifreeze to the bottle?”
“Or her drink. And to Tom’s, perhaps.”
“But who?”
“Someone with a strong enough motive,” Rex replied, before asking carefully, “And where were you when you made the call to Lydia at around six?”
“In Aston-on-Trent. I go most Sundays to visit my parents for church and Sunday dinner.” Cheryl sounded a touch defensive.
Aston-on-Trent was a village about half an hour’s drive from Barley Close. It was where he and Helen had attended the macabre wedding.
“You can ask my parents,” Cheryl told him. “And I’m sure the detectives checked my mobile phone records and verified the local tower where the signal would have bounced off. I called Lydia just before I set off back to Derby on the off-chance she might want to do something later, but she was too tired, and so I went straight home.”
Rex could tell by her huffy tone he had offended her, but it was hard to pursue an investigation without stepping on a few toes. As someone closest to one of the victims, Cheryl could not be ruled out as a suspect. Lydia had dropped her friend and business partner to join the Gladstone furniture company. Cheryl couldn’t have been happy about that. Nor did the phone alibi account for the crucial period of time between six and eight, when Natalie had alerted the police upon finding her ex-husband and Lydia dead. “I just had to confirm,” he apologized to the young woman. “It would be remiss of me to leave any stone unturned.”
“Well, you’re barking up the wrong tree,” she snapped, retorting with a cliché of her own and cancelling the phone connection.
Rex terminated the call at his end. That had not gone very well, he reflected with discomfort, but it proved the young woman had more spirit than she had hitherto shown.
Chapter 18
Rex rejoined Helen on the couch and took up the mug of tea she had placed for him on the table. “I wish I could see the blasted diary for myself,” he lamented. “Cheryl insists it doesn’t contain anything incriminating about anyone. She says Lydia used it more as a factual daily record and that it doesn’t delve deeply into matters of the heart. She writes about what she did with Rob, but not, apparently, how she felt about him. Or how she felt about her husband. She refers to his illness and describes everything they saw in Paris, but doesn’t give any indication that she’s angry with him about his affair with Natalie, whom she doesn’t mention by name, or that she wants to leave him, or anything of the sort. Makes me wonder why Lydia would have been so concerned her best friend should have it if something happened to her. And why would a healthy young woman anticipate something happening to her?”
He shook his head. “Anyway, apart from Uncle Rob, there’s nothing much to hide, that I can fathom, without seeing the diary for myself. And I think she may have wanted everyone to know about her affair, to embarrass Tom.”
Helen leant back on the sofa with a sigh. “We all knew about Rob and Lydia. If that’s all there was to hide, why would Cheryl be reluctant to show it to you?”
Rex shook his head slowly. “All we have to go by are what we’ve been told by interested parties and what we’ve read in the papers.”
“Well, let’s put our heads together. What do we know for certain?” Helen asked.
“That Lydia and Tom Gladstone are dead, whether intentionally or by accident, and that the poisoning in Tom’s case had been going on for some time.”
�
��Probably an inside job,” Helen said.
“Aye, it had to have been someone close to the family. Let’s consider motive and go down the list.” He glanced at Helen to make sure she was a willing participant. She nodded in agreement, legs curled up on the sofa, mug of tea in hand. “I’ll call out a suspect, and you present a possible motive,” he continued. “Tracy.”
“Easy,” she responded. “Tracy wanted Tom and his money. Perhaps they were in it together. In Tracy, he had a ready-made mother to step into Lydia’s shoes. And I rather think Tracy would have liked those designer shoes.”
“Ha! But Tom was having an affair with his ex-wife.”
“Maybe it was just for old time’s sake. Perhaps Natalie wouldn’t leave her new husband. Perhaps he was ready to make Tracy wife number three.”
Rex made a dissenting sound. “I spent time with Tracy this afternoon. She’s pretty and has a good head on her shoulders, but she cannot match Lydia in wit and elegance, from what I’ve heard. I don’t see her retaining Tom’s interest for long.”
“Maybe he was looking for someone more submissive than Lydia.”
“Tracy might have been in love with him, I’m not denying that. I’m just not convinced it was reciprocated.”
“If you say so. But Tom could have been going through his mid-life crisis and been looking for a much younger substitute. Men can be very silly.”
Rex smiled at her. “Shall we go on?” he asked.
“By all means.”
“Daniel Gladstone.”
“Sibling rivalry,” Helen answered without hesitation. “His brother presumably made more money. Tom had the seemingly perfect family. And you told me Tom had bullied him growing up.”
“I’d be more inclined to go with that theory if Daniel had been the one having the affair with Lydia and she dumped him.”
“Perhaps he was named in Tom’s will, and the motive was money.”
“Possibly, but chances are Tom left everything to his wife and children.”
PRELUDE TO MURDER: A Rex Graves Mystery Page 8