David Webb 13 - One Is One and All Alone

by Anthea Fraser

  Hannah shook her head. ‘Surprise me.’

  ‘I might, at that. She’s one of your lot, at the school.’ Hannah was deputy head of the prestigious Ashbourne School for Girls, and for the last six months had been in charge of it while the head was on a sabbatical.

  She raised her eyebrows. ‘Really? Who?’

  ‘Miss Barbara Wood.’

  ‘Barbara Wood’s Malcolm’s sister-in-law?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Good Lord!’

  ‘I gather you didn’t know.’

  ‘Well, no, but until this weekend it wouldn’t have meant anything to me if I had.’

  ‘What’s your opinion of her?’

  ‘I like her very much. She’s intelligent, conscientious, an excellent teacher—’

  ‘I’m not asking for a reference, Hannah!’ Webb interrupted. ‘What are your personal impressions?’

  ‘She’s always struck me as calm and level-headed, a good person in a crisis.’

  ‘Do you know anything of her private life?’

  ‘Only that she lives alone, travels extensively during school holidays, enjoys the theatre and is knowledgeable about flowers and plants.’

  ‘Love affairs?’

  ‘That’s something I don’t discuss with my staff,’ Hannah answered primly, her eyes mocking him.

  ‘But have you heard any man’s name in connection with her?’

  ‘Look, what is this? You haven’t lined her up as murderer, I trust?’

  ‘No,’ Webb said slowly, ‘but I’m pretty damn sure she was in love with Malcolm.’

  ‘Her sister’s husband?’

  ‘It does happen,’ Webb returned drily.

  ‘I know it happens, damn it, but — Barbara?’

  ‘I caught her offguard in the kitchen, and the expression on her face—’ He broke off, shrugging. ‘What’s more, all the kids expected him to marry her when Carol died.’

  ‘They knew she loved him?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t think so, just thought it would tie up loose ends. And God knows, the poor bloke would have been better off with her than with Una.’

  ‘You don’t like Una any better, then?’

  ‘To be honest, I don’t know what I think of her. Occasionally there’s a vulnerable look in her eyes, but just as I start to feel sorry for her, she comes out with something caustic and I change my mind again. The daughter-in-law was the only one with a good word to say for her.’

  ‘And Barbara? She offered her hospitality, at least.’

  ‘Barbara,’ Webb said, ‘is doing her duty, as she sees it. I don’t think she’s enjoying it much.’

  He stared into his glass, wondering why Una hadn’t told him she’d been back to the house. He’d ask her tomorrow, but it was not something he could discuss with Hannah. Not yet, anyway.

  *

  In the little house in Coombes Crescent the evening was coming to an end, to Barbara’s intense relief. Conversation was increasingly stilted and Una spent much of the time gazing silently into space. Barbara would have given a lot to know what she was thinking.

  ‘I’ll ring school in the morning,’ she said, breaking a lengthening silence. ‘I’m sure they’ll give me a day or two off, in the circumstances. It’s compassionate leave, after all.’

  Una turned to her in surprise. ‘Don’t you feel up to going in?’

  ‘It’s not that,’ Barbara denied — too quickly, she felt. ‘But I can hardly leave you here alone, and—’

  ‘Oh, I shan’t be here, Barbara. I’m going to the office in the morning.’

  Barbara gazed at her, astounded. ‘You’re going in to work tomorrow? Less than forty-eight hours after Malcolm died?’

  ‘What’s that got to do with anything?’ Una demanded, with a touch of her old impatience. ‘My hanging around here isn’t going to help him, is it, and I’ve several important appointments. Anyway, work will help to take my mind off things. I should have thought you’d feel the same.’

  Barbara was at a loss how to reply. Though she’d dreaded another day of Una’s exclusive company, it had, to her mind, been part of the package deal she’d offered her. Her own control, reined in of necessity, was increasingly unstable and she certainly didn’t feel ready to resume normal life as if nothing had happened. But if Una went to work, she herself could hardly stay at home.

  ‘Just as you like,’ she said weakly at last, and that was how the matter rested. As she prepared for bed and another sleepless night, Barbara, holding back tears until her throat ached, told herself bitterly that at least Una’s long silences were now explained: she’d been planning the next day’s appointments.

  *

  Webb and Hannah lay side by side in her bed. She had thought he might be too tired for lovemaking, but she was wrong. He’d seemed to need her more than ever, perhaps as reassurance that, despite his friend’s death, he himself was still alive.

  It was in this aftermath that, often, confidences came. If a case was troubling him he’d use her as a sounding board, bouncing off ideas which were too unformed to put to more official recipients. Or he’d speak of the horrors he’d witnessed, of dead children, mutilated bodies, distraught relatives. Hannah dreaded these confidences, and it took all her strength not to beg him to stop, but she somehow managed to keep silent, knowing it was a release for him, and one which he could obtain nowhere else.

  Tonight, therefore, she was not surprised when he started speaking of Malcolm Bennett. At first his tone was nostalgic, recalling their first meeting, evenings spent together with their wives. He told her of Bennett’s passion for football, the matches they’d been to, the celebrations and disappointments.

  Then the reminiscing became more sombre. It had been to David that Malcolm first confided the news of Carol’s illness, and to whom he had turned for comfort during the dark months that followed; David, also, who’d been the first to hear of his plans to remarry.

  ‘I wanted to like her, Hannah, for Malc’s sake, but I couldn’t. I hope he never knew that.’

  ‘I’m sure he didn’t,’ she murmured.

  ‘I’m just beginning to realize how much I’ll miss him,’ he said. ‘God, if I could only—’ He came to a halt, his hand tightening convulsively on hers.

  ‘I know, darling, I know.’ She put her arms round him and held him till the tension gradually left him and he slid into sleep.

  Carefully, so as not to disturb him, Hannah lay back on her pillows, hoping that the day ahead would deal more kindly with him; hoping, too, that she’d been some comfort. And she thought of Barbara Wood, who, if David was right, was bearing a grief deeper than her family appreciated.

  Resolving to keep a tactful eye on her, Hannah in her turn fell asleep.

  *

  The postmortem the next morning was as grim as Webb had feared, but no new facts emerged. In layman’s terms, Malcolm had died from three heavy blows to the skull administered from above and behind, which they had known all along. The discarded stick was officially confirmed as the murder weapon — the traditional ‘blunt instrument’ — and the time of death, based on the stomach contents, estimated at between one-thirty and two.

  White-faced, Webb thankfully emerged from the hospital and drove down to the police station to meet Jackson as arranged and inform him of the discrepancy in Mrs Bennett’s statement.

  Jackson, noting but not commenting on his boss’s pallor, remarked, ‘So there’s another possibility: they both got back around the same time, had another row like the one the girl came in on, and she lost her temper and thumped him.’

  ‘Theoretically it’s possible, though she’s unlikely to have had that stick to hand.’

  ‘Why else would she pretend she didn’t go back?’

  ‘Don’t ask me, Ken. Once we’ve seen the neighbours and heard what they have to say, we’ll pay her another visit. I’d like to track down Jane’s boyfriend, too. It’s a long shot, but he might have been harbouring some kind of resentment.’

  The ad
dresses Carter had given Webb were of two houses on the opposite side of the road from the Bennetts, one directly facing them, the other a little way down. The incident van was still parked outside, but this was a quiet neighbourhood with little passing traffic, and Webb didn’t see anyone approach it.

  He and Jackson went up the path of number twenty-six. The door was opened by an elderly man in a hand-knitted cardigan, who cupped a hand to his ear before Webb so much as opened his mouth. He hoped devoutly there would be someone else to speak to, and he was in luck. Halfway through Webb’s explanation of his presence, the man turned and shouted back into the house, ‘Mother! It’s the police!’

  An equally elderly woman came hurrying up the hall, but she was spry and sharp-featured and showed no sign of her husband’s deafness.

  ‘About Mr Bennett, is it? Crying shame, I call it, a nice man like that, murdered in his own bed.’

  ‘His own chair, anyway,’ Webb amended smilingly, complying with her gesture to step inside. ‘You know the family well, ma’am?’

  The woman’s mouth pursed. ‘I knew the first Mrs Bennett. Lovely woman, she was — never minded lending a hand. She made jam every year for the WI and collected regular for charity.’ She sniffed. ‘But this one’s too hoity to talk to the likes of us.’

  Someone else Una had offended. Webb had an irrational desire to shake her; why did she have to antagonize everyone? ‘I believe you saw her car on Saturday?’

  ‘That’s right. I was pulling up weeds at the front. Just decided to stop and see to lunch, when she came up the road and turned into her drive. Don’t know why everyone’s so interested; she lived there, after all.’

  ‘Could you say what time this was, Mrs — er — Hill?’

  ‘Well, like I said, I was thinking about lunch. Must have been getting on for one.’

  ‘You can’t be more specific?’

  ‘We eat when we feel like it,’ she said, fixing him with a beady eye. ‘We don’t have gongs going off at set times.’

  Webb let that go. ‘How long was she there?’

  She shrugged. ‘It was two before I got outside again, and the car’d gone by then. She could have put it in the garage, I suppose, but I’ve never known her to. Mr Bennett keeps his in there, and she always leaves hers in the drive.’

  ‘Did Mr Bennett come home while you were in the garden?’

  ‘If he did, I didn’t see him. Hardly surprising, since I was on my knees most of the time, pulling up weeds. I only saw her because I happened to stand up just as she arrived.’

  ‘And you didn’t see anyone else call at the house?’

  She shook her head firmly.

  ‘Might your husband—?’ Webb asked tentatively, eyeing the old man who was looking from face to face as they spoke, apparently catching little of what was said.

  ‘Him!’ said his wife scornfully. ‘Spends most of his time asleep in his chair.’

  ‘So you would say Mrs Bennett arrived home about one and had gone again by two?’

  She nodded and Webb could do little but thank her and take his leave. All she’d told them was that she’d seen Una around lunchtime, which they’d been aware of when they arrived. They were no nearer knowing how closely her return coincided with her husband’s.

  It was with reduced expectations that they walked along the pavement to the second address.

  Mrs Higham at number eighteen was very different from her neighbour, a smart, well-dressed woman in her forties. She ushered them into her sitting-room, produced coffee in china cups and settled them comfortably on the sofa — a distinct improvement, Jackson felt, on the conversation they had just held in the hall up the road.

  But she began with the same point as Mrs Hill. ‘I don’t know what’s so unusual in my having seen Mrs Bennett,’ she said, surveying them with thinly disguised curiosity. ‘When the police asked if I’d seen anyone going into their house, I said no. It was only when they persisted, “Anyone at all?”, that I mentioned her.’

  Webb sidestepped the implied question. ‘And how did you come to see her, ma’am?’

  ‘I’d been shopping in town, and as I reached the roundabout at the bottom of the hill, she was approaching along the Shillingham road. I had right of way and she waited for me, though I don’t think she recognized me. She followed me up the hill and into Westwood Avenue, where, of course, I turned into my gateway and she went on to hers.’

  ‘And what time would that have been?’

  ‘A quarter to one,’ she answered promptly.

  A definite time at last! ‘Can you be sure of that?’

  ‘Absolutely. I was listening to The News Quiz on Radio 4, and as I stopped the car I glanced at the clock to see how much longer the programme had to run and saw there were ten minutes — it finishes at five to one. So I hurried inside and turned on the radio in the kitchen.’

  ‘Thank you, Mrs Higham, that’s very helpful,’ Webb said, for once meaning it.

  She raised her eyebrows. ‘Is it? I can’t think why?’

  Again he avoided her question with one of his own. ‘Did you happen to notice what time Mrs Bennett left the house?’

  ‘In the morning, you mean?’

  ‘No, after she’d returned home.’

  ‘I didn’t even know she had. Oh.’ She stopped, seeming suddenly to realize the implications. ‘Of course, she must have done, or her poor husband would never have been killed.’

  That, Jackson told himself, scribbling in his pocket book, was a moot point.

  Webb was silent, mentally summarizing the situation. They now knew for a fact that Una had arrived home at twelve-forty-five, but still had no idea how long she’d stayed. Nor had they a definite time for Malcolm’s return; no one seemed to have seen him. He might, as Carter supposed, have gone straight home — and in view of the imminent football match, that was the most likely theory. But he could have stopped off somewhere first, perhaps for a sports paper or some cans of beer to drink during the match.

  Without corroborating evidence, though, it must be assumed that he arrived home at about one-fifteen — half an hour after Una. Why had she gone back to the house? To see him? And even if so, would she have waited so long when, as Malcolm had told him, she had a rehearsal that afternoon in Steeple Bayliss? For that matter, what could have been so urgent that she would go out of her way like that, when she’d seen her husband at breakfast and expected to see him again that evening? Whatever it was, wouldn’t a phone call have sufficed?

  Webb looked up from his ponderings to find Mrs Higham’s bright eyes considering him.

  She said hesitantly, ‘Although I didn’t see anyone near the house on Saturday, there was a young man hanging about earlier.’

  Webb snapped back to attention. ‘When was that?’

  ‘About ten days ago. He was parked outside the Bennetts’ one evening. I noticed him when I was taking my daughter to ballet — it’s only round the corner, so we walk — and he was still there when I came back ten minutes later. I was slightly concerned, and looked out of the window a couple of times.’

  ‘To check on him?’

  ‘Yes; he was there for a while, but the last time I looked, he’d gone.’

  ‘What day would that have been?’

  ‘Wednesday; that’s when Sophie has her class.’

  ‘Last Wednesday?’

  ‘No, the week before.’

  ‘And you haven’t seen him since?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You didn’t think of telling the Bennetts someone was watching their house?’

  She moved uncomfortably. ‘I’d no reason to think he was, particularly. I mean, yes, he was parked outside, but he might have been waiting for someone. Anyway, with Mr Bennett being in the police, I thought he probably knew about it.’

  ‘It doesn’t make us psychic,’ Webb said mildly. ‘Did you get a good look at him?’

  ‘No, we were on the other side of the road. All I registered was that he was young and wearing some kind of dark jacket
. He had the car radio on — we could hear it.’

  ‘And the car itself?’

  ‘Oh yes — I’ve just remembered! As I passed it coming home I memorized the number, just in case.’

  Webb’s face lit up. ‘Wonderful! That could be very useful. You have still got it?’ he added with sudden anxiety.

  ‘Only because I’d forgotten all about it.’ She stood up, took a piece of paper from behind the clock, and handed it to him.

  ‘That’s great; thank you very much, Mrs Higham. I wish everyone took their civic duties so seriously.’ And he closed his mind to the possibility that, had she reported the matter at the time, Malcolm might still be alive. But that was wild theorizing and had no basis in fact. As she’d said, the young man could have been innocently waiting for his girlfriend.

  When they left her shortly afterwards, Webb and Jackson called at the incident van, handed over the car registration and, while they waited for it to be checked, told the men about the two interviews.

  ‘How’s SOCO getting on at the house?’ Webb asked the manager.

  ‘Not much new, Guv. A few hairs, some fibres and a smudged footprint in the kitchen, but not clear enough to be useful. He wore gloves, of course.’

  ‘Anyone been in to see you?’

  ‘Not after the first novelty wore off. I reckon we’ll be moving back to the station soon.’

  Webb nodded, then turned as the answer came back on the car. It was a blue Ford Escort, registered in the name of Steven John Clark.

  ‘Steve Clark?’ Jackson broke in excitedly. ‘Guv, that’s young Jane’s boyfriend. I got his name and address from Mrs Bennett.’

  ‘Is it, by Jove? Come to think of it, Ken, it fits. That Wednesday would have been while Jane was staying at the house. He was probably just hoping for a word with her, but it’ll do no harm to check. Any idea where he works?’

  ‘At Savemore’s in Duke Street.’

  ‘Then we’ll head back to Shillingham, call on him and then Mrs Bennett and see what they both have to say for themselves. Thanks, lads. I’ll be in touch later.’