A Death of Distinction

by Marjorie Eccles

  ‘Nothing like that,’ she said, looking him straight in the eye.

  He sighed gently.

  ‘Are you suggesting, Mr Mayo, that he murdered Charles Daventry? That’s preposterous! Jack, sticking a knife into someone? Never! He was for life, not against it – no one more so.’

  She surprised him, then. After taking a deep breath, she said in a rush, ‘If anyone was to blame, I was.’

  No one spoke. She looked frightened. A plane droned across the sky. He wondered if she’d meant to say that, and then realized this was why she’d sent for him, why she’d wanted Flora out of the way. But –

  ‘Well, there you are,’ she said in a tired voice.

  ‘That’s not all, though, is it?’

  After a moment, she shook her head. ‘No. She killed her husband, of course. But not simply because of a quarrel over money. Whatever her reasons were for saying that, I’ve no idea, but it wasn’t true. She killed Charles Daventry because he found out about her affair with Jack.’

  ‘How can you know that?’ Abigail asked.

  ‘For the best reason I can think of. I told him myself.’

  Her back stiff, she looked at nobody as she added, ‘I cannot imagine now what made me do something so – so vulgar. Jack had had affairs before, but none that lasted. I’d valued my marriage enough to ignore them. But this was different... it had gone on too long, it had to be stopped before it got too serious.’

  ‘How did you find out?’

  ‘What? Oh, one knows. We’d met them socially, and when I saw them together ... a woman knows these things ...’ Doubtless that was partly true, Mayo thought, if her suspicions had been alerted in the first place, but it was too simplistic to be wholly convincing. In the circumstances, he decided to let it pass, until the next time he questioned her. It wasn’t the only thing she’d been lying about.

  So this was Marie-Laure, the woman who had killed her husband, sitting on the other side of the interview room. There could hardly have been a greater contrast with Dorothea Lilburne, the woman he’d just left.

  Dark, slender; brown eyes in a pale face, a wide Gallic mouth. Not the face or demeanour of a murderess, but if criminals wore their guilt or their malevolence on their features, he and a lot more people would pretty soon be out of a job. She had, apparently, been very upset when told the news of Avril Kitchin’s death – though she’d reportedly shed no tears – but she’d seemingly recovered and now appeared self-controlled and determined to say as little as possible.

  Prison had taught her when to be silent, when words might incriminate. Living in the convent, where unnecessary speech would no doubt be discouraged, had possibly, though in a different way, reinforced this lesson. But while silence in a nun might be admirable, the refusal of the woman in front of him to communicate in anything more than a few words was irritating.

  ‘Mrs Nicoud – do you prefer to be known as that, or Mrs Daventry?’

  ‘Daventry is still my legal name.’

  ‘Mrs Daventry, then. When did you last see Miss Kitchin?’

  ‘When I moved out, and into my own flat, about three weeks ago.’

  ‘Three weeks? That’s a long time, to say you’d previously been living together.’ She shrugged. ‘Did you by any chance have a disagreement – was that why you left? Failing, incidentally, to report your new address? You’re in trouble there, you know that?’

  ‘It didn’t occur to me. Perhaps I forgot. I was very preoccupied. It was always understood I would leave, as soon as I found somewhere of my own. Her place was too small for two people to live comfortably.’

  ‘Didn’t she help you to move in?” Abigail asked. ‘Or even come to see your new flat, to see how you were settled?’

  ‘She would have done, in time.’

  He let her take a drink of water. ‘What brought her to live in Lavenstock after she was released? She wasn’t from these pans.’

  ‘She knew I would return here, eventually. We were friends. She didn’t have many.’

  ‘You didn’t appear to have much in common, if I may say so.’

  ‘She was a strong woman – she helped me to survive in prison – she gave me confidence.’

  He was wondering what made her think she lacked confidence, for he certainly didn’t think so, unless they had different perceptions of the meaning of the word, when Abigail asked, suddenly, ‘Do you still have the set of keys to her flat she gave you when you lived with her?’

  ‘Keys?’ She looked blank. ‘Oh, yes, as a matter of fact, I have.’

  Abigail held her hand out and after a moment when it looked as though she might be about to refuse, Marie-Laure produced from her handbag two Yale-type keys on a ring with an enamel tag. ‘I had forgotten about them.’ She surrendered them reluctantly, watching warily as they were slipped into a plastic bag and tagged.

  ‘Why did you go to the convent yesterday?’ Mayo asked abruptly.

  She studied the lion and the unicorn stamped on the copy of PACE which hung on the wall, as if every detail had to be committed to memory. ‘I had something personal I wished to discuss with the Reverend Mother.’

  ‘As personal as confessing to her that you’d killed Avril Kitchin?’

  ‘I have told you, I had nothing to do with Avril’s death.’ Her words were low and dispassionate, there was still nothing in her manner to show that she was upset, or grieved for her friend. Which didn’t mean that she didn’t feel anything, of course, only that she held her emotions on a very tight rein indeed.

  He asked her the same question he’d asked her son, interested to see whether her reaction would be the same as his. ‘You haven’t asked how she was killed.’

  ‘If you want me to know, no doubt you will tell me.’

  ‘Perhaps you already know that she was stabbed with a knitting needle. Pierced through the heart with it.’

  The announcement provoked no other reaction than a slight flicker in her eyes, a tightening of her mouth. ‘I did not know.’

  ‘All right.’ Mayo leaned back in his chair. ‘Never mind that, for the moment. Let’s talk about something else. You must have heard about the bomb at the Conyhall Young Offenders’ Institution, and Mr Jack Lilburne, who was killed?’

  ‘I read about it in the newspaper, yes.’

  ‘Did you have any hand in that killing?’

  She stared at him. ‘I did not.’

  ‘Do you know who did?’

  He hadn’t expected an affirmative, though it was a valid question. Both women had been inside for a long time – they could have made contacts, they knew the score. And he’d sensed fear, smelled it, when Lilburne’s name was mentioned ...

  This time, he’d at least provoked a reaction. ‘You insult me,’ she said. ‘I committed a grave sin once. Am I to be under suspicion for the rest of my life, for every murder that is committed in this town?’

  ‘But you were acquainted with Mr Lilburne, weren’t you, before you went into prison?’

  The tape machine whirred. She was so long answering he thought she was again taking refuge in silence.

  ‘Come on, now, we know you were. That he was meeting you on a regular basis, that he stayed with someone on several occasions at the Gravely Arms near Chipping Campden, and we have witnesses who can prove it was you. We also believe you recently wrote him a letter, suggesting a meeting. Can you confirm this?’

  She still didn’t reply.

  ‘Mrs Daventry,’ he reminded her, ‘we can if necessary compare the handwriting on that letter with yours. Did you write to him because you wished to resume your relationship with him?’

  ‘No. Not at all. You’re quite wrong!’ She stared down at her hands, clasped together on her lap, then raised her eyes to his face, eyes that were clear and luminous. ‘Very well. I did write to him, but not for those reasons. When I went to prison, he made arrangements for my son to be adopted, and during this time – and afterwards – he kept me informed of Marc’s progress ...’

  ‘Why? Why did he ag
ree to do all this?’ When she merely shrugged, he went on, ‘I suggest it was in return for keeping his name out of it. For not revealing at the trial the real reason you and your husband quarrelled?’

  He thought she was going to deny it, then she sighed. ‘Charles had found out about us, I don’t know how – he was threatening divorce, to take the child from me, to make a scandal for Jack ... in the end, it was too much ... I was telling nothing but the truth at my trial when I said my life with my husband had been a misery. I killed him, I have never denied it. But nothing would have been gained if I had made my affair with Jack public.’

  Naming him at the original inquiry wouldn’t have saved her, that was true. Might have put her in a worse light, and would have ruined more lives, Dorothea’s and Flora’s, not to mention blighting Lilburne’s career. On the other hand, she might have received more sympathy from the jury than simply knifing her husband in cold blood had earned her. He watched her hand tighten round the little ivory crucifix. Could they believe her? She was a clever woman, she could be a very convincing liar. He could, very easily indeed, imagine her wielding a knife – or a knitting needle – and killing someone. Yet ...

  Dorothea Lilburne, he was sure, had lied about her husband being at home on the night of the murder.

  He was familiar with all the vagaries of human nature but he’d never yet met anyone willingly prepared to serve a life sentence for something they hadn’t done. So what kind of a woman would admit to a murder she hadn’t committed? What kind of man would let her do that for him?

  And what kind of son would not want revenge if he saw Lilburne getting off scot-free, while his mother spent the best years of her life incarcerated for something she was, putting the very best construction on it, only partly to blame for?

  ‘Please go on, Mrs Daventry.’

  ‘When he wrote and told me that the couple who had taken Marc had been killed in an accident, I thought – I knew – it was my duty to contact my son and see if I could help. I wrote to Jack, suggesting we should meet to discuss it, but he did not think it wise that my son and I should be reunited, and he refused to help me.’

  ‘What reason did he give for this?’

  ‘He would not explain. But his help was not necessary. In the end, it was Marc who found me.’

  ‘How did he manage to do that?’

  ‘By chance.’ She told him how they had met, through Marc’s encounter with Avril Kitchin at the place where she had worked.

  He looked steadily at her when she had finished, knowing that this was the core of it, where it all began. They were a close pair, she and her son, and they both knew the truth of this whole business, even if they weren’t telling it. He sensed some sort of complicity, though in a way which bothered him, and for some reason he couldn’t define.

  She said, ‘I wish to go now. You have no reason for keeping me here.’

  She was right. He’d no cause to hold her at the moment. He said, ‘You can go presently, as long as you don’t disappear again, Mrs Daventry. We shall need to see you again. But first, I want you to tell me more about your son – how much he knew of the circumstances in which your husband was killed.’

  ‘He knew nothing until after his adoptive parents were killed, when he found the papers relating to the trial.’

  ‘Nothing more than that?’

  ‘There was no more to know,’ she answered, looking at him steadily.

  ‘These adoptive parents. What was their name?’ he asked. He thought. Don’t tell me, let me guess.

  They showed Dex Davis a photograph, an identity photo taken by the hospital as part of their new safety measure campaign. ‘That’s him,’ Davis, now back in Conyhall on remand, said triumphantly. ‘That’s John Clarke. Now will you believe me?’

  20

  The church of Our Lady of the Assumption was an unappealing Victorian edifice of soot-blackened bricks, with a tall steeple, its steps opening straight off the street. Marc waited across the road, loitering in a shop doorway until the priest had left the presbytery, watching him until he’d crossed to the church and entered by a side door. He waited another ten minutes before following him into the unfamiliar church.

  He slipped in silently and stood in the flickering dimness near the stand of votive candles at the back, blinking slightly as he searched for her in the shadowed nave where she knelt alone, a solitary figure at the end of a pew, her head bent, kneeling upright, unsupported. A posture she could keep up without any seeming effort. You’d have thought she’d have had enough religion by now. But he’d known she’d come straight here after being questioned by the police: the woman at Catesby’s, when he’d rung to speak to her, had told him disapprovingly where she was. He was impatient, but controlled it – if she’d already made her confession, it couldn’t be long before she was ready to leave.

  It wasn’t a prepossessing church. Apart from a Burne-Jones stained-glass window, it had little of either architectural or ecclesiastical merit. Nor did it seem to be particularly well-cared for: there was a mingled odour of dust, damp, incense and burning wax tapers that was not wholly pleasant, but the riot of pre-Raphaelite yellows and browns from the window bathed the altar in a dappled glow which even now, when the light was beginning to fade, and the body of the church was dark, gave a spurious illusion of sunlight flooding into the interior.

  Not yet ready for what he knew he must do, reluctant to approach the kneeling figure, Marc let his gaze rest on the source of the golden light, and a recollection, sharp and clear in its totality, came to him, of a bright morning long ago. A warm, early summer’s morning and himself a child, running down the narrow, high-walled passageway that was a short cut from the High Street to the playground where the swings were. He’d run ahead of the other two, rejoicing in the freedom of wearing shorts for the first time that year, feeling the sun on his face and the air against his legs, wanting to skip, jump, climb trees, run ...

  She’d appeared before him like some great black bat, her arms outstretched to catch him, blocking his way, cackling, her face contorted with crazy laughter: the madwoman who walked about the town, strangely dressed in voluminous garments, talking to herself, waving her umbrella. The old woman they called Mad Motty, the one all his class at school jeered and laughed at – though from the safety of the other side of the street. He’d screamed in terror, and run. But the stony alleyway was slippery, his rubber soles had skidded on the loose, flinty pebbles and he’d fallen, bloodied his knee and cracked his forehead painfully. For a moment he lay, winded, on the upward slope of the path, then he began to roar, never mind that he was seven and big men didn’t cry. And in a moment his mother’s arms were round him, his head was pillowed against her soft bosom, shutting out the horrible sight, he was safe, nothing could hurt him any more.

  ‘It’s all right, lovey, it’s all right, she doesn’t mean any harm.’

  To the deranged old woman, uncomprehending of why the child had been so afraid of her, when all she’d wanted was to scoop him up and cuddle him, and who was now trying to pat him and wanting to kiss him better, his mother said kindly, ‘Leave him, Miss Mott, leave him to me, he’ll be all right. You be on your way, now.’

  The madwoman finally went, and June mopped him up and tied a handkerchief round his knee, and his father hoisted the wounded soldier on to his shoulders, the bright morning came back and terror receded, to be forgotten altogether until now.

  June. His mother. His mother.

  The pain he’d never felt when she’d died, when Frank had died, pain obscured by anger, now ripped through him like a knife, so that he swayed and had to hold on to the back of the pew in front of him. The dizzying revelation of what he’d tried not to acknowledge over the last few weeks came to him in full that the dark figure kneeling in the pew in front was as unreal as the figure of the Madonna in the niche by the altar. She’d given him birth, she’d passed on physical characteristics – but nothing more, except that one thing, so monstrous that his mind blotted it out.
/>
  His mother, in everything that mattered, had been June. His father had been, not the unknown Charles Daventry, but Frank.

  Simple, uncomplicated, kindly people. Unimaginative, but well meaning. Too late, he felt regret – for not appreciating the love and happiness of their home, the kindness, the careful nurturing, everything that he’d taken for granted as a child – for things he’d sometimes despised them for, as a self-centred teenager. Their only failure had been, not a deliberate attempt to keep him ignorant of the true facts of his birth, but an inability to know how to tell him what a fearful heritage was his, a lack of the necessary insight. It was true, he knew, that he’d been a difficult child to communicate with. He wasn’t like them. A cuckoo in the nest. Perhaps they’d been a little afraid of him.

  And he’d been seduced by an idea, a mistaken concept of what his true mother was, by a romantic myth of suffering and martyrdom. He saw now how wrong he’d been, how bitterly he’d been let down. She’d never really wanted him, not after she’d given him away. The years between had made her into someone who had no need of, or no wish for, personal relationships. Duty had made her acknowledge him, but they could never have anything truly meaningful to say to each other. After all he’d done for her, she was too occupied with the dark, inimitable forces within her.

  It was that part of his genetic inheritance which he didn’t want to think about, not now, not ever again.

  He’d come to the church before leaving, intending to ask her to walk in the park near the river with him, thinking he might find it easier there, in the dark, with the distant sound of traffic and the rush of the weir nearby, to say so many of the things he had to say, all of which he now saw as pointless.

  He left her kneeling there and went out as silently as he’d entered.

  A squad car sped off to Branxmore, to the address Marc Daventry had given. Farrar drove. Kite had a warrant in his pocket. Deeley and Tip were there as back-up. While it was on its way.

  Mayo conferred with Abigail, looking at the profile they’d already drawn up of the putative bomber.