Sour Grapes

by Natasha Cooper

  ‘What they did not know was that, although he was indeed guilty, he had not committed the crime for which they had arrested him. He had done something much more serious. But that did not emerge until long after he had been tried, convicted and imprisoned for the crime someone else had committed.

  ‘I shall explain how the case appeared to the officers whose job it was to interview A, and I shall then describe to you what exactly had happened on the night of the crime they were investigating, and what had happened on four separate occasions during the previous month.’

  Emma stopped, took a deep breath, smiling at no one in particular, and, taking the first cue card from the top of the pile, pushed it to the back. Then, for most of the time remembering not to gabble, she relayed everything she, Jag and Willow had learned about the three different strands of the case. As she spoke, she was encouraged by the growing interest she could see on many of the faces in her audience. It was not just her friends who were alert and listening, but most of the other criminologists and several of the many strangers there.

  Professor Bonmotte looked benevolently approving throughout, if not exactly surprised by anything Emma said. He hardly could be, since she had discussed her thesis with him exhaustively before she had completed it. Continuing her explanation, speaking more fluently as she got further into her story, losing the high, formal edge to her voice and sounding much more natural, she began to recognise other faces in the audience. When she saw, sitting right at the back, the unmistakable figure of Jemima Lutterworth, Emma hesitated and almost dried completely. Only the knowledge that Jemima had sat through her husband’s second trial and had heard every scrap of evidence about the four young boys he had strangled kept Emma on her feet and talking.

  That trial had been a surprise to her because she had been afraid that even if the car could be traced there would be no evidence left in it, and there might be nothing else with which to convict Lutterworth of the murders. But to her extreme admiration, the police had set up a full-scale investigation of her allegations. Once the four pathetic corpses had been exhumed from the memorial garden, the investigators had moved smoothly forwards, not giving up until they had identified them all and accumulated enough evidence to persuade Lutterworth’s second jury of his guilt.

  Emma’s tapes of his outburst in the prison were not, of course, admissible, and he took full advantage of his right to silence. His counsel did not allow him to give evidence at all, and managed with great skill to suggest that he was not guilty and he was merely refusing to speak in order to avoid laying the blame where it would more properly lie. He did not go so far as to state that it must have been Jemima who had killed the four boys, but he made it quite clear to the jury that she could have done it and that in the frenzy of her bereavement she might not have known exactly what she was doing.

  The jury were not having any of it, and not only because the prosecution made it abundantly clear that two of the four boys were known to have disappeared during the time that Jemima was being closely supervised in the nursing home to which her husband had taken her.

  There had been no such neat ending to the case of Terry Lepe. Tom had encouraged Willow to report everything she had learned to the proper authorities, who had expressed polite interest but eventually decided not to pursue the case. There was no evidence beyond Susie’s confession, and the Crown Prosecution Service decided that it would not be in the public interest to pursue the matter. Willow had been to see Susie twice more, partly to reassure herself that Susie was not in danger from Terry, and partly to urge her to do something to make herself employable. She had even met Susie’s mother, who turned out to be a wholly sensible woman, driven to distraction by her anxieties about what was going to happen to her clueless daughter when she herself was no longer alive to protect her.

  Emma watched Jemima at intervals through her long recitation of the case and the conclusions she had drawn from all the bits and pieces of evidence she had collected. It was impossible to know what she was thinking; her face showed nothing but mild interest. Emma had not been able to banish the feeling that Jemima had known—must have known—something of the truth, but she had had to face the fact that she was unlikely ever to be told exactly how much.

  At the end of the long lecture, the audience had clapped for what sounded like at least five minutes, but was probably only seconds, Emma clambered shakily down from the dais and, seeing that her mother was politely talking to the people with whom she had been sitting, went to speak to her own friends first.

  Jag put his hand on her right arm at the same moment as Tom hugged her from the other side. As Jag headed off to the other side of the hall to talk to Bonmotte, Willow smiled with such open and approving warmth that Emma felt she had truly earned her place in Willow’s world at last. Jane, who had appeared unexpectedly with Hal Marstall, pushed forwards to hug Emma, too.

  ‘You did brilliantly, Emma. It was absolutely stunning. I want to talk to you quite seriously and soon. What are you doing after this?’

  ‘I’ll have to have a word with my mother, make sure she’s not too appalled by what I’ve just said, and then—’

  ‘Then, my dear Jane,’ said Willow, ‘as you very well know she’s coming back to London with us for the celebration dinner Mrs Rusham has spent days cooking.’

  ‘So she is. Can Hal and I come too?’

  Emma had a moment’s embarrassed anxiety that Willow was going to say ‘no’, but she laughed.

  ‘You know perfectly well that you agreed to come weeks ago.’

  ‘Yes, but Hal?’

  ‘Didn’t he tell you that he’s accepted an invitation, too?’

  Emma stared at Willow and then looked quickly at Jane, who seemed as puzzled as she was.

  ‘I didn’t know you knew him,’ Jane said, saving Emma the trouble.

  ‘Oh, Hal and I have become great friends,’ said Willow.

  Emma thought in some irritation of the amount of time she had spent resisting what she had taken to be Hal’s attempt to pump her for information about Willow and Tom.

  ‘Since when?’ she said, noticing that Hal was looking remarkably pleased with himself.

  ‘Six or seven months now, isn’t it, Hal?’ said Tom, who was standing with his arm around Willow’s waist.

  ‘About that,’ agreed Willow. ‘He just came to the Mews and rang the bell one evening.’

  ‘And he’s standing here, listening to you all,’ said Hal as he handed Emma the freesias he had been holding and leaned forwards to plant a kiss on her pale pink cheek. She moved a little away from the others so that he had to move too.

  ‘What’s been going on, Hal? Why did you go and see Willow?’

  ‘Well, when I couldn’t fathom what you were up to, I thought I’d ask for help,’ he said, smiling down at her with all the easy affection she had come to like so much and tried so hard to resist.

  ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

  ‘I’m sure you do, Em. There you are, happy to chat for hours on the phone, happy to eat with me, apparently happy in my company, and yet blind to every possible signal I put out. I couldn’t exactly fall on you like a stallion, now could I? Or should I have?’

  ‘No,’ she said, laughing. ‘And what did Willow advise?’

  ‘Bide my time,’ he said airily. ‘I thought you were stunning today.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘But then I always think that, as you know. Emma—’

  ‘Not now, Hal. There’s rather a lot going on just now. Can we leave it all on hold for a bit?’

  He looked carefully at her and after a while he nodded.

  ‘Spot more biding of my time, you mean?’

  ‘Just a spot,’ she agreed.

  ‘OK.’

  She felt Jag’s hand on her shoulder as he returned to her side and she looked up to smile at him.

  ‘You two know each other, don’t you? Hal Marstall, Jag Turrant.’

  They shook hands and Jag said, ‘I gather from Willow
that we’re all dining together. I’m afraid there’s only room for the two of us on the like Hal, and we ought to get going soon if we’re to see Lucinda before she goes to sleep. So, are you ready, Emma?’

  ‘Nearly. I’ll follow you in a minute. I must go and have a word with my poor mother, make sure she’s all right after all that.’

  Lady Gnatche’s face was betraying all the shock Emma had wanted to spare her, but her courage kept her smiling as she kissed her daughter and congratulated her.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Emma, kissing her back. ‘It was lovely of you to come, and I am sorry you had to listen to all that.’

  Lady Gnatche took a shaky step backwards. For a moment Emma thought that she was so horrified she could hardly bear to touch her, but it turned out that she simply wanted to see her better.

  ‘You warned me. You know, your father would have been very proud of you,’ she said at last. ‘He would have minded your being involved with people like that, but he would have admired the way you stuck with it until you had found out everything that mattered. I wish he could have been here.’

  Emma had to blink hurriedly and breathe deeply to keep from showing too much emotion, but she managed it and so did her mother. They nodded to each other formally.

  ‘Henry and Serena will take me back now, and I’ll be home again tomorrow. I hope that when you have some time to spare you will think of coming to stay for a weekend.’

  ‘Yes,’ Emma said, grateful for the immense difference between the invitation and the kind of blustering order Anthony used to deliver whenever he thought she should go back to Gloucestershire. ‘I’d love to, and I’ll ring as soon as I know what I’m going to be doing and where I’m going to be based.’

  ‘Excellent. I shall look forward to it. Now, Henry.’

  A tall, elderly man who had been waiting patiently some distance away came forward to take her arm. Emma thought she saw in his face all the naked disgust and shock her mother had tried to hide.

  ‘The car’s outside, Honor,’ he said. ‘Shall we go?’

  ‘Thank you, Henry. Goodbye, Emma.’

  ‘Goodbye, Mother,’ said Emma, feeling as though she had been given the keys to her own life just at the moment when she understood that the doors had never been locked and had merely needed a light push. She waited while her mother made her slow way out of the hall beside her friend and then went back to Willow, Tom, Jag and Jane. Hal seemed to have gone ahead.

  ‘I couldn’t have done it without all of you,’ she said, reaching them. ‘I am so very grateful.’

  ‘You made full—almost fulsome—acknowledgment in your talk,’ said Jane, ‘but if you really are feeling grateful I’d like you to consider a proposition.’

  ‘She can do anything she wants now,’ said Willow forcefully. ‘And she’s had lots of good job offers.’

  ‘Yes, I know, but she’s her own woman, too. She can choose without your advice.’

  Willow scowled at Jane and then, as though remembering her moment of revelation on the train to Leeds when she and Jag had been on their way to interview Terry Lepe, she smiled. ‘Yes, of course she can.’

  ‘Good. Emma, I want you to think about becoming an investigative reporter for us. We’d pay you a lot more than any of the other jobs you’ve been looking at. Will you think about it?’

  ‘Don’t do it, Emma,’ said Tom, laughing. ‘You and I’ll end up on opposite sides if you do.’

  ‘But we are on opposite sides anyway,’ she said, laughing back at him. ‘You were nearly ready to have me arrested for kidnapping Willow at one moment.’

  ‘True enough.’

  ‘Jane?’

  ‘Yes, Emma?’

  ‘I’m not sure, but I am flattered. I will think about it. But there’s something else. Look, I’ve been wanting to ask you for ages about Jemima. Do you think she really came to you to stop you printing anything more about drivers who kill, or was she making some kind of cry for help before Andrew got out again?’

  Jane shrugged. Her face had lost all its usual brilliance and excitement.

  ‘I’ve been thinking about that too. Could she have known? I kept looking at her while you were talking, and at one moment I caught her eye. Neither of us had meant to do it, but we couldn’t look away. Then I did think she’d known something and hoped I’d find it.’

  ‘Yes, I thought so, too,’ said Emma. ‘Poor woman.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ said Jane. ‘She should have gone straight to the police. What I don’t understand is why Andrew ever agreed to a polygraph test in the first place. It seems quite mad.’

  ‘Oh, I think I know,’ Emma said. ‘He must have been afraid that he wasn’t going to get any kind of decently paying job once he got out of prison—partly because of the criminal record; partly because of his age. I think he assumed that a polygraph would have proved him innocent of the crash so that he would come out a vindicated man. He must have assumed that he could stop me asking any questions that would have revealed his killings.’

  ‘Maybe. But he was pretty foolhardy, wasn’t he?’ said Willow.

  ‘Arrogant,’ said Jane. ‘Just like they all said. Look, Emma, are you going to London with Tom and Willow, or would you like a lift with me? I’m taking Hal, but there’s plenty of room for one more.’

  ‘No thanks,’ said Emma, smiling at her. She looked around for Jag, who was coming back into the hall in his leathers with the two huge, globular yellow helmets dangling from his right hand. In his left, he had another set of leathers and a pair of boots with quite as many jangling buckles as his own.

  ‘You are breaking out, aren’t you?’ said Jane, half in amazement and half in admiration.

  ‘Yes,’ said Emma, ‘and I suspect that if I do come to work for you, it’ll be so that I can afford a Harley.’

  They all laughed. Jag handed her the leathers and she took them to the nearest cloakroom to change. Then, almost unrecognisable, she clanked out to find him. About to slide the helmet over her head, he said, ‘You’re home now, aren’t you, Sunshine?’

  ‘Yes. And you’ve got your doctorate, and the sheep and the green valleys are calling, aren’t they?’

  ‘How did you know?’

  ‘I might make you an offer for the bike, pending my Harley,’ she said, not answering because it did not seem to matter at precisely which point she had begun to understand that it was kindness and not love or even lust that was keeping him with her.

  He swept her into a huge embrace, quite unbothered by all the people milling around them, and then kissed her.

  ‘You might not have to. I thought if you wanted it I’d give it to you when I go. There’s nothing like a bike for real freedom, Emma.’

  Laughing, she took the helmet from him, and led the way out to where the gleaming black and silver machine awaited them both, and thought of herself roaring up to the quiet Cotswold manor with the bees and the lavender and the linen sheets and realised that she did not need any internal combustion engine to make her feel free.

  Copyright

  First published in 1997 by Simon & Schuster

  This edition published 2012 by Bello an imprint of Pan Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited Pan Macmillan, 20 New Wharf Road, London N1 9RR Basingstoke and Oxford Associated companies throughout the world

  www.panmacmillan.com/imprints/bello

  ISBN 978-1-4472-3861-4 EPUB

  ISBN 978-1-4472-3860-7 POD

  Copyright © Natasha Cooper, 1997

  The right of Natasha Cooper to be identified as the

  author of this work has been asserted in accordance

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