Death Knocks Twice

by Robert Thorogood

  ‘Just like Nanny Rosie told us,’ Richard said.

  ‘That’s right. But this woman didn’t even have a train ticket. All the Police were able to find was £1.20 in the pocket of her dress.’

  ‘But is that woman Lady Helen?’

  ‘That’s the thing, sir. They’ve sent through the photos from the crime scene.’

  Camille scrolled down the pdf of the report, and there were a number of crime scene photos of the crumpled body of a woman at the side of the train track.

  The dead woman was wearing a red dress with white polka dots. Just like Rosie said Helen had been wearing when she walked out on her family. And there was a white shoe on the gravel to the side of her body. Just as Rosie said Helen had been wearing that day.

  The next photo removed all doubt. It showed a picture of a woman’s head, and although her skull had been crushed at the back – with black blood matting her blonde hair – most of her face was relatively undamaged.

  The woman was Lady Helen Beaumont.

  ‘It’s her,’ Fidel said.

  ‘So what does the report say?’ Richard asked eagerly.

  Camille scrolled back up through the document.

  ‘Okay,’ she said, ‘it says here that after they failed to identify the dead body at the scene, the Winchester Police issued photographs of the deceased around the county, and appealed for witnesses who could identify the body. But no-one came forward. And there was no CCTV footage of her death. So the Coroner ruled it death by misadventure, but the presumption was that it was a suicide. After six months, the Police closed the file.’

  ‘So they never identified her?’ Dwayne asked.

  ‘That’s what it says here,’ Camille said.

  As his team started discussing Lady Helen’s death, Richard felt something tickle at his memory, but he couldn’t quite place it. What was it? He could tell that whatever it was, it was the faintest of connections, and he decided to try and forget all about it. Sometimes you could frighten ideas away if you thought about them too closely. Instead he tuned back into the conversation his team were having.

  ‘She did this on purpose,’ Camille was saying.

  ‘What’s that?’ Richard asked.

  ‘The Police didn’t find her train ticket on her. Which suggests to me that she didn’t want to be identified after she’d killed herself.’

  ‘But why did she kill herself?’ Fidel asked.

  ‘That’s the million dollar question,’ Richard agreed.

  ‘Although we don’t know the stresses she’d been under,’ Camille said. ‘Or just how bad it really was living with Freddie. Because if he’d been hitting her – like Hugh, Rosie and Lucy all said he did…? The moment Nanny Rosie walked in – and she knew her children would be safe from that moment onwards – I could imagine a woman who was already unstable just giving up. Just walking out of the door – too ashamed to carry on with her life.’

  ‘So you think she already knew she was going to kill herself when she left?’ Fidel asked.

  ‘I’m not sure. The fact that she died on the journey back to her parents suggests that she at least set out that day with the intention of going home. So maybe something happened on the journey that made her change her mind. Or maybe she just changed her mind anyway. But, either way, she threw her train ticket away and made sure no CCTV cameras could see her before she committed suicide.’

  ‘Although, what if she was killed?’ Fidel said, getting everyone’s attention.

  ‘Go on,’ Richard said.

  ‘Not that there’s any proof, but the absence of a train ticket isn’t really proof that her death was definitely suicide, either. Maybe she lost the ticket on the way. Maybe her killer took it from her before pushing her in front of a train. But if she was murdered then that would also explain why her death didn’t happen near any CCTV cameras.’

  ‘But who’d want to kill her?’ Dwayne asked. ‘Who benefits from her death?’

  ‘And how did her murderer – if it was murder – know that she’d be on that station at that time?’ Fidel asked.

  Richard found himself remembering how he’d briefly wondered if Lady Helen had had an accomplice of some sort when she walked out on her family.

  ‘And why wasn’t there any luggage with her when her body was found?’ Dwayne asked.

  ‘Wait!’ Richard said, holding up his hand for everyone to stop talking. He was sure of it now. There’d been a critically important piece of information that he’d heard in the last few minutes. Something that contradicted what he thought he already knew – or threw a new light on a previously-gathered piece of evidence. But what was it?

  Turning his back on his team, Richard went to the whiteboard and looked at it for inspiration. His eye took in the names of the suspects, the key pieces of information, the list of slave names he’d only just pinned to the board, and then, before he’d even consciously had the thought, an ice cold shiver ran through his body. It was like a sudden shock of precognition, because he knew – just knew – what he’d just heard that was out of place.

  ‘Good grief,’ he said quietly to himself.

  But it couldn’t be true, could it?

  Richard turned to face his team.

  Fidel started to ask a question, but both Dwayne and Camille shushed him into silence before he’d even opened his lips.

  Richard barely noticed. Instead, he dashed over to his desk and grabbed up the bulging case file for Freddie’s murder. Allowing statements and reports to tumble onto the desk, he eventually pulled out a document, slapped it onto his desk and bent down to inspect it carefully. After a moment, he looked up at his team.

  He’d got it. Or had he?

  Richard crossed to Camille’s desk and quickly scrolled through the crime scene report for Lady Helen’s death – and saw, once again, that she had indeed been wearing a red dress with white polka dots when she died.

  ‘But it’s not possible,’ he mumbled to himself, before biting his lip. What did this mean?

  Richard’s mind raced back over the case from the moment that Lucy had entered the Police station saying that there was a man at the plantation stalking her. Richard considered what they’d learned about Freddie and his life with Helen before she left him. He then considered Lucy’s relationship with Freddie, and everyone else’s relationship with her. Who wanted to sell the Plantation, and who didn’t. And then – almost unbidden – Richard had a stunning realisation as he remembered a throwaway remark that the solicitor Zoe had said when they interviewed her. Dear god, he thought to himself, was this it? The reason why Freddie had to die? And Lucy afterwards?

  But even if it was, how did the killer murder Freddie inside a locked room and then manage to be outside it when it was opened up?

  And that’s when Richard got it. The whole plan. It was so obvious when you thought about it, he realised. That’s how the killer did it.

  ‘Got you,’ he said in quiet wonder.

  ‘Sir?’ Camille asked tentatively. ‘You’re not saying you know who our killer is, are you?’

  Richard’s attention returned to the room, and he looked at his partner as though he were surprised to see her standing in front of him.

  ‘You know what?’ he said. ‘I think I am.’

  ‘You know why Freddie had to die?’ Dwayne asked.

  ‘I do.’

  ‘And was it the same person who then went on to kill Lucy, sir?’ Fidel asked.

  ‘It was, Fidel. The same person killed both Freddie and Lucy.’

  Camille, Dwayne and Fidel exchanged stunned looks, and then Camille turned back to face her boss.

  ‘Then do you also know how the killer got out of the locked room after they’d killed Freddie?’

  Richard looked at Camille with a twinkle in his eye.

  ‘Of course I do. Don’t you?’

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  As the Beaumont family entered the shower room, they found Richard already waiting for them, looking out of the window. As they settled themse
lves on the slatted benches in the changing area, Richard kept looking out at the tarmacked road and thick jungle outside. What he found so interesting was the way that the jungle just stopped at the very edge of civilisation. But it was always there. On the edge of things. Wild and threatening. Waiting. All it took was one step. One step, and you moved from the ordered world of roads and buildings and were plunged into the untamed wilds. Because that’s what had happened on the day that Freddie was murdered. The killer had, in one step, moved from civilisation and entered the lawless anarchy of the jungle.

  Richard looked at the watch on his wrist. He’d sent Dwayne and Fidel to search Beaumont Manor ten minutes ago, and he hoped that they’d be back soon enough.

  There was a clatter of footsteps, and Richard turned to see Camille walking a handcuffed Andy Lucas across the room. Andy didn’t look anyone in the eye as Camille made him stand on his own to the side of the family, although Richard could see that Sylvie was looking at Andy with shock. Yes, Richard thought to himself. Sylvie should be shocked.

  But now they were all gathered. Hugh Beaumont. Sylvie Beaumont. Their two adopted children, Tom and Matthew. The family’s one-time nanny Rosie. And the semi-criminal Andy Lucas.

  ‘Thank you for all meeting me here,’ Richard said.

  ‘What choice did we have?’ Tom said.

  ‘Indeed,’ Richard said with what he knew wasn’t even the beginnings of a smile.

  ‘But what do you want with us?’ Sylvie said.

  ‘I want to tell you who killed Freddie and Lucy Beaumont,’ Richard said, and was gratified to see the effect that his words had on the suspects. ‘But first, let me tell you how we all ended up here.

  ‘The Beaumonts are a proud and noble family who can trace their lineage back many centuries. And the Saint-Marie Beaumonts have been one of the island’s most important and wealthy families for well over two hundred years. Or, that’s the impression you’d all like to give, because the reality is somewhat different. Your plantation has been steadily losing money for decades, you’ve been selling off family assets for just as long, and most of you have felt hard done by one way or another ever since Grandfather William died. But then, that’s no surprise, is it? Grandfather William sewed the seeds for this particular tragedy when he left a will that turned the estate into a trust because he wanted to cut out his wastrel first born son, Freddie Beaumont. In truth, it’s hard to know what else he could have done to stop Freddie from inheriting. Although, of course, he could have left the estate outright to you, Hugh. After all, he knew that you’d adopted Lucy, so the line of inheritance would have eventually reverted back to the family’s firstborn. Which is the real reason you adopted Freddie’s children, isn’t it?’

  ‘What?’ Hugh said, appalled by the suggestion. ‘No. We adopted our three children because it was the right thing to do. And it was the best decision we ever made. They’ve brought nothing but joy to us.’

  Richard glanced at Sylvie, but she was looking away, and Richard didn’t push the point. Sylvie had made her feelings about her children clear the last time they’d all been gathered. As Andy Lucas had told them, she thought they were ‘brats’.

  ‘Okay, so let’s park your exact motives for adopting your brother’s children for a moment. It’s still true to say that you felt snubbed when William’s will didn’t leave his estate to you, didn’t you?’

  Now it was Hugh’s turn to look away from Richard’s gaze.

  ‘And it’s easy to see why. You’d had to sacrifice your dreams of being an artist to run a plantation you’d always presumed would have been Freddie’s responsibility. And – worst of all – even after your father died and you learned that you hadn’t even inherited this place, you still had to stay on as the plantation’s proxy owner. Because you either ran the plantation as a trust, or you walked away – in which case the solicitors would have got someone else in to take over, and you’d have lost all control. And with that, your salary. And Sylvie’s. You were handcuffed to this place. Whether you liked it or not.

  ‘But then Lucy came up with a plan earlier this year, because she shared your dislike of the plantation. Although, for her, it wasn’t so much that the plantation was no longer profitable, it was more that she felt your family’s history on this island needed to be erased. I mention this because it gets to the heart of why Freddie had to die, and why Lucy then had to die afterwards. Your history.

  ‘Anyway, I bet no-one was more surprised than Lucy when she discovered from Zoe, your solicitor, that although the plantation wasn’t making any money, the land you owned was worth a small fortune. Five million dollars in fact. Five million dollars to share between the four of you. Or so you thought, because – to start off with – Tom refused to sell. And then you all learnt that Freddie would have to sign the document of dissolution as well. And not only did he have to sign, but he would also have to get his share of the five million dollars. And that’s what put paid to the whole plan, because Lucy point blank refused to sell if her biological father benefited in any way. Which is interesting, isn’t it? Because that’s a truly twisted level of hatred when you think about it. That you’d pass up getting a million dollars yourself just to stop some third party from also getting a million dollars. Which rather begs the question: what was it that drove Lucy’s hatred of her father? Why was it that she could never forgive him?

  ‘But once Lucy said she refused to sell, the situation became an impasse with no way out. Because that meant that there were now two family members who were opposed to selling. Tom. And Lucy. And this must have been so frustrating for the rest of you,’ Richard said, turning to face Hugh, Sylvie and Matthew. ‘Because the three of you wanted to be shot of the plantation, but there was no way of convincing both Lucy and Tom to change their minds. They were too set in their ways. So that was that. You were thwarted.

  ‘And then, quite unwittingly, Matthew set off a train of events that would lead to his biological father and his sister’s murder. He wrote to Freddie, as he always did on the occasion of his birthday. And this one entirely innocent letter was enough to set the first domino toppling. Freddie wrote back and told Matthew that he was dying.

  ‘As Matthew had never understood why his family had refused to reconcile with Freddie, he did the honourable thing. He went to Hugh – as the head of the family – and showed him the letter, and asked him to reach out to Freddie before he died. But Hugh refused to, and sent Matthew away, telling him to break all contact with his biological father. So Matthew stopped all communication with Freddie. No more letters. No phone calls – as we were able to prove when we looked into his and Freddie’s records. Matthew really did just walk away, as Hugh had asked him to.

  ‘Which is more than we can say about Hugh. Because he was in a quandary. Did his brother have cancer, or didn’t he? Was he going to live for many years, or would he be dead soon? So Hugh did the most natural thing. He shared his concerns with his wife. As she inadvertently ended up admitting to us. And, as she also made clear to us, she had no such doubts. To her mind, Freddie was a liar. Therefore, if he said he had cancer, it wasn’t true. As far as she was concerned, all the letter really proved was that Freddie was alive and well and still hustling. As it happens, Freddie did indeed have cancer, but there was no way for Sylvie or Hugh to know about this at this time. Instead, I think Sylvie decided that if Freddie was out to get himself some money, then – for once – his interests aligned with hers. Because it’s clear to me that it’s been Sylvie who’s been driving her husband’s actions all of this time.

  ‘So I think it was Sylvie who got Hugh to ring Freddie up and tell him that if he wanted cash, then there was a million dollars waiting for him. All he had to was come to Saint-Marie and sign a document. And Freddie agreed. Of course he did. And all along, Sylvie hoped that if she stayed in the background, no-one would work out how involved she was. Well, her plan backfired – and backfired spectacularly – when Lucy found out what Hugh had done. Because this was when, like Mount Esmée,
Lucy erupted.’

  ‘If you think I could kill my own daughter…?’ Hugh said incredulously. ‘There are simply no circumstances under which I could ever do harm to any of my children. Whether it benefited me or not. They’re mine. I love them. They’re the only good I’ve achieved with my life.’

  Seeing the desperation in Hugh’s eyes, Richard decided that it was time to put the man out of his misery.

  ‘I know. And that’s the real reason why you kept lying to us, isn’t it? You said at the time that you were trying to protect your family, but I think you’ve only actually ever been trying to protect yourself. Because you knew that if this became an investigation into your brother’s death, we’d uncover how badly you’ve been mismanaging the plantation, and how you’ve allowed your own wife to bleed this place dry. And you were also petrified that we – and therefore your children – would find out that you’d gone behind their backs to get Freddie out here. The shame you felt – at your failures as a businessman, and as a father – is what has driven you to continuously lie to us and try to cover up your role in what happened here. But you’re no killer. I know that now.’

  ‘You do?’ Hugh asked.

  ‘I do.’

  Hugh turned from Richard and looked pleadingly at Matthew and Tom.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I’m so sorry.’

  Looking at Hugh, Richard had a sudden insight that he could see through the decades and observe the young schoolboy inside the older man. And the young boy that Richard could see was nervous, insecure, and desperate for approval. How very sad, Richard thought to himself. Hugh’s self-confidence was really not much more than a glossy haircut and a posh accent. There was nothing else there.

  ‘Which brings me to you, Sylvie,’ Richard said, turning to Hugh’s wife. ‘Because if your husband is mostly innocent, the same can’t be said for you.’

  ‘What?’ Sylvie said. ‘I don’t know what you mean.’