Death Knocks Twice

by Robert Thorogood

  ‘But I don’t even know this woman,’ Andy said, angrily.

  ‘And we’re supposed to believe you, are we?’ Richard asked. ‘A known criminal?’

  ‘But he’s telling the truth,’ Rosie said, just as panicked as Andy. ‘I’ve never seen this man before in my life.’

  Richard held Rosie’s gaze for a long moment.

  ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘Then tell me about the list of slaves’ names you found in Tom’s study.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Because I remember that when Tom told us he’d found a handwritten list of slaves’ names in an old book, he hadn’t been on his own. There’d been two other people with him at the time. And those two people were Matthew and you. Isn’t that right, Matthew?’

  Matthew looked at Richard awkwardly. He didn’t want to implicate Rosie, but it was obvious that he couldn’t lie, either.

  ‘You’re right,’ Matthew eventually said. ‘The three of us found the list of names together.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Richard said, turning to face Rosie. ‘So you admit it? You saw the list of slave names that day?’

  ‘I suppose so,’ Rosie said, now desperately confused by Richard’s questioning.

  ‘And after the murder, we found that same list of names burned in Tom’s bin. A list of twelve names. And while eleven of them weren’t that interesting, there was one name that I couldn’t help but notice.’

  As he said this, Richard reached into his pocket and pulled out the printout of the re-joined burnt pieces of paper. He held it up for everyone to see.

  ‘You worked out what was written on the paper?’ Tom asked, amazed.

  ‘It was a name in the middle of the list,’ Richard said. ‘A man’s name. “Gabriel Lefèbvre”,’ Richard said. ‘And I can’t help noticing that, as surnames go, it’s extremely similar to yours, Rosie. Because your surname is Lefèvre. In fact, when you consider how names can change over two hundred years, it’s extremely similar. And because I knew this list of names had to be important – or it wouldn’t have been burnt – I then remembered the story we’d learned about “Mad Jack” Beaumont, and how he’d killed a whole dormitory of slaves, even though there was one witness. And when this witness tried to testify against “Mad Jack”, “Mad Jack” rigged the evidence and the jury so that this one witness was convicted of the crime and therefore hanged.

  ‘But what I finally remembered was the fact the innocent man who “Mad Jack” had hanged was called Gabriel. It’s not too much of a stretch to imagine that the Gabriel who Mad Jack had hanged was the self same Gabriel Lefèbvre who’d come over on the first boat with Thomas Beaumont. And it’s also not that much of a stretch to imagine that this Gabriel Lefèbvre was also one of your ancestors. So, if a mad and crazy drunk had killed one of your forebears, what if it was you who’d now killed Mad Jack’s mad and drunk descendant, Freddie?’

  ‘But why would I do that?’ Rosie asked, still reeling from Richard’s accusations.

  ‘Indeed,’ Richard said. ‘And why would you then kill Lucy? It doesn’t make much sense, does it? But it just goes to show how fiendishly clever the real killer has been – that I even began to wonder if a woman very much in the Autumn of her years might have been our double killer.’

  ‘Hang on,’ Hugh said. ‘Are you saying that Rosie is innocent?’

  ‘Of murder? One hundred per cent. She had nothing to do with either death. But she’s by no means blameless. Like Hugh, she’s been lying to us from the start. But unlike Hugh, she’s also been lying to the whole family for the whole time she’s been working for them.’

  ‘What’s that?’ Rosie said, confused.

  ‘Rosie,’ Richard said, turning to face the old woman, ‘I think that Freddie and Lucy’s killer will strike again. Unless you tell us the truth right now.’

  ‘But I’ve only ever told the truth,’ Rosie said.

  ‘Then prove it. Tell us the identity of the killer.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You know who the killer is.’

  ‘But I don’t know. I don’t.’

  ‘Oh you do. You’ve known from the start. When you really think about it.’

  Richard held Rosie’s gaze for a long moment, and then she looked away.

  Richard pounced. ‘I’m right, aren’t I?’ he said.

  It was barely noticeable, but after a long moment, Rosie nodded her head.

  ‘But I don’t understand,’ Sylvie said. ‘Who killed Freddie and Lucy?’

  ‘It’s obvious, Sylvie,’ Richard said. ‘There’s only one person here who could possibly be our double killer.’

  ‘And who’s that?’

  ‘The person who cut up the bird.’

  ‘What bird?’ Hugh asked.

  ‘I’m sure you know the story, but the first time we met Rosie, she told us how, many years ago, she’d been walking in the garden when she discovered a bird that had been ritually disembowelled. It’s such a sick thing to have done, it’s always felt to me as though whoever had experimented on the bird in the past was almost certainly our killer in the present. Even if they were only five years old at the time. Isn’t that right, Matthew?’

  ‘What’s that?’ Matthew asked.

  ‘It was you who ritually disembowelled that bird all those years ago. And it was you who killed Freddie Beaumont. And then killed your sister Lucy.’

  Matthew still didn’t seem to understand this statement, and he remained just as confused as Dwayne stepped towards him and started to handcuff him.

  ‘What’s this?’ Matthew said. ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Arresting you for murder,’ Dwayne said as he yanked Matthew’s arms hard behind his back. ‘For two murders.’

  Hugh, Sylvie and Tom were too stunned to speak, but as Matthew started finally to profess his innocence, Richard turned to face Rosie and saw tears in her eyes.

  ‘And you’ve suspected that Matthew was the killer for some time. Haven’t you?’

  Rosie didn’t say anything.

  ‘But it’s not possible,’ Hugh said, finally finding his voice. ‘Matthew was Lucy’s favourite. He could never kill her. And why would he kill Freddie? It’s like you said. He never even met him.’

  ‘That’s right,’ Richard said. ‘And those are the reasons why – when I managed to put my prejudices to one side – I found myself naturally wanting to discount Matthew as our killer. After all, there really does seem to be no rational reason for him to have killed a man he’d never met – and who was dying anyway – and then a sister who he loved. But these murders weren’t entirely rational. In fact, although they were meticulously planned, the motive behind their deaths wasn’t even close to rational.’

  Richard looked at the room. This is what he lived for. Delivering justice.

  ‘Let me tell you what happened.’

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  ‘The past casts a long shadow,’ Richard said. ‘And, as I said before, these two murders are all about the past. Not that Matthew started out planning to kill anyone. In fact, as far as he was concerned, he was just trying to make contact with his biological father after he’d learned that he was dying of cancer. But Hugh told Matthew that Freddie was lying. That it was all a ruse, and that he should cease all contact with Freddie. So that’s exactly what Matthew did. He did as he was told. But we also know how honourable Matthew is. And I don’t think this decision would have sat well with him. After all, it wasn’t the honourable thing to do to abandon Freddie in his last hours.

  ‘But unbeknownst to Matthew, Hugh decided to take matters into his own hands. Now, I don’t think we’ll ever know the precise order of events. Did Matthew overhear Hugh telling Sylvie that he’d paid for Freddie to come out to the Caribbean? Or did he find out by some other means? It doesn’t much matter, because what we do know is that when Lucy started saying that she’d seen an old guy spying on her, Matthew guessed who it might be. Or maybe he also saw the old man hanging around the plantation, spoke to him, and found out that he was Fr
eddie, his biological father. Again, it doesn’t much matter what the precise order of events was, because it’s obvious from what followed that Matthew worked out that it was Freddie who was the plantation’s Peeping Tom. But to be clear: Matthew still had no thoughts of murder. Not yet. He just wanted to do the honourable thing.

  ‘And once again, we have to speculate, because Lucy is no longer here to tell us exactly what happened, but it would only be natural that Matthew would go to his closest ally in the family. His big sister, Lucy. And whether or not he’d told her everything before, he did now. He explained how he’d been writing to Freddie for years, how Freddie was now dying of cancer, and how it wasn’t right that Freddie should now be reduced to skulking around in the undergrowth trying to steal glimpses of his family.

  ‘But Lucy’s reaction shocked Matthew, because she still refused to have anything to do with Freddie. In fact, I think her reaction to the news was extremely violent – in the same way that we were told that Lucy was like Mount Esmée. Quiet for long stretches of time, and then she blows her top. But Matthew’s sense of duty towards Freddie was a match for Lucy’s loathing, and I bet he argued back. Forcefully. They had to see Freddie. And I imagine that it was Matthew’s insistence that they should behave with honour that tipped Lucy into making a terrible mistake. She told Matthew the truth. I’ll explain what she said in a moment, but for the time being, all that matters is that, by doing so, she sealed her fate. And she sealed Freddie’s.’

  ‘I imagine Matthew took time to digest what he’d just learned. But very soon afterwards, he went back to Lucy and told her that he now agreed with her. Freddie deserved to die. And of course Lucy agreed like a shot. She’d always wanted Freddie dead – as she was so happy to tell us. But what poor Lucy didn’t know was that Matthew wasn’t going to stop with Freddie’s murder. He was going to kill Freddie, and then he was going to kill her.’

  Richard looked at the witnesses and was gratified to see that they were hanging on his every word. Everyone, that was, apart from Matthew. His head was bowed. In shame – or denial – it was hard to tell.

  ‘But how to kill Freddie, that was the question. Well, living on an old plantation like this, it didn’t take Matthew and Lucy too long to remember the odourless, colourless and soluble pesticide, 1080, that was once used for controlling pests. That would be a perfect murder weapon. But how could they get hold of it? They both knew that it was strictly controlled. So Matthew told Lucy that they should get Tom to buy the poison for them. You see, not only did Matthew want to kill both Freddie and Lucy from the off, but it was also always his plan to pin both murders on his brother Tom.’

  ‘But why?’ Hugh asked.

  ‘Don’t worry. He had his reasons,’ Richard said darkly. ‘But going back to the chronology of the two murders, Matthew had now tricked Lucy into asking Tom to get hold of a box of 1080 poison. And that’s when he enacted stage two of his plan. Again, we’ll never know the precise order of events, but I think that, once they’d got the poison, Matthew pretended to realise that it wouldn’t work. He no doubt told his sister that, once the Police did an autopsy on Freddie’s dead body – as they were bound to do – they’d discover that he was killed with 1080 poison. They’d then check the poison registers, and they’d discover that Tom had bought some 1080 poison recently. And when interviewed, Tom would just tell the Police that it had been Lucy’s idea to get the 1080 poison. She’d be implicated in his murder.

  ‘So Matthew told her they needed to come up with an alternative plan. A better plan. And it was at this point that Matthew suggested they use Lucy’s Glock 19 pistol to shoot Freddie dead. Now, I’m sure Lucy had told Matthew all about her gun long before they bought the 1080 poison. And I’m sure that Matthew had discounted it as a possible murder weapon at the time. After all, it belonged to Lucy. If they used it, they’d risk implicating her even more than the poison would.

  ‘But this is when Matthew made his big play. He suggested that maybe they could use Lucy’s gun after all, as it wouldn’t much matter whose gun was used if they made Freddie’s death look like suicide. After all, if an old tramp is found shot dead inside a locked outhouse with a pistol in his hand, how could it be anything other than suicide? And if Lucy was still worried about being implicated, they could make sure that she was with the Police when Matthew killed Freddie. She’d then have an unbreakable alibi to prove that she didn’t pull the trigger. She’d be in the clear.

  ‘And Lucy finally agreed. They put the 1080 poison aside. Matthew would use her gun to kill Freddie. And it’s here that I have to apologise to you all. Because I’ve been guilty of committing the crime of post hoc ergo propter hoc.’

  ‘You have?’ Dwayne asked, as if his boss had just confessed to having a highly contagious disease.

  ‘Or to put it in English?’ Camille asked, not entirely politely.

  ‘It’s a Latin phrase, Camille. And it means “after this therefore because of that”.’

  ‘Well I’m glad we’ve cleared that up,’ Camille said.

  ‘In other words,’ Richard said, deigning to explain, ‘it’s a logical fallacy where you say that since event Y followed event X, then event Y must have been caused by event X. And that’s the mistake I made when we found that Lucy’s safe had been broken into and that her gun and box of bullets were now missing. I presumed that it had been her gun and bullets that had been stolen from the safe.’

  ‘Because of Post Hic… whatever-it-was-you-said,’ Dwayne said.

  ‘Exactly,’ Richard said, delighted that Dwayne had caught up with him. ‘And it’s such a clever trick, really. We see that the safe has been broken into. The gun and box of bullets are missing. Therefore, it must have been the gun and box of bullets that were stolen. But the reality is that they were never stolen from the safe.’

  ‘Then how did Matthew get the gun from the safe?’ Hugh asked.

  ‘Lucy just took the gun and bullets out herself, and then handed them to Matthew. That’s how her gun got out of the safe.’

  ‘But I don’t understand. If that’s what happened, why did anyone have to break into the safe?’

  ‘Because it wasn’t good enough for Matthew that Lucy just give him her gun. That only suited the plan that he’d agreed with Lucy. He also had his secret plan to frame Tom for the murder. But how could Matthew make it look as though Tom had broken into the safe to get the gun? Well, it was quite simple, really.

  ‘First, he wiped the keypad on Lucy’s safe – removing all fingerprints. He then offered to help Tom go through the old papers in his office. And, as Matthew rather foolishly confirmed to us only a few moments ago, it wasn’t just Rosie who was present when the old document was found. Matthew was there as well. And I don’t think it much mattered what the document was. All that mattered was that Matthew could convince Tom that it was important enough to put in Lucy’s safe. And then, once Lucy had put the document in her safe, Matthew went up to Lucy’s bedroom and used graphite powder to reveal the code on the safe’s keypad.

  ‘He then broke into the safe and left a thread of blue cotton on a hinge that he knew he could later use to frame Tom to make it look as though this was when and how the gun had been stolen. But Matthew also realised – once he’d got the safe open – that there was one more thing he could do. He could remove the old piece of paper that Lucy had only just put in there. And, having done so, he then took it downstairs and set fire to it in Tom’s bin. Because he knew that if the Police later found a burnt piece of paper in Tom’s office, we’d have it analysed and would discover that it had originally been an old document. And, from there it would have been a short step to discover that Lucy had recently put the document in her safe – at Tom’s bidding.

  ‘As for what the piece of paper was now doing burnt in Tom’s office, Matthew knew it would have been quite reasonable for us to then make the false assumption – seeing as it was Tom who’d got Lucy to store the piece of paper in her safe, and now here it was in his bin – that it must a
lso have been Tom who’d opened the safe to remove Lucy’s gun and bullets at the same time that he’d taken the piece of paper. And now Tom had burnt the incriminating piece of paper in a botched attempt to destroy the evidence that apparently linked him to Lucy’s safe.’

  ‘Hold on,’ Sylvie said, ‘are you saying that Matthew set all this up before he’d even committed murder?’

  ‘That’s exactly what I’m saying,’ Richard said. ‘His whole plan was thought through in advance. You see, Matthew may not be all that good at acing exams – or standing out from the crowd when he’s at an overachieving private school – but that doesn’t mean he hasn’t got plenty of cunning. And a desperate point to prove.

  ‘Because I think that Matthew’s felt inadequate his whole life – when compared to his father’s illustrious ancestors, whose great deeds go back to the time of William the Conqueror. That’s why he’s been writing a history of the family. I think he’s fatally fascinated by his family – and not in a way that’s even remotely healthy. Especially seeing as he’s the third-born of his three siblings. He could never inherit anything. The rules of primogeniture make sure of that.

  ‘And if the history of the Beaumont family is enough to give Matthew an inferiority complex, let’s consider his mother Lady Helen’s family, who count Earls and Countesses in their number stretching back in greatness just as far as the Beaumonts. And still, Matthew knew he’d not inherited anything from her, either. Certainly not brains. Certainly not money. Not even a title.

  ‘So this wasn’t just a murder for Matthew. This was also his vindication. The proof he’d craved his whole life that he had it in him to be a “great man”.

  ‘Or that was the plan at least, because now we come to the day of his first murder. The day he shot Freddie dead. Or the day before, to be more precise. Because the note we found in Freddie’s pocket – with “11am” written on it – made it clear to us that Freddie’s presence in the drying room on that fateful Thursday morning had been pre-arranged. Now, I don’t know what lie was used to make Freddie agree to the meeting, but I imagine Lucy or Matthew promised Freddie the big family reconciliation that I think he secretly craved. After all, why else was he spying on his family, if not because he wanted to see them but was too scared to approach? And why else had he kept the letters that his son Matthew had written to him for all of these years if not because – at some level – he’d always been desperate for some kind of a reconciliation? So yes, I think it would have been tragically easy for Lucy or Matthew to trap him with a promised meeting of the whole family.