by Cathy Ace
A call to the local police had finally brought a visit from PC Wymans, who had informed Stephen of the fact Joan’s car had been found smashed into a wall at the bottom of Long Hill, a part of the back-road route she would have favored from the village she was visiting. The PC had driven Stephen to the hospital where Joan had been taken, but their arrival only allowed Stephen to have it confirmed by a doctor that both Joan and Betty had been dead upon arrival. He’d stayed all night with her body, ravaged though it was by the accident. It was a duty of love he hadn’t been able to undertake for his parents, who Edna knew had died in a car accident while on holiday without him in Spain. It was a heavy burden to bear, to lose two parents and a grandparent all to car accidents, and Edna wasn’t surprised to hear Stephen swear he’d sell his car and walk everywhere for the rest of his life.
She held his hand and patted his arm as the tragic tale tumbled out of him; she didn’t know how to give him any real solace. All Edna could do was to, literally, stand by her man over the weeks that came; first at Joan’s funeral, and then at their wedding.
It was the biggest wedding the village had seen in many years; almost the entire local population was in attendance and, as the early September evening light glowed upon the happy couple at the end of a wonderful reception held in the church hall, Edna knew she had found the happiness she had so long desired. She looked into Stephen’s eyes – her husband’s eyes – and knew she’d made the right decisions in life: the right decision about where to have her dream tea shop, the right decision about not mentioning her suspicions about his grandmother, and the right decision to marry him.
Edna popped Harry’s little feet into the snuggle suit he wore for bed; she could hear Joanie giggling as she played with her father in the next room. Stephen’s head appeared around the door, swiftly followed by that of his daughter, who clung precariously to his ears as she steadied herself upon his shoulders.
‘Come on now, Joanie – let Daddy put you to bed, you know it’s time,’ called Edna, smiling. ‘Harry’s ready – look,’ and she held her wriggling son toward his father and sister as if to prove that his being ready was a sign it was time for all playing to end. When both children were snug and sleeping, Edna and Stephen made their way downstairs to the drawing room, where a roaring fire in the far-from-modest hearth was taking the chill off the night air.
‘Oh Stephen, you built a fire, how lovely.’ Edna kissed her husband and gasped as he pulled an ice bucket replete with champagne and glasses from behind a leather wing chair and proudly shouted, ‘Happy Anniversary!’ He flicked the switch on an old cassette player and the familiar strains of ‘their’ song filled the room.
‘Ssh, the children,’ stage-whispered Edna as she closed the door to the hallway. She hugged her husband as he popped the cork on the glowing green bottle and poured the golden froth into two delicate champagne flutes. Toasting themselves, they fell onto the antique rug that sat before the fire, and cuddled. They certainly had good cause for celebration; five years of happiness and almost never a cross word. Edna now owned dozens of ‘Sweet Olde Tea Shoppes’ across England, and even sold her own line of tea paraphernalia and home décor items online, while Stephen was a very happy stay-at-home father. How lucky Edna was to have found him; how pleased he was to have discovered that his role in life was to be a father.
Edna’s entrepreneurial mind and Stephen’s initial investment had allowed her to become wildly successful in terms of business; his love, and their children, had allowed her to become all she could as a woman and a mother. She was complete. And she knew it. She blessed it every day of her life. Certainly she wished she could spend more time with the children, but she worked from home as much as possible and knew that, even when she had to be away, Stephen was with Harry and Joanie every moment, cherishing them as she did, and keeping them safe and happy.
The couple cuddled and reminisced about the years they’d spent building their life together, and talk turned, inevitably, to how Edna had chosen this particular village for what had turned out to be her first shop, then to the first time they had met, and then – of course – to Joan.
It was always at this point in their otherwise happy reminiscences that Edna felt awkward; she still had a lingering discomfort when she thought of Joan. Unfortunately, she’d not been able to come up with an acceptable argument to prevent naming their daughter for the woman who had raised Stephen, but the use of ‘Joanie’ rather than ‘Joan’ helped Edna to come to terms with it. As the years had passed, and little Joanie had developed her own personality, Edna was able to almost erase the connection with Joan from her mind. But, at this time of year, the conversation always turned to Stephen’s grandmother, and the role she had played in their coming together.
Edna had never mentioned her concerns to Stephen; Joan’s death had removed all reason for her to say anything. Indeed, Edna had almost convinced herself that her suspicions about Joan had been groundless, so there was really nothing to mention in any case.
The couple kissed, and Stephen said dreamily, ‘I love you, Mrs Edna Halyard. Or should I say, Miss Edna Sweet, as the world knows you?’
‘I’m so much happier being Mrs Halyard than being Miss Sweet, but we both know what works best for the business.’
‘I know,’ he reassured her. ‘Just as well they named you for your father’s mother, not your mother’s mother, or you’d have been Etta Sweet.’ He giggled. They giggled together. They’d often giggled about it before. ‘Now you’d be Etta Halyard, but then Etta anything is a bit tough, don’t you think? They wanted to name me Gascoigne after my great-grandfather. Can you imagine going through life being called Gascoigne? That’s even worse than Etta, you have to admit it.’
Edna smiled. Stephen looked so beautiful with the firelight flickering on his skin. She stroked his face, lovingly. ‘I don’t care what I’m called, so long as I am your wife. And I’d have married you whatever your name, whatever your situation in life.’
Stephen took a swig from his glass and looked at Edna with a curious glint in his eyes. ‘But you wouldn’t have, would you? You wouldn’t have married me if Gran hadn’t died, would you?’
Edna was taken aback; Stephen had never said anything like that before.
Her eyes must have betrayed her surprise, because, before she had a chance to respond, her husband added, ‘I knew it, of course – I knew you’d found out about her. I knew that, although you said yes, you would have ended up saying no to me. If I hadn’t acted, we wouldn’t be here today. You wouldn’t have married me and become Mrs Halyard, and there wouldn’t even be a Joanie or a Harry Halyard.’
Edna took it all in. ‘What do you mean I found out about her? What did I find out?’ Edna was scared, but she blurted it out anyway.
‘You found out about Joan killing people.’ Stephen spoke as if he’d made a mere throwaway comment, not as though he’d just hurled a grenade into their happy life.
Edna gulped at her champagne, to give herself a moment to think as much as because she needed the drink. How to respond? Honesty was the best policy, she decided.
‘Okay, Stephen, I’ll come clean. I overheard Joan and Betty talking one day about poisoning somebody, and then she mentioned Ruby someone or other, whom she’d already killed. You told me about that Ruby woman and the Scout master disappearing, and I thought Joan and Betty must have done something awful. Of course, I didn’t know whether to say anything to you about it. I didn’t know if you’d believe it because – frankly – I didn’t know if I believed it myself.’ She finally drew a breath, then hissed, ‘Oh my God, Stephen, do you mean Joan really did kill people?’
‘Yes. She really did.’ Stephen sounded quite calm; Edna felt anything but. Until that moment she’d almost managed to convince herself that it was all a fiction.
‘What do you mean exactly?’ pressed Edna – hating to believe, but needing details.
‘Ruby Smith and Fred Wilmslow, it was them. When you mentioned Ruby�
�s name I knew you must have found out something; Gran was never as discreet as she thought she was. You probably overheard her saying something in the tea shop one day. She nearly got caught out like that several times; what Gran thought of as a whisper wasn’t terribly quiet at all, and she’d never admit to having a hearing problem, of course.’
Edna’s eyes widened as her husband continued to speak as though he were having a very ordinary conversation about some everyday topic.
He continued, ‘But they weren’t Gran’s first. I believe she killed my nanny when I was a small child. I’m not sure how she did it, but she told everyone that the girl had simply gone away, which – upon mature reflection – I think was unlikely. And Gran also mentioned several things which led me to believe that she somehow tampered with my parents’ car causing it to crash and kill them both.’
Edna interrupted – aghast and puzzled in equal measure, ‘But didn’t your parents die when they were on holiday in Spain? That’s what you told me.’
Stephen airily waved his arm. ‘Oh they did, but Gran had been visiting them there right up until a couple of days before they died. I believe she fiddled with the car they’d hired. Of course, all she ever really wanted was to raise me herself. She hated my mother, you see, because she felt my father had married beneath him, thereby betraying the family name. The family name was very important to Gran – she’d have done anything to defend it, to allow it to reach its full potential.’
He finished his champagne, and topped up Edna’s glass as well as his own. Edna was stunned, but sipped.
Stephen continued nonchalantly, ‘Before that – before she even married Granddad, in fact – I believe she killed her own brother; he was a bit of a bad ’un, and someone whose reputation she felt wouldn’t let her rise to meet the requirements of the Halyard family when she decided she wanted to marry into it. My father was conceived out of wedlock, and Granddad had to marry her PDQ. Of course, that was all hushed up too; Gran managed to wriggle herself into one of the oldest families in England by seducing the son of the house. Believe it or not, apparently she was quite a looker.’
Stephen guffawed, and Edna had to admit this statement surprised her as much as any of the others. She sipped her champagne as her mind raced.
Stephen was on a roll. ‘Once she’d got into the family, Gran made it her business to become guardian of the Halyard name. When Granddad died, she became the sanctimonious old biddy you met. I think she might have killed him too, because he went a bit gaga, and she wasn’t very keen on that – then he died. Unexpectedly.’
Stephen paused for a slurp of champagne, but continued in the same matter of fact way. ‘Gran put the Halyard name before everything else. And I mean everything; when I was growing up, she instilled in me that your family and your name are the most important things you have in life. And, to be fair to her, I’m convinced everything she did – in the early days, that is – really was to protect the family name. But I could see she was getting more emboldened about killing. That Ruby woman was a case in point; Gran only meant to kill Wilmslow himself, you see, because he’d called her a stuck-up something or other and implied she wasn’t up to the Halyard name – just about the worst thing anyone could say to Gran. She bashed him over the head with a coal shovel. You wouldn’t think to look at her that she’d have had the strength, but she did it sure enough. And Ruby Smith heard something going on in his back garden next door to her cottage – which was where it happened – put two and two together when he “disappeared”, and made the mistake of telling Gran her suspicions. So, of course, Gran had to kill her too. By stealing the Scouts’ money Gran was able to make it look as though Fred Wilmslow had run off with both the cash and Ruby, and Gran let it be known that she and Betty had spotted them in Scarborough.’
‘But what did she do with the bodies?’ asked Edna, grappling with the vision of the tiny septuagenarian Joan trying to move anything more hefty than a footstool.
‘I buried them in the orchard.’
‘You buried them?’ Edna was stupefied.
‘What else could I do?’ Stephen seemed genuinely surprised that Edna should have asked. ‘Gran was in trouble, so I had to help. She couldn’t move them herself, so I carried them into the orchard one night, and buried them. No one ever goes to the orchard, there’s nothing much there worth picking, as you know, so it was an ideal place.’
Edna felt as though maybe she was going mad. She felt compelled to ask, ‘Was there anyone else?’
‘Only them, that I know of.’
‘So – to be clear – you know for a fact that Joan killed two people, and you believe she killed five others, four of them family members?’
Stephen nodded. ‘Yes, that’s right.’
‘I overheard her talking about poisoning someone. Who on earth was that?’ Edna felt some relief she’d finally been able to say the words.
‘Well, that was the problem, you see, because she was planning to kill the vicar.’ Edna’s eyebrows shot up even further. Stephen evidently picked up on her surprise. ‘Exactly – you can’t go around killing vicars and expecting to get away with it. I’m sure questions would have been asked about the vicar.’
‘Really?’ Edna wasn’t sure if she’d added enough sarcasm to her tone for Stephen to spot it; his response showed she hadn’t.
‘Totally. The rev’s a lovely man, and everyone knows him. I’m sure he didn’t mean it when he told Gran she wasn’t a real Halyard; he only meant that she’d married in, which she had, of course. But Gran didn’t see it that way; she said he’d slighted her, and she said she’d decided to kill him. However, it seemed she and Betty were at odds about how they should do it.’
Edna couldn’t help herself, ‘What about Betty? Why was she involved in all this?’ She was morbidly intrigued.
‘Betty happened to be with Gran when she whacked old Wilmslow, so she got involved from then on. She wouldn’t dare give Gran away; she liked being Gran’s special friend. And I think she was a bit potty too, of course.’
Edna’s, ‘Uh-huh,’ was laced with irony, but Stephen missed it as he continued his narrative.
‘I was getting worried about Gran; I was pretty sure she’d get herself into trouble over the vicar, and I couldn’t talk her out of it.’
Edna’s heart sank. ‘So you discussed this with her?’
‘Oh yes, Gran and I talked about everything, all the time. She really liked you, you know. She said you’d give the Halyard blood a lot of new energy, which it needed. She was right, of course; Harry and Joanie are real live wires, and Joanie is just as beautiful as her mum.’
Edna couldn’t believe Stephen’s conversation was able to move from murder to compliments so easily.
Her husband grinned cheerily. ‘So that – and because I worked out you’d somehow twigged something about Ruby Smith – was why I had to kill her.’
Edna couldn’t speak; she swallowed hard, and let her husband continue.
‘You’d said you’d marry me, but I knew you wouldn’t go through with it; not if you suspected Gran of killing someone. You’re so tenacious; the writers in the business pages say that about you and they’re right, you are. You’d never have let go; you’d have worried about it, and you wouldn’t have known whether to say anything about it or not, and you’d have ended up not marrying me. So I mucked about with Gran’s brakes – it’s pretty easy to do on older cars. I knew she’d come back down the Long Hill way, and I knew she’d end up smashing into that big wall at the bottom. I was pretty sure she and Betty would die outright, because Gran always drove too fast. I couldn’t be certain, of course, so that ride with the PC to the hospital was a bit hairy, but when they said they were both dead on arrival, I knew everything would all be alright. The car was a real mess, thank goodness, so they never knew it wasn’t just an accident caused by poor maintenance and an older driver.’
‘Right,’ said Edna, feebly.
‘So there she was, gone, and the
re was no reason for you to not marry me. So you did, and here we are.’ Stephen raised his glass to his wife and added, ‘Cheers!’ as he downed the last of his champagne.
Edna suspected she was in shock, especially as she too raised her glass and responded with her own ‘Cheers!’ Then, for some reason she couldn’t fathom, her mouth said, ‘So what now, Stephen?’
‘What do you mean, “what now”? Nothing now. We’re doing just fine, aren’t we?’ Her husband sounded genuinely surprised.
‘Yes, I suppose we are . . . but, you’ve killed two people, Stephen. And you’ve buried two more in the orchard. Don’t you think we should . . .’ Edna realized she didn’t know what to say next.
‘Should what, darling? No one missed the widow Betty; she spent all her time with Gran and had no children. Gran was going to kill someone who didn’t deserve it, and I stopped her doing that. The other two? As I said, I had to help Gran, and everyone thinks they’re having a great time living in sin in Scarborough. Where’s the harm in that?’
Edna dwelt on her husband’s words for a moment. What was she proposing? That her darling husband give himself up to the police for a crime he’d committed five years ago, which had actually saved the vicar’s life, and which had drawn no suspicion at all? Or maybe that he should announce to the world he’d been an accessory after the fact to two murders committed by a woman now dead?
She had to agree with Stephen; it seemed to make little sense to do anything but carry on as though nothing had happened. After all, maybe even she was complicit; she’d had her suspicions and had kept quiet – maybe morally that was as bad as actually doing the deed itself. What would be gained by owning up now? Nothing. Her children would lose their father to a long prison term, she her husband. And he was such a good father.
Edna reached over and patted Stephen’s hand. ‘I love you, darling, and I agree we should let sleeping dogs lie.’
‘Good,’ Stephen responded in jolly tones, ‘after all, I couldn’t bear to see our name dragged through the mud in all the newspapers. It’s our children’s name too, you see, and they are so important to me. They are the ones who will carry the Halyard name forward. They are the ones who matter. But there, enough said. Fancy a cuppa? That champagne has gone straight to my head.’