The Night She Died

by Dorothy Simpson

  ‘Apparently, the two nights previous to that interview – and regularly since, I might add – she had dreamt that she was in a cage. She was shut in, trying frantically to find a way out, and failing. And then she would become aware that whatever it was she was terrified of was in the cage with her, and that there was no way of escaping it. It was dark, but she knew that it was coming closer, and then, when it was so close that she could feel the heat of its breath on her cheek, she’d wake up. Just talking about it upset her so … d’you know, when she’d finished, she rushed off to the cloakroom and was sick, really sick, poor girl. I went after her and I saw …

  ‘I did wonder if perhaps the cage represented how she felt about her marriage, but that seemed such a glib explanation and I felt there was more to it than that. I tried to find out what could have triggered off the nightmares, but we just didn’t get anywhere. To her knowledge she’d never had this particular dream before, though she did admit to remembering creeping downstairs to look for her mother after bad dreams as a child. Later on, after she’d gone, there was one possible explanation which occurred to me. I already knew that Julie had been brought up by her mother – who died about a year ago – because her father had been killed in a car crash when Julie was very small, about three, I think. I wondered if, perhaps, she had been in the car at the time … well, it would have been a terrifying experience for a small child, especially if her father died as a result of the accident. If she’d been trapped in the car, unable to get out …’

  ‘Quite a likely explanation, I should think.’

  ‘But why should she suddenly start having nightmares twenty years later? I mean, what could cause the memories to be … reactivated?’

  ‘Did she have any memories of the crash?’

  ‘Oh no, none. She talked about it as if she’d only heard about it from someone else – her mother, I assumed. She certainly showed no signs of distress when talking about it – though I suppose that’s nothing to judge by. If the experience had been as traumatic as all that, then she might well have wiped it out of her mind completely.’

  ‘Did you suggest this explanation to her?’

  ‘There was no opportunity. The following time – last week – she and John came together, and she had asked for my assurance that I wouldn’t tell him about the nightmares.’

  ‘But he must have known she was having them, surely?’

  ‘Yes, but not what they were about.’

  ‘I wonder why she didn’t want him to know?’

  Mrs Thorpe shrugged. ‘Who can tell? But she didn’t, and of course, having promised, my hands were tied.’ She hesitated, then went on, ‘I was really worried about her. When they came last week … she looked awful. Very strained, desperate, almost, I’d say she was very near breaking point.’

  ‘Breaking point?’

  ‘Well, as I said, she found it very difficult to express her feelings – to talk about them or to show them. The only emotion I ever saw her show was distress, fear, if you like, over this nightmare. And John seemed incapable of understanding what I explained to you just now – that the harder he pressed the more she would withdraw from him, that what he needed to do was to ease up on that pressure, leave her alone, allow her some space in which she could have an opportunity to sort out her problems and perhaps begin to respond to him differently. Though frankly, I don’t know if that could ever have happened.’

  ‘So you felt that in a way circumstances were combining to push her towards this breaking point, as you call it?’

  ‘Yes, I do. That was why I was very careful indeed not to put any pressure upon her myself. And she did seem to respond to the gentle approach.’

  ‘But if there had perhaps been other pressures, about which we know nothing …?’

  The counsellor lifted her hands in a gesture of helplessness. ‘I just don’t know.’

  ‘Mrs Thorpe, I must ask you this, though I realise that perhaps it is not a fair question. Do you think she was capable of turning on her husband with a knife?’

  She shifted uneasily in her chair, considered. ‘I’m sorry, I just don’t know. Well, yes, I suppose it would have been possible, if he really had put intolerable pressure on her. It could have been some last, desperate defence of her privacy … Once or twice I’ve seen what happens when people like Julie, people who seem incapable of showing their feelings, have been pushed too far. They lose control completely, become hysterical, incapable of rational behaviour.’

  ‘But it would have to have been done in the heat of the moment.’

  ‘Oh yes. I’m pretty sure about that. I simply can’t see Julie planning a cold-blooded murder. Nor John, either, for that matter.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Thanet stood up. ‘You really have been most helpful.’

  As he left he glanced at his watch. Too late, now to get anything to eat in the canteen. On the way back to the car park he called in at a small pub for a beer and a sandwich. The place was almost empty after the lunch-time rush and he was able to settle down in a quiet corner and think in peace.

  He felt he now had a much clearer picture of Julie. And he saw her, above all, as frightened. But, of what? Of her husband, of this boyfriend she had been meeting regularly, if the landlord’s tale was to believed, of those nightmares … or of herself? Had she sensed that she was being pushed towards that breaking point Mrs Thorpe had mentioned? And had she, the night she died, reached it?

  The question, of course, was who had been with her at the time? The obvious choice (if the landlord’s story was true) was the man in the pub. In any case, it looked as though her husband was in the clear, as Thanet had thought. For Julie to have cracked, as she did, there must have been some considerable build-up, a protracted quarrel. Holmes had been at night school all evening, had walked home with Byfleet. Those fifteen or twenty seconds were simply not long enough for such a build-up, even assuming that the quarrel had begun before Holmes left at quarter to seven. No, there had to be someone else involved. Suddenly, Thanet could hardly wait to hear what Lineham had found out. He left his beer half drunk and hurried back to the car.

  As soon as Thanet saw Lineham’s face he could tell that the sergeant’s trip had been fruitful.

  ‘It was her,’ Lineham said ungrammatically. ‘That’s definite. The barmaid saw her too and, being a woman, even described what she was wearing – a brown tweed coat with a mermaid brooch on the lapel. She particularly noticed the brooch because she fancied it, asked Mrs Holmes where she’d got it.’

  ‘Good.’ Thanet sat down, took out his pipe, began filling it. ‘Go on then. Let’s hear the details.’

  It was, according to the landlord, the third or fourth time that Julie and her boyfriend had visited the Dog and Whistle, always on a Tuesday evening. The landlord was certain of this because Tuesday was Darts Match night and the couple always arrived, separately, soon after the match began at eight.

  Last Tuesday had been no exception. The man arrived first, ordered drinks for both of them and waited, sitting at the bar because the pub was crowded and there were no tables empty. Julie arrived soon afterwards and shortly after that a table became vacant and they moved – the barmaid remembered this, because of her interest in Julie’s brooch and because, practised at interpreting people’s moods, she had seen at once that Julie was ‘uptight’, as she put it.

  She had therefore kept an eye on them, interested to see what would happen. She was rewarded by signs of a developing quarrel, Julie shaking her head repeatedly and the man becoming more vehement, leaning forward and making angry gestures.

  After about half an hour – the barmaid could be no more accurate than that – Julie had jumped up and run out of the pub ‘in a real state, hardly knew what she was doing’. She had bumped into one of the darts team without apologising, earning herself some ‘dirty looks’. Her companion had sat on for a few minutes, glowering into his glass and had then finished his drink and left.

  ‘They didn’t happen to see if he followed her?’r />
  ‘No. They were very busy and anyway the windows in the Dog and Whistle are high up. The barmaid couldn’t have seen without going outside to look and even if she hadn’t been busy I don’t think she’d have been interested enough to do that.’

  ‘You didn’t get the name?’

  ‘No. The man wasn’t a regular.’

  ‘Pity. Still, things are looking up, aren’t they? This all fits in beautifully with what I learned from Mrs Thorpe.’ Thanet gave Lineham an account of his interview with her.

  ‘Yes. I see what you mean, sir. You think this man might have followed Mrs Holmes back to Gladstone Road after the quarrel, started haranguing her again. She grabs the carving knife and in the struggle she gets killed.’

  ‘Seems logical, don’t you think, in view of what we now know? Fits all the known facts, too. Let me see. If they stayed at the pub for about half an hour, they must have left between, say, half past eight and twenty to nine. You didn’t by any chance think to check how long it takes to walk from the Dog and Whistle to Gladstone Road?’

  ‘Six minutes,’ said Lineham, with justifiable smugness.

  ‘And she died between eight-thirty and nine-thirty … Did you manage to get a decent description of the man?’

  Lineham opened his notebook but did not, Thanet noticed, do more than glance at it. He had the description off pat. ‘About five eleven, good, athletic build, springy walk, hair thick, dark brown, cut to just below his ears, eyes possibly brown. Wearing jeans and a brown suede jacket.’

  ‘The barmaid?’

  Lineham nodded.

  ‘Wish there were more like her.’

  Lineham grinned. ‘She said she noticed him particularly because she fancied him. “Dishy”, she said he was. I think that’s why she kept an eye on him and Mrs Holmes. Hoped that if Mrs Holmes ditched him, he might drift in her direction … He could be our “tall, dark man”, sir.’

  ‘He could indeed. Though neither of those two witnesses mentioned seeing Mrs Holmes.’

  ‘Perhaps he stayed a little way behind her, to give her time to cool off before he approached her again.’

  ‘Mmm. Possibly. Now, how to get hold of him … I think we’ll plump first for his being that former boyfriend of hers in London. Mrs Thorpe said he was a very persistent type. What did she say his name was? Kenny somebody, that’s right. Let’s go and see Holmes. No doubt he’ll be only too delighted to supply us with the details.’

  6

  One of Dobson’s lorries was backing out of the builder’s yard. Thanet and Lineham had to wait until it had completed its manoeuvres and driven off before they could pull in, in front of Holmes’s house.

  Holmes looked even worse than the previous day. Still unshaven, still wearing the same clothes, he said nothing when he saw the two policemen, simply turned and shuffled into the living-room, once again carefully avoiding the place where Julie’s body had lain. He flopped down into his armchair, sinking at once into what had clearly become an habitual posture, eyes dulled and staring unseeingly at the floor. Thanet and Lineham might not have been in the room for all the awareness he showed of their presence.

  Thanet grimaced at Lineham and without a word they cleared a space to sit down on the settee, which was littered with unopened newspapers and half-empty mugs, one of which had overturned, leaving a long brown stain on the golden velvet. Cups and mugs, interspersed with overflowing ashtrays, were scattered everywhere – on the mantelpiece, the floor, the transparent cover of the record-player, in the fireplace, even. There were, however, Thanet noted, no plates. Had Holmes not eaten since Tuesday evening? The air in the room was sour with more than a smell of stale sweat and cigarette smoke; the miasma of despair was so powerful as to be almost tangible.

  There was one new feature, though. A painting, from the face of which the brown paper wrapping had been roughly torn away, stood on the floor, leaning up against one of the legs of the long work table in the bay window. Thanet remembered the flat, oblong parcel which Holmes had almost kicked over in the hall, the last time Thanet came. Shadowed by the table and with its back to the light it was only dimly illuminated, but Thanet thought it looked interesting. It was a painting of a cricket match, on a village green, by the look of it. There was something oddly familiar about the scene and Thanet would have liked to get up and examine it more closely. He refrained from doing so, however – he was not here to appreciate art.

  ‘Mr Holmes?’

  Thanet had to repeat the name three times before the dulled eyes swivelled slowly upwards to meet his.

  ‘Mr Holmes, I’m sorry, but I’m afraid there are some more questions I must ask.’

  No response.

  ‘I know this is painful for you, but it really must be done,’ Thanet persisted.

  Something, the gentleness in his voice, perhaps, provoked a reaction. Holmes’s eyes filled with pain and the muscles in his jaw contracted as he clenched his teeth. Then, ‘It won’t bring her back,’ he said. His voice was rough, either from disuse or from too much smoking.

  “No,’ Thanet said. ‘But it will, I hope, help us to find out who killed her.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Holmes dully. He made a tiny, helpless gesture with one hand. ‘What the hell,’ he said. ‘Who cares?’

  ‘I do,’ said Thanet.

  There was, he now saw, something to be done before he could hope to get anything out of the man. Holmes had sunk into this torpor because it was the least painful way of dealing with an intolerable situation. Somehow, he had to be brought out of it, not only because in this state he was useless to Thanet but for his own sake, because if he went on like this he would surely, eventually, die. There was apparently no one to care whether he lived or not. Perhaps Thanet ought to try to get him into hospital? But he had a horror of interfering in people’s lives to such an unwarranted degree, ‘for their own good’. If the man did not wish to go on living, then ultimately the choice was his. Nevertheless, Thanet couldn’t just stand by and let it happen.

  ‘Mr Holmes, when did you last have anything to eat?’

  ‘Eat?’ A tiny furrow appeared between Holmes’s brows, as if he had difficulty in understanding the question.

  ‘Yes, to eat.’ Thanet gestured at the room. ‘It looks as though you’ve been living on coffee.’

  The frown became more pronounced. ‘I don’t know.’

  Thanet turned to Lineham. ‘We won’t get anything out of him while he’s like this, poor beggar. Go out to the kitchen, see if you can rustle something up, will you? And take some of these mugs with you.’

  They both got up, collected two fistfuls of mugs each and returned for more. Then Lineham began investigating the contents of the refrigerator and larder while Thanet emptied the ashtrays, finally moving to the bay window and throwing wide open two of the casement windows. Sweet, clean air rushed into the room and Holmes, who, during all this activity had remained motionless, turned his head towards the window as if its freshness had touched some chord in his memory.

  ‘Here we are,’ Lineham said cheerfully, carrying in a tray. ‘Not very exciting, but the best I can do.’ The aroma of freshly buttered toast filled the room, a wholesome, appetising smell. Lineham had scrambled some eggs, made a pot of tea.

  Holmes ate reluctantly at first and then his appetite awakened, like a man who had just discovered the existence of food.

  Lineham poured cups of tea for Thanet and himself.

  ‘I’ll recommend you for the staff canteen,’ Thanet said, grinning, as he accepted his. ‘Now then Mr Holmes, if you’re feeling better …’

  ‘Much thanks.’ Holmes had lit yet another cigarette, but he was, Thanet thought thankfully, at least looking alive again. The dullness had gone from his eyes, his movements were more positive.

  ‘Good. But before we start, please try not to let yourself get into that state again.’

  ‘Pull yourself together, you mean,’ Holmes said bitterly. ‘What for?’

  ‘Very well,’ Thanet said briskly. ‘
It’s your choice and I’m not going to argue with you. But for God’s sake make it a choice, not an abdication of responsibility. Now, these questions.’

  Holmes blinked at Thanet’s change of tone, but Thanet could see that he had at last given him cause to think. What more could he do? You can’t make a man want to live. ‘Now, I’ve been to see Mrs Thorpe and there are one or two points I want to clarify. First of all, I understand your wife’s father was killed in a road accident. Can you tell me where they were living at the time?’

  ‘London, so far as I know. Julie told me she’d lived in London all her life.’

  ‘Which area?’

  ‘Wimbledon, I think. That’s where her mother lived, and Julie too, of course, before we got married.’

  ‘Your wife had no memories of this crash?’

  ‘No. Not to my knowledge anyway.’

  ‘And you’ve no idea if she was involved in it herself?’

  ‘No. Look here, what’s all this about? How can it possibly matter?’

  ‘I’ve no idea,’ Thanet said. ‘I’m trying to understand your wife’s state of mind at the time of her death and Mrs Thorpe seemed to think that there might possibly be a connection between this accident and the nigthmares your wife had been having lately. Did your wife tell you about them?’

  ‘No, she wouldn’t. But they terrified her, all right. Me too, when she had them. She’d wake up screaming, and the first time it happened … It used to take ages to calm her down, afterwards.’

  ‘She had them most nights?’

  ‘Every night, since they started.’

  ‘Have you any idea why they did start?’

  ‘None at all.’

  ‘She’d never had them before?’

  ‘No, never.’

  ‘Then something must have triggered them off. Now, I understand that the first one occurred on a Monday evening – that would be a fortnight ago last Monday.’