Killing with Kindness

by Anne Morice

  “Wasn’t he spreading exactly the same stories round the studios?”

  “I’m sure he was, but he may not have succeeded quite so well there. I think that was why he took her to the Christmas Eve party. Normally he didn’t allow her within miles of the studios, but perhaps his credibility was wearing thin, so he dusted Brenda off and brought her out on that occasion purely to demonstrate what a hard case she was.”

  “You’re not suggesting that he actually contrived to get her drunk in public in order to boost his own verisimilitude? I find that very hard to believe.”

  “So do I,” Robin agreed. “And I think Tessa must have got her facts a bit muddled here. I wouldn’t have said it was possible to pass one’s wife off to the world as a confirmed alcoholic unless there was some truth in it.”

  “But of course there was some truth in it, Robin. I don’t deny that for a second.”

  “Meaning that she had occasional bouts?”

  “No, I mean that she’s cured of it, but only to the point where she can’t take a drop of alcohol in any shape or form. She’s one of those people who, once they start drinking, are unable to stop. Mike knew that as well as anyone and he talked her into having a couple of stiff ones before they set out for the party, on the grounds that it would liven her up and release all the terrible inhibitions. He even took a flask along in the car, believe it or not, so she was pretty far gone when they arrived. What the little brute didn’t realise was that he’d finally gone too far and the worm was about to turn. About to turn into a clever and determined murderess, as you might say.”

  “Is that when she decided to kill him?”

  “I think I’d have done the same,” Toby admitted. “She certainly had provocation, you know. Perhaps we should arrange for Gerald to get her acquitted?”

  “He may have a little difficulty there,” Robin pointed out, “since it would appear that she has confessed.”

  “Only to me, and I advised her not to say a word unless her solicitor was present. But would you both care to hear the whole story, exactly as she told it to me this morning?”

  “Very much indeed,” Toby replied. “Shouldn’t we, Robin?”

  “Since you know as well as I do that Tessa means to tell us anyway, I suppose you feel there is nothing to be lost by being gracious about it?”

  “It all began,” I said, ignoring this, “almost seven years ago, soon after the birth of Barry Parsons when Brenda first began to hit the bottle. Up to then her life hadn’t been too awful because although Mike neglected her shamefully she was at least able to go out and about on her own a bit and she also had a part time job. Once there was a baby in the house all that came to an end. He’d completely destroyed her confidence for driving and so she was stranded on her own in the house from eight o’clock in the morning, quite often until ten or eleven at night, and sometimes all through the weekend as well.

  “When Mike discovered that she was consoling herself with a steady intake of whisky and gin the most extraordinary thing happened. Instead of doing everything in his power to cut off her supplies, as most husbands would, and which wouldn’t have been at all difficult in their circumstances, he positively encouraged her to step up her drinking. He even arranged for a dozen bottles to be delivered to the house every week, so that she would no longer have the trouble of pushing the pram down to the supermarket for it. And you know why? I’ll tell you.”

  “We thought you might.”

  “Because under that shy little exterior he was a sadist and a power maniac. He wanted to dominate people totally and to do it he had first to reduce them to the meanest abject level. Brenda’s weakness made a perfect weapon because he would arrive home and find her slightly groggy, and the house not quite so trim as he felt it should be, and so then the bullying and scolding would begin. Sometimes he would go on for over an hour, until she was a sobbing wreck, swearing over and over again that she would never touch another drop. You get the picture?”

  “Clearly,” Toby said with extreme distaste.

  “It doesn’t get any brighter, I must tell you, because when he’d wrung that situation dry he’d suddenly turn on the smiles again and tell her that she was forgiven, but she must take it easy for a bit and put her feet up while he cleared up some of the mess. Then he’d set to with the brushes and vacuum cleaner and literally force her to sit by, twiddling her thumbs, and watch him do the house-work. Afterwards he’d tell her she was a good girl and should have a nice strong nightcap, to make sure she slept well, and off they’d toddle to bed.

  “Actually, at this stage, Brenda wasn’t too bad, just hardly ever completely sober, and this went on even when she became pregnant again. But of course those two particular conditions tend to make women rather a drag and inevitably Mike grew bored with tormenting her and spent even less time at home. I gather it was around then that he first took up with Chloe and her brother.

  “So naturally Brenda became worse and worse until finally the catastrophe hit them. It was when Keith, the younger child, was about two years old. Brenda was at the end of her tether, coping with two small children in solitary confinement and the drinking had got a real hold on her. One day, as the direct result of her being half stoned, the baby fell on to the electric fire and ended up in hospital with third degree burns.

  “Well, as you might guess, that brought matters to a head. The little boy was in a touch and go condition for weeks and when the doctor sniffed out the true cause of the accident he prevailed on Brenda to go as a voluntary patient for treatment. She’d had the most appalling shock and didn’t need much persuasion. Whether Mike was quite so ready to fall in with the idea I don’t know, but I daresay it had shaken him a bit too, and anyway he probably had no option, especially as his sister-in-law was quite prepared to have Barry to stay with her in the meantime. I don’t think she’s such a bad woman, incidentally, but like so many others she’s utterly ignorant of the real nature of Brenda’s complaint and inclined to take a very moralising attitude.”

  “One way and another, they sound a thoroughly detestable family,” Toby remarked.

  “Yes, and isn’t it strange how things are so rarely what they seem? You bowl through the night in a train, looking at all the little lighted windows and you picture people behind them, watching television or planning their summer holidays over steaming cups of cocoa, and it all seems so safe and cosy. I quite envy them sometimes, but of course it isn’t really like that at all. Half of them are in the grip of these terrible primitive emotions and working them out on each other in the most fiendish ways imaginable.”

  “A trifle less of the homespun philosophy, if you please!” Toby entreated. “We haven’t got all night, you know. At least, I haven’t.”

  “Oh, very well,” I said. “And it may please you to know that we can skip a year or two here, because we now move on to that studio party. The baby has recovered, although he’s still physically retarded and has such a terrifying squint that it’s quite painful to look at him; and a combination of fright and medical treatment has done the trick for Brenda too. She is now on the wagon.

  “Well, you know what took place at the party and of course the next morning she was nearly out of her mind. It wasn’t only that she had the most ghastly hangover and was craving for a drink to set her up again. She also had to face the fact that Mike had done this to her deliberately, that he actively sought to turn her into an addict again, even though it would lead to her total destruction and possibly the children’s as well. Some fun, eh?

  “Incidentally,” I went on, as neither of them answered, “that was one of the two points where Chloe gave herself away, if only I’d been bright enough to notice. She hinted that the reason for Mike being teetotal was that it was he who had caused an accident when drunk, whereas every single other person who knew him maintained that it was on account of his wife’s dipsomania. Chloe, of course, was the exception who knew the whole truth, but that was one part of the story which she and Brenda hadn’t worked on.�
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  “What was the other?” Robin asked.

  “Oh, that was the mythical Sandy who kept me running round in circles for so long. Brenda had invented him, for reasons which I’ll come to in a moment, but she knew I would get to Chloe as soon as I saw the scrap of paper with her signature on it. In fact, that was her sole purpose in showing it to me.”

  “Which strikes me as odd. One would have thought their best bet was to keep you apart?”

  “Yes, I expect that was the original policy, but I don’t think Brenda had bargained on my taking up her cause with quite such zeal. Instead of the passive role she’d allotted me I had started ringing her up and even driving down to see her without proper warning. It didn’t suit her, and Chloe was brought in to demonstrate that even though his wife had no motive for wanting him out of the way plenty of other people might have, and at the same time to discourage me from getting too nosey. However, that was a last minute strategy and when she set it up Brenda forgot to warn Chloe about this fictitious Sandy. What happened was that when I called at Old Lock Cottage, Chloe first of all denied ever having heard of any Sandy, but while I was talking to her someone rang up, and then a bit later on she quite casually threw it out that she did remember Mike mentioning him. It was curious and I should have realised earlier that this was a common factor between them. They both knew about Sandy, whereas everyone else I questioned had simply never heard of him.

  “However, to get back to Brenda’s story, it was when the frightful truth about Mike dawned on her that she made up her mind sooner or later to kill him. She hadn’t the faintest idea how she would do it, still less how to do it and get away with it, but she hit on a very clever jumping off point. It occurred to her that she had a unique weapon and without quite knowing how she would use it she determined to make it a secret weapon. Poor old Brenda, I believe she might have been quite a brainy type if she’d had a proper education. I expect there must be thousands of women like her, don’t you? All their latent intelligence turning to cunning, simply because they’ve never had a proper outlet for it or a chance to develop it constructively.”

  “Oh, all right,” I said crossly, as Toby held up a warning hand. “If you want the story straight and without the interesting sidelights you shall have it. Brenda’s secret weapon was her drinking. Or, to be precise, her pretence of drinking. She never let the act get too ambitious, but she knew better than most how to imitate someone in a mild state of intoxication and she was very careful to neglect the house a bit, specially when she knew for certain that Mike would be coming home. It was all deliberately done to ensure that he would consistently underestimate her and so be off his guard when her moment came. She even kept up the farce of the weekly order. I do wish I’d remembered to ask her what she did with all those bottles. Perhaps she managed to flog them. Somehow I can’t see her pouring all that expensive stuff down the drain. She’s a very frugal person.”

  “Not only frugal and clever, but superhuman too, if you ask me,” Robin said. “Imagine someone with a weakness like hers spending day after day alone in the house, with all that temptation within reach and not even a spot of housework to keep her busy!”

  “Ah, but you see she didn’t spend all that time alone in the house. Oh dear me, no, you underestimate her. I should explain that she was practical as well as clever and she got herself a job. Only part time, admittedly, and it was understood that she couldn’t work during the school holidays or when her husband was at home for any reason, but can’t you see what a delightful set-up it was? Once the boys had been despatched on the school bus all she had to do was to trot down to an office in the High Street and earn herself a dinky private income, which was tucked away in a separate account for the rainy, or rather sunny, day when she became a widow. No need to bother with the boring old cooking and housework because she only had to put on a show of being slightly squiffy and the little man would see to all that in the evening.”

  “Did she really tell you this herself?”

  “It was more a question of confirming it for me. I’d had my suspicions for some time, partly because of all the tricks she’d resorted to to ensure that I would only telephone her by arrangement. First of all she spun a pitiful tale about hating to answer the telephone in case it should be Mike, and then she was so upset and disappointed when it turned out not to be. She couldn’t keep that up once he was known to be dead, so then we had the one about being too frightened to answer because of the anonymous calls. Quite untrue, of course, but having invented this Sandy in order to strew a few false trails around, she used him again as one of her anonymous callers. Unfortunately for her, this was a double-edged sword. I had urged her to tell the police about these calls and eventually she did so, possibly fearing that otherwise I might, and it had a repercussion she hadn’t bargained for. They told her they were going to tap her line, which meant that from then on it became too risky for her and Chloe to keep in touch by telephone. They had to find another means and luckily there was a perfect one ready made for them. I speak now of the Four Corners Travel Bureau.”

  “You have been getting around, haven’t you, Tessa?” Robin asked reproachfully.

  “It’s only fifteen minutes’ walk from Hill Grove, actually. I saw Chloe coming out of it the other day, behaving in a somewhat furtive manner and when I confronted her with it she denied it absolutely.”

  “I can hardly see how admitting it would have incriminated her,” Toby said. “But no doubt you are about to tell us?”

  “Because an office at the back of it was where Brenda did her accounting and secretarial work. Chloe had once revealed that her mother had left her part share in an agency. She didn’t specify what kind, but I put two and two together trusting to luck they’d add up to five and that, my friends, was the first major breakthrough.

  “Well, I see from your faces,” I went on after a brief silence, “that you still do not see the vital importance of sniffing out a collaboration between Chloe and Brenda. Apart from Alec Ferguson, who was a candidate at one time, those two were always my principal suspects.”

  “Why Ferguson?”

  “He became so touchy and evasive as soon as Mike was known to have vanished; really vanished, I mean, not just left his wife in the lurch. And then he threw up his job for no apparent reason. However, with a little help from Gerald, I soon realised that he was scared stiff that there would be a police enquiry at the studios, which he might become involved in, particularly as there’s reason to suppose that Mike was blackmailing him. All he wanted was to lie low until the thing had blown over.

  “So anyway, there I was with Brenda and Chloe once more, each of them temperamentally capable of such a crime, but physically having to be ruled out. One of them had a first rate motive, which she didn’t hesitate to proclaim at the top of her lungs, but no opportunity, for you cannot by any stretch of the imagination conceive of a dead man being shoved in the river in such a way that he will float upstream for twelve or fifteen miles. The other, being his wife, had the best opportunity for murdering him, though no perceptible motive and, as I discovered during the driving lesson, no hope at all of getting the corpse into the river. The minute I got a hint that they were in it together all these little problems were smoothed away.”

  “If you really picked up all this as you went along, I cannot think why you didn’t pass it on to the proper quarters,” Robin said, being subject to a one track mind on occasions.

  “There wasn’t anything to pass on; just a growing pile of trivial incidents and anomalies which didn’t fall into a pattern. Take that business of the wheelbarrow, for instance. It happened when I met Brenda for only the second time, long before any of us knew that Mike was dead, and yet if I’d played it right she might have broken down there and then and confessed all. Just for a flash she believed I’d guessed the truth and she came within an inch of admitting it.”

  “What was the incident of the wheelbarrow?” Toby asked. “Did you not tell me, or can I have forgotten?”
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  “Or could it be that you weren’t listening? It was when I was leaving. The little boys were giving each other rides in the wheelbarrow. Brenda went through the roof and screamed at them like a lunatic. Afterwards she practically passed out and I said something like, ‘I suppose it was seeing the wheelbarrow that upset you?’, to which she replied, ‘How did you guess?’ and if only I’d kept my silly mouth shut I might have learnt exactly what it was about the wheelbarrow that sent her into hysterics, thereby saving myself a whole lot of trouble.”

  “And exactly what was it about the wheelbarrow?”

  “I think there were two things really. One was that it had been used as a prop in the hedge clipping scene, which was set up to establish her alibi and to confuse everyone about the time of Mike’s death. But what really gave her the horrors was that she and Chloe had used it the night before to wheel him from the house to the garage, and I daresay she hasn’t been able to look at it since without seeing his dead body curled up inside it.”

  “So he was actually killed the night before his so-called disappearance, was he?”

  “Yes, and that was the one part of the plan which had to be left to chance. All the rest had been worked out to a hair, but it was agreed that Brenda should choose her own moment for lacing his bedtime drink and holding the cushion over his face as soon as he’d passed out. Funny how enormous events hinge on tiny ones, isn’t it? It was a dry, moonless night, which made it suitable, but what chiefly spurred her on was that he’d drawn all the money out of their joint account and was proposing to squander the lot on some silly boat. She was sick to death of his chucking his money around on his stupid good works and on spirits which nobody drank, and this was the last straw.”