by Ann Cleeves
‘The crisis of confidence was about killing his daughter,’ George said. ‘And the Mardon Wools incident. He knew he should have followed it through. After Hannah’s death he was in a state of shock and he couldn’t decide what to do. Meg decided for him. He regretted it afterwards.’
‘I don’t care,’ she cried again. ‘He had everything, didn’t he? He had money and a family to look after him. He had it all.’
‘He tried to put it right,’ George said. ‘In his autobiography.’
‘I know,’ she said. ‘ Why do you think I waited for it to be finished before I killed him?’
They walked on again without speaking. It was dusk but George’s eyes had become accustomed to the gloom. There was a soft sucking and gurgling sound as the tide came in, and the crunching of their footsteps on the shingle.
‘You were ill too, weren’t you?’ he said carefully. Molly’s phone calls had been to social work colleagues in the Midlands. She had found out about Rosie being committed to local authority care.
‘Not ill,’ she said at once. ‘Angry. I was angry.’
‘You attacked a social worker who was trying to help you,’ he said gently. With a bread knife, he could have added, but didn’t.
‘She didn’t help! She couldn’t understand. I told her that we had to come home, back here to Mardon. Mum would be all right then. But she couldn’t see it.’ She paused. ‘I lost my temper,’ she said.
‘And that’s why you got taken into care,’ he said. ‘They put you in a secure unit.’
‘It was dreadful,’ she said. ‘Hellish. That’s where I planned my revenge. It was the only thing that kept me going.’
‘You can’t have known that Jimmy Morrissey would need a cook,’ he said.
‘No,’ she said. ‘Not that. That was luck.’ She stopped walking. ‘I did enjoy the cooking,’ she said. ‘ I really enjoyed that. It was creative, you know? It was the only good thing to come out of that place.’
He nodded.
‘When I saw the advert in the magazine it was like a sign.’
‘Didn’t Jimmy recognize you at the interview?’ George asked. ‘You look so like your father.’
‘Do I?’ She was distracted again by the thought. Then: ‘You don’t think Mr Morrissey interviewed the staff? That was below him. Meg saw to all that.’
‘And later? Did he recognize you later?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘That shows the arrogance of the man, doesn’t it? My father had no impact on him at all. He didn’t even recognize the name. If he had, you know, if he’d said sorry, everything would have been different probably.’ She paused again. ‘I quite liked him in a funny sort of way. But I couldn’t go soft. Not after all that planning. All that waiting.’
‘What happened then?’ George asked. ‘You said you waited until the autobiography was finished. How did you know?’
‘He told me,’ she said simply. ‘He came into the kitchen that afternoon pleased as punch. All smiles and laughter. “That’s it,” he said, “I’ll have to read it through of course. It’s just a first draft. But I’ve got all the facts down. It’s all straight now.” It was what I’d been waiting for. I’d been planning it for months. I knew those pills would kill him. My mum had the same sort at one time. The doctor told me to keep an eye on her. “ They’re useful because they have a sedative effect that the more modern drugs don’t have. But there’s always the danger of overdose. Don’t leave them lying about where she can get hold of them.”’
‘How did you know that Jimmy had been prescribed the same tablets?’
‘I looked,’ she said. ‘ The flat was never locked. I wanted to know all about him, all about his bloody loving family. When they were out I went up and poked around. They never knew, never suspected.’
‘And that night you stole his tablets from the bathroom.’
‘That’s right,’ she said. ‘While they were at dinner. They thought I was in the kitchen skivvying. I crushed them up using two wooden spoons. I got a really fine powder.’
‘Did you put them in his food?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘I couldn’t be sure he’d eat that. I thought about the coffee but sometimes he even left that to go cold. But he’d always drink the whisky.’
‘But didn’t he keep the bottle in his study? Wouldn’t he have helped himself to a drink? He wouldn’t have needed you to get that for him.’
‘I’d cleared all the glasses away,’ she said. ‘He always started on the whisky after dinner so when I went to get his tray I knew he’d ask me to fetch him one. “Bring one for yourself,” he said. “You can have a drink with me and help me celebrate.” He was still reading through his manuscript when I came in. I could have tipped half a bottle of bleach into the glass and he wouldn’t have noticed.’
‘So there were two glasses in the study the next morning,’ he said. ‘The second one was yours.’
She nodded.
‘What was Jane doing when all this was going on?’ he asked.
‘You leave Jane out of this,’ she said sharply. ‘It’s nothing to do with her.’
‘Didn’t she even suspect?’
Rosie shook her head. ‘She thinks the best of everyone, Jane. I’ve told her, she’ll get hurt in the end. She’d have to toughen up or folks’d walk all over her.’ She paused. ‘I wasn’t going to let that happen to me,’ she cried. ‘I couldn’t let that happen to me, could I?’
It was almost dark. George took her arm gently and guided her back to the Mill. Molly would be waiting for them.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Later Molly sat on the bed in Rosie’s cell-like room and read the letter which the girl had been writing two nights before. It still lay, face down, on the dressing table:
Dear Mum,
This afternoon I went for a walk along the shore to the place where we used to go on Sunday afternoons for a picnic. Do you remember? Dad built a fire with driftwood below the tide line and we’d cook potatoes wrapped in foil. They were still hard as stones when the time came to go home and we always ended up chucking them into the water, seeing whose would go the furthest. Dad’s always seemed to go for miles, up into the sky and beyond Salter’s Spit. Halfway to Scandinavia we used to say.
I’m sorry you’ve been feeling a bit low lately. I’ll bring you back to Mardon as soon as I can. We’ll find a little house, just big enough for the two of us with a view of the river. You say I’ve deserted you but you know that’s not true.
Did you see the pictures of James Morrissey’s memorial service on the television? You said you’d get better if James Morrissey paid. I did it, just like you always told me to. I did it for you.
The letter was unsigned, unfinished. At that point Rosie had been interrupted by Molly and Jane and the bottle of wine. Molly replaced it on the dressing table. The police would find it and use it in evidence at Rosie’s trial. Molly hoped that a skilful defence lawyer would make use of it too.
She was roused by the sound of the distant dinner bell. Meg was obviously determined that the ritual of the Mill would go on.
They sat for dinner at the same single table as on the night when George and Molly had arrived at the Mill. Jane had set the table before she had heard of Rosie’s arrest and the neatly arranged cutlery, the empty glass held their attention. The younger children kept glancing surreptitiously towards the place before picking again at their food. They ate in silence. Only Meg seemed insensitive to the general mood of sadness.
‘So it was Rosie!’ she said brightly, speaking rather loudly because of her position at the head of the table. ‘I can hardly believe it. She was a good enough worker. And to think we always treated her as one of the family! She must have been unbalanced, deranged. What can one expect with parents like that? It’s in the upbringing of course.’
She seemed to bear the girl no malice for killing her husband, only for taking them all in. Now that she had got used to her role as widowed mother she was starting to enjoy it. It would always elicit sympath
y and she no longer ran the risk that her marriage would be exposed as less than perfect. Molly saw that life would be more convenient for her in many ways without James around.
Meg had come in to dinner still carrying the typescript of an article she had been correcting. It was entitled ‘Coming to Terms with Bereavement’. Molly thought Meg had lost no time in sharing her experiences with the nation’s women and supposed she would be even more in demand as a contributor to women’s magazines after the publicity surrounding Rosie’s trial.
‘I saw that dreadful man Porter arrive to take her away,’ Meg went on in the same conversational tone. ‘I could see it wasn’t the time to intrude but I shall insist on an apology from him for not taking my allegations more seriously. Perhaps I should write to the Chief Constable. What do you think, George? I’m so grateful that you proved me right in all this.’
George said nothing. He found Meg’s righteous indignation almost unbearable.
‘Are you all right?’ Molly said quickly to Jane. The housekeeper was red-eyed, drawn. She made no attempt to eat.
‘I wasn’t much of a friend to her, was I?’ Jane said abruptly. ‘All this time and she couldn’t trust me enough to tell me what was bugging her. I knew she wasn’t happy but I could never persuade her to talk. I should have seen how angry she was. I could have stopped her …’ She paused. ‘Now she’s ruined her life and there’s nothing I can do to help. She wouldn’t even let me go to the police station with her. Perhaps she thought I’d make a fuss. She probably thought I’d be useless.’
‘She wouldn’t let anyone go with her,’ Molly said. ‘She wanted to see it through on her own. It had nothing to do with you.’
‘Besides,’ Meg interrupted, ‘Jane, my dear, that would have been quite unsuitable. The police station! What would your mother say? It’s bad enough as it is. Poor Celia. She sent her daughter to me for safekeeping and you became friends with a murderer!’
‘We were friends,’ Jane said quietly to Molly. ‘ Whatever she’s done somehow that’s still important.’
‘I think I’d better phone Celia and explain before she reads about it in the press,’ Meg continued, as if Jane had not spoken. ‘I suppose there will be a lot of press coverage.’ She seemed lost in thought for a moment and Molly guessed uncharitably that she was picturing headlines like ‘ Brave Widow Fights Police Indifference. Justice at Last’. ‘I hope Celia doesn’t expect me to send you home to her, Jane. I don’t know how we’ll manage as it is if we’re opening for business again next week. Rosie was a competent cook. One must give her that. I must say it will be a relief when we get back to normal.’
Ruth looked at her mother with astonishment. How could she talk so glibly about things returning to normal? She was tempted briefly to make a grand gesture. She could walk out, leave home, tell Meg that she could not stand the hypocrisy and pretence any longer. She could live with her father or find a flat of her own. But she knew she would never do it. In the end she did not feel strongly enough. She would stay here, one of the children, pretending to be a dutiful daughter. She would read bedtime stories to Tim and Em, prevent Caitlin’s wilder excesses, be polite to the students. She would even answer the visitors’ questions about Aidan Moore.
‘Yes,’ she would say. ‘Of course we knew Aidan. It was a terrible tragedy. He was a brilliant artist. And a good friend.’
Eventually she would go away to college but even then she would return, every holiday, to the Mill. That was how most families worked. And perhaps it was healthy, the detachment, the dependence on show and form. Look at Rosie after all. Look what a close and loving family did for her.
It was left to George and Molly to make the grand gesture. When the meal was over they stood up and said that they were leaving.
‘Surely not, George,’ Meg said, ignoring Molly. ‘ Not at this time of night. At least stay until tomorrow.’
‘We’ve done what we came for,’ George said. ‘We’ve no more reason to stay.’
‘I was hoping to entertain you in the flat this evening, to say you know, thank you for all your help.’
‘There’s no need for that,’ George said. Then, brutally: ‘We’ll send our bill in the post.’
He saw his rudeness had got through to her but she would never have been impolite in return. Not in front of the children. She turned away and composed herself, not allowing her irritation to show.
‘Well if I can’t persuade you …’ she said. ‘Perhaps we’ll see you at the Mill again in happier circumstances.’
George said nothing. He knew they would never go back.
Copyright
First published in 1994 by Macmillan
This edition published 2013 by Bello
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Copyright © Ann Cleeves, 1994
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