by Jill McGown
And anyway, he liked Chris. He didn’t want him to be in this terrible trouble, and he didn’t understand why he was. Forget it, forget it, he told himself sternly. One thing at a time. Wait and see. No point in meeting trouble halfway. Having exhausted his supply of wise saws, he lifted his face to the thin jets, screwing up his eyes and letting the water cascade over his face. It streamed down his body, washing away the soap and the fatigue and the worry.
What did it matter? The whole thing was a mess.
‘I still can’t believe it,’ Elaine Short said, handing Lloyd a cup of unannounced coffee, her hand shaking slightly as she did so. She was tall, slender to the point of thinness, and as elegant and graceful as a dancer. She and her husband were both in their forties – about his own age, Lloyd judged. Martin Short, looking anxiously at his wife, was about as different from her as he could be. He clearly never skipped lunch; he lumbered amiably about the room in search of things he had mislaid – his cigarettes, his lighter, his glasses, the plans of the café and boathouse. His fair hair never stayed where he meant it to, and he flicked it off his forehead as he spoke.
‘You read about this sort of thing,’ he said to Lloyd. ‘But you never imagine them as real people, do you?’ He lit a cigarette, having finally run to earth the necessary equipment to do so. ‘I mean, you don’t think of them as being ordinary.’
The Shorts had given him the bare bones of what had happened the night before. What time Donald and Julia arrived, that Julia left very shortly afterwards, that Chris offered to run her back to the Mitchells. They had admitted, reluctantly, that she had refused the offer at first; but then, Elaine assured him, people did, didn’t they?
He knew now that Wade was a widower, a piece of information defensively given to him by Elaine, as though it might damage his case.
‘Your brother’s wife,’ he asked. ‘How long ago did she die?’
‘Two years ago,’ Martin answered. ‘It was a car crash. Chris took it very hard – he was driving.’ His eyes flicked over to his wife as he spoke. ‘He blamed himself,’ he went on. ‘But it was no one’s fault really – a dog ran out. It was just one of those things.’
‘He’s all right now, is he?’ Lloyd asked.
‘Oh yes. It took him a while – he began to drink a fair bit. Don and Helen were very good to him, I believe.’ He started looking for an ashtray. ‘We weren’t here then,’ he added. ‘We’ve just moved here.’ Finding the ashtray, he sank back into the sofa. ‘That’s why it’s so hard to believe,’ he said. ‘He wasn’t drinking or anything.’ Too late, he realised that the statement presupposed his brother-in-law’s guilt. ‘Not that I think—’
‘He didn’t kill her!’ Elaine Short interrupted him vehemently, bringing down the coffee pot with a thud, and sitting down opposite Lloyd. She didn’t share the sofa with her husband as Helen Mitchell had done, and yet Lloyd got a sense of unity from the Shorts that had been singularly lacking from the Mitchells. It was of no importance – he just liked to collect the odd pieces of human behaviour that came his way.
‘Nobody knows what happened yet, Mrs Short.’ Lloyd sipped his coffee and was pleasantly surprised.
‘What happened is that Chris took her home from here, and now she’s dead and he’s disappeared,’ she said, succinctly enough. She jumped up, and walked to the window. ‘And you think he killed her,’ she added. ‘Don’t you?’
‘I don’t know, Mrs Short. Really, I don’t. I want to speak to him certainly.’ He took another sip of coffee. ‘And,’ he continued, ‘it would be silly of me to pretend that he isn’t under suspicion, because he is. But I don’t know enough yet to have formed any conclusions.’
‘You don’t seem to have to know!’ she said angrily.
‘Oh?’ Lloyd finished his coffee and walked over to her. ‘What have I done to indicate that?’ He stood beside her, looking out at the garden, fresh after the rain, to see yet more rain darken the pathway as he spoke.
‘You’ve got men searching the woods,’ she said miserably.
‘She was naked, Mrs Short. Her clothes could tell us a lot.’ The voice was gentle, though the effect of his words was not meant to be.
Elaine Short was staring at him, and then her husband. Lloyd didn’t speak, but nodded as she looked back at him.
‘Are you suggesting that Chris—?’ she didn’t, wouldn’t, finish the sentence.
‘I’m asking for help, Mrs Short. I want to know as much as you do – as much as everyone who came into contact with Julia Mitchell knows. Then, I can perhaps come to a conclusion. And I don’t know until then whether that conclusion will involve your brother or not.’
She walked shakily back to her chair, but Lloyd didn’t go with her. ‘So,’ he said. ‘You’ve told me that Donald Mitchell stayed and your brother ran Julia Mitchell home.’ He stayed by the window, and didn’t look round at the Shorts. He could feel the eye-signals, and even see a faint reflection in the window as the clouds raced across, darkening the sky.
He turned, quickly, and they tried to look as though no communication had taken place, like schoolchildren caught cheating in an exam.
‘Now,’ he said. ‘I’d like to know what they said, what you said, what you thought, even.’ He sat down then, fixing Elaine with his eye. ‘And if you don’t believe your brother could have killed her,’ he said, ‘you won’t help him by missing anything out.’
‘I don’t think Elaine had any intention of—’ Martin began, protectively, but he was interrupted.
‘No, I hadn’t,’ Elaine said. ‘But I would, if I thought it would help. There’s nothing to leave out,’ she said simply. ‘At least, not about Chris.’
Martin shifted uncomfortably as his wife looked over at him. ‘It hasn’t really got anything to do with us,’ he said. ‘Or what happened, for that matter.’
‘It might, whatever it is,’ Lloyd said. ‘Tell me. If it’s got nothing to do with it, no one will ever know I knew.’ He smiled at Martin with the clear-eyed honest look that almost always worked, and wasn’t disappointed.
‘They had had a row,’ Martin said, reluctantly. ‘Donald and Julia. They were still going at it hammer and tongs when they got here.’
Elaine rose, and switched on the table lamp. ‘She was very angry,’ she said. ‘She wouldn’t stay.’
‘Mr Mitchell did mention an argument,’ Lloyd said. ‘I don’t think you’re breaking a confidence.’ But there was more, obviously. He smiled at Mrs Short. ‘I don’t suppose I could beg another cup of that coffee, could I? It just isn’t like that when Constable Sandwell makes it.’
‘Of course.’ She poured another cup for each of them, and came to a visible decision. ‘I don’t think it really has any bearing on it,’ she said. ‘But I – that is, we – we think Donald was having an affair with Julia Mitchell.’
Lloyd raised his eyebrows. ‘I see,’ he said. ‘And the row could have been of a more personal nature than I was led to believe?’
‘It could have been,’ she said, as cautiously as he had.
Lloyd stirred his coffee thoughtfully. ‘What makes you think they were having an affair?’
‘Not what they were saying,’ Martin said. ‘That could have been about anything. It didn’t make much sense unless you’d heard the rest of the row.’
The coffee was almost gone again. Lloyd tried to make it last, but the cups were very small. ‘What were they saying?’
Martin screwed up his face as he tried to remember. ‘He said something about her doing something, or not doing something, and she said that she hadn’t promised to.’
Setting down his empty cup regretfully, Lloyd asked if either of them could remember the exact words.
‘No. I don’t think so,’ Martin said slowly. ‘They were angry – shouting at each other. I don’t know exactly what they said.’
‘I think I do,’ Elaine said. ‘As far as I can remember, he said “I wouldn’t have believed you’d do this,” or something like that.’
‘
That’s right,’ said Martin, suddenly coming to life. ‘And she said “More fool you” – I remember that. And then that she’d never promised anything. He said it was a row about the boating lake, but—’ he shrugged.
‘And what makes you so sure it wasn’t?’
There was a silence and Martin’s skin became slightly pink.
‘Tell him, Martin.’
‘I don’t think it’s anyone’s business but theirs!’
‘Tell him!’
Martin hunched his shoulders like a small boy, then spoke quickly, throwing away the words. ‘It’s nothing really. I had to be in London for a couple of days a few weeks ago, and I stayed the night rather than do the trip twice.’ He began to search for his cigarettes. ‘At an hotel.’
‘They’re on the table,’ Lloyd and Elaine said in unison, then smiled with some warmth at one another.
‘I was booking out on the Sunday morning, and I saw Donald and Julia coming down the stairs. It was first thing in the morning.’
‘Did they see you?’
‘No.’ Martin looked ashamed. ‘I don’t think so. I saw them at the top of the stairs, and I went into the phone box as they came round the corner.’
‘A bit of a coincidence, that,’ Lloyd said. ‘Out of all the hotels in London.’
‘No – not really. It was Donald who suggested I stay there if ever I was in town.’
‘And he still doesn’t know you saw him?’
‘No.’ Martin Short had retreated so far back into the sofa that he was almost invisible.
‘Now. Last night. They came in, having a row. How long did Mrs Mitchell stay?’
‘Two minutes,’ Elaine said. ‘Not even that.’
‘They stood there,’ Martin said, indicating a spot near the door. ‘I didn’t even have time to offer her a drink.’ He pursed his lips. ‘Perhaps if she’d stayed—’
‘Then he called her a mercenary bitch, and she said she was going,’ Elaine said. ‘She’d sooner walk home than stay with him – that sort of stuff. And that’s when Chris offered her a lift.’
‘Right. And when did Mr Mitchell leave?’
‘The storm began just after that, and he waited until after eleven – well after – before he left.’
‘Thank you.’ Lloyd rose. ‘You’ve been very helpful – and the coffee was delicious.’ Twelve o’clock, his watch assured him. No wonder he was beginning to feel peckish. ‘I’ve been here a long time,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Never mind about that,’ Martin said. ‘Just so long as you get to the bottom of it.’ He was neatly overtaken by Elaine, who followed Lloyd to the door.
‘You still think that Chris did it, don’t you?’ she asked him, as he stepped out into the gusty wind.
He turned back to face her. ‘I don’t have any other theory to consider yet,’ he said. ‘You said it yourself – he took her home, she’s dead, and he’s disappeared. But they’re looking for evidence now – it could change the whole picture.’
‘If you want someone else to suspect,’ she said, ‘you try Helen Mitchell. Ask her where she was when Donald tried to ring her – twice. You ask her that – it’s her husband Julia was sleeping with, after all!’
Chris Wade sat in the gloom, his knees drawn up to his chest, his ears straining to hear any sound above the whine of the wind in the trees. There was a window, but years of untroubled grime blocked out most of the watery light. He didn’t dare move until it was dark, and he couldn’t stand in the confined space. The bench was beginning to assume the comfort rating of a king size double bed, but he must not lie down. He might sleep, and be taken by surprise. He’d made matters worse now, by running away, and the only justification would be if it gave him time. Time to remember, time to make sense of it all, time to go to the police of his own accord.
Helen would be in trouble if they found out he’d been there. He’d tried to tell her; dimly, through the haze of drunken memory, he could remember trying to explain. She had patted him, humoured him, cradled him like a baby. He could feel her arms, soft and welcoming, until he asked her to leave him. And then the police came, and told her Julia was dead. And he, for a single, stricken second, believed he’d killed her. His alcohol-clouded mind told him to run. Donald told him to run, when he took his time answering the police. Helen told him to run, with her direct, atypical lie.
So he had run, and in the safety of his lair, he’d made the mistake of slipping off his shoe to examine his ankle. He couldn’t get the shoe on again, which made even giving himself up a difficult obstacle to overcome. But at least his prison was safe – even the vandals had forgotten it existed, and it would be a while before the police remembered. It had seemed so important once – it was an eyesore, a disgrace. But now the tangle of bushes almost hid it, and the good people of Stansfield had forgotten all about it. To Chris it was no eyesore; it was a haven, a safe-house, a resting place where he could have time. Once he’d decided what to say, then he’d go to the police.
It would be nice, though, to lie down. Just for a moment.
One o’clock, and no more news than they had already given. Helen Mitchell switched off the radio, and poured herself a stiff drink. The gin was possibly negating the less fattening qualities of the slimline tonic, but for the moment she didn’t care about her thickening waist. She had never been sylph-like; she was the land of woman once called handsome. At fifty she was perhaps more attractive than in her youth – age suited her tall, well-built frame rather better than girlishness had. In her teens, she had felt like an Amazon, in her twenties and thirties, unfashionable. During her forties, her robustness had mellowed into a suggestion of overweight, and had made her softer, more approachable. Now she kept an eye on the calories as middle-age spread threatened to make her merely fat.
Donald had gone off with the police to make the identification, and Helen had tried hard to feel something, but she couldn’t. She was worried sick about Chris, that was all. Julia and Donald and the rest of the world could, and probably would, go to hell. She wanted to know if Chris was all right.
Last night seemed a long time ago. It had all started when Donald had rung looking for Julia, and had suggested that she and Chris might have gone off somewhere together. The irritation she had felt at the suggestion surprised her. Irritation was the name she had given to the sudden sweep of anger, but jealousy would have been nearer the mark. Chris was her business. She had put down the phone with such force that Margaret, who was visiting, had asked her what was wrong, but she had just laughed it off with ‘Men!’ and there were no more questions, because they had to leave to catch Margaret’s train.
At first, she hadn’t liked Chris, who had presented himself as a surly, uncommunicative young man, who had usually had too much to drink. She had asked Donald not to bring him to the house, but when he explained about the accident, her sympathy had been roused, and she had taken over the role of keeper, cooking meals for him, listening to him when he was maudlin and berating himself for being the cause of Carrie’s death. She had watched the gradual effects of her patient counselling, as he emerged from the self-pity, and his health, both mental and physical, returned. He began to piece together his life and his business, both perilously close to bankruptcy after months of neglect.
Then Charles Mitchell had died, and Donald had to deal with his estate, which meant spending even more time in London, at the Mitchell Development offices. Spending time with Julia. One night, when he rang yet again to say that he was staying over in London, she had told Chris about Julia, and about Donald’s other girls. The final, fatal straw had been dropped in place, and the sudden rush of emotion caused their relationship to undergo a sea-change. He was fourteen years her junior, and until a month ago she had been just someone to run to, someone who would put up with him in any mood, in any state. In the last few weeks, everything had changed.
Chris’s sister and her husband moved to Stansfield and perhaps it was Elaine who got Chris when he needed cheering up, because it c
ertainly wasn’t Helen. She knew he needed her, and now he was saying he wanted her. She had just begun to believe him, begun to accept that his motive was not one of pity, or gratitude, begun to make less of an attempt at concealment of their changed relationship, when this happened.
The clock had turned back two years when he staggered in, breathing whisky fumes all over her. And Helen knew then that she didn’t care what happened to her or anyone else. Chris was all she cared about.
‘Mrs Marsden?’ Judy smiled at the lady who sat in reception, even though she had probably given herself indigestion hurrying up her canteen Sunday lunch in order to see her.
Mrs Marsden was a small woman with a neat figure and greying hair.
‘If you’d like to come with me,’ she said, and Mrs Marsden stood up.
‘I hope it’s him you’re looking for,’ she said in a stage whisper. ‘He wouldn’t say.’ She nodded to Tom Rogers on the desk. ‘I’ll feel such a fool making all this fuss if it’s not.’
‘No need, Mrs Marsden,’ Judy assured her, pushing open the swing door into the CID room. It was quiet now after the controlled excitement prior to lunch, when everyone had gone around trying to look as though it was all in a day’s work. Only Joe Miller held the fort.
‘They’re all out,’ Joe said, with a sigh. ‘Or gone back to their own jobs, thank God.’
This was a reference to the Superintendent who was, Judy had already noted with relief, back upstairs where he belonged.
‘Through here,’ Judy said, as their heels rang through the empty office. She held open the door to the office she shared with Lloyd, and indicated a chair. ‘Have a seat,’ she said. ‘Bring it up to the desk.’ She smiled encouragingly. ‘Now. You think you’ve got something that will help us?’
‘Only if it’s him you’re looking for.’
‘Who would that be?’
‘Mr Wade from the garage on Victoria Street.’
Judy rearranged some files on her desk. ‘Is that what you’ve heard?’
‘Everyone says so. You’ve been at the garage, and it’s been closed all day.’