A Trio of Murders: A Perfect Match, Redemption, Death of a Dancer

by Jill McGown

  ‘And then you went back to the Hall. It was still pouring – Mr Treadwell got soaked to the skin just walking round the Barn. But you went all the way from Palmerston House, which is at this end of the school, to the Hall, which is at the other end, without getting wet at all. Not even damp. You were dry, Matthew. Your clothes were dry. How did you manage that?’

  ‘I had my coat on.’

  She shook her head. ‘You didn’t have a coat,’ she said. ‘I saw you in the crowd. You weren’t wearing a coat, and you weren’t carrying one. And only Mrs Hamlyn’s coat was in the cloakroom. Try again.’

  Matthew hated her. She had been cleverer than him. He didn’t like that. But that wasn’t enough. It couldn’t be.

  She smiled. A cold, hard smile. ‘I’ll tell you how you did it,’ she said. ‘We knew whoever did it had to have changed his clothes. And who could change out of formal dress without people noticing? Someone in a school uniform, that’s who. You murdered Mrs Hamlyn, you ran back to the House, and picked up your old uniform. The one you had outgrown. The one your father had to replace this term. I imagine you stuffed it into one plastic bag, and the broken golf-club into another. You ran through the rain to the school.’

  Matthew was beginning to panic again. The panic that had engulfed him when Mrs Hamlyn wouldn’t stop sobbing like that, and he had run away, the blood pounding in his ears, still sure he could hear her when he got to the House. The panic that had made him careless with the loft door. He mustn’t be careless. He mustn’t panic.

  ‘You burned the club, and you changed your clothes. You hung the uniform you’re wearing now up to dry. No one was going to go into the boiler room until Sunday.’

  How did she know what he had done? He wasn’t left in doubt for long.

  ‘I told you that I saw you later that night, Matthew. In the crowd. I saw someone whose trousers and sleeves were about an inch too short; a boy, still growing. But that’s not how you looked last month. And it isn’t how you look today. I don’t think you get taller and shorter, Matthew.’

  It should have worked. He had spoken to everyone he could think of about the accident, and the golf-club incident. It had worked; the rumours had hit the classrooms by lunchtime. Mrs Knight might have killed her, they were saying. The police are here again. Not enough for them to charge her, but enough to suspect her. Enough to keep him out of it.

  It had worked. So why was he here? How did she know, how did she work it out?

  ‘I know someone like you, Matthew,’ she said.

  Perhaps she read minds, too.

  ‘He had me fooled,’ she said. ‘But I don’t get caught the same way twice.’ She paused. ‘The next day, you went to help Mrs Knight set up a project in the school building. You raked the metal head of the golf-club out of the ashes, and put it in the ashcan. You picked up your uniform, and put it in your briefcase.’

  It was all circumstantial. His father would get lawyers who could make mincemeat of her case.

  ‘You can’t prove any of this,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, yes, we can. You’re interested in forensics – you should know that. We have a thumbprint. We have threads from your blazer. We have samples from the victim, and now we even have a thing called DNA testing. Genetic fingerprinting. Do you know what that is, Matthew? It means that all sorts of things can be proved that could once only be suggested. Paternity, for instance. Right of inheritance. Rape. Murder.’

  Panic took hold; Matthew leaped up, and ran from the room, from the house, smack into the arms of two police officers in the doorway.

  The sergeant came out, followed by Lloyd; Treadwell brought up the rear.

  ‘You should have let her live, Matthew,’ she said.

  Matthew stopped trying to struggle free. It wouldn’t get him anywhere even if he could. He hated Sergeant Hill.

  ‘She wasn’t about to tell anyone. Her husband had just been made deputy head. Think about it – think about her history. Think about the headlines. She wasn’t going to report it – she ran away from Mr Treadwell sooner than have to explain.’

  Matthew’s eyes widened. She was right. She was right. And his body sagged a little, his weight taken by the policemen who held him, one on either side.

  ‘But maybe Mrs Knight would have made her tell the police,’ she went on. ‘And we would have charged you. But what would have happened? A sixteen-year-old schoolboy and a woman like her? A nice middle-class sixteen-year-old schoolboy and a woman with a reputation like Mrs Hamlyn’s? She had to have led you on. She had to have been asking for it. And the violence was . . . well, within reason, shall we say? A professional foul – that’s how I understand it was described. And that’s how they would have seen it in court. A guilty plea, a show of remorse and, my God, Matthew, you would have got so many Brownie points they would have probably sent her to jail instead.’

  Matthew swallowed.

  ‘But you murdered her,’ she said. ‘And perhaps she didn’t die in vain. Perhaps she saved a lot of other women going through what she went through in that car.’ She stepped back a little, and looked at him for what seemed like for ever.

  ‘Now you can take him away,’ she said.

  He hated her.

  They had put on his film. After all the other programmes, where no one would notice it. But Judy had; she had gone to bed without the attendant nagging of his fantasy. He got up when it had finished, and took his mug into his suddenly tidy kitchen; he wasn’t sure he could get used to that. He couldn’t just leave it, like he would have done before. He washed it up, put out the light, and went back through to the living-room. Television off, video off, lamp – his eye caught Judy’s ashtray. He would have to add that to the list, he thought, examining it carefully before putting its contents in the waste-basket, as though the cigarette that she had stubbed out two hours ago might suddenly leap into life-threatening flame.

  He went round doing his usual check of windows and gas-taps. Putting the cat out, he called it in his head. Not that he had a cat. Not that he would put it out if he did. He liked cats. He wondered if Judy would like one, and realised that she might loathe them for all he knew. It had never been discussed, because all he and Judy had ever talked about was work and the triangular relationship in which they had always found themselves. Now at last they had the time to talk about other things.

  He tiptoed into the bedroom, and undressed in the dark, easing himself into bed beside her. He liked going to a bed that had Judy already in it.

  ‘Was the film good?’ she asked.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I tried not to disturb you.’

  ‘Some things disturb me,’ she said. ‘You’re not one of them.’ She switched on the light, and smiled.

  He put his arm round her, not sure whether to broach the subject that had been bothering him.

  ‘Judy,’ he said slowly. ‘Was there anything personal in what you said to Cawston? About what Diana Hamlyn had gone through?’

  She shrugged a little.

  ‘You haven’t been . . .?’ He was getting like Treadwell, he thought.

  ‘Raped?’ she supplied, shaking her head. ‘No.’

  ‘But something,’ Lloyd said. ‘Something of the sort.’

  She looked faintly surprised, then gave an unamused laugh. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Something of the sort has happened to me.’

  ‘When?’ he asked, alarmed.

  ‘Years ago.’ She sat back a little. ‘Lloyd,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘Go out tomorrow, and ask ten women in the street. I guarantee you that something of the sort will have happened to seven of them.’

  He frowned.

  ‘Oh – they don’t report it,’ she said. ‘They aren’t raped. They manage to run away, or someone happens to come along at the right time. Or they talk their way out of it. But they know what could have happened if they’d failed.’ She smiled a little sadly. ‘Something of the sort will have happened to Mrs Knight, and Mrs Treadwell,’ she said. ‘Something of the sort has happened to almost ever
y woman you have ever met.’ There was a little silence before she spoke again. ‘If Alsatian dogs were as unpredictably violent as men,’ she said, ‘the breed would long ago have died out.’

  Lloyd thought about that. ‘So what’s to be done?’ he asked.

  ‘I don’t know. All I know is that when I saw Diana Hamlyn I knew it could have been me. But I lost sight of that, until I saw Sam’s painting.’

  Lloyd had seen it, too, now. He didn’t care for it.

  An elegantly shod foot, thrusting in from the edge of the canvas, kicking to death a slot machine that had failed to produce one of the red-wrapped goodies which were spilling out in its death throes, staining the snow-covered ground, trampled, crushed, no longer wanted. Only destruction would satisfy.

  ‘I saw it,’ Judy said, ‘and I knew I was letting her down. Because that was what it looked like when we saw her, and that was what it was, whatever Freddie said, whatever anyone said.’

  Lloyd nodded.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I don’t actually hold you personally responsible.’ She kissed him on the cheek. ‘Good night.’

  She left the light on; he liked to read. He picked up his book. Perhaps one day she would complain about the light, about his late hours; the honeymoon wouldn’t last for ever. But he was almost looking forward to that. He looked at her, at the dark head on the pillow beside him, and swallowed a little as he remembered her arrival on Saturday night. Angry, hurt, clutching a huge blue laundry-bag.

  But give her someone like Sam Waters, and she could hold her own all right, he thought with a smile.

  ‘Did Sam Waters make a pass at you?’ he asked. ‘Is that why you said whatever you did say?’ He hadn’t asked what she had said; he was sure he would rather not know.

  ‘Yes. I told him exactly what I would do to him if he didn’t take his hand off my knee. And I meant it.’

  He smiled. ‘Was I once in danger of whatever dire punishment you threatened?’

  ‘You didn’t make a pass,’ she said. ‘You said: “I’m a married man with two children, and I’m falling in love with you. Is this going to be a problem?”’ She smiled.

  He remembered. ‘And you said yes,’ he replied. ‘How right you were.’

  But it wasn’t a problem any more.

  ‘I can take you out to dinner!’ he said, suddenly aware of the new world opening up. ‘We can go to the pictures – we can go for walks.’ He abandoned his book. ‘We can go on holiday,’ he said, beaming.

  ‘I’ll hold you to all of this,’ she said.

  He put out the light, holding her close in the darkness.

  ‘Lloyd?’ she said, after a few minutes.

  ‘Present.’ He stroked her hair.

  ‘Is your first name biblical?’

  Bello:

  hidden talent rediscovered

  Bello is a digital only imprint of Pan Macmillan, established to breathe new life into previously published, classic books.

  At Bello we believe in the timeless power of the imagination, of good story, narrative and entertainment and we want to use digital technology to ensure that many more readers can enjoy these books into the future.

  www.panmacmillan.co.uk/bello

  PRAISE FOR JILL McGOWN

  ‘First rate’

  Sunday Times

  ‘Impeccable and accomplished’

  Mail on Sunday

  ‘Jill McGown is a crisp writer and a

  spellbinding storyteller’

  Financial Times

  ‘Superior crafting, careful plotting

  and unexpected turns’

  The Times

  ‘Superior mystery fiction’

  Publishers Weekly

  A TRIO OF MURDERS

  A PERFECT MATCH

  REDEMPTION

  DEATH OF A DANCER

  JILL MCGOWN lived in Northamptonshire and

  was best known for her mystery series featuring

  Chief Inspector Lloyd and Sergeant Judy Hill.

  The first novel, A Perfect Match, was published

  in 1983 and A Shred of Evidence was made into a

  television drama starring Philip Glenister and

  Michelle Collins. Jill McGown died in 2007.

  By Jill McGown

  A Perfect Match

  Redemption

  Death of a Dancer

  The Murders of Mrs Austin and Mrs Beale

  The Other Woman

  Murder . . . Now and Then

  A Shred of Evidence

  Verdict Unsafe

  Picture of Innocence

  Plots And Errors

  Scene of Crime

  Births, Deaths and Marriages

  Unlucky for Some

  First published 2014 by Pan Books

  This electronic edition published 2014 by Pan Books

  an imprint of Pan Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited

  Pan Macmillan, 20 New Wharf Road, London N1 9RR

  Basingstoke and Oxford

  Associated companies throughout the world

  www.panmacmillan.com

  ISBN 978-1-4472-8170-2

  A Perfect Match Copyright © Jill McGown, 1983

  Redemption Copyright © Jill McGown, 1988

  Death of a Dancer Copyright © Jill McGown, 1989

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, organizations and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, places, organizations or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  You may not copy, store, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

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