by K. J. Frost
I recall Lillian Sanderson’s hurried entreaties not to tell her husband of her affair and wonder if that was just for my benefit. Based on what Mr Sanderson is saying, that seems quite likely.
“I suppose it was only to be expected really,” he gets to his feet and stands in front of the fire, looking down at me. “She’s so much younger than I am, after all.” He runs his fingers through his hair. “But why on earth she had to choose David Cooke, I’ll never know. The family connection goes back years.” He stops and narrows his eyes. “Maybe that’s the whole point,” he muses. “Maybe she wanted me to feel worse still… knowing that she could take one of my friends and there was nothing I could do about it.” He turns, resting his hands on the mantlepiece, his arms straight, the tension in his body obvious. “I know people think I’m harsh with her… that I don’t care,” he says quietly, so quietly that I have to strain to hear him. “But I’m not. Well, not intentionally, anyway.” He turns back again, his eyes alight with emotion. “But do you have any idea what it’s like, Inspector, to be married to a woman, who despises you, who makes it clear at every opportunity that she’d rather be anywhere than be with you?”
I don’t reply, because I don’t think he expects me to, although I do wonder whether his wife and her lover have any idea of the damage their relationship is causing. And if they think it’s worth it. As Mr Sanderson gets his breath back and sits down, composing himself, I also take a moment to think about Amelie’s guardian, Gordon Templeton. Did he think about Amelie and Beth, and his wife, when he started seeing Abigail Foster, all those years ago? Does anyone think about the people around them when they fall in love?
“I’m sorry,” Mr Sanderson says, his words breaking into my thoughts, his voice much softer now. “I shouldn’t have said any of that. It was just the… the shock. I don’t for one minute believe that David Cooke would ever harm Amy, even if only because he loves my wife.” He attempts a smile, but doesn’t quite get there. “I can’t in all honesty call him an honourable man, not when he and Lillian are conducting an affair behind my back, but I know David well enough to understand that he’d never hurt a woman he loved. Not knowingly.”
That’s perhaps the most fair and reasonable thing I’ve heard Sanderson say since we first met and it’s hard not to admire his stoicism.
While I fully appreciate that nothing in life is a certainty, I’m feeling a lot more confident about my future with Amelie than I was – especially after the last couple of evenings with her. But I’d like to think that if she ever did turn away from me, I would conduct myself with similar forbearance.
However, none of that is going to help with our investigation.
“As I said yesterday,” I remark, getting back to the point in hand, “we need to speak with Miss Sutton.”
His head shoots up. “I’ll go and fetch her,” he says.
“Don’t trouble yourself. Sergeant Thompson can go.”
Without waiting to be told, Thompson leaves the room, although Mr Sanderson observes him closely, his eyes narrowing again, and for a moment, I wonder if he’s jealous, or at least suspicious of my sergeant, who is, after all, a very handsome man… and my generosity towards Mr Sanderson wanes just slightly. Is he really any better than his wife?
Mr Sanderson and I sit in silence, although he doesn’t take his eyes from the door, until it reopens, and Miss Sutton comes in, followed by Thompson, who looks across at me and raises his eyebrows. I have no idea what that means, but I glance at Miss Sutton and notice her red and swollen eyes, and assume that she, like Lois, has spent many hours in tears.
“Come and sit down,” Sanderson says, moving along the sofa. Miss Sutton hesitates, glancing at the chair, but then goes and sits beside him, leaving about an eighteen inch gap between them.
She looks up at me, blinking quickly and dabbing at her eyes with a lace-trimmed handkerchief. I notice though, that her lipstick is still impeccable, and there isn’t a hair out of place on her head.
“I know you’ve been informed that Amy’s body has been found,” I begin, and she nods her head, just once, sniffling slightly. “She was discovered in the workmen’s shed in the larger park… the one on Ewell Road,” I add.
Her mouth drops open. “What was she doing there?” she asks.
“Well, she didn’t get there by herself,” I reply, perhaps a little harshly. “Can you tell me about the man you saw in the recreation ground, when you were there?”
“I didn’t really pay that much attention,” she says. “He was tall…”
“And?”
Sanderson sits forward, but I ignore him. “He had on a hat, and a dark coat,” she says. “I can’t remember…” She turns to her employer. “I wasn’t looking at him; I—I was looking at the pram, and then I saw that Amy was gone…” She starts to cry and he moves closer to her, putting his arm around her shoulder. “And then… then, once I knew she wasn’t there, I just… I just ran back here,” she says, sobbing more loudly.
I give her a few moments to calm down. “Do you remember telling me that Amy was a lovely child?” I say quietly. She looks up at me.
“Of course I do. She was a lovely child.”
“She wasn’t naughty, or wilful, or disobedient?”
“Not with me, no,” she says. “I know she could be a bit badly behaved when I left her with Lois, or with Cook, but that’s only because they’re not… I mean, they weren’t used to her… her ways…” She gulps down a couple of breaths and then looks back at Sanderson again. “I—I’ll hand in my notice, of course,” she murmurs. “You won’t want me here—”
“You’ll do no such thing,” he interrupts. “How on earth do you think we’d manage without you?” He leans a little closer still and, with his arm still stretched across her shoulder, he places his free hand on her knee. “I told you yesterday, this is not your fault, my dear. We need you more than ever… to look after Eve.” He adds that as an afterthought, and she smiles at him, dabbing at her cheeks and fluttering her eyelashes – or so it appears to me, anyway.
Sanderson stares at her for a moment, seemingly captivated, a blush appearing on his cheeks, and I wonder whether he’ll stray. Or whether he has already?
My waning admiration for the man disappears altogether.
God, what a mess these people have made of their lives.
We leave Miss Sutton in the more than capable hands of her employer, agreeing that we’ll return tomorrow to speak with Mrs Sanderson about David Cooke. Mr Sanderson seems more concerned for the nanny’s well-being than he does over the fact that we’re going to question his wife about her lover, but nothing he does surprises me anymore.
Once we’re in the car, I turn to Thompson. “What was that look you gave me when you brought Miss Sutton into the room?”
He smirks. “Oh, nothing much,” he replies. “She was just doing her damsel in distress bit when we were upstairs, that’s all.”
“Put on, or for real?” I ask.
“Hard to say.” He thinks for a moment. “She’d been crying, that much was clear, but when I said we wanted to talk to her, she got all flustered and started panicking about it all being her fault, and Mr Sanderson sacking her.”
“I think he’s made it very clear that’s the last thing on his mind.”
“Hmm,” he says, starting the engine and managing to put a great deal of emphasis into that simple sound.
When we get back to the station after a silent journey, Tooley has just finished putting together the list of local men with a history of sexual abuse.
“Before you go,” I say to him as he starts to leave my office. “I’m sorry, but I’ve got another job for you.”
“Yes, sir?”
“I know we asked the householders during the search whether they’d seen Amy on Tuesday afternoon, but I want you to arrange for some men to go back to the Ewell Road park and interview all the people who live in houses overlooking the area in more detail. I want to know if they saw anything unusual. I don�
�t care what it was. Anything that didn’t belong, at any time between early afternoon on Tuesday, and the time when the body was found. I’ve been assuming Amy was left in the shed on the day she died.” At least that’s what I told Amelie. “And if I’m being honest, I still think that’s the most likely scenario. But it’s dawned on me that she might have been killed somewhere else and dumped there some time later. We need to know if anyone saw anything.”
“Very good, sir.”
I look up at him. “I know it’s the weekend, and I’m sorry for all the extra work.”
He smiles. “None of us minds, sir,” he says. “We just want to catch him… whoever he is.”
I nod my head in agreement and he leaves the room, closing the door behind him, then I sit down at my desk, with Thompson taking a seat opposite me, and I look at the list which Tooley left behind. There are six men on it, which is more than I would have liked, but less than it could have been, I suppose.
“Any of these names ring a bell?” I ask, handing over the sheet of paper. It’s been years since I’ve worked here, whereas Thompson is more familiar with the area and the people who inhabit it. I’m hoping some local insight might prove useful.
“I only know one of them,” he says, pointing to the second name on the list. Albert Finch. “He’s a nasty piece of work.”
“In what way?”
“I arrested him about five years ago, in a domestic case.”
“Really? Involving a child?”
He shakes his head. “No. We were called out one night by the neighbours, who reported a disturbance. It turned out Finch had beaten his wife black and blue. When I got there, she was being treated by an ambulance crew and he was sitting calmly at the kitchen table, nursing his bruised knuckles. He didn’t deny what he’d done… admitted it right away, in fact. He claimed he’d come home from the pub and caught her with another man, the man had scarpered and he’d taken it out on her. But then, once Finch was safely under arrest, his wife changed her story. She told me there wasn’t any other man involved, and that her husband had raped her before beating her.”
“Had he?”
He shrugs. “We never did find out. She refused to go to hospital, or submit to any form of medical examination, and he denied it… the rape, that is. I wasn’t sure I believed her. I thought she was probably just looking for a way to have him locked up for a bit longer, but I wanted to give her the benefit of the doubt and, to be fair, we couldn’t find any trace of another man having been present in the house. Still, with no evidence, in the end it was six of one, and half a dozen of the other. He was charged with assault and was sentenced to twelve months, if memory serves.”
“Is he worth talking to?” I ask him.
He thinks for a moment. “Can’t hurt.”
“Okay. Arrange to have him picked up with the others.”
“Now?”
“Yes, now.”
He stands. “I’ll get that organised. Although I doubt we’ll be able to start the interviews until tomorrow. Some of this lot won’t be easy to find.”
“Tomorrow’s fine with me. Bring them in and let them stew in the cells overnight.”
By the time Thompson and I are ready to leave for the day, I know four of the men have been brought in. One of them could be heard shouting the odds about police harassment throughout the entire building, I think. I fully expect that he’ll keep his fellow inmates awake half the night with his rantings, but that works for me. The more tired they are, the more likely they are to slip up… assuming that any of them is guilty, of course.
My copper’s instinct tells me that I’m going to find the perpetrator of this crime much closer to home, but I have to rule out the obvious, even while I’m working on the more obscure – and repulsive.
On the journey home, Thompson and I make our plans for the following day.
“We’ll start with Mrs Sanderson,” I tell him. “I want to get her out of the way first, and it won’t hurt our wayward felons to sit in the cells for a few hours longer.”
He nods. “Hopefully we’ll get Doctor Wyatt’s report back soon,” he says.
“Not that it’ll tell us anything we don’t already know.”
“No.”
“How’s the search of the park going?” I ask.
“Well, they’re hampered by the lack of light,” he says. It’s getting dark by just after three o’clock at the moment, but then we are approaching the shortest day, and the weather is particularly grey and overcast. “I think Tooley is hoping to have it completed tomorrow.”
“He’s working like a trojan.”
“They all are.”
I can’t disagree with that.
I get home at just before seven and let myself in, taking off my hat and coat and leaving them on the end of the stairs.
When I turn back, my mother is standing in the doorway to the living room.
“Come and see who’s here,” she says, beaming.
I know it’s Aunt Issa, but I play along and follow her into the room, where Aunt Dotty is sat in her usual place, beside the fire. Next to her is Aunt Issa, wearing her country tweeds as usual, her mass of steel grey hair piled on her rounded face. She gets to her feet as I enter, but I’m distracted by the sight of Amelie, who’s sitting in the sofa opposite my aunts, and who turns to face me, a beautiful smile on her face.
“Hello,” I say, smiling across at her.
“Hello.” She stands too.
“Well, that’s a nice greeting, I must say.” Aunt Issa puts her hands on her hips and glares at me, her lips twitching upwards.
“I apologise, Aunty,” I say, going over to her and bending to kiss her cheek. “I was… distracted.”
I turn and smile at Amelie again and she blushes.
“Understandable, dear boy,” Issa replies, tapping my arm. “Completely understandable.”
“Sit down, sit down,” my mother urges, steering me towards Amelie, and I sit, taking her hand as we glance at each other and smile.
“This is a lovely surprise,” I murmur softly.
“Your aunt telephoned me,” she says.
“With two of them here, I’m afraid you’re going to have to be more specific. Which aunt?”
“Dotty,” Amelie clarifies. “She invited me for dinner.”
I look across the room at Aunt Dotty, who’s leaning against the arm of the sofa, a smile settled on her face. “Thank you,” I mouth to her.
“Well, you haven’t been able to see much of each other,” she says by way of explanation. “And I thought it would be nice to have a big family meal to welcome Issa.”
I can’t help myself from smiling as she says ‘family’, and Amelie squeezes my hand at the same time. This is all so obvious, I feel like I may as well just get down on one knee right here and now… except I still don’t have a ring, and I really would like to have one when I propose. It feels rather half-hearted making the offer without the symbol to indicate my commitment, or her acceptance.
“Issa’s brought us up some pheasants,” my mother says, as though we’ve been troubled by food shortages. Despite the issuing of ration books over two months ago, as yet, things have carried on pretty much as usual, although we all know the New Year will bring changes, so I suppose we might as well make hay while the sun shines… as it were.
“That sounds lovely.” I turn to Amelie. “Do you like pheasant?”
“Yes,” she replies – thankfully.
“I think we can go through in a minute,” Dotty says. “But would you like a drink first?”
“I’d love one.” Everyone else already seems to be catered for, but Aunt Dotty makes me a very quick, rather strong, gin and tonic – her speciality at present. It’s not a patch on Amelie’s dry martini, which is an abiding memory, but then nothing about that evening is likely to fade from my mind very quickly, I’m pleased to say.
As we walk through to dinner, I manage to pull Amelie back slightly, and although I’m fairly sure my mother and aunts ar
e aware of what I’m doing, they talk among themselves and don’t seem to mind.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper.
“What for?” She looks up at me.
“If I’d known I was going to get home this early, we could have spent the evening decorating your tree.”
She shakes her head and rests her hand on my arm. “Don’t worry. Uncle Gordon got home just before I came out. I was rather pleased to escape.”
“Oh…” I fake a pout. “So you didn’t want to see me then?”
She glances towards the dining room door, through which my family have already disappeared, and then leans up and kisses me very quickly on the lips. “Of course I wanted to see you,” she says softly, smiling.
“Good.” I bend and kiss her back, taking a little longer than she did. “But you should try and spend some time with your uncle, while he’s here.” Her smile fades.
“He’s already said he’s got some work to do tomorrow,” she replies. “I honestly don’t know why he bothered coming home.”
“Well, why not suggest you have a few hours together in the evening, before he has to go back to London?” I suggest.
She hesitates. “I suppose… Although I’d rather see you.”
I smile down at her. “So would I. But I’ll do my best to come over on Monday… and I’ll make up for it then.”