by K. J. Frost
“I know, but you don’t need me wasting your time telling you about it, do you?”
“Yes, I do. And you’re not wasting my time. I need to know how you feel. If you miss me, I want to know, so I can try and do something about it, and if I can’t, at least I know I’m not alone. At least I know I’m not the only one who feels lonely when I can’t be with you.”
“You feel lonely?” She stares into my eyes.
“Of course. You’re part of me. If I can’t be with you, I’m lost.” She sucks in a breath. “You don’t have to pretend with me, Amelie. And you don’t have to be anything you don’t want to be. Not ever.”
“But surely, a policeman needs a wife who’s supportive.”
I shake my head, my lips twisting up into a smile. “You are supportive. That’s why I’m here…” My voice fades to a whisper and her brow furrows.
“Something’s happened, hasn’t it?”
“Yes.”
She pulls away. “Come with me.” Her voice is firmer now, and she takes my hand and leads me into the drawing room. Once inside, she takes my coat and hat, along with my jacket, which I’d just shrugged over my shoulders, placing them all over the back of the nearest chair, then guides me to the sofa, sitting me down in the corner, and perching on the edge of the seat beside me, looking closely into my eyes. “Tell me,” she says.
“We’ve made an arrest.”
Her eyes widen. “Who?”
“The nanny.”
Amelie claps her hand to her mouth in shock. “The nanny?” she repeats. “The children’s nanny?”
“Yes.”
“You’re sure it’s her?”
“She’s confessed.”
“Oh my God. Did she do… did she do the… the thing… the thing that was done to the little girl, after she was killed?”
“Yes. She’s admitted that.”
Tears form in her eyes, but she blinks them away, trying to be strong for me, I think. “How could she?”
I shrug my shoulders. “Self preservation, I suppose.” She tilts her head to one side. “She claims the child died by accident, but didn’t think anyone would believe her, so she came up with the idea of making it look like a man had killed her.”
“Accident?” I can hear the scepticism in her voice, which mirrors my own.
“Yes.”
She sighs and sits back into the sofa, leaning up against me, as I put my arm around her. “Are you allowed to tell me about it?” she asks.
“Of course. If you want to hear it. Parts of it aren’t pleasant.”
“I know.” She twists and looks up at me. “But I think you need to talk, don’t you?”
I nod my head. “Only if you want me to.”
She settles back into me again. “As long as you hold me, yes.”
“Oh, I’ll hold you.” I tighten my grip on her. “I don’t ever want to let you go.”
She puts her arm around my waist, clinging to me. “Then don’t.”
We sit like that for a while, just holding each other, letting the horrors of the last few days wash over us, but then Amelie shifts and lies down, her head in my lap, looking up at me. “Tell me,” she repeats. “Get it over with…”
I nod my head, my arm resting across her slender waist as I start to tell the story.
“The biggest confusion was with the parks,” I begin, because it seems like the most logical place.
“The parks?” she queries.
“Yes. The nanny had maintained all the way through the investigation that she’d taken the children to the small park, just up the road from the Sanderson house.”
“And she hadn’t?”
“No. She’d taken them to the larger park on Ewell Road. The one where the body was found. It may have been being dug over, but the workmen had removed the swings and slide from the back corner, leaving them to one side to be re-installed nearer the front at a later stage, and they’d left a small area of grass for the local children to play. It wasn’t much, but it was something, and the nanny took the children there, and walked the pram up and down the pathway, while Amy ran and played on the grass.”
“I see,” she muses, although I’m not sure she does.
“That meant all of our enquiries were centred around the wrong place,” I point out. “We spent hours searching the wrong park; carried out house-to-house interviews in the wrong roads, and searched the properties between the two parks over several days, because we’d assumed the girl had tried to make her own way from one park to the other, when in reality, she’d been at the second park the whole time.”
“So what actually happened?” she enquires, nestling into me a little, which feels comfortable, like she’s where she belongs – which she is.
“Amy was misbehaving. She was a demanding child, it seems, craving attention and playing up when she didn’t get it. The new baby didn’t help with that, being as she took up a lot of the nanny’s time herself, and from what I can gather, Amy could be difficult to control.”
“So?”
“Well, while Amy was being tiresome, the wheel of the pram got stuck – that much of the nanny’s story was true – and she was trying to mend it. But Amy wouldn’t give up. She kept demanding that the nanny stopped what she was doing and focused on her. She made a grab for the nanny and almost toppled her over, and the nanny saw red, stood up and struck the child.” Amelie gasps and I tighten my hold on her.
“She hit her?”
“Yes, across the cheek. Amy fell backwards and banged her head on the concrete path.”
“Why didn’t she go for help? The nanny, I mean?” Amelie asks.
“I don’t think it even occurred to her,” I reply. “She said she knew straight away that the little girl was dead, and she panicked.”
“She panicked?”
I nod my head slowly. “Yes, I know. I spent some time explaining to her that her actions were not those of someone in a panic. She behaved in a very calculated fashion, but she maintains it was all done on the spur of the moment, in a state of a confusion.” I shrug my shoulders. “That will be for a jury to decide.”
“So she hid the body?”
“Yes. She checked there was no-one around, and then picked up Amy’s body and laid it over the pram, then wheeled it to the far side of the park, to the workmen’s shelter. She left the pram outside and laid Amy’s body in the far corner…” I let my voice fade, because I know what comes next in the story.
“And then she…?” Amelie clearly can’t say the words.
“Yes. She said she took a few moments to decide that her best chance of getting away with it, was to make it look like a man was responsible. She came up with the idea of saying she’d seen a man in the park, but she didn’t think that would be enough… and then she saw the wooden pegs, attached to the string. She untied one and removed the child’s underwear…”
“Don’t,” Amelie says, interrupting the story. “I can’t hear this part.”
I lean down and kiss her, just gently, pulling her closer to me. “It’s alright, I wasn’t going to say exactly what she did.”
“Did she tell you?”
I nod my head. “Yes. I had to make her tell us.”
“What was she like when she was explaining it?”
“Quite matter of fact, really. I—I think that was the worst part. She didn’t even think about Amy. Her sole concern at that stage was to protect herself.”
Amelie shakes her head. “And how did you feel?” she asks.
“Sick.”
She puts her arms around my neck and pulls herself up, so she’s sitting on my lap, leaning against me, her head on my shoulder. “My darling,” she whispers into my neck.
As much as I love having her sit with me like this, I need to finish the story. I need to tell it all, so I can begin to put it behind me, and start to look forward. “What happened next?” Amelie asks, just as I’m about to start speaking again, as though she’s read my mind.
I smile, just lightly,
at her perception, and continue, “Once she’d finished, she covered the body – although she didn’t do a very good job…”
“Was that intentional?” Amelie asks.
“I don’t know. She said she’d covered the body, but when it was found, there was a foot sticking out, which made it easy to spot. Maybe she missed that in her haste to get away.”
“It’s just that you’d think, if she was trying to delay the discovery, she’d have taken more trouble.”
“I suppose… but you have to bear in mind that, contrary to the version of events she gave us, she went to that park frequently with the children. She was well aware of the fact that the men had finished their digging. Admittedly, she had no idea of when the next team would come in to do the planting, but I imagine she felt fairly safe in the knowledge that Amy’s body probably wouldn’t be discovered for a few days at least.”
“I see,” Amelie says, leaning back slightly and looking at me. “So what did she do then?”
“She hurried home, just as she said she did. During the walk, she worked out her story, that the girl had been playing and had disappeared while she was fixing the pram, and dealing with Eve’s glove. She remembered that, when she’d got home earlier, from her visit to Donald Curtis, the cook had explained that Mrs Sanderson was still out of the house herself, and they’d conjectured about the fact that she was probably with David Cooke. The affair was common knowledge among the household staff… well, her husband knew as well, but that’s…”
“Her husband knew?” Amelie’s shocked.
“Yes. Mrs Sanderson begged me not to tell him, but that was just an act. She wanted me to believe the whole thing was a secret, that her husband was impossible to live with, and that she was justified in cheating on him, so I wouldn’t think badly of her. Not that I could really care less, but I suppose she was worried about how it might look. Anyway, it transpired the whole house was aware of her infidelity, and the downstairs servants had been discussing it on the day of Amy’s disappearance. Miss Sutton revealed that she’d met Mr Cooke once, not long before his affair with Mrs Sanderson had begun, when he was still calling at the house, and she’d decided to give us a description of a man that vaguely matched him, in the hope that suspicion would be well and truly diverted from her.”
“How calculating,” Amelie comments, quite taken aback, I think.
“That’s not the best of it,” I remark. “Not when it comes to Miss Sutton’s ability to manipulate.”
“Why? What else did she do?”
I hold her a little closer. “Firstly, she wrote letters to her boyfriend, Donald Curtis, describing how upsetting she found the whole thing, in the hope, I presume that he’d take her side when questioned. And she made a point of telling him how much she missed him, reminding him of the times they’d spent together, presumably so he wouldn’t forget the… um… benefits of their relationship.” I struggle to phrase my sentence and look down at Amelie, hoping I’m not blushing. She smiles up at me and nestles into my neck.
“It sounds like they weren’t waiting?” she murmurs and I chuckle.
“No, darling. They most certainly weren’t. But even if we hadn’t read about it in their letters, Donald Curtis had already made the nature of their relationship very clear.”
She leans back a little. “Really? He told you?”
“Yes. He didn’t leave much to the imagination.”
She blushes herself now. “Do… do men always talk about things like that?”
“Some men do.” I recall my conversations with Thompson.
She leans back, and sighs. “Do you?”
“No. What happens between us is personal. I wouldn’t dream of talking about anything that we might do together with anyone but you.”
A smile forms on her lips and she leans up and kisses my cheek. “Thank you,” she mutters.
“You don’t have to thank me.”
She shakes her head. “Based on what you’ve just told me, I think I probably do.” She leans into me again. “Was that all she did?” she asks. “She wrote to her boyfriend?”
“No. She also started playing up to Mr Sanderson.”
“Playing up?’ she repeats.
“Yes. Flirting.”
“With her employer?” I love how innocent Amelie can be sometimes. It’s beautifully refreshing. “But he’s married.”
“Yes. He’s also never disguised the fact that he’s keen on the nanny… not if the arguments between him and his wife are anything to go by.”
“Good Lord…”
“I know.”
“So what happened?”
“I think Miss Sutton worked on the theory that, if she could hook him in, he’d protect her should the need arise. Being as everyone knew Mrs Sanderson was having an affair, she obviously thought Mr Sanderson might be open to a little flirtation. He was – quite clearly – because in the early stages of our investigation, he did his best to interfere every time we tried to interview Miss Sutton. And then, after we went back the last time, and started to ask more questions, she… she persuaded him into bed.”
“He slept with her?” Amelie sounds disgusted.
“Yes. Twice.”
“Twice?”
“Yes. The second time was literally minutes before we arrived to arrest her.”
She leans back and looks up at me, her eyes wide with shock. “How could he?” she mutters. “That woman killed his daughter… mutilated his daughter. How could he do that?”
“Well, he didn’t know what she’d done at the time. That realisation only came later. At the time, I imagine all he was thinking about was that the woman he’d been attracted to for months, was finally going to be his. Of course, once I told him what she’d done to Amy – and that she’d used him for her own ends – he broke down.”
“Good,” Amelie says, her remark more cutting than anything I’ve ever heard her say before. “It serves him right.” She looks up at me again. “What an absolutely horrible bunch of people.”
“I couldn’t have put it better myself. Do you know, I don’t think it dawned on any of them that, if they’d just spent a little more time with the child and focused more on her and less on themselves, she wouldn’t have been so demanding in the first place. She wouldn’t have been so wilful, or so badly behaved. And then none of this would have happened. I’ve spent a lot of time during this case, asking myself why on earth Mr and Mrs Sanderson ever had children. Actually, I’ve spent quite a bit of time, asking myself why a great many people have children. David Cooke remarked to me that the reason people like the Sandersons have a nanny is so they don’t have to spend any time with their own offspring – so why do they have them in the first place?”
Amelie shifts on my lap, sitting forward and looking back at me, her face a picture of confusion. “Can I ask you a question?” she says, her voice rather quiet all of a sudden.
“Yes.”
“Do you like children?”
I tilt my head, staring at her. “Yes, I do. That’s the whole point. I don’t understand why people who don’t like them and employ someone else to look after them, bother to have them.”
“So… so you want us to have children of our own?” she murmurs, and I smile.
“Yes, of course I do.” I pull her back towards me, holding her against my chest. “I’m sorry. I’m being very cross and crotchety, aren’t I? Of course I want us to have children, one day.”
She sits upright again, very abruptly. “One day?”
I let out a sigh. “There’s no rush, is there?” I reach out and caress her cheek with my fingertips. “You’re not even twenty yet, although you will be by the time we’re married… but even so, I—I’d like us to have some time to ourselves first.”
She smiles and leans into my touch as I cup her face in my hand. “You would?”
I struggle to suppress my grin. “Yes, I would. I haven’t waited all this time for you, just to start sharing you with someone else straight away.”
She gasps, and then takes my hand, kissing the palm, in an action that makes my skin tingle. “You’ll never have to share me,” she whispers, locking eyes with me.
“When we have children, I will. And that’s how it should be. That’s why I want to wait – so that when children do come along, we can shower them with love and attention.”
“Does that mean you won’t shower me with love and attention anymore?”
“Of course not. But I know you’ll be busy and pre-occupied with them, and I’ll understand if you don’t have so much time for me.”
She shakes her head slowly. “Rufus,” she says, seriously, “I’ll always have time for you.”
Her words fill me with love and hope, and I place my hand behind her head and pull her closer, crushing my lips against hers. Without breaking the kiss, Amelie twists around and moves her legs, straddling me, like she did the other night, my body responding to the nearness of her as we groan and sigh in mutually ascending arousal.
“Whoa.” I lean back, breathing hard. Amelie stops, panting, her fingers still twisted in my hair, her eyes alight with a need I haven’t seen before. “We have to stop.”
“We do?” She bites her bottom lip and I reach out, pulling it free.
“Don’t do that. You’re teasing me.”
I trace along the outline of her lips with my thumb, her eyes widening. “And you’re not?” she whispers, then captures my thumb between her teeth and sucks it into her mouth. I’m mesmerised by the sight and stare at her soft full lips surrounding the tip of my thumb. She must know what she’s doing, surely? And yet, the look in her eyes tells me she probably doesn’t. Even so, I know I have to regain control of the situation before I’m completely undone, so, regardless of my broken limb, I lift her off of my lap, shifting forward in the seat at the same time, and tip her back onto the sofa beside me, laying her down, and moving on top of her, my weight supported on my good arm. She squeals and giggles her pleasure as I lean down and kiss her. Thoroughly.
I halt, suddenly, aware of her hands on my skin… on my back, and realise that, while we’ve been kissing, she’s pulled my shirt from my trousers.
“What are you doing back there?” I ask, leaning up and looking down at her.