by Hazel Holt
“I’m so sorry.”
“She liked it down there and she made a lot of friends. You know how well she always got on with folk. But one of her friends rang Molly and said she really didn’t think Amy should be on her own. She was getting very forgetful, kept leaving the back door open, things like that, and once she left the gas on and nearly had a fire in the kitchen. Getting very vague, too, not remembering what day it was. Like I said, things like that.”
“Oh dear.”
“So they thought they’d better go down and see what was happening.”
“Of course.”
“It wasn’t easy for Bob to get away; he’s still busy with that case—you know the one we were talking about. But they were very good about it. Bob said they were waiting for more evidence or something like that; I don’t understand these things. Molly’s sister Josie had the children, so they didn’t have to be taken out of school. Anyway, when they got down there they found things were worse than they’d imagined.
“Poor Molly.”
“Well, the way things were, they decided she really had to go into—what do they call it now?—sheltered accommodation, an old people’s home.”
“That’s very sad.”
“I mean, Molly would have had her back up here, but with the children and Bob away sometimes it wouldn’t have been easy.”
“No, it wouldn’t.”
“So they’re down there looking at places. Molly said there was a very nice one, and one of Amy’s neighbors was already in there, and when they took her to see it she seemed to like it.”
“That’s good.”
“But, of course, there’s so much to arrange.”
“I expect they’ll have to be down there for quite a while.”
“Well, Bob will have to come back soon, but if she does go into this place there’ll be the house to see to. Although Molly says she can manage, he’s going to stay as long as he can.”
“Well, he would need to. Poor souls, it must be very difficult for them.”
* * *
“So it seems,” I said to Rosemary, “that he’s going to be away for a bit. And really, I don’t think I can phone him when everything’s so difficult there.”
“I suppose not,” Rosemary said regretfully.
Things hadn’t improved at the shop; Norma was hardly ever there. Jean’s irritation was mounting, and her threats to phone headquarters were more frequent.
“I just hope she hasn’t forgotten I’m away for a week next month,” she said. “She’ll have to arrange for Dorothy to come in every day. You can’t manage on your own.”
“I expect she’s made a note of it,” I said soothingly.
“She might not have done.”
“Oh?”
“I phoned her when I first knew we were going to see my sister Freda in Bournemouth. I wanted to do it straightaway so no one else would get that week first, and I didn’t want to ask Desmond because he was always so awkward about things like that. So I phoned her at home that day when she rushed off and said she had a migraine. Of course, I didn’t believe for a moment she had one—you remember what a temper she was in! Anyway, when I phoned she really did sound awful, so I felt quite bad for bothering her. I wondered why she answered the phone herself if she was in such a state, but she said she thought it was Marcus—he’d gone out to get something for her.”
“That was the night that Desmond was killed.”
“That’s right. So you see, what with all that commotion, she might have forgotten.”
“What time did you phone her?”
“What time? About eight, might have been quarter past. I suppose Marcus had gone out to get her something from the all-night chemist—she sounded really bad.”
“Poor thing.”
“But I do need to know,” Jean said firmly, “if she’s made arrangements for cover while I’m away.”
Chapter Twenty
“So Norma does have an alibi,” Rosemary said. “Isn’t that maddening?”
“Jean would be cross if she knew she was the person who gave her one.”
“Mind you,” Rosemary persisted, “there’s still all this Switzerland business.”
“Probably to do with money,” I said. “It usually is. Anyway, we’ll just have to wait until Bob comes back and see if there’s been any development we don’t know about. He’s bound to come back fairly soon. He’s very conscientious about work.”
Everything seemed very flat, somehow, when I went to the shop. Norma continued to come and go and Jean continued to complain about it and I counted the days until Norma and Marcus would be going to Switzerland and wondered when, if ever, she would let us know that they were going.
“It’s been very slack today,” Jean said, “and I don’t think it’s going to improve now. It doesn’t look as if Norma’s going to come back. So I’ll go to the bank early and then you might as well go home.”
On my way I thought I’d call on Mrs. Lyle and have a word with her about the Kipling first editions. Easier, really, to do it face-to-face than on the phone. She was in and seemed pleased to see me—lonely, perhaps, after her husband had died.
“Come in and sit down. Have you time for a cup of tea?” She bustled about in the kitchen and brought in a tray. “I’ll just put a bar of the fire on; it’s quite chilly today with all this wet weather.”
I accepted the tea and a piece of shortbread and told her about the books.
“I think some of them might be really valuable,” I said. “And it’s a fairly substantial collection, too. I wondered how much you knew about them.”
She smiled. “To be honest with you, not a lot. Alfred was very keen on Kipling and just bought the books over the years. He was a great one for secondhand bookshops, you know; wherever we went on holiday, that was always the first thing he looked for! But I don’t believe he ever thought about any value they might have, so nor did I. I don’t think he paid much for any of them.”
“I’m no expert,” I said, “but I looked up the titles on the Internet and it did seem to me that someone should value them.”
“Oh, the Internet—I could never be bothered with all that! Valuable, you say?”
“Hundreds possibly. I don’t know.”
“Good gracious!”
“I thought that if you weren’t aware of their possible value….” I hesitated. “Well, I thought the money might be useful just now.”
“Oh, I’m all right—I can manage perfectly well. But nothing for any sort of extravagance.” She smiled again. “It’s just that I would like to visit my daughter in Australia—she’s in Perth, such a long way away, though she has been over here a couple of times, just to show us the children. Then, when Alfred died, she did say how nice it would be if I went over there for a good long visit. But I didn’t feel I could….”
“It sounds like a splendid idea,” I said. “I’ll get the books back and you can get them valued. I can give you the address of a really reliable man.”
“That’s very kind of you. But I did give them to the charity and I wouldn’t want them to think—it might be awkward.”
“No, I’m sure that will be fine. I’ll bring them back to you tomorrow or the next day.”
“Oh, they’ll be too heavy for you to manage. Perhaps Marcus could do it. Marcus Stanley—you know him of course, such a nice man. He took them in for me.”
I looked her intently. “Oh really. When was that?”
She thought for a moment. “Quite a while ago. He called in to bring me the program he’d promised me for the Madrigal Society—Alfred and I always used to go. I hoped he’d stop for a chat but he said his wife had one of her bad heads so he had to get back, and he had to go to the shop and pick up her handbag she’d left there. She had to leave in a hurry, he said, because she felt so bad. Terrible thing, migraines, aren’t they? Emily, my daughter, used to have them, but she seems to have grown out of them now; people say you do.”
“And that’s when Marcus took the boo
ks?”
“Yes, I’d told him that I wanted to give them to the charity and they were there in the sitting room, so he said that he was going to the shop anyway so he could drop them off. Well, I said wouldn’t it be shut—it was getting on for eight o’clock—but he said that was all right because he had Norma’s key.”
“I see.” I got to my feet. “Don’t you worry about anything. I’ll bring the books back to you myself—I’m sure I can manage them.”
I went and sat in the car for a while before driving off. My mind was churning away and I couldn’t concentrate on anything but the conversation I’d just had. Finally, I pulled myself together and drove home and phoned Rosemary.
“If Marcus was there that evening, just at that particular time, why ever didn’t he say so?”
“Exactly.” Rosemary sounded as excited as I felt. “He could have killed Desmond….”
“But why? What possible motive could he have had?”
“Oh, motive!” Rosemary said impatiently. “There’s bound to have been something we don’t know about. And there’s all that stuff about them leaving—it all fits in. Ring the station now and see if Bob is back.”
“It’s not evidence,” I said reluctantly. “There might be some other, quite innocent explanation.”
“For goodness’ sake, stop wittering and get on with it!”
So I rang the station and they said Bob would be back the following afternoon. I rang Rosemary and refused to call Bob at Bournemouth, pointing out that nothing was likely to happen before then, and promising faithfully that I would ring the station when he was back. I tried to put it out of my mind—the animals were being particularly demanding—but I slept very badly and woke up next morning with a headache. Fortunately, it wasn’t a day I had to go to the shop. After taking some aspirin, tea and toast, I thought a good sea breeze would be the best cure.
I parked the car in the quiet bit beyond the harbor and stood leaning on the seawall. There was no breeze; it was a still, dismal day with low clouds and the occasional drizzle of rain, the gray of the sea and the gray of the sky merging into one so that there seemed to be no horizon. Not a day to tempt anyone out. I stood, watching the waves breaking on the shingle, one after the other, in a mesmerizing way that I always found soothing. After a while my head cleared and I felt better. I was about to turn and go when I became aware that there was another person a little way away, also leaning on the wall, apparently lost in thought. It was Marcus Stanley. For a moment I didn’t know what to do. Then, on an impulse, I went over and greeted him. He turned suddenly, with an exclamation.
“I’m sorry, Sheila. I didn’t see you there.”
“You looked very far away.”
“Yes.”
We both turned back and looked at the sea. This part of the beach was sandy and the waves here broke gently, the water creeping up over the sand silently rather than dashing against the pebbles.
“The tide’s coming in,” Marcus said.
“Yes.” There was so much I wanted to say, to ask, but just for the moment I couldn’t. All I felt capable of was watching the slow, inexorable movement of the sea. We must have stood there in silence for several minutes until a large herring gull, probably hoping for food, swooped down close to us, shattering the silence with a hoarse cry.
“You’re going away, then,” I said.
He turned slowly. “Did Norma tell you?”
“She hasn’t said anything yet. No, I overheard her making some arrangements. Switzerland, I believe.”
“Just at first. I don’t know where we’ll go from there.”
More silence.
“Marcus,” I said, “why did you never tell the police that you were at the shop just after eight on the evening Desmond was killed?”
“I… I went to collect Norma’s bag—she’d left it behind when she was so ill.”
“And you very kindly took those books in for Mrs. Lyle.”
“So that’s how…”
“Yes.”
“He was alive when I left him,” he said.
“So why didn’t you tell the police that you’d been there?”
“I was afraid—Norma said—they might think I’d killed him.”
“Perhaps,” I said, “you were afraid of them knowing that you’d been there just at that moment, the only window of opportunity, you might say, for killing him. Because the poor girl who robbed the till came in and found him dead quite soon after you were there. Of course, she didn’t tell the police because she’d been taking money from the till. Nor did Wendy Barlow, who went to the shop even later and saw him dead. She just went away again.”
“Good God! I didn’t know that.”
“Yes, unbelievable, isn’t it?” I paused for a moment. Then I said, “If they knew you’d been there, at that particular time, the police might have found that you had a reason for killing him. Was that it?”
He was very silent, a positive silence, as if he was turning something over in his mind, and suddenly I was frightened, though, even at that moment, I told myself that it was silly to be frightened of Marcus. A pair of walkers with their rucksacks and their walking poles greeted us as they went by and I relaxed again. Even though it was quiet, this was a public place; there were people here as well as seagulls.
“Was that it, Marcus?” I asked again, more firmly this time.
He seemed to have been holding his breath and now he let it out in a great sigh.
“It’s no use; I can’t go on like this any longer. You’ll tell the police—I can’t stop you—and everything will come out. Look,” he turned to face me and said urgently, “will you promise not to tell the police anything until tomorrow? Please.”
“So that you can get away to Switzerland?”
“No, no, truly, it’s not that. It’s just that there’s something I have to do before…” He paused and then said even more earnestly, “Look, I promise I’ll tell the police myself tomorrow. I promise!”
I shook my head. “I can’t, Marcus—you must see that. You killed someone. I can’t—”
“Please let me explain. Listen to me. Please.”
“All right.”
He took a deep breath. “It happened when we were living in the Midlands, some years ago. I’d been having a few drinks with a client and then I remembered I’d promised to pick up Norma from a meeting. I wasn’t drunk, I swear, but I suppose I shouldn’t have driven anywhere. But Norma was expecting me….”
“Couldn’t you have phoned?”
“I didn’t have a mobile—not everyone did in those days, and I was in the car before I realized I could have phoned from the hotel. Anyway, I knew I was late and Norma would have been waiting.
“It was a dark night, had been raining. He stepped out in front of the car—I swear I didn’t see him. I heard this awful bump.” He shuddered. “I got out and looked at him. He was an elderly man; I couldn’t bring myself to touch him but I thought he was dead. It was a quiet street and there was no one about and no phone box that I could see. I panicked. I just got into the car and drove away.”
“Did you tell Norma?”
“I had to; I was in such a state when I got there. She drove us home.”
“And you didn’t tell the police?”
He shook his head. “I wanted to but Norma said not to. She said it wouldn’t change things, just make misery for everyone. A few days went by and nothing happened, and then one day the police came to the house. Norma was out, so I answered the door. Apparently someone had seen what had happened—they saw it from the front window of their house. The car was right by a lamppost so they could see the number. They took me to the police station and charged me.”
“I see.”
“Norma got a good solicitor and he said I could probably get off with a verdict of careless driving, but then they spoke to my clients and they confirmed that I’d been drinking with them. The police hadn’t Breathalyzed me the night it happened so there was no evidence that I was above the limi
t, but there’d been a bad case of drunken driving just then—in all the papers—so they didn’t give me the benefit of the doubt.” He paused. “I got a prison sentence—two years. I deserved it.”
“How was Norma?”
“She was wonderful; she stood by me. There hadn’t been much in the papers, thank goodness. She moved everything, the house and the business, too. She was wonderful.”
“Did she come and visit you in prison?”
“I told her not to—I couldn’t bear her to see me there.”
“So what has this to do with Desmond?”
“I was in prison in Birmingham. He lived there then. You know how he liked to do all those good works—well, he was a prison visitor. I didn’t see him. I was pointed out to him by one of the guards who told him what I’d done, but Desmond obviously didn’t think I deserved saving.” He paused for a moment, then went on. “It was just before I was released so I never did see him.”
“And he recognized you when you came to Taviscombe?”
“Yes.”
“But he didn’t say anything?”
“No.”
“So what changed?”
“It was when he heard I’d been accepted for the council. He was in the storeroom that night when I went to collect Norma’s handbag and he went on about it right away. How he’d held back about exposing me because he believed in giving people a second chance, that sort of thing. But now he felt he couldn’t stand aside and let me take public office—you know how smug and self-satisfied he was. And then he started on Norma and how we’d both been living a lie and she was as bad as I was and it was his duty to expose us both…. I just snapped. You know how they talk about a red mist—well, it wasn’t that exactly, but everything went sort of blurred—I honestly didn’t know what I was doing. I felt I had to shut him up somehow. There was a knife, just lying there….” He stopped and squeezed his eyes tight shut, as if to blackout the memory. Then he went on more slowly. “I don’t think I meant to kill him. I mean, I didn’t aim at his heart or anything—I just wanted him to be quiet.”
“But he was dead?”