by Nicola Upson
The accusation tempted him out of his silence. ‘I had nothing to do with that woman’s death,’ he said desperately. ‘I’m not a killer. You know I’m not.’
‘And neither was I, it seems – not until recently, anyway.’ Her tone was becoming increasingly aggressive, and Josephine wondered if and when Archie would step in. ‘So you just cleared up the mess, as usual?’ she asked, pressing him for an answer. ‘Well, you can’t clear this one up for her, Billy. This is beyond even you.’
Whiting looked at Archie. ‘I didn’t kill anyone,’ he repeated. ‘You have to believe me.’
‘Forgive me if I don’t take anybody’s word entirely at face value just yet,’ Archie said. ‘Put Mr Whiting in the car, Sergeant, and call for back-up. I’m going to take Mrs Beresford inside and find out what the hell is going on here.’
‘There’s a child around somewhere,’ Marta warned. ‘I think he’s in the garden. Shall we go and find him?’
Josephine tried and failed to remember the last time she had seen such an unforgiving expression on Archie’s face. ‘I think you’ve both done quite enough for one day,’ he said, ‘and you’re certainly not going to start wandering off round the garden. Sergeant, when the other car gets here, ask them to stay with Whiting while you look for the boy. I don’t want him frightened by uniforms. In the meantime, make sure everyone else stays exactly where they are. Is that clear?’
‘Yes, sir,’ Fallowfield said, glancing apologetically at Marta and Josephine.
‘Good.’ He turned away, and Josephine watched as he took Vivienne and her escort back into Paradise House. She glanced up at the window again, but Olivia Hanlon – if that was who she was – had disappeared.
*
Penrose watched Vivienne Beresford glance round curiously as soon as she was over the threshold, but she seemed certain of where she was going and he let her lead the way upstairs, waiting in vain for the other woman to show herself. After the strong colours in the rest of the house, the main bedroom – with walls distempered a dull white – seemed daring and radical; the shade had been deliberately chosen to show two bright abstract paintings off to their best advantage, and it combined with unusually high ceilings to give the room a spacious, airy feel. There was a sycamore tree outside the window, and a breeze blew its branches against the glass as Penrose looked at the woman sitting on the bed with her head bowed, conscious of intruding where he did not belong. She lifted her face when she heard them come in, and he saw that her eyes were swollen from crying and her face was pale and drawn; she had aged, but he recognised her instantly from his last visit, and he wondered how many of the lines around her face and eyes had been added by the shock and the grief of the week she had just lived through. On the bedside table, easily within her reach, there was a gun.
Vivienne stumbled in the doorway, as if she hadn’t entirely believed – or wanted to believe – her own theory. The reality of coming face to face with her worst suspicions threatened to be too much for her, and the warder had to steady her. Slowly, languidly, Olivia Hanlon picked up the gun and nursed it in her lap, and Penrose saw in her demeanour the desperation of someone who was lost beyond all hope of return. The warder seemed to recognise it, too, and Penrose guessed that she had witnessed it many times in the women in her charge. Her fear was obvious and justified, and his conscience wouldn’t let him keep her there. ‘Give me the key,’ he said, and then, when she hesitated, ‘I’ll take full responsibility for anything that happens.’ Relieved, she did as he asked and Penrose released her from the handcuffs and sent her downstairs, confident that Mary Size’s expectations of her staff would not include acting as a sitting target for a woman with nothing left to lose. Vivienne rubbed her wrist absent-mindedly but barely seemed to notice that she had lost her shadow, so transfixed was she by her sister. For both women, the world had shrunk to include just the two of them, and Penrose realised that he was merely a silent observer.
It was Olivia who spoke first. ‘How dare you come here after what you’ve done?’ she said.
‘What I’ve done?’ Vivienne looked at her in astonishment. ‘You made me think that I’d killed you, then lived with my husband for ten years behind my back – and you challenge me about what I’ve done?’
Penrose interrupted, hoping to distract the women from their mutual hatred by straightforward questions. ‘Is this true?’ he asked. ‘Are you Olivia Hanlon? Forgive me if I’m confused, but the last time we met you told me you were her housekeeper.’
The woman looked directly at him for the first time, and he remembered how convincing she had been back then; not for a moment had he suspected that she wasn’t who she said she was, and he wondered how far he should trust her word now. ‘Yes, I was Olivia Hanlon, but she died to me ten years ago.’
‘So whose body was lying by the pool that night? Who have we buried as you?’
‘Her name was Colette Haas. She worked for me as a prostitute in Paris, and then in London.’
Penrose glanced at Vivienne, but the name obviously meant nothing to her; the details of the deception she had guessed at were as new to her as they were to him. ‘And how did Colette Haas die?’
She gave a hollow laugh. ‘More obligingly than Olivia Hanlon.’
‘Tell me, Miss Hanlon,’ Penrose said, and there was an edge to his voice now which matched hers; it wasn’t only Vivienne Beresford who felt cheated of the truth.
‘As I said, she’d worked for me in Paris and in London. Every now and again, we needed more cocaine than we could get via the usual methods, and I asked people to bring it in for me. She was one of the girls who volunteered. It was dangerous, but I paid her well and she always needed money because she was rather too fond of the stuff herself. The delivery was scheduled for that night. Billy collected her from the station and brought her up to the house. It was a good party, and Colette was looking for oblivion. I suppose you could say that I helped her find it.’
‘So she died of an overdose?’
‘Does it matter how she died?’
‘Yes, it matters very much.’ Penrose managed to keep his voice even, but only just. Olivia Hanlon’s detached recollection of the girl she had used disgusted him. He had not been able to forget the sadness of Rosina Field’s death, her body dumped so callously in that cellar, her life dismissed so easily. The assumption that women of a certain type were dispensable was one of the things he hated most about his job, and he saw it both in the men he arrested and – occasionally – among his colleagues. He expected it from someone like Frederick Murphy, but somehow he had never believed that a woman would treat a member of her own sex in the same way, and he cursed himself for his own naivety.
‘No, she didn’t die of an overdose,’ Olivia admitted. ‘She drowned. After everyone else had fled to save their own skins before the police arrived, there was one person left who was too out of control to go anywhere.’
‘And you drowned her.’ It wasn’t a question; by now, Penrose was all too certain of what had happened that night and how he and Townsend had been fooled.
‘Did Anthony know what you were doing?’ Vivienne asked, and then, when she received no response, ‘For Christ’s sake, Olivia, tell me if my husband was a killer.’
She took a couple of steps closer to the bed and Olivia picked up the gun which had lain forgotten in her lap. ‘Your husband? How easily you use that word. Anthony loved me, Vivienne. He would have done anything for me, so what do you think he knew?’ Penrose took Vivienne’s arm and tried to pull her gently away, but she resisted. ‘You made it all so easy, Viv. I goaded you all night, and I knew exactly how you’d react when you saw me with Anthony. I’d seen you in those clubs, remember – my little sister, hard as nails. Nothing ever got to you, did it? There was no passion in you, only anger, and anger is so easy to manipulate. Did you really think you could kill me so easily, Viv? A few seconds under the water and out of your life for good? Remember who taught you everything you know.’ She raised the gun and Penrose moved fo
rward, but to his astonishment she simply held it out to Vivienne. ‘Here – take it. It’s all over now, so finish what you started. I won’t stop you this time.’
‘Put the gun down, Miss Hanlon,’ Penrose said urgently.
‘Why? She can’t take anything more from me than she already has.’ She stared challengingly at her sister, goading her now as she had all those years ago. ‘Take the gun, Viv.’ It was an order, and Vivienne did as she was asked, holding the weapon with a familiarity that told Penrose that the single shot to Anthony Beresford’s head had not been a lucky accident.
‘So you waited until Anthony had got rid of everyone, then you killed Colette Haas and put her body where yours should have been?’
‘Yes.’
Olivia Hanlon’s willingness to admit to everything suggested that she no longer wished to live, and she seemed oblivious to the gun and the danger she was in, but Penrose wondered if she had considered the positive effect that her implication of Anthony Beresford might have on Vivienne’s chances in front of a jury? Unwittingly, she could be helping her sister to live, but only if there was no further bloodshed. ‘Then you went to the lodge and played housekeeper?’ he said, hoping that Vivienne would have the sense to realise that the more Olivia was allowed to say, the more reasons she had not to pull the trigger.
‘Yes, although that was never part of the plan. I just went there to get out of the way. Stupidly, I didn’t expect anyone to come looking, but you saw me and I had to let you in. It was the best story I could think of at the time.’
‘You let me think that I’d taken a life,’ Vivienne said. ‘Do you have any idea how that changes everything you’ve ever believed about yourself?’
‘Of course I do. I know exactly how it feels.’
‘And that’s why Anthony was so tender towards me afterwards, isn’t it? It had nothing to do with genuine love, or even regret – it was expediency. He needed me on side, so he did what Anthony always did best – he took control.’
Olivia shrugged. ‘Perhaps that was the Anthony you knew. Mine was very different.’
It was a simple observation, but perhaps the most inflammatory thing she had said yet. Penrose did his best to divert Vivienne from a conversation which would only throw up more damaging comparisons between the two relationships, but he knew that there was no such thing as safe territory. ‘What did you do after that night?’ he asked Olivia.
‘We waited for things to die down, then I left the country as Colette Haas. I stayed in France while Anthony was working in Europe, and we saw each other when we could.’
‘You were with him there as well?’ Vivienne asked, stunned, and the pain in her voice as she saw the lies torn down one by one was almost unbearable.
‘Yes. We came back to this country shortly after you did, and moved straight in here.’
‘We?’ Penrose queried, and immediately regretted it.
‘Yes. By then we had a child. Can you imagine a more idyllic place to raise a little boy, Viv? And Anthony was such a good father. Christophe worshipped him.’ At the thought of her son, her own pain seemed finally to eclipse her desire to hurt her sister. ‘Do you have any idea what that little boy has lost, thanks to you?’ she demanded.
‘It didn’t have to be that way. Why didn’t you just take Anthony from me, Olivia? If you loved each other that much, why put me through all those bleak, empty years? I might have been happy with someone else, for God’s sake. What had I ever really done to either of you to deserve that?’
In her distress, Vivienne had relaxed her grip on the gun and Penrose edged a little closer to her. ‘Answer the question, Miss Hanlon,’ he said, deliberately allying himself with the bigger threat in the room. ‘A lot of lives might have been saved by a straightforward divorce.’
She glared at both of them, but obliged him with an answer. ‘Olivia Hanlon needed to die,’ she said. ‘It was as simple as that. I had debts – big debts, and they weren’t going to go away. The house was at risk and other things had caught up with me. My friendly policeman couldn’t protect me anymore, not after the scandal of Goddard and Mrs Meyrick, and there were people who wanted me dead. Even Colette Haas had started to cause trouble by threatening to expose what really went on at the Golden Hat if I didn’t pay her more money, and I couldn’t afford to do that. So I could never have lived openly with Anthony, even if he wasn’t married. At best, I would have ended up in prison; at worst, someone on the outside would have caught up with me. This was the only way.’
‘Which policeman was protecting you, Miss Hanlon?’ Penrose asked, scarcely wanting to hear the answer.
‘Jim Townsend, but I’m sure you’ve worked that out already. How is he these days? I must have paid for that bungalow over the years, so I hope Bournemouth suits him.’
It would have been hard for Penrose to rationalise the sense of betrayal which he felt at that moment, and he responded in the only way he could. ‘Mr Whiting has implied that you murdered Millicent Gray,’ he asked, determined now to bridge the years between the crimes with truth, no matter who was hurt in the process. ‘Is he right?’
Whiting’s disloyalty came as a painful shock to Olivia Hanlon, as he had known it would, but she had no choice but to believe it. ‘She found out about us somehow. I think she followed Anthony one day, then she made an appointment to see the house and bided her time until she’d worked out who his lover was. She sent me a note. I think you got one, too?’ Vivienne nodded. ‘She was going to confront us with each other, but I couldn’t allow that to happen, so I got there first.’
‘Did you kill her?’ Penrose asked again, wanting no misunderstandings later – if they were ever lucky enough to get out of the house and into a courtroom.
‘Yes. I knew Anthony would never be a suspect on a day like that, so I took my chances. She was already dead by the time you arrived, Viv. I heard you coming down the steps, and you have no idea how tempted I was to answer the door. I watched you leave, and it was so strange to see you again after all those years.’
‘Did Mr Beresford know what you were going to do?’ Penrose asked.
‘No, not this time. I was going to tell him later – we didn’t have any secrets – but of course I never got the chance.’
‘And you were going to let me take the blame for that, as well,’ Vivienne said, scarcely able to believe what she was hearing.
‘Not deliberately, no. You really weren’t that important to me, Viv. When I found out that Anthony was dead, I stopped caring what happened to anyone else, especially myself.’
Penrose tried to imagine what that moment had been like for her, receiving the news from Billy or switching on the wireless to hear her lover’s voice, only to discover that he had been killed. ‘What about your son, Miss Hanlon? Surely you must care about him?’
She thought for a long time before answering, and Penrose wondered if she was going to ignore the question altogether. ‘I love my son,’ she said eventually, ‘but I love him because he’s part of Anthony and our life together. Now that life is gone, I have no idea how I feel. At the moment, I can’t even bear to look at him.’
Vivienne had been listening intently, sensing a vulnerability that she was determined to exploit. ‘It’s an idyllic picture, Olivia, but it must have been hard on you to realise that it still wasn’t enough for him.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Anthony and all those other women. He always needed something more, didn’t he?’
‘What?’ She laughed scornfully. ‘They were a cover, Viv – that’s all. They gave him the excuse to be with me when he wasn’t with you. As long as everyone thought he was a serial philanderer, nobody would guess the truth. But they meant nothing to him. He never even touched them.’
‘You’re sure about that, are you? You never thought about how attractive Millicent Gray was when you went to see her? How young? All that energy and vitality and adoration – could Anthony resist that, do you think?’ For the first time, a flicker of doubt cross
ed Olivia Hanlon’s face. Penrose had no idea if there was any truth in what her sister was saying, or if Vivienne was simply trying to get her own back, but whatever she was doing gave her the upper hand. Olivia seemed distracted and short of breath, and he suddenly remembered that she suffered from asthma. ‘Isn’t that why you killed her?’ Vivienne suggested. ‘Because she reminded you of how you used to feel? I wouldn’t be quite so sure of what you had, Olivia. Millicent threw some very intimate details in my face to hurt me, and I don’t doubt that she would have shared them with you if she’d lived long enough. Perhaps you and Anthony had more secrets than you realised.’
‘We were going to have a new life,’ Olivia insisted. ‘The three of us, together as a family at last.’ She just managed to get the words out before a fit of coughing overtook her. Penrose went to get her some water from the sink in the corner, but Vivienne used the gun as an effective deterrent and Olivia seemed to find the strength to bring the attack under control. ‘This is where we made love, Vivienne,’ she said, clutching the sheets with both hands. ‘Here – you can still smell him. It’s where we played with our child. Those are Anthony’s books on the shelf, and we chose those paintings together. His clothes are in those drawers. His life is in this house. He was mine, and nobody else’s.’
The effort that such a speech required proved almost too much for her. She stopped talking and her breathing took on a hollow, rasping sound, but her sister showed no mercy. ‘Anthony was my husband!’ she shouted, slamming her free hand down on the bed.