‘You live near the river now,’ Jack said.
‘It’s where I belong,’ Megan Lawson said.
‘The police let your father go. Why do you think he’s guilty?’ Stella persisted.
‘I was a kid, I knew Dad liked Honeysett, she made him laugh, but I didn’t think anything of it. Mrs Merry made me see. Like Mum, she’s a survivor.’
‘Why is she a survivor?’ Jack hadn’t meant to ask but, scribbling in her Filofax, Stella gave no sign she minded his interjection.
‘Her husband and daughter were killed in a car crash before she moved to Thames Cottages.’ Megan Lawson hummed a snatch of tune. ‘It’s why she spent time with me. I made up for her daughter.’
‘If your dad liked Helen Honeysett, why would he kill her?’ Stella steered her back on track.
‘Honeysett was a gorgeous girl about town and Dad was a plumber with an overdraft and two kids. Fun to flirt with on the towpath, but end of. He made a pass and she gave him the brush-off.’ She resumed her humming.
‘How do you know this?’ Stella turned to a clean page.
Megan Lawson shrugged.
‘Did he have a temper?’ Stella wasn’t giving up.
‘My mum could lose it. He was the silent type, he’d just leave the house.’
‘Did he hit you or your brother?’
‘He never hurt us.’
Stella said nothing. She would be doing a ‘detective silence’. Her dad had said, ‘Let a void open and the interviewee will fall into it.’
Jack heard the thud of the lobby door, then footsteps, slow and ponderous, on the stairs. They paused outside her flat. There was the jangle of keys and a door opened and closed.
‘Dad bottled up his emotions, but Honeysett got to him,’ Lawson said eventually.
‘What would he gain by killing her?’ Stella was having to rejig the angle of her questions because rather than defending him, as they’d expected, Steven Lawson’s daughter was a fierce exponent of his guilt.
‘A person can be murdered out of fury.’ Megan addressed the ceiling: ‘I’m sorry, but I can’t help you. In fact, I don’t want to help. I don’t need a couple of would-be detectives raking up the past. I told the police I saw my father go after Helen Honeysett. My brother saw him too, but swears he didn’t. Go and torture him.’ She broke into a hum and then, ‘Like my aunty says, innocent men don’t walk into the river and drown themselves.’
‘Actually they do.’ Jack shifted on his chair. ‘Living under a cloud of suspicion can be too much to bear.’
‘He wasn’t the only one living under a cloud. He’s made us all guilty. You have no idea what it’s like to step off a platform in front of a train!’
‘Well, in fact...’ Jack trailed off. Drivers dreaded getting a ‘One Under’. Many went through their working lives without someone jumping into the path of their cab, others had it more than once. He’d had one and been a witness to another. Most drivers found it hard to get over. Jack still saw the expression of the man who had looked directly at him as he jumped. It was unfair to resent Megan Lawson for choosing that way to end her life, but he did.
Perhaps Stella guessed his feelings because she changed the subject. ‘Who lived at number 1 Thames Cottages in 1987?’
‘Neville something. Garry said he murdered Honeysett, but he had an alibi. He was creepy, used to watch the houses through the hedge.’
Jack sat up. Now they were getting somewhere. ‘Did you tell the police?’
‘Nothing to tell. Like I said, Rowlands – that was his name – had an alibi for that night: he was caring for his mother. Besides, I heard Helen Honeysett with Dad on the towpath.’
‘You were there?’ Stella leant forward. ‘Did you tell the police?’
‘What business is it of yours?’ Megan Lawson countered.
‘Did your family know that you left your house?’ Jack asked. Stella had mentioned reading in Adam Honeysett’s file that Megan had gone to the towpath. How had he known?
‘No! My mum would have told the police. Garry knows. He just can’t bear to face it.’
‘Adam Honeysett knows.’ Stella had remembered too.
If it were possible Megan went even paler. ‘We went out for a drink a few months ago. I forgot I told him.’
‘Why did you go out?’ Stella pursued.
‘Not on a date if that’s where you’re going.’ Megan hummed and then interrupted herself. ‘He was quizzing me about that night. Like you are.’ More humming.
Jack knew it wasn’t the first time a wife had helped cover up a murder for her husband. Was this why Garry Lawson couldn’t leave? He wasn’t being the husband his mother had lost, he was making sure she didn’t reveal the truth about Steven Lawson.
‘Did you see your father with Helen Honeysett?’ Stella was filling her Filofax page with her neat script.
‘I was hiding on the riverbank.’ Her humming sounded like a variation on the theme for The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.
‘What did you hear?’ Stella kept her eyes on Megan Lawson, although the other woman never met her gaze.
‘She said, “Oh, it’s you!”’
‘How close were you?’ Stella was her father’s daughter.
‘No idea. About ten feet?’
‘Why were you sure it was Helen Honeysett?’ Jack asked. Stella’s slight nod told him it would have been her next question.
‘Who else could it have been?’
If Stella had been tempted to answer ‘pretty much anyone’ she resisted. ‘What did you do next?’
‘I climbed up the bank. I’d been stupid; the tide was rising. If I’d slipped I’d have fallen in. There was no one on the towpath. I ran home. My mum was in the kitchen, she was crying, but she hid her face. She never knew I’d been out.’
‘Mrs Merry found Helen’s dog on her way back from Kew Bridge.’ Stella made of show of looking back on her notes. ‘Could it have been her that you overheard?’
‘No.’ More humming.
‘Can I get this straight?’ Stella was sketching a map of the towpath. ‘Daphne Merry turned left from the cottages on to the towpath towards Kew Bridge and Helen Honeysett always went right and passed Mortlake Crematorium. So how come Merry found Honeysett’s dog?’
‘When Helen Honeysett was jogging, she never noticed him run off. Baxter tried to go home, but got confused and passed the steps to the cottages. Mrs Merry hated carelessness. “One day he’ll drown,” she said. Dad rescued Baxter once.’ Despite her conviction that Steven Lawson had murdered their neighbour, Jack saw a fleeting look of pride at this memory. Again he saw the seven-year-old Megan Lawson had been.
‘So Daphne Merry didn’t have an alibi?’ Stella was sharp.
‘Of course she did, that creep saw her.’
‘What creep?’ Jack tried to hide his excitement. They were getting warmer.
‘I just told you. Neville Rowlands was always following Daphne when she walked Woof.’
‘Woof?’ Jack echoed. ‘Was that her dog’s name?’
‘Her little girl named him,’ Megan explained.
The dog would have been all Daphne had left of her family. Jack remembered his meeting with Daphne on the towpath. ‘Isn’t Woof the name of her dog now?’
‘I don’t see her now.’ Megan was curt.
‘Why did Neville Rowlands follow Merry?’ Stella was on point.
‘He wasn’t following her, he was walking his dog.’ Megan looked irritated. ‘Helen said he was a sweetie.’
‘Why did she think he was a “sweetie”?’ Personally, Jack was happy to move Neville Rowlands up to pole position on their suspect list.
‘She said that about everyone. You couldn’t trust her.’
Stella didn’t disguise her surprise. ‘Why not?’
‘She let my brother’s birds escape. Some died. Neville Rowlands found one in his garden and brought it back. I told Helen Honeysett. She wouldn’t confess what she’d done. She said that if Neville Rowlands moved out, the owne
r could do up the house and make a fortune. He’d lived there all his life. Like my parents he was a tenant. When Mum dies Garry will be homeless.’ A shadow passed across her face. Garry Lawson had cut off his sister for suspecting their father of murder. Yet still Megan worried about his welfare. Must be a sibling thing. Jack liked her for it.
‘How could Neville Rowlands have seen Daphne Merry on the towpath if he was at home looking after his mother?’ Stella missed little.
‘He took his dog for a pee. He said he saw Daphne coming back from Kew Bridge with Baxter and Woof. His mother confirmed he was away for five minutes.’ Megan roused herself. ‘Neville Rowlands wasn’t a sweetie, he was a total creep, but don’t go pinning this on him. Or anyone else. My dad did it and then killed himself.’
‘Who else was on the towpath?’ Stella was contemplating her map. ‘In 1987 everyone in the street owned a dog.’
‘How should I know? Since I heard my dad, it’s irrelevant.’ Jack noticed that Megan Lawson had a fine line in couching conjecture as unstinting fact.
‘You didn’t say you heard your dad.’ Stella’s tone was even.
‘I heard her and he was with her.’ Megan stood up. ‘The one you should be talking to is my aunt. She’s written articles on it. She’ll write a book one day.’
‘Your aunt is a reporter?’ Stella remained sitting.
‘An investigative journalist. Dad called her a “hack”.’ Megan carried on humming.
Megan Lawson was familiar, not because she’d been on his train or on a station platform, but because she had the same brown eyes and full mouth as someone he and Stella knew all too well. Someone who was going to write a book ‘one day’. Someone who had a fine line in whisking up fact from hazy supposition.
‘Who is your aunty?’ Stella knew.
Megan Lawson stopped humming and fixed directly on Stella. ‘She’s called Lucille May.’
44
Tuesday, 6 January 1987
The bedroom door burst open. Megan dropped her pencil on the carpet.
‘You’ve done it now.’ Garry’s fists were balled. Despite this threatening pose, Megan only noticed that his cheeks were wet with tears.
‘Garry! What’s happened?’ Had Mum gone to the river? She put out her hands to hug her brother.
Choked by sobs, Garry spluttered, ‘You killed them. Murderer! You killed…’ He dashed a sleeve across his face and swept the drawing pad and a jar of colouring pencils off the little desk. He retrieved the pad and began systematically to rip up each page, flinging scraps of paper in all directions.
‘Stop! Please,’ Megan protested feebly.
‘What’s going on in here? Garry, put that down now!’ Bette Lawson stormed into the room and snatched what remained of the pad off her son. She dropped it on the uncluttered desk, giving the pad a pat as if that might restore it. ‘What’s the matter?’
‘She’s evil!’ Garry’s voice trembled with suppressed fury. ‘She’s killed my birds!’
‘Do not talk about your sister like that. What do you mean she’s killed your birds?’ Bette Lawson went to the window, but it was dark so she couldn’t see the aviary.
‘She went in without my permission. She left the cage door open on purpose.’
Megan came to life. ‘I did not!’ She set about gathering up the bits of paper. Garry gave her a kick; it wasn’t hard, but it knocked Megan off balance.
‘Garry! Whatever Megan has done, we don’t have violence in this house.’ Bette Lawson paused, perhaps registering there was no ‘we’.
‘She is violent!’ Garry scrubbed at his hair with both hands. ‘She killed my birds.’
‘I did not!’ Helen Honeysett’s visit was her secret. ‘I made ’specially sure the door was fastened properly. I did your drill. Make sure no budgies are by the cage door, back out and put the latch on behind you. I did that. That’s what I did.’ She ran out of breath.
Bette Lawson would have liked to do what Steven did when things got difficult and take the dog for a walk. Let the kids fight it out. Let someone else sort out the mess. But as per Steven had left her to deal with it and gone off to do a job. Or so he said. Bette had picked up what remained of Megan’s pad and was twisting it, bending the spiral spine.
‘Are you sure you shut the cage when you left, Megan? Better to tell the truth.’
‘I did. I am sure.’ Megan saw Helen Honeysett’s retreating figure, the beads slung around her shoulders. She had gone back for her pager thingy. Megan stared blankly at her mum… She couldn’t tell her mum about Helen Honeysett visiting or her mum would realise who had left the cage open. Yet it was quite impossible that Helen Honeysett would do such a thing. The afternoon with Helen Honeysett felt suddenly wrong and strange.
‘What’s happened?’ Bette Lawson turned her attention to her son.
‘Three birds got out and the dog that belongs to the old lady at the end killed one.’
‘Which bird was killed?’ Megan asked tremulously. Her brother ignored her.
‘Garry, if Megan says she didn’t leave the cage open then she didn’t.’ Bette wearily took off her mac and folded and refolded it. Absently, she corrected her son, ‘Miss Lofthouse isn’t old.’
‘The one you hand-reared. Its head is ripped off.’ Garry was stony-faced.
Megan went white. ‘Mindy’s dead?’
‘Garry!’ Bette dropped the mac on Megan’s bed and took him by the shoulders. ‘Stop it!’
Megan said, ‘Can I help bury Mindy?’
‘Stay out of it.’ Garry shook off his mother’s hands and slammed into his bedroom.
In that moment, Bette Lawson saw the man that her son would become. A stolid and silent individual who would no longer love her.
Megan subsided on to her bed. In her seven-year-old way, she too saw that Garry was properly gone. ‘I was telling the truth,’ she said to no one in particular. ‘I fastened it tight shut.’
*
Weeks later everything was different. Helen Honeysett was missing; Steven Lawson lay on a slab in the Richmond Morgue; his daughter Megan sat at her bedroom window staring out at the night. The lawn was patterned with moonlight and she could just see the aviary; the mesh, washed with silver light, was like cobwebs. The birds would be in their beds. Except for Mindy. Where was she? With her dad, she hoped.
Dubious about God, because if there was one it would be true that her dad was in Hell, Megan gazed towards the rose bush where Garry had buried his birds.
Mechanically, she whispered the Lord’s Prayer:
‘Our Father in heaven,
Hallowed be your name…’
Hours later, drifting into a fitful sleep, Megan saw a tiny feathered form lying on the floor of the aviary. She looked closer. Its head was missing.
Your kingdom come,
Your will be done,
On earth as in heaven…
45
Monday, 11 January 2016
‘Lord Peter Wimsey and Miss Marple!’ Lucie May’s voice crackled from a speaker beside the front door. ‘Come to update me on what’s occurring in the murky subterranean worlds of deep cleaning and late-night passion wagons?’
Jack and Stella waited.
‘Entrez!’ the Dalek voice gargled. Jack pushed on the front door; it held fast.
A static cackle. ‘Harder, Jacko!’
Stella tried; still the door remained stubbornly shut.
‘Lucie, could you please come and open it?’ Jack addressed a badly concealed camera amid a clump of ivy above the door.
‘Harder!’
‘It’s locked.’ Talking to the ivy, Stella was unruffled. ‘You need to wire the lock to open when you activate it. This is a mechanical lock, it works manually.’
Jack mouthed at Stella quizzically.
‘She’s installed a Wi-Fi doorbell. It rings on your phone and you can see who’s there and talk to them. But not if—’ The door flew wide and, waving her mobile phone, Lucie May was before them.
‘Bloody
thing.’ She sashayed into her sitting room. Dressed in her late-night garb of a baggy shirt that was her ‘hated ex-hubby’s’, a jumper slung over her shoulders and tight black leggings, she was already curled in her corner of the sofa, legs tucked under, nibbling on a carrot by the time they joined her.
‘What’s that smell?’ Jack asked as a sharp tang assailed him.
‘Lemon oil. Wards off depression and mosquitoes.’ Lucie wagged her carrot at Stella. ‘It’s better than bleach for cleaning showers and whatnot.’
‘Are you depressed?’ Jack was concerned. He had feared that the noxious mix of driven ambition and constant disappointment would take its toll.
‘Have I the time or luxury?’ Lucie chomped up her carrot and reached for another from a line of crudités laid in a row on the coffee table before her. ‘Nippets, both?’ she warbled cheerily and, springing up, flew across to her ‘Nippet Station’. She unscrewed a bottle of Gilbey’s gin, doing a skipping motion that belied any suggestion of depression.
‘No thanks,’ Stella said. ‘Actually alcohol is a depressive.’ Lucie’s shoulders stiffened. Jack knew Stella wasn’t judging – she was a stern judge only of herself – she was stating a fact. Wary of each other, the two women were polite for pragmatic purposes. If they were going to fall out, Jack wanted to be far away.
‘Not in small doses.’ Lucie filled her glass with a generous helping of gin and a cursory splash of tonic. She tossed in an ice cube and a sliver of lemon from a dish on the pull-down flap in her cabinet and meandered back to the sofa. ‘Sit down, Thompson and Thomson!’
She brushed aside papers and chocolate wrappers scattered on the sofa and signalled to Jack to join her. She appeared to have forgotten Stella was there.
Stella removed more papers and a wizened carrot from an armchair at a distance from the sofa and sat down.
Lucie took a slug of her ‘nippet’ and produced, from beside the rank of carrots, a phial of lemon oil, sprinkling it indiscriminately. Drops fell around Jack’s polished brogues. He scooted his feet back. He didn’t care about many material possessions, but he did care about his shoes. ‘Feel your mood lighten and the cogs in your minds whirr,’ Lucie trilled.
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