So she did have that in mind, thought Lucy. Somehow she was glad.
Martin’s voice slowed and he spoke as if he was finally surprised by his own actions, that for a long time he had not been able to quite believe in them himself. ‘I hit her in a way that, once again, I’d been trained to do in the army. I think I broke her neck. Then I dragged her up to the fourth floor of the undamaged wing. She was very heavy, the opposite of poor Tim.’ He paused. Still Lucy couldn’t find the anger. His description had almost been tender. ‘I wrapped the torn piece of shirt around her fingers and then took a long time levering her out of the window. Eventually I managed. Then I made my own search for the film, but, of course, it was fruitless. Solange had already decided what to do.’
There was another long silence and Lucy realized that Metand wasn’t going to prompt Martin, who reached for May’s hand. For a moment Lucy thought she was going to push him away. But she simply kept staring ahead and he eventually gave up.
Martin continued, his words tumbling over each other, the little pulse in his temple beating more rapidly. ‘I killed Baverstock and Tim and Solange. I did it purely to protect myself and Peter. I knew that I had to, that in their different ways they would all three undermine what had been built up since the war. I didn’t want to accept how I felt sexually. I wanted to be normal. I wanted to forget Pavilly. Then Peter weakened so I didn’t have any choice. Tim’s attempt to try and make good the past only made me realize how fragile my identity was. I couldn’t lose it. I couldn’t lose everything.’ He tried to take May’s hand again, but she was still gazing ahead. ‘Can’t you understand?’ Martin spoke now as if only he and May were in the room and he was desperately trying to reach her. ‘It’s the 1950s for God’s sake, but nothing’s changed since bloody Oscar Wilde. Why not? Why can’t we say the name?’
‘I can say it.’ May spoke savagely. ‘Homosexual. Queer. They’re just names. Why didn’t you tell me how you felt? Why couldn’t we have tackled it together? It was the secrecy.’
‘What do you expect in Esher?’
‘I don’t expect anything in Esher or Hersham or anywhere else. You should have told me. You would have been safe. But I wasn’t important, was I? It was the cricket team, the job, your social standing. That’s what you were obsessed with. You didn’t give a damn about me.’
‘Cricket teams,’ said Sally woodenly. ‘Filthy sandwiches.’
Thanks, thought Lucy. You never had a hand in making them, did you?
‘Now you’re really run out.’ Sally laughed raucously.
‘All that status,’ continued May. ‘You killed for it, didn’t you?’
Lucy supposed that was the case but she still couldn’t loathe him. Martin was like a little boy caught with his trousers down. Having done things.
‘Is there any more?’ asked Metand.
Martin started to say something and then stopped.
‘François.’ Lucy used Metand’s first name without thinking.
‘Yes?’
‘Could you take him away.’
‘Of course.’ Metand walked across to Martin Latimer and lightly touched his arm. ‘You’ll need to come to the police station with Inspector Frasier and me. We will need a statement.’ He turned to May. ‘Your husband will spend the night in custody and you’ll need to call your solicitor.’ Metand turned to Lucy. ‘It’s over. At last.’
‘I quite understand.’ May’s shoulders sagged. For once she was unable to find any common sense or any sense of belonging to anyone.
Martin walked over to the door with Metand by his side. Then he turned back to Lucy. ‘It was Tim who was everyone’s hero,’ he said.
Lucy would always be grateful to Martin for having said that.
‘After I’ve got the statement I think I’ll take the night ferry home.’
Lucy Groves and François Metand were standing in the drive of Conifers while a police car drove Martin away. The sky had cleared and the stars were hard and bright.
‘You won’t stay the night?’
He shook his head. ‘I’ll telephone when you are needed. Probably in a day or so.’
‘I shall miss you.’
‘I’m very sorry about what has happened. It’s all a profound tragedy.’
‘If I hadn’t forced Tim to France they would all be alive.’
‘You sent him back to war again, Lucy, but at least you gave your husband back his self-respect.’
‘Do you really believe that?’ she asked too eagerly.
‘Yes, I do.’ They shook hands and then Metand walked to his car. He didn’t look back.
Epilogue
4 August
The three women sat at their usual table in Caves Café.
It was Sally who had suggested the visit, and in a confused moment of bravado Lucy and May had agreed to join her. They had gathered at May’s house, determined that what the men had done would not drive the women apart. ‘One last coffee and revolting cake. Then there will be policemen to see, arrangements to make. But after that I’m determined I’ll sell the house and go. Where I don’t know, but if we go to Caves we could all three make a pledge,’ said Sally.
‘What would that be?’ May had asked. She seemed to have aged a good deal in a few hours, but it was obvious that even she didn’t want to be left alone.
‘That we’ll stick together, help each other out.’
Martin had been remanded in police custody and the newspaper headlines had gone into frenzied action.
BRITISH EX-ARMY OFFICERS SLAIN
NORMANDY KILLINGS MATCH BRITISH SLAUGHTER
KILLER CONFESSES TO FRENCH MURDERS
BRITISH EX-ARMY OFFICER’S SUICIDE LINKED TO FRENCH
KILLINGS
KILLER ARRESTED – CLOSE FRIEND COMMITS SUICIDE
THE TRAGEDY OF SHRUB LANE
THE SHRUB LANE KILLER
YOUNG GARDENER’S MURDER BEGINS SLAUGHTER
Only the Telegraph had been a little more restrained, with a headline which read NORMANDY KILLINGS LINK TO CLUMP MURDER AND SUICIDE.
Martin Arthur Latimer, 32, of 15 Shrub Lane, Esher, was arrested last night in connection with the murder of Graham Alan Baverstock, 17, of 28 Walton Road, Hersham, Surrey, Timothy Edward Groves, 31, of 12 Shrub Lane, Esher, and Solange Estelle Eclave, caretaker of the Château Pavilly, Navise, in Normandy, France. In a separate incident, a close friend of the Latimers, Peter Grant Davis of Conifers, Shrub Lane, Esher, was found dead at a local beauty spot.
‘I shall be visiting Martin when I’m allowed,’ May had explained tersely, as if she wanted to set a final record straight. ‘I’m surprised you can bear to be anywhere near me, Lucy.’
‘What Martin did had nothing to do with you.’
‘If he could have only turned to me, then I could have helped him. We could have got through together.’
‘That’s what I like to think about Tim. And the way Sally feels about Peter. But it could never be.’
‘Why ever not?’
‘They had to keep the status quo. It was in-built, despite the fact that it was also their undoing. We weren’t seen as equals. We were seen as in need of care and protection.’
‘We’re no longer in need of care, nor protection,’ Sally had pronounced. ‘Directly it’s all over, Alice and I are going to Florence for a couple of weeks.’
‘What about Nancy?’
‘I’ve given her notice. She wouldn’t have wanted to stay anyway.’
Lucy knew that however crazy Sally’s idea of paying a farewell visit to Caves Café had seemed, it was definitely the right thing to do. With one collective piece of courage, they had told the ladies of Esher that they were still bonded together.
They sat at their usual table and drank their coffee in the same way they had always done. Only May began to look doubtful.
‘Will you be having cakes?’ asked the waitress, gazing at them as if they were pariahs.
‘We always have cakes,’ said Sally truculently. ‘Why should this morn
ing be any different?’
‘No reason. No reason at all.’
It was not only the eyes inside the café that feasted on the three women. With studied casualness, passersby flocked to the mock Tudor windows to regard ‘the tragic trio’ as the press had dubbed them.
At the table of the tragic trio, however, conversation was surprisingly positive.
‘I just want to get out of Esher for good,’ said Sally. ‘I hate the place. It’s like being in aspic. Like being a flower and pressed in a book.’
Disapprovingly, May put a finger to her lips, concerned that Sally was talking far too brazenly and that the chatter around them had fallen away. It’s like reading The News of the World aloud, thought Lucy. Last night she had cried herself to sleep and this morning she had woken to more tears and the realization of an agony that wouldn’t end.
Lucy turned to Sally. ‘I’m going to the Hotel des Arbres,’ she said.
‘Where it all happened?’ gasped May disapprovingly.
‘I can be closer to Tim there. That’s where he died his hero’s death. I can’t hate Martin. I want to, but I can’t.’
May looked away.
‘Could I come to Normandy?’ asked Sally eagerly.
‘Of course.’
‘Peter only took you to Portugal just after Christmas,’ May said disapprovingly.
‘Yes. But that was the old life, wasn’t it? The new is here now. Waiting for us.’
‘He only took his life the day before yesterday.’
‘Why don’t you shut up?’ Again, Sally’s voice was deliberately loud.
‘Please,’ said May. ‘It was a mistake to come. We’ve got to go. I have to get back. I’ll be wanted.’
‘Only by the police,’ giggled Sally.
She’s high on her own adrenalin, Lucy told herself. She was sure she hadn’t been drinking.
May struggled to rise to her feet, flushed with anger and embarrassment and despair, but she was wedged in behind the table. ‘Please move.’
Sally affected not to be able to hear.
‘Please move. I want to get out.’
Suddenly she acquiesced, apologizing while May shakily rose to her feet. Bullies in the playground, Lucy thought. Bullies in the gossip shop. Is that what Sally and I have become, stripped of the identities our men bestowed upon us? Children again?
Lucy paid the bill and left a deliberately small tip. As Sally opened the door, she said to the woman behind the cash desk, ‘It’s a lousy day outside, you know.’
‘Is it, madam?’ she replied frostily. ‘I haven’t had time to take a look.’
‘We have a lot of time on our hands,’ said Sally sweetly. ‘We’re housewives out on a spree.’
‘Really, madam?’
‘Lucy, May and me,’ Sally sang the last line and Lucy exploded with indecent laughter. May pushed past them and made her way out into the sun-soaked street that smelt of melting tar and exhaust fumes.
‘You embarrassed me,’ she said, walking too fast down the Cut. ‘You let me down in public’
The spree was over. Sally was almost in tears and Lucy felt weighed down with her grief. Why had they behaved like that, she wondered. It was demeaning.
‘It was just a reaction, that’s all.’
‘What a reaction!’ snapped May. ‘You both made a terrible scene.’
‘I’m sorry.’ Lucy tried to put an arm round her waist, but she pushed it firmly away.
‘You’re hysterical,’ said May. ‘I’ve got to live here. Alone. For a long time.’ She began to cry and Sally and Lucy were penitent, although they knew she would never forgive them.
‘Are we going to sit alone in our houses?’ asked Sally.
‘Just for a while,’ suggested Lucy. ‘Come round and have a cup of tea later. I’ve decided to go to France early tomorrow.’
‘Commuting again. You should get a season ticket on that ferry.’
May’s pace increased still further and then she slipped, saving herself by going down on one knee. She whimpered and they rushed to help her. Again, she tried to push them away.
‘We’re nothing without them. We’re nothing without our men.’
‘Yes we are,’ said Sally defensively, but she was crying too.
Tim and I were comrades in arms, thought Lucy with a burst of pride. Then a forgotten few lines of poetry came into her head.
The men have marched away,
With a rattle of the drum,
Tiddly-um-tum-tum.
That seemed to say it all. Now the women must run the show.
With much love and thanks to Julia, friend and researcher
This electronic edition published in July 2011 by Bloomsbury Reader
Bloomsbury Reader is a division of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 50 Bedford Square, London WC1B 3DP
Copyright © 1997 by Anthony Masters
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