A Deep Deceit

by Hilary Bonner

  The DS suggested that I wait a moment while her colleagues completed some enquiries they were making and she left me alone with a stunned-looking Rob Partridge. After a couple of minutes a uniformed constable came in and told Rob he was wanted on the phone. Rob retreated with obvious relief and the constable positioned himself by the door like a sentry. I assumed that DS Perry and the others were checking up on me and my story.

  I wondered what prison would be like. From the moment I decided to make my confession I had been in no doubt whatsoever that I would go to jail. I saw no alternative. I didn’t relish the prospect, but I doubted it could be any worse than what I had endured with the man I had eventually killed.

  I just hoped that Carl would not feel too betrayed, and that one day he and I would have a future and would be able to live a normal life. Throughout whatever came before that it would be the dream of a future with Carl that would keep me going.

  I was beginning to become aware that normality was something I had never experienced.

  Ten

  The biggest shock was still to come.

  ‘Why don’t you go home now and someone will call round to see you in a day or two,’ said Sergeant Perry when she eventually returned.

  I looked at her in amazement. ‘You can’t just be letting me go, surely,’ I said. ‘I murdered my husband; I killed Robert Foster.’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ she replied.

  I couldn’t believe my ears. ‘But I did!’

  ‘We have done quite a bit of checking already; we’ve been on to the Metropolitan Police and they have no record at all of the murder you have reported,’ she continued calmly.

  I was staggered. ‘W-What does that mean?’ I stammered.

  ‘I think it means you couldn’t have killed your husband,’ she said quietly.

  ‘But I did,’ I responded. ‘I stabbed him to death. I can still see the blood. He was lying dead in a pool of blood . . .’

  ‘Mrs Peters, we have been round to see your present husband. I told you that. He’s here now, waiting for you. And he’s very upset. He has explained to us all about your terrible nightmares . . .’

  ‘This is not a nightmare, it happened!’ I said. I was suddenly very angry. Anger was new to me. Fear and pain I understood well enough, but not anger.

  ‘Mrs Peters,’ the sergeant went on patiently, ‘the Reverend Robert Foster was not murdered.’

  ‘B-But he’s dead, isn’t he?’ I cried.

  ‘I believe so,’ said the sergeant. ‘But I don’t know the details. We will look into it more, of course. However, I see no reason to detain you.’

  ‘How did he die then, if I didn’t stab him? How?’

  ‘We don’t know yet. The Met are looking into it and will be sending us a full report.’

  ‘So how can you be sure that he wasn’t murdered? He was. He was. With my kitchen knife.’

  I realised I probably sounded absurd. I could hear the note of hysteria in my voice. Surely never had anyone tried harder to get themselves arrested on a murder charge.

  ‘There was never a murder investigation, that’s how we know,’ continued the sergeant. ‘Surely there would have been if a man had been found stabbed? That can hardly be natural causes, can it? You must see that.’

  I saw all right. DS Perry was barely concentrating on me at all any more. I suspected she just thought I was one of those people unable to differentiate between what was real and what was not.

  She could be forgiven, I suppose. My head was reeling. I could feel a dull ache beginning in my temples. ‘What about all the threats, those awful letters I got and the paint daubed on our front door?’ I asked.

  She nodded. ‘We’ll look into that too. You thought you were being threatened because somebody knew you had killed your husband. Well, it seems that cannot be so. Can you think of anything else that might lie behind these anonymous threats?’

  I shook my head numbly. I really didn’t know what was going on any more.

  ‘Well, let’s take it a step at a time then, shall we, Mrs Peters?’ said the sergeant, quite incomprehensibly I thought.

  The hysteria took a grip of me for a moment or two.

  ‘It’s not Mrs Peters,’ I yelled at her. ‘I’m still Mrs Foster. I’m not married to Carl. We couldn’t possibly have got married, we would have been found out. It’s not even Suzanne. I had to take a new name because of what I’d done. I’ve been living a lie . . .’

  ‘It’s not an offence to change your name, women commonly use the name of a man they live with but have not married. I assumed you preferred to be called Mrs Peters.’ The sergeant sighed. ‘Look, we will get back to you, you can rely on that. Meanwhile go home, get some rest . . .’

  She just wanted to be rid of me, I suspected. Everyone thought I was weak, even the police. Too weak and confused to be a murderer apparently.

  She led me into the interview room in the reception area where I had first been installed. Carl was waiting there, sitting on one of the plain wooden chairs. His eyes were red-rimmed. The strain was also apparent in the tight little lines round his mouth. But if he was angry with me he didn’t show it.

  His eyes lit up when I walked in, the way they always did when he saw me, and he even managed half a smile as he stood up and wrapped an arm rather awkwardly round me, just as he had on that fateful morning so long ago.

  ‘You can take her home now, Mr Peters,’ said the sergeant, carefully not calling me by any name at all.

  Carl did not need a second bidding. ‘Let’s go, honey,’ he muttered, and bundled me outside.

  When we were in the car park he gently turned me to face him. ‘My darling,’ he said. ‘Why on earth did you go to the police? Haven’t I told you often enough that I will look after you. It’s dangerous for us to involve anyone in our lives, you know that – let alone the police.’

  ‘But . . . but they said there was no murder,’ I stuttered. ‘I don’t understand . . .’

  ‘They’ll f-f-find out the truth eventually, they’re b-bound too,’ he hissed through clenched teeth, the strain of it all making him stammer.

  I shuddered. Just a while ago I had been so sure of myself – nervous to the point of being afraid, but quite certain I was doing the right thing. Now I didn’t even know what the right thing was any more. DS Perry had made it fairly clear that she thought I was a raving nutter. The front desk clerk had seemed to assume that even before I’d really got going with my story. They certainly appeared to believe, just like Carl and my gran, that I was congenitally unable to cope with the practicalities of life, to sort anything out for myself.

  ‘Don’t worry, honey, just don’t worry about anything,’ soothed Carl as he steered me through the narrow streets back to Rose Cottage. Sometimes he really did behave as if I were stupid. How could I possibly not worry, for goodness’ sake?

  Then, as bad luck would have it, we saw the rear end of Fenella Austen disappearing round the corner by the library. I had been hoping that Carl wouldn’t notice her, neither of us needed any further agitation, but of course he did. I felt him stiffen beside me and he muttered something under his breath, so softly that I couldn’t quite catch the words. I could guess, though. Carl still distrusted Fenella.

  ‘Carl, you know she can’t be the one, there’s no logic to thinking that,’ I said quietly.

  ‘Somebody sent those letters and plastered paint over our door. Somebody had a go at our van, tried to drive us out of our minds.’

  ‘Yes, and we don’t have a clue who it was, not a clue.’

  His arm was still across my shoulders and he drew me closer to him. ‘I suppose you’re right,’ he muttered eventually.

  ‘You know I’m right,’ I replied.

  He gave a kind of grumpy snort. ‘I just know that without the threats none of this would have happened. You felt beleaguered, hunted. That’s why you went to the police.’

  ‘Maybe,’ I said. ‘But I think I might have wanted to do that eventually anyway. I did tell y
ou, try to warn you about how I feel. I’m tired of hiding, Carl, sick of it.’

  ‘So you haven’t been happy with me all these years; you’ve been living a lie, have you?’ he enquired abruptly in a flat voice and removed his arm from my shoulder.

  ‘Of course I’ve been happy with you,’ I cried. And that was the truth, for certain. ‘We’ve both been living a kind of lie, but not with each other, never that.’

  He put his arm round me again and kissed my cheek. ‘There you are, then,’ he said. ‘If it hadn’t been for those goddamned letters and all the other stuff we’d still be happy. Wouldn’t we?’

  I had to agree, reluctantly. ‘In a way we would, I suppose,’ I said. ‘But there has to be more to life than what we have allowed ourselves . . .’

  ‘Of course we would still have been happy,’ interrupted Carl heartily, as if he hadn’t been listening to me at all. ‘That’s all that changed it. I just wish I really did know who sent them. There’d be another murder then.’

  He set me thinking again. ‘But the police say there wasn’t one in the first place . . .’ I began.

  ‘You’re confused. They’ll find out, they’re bound to find out.’

  We were almost at the cottage by then, the funny little house that had been our haven for so long.

  ‘It’ll be all right, Suzanne, it’s just got to be,’ he whispered into my ear as he unlocked our front door.

  Inside the house I could not settle.

  Carl busied himself in the kitchen cooking supper, but everything seemed different. I had known that what I did that afternoon would change our lives irrevocably, but what had actually happened was nothing like anything I had imagined.

  I had foreseen being charged with murder, being arrested and locked up at once in a police cell. It had never occurred to me that I might be told there had been no crime committed and sent home. I just couldn’t get my head around it and, for once, Carl wasn’t helping.

  He seemed intent on carrying on as if nothing had happened. Perhaps it was all he knew how to do for the moment. Whatever his motivation, I found it really irritating.

  He was clutching a small saucepan when he came to me as I stood by the dining-room table scraping at some wax, which had fallen on to the polished wood from a candle. It wasn’t that I cared a jot for the table at that moment – it was in any case the same rather shabby gate-legged one, which had been in the house when we first moved in – just that I was looking for something to do with my hands.

  ‘Now, taste this,’ Carl instructed abruptly, thrusting a wooden spoon under my nose.

  I wanted to tell him to go way and leave me alone. I didn’t, of course.

  ‘It’s a new sauce for pasta – crabmeat and clam,’ he continued, almost prodding me with the dripping spoon. ‘Fresh clams, naturally. Steve dropped them round earlier . . .’

  Eventually I obediently complied, stuck out my tongue and licked at the spoon.

  ‘What do you think?’ he asked, as if my opinion of his blessed pasta sauce were his only anxiety in all the world.

  ‘Lovely,’ I said flatly. I really couldn’t have cared less.

  If he realised this he wasn’t showing it. ‘Is there enough garlic?’

  I nodded. I really didn’t want to know.

  ‘Good. Now, I put some Cajun spices in. It’s not too hot, is it?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘But can you spot my special secret ingredient?’

  I couldn’t carry on with this nonsense. ‘No, Carl, I can’t,’ I snapped. ‘I have other things on my mind. Don’t you understand that.’

  He hung his head like a schoolboy chastised by his teacher. I was never irritated by Carl. He wasn’t used to this kind of outburst from me, but I couldn’t help it. Couldn’t withdraw it, either. I just wanted time to think. But Carl seemed intent on not giving me that.

  He retreated, wounded, to the kitchen but returned within minutes clutching two glasses. ‘Cooking sherry, there was only this little drop left in the bottle after I made the sauce,’ he said. ‘I want to propose a toast.’

  I didn’t really want a drink, but I took one nonetheless.

  ‘To our future,’ said Carl stoutly, raising his glass to mine.

  It was not like Carl to be so insensitive. At that moment I couldn’t sort out the present, let alone the future, and I was staggered that he did not seem to have any understanding of this. As for the past, well, I was plain bewildered.

  I took a reluctant sip. It might have been me, but I thought the stuff tasted quite disgusting. As soon as he returned to the kitchen, saying it was time to put on the pasta, I took the opportunity to get as far away from him as was possible in our little house.

  I went upstairs, stood by our beautiful picture window and gazed blankly out over the bay. For once the spectacular view gave me no pleasure. In fact, I barely saw it, to be honest.

  I kept thinking about my surreal experience at the police station. It didn’t make any sense. I felt I had been fobbed off, dismissed as being of no consequence like some kind of prankster. I half wondered that they hadn’t accused me of wasting police time, such had been the attitude of DS Perry.

  There were so many unanswered questions I should have asked and didn’t. The Devon and Cornwall Constabulary weren’t really interested, that was the truth of it, or they would not have let me leave without having received a full report from the Metropolitan Police. Perhaps Carl was right to treat me as if I were stupid. I certainly felt it, as well as everything else. I wanted to go back to the police station and demand that they find out at once exactly what the Met believed had happened in my Hounslow manse home seven years previously. And I might have done so, too, were it not for Carl. As it was, I could not face the confrontation with him that I knew such a course of action would bring about. So I just stood there in a vaguely trancelike state.

  Because of that, maybe, I did not notice anyone in the street outside before the doorbell rang.

  I heard Carl shout ‘just a minute’, followed by a muffled curse as he dropped something in the kitchen and then his heavy footsteps as he made his way across our little dining room to the front door.

  ‘Hallo, there, brought you some good news,’ said a familiar voice from the alleyway outside.

  ‘Right,’ said Carl, making no move to invite the caller in.

  ‘Yes,’ the voice continued. Will Jones, no doubt about that.

  There was a pause.

  Then Will, obviously puzzled by the absence of Carl’s usual hospitality, spoke again. ‘Aren’t you going to invite me in, then?’

  ‘Of course,’ said Carl unenthusiastically and I could hear a shuffle as he stepped aside, then Will’s footsteps, followed by the slight bang and click of the door closing.

  No wonder Will sounded puzzled. We both liked him but his occasional unexpected visits to our little home were welcome for more reasons than that. He had only ever been turned away once before, the night of the pink champagne, and I think he had understood that I had always felt a bit guilty about that. Apart from anything else, he usually brought with him an envelope full of money when he called. Will knew how broke Carl and I almost invariably were and was in the habit of passing on the cash to Carl almost immediately after he sold a painting. A call from Will usually meant a sale, so he was nearly always a welcome visitor.

  ‘Where’s Suzanne?’ he asked. If Carl was in the house it was unusual for me not to be there with him, particularly in the evening, and Will knew that.

  ‘She’s upstairs,’ said Carl.

  Will must have made a move as if he were intending to climb the staircase – after all, he knew well enough that we more or less lived in our airy top room with its stunning picture window and that was where we usually entertained him when he brought us ‘good news’ – because I heard Carl tell him not to go upstairs.

  ‘She’s in a bit of a state, you see,’ he muttered by way of explanation.

  ‘What’s wrong, Carl, can I help at all?’ enquire
d Will predictably. He was the kind of man who always seemed to want to help if he could. Mind you, I just wished he’d go away and I suspected Carl felt the same. There are times when the last thing you want is someone else’s help. And Will could be very persistent in his attentions to us.

  Very quietly I made my way to the top of the staircase. There was a bend in it, and if you were both silent and careful you could squat there and watch what was going on below through the banisters without being spotted. Why is it that overhearing yourself being talked about is always so irresistible? Even in my confused and depressed state of mind I wanted to know exactly what Carl was going to say about me and how Will would react.

  At first Carl just sighed. For a moment I thought he might try to pass it off and show Will the door. But he didn’t. After a few seconds he gestured to Will to sit down and joined him on one of the old upright chairs round the table.

  ‘It’s this hate campaign against us, if that’s what it is . . .’ Carl began.

  I saw Will’s expression change, a kind of shadow fall across his face. He did not speak, just sat waiting for Carl to continue, which he eventually did.

  ‘I knew she’d be upset, but I never thought she’d be quite so bad. I think it was the nightmares. She thinks they’re never going to go away, not now these letters and all the rest of it have started . . .’

  ‘What nightmares?’ asked Will.

  Carl hesitated. ‘Oh, she’s always had them,’ he said eventually. ‘Since childhood. But I think she thought they had finished. The threats brought them back, worse than ever.’

  ‘I didn’t know. Poor Suzanne,’ said Will and I was touched by the concern in his voice.

  ‘She went to the police today,’ Carl continued.

  Will appeared to be almost as anxious as Carl. ‘What did they say?’

  ‘About the letters, you mean?’

  Will really did sound puzzled then. ‘Yes, of course, the letters. What else?’ he asked.

  Carl blinked rapidly. ‘Of course,’ he repeated quickly. ‘The letters and the other threats. It’s what they’re referring to, that’s what’s worrying us.’