by Hazel Holt
‘Oh no!’ Jenny exclaimed.
‘Fortunately Dr Macdonald was here so he was able to look after them until the ambulance arrived.’
‘How terrible!’ Anthea said. ‘Poor Carol!’
Rosemary came over with Delia in her arms. ‘There’s Daddy,’ she said.
‘Daddy,’ Delia said, considering him. ‘Daddy have chocklit biccy.’
Roger laughed a little unsteadily. ‘Not a chocolate biscuit, but I wouldn’t mind a cup of coffee if there is one. It’s going to be a long night. We’ve got to clear the ground so that the experts can have a look and see exactly what happened as soon as possible. On the other hand, I need to keep track of as many witnesses as possible. I’ve got a couple of constables and a sergeant going round and taking names and addresses. Tomorrow’s going to be a busy day.’
Liz handed him a cup of coffee and he drank it gratefully.
‘I was standing quite near to Carol,’ I said, ‘but I’m afraid I didn’t see anything—anything unusual, that is. I was talking to Dick and Muriel Mabey who had the next table to Carol’s. Perhaps they noticed something.’
Roger got out a notebook and made a note of their names.
‘Actually, I think Muriel was injured,’ I said. ‘She may have had to go to hospital. Oh dear,’ I went on, ‘poor Carol. Fancy such a terrible thing happening now, just when ...’
‘Exactly,’ Roger said. ‘Just when.’
The dogs were restless and uneasy when I got in, unsettled by the noise of the distant fireworks, and even Foss, usually imperturbable, stayed by my side, wailing more urgently than usual.
‘Look, you go straight to bed,’ Michael said. ‘I’m just going to take Jenny home and then I’ll come back and bring you up a hot drink.’
‘No,’ I protested, ‘it’s early yet. You and Jenny go to the pub or something.’
‘No, honestly,’ Jenny said. ‘I think we both feel a bit shattered by what’s happened.’
‘At least let Michael make you a cup of coffee,’ I urged.
‘Well,’ she hesitated, ‘that would be nice.’
‘Good,’ I said. ‘I’m going to take the animals up with me; they’ll only get under your feet otherwise. And they need a bit of human company at the moment.’
Jenny smiled. ‘I do hope you feel better tomorrow.’
As I lay in bed, with Foss curled up beside me and both dogs lying heavily on my feet, I allowed my mind to return to the dreadful fact of Carol’s death. Was it an accident or, given the large sum of money that she and Ronnie were about to inherit, wasn’t it more likely to be murder? But, if it was murder (and had someone been able to doctor one of the rockets to such terrible effect?), who on earth could the murderer be? Ronnie was the only person with any sort of motive. He disliked his wife, it is true, and perhaps he might have wanted to keep all the money for himself (but there was a great deal of money, surely enough for both of them to fulfill their wildest dreams), and Ronnie—well, he was such a negative sort of person, it was quite impossible to think of him even contemplating anything as positive as murder. It was well known that he was frightened of Carol and he would never have dared to plot anything against her in even a minor way. Besides, I’d never found him very bright and whoever murdered Carol (it indeed, she was murdered) must have been capable of a greater organizing ability than I felt Ronnie possessed. Also, now I came to think of it, if Carol had been murdered, the same person must have killed poor Miss Graham and if it was Ronnie, then where had he got the little cakes? Unless he and Carol had plotted that murder together (and she’d made the cakes) and then he’d murdered her ... It was all too confusing. I shifted about restlessly in bed, causing Foss to give a muted bellow of complaint as I disturbed him.
The door opened and Michael came in. ‘I thought the traditional hot, milky drink would be more suitable than coffee,’ he said, putting the mug down carefully.
‘Do you think perhaps Carol and Ronnie murdered Miss Graham together?’ I asked.
Michael looked a little taken aback by this question out of the blue.
‘And if it was Ronnie on his own,’ I went on, ‘where did he get the almond tartlets?’
‘A coffee morning or a bring-and-buy sale?’ he suggested. ‘Honestly, Ma, I don’t think you ought to be brooding over all that now. You’ve had a bad shock and you really should try to get some rest.’
‘It keeps going round and round in my mind,’ I said. ‘You know how things do.’
‘Well, don’t let it,’ Michael said. ‘Here,’ he continued, picking up from my bedside table a large and rather heavy (in all senses of the word) life of Henry James that I’d been sent for review. ‘Read your nice book and take your mind off it.’
‘Perhaps I will,’ I said. ‘But not that one. Get my copy of The Provincial Lady from the bookcase—top shelf, right-hand side—that’s the one. I think I want a little uncomplicated comfort just at the moment.’
Apart from a fairly spectacular bruise on my arm I was perfectly all right the next morning. After I’d got Michael off to work, fed the dogs, and pulled up the duvet around Foss who seemed disinclined to get up, I rang Rosemary.
‘How’s Delia?’ I asked.
‘Fine,’ Rosemary replied cheerfully. ‘She’s decided that the big bang was part of the firework display, thank goodness, and keeps on asking when we’re going to have some more.’
‘Poor Roger,’ I said. ‘He set out for a jolly evening with his child and ended up with a fatal accident. How is he?’
‘He didn’t get in until nearly two o’clock, poor lamb, so Jilly said. And he was off again before eight-thirty this morning.’
‘ {ew s ofHe didn’t say anything, I suppose?’ I asked tentatively. ‘About Carol’s death, I mean.’
‘I don’t think so. He’s got to see the, whatever, the forensic people, this morning, so I suppose he’ll know more then.’
‘Yes, of course,’ I said. ‘I suppose he will.’
Actually I didn’t have too long to wait to satisfy my curiosity because I ran into Roger the next day in the bank. I’d just been wrestling with the cashpoint machine, which sometimes humiliatingly rejects my card for no apparent reason, when I saw him turning away from the counter.
‘Oh, Roger,’ I said, edging him into the corner by the Securities section where we could speak relatively privately. ‘What news?’
‘News?’ he asked.
‘About Carol. Was it an accident?’
‘It seems unlikely,’ he said. He hesitated for a moment. ‘Look, Sheila, you’re on my list of witnesses, since you were quite close to Carol when it happened. If you’ve got time now, can we go somewhere quiet and talk? My car’s just round the corner.’
I followed him out and he drove us down to the sea front where we sat staring out at the grey tumbled sea, while the gulls swooped hopefully around the car, hoping to be fed.
‘So it wasn’t an accident, then?’ I asked.
Roger shook his head. ‘I’m afraid not. The firework was definitely tampered with and an extra charge of explosive was put in it. And not just that: small metal nuts and bolts had been packed in as well, which made it really murderous.’
‘How wicked!’ I exclaimed. ‘I mean, other people could easily have been killed as well as Carol!’
‘Two people had to be treated for burns and ten more people and a couple of children had bad injuries from the flying metal, not to mention those who were knocked down and hurt in the panic,’ Roger said gravely. ‘It had the same sort of effect as a small bomb. It was a very bad business indeed. We must be grateful that it wasn’t even worse.’
‘Do the explosives people know how the rocket was tampered with?’ I asked.
‘More or less, from the bits and pieces they’ve retrieved,’ he replied. ‘It seems that somebody took the black powder out of four or five ordinary rockets and packed it into a light copper tube—you know, the sort that plumbers use—and added some small metal nuts and bolts that would be shot out wi
th tremendous force when the thing went off, to make the whole thing really lethal—then screwed on a cap at either end (you can buy the whole lot at any DIY store) and bored a hole at one end for the fuse. The copper tube would act as a sort of compression chamber and so the force of the relatively small amount of black powder would be greatly magnified. Then it must have been wrapped up in one of the real rocket tubes, the stick was inserted, and there you are, a hideously lethal weapon looking like a harmless firework. The fuse had been shortened so that the effect was more or less instantaneous.’
‘Good God,’ I said. ‘Who could have done such an utterly vile thing? I mean, the only person who might conceivably have wanted Carol dead is her husband, and Ronnie—well, you’ve met him. Do you think he’d be capable of that sort of murder?’
Roger shrugged. ‘I agree it seems unlikely, but I’d never bet on who would or wouldn’t be capable of any crime if only the circumstances were right. Nobody would believe that you could ever kill anyone, now would they, but say Michael’s life was being threatened ...’
‘Well, yes, I suppose so. But, even so, I really can’t believe Ronnie would have the ingenuity to work out such a complicated way of killing anyone. Anyway,’ I suddenly remembered, ‘Ronnie’s got a perfectly good alibi. He was at a meeting of the CPRE.’
‘I agree that a committee meeting of the Council for the Protection of Rural England sounds highly respectable and, yes, I did know that he was there and other members of the committee have confirmed it.’
‘Well, there you are.’
I watched a solitary windsurfer (surely mad at this time of the year although he was wearing a wetsuit) lose an unequal struggle with his board and topple into the water. The gulls had given us up as a bad job and were making for an elderly lady with a small black dog who had stopped by the sea wall and was delving into a carrier bag for the remains of a sliced loaf.
‘Of course,’ I said, having just thought of something, ‘Ronnie is the one person who might have tampered with the box of fireworks at home before she left.’
‘No go, actually,’ Roger said. ‘All the boxes of fireworks were brought along by another member of the Round Table (a man called Dick Mabey) and distributed on the night. Furthermore, each box was wrapped in sealed cellophane so if anyone had been tampering with them someone would have noticed.’< {fonher/p>
‘Well, that does seem to put Ronnie in the clear, as it were. How is he, by the way? I suppose you’ve seen him?’
‘Yes. I saw him right away that evening. He seemed pretty stunned then, of course. Then yesterday when we confirmed that it wasn’t an accidental death I called on him again. He was’—Roger paused as if searching for the right word—‘not really with me—very vague and not taking in what I was saying. It’s not an unusual reaction in such circumstances; a form of shock, really.’
‘Well, if he is innocent then it must all be pretty devastating for him,’ I said thoughtfully. ‘First his aunt and now Carol. Not to mention suddenly coming into all that money. I should think he wouldn’t know if he was on his head or his heels!’
‘The money, yes ...’ Roger beat a light tattoo with his fingers on the steering wheel. ‘Now that’s got to be the key somehow, but I’m damned if I can see how at the moment.’
‘Well, certainly if Ronnie has got a watertight alibi ...’ I said. Something else occurred to me. ‘I wonder who his heir would be. After all, he and Carol didn’t have any children. Do you think there’s a possible motive there?’
‘I’ll certainly see what I can find out. There might be something. As you can imagine, I’m clutching at straws a bit now. Did you speak to Carol at the firework display?’
‘Oh yes,’ I said, ‘we had a little chat just before she let them off.’
‘And did she seem more or less normal? Not upset or agitated about anything?’
‘No,’ I replied. ‘Just her usual moan about Ronnie {abo34"not having done something—goodness, yes! I’ve just remembered! The special taper she needed to light the fireworks. Apparently Ronnie had promised to get some for her, but he’d forgotten so she had to go and borrow one from Dick Mabey!’
‘Yes?’ Roger enquired.
‘She’d already started unpacking the fireworks from the box on the ground to put them on her little table, so the box was open ...’
‘And so somebody could have slipped the doctored firework into the box while she was not there!’ Roger exclaimed.
‘And in the dark, of course,’ I went on, ‘not to mention all the people milling about; it was pretty crowded by that time.’
‘Right,’ Roger said. ‘Now had she unpacked all the fireworks when you left her?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Yes, she had. Then I left her to have a word with Muriel Mabey, who was with Dick at the next table, and I waited with them until Dick finished his lot and Carol started hers.’
‘You didn’t see anyone talking to Carol?’
‘Sorry, I wasn’t watching her all the time because I was talking to Muriel and had my back to her. I only turned round to watch when she actually started to let the fireworks off. Then, after she’d done most of them, there was this awful bang and the smoke and the confusion, so I’m afraid I rather lost track of things then.’
‘It all seems like a series of dead ends,’ Roger said ruefully.
The old lady with the dog tipped the remaining crumbs from the carrier bag, turned it inside out and put it in a litter bin. The gulls moved on further up the beach looking for a new food supply.
‘What sort of person could do a thing like that?’ I said, reverting to my earlier thought. ‘Killing someone that way, so that innocent bystanders could have been killed and maimed as well; children, too. They must have known that there’d be children there! Delia,’ I said, looking at Roger.
‘I know,’ he said, his hands clenched white on the steering wheel. ‘I try not to think of what might have happened. But, by God, I’m going to get whoever’s responsible!’
‘It’s all of a piece,’ I said, ‘with poisoning a trusting old lady. I mean, both acts are so calculating, so devious. Whoever did those things must be totally devoid of any sort of feeling for other people, utterly selfish and self-absorbed, not to men {d, fonttion ruthless. Honestly, I really can’t imagine anyone I actually know behaving in such a way, can you?’
‘It certainly indicates a cruel, pitiless character,’ Roger said thoughtfully, ‘and no one comes immediately to mind in that way; at least, not in the context of the first murder.’
‘I don’t suppose,’ I suggested, ‘that the two aren’t connected. Perhaps someone else wanted Carol out of the way for some totally different reason, nothing to do with Ronnie, Miss Graham or anything. I mean, now I come to think of it, I don’t really know anything about Carol’s private life. She may have had all sorts of secrets that one simply knew nothing about.’
‘It’s a possibility,’ Roger said. ‘Perhaps,’ he added, with an amused sidelong glance at me, ‘you’d better get the Taviscombe Mafia to work on it right away!’
Chapter Fifteen
‘Well,’ I said, ‘what do we really know about Carol? I mean, she’s always been a bit difficult and not very easy to get on with, so somehow I’ve rather avoided her.’
Rosemary got up from her chair to put another log on the fire.
‘She was a bit older than Ronnie, of course,’ she said, moving the burning logs with a poker so that a shower of sparks fell into the hearth. ‘There, that’s better. An open fire is the very last thing I shall give up when old age finally creeps up on me. It’s an awful bore to clean out every day, but there really is nothing like it!’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I sometimes wish I hadn’t got rid of ours, but when Peter died and Michael was away at Oxford I couldn’t face lugging coal and logs about so I put the gas ones in—not the same, though, however many little flickering artificial flames they have!’
‘Carol was certainly very blunt and down to earth,’ Rosemary said, ‘
but very efficient, you have to give her that. I can’t imagine how Ronnie will manage without her in the shop.’
‘Well, he won’t have to, will he? I mean, I don’t imagine he’ll keep on the shop now that he’s going to inherit all that money.’
‘I never thought of that. I wonder what he will do?’
‘One thing’s for sure,’ I said, ‘he’ll be able to buy all the antiques he wants now. Remember all those beautiful things he’s collected. Money will be no object now.’
‘He’ll miss her, I expect,’ Rosemary said. ‘Carol used to boss him around, I know, but she organized his life. He’ll be lost without her.’
‘Perhaps he hated being organized,’ I replied. ‘Perhaps he just wanted to be.’
I stared at the flames licking round the new log that Rosemary had just put on and wondered about Ronnie and his new-found freedom. Maybe it had come too late and he wouldn’t know how to deal with it. Sometimes the thing we think we’ve longed for is not the thing we really want.
‘There was an old song my father used to sing when I was a child,’ I said. ‘ “Just when you get what you want, you don’t want what you wanted at all.” Perhaps that’s how Ronnie feels now.’
Rosemary laughed. ‘Well, he doesn’t have to be lonely. Not with all that money. I expect he’ll marry again. He’s quite a catch now!’
‘Oh dear, do you think he will? Some little gold-digger, years younger than he is?’
‘It happens.’
We both fell silent, contemplating this scenario. Our musings were interrupted by Jack coming into the room.
‘Good heavens! Are you two still having tea?’
Rosemary glanced guiltily at the tea things on the little table in front of the fire. ‘Jack, you’re home! Is it that time already?’
‘Goodness, yes,’ I said, getting to my feet, ‘I’d no idea it was so late. I must be off.’
‘No, no, Sheila, don’t go! I’m early actually. I called to see a client and he was out so I didn’t bother to go back to the office. No, sit down and we’ll all have a glass of sherry.’