Murder Unexpected

by Anita Waller

  Doris and Mouse leaned forward onto the table.

  ‘If I call Martha anything but Rowe, it’s denying her a true heritage. She is Leon’s child, Leon Rowe. She has grandparents called Rowe, but, and here’s the biggy, I don’t want to be a different name to my daughter. Therefore I have decided my name will remain as Rowe, and Martha will grow up knowing who she is, who her mummy is, who all of her grandparents are, and who her daddy was. I’ll obviously have to cushion things until she’s old enough to know the truth, but I’m sticking with Rowe.’

  ‘Good,’ Doris said. ‘Have you told your mum and dad?’

  ‘I have. I told them when I collected Martha last night. I think they’re pleased I’ve actually reached a final decision, and on Monday I’m going to make an appointment to register her birth, then we’ll see about having a christening.’

  ‘And a party?’ Mouse asked, pouring cups of tea for them.

  ‘And a party,’ Kat said.

  The breakfasts arrived, and they watched the rain getting heavier. ‘Okay,’ Mouse said, waving a piece of sausage around on a fork, ‘we’re not going to be going anywhere until this lot has slowed down a bit, so let’s talk. Does anybody else share this feeling that Marsden seems to be pursuing, that Grace Earle is a murderer?’

  Doris and Kat shook their heads, their mouths too full of food to speak. Mouse pushed the sausage into her mouth, chewed silently for a moment, and then said, ‘Neither do I.’

  ‘Why not?’ Doris asked, putting down her knife and fork for a moment to look at her granddaughter. ‘Are you basing that on facts or feelings?’

  ‘Feelings, I suppose, I just don’t see her like that. A fraudster, yes. I can well believe she’s helped herself to a lot of the family fortune, but it’s the wrong sort of murder. I can see her planning and succeeding in killing Pam, because it’s a non-violent murder, and I genuinely feel that might have been on the cards, but stabbing somebody? That takes some strength, some bottle. She actually comes across as quite middle-class – and I’m not saying middle-class people don’t commit murders – but to me it was almost as if she couldn’t lower herself to stab somebody. Any murder she committed would be… middle-class.’

  Kat almost choked on her scrambled egg. ‘Mouse Walters, I love you,’ she finally managed to say. ‘You have a way of putting things into perspective that is quite unique.’

  ‘Crazy, I call it,’ Doris muttered, and returned to enjoying her breakfast.

  But Mouse couldn’t let it go. ‘I know you both understand what I mean. And I genuinely think our local friendly DI has got it wrong.’

  ‘Just as a matter of interest, Mouse,’ her nan said, ‘who do you think has killed Judy?’

  ‘I don’t know yet. But I will.’ She picked up her cup of tea and sipped it. ‘This is hot.’

  ‘It’s made with boiling water.’

  ‘Kat Rowe, don’t get clever with me. I’m going to stop talking and start thinking. And eat the rest of my sausage.’

  Doris and Kat found it difficult to eat anything, as they tried to hold back the laughter. Mouse was still so easy to wind up, and yet they both knew they fully agreed with her.

  The rain didn’t stop, and by the time they arrived home they were once again soaked, but definitely no longer hungry.

  All three of them sat around the kitchen table, laptops open. Kat was polishing her sermon, and she knew her excitement at recommencing her deacon work at the church had to be bouncing off her. She missed her quiet time, the time when she just sat on a pew and let the silence, the peace, the tranquillity surround and infiltrate her soul. It hadn’t happened in a while, but the next day it would. She changed a couple of words, and then sent it to the printer.

  ‘You finished?’ Doris asked.

  ‘I have. It’s been quite difficult. I’ve felt as though I had to be careful of everything I put into it. Danny’s wife will be there, I’m presuming, and I don’t want to upset her any more than she already is.’

  ‘You seriously think she will be there?’ There was concern in Mouse’s voice. ‘You need the two of us to be there?’

  Kat smiled. ‘I’ll be fine, honestly. And I do think Bibi will come to the service. She attends every week. If she doesn’t, I’m not sure how I’ll deal with it. And Mum and Dad will both be there. They’re going to have Martha while I take the service. I’m going to introduce her to the congregation, that should diffuse any bad feelings, I hope.’

  She went to the printer to collect her printouts. ‘I’ll be fine,’ she repeated, but the other two recognised desperation when they heard it.

  Carl Heaton escorted Pam Bird through her front door, then closed it gently behind him.

  ‘Let me hang up your coat,’ he said. ‘It will soon dry.’ It hadn’t been raining when they went into the bank, but it was monsoon-like when they emerged some time later. It had been a fraught hour and a half, but the outcome had been that Grace Earle, the trusted personal assistant made signatory on the accounts by Pam herself, had defrauded Pam’s business of at least quarter of a million pounds.

  He made sure she was seated on the sofa, and then went to make her the cup of tea he had promised her while travelling back to her home.

  ‘Do you need any medication with this drink?’ he asked, placing the tray carefully on the coffee table.

  She shook her head. ‘No, thank you. I took some this morning, and my consultant is coming to see me this afternoon to discuss how we deal with regulating my tablets to get me on the right dose again. Apparently, I can’t just go back to what it used to be before that woman began to overdose me because I will have severe withdrawal symptoms – and trust me, Carl, I don’t need any extra pain.’

  How the other half lives, he thought, a consultant doing a house call to his patient on a Saturday afternoon. And a bank manager working on a Saturday morning for one highly prized customer.

  ‘Then I’ll have a cuppa with you, and head back to the station. DI Marsden will be wanting to know the outcome of this morning’s meeting before she interviews Grace Earle again.’

  ‘She’s not been interviewed? Is that normal?’

  ‘Perfectly normal. DI Marsden doesn’t have all the facts yet. She’ll want them at her fingertips when she’s interviewing this particular suspect. And I’ll let you into a little secret, making a suspect wait for interview tips them over the edge, and they say all sorts of stuff through nerves. But I’ve not told you that, have I.’

  ‘Definitely not, young man,’ she smiled. She had a beautiful smile, now she was awake enough to perform the action.

  He finished his drink, poured her a second one, and left her organising a locksmith to come and change every lock on the property… Just in case, she had said. He could see the fear in her eyes.

  Carl spoke to Marsden at length on the drive back to the station, gave her all the information he currently had on the situation and promised a full written report by the time he left for home.

  Marsden opened the questioning by asking where Grace was on the morning of Judy’s murder, and Marsden carefully specified day, date and window of time.

  Grace turned to Elena Taylor, her solicitor. ‘I have to answer that?’

  ‘Yes. Just answer the questions. No elaborating.’

  Grace faced Marsden once again. ‘I was at home with Pam. She will confirm that.’

  ‘Then there we have our first problem, Mrs Earle,’ Marsden said. She glanced down at her notes, but it was only for effect. ‘You see, Mrs Bird was packed so full of drugs she hasn’t a clue about your whereabouts at that time, so is there anyone else who can verify your presence in the house?’

  ‘No, of course not. But why are you asking me? You think I killed Judy? My own sister?’

  ‘A sister you walked away from a long time ago, and, according to you, you hadn’t seen for many years. So please answer my question. Is there anybody at all who can say for definite that they saw you in that house at that time?’

  Grace Earle visibly crumpl
ed. ‘No,’ she whispered.

  ‘Please speak louder for the tape, Mrs Earle.’

  ‘No, damn you, no.’

  ‘Then let’s move on for the moment. We’ll come back to those potential charges later.’

  ‘Charges? Charges for what?’

  Elena Taylor leaned across and touched her client’s hand. ‘Calm down, Grace, please. We’ll sort this.’

  ‘Oh good.’ Grace Earle’s voice was loaded with sarcasm.

  ‘Let’s move on to the next item, Mrs Earle,’ Marsden interrupted, aware of the panic bubbling out of her suspect.

  ‘Next item? I thought I was here because you accused me of giving Pam a couple of tablets too many! What next fucking item?’ All pretence of the ladylike exterior was evaporating in front of Tessa and Hannah’s eyes.

  Hannah could hardly believe what she was seeing. She was watching her boss, who she had the greatest of admiration for, demolish a suspect without faltering in any way.

  She had seen lots of interviews in these rooms, and learned something new from each one. This one was a masterclass in how to crucify a person in three easy stages.

  Grace Earle was collapsing, it was obvious. And yet Grace didn’t appear to know it was happening; she thought Elena Taylor was going to point a magic wand at Marsden, whisper ‘Alarte Ascendare’, and Marsden would become a projectile disappearing at speed through the roof.

  Hannah waited, hardly daring to breathe; she wanted to see where Marsden would take this next.

  Marsden gave a slight cough, showing that she had heard the profanity and didn’t like it. In reality, the same word left her own mouth several times a day, and, as a policewoman, it was simply a part of the job. She didn’t want Grace Earle to realise that.

  ‘Mrs Earle, there appears to be a large amount of money missing from the accounts of BirD. Perhaps you can shed some light on where it is?’

  Saturday came to a close with several more, and different, words of profanity.

  Chapter 31

  ‘It seems that when she’d managed to siphon off half a million she was going to disappear.’ Marsden gave a short bark of laughter. ‘It only took one night in the cells to convince her she had to confess. But that’s only to the money, and she’s not told us where it is yet. I still half like her for Judy Carpenter’s murder, but unless it was just a simple falling out of thieves, I can’t see a motive.’

  ‘We had a talk about it yesterday,’ Mouse said. ‘It was something to do while we were being held prisoner in the Village Green. It was pouring with rain. None of us could see Grace as a killer, not as a violent killer anyway, and there had to be some power behind that vicious stabbing. I can see Grace doing what you seem to have stopped her doing, and that’s slowly killing Pam Bird with her own medication, but I don’t see her as an angry killer, and there was anger in that room when we walked in and found Judy.’ Mouse gave a shudder as she had a momentary flashback.

  ‘We’re still holding on to her, there’s a lot more investigating to do around Grace Earle. We’ll obviously be charging her with fraud, but I’m hopeful we can pin attempted murder on her for Pam. We are still checking other alibis but if we can throw the whole lot at Grace Earle it would be helpful.’ She laughed. ‘That’s really not going to happen is it? You know what, Beth, it’s my day off and all I can do is sit around in the station, on my own, and try to stop my thoughts. I need an open mind really, I could be so wrong about Earle.’

  ‘Come for a meal,’ Mouse said. ‘Come and talk your thoughts through with us, we’re good listeners, and we’ve got our secret weapon: Kat. However, and more important than that, Nan is cooking. She’s doing a massive beef joint that will probably feed us all week, roast potatoes, Yorkshire pu–’

  ‘I’ll be there in half an hour.’

  After the totally and brilliantly perfect meal, Doris, Mouse and Tessa waddled through to the lounge, Tessa now claiming she was carrying a full term food baby.

  ‘Do you eat like this all the time?’

  ‘Nah.’ Mouse laughed. ‘Only when Nan gets fed up of pizza and Chinese takeaway.’

  ‘It certainly beat my microwave spag bol,’ Tessa said.

  ‘You live on your own?’ Mouse asked. It dawned on her she knew nothing about Tessa, other than that she was a DI.

  ‘I do. What man would put up with the hours I work?’

  ‘Another policeman, I suppose.’

  ‘Tried that, didn’t work. We lasted a year. He’s still in London, I’m in Derbyshire, and now we’re divorced we’re good friends.’

  Kat pushed the lounge door open with her bum, carefully carrying a tray of coffees to the coffee table. ‘Okay, dishwasher loaded and running, coffees made, does anybody want anything else?’

  ‘Not for another week,’ Tessa said with a sigh.

  They chatted about anything and everything for half an hour, but their talk inevitably led on to the case. ‘I’ve brought some work home with me to go through again tonight. I have a sizeable report from Hannah Granger, and one from Dave Irwin. Hannah checked out Alice Small’s alibi, and Dave checked out the alibis of the five people still left living in the row of six cottages. One of the houses, the last one in the row, is awaiting a new tenant, but the other four are occupied by Keeley Roy, Eric Davies, Philip and Emma Jones, and…’ she searched her notes, ‘Owen Ashton, who is still living with his parents in Bournemouth for another month, then moving up to Hope to start a new job. He will be renting the property, not buying it. We’ve confirmed he was in Bournemouth on the day of the murder.’

  ‘You think the answer is locked somewhere in the alibis? Somebody is lying?’

  ‘I’m the sort of old school copper that thinks the answer is nearly always in the alibis. Let’s have a look at Hannah’s report. I’ll fill you in on what we knew before she set out to test Alice’s alibi for truthfulness. Alice said she goes for a run every day, and she checks in with friends on the route who are all with limited mobility. She does a bit of shopping for them, that sort of thing. She’s a lovely lady, but because of her relationship to Judy, we had to check her out. It turns out that this run is one she does at speed, she is over eighty and fitter than we are, and that day she did the run but a little later than usual because she had to wait in for a delivery. We have to check that part, to prove she is telling the truth. Take a look,’ she said, and passed the report across to Mouse.

  Mouse read through it at speed and then passed it to her nan. ‘Rosie? The journal entry.’

  Tessa nodded. ‘Hannah’s done a good report, missed nothing out. She said Rosie is very credible, and came across as honest. We’re going to be ringing around all parcel delivery companies tomorrow, trying to track this delivery that Alice waited in for. If it’s all above board, we can agree her alibi is good.’

  ‘And if you can’t find anyone who delivered to her, she moves to the top of the suspect list?’ Doris asked. ‘Maybe the new trainers were the delivery.’

  ‘We still need to prove the delivery happened at the time she says. I hope she’s telling the truth. I like Alice Small, feisty old lady.’

  ‘And motive? Why would she want to kill Judy? She’s lost Tom, but that wasn’t Judy’s fault, he had cancer. The will didn’t leave her such a lot; £10,000 and the house where the Bournemouth chap is going to live. Keeley received a lot more, and quite rightly so.’ Doris looked and sounded perplexed.

  ‘I don’t understand it any more than you do, Doris,’ Tessa said. ‘I just know it will become clear, and in the end, we’ll find the right one. Maybe we’re looking in the wrong direction completely.’

  Kat picked up the report and skimmed through it. ‘They love her, don’t they? All these people, all vouching for her, all relying on her. Remarkable woman. And fit. I couldn’t do that run, and definitely not every day.’

  ‘Fit enough to overpower Judy, who is twenty-five years younger?’ Tessa threw the question into the debate.

  ‘I don’t know. If you take anybody by surprise, you h
ave the advantage.’

  ‘But we believe Judy had already seen her attacker. Don’t forget she was heard to shout out to somebody in her back garden around seven in the morning.’ Tessa once again had a point to make.

  ‘Somebody that could have been a cat. Nobody else saw anyone. Let me throw something in here. The untenanted house at the end of the row and the one that Aston… Ashton? … is going to rent, have they been checked over? Could somebody have been in one of them, biding their time until they could drop down into Judy’s house? Maybe hearing Judy out in the garden shouting at whatever, was the start they needed to go up through the loft space and down into Judy’s house.’ Kat shrugged. ‘Just throwing that in as a possible scenario.’

  ‘Somebody who was fit?’ Tessa countered. ‘And the one at the end has been checked, because that does have loft access, so we went down and had a look around. It’s empty, no signs of anyone having been in there.’

  ‘Which brings us back to Alice, if the criteria is that they would have to be fit.’

  ‘We did check through the loft hatch of the Ashton house, but it didn’t have a built in loft ladder like the other five, so we couldn’t get down into the house itself. We also didn’t have a key to get in by the normal route of the front door, but I’m betting the estate agents do.’ Tessa took out her notebook and wrote a brief message to herself. ‘That’s on the list for tomorrow. See, I knew you three would spark something else.’ She grinned. ‘And I promise I’ll let you know if we find anything.’

  ‘And I promise I’ll let you know when I find out if there really was a parcel delivery,’ Mouse said.

  ‘How the hell…? No, I won’t ask. When you tell me, you say you rang up with a query about it. Okay?’

  ‘Tessa, stop worrying.’ Kat smiled. ‘She’ll probably blame me if it all goes pear-shaped anyway. I’m taking Pam Bird out tomorrow, just for the record, not going on any computer.’