Dying For You

by Evans, Geraldine

  The drive back from York was the leisurely one Rafferty insisted upon. Unfortunately, it was also one with something of an ‘atmosphere’. Because, even though he had again allowed Smales to drive, this had done little to mollify the young officer's pique at being excluded from the interviews; neither had Rafferty's terse instruction to be quiet as he needed to think. After that, Smales had retreated into a sulky silence. It worried Rafferty because not only had his now silent companion become worrying inquisitive, he had also questioned Rafferty's handling of the interviews, even going so far as to point out that he should have been present at both.

  He was right, of course. Shame he hadn't realized just how much Smales had come on in the last few months. It was unfortunate that Smales's nous hadn't developed sufficiently for him to realize that questioning a senior officer's conduct of a case was unlikely to win him brownie points.

  The only pleasing aspects to their return journey from Rafferty's point of view was that it provided more time both for his beard to grow and for the witnesses’ memories of ‘Nigel’ to fade.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Back at the station, Rafferty quickly dismissed Smales. Anxious to avoid Llewellyn and receive another third-degree about Nigel's alibis, he broke all records in typing up the notes of the York interviews that concealed as much as they revealed, and was about to head back out when he saw Llewellyn's message.

  The first item on this lengthy epistle told him another thing he'd rather no one knew he knew; namely, that Isobel Goddard had returned from her parents’ home and could be interviewed without Rafferty having to drive to Suffolk.

  Why was it, Rafferty wondered, that whenever Llewellyn tried to be helpful, he invariably upset his own cunningly laid plans? Clearly, Llewellyn expected him to turn up at the dating agency offices. As this didn't suit Rafferty at all, he scribbled a brief note to the end of Llewellyn's, to the effect that he would be unavailable as he was interested to learn what Isobel's parents could tell him about the reason for her flight.

  By now, as a quick perusal of the rest of Llewellyn's note revealed, the team, with minimal hands-on input from him, had managed to whittle the suspect numbers down by half. Isobel Goddard was still numbered amongst them.

  With the discovery that Isobel had not been able to supply a verified statement as to her exact whereabouts for the approximate times of the two murders, Rafferty felt more need than ever to try to find answers to questions he had about the girl. After what he had learned about her at the first dating agency party he doubted her reason for returning to her parents’ home after the murders provided the complete answer or even the real one. He hoped her parents might be able to shed some light.

  It was a pleasant drive up to Suffolk. The Goddards’ home, Latimer Court, was north of Ipswich and as traffic was surprisingly light he made good time until he tried to find the house itself. Latimer Court wasn't on a main road and even though he had rung Charles Goddard and obtained directions these had turned out to be totally confusing. So it was early evening before he finally noticed the sign for the house. Obscured by a privet hedge badly in need of a trim, it was only when a timely breeze raised the obscuring foliage that the worn lettering ‘Latimer Court’ was revealed and he realized he had already passed the place three times.

  He turned the car left and edged gingerly up a drive cratered with potholes and lined with knee-high weeds. Lancelot Bliss had said the place needed a lot of money spent on it. But even as Rafferty drove nearer to the house and saw its run-down state, he recognized that Latimer Court had once been a beautiful place and could be again. Elizabethan, laid out in the traditional ‘E’ design, it had the tall chimneys that were a feature of that era. Built of red brick mellowed to harmonious shades of rose, broken up by the many large creeper-clad casement windows, it was a romantic-looking house – at least from a distance. Though as Rafferty got nearer, he noticed the peeling paint on the woodwork, the dullness of the glass in the windows and that the chimneys, far from being engagingly picturesque, were in reality dangerously unstable. He guessed from the stains on the walls that the place also had a problem with damp.

  Whatever might be wrong with the rest of the house, the front door looked as sturdy as the day the carpenter had fitted it. Huge, it was of silvery-grey oak with a knocker half as big as Rafferty's head. The woman who answered its reverberating summons turned out to be Mrs Goddard, Isobel's mother.

  Eve Goddard must have been lovely in her youth. Tall and willowy, she retained the good bones of true beauty, though Rafferty suspected the beauty was on the outside only. It wasn't age that had scored lines from nose to mouth and made those little puckering lines above her top lip that, in her case, surely betokened discontent rather than age.

  Her greeting was cool. She led him to a room at the back of the house that he assumed had once been the library and left him there while she went to find her husband.

  The room was as shabby as the rest. A large bookcase took up most of the wall opposite the windows. Half the shelves contained nothing but dust-balls and dead flies and the other half housed a collection of dun-coloured books that looked as though no one had opened them for half a century or more. In the centre of the room, eight chairs upholstered in cracked burgundy leather were set around a long table, all laced together by cobwebs; Rafferty half expected Dickens’ Miss Havisham to appear, still in her tattered bridal dress.

  Even though it was a bright day and the library had four floor-to-ceiling windows, the room was dim. He saw that the windows all had a thick film of grime made up of rain splatters, pigeon droppings and time's unwashed detritus. And as he peered through this misty miasma he glimpsed a secret garden that time – and the gardener - had long since forgot. It was all matted shrubs and roses strangled by the heavy embrace of bindweed. Beneath it all, he could just pick out what he thought must be part of the original herb garden. It was as choked and uncared for as the rest. He turned as he heard a hesitant footfall behind him.

  ‘Inspector…em…? My wife said you were here.’

  It was clear Charles Goddard had already forgotten his name, so Rafferty repeated it.

  ‘How can I help you?’

  Charles Goddard was surely no more than in his mid-fifties, but with his grey, rapidly balding hair, vague manner and scholarly stoop, he looked ten years older. In his dark green cardigan that was missing buttons and had holes in the elbows he appeared as uncared-for as his home. He peered uncertainly up at Rafferty through spectacles held together with Sellotape.

  Rafferty said. ‘I wanted to speak to you about your daughter Isobel, sir.’

  ‘My daughter's not here, inspector.’ Eve Goddard appeared behind her husband. ‘She's returned to her flat in Elmhurst. I drove her there myself.’

  Rafferty nodded. ‘It was you and your husband I wanted to speak to. I wondered whether your daughter told you what had prompted her to return here?’

  ‘I'd have thought the murders in Elmhurst would be prompt enough for any sensitive young woman, Inspector,’ was Eve Goddard's sharp response.

  Charles Goddard added, more gently, ‘They upset her so much that she could barely bring herself to talk about them at all. Not to me, anyway. She was closeted with her mother for most of the time she was here. I hardly saw her.’

  ‘I asked because your daughter was apparently convinced she had been the intended target both times. Do you have any idea why that was?’

  Charles Goddard gaped at him. ‘Isobel? Surely not? You must have misunderstood her, Serg– er, Inspector.’

  It was clear to Rafferty her father was the last person Isobel would confide in. He turned to Mrs Goddard. ‘Did your daughter confide in you?’

  ‘Confide?’

  Her voice was sharp, her manner verging on the hectoring. Rafferty began to understand why her husband should appear so beaten down and defeated.

  ‘Isobel had nothing to confide. As I have already told you, it was natural for her to return home in the circumstances. My daughter
's a sensitive girl and had managed to convince herself she was next on the list of some psychopath.’

  Charles Goddard chimed in. ‘I don't understand why she went back to Elmhurst if that's the case.’

  Neither did Rafferty.

  ‘I told her she could give up that position my wife found for her,’ Goddard said. ‘I don't like to think of my daughter being alone in Elmhurst when there's a dangerous maniac on the loose.’ Goddard turned to his wife. ‘It's worrying, too, my dear, to think he might have attacked you that same night.’

  ‘You were in Elmhurst on the weekend of the murders?’ Rafferty asked.

  Eve Goddard's beautifully sculpted lips thinned. ‘Yes, but really, I can't think why you should question me on my movements. If you must know, I had found a wonderful dress for Isobel. I stopped at her flat that Friday night – the night I gather the Warburton girl was killed – to drop it off. I wanted her to have it for the party. I then drove her to the Cranstons’ house.’

  Rafferty recalled the man-bait dress and was astonished at the discovery that her own mother had bought Isobel such a revealing costume.

  ‘And you really had no cause to worry about me,’ she assured her husband. ‘I was in no danger. I didn't even get out of the car.’

  In her statement Isobel had made no mention of her mother dropping her off. Presumably she hadn't thought such information relevant. Mrs Goddard had appeared annoyed when her husband had mentioned it. Rafferty wondered why. Was it simply because she objected to being questioned? Or did she actually have something to hide? Whether she had or not, she was clearly a forceful woman. If it were up to her, Rafferty believed, the family fortunes would soon be revived.

  Although when questioned, she denied turning up at the second party also, with her looks, Rafferty didn't think she would have found it too difficult to persuade one of The Elmhurst's doormen to let her in. Or she could simply have asked her daughter for an official invitation.

  Charles Goddard's mind was still on safety issues. ‘I can only hope Isobel comes to her senses and returns home.’ He turned to his wife and remarked, ‘I said to you at the time, my dear, if you recall, that I thought working in a dating agency was not quite the thing.’

  ‘It gives Isobel an income, Charles.’ Implicit in Eve Goddard's voice was the rider that this was more than her husband managed. She didn't trouble to hide the contempt, though Charles didn't appear to notice this any more than he seemed to notice that the beautiful girl he had married had turned into a deeply frustrated woman.

  ‘Still, as I said, that will soon be a thing of the past.’ Goddard's previously dull eyes had developed an enthusiast's sparkle as he turned to Rafferty and said, ‘I've got plans, you know. Great plans.’ Even his stoop seemed less pronounced. ‘Chap was telling me about this marvellous idea–’

  ‘Not another one.’ Eve Goddard's mouth thinned. ‘How many more?’

  Goddard appeared oblivious to his wife's interruption. ‘He said he'd made a packet in six months. All I'd need for capital is £5,000. I could raise it if I sold part of the library.’ He gazed vaguely round. ‘Some valuable first editions here, I believe.’

  If there were, they were also veritable Houdinis at concealment. Rafferty, who had spent some twenty minutes in the library while he waited for Charles Goddard to appear, guessed if there had been valuable first editions, Eve Goddard would have long since realized their worth. As far as he could see, this ‘valuable’ library consisted mostly of snore-worthy collections of old sermons, dusty tomes by authors with unrecognizable names, piles of torn paperbacks and several teetering yellow towers of The Times.

  Goddard, clearly intent on making the most of his captive audience, explained the ‘marvellous idea’. To Rafferty it sounded like a classic scam. He began to give Goddard his opinion, but Goddard waved his doubts away.

  ‘I'm sure you mean well,’ he said, ‘but you're quite wrong, my dear chap. You're a policeman, don't you see? You haven't the entrepreneurial flair required to get such a scheme off the ground. You would need the contacts, too, of course.’

  Goddard's voice petered out as he realized he'd implied that Rafferty couldn't possibly have the contacts required. But although his voice trailed away, the light of the born enthusiast still burned in his eyes. After seeing Eve Goddard's reaction to this latest wheeze and hearing the exasperation in her voice, Rafferty realized Goddard was the type of man who would always see yet another new Jerusalem on the horizon. Hadn't Lancelot Bliss and Ralph Dryden made some acerbic comment about this tendency? It seemed clear that no matter how many false dawns lighting the way he'd already seen, Goddard would still be marching purposefully towards Jerusalem when they took him away either to jail or a rest home for the serially deluded.

  Rafferty – whose family had always been poor – had the novel experience of feeling sorry for a man who had once had everything life could offer, but who had thrown it all away chasing rainbow-gold. He began to understand something of Eve Goddard's frustration.

  For how many years had Isobel witnessed this same scene and her mother's contemptuous treatment of her father? When had it begun? She was 27 now and he recalled Lance Bliss saying she had been around 12 when her father had made his disastrous investment. So, from an impressionable age and through fifteen long years after, she had seen the man who should have been the most important male in her young life abused and derided. Was that what had made her view all men as empty vessels worthy only of exploitation?

  Charles Goddard appeared ineffectual and unlikely to restore the family fortunes, but he was still able to delude himself that one or another hare-brained scheme would provide the answer to the family's money problems. Rafferty was surprised a realist like Eve Goddard had stayed around long enough to witness yet another grand plan unfold.

  Though he questioned them further, it was clear Charles Goddard could tell him nothing more. As for Mrs Goddard, Rafferty thought it was probably more a case of wouldn't than couldn't. Even if she didn't strike Rafferty as the most caring mother in the world, she seemed determined to reveal nothing more than what she had already told him.

  It was as Charles Goddard escorted him to the door that Rafferty’ eye alighted on the woodworm raddled oak staircase. It was lined with portraits; most, to judge by the costumes, of long-dead people.

  Goddard noticed Rafferty's study of this dark and dusty collection and told him proudly, ‘My ancestors, Serg– Inspector. There have been Goddards living here since 1565, when my namesake, another Charles Goddard, built the house. ’He's that rather villainous-looking character at the bottom.’

  Goddard pointed to the portrait of a swarthy-skinned individual at the lower turn of the staircase. Dressed in scarlet velvet and lace, he reminded Rafferty of Charles II, but without the charm.

  ‘Bit of a Casanova where the ladies were concerned,’ Goddard confided. ‘Ruthless too, if the family stories that have been passed down are to be believed.

  ‘The man couldn't stand rivals at any price. He had a particularly effective way of seeing them off by arranging to have them attacked by footpads and run through with a sword. Rumour had it that old Charles wielded the sword himself.’

  ‘Handy to have your very own gang of cut-throats,’ Rafferty observed. ‘Must iron out life's little problems a treat.’

  Goddard shrugged. ‘I suppose so. But the rumours did for him in the end, especially when he ran through one of Queen Elizabeth's favourites. He ended up on the gallows.’

  Rafferty shuddered. ‘Direct ancestor of yours, is he?’

  ‘Yes. He's my great, great… What is it now?’ Goddard looked bemusedly along the row of portraits as if he expected one of them to come up with the answer. ’Is it ten or eleven greats? I can never seem to get it right. Anyway, he‘s my however-many-greats grandfather. It's funny how every generation seems to produce someone in his mould.’ Goddard attempted a little joke. ‘Thank God they've done away with hanging.’

  Amen to that, thought Rafferty as, a m
inute later, the massive front door closed behind him. But even as his neck was gratefully shrugging off the rough noose imagination had dropped around it, he couldn't help but wonder whether, concealed beneath the make-up, the designer clothing and the décolletage Isobel might not be the current generation's chip off cut-throat Charlie Goddard's block.

  He started up the engine and bounced back up the drive to the road. How had she felt when the burden of saving the family had been thrust on to her shoulders? Desperate and frustrated, like her mother? Or determined, like her father's namesake? And if delusion was another family inheritance, like ruthlessness in ridding oneself of love rivals, was it possible that Isobel had thought if she removed Caroline then Guy would marry her?

  Of course, the difficulty there was that it hadn't been Caroline Cranston who had been murdered. But if he was putting Isobel in the frame there was an answer to that little difficulty. Not only was Isobel extremely short sighted, she was also very vain and refused to wear spectacles. And– as he had overheard at the first agency party – since she had tried and failed to get used to contact lenses, she was reduced to a half-world of vaguely-formed faces and red rhododendrons that closer inspection turned into tractors. No doubt, even now, she was saving madly for one of those laser treatments that would remedy the problem.

  The fact that she was more than half-blind wouldn't have assisted her in correctly identifying her victim. Both murder scenes – the Cranstons’ car park and the grounds of The Elmhurst's annexe – had been dimly lit. Easy enough to mistake identities when the two victims had been dressed in similar clothes to Caroline Cranston and shared a superficial likeness to her.

  Of course, the fact that both murder scenes had been poorly lit meant that others, too, would have found it difficult to correctly identify the chosen victim. Maybe, if Isobel had a guilty secret that gave her a valid reason for suspecting she had been the intended victim both times, she had been right to flee for her life.