To Kill a Wife (Inspector Peach Series Book 3)

by J M Gregson

  “No. No, the pain hasn’t gone away,” she said resolutely. Her husband had made her promise that she wouldn’t minimise things in her embarrassment, wouldn’t behave as if she were merely an unwelcome hindrance to a man with more important illnesses than hers to consider. But she heard herself saying, “I – I expect I make too much of it, Dr – I mean Mister Johnson.”

  She reddened suddenly with embarrassment, the blood filling her strained face as if it had been poured in from outside. She knew you had to call a surgeon ‘Mister’, not ‘Doctor’, had known it for years. Yet to her, it still seemed odd to find a black man in such an exalted position. There had been no black men in the town when she had played as a girl in the stone-flagged playground, which was now long gone, when the world seemed an unchanging place and hospitals were mysterious places where the old went to die.

  The very black face with its regular, handsome features and its gold-rimmed glasses smiled reassuringly at Audrey Capstick, and suddenly she knew that everything was going to be all right. “You shouldn’t apologize for feeling pain, Mrs Capstick. Gallstones are a very painful complaint.”

  Her heart leapt at the words. Her eyes must have been misted a little by tears; for a moment, the rest of the consultant’s face disappeared and she could see only the wide smile and the beautiful, regular teeth, which seemed so very white. “It’s not – not anything more serious, then?”

  She couldn’t say the word even now, and Richard Johnson said it for her, gently, slowly, releasing her softly from the malign grip it had kept on her for weeks. “Not cancer, Mrs Capstick, no. Certainly not. Painful enough, but curable, completely curable. More easily now than a few years ago, in fact.”

  She was massively relieved, then absurdly grateful to him, as if he personally had banished the canker, which had threatened to eat away the trunk beneath her best two-piece and the new underslip she had bought for this visit. Though he was not sure how much she was taking in, Johnson took her through the details of keyhole surgery, explaining how much easier it was now to pinpoint the source of the pain, how much smaller the incision, how much more quickly she would recover and be herself again.

  They arranged that she would come into woman’s surgical on Thursday and be operated on on Friday. For a moment, her face clouded again, as if the urgency suggested that he was still concealing something from her, that she was after all in some desperate condition, as she had been sure she was when she was wracked by pain in the small hours of the night.

  But Richard Johnson laughed away her fears. “It’s because you’re in pain you’re a priority, not because what you have is life-threatening,” he said. “I think you’ve waited quite long enough already to have this put right, don’t you, Mrs Capstick?”

  And Audrey, thinking again of all those useless paracetemols and the muted weepings as she waited for the dawn to reach her bedroom windows, had to agree with this friendly, reassuring man, who carried his knowledge so lightly, when compared with the doctors of her youth.

  “You’ll be on your feet again a few days after your op. Rushing about again in six weeks,” he reassured her.

  It was too good to be true. They might even manage a holiday in September. Down to Sidmouth or Torquay, perhaps. Paul would like that. She couldn’t wait now to get back to the waiting room outside and tell him. They’d said he could come in with her, but he hadn’t wanted to, and she’d understood that.

  Richard Johnson shook her hand before she went, just as if they were equals. He said he’d see her when she came in on Thursday, before the operation. If she should have any questions, she could put them to him then. As if she would have! As she turned to go, the familiar pained stabbed sharply at the left of her stomach, making her wince. But even the pain seemed a friend, reassuring her that it was not the awful thing she had feared for so long. She clutched the spot for a moment with gentle, welcoming fingers, and went happily out to the husband who would tell her that he had been right all along.

  Richard Johnson smiled after her, glad that he had been able to help her, delighted by her eagerness to relay her good news to the dour, loving man outside. He was again glad that he worked not in one of the great city hospitals but in this grimy town with its stalwart, friendly folk.

  He was tired at the end of a crowded day, but pleasantly so. Perhaps tonight, he would drive Carmen out into the Ribble Valley, so that together they could enjoy the peace and beauty that was so close at hand. He didn’t hate her at all. That had been one of his stupid overreactions. Of course, he didn’t love her as he once had, but passions cooled in all marriages over the years. And all the faults were on his side. It was time he put his life together and made the most of it. With Verna gone forever, he could begin to do that.

  He gazed out for a full minute at the crowded ribbons of terraced houses beyond the disused canal, to the heat-hazed hills on the skyline. There was no reason why he should not make his life outside this place as happy and confident as the one he enjoyed in the hospital.

  When he went into the adjoining office, he found that his secretary had switched off her computer and gone home, as he had suggested she should while he was with Mrs Capstick. He glanced at the memo she had left in his in-tray.

  It informed him that a Detective Inspector Peach would like to see him. Urgently.

  Eighteen

  Death affects people in all kinds of ways they do not anticipate. Murder is more severe than mere death: it seeps around those involved like a toxic gas, poisoning relationships which were once secure and unthinking.

  Martin Hume was immensely relieved when he was released from captivity. It had been an unreal period, when he knew he was technically innocent, yet felt there was a justice in his detainment and questioning. Had he not planned Verna’s murder, been thinking of how he could best encompass it at the very moment when he found her body? He had tried hard to disguise the fact that her death was immensely convenient for him from the succession of policemen who saw him, but he was not sure how successful he had been. Certainly that bouncing ball of aggression who called himself DI Peach and who had finally released him, had seemed to realize that Verna’s death had caused her husband elation rather than grief.

  And now, when he rang the woman he had been freed to marry, their conversation was curiously muted. Perhaps Sue Thompson’s heart lifted when she heard him, but her voice stuck in her throat. Their first exchanges might have been the polite small talk of distant acquaintances.

  “Are you at home?” she asked.

  “No. I’m at Alison’s. My sister’s,” he added unnecessarily. “Are the police still at your house?”

  “They may be. They explained that they have to go over everything with a fine toothcomb, because it’s what they call the scene of the crime. I expect they’ll have finished their work by now, but I didn’t fancy being in that house on my own, somehow. Not just yet.”

  “No.” She wondered what to say to him next, as she had not needed to do for months. Verna’s death was like a wall between them; she felt that she had known it would divide them from the moment she first heard of it. What was it he had said to her all that time ago, on that fatal afternoon, when he had taken her to the station in his car and they had first kissed? “There are ways of making things happen. Just trust me.” In the weeks which had followed, as their love had developed, she had hugged those words to her, in the small hours of the night when she was lonely, in the evenings after he had left her.

  And now, her sister was dead. Very conveniently, for both of them. The first time anything connected with Verna had been convenient for a very long time. Too convenient? The question nagged at her, however roughly she tried to thrust it away. And all Martin’s confidence that things would work out for the two of them seemed suddenly sinister.

  “How’s Toby?” asked Martin. He had heard a slight click on the line at the beginning of their conversation, and he wondered if the phone was bugged. Perhaps he was just feeling persecuted. They wouldn’t have bugged Aliso
n’s phone, surely? But they had wanted to know where he was going when he left the police station, had taken details of the address, and had warned him that he was not to move out of the area without letting them know his whereabouts. Did they bug the phonecalls of people in his situation? Was it legal for them to do so? He didn’t think it was. But he realized that he was really hopelessly ignorant of police procedures and police powers, and his ignorance made him feel vulnerable. He must watch what he said to Sue, just in case.

  She was telling him about the things Toby had been doing at school: it seemed an impossibly distant, innocent world. Martin reminded himself again to be careful of his words, just in case there were listeners other than his lovely Sue.

  “They seemed to realize I couldn’t have done it, in the end. The police, I mean.” He heard himself giving way to the little nervous giggle he thought he had left behind with his adolescence.

  “I had to identify her, you know.” Sue spoke as if she had not heard him.

  “Oh. That must have been unpleasant for you.” The word was thoroughly inadequate, but he couldn’t be spontaneous.

  “She looked very peaceful. Almost as though… well, you know.”

  “Yes.” Almost as though she’d died naturally, Sue meant. Instead of being brutally murdered. “There’ll be an inquest, of course.”

  “Yes, I suppose so.”

  “I expect you’ll have to be there because of identifying the body. I will, of course, because I found her.”

  “Yes.” She tried not to picture what had gone on in that house. “Have they given up all thought that you might have done it?”

  “Yes. Well, I think so.” He thought again of that little click on the phone. Perhaps he was being watched, as well as overheard. Perhaps there was some plainclothes man discreetly positioned outside the house even now. Or perhaps he was becoming paranoid. The police were vastly experienced in this business of murder – how had he ever thought he might deceive them? He said, lowering his voice in the empty house, “Perhaps it might be better if we didn’t meet for a little while. Until we know how things are going.” He wasn’t sure what he meant by that last lame phrase.

  “All right. I wouldn’t want Toby to be drawn into any of this, anyway.” She was glad to have her son to offer as an excuse; then she felt ashamed to use him like that. Did murder always make people behave shabbily?

  She had agreed too readily, with too little argument.

  “Perhaps I’m just feeling persecuted. But we can keep in touch by phone easily enough.”

  “Yes. We’ll see each other at the inquest, anyway.”

  They rang off then, without any of the loving endearments, which they had used before this thing happened. Each of them was left feeling deflated by a phone conversation they had eagerly anticipated.

  It was her own fault, not Martin’s, Sue Thompson told herself. It was ridiculous that she could even have entertained the idea that Martin might have killed Verna. She had dismissed it long before the police agreed with her and let him go, she thought.

  But the murder had deadened her responses when she had wanted to be warm and loving. And Martin had been guarded with her when she had expected him to be relieved, to lift the foreboding this death had brought to her. She sat for a long time looking at the silent phone. She still believed that Martin Hume was in love with her, but the idea which had crept bleakly into her head would not go away.

  Did he now seriously think that she might have killed her own sister?

  *

  Percy Peach’s interviewing technique was not designed for elderly ladies. It had broken many a brash young mugger or car thief, but it was not suitable for people who were already almost speechless with apprehension and embarrassment.

  He said to his detective sergeant before they went in to see her, “Just come into the questioning whenever you feel it might be useful, Lucy.”

  DS Blake nodded, carefully suppressing the smile which threatened. He used her first name when he wanted help from her, she had realized. And he used it more and more these days. He had almost dropped the ‘Sexton’ which was her inevitable nickname around the station. It was probably very unfeminist in her even to notice such things, but she was pleased when he called her Lucy and put her on a par with the male detective sergeants.

  In the small, warm cube which was the interview room, the two of them sat down unhurriedly. Percy Peach contemplated the anxious face with its frame of gray hair on the other side of the square table for several seconds before he said, “Well, Mrs Alice Osborne, this is a turn-up for the books, and no mistake. Breaking and entering. And at a house where a murder took place only last Saturday. A real turn-up. And a night in the cells to follow. Breakfast all right for you, was it?”

  Alice gave a nervous little grin. She said almost apologetically, “Your people did their best to make me comfortable. I had my own key. That’s not breaking and entering, is it? And I drove my own car to the police station, with your officer giving me directions.”

  She wasn’t from round here, then. She had a light, attractive Geordie accent. Percy grinned back at her. “Not the usual way to be arrested, I have to admit. But you were in a strange house at dead of night. Gave an innocent young copper quite a turn, I expect. PC Wall was probably quite relieved when you didn’t clobber him.”

  Alice Osborne considered this. She could see how things looked bad for her. But eleven o’clock wasn’t quite the dead of night. And it hadn’t been entirely a strange house. She said, “He’s a canny lad, your young copper. I’m sorry if I gave him a shock. But I hadn’t broken in: I had a key. It was my stepdaughter’s house, Inspector.”

  Peach nodded. He’d found out that much before he came into the interview room. “Verna Hume. Who was brutally murdered last Saturday night.”

  “Yes.”

  “Where were you last Saturday night, Mrs Osborne?”

  “At home. At our bungalow, in Lytham St Annes.”

  “With your husband? Who can no doubt vouch for your presence there?”

  “No.” Alice Osborne’s moist gray eyes opened a little wider, then suddenly blinked three times.

  “I see. Can anyone else confirm that you were at home, Mrs Osborne?”

  “No. I don’t think so. Derek was visiting a friend, you see.”

  He noted that she had volunteered information about her husband, the dead woman’s father. Not usual, that. It seemed incredible that this slight, elderly figure could have been involved in a murder, even as an accessory, but stranger things had happened. You had to remind yourself about that constantly, when dealing with murder. That was one of its attractions for a man like Percy who was easily bored. So he reminded himself now that a much frailer woman than Alice Osborne could have pressed that pillow onto Verna Hume’s face until she ceased to breathe.

  It was Lucy Blake who said softly, “What were you doing in the house last night, Mrs Osborne?”

  Alice wrung her fingers hard together beneath the square table. She had done this since she was a child when she was agitated, and she knew it. That was why she had made sure from the start of this meeting that her hands were out of sight; she had known that this moment must come. When she spoke, she was surprised by the steadiness of her voice. But she would trust it with as few words as possible. “I was looking for something, bonny lass, wasn’t I?”

  “Were you? We don’t know, so you’ll have to tell us. But tell us everything, Mrs Osborne – it’s much the best thing to do, in the end.”

  The girl’s face seemed to Alice incredibly young. Could this pretty, earnest girl really be a detective? Alice fought down an urge to confide everything to her, and made herself look back at the hostile dome of the moustachioed man who had begun the interrogation. It would be easier to lie to him, even though he looked so disbelieving.

  “I thought there might be photographs. Of the three of us together, you see. Verna used to visit us, fairly regularly.”

  Peach looked as if he might explode with d
erision. But it was Lucy Blake who said swiftly, “Did you need to go secretly to the house where she had been killed to get photographs, Alice? An empty house where murder had been committed, and during the night? It must have taken an awful lot of nerve to do that.”

  Alice nodded. It had. She’d been petrified as she crept from her car to the front door and put her key in the lock. And creeping from room to room with her torch had been…

  “So you weren’t just looking for photographs, were you, Alice?”

  It was the girl who had trapped her, after all. Those soft, compliant features, that voice so full of understanding, had merely underlined the stupidity of the story she had thought up so hastily as she waited in that cell, where the high, white-washed walls seemed designed to inhibit thought. Alice fought down the urge to nod, to weep, to tell all, to enjoy the delicious relief of confession. But she knew she must deny herself, must give them some other, more convincing story. “No. I was looking for jewelery, really.”

  There was a long silence. She felt them weighing this new idea, testing whether it had anything more to be said for it than her first, abject lie.

  Lucy allowed a little surprise to creep into her voice as she said, “You wanted to steal your daughter-in-law’s jewelery?”

  Even in her turmoil, Alice bridled at that word ‘steal’; she could not let it go by. “No. I was only looking for what was mine. I – I’d lent Verna a ring and a pair of earrings. Diamond ones. I thought I wouldn’t get them back if I didn’t collect them myself. There was nothing to say they were mine, you see, and I thought they’d just be put in with the rest of Verna’s things.”

  Lucy took her time: it was something she had learned from Percy Peach. She looked at the cheap bangle on the ageing wrist, at Alice Osborne’s clean but well-worn blouse, at the short coat she had taken off in the overheated room. And, as she watched the worn hand steal too late towards the C & A label, she thought of the clothes she had seen in Verna Hume’s wardrobe, clothes from shops which this woman would never have entered. An infinite sympathy for this anxious, elderly woman, who was so patently out of her depth stole over her for a moment. Then she reminded herself that this most unlikely candidate could still be their murderer: Peach had taught her to remember that as well.