Wings over the Watcher

by Priscilla Masters

  Arthur held it in his hand.

  The unfinished epistle. He already knew every word contained in it. Right up to the half-finished sentence which began, And when you touch me… What she had intended to say no one would ever know. At the very point when she was writing he had walked into the room and seen her tuck the corner of this letter underneath a book she was pretending to read. When she had casually left the book lying closed on the sofa cushions and put the kettle on for a brew he had scanned through it.

  The really hard bit had been to pretend to drink the tea without displaying any of the shock. The utter shock that he had felt as he had read through the treacherous words.

  The sense of terrible, gut-wrenching betrayal. Beatrice. His loyal, faithful, quiet wife.

  Except she wasn’t.

  Kerry was watching him so for show he read the letter through again, closing his eyes against surprisingly real pain which Kerry interpreted as a failure to understand the significance of the words. “She was having an affair, Arthur,” she pointed out, suddenly shrewish. “Beattie had someone else.”

  Did he understand – or not?

  Arthur Pennington couldn’t find the right words so to soak up the time he read it through again. Once, twice, three times. It didn’t matter how many times he read it through, did it? Its meaning was exactly the same. Clear as a pane of glass. A window, in fact, to the treachery of his wife’s mind.

  Betrayal.

  Kerry opened her mouth to speak again but Arthur spoke first. “This is terrible,” he said. “Terrible.”

  Her blue eyes rested on his face without comprehension for only a minute. Then she started to understand and in the same split second backed away. “Arthur?” she said uncertainly.

  He smiled at her.

  “Arthur?” she said again. She did not like that smile.

  He was still smiling, that empty, frozen smile that failed to warm his face.

  She suddenly felt very afraid. She backed out into the hall. “I’ve got to go now,” she muttered, pulled the front door open and was gone.

  While Bridget Anderton watched.

  Now what had made flirty little Kerry Frost fancy her chances and then back off like a scalded cat, she wondered, before picking up the phone.

  “I thought you’d be interested, Ma’am.”

  Corinne was tired of the rows, tired too of her husband’s constant goading, of his threats and promises. There is only one way to deal with a would-be bully and it was an exhausting way. Confront him. Magic your weaknesses into strengths. Turn his perceived strengths into weaknesses. “I don’t believe you’d do it,” she said weakly. “I can’t see you leaving me. Why would you? I believe you’re too frightened of the scandal, of the loss of income, loss of status. You’d miss your bloody meal ticket,” she ended savagely.

  Pete made a feeble attempt to fight back. “Don’t push me too far, Corinne,” he warned. “You don’t mean that much to me.”

  They were in the conservatory. The sun was trying to shine through thin wisps of cloud but the weather was cool. Corinne sank back on to the Lloyd loom chair. It creaked in protest. “I think I’ve learned,” she said,” that I don’t actually mean anything to you. I’m just a means to an end. A convenience.”

  Hands on the armrests he leaned over and put his face close to hers. “How do you think I feel about you, knowing this?”

  She shrank into the chair, aware of his fury. The fury of all men spurned as representative of their sex. “I am not a lesbian, Pete,” she said. “I was the object of a lonely woman’s affections. I helped her. That’s it. Understand?”

  The anger in her husband’s eyes took her by surprise. She had seen him petulant before. Peevish and demanding but she had never before seen this furious, uncontrolled side of him. There was something quite wild in his face. She watched him, part fascinated, part frightened, part mesmerised.

  The slap came out of nowhere. And yet she had seen it coming for years. She had always known her husband was capable of violence. When the assault accusation had been directed he had spent evenings trying to convince her that he had not moved to hit the girl. But she had known the truth. You cannot hide a violent nature. It surfaces. Afterwards, when she was pressing an ice cube to her face and worrying what she would say in surgery the next day to explain her injury, she tried to remember and knew. She had not seen his hand move. It was as though some disembodied thing had hit her – so hard her neck had jerked right back. She touched her face and saw blood on her hand. “Pete,” she said. “Please. Don’t.”

  I walked into a door.

  How else do you explain away a black eye, a split lip, a bloodied, bruised nose?

  Tell me. Because it is hard. And no one believes you. They all give a knowing look.

  The battered wife syndrome.

  You can always ring the police and they will press charges. Oh yes, expose yourself to the full force of publicity, a court case, pity – and behind that always the question, what did she do to earn that?

  And this time there was an obvious answer glaring back.

  Or you can do nothing but dab on extra foundation and tell a silly lie which nobody believes.

  There comes a time when you stare facts in the face. You are unhappy. You are bored. You are frightened of your husband. You don’t love him. You don’t even like him.

  Corinne Angiotti had reached this exact position.

  He was still bending over her.

  Staring at her with a look of triumph. He had done it, what he had wanted to do for months, wipe that confidence right off the sneering face and replace it with fright, uncertainty and apprehension. He would now dominate her for ever.

  Corinne’s eyes watched him warily. For a second – two seconds her fright persisted – that he would hit her again. And then she didn’t care any more because the fright had been replaced with hot fury. She pushed him away with her feet. “Get out,” she screamed.

  “Pack your bags and get out of my life. I’ll be with the solicitor first thing in the morning.”

  Startled he fell backwards and she moved. He followed her to the kitchen. “That’s what you want, is it?” he jeered. “You want me to go to the law with the letters in my hand and tell them why I hit you? You don’t think I’ll get sympathy? You don’t think the publicity might just cost you your job?”

  She didn’t respond. He jerked her shoulder back. “You don’t think this evidence might just put you under the suspicion of the police?”

  “You bastard,” she spat out, running a towel under the cold tap.

  “Where were you first thing on Wednesday morning?”

  “Surgery.”

  “Oh no you weren’t. I saw you, Corinne. You were late for work. I watched you sitting in your car outside the library. After I’d read the letters I was very curious. I saw you there on the morning she died.”

  “At what time?”

  “You know what time.”

  “I was at surgery,” she said again.

  “Oh no you weren’t. You were late. Liar.”

  She took the cold compress away from her face. “What’s your point, you scum?”

  “I can go with a noise or I can go like a little mouse, squeaking away behind the skirting board,” he said. “The choice is yours.”

  Marilyn Saunders was speaking to her friend on her mobile. “I don’t know,” she said dubiously. “I don’t know. Guy’s such a liar. Who knows when he’s telling the truth and when he’s lying through his teeth? I know that I simply don’t trust him any more.”

  “I’d give him a chance if I was you,” Jewel advised. “Who knows what he knows?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Guy wasn’t having an affair with Beattie,” Jewel said again. “He was just mucking around. Playing.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Oh come on.” Her eyes screwed up. “I don’t believe you ever thought those two had got it together.”

  “I did.” A long pause.
“Well…I…put it like this. I was never sure.”

  “Anyway.” Jewel was anxious to move subjects. “If I was you I’d be worrying about something else.”

  “What?”

  “I’d be worrying who killed Beattie. Because whoever it was just might think we know more about it than we do and strike again.”

  “Don’t be so theatrical, Jewel.”

  “Well – the police haven’t caught whoever it was, have they?”

  There was silence from the other phone.

  “Are you still there?”

  “Yes.”

  Jewel made some more sympathetic noises down the line but her friend had stopped listening. She tried one more time to provoke a response then gave up.

  Kerry had a friend too. Sonya. She’d bolted the front door after her and was still shaking as she found her name on her mobile phone directory. “Son,” she started. “Are you all right to talk?”

  Her friend picked up at once that something was wrong. “Yes. What is it?”

  “Where are you?”

  “Up the town. Shopping. What’s the matter? You sound awful.”

  Kerry started to explain about the letter and the deduction she had made from it. “He already knew, Son. He said he didn’t but I could see it in his eyes. He already knew.”

  “O-o-h.” A pause while she struggled with something. “Do you mean before she died?”

  “Yes. I think so.”

  Her friend was silenced. Then she added in a low voice. “You don’t think…”

  “That’s the trouble. I don’t know what to think. I just don’t feel comfortable with him any more. I don’t trust him. He had such an odd look in his eyes.”

  Sonya Darlington frowned, ignored the people hurrying past her and concentrated on the conversation. “You be careful, Kerry,” she warned. I wouldn’t go over there on your own if I was you. I’d just wait until the police have arrested someone.”

  “What if they don’t arrest anyone? Ever?”

  “Then I wouldn’t go over at all.”

  “But he seems so nice.”

  “People aren’t always what they seem,” her friend said darkly. “I should give him a wide berth if I was you. Until somebody’s arrested for the murder you don’t know it wasn’t him.”

  “Hmm.” There was still some doubt in her friend’s voice.

  “Kerry,” Sonya said warningly.

  The moment she had stopped speaking to her friend Sonya Darlington rang Leek Police and was put through to Joanna.

  Who listened intently.

  Korpanski was watching out of the corner of his eye and from the stiffening of her shoulders he knew this was a significant phone call. He waited for her to put the receiver down.

  “He knew,” Joanna said slowly. “Pennington knew about the letters.”

  “How can you be sure?”

  The trouble was – she couldn’t. Sonya had merely said her friend was convinced he already knew. Pennington had not admitted it but she had felt the sight of all that passion spilling out onto the blue notepaper had been no surprise.

  “And if so,” Mike, “it gives him a very clear motive.”

  “But no opportunity,” he said.

  Her shoulders drooped. Korpanski was right.

  But it did mean that Pennington’s protestations of ignorance of his wife’s affair had been a deceit.

  Well, he was a very good liar.

  Joanna had reached the point in the case when she felt she knew all she needed to know. She simply didn’t understand the significance of it all. So she had decided to have a brainstorm with every single officer who had been detailed to gather the information.

  Dressed in tight black trousers and a red shirt with high-heeled black boots she was perched on the corner of a desk. “Chuck it at me,” she said, fists clenched. “Start with the obvious. Move in, tell me specifics and any great ideas you have. I don’t care if they’re not logical or wise. I don’t care if they’re simply questions you don’t think have been satisfactorily answered. Just – start – talking.”

  She’d ordered coffee and sandwiches for everyone. She wanted a nice, relaxed atmosphere, plenty of ideas and fact sharing.

  Bridget Anderton kicked the ball off.

  “The murder of Beatrice Pennington, aged fifty-two, married woman who had two grown-up children, who live away. Suspicions of having an affair with another woman.”

  PC Paul Ruthin took up the story. “Set off for work on the morning of Wednesday, June 23rd…”

  “In an uncharacteristically smart dress,” Kitty Sandworth put in.

  “For work,” Korpanski growled.

  “Chained her bike to the railings and…”

  “Disappeared.”

  “Reported missing on Thursday, 24th June by her husband. Body found almost a week later under a hedge on the Moorlands on a little-used road between Grindon and Butterton in a state of decomposition. Cause of death manual strangulation.”

  “The pathologist thought the hand was big.” Bridget Anderton again. “He thought more likely a man’s hand.”

  “And probably dumped under the hedge soon after she disappeared.”

  Joanna spoke. “Anomaly one. The affair was thought to be with a woman but the murder thought to be committed by a man.” She searched around the room. “Inspiration anyone?”

  “The husband of the woman she’d been having an affair with?”

  “Or maybe her own husband,” Joanna said thoughtfully. “Bridget? Would you like to tell the others what you saw”

  “He came home from work hurriedly today,” the WPC said. “His neighbour, Kerry, had spent the morning in his house. I was just keeping an eye,” she replied to the sniggers around the room. “Anyway – she meets him on the doorstep holding out some pages of blue what looked like notepaper. They go inside. A couple of minutes later she bolts back out, runs across the road and back into her own house. A minute or two later Pennington’s knocking on her door. She doesn’t answer it and he drives back to work.”

  “Maybe he tried it on.” Paul Ruthin suggested.

  “No, it was obviously the letters,”

  Joanna interrupted. “We know that Beatrice sent numerous letters on blue notepaper, sealed in blue envelopes to the object of her affections,” she said, “because the librarians have told us. We know that she delivered them by hand, walking from the library so we assume it was somewhere near, in the town.”

  She paused. “And, according to a friend, who kindly rang us, Kerry Frost is convinced that Arthur Pennington had known about his wife’s letters for some time. In other words before his wife was murdered. However, as Sergeant Korpanski has pointed out, he may have motive but he did not have the opportunity. Too many witnesses saw his wife after Pennington was safely in his office.”

  “The real question is – who were these letters addressed to?”

  “C,” Phil Scott said gloomily.

  Joanna put her hands up to her face. “Surely it is not beyond our capabilities to find out who ‘C’ is? Surely if we find out who she is it will lead us to Beatrice’s killer?”

  At her side Korpanski let out a long, heaving sigh.

  Time to move on. “Right – so. There are other problems. While plenty of witnesses saw Beattie cycling in to the town and even locking her bike to the railings it seems no one saw her get into a car or be abducted.” Another thought struck her. “We know that the letters were sent to someone who either lived or worked very near the library. It’s possible she went once too often to deliver one of these and that was where she met her death, her body being disposed of at some other time, maybe that night.”

  A few heads nodded. It seemed logical.

  “Let’s think about alibis. Her own husband?”

  Korpanski shook his head. “It’s not going to work,” he said. “He’s in an office with a secretary in the adjoining room. He has to go through her room to reach the outside.

  “Even if he had slipped out he would have to
work very quickly,” Bridget Anderton objected. “Meet up with his wife, murder her, dispose of her body somewhere and get back to work – all in a pee-break. Unless,” she said, “his wife’s body lay in his boot all day.”

  Joanna stared at the back of the room. “No response to the boards, I don’t suppose?”

  “Plenty,” PC Anderton said. “Everyone saw her in her best frock wobbling along the road. I mean – she was conspicuous but no one so far reports seeing her get into a car near the library or on the road at any time when the body was being dumped.”

  On this down beat the briefing seemed to pause.

  There was a hard knocking at the door, the desk sergeant’s face appearing in the round window.

  “Oh no,” Joanna said crossly. “Not now.” She didn’t want interruptions. She wanted to move on, consolidate their knowledge, pool their ideas. She wanted to find the killer, make an arrest.

  But he opened it anyway. “I think you’ll want to see this, Ma’am.”

  “What,” she asked irritably. “We’re in the middle of a very important briefing.”

  For answer the desk sergeant lifted his eyebrows and stared, the faintest hint of a smile touching his mouth. Trust me, it said.

  “All right then. Korpanski,” she said, “come with me.”

  “We’ll continue later.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Joanna faced the determined, damaged face of Corinne Angiotti. Her first instinct was one of shock. The last time she had met the doctor she had been composed, in control, confident to the point of arrogant. And now? Someone had put a fist into the delicate features. Hard. And done a lot of damage. The eyes that glared back at her were full of anger and terror.

  Joanna was curious; but first things first. “Do you need a doctor?”

  Corinne Angiotti shook her head.

  “Some pain killers?” Joanna managed a smile. “We keep a couple of aspirins around the place – for hangovers usually.”