Wings over the Watcher

by Priscilla Masters

  “I’m OK.”

  “Who did this to you?”

  Corinne Angiotti stared back without speaking.

  “Let’s go in here.” Joanna led her into one of the smaller interview rooms. “Are you sure I can’t get you anything? Tea?”

  She was struggling to conceal her shock and pity. She hadn’t expected this.

  She closed the door behind them. “OK,” she said. “Do you want this on the record or off?”

  “Off – for now,” Corinne spoke with difficulty through the split, swollen lip. “It’ll all have to come out – eventually, I expect.”

  “What?”

  Corinne put a hand up – near her face. “This,” she said, “and other things.”

  So this was “C”, Joanna thought and could have kicked herself. The signs had all been there from the first. The numerous calls to the doctor’s surgery, the fact that it was round the corner from the library. And Corinne Angiotti had just the right profile to fit. Beatrice Pennington would have adored the woman who had given her so much attention. It was typical of her that she had misinterpreted the doctor’s professional interest as being a return of her love. Oh what a tragedy – not only the woman’s death but her life too.

  She glanced across the room at Korpanski and knew he had worked it out in the same second that she had.

  “So you were the one,” she said. “The object of Beatrice Pennington’s affections.”

  Corinne’s eyes dropped instantly. “Can I have a glass of water?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  Korpanski shot across the room to the sink, filled a plastic cup, handed it to her – all in the space of a second. Corinne Angiotti took it gratefully without looking at him once and drank.

  “Beatrice Pennington,” she said steadily, “was a sweet, kind woman who was cruelly mocked by her family, her friends and in particular Guy Priestley.” Her eyes opened as wide as she could manage. “They were all laughing at her. People she’d loved and trusted, people she’d known all her life. They all let her down. Her husband hardly acknowledged her existence; her mother and father had little time for her, preferring her sister; her two friends used her and her children couldn’t have cared less whether she was alive or dead. She had no one she could turn to. She was lonely and ignored so she came to consult me as her doctor because she felt so devastated by what had happened. I couldn’t let her down.”

  “What was your understanding of what did happen?”

  “I’m sure you’ve unearthed the full story. Urged on by Marilyn, Guy Priestley quite callously pretended to made a play for her. She fell for it. Beatrice was naïve beyond belief. She had low self-esteem. She felt a fool, completely unloved and unwanted. I just gave her some of my professional time.”

  “But her husband wanted her,” Joanna pointed out.

  “Her husband was used to her. That’s all.”

  Corinne tried to smile but it started the lip bleeding. “Ouch,” she said, putting her hand to it.

  Korpanski shot back to the sink and returned with some paper towels soaked in cold water. Corinne took it gratefully and dabbed the blood away. Joanna gave Mike a suspicious look. There was no need for him to compensate for the behaviour of the entire male race.

  He caught her eye and gave her a bland, innocent smile but he knew that she knew what he was up to.

  “Beatrice consulted me on a number of occasions,” Corinne continued, “starting round about Christmas-time. Within a week, I think, of the Priestley incident. Her son and daughter had not let her know whether they would be home or not for the festive season. Her parents were going to her sister’s. I felt really sorry for her.” Corinne’s fingers brushed over her face. “She seemed so low. I tried to prescribe some antidepressants but she refused them. She said it did her more good to talk to me. I tried to refer her to a counsellor but again she refused, again saying that she would prefer to talk to me, that she found it more helpful.” She brought her hands up, palms outwards in a foreign gesture of appeal. “What was I to do? I’m a doctor. My work is to struggle against the forces of nature, do what I can to promote my patients’ physical and mental health. I have taken the Hippocratic oath to that effect. In the circumstances the best option seemed to be to listen to her problems. At least she felt she could unburden herself of some of the humiliation and shame she’d experienced when Guy Priestley deliberately made such a fool of her. I knew how she felt. I have a – few problems myself.” Her hands brushed over her face and even through the swollen eyelids Joanna could read the hurt held in her eyes.

  In the circumstances the epithet, problems, seemed a bit of an understatement but Joanna reserved her comment. It would have been unkind to say anything.

  “I felt a real empathy with her. Maybe that was my mistake,” Corinne mused – more to herself than to the two detectives. “Maybe I shouldn’t have empathised with her quite so much but it seemed natural at the time. We talked quite a lot about marriage, about relationships. That sort of thing. To be honest I too found it therapeutic. That was another mistake I made. I see it now so much more plainly.”

  “And then?” Joanna prompted.

  “And then she started writing letters to me. Love letters. They were awful. Embarrassing, quite unbalanced. At first they professed a sort of romantic love. Adoration, almost. Then they got quite physical. Talking not about emotion but about touching, feeling, kissing. I felt terrible.”

  “When was this?” Joanna interrupted.

  “Well after Christmas. March, sometime. I wrote back telling her this was a big mistake, that I had expressed a professional interest rather than personal, that I had treated her as a patient. The trouble was – I started to see myself as no better than Guy Priestley. I too had led her on and now was trying to let her down. It was just what she didn’t need. You understand? I was letting her down more gently than he had. Without cruelty or malice. But the result was the same. It would make no difference to her. She’d perceived us both as potential lovers. At one point she threatened suicide.”

  “When was this?”

  “May, June sometime. I…”

  And suddenly Corinne’s eyes became furtive and her manner evasive, face turning away, hands fidgeting, feet moving underneath the table. Joanna thought she understood. Although these consultations had taken place in the surgery, Doctor Corinne Angiotti had not kept accurate and detailed records which would make her story uncorroborated. And which left her, in turn, vulnerable.

  “Did these exchanges take place in the surgery?”

  “Yes.”

  “Entirely?”

  “Up until then, yes.”

  “So they’re all on record,” she asked innocently.

  Corinne covered her mouth with her hand. She scooped in a long breath. “Not fully, no.”

  The fidgeting stopped. It is interesting how truthful people are incapable of lying.

  “And then things turned nasty and a bit frightening. She began waiting outside the house, bumping into me deliberately when I arrived at and left surgery. Often when I’d think I was alone in the house I’d look out of the window and see her just standing there. If I went shopping up the High Street I’d bump into her. It was terrible. I was always conscious that she was nearby. She became further detached from reality, imagining things I’d never said. Started to tell me she’d found a cottage where we could live, that we could build a new life together.” Suddenly Corinne Angiotti covered her face with her hands and burst into tears. “It was horrible. I didn’t want it. I didn’t want to be with her. I simply thought of her as my patient, someone I treated. Not a bloody lover. I didn’t know where it was all going to lead. I didn’t know how to stop it and professionally I was frightened. She appeared so plausible, so lucid, so unimaginative and truthful. I was worried that if the story came out people would believe her and not me.”

  Joanna exchanged a swift glance with Korpanski. Did Angiotti know she was digging herself into a pit?

  She gave her a chan
ce. “Why didn’t you come to the police?”

  “Because in my more confident moments I still thought I could handle it. Because I didn’t want to embarrass her. Because I was afraid that you would believe her – not me.”

  “We would have handled this with kid gloves,” Joanna said. “We can be careful and considerate. Don’t you understand?”

  “You didn’t know how convincing she was, nor the power of her conviction that she was right. She was deluded. She really was quite convinced that I did love her and had, at some time, promised that I would leave Pete to go away with her. She sensed that we weren’t happily married and filled in the rest.”

  But Korpanski was staring, fascinated at the doctor. He always stood in the same way, like the genie of the lamp, guarding the door, arms folded, legs apart. “There’s more,” he said.

  Corinne Angiotti looked at Korpanski directly for the first time since entering the room. And she looked at him with fear.

  “And then?” Joanna echoed.

  “Then things turned even more threatening,” Corinne admitted.

  “She hid in the drive one evening. We have a long drive,” she explained. “We live in one of the Victorian semis on the Buxton Road, on the fringes of the town. The drive is curved and lined with rhododendrons. Anyone could hide in there and she did. One evening when I’d been working for the Medical Deputising Service I was very late home. It was around 1 am. As I got out of my car I knew she was there, I could hear her breathing heavily. Did anyone tell you she had adenoids and very laboured breathing? Oh yes. As her doctor I knew that all right. I knew it every bloody time she phoned me at home. I could hear it. ‘Your heavy breather again’, Pete used to say.”

  “Go on.” Joanna was wondering where all this was leading.

  “She asked me where I’d been. I started off telling her it was none of her business. But she persisted, accusing me of having another lover. She was mad,” Corinne said. “She said she had a knife. ‘I mean it,’ she said. ‘I mean it. I will kill you if you don’t stick by your word. I know you want to be my lover.’” Corinne’s eyes were struggling to open against the bruising which was darkening by the minute. “How could she know that,” she asked pitifully, “when it wasn’t true?”

  Joanna glanced across the room at Korpanski. He was watching the doctor with fascination.

  It was he who broached the subject. “Tell us about the murder.”

  “I don’t know about the murder,” Corinne protested. “I don’t know. I only know that I didn’t do it.”

  A gaze flickered between the two detectives. Joanna gave an almost imperceptible shake of her head and a swift glance downwards at the doctor’s hands. Medium sized for a woman. Not the man’s hands the pathologist had described.

  “Then what?”

  “She wanted us to go away together. You have to understand. I really liked her but there was no way I was going to ride off into the sunset with her. I’d hoped…” Her voice softened. “I suppose I’d always hoped that my husband and I would somehow work things out.”

  They waited for her to draw the inevitable conclusion.

  “It seems that was a bit of a vain hope.”

  Joanna exhaled noisily, blowing out in relief.

  “I knew I really had to confront her,” Corinne said, “somewhere on neutral ground and somewhere where I would be safe. I was feeling increasingly threatened. She was unbalanced, you know. There was no appealing for her to understand that it was all in her mind. She simply wasn’t listening.” She drew in a deep breath. “I was late for work on the Wednesday she disappeared and as I passed the library I saw her bending over, locking her bike to the railings. She was wearing a fifties-style cotton thing with a full skirt.” She smiled. “It looked odd with a cycling helmet. I honked my horn and tried to do a U-turn in the road but when I arrived back she’d vanished. There was just the bike locked against the railings. I don’t know whether she’d seen me or not. She didn’t wave but I thought she’d started to look round.” Her hand covered her mouth again as though she was distressed by her memory. “I lost the chance to talk to her – for ever, it seems.”

  Now it was Joanna’s turn to look wide-eyed at Korpanski. Corinne Angiotti must have been so close to the killer.

  “Did you see anyone else approach her?”

  The doctor shook her head. “No.”

  “Did you notice anything that might give us a clue?”

  “I’ve thought and thought about it, gone over that little street scene so often in my mind but the only thing I keep coming up with is that for some reason she didn’t want to see me that morning.” Corinne’s face was puzzled. “I don’t know why but I’m convinced it’s true.”

  Joanna eyed the tape-recorder with frustration. If it had been switched on they could have recorded this interview.

  The case had never seemed more ridiculous. For Beatrice Pennington to shrink away from the woman she had professed to love? It didn’t make sense.

  Corinne Angiotti must have read her mind.

  “I know,” she said. “It doesn’t make any sense at all.”

  “How were you when you arrived at the surgery?”

  “Agitated,” Corinne said. “Very.”

  “Did anyone witness these events? See you turning in the road?”

  The doctor shook her head. “Well – loads of people must have seen me turning around on such a busy road. No cars hit me but I don’t suppose anyone would remember. It’s an insignificant thing. I really wasn’t conscious of other people. I simply felt an overwhelming sense that I must have it out with her for once and for all.” She paused. “My husband saw me.”

  “He was in Leek that morning?”

  “Yes.” She and Mike exchanged glances. This was like a horse race. And right now Pete Angiotti was way out in the lead. He had motive, opportunity and the right twisted character too.

  Joanna leaned across the table. “Can I point out, doctor,” she said. “We have a murder investigation on our hands and you have come in of your own free will and told us a completely unbelievable story.”

  “It’s true.”

  “What strikes me is why have you come in to make confession today?”

  Corinne touched her face. “Because my husband found the letters,” she said. “And even he did not give me the benefit of the doubt. I knew I had to tell my story first – before you found out from another source. The whole thing was bound to come out.” She bent down, reached something from her bag and put sheets of blue notepaper on the desk. Joanna leaned back in her chair, eyed the sheets of paper, glanced at Korpanski triumphantly and resisted the temptation to punch a hole in the air.

  “We’d like to keep these,” she said.

  Corinne Angiotti simply nodded.

  “Where are you going now? You can’t go home.”

  Corinne shrugged. “I don’t know. I must speak to people at work and take some time off. I’d like to go away from Leek for now.”

  “I don’t think that’s going to be possible for a while.”

  “Well then?”

  “We do have accommodation. A safe house.”

  Corinne stood up. “I should go home,” she said.

  “I take it it was your husband?”

  Corinne nodded. Then she touched her face. “This is what husbands do to women they believe have betrayed them.” She swallowed. “I don’t think Pete will try anything again. He’s probably gone.”

  “We can arrest him. But that isn’t the problem,” Joanna said.

  Corinne’s face moved. Had it not been so swollen it is possible she would have looked questioning.

  “Beatrice’s killer is still out there,” Joanna said.

  Corinne managed the faintest of smiles. “Well – at least you don’t think it was me.”

  “We know it wasn’t you,” Joanna said. “The hand that strangled her was a man’s.”

  Corinne flinched. “So it isn’t a matter of your believing me or not,” she said. “It’s do
wn to the facts.”

  “I’m a policewoman,” Joanna said. “We’re not known for our blind trust in the human race.”

  Corinne bowed her head.

  “So you really do intend to go home?”

  “Where else?” Corinne said steadily.

  “We’d be only too happy for you to go home,” Joanna said, “on one condition, that you have a WPC with you 24 hours a day. We can’t risk this happening to you again. And the killer may have some animosity against you or even believe that you saw him on that morning.”

  “If Pete sees a policewoman in our house he’ll think she’s there to arrest him.”

  “I don’t care what your husband thinks,” Joanna said. “We can’t risk anything further happening to you. Understand?”

  Corinne nodded.

  “And you accept the terms – just until we’ve made an arrest?”

  Again Corinne Angiotti nodded.

  “Why did you keep the letters?” Joanna asked curiously. “They were so incriminating. Why didn’t you destroy them?”

  “Because.” Corinne Angiotti looked helpless. “Because they were such beautiful letters. Because they were such lovely words, because she had a vision of me that was intensely flattering. Because no one had ever said such beautiful things to me before and probably never will again.”

  “When did your husband find them?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Could it have been before June the 23rd?”

  Corinne licked her cracked lips. “It’s possible. I think it might have been.”

  “Where is he now?”

  “I don’t know. I just left.”

  “Does he have a mobile phone?”

  Corinne nodded.

  Joanna pushed a pad and biro across the table at her and Corinne wrote the number down, copying from her own mobile phone menu.

  She pushed the pad back at Joanna.

  “Thank you.”

  The action must have released some tension in the doctor. She gave Korpanski a flirtatious look as she spoke to Joanna. “I don’t suppose the first watch could be your detective sergeant, could it? I think I’d feel safe with him.”