A Death Left Hanging

by Sally Spencer

  ‘It wasn’t anything like as simple as that,’ Earnshaw told him. ‘When Margaret began getting serious about Fred Dodds, she broke our affair off for a second time.’

  But why did she ever even begin to get serious about Fred Dodds? Woodend asked himself.

  Because, he thought, answering his own question, she had made the wrong choice with her first marriage and wanted to ensure that it did not happen again. Fred Dodds would not disappoint her as Rob Hartley had done. Dodds had already proved that he could be successful.

  And so it was that, in order not to make the same mistake twice, Margaret had made the biggest mistake of all – by not asking herself what it was that Dodds wanted from her.

  ‘If you want to keep on doin’ that sort of thing, why don’t you get married?’ Marcus Dodds, another child abuser, had advised his son. And for once the son had followed the father’s advice.

  ‘Are you still with me, Charlie?’ Seth Earnshaw asked. ‘You look miles away.’

  Years away would be closer to the mark, Woodend thought. But aloud he said, ‘Yes, I’m still with you. You were tellin’ me about your on-off affair with Margaret.’

  ‘That’s just what it was,’ Earnshaw said. ‘An on-off affair. Because when her marriage to Dodds turned sour, she came back to me for a third time.’

  ‘Did you ever ask her what it was that made her marriage to Fred Dodds turn so sour?’

  ‘No, I didn’t.’

  ‘Weren’t you even curious?’

  ‘I was just so grateful that she’d come back to me. She was the love of my life.’

  Love without responsibility, Woodend thought. It was probably most men’s dream – but he knew it would never have suited him.

  ‘Shall we get on to the night of the murder?’ he suggested.

  ‘Why not? We were out together that night.’

  ‘Somewhere in Whitebridge?’

  ‘No. We were always very careful about where we were seen together. We used to drive to country pubs, where we wouldn’t be recognized. And when we got back to town, I’d always drop her off on the outskirts and she’d get a bus home. Anyway, we were in a pub that night and she said, “I’ll just ring my sister-in-law, to make sure that Jane’s all right.” Jane was staying with her father’s sister, you understand.’

  ‘Aye, I know about that.’

  ‘When she came back from using the phone, she was as white as a sheet and her hands were trembling. “Helen’s taken Jane home!” she said. I asked her what she meant. “Jane was supposed to be staying with Helen all week, but Helen’s had a last-minute invitation to a dinner-dance, and she’s taken Jane home.” I know it doesn’t sound very dramatic when I say it like that, Charlie, but believe me, it was. Margaret was on the verge of hysterics.’

  ‘Understood,’ Woodend said. ‘What happened next?’

  ‘Margaret insisted that I drive her home immediately. Not to the edge of town as usual, you understand, but straight up to her front door. I pointed out that her husband might see us through the window, and she said that she didn’t care. In fact, she said that she didn’t bloody care. And Margaret was never one for swearing.’

  ‘You did as she’d asked you to?’

  ‘Yes. I didn’t want to – I had my marriage, and reputation in the community to consider – but given the state she was in, I didn’t see I had any choice.’

  ‘Still, you didn’t drive her straight home, did you? You stopped once on the way.’

  ‘How in God’s name did you know?’

  ‘That doesn’t matter. Just tell me where you stopped. An’ why.’

  ‘We were crossing town. The Isis started to misfire, then stalled. I told Margaret I’d have to look under the bonnet. She’d been upset before. Now she became even worse. Still, there was nothing for it but to take a look at the engine. It was a minor problem – dirty points – but by the time I’d fixed it Margaret had disappeared. Then she came running back. “I’ve just phoned Fred!” she said. “He won’t answer! The swine won’t even pick up the phone!” I told her that really didn’t matter, since I’d have her home in a few minutes.’

  ‘Where did this breakdown of yours happen?’ Woodend asked. ‘Near St Mary’s Church?’

  ‘Yes, I . . . I can’t imagine how you’ve found all this out.’

  ‘That particular piece of information came from a reformed burglar named Harold Brunskill,’ Woodend explained. ‘He told the police he’d seen Margaret near the church. But that wasn’t something that the man in charge of the investigation particularly wanted to hear, so he decided to ignore it. But that’s neither here nor there at the moment. What happened after you’d got the car started again?’

  ‘I drove Margaret to Hebden Brow. The second I’d stopped the car, she was out of the door and running up the path to her front door. She didn’t even say goodnight.’

  ‘So what did you do then?’

  ‘I came back here.’

  ‘Weren’t you worried that your wife would be suspicious if you got home earlier than you’d said you would?’

  ‘Edith was away. She was staying with her mother.’

  ‘How long had you been back at home when you got the phone call from Margaret?’

  Earnshaw shook his head in wonder. ‘Talking to you is like talking to a mind reader, Charlie,’ he said. ‘How do you do it?’

  ‘No trick,’ Woodend assured him. ‘You’ve already told me you went back to the Doddses’ house. The only thing that could have made you do that was a phone call. When did that call come?’

  ‘The phone was ringing as I walked through the front door.’

  ‘How did Margaret sound?’

  ‘Calmer than she’d sounded earlier. Too calm, now I think about it. Almost as if she was holding her real feelings in – but only by a tremendous effort of will.’

  ‘When you got back to Margaret’s house, she brought her daughter out and handed her over to you. What state was Jane in?’

  ‘Very quiet. Docile. Almost as if she’d been drugged.’

  ‘Do you think she had been?’

  ‘No. Drugged was a bad choice of word. She seemed dazed. Perhaps even shocked. But then so would any child who’d just seen her mother batter her stepfather to death with a hammer.’

  ‘You think that’s what happened, do you?’

  ‘Of course that’s what happened! What other explanation could there possibly be?’

  ‘What did Margaret ask you to do with Jane?’

  ‘She asked me to keep her with me until eleven o’clock. By then, the dinner-dance would be over, and I was to take Jane to her Aunt Helen’s house. And that’s just what I did. I brought Jane here, put her on the sofa and covered her with a blanket. I asked her if she wanted a glass of warm milk or some biscuits, but she didn’t seem to hear me.’

  ‘Did any of the servants see her?’

  Earnshaw gave a dry laugh. ‘We’re not talking about the days before the First World War, Charlie. This was the thirties, and while you still could get servants, it was rare to find one willing to live in. By the time I got back here with Jane, all my servants had gone home.’

  ‘So you waited until the dinner-dance was over, then you took Jane to her aunt’s. What did you tell Helen?’

  ‘I told her exactly what Margaret had instructed me to tell her. That whatever she heard about the events of that night, it was vital she never reveal the fact that she’d taken Jane to Hebden Brow – or that I’d brought her back.’

  It wouldn’t have taken any bobby worth his salt long to uncover the truth, Woodend thought. Even a simple check on alibis would have revealed that Helen couldn’t have been taking care of Jane and also been at a dinner-dance. But Eric Sharpe had not bothered to follow even such rudimentary procedure. He had someone who he could make a case against – and that was good enough for him.

  ‘I felt so helpless,’ Earnshaw said. ‘If Margaret had ever told me anything about what had happened between her and Fred Dodds before that fatal night –
if she’d said that he’d beaten her up or something of that nature – then I’d have gone to the police. And I’d have testified at her trial, even if that had meant ruining both my marriage and my career. But she’d told me nothing – and I’d been so worried about holding on to the happiness she brought me that I’d never bothered to ask. So all I could do was let justice follow its natural course.’

  But had justice taken its natural course? Woodend wondered.

  Suppose Margaret really had killed Fred. Why should she have denied it? Why not tell the court the reason she’d committed the murder? And if she didn’t want to do that – if she wished to keep Jane’s name out of it – why not agree with the prosecution that she’d done it for the money? Yet despite the other options open to her, she’d steadfastly maintained throughout the investigation and trial that she was not guilty.

  There had to be some logic behind the way this highly intelligent woman had acted, Woodend told himself. All he had to do was find it.

  ‘Is there anythin’ else you can tell me about that night?’ he asked Earnshaw. ‘Anythin’ that Margaret said – or Jane did.’

  ‘Jane was very restless while she was lying on my sofa. She kept mumbling something like, “Bad man! Very bad man!” I expect that’s what her mother had told her – that Fred Dodds was a very bad man.’

  ‘Anythin’ else? Any little detail? It doesn’t matter how insignificant it seems to you.’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Earnshaw said. ‘No! Wait! There is something. I’d forgotten all about it until this very moment, and I still don’t see how it could help you. But since you did say anything I could remember . . .’

  ‘Go on,’ Woodend encouraged.

  ‘Margaret gave me something she’d brought with her from the lounge, and asked me to destroy it. It seemed a strange request to me, but everything about that night was strange, so I did as she’d asked.’

  An image of the inventory which one of Sharpe’s men had so painstakingly constructed flashed through Woodend’s mind.

  Packet of Embassy Cigarettes (three smoked, stubs in the ashtray – see below)

  Box of England’s Glory matches Ashtray (souvenir of Fleetwood)

  Ball of wool (light blue)

  Knitting needle

  Magazine (Woman,16th June)

  Daily Herald (15th June), corner of page containing crossword ripped out

  Pair of pinking scissors

  One shilling and threepence (1/3d) recovered from back of sofa (sixpenny piece, threepenny piece, four pennies, four ha’pennies) . . .

  ‘What was this thing that Margaret asked you to get rid of?’ he asked. ‘Something valuable? Something personal?’

  ‘No, it was neither of those things. That was what made the request seem so strange. Why on earth did Margaret want me to destroy a common-or-garden knitting needle?’

  A knitting needle! Woodend thought. A simple bloody knitting needle, which you could buy from any wool shop and couldn’t have cost more than fourpence or fivepence at the most. Yet as simple as it was, it provided an answer to those aspects of the case that had been giving him the biggest headaches.

  He knew now why Fred Dodds had died that night. He knew now how Margaret Dodds could first pulverize his head with a hammer – until nothing was left but powder and bone splinters – and then stand up in court and say that she had not killed her husband!

  He had all the answers – and there was at least a part of him that wished that he hadn’t!

  Twenty-Eight

  Woodend sat behind his desk. Gazing at the wall. Gazing at the clock on that wall. Listening to the ticking of the clock. Believing – though his mind told him it could not possibly be true – that the ticking was growing louder every time that the big hand jumped.

  He would have to go back as far as the war in order to remember a time in which he felt so unsure of himself, he thought. No, even that wasn’t true. In the war, he’d not liked what he’d had to do, but he’d known that it was right that he do it. To come anywhere close to his present state of uncertainty, he would probably have to travel as far back in time as Miss Scoggins’ Standard One class.

  ‘It’s five past four,’ Monika Paniatowski said impatiently. ‘The board of inquiry is due to meet in less than two hours.’

  ‘I know,’ Woodend said, and it was all he could do to prevent himself from adding ‘Miss’ to the end of his sentence.

  ‘But it doesn’t have to meet at all, does it?’ Bob Rutter asked, his voice more angry than impatient. ‘You could stop it, if you wanted to.’

  Why had this reversion to childhood happened? Woodend wondered. By what psychological mechanism had he ceased to be the head of the family and instead become the recalcitrant child to Rutter and Paniatowski’s firm parents? Had he lost his power because he was merely being stubborn? Or was it because the other two had grown so jaded and cynical that they could no longer understand the innocent simplicity of his argument?

  ‘You have to ring Lord Sharpe, sir,’ Bob Rutter said.

  ‘An’ what do I do when I’ve got him on the phone?’ Woodend demanded, aware that, to the others, he might well be sounding petulant. ‘Do you want me to lie to him?’

  ‘No!’ Paniatowski said. ‘Not lie to him. There’s no need for you to go that far.’

  Who would ever have imagined that Rutter and Paniatowski could have found it in themselves to put aside their differences and form a united front? Woodend thought. And did the fact that they’d been able to achieve the almost impossible automatically make them right?

  ‘So there isn’t any need to go that far, isn’t there, Monika?’ he said. ‘Then would you mind tellin’ me just how far you do want me to go?’

  ‘Tell him the truth – but not all of it,’ Paniatowski said.

  Woodend ran his hand across his forehead, and was not surprised to discover that it was damp.

  ‘I’ve been a bobby for a long time,’ he said. ‘Durin’ the course of my career, I’ve been offered all kinds of bribes. Money, cellars full of booze, holidays, holiday homes, every variety of sex you could imagine – an’ some you probably couldn’t. An’ do you know what? I’ve turned them all down without a second’s hesitation.’

  ‘This is different,’ Rutter argued.

  ‘I’ve met plenty of bobbies who thought what they were doin’ was different,’ Woodend countered. ‘It was different because the only reason they took a bribe was to get their children’s teeth fixed. It was different when they accepted a free night with a high-class prostitute, because if they didn’t sleep with the girl, then somebody else would.’

  ‘We’re not asking you to take any money or––’ Rutter began.

  ‘It’s always different,’ Woodend interrupted. ‘Each an’ every time you can find a reason which makes it different. An’ that’s why you have to steer clear of it – because it always leads down the slippery path to hell.’

  ‘If you don’t make the call, then what happens to us?’ Rutter asked. ‘Who’ll protect us when you’re gone? Or are you going to try and pretend that we won’t need any protection?’

  Woodend shook his head. No, he couldn’t pretend that.

  Maybe they did have a right to demand that he compromise himself, he thought. They had followed him willingly into shark-filled waters often enough. Could he now leave them to the mercy of those sharks while he was airlifted out into the rescuing arms of retirement or another meaningless committee?

  He would do it! He would make the phone call for them. Yet he still wished that one of them could say something that would make him despise himself a little less – that would tip the balance just far enough for him to believe that he still had a little integrity left. But there was nothing either of them could say, was there?

  And then Monika Paniatowski said it.

  ‘Don’t do it for yourself,’ she told him. ‘Don’t even do it for us. Do it for Jane Hartley.’

  Twenty-Nine

  Until around an hour earlier, there had be
en at least a dozen other drinkers in the hotel bar. Though Jane Hartley had made no attempt to talk to any of them, they had provided a pleasant background noise to accompany her drinking. They had been – somehow – reassuring. Then the barman had rung the bell to announce that the bar was now closed except to residents of the hotel, and the other drinkers had all drifted away. Suddenly, she was surrounded by emptiness. But she did not really mind that, she told herself. She was perfectly capable of drinking alone.

  Jane placed her glass as far along the bar as her arm could stretch, then focussed her eyes on it. The rim of the glass did not undulate. The surface of the double whisky inside it appeared not to have been struck by any sudden, unexpected tempest.

  Good, she was still relatively sober. She did not need to wrestle with the question of whether or not she should walk away from the bar – a battle she already knew the sensible side of her would lose – until she’d at least drained this dose of anaesthetic.

  ‘I’m sorry, sir,’ the barman said, looking at someone behind her. ‘We’re closed.’

  ‘That’s all right,’ answered the man. ‘I don’t want a drink. I’m here to talk to the lady.’

  Jane Hartley turned cautiously on her bar stool, and found herself looking at a rather attractive younger man in a smart suit. She was almost sure that she’d seen him before, though the alcohol was making it slightly difficult for her to recall quite when.

  ‘DI Rutter,’ the man said.

  ‘I know,’ Jane replied, remembering now. ‘You’re Mr Woodend’s little friend.’

  If he registered the insult, he certainly didn’t let it show. ‘Mr Woodend was wondering if you could spare the time to come to police headquarters,’ he said.

  ‘What’s it about?’ she asked, being careful not to slur her words.

  ‘I imagine it’s about the matter you wished him to investigate.’

  ‘I see. And has he come up with any startling new relav–– . . . revelations?’

  ‘I’m afraid I couldn’t say.’

  He was a liar, she thought. But then all men were liars.