"Was he?” I felt my hands shaking.
"There were rumours going round that he was abusing her, but the police never found any evidence ... that's what I was told anyway. Don't repeat it, will you?"
"No.” I could hear my heart beating. “Of course I won't.” I hesitated. “What happened to the boy the police suspected?"
"I think his family left the area. Why?"
"No reason,” I said, as casually as I could manage. “Just curious."
I stood up. I wanted Mandy to go. I wasn't in the mood for company. I was wondering how to stop Paul from going to the harvest supper ... how I was going to keep him away from Carter. But then I realised that I didn't have to go with him. I could develop a strategic headache. As long as I didn't come face-to-face with Carter and the nightmares of my childhood, I'd be all right.
"You're shaking. What's the matter?” Mandy's voice was all concern.
"Nothing.” I tried to smile.
It was half an hour before she left and as she was leaving she asked me if I was going to Miss Downey's funeral. I said no. After all, I didn't know the woman.
As soon as she'd gone I rushed upstairs and opened my underwear drawer. I felt underneath the layers of flimsy lace for the note, and when I found it I took it out and read it.
Dear Karen,
I've been thinking about our meeting the week before last and I've been wondering what to do for the best. I do understand your feelings but I think it would be helpful to talk. Perhaps you would call on me one day for tea.
Yours sincerely,
Edith Downey
I tore it into tiny pieces and put it down the waste disposal unit in the kitchen. I was stupid to have kept it, but I vowed not to make any more mistakes. That evening I told Paul that I wanted to go back to London but his response was that it was still early days ... and the harvest supper was just what I needed to get to know people.
The next day I heard from Mandy that Carter had been released without charge.
* * * *
I lived in a strange state of limbo for a week, pretending to Paul that I was looking forward to the harvest supper ... and all the time making plans to avoid it at all costs. The most worrying thing was that Paul seemed to have reached some understanding with Carter. He had taken to visiting the Wagon and Horses some evenings and one night when he returned, he said that he had been talking to Carter and he seemed all right, really: You couldn't always judge by first impressions.
The change in Paul shocked me: He claimed that the slow pace of country life was lowering his blood pressure and making him feel calmer. Why run around like a headless chicken in London when you could enjoy the simple pleasures of a small community and open spaces? Paul seemed hooked and, like converts the world over, he began to enter into his new enthusiasm with a gusto lacking in the born-and-bred countryman. He talked of learning to ride, maybe joining the local hunt. To my horror, he even suggested inviting Carter round for lunch one Sunday as he was on his own, an idea which sent me straight to the bathroom to throw up.
Paul was going native and with every new development I became more and more certain that I had to get back to the city ... any city ... anywhere away from Manton Worthy. I had to get out before it was too late.
On the night of the harvest supper I developed a headache as planned and told Paul to go on his own. He looked disappointed, like a kicked puppy, but I had no choice. After some persuasion he went, and once I was alone I locked all the doors and settled down to an evening by the telly with some interior design magazines—I wanted to do something with the en suite bathroom so I found myself a pair of scissors to cut out any pictures that might provide me with some inspiration. I opened a bottle of Chardonnay, too—I needed something to steady my nerves.
At half-past nine it was pitch dark outside. Darkness in the countryside is nothing like darkness in the city and I could see nothing outside the windows, as though someone had hung black velvet drapes on the other side of the glass. But with the curtains drawn and the telly on I felt cosy and safe. Until I heard the noise of our polished brass doorknocker being raised and lowered three times.
I froze. The telly still babbled on, oblivious to the crisis, as three more knocks came. Then another three. I went through all the possibilities in my mind. Could Paul have forgotten his key? Could Mandy be calling to see how I was? I crept along the hall in the darkness, making for the front door. There were no windows in the door but the TV executive had installed a spyhole and security lights. I stood on tiptoe to look through the spyhole, but although the front step was flooded with halogen light, there seemed to be nobody there.
I was about to return to the safe warmth of the lounge when the knocking began again. My body started to shake and I tried to peer out of the spyhole but again there seemed to be nobody there.
I know now that I shouldn't have opened the door, but it was an automatic reaction—and I suppose I assumed that I could just close it against any danger if the worst happened. But things are rarely that straightforward. As soon as I had turned the latch, the door burst open and I fell backwards. I think I screamed. I think I tried to lash out. But it was useless. It was dark in the hallway and I could see very little, but I felt strong arms dragging me towards the lounge. I tried to kick, but it was as though I was caught in a web like a fly ... at the mercy of some monstrous, unseen spider. I screamed again, but then I realised that this was the countryside. There was nobody there to hear me.
We were in the lounge now and Carter was bundling me onto the sofa. I could smell his waxed jacket as he held me ... the same smell I remembered from all those years ago. And I could see his face ... full of hatred.
"I saw you.” He spat the words like venom. “I saw you run her over."
I tried to wriggle free, but he held me tight.
"But you were too late. She'd told me already that you were back."
"I don't know what you're talking about.” The words came out as a squeak, unconvincing even to myself.
"Miss Downey, that's what I'm talking about. I got talking to that husband of yours. Funny how you didn't tell him much about yourself. He's no idea, has he?"
I felt his breath on my face and I tried to push him away. But it was no use. He was stronger than me.
"Why, Karen?” he hissed, putting his face close to mine. “Just tell me why. What had she ever done to you?"
"I don't know what you mean."
"My Jenny ... why?"
"Luke Fisher killed Jenny. Everyone knew that."
His hands began to tighten around my neck. “Once you'd gone, Luke told the police what he saw. They didn't believe him—just because he wasn't all there they thought he was making it up. But I knew he was telling the truth. You were always a sly little bitch ... a bully. You made my Jenny's life a misery. No wonder your mam and dad moved away so bloody quick after she died. Did they know, eh? Always looked so bloody innocent, didn't you ... face like one of them angels in the church. Did they know what you were really like? Did they know what you'd done?"
With an almighty effort I pushed him off and sprang up. I don't remember much about what happened next. Only that there was a lot of blood and I felt that same strange detachment I'd felt after I had killed Jenny Carter ... when I looked down and saw her dead, bulging eyes staring up at me.
The memory returned like a tidal wave, everything that had happened that day all those years ago. The bell ropes in the church had been replaced and the old ones had been left lying in the back pew, perfect for the game I'd made up ... the game of dare. I dared Jenny Carter to go to the old gallows and put the rope around her neck. Luke followed us: He was hard to get rid of ... older than us, big and soft and too simple to know when he wasn't wanted. But I hadn't known he was watching when I tightened the rope around Jenny's neck, just to see what it would be like to kill somebody ... to have the power of life and death. Once I'd started pulling on that rope I couldn't stop. I'd watched, fascinated, as her face began to contort and her
eyes started to bulge. I was all-powerful, the angel of death; just like the angels on the screen in the church ... only different. As I stood over the body of Jenny's father, I felt the same elation ... the same thrill. But when I heard a voice calling in the hall the feeling disappeared and my brain began to work quickly.
I began to sob and I sank to the floor. The scissors I'd grabbed from the coffee table were in my hand and I threw them to one side. I was shaking and crying hysterically by the time Paul entered the room. And when he took me in his arms I slumped against him in a dead faint.
I pretended to be unconscious when the doctor and the police arrived. I thought it was best. And when I came round, in my own good time, I told my story in a weak voice. Carter had arrived and pushed his way in, then he had tried to ... I hesitated at this point for maximum effect, but the policewoman with the sympathetic eyes knew just what I meant. Women alone in the countryside were so vulnerable and hard-drinking men like Carter, sensing weakness, knowing a woman would be alone ... She was the sort of woman who believes all men are potential rapists and she believed every word I said. I was the victim, she said, and I mustn't feel guilty. I never liked to tell her that I didn't.
We left Manton Worthy soon after, of course, and made a tidy profit on the Old Rectory, which we sold to a city broker who wanted it for a weekend retreat. I told Paul that I couldn't bear to stay there after what had happened and he was very sympathetic: He even blamed himself for getting too pally with Carter. The day before we left I wandered into the church and I looked at the angel on the screen, the one with the sword, and I couldn't help smiling. I was Manton Worthy's angel of death ... and nobody would ever know.
Once we were back in London I resumed my old life. I was Petra, Paul's wife; a lady who lunched and did very little else. Karen was dead.
It was six months later when Paul was found dead at the foot of the stairs in his office. He'd been working late and I'd been at the gym, working out with Karl, my personal trainer. Of course, when I say working out, I use the term loosely: What we were doing had very little to do with exercise bikes and weights. Karl had a girlfriend, but I wasn't worried about that: He was just a bit of fun, a way of passing the time ... and Paul would never get to know.
The policeman who came to tell me about Paul's death wasn't very sympathetic. He questioned me for hours about where I'd been and about my relationship with Paul. I said nothing about Karl, of course. And when he asked me how much I stood to inherit on Paul's death, I told him the truth. Five and a half million, give or take a few quid. Of course I'd assumed that Paul's death was an accident, cut and dried. But it just shows you how wrong you can be.
The police said that Paul hadn't fallen; there were signs of a struggle and fibres from my coat were found under one of his fingernails. I told the police that he'd caught his nail on my coat that morning. And I told them he had some pretty dodgy business associates ... he'd even moved to Devon once to get away from them. But they wouldn't listen, and when they charged me with Paul's murder even Karl turned his back on me and refused to give me an alibi because he was scared of his cow of a girlfriend.
I was convinced it would never come to trial. After all, I hadn't done anything. But every time I tried to convince the police of my innocence, they wouldn't listen. My defence barrister told the court how six months ago I'd been the victim of an attempted rape, but even that didn't seem to earn me much sympathy. The jury was full of brain-dead idiots who found me guilty by a majority of ten to two, and as the police bundled me past the crowds waiting outside the Old Bailey, someone flung a coat over my head and pushed me into a van that smelled of unwashed bodies and urine.
Even when they took the coat off my head the windows in the van were too high to see out of and I couldn't tell where we were or what direction we were driving in. We seemed to drive for hours on a fast, straight road, then we slowed down and the roads started to wind.
I asked the sour-faced woman I was handcuffed to where we were going and she turned to me and smiled, as though she was enjoying some private joke.
"Oh, you're going to Gampton Prison. You'll like it there. It's in the country ... right in the middle of nowhere."
When she started to laugh I screamed and banged on the side of the prison van until my hands were sore.
©2007 by Kate Ellis
[Back to Table of Contents]
THE JURY BOX by Jon L. Breen
Washington Post critic Patrick Anderson has written a survey of recent bestselling crime fiction, The Triumph of the Thriller: How Cops, Crooks, and Cannibals Captured Popular Fiction (Random House, $24.95). While his knowledge of mystery history seems spotty and I question his implication that the best of crime fiction present is artistically superior to the best of crime fiction past, he writes en-gagingly about such estimable contemporaries as Michael Connelly, Sue Grafton, Scott Turow, and George P. Pelecanos, among many others. The emphasis is American, but a few British writers are discussed, notably Scotland's Ian Rankin, the creator of maverick cop John Rebus, one of the great characters in contemporary crime fiction now twenty years on the job. In-creased length, a broad canvas, a multitude of apparently unconnected cases, and an emphasis on the personal lives of the cops are not always happy trends in the hands of lesser writers, but Rankin is a master.
***** Ian Rankin: The Namingof the Dead, Little, Brown, $24.99. In 2005 Edinburgh, the G8 economic summit and associated demonstrations complicate life for Rebus, now approaching retirement age and mourning the death of a brother, and his colleague Siobhan Clarke, whose aging hippie parents have traveled north to join the protests. A Scottish Member of Parliament has died by fall, jump, or push from Edinburgh Castle, and a serial killer has apparently used a weird shrine to witchcraft and superstition called a Clootie Well to link three seemingly unrelated crimes. One of the best mystery plots in recent memory accompanies a detailed and harrowing account of the historic events attending the summit, peopled by a wide range of vividly drawn characters.
**** Dick Lochte: Croaked!, Five Star $25.95. In 1965 Los Angeles, young Harry Trauble works on his potential best-selling novel Child of the Gap while writing advertising and promotion copy for Ogle, a high-class girly magazine second only to that one in Chicago with the rabbit. In a workplace whodunit somewhat in the mode of Dorothy L. Sayers's Murder Must Advertise, the circulation director dies when a sculpture of the magazine's trademark frog falls on his head. Lochte's satirical eye captures the period flawlessly, and there's even a broad clue to the surprising murderer.
**** Margaret Frazer: The Traitor's Tale, Berkley, $24.95. In 1450 England, nun-detective Sister Frevisse and Simon Joliffe, actor-turned-intelligence-agent for the Duke of York, join forces to solve a series of murders possibly connected to a plot against King Henry VI. A richly detailed mix of political, social, and domestic history is balanced by nimble plotting, strong characterization, humor, and lively give and take. Both prose and dialogue avoid ar-chaism and stiltedness without seeming anachronistic.
*** Lee Goldberg: Mr. Monk and the Blue Flu, Signet, $6.99. When San Francisco police engage in a sick-out to protest the mayor's budget cuts, TV's obsessive-compulsive homicide consultant Adrian Monk returns to official police work and confronts a variety of cases (serial killings of female joggers by a shoe fetishist, a murdered as-trologer, and others, some connected and some not), aided by minder and Watson-narrator Natalie Teeger and a trio of comically impaired ex-cops. At least two chapters could stand alone as short stories. This is a very funny and inventively plotted book, and you don't have to be a fan of the TV show (created by Andy Breckman) to enjoy it.
*** Deborah Donnelly: Bride and Doom, Dell, $6.99. Wedding planner Carnegie Kincaid's latest murder-interrupted assignment involves the nuptials of a baseball slugger for the fictitious Seattle Navigators and a Goth rocker known professionally as Honeysuckle Hell. She also has her own coming marriage to worry about in a strong entry from a consistently good seriocomic series. Many will spot the murdere
r, either through veteran whodunit reader's instincts or some commendably fair clues.
*** Robert B. Parker: Edenville Owls, Sleuth Philomel, $17.99. In 1946 Massachusetts, eighth-grader Bobby Murphy prepares his coachless basketball team for a state tournament and tries to save his admired teacher from a mysterious threat. The author's first young-adult novel, aimed at readers 12 and up, is a juvenile equivalent of a Spenser caper, including noble hero in embryo, simple straight-ahead plot, and wise and supportive adolescent Susan Silverman figure, clearly a tribute to Parker's wife of fifty years. Some elements might appeal more to adults than to the target audience, who could use more context for pop-culture references familiar and nostalgic to Parker's contemporaries.
** Ruth Dudley Edwards: Murdering Americans, Poisoned Pen, $24.95. Offering more right-wing cultural satire than mystery, Edwards has taken every em-barrassing anecdote about the failures and excesses of American universities (political correctness, lowered standards, culturally illiterate students, grade inflation, liberal bias) and visited them on a single fictitious Indiana campus, where colorful ser-ies sleuth Baroness Troutbeck serves as Visiting Professor. Even those who don't share the political perspective may find at least some bits funny. The British author's take on American lingo isn't bad, but she has, like, no idea where the likes are properly placed in youth speech.
Two new anthologies will be of special interest to EQMM readers. Passport to Crime (Carroll & Graf, $16.95), edited by Janet Hutchings, gathers 26 stories from the magazine's regular feature of mysteries in translation, neatly bookended by Fred Kassak's droll contemporary var-iation on an Edgar Allan Poe classic, “Who's Afraid of Ed Garpo?", and Norizuki Rintaro's cleverly plotted Ellery Queen homage, “An Urban Legend Puzzle.” While some of the writers have books available in English—e.g., Boris Akunin, Baantjer, Paul Halter—others, for all their award-winning accomplishments, still have not ap-peared in translation outside of “Passport to Crime,” an addition to this magazine that surely would have Fred Dannay and Anthony Boucher smiling.
EQMM, June 2007 Page 7