“But did she? I agree with all you’re saying, and yes, I can see she might well have done the killing, but I still think it could equally well have been Joseph.”
“Well, look at it this way. Think of the effect that that kind of obsessive love would have had upon him. She cocooned him in it so thoroughly that, over the years, I should think his willpower would have been completely destroyed. I’d guess that by now he would have been incapable of any sudden act of aggression, let alone one as violent, as extreme as murder. Faced unexpectedly by Carrie, I should think that his instinctive reaction would have been to turn to his sister for rescue, just as hers was to strike out in his defence. No, I’m as certain as I can be that he couldn’t have done it.”
“Yes,” Joan said slowly, turning it over in her mind. “I see what you mean. Yes, I suppose you’re right.” She shivered. “it’s frightening, isn’t it, to think what one person can do to another, in the name of love?”
“Yes,” said Thanet, remembering grimly how he himself had so narrowly escaped that particular trap. “It certainly is.”
Joan was silent for a while, thinking.
“But I still don’t understand how you cottoned on to the idea that Joseph was still alive and living with his sister,” she said at last.
“It was something old Mr Pitman said. You see, peculiar as people can be, they are usually consistent in the things which really matter to them.
“We’re both too young to remember it, but I understand that many, many women whose men were reported ‘missing, believed killed’ in the last war refused to accept that they were dead, preferring to think that they were really stuck behind barbed-wire fences in some prisoner-of-war camp. And, of course, a lot of them were. Usually news filtered back from the camps before the war ended, but there were plenty of cases when men turned up unexpectedly some considerable time later. After hearing about young Matty Cox and her single-minded devotion to her brother Joseph, I was surprised that she hadn’t gone on hoping that this was what had happened to him long, long after most women would have given up. But she didn’t. Mr Pitman told me that she stopped expecting him to come home about a year after he went missing, towards the end of 1944—long before the end of the war.
“The Pitmans apparently thought that this was because it was too painful for Matty to go on living in perpetual disappointment, that the only way she could cope was to accept that he was dead—but I bet that was the moment when he finally arrived back home. It was also at that point that she abruptly became a recluse. People accepted this, of course, thought that the shock of losing her brother had unhinged her. And I don’t know, but I would guess that it was then that she gradually began to adopt a mannish appearance.”
“You mean, so that if by chance anyone should catch a glimpse of Joseph, they would think it was her?”
“That’s right. And they did indeed look very similar, dressed alike and with the same hairstyles—cut by Miss Cox herself, I imagine.”
“But just think,” said Joan with awe, “to live like that for more than thirty years, shut up in one room …”
“Not necessarily in one room. At night, with the curtains drawn, I should think he would have been able to have the run of the house.” Thanet remembered his recurring feeling of being watched by someone in number five, and for the first time he wondered: could that have been Joseph, not his sister? It was possible.
“What was it like, the attic?”
“It takes up the entire roof space. The partition wall between number five and number four had been heavily insulated, presumably so that he wouldn’t have to worry too much about keeping quiet all the time—and the room itself … you should have seen it. He had everything he wanted up there, I imagine, and yet it was so pathetic, somehow, a substitute for life. There was a vast model railway layout on a properly constructed base, books on bird-watching and on almost every aspect of country and wild-life, and some very fine binoculars. There was a carpenter’s bench with a splendid set of tools—most of the furniture in the house had been made by him, by the look of it. Games, records, you name it, he had it. I should think Miss Cox spent every penny she could spare on keeping him happy.
“And yet, it was almost as if Joseph had never become a man at all, as if he was a small boy whose hobbies had to be indulged.… I suppose he’d grown used to it. I expect he’d lost the will to live in any other way and would have found the modern world a bewildering and perhaps frightening place. No, I think that the most astounding aspect of the whole affair is that he could have lived in a terraced house in an English village for that length of time without anyone once suspecting that he was there. I suppose if he’d ever been seriously ill the game would have been up.”
“It’s no good. I still don’t see how you guessed. I wouldn’t have, in a million years.”
Thanet laughed. “Flattery will get you everywhere,” he said. “Did I tell you how gorgeous you’re looking today, by the way?”
Joan was wearing a new spring suit in a deep hyacinth blue which suited her fair colouring to perfection. On her head was perched a minute straw hat decorated with tiny blue and white flowers.
“That,” he went on, “is the most ridiculous and adorable hat I have ever seen in my life.”
Joan looked pleased and a faint flush of pleasure bloomed in her cheeks. “I’m glad you like it,” she said demurely, “but you’re not wriggling out of it like that. You still haven’t explained to me …”
“My word, you certainly deserve full marks for persistence,” Thanet said with a grin. “Well, I admit there was something else … something apparently quite irrelevant. By itself it would have had no significance, but linked to Carrie’s love of snooping and Miss Cox’s inconsistent behaviour over her brother’s reported death … You see, at one point I began to suspect that Major Selby was a fraud.”
Joan looked blank. “I’m not with you at all,” she said. “What’s the connection?”
“It just seemed to me that he was too much of a good thing. As I said to Lineham, he was almost a caricature of what an ex-regular Major should be.”
“I still don’t see the point. Was he?”
“Was he what?”
“Genuine?”
“No idea. We never got around to checking. Patience, darling,” he said, as Joan made an exasperated sound. “Patience, and all will be revealed. I know it’s a bit tortuous, but you did ask.… You see, the point is that once I’d started thinking along those lines—about the army and the war in general—I side-slipped on to Joseph Cox. I remembered thinking how strange it was that Miss Cox had suddenly given up hope of his return, when there was really still quite a strong possibility that he hadn’t been killed at all, but picked up and put into a POW camp. And then I thought, what if he hadn’t been killed and he hadn’t been picked up, either. What if he’d lain low for a time and then managed to find his own way back to England, as many men did.… You see? Once I’d reached that point, my whole thinking about the case altered. I saw that I could have been misinterpreting Miss Cox’s behaviour all along.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, I had thought she was afraid. And I was right, of course, she was—but not, as I had imagined, because the murderer was still at large. What she was really frightened of was that I should learn the truth. The tragedy was that in trying to reassure her, by telling her that the end of the case was in sight, I achieved precisely the opposite effect and pushed her into action. If I hadn’t done so she wouldn’t have panicked and both she and her brother would still be alive. I can’t help feeling guilty about that.”
“You mustn’t blame yourself. How could you have known?”
“That’s beside the point.”
“No, it isn’t!” Joan cried passionately. “You were simply trying to be kind. And anyway, how much better off do you think they would have been if they were still alive? You said yourself that Joseph would have been lost if he’d had to cope with present-day living. What do you thin
k it would have been like if he had had to do so without his sister to help him? And how absolutely miserable she would have been, if she’d had to go to prison and not only have to live without him but know that he was hopelessly ill-equipped to fend for himself?”
Thanet was silent for a few moments and then he gave Joan a shamefaced grin. “I hadn’t thought of it quite like that,” he said.
“That’s because you’re always too ready to blame yourself for everything that goes wrong. But when it comes to taking the credit …”
“Here’s the church,” interrupted Thanet with a smile. “Just at the psychological moment, before you get well and truly launched on that one.”
Joan released an exaggerated sigh of mock exasperation. “Sometimes, my darling, you are well and truly impossible!” she said. But her curiosity had been satisfied now and she was leaning forward to look eagerly out of the window, eyes shining in anticipation. “I am glad they’ve got such a lovely day,” she said. “Oh look, the bridesmaids are arriving.”
And there they were, one girl in her early twenties and two tiny ones, all of them looking like spring flowers themselves in their pretty pastel dresses.
“It’s a shame Mrs Lineham couldn’t have been here,” said Joan, as she and Thanet walked along the ancient flagstones to the church porch.
“I don’t want to sound hard,” Thanet said, “but in a way she has brought this on herself, you know. All the same, I do agree. It is a pity. But I think Mike made the right decision in going ahead regardless. If he hadn’t …”
“True. He’d never have got away, then. I don’t think Louise could have borne a third postponement.”
Thanet and Joan took their places on the bridegroom’s side of the church. Half the police force of Sturrenden seemed to be present, unfamiliar in their Sunday best. Thanet thought how glad he was that with the Birch case solved Lineham would be able to go off on his honeymoon with a clear conscience.
Briefly, his mind skimmed back over the case, pausing to rest for a moment on each of the main characters. For a very little while he had impinged upon their lives and they upon his. Some of them would stick in his memory, he knew: old Robert Pitman, for example, with his unquenchable fortitude and zest for life—and, yes, Carrie Birch herself with her pathetic daydreams, her thirst for vicarious living. She would never know it, but he would remember her with gratitude. For did he not, after all, in some strange way, owe her Joan? He shivered involuntarily to think how close he had been to losing his wife.
“Cold?” she whispered.
He shook his head, smiled at her.
Lineham and his best man were rising now, moving to take their places for the ceremony. The bride must have arrived. Heads turned, seeking a first glimpse of her, as the congregation came to its feet.
Then the organ burst forth into the gloriously triumphant opening chords of the Wedding March and Louise began to move serenely down the aisle on her father’s arm.
Thanet felt for Joan’s hand and pressed it, savouring the quick response. They exchanged affectionate glances.
Yes, he was whole-heartedly in favour of marriage, himself.
Turn the page to continue reading from the Inspector Thanet Mysteries
1
The smell of burning toast drifted upstairs to the bathroom, where Detective Inspector Luke Thanet was shaving. He grimaced at his foam-bedecked reflection, laid his razor down on the wash-basin and went out on to the landing.
The smell was stronger here and a faint bluish haze was issuing from the half-open door of the kitchen, like ectoplasm. The sound of a one-octave major scale, haltingly played, indicated that Bridget was dutifully doing her early-morning piano practice. Thanet was loath to disturb her.
“Ben!” he bellowed. “Toast!”
A small figure clutching a comic shot out of the sitting room and into the kitchen and Thanet heard the clunk as the defective release mechanism on the toaster was operated.
“Put some more in, will you, Ben?” he called. “And watch it, this time.”
He went back into the bathroom, took up his razor, frowning slightly. Joan was presumably next door again, administering an early-morning dose of comfort to their neighbour, Mrs Markham. It was about time he put his foot down. This had gone on long enough.
Joan had been working for eighteen months now as an Assistant Probation Officer, prior to launching into her formal training. She loved the job but it was very demanding and, although Thanet tried to help as much as he could, Bridget and Ben still needed a good deal of attention. And at the moment they weren’t getting it, he reflected grimly as he rinsed and dried his face. There was a limit to what one woman could do. It was unreasonable of Mrs Markham still to be making such powerful bids for Joan’s time and attention. Mr Markham had been dead for a year and, although Thanet had initially been full of sympathy for his widow, it annoyed him that she was now exacting from Joan the same degree of attention and service that she had expected from her husband.
When Thanet had dressed he went downstairs firmly resolved to speak to Joan about it. It was disconcerting to find that she still wasn’t back.
“I can’t find my leotard, Daddy,” Bridget said, the moment he entered the kitchen.
She and Ben were munching their way through plates of Rice Crispies.
“I don’t suppose it’s far away.” Thanet poured himself a cup of coffee and sat down. “When did you have it last?”
“Mummy was going to mend it for me. Daddy, I must have it for today. It’s dance club and they’re doing auditions for the Christmas pantomime.” Bridget’s grey eyes were beginning to glisten like pearls.
“Don’t worry, Sprig.” Thanet gave a reassuring smile, reached across to pat her hand. “I’ll just eat this piece of toast and we’ll go and look for it. Ben, how many times have I told you not to read your comic at the table! Anyone know if Mummy’s had any breakfast yet?”
That was another thing, he thought grimly as they shook their heads. More often than not Joan was going off to work without even a cup of coffee these days.
Fifteen minutes later his decision to have it out with her had become full-blown determination. An exhaustive search had failed to turn up Bridget’s leotard.
“Where can it be?” The tears were beginning to flow freely now.
He squatted to put his arms around her. “Hush, sweetheart, don’t cry. It’s bound to be here somewhere. Ben, run next door quickly and ask Mummy where she’s put Sprig’s leotard. Say she has to have it to take to school today. We really must go soon, or we’ll be late.” He hated to see the children go off to school distressed. His head was full of all the angry things he’d say to Joan when he had the opportunity. He had no intention of making a fuss in front of the children this morning though. He didn’t want to upset Sprig further by having her witness an angry scene between her parents.
Joan came in with a rush, followed by Ben. “Sorry, darling,” she said. “I just couldn’t get away.”
She avoided looking at him, he noticed.
“Don’t worry, Sprig,” she went on. “I know exactly where your leotard is. I’ve just got to put a stitch in it and …”
“You mean, you’ve still got to repair it?” Thanet could feel the anger building, fuelled by Bridget’s distress and by the knowledge that they were already late, would now be delayed even further.
“It won’t take a second,” Joan said, disappearing into the sitting room. “I’ll have it ready by the time you drive the car out of the garage,” she called.
“Right, come on then, kids,” said Thanet. Just as well it was his turn to take the children this morning. “Coats and scarves on, quickly now. We’re late already.”
True to her word Joan came running out with the leotard as Thanet was backing out of the garage. Thanet wound down his window to take it from her, handed it to Bridget.
Joan leant in to give him a quick peck on the cheek, blew kisses to the children. “’Bye darlings,” she said. “See you thi
s afternoon.” One of Joan’s friends earned pin-money by collecting Bridget and Ben from school with her own children. She would give them tea and keep them until Joan was free to pick them up.
Joan waved until the car was out of sight. Thanet watched her diminishing figure in the car mirror until he turned the corner. At the school he waited until Bridget and Ben were safely inside the playground and under the eye of a teacher before driving off.
“Beautiful day!” called another father, similarly engaged.
And it was, Thanet realised, noticing it properly for the first time, a perfect autumn day: unclouded sky and a sun whose strength was already dissipating that early-morning crispness which is a foretaste of frosts to come. His spirits began to rise, his mind to move forward to meet the day ahead. His undischarged anger was still there, underneath; but now, by some strange process, it was becoming translated into energy. By the time he reached the office he was brimming over with it and he began to hope that something really challenging would come in today. One of the things he liked about being a policeman was never knowing what would come along next.
It was a disappointment to find that his In tray held nothing of interest and after a cursory inspection he rose and crossed to the window. Down below in the street people and cars hurried by, intent on their destinations, seemingly imbued with a powerful sense of purpose. Thanet shifted restlessly from one foot to the other, envying them. He ached to be out there doing something.
Unfortunately, he told himself as he settled down at his desk, life is not in the habit of producing just what we want when we want it and for every exciting, challenging task there are usually a hundred dull ones to be tackled. He opened the first of the files awaiting his attention.
Six Feet Under Page 20