When Anthony Rathe Investigates

by Matthew Booth

  Elizabeth Newsome shook Rathe’s wrist, turning him away from her husband. “Don’t let him see you staring, Mr Rathe, please. I don’t want him to realise that I know.”

  “Know what, Mrs Newsome?”

  She glared at him once more, her eyes now a frantic blend of nervousness, malice, and fear. Despite himself, Rathe was unable to turn away from her, those eyes demanding and holding his attention with their hypnotic allure of horror. “I know what he’s planning, Mr Rathe. I know what he wants.”

  Her spell temporarily broken, Rathe looked back over to Edward Newsome, who was nodding in agreement with some point made by his conversational companion. “And what does your husband want, Mrs Newsome?”

  She clenched his wrist once more, forcing his eyes to return to hers. She held his gaze for longer than he felt was comfortable before releasing her grip on him. “I’m so sorry. Please, forgive me, Mr Rathe. Ignore me. It’s just me being stupid, take no notice.”

  But he knew she didn’t believe a word of it. And, somehow, that knowledge seemed to taint his own views and he found himself doubting that her feeble denials were justified. “Tell me what your husband wants, Mrs Newsome.”

  “I shouldn’t burden a stranger with my troubles. It was wrong of me.”

  Rathe leaned in closely to her, not so much intimidating as persuasive. “Tell me.”

  He felt a slight tremble in her thin fingers as they touched his arm once more. Their nervous shuddering seemed to him to complement the hesitancy of her voice when she replied, so softly he had to strain to hear her.

  “Murder.”

  “I’m sorry, what?”

  “My husband wants me dead, Mr Rathe.” She pleaded with her eyes for his belief. “He wants to murder me… ”

  * * *

  Rathe found Cook in the garden, sitting on a small bench, staring into a fish pond. The water rippled gently in the night breeze, illuminated by the small lights which lined the perimeter of the pond. As he approached, Rathe could see the slivers of silver and gold flitting through the dark pool of the water, their movements nothing less than mesmerising in their fluidity. Overhead, the trees extended towards the moon, generating a further layer of silhouetted privacy to this secluded corner of the lawn. The noise and bustle of the house seemed further away than the length of the garden itself, incapable of intruding on the tranquillity of this part of the garden, to such an extent that it could have been in a different place altogether.

  Cook was sitting back, his hands in his lap and his legs outstretched. His attention was fixed on the pond, his eyes following the fish as they made their aimless way around the depths of the water. Rathe did not sit down for want of an invitation, but he stood facing Cook without obscuring the view of the fish.

  “You come to tell me I’m neglecting my guests?” murmured the inspector.

  “No. I don’t think anyone’s noticed you’ve gone,” replied Rathe. “No offence.”

  It was difficult to tell by the minimal illumination of the pond lights, but Cook might have smiled. “Andrea loves hosting parties. I can’t stand it. The noise, the mess, the small talk. I’d rather sit here and look at my fish.”

  Rathe glanced down into the water. “Do you often sit down here?”

  “It’s my space, for my time.” He glanced up at Rathe. “For when everything else gets too much and you just want the world to disappear for a few minutes.”

  “I know that feeling.”

  “So, I come here and look at my fish. What do you do?”

  Rathe shrugged, bowing his head. “Brood, mostly.”

  “You shouldn’t. It’s not healthy. You should find something to do. Like opera.”

  “I’m not getting into opera just to please you.”

  “Please yourself, but you need to find something. For the times when you want the world to vanish too.”

  “A hobby is supposed to pass the time, not fill it.” Rathe raised his eyes to the moon, pausing for a moment. “How well do you know the Newsomes, out of interest?”

  Cook’s eyes shifted from the fish once more, narrowing as they turned to Rathe. “Why are you asking?”

  “Just curious.”

  “What’s Elizabeth been saying to you?” Cook’s voice was guarded, as though he was afraid of the answer. “Whatever it is, ignore it.”

  “She told me people would say she’s paranoid.”

  Cook nodded. “She is, that’s why.”

  “Does she have reason to be?”

  For a moment, Cook looked as though he was going to tire of the subject of Elizabeth Newsome both quickly and irritably. He bunched his fists in his lap and tightened his lips, as though preparing himself to launch off the bench and grapple Rathe to the floor simply for having the temerity to mention her name. However, the fury was not to come; instead, Cook exhaled loudly in a frustrated sigh, and leaned forward, putting his elbows on his knees. The fists remained in place.

  “Let me ask you this about Elizabeth Newsome,” he said. “What did you think of her, first impressions and all that?”

  Rathe put his hands in his pockets and leaned against the trunk of a tree. “Nervous, anxious. Frightened.”

  Cook nodded. “I remember when she was funny, full of life, ambitious. I remember when she had a comeback for everything and a one-liner for anybody. But I also remember seeing her disintegrate, fall to pieces, and wither away. Until she was that ghost of a person you met tonight. Elizabeth Newsome has turned into a very sad woman, Rathe.”

  “What happened?”

  Cook chewed his lip, preparing himself for what he thought might be a long story. “Her and Ed have got a son, right? Good lad, called Sean, must be getting on for sixteen now. They had him later than most couples, because they were both in their thirties when she fell pregnant with him, but he’s grown up to be a strong and decent lad.” He paused, the memories stirring in his mind. “About six years ago, by accident presumably, Elizabeth found out she was expecting again. She went full term and gave birth to a daughter. They called her Jane. Straight away, it was obvious things weren’t right. You can imagine the signs. Long story cut short, the girl died before she was two.”

  Rathe was nodding his understanding. “And Elizabeth never got over the loss?”

  “Worse than that, she blamed herself. During all the doctor talk about mortality rates, sudden infant death syndrome, heart failure, brain malfunctions, and all that, it was mentioned that women who conceive later in life run a higher risk of losing the child. Elizabeth’s mind latched on to that one point. Couldn’t see past it, ignored everything else.”

  “The poor woman,” muttered Rathe.

  “Over the last four years, she’s let her grief and guilt consume her. At one point, Andrea tried to help her and get her to see things differently, but it didn’t work. I told her it wouldn’t, but she wanted to do it anyway. That’s typical of her. But, in the end, it was harder on Andrea than on Elizabeth.”

  “Meaning what, exactly?” Rathe’s voice was without emotion, as though daring Cook to justify the words.

  Cook recognised the challenge with a heavy sigh. “Sounds cruel, but I don’t think Elizabeth wanted to be helped, not then and not now. I reckon she’s so used to the feeling of guilt that it’s all she understands. But because she won’t let go of it, it’s twisted her view of the world. She sees things differently to everyone else, misreads things. Misinterprets what people mean.”

  “You’re saying she’s delusional?”

  “I don’t know these fancy words like you, Rathe, so I can’t say. But Elizabeth’s got no lights on in the attic. I’m no expert, and don’t pretend to be, but I don’t reckon she’s grieved properly. She’s let it all fester and you know as well as I do that grief can twist your insides into knots.”

  Rathe nodded, sadly. “It can… so can guilt.”

  Cook shrugged, as though his point had been made. “Elizabeth Newsome died when her daughter died. The person you spoke to isn’t the woman I knew. Not
any more.”

  For a second or two, they remained silent, the tragedy of Elizabeth Newsome’s daughter hanging between them like an unspoken secret yet to be confessed. At last, Rathe took a step forward and turned back on his heel to face Cook.

  “What about the husband?” he asked. “What’s he like?”

  Cook rolled his eyes, sniffing with distaste. “Cold, difficult to get to know. I’m not a fan.”

  “How did he take the death of the child?”

  “Who can tell? He doesn’t let you know what he’s thinking. Ed’s one to keep himself under wraps.”

  “Secretive?”

  Cook shook his head. “Private. He handled his grief like he’d handle some bad news from the bank, as just something to be dealt with. Elizabeth went into meltdown; Ed just formed another layer of ice.”

  “I can’t imagine it being a happy marriage.” Rathe forced himself not to look at Cook.

  The detective raised an eyebrow. “I don’t think it’s any sort of marriage. They just exist together.”

  Rathe examined a fingernail. “Would Edward Newsome ever be violent to her?”

  Cook’s eyes narrowed and he took a step closer. “What’s all this about?”

  For a moment, Rathe wondered whether he should respond. Standing there in Cook’s private corner of peace, with the stillness of the night around them, the melodramatic suspicions of Elizabeth Newsome seemed outlandish and ridiculous. Rathe was suddenly aware that repeating them there and then might make him seem as foolish as people assumed Elizabeth Newsome herself was. But the question had been asked and, for better or worse, he knew it required an answer.

  “Elizabeth thinks her husband is planning to kill her.”

  Cook made no immediate response. It seemed as though hours were spent processing the information and Rathe felt compelled to stare down at the flagstones beneath their feet, almost embarrassed by the words he had said.

  “Did she say why she thinks that?” asked Cook at last.

  “She didn’t get the chance. Edward began to walk towards us, so she wouldn’t say any more. But she begged for me to help her. And I mean she begged me, Cook.”

  “Why you?”

  Rathe licked his lips awkwardly. “Easier to talk to a stranger, she said.”

  Cook turned back to the pond and dipped his fingers gently into the water. The soft trickle of the disturbed water seemed to soothe the air around them. “Have you come out here to ask me if it could be true?”

  “I just wondered what you’d think of it,” Rathe said. “You know them both better than me, obviously, but there was something about her eyes and her expression which seemed so earnest, so desperate to be believed. And she told me people thought she was mad. She confessed that straight away.”

  “So?”

  “So it made me think she might not be. How desperate do you have to be, after all, to approach a complete stranger and say something like she did?”

  Cook looked back over his shoulder. “But she is desperate, Rathe. Which is why you can’t take what she says seriously. I might not like the uptight bastard, but Ed Newsome is no more capable of murder than one of these fish. He’s not got the balls for one thing and he’s too self-possessed for another. Trust me, he’d walk away from any sort of confrontation before he let himself get so hot under his shirt that he’d kill someone.”

  Rathe remained impassive. “So you’re sure there’s nothing to what she said?”

  Cook stepped away from the pond and brought his face close to Rathe’s. “I’m sure. I know you’ve got something in you which feels the need to try to save people and I think I understand why it’s in you. But, this time, there’s nothing to be done about it.”

  Rathe ignored what he took as a cynical reference to his own psyche. “You didn’t see the look on her face.”

  Cook shook his head again, but with a smile, as though he had scored another point. “Not tonight I didn’t, no. But I’ll have seen it a hundred times before, because it’s always there. It’s the memory of her daughter carved in her face and it never leaves her. The only thing to change is the fantasy she spins to explain it. I told you before, but I’ll say it again. Elizabeth Newsome is a sad, depressed, and broken woman. But that doesn’t make Ed Newsome a murderer.”

  “Perhaps not,” conceded Rathe.

  Cook clapped a hand to Rathe’s shoulder, as though that sealed the agreement between them that there was nothing more to be said about Elizabeth Newsome or her suspicions of impending death. As the two of them walked back to the house together, Cook spoke about something unrelated but Rathe barely heard a word of it. His mind was elsewhere, recalling with a vivid intensity those pleading eyes and trembling fingers of the woman who had suffered in life and, it seemed, who may yet suffer in death.

  * * *

  The following morning dawned with a clear sky and the diurnal promise of the sun. It was one of those mornings which a painter might have striven to capture in his waking moments or which a poet might have manipulated immediately into a metaphor for the refreshing and clarifying virtues of sleep, just in case that crispness of the forthcoming day was so pure that it could never be expected to last its course and might never be replicated. It was a morning when the city seemed eager to proceed, where no problem appeared to be insurmountable, and when the river was blue with hope as opposed to black with menace. And yet, as he looked out over that same river of ambition and across the same skies of optimism, Anthony Rathe knew that his own mind was in turmoil.

  The two conflicting conversations from the previous night lingered in his memory and he knew that he had spent much of the remainder of the preceding twilight hours fluctuating between them. On the one hand, he could understand Cook’s almost rational explanation of the Newsome woman’s hysteria, especially when he took into account the immense grief which she must have experienced and which, according to Cook, she had not confronted. And yet, conversely, Rathe found it impossible to ignore the deep entreaties of Elizabeth’s expressions and words when she had spoken to him. His brain compelled him to side with Cook’s realistic analysis; but his heart and his instincts clasped hands in solidarity with Elizabeth Newsome’s alleged paranoia.

  By the time he and Cook had gone back inside from the garden, the Newsomes had left the party. Andrea Cook was less than impressed that her husband had not been around to say goodbye, but Cook had shrugged off the admonishments with a roll of his eyes and the sharp fizz of a new bottle of beer being opened. Rathe had permitted himself no more to drink and he had made his excuses. At the end of the driveway, Cook had issued a reminder to forget the Newsome woman and her claims, advising Rathe to turn his mind to something more profitable.

  “Like opera?” Rathe had quipped.

  “If that’s your bag,” Cook had grinned, turning his back and walking away.

  But Rathe’s mind was not for ignoring the possibility that the woman was in danger. He found it impossible not to think that, if he ignored her and those fears became a reality, his own conscience would break under the strain of her life hanging on it alongside that of Kevin Marsden’s. The thought was impossible to entertain. By contrast, if he could satisfy himself that Elizabeth’s fears were delusional and there was no danger from Edward Newsome, Rathe felt he would have lost nothing but his own time, but that loss was nothing compared to the peace of mind which he would gain because, of course, he had all the time in the world to lose.

  An internet search which was both quicker and easier than he had anticipated provided details of a number of Newsomes in the immediate area, but only one with a third occupant in the property by the name of Sean. The address was across London, involving a change of Tube and a cab he feared, but it would be easier than driving and the journey would give him time to formulate his thoughts. He drank a cup of coffee, contemplated a bagel but discounted the idea, and left the house.

  He could recall very little of the journey itself when he arrived at the Newsomes’ property. His mind had been e
lsewhere, planning and rehearsing his words and imagining her reactions and responses, and so he had not noticed the collection of underground stations through which he had passed and the change of trains had been completed in a mechanical haze. He seemed to remember a crying child on the second train, but that had only made him think of the dead Newsome baby, Jane, and the effect her passing had had on her mother. He remembered checking directions on his phone and deciding that what seemed to be only a short walk through a leafy suburb was preferable to a cab journey through the same district. But, as he stood at the gates of the property, the walk itself now seemed to be from another time and place altogether.

  The house was set back from the road, the driveway a long path of flagstones, bordered on the one side by a fence and overhanging trees and, on the other, by a finely decorated and carefully maintained garden. The front door of the house was hidden by an arched portico which hung over the front steps. There was a bay window downstairs and three large windows on the upper floor, seemingly peering out from the shadows of the gables above them. An extension was to the left of the house, built onto a sizeable garage and, whilst impossible to see for certain, Rathe had the impression of a large garden at the rear of the property, no doubt as well cared for as its front counterpart. The area was quiet, tranquil, far away from the general noise of the city, and Rathe felt like something of an imposter, intruding on this peaceful solitude, as though the purpose of his journey was a stain on the serenity of the place.

  Elizabeth Newsome responded to the ringing of the doorbell as promptly as might have been expected and her initial look of surprise at a visitor was quickly intensified when she saw Rathe standing on the threshold. A momentary confusion passed over her face whilst she tried to place him in her memory, but it was a second only before she recalled his face and name, changing her expression from surprise to gratitude.

  “I never expected you to… ” she stammered. “You believed me? Last night, you believed what I said?”