by Paul Kelly
“Hello Mr. Gardner, I’m fine. How are you?” he asked, but there was a serious doubt in his mind as he thought over his recent past . . .
“Just a social call, William ... Just to recap ... You went to St. Michael’s school didn’t you?” asked Reggie as he blew a smoke ring into the air.
“Yes ... That’s right. Why do you ask?”
“Well, you see. It’s like this . . . Oh … by the way, how old are you now William? It must be a couple of years since I last saw you. We’re making a lot of enquiries at the Station and I was wondering if you could help us, with you having been a pupil at that school yourself,” said Gardner with a wicked smile on his rugged face. “St. Michael’s I mean ... Not the police station.” Reggie laughed again, as he often did at his own corny jokes.
William went pale and Reggie Gardner could see that his enquiry had made some impression.
“I’m twenty-three and I’ll do what I can, but I don’t remember much about my days at St. Michael’s, as it’s been quite a long time now,” said William with alarm as he could sense what Reggie Gardner was getting at and he didn’t like it.
“Can you remember any of the pupils who went there with you, William? Any of the girls for example . . . I thought you might as you did tell me that you didn’t like them giggling at you. That’s right, isn’t it?”
“Yes, that’s right. I hated that.”
Well now ... Do you remember a girl named Frankland? Lisa Frankland?”
William felt faint when Reggie mentioned Lisa’s name. How could he say that he could indeed remember her without incriminating himself and he knew by this time that Reggie knew all about the murders, but he was aware of the fact that he would have to be very careful in the answers he would give to the police officer and he thought a little flattery might just help . . . It certainly wouldn’t go amiss, he felt sure of that with his knowledge of the cocky policeman who was sitting looking into his eyes . . .
“Yes, I think I remember Lisa,” he replied as he squared his shoulders and sat upright in his chair,” but haven’t you been promoted since I last saw you?”
The policeman raised his eyebrows and shrugged his shoulders.
“Yea … that’s right. What a good memory you’ve got, William.” Reg. Gardner replied as he dusted his cap with its obvious promotional status wrapped around it, “but I asked you about Lisa … Lisa Frankland . . .Did you know her …”
Reggie shifted his legs and put his right foot down on the floor as he scratched his left ankle. “Just a name that’s come up in our enquiries, that’s all,” said Reggie and Fiona looked strangely from Reggie to William, waiting for any further answer her friend might give, but William stared ahead into the room and swallowed hard.
“Do you remember a girl named Heather Ramsay and another called Moira Bancroft?” Gardner went on as he studied his nails and William pretended to rack his brains with effort as he rubbed his fingers over his brow.
“Can’t think that I do ... I remember a girl called Moira, but I’m not sure of her surname. Why are you asking me all these questions?”
Reggie Gardner stubbed out his cigarette on an onyx ashtray and smiled.
“They didn’t make you wild with their giggles, by any chance, did they ... when you killed them ... strangled them with your own fair hands, eh . . . did you William?”
Fiona jumped up when Reggie Gardner made that accusation.
“You must be mad to say these things, Mr. Gardner. William would never do such a thing ... I know he wouldn’t.” she screamed, but Gardner ignored her protest with more accusations as he jumped up and stared at William Bright with an accusing finger
“But you didn’t strangle Mr. Barras ... did you?” he shouted, “Nor Sharma, Moffat and the others. You were kinder to them, weren’t you William, if you can call kindness using this…” At this point Reggie Gardner produced something shiny from his coat pocket. “Would you recognise this?” he asked as he produced William’s Stanley knife and continued to stare into William’s eyes.
William stared at the knife, unable to believe what he was seeing and then he remembered that he had lost it the night he was chased by the Bertrand’s Alsatian dog. It must have been on that occasion . . . he recalled again …and he smiled sarcastically at Gardner before he looked at Fiona and she stared in horror at the look in his eyes.
“Yes . . .” he said softly, almost inaudibly before he repeated himself aloud. “Yes, I killed them. I killed them all. It was what they deserved. None of them loved, well … no one other than themselves. There wasn’t an ounce of love in any one of them. ... None of them had regard for anyone but themselves. They were selfish bastards . . . all of them. Yes, they deserved to die and I’m not sorry for what I did to them. My Maya knows what it meant. She knows how much I love her now and always will and I will destroy anything or anyone who defiles my love for her.”
Fiona ran out of the lounge and into the kitchen, holding her hands to her ears when William made his announcement, but Gardner produced a set of handcuffs and stood up from where he was crouching on the settee.
When Fiona returned to the lounge she looked more composed as she stared at Reg, Gardner and he looked back at her knowing that there was something serious on her mind. She shrugged her shoulders and stood face to face with the policeman
“If as you presume,” she said with a defiant note inn her voice …”If you presume that William made all these telephone calls to all these people he is supposed to have killed,” she snarled, “ how then could you, or they ... not trace the number he was calling from. Surely as a policeman you should have thought of that?” she screamed and Gardner shook his head sympathetically.
“The 141 code, dear,” he said, “You must have heard of the 141 code where you can make a call to anyone and hide your identity as you do it ... That’s modern technology and only if he made the calls at a public telephone box, there would be no trace. He doesn’t have a mobile phone, does he?”
Fiona was about to say that William did have a mobile phone, but then in an instant she corrected herself and said nothing in the fear that she may incriminate William even further, as Gardner looked to the ceiling
“You’d better come with me, William Bright,” he said and William made no resistance as he held his hands out before him
“But tell me, Mr. Gardner ... apart from the knife, which incidentally is mine, although I know you already know that. How did you guess it was I who strangled those girls?”
Gardner fastened the cuffs as he spoke.
“I remembered how you told me of your school days and how you hated those girls laughing and giggling at you ... It seemed to be a particular ’hang-up’ with you and then when I discovered they all came from St. Michael’s, I put two and two together and your name came up. Easy, don’t you think? There’s only one flaw ... Do you remember the man you thought you had killed when you were visiting Mrs. Broomfield?” William looked to the ground, but did not answer as Gardner continued,” Well you should have learned your lesson there, Boy. You see another of your so-called victims didn’t die either.”
William glared at Gardner when he said that.
“I don’t know what you mean,” he stammered, “I’ve told you I did those murders. What more do you want?”
“Well you were a little bit too hasty, William, You should have stuck to one killing at a time, but being the smart ass that you are, you thought you’d double your act. Didn’t you?”
William thought immediately of Tobias and her cousin Smith
“Jane Smith didn’t die. You must have been too tired after you killed her cousin. Perhaps that’s what it was, but you didn’t use the pressure on Jane Smith that you did on the others. She’s in hospital now and can give evidence against you ... because although you have admitted to assaulting her, she also gave evidence that it was a man w
ith a distinct stammer who attacked her ... and she was pretty sure that was you.” And as the inspector drew his conclusions, Fiona returned to the lounge.
“This is nonsense,” she screamed, “William is cured of his stutter. I have lived with him in this flat for a long time now and I can vouch that he has lost any trace of a stammer . . . William ... Please tell me this isn’t true? I cannot believe that you would do this. I just can’t. Please tell me it is all a mistake?”
“William only stammers when he is excited about something Fiona,” said Gardner. “With you he is restful and his stammer wouldn’t be apparent, but when he is planning to kill someone ... well?”
William looked at Fiona and there was a great sadness in his eyes.
“I told you how much I loved your mother,” he said. “You must have realized how deep that love was. I know that you love me Fiona and in a way, I love you too, but the love of my life was and still is, Maya. I knew I could never ever love anyone again after my darling died and it is this love that drove me to do what I did. The girls laughed at me and I couldn’t stand that. The men abused your mother and that upset me too. I couldn’t stand that either.”
As Gardner led William away from the flat, Fiona hid her face in her hands as she cried.
“What will they do to him Inspector?” Fiona sobbed as she asked her urgent question … “I can’t bear to think of him going to prison. He would die if they did that to him.”
Garner turned to where Fiona was standing and sighed,
“I’m sorry Miss, but the evidence is strong against him and he has admitted guilt,” he said as he led William away.
Fiona was distraught. She didn’t have anyone to discuss her grief with now that Maya had gone and then an idea struck her.
“William’s mother . . . Yes, she should be told and he didn’t have any recent contact with her ... Yes, yes, she should be told.”
Fiona looked up her telephone address book to find the number, but she was confused for a moment as she couldn’t find any Mrs. Bright in her telephone directory and then she remembered that William called his mother, Bertha and there under that name she found a telephone number. It seemed that Bertha Bright had registered her name in the telephone directory as Bertha. Perhaps she didn’t think that Bright was a suitable enough name for her to have . . .
“Good morning. I am trying to trace a Mrs. Bright ... a Mrs. Bertha Bright. Could you help me please?”
There was a rough response to Fiona’s enquiry and a gravel voice, barely audible said that she was indeed Mrs. Bertha Bright.
“What d’ya want with me?” she snapped.
Fiona stopped for a moment, wondering just how she was going to tell William’s mother what had happened to him. It was drastic news and she shivered a little as she tried to talk. Her throat was dry and she knew her voice was weak.
“I am a friend of your son, Mrs. Bright and …”
Fiona was interrupted by the gravel voice again.
“Didn’t know ‘e ‘ad any friends, did that one,” she announced and coughed loudly in her effort to speak, but Fiona ignored the remark she heard as she continued her conversation.
“Yes, as I have said, Mrs. Bright. I am a friend of your son and I am afraid I have some rather sad news to tell you.”
“Nothing you can tell me what I don’t already know. He never was no good was that boy an’ I told him so many times, but he wouldn‘t listen.” was the reply, but when Fiona spluttered out that William was accused of murder, omitting to say he had been found guilty not only of murder, but of several murders, Bertha Bright had a very different response to what Fiona had expected.
“What? What was that you said? My William is accused of murderin’ somebody . . .? Well, I’m not surprised. Not one bit. I always told him he would come to a sticky end and would he listen to me … NEVER ... He knew it all, or so he thought, but he knew bugger all and it’s proved I’m right in the end. Don’t it?”
Fiona could not believe her ears at what she had heard. It seemed impossible that any mother would reject her son, so out of hand and especially in such a serious matter. She was about to say goodbye to William’s mother but the latter would not let the matter go. She coughed twice and apologised for her heavy breathing, saying that she had known better days when in reality, Fiona could guess that she was a heavy smoker.
“Ever since ‘e was a little sod . . .” said Bertha before she coughed again. “He never was much good at nothin’ . . . Always trying to skive off from lessons at school an’ things. Tellin’ everybody ‘e was a dyslexion,” she said, using her interpretation of the word, “but I could see through all that, I could. ’E was a lazy git an’ never ’ad no sense at all. That’s what I’ve always said and you can see how right I am now, can’t you?”
Fiona put the telephone down and dried her eyes in her handkerchief before she telephoned the police station to enquire the whereabouts of William and asked if there was any possibility of her seeing him, but Reggie Gardner was not there and the police sergeant on the desk told her he would get Gardner to telephone her as soon as he got back. Fiona waited impatiently, pacing the lounge floor of her flat, but it was only about an hour later that Gardner did phone and the news wasn’t at all good. No-one would be allowed to see William until after the doctor had examined him and that wouldn’t be until much later that evening, but later that evening, the news was worse than even Fiona had expected. The doctor had diagnosed William as mentally disturbed, emphasizing that the most likely diagnosis was ‘mentally deranged’ and that was considered to be a lenient conclusion…Gardner told Fiona that the likelihood of prison for William was unlikely and that he would most probably be sent to an asylum for the insane, but Gardner was swift to add that even at that, William may well be given some community service if it was considered that he might well better serve the community in this particular way.
“After all,” added Gardner as he stroked his chin in his usual way when he was having a ’deep thought’ ... “not all people who are mentally disturbed are considered to be ‘dangerous’ and with William’s musical talent, he may be better using that talent somewhere in the outside world rather than let it rot away in some dismal asylum, don’t you think?”
Through all this that went on concerning William Bright, he never raised an eyebrow. He went into an asylum for the insane and continued playing his violin as if the world and everything in it was at peace and the music he played was Maya’s favourites. He left a note for Fiona.
“Dear Fiona . . . Sorry about all this disturbance, but I am quite content with how things are progressing. Please don’t worry about me, but I would be grateful if you could write to the Royal College of Music for me and tell them I am sorry I cannot accept their kind invitation to commence studies with them early in August. Tell them I have more urgent and pressing business with her Majesty. Be good and always stay as you are. Maya would be proud of you, as I am.”
***
But as William always said when he was involved with his crimes of vengeance, “What goes around, comes around…”
He played his violin, all the time of his incarceration and never gave the slightest impression in the asylum that he wanted to be anywhere else. He played with love in his heart until he died at the early age of 42 and was buried together with his violin in the asylum cemetery. His beloved violin . . .and a photograph of an unknown lady.
The End
Also Available
00%); " class="sharethis-inline-share-buttons">share