She seemed, George thought, completely unperturbed by Hobday’s attempt to arrest her. She looked utterly unarrested. It was, she clearly felt, a kind of hoax. It might have something to do with a possible appearance on some now vanished early version of the reality show, like This Is Your Life or Beadle’s About. Soon Hobday would be grinning and slapping her on the back, the walls of George’s house would be sliding back to reveal they were no more than studio flats and the audience would be clapping and cheering under the arc lights as Lulu, with that serene smile so beloved of the English middle class, welcomed everybody to one final gala transmission of that universally loved programme Come Sit On My Knee. ‘Good evening, Inspector Hobday – this is Lulu Belhatchett inviting you to … come sit on my knee!’
She laughed again. Just as she had before she had asked the question that made Tony Blair burst into tears. The one about the family secret that nobody was supposed to know. ‘You aren’t serious, Inspector. Are you?’
Hobday’s eyes did not leave her face. ‘I’m afraid I am, Lulu. I’m afraid I’m completely serious. You’re nicked.’
Chapter Twenty-two
Lulu’s arrest was one of the better things to have happened since George had died. It didn’t send him straight back to the scattering area of Putney Vale Crematorium, inspire him to lie down on the well-kept grass and allow his fragile consciousness to fade into longed-for oblivion, but it was better than a slap in the face with a wet mackerel. He had often thought of performing a citizen’s arrest on his sister-in-law on the grounds that she was the most annoying person he had ever met, but seeing someone else pull her over for wilful murder ran it a close second.
He could have wished, however, that DI Hobday had managed to work his name into his little speech. ‘And for the poisoning of one George Pearmain, the innocent father of two and loyal, devoted husband – if you leave out that business with Biskiborne – to Esmeralda Pearmain.’ Then a bit of struggling and screaming from Belhatchett as she was dragged out to the waiting van by a heavy-set sequence of constables.
He could also have done with a bit more of the ‘hereby’ and ‘yea verily’ stuff. It was all a bit too New English Bible for George. When was the man Hobday going to get out the gyves and start telling the appalling woman who had married his brother that she was to be taken from hence to a place of execution and hanged by the neck until she could no longer purse her lips and say, ‘We don’t usually eat starters,’ or ‘Stevie – could you do a placement’?
‘I take it,’ said Lulu, still apparently unimpressed by Hobday’s attempt to arrest her, ‘that you imagine you have proof of this absurd allegation.’
She seemed, somehow, to have put all the police in the room at a disadvantage. Even Hobday, who clearly did not propose saying anything on which he might rely later in court, appeared slightly shaken by her enormous tranquillity.
‘It all depends,’ she went on, ‘on how foolish you want to look, I suppose. You do realize that there will be quite a bit of, well, publicity about this little mistake of yours? Can one withdraw an arrest? Is it too late for you to do that before the papers get hold of this?’
The drawling emphasis that Lulu managed to put on the words papers and publicity reminded George of her curious faith in the loyalty and unswerving decency of the media world she inhabited. She had clearly not stopped to consider that most of them were as devious and unscrupulous as she. That she had once read the nine o’clock news was not going to stop her colleagues crucifying her long before she came to trial.
If you looked at her closely, however, you could see her mask-like face already hinting at the impartial smile affected by well-known persons recently accused of sexual tampering with children. There was something a little too artificial about her composure. Was there, could there possibly be, a hint of desperation lurking in the pale eyes of the woman who had won no less than three BAFTA awards for her services to the media?
Lulu Belhatchett, George saw, was as crazy as a bag of rats.
It was only as Hobday started to yawn and rub his knuckles into his eyes that George grasped that the inspector was, as usual, playing a slightly more subtle game than a casual observer might suppose. He had seen the man do this a few times before – once when he was looking at the knot in the rope with which Frigga had been strangled, and again when he was looking at the kitchen floor on the morning after George had been murdered.
Who had murdered him? Who had murdered his mother? It certainly was not Lulu. Or was it? George was certain that Hobday had a good idea of how both murders had happened but, so far anyway, had no proof. His talent as an interviewer was more considerable than Lulu’s. He let people talk – and that was just what he was doing with Lulu now.
If Lulu had a weakness to which she was prepared to admit – conceit, blindness to the feelings of others, snobbery, obviousness and self-righteousness were not qualities she seemed to see in herself at all – it was that, as she often said, ‘Once I start chatting, I just cannot stop!’ Perhaps it was all those years of asking questions to which she really did not want to know the answer that now made her so keen to respond to interrogation – even when she was not actually being interrogated.
‘Perhaps, Inspector,’ she continued, ‘you think that I rushed down from Basingstoke on my broomstick, slid down the chimney and poisoned poor old George, then whacked his mummy on the bonce. I was rather fond of George. Perfectly innocent chap, with his poetry hobby and his impressions. A nicer bank manager never lived. Or died.’
She was patronizing him beyond the grave. She was patting his corpse on the head and telling it it had been rather sweet, although of no interest to a media figure of importance such as her. How dare she? She had been on the television. So what?
He recalled an afternoon with her and Stephen some fifteen years ago when she had been at the height of her fame. They had all gone for a walk on Putney Heath. Normally such expeditions were wrecked by autograph hunters, admirers of all ages and sexes, all united by the fact that they felt the need to touch, talk to or just stare at the face that had connected them to so many other celebrities. For some reason, none of her fans had been out that afternoon. No one had recognized her. She was left alone. At first, Lulu did not seem to notice. Then she took to gazing into the faces of passers-by, often with a slight smile, an anticipation of her graceful acknowledgement that, yes, she was a celebrity and would be glad to write something in their autograph books. That did not do the trick. After nearly three-quarters of an hour of it, Lulu had adopted more aggressive tactics. As they came up to Wimbledon Windmill she began to sing, quietly at first, and then, as they walked down to the Queen’s Mere, she was not only singing but had added a full range of operatic hand gestures. By the time they got to the water’s edge she was practically yodelling at top volume, as she scanned the bushes for someone, anyone, who might recognize her.
They did not. Hobday seemed similarly proof against her prominence.
‘Did I somehow pop into Mummy Pearmain’s flat and hang poor dear lonely Frigga from the ceiling? May I remind you, Inspector, that I was, at the time, in Basingstoke.’
‘Actually, Lulu,’ said Hobday, ‘we have a credit-card receipt from you that puts you in the Shell garage in the Lower Richmond Road around the time of the murder. And your DNA is all over Frigga’s manuscript. There is, too, the fact that you were an active member of the Lower Billesley Sailing Club for many years, where your expertise with knots was much talked of…’
‘Circumstantial evidence, Inspector.’
She was getting angry now. Hobday was, George realized, deliberately using his lack of proof to feed her desire to dominate the stage.
‘I presume you imagine the motive for these appalling crimes is the need to get someone’s hands on the money poor old George’s mummy left in her will. If she wanted to leave it to dear old Mullins that was her affair. I was, by the way, as my husband will testify, in Esmeralda’s house for most of the evening, and why you imagine you have
the right to arrest me when the only woman who seems to have been out there in the garden, as we all saw, was the extremely acquisitive Dawkins, I cannot think.’
Hobday said nothing. He merely smiled.
The smile and the silence did their work. When Lulu spoke again her voice had risen in pitch and her eyes were bright with suppressed anger. ‘Stephen will tell you that I had no interest whatsoever in Jessica’s money. She was a perfectly pleasant old woman and if, at times, she was a leetle bit obsessed with her darling Georgy Porgy and tended to ignore her poor old younger boy, my Stephen, that was no reason for me or anyone else to bang her on the head and leave her dead on the kitchen floor. My God! Why are we making such a fuss about the old lady anyway? She was ninety-nine, wasn’t she? She was well past her sell-by date!’
During this speech Stephen was looking at his wife with a kind of dull hatred but when he finally spoke he sounded tired and drained of all emotion. ‘My mother wasn’t murdered,’ he said. ‘It was an accident.’ He had been biting his lower lip and staring at his phone, as if it was about to provide Lulu with an alibi, but now he was staring straight ahead, his arms listlessly by his sides, his shoulders slumped as if he was suddenly too tired to go on with his life.
Lulu did not look pleased that he had spoken. She glared at him, which usually guaranteed his silence for the next three days, then added the whinnying laugh that George found so irritating. ‘Yes,’ she said brightly. ‘Jessica fell over. I thought that was obvious. She was an old lady. She wandered into the kitchen and she fell over.’
‘She was always interfering,’ Stephen said, in a low, miserable voice. ‘She was always taking charge of things. “I’ll do that!” “Let me do that, Stephen!” And if she hadn’t decided she was going to “tidy away” the glass, it wouldn’t have happened, would it?’
There was a long silence.
‘What would not have happened, Stephen?’ said Hobday, in a very soothing voice.
‘Don’t answer that, Stevie,’ said Lulu, ‘without your lawyer present.’ She gave Hobday a very narrow look.
‘Mr Pearmain,’ said the inspector, in ultra-reasonable tones, ‘may say anything he likes. He has not been arrested yet.’
Stephen looked, thought George, as sullen as he had on his first day at school when George had had the job of making sure none of the other boys stole his packed lunch or tried to trip him up in the playground. Luckily, as a child, George was as aggressive as Stephen was meek. He didn’t let anyone get away with anything. Someone had got his little brother alone, though, and done something unkind to him. George had found him crying at the end of the day, in a corner by himself. He looked as if he might cry now. He looked, for the first time in years, like George’s younger brother.
‘That’s true,’ said Stephen, in the same dull monotone. ‘I haven’t been arrested yet.’
‘And,’ said Lulu, in an easy, pleasant way, ‘there is no reason why you should be – if you keep your fucking mouth shut.’
Stephen did not appear to hear what she was saying. He was now staring at his phone, fiddling with the controls. When George went over to see what he was doing, his brother was Googling the names of lawyers. As George watched, Stephen typed a new question into the box at the head of the web page. ‘WHAT SHOULD I DO IN CASE I’M ACCUSED OF MURDER? was the request, and, already Auntie Google had come up with a number of interesting answers. Run! thought George, would have been his response. Run as fast as ever you can!
Stephen did not look like a man who was capable of running anywhere. George had never really understood what went on his brother’s mind. Did brothers or sisters ever quite get each other? You played cricket in the garden with them. You shared the same parents. You went to the same school, the same university. They acquired friends you did not understand. You did the same. Sometimes they hit you or you hit them, if you/they tampered with their/your possessions. But you didn’t really know them at all. Not really.
He remembered one afternoon over half a century ago when, in the kitchen of their parents’ first house, in Southfields, Stephen had suddenly run at George, screaming, biting, kicking. ‘Normally,’ said Jessica, regarding him with the slight curiosity he always seemed to evoke in her, ‘he’s such a quiet child. Always hanging around me. It quite annoys me sometimes.’
And then another occasion, when they were older, perhaps at university, or even later than that, just before they made their marriages, Stephen had asked him if he felt guilty. ‘Guilty of what?’ said George, who had never felt guilty about anything, even the things he had done that were wrong. ‘Not really,’ he had replied. ‘Do you feel guilty?’
‘I do,’ said Stephen, his big, saucer face more than ever like a full moon making its opening bow, low in the sky.
‘What about?’ said George.
‘Everything,’ said Stephen. ‘Everything.’
Lulu was back on stage. George had the impression, though, that much more than vanity was at stake here. If only she could keep the inspector talking there was a chance that Stephen would not say whatever was on his mind. It was even clearer to George now that she had no idea – though she might have had suspicions – of what had happened on the night he was murdered. Lulu and his brother clearly talked even less than he did to either of them. Families! Jesus!
‘I presume,’ she said rather shrilly, ‘that you have some evidence for this absurd accusation.’
Hobday still said nothing. He had not mentioned the camera. Clearly he was not going to do so. Not until he got to court, if he could help it. That gave him power over her, and you could tell from her face just how much she did not like that. She was hunting for what had allowed Hobday to make his move. Had he got someone who had been out in the garden? Surely he would not have taken anything Dawkins might have said on trust. She had been holding the fucking knife, hadn’t she? So why – her cold blue eyes seemed to say – was this copper sounding so pleased with himself?
‘I think you’d better carry this ridiculous farce to its logical conclusion and cart me off in your little van so that I can phone my lawyer, who is very good, actually, and you will get a great deal of shit dumped on your head.’
You couldn’t help but admire the woman. Only twenty minutes ago she had been blind drunk and hacking bits off an elderly lesbian with a carving knife. Now you would have thought she was getting ready to do an episode of Come Sit On My Knee.
She wanted to get Hobday talking, to prompt a reaction – any kind of reaction – from him, but Hobday was following a game plan that more guests on her chat show should have used: total silence. The more she talked, the more her second husband bit his lower lip and looked from her to his phone and from his phone to her, as if he was trying to make up his mind which one he should ask for the help he so obviously needed.
That owlish vulnerability in him reminded George once again of old times. A holiday in France, during which Stephen had cut himself badly and George had had to carry him back across a rocky beach to the house his parents had rented over the summer, Stephen howling all the way.
‘Go on, Inspector. Take me away in your Black Maria. I’ve seen the inside of a police station before. You may remember that I presented Crimewatch for a brief period. I know several people who are quite high up in the police force. I’ve had dinner with Sir Bernard Thingy, actually. And that bloke who owns up to being a poof. Do you want a career in the Metropolitan Police or not, Hobday?’
When Stephen spoke it was in his quietest voice so far. If Lulu hadn’t stopped talking, which she did as soon as he opened his mouth, it was possible that no one in the room would have heard him.
‘It wasn’t murder,’ he whispered. ‘It was an accident. I could never murder my mother. It’s wrong. Killing anyone is wrong but killing your mother is a very bad thing to do. It’s really shocking. I mean – all I did was push her.’
‘Stevie…’ began Lulu, but he did not seem to hear her.
‘Was she trying to take the glass off you?’ said
Hobday, in the same soft, reassuring tone. ‘Was that it?’
Stephen turned to him. ‘She was,’ he murmured. ‘How did you know that?’
‘It’s my business to know these things,’ said Hobday.
‘She was,’ went on Stephen, ‘because, of course, being my mother she wanted to know why I was getting up in the middle of the night to take a glass out of George’s room and lug it all the way to the kitchen. “Why?” she kept on saying. “Why? Why are you doing this? Why?” She wouldn’t shut up. She was always asking me questions like that. “Why don’t you like George? Hasn’t he always been nice to you?” “I don’t know,” I would say to her. “Leave me alone. I don’t know. Just leave me alone.” But she wouldn’t leave me alone.’
Lulu sighed slowly. ‘It was an accident, Stevie,’ she said. ‘Wasn’t it? It was a silly accident.’
Stephen, however, appeared to have given up paying attention to his wife. It was something she simply could not understand. On the whole, from George’s observation of their twenty years of married life, his brother did everything his wife wanted him to do. He frequently obeyed orders that were transparently ludicrous – buying blue blazers, sitting through Wagner operas although he was tone deaf, treating his stepchildren as if they were some vital diplomatic asset – but now she was trying to get him to do something sensible, i.e. shut the fuck up and stop incriminating himself, he seemed incapable of doing it. Stephen was at last, George saw, having his moment and he was determined to enjoy it.
‘Of course,’ he went on, ‘I couldn’t say, “Oh, Mummy, there’s some hemlock in the glass”, could I?’
‘Stevie, shut the—’
‘I couldn’t say to her, “Oh! Mummy! I thought I’d poison my brother! It was a spur-of-the-moment thing. Like borrowing his car that time in the Lake District, then trashing it. Do you remember?”’
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