by Agatha Frost
Across the green, Percy emerged from the church with Gus. Dot was the closest to the village hall. Though Julia led Vicky up the street by the hand, Dot was dragging Ethel along like a reluctant dog. Percy rushed over with waving hands before Julia needed to step in.
Now that it would be obvious what they were doing, Julia expected Vicky and Desmond to make their bids for freedom, but they were either curious to find out what was going on or so confused they were going along with things unwittingly.
In the village hall, Father David was wiping down a large metal soup vat at a long table set up against a wall.
“You going to be long, Father?” Dot asked as the others milled about awkwardly.
“Have I missed a meeting on the schedule?” He checked his watch. “This is when I run a soup kitchen here for those in need of it. It was in the Parish newsletter.”
“Ah, yes.” Dot blushed. “I remember.”
Julia didn’t know if anyone read the Parish newsletter, but she’d heard the news from Father David’s lips late last year while still pregnant and working. The café had been ordering and donating an extra box of carrots and potatoes every week since.
“I’m finished here, anyway. Ran out today, but nobody’s been in for a while.” He looked up and smiled into the crowd, and it parted around Desmond. “I’m sorry, Mr Newton, but I thought I should tell you: I’m on my way to the police station. Your grandson was in here again. He was hungry, and I wasn’t going to turn him away. I tried to persuade him to do the right thing and hand himself in, and he said he would, but he didn’t seem to be going that way when he left.”
“It’s okay, Father,” Desmond said with a slow nod. “Well, nothing about any of this is okay, but there’s little else anyone can do for him now.”
“Don’t give up on him, Desmond,” Father David urged with kind firmness as he carried out his soup vat. “He’ll still need a grandfather from inside prison.”
When Father David left, the polite stillness they’d all been maintaining vanished. Ethel ripped away from Dot and turned in front of the stage. Two feet back, and she’d be right in the spotlight . . . if it was on.
“Will somebody tell me what is going on?” Ethel demanded, pushing up her lilac curls in a gesture alarmingly like Dot’s. “And if anyone says the word supergroup, I won’t be held responsible for my actions.”
“Oh, I really wish it was you,” Dot said, moving Ethel to the side and taking her spot at centre stage. “We did what you couldn’t. We’ve figured it out. Not that I’m gloating or anything.”
“You are,” Ethel fired back.
“Am not.”
“Figured out what, you dotty . . . Dot?”
“We know which of you killed Penelope,” Dot stated, clasping her hands and looking around the group. She lifted her steepled fingers and pointed. “Vicky.”
Vicky looked around, batting lashes ready to smudge the mascara she hadn’t been able to wipe away on the walk over.
Dot’s clasped pointed fingers went up to her lips, and her eyes closed. The silence stretched out cruelly until the door behind them creaked. They all spun as Johnny snuck in apologetically.
“Yes?” Vicky pushed.
“It wasn’t you.”
Vicky breathed a sigh of relief as though she’d somehow feared she might have killed Penelope.
“What gameshow is this?” Johnny whispered to Julia. “I’m a Murder Suspect, Get Me Out of Here?”
“We thought it was you,” Dot admitted as she paced a wider arc than her own sitting room allowed. “Oh, yes, we can admit when we’ve been wrong. That’s what a balanced and calm group would do.”
“What were you saying about gloating?” Desmond forced a laugh that didn’t catch on. “Will you get on with it? I didn’t have time to write a sign for the library.”
Desmond glanced at Amy, who was too busy following Dot’s pendulum pacing to notice.
“It would have made sense,” she continued with a finger wag. “The scorned adulteress head over heels in love with her friend’s husband. Engaged in an affair of words with a man who couldn’t have cared less about her. A man ready to dispose of her, even after the wife exited stage left.”
Dot paused to dramatically point stage left, no doubt revelling in her moment. As eloquent as she was, Julia could feel the knife sinking into Vicky’s chest as she listened to a compilation of her recent lows in front of an audience.
“You could have met her at the graveyard, and with one hit – bam!” She repeated the move she’d performed on Amy, though at a more realistic speed. “Everything you ever wanted – or thought you wanted – in a single moment.”
“Vicky and Gus were having an affair?” asked Desmond quietly.
“Everyone knew that,” snapped Ethel, rolling her eyes at him.
“I didn’t,” Evelyn whispered.
“Me neither,” said Shilpa.
“You ladies have missed a lot.” Dot ceased pacing and took a moment to smile at them. “It’s good to see you.”
They returned her smile, and even though they had much to discuss, Julia had a feeling they weren’t all enemies just yet. She leaned forward to look at Gus, sitting at the end of the row, but he seemed the least invested in listening.
“And then you.” Dot rolled her eyes at Ethel. “The mediocre poker player ready to snatch her neighbourhood watch crown mere seconds after her leader’s death.”
“So were you.”
“I came up with my idea before she died,” Dot corrected, glancing back at the stage as though she could see the flowers on the other side of the open window through which she’d heard everything. “But no, as much joy as it would bring me to see the police cart you off, it wasn’t you.”
“I know it wasn’t me!” Ethel’s hands planted on her hips. “Is this going somewhere?”
“Let me set the scene, Ethel.”
“Just get on with it, Dorothy.”
“I will if you shut up, Ethel.”
“Please.” Ethel’s bow dripped with sarcasm. “Continue.”
Julia saw the moment her gran caught herself before snapping another automatic reply. Dot stretched out a finger and, once again, everyone turned. This time, they faced Desmond.
“You were trickier,” she admitted, blowing out her cheeks. “Killed Penelope so nobody else could have her? But why in the graveyard? And why now?”
“Well, it wasn’t me.”
“Yes, I know.” Dot whispered with a twitch of her brooch. “I was explaining why.”
“Maybe just explain who it was,” Ethel cried.
“Isn’t it obvious?” Dot called back, both women squaring up like boxers again. “There’s only one person left.”
Julia leaned forward to observe Gus’s reaction, but he’d gone. She spun around, as did everyone else, one by one. Gus froze and turned.
Click.
Flash.
Julia could practically hear Johnny’s brain cooking up the headline.
“I just remembered,” he said with a laugh. “I have a very important appointment.”
“Boys!” Dot cried. “I said you’d know when I was giving you the cue. This is the cue.” She sighed her disappointment. “Amateurs.”
The red curtain on the stage parted to reveal DI Christie and his brigade. Julia whirled back to the door just in time to see Gus open it, revealing two uniformed officers waiting in the foyer.
“Everyone who isn’t Julia South-Brown,” DI Christie called through a megaphone, “please exit through the rear.”
Desmond, Vicky, and Ethel were the first to scurry for the doors, slipping past the officers. Julia was sure that, in time, DI Christie would pull each of the former Peridale’s Eyes into the station to ask why they’d kept the hit-and-run secret.
“Actually, Detective Inspector,” Julia said, stepping back and holding up her hands before anyone else left. “We’re a team. If you want to hear this, we all stay.”
Christie sighed, pinched between his
brows, and lowered the megaphone. He snapped at some officers and a chair appeared in the middle of the hall, where Gus was sat to have his hands cuffed behind his back.
“Today’s the anniversary of his son’s death,” Julia whispered to the DI. “Go easy on him.”
“He’s a murderer.”
“A fact of which I’m fully aware,” she replied, “but which makes no odds to what I just said. Where’d you get that megaphone from?”
“Ethel came in screaming about parking or something,” he said, looking down at it. “I couldn’t be bothered with the noise, so I rattled my handcuffs at her. She dropped it and ran pretty much right into your gran’s hands. That’s when Dot reluctantly told me what was going on. She promised a show, and she didn’t disappoint.”
“It’s not over yet, Detective,” Dot said as she set up a chair across from, but at a considerable distance from, Gus. “And I only agreed to have you spring out if we got to talk to him before you shipped him off to his cell.”
“Does she forget we’re the police?” Christie whispered to Julia.
“My grandmother is an authority unto herself.”
“She’s something, alright.” Christie clicked on the megaphone and lifted it to his mouth. “Action, Dot. You have five minutes.”
“Ten.”
“Six.”
“Ten.”
“Nine.”
“Ten!”
“Fine.” Christie patted his pockets. “Unbelievable. I can see it right there on the desk. How am I supposed to get through this without nicotine?”
Dot took her seat and, after adjusting her skirt hem for most of the first thirty seconds, clasped her hands against her knee and stared at Gus. He stared back, his gaze vacant.
“Why?” Dot asked. “We know you were at your son’s grave, and we know you struck her as she was leaving.”
Dot paused, but Gus didn’t raise his voice to deny her claims.
“Was it because Penelope pushed your lover out of the group?” Dot ducked to meet his eyes. “Did it send you over the edge?”
“Lover?” He snorted. “I wouldn’t go that far. She paid me attention, and I liked it. That was all. Vicky’s desperate.”
“You strung her along.”
“She strung herself along.”
“Was Penelope not paying you enough attention?” Dot pushed. “Spending too much time being pals with her ex-husband? I notice she kept his name, and here they were, running around this place covering up their grandson’s messes. I bet you felt pushed to the side lines.”
Gus blinked back tears, but not before one tumbled down his cheek.
“I think I might be able to explain the how,” Johnny said as he stepped forward and pulled a notepad from his bag. “Julia asked me to look into Shawn Morris, your son.”
Gus stared up through his brows, his jaw clenched tight.
“He died in 1983, aged thirteen,” Johnny said, lowering the pad. “He’d have been fifty last week if not for that young girl who decided she was fine to drive home from the disco after one too many glasses of Cinzano Bianco.”
“Four years,” Gus said, laughing up at the ceiling. “They gave her four years, and then she got out and started a new life. I heard she moved to Canada. Shawn had these moose pyjamas that his nan bought him for his tenth birthday. I said I’d take him to see a real one at the zoo when we could afford it, and he laughed and said zoos didn’t have moose. So we agreed we’d go somewhere to see them in the wild.” His fond smile soured. “Canada has moose. She got to see them. He never got the chance.”
The creaking floorboard under his chair was the only noise in the silent village hall. It was so uncomfortable, Julia strained to pick up on a mower – something, anything – outside.
“I had no idea,” Dot said, choking back tears as she dabbed under her eyes. “But Johnny’s ankle surely wasn’t—”
“There’s a girl, gran.” Julia swallowed her own tears. “She was hit in Riverswick the same night as Johnny.”
“Abigail Smith,” Gus said, his gaze once again distant. “I went to see her after Penelope told me. Her parents are torn up. She’s just tubes in a bed because of him. And Penelope knew. She knew, and she did everything in her power to make sure nobody else found out.”
“How did you find out?”
“Penelope knew how to pick her moments,” he said, glancing up at the ceiling. “Every birthday, I lay an extra plate for Shawn. It used to be every day. I’d put food on it, thinking it was helping me cope. It made things worse, so I did it less, until eventually it became just a birthday thing. I liked the ritual of it. I set the plate out, wished him happy birthday, and was ready to go on with my day, unaware of everything my wife was keeping from me.”
The tears gave way to a snarl.
“She’s lucky I didn’t kill her then,” he said darkly. “She insisted she had to tell someone, and in her words, ‘Today’s the perfect day for it since it’s fresh in my mind’. She thought I’d know what to do because that’s how my son died. What sort of person makes that connection? She told me all about the night two months earlier when Callum turned up crying. I was away visiting my sister in Wales. He told her he’d hit two people. Then he passed out. By morning, he claimed not to remember a thing that had happened the night before. So, she didn’t tell him.”
“What?” Dot gasped.
“He knows what he did.” Gus chewed the inside of his lip. “I never bought his act. Even at his worst, she desperately clung onto her memory of that little smiling boy everyone saw in the paper. She refused to see the man he’d become. When she looked at him, she saw Melinda; he knew that, and he used it. I hated him for it. And I hated her for falling for it every time, giving him our money, letting him sleep under our roof, bringing trouble to our door. But this? I couldn’t believe it. I came for the meeting, and Ethel was already here. I told her everything. I wanted everyone to know.”
“And it caused an argument?”
“Penelope tried to wriggle out of it,” he continued, looking over his shoulder as though that’s where it had happened. “Of course she ran to Desmond’s open arms when nobody was on her side.”
“And the graveyard?”
“I always go on his birthday,” he said, lowering his gaze to the floor again, “and on the anniversary. They’re too close together, and it’s always the worst week of the year. Maybe if she’d told me about it back when it happened, I might have spoken some sense into her. Maybe if she hadn’t turned up in the graveyard, she might still be alive.”
“You didn’t invite her?” Dot asked.
“I wanted nothing to do with the woman.” He shook his head. “I was sickened. I couldn’t look past it.” He pushed his hands through his hair. “She hadn’t even come to reason with me, to talk to me; she came to threaten me. After everything she’d done, she said she’d tell everyone I was having an affair with Vicky if I spoke up about Callum. Everyone else in the group had agreed to keep their mouths shut because of how it would make them look, but how could I? I told her to leave, but as she did, she told me not to wait up because she was taking Desmond’s sofa for the night. I snapped. It was over before I could reason with myself. I ran into the forest, and . . . well, here we are. What a week.”
“And you kept her secret,” Julia said, “because if you’d told the police the truth about the hit and run—”
“I’d eventually have ended up here,” he said, tugging at the handcuffs. “Not how I expected. I thought the police finding out about the break-ins might keep them preoccupied, but your group has proven to be a worthy successor. You had me fooled there, Percy, with that rehearsal emergency.”
“Sorry, old pal.”
“It’s alright.” He shrugged. “This secret has exhausted me. It’s worn me down to nothing. I don’t know how Penelope managed it these last two months.”
Christie stepped forward with a grunting cough and Dot rose from the chair. Like her gran, Julia wasn’t sure what else there wa
s to say. The excitement had evaporated and the adrenaline drained; Gus’s story was a sobering dunk in an ice bath, and it was hard to feel triumphant after hearing it.
“I’m not saying I’m on his side,” Johnny whispered as they moved aside to allow the officers to lead him out, “but I’m definitely not on Penelope’s.”
Going by the surreptitious eye dabbing amongst her fellow neighbourhood watch members, they’d all been touched by Gus’s story. It had been too raw to be a fabrication, and the admission saw him walking out of the hall with a lighter step than the one he’d had while walking to the chair.
“The worst part of all this?” Gus called over his shoulder, grinding the procession to a halt. “When I was running through the forest, I crossed paths with Callum. Penelope’s precious grandson has known all week. He could have gone to the police any time. After everything she did for him, he chose to protect himself. Thought that needed to be said.”
The officers left and, after clearing away the chairs, the group was left alone with DI Christie.
“Well done,” he said, offering Dot his hand. “I can see where Julia gets it.”
Dot beamed as she heartily shook his hand.
“Were you really close to figuring it out that whole time?” Julia whispered to him before he left.
“Not in the slightest,” he replied with a wink. “I kept telling Barker that because I knew he’d tell you lot, and it turns out, I was right.”
The door swung shut behind Christie, leaving them alone.
“Well, now that we’re all here,” Dot began, a note of hesitation in her tone, “Why don’t—”
“Leah’s not here,” Johnny cut in.
“Isn’t she?” Dot looked around. “Well, almost everyone. Why don’t we go to the café for our first debriefing? We . . . well, we have a lot to talk about.”
“I think that’s a good idea,” said Shilpa, looping arms with Dot. “Well done. That was marvellous to watch.”
“Quite the show,” Evelyn said, rushing to catch up on the other side. “How did you . . .”
With Amy and Percy trailing behind, Julia and Johnny took up the rear at a slower pace , hanging back by the door when Desmond approached. Had he been waiting there the whole time?