Revengeful Death
Page 18
She’s right enough, decided Charmian to herself; she’s chewing me up and spitting out the mouthfuls.
‘Let me take the boy,’ she said, holding out her arms. She could hear the sounds of police cars, her back-up was arriving. ‘I won’t say I knew all this, Mr Hardy, but I was beginning to suspect. You teach woodwork, perhaps?’
Edward Hardy stood up, arms hanging by his sides.
‘You’re not left-handed but one arm, I notice, is shorter and weaker than the other. A birth defect, perhaps?’
David Darling had not been so far out, then. Not a left-handed killer, but one with a weak right hand.
Edward Hardy stood still, his eyes masked. Then he drew up his hands, made a circle of them, cupping them slowly, then pressed the circle inwards as if pressing Mary’s throat. ‘I worked in your grandfather’s shop once – you didn’t know that. He sacked me, but I learned about blood and knives … you can get to like them both. You know that, Mary? Blood is lovely stuff.’ He turned to Charmian and said, in a confident voice, ‘ She’s the real killer, like her brother.’
‘Once the forensic teams have been over the house and over you, Mr Hardy, either you will be charged or you won’t.’ She took the boy from Mary. ‘Let me have him; it’ll look better when my team pours in.’
Reluctantly, Mary handed him over. ‘He needs his mother, really.’
‘If we knew where she was.’ Charmian had an ear out for the noises in the street. Was that Jack Headfort’s voice?
‘Look in the attic here or the garden shed,’ said Mary. She turned towards Edward Hardy.
‘Your wife wasn’t running away when I saw her – she was running after you because you had killed, and you caught her. And then we gave you your child, so you were all a happy family together’ There was anger and a terrible bitterness in her voice. ‘Where is your wife? Penned up like the boy? But you let her out to do the housework, don’t you? She was the woman you got in. In from where?
‘Wake up, you,’ she said to Charmian; ‘look in the garden shed. He always takes the easy option, this one.’
When Charmian and Jack Headfort went to the garden shed, they found Alice Hardy, almost naked in a bra and pants, tied up and with a gag over her mouth. By the smell in the shed it was clear it had been her prison for some time.
She needed a wash, some clothes and various other attentions, since she had been beaten at some time and possibly raped. The sex had certainly been rough and violent, but perhaps with those two it always was. She was not questioned then, except very briefly and gently. Reunited with her son, she was able to smile. Soon, they knew, like her son, she would talk.
Later that day, in the evening at home, Charmian said to her husband: ‘ Mary March was right, she did eat me up. I’ve never felt so ashamed in my life.’
‘You were getting there,’ said Humphrey.
‘Yes, doing it the hard way.’ Charmian could smile at him now. ‘The wife’s story will help convict him: She says she was to be the first victim, that he came to the flat; he was going to leave her body outside Mary March’s where he later left the girl.’
‘Lovely man.’
‘Then the bell went and the child, Ned, ran to open it and Pip came in … Alice says she lost consciousness then, and when she came to, it was to see the body rolled up in the carpet. She couldn’t see the boy so she ran, trying to find her husband. He found her – he was sitting in a car up the street – he dragged her in. So she says. They were both sitting there when they saw Mary cross the road and go into the flat. She says her husband laughed and said that Mary was doing the job of incriminating herself without his help … Then he drove her to Merrywick.’
‘Do you believe her story?’
Charmian considered. ‘ I think so … the boy’s evidence bears it out.’
‘He’s talking then?’
‘Not so much talking as drawing. I gave him the drawing book early on, he’s made use of it. Good therapy.’ He had a picture of his father with a knife, of a long body on the floor with a pool of blood. ‘The most striking drawing is one of a large face with the mouth grinning, showing great pointed teeth.’ She gave a small shudder before going on.
‘In the kitchen, in the refrigerator, we found some bits of what we think must be flesh from Pip, and also a piece of tonsil, probably from the girl.’
‘He was mad, then?’
‘No, cold and bloody. He was probably going to use these pathetic scraps to incriminate Mary March somehow … in the bedroom we found a diary. If you can call it that; just notes of what he meant to do once he’d recognized Mary as the sister of the man who killed his own sister. He seems to have hated her more for still being alive. Coming to live opposite his estranged wife was just her bad luck.’
Pip had had bad luck too, she thought, and so had the girl Marian, who had met and trusted him as a teacher she knew, that late night in Windsor. Gina had had her small share also in getting the blood on her sleeve. Edward Hardy had made more than one trip to where Mary lived after he killed Marian. Gina had got blood on her sleeve from a deposit he later removed. Don’t ask why – not a man of reason. But he must have thought it would be seen too early, and bring the police round before he had set out the body.
‘Gina is triumphant,’ Charmian went on. ‘She did flush out the killer. Clever lady.’
‘What bad luck, or a tragic coincidence, that Mary March turned up where he lived in Windsor.’
Charmian said thoughtfully, ‘Bad luck in a way, but probably not a total coincidence: we found that while she was in prison, together with hate mail, she was getting letters from estate agents in Windsor who recommended properties. I think Hardy was behind it. For all I know, although I hope to find out, he put his wife in that flat because Mary was opposite.’
‘Devious fellow.’
‘He was a planner all right.’
‘What about Mary March, what will become of her?’
‘The last I heard she was offering to have Alice Hardy and the boy to stay with her until Alice has got things sorted out. And Alice was accepting. Perhaps they’ll stay together, until one or the other finds another alliance.’
‘Will that happen?’
Charmian shrugged. ‘ Who knows? They’re both attractive women when in a normal state. Jack Headfort took to Mary and she likes him, but I don’t know what the future is there.’ Jack had a wife, although one never knew if his marriage was stable.
The future, she thought. What about my own future?
‘There’s a letter for you,’ said Humprhey, handing it over. ‘Looks important.’
Charmian recognized the envelope. It had come at last, the news of what was in store for her. Events do rush together sometimes. No doubt there was a technical term for it in physics. ‘Lord D. himself, the Lord High Executioner He wants to see me. Lunch at the Athenaeum. So which is it? Am I to be kicked up or out?’
And did she mind? She could always join up with Humphrey and Rosie for a life on the stage. She had to admit that she had enjoyed the Trojans and owed a vote of thanks to Gina. They were a nice lot.
David Garrick, here I come.
Copyright
First published 1997 by Macmillan
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