by Will North
“’Course I do.”
“Good. Now then, when you were here last you talked about how close you and Alice were with the Treveans, especially after Mary’s husband died. Do I remember that correctly?”
“Yeah. Been that way for years.”
“That must have been wonderful in a place as sparsely populated as Boswednack. Good friends and neighbors. Those of us who live in cities don’t ever get to experience that sense of community and neighborliness. I envy you. But I’m also curious, Eldridge: after Bert died, were you more? Did you try to comfort your friend Mary?”
“Well a’course! We both did, Alice and me.”
“Took her meals and such, as I recall, yes?”
Biggins nodded.
“But did your comforting of Mary include becoming her lover, Mr. Biggins?”
Biggens stood so fast his chair tipped and clattered to the floor. “That’s an insult to Mary’s memory!”
The man’s face was crimson. His breathing was rapid. Was it fury or fear?
“Sit down, Mr. Biggins.”
After a moment, he righted the chair and sat. A vein in his forehead throbbed.
“Are you all right, Mr. Biggins?”
“’Course I’m not!”
“I understand. But you have not answered my question.”
“Bloody right I haven’t. And I won’t. Rude is what it was.”
“Yes, well, it is my job as a detective to ask difficult questions…”
“Nasty job it is, then…”
“Sometimes, yes; shall I gather that your answer is no?”
“’Course!”
Morgan switched her approach: “So, if not you, Mr. Biggins, did she have other suitors after Bert died? Were other men interested? She was, by all accounts, an attractive woman.”
“No idea. None of my business.”
Morgan thought the answer too quick and tinged with anger.
TERRY BATES SAT with Alice Biggins in an adjoining room. She sat next to her, rather than across, so Alice would not feel intimidated. The room, an office actually, wasn’t equipped like the interview room but there was a voice recorder.
“What’s that for?”
“We are required, you see, to have a record of every interview we do. It’s to protect your rights.”
“Oh.”
“So, how have you been keeping, Alice, since we last spoke?”
“Well enough, I reckon. Bit of arthritis in my hands when the weather’s damp. Makes it hard to keep up with the cleaning.”
“Which you do very well, don’t you? Your kitchen was spotless when I visited with you.”
“Keeps me fit and it’s what he expects.”
“Pardon?”
“Eldridge. What he expects. Clean the house, top to bottom, every day. Worries about germs; says he doesn’t want them passed on to the cows.”
“Can that happen?”
“Don’t know. What he says, okay? And I obey. Least I can do; he’s good to me.”
Terry said nothing for a moment and regarded the woman. As before, she seemed almost emaciated, as if she seldom ate and, even then, very little. Worn was the word that came to her. Just like Alice’s ancient kitchen.
“The last time we chatted you mentioned how close your husband and Mary had been…”
“All four of us, really; practically lived in each other’s pockets, we did.”
“But tell me, Alice, were you never jealous of your husband’s closeness to Mary? That would only be natural, I should think.”
“We’ve had a fine marriage, Eldridge and me. Plus, I had Bert’s friendship as well.”
“What was that friendship like, Alice?”
The woman straightened. “He were a perfect gentleman, Bert were, and a caring soul.”
“Did he care for you?”
Mary’s face clouded. “What’s that mean?”
“I mean like Mary did Eldridge, that’s all.”
“Well, sure. We spent plenty of time together—tea, chatting, that sort of thing.”
“Was that all?”
“I don’t know what you’re getting at…”
“I’m asking whether there was more than tea and company. Were you and Bert lovers, Alice, what with your husband off so much to be with Mary? I reckon Bert wanted your company, too?”
To Terry’s surprise, Alice looked as if she’d been caught out. Her birdlike eyes darted around the room.
“Alice? This is just us girls, okay?”
It seemed to Terry almost physically impossible, but Alice shrank farther into herself.
“Bert were a kind and lovely man, is what I’ll say, far gentler than my Eldridge ever was. Miss him something awful, tell the truth.”
Terry patted Alice’s bony hand. “I certainly understand. Only natural. I think that will be all for now, Mrs. Biggins. I thank you for your honesty.”
Somewhere from beneath her normal pallor, Alice Biggins almost blushed.
“We may ask to see you again. Will that be all right?”
As she had when Terry first met her, Alice brightened, as if she looked forward to it. Terry wondered if Alice was just terribly naive or simply desperate for company, like maybe she had been until Bert came along. And now he was gone.
Thirty-Six
“I ORDERED THE Biggins DNA analysis from Truro yesterday,” Penwarren said Wednesday morning. “I had his sample driven up there immediately. Given our last exchange with the lab, I must say they moved with alacrity. What used to take days can now be done in hours. Thankfully, Truro has the new technology.”
Penwarren was pacing the incident room. The key players in the MCIT were seated. They knew better than to interrupt Penwarren’s train of thought—everyone, that is, but Morgan.
“Is this a quiz game on BBC Radio 4, boss? Are we supposed to guess the answer?”
Penwarren turned and smiled. They could hear a constricted chuckle. He folded himself into a chair.
“I’ve heard from the Bristol lab as well. They’ve consulted with Truro and shared their results. The sample taken from the top side of the cushion that suffocated Mary Trevean is not Eldridge Biggins’s.”
“Damn!” Morgan cursed. She slapped her hand on the table top and rose.
“Look, Morgan,” Penwarren said. “Everything pointed to Rhys-Jones and you were all over him, brilliantly. Then it was Biggins…”
“And now it’s not. But I saw Trevean’s will; Biggins and his wife are her sole and joint beneficiaries. He owes a fortune. He’d be rich. That’s motive in my book.”
“Yes, I read about the will in your HOLMES II entry and well done getting it, Morgan. That information was entered only yesterday, but I suspect you knew its contents earlier. Care to tell us how?”
“No.”
“Very well, Inspector; you may protect your sources…for now at least. But we will talk about this later.”
Morgan shrugged; being reprimanded was nothing new.
“Now, let me point out that at this point we have no evidence that either of the Biggins’s knew about the bequest, as near as we can tell. Nonetheless, I ordered both of them brought to Camborne once again this afternoon.”
“If Biggins is no longer a suspect, why haul him back?” Morgan challenged.
“Because I still don’t think we know the truth from either of them, that’s why. And we will need backup for Novak, who’s been our uncomplaining taxi driver through all of this. We might have some resistance this time.”
“I can take that job, Sir,” Terry volunteered.
Penwarren smiled. “Yes, I know, but I think we’ll use one of his community support officers. In case they resist.”
“What about milking his cows?” Calum asked.
“I am not concerned about his cows.”
“Won’t they explode or something?”
ELDRIDGE AND ALICE Biggins sat, side by side, at the bare table in the Camborne interview room. They’d been cautioned. Like Eldridge before, Alice had been
swabbed and printed. Penwarren stood to one side of the room but Morgan was seated opposite the couple at the table. Terry Bates, Adam Novak, Calum West, and the CPS’s Derek Martin were in the viewing room next door.
“Are we under arrest or something?” Eldridge asked.
“No, not at all, Eldridge, but because of your close relationship with the deceased, you are, naturally, important persons of interest in this case. I must apologize for repeatedly interrupting your life at home. I just have a few more questions to ask each of you, but if at any time they seem intrusive, I want you to understand that you both have the right to be represented by a solicitor, either together or separately,” Morgan said. “We can arrange that for you.”
Eldridge clasped his wife’s skeletal hand and thrust out his jaw. “Done nothing wrong; don’t need no lawyer. What’s this about, then?”
Morgan rested her chin in the palm of her left hand, her right hand on a file folder, and smiled at the pair.
“It’s about what it always has been, Mr. Biggins: the murder of your neighbor, Mary Trevean.”
“Nothing to do with us.”
“Except that’s not true, is it Eldridge?”
“What?”
“There is this troublesome problem we call evidence. For example, we have a print of your hand on the sill outside the window of Mary Trevean’s sitting room.”
Biggins merely blinked. Morgan admired his discipline.
“Did work for her from time to time on that old house, didn’t I?”
“Yes, you certainly did. It’s in her accounting book on the cost of running her rental business. She kept meticulous records. But there’s just one problem: you’d done no work for her for more than a month before her death.”
“So?”
“So why were your fresh prints, not the slightest bit weathered, so easy for our people to collect and identify on that window sill, Eldridge, if not that you intended to enter her house surreptitiously? Why not knock on her door? Did you climb through that window?”
“I never did!”
“And therefore, you did not cause her death?”
Eldridge stood. “No, but I’ll tell you who did, I will!”
Morgan did not move. She called moments like these “trigger moments,” the point at which a threatening question caused a witness to overcome his caution.
“I am listening, Mr. Biggins…”
“It was some chap, a stranger. I saw them through that very window! They were naked and having sex right there on the floor of the sitting room by the fire, bold as can be!”
“Was it anyone you knew?”
“Hell no! But I reckon it were that Italian chap, her tenant. Mighty chuffed she were, having him around. Planned to stay a while, she said.”
“And you learned this when?”
“That same afternoon. We often had tea, Mary and me. A break from the farm. Just a half hour or so. But she were excited that day, searchlight bright, she were…”
“Because?”
“No idea. But it weighed upon me all afternoon.”
“And you came back that night to check on her?”
“It was late, but I could see her lights were still on. That wasn’t normal. I was worried.”
“Worried, or jealous, Eldridge?”
“Jealous? No reason to be, until I looked in that window and saw what she was doing.” He closed his eyes and shook his head as slowly as one of his cows: “My Mary.”
“How late was that, Mr. Biggins?”
“After bedtime, maybe half ten.”
“And Alice, did you not notice your husband had left?”
Alice stared at her husband.
“We have separate rooms,” she said.
Morgan’s eyes widened. “That is not an answer, Alice.”
Alice Biggins looked at Morgan, her face hard and fixed as a plaster mask. “I heard him go. Go to her. I saw his torch as he crossed the field. I knew what was happening; I’m not stupid. He thought I was asleep. I waited a while; I don’t know how long. I wanted to catch them doing it. I went right up to her door and hammered on it. She answered in a loose robe. Her skin was still pink from the sex. ‘Where is he?’ I yelled, and I pushed through the door.”
“’Who?’ she said.”
“’My husband, you whore! How long have you been shagging him? How many years? I can smell it in this room!’”
“She yelled ‘No!’ and backed away and that’s when I knew I was right. She fell over the arm of her couch—so fancy and modern, not like our old worn out one—and I jumped on her. I grabbed a cushion and pressed it over her face. I’m much stronger than I look. She barely fought. She was drunk. I could smell the wine. After just a few moments, she went limp and that was done, now and forever. No more Mary and Eldridge.”
“And then, Alice?”
Her bravado evaporated.
“And then I saw an empty bottle of wine by the hearth. It wasn’t one of ours. And Mary never drank, except maybe a pint at the Tinners. I looked at the bottle. It was something Italian.”
“And then?”
“And then I went to our barn to think.”
“Our crime scene people found no bottle.”
“I took it. Next morning, Eldridge was out early attending to the milking before I came down. He’d made himself tea and toast. Usually he waits for me to make breakfast, the full English: two fried eggs, bacon, sausage, beans. Said it held him all morning. But he was gone. I didn’t know why.”
“Did you look for him, Alice?”
“No, I was too afraid.”
“I can understand, Alice.” Morgan rose. “Might you two give me a moment? I’ll be right back.”
The two sat in silence, never looking at one another. In the viewing room, Morgan just looked at Derek Martin.
“Yes,” he said.
“SORRY ABOUT THAT,” Morgan said when she returned moments later. “I needed to check something but then it came to me: you knew what to do next, didn’t you, Alice? You did what you always do: you cleaned. You cleaned Mary’s house, which you entered using a spare key, yes?”
“We each had keys, her and me. For emergencies.”
“Of course, being neighbors and all. And then you went to work. Spic and span is how you left the place before removing her computer and registration book and locking the front door.”
Alice glared: “You think you know everything, don’t you…”
“No, but I do know what you did next…”
“Please,” Eldridge whispered, his hands up, supplicating.
Morgan ignored him. “Care to tell us, Alice? Tell us what you did next?”
Alice stared across the room, as if into another realm of being, a haven perhaps, but was silent.
“Well, allow me to continue then: once you realized Mary’s tryst the night before was with her Italian tenant and not with your husband, you went up to the Chicken Coop cottage next. You found it unlocked and vacant, right? Are we on the same page, Alice?”
The woman ignored her.
“And then you went to work again, cleaning and bleaching, didn’t you? That was very clever, I must say, Alice: made it look like the tenant had tried to erase all signs he’d been there—which is to say, you did so to make him look guilty. How am I doing so far, Alice?”
Alice Biggins looked brittle as Venetian blown glass and just as hollow. Penwarren tried to get Morgan’s attention to back off, but she wasn’t done and ignored him.
“Then, clever clogs you, you dumped Mary’s computer, modem, and registration book into the bin at your local, the Tinners Arms in Zennor, didn’t you, wiping them all with the same cleaner? The Italian wine bottle, too?”
Alice Biggins’s face had gone blank. Disassociation, Morgan thought. She’d seen it before. The suspect had checked out.
Morgan stood. “Mrs. Alice Biggins, you are under arrest for the murder of Mary Trevean, your neighbor and friend. You do not have to say anything. But it may harm your defense if you do not
mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court. Anything you say may be given in evidence. You will be held in custody here at Camborne. You have the right to a lawyer. If you cannot afford one, we will have someone represent you from the Public Defender Service. Do you understand?”
She did not respond. Morgan nodded to the viewing room camera. A uniformed constable entered and led Alice Biggins out to a cell.
Morgan turned. The man opposite her was as rigid as a granite monolith. “Mr. Biggins; I am deeply sorry.”
He blinked and looked at her: “It was her killed my Mary?”
She did not see disbelief in his eyes, only shock, as if he’d just witnessed a fatal accident.
“That is what she’s just admitted, sir. We await other bits of evidence, but the case against her, given her confession, is pretty clear. Again, I am so very sorry.”
“What happens next?”
“The case goes to the Crown Prosecution Service who must decide whether to charge her. Then the case will first be heard at the county magistrate’s court in Bodmin. Her defense lawyer will want to study the evidence and may also wish to call for a second post-mortem exam of Mrs. Trevean, though I doubt it under these circumstances. All this will take time.”
Penwarren crossed the room and rested a hand on Eldridge’s shoulder. “You are free to go now, Mr. Biggins. Constable Novak will take you home. Is there someone in Boswednack who might look after you?”
Biggins looked around the room as if for an answer.
“Lost my Mary,” he said. “Lost my Alice, too, I reckon. Got the cows still. Sweet beasts, they are, and they love me.”
“This is a terrible shock, I know, sir…”
“She were always a little high-strung, my Alice. Explosive sometimes. She’s not well, I reckon. But I put up with it. Loved her. But not no more.” He shook his head. “Not after this. Not after Mary.”
“When you’ve had a bit of time to recover,” Morgan said, “I suggest that you contact your banker, Mr. Roderick Nelson at Lloyds in St. Ives. He has some good news for you. It’s from Mary.”
“News from Mary?”