Murder in Hyde Park

by Phillip Strang

  Wendy had bought a magazine from her local newsagent two days previously, and there was Amelia on the front cover, standing on a sandy beach in a bikini. Definitely not the wear for today, as outside the café there was a steady drizzle and a cold bite in the air.

  ‘I’m not willing to let Matilda be labelled a murderer, are you?’ Wendy said, hoping to get through to the woman about the seriousness of the situation.

  ‘I’ve no more to say. I must go. I thought with her father’s death that would be the end of it.’

  ‘You thought wrong. He’s admitted that he was responsible for killing his son, also that he was guilty of his daughter’s suicide, his wife’s death. We know that two of the three are not correct, not the actual act. We’ve no proof that he was in Hyde Park either. But you, Amelia, have admitted to being in love with Barry, yet you’ve never said what Matilda thought of it.’

  ‘I’ve told you. She knew about my love for him, his neutrality towards me. Just someone to sleep with when he wasn’t whoring.’

  ‘You knew about that, didn’t you? Admit it now, or I’ll know you’re lying.’

  ‘I suspected that he was. There was a woman outside Matilda’s house once, someone I hadn’t seen before.’

  ‘New evidence? Why have you kept this secret?’

  ‘It was the day before he died. I didn’t think much of it at the time. She stayed for a few minutes and then left. It’s only with you asking questions, and then confirming that Barry was putting it about, that I’ve started to think more about it.’

  ‘Yet you still never came to me with this, knowing that I wouldn’t judge you and I would have followed through on it.’

  ‘I was frightened to tell you anything.’

  ‘Describe the woman.’

  ‘Blonde, mid to late forties, attractive, starting to put on weight. I didn’t look at her for too long, but I could see that she would have been a stunner in her day.’

  ‘Tall?’

  ‘Tall enough to have been a model. That’s what they want these days, tall, skinny, androgynous if they can.’

  ‘The person I have in mind wouldn’t qualify on the androgynous. You’d better make a phone call, tell the photographer that you’ll be late. Is this the woman?’ Wendy scrolled through the photos on her smartphone and showed the selected image to Amelia.

  ‘Her hair was longer, but yes, that’s her.’

  ‘That’s what I thought. I’m sorry, you’ll have to reschedule or cancel. This is serious.’

  Amelia made a call. ‘We’ve rescheduled for tomorrow,’ she said to Wendy after she had finished the call. ‘It’s a nuisance, and the makeup artist and photographer will want extra money now.’

  ‘Your money?’

  ‘No, but that’s not the point. It’s my reputation that suffers. The models who get the work are the ones who turn up on time, healthy and able to pose.’

  ‘Some don’t?’

  ‘Some of them don’t eat, or they’ve got a love affair with recreational drugs.’

  ‘The same as you?’

  ‘A casual acquaintance, that’s all.’

  ‘We can either talk here or at your place.’

  ‘Here’s fine. The memories back there are starting to get to me. I’ve considered moving, but the price of the place will be down on account of what’s happened across the road.’

  ‘The truth, not the shortened version that you’ve been feeding me,’ Wendy said.

  ‘It doesn’t look good for me, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Matilda knew about Barry and me. She accepted it when it was casual. But then it started to become more serious.’

  ‘Barry as well?’

  ‘He was more reticent, but with time, or maybe I was just hopelessly in love and deluded, I’m not sure which. I felt that he was coming out of his shell and that the two of us could have made a go of it.’

  ‘There’s still this bond between Barry and Matilda.’

  ‘It was sibling love, nothing physical. And back then, I never knew of the life the two of them had had as children. Even if I had known, I wouldn’t have known how to react. I’d grown up in the country, the child of wealthy parents, a horse for my birthday, a stately home to live in.’

  ‘I had a horse,’ Wendy said. ‘It pulled a cart sometimes, not that it was much good for that. Sometimes I’d ride it, bareback.’

  ‘Our lives, so different, yet we can be friends.’

  ‘It depends on what you tell me.’

  ‘Still friends, regardless. You know, Wendy, that you are a thoroughly decent person. No wonder my parents liked you, and once this is over, you and your friend Bridget must come up and stay with us, sample my father’s wines, and I’ll take you horse riding.’

  ‘We’re getting away from what we were talking about.’

  ‘It was the day before Barry died. We had spent the night together, not that Matilda knew. For some reason, she had come home late the previous day, and Barry had come to my place first. He said that he was in love with me.’

  ‘Had he said it before?’

  ‘In the throes of passion, but men tend to do that sort of thing.’

  ‘This time it wasn’t lust?’

  ‘Not much of it anyway. We’re sitting downstairs having a glass of wine, and he leans over and says the words. I’m not sure what to say and do.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Matilda. I knew enough of her to know her reaction. She had to be told before I could reciprocate. I didn’t want to allow what I felt for him to become an overriding obsession, knowing what could happen if we made a mistake. I’ve got my parents as a reference, and I wanted what they had for each other. Matilda could have been a complication that I couldn’t deal with.’

  ‘Love is blind, conquers all obstacles,’ Wendy said.

  ‘Poetical, but that’s not reality, is it?’

  Wendy thought it was.

  ‘Why haven’t you told us this before?’

  ‘I blocked it out. I had to, don’t you understand?’

  Wendy could understand that a person might want to; there was only so much bad news that any one person could take.

  ‘I take it that you confronted Matilda with what Barry had professed to you.’

  ‘I didn’t know about the other women. If I had, I wouldn’t have fallen in love with him.’

  ‘Where did you think his money came from?’

  ‘Matilda had money, and he told me that he did some modelling, not that I had ever seen his work anywhere, and that he helped out a friend with his business. Quite frankly, I wasn’t overthinking about it. He always dressed well, he didn’t have a car, and he stayed with Matilda most of the time, and I’m sure he never gave her any money.’

  ‘She could have given him some.’

  ‘I never asked. It wasn’t my business to pry, and the two of them were my friends.’

  ‘One was more than that.’

  ‘A good friend, yes.’

  ‘Matilda?’

  ‘She came over, and we sat around the kitchen table. I asked her if she would object if Barry moved in with me.’

  ‘Her reaction?’

  ‘At first, she was supportive. She said she understood, and that she was pleased for us.’

  ‘Did you believe her?’

  ‘I was initially pleased with her reaction, but then she started to throw up negatives. How were we going to survive financially? How could we maintain a relationship with me away modelling? Barry without a career? Her mood was becoming morose. We both could see that she had only wished us well out of courtesy, the same as you do when a work colleague tells you she’s pregnant or getting married.’

  ‘It ended badly?’

  ‘Matilda started to become animated. And remember, this is a woman who rarely showed emotion.’

  ‘She became violent?’

  ‘She accused me of being a bitch for seducing her brother, and Barry for being such a fool. Her anger was directed against me, not against
him.’

  ‘We believed you weren’t in the country.’

  ‘I didn’t openly deceive you or your fellow officers. I just preferred to forget, and then, Barry disappears, and I find out he’s dead, and Matilda’s hanged herself. It was just too much to comprehend.’

  ‘Let’s come back to when you told Matilda about you and Barry,’ Wendy said. She waved over to the waitress, two fingers, not in an offensive salute, but as an indicator for two coffees to be brought to the table. She also pointed to cheesecake in a glass-fronted cabinet, two fingers again.

  ‘Matilda started accusing Barry of deserting her. He stayed calm, brooding under the surface. I don’t believe he could ever say a word against her, not to me, never to her. I could see that the bond was unbreakable between the two and that it would have been a marriage of three. I accused Barry of not being a man, irrational on reflection, but he wasn’t under the thumb of an oppressive parent, he was under Matilda’s thumb.’

  ‘Is that it?’

  ‘Not totally. Barry left in a huff, not saying a word to me. I swore at him. Matilda stayed with me, and within ten minutes, she’s talking about this and that, not looking smug, nothing that you would sense as unusual. The Chinese might call it inscrutable, but to me, she was still seething. She left soon after to go to her cottage, and I hailed a taxi for the airport. That was the last time I saw either of them alive.’

  ‘What’s missing?’

  ‘Nothing,’ Amelia said as she drank her coffee, prodded her cheesecake. Wendy imagined that she would be a secret food purger if she felt that her weight was increasing.

  ‘You’ve thrown the investigation wide open by telling me all this. You’d better tell me the rest.’

  ‘I was livid, and I told Barry that he had destroyed my life, and if I ever saw him again, I’d kill him.’

  ‘Angry people say stupid things. Were you that angry? Did you kill him?’

  ‘I was overseas when he died. I wanted Barry, more than anything else in the world.’

  ‘Matilda?’

  ‘Who knows what was going through her mind. Did anyone ever know? The next time I saw her was when I found her hanging from that beam. It still gives me nightmares.’

  ‘Could Matilda have killed Barry?’

  ‘I don’t know. Honestly, I don’t.’

  ‘Could she swim?’

  ‘Not a stroke.’

  ***

  Christine Mason had been hauled into Challis Street. Amelia had confirmed that she had been in Pembridge Mews, which meant that she, like others, had been economical with the truth.

  It was four in the afternoon, and the woman was fretting, having been confined to the police station for two hours and thirty-five minutes already.

  Isaac sat beside Wendy; Christine Mason beside Gwen Hislop. The four were in the interview room. Four bottles of water were on the table that separated the police officers from the sisters.

  Isaac went through the formalities, informing Christine of her rights, the procedure to be followed, the usual. He could say it all verbatim, and Gwen Hislop knew it equally well.

  Christine Mason sat calmly, although she was picking at her fingernails, and her lipstick had been applied with a nervous hand sometime before. Gwen Hislop, whom Isaac admired, for her professionalism and the fact that she was representing her sister, someone who, by her own admission, she did not like very much.

  ‘Mrs Mason, you were seen outside Barry Montgomery’s sister’s house. You know him as Colin Young.’

  ‘I hope we’re not going over old ground here, Chief Inspector,’ Gwen Hislop said. ‘My client’s had a difficult few days, and if this is another attempt to draw more information from her, then I will regard this as more than the diligent carrying out of your police duties.’

  Isaac did not respond, aware that the woman was trying to throw him off track.

  ‘Christine, are you denying that you were in Pembridge Mews one day before Colin Young’s death?’

  ‘I went to find him in Hyde Park, you know that.’

  ‘We know this well enough, but we never knew about Pembridge Mews. Why?’

  ‘Why what?’ Gwen Hislop asked. ‘You’re beating around the bush on this. My client has given a full account of her actions, explained where and when she was, who she was sleeping with.’

  ‘We can prove that Christine was in Pembridge Mews on the same day that she was in Hyde Park,’ Isaac said. ‘We can understand her knowing about the man’s jogging habit, and where he liked to run and the time. That’s one issue we’ll accept, although one day before he died is suspicious. However, we didn’t know about Pembridge Mews, and if your client knew that address, then she knew his real name, that of his sister as well. All in all, damning evidence.’

  ‘Okay, I knew,’ Christine blurted out. Her sister looked at her with a scowl.

  Gwen Hislop realised that she was tasked with defending the indefensible. ‘Five-minute break,’ she said.

  Isaac and Wendy left the room, meeting Larry outside. The three each took a coffee from the machine in the hallway. It tasted awful, but for once it didn’t matter. Christine Mason was in the hot seat, and the evidence against her was mounting.

  The five minutes stretched to ten; two coffees from a café across the road were delivered to the two women in the interview room.

  None of the officers sat down, and Chief Superintendent Goddard had joined them, bringing a coffee with him. ‘I’m not drinking that,’ he said, looking over at the machine. ‘A confession?’

  ‘Not yet. It’s still circumstantial. Just because she’s been at two of the key sites, doesn’t give us a cast-iron case. It’s her word against ours, and her lawyer’s no fool. No doubt she’s berating her for admitting that she was in Pembridge Mews,’ Isaac said.

  ‘The witness, solid?’

  ‘Amelia Bentham has been careful not to say too much. If a defence lawyer for Christine Mason got to know that she’s been holding back vital information, then she’d be soon discredited.’

  ‘Best of luck,’ Goddard said as he walked away.

  ‘He’s going easy on us, none of the normal rallying of the troops speech,’ Larry said.

  ‘He knows it’s a matter of hours before we wrap up this case.’

  ‘But we’re not proving this, only pressuring others to come clean.’

  ‘Amelia, could she have killed the man?’ Isaac asked Wendy.

  ‘She was overseas at the time,’ Wendy replied.

  ‘Proven?’

  ‘It has been now.’

  ‘Then it’s not her. Is this it, the end of the investigation?’ Isaac asked. ‘Christine Mason admits her guilt if we pressure her?’

  ‘I’m not convinced,’ Wendy said. ‘Christine Mason’s a pawn, not one of the major pieces, certainly not a bishop or a rook, definitely not a queen. Things happen to her due to her submissive nature. I don’t believe she could maintain the rage long enough to harm anyone.’

  A uniform summoned Isaac and Wendy back to the interview room. It was clear that the two sisters were not comfortable with each other, the chairs they had been sitting on marginally further apart from their previous positions.

  Isaac recommenced the interview.

  ‘My client has a statement,’ Gwen Hislop said. Christine Mason shifted uneasily on her seat; she did not look over at her sister.

  ‘I admit that I was in Hyde Park,’ Christine Mason commenced, ‘and that my purpose was to confront Colin Young, who I believed was fond of me. Naivety may be what others will say, but to me the love that we shared was real. And even though I had not seen him for some time, I accepted that was the nature of his business. When I saw him in that taxi with a woman, I was alarmed. Not necessarily because he was with her, although I could see that they were happy and laughing, and she was attractive, not showing her age as I am.’

  It was clear to Isaac that Christine had drafted the statement, her sister only checking it for incriminating words or descriptions of actions that could
damn the woman. It was a clever document, though, in that it showed Christine to be a woman with neuroses, unable to separate fact from fiction. If she did claim to be the murderer, or she was charged with murder, then evaluation of her statement, her known behaviour, would all be valuable in deeming her as having diminished responsibility.

  Isaac’s estimation of Gwen Hislop took another leap up. Wendy, not as astute as Isaac, saw it differently. She was worried for Christine Mason, certain that she was about to confess.

  ‘I never saw him in the park, and where I had waited was coincidental,’ Christine continued. ‘I needed to know if his love for me was real or whether it was feigned. I was beside myself with worry, not that the relationship was floundering, but because I had assisted him with money. I had seen the taxi, taken its number.’

  ‘Photographic memory, we remember,’ Wendy said.

  ‘I’ve not finished my statement,’ Christine said.

  ‘Apologies, continue.’

  ‘I recognised the taxi as it sometimes picked up people at the hotel, let them off. I phoned the taxi company, they let me have the driver’s phone number. I knew his name. He told me about the fare and where he had picked them up, where he had dropped them off.

  ‘I went to the address in Pembridge Mews, not sure what to do or what to say. If he had been there, it would have been suspicious. If he was inside with the woman, then maybe they were together. I was confused, so I left. That’s the end of the statement.’

  ‘I don’t think there’s any more to say, do you?’ Gwen Hislop said. She had a look of satisfaction, as if she was going to call a halt to the proceedings and take her and her sister out of the police station.

  ‘We can probably accept that Christine found the taxi and the driver,’ Wendy said. ‘However, there’s one flaw.’

  ‘Clutching at straws, trying to pin this murder on my client, will not work. We all recognise her weak personality, her lack of confidence in herself.’

  Isaac could see that the sister made up for Christine’s failings in bucketfuls.

  ‘Barry and Matilda Montgomery took a taxi at the end of Pembridge Mews,’ Wendy continued. ‘It’s a cul-de-sac. There’s no way that your client would have found out the address from the taxi driver. He would not have waited at the address.’ She knew that she was placing the woman in the line of fire again, her previous statement shot down in flames.