The Silent Killer

by Hazel Holt

  As I was thinking about all this Brian came into the kitchen.

  “I’ve finished the bookcases,” he began. “Oh, I’m sorry, were you listening to that?”

  “Listening? Oh, the radio. I’d forgotten it was on.”

  “Those money programmes,” Brian said. “They can be quite interesting. There was one very good one I heard about insurance.”

  “Yes, they’re quite useful.” I moved over and switched the radio off. “Shall we have a cup of tea? I know I can do with one after all this baking.”

  “That would be very nice.”

  “I don’t know much about finance and things,” Brian said. “Though I used to hear him talking about it sometimes.”

  “Really?”

  “Well, not so much talking – he knew my mother hadn’t a clue about anything like that – but boasting.”

  “What about?”

  “Oh, deals he’d made, how he’d put something over on someone.”

  “In the City?”

  “That’s right. He was just sounding off about things, he knew she hadn’t any idea what he was talking about. Just wanted someone to know how clever he was.”

  “He didn’t say what sort of deals, did he?”

  “He may have done, but it didn’t mean anything to me either, I was just a kid.”

  “No, of course.”

  “That’s just the way he was in those days, though I don’t suppose he changed much, except to make even dodgier deals and get richer.”

  “You think the deals he made in those days were dodgy?”

  “Oh yes, no doubt about it. It was the way he talked about them, even though I didn’t understand I could tell there was something not right about them. It was all of a piece with the rest of him, I reckon.”

  “I’m sure you’re right.”

  When we’d finished our tea I went to have a look at the shelves.

  “They’re lovely,” I said. “They improve the look of the whole room.”

  “Well,” Brian said, regarding the piles of books on the floor, “it’s somewhere to put all that lot. Mind you, that paint will take a fair while to dry properly, so don’t put any books on the shelves for at least a fortnight.”

  When he had gone I went back into the kitchen and checked on the cakes in the oven. One was done so I put it on the wire tray to cool and re-set the timer for the other. There was still some tea left in the pot so I poured myself another cup and sat down at the kitchen table to think about what Brian had told me. I had no doubt now that the young Sidney Middleton had been less than scrupulous in his financial dealings and, as Brian had said, there was no reason to suppose that he had become more honest with the passing years. He’d certainly become richer and I hoped that Roger would be able to find out just how he’d managed it, and if that was why he’d been killed.

  Chapter Twenty

  * * *

  “What’s that little table doing there?” Anthea asked.

  “I brought it to go in the sale,” I said.

  Anthea bent down to examine it. “It’s an antique,” she said. “Are you sure you want to get rid of it?”

  “Yes. Quite sure.”

  “Oh, all right then. Put it over there with the bric-a-brac. Now then, about the clothes.” She looked round. “I thought Rosemary was coming too.”

  “Yes, she is, she’ll be here in a little while.”

  “Well, you’ll have to tell her about where things are to go. I can’t stop to go all over it again when she comes.”

  “That’s all right.”

  Anthea looked at the garments piled up on one of the trestle tables. “We don’t get nearly as many things as we used to,” she said. “It’s all those charity shops.”

  “I suppose it’s more convenient to get rid of things as and when,” I said, “instead of keeping them hanging around until the next jumble sale.”

  “That’s as may be,” Anthea said irritably, “but if this goes on we’ll have to give up the clothing stall altogether. You’ll just have to make this lot look as attractive as you can.”

  “I daresay if we price things cheaply enough they’ll go anyway.”

  Anthea gave me a dissatisfied look and went on, “Put the coats and dresses on the rail and fold the other stuff neatly and lay it out on the table. The hats and shoes should go separately at one end.”

  “That’s fine,” I said, “I’m sure we can manage.”

  “Right then, I must be going. Oh, by the way, Jim Norton is in the Committee Room seeing to the electrics. I expect he would like a cup of tea when you and Rosemary make one.”

  When she had gone I trundled out the rail on wheels that we used on these occasions from the store room and was just trying to disentangle some of the pile of metal coat-hangers that seemed irretrievably entwined when Rosemary arrived.

  “Sorry I’m late, Jack suddenly decided to come home for lunch so I had to cook something. Has Anthea gone?”

  “Your absence was noted,” I said, “and I have strict instructions to pass on all the vital information she gave me about the disposition of the merchandise. All the same as last year, of course. Here, you can unlock these hangers and I’ll put the things on the rail.”

  “Anything decent this time?” Rosemary asked, turning over the garments on the table. “Oh, this is pretty.” She held up a girl’s pink top with rosebuds round the neckline. “A year ago I’d have got it for Delia, but I wouldn’t dare choose anything for her now. She was very polite about the top I gave her for her birthday but I could see that she didn’t think it was really cool.”

  “I did have my eye on that little straw hat for Alice, that one over there with the cornflowers and poppies on it. If I price it quite high then I won’t feel guilty at having first pick!”

  “The children’s things are always the first to go,” Rosemary said, “and some of the sweaters. This one’s pure wool and, goodness, this one’s cashmere!”

  “Oh, that’ll be Marjorie Richards, she always sends expensive stuff. I think it’s a form of showing off, but who cares if it sells well!”

  “Is this leather coat hers as well?”

  “No, I recognise that, it’s Beryl Austin’s – she used to wear it when she went around with Jimmy Hackett in that open-top sports car of his. When they broke up I suppose she didn’t want it any more.”

  “I didn’t know that they’d broken up,” Rosemary said with interest. “That didn’t last long – young people nowadays!”

  “This rail is very wobbly,” I said. “It’s not straight, the things keep sliding to one end.”

  I bent down to examine it more closely. “Oh yes, this nut needs tightening. Have we got a spanner or something?” I fiddled with it for a moment, then I said, “I’ll go and ask Jim Norton if he’s got one. He’s in the Committee room. Oh yes, and Anthea said very pointedly that when – not if – we make our cup of tea would we give him one.”

  “Right, then,” Rosemary said, “I’ll go and put the kettle on.”

  I found Jim Norton crouching on the floor rewiring a point.

  “Do you have a spanner I could borrow, please? The rail we hang the clothes on needs fixing.”

  “Can you manage?” he asked. “I’d come and do it for you now but I’m in the middle of something.”

  “No, it’s fine, just a simple job. I can do it.”

  “Right. There’s a couple of spanners in my big tool box. I left it in the big room over by the window, help yourself.”

  I thanked him and found it where he had told me. It was a big, blue metal box with a folding lid and with two layers for tools and odds and ends. I found a spanner in the size I wanted but I couldn’t close the box up again. Something underneath was preventing the top layer from lying flat, so I lifted up the tray to repack it. As I did so there was a familiar acrid smell and I found in the bottom of the toolbox a pair of rough leather gardening gloves, covered in soot. Not only were they stained black, but grains of soot were caught in the leather fibres.


  I took them out of the box and stood there considering what I had found. There was a stifled exclamation behind me and I turned to see Jim Norton staring at the gloves in my hand.

  For a moment neither of us said anything. Then I said, “Soot,” holding out the gloves.

  “Yes,” he said. “I was – I was clearing out the grate…”

  “No,” I said. “That’s not it. I saw your face, you were horrified when you saw what I’d found.” He was silent and I continued, “Besides, you don’t have a grate. You don’t have a chimney. The soot on those gloves came from Sidney Middleton’s inspection plate, didn’t it? I daresay it could be proved…” My voice trailed away.

  He still didn’t say anything but just stood there, motionless.

  “But why? What possible reason could you have for killing him?”

  “I’ve put the kettle on, tea won’t be long.” Rosemary came back into the room. She looked from one to another of us. “What’s going on?”

  “Why?” I persisted. “Why did you kill Sidney Middleton? You did kill him, didn’t you?”

  Rosemary’s exclamation of surprise seemed to bring Jim Norton back to life.

  “Yes,” he said in a steady tone. “I did it. I had my reasons.”

  “But why?”

  “He killed my son.”

  “Your son? How, what happened?”

  “So I killed him.”

  “No!” The word was positively shouted. Myra Norton had come into the room. She moved towards us and saw the gloves I was still holding in my hands. “No, he didn’t do it, he didn’t do it!”

  Jim Norton moved over and grasped her arm. “Be quiet, Myra. It’s all right. I’ll deal with this.”

  She broke free and confronted us.

  “It was me. I did it and I’m not ashamed to admit it. He – that man – he killed Martin, he killed my son, the only one we had left. Julie, my girl, she died of meningitis, so Martin was all we had, and he took him away from us…” She was sobbing now. Jim Norton put his arm round her awkwardly, as if it was a rare gesture for him.

  “Martin worked in the City,” he said. “He lived with us – he could have got a place of his own, but he knew how much it meant to his mother to have him at home. So he travelled up from Reading every day. He was a bright boy and did very well, they all thought highly of him. Middleton was impressed and made him his assistant. But Middleton was up to all sorts of scams. Martin never knew about them, of course, he was too straight himself to think of anyone doing things like that. A fool, perhaps, but honest, honest as the day is long. Anyway, the long and the short of it was Middleton tried to pull off some really big thing – something to do with insider trading, I won’t go into details – and it went wrong. But Middleton was really clever. He’d got it all worked out that if it did go wrong then Martin would get the blame for it.”

  “They took him away,” Myra Norton sobbed. “They came to the house and took him away.”

  “There was a court case,” Jim Norton said quietly “and Martin was convicted and sent to jail. They put him in an ordinary jail at first. They were going to move him to an open prison – that’s what they usually do for fraud cases – but those couple of weeks were too much for him. He couldn’t bear it and he hanged himself.”

  “Oh God!” Rosemary said quietly.

  “Myra here had a breakdown,” Jim Norton said. “She’s still on anti-depressants, will be for the rest of her life.”

  “Did you know that Sidney Middleton lived in Taviscombe when you moved down here?” I asked.

  “No. We came here because it’s where we used to bring the children on holiday when they were small. It had happy memories for us.”

  “They used to play on the sands,” Myra Norton said, tears pouring down her face. “They had ice creams…”

  “I’m sorry,” I said inadequately. “I’m so sorry.”

  She moved suddenly towards me and, instinctively, I backed away.

  “You’ve got a son,” she cried, “and you,” turning to Rosemary, “you’d have done the same.”

  I found I still had the gloves and I held them out to Jim Norton.

  “Why didn’t you get rid of them?” I asked.

  “I thought Myra had,” he said, taking them from me. “I don’t know why she didn’t.”

  “To remind us,” she said fiercely, “so we’d never forget!”

  Jim Norton moved over to her side. “When I saw that man here – at that auction, it was – I couldn’t believe it. I knew what it would do to Myra, so I decided I’d have to get rid of him. I went round to his house when I knew he was going to be away (I heard you talking about it here) and as soon as I saw the inspection plate I knew how to do it. Neighbours of ours in Reading nearly died from carbon monoxide poisoning when theirs was left off by mistake. We went round one night. Myra insisted on coming with me…”

  “But he couldn’t do it!” she burst out. “When it came to it he couldn’t do it. So I did. I did. He killed Martin. An eye for an eye…”

  “We went back just before it got light,” he went on, “and put the plate back. I had a torch but it was dark and I must have missed seeing the soot that fell out. I thought the Goddards might have heard the car so early in the morning, but they didn’t.”

  “He didn’t do it,” Myra Norton was shouting now, shouting wildly and sobbing at the same time. “I did it, I did it!”

  Her husband moved over and put his arm round her shoulder.

  “It’s all right,” he said, “we’re going home, we’re going home.”

  He led her away and, just as they got to the door he turned and said, “You don’t have to worry, we’ll do the right thing.” Then they were gone.

  I sank down into a chair. “That woman, that poor woman.”

  “Dreadful,” Rosemary said. “Dreadful,” she repeated.

  “What have I done?” I said. “Oh why did I have to interfere?”

  “She was living on the edge,” Rosemary said. “I see that now – all that endless chatter.”

  “But I pushed her over the edge. I should never have done that.”

  “She shouldn’t have killed Sidney. I know, an eye for an eye, but where does that end? It’s terrible, I know, but you have to accept it. It wasn’t your fault.”

  “But would we have done the same if it had happened to our children?”

  “No,” Rosemary said, “we would have wanted to, but we wouldn’t have done it.”

  “He took the gloves,” I said suddenly. “We have no proof. There’s nothing to tell the police. I’m glad about that.”

  “I think he will go to the police himself,” Rosemary said. “I think he probably wanted to all along.”

  “But Myra – what will happen to her?”

  “Diminished responsibility, I imagine. She’s obviously unbalanced.”

  “I just wish I’d never interfered…”

  Rosemary came and put her arm round me.

  “There’s no point in blaming yourself,” she said. “It’s something that was always going to end in unhappiness. It’s not your fault. Come back now and have some supper with Jack and me.”

  I looked at the piles of clothing. “What about all this?” I asked.

  “We’ll do it tomorrow. Tomorrow’s another day.”

  “Yes,” I said. “I suppose it is.”

  About the Author

  HAZEL HOLT was born in Birmingham and was educated at King Edward VI High School and Newnham College, Cambridge. She worked as an editor, reviewer and feature writer before turning to fiction in an attempt to keep up with her son, the novelist Tom Holt. Her life is divided between writing, cooking and trying to cope with the demands of her Siamese cat, Flip.

  By Hazel Holt

  Death in Practice

  The Silent Killer

  No Cure for Death

  A Death in the Family

  A Time to Die

  Any Man’s Death

  A Necessary End

 
Copyright

  Allison & Busby Limited

  13 Charlotte Mews

  London W1T 4EJ

  www.allisonandbusby.com

  First published in Great Britain by Allison & Busby in 2004.

  This ebook edition first published in 2012.

  Copyright © 2004 by HAZEL HOLT

  The right of HAZEL HOLT to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All characters and events in this publication other than those clearly in the public domain are fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent buyer.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN 978–0–7490–1203–8