Chain Reaction

by Gillian White

  By tomorrow the whole world will know. He might have the front page to himself and not even have to share it with that household name, Mrs Irene Peacock. Ding, dong bell. He can see the headlines now. How they will relish it when they hear he hid his dead wife in a well.

  ‘Mr Vernon Marsh?’

  Vernon stands at the open door and awaits his fate in a cloud of shame. ‘Yes, I am Vernon Marsh.’

  The policeman, not unfriendly, gets out his notebook and unravels a daily paper. ‘I am here after our Lancashire branch faxed us over a message just now regarding the man at your window here who resembles an absconding prisoner.’

  Vernon studies the paper as if it’s the first time he’s seen it, so astonished is he. And there is Jody’s face at the window, staring, horrified. ‘Wanted?’

  ‘Jody Middleton to be precise. He is wanted to stand trial for rape, Mr Marsh. This is very probably not he, but would you mind identifying the person who was standing above us last night when the photographer took this picture?’

  So they’re not here to take him away! They don’t know anything about the murder! It’s Jody Middleton they’re after. Vernon is totally confused, almost speechless. His brain races madly in his head. ‘There was a boy staying with me last night,’ he agrees quickly. ‘And yes, he did introduce himself as Jody Middleton, said he was a member of the family who were buying this house and asked if he could have a bed for the night as he was touring the West Country. Well, I thought it was rather odd, but felt I couldn’t really refuse. I had a spare bed and my wife is away…’

  ‘Where is Middleton now, sir?’

  ‘I really don’t know,’ says Vernon truthfully, helplessly shrugging. ‘When I got up this morning, he was gone. No word of explanation or thanks…’

  ‘Would you mind, sir, if we came in to have a quick look around?’

  ‘No,’ says Vernon helpfully. ‘Come in, do whatever you have to. I never imagined for a moment the boy was on the run.’

  ‘It was a bit silly,’ reproves the second policeman, removing his hat on the stairs, ‘to invite a total stranger to stay overnight.’

  Vernon scratches his head and readjusts his glasses. He goes on with studied carelessness, ‘But he wasn’t a total stranger, Inspector. As I said, he told me he was the son of the people who are buying our house.’

  ‘Even so,’ says the Inspector, moving on. ‘These days…’

  ‘I realise that now,’ says Vernon, going back to his coffee and cigarettes at the kitchen table, only to find that he cannot sit down and is forced to wander to and fro. He longs for them to go so he can be alone with his crazy questions. Menace seems to be everywhere. If the lad is on the run and manages to keep going there’s a good chance the police will never find out about Joy, but when they catch him, and they’re bound to catch him, the murder will be the first thing the boy starts to blab about. What a malignant trick of fate that such a distasteful person should catch him about his gory task, then that the camera should catch his face at the window, that he should then disappear, so that even if he never gets caught, Vernon will never again feel easy. What has his life descended to now—dependent on a rapist to stay free?

  This situation is almost worse than being charged and convicted. At least that way he would get it all over. But no, no, not when he thinks about Tom and Suzie. Anything rather than destroy his children’s lives in misery and shame like that.

  So this explains the strange behaviour of the couple who came with their nervous daughters to view Joyvern, it seems like years ago now. That explains why they never bothered to barter over the price of the house, and didn’t seem particularly bothered about much anyway. Their son was on remand for rape. Having met Jody, Vernon is very surprised, but then he manages a wry little smile. How can you tell what people are capable of by their behaviour, by how they look? Nobody in their right mind would think him capable of a brutal murder. His awful circling thoughts go round and round again. Tick tick tick goes Joy’s kitchen clock on the wall, designed to resemble a fresh green apple. Is it ticking his moments of freedom away?

  ‘Coffee?’ he asks the returning policemen, while trembling inside.

  ‘We’d better not, sir. We’d better get back, thanks all the same. If this man is in the area it is imperative that we catch him, bearing in mind the sickening nature of the crime. Someone will be back to take a statement from you later.’

  ‘Yes. Absolutely. That’s fine,’ agrees Vernon, his disloyal eyes straying to the place on the kitchen floor where Joy had fallen, where he had beaten her head to pulp.

  The hours go by so slowly when you are expecting trouble, when every passing footstep might represent the end of your freedom for ever, every cruising car, every shadow on the wall. He hates being alone doing nothing, for this allows him to think too much. Driven by his need for action, any action, it no longer much matters what, Vernon is compelled to telephone the Middletons in Preston, half-wanting to discuss the matter of their absent son and his likely whereabouts, and half-wanting to know if the house sale is still going through according to plan. In spite of the fact that Vernon’s world has gone all twisted and awry, everyday life must go on. Mr Mycroft at the bank must still be satisfied, the lease on the shop must be paid.

  ‘Oh,’ Mrs Middleton sounds most surprised to hear from him. ‘Mr Marsh. Yes, certainly everything is going through on our side, and as far as we know some people called Smedley are still buying ours. The solicitors seem quite happy, anyway, there have been no snags that we know of. Why? Is everything all right your end?’

  So Vernon proceeds to explain about last night’s extraordinary visit.

  ‘Jody actually called at your house? He insisted on staying the night? I must say it was good of you to have him.’

  Vernon smiles at her little game. ‘He would have stayed longer, I believe, but for the fact the newspapers sent their photographers round and the police picked up his trail.’

  She is silent for a moment. ‘You know?’ she whispers with horror. ‘You know about Jody?’

  Vernon feels a spasm of pain. He’s a sentimental man, a believer in mercy and forgiveness—how many times has he forgiven Joy her reckless behaviour in the past? He imagines how terrible this mother must feel in her innocence, not only her but her whole family.

  ‘The police told me this morning.’

  ‘But he’d gone?’ She is desperate for reassurance. ‘He’d gone before they arrived?’

  ‘Yes, Mrs Middleton, he’d gone. I think he probably left some hours before.’

  ‘And how was he? How was the cut in his poor chest?’

  What can he tell her? That the lad was tired? Immature? Homesick? A young man of some intelligence with tousled hair and a couple of earrings? ‘He never mentioned a cut to me. He seemed well. He ate a good supper. We shared a Chinese meal and watched the news. I am surprised the police haven’t contacted you yet.’

  ‘The police tell us nothing, nothing at all. It’s a real eye-opener to be at the wrong end of the law, you soon stop saying how wonderful they are. And so this siege which is hogging the news at the moment is at the very flat which you were supposed to move into? That is why the press came round? How terrible for you and your wife.’

  Vernon pauses for a planned few seconds. He might as well start the ball rolling. ‘Actually,’ and it’s easier to start with a stranger, ‘I haven’t seen my wife for some days now. She walked out after an argument and she’s never been back. I am quite worried, to be honest. She has been behaving rather oddly of late.’

  ‘Oh no, how awful for you!’ The woman’s concern is genuine. Perhaps all women are naturally sympathetic when they hear about one of their number gone over the edge, although they say that these days men are quickly catching up, especially young men. And the suicide rate is growing. ‘Have you informed Missing Persons?’

  ‘Not yet. She would be most upset if I told them and she had just decided to go off for a while to cool down.’

  ‘I suppose so
, yes, but I know how worrying it is to have a relative missing and be unable to get in touch. I do wonder, Mr Marsh, if Jody is in the area, whether I might pop down that way to do some measuring for carpets and curtains, just in case…’

  ‘I doubt that he’d come back here now.’

  ‘No, but just to be in the area, just to know I was near him would make me feel better. Do you understand how I feel?’

  Vernon, who fully understands, says kindly, ‘Of course I do. Has he got friends around here?’

  ‘No, it was my idea he went there, actually. Safer than hanging around his old home.’

  Vernon the murderer cannot help but feel shocked. ‘You helped him? He evaded the law and you helped him do it?’

  ‘I am his mother, Mr Marsh. I might be foolish, but I believe my boy when he swears to me that what he did to that girl was not rape at all, and I hope you realise he hasn’t even been tried yet. But when you’re suddenly accused of something as sickening as rape, I’m afraid that no matter what sort of person you were everyone believes the worst of you.’

  Vernon silently thinks about this. He must discover as much about Jody as he can and this is his only chance. ‘A good boy, was he?’

  ‘A son to be proud of. This has broken his sisters’ hearts, and mine, and his dad’s.’

  Overindulged, most likely. ‘I understand. It would be unendurable if something like this ever happened to our two children.’

  ‘They must be terribly concerned about their mother’s disappearance.’

  ‘Oh they are, they are.’ His next job, and one that he’s dreading, is to tell them. ‘So you have no idea at all where Jody might be now?’

  ‘None, but I do feel the urge to come down there. I need to take these measurements anyway, and have some discussions with you about what you are prepared to leave. I take it you are still intending to go, even though your flat, at the moment, seems to belong to the media? I’m sure the whole business will soon blow over, and hopefully your wife will be back.’

  ‘Oh, I’m still leaving,’ says Vernon, ‘don’t worry about that. If necessary I will put our things into storage. And if my wife doesn’t return I don’t think I’ll bother to buy, I’ll rent…’

  ‘Don’t dwell on the black side, Mr Marsh. I know how easy that is, to let that darkness take you. You must believe that all will be well. You must have faith…’

  But Vernon is no longer listening. Fear and cunning have taken him over, and self-preservation is all he can see. He liked Jody. He doubts if that boy would rape anyone and yet they share one terrible secret. Life is hard and life is unfair and if opportunity drops into your lap you’d be a fool not to take it. He is shocked to discover how easy it is to betray a stranger. To save your own skin. Since the murder, what does it matter how shabby his conscience or his behaviour? He’s doomed to hell anyway, the flames are already licking his ankles and he’s loathsome in the sight of God. He is already working out in his mind how he can implicate Jody. From what he can gather, the boy is finished anyway, and probably he is guilty of rape and the mother can’t bring herself to see it. That’s perfectly natural, he would be the same. How simple it would be for the police to get hold of the wrong end of the stick. If the boy is going to be locked up for the rest of his life, then he might as well take the can for Joy’s murder, too. He can deny it as much as he likes. Nobody will believe him.

  When the police return that afternoon Vernon emphasises in his statement just how peculiar Jody was. ‘Very twitchy. Of course, I understand why, now that I know he was on the run. Very interested in my wife, which was odd. Kept asking questions about her—and the strangest part of all was that the boy turned up here on my doorstep soon after Joy went missing. He gave me no other reason than that his family were about to move in here. I sensed there was something wrong with him. I was nervous, quite frankly, suspecting he might be one of those young schizophrenics let loose from hospital. That’s why I allowed him to stay. I was concerned what his reaction might be if I sent him packing.’

  ‘That’s interesting, sir,’ says the policeman, scribbling. ‘But you had no idea that he had escaped from remand, accused of rape?’

  Vernon shakes his head. ‘Of course not, no. I would have found a way to inform you if I had suspected anything like that. I have always been a most law-abiding man.’

  ‘Quite so.’

  ‘To tell you the truth, Jody Middleton terrified me. There was something sinister about him.’

  ‘He is a thoroughly bad lot, according to my information from Lancashire.’

  ‘Capable of anything, I would have said.’

  ‘You are probably right. A bad apple.’

  ‘It’s his family I feel sorry for.’

  ‘I wouldn’t waste your sympathy,’ said the tall lanky policeman, bending almost double on the sofa to prop his pad on his long bony lap. ‘It’s normally the parents’ fault. Too damn soft.’

  ‘I agree with you absolutely,’ says Vernon. ‘You see enough of it round here.’

  ‘You see it everywhere these days, I’m afraid, sir.’

  Vernon hesitates slightly. He looks up sadly at the lean man in blue. ‘At what point would you advise me to report the disappearance of my wife?’

  ‘How long has she been missing now, sir?’

  ‘Five days. I dropped her off at the shops after a slight argument and haven’t seen her since.’

  ‘Might I ask what the argument was about?’

  ‘Yes, it was about which property we ought to buy. She favoured an old ruin out on the moor, I tried to persuade her that the flat would be more sensible. Funnily enough it’s the self-same flat in Swallowbridge which is featuring so highly in the public eye at the moment. The siege.’

  ‘Oh? Of course, I think you mentioned that earlier. That’s what brought the photographer round.’

  Vernon nods. ‘Exactly. But Joy had her heart set on a cottage called Hacienda. I did wonder, actually, if she might have called there… She’s been behaving so strangely lately.’

  The policeman nods knowingly. ‘We can certainly check that out, Mr Marsh, if you would give me the directions.’

  ‘I can do better than that.’ Vernon gets up and retrieves the estate agent’s particulars from the drawer. ‘It looks quite nice in that picture but really it would have cost a fortune to make it habitable, and my wife—’

  ‘I know what they’re like, women—romantics, most of them. I see it’s even got its own well.’

  ‘A hole in the ground, no more than that, probably. Character, they call it.’

  To Vernon’s relief the policeman finally gets up to go. ‘Well, you leave this all with me and as I said, someone will check it out just in case Mrs Marsh decided to pay the cottage a visit, although how she would reach it in the middle of nowhere is quite another matter.’

  ‘A lift?’ queries Vernon. ‘Not difficult at this time of year when you’ve got all the holidaymakers crisscrossing all over the place.’

  ‘That’s always possible,’ says the constable, straightening his helmet in the mirror by the door. ‘Or there’s probably even an odd bus once or twice a week. The driver would probably remember.’

  The driver will not remember. Nobody will remember giving Joy a lift to Hacienda five days hence but that won’t matter; given the other evidence, that won’t be of vital importance. But sure as eggs are eggs, fugitive or not, Jody Middleton will have left clues back at that cottage—discarded Coke cans, packaging, footprints and fingerprints, advertising the fact that he was there. Whereas Vernon himself left no sign at all. Any tyre-marks the car might have left can be passed off as those they made the first time they visited Hacienda together. The offending iron has been sold on in the shop, cleaned and done up as new, and an excellent second-hand one now sits on the shelf in Joy’s cleaning cupboard.

  She came upon him while he was hiding there, didn’t she? He acted out of sheer panic.

  No, Vernon rubs his hands. Not such a failure after all. Joy would
have been proud of him. Soon they will not only be after the unfortunate Jody Middleton for rape, but for murder as well.

  THIRTY-THREE

  Penmore House, Ribblestone Close, Preston, Lancs

  NEVER MIND ABOUT JODY, Babs Middleton feels like she’s on the run from something herself. Speaking on the telephone to Vernon Marsh who has seen Jody so recently, even had him staying in his house, has lit the feverish flame of protective motherhood once again at the thought of her child reduced to begging for food and sanctuary at the door of total strangers. They should never have turned him away from home when he needed them most. Although she was in agreement at the time, Babs blames Len for that, and the attitude of Dawn and Cindy. If they were more sympathetic towards their persecuted brother she herself would not have felt the need to defend him against them.

  Babs is angry. She is angry towards the police who are out to get him, the judicial system which is out to stitch him up, Janice Plunket and her unimaginative family who are determined to exact an unjust revenge, but most of all she is angry at Len and the girls who seem relieved to be shot of him.

  The only real sympathy she has been given of late has been from an unexpected source, Vernon Marsh at Joyvern. He seemed to understand a degree of the sort of despair she is going through. He might have more news of Jody than he was willing to give on the telephone. He has seen her beloved son, spoken with him, spent time with him—perhaps there is something more he can tell her? She knows these cravings are quite illogical but she feels compelled to go down to Milton in Devon, just in case something might happen. Jody might get in touch with Vernon again, and Babs wants to be there in case. She fights the great hope within her, knowing how unlikely it is.