Close Her Eyes

by Dorothy Simpson

  ‘And Charity?’

  ‘Went off with some fella she picked up on the train. She was mad with me, of course. In the end she saw I wasn’t going to budge and she said if I wouldn’t go along with her she’d bloody well—sorry, Mum—do it by herself. So off she went to the buffet car and that was the last I saw of her till Paddington.’

  ‘She did pick someone up, you say?’

  ‘You bet.’

  ‘You saw him?’

  ‘Yes. When we got to London. They got off the train together.’

  ‘How far away were you?’

  ‘About fifty yards, I suppose.’

  ‘Did you get a good look at him?’

  ‘Not really. Only a side view.’

  ‘Can you give me a description?’

  Veronica frowned, recalling. ‘Young—early twenties, I suppose. Black hair and beard.’

  ‘Tall? Short?’

  ‘Medium. He had his arm around Charity’s shoulders and they were laughing … He was a few inches taller than her and she’s … she was the same height as me, five four.’

  ‘So, five eight or nine, then?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What sort of clothes was be wearing?’

  ‘Jeans and a black leather jacket.’

  ‘Anything else you can remember?’

  ‘No. Sorry. Oh … just a minute, yes … He was carrying a crash helmet. Yellow, it was.’

  ‘Was he wearing glasses?’ Thanet had to ask, though he knew that the question was pointless, really. The description was quite different from that of the man who had got off the London train with Charity last night.

  She shook her head.

  ‘Did she ever tell you anything about him, later?’

  ‘No. She liked being mysterious about him. She was always going on about how terrific he was, how crazy about her, what a marvellous time they’d had, that sort of thing …’

  ‘Did she spend the night with him?’

  ‘Yes.’ Veronica was studiously avoiding her mother’s eye.

  ‘Did she say where?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Did she tell you where he lived?’

  ‘Sorry, no.’

  ‘Whether she was going to meet him again?’

  Veronica hesitated.

  ‘Was she going to meet him again?’ said Thanet softly. ‘Last weekend, for example.’

  Veronica bit her lip. ‘I’m not sure.’

  ‘But Veronica!’ burst out Mrs Hodges, unable to keep quiet any longer.

  Thanet leaned across to lay a restraining hand on her arm. ‘Mrs Hodges, look. I do appreciate how difficult this is for you. But I’ve nearly finished, now. If you could just bear with me … When we’ve gone, you and Veronica will be able to talk as much as you like.’

  Mrs Hodges compressed her lips, scowled at him. ‘It’s all very well for you. It’s not you sitting here listening to your daughter telling you …’

  ‘I know. But I won’t be much longer, I promise. This really is very important.’

  He took her silence for assent, turned back to the girl.

  ‘What were Charity’s plans for the weekend?’

  Veronica glanced nervously at her mother. ‘To book up at the Holiday Home again, then, on the morning of the day we were due to arrive, ring to say one of us was ill. That would mean neither of us could go because of this rule they have about girls travelling in pairs. Then we’d go to London, have a good time …’

  ‘Pick up some men again, you mean?’

  That’s what she said, but …’

  ‘But what?’

  ‘Well, I just didn’t know whether to believe her or not. You never knew, with Charity. She could tell lies and look so innocent about it that you’d believe every word she was saying. It was ages before I cottoned on to that.’

  ‘So what made you think she wasn’t telling you what her real plans for the weekend were?’

  ‘I don’t know. It was just an impression. And a letter came for her, three or four weeks ago, from London.’

  ‘It came here, you mean?’

  ‘Yes. Inside an envelope addressed to me. She’d even had the nerve to tell him he could write to her here!’

  ‘The man she met at Easter, you mean? I see, so you suspected that they might have made arrangements to spend the weekend together, and that you were going to be—how shall I put it?—ditched, when you got to London.’

  ‘That’s right. But do you think I could get her to admit it? Whenever I tried, she’d just laugh, say I was imagining things.’

  ‘But when you saw her last night, when she called in on the way back from the station … Didn’t she tell you where she’d been, over the weekend?’

  ‘London, that’s all. With a friend. As a matter of fact, I had the impression the weekend hadn’t been much of a success.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I thought she looked tired. And a bit … subdued, depressed. Though I suppose that could have been because Mum had told her her father’d been round here looking for her and she knew she’d be for it when she got home. No … I still think there was more to it than that.’

  ‘Do you happen to know if Charity knew a man who wears pebble-lensed glasses?’

  The question had taken her by surprise. Thanet glimpsed shock and recognition before she shook her head, a little too hastily.

  ‘I’m afraid not, I’m sorry.’

  She was lying. Should he press her? The girl was looking exhausted and he had the feeling that she couldn’t take much more. No, he’d leave it for the moment. There was one other question he wanted to ask before he had to stop. He’d saved it until last because he had the feeling that it was the one Veronica would find most difficult of all to answer, especially in her mother’s presence. He hesitated, wondering how to phrase it tactfully.

  Mrs Hodges beat him to it. Taking his brief silence as an indication that he had finished, she leant forward and said, ‘But Veronica, love, I don’t understand. Why go along with all this, if you didn’t want to? Why go on being friends with Charity at all, if that’s what she was like?’ Mrs Hodges gave a little shiver of distaste. ‘Your dad would’ve had a thousand fits if he’d been here listening to all this.’

  Veronica’s gaze slid away from her mother’s. Her hands, until now lying loosely in her lap, curled into fists and Thanet saw her feet move slightly as her toes bunched up inside her shoes. He had been right. This was the question she had feared most of all.

  ‘Veronica?’ said her mother sharply.

  ‘I was sorry for her,’ Veronica muttered.

  ‘Sorry for her? Sorry for her? So sorry that you had to go begging for somewhere to spend the night in London, rather than come home a day early?’ Mrs Hodges’ pent-up bewilderment and frustration suddenly erupted into anger. She jumped off the arm of the chair and stood over her daughter, feet apart, hands on hips, eyes blazing. ‘You really expect me to believe that? That you begged me to allow you to go to Dorset again knowing that you had no intention of doing so … that you deliberately set out to deceive me—me, your own mother—just because you were sorry for Charity? What kind of a fool do you take me for?’

  Veronica had shrunk back in her chair, desperate as a cornered animal. Poor kid, thought Thanet. She couldn’t defend herself without giving herself away. Her only resort would be to react angrily, use the quarrel as a smokescreen.

  As if she had read his mind Veronica sprang to her feet and shouted furiously, ‘So that’s what you think of me, is it! I’m a liar, am I?’

  ‘Well, what else am I to think? You knew what she was planning, yet you agreed to go along with it. You begged me to let you go. You’d even packed your suitcase! If you weren’t going to Dorset and you didn’t intend doing what she wanted you to do, what did you plan to do? Spend the entire weekend with tramps and drop-outs at an emergency hostel in some grubby part of London?’

  ‘But I didn’t, did I? I didn’t bloody go! Just remember that, will you?’

&nbs
p; And, bursting into tears, Veronica ran out of the room. They heard her pound up the stairs, then there was silence.

  For a few moments Mrs Hodges stood rigid, staring blankly at the door. Then, moving very slowly, she lowered herself into the armchair Veronica had vacated and slumped back into it. ‘That’s done it,’ she said ruefully. ‘Now I’ll never find out. I shouldn’t have lost my temper, should I?’

  ‘I shouldn’t give up hope,’ said Thanet equably. ‘Give her time. She’s in a pretty fragile state at the moment, remember. She’s just had a very bad shock, learning about Charity’s death, and then, on top of that, having to be questioned …’

  But Mrs Hodges was still shaking her head. ‘Time was, I’d have agreed with you. We were so close, Veronica’s dad, her and me … If you’d told me it would ever come to this …’ Her eyes clouded, became almost opaque. ‘If I’d had any idea what was going on, I’d have …’ She stopped, passed her hand across her face as if brushing cobwebs away and seemed to become aware of their presence again. ‘And I don’t suppose she’ll ever forgive me for shouting at her like that in front of you … I should have listened to what you said, kept my mouth shut until you’d gone … I’m sorry, I suppose you … Had you finished? Your questions, I mean?’

  ‘Most of them. But there were one or two small points …’ Not to mention the delicate issue over which the interview had broken down. ‘I’ll have to come back tomorrow morning, I’m afraid. If that’s all right by you.’

  Mrs Hodges gave a resigned shrug. ‘I suppose if you must, you must.’

  Thanet waited until he and Lineham were in the car before asking him for his impressions of the interview.

  ‘Looks as though we were right. Charity did have something on her. I wonder what.’

  ‘As a matter of fact, I’ve got a good idea. It was something her headmistress said …’ Thanet explained his theory.

  Lineham whistled. ‘Could be … That would be just the sort of thing she’d be terrified would come out. But I was thinking, while I was listening, back there …’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Well, we haven’t had the PM report yet, of course, but I think you’ll agree that from what we saw of the circumstances of the murder, last night, it did look as though it could have been an unpremeditated job.’

  ‘Possibly, yes.’

  ‘I know he could have been lying in wait for her with the deliberate intention of attacking her—or anyone else, for that matter—but he could simply have been waiting for her for some innocent reason—he may have wanted to talk to her about something.’

  ‘True.’

  ‘Or, he could have been walking with her, and they had a quarrel during which he gave her a violent shove, causing her to fall against that lethal bit of iron.’

  ‘Agreed.’

  ‘Or,’ said Lineham slowly, ‘he could even have followed her, caught up with her and then ditto. I’m saying “he”, but of course, it could equally have been “she”. It wouldn’t have taken that much strength …’

  ‘So what are you suggesting?’

  ‘Well, as I said, while I was listening, I was thinking … Supposing Veronica had had just about as much as she could take, from Charity. Suppose that after Charity left her last night she thought about it for a minute or two and then decided to follow her, tell her just that.’

  Thanet didn’t like it. But he had to concede that Lineham could, just possibly, be right. Perhaps Veronica’s desperation, which he had attributed to fear of her mother finding out the reason why Charity had had a hold over her, had really been terror of discovery. As Lineham had suggested, Charity’s death could well have been an accident, the unfortunate result of a jagged piece of metal being in the wrong place at the wrong time. But would Veronica then have gone calmly off on a day trip to Boulogne?’

  He put this to Lineham.

  ‘How do we know it was calmly?’ said Lineham. ‘I think you’ll agree, sir, that Mrs Hodges would do anything to protect Veronica. It could have happened like this … After the accident Veronica rushes home to mum, in a state of shock. Mrs Hodges calms her down and they discuss what they are going to do. They decide it would be best to behave as though nothing has happened, that Veronica should go on her trip as planned. It’ll give her a breathing space, a chance to get over the shock a bit …’

  ‘So that performance we just witnessed was just that, a performance?’

  ‘Not entirely,’ said Lineham eagerly. ‘Mrs Hodges might genuinely not have known anything about the business with the telegram at Easter … But I haven’t quite finished, yet, sir. Or …’

  ‘You’re brimming over with theories tonight, Mike. Don’t tell me there’s another one coming up!’

  ‘Well, it did just occur to me …’

  ‘Come on, then, let’s have it.’

  ‘Well, it could equally well have been Mrs Hodges—who killed Charity, I mean. After all, we’ve only got her word for it that Charity left there at 9.35. All we know—if the ticket collector is right—is that Charity got off that train at 8.58. I’d guess it’s about ten minutes walk to Lantern Street, so she would have got there about ten past nine. If Mrs Hodges is telling the truth, Charity must have spent about twenty-five minutes there, but for all we know it was nothing like as long as that, it could have been ten minutes, or even five. Now, say during that time Mrs Hodges overhears something between Charity and Veronica—an argument, anything which tells her that Veronica is getting desperate about her relationship with Charity … Mrs Hodges could have decided to have a word with Charity on her own, follow her and have it out with her. She catches up with her … they quarrel … we have that fatal shove … and Mrs Hodges rushes home, just getting back in time to look innocent when we arrive on the doorstep asking where Charity is …’ Lineham paused, took his eyes off the road long enough to glance hopefully at Thanet.

  ‘Could be …’ Again, it was possible. Mrs Hodges had obviously disliked Charity, resented her influence over Veronica. But, enough to kill her … Though she might not have intended to kill her … ‘We’ll do some checking on their movements tomorrow.’

  They were in the car park now and Lineham reached for his notebook.

  ‘Starting with a house to house in Lantern Street?’

  ‘Yes. Covering the earlier period, too—say from nine o’clock onwards.’

  ‘Right. Incidentally, Veronica was lying, when you asked about the man in glasses, wasn’t she?’

  ‘You spotted that too. Yes, I’m certain of it. I’ll have to have another go at her about that, when we see her tomorrow. And we must both set our minds to working out how to trace either of the two men.’

  ‘The one she picked up at Easter could be tricky, sir. He could be anywhere in the country by now—or abroad, for that matter.’

  ‘Come on, Mike. Let’s just regard it as a challenge to our ingenuity.’

  Lineham grinned, gave a mock salute. ‘Yes, sir. Right, sir. Any other homework for tonight?’

  On the way home Thanet pondered the sergeant’s suggestions. Could Mrs Hodges or Veronica be guilty? If so, his own antennae had let him down badly during that interview. Perhaps he had been too preoccupied with trying to ask the right questions in the right order, and with preventing Mrs Hodges from messing the whole thing up. This, after all, was one of the main reasons for having an observer: a non-participant had a much better chance of seeing what was going on beneath the surface. Had his own perceptions really been so dulled, tonight?

  It was a sobering thought, but it was pointless to dwell upon it. He began instead to consider the task he had set Lineham: how to trace either of the shadowy male figures of whom they had been given such tantalising glimpses.

  He tried to picture Charity with the young man Veronica had described, but somehow he couldn’t do it. That virile, male image in jeans and black leather jacket simply didn’t go with Charity’s schoolgirlish style of dressing. And the clothes at home and in her suitcase had been much the same—dull, sober,
juvenile. Perhaps Veronica had been telling a pack of lies? Perhaps it had been she who had been the prime mover in the Easter escapade and it had been Charity, not she, who had spent the night in a hostel.

  Thanet shook his head unconsciously. No, he didn’t believe that. It was Charity who had been murdered and besides, Veronica’s story had rung true, had fitted in with the emerging picture of Charity as a girl whose rebellion against her repressive father, driven underground during her childhood years, had recently begun to manifest itself in much more devious and dangerous ways. He frowned. The trouble was, she just hadn’t looked the part. If she had been dressed differently, now …

  Inspiration came as he swung into his mother-in-law’s drive. Of course!

  He cut the engine and the dense, country silence enfolded him. He sat for a few minutes, thinking. If he were right, it would explain so much—how Charity had so completely hoodwinked her parents, for example, and why she had called first at Veronica’s house, instead of going straight home from the station …

  Yes, it all made sense.

  Why on earth hadn’t he seen it before?

  12

  Thanet slammed the receiver down in frustration. He’d already tried twice to get through to Joan earlier on this evening, before leaving for Veronica’s house.

  ‘No luck?’ His mother-in-law had just come into the room with two cups of tea balanced on a tray.

  ‘Still out.’ Thanet sat down heavily on the settee and essayed a smile as he accepted the tea. He didn’t feel in the least like smiling. A quarter to eleven and Joan was still out, after saying she’d be in all evening. Where the hell was she?

  It was above all at times like this, when he had had a demanding day and was in need of the solace which she had never failed to give, that the fear of losing her—or perhaps having already lost her—surfaced most strongly. They’d known that this time apart would be difficult, of course, and had both been aware that it would be harder for Thanet and the children than for her. She would be working towards a goal, would be expanding her knowledge and experience, breaking new ground all the time, whereas he would remain in the same situation, conscious only of his sense of loss, of the yawning gap left by her absence.