‘Pretty unbearable, was it?’
Pathetically grateful that Thanet appeared to understand, Jethro agreed that yes, it had been.
‘How unbearable?’ said Thanet softly. ‘Unbearable enough to make you want to take active measures to prevent it going on indefinitely? Unbearable enough to make you decide to kill her?’ But even as he spoke he was asking himself if Jethro would have had the guts.
Too late, Jethro saw the trap into which he had fallen. His one good eye gazed at Thanet with a fixed, frantic stare. Then, with a groan, he lowered his face into his hands, shaking his head from side to side in despair.
‘Well?’ said Thanet sternly. ‘I’m waiting.’
Still no reply.
Thanet stood up. ‘Very well, Mr Pritchard, if you can’t satisfy me as to your precise movements between 9.45 and 10.15 on Monday night, then I shall have to ask you to accompany me to the police station.’
Jethro lifted a face like a trapped rabbit’s. ‘No! Look, Inspector … If I … If I did tell you where I was, during that half an hour, can you give me your word my wife won’t find out?’
What was coming now? ‘That depends,’ said Thanet cautiously.
‘On what?’
‘On whether the information has any relevance to the case.’
‘Well, it hasn’t … Or at least, only for me … Look, sit down, Inspector, and I’ll tell you.’
Thanet sat.
Even now Jethro procrastinated. He blew his nose, made a show of putting his (now revolting) handkerchief away, sat up a little straighten.
Thanet folded his arms in an exaggerated gesture of patience.
‘My wife’d kill me if she knew … I was in a pub,’ said Jethro, with the air of someone confessing to a major crime. ‘With my son.’
So that was it. If Mrs Jethro knew that her husband had not only committed the sin of imbibing alcohol—and in a public house, at that—but had also been fraternising with the son who was ‘dead’ to her, Jethro’s life would be hell on earth.
‘You’d arranged to meet?’
Jethro shook his head. ‘I bumped into him soon after leaving the school. He was coming to look for me. He’d been to the house, apparently, but my wife … I keep on trying to patch things up between them, but it’s no good, she won’t listen.’
‘She told him where you were?’
‘Oh no. He just came along on the off-chance. Well, there aren’t many other places I could be. He knows I come here sometimes, even when the school is closed … just to keep an eye on things.’
Jethro’s eyes flickered around the tiny, shabby room with a proprietorial air. This, Thanet realised, was his sanctuary. Though it was still beyond him to understand how Jethro, with a conviction for indecent assault on an under-age girl, should have managed to get a job in a school in the first place. Perhaps he had somehow managed to suppress the information?
‘Which pub did you go to?’
‘The King’s Head. In Denholm Street. We usually do, when we have the chance.’
Well away from this area, then—presumably to minimise the chance of Mrs Jethro finding out. Did this mean that, if Jethro was telling the truth, he was in the clear?
Thanet’s brain moved into top gear, inventing and discarding one scenario after another—Jethro had met and killed Charity before meeting Caleb … after leaving him, later on … they had done it together …
This was the point at which Jethro dropped his bombshell.
‘We had a lift.’
‘A lift?’ An independent witness? ‘Who from?’
‘Friend of my son’s. Came by just after we met, gave us a lift over to the King’s Head. We all had a drink together. Then he ran me home. Nice young chap.’
‘Name?’
‘Pete.’
‘Pete who?’
Jethro shrugged. ‘Dunno. Never heard his last name. Caleb—my son—would know, I expect.’
‘You gave your son’s address to Sergeant Lineham?’
‘Yes.’
Thanet left in a dispirited mood. They’d check, of course, but it really did look as though that was the end of one of his most promising suspects. And he wasn’t getting very far with the others. In default of any shred of evidence against Mrs Jethro, Mrs Hodges or Veronica (whom Thanet had never really seriously considered anyway), it looked as though the list was now reduced to two. All he needed now was to find Carson’s report on his desk confirming that every moment of Mathews’ time was accounted for, from the moment he left the station to the time he arrived at Eileen’s house, and the case would come to a grinding halt.
Thanet tried to reassure himself that this had happened before, that it did not necessarily mean defeat, that sooner or later something would turn up, some scrap of information hitherto ignored or unavailable … Nevertheless, Thanet loathed finding himself in the position of having to rely on such stray crumbs. All the while there were leads to follow up it was possible to feel optimistic, but when there were none it was difficult not to sink into a mood when he could think only of all the unsolved murders still in the files of every police force in the country, and wonder if he himself was this time going to have to admit defeat.
But back at the office a surprise was awaiting him.
‘There’s a Mr Mathews and a Miss Chase to see you, sir. They’ve been waiting nearly an hour.’
A confession? Hope burgeoned once more.
‘Where are they?’
‘Interview room two.’
‘I’ll see them right away.’
19
Mathews had armoured himself in respectability: dark suit, white shirt, sober tie. Eileen, too, was formally dressed in a fawn linen suit, cream blouse with Peter Pan collar. They both stood up when Thanet came into the room.
‘What can I do for you?’
They glanced at each other. Eileen gave a small, encouraging nod.
Mathews’ Adam’s apple moved jerkily in his throat. ‘I … we thought we ought to clarify the position.’
‘Shall we sit down, then?’ Thanet checked: the policewoman who had come to take notes was ready.
‘I don’t know where to begin.’ Mathews looked helplessly at his fiancée.
Eileen edged her chair closer to his and took his hand. ‘Begin with why we decided to come,’ she said softly.
Mathews clutched her hand in both of his, like a talisman. ‘It’s just that … Well, we’re not exactly stupid, Inspector. We appreciate the position I’m in. We know that you’re bound to be looking for a man in connection with Charity’s death, in view of …’ His courage failed him and once again he cast a desperate glance at Eileen.
‘In view of the fact that she’d just had an abortion, Inspector,’ she said calmly. ‘As my fiancé said yesterday, we have no secrets from each other. It’s obvious that there would have been a post mortem and that in the circumstances you would look first for the father of that child.’
Mathews had gained strength from her intervention. ‘It was clear from your questions, yesterday, that I was high on your list of suspects, so we thought that if we came and told you everything, you would believe me when I said I was innocent.’
‘Of the murder, Leslie means.’ Eileen leaned forward in her chair, the protruberant eyes bulging earnestly. ‘You must believe that.’
So they had come to confess to the lesser crime in the hope of exonerating themselves from the greater. Well, we’ll see, thought Thanet.
‘What do you mean by “everything”?’ he said cautiously.
Mathews’ face was suddenly flooded with scarlet. ‘The child was mine.’
So, candidate number three for the paternity of Charity’s baby. Thanet wondered what Matthews would say, if he knew about the other two.
His confession made, Mathews suddenly became voluble. ‘As I said, it was obvious, yesterday, that you suspected the truth. And we thought it would only be a matter of time before you started to put pressure on me, ask for blood samples and so on. So, to be h
onest, we thought it would look better if I came in of my own free will and confessed—to being the baby’s father, that is. But the murder … Inspector, I swear I had absolutely nothing to do with that. When I heard … I just couldn’t believe it. And I’d travelled down from London with her, just before! I knew how bad it would look, so at first, I … we thought it would be best if we kept quiet.’
‘You helped Charity arrange for the abortion?’
‘No. She fixed it up herself, said she didn’t need any help from me. Only the money.’ Mathews released Eileen’s hand and wiped his palm on his trouser leg.
‘How much?’
‘Two hundred pounds.’
Charity, it seemed, had had a talent for capitalising on even the most unpromising situations. Just before Thanet left Jethro had told him that he, too, had given Charity two hundred pounds—money he had won betting and had tucked away ‘for a rainy day’, unknown to his wife. It was not surprising, then, that even after paying for the abortion Charity had had over a hundred and fifty pounds left—and there would have been more, Thanet reminded himself, if she had managed to squeeze money out of the young Welshman.
All in all, Thanet found that he was liking Charity less and less with every day that passed.
‘You know which clinic she went to?’
Mathews shook his head. ‘She wouldn’t tell me. Somewhere in London, that’s all.’
‘You arranged to meet on the train, on Monday night?’
‘No! That was pure chance, I swear. If I’d known she was catching that one … She was the last person in the world I wanted to see, I assure you. As I said, she got on after me, came and sat opposite.’
‘How did she seem?’
‘Very quiet. Tired, I thought. Well, that would be understandable …’
‘What did you talk about?’
‘We didn’t talk, not really. I just asked her if it had gone off all right and she said yes. She dozed, most of the way. To tell you the truth, I was relieved. It was a pretty embarrassing situation.’
‘I can imagine. And when you got to Sturrenden?’
‘As I told you, we parted outside the station. And that was the last I saw of her.’
‘Excuse me for a moment, will you?’
He left them exchanging an apprehensive look and hurried up to his room. Before proceeding he needed to find out if Carson’s report was in. He shuffled through the reports he had not yet had time to read that morning and found the one he sought. His eyes skimmed the single sheet of paper, his spirits plummeting.
The landlord of the Red Lion, in Cresset Street, remembered Mathews coming in soon after nine. He was firm on the time because his daughter, who helped behind the bar, had left for a disco at nine. The landlord hadn’t been too pleased to be left single-handed to cope with the Bank Holiday crowd. He’d first noticed Mathews just after she left. He remembered him partly because he was not a regular, partly because of the orange rucksack he carried, and partly because he had looked so depressed. He had spoken to no one, had consumed several whiskies and was walking unsteadily when he left at about ten to ten. At no point during the three-quarters of an hour had Mathews left the bar.
And Eileen’s mother, who could have no possible reason to lie, had been quite definite about the time of Mathews’s arrival that evening: ten o’clock. So Mathews simply wouldn’t have had time either to have followed Charity after leaving the station or to have intercepted her on her way home.
Thanet tossed the report on to the desk with an exclamation of disgust. There was no point in questioning Mathews any further at present, he might as well let the couple go. He was at the door when the phone rang. It was Lineham.
‘Any luck, Mike?’
‘I found him, sir. Caleb. Got his address from Jethro, as you suggested. Jethro’s got a lovely black eye, by the way.’
‘Yes, I know. I’ve seen it. What did Caleb say?’
‘No wonder Mrs Jethro Pritchard has disowned him. Guess what he does for a living?’
Thanet was in no mood for games. ‘Just tell me, Mike, will you?’
‘He’s a one-man band! You know, blow through a comb, play an accordion, clash the cymbals with a string attached to one foot …’
‘I get the picture.’
‘I rather liked him, actually.’
‘And, let me guess, he spent the relevant time having an innocent drink in the King’s Head with his daddy.’
‘That’s what Jethro says?’
‘Yes.’
‘So does Caleb. And I’m afraid it looks pretty cast-iron. There’s a third party who bears them out.’
‘The chap called Pete?’
‘Peter Andrews, yes. I’ve been to see him, too. He’s a mechanic at Potters, in Biddenden Way.’
‘Reliable, you think?’
‘I’d say so, yes. He says he picked them both up just along the road from the school, drove them to the King’s Head, had a drink with them and then took Jethro home—the old boy was getting a bit agitated in case his wife got wind of what he’d been up to. Andrews gave him a peppermint to suck and dropped him off at the corner of Gate Street, just before 10.15.’
‘When the girl next door saw him arrive home.’
‘He could easily have gone out again.’
‘There’s been no whisper of that, from anyone. Just a moment.’
A policewoman with a slip of paper in her hand had just come into the room, looking urgent.
‘A message for DS Lineham, sir. Switchboard said you were on the phone to him.’
‘Well?’
‘The hospital rang. His wife is asking for him.’
‘Thank you.’
Thanet relayed the information to Lineham, told him to take the rest of the day off and returned to interview room two.
‘Right, well I think that’s all, for the moment.’
Mathews and Eileen exchanged a disbelieving glance and then looked up at Thanet in mingled astonishment and hope.
Eileen was the first to find her voice. She came slowly to her feet as she said, ‘You mean, you believe us? That Leslie had nothing to do with Charity’s death?’
‘His alibi has been checked. That’s why I left you, just now. I thought that the report was probably in, but I hadn’t had time to look at it before talking to you earlier. Mr Mathews seems to be in the clear.’
Mathews stood up and he and Eileen looked at each other, transfigured by joy. Then Eileen turned back to Thanet, the radiance fading. ‘We needn’t have come and told you all this after all, then. I should have thought … we should have waited … how stupid of me. I panicked, I suppose.’
Thanet noted the varying pronouns with interest.
Mathews put an arm around her shoulders. ‘Never mind, darling. It doesn’t matter, now … except that … Inspector, may I ask …?’
‘Go ahead.’
‘Will there … In view of the fact that Charity is dead … will there be a prosecution?’
‘For unlawful intercourse, you mean? Extremely unlikely, I should think. After all, you can’t have a prosecution without evidence and as the main witness—as you so rightly point out—is dead, I can’t see that it would have much chance of success. And I imagine that you have learnt your lesson.’
‘Oh I have,’ breathed Mathews fervently. ‘Believe me, I have.’ And in a daze of incredulous happiness, they left.
Thanet watched them go, glad that this case had had at least one positive outcome. Mathews, he was convinced, was no pervert, had merely been too weak, too flattered, perhaps, to resist a young girl’s determined advances.
For by now Thanet believed that in the case of each of her ‘lovers’, it had been Charity who had initiated the affair. With young Williams she had failed to shape matters as she would have wished, he had been too experienced for her, but Mathews and Jethro had, he was sure, been as clay in her manipulating fingers.
Yes, he thought as he returned to his office, there was no doubt about it, his feelings towards th
e girl had undergone a considerable change since the moment he had first stumbled upon that pathetic figure huddled in the alley. Then, he had seen her as innocence destroyed, now he felt that despite her tender years she had herself been a destroyer, totally lacking in compassion, loyalty or finer moral feeling. He had no idea whether or not her awakened sexual appetite had truly been as gross as both Jethro and the young Welshman had claimed it to be, but in any case, Thanet was more certain than ever that Charity had consciously used that sexuality to strike back at her father in retaliation for the long years of tyranny.
How heady must her sense of power have been, while she explored its deadly potential. But unfortunately for her it proved to be a weapon she could not control. She had become pregnant. How had she reacted? Would she have been in despair, as most girls of her age in her position would have been? Probably not, Thanet thought. She would have been much more likely to have been furious with her own body, for having dared to betray her. In any case, she had not lost her head. She had been determined to turn even this situation to her own advantage.
But unwittingly she had set in motion the forces which would ultimately destroy her.
To Thanet’s mind, the saddest aspect of Charity’s life was that she had evidently come to believe that to possess power over others was the road to fulfilment. Lacking generosity of heart she had failed to inspire it in those around her, and she had died without ever having experienced the joy of giving and receiving in love. Of all the people he had met on this case, not one, apart from her parents, had expressed any affection for her and it seemed that no one else would mourn her passing.
But it was still Thanet’s task to find out who had killed her and he took a piece of paper and once more wrote down the names of his suspects. Then he sat brooding over it. Every one of these people had suffered because of Charity. The question was, which of them had decided to retaliate? And, even if he could find out, how could he prove it? It looked as though his two most likely candidates, Jethro and Mathews, were out of the running. With uninvolved third parties to support their stories, there didn’t seem to be much likelihood of proving their guilt. And all four women—Veronica, her mother, Eileen Chase and Mrs Jethro—well, so far there was not a single scrap of evidence to connect them with the crime.
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