by Alice Castle
As usual, she wondered briefly if she needed to bring York up to speed. But, after their long talk this afternoon, she was more convinced than ever that York’s heart wasn’t really in finding a solution. He was a pragmatist, and a policeman. He had to work within the constraints of the system. She, on the other hand, was consumed by curiosity, and more than capable (or so she felt, after this afternoon’s revelation) of finding out all she needed to know on her own.
She quickly rang Katie, just to check all was well with Ben and Charles. ‘Yep, looks like they’ve had a good day,’ her friend replied cheerfully. ‘But you won’t like this, they’ve been given another project to do.’
Beth groaned down the phone. ‘It’s only been two minutes since the last one, those blimmin’ dinosaurs,’ she said.
‘Don’t tell me, tell the silly school. Anyway, you’ll love this, they’ve only got to make the planets. Again!’
‘No! At least we know what to do this time, though.’ Beth remembered only too well her last attempt to get Ben interested in modelling the solar system. As usual, he had been in denial about the whole business until the night before it was due in. Then Beth had been up till 1 in the morning, splotching blue paint onto a green furry tennis ball and hoping the result would pass muster as the earth. It didn’t.
As she saw Ben’s friends bringing in entire galaxies the next day, she cursed for the umpteenth time the fact that other Dulwich mothers had too little to do and too much time to do it in. This time, she’d buy a packet of balloons and do the whole thing properly, with papier mache and everything. Really, she would.
‘You know what would make a fortune round here? A company specialising in doing kids’ school projects. You’d just email them and the next day they’d send round the entire Milky Way made out of yoghurt pots,’ said Beth.
‘Brilliant idea. Slightly missing the point about getting the kids interested in making stuff, but otherwise a sure-fire winner,’ said Katie.
‘Oh, come on, don’t pretend anyone’s kids are making these things. Do you seriously think Belinda McKenzie’s lot have ever been anywhere near paint?’ Belinda McKenzie was famous for rigorously quizzing au pairs on their crafting skills before hiring. Creative talent, and the type of leaden looks that posed absolutely no temptation to Belinda’s erring husband, Barty, were far more important to Belinda than any interest in children. One of her hirelings had been so unfortunate of face that both dogs had taken one look and scarpered. But the girl was a genius with crepe paper, and stayed two years before decamping with the physics tutor.
‘Fair point,’ chuckled Katie. ‘Just got home. I’ll feed them, and see you later?’
‘Thank you so much, Katie, you’re a star. I’ve just got to follow something up with Mrs Jenkins… be right over when I’ve finished.’
‘Her again? Do you have to? According to Judith Seasons, she’s taking the death really badly. She’s hardly been outside her front door since it happened. And she’s completely let her yoga slip.’
‘Must be serious,’ said Beth, mentally rolling her eyes. Katie was wonderful but she was obsessed with yoga. A normal person missing an exercise class was perfectly understandable. For a grieving widow, surely it was only to be expected? Katie, though, marked it down as a sign of imminent collapse. ‘See you soon.’
Beth picked up her pace a little as she walked the short distance to Gilkes Place, hoping against hope that Mrs Jenkins would be in. She wasn’t sure what the woman’s teaching hours were – apart from the Thursday when she was at the Primary with Ben and other reluctant readers in his year – though she was still on leave of absence, as far as Beth knew. But if she was shunning yoga, maybe she was at home. She crossed her fingers.
As she walked up the path, Beth noticed a few little changes since her last visit. The recycling tub had been left out in the garden, though collection day had come and gone, and the lid was askew. Not very Dulwich. And, if she wasn’t imagining it, the crazy paving of the path to the front door had sprouted a few weeds. Like errantly bushy eyebrows on an otherwise carefully made-up face, they were a jarring note.
Beth rang the bell, peering at the frosted, textured glass in the pillar box red door. Within, all was dark, distorted, quiet. She was about to turn away, with something like relief despite herself, when the door was yanked open.
There stood Mrs Jenkins, her stolid, tubular body clad today in comforting dusty blue shades – a floral jersey dress with a droopy cardigan over the top. It was the sort of fashion favoured by women who had given up, Beth thought privately, but it was neat and utterly inoffensive.
‘It’s you again. You’d better come in,’ said Mrs Jenkins.
Beth was surprised. She’d expected that she’d have to come up with some sort of story to get herself past the front door. She didn’t seem to be improving at all in making these up, so Mrs Jenkins’ relatively warm welcome was a relief.
Wordlessly, Beth followed her hostess. She’d thought they’d make for the dark and somewhat oppressive kitchen, but instead they veered off towards a sitting room which also opened off the square hall. It was patterned in a William Morris print, which she recognised as the heavily ornate ‘Lily Green’. It amused her that Morris, a thoroughgoing firebrand in his time who had yearned for revolution, had become the middle classes’ go-to wallpaper designer. Patterns which had been cutting edge in his day were now safely classic.
Here, all four walls were papered with wildly interlocking lillies and tulips, with tendrils of foliage curling about them in a restless dance. The effect was claustrophobic in the extreme. Floor-length, forest green velvet curtains, drawn tightly against the light, made the room even more of a dark jungle. Ruth snapped on a central light, its shade patterned to match the walls, but it was one of those eco bulbs which gave off about as much wattage as a birthday cake candle.
Beth hadn’t realised what a cold colour green could be. Usually, she thought of it as warm and welcoming. Here, despite the hectic fecundity of the wallpaper, the green carpet suggested a frozen pond, the pictures on the walls were uninspiring botanical prints, and even the books in two bookcases looked unloved and untouched.
Ruth Jenkins gestured to one of the hard-looking Chesterfield sofas, arranged around an empty fireplace. Beth perched on the edge, the shiny leather threatening to slide her off and squeaking rudely whenever she moved. Ben would have laughed himself silly, she thought. But she bet no-one had ever giggled at such noises here.
‘So, you’ve found out, I suppose,’ the woman intoned quietly.
Beth didn’t know what to say. Should she pretend she knew what Ruth Jenkins was talking about, to decoy her into saying more? Or should she admit ignorance, and try and get her to explain?
Before she could decide on an approach, her phone pinged. Normally, she would have ignored it. But this could help her play for time. ‘So sorry, I must get this,’ she murmured. Ruth Jenkins tutted loudly, no doubt having all her prejudices about Beth’s phone-obsessed generation confirmed.
Beth fumbled around in her bag, drew out the phone and peered at the screen. Just a text from Katie saying they were fine and eating fish fingers. Except, knowing Katie, they weren’t really fish fingers, but home-prepared fish goujons lovingly hand-breaded to look like the cheap neon supermarket stuff.
She was just composing a reply when a huge weight thundered onto the shiny glass coffee table in front of her, splintering it completely. Her phone flew out of her hand in shock, and dropped to the floor with a thud, bouncing under the sofa where it lay, neglected. She looked up into Mrs Jenkins’ triumphant, mocking face, her homely features distorted with hatred.
‘What do you think that is, then?’ Mrs Jenkins hissed.
‘What? What are you doing?’ shrieked Beth, frantically brushing her fringe out of her eyes and off her forehead, suddenly hot. Her eyes were wide with shock. The object seemed to be a trophy of some sort, complete with a heavy marble base which had completely shattered the table. ‘Your table…�
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‘Do you think I care about the table? When I’ve found out what he was up to?’
‘He? You mean… your husband?’
‘Yes. That swine. That’s his poker trophy, there. I should have bashed his head in with that, instead of…’
‘Instead of… what?’ Beth prompted. Mrs Jenkins looked at her and shook her head, suddenly subsiding into one of the chairs. It squeaked like Beth’s had, but no-one was smiling now.
‘Didn’t you know about the poker? Is that why you’re angry?’ said Beth, searching to make sense of this violent turn of events.
‘Of course, I knew about it! He used to play for a club down in Eltham, that’s how he won that blessed lump of a cup I’ve had to dust all these years. Then he started playing in secret, up at the school.’
‘He thought I didn’t know about his stupid sneaky games. Well, I knew, but I didn’t care. Anything that got him out of the house, away from me, was fine. I didn’t even care about his affair with Judith, that bitch.’
‘Were they definitely… an item?’ said Beth. ‘That must have been upsetting for you.’
‘Upsetting? Him inflicting his… ways on someone else? I was glad.’ Mrs Jenkins’ eyes, that Beth had once thought kindly, glittered coldly.
“The only thing I hated about that sordid business was the fact that Judith pitied me. She thought she had some great secret, had one over on me because she was sleeping with my husband. Little did she know that I set the whole thing up. I knew he’d be keen, not because he found her attractive – she was about 50 years older than he liked them – but because he hated her husband.’
‘Tom Seasons? The Bursar?’ Ruth Jenkins was so deep in her story that she twitched her head at Beth’s interruption. Beth hoped she hadn’t destroyed the woman’s train of thought. But then Mrs Jenkins seemed to turn her gaze inward again, and she went on.
‘He hated Tom Seasons. Tom was everything he wasn’t – outgoing, good company… normal. Alan was a horrible little pervert, and he knew it himself.’
‘Why did you marry him?’ Beth couldn’t resist asking.
‘I was stupid. I wanted to get away from my own home. I hardly knew him, I had no idea what he was like, what his tastes were – and at the time I was young. He liked them young,’ she said heavily. ‘Of course, I aged. But then we had Rachel.’ Mrs Jenkins picked up the poker trophy again from the wreckage of the coffee table, seemingly oblivious to the danger from all the shards of glass, and suddenly hurled it at the windows beyond the heavy curtains. Beth heard the crack of the glass, muffled by the fabric. The trophy bounced off the heavy velvet and came to rest on the floor.
‘Did you know… what was going on?’ Beth asked tentatively.
‘I did… and I didn’t,’ said Ruth Jenkins, and Beth could feel the pain of her honesty. ‘I suppose the truth is that I didn’t want to know. I didn’t want the burden of having to do something about it. If I pretended nothing was going on, then everything could carry on. It was too difficult.’
‘But it was your daughter,’ said Beth.
‘She never loved me. We never got on, never saw eye-to-eye. When I had a daughter, when she was first born, my dearest wish was for us to be friends. But we never had that bond,’ said Mrs Jenkins, deep in self-pity now. Somehow, in her head, her child had failed in her responsibility to befriend her mother. She absolved herself entirely of any duty she might have had to love the child first, and show her by example how to build bridges. Rachel had paid a high price for not having a better relationship with this woman, thought Beth with a shudder.
‘Was that why you… turned a blind eye?’ asked Beth gently.
‘I didn’t know. I had no idea,’ said Mrs Jenkins, shaking her head rigorously.
Beth stared in disbelief. It wasn’t the story the woman had told her with her own mouth just two minutes ago. But it was the story she wanted to believe. Beth looked around. The jungle pattern of the walls seemed to close in on her. The weight of secrets in the house pressed in on them both.
‘So, what happened? What went on?’ Beth probed.
‘It was Ellen,’ said Mrs Jenkins starkly.
Beth sat upright with a jolt. She had nearly forgotten little Ellen, with the shiny hair and open smile. She was Rachel’s daughter, and looked like a miniature, more joyful version of her mother.
She must have been a temptation beyond words to Dr Alan Jenkins.
Yes, she was his own grand-daughter. But if that hadn’t stopped him with his daughter, why would it matter now? In fact, with another generation as a buffer between them, he would have found it easier, not more difficult, to start his horrible games.
Beth swallowed. She didn’t want to ask the question, but she felt she must.
‘Did he… touch her?’
Ruth Jenkins seemed to crumple in the solid, unyielding chair. Her body, already soft, sagged in on itself like undercooked dough. ‘He’d started to look. I hadn’t known for sure with Rachel.’ She risked a quick look at Beth, to see if she would contradict her. Beth decided to remain silent. ‘But I knew what that look meant. The glances he’d give her… it was like his hands running right up your legs. It was horrible. He used to give me that look when we were first married, and it always meant he wanted to get me alone and… well, you know. When I first saw him look at Ellen like that, I just froze. I didn’t know what to do.’
‘You could have stopped her coming to the house. You could have forbidden him to see her,’ said Beth, thinking aloud more than anything. There were a hundred ways to stop child abuse. But they all started with recognising it existed.
She could see that Mrs Jenkins, who had based her whole life and her whole comfortable, Dulwich lifestyle around pretending nothing was going on in this house, was simply not able to confront her husband. If she spoke up now, she would have to acknowledge, finally, that she had once remained silent – and thrown her own daughter to the wolf.
Mrs Jenkins was twisting her hands restlessly in her lap, turning her wedding ring round and round on her finger, now and then covering her mouth with her fingers. She burst into speech.
‘But how could I say that? He might not have meant… anything by it. And then what would I have said?’
‘If you admitted you knew what that look meant, then you’d be saying you were aware of what happened to Rachel,’ said Beth quietly.
‘And I didn’t know! I didn’t! But I had to make sure it didn’t happen to Ellen.’
Beth was beginning to see the many traps that Ruth Jenkins had made for herself. Turning a blind eye to her husband’s activities, sacrificing her daughter for peace of mind and the family’s reputation, had already exacted a heavy toll. Now she had got herself into the position where speaking plainly to her husband was more difficult, socially, than murdering him.
It was a perfect Dulwich predicament. Mrs Jenkins had had to stop her husband, before he turned her grand-daughter into his next victim. Rather than air the decades of hurt and horror which swirled around this house, she had decided quite simply to shut the whole thing down forever.
‘So how did you do it?’ asked Beth.
Mrs Jenkins glanced up at Beth for a moment, then went back to twisting her hands on her lap, though this time there was a reminiscent smile playing at the corners of her mouth.
‘It was so simple. I went to the Village School for the meeting, then, instead of meeting that bitch Judith for yoga, I went to the school. They’re used to seeing me there. I taught literacy there for a while before changing to the Primary. And I pick Ellen up from school when Rachel’s between au pairs. They know me,’ she added simply.
‘I took my washing-up gloves in my handbag, and a knife from the kitchen. It’s the one I use for peeling fruit.’ Beth remembered seeing the sharp little knife on the draining board, the first time she’d been here. The murder weapon had been right there, under her nose, all along.
‘I’ve watched all those detective shows on TV for years. I know all about CCTV footag
e, so I came through the playing fields. The groundsmen were on a tea break. I knew Alan would be round by the bins at some point in the morning, he usually went there for a smoke. I was just lucky that he came out quite promptly. It must have been just after 9 when I stabbed him. He was surprised to see me there. Not pleased, but surprised enough to come right up to me. Normally, he wouldn’t come within three feet of me any more; he thought old women were revolting. He only made an exception for Judith because he liked humiliating her husband so much. God knows how he made himself perform.’
Beth stared in horror at Ruth Jenkins, then shook her head to clear it of any taint of Dr Jenkins’ sexual fantasies. Of all the places she did not want to go, that was now at the very top of the list. She concentrated instead on the older woman, who had a faraway look on her face.
‘What happened next?’
‘When Alan was close enough, I stuck the knife in. It wasn’t difficult. It just sank right through the skin, and all the way in, as though he was made of lard, the filthy pig. I think I might have struck a rib, there was a nasty grating sound, but I just angled the knife away from it, gave it a bit of a twist. It was all very neat, hardly any blood,’ Mrs Jenkins continued with gentle pride in her voice, as though she’d pulled off a rather clever feat of housekeeping.
‘I couldn’t believe I’d killed him, really. I don’t think he could believe it either. He had a really shocked look on his face,’ she said, with a grotesque, mischievous laugh. ‘He fell on his back between the bins.’
‘I carried on watching him for a while, then he started getting restless, moving his head from side to side as though he was going to talk. I just threw one of his handkerchiefs over his face. He’d dropped it on the floor when I stabbed him. He used to insist on me laundering those disgusting things, years after everyone else had moved to paper tissues. He was a revolting man. As soon as his face was covered up, he stopped moving. Like a parrot when you cover up its cage. I waited for a few minutes, then I went home.’