A Snapshot of Murder

by Frances Brody

  The sound of chanting floated across from the walled garden, reaching a crescendo, augmented by the howling of the bloodhound, joining in most plaintively.

  Harriet came back moments later. ‘I don’t want Sergeant Dog to think that howling is a good idea.’

  ‘It’s time that he went home, Harriet, and you must go with him. He can go to my mother at the weekend.’

  Sykes chipped in. ‘Mrs Sugden said the constable who brought him says he’s trained to be good with cats, so yours will be safe.’

  I smiled. ‘Sookie will soon put him in his place.’

  Harriet did not object. It is a habit of hers to seem deceptively quiescent, and then to come up with an alternative plan. ‘Do you know what I was thinking?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I don’t want to go until the murder has been solved.’

  ‘I think it might be solved, Harriet, only we won’t know for sure until much later, so really it’s time to go home. I’ll be coming back tomorrow.’

  ‘So it was Derek?’ Harriet’s mouth opened. ‘I know he was soft on Carine but …’

  I glanced at Sykes, urging him to say something. He left it to me.

  ‘Harriet, Derek will be released. He has his belongings with him because he thought he would go home on Sunday. He has been through a difficult ordeal so might you consider going with Mr Sykes to meet him at Keighley police station and see him onto the train?’

  She thought for a moment, and gave a sigh that seemed far too old for her. ‘I will meet him, just because if that were me, I’d want someone to meet me and go with me to the station. But do you know what?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Derek wouldn’t do the same for me. He’s too selfish. He only thinks of what great things he’ll do.’

  ‘You could be right, Harriet.’

  ‘I thought he used to walk me home from the pictures because he liked me, but he only wanted to hear what I had to say. I heard him talking to Rita about Rin Tin Tin. He was saying exactly what I’d said to him, same words, everything.’

  ‘Well then you’re right about him. He’s older than you, but you are more grown up, and kind. You’ll be doing the right thing. That’s what’s important.’

  I waited. I knew that she had another question.

  Harriet was thinking. It took her a moment to speak. ‘Edward has gone. Rita is here. No one is mentioning the camper. Derek is to be set free. Who did it? Did Mr Murchison stab himself?’

  ‘No.’

  Sykes moved to go. ‘I’ll just check on the car and bring it along. Harriet, you might need to ask Elisa for a dish, and a bottle of water, in case we have to stop on the way back for the dog.’

  Harriet stared at me. ‘You’re not saying it’s Carine?’

  ‘We can’t know for sure, but that is a possibility.’

  She did not seem as surprised as I expected her to be. ‘When I looked at Carine on the train, pretending to be asleep, and she reminded me of that doll in the County Arcade, I thought that she looked – I don’t know, too good to be true, but I never thought –’

  ‘Go get that water.’

  Sykes helped the dog into the dickey seat. Sergeant sat still for half a minute and then jumped out and ran to me. ‘It’s all right, Sergeant. Harriet is coming.’

  She appeared a few moments later, carrying a bottle of water and an enamel pie dish. ‘I hope he won’t be too disappointed when we take him home. Life won’t always be so exciting for him.’

  ‘Harriet, don’t forget that he is not our dog.’

  ‘He probably is ours. I forgot to tell you. I saw Auntie Ginny and Uncle when I was taking him for a walk. They’re not moving to the country. Uncle won’t be retiring. They won’t be buying the house from Mr and Mrs Porter.’

  ‘Even if you’re right, that doesn’t mean Mother won’t have the dog.’

  ‘I told her he pulls. I told her he’d break her arm. Besides, Sergeant Dog might want to have a say in the matter. He might decide that we’re his home.’

  Sykes once more helped the dog into the dickey seat. He climbed in and started the car. ‘Right then – all on board!’

  Harriet got into the passenger seat. She wanted one more word. ‘There is a possibility for Carine, isn’t there? That the worst won’t happen to her? I do so like Carine.’

  ‘Everyone does, Harriet, and there are always possibilities.’

  I waved them off. She called, ‘Say goodbye to Rita for me.’

  Rita came from the walled garden, just in time to wave. She carried sprigs of lavender and handed one to me. The scent of lavender makes it hard to imagine that anything could be amiss in the world. I wondered how Carine would survive without flowers.

  Rita and I sat by the fire in the main hall. It was not much of a fire, there only to keep something burning in the hearth. No one troubled to mend it. One often has a niggling doubt, but not this time. Carine had murdered Tobias. I could understand why. In some ways it must have seemed a perfectly reasonable act. He had married her under false pretences. She was pregnant by another man. He was having her followed. She was an attractive woman, with a good business. Perhaps she wanted to be a widow, with her child, a girl who might walk with her on Woodhouse Moor and sit for a photograph as she had done with her own mother.

  Who was I to stand in the way of Carine’s dreams?

  The answer looked back at me from the fire. Murder is the most appalling of crimes, and yet there may be something worse. That something would be to watch another person, an innocent person, pay the price. Carine would have let Derek take the blame. Perhaps she thought someone else would kill Tobias, one of the Vareys, perhaps. Or he might have met with an ‘accident’ while walking on some precipitous path.

  Elisa began to clear away the dishes. ‘Mr Charles of Scotland Yard is here. He wants to speak to all of us. I’ll show him in, will I?’

  She asked us, her paying guests, for permission.

  Of course, he needed no permission, and she did not need to ask. The evening teemed with courtesies, as we tiptoed around each other, each with a particular slice of guilt.

  Marcus came in, hat in hand.

  ‘I’m here as a courtesy, ladies. Miss Varey, would you please ask your mother to come in? It is better that you hear the news from me, rather than picking up rumours from special constables.’

  ‘We already know,’ Rita said. ‘You are putting Carine before the bench tomorrow. It is the most appalling lie and it will be shown up as such. Tell him, Kate.’

  ‘Let Mr Charles speak, Rita.’

  ‘We’ll wait until Mrs and Miss Varey can join us. They have a right to hear.’

  Mrs Varey walked with a stick. We heard her tap-tapping across the corridor from the kitchen.

  Marcus waited until the Vareys were seated.

  ‘I will be brief. Mrs Murchison will appear before the Keighley magistrates tomorrow. She has been charged with the murder of Tobias Murchison. Mrs Murchison is represented by a solicitor who will provide her defence. The expected outcome for tomorrow is that she will be remanded in custody until the next session of the assizes.’

  ‘On what evidence?’ Rita came to her feet. ‘She wasn’t even there.’

  Marcus ignored her. ‘On behalf of Scotland Yard, I thank you for your co-operation. I extend condolences for the loss of Mr Murchison.’

  ‘Where will you take her?’ Rita demanded.

  ‘That I can’t say.’ Marcus put on his hat and wished us good evening.

  Mrs Varey, leaving her stick hooked onto the chair back, made her way into the family parlour. ‘Good riddance to him and his condolences.’

  Elisa went to sit beside Rita on the sofa.

  Rita glared at me. ‘Traitor! You think that by finding a solicitor, you let yourself off the hook.’

  More than anything else, I wanted to be away from them all.

  ‘I’m going to Stanbury, Elisa. Don’t lock me out.’

  ‘I won’t.’

  I left the hou
se and walked towards the track that led to the mill, undecided as to whether I should cut the corner and take the scenic route or – given the hour – walk by the road. The choice was made for me when I saw the constabulary car, parked by the reservoir.

  Marcus got out, and waited for me to reach him. ‘I thought you’d come in this direction. Sorry it’s been such an ordeal.’

  ‘I’m going to see my parents. My mother will be worrying.’

  ‘Let me drive you there. Mr Hood and Mr Porter were very helpful. I said I’d call to say goodbye.’

  We both got in the car. He did not start the engine, but lit a cigarette and offered it to me. I don’t usually, but once in a while I smoke. This was one of those times.

  ‘You’re confident then?’

  ‘Yes, Kate. I’m confident that Carine is guilty.’

  ‘What was found in the police house garden?’

  ‘A kitchen knife and a pair of blood-stained cream lace gloves. She was caught in the act of taking them from a bush near the gate. She had brought a pillowcase to wrap them in, and had a large handbag with her.’

  ‘She had that same handbag with her on Saturday.’ If Carine had left those articles where they were, and not taken the risk of trying to retrieve them, they may not have been found for months, perhaps never. But Carine dared not take that chance. ‘How did she manage to take the knife and the gloves with her from the parsonage to the police house without anyone in the Sunday school noticing, or Mrs Hudson noticing?’

  ‘There was a brown paper bag in the bush too, also stained with blood. Mrs Hudson left Carine by the gate while she took out her key. To hide the incriminating evidence was the act of a moment, less than a moment.’

  ‘So it was all planned.’

  ‘It was carefully planned.’

  ‘You know she is mentally imbalanced, Marcus?’

  ‘I thought that’s what you would say.’

  ‘Has she been told about the discovery of her mother’s body in the cellar?’

  ‘Her solicitor will tell her tomorrow, after the hearing in the magistrates’ court. What age did you say she was when her mother disappeared?’

  ‘Five.’

  A flock of starlings flew across the reservoir.

  When they were out of sight, Marcus said. ‘Her solicitor tried to prevent my charging her on the grounds that when Tobias fell, Carine was not there. You’d thought of that, hadn’t you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How did you know that she had done it?’

  I hesitated to tell him how the thought had come to me. I would have preferred it to be some brilliant deduction based on abstract logic. ‘Harriet told me something. It kept coming into my mind, and I couldn’t think why.’

  ‘What did she tell you?’

  ‘She lost her umbrella.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘She was in a crowded cinema queue. Everyone was pressed tightly together, people wanting to keep their place. The queue began to move. Queues have a life of their own. By the time she missed her umbrella, she had been swept along almost to the entrance of the cinema. I asked myself why that scene kept coming into my thoughts when there was so much else going on, matters of life and death.

  ‘On Saturday by the parsonage, waiting to see Lady Roberts present the deeds, we were in a similar position, barely able to move because of the crush as people pushed forward for a better view of the handover.

  ‘Carine missed the handover of the deeds because she had slipped away, saying she felt unwell. She spoke to Tobias before she went. He grunted, which was just like him, typical of his attitude. So at the time it didn’t occur to me that he should have answered, or gone with her.

  ‘Of course, he couldn’t have. Edward thought that Tobias bent his head for a kiss. His head fell forward because he was dying, from a knife wound to his heart. He remained standing because on all sides, he was surrounded by people whose attention was elsewhere, propping him up. I don’t know whether Carine pressed the catch on the swordstick that released the blade, or whether Tobias did that as he slumped forward.’

  ‘Slim, quick and charming Carine; people remembered making way for her.’

  ‘By the time I realised he was dead, Carine was in the Sunday school room, recuperating.’

  Marcus took my hand. ‘Did Tobias Murchison hurt you when he fell?’

  ‘Just start the car, Marcus. Let’s go say goodbye to the Porters.’

  Early on Tuesday morning, Elisa, Rita and I went to pick flowers. I chose rosebay willowherb, toadflax and cranesbill. Rita thought that a powerful scent would matter. She clipped wild thyme, basil and clover. Elisa wanted sunshine. She picked buttercups, daisies and marigolds that go to bed with the sun and rise with him weeping. We intended to be in the magistrates’ court and sit on the front row with flowers. Rita said that we must show Carine we care, and believe in her. It was Rita’s plan that we must rise at dawn and walk from Stanbury to Keighley in procession.

  Elisa and I persuaded her that the flowers would survive better if Timmy Preston took us into Haworth on the cart, for the train to Keighley.

  I was surprised to see Derek Blondell waiting to go into the courtroom.

  ‘I’m here for my paper. What’s been happening?’

  ‘Nothing.’ What a tiresome boy he is.

  Edward was already on the front row, holding a white rose. It was a pity he did not put such a rose in his lapel ten years ago, for a wedding day.

  Carine’s case was the first to be heard. I wanted to sink into the floor when Derek took out his notebook and pencil. Carine was brought in, handcuffed to a policewoman. She looked tired. No, she looked exhausted and ill.

  Carine looked at the five of us, four of us with flowers, and Derek with his notebook and pencil.

  The reliable and brilliant Mr Cohen was there. From the look on Carine’s face, it seemed to me that she had already been told about her mother’s body. Mr Cohen may have done that as a way of making sure she was too shocked to speak.

  Sometimes the most dramatic episodes are over in a few moments and that was true here. Carine had to confirm her name, her address and her date of birth, and listen to the charge. Mr Cohen ensured that nothing else was said.

  Derek suddenly called out, ‘Carine, have you heard about your mother?’

  She glanced at him with a look of confusion, as if he was someone from another world. Before the usher had time to reach him, Elisa pulled Derek from his seat by his lapels, turned him round and marched him out of the courtroom.

  Carine and her police escort were gone.

  Mr Cohen is a small man, full of movement. You might picture him on a starting line, waiting for the call: On your marks, Get set, Go!

  He spoke to me. ‘I’m going back to Leeds. Will you come with me in the car? I want you to meet the barrister. He’s here on another case.’

  Rita was crying. ‘I wanted to give her the flowers.’

  ‘Can Miss Rufus come too, Mr Cohen?’

  ‘Of course.’ He patted Rita’s arm. ‘We will act most diligently for your friend, Miss Rufus.’

  Marcus drew me to one side. ‘I’ll see you again soon, under different circumstances. Thanks to you and Sykes for your help.’

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  The Spiritual Quality of Light

  For several days after Carine had been transferred to prison to await trial, my dining room became the headquarters of her defence campaign. Mr Cohen decided that it would be better for him to come to the mountain of Headingley than to ask the mountain to come to him.

  It was an encouragement to him, and something of a relief to me, that the tradespeople and residents of Headingley, with the exception of Tobias’s cronies in the Oak, were generously contributing to raise funds for Carine’s defence. I permitted myself the venal thought that, after all, I may not need to sell the Rolls-Royce.

  Mr Cohen had begun to compile a dossier of his client’s accomplishments, qualities and respected place in the community. Mrs Va
rey and Elisa Varey gave a sworn statement that early on the morning of Saturday, 4 August, Mrs Murchison borrowed a knife to cut lavender. An accomplished water colourist, she intended to draw a still life. The Vareys told her to keep the knife by her, in case she saw some other plant or flower in the fields or on the moors that caught her eye. A perfectionist, Mrs Murchison wanted to capture the exact texture and shade of her subject.

  Carine’s school friend’s mother, Mrs Cleverdon, sat at my dining table admitting she had always worried about Carine after her mother disappeared. Carine had watched at the school gates, expecting her mother to come for her. For a year, she went on asking the other mothers if they had seen her. It was Mrs Cleverdon’s conviction that there had been foul play. Carine had nightmares. The Cleverdons took her on holiday to Scarborough when she was eight years old. The landlady at the boarding house banged on their door when Carine woke up screaming and calling, ‘Daddy, stop!’ The landlady misunderstood and the family came close to being ignominiously evicted in the middle of the night. Mrs Cleverdon believed that the landlady, if still alive, would remember that vivid incident. On return, Mr Cleverdon reported the matter to the police because there had always been suspicions surrounding the disappearance of Carine’s devoted mother, Geraldine Whitaker.

  It was through Mrs Cleverdon’s information that Carine’s aunt in Otley was tracked down. Carine had stayed with her during her breakdown at the beginning of the war. The doctor who treated her was prepared to testify to the nature of her breakdown. He had advised a longer period of rest and recuperation, but she took up work on the Leeds trams as soon as the call came for women workers.

  Mr Cohen was pleased with the witnesses Rita brought with her. The trusted pharmacist, Mr Norton, and the local solicitor, Mr Barrington, had each made a written note of what Carine said to them on the day of her father’s funeral.

  She feared her husband intended to kill her. She feared he intended to push her down the cellar steps to her death.

  When the men had gone, Mr Cohen slapped his palms together. ‘We have it: the father, no longer a threat; the husband to whom the fears are transferred. From the photographs I have seen, those two might have been father and son. Now there’s a thought. Certain qualified gentlemen who deal in matters of the mind will be most interested in this case.’