The Marlow Murder Club

by Robert Thorogood

  Becks’ mouth opened in horror as she realised she was looking at her own tenth circle of hell. And then she sneezed. And sneezed again. She fished out a hankie from her sleeve and held it over her nose.

  ‘Why …?’ Becks started to ask, but abandoned hope of ever finishing her sentence.

  ‘I don’t like getting rid of newspapers.’

  ‘No shit, Sherlock,’ Suzie said. ‘But this isn’t just newspapers.’

  ‘There are local papers as well. And magazines. Periodicals have to be saved. And parish newsletters. Brochures of what’s coming up from the council.’

  ‘How far back …?’ Becks asked in wonder.

  ‘1970.’

  ‘Is that when your great aunt died?’ Suzie asked.

  ‘No. She died a few years later.’

  Suzie’s eyes narrowed.

  ‘When did she die?’

  ‘A bit after.’

  ‘What year?’

  ‘1976.’

  ‘So you’d been hoarding papers for six years already?’

  ‘Look,’ Judith said irritably, ‘we need to go through to the other room.’

  Becks was dismayed.

  ‘There’s another room?’

  ‘There are two other rooms. Come on.’

  Judith picked her way between the towers of papers, her two friends following.

  In the next room, each of the four walls were covered floor to ceiling in metal-framed bookcases, and every inch of shelf space was jammed thick with piles and piles of crisp-edged, yellowed newspapers.

  ‘This is where it all started,’ Judith said simply.

  ‘Back in 1970,’ Suzie said.

  Judith could see that Suzie’s instincts were telling her that the year 1970 was important.

  ‘So what exactly are we looking for?’ Becks asked.

  ‘Well, if Elliot’s removed a rowing photo from his wall, it must be because it’s incriminating. So I suggest we find out who Elliot Howard rowed with when he was younger.’

  ‘You think the answer will be in here?’ Becks asked, already overwhelmed by the thought.

  ‘Don’t worry, it’s not as bad as it sounds. Elliot is fifty-eight years old, which means he would have joined Sir William Borlase’s Grammar School in 1973, and would have left, aged eighteen, in 1980. And Borlase always row at the Marlow Town Regatta, and at Henley as well. They happen in June and July. So we’re only interested in checking the local papers for the months of June and July in the seven years between 1973 and 1980. It shouldn’t take too long.’

  ‘Are you saying that Stefan’s murder didn’t have anything to do with the Rothko on his wall?’ Becks asked. ‘He was killed because of something to do with rowing?’

  ‘Actually, I think I’ve worked out how the Rothko fits into all of this, seeing as the painting currently on Stefan’s wall is the real deal.’

  ‘You’ve worked out why Elliot stole the frame from the real painting?’

  ‘I think I have. But that’s just a sideshow for the moment. I’m convinced that if we can find who Elliot rowed with, we’ll finally work out why Stefan, Iqbal and Liz had to die.’

  Judith had said their task wouldn’t take long, but she was wrong. It turned out she couldn’t remember what system she’d used for storing local newspapers in the 1970s, although she was at pains to point out that there had been a system of some sort in the early days, unlike in the more recent decades. It seemed that each publication had its own stack, with the oldest papers on the very bottom, but the system was by no means thorough. It was only possible to say that there’d be a run of one local paper for a number of months, or even as long as a year if they were lucky, and then the stack would change, for some unknown reason, to a different local newspaper, or suddenly jump to a different year. All that seemed to be broadly true was that the newspapers on the bottom of piles tended to be older than the newspapers at the top of each pile. But there were hundreds of separate stacks of newspaper all squashed tight in the bookcases.

  Becks, for her part, struggled to batten down her panic as the dust swirled and settled in her hair, and on her clothes and her skin. But she made herself go through with it, and it was Becks who came up with the best system for working through the newspapers. She’d riffle the dry edges of a stack, trying to find the dates on the corners of each page. If they were from before June, she’d work upwards from that point and head downwards if the date was from after July. And once she found any newspapers that covered June or July, she’d oh-so-carefully prise them out from within the stack so they could then be searched more thoroughly.

  The good news was that Judith had been right when she’d predicted that each of the local newspapers covered the Henley and Marlow regattas in great detail. There were whole pages of photos and reports, and better than that, the Henley Advertiser ran a page that listed the results of every race. However, the paper merely recorded the names of the boats rather than the names of the crew who were rowing. So, ‘Borlase’s 1st VIII’ would be rowing against ‘Abingdon 1st VIII’, and while it might list that Borlase’s won the race while Abingdon went through to the repechage competition, it didn’t list the names of the crew.

  After two hours of searching, Judith threw her hands up in despair.

  ‘Please don’t send any more dust into the air,’ a grime-smeared Becks begged.

  ‘But it’s useless! We’ll never find what we’re looking for.’

  ‘If it’s here, we will,’ Becks said.

  ‘But it’s not here, is it?’

  ‘We just have to keep looking.’

  Judith knew that Becks was right. There was still a chance they’d find Elliot’s grinning face in a photo somewhere, and with it, the names of the other people in the photo, but it seemed such a long shot.

  ‘And you could actually try helping, Suzie,’ Judith said, taking her frustration out on her friend.

  ‘What’s that?’ Suzie said, looking up from the newspaper in her hands.

  ‘Only I can’t help noticing that you’ve not found a single article in all this time.’

  Suzie looked as though she wasn’t sure how to respond, but then she brandished the newspaper she was holding.

  ‘I wouldn’t say I’ve found nothing.’

  She was holding a truly ancient copy of the Bucks Free Press, and it was turned to one of the inner pages that had a headline that screamed ‘MARLOW WOMAN’S GREEK TRAGEDY’.

  Underneath the headline there was a large black-and-white photo of a much younger Judith Potts.

  Chapter 36

  ‘Where did you find that?’ Judith asked, standing quite still.

  ‘It’s your wedding ring,’ Suzie said.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘You said your husband was a bully. That he was violent. But, all these years later, you’re still wearing your wedding ring.’

  ‘That’s really none of your business.’

  ‘Because I know what it’s like to have a husband who lets you down, and I can tell you, I couldn’t wait to get rid of my rings. Sold them in town, spent the money on extra Christmas presents for the girls. But you’re still wearing yours.’

  ‘I told you, it’s to remind me of mistakes made.’

  ‘I know. That’s what you said, but that’s just weird. And every time the subject of your husband comes up, you always look guilty. So when you revealed you’ve been keeping all of the world’s newspapers since 1970, well, I put two and two together. 1970 was the year your husband died, wasn’t it?’

  ‘His name was Philippos.’

  ‘And for some reason you can’t let go. Which is why you still wear your ring, and why you’ve got this mad Aladdin’s cave of every newspaper that’s been published since then. And all I can think is, all of this is because you did wrong when he died. So I started looking. I reckoned I had to look at the very bottom of the bottom-most piles, and I’d find the newspaper that sparked all this off.

  ‘So I’ve been digging through every paper from 1970 I could
find. The Maidenhead Advertiser, Henley Advertiser, Windsor Echo, Marlow Free Press, Reading Evening Post. And then I found it.’

  Suzie handed the old article to Becks, who started reading it avidly.

  Judith was still rooted to the spot, but she could feel anger bubbling up inside her. This was why she didn’t let people into her house. It was why she kept these rooms behind lock and key. If people didn’t know anything about you, they couldn’t betray you, could they? And anyway, Judith knew that no one would understand that her need to keep the newspapers wasn’t based on any kind of a weakness on her part, it was simply a habit she’d got into. That’s all.

  At first, when she’d returned from Greece after Philippos’s funeral, she’d kept them because she needed to know the papers weren’t printing any more lies about her. And once she’d got into the routine, well, it was hard to know when to stop, wasn’t it? After a few weeks? Months? As far as Judith was concerned, it was entirely natural that collecting newspapers and other printed materials had evolved into becoming an end in itself. She found it comforting. Like the feeling of security you’d get in the old days from owning a full set of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. She had all local knowledge here in these three rooms.

  And it was useful, wasn’t it? After all, who’d have known in 1970 when she’d started out that, many decades later, she’d be using her archive to identify a potential murderer?

  ‘The article says someone else was on the boat at the time,’ Becks said, breaking into Judith’s reverie.

  ‘That’s what I noticed as well,’ Suzie said.

  ‘They were mistaken,’ Judith said, wanting to get her rebuttal in first.

  ‘Although I must say,’ Becks continued, ‘this sounds terrible. I had no idea you were interviewed by the police. That it was considered a suspicious death. It must have been horrible.’

  ‘Oh it was that, I can tell you. But it was me who insisted the police start investigating. Philippos was such a good sailor, you see. But they never found anything suspicious. In the end they ruled it was a tragic accident.’

  ‘Suzie’s right, though. It says here a witness on the shore saw Philippos on his boat with someone else.’

  ‘It says a witness thinks they saw someone else on the boat,’ Judith said testily. ‘It was a possible lead for a time. But the man on shore was old, and he wasn’t ever able to identify who this second person was, or even if it was definitely Philippos’s boat. It all fizzled out, sadly.’

  ‘Do you think your husband was with someone?’ Becks asked, and the tone of her voice made her subtext clear.

  ‘Do you mean, was he with his fancy lady? I don’t know. I know he had one at the time. He always did. But I doubt it. Only Philippos’s body was ever found. If he’d been with someone, her body would have been found as well. Or been reported as missing. Now I think we’re done here, don’t you? I don’t like coming in here at the best of times, and it’s clear we’re not going to find what we came here to find.’

  ‘We’ve not finished,’ Becks said.

  ‘I think it’s time you both left.’

  Becks looked as though she’d been slapped in the face.

  ‘Come on, Judith,’ Suzie said. ‘There’s no need to get—’

  ‘No no,’ Judith said, interrupting, ‘it’s nothing to do with you, Suzie, I just don’t like coming in here. Too many memories. Too much history.’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ Becks said, putting the newspaper article down.

  ‘So if you could show yourselves out?’

  Suzie and Becks stood in silence for a moment, but Becks recovered first.

  ‘Come on, Suzie, we should go,’ she said, and started to usher Suzie out of the room. ‘But Judith, if you need anything? Someone to talk to, or to get back to the case, give us a ring,’ Becks added as she paused in the doorway.

  Becks took in the calamity of mess, and the woman who stood alone in the middle of it. Judith had picked up the old newspaper article and was already lost in it.

  Becks and Suzie let themselves out.

  Chapter 37

  Judith couldn’t tear her eyes from the article, and the photo of her that stared out at her from 1970. She’d been twenty-seven years old, and she remembered the day the photo was taken as though it were yesterday. It had been snapped on the beach at Paleokastritsa, after she and Philippos had had lunch. Despite the awfulness of her life at the time, Judith had been unaccountably happy that day. It had been so sunny, the setting so beautiful, and she remembered the early afternoon breeze on the beach that brought the woody barbecue smells of the café mixed with the sweet scent of the rosemary bushes that grew around the bay.

  Judith believed that even though she was an old-age pensioner, she still had beauty. But it was a feeling she now carried inside her, rather than being any kind of outward appearance. As she’d got older, her beauty had retreated from her skin and become part of what she thought of as her soul. But she couldn’t help looking at the woman in the photo and noting how very glossy her hair was. How her skin seemed to glow with light, even in the black-and-white photo, and how bloody thin she’d been.

  And it was as she remembered how she’d looked when she was in her twenties, that Judith worked out the answer.

  The notion popped into her head entirely unbidden. Unwished for. One moment the answer to the puzzle didn’t exist, and in the next moment, it did.

  Judith was stunned. Was it really that simple?

  And then she felt a sudden rush of adrenaline as she realised the significance of a comment that Andy Bishop had made to Becks towards the end of their walk together.

  Judith let the newspaper in her hand drop to the floor, left the room and locked the door behind her. Because her breakthrough was only one piece of the jigsaw puzzle, wasn’t it? There was still a piece missing. But this time she felt confident she’d find it. She knew the shape of the piece she was looking for, even if she didn’t yet know what it was.

  In her mind, Judith started going through all of the information she’d learned in the police station: Iqbal’s dreams to buy a boat; the testimony from Fred the postie that Stefan was a crook; the fact that Liz had got a rogue vet to kill her otherwise healthy dog. But no matter how much she tried, the answer she was looking for didn’t jump out at her. She knew she’d know it when she saw it, she just had to keep going.

  So where else could she look?

  Judith got up her tablet computer and started checking through the history on her web browser, but that didn’t trigger any answers, either. But she knew she had to be methodical. So she went back to the very first web search she’d done after Stefan had died. It was the article on Stefan’s argument at Henley with Elliot Howard. She clicked the link and carefully read the article again, but the answer to the question she was asking wasn’t there. So she closed the web page down and reopened the next one in her history.

  As Judith worked forward in time in her web history, a calm descended on her, the same calm she felt when she was compiling a crossword. She’d open a web page, read it carefully, and then close it down and open another.

  It took an effort of will to stay focused, but she kept plodding, knowing she’d get there if she was patient.

  And then she found it.

  As fate would have it, it was the most recent web page she’d visited, and therefore the very last page she could check.

  It was the article in the Marlow Free Press about Stefan Dunwoody’s riverside house. Judith couldn’t believe that she’d read it so recently and the salient fact from it hadn’t registered at the time. But since seeing the old photograph of herself, and remembering Becks’ comment, she now read it again with fresh understanding.

  Mr Dunwoody laughs when I ask him why he bought a house on the River Thames. ‘I can’t swim and I’ve always hated everything to do with rowing, so you’d think it was strange me buying an old watermill. But I love the wildlife you get on the river. As long as you never make me get in a boat, I’m happy.’

/>   It was so obvious! These few sentences revealed who’d killed Stefan Dunwoody.

  And finally everything made sense to Judith. Why you’d want to kill Stefan Dunwoody, and then Iqbal Kassam and Liz Curtis. And why you’d use a Second World War Luger to do it. And why the killer then left a Masonic medallion behind at the scene of each murder.

  Judith was so deep in thought that it took her a while to realise her phone was ringing.

  She finally registered the sound and picked up the call.

  ‘Hello?’ she said into her phone.

  ‘What were you doing in my office today?’

  Judith’s blood chilled. It was Elliot Howard.

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘My wife told me you went into to my office when I wasn’t there. What were you doing?’

  ‘Where did you get my number from?’ Judith asked, trying to buy herself some time.

  ‘I know a lot about you, Judith Potts.’

  ‘You can’t call me on this number.’

  ‘And you can’t go into my office when I’m not there.’

  Judith’s mind was reeling, she didn’t know how to respond, so she lashed out.

  ‘I think you’ll find I can do what I like as long as you refuse to pay for cleaning my dress.’

  ‘You’re not still pretending I spilt wine on you, are you?’

  Judith knew her only option was to double down.

  ‘You know you did, and I’ve got the dress to prove it.’

  ‘Pathetic.’

  ‘And I’ll come and show you it, and then you’ll pay for it.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t think we’ll meet again.’

  Elliot was so casual in the way he said this that Judith was instantly alarmed.

  ‘You can’t possibly know that.’