‘I’ll be round the back, of course,’ she said.
As I walked up the street, my heart was pounding at what felt like double the usual rate, and I was suddenly as cold as if I’d plunged into icy water. It was possible, I told myself, that we were only a few minutes away from finding out why three of my family had died – and though there was a part of me which desperately wanted to know the answer, there was also a corner of my being which feared that perhaps the truth might be so horrendous that it would be better left hidden.
I reached number seventeen. The brickwork was eroded. The black paint on the front door was peeling. The faded curtains at the front window were tightly drawn. I didn’t know how much Paul Taylor was paying for his hiding place, but whatever it was, he was being cheated.
I knocked loudly on the front door and saw the curtains twitch. I knocked again. There was the sound of running footsteps in the hall. I bent down and opened the letterbox.
‘Be sensible, Paul,’ I shouted. ‘You know you’re going to have to talk to me sometime.’
The footsteps were getting fainter. I knocked a third time and wondered whether it was as easy to break down doors in real life as it always seemed to be in the Hollywood movies.
There were more footsteps – two sets – and the door swung open. Paul Taylor was standing there, bent forward. Behind him was Marie, with his arm in a lock. He looked like nothing so much as a terrified child, and I found it almost impossible to believe that this man, this pathetic wretch who Marie had rendered completely helpless, could be a killer – even a long-distance one.
‘You’ve no right to do this to me,’ Paul gasped.
‘No right!’ Marie said harshly. ‘You’re a fugitive from justice, sunshine. It’s you who doesn’t have any rights!’
‘If Marie releases you, do you promise not to try and make a break for it again?’ I asked.
Paul looked up at me with eyes which were filled with defeat. ‘What would be the point?’ he said. ‘I’ve nowhere left to run to.’
‘Why don’t you let him go?’ I suggested.
‘You come inside and close the door behind you first,’ Marie told me, maneuvering Paul a little further back down the hallway.
Once I was in the passage, Marie let go of her captive’s arm. Paul reached up with his left hand and massaged his shoulder.
‘You hurt me!’ he complained.
‘It’s your own fault – you shouldn’t have struggled so much,’ Marie said indifferently.
‘Shall we go into the lounge?’ I asked.
‘If that’s what you want to call it,’ Paul said bitterly.
When he led us into the room, I saw exactly what he meant. Apart from a three-piece suite which must have been old when my grandfather started making furniture, the room was bare.
‘Welcome to my humble home,’ Paul said, the bitterness still very much in evidence in his voice. ‘How did you find me?’
‘How do you think we found you?’ Marie asked.
‘Did Hugh Morgan sell me out?’
‘Of course,’ Marie said. ‘And he did it without a second’s hesitation. He doesn’t give a toss about you. Nobody does. Nobody wants to help you, either – except for us. And even our help is dependent on how cooperative you are.’
Paul sank heavily on to the sofa. A cloud of dust rose around him.
‘I suppose I should have expected it from Morgan,’ he said. ‘I had nothing left to give him. Perhaps I should have gone while I still had a little bit of money, but where would I have gone to?’
He looked tired, I thought, very, very tired. And much older than the last time I’d seen him.
‘Did you kill my brother?’ I asked.
He shook his head wearily. It was the gesture of a man who, having failed in his one brief dash for freedom, had finally given up hope and no longer cared what happened to him.
‘Say it!’ I demanded. ‘Tell me you didn’t kill my brother.’
‘I didn’t kill John. I didn’t kill any of them.’
‘Then who did?’
‘Lydia.’
‘You’re lying to me!’ I said angrily. ‘Maybe she was behind it all, but Lydia was in the Middleton Health Spa the night the car was tampered with. According to Chief Inspector Flint, she couldn’t have got out without being noticed. Besides, she called room service in the middle of the night, like she’d done all the other nights she’d stayed there.’
Paul shook his head again. ‘She called them all the other nights, but that night it was me.’
‘You’re saying you could imitate her voice well enough to fool a woman who’d probably heard it fifty times before?’
‘No, I couldn’t,’ Paul agreed. ‘But I didn’t need to. She’d left a tape with two messages on it. I played the first one – ordering the coffee – over the phone. And I played the second one from the bathroom, when room service arrived. Lydia said that was where she normally was when the coffee arrived, so it wouldn’t arouse any suspicion. And as for issuing orders, and then not waiting for a reply, she’d been doing that all week. I tell you, she planned it all out very carefully.’
Marie lit a cigarette. ‘Go back to the beginning,’ she ordered him.
‘You mean, when we first met?’
‘No, you bloody idiot!’ Marie said harshly. ‘I’m not interested in the whole of your nasty little affair. Just go back to the beginning of your visit to the Middleton Spa.’
Paul Taylor bowed his head. ‘It was Lydia who arranged it. She said we needed some time away, in order to talk things through, and I agreed because I didn’t want a scene.’
‘You didn’t want a scene?’ I said. ‘Lydia said that was what she was afraid of.’
‘Why should I have made a scene?’ Paul protested. ‘I was the one who was dropping her.’
‘I don’t believe you,’ I said. ‘Lydia told me she was dropping you because she felt guilty about having betrayed her husband – but why would you want to drop her?’
‘I wanted to end it because I’d realized I was in love with someone else,’ Paul said.
‘Who?’ I asked.
A look of total astonishment – which I’ll swear he couldn’t have faked – filled Paul’s face.
‘Don’t you know?’ he asked.
‘No, I don’t,’ I told him.
And then – in a flash – all the odd facts and unexplained events which had been floating around my head came together, and I did know.
‘Oh God, no!’ I moaned.
‘When exactly did you make your first visit to the spa?’ Marie asked crisply.
‘It was two days before the crash. That’s when I told her I was finishing with her.’
‘How did she take it?’
‘She was hysterical. She said she was going to kill herself.’
‘What did you do?’
‘I left.’
‘You didn’t think there was a chance she might kill herself?’
‘Not for a second. Lydia is as hard as nails. There’s nothing soft or vulnerable about her – and that’s why I could never make myself love her, however hard I tried.’
‘You went back to the spa the next day – the day before the crash,’ Marie said. ‘Why?’
‘She phoned me and said that if I’d just do one little thing for her, she’d let me go without any more trouble.’
‘And did she say that one little thing was to pretend to be her for the night?’ Marie asked.
‘Not on the phone – she didn’t explain it until we were up in her room and she’d shown me the tape recorder.’
‘Did she tell you why she wanted you to pretend to be her?’
‘No.’
‘And you didn’t ask her?’
‘I did ask her, yes, but all she’d say was that it was very important and she’d explain everything when she returned. I suppose the truth is that I wanted her off my back so badly that I’d have agreed to almost anything she asked – however crazy it seemed to me. Anyway, she took my car,
and left just after dinner, before the gates were closed.’
‘And did she explain everything to you when she got back?’ Marie asked.
‘Oh yes,’ Paul said, shaking his head in horror.
‘So tell us about it.’
‘She said beforehand she couldn’t return until about ten o’clock next morning, when she’d be able to slip in unnoticed in the middle of the traffic which was coming in to use the spa facilities. So until she got back, she said, I was to put a “Do not disturb” notice on the door, and stay in the room.’
‘And what did she do when she returned?’
‘She turned on the news channel on the television.’
Marie nodded, as if that had been what she’d expected him to say.
‘Did she explain why she’d developed this sudden interest in the news?’
‘No, she just said that I should just shut up and watch. So that’s what we did – sitting side by side. There was some international news first – a report on an earthquake somewhere, I think – and then the report on the crash in South Wales. There were pictures of the car. It looked a bloody mess. The police hadn’t released the names of the victims at that point, but they did say there’d been five people in the car, and three of them were dead. Lydia said, “Good, John’s bound to have been one of the fatalities, because he’ll have been the driver.” I didn’t know what she was talking about, so she explained it to me. She told me how she’d got into the garage, what she’d done to the hydraulics, and how she’d cut through the brake cable. “Most people would have made a mess of it,” she said, “but I knew just how far to cut so it would give way at the right time.” You should have seen her eyes. They were mad – completely mad!’
‘What happened next?’ Marie asked.
‘I still couldn’t accept it. I told her she couldn’t seriously expect me to believe that she’d deliberately set out to kill five people. She said that of course she hadn’t – that the only one she’d been interested in killing was John. She hadn’t even known there’d be five people in the car – there certainly shouldn’t have been.’ Paul Taylor shuddered. ‘As if her not knowing there’d be five of them made it better – as if she was only responsible for the death of the man she wanted to kill.’
‘Go on,’ Marie told him.
‘She said John’s death made her a very rich woman, and that now she’d got her hands on the money, I’d want to stay with her. I told her she was insane, and that I was going to the police. And her eyes turned colder than I’d ever have believed anybody’s could be. “You’d better not do that,” she said. She looked down at her handbag, which was on her knee. “I’ve got a gun in here”.’
‘Had she?’ Marie asked.
‘Yes, she had.’
‘And did she point it at you?’
‘No, I think she thought she’d done enough by letting me know she had it. But there were other things she did threaten me with.’
‘Like what?’
‘She pointed out that, after what I’d done for her the previous night, the police were bound to suspect I was involved in the murders. And even if they didn’t, I still wouldn’t be safe, because a rich woman like her could easily ensure that I had a nasty accident.’
‘Did you believe her?’ Marie said.
‘Oh God, yes!’ Paul said. ‘She killed three people without turning a hair. She wasn’t going to worry about having one more murdered.’ He gulped. ‘A second later, the coldness melted away, and she was stroking my hair. “We can’t get married right away,” she said. “But when a little time’s passed, it will be perfectly acceptable. And once we’re married, we’ll have a wonderful life. I’m a very important person in the village, you know. Everyone looks up to me.” He shook his head. ‘I think that’s really why she did it. Not so she could have me – although she did want me. Not for the money – though that was nice too. The main reason she killed John Conroy was in order to keep her position in the village.’
‘What did you say to her?’
‘I was half out of my mind with fear. If I’d told her I wasn’t going along with her scheme, she’d probably have killed me, right then and there. So I said I was sorry I’d been acting strangely, and it must just have been the shock. If only she’d told me beforehand, I said, I’d have been prepared. But now I could see how clever she’d been, and we would have a wonderful life together.’
‘And she bought it?’ Marie asked skeptically.
‘She must have done, or – I swear to you – she’d never have let me walk out of there.’
‘What excuse did you give for leaving?’
‘I said it wouldn’t look good if I was there when the police arrived to tell her that her husband was dead, so I’d go straight back up to Cheshire, and wait for her there.’
‘But, in fact, you went to the bank to draw out twenty thousand pounds, and then you went to see Hugh Morgan?’
‘He was the only person I could think of – because Lydia was right, you see. I couldn’t go to the police, could I?’
‘Maybe not then,’ Marie said. Her voice was more ragged and emotional than it had been earlier, and I understood, for the first time, that she’d been making a tremendous effort to keep control of herself. ‘No, maybe not then.’
‘When else could I have gone?’ Paul asked miserably.
I think he realized he’d made a mistake the moment the words were out of his mouth – realized it even before Marie grabbed him by the lapels of his jacket and hauled him to his feet.
Though he was taller than she was, he somehow seemed to look weak and puny when contrasted with her towering rage.
‘When else could you have gone?’ she demanded. ‘You could have gone when she first put forward her crazy plan. It should have been obvious why she needed an alibi – even to you. You could have prevented a tragedy if only you hadn’t been so gutless!’
‘If I’d known …’ Paul protested.
In one effortless movement, Marie released his lapels and delivered two whip-crack open-handed slaps which sent him reeling back on to the sofa.
Paul put his arms up to protect his face, but Marie had already flung herself on him, and was screaming, ‘Bastard! Bastard!’ and trying to claw his face away.
‘Marie!’ I shouted, but I don’t think she even heard me.
I grabbed her from behind and pulled her clear. She struggled for perhaps a second or two, then went limp and started to cry. I guided her over to one of the decrepit chairs, and gently lowered her into it. She buried her head in her hands and began to weep in earnest.
‘What is it, Marie?’ I asked softly. ‘Whatever made you lose control like that?’
‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ she said, between sobs. ‘I … don’t … want … to talk … about it.’
TWENTY-EIGHT
It was almost incredible, as I watched the way that Marie handled the Bristol rush hour traffic with such skill and expertise, to think that only an hour earlier, she’d been a blubbering wreck, but when she spoke now, her voice, still thick with the tears she’d shed, brought it all back.
‘What exactly is the deal that you’ve made with the police?’ she asked.
‘The Bristol police won’t announce they’ve got Paul Taylor in custody until tomorrow morning, and Owen Flint won’t arrest Lydia until I’m there to cushion Grandmother against the shock.’
‘And that’s why you’re going back to Cheshire, is it – to cushion your grandmother against the shock?’
‘Yes.’
‘But it’s not the only reason, is it, Rob?’
‘No,’ I agreed reluctantly.
‘So what other reason do you have?’
‘I want to talk to Lydia, too.’
‘But why – for God’s sake? What’s the point in putting yourself through all that when there’s no need to?’
‘There is a need to,’ I said. ‘I have to see for myself whether or not the woman who killed my father and brother really is a monster.’
/> ‘Let me answer that question for you, right now,’ Marie said. ‘If she’d killed for love – or even money – then perhaps you could understand what makes her mind tick. But you heard what Paul’s told you. She killed to avoid a scandal! And that’s simply not human.’
‘I still have to see for myself,’ I said.
Marie sighed. ‘Yes, I suppose you do.’
We had arrived at Temple Meads station, and Marie pulled up close to the main entrance.
‘Come back to Cheshire with me,’ I pleaded.
‘I can’t do that,’ she said. ‘Not in the shape I’m in.’
‘We’re both in bad shape,’ I argued – though I still had no idea why the encounter with Paul Taylor should have had such an effect on her. ‘Couldn’t we try to get through this thing together?’
‘I don’t work that way, Rob,’ Marie told me. ‘I have to sort things out on my own.’
‘If you really loved me, like you said you did …’
She raised a hand to cut me off. ‘Please, not now, Rob. It’s not the right time.’
‘It’s never the right time for you,’ I said angrily. ‘And it never will be the right time.’
She looked down at her watch. ‘If you don’t go right away, you’ll miss your train.’
‘To hell with my train!’
‘Your grandmother needs you. And you’ve only got a few hours to get her used to the idea that her two sons and one of her grandsons were killed by a member of the family.’
I reached for the door handle. ‘So what will you do now?’ I asked. ‘Go back to Oxford?’
‘Perhaps. I haven’t made my mind up yet.’
‘And when will I see you again?’ I asked imploringly. ‘I really need to know.’
Marie shrugged her shoulders. ‘Soon.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘A couple of weeks. Maybe a little longer.’
‘And what if I need to contact you in the meantime?’
She lit a cigarette. ‘You won’t be able to.’
There was so much to say, and yet, with Marie’s secrets like a huge barrier between us, there was nothing to say at all. I slammed the car door and watched her drive away.
And as I stood there, I remembered the day, so many years ago now, when I had stood outside another railway station and watched my darling Jill go away – forever.
The Company Page 27