The Killer in the Choir

by Simon Brett

  While Ted Crisp, unasked, poured another large New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc, Jude introduced her neighbour to Ramona Plowright. Barney Poulton, Carole already knew – and she found him just as much of an irritating poseur as Ted did.

  ‘We were just talking about Heather,’ said Jude.

  ‘And we reckon her death,’ Barney pronounced, ‘was definitely suicide.’

  ‘Speak for yourself,’ said a rather riled Ted Crisp.

  ‘No, you take my word for it,’ the bar-room sage insisted. ‘She threw herself into the Fether.’

  ‘We don’t know that for sure,’ said Jude.

  ‘In fact, we don’t know very much,’ Ramona contributed.

  ‘No, but maybe Carole does know something.’ Jude gestured towards her friend, as if inviting her to take centre stage. ‘She’s just been interviewed by the police.’

  Even Barney Poulton looked impressed by that. Carole gave Jude a rather old-fashioned look, to indicate that she’d been intending to discuss the matter à deux, but the excitement of having a larger audience proved too compelling.

  ‘So, what did they say?’ asked Ted.

  ‘Well, they wanted to talk to me, because I was on the beach early this morning with Gulliver – that’s my dog. And they wondered if I’d seen anything untoward.’

  ‘And had you?’ asked Barney.

  ‘No.’ She still sounded disappointed. ‘I only talked to another dog walker who’d met the dog walker who’d actually found the body.’

  ‘Incidentally,’ said Jude, ‘were the policemen who interviewed you the same ones who were in touch after Leonard Mallett’s death?’

  ‘No,’ said Carole dismissively. ‘Even if it was part of the same investigation – and they gave no suggestion that it was – it’s only in crime fiction that the same Detective Inspector and Detective Sergeant work on the same cases all the time. I’d never seen either of these two before.’

  ‘So, did they talk about suicide?’ asked Barney.

  ‘No, they didn’t. But they did say they were conducting a murder investigation.’

  ‘Murder? What made them think that?’

  ‘The marks on Heather Mallett’s neck,’ said Carole. ‘She was dead before she went into the Fether. She had been strangled.’

  FOURTEEN

  ‘I didn’t want to tell all that about the police in front of everyone,’ said Carole, when they got back to Woodside Cottage. They had stayed in the Crown & Anchor for one of Ed Pollack’s excellent Sunday roasts. Jude had suggested going back to her place for a coffee, but when they arrived, produced an open bottle of Sauvignon Blanc. Carole made only minimum demur before accepting a glass.

  ‘You seemed to be enjoying it,’ Jude responded.

  ‘One has to put up a front when one’s with people. Anyway, I suppose I didn’t tell them anything important.’

  ‘You mean there was more important stuff?’

  ‘Well …’ Carole was forced to admit, ‘No, not that much. The other dog walkers must’ve given the impression I’d seen more than I had. The police weren’t actually with me very long.’ She sounded disappointed.

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘They asked me how well I knew Heather Mallett. To which the answer was: hardly at all, really. They’d have done better talking to you.’

  ‘I didn’t know her that well,’ Jude protested.

  ‘No? You were in two choirs with the woman.’

  ‘Yes, but she wasn’t the kind to give much away about herself.’

  ‘No?’ This one was more pointed. Carole couldn’t possibly know about the confession about Alice that Heather had made. Could she? Jude felt awkward and guilty. In the new circumstances of a murder, Carole was going to be much more curious about the dealings her neighbour had had with the dead woman. Jude’s ability to keep secrets would be sorely tested.

  And the testing started straight away, as Carole asked, ‘Did you ever spend time with Heather, just the two of you?’

  ‘Erm …’

  But fortunately, Jude’s decision about whether to tell a direct lie was delayed by her phone ringing. ‘Hello?’

  ‘Jude, this is Alice Mallett.’

  ‘Oh. I was terribly sorry to hear the news.’

  ‘Not half as sorry as I was.’

  ‘No, but I’m sure—’

  The newly-wed cut across her sentence. ‘I need to talk to you,’ she said.

  Carole was miffed when she heard who the call was from, but she couldn’t summon up an argument that would justify her staying to witness the encounter between her neighbour and the bereaved bride. ‘You will tell me what she says, won’t you?’ she demanded, as she moved reluctantly towards the front door.

  ‘I will tell you as much as I can.’

  ‘And what’s that supposed to mean?’ came the sniffy response.

  ‘It means that I’ll you as much as I can. It’s possible that Alice Mallett wants to consult me as a healer. If that’s the case, of course there would be an issue of client confidentiality.’

  ‘Oh, poppycock!’ said Carole. ‘You always fall back on that when you’re just basically being secretive. Anyway, the girl’s stepmother’s just been murdered. The first thing she does is hardly going to be to consult a healer, is it?’

  ‘I can’t think of a time when she might have more need of a healer.’

  ‘No, but …’ Carole gave up the unequal struggle. ‘Just remember, I can always tell when you’re keeping information from me.’

  Which didn’t make Jude feel any better.

  ‘We couldn’t have met at Mum’s place,’ said Alice. ‘I’ve just come from there, and it’s crawling with police officers. I told them I had to nip out for some shopping. I don’t know whether they believed me. They may have followed me here.’

  The possibility was alarming to her, and made the poor girl look even more ghastly. The radiant bride of the day before had been reduced to a dumpy, tear-stained mess, dressed in a hoodie, jogging bottoms and trainers. Her eyes were puffy from crying, and she didn’t look as if she’d slept for a month.

  ‘But,’ she went on, ‘it was important that I should talk to you before the police do.’

  Jude nodded slowly. ‘I think I know why. Heather told you that she’d told me … about your father’s death?’

  Alice nodded, too overcome for a moment to speak. Then she said, ‘And, given the awfulness of what’s happened to Mum, the thought of all that being revived … I couldn’t stand it.’

  ‘If you’re worrying about my telling the police what Heather told me, put your mind at rest. She shared that in confidence, on the understanding that I would keep it to myself. And I promise you I will do that.’

  ‘Thank you. That’s one small relief, but everything else …’ The girl’s eyes filled with tears.

  ‘It must be terrible. I can’t imagine how you’re feeling. Heather was in such wonderful form yesterday.’

  ‘Yes. Wonderful.’

  ‘When did you last see her?’

  ‘After the dancing finished. After we’d said goodbye to everyone. Our best man, who fortunately doesn’t drink, had said he’d drive Roddy and me to our hotel.’

  ‘And did Heather say what she was going to do?’

  ‘She said she’d had too much to drink to drive. I suggested she called a cab, but she said it was such a lovely evening – which, of course, it was – that she’d walk back to Sorrento. Which I suppose is what she did. And, on the way, she met …’ Alice shuddered and dissolved into tears.

  Jude put her arms around the girl’s heaving shoulders. ‘Crying’s the best thing you can do. It’s better to express emotion than bottle it up.’

  ‘I know. I still can’t believe what’s happened; keep thinking it must have been a dream, that soon I’ll wake up and … But I won’t. That dream will be the reality for the rest of my life.’

  ‘At least you’ve got Roddy by your side to help you through it.’

  ‘Yes.’ Alice looked uncertain. ‘But Roddy’
s not …’

  ‘Not what?’

  ‘Not as stable as he may appear to an outsider. Nobody does a tour of duty in Afghanistan and comes away totally unscathed. He’s … well, his way of coping is to build up this hearty exterior, behave as if he doesn’t take anything seriously, but … he’s not always like that. Sometimes, he just loses it and …’

  ‘Are you talking PTSD?’

  ‘He’d never admit that, and he refuses to go and have any treatment for it. His whole attitude is based on never admitting to weakness. I think it’s something to do with his relationship with his father. The old man prides himself on never showing emotion, and Roddy tries to do the same. Which means he bottles things up and, when he does let go …’ She seemed about to say more but thought better of it.

  There was a silence. Then Jude said, gently, ‘Heather did tell me about your father, about how he behaved towards you … and her.’

  ‘Yes, she said she’d told you.’ The girl shuddered. ‘This is all his fault, everything. He’s the villain in all this. We’ll never escape his evil shadow. He’s still controlling us, from beyond the grave.’

  ‘Are you suggesting your stepmother’s death is connected with your father’s?’

  ‘It must be. The two happening so close, it’s too much of a coincidence for there to be no link.’

  ‘But there isn’t the obvious link.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘The killings weren’t done by the same person, were they?’

  Alice’s red eyes turned on Jude, as she took in the impact of this. ‘God, no! I didn’t kill her. I loved her. She saved my life. I was so alone, after I lost my birth mother. Without Mum’s support, I’d never have got through.’

  ‘But do you have any idea who might have killed her?’

  Slowly – perhaps too slowly – Alice said, ‘No.’

  Jude let the silence settle before saying, ‘Do you mind if I ask you about the circumstances of your father’s death?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I was just wondering … why then?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You’d suffered abuse from him … what, from your childhood onwards?’

  ‘I can’t remember a time when he wasn’t … touching me.’ The girl shuddered involuntarily.

  ‘But life must have been better once you had Heather in the house. You say she saved you. You had an ally.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And then you moved away from him, moved to London, and you had Roddy to support you. Things must have been better.’

  ‘Yes. The hurt was still there, the damage could never be undone, but yes, for the first time I could see that I had a possible future.’

  ‘So, I go back to my original question. Why then? Your feelings against your father had been building up for years. Perhaps your desire to kill him had also been around for years …?’ Alice nodded. ‘Then what drove you over the edge on the seventeenth of February?’

  ‘Two things.’ She corrected herself. ‘No, one thing, really. That lunchtime I was alone in the house. Mum was having her singing lesson – well, she’d told Dad she was doing some shopping, but I knew she was with KK. And Dad had gone off to some regular pub lunch with some old insurance cronies. He did that quite often. And I … I suppose I was feeling more confident. I’d got Roddy, the wedding date was set. So, I did something I’d never done before. I searched Dad’s study.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘And there I found, amongst a whole lot of other stuff … my mother’s death certificate.’ Jude held her breath, allowing Alice to tell the story at her own pace. ‘It had been completed following a coroner’s inquest. It said she committed suicide.’

  ‘So, you thought your father must have abused her in the same way that …?’

  ‘What else is there to think?’

  There were other possibilities, but Jude didn’t raise them, as Alice went on, ‘I waited for him to come back. He was drunk; he always was when he came back from meeting his insurance lot. He smelled of beer. I remember, as a child, when he … when he came into my bedroom … he always smelled of beer. I can never smell beer without thinking of …

  ‘He called out to me when he came in through the front door. I’d been down for the weekend, he knew I was still there. I said I was upstairs. I don’t know if he thought that was some kind of come-on. I didn’t say I was in his study. I can still hear his footsteps coming up the stairs, just as I heard them when I was a child. He always used to pause on the half-landing, and I used to hope that he’d change his mind and go back downstairs … but he never did.

  ‘I waited to come out of the study until he was at the top of the stairs. He looked furious. “What the hell have you been doing in there?” he shouted.

  ‘“I’ve been finding out how you killed my mother,” I replied. And then, I just went straight forward and pushed him. He was off-balance. He fell immediately. I heard his head banging against the banisters, again and again, as he went down. I knew he was dead. And I thought it was very fair. Primitive justice, if you like. A life for a life, though of course he’d destroyed more than one life.

  ‘Then I went downstairs, stepping over his body, not even checking whether he was still breathing. I knew he wasn’t. And I watched television until Mum came back.’

  The reliving of the experience seemed to have calmed the girl. She looked almost serene, forgetting for a moment the second, more recent, death. Jude could feel nothing but sympathy for her. She felt more determined than ever that Carole would never know how Leonard Mallett died.

  Alice’s serenity did not last. Quickly, the pain returned to her ravaged face. She looked at her watch. ‘I must go back to Sorrento. Face the music … or do I mean the police?’ Her look became pleading. ‘And, Jude …’

  ‘I’ll never tell them.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  As Alice Mallett rose to leave, Jude asked, ‘Is Roddy back at the house?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Oh? Where is he?’

  A new layer of fear spread across the girl’s face. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘The fact is, last night …’ She chose her words carefully. ‘We had a row.’

  ‘I’m sorry. Back at the hotel?’

  ‘At the Craigmullen, yes.’

  ‘It must have been a very stressful day for both of you.’

  ‘Perhaps.’

  ‘And did this happen before, before you heard about Heather’s death?’

  ‘Yes. It was only about an hour after the dancing finished in the church hall. The best man drove us to the hotel. They’d made an effort with the room … champagne and … Then we argued and … Roddy walked out. Our room looked out over the car park. I saw him get into his car and drive off.’

  ‘You’ve no idea where to?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And you haven’t had a call, a text or …?’

  The girl shook her head. ‘I didn’t sleep. I felt terrible. I kept texting him, but … Then, before seven, the police were at the Craigmullen, with the news about Mum.’

  The two women looked at each other. Neither voiced the thought, but both suspected that Roddy must somehow be involved in Heather Mallett’s murder.

  FIFTEEN

  Carole could not pretend to be anything other than disgruntled. She would have hotly denied that she was at the window watching for it, but she did happen to see Alice Mallett’s departure from Woodside Cottage. Of course, she was far too proud actually to ring Jude. But she was desperate to know about the conversation which had just taken place next door.

  She waited the rest of the Sunday for Jude to come round to High Tor. Or at least to ring. But she waited in vain.

  By the Monday morning, the murder had become public property. Even the front page of Carole’s sedate Times featured a photograph of Heather Mallett, and the tabloid headlines went mad. ‘MOTHER OF THE BRIDE MURDER!’ was one of their milder efforts. But, as ever, t
he police gave little indication of which way their enquiries were heading.

  For the next few days, Fethering locals complained – but were secretly very excited – about the amount of media attention their village attracted. There were noticeably more people out and about, walking along the Parade and Fethering Beach, on the off-chance that their opinion might be solicited by a passing camera crew.

  And still Carole heard nothing from Jude. Her frustration grew. By the Wednesday she had become determined to conduct an investigation of her own.

  ‘Rare sight,’ Ted Crisp greeted her, ‘you in the pub at lunchtime. On your own.’

  ‘Yes, well, I seem to have been cooped up in the house too much the last few days.’

  ‘New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc?’

  ‘Just a small one.’

  ‘I think we’d better make it a large one. And I’ll just charge you for a small one.’

  ‘Oh, Ted, you shouldn’t.’ But it was only a token demurral. Just before noon was early for Carole to be drinking. But she was on a mission, which she thought justified behaving out of character. She was pleased to see that her calculation of the timing had been accurate. There were very few customers – even Barney Poulton hadn’t arrived yet to dispense his infuriating homespun wisdom – which gave her the perfect opportunity to pick the landlord’s brains.

  ‘I assume the Crown & Anchor Choir didn’t happen on Monday?’

  Ted Crisp looked surprised. ‘I thought you’d know from Jude that it didn’t.’

  ‘Oh, I haven’t seen her for a couple of days,’ said Carole airily.

  He made no comment, though he knew that the relationship between the two women went through phases of froideur. He also knew that such phases were almost always Carole’s responsibility. During their brief affair – which was never mentioned and still seemed slightly unbelievable to both of them – Ted had got some insight into the complexities of Carole’s personality.

  ‘Hardly surprising,’ he said, ‘is it? Given what happened to Heather. The choir was so much her baby, I would think that’ll be the end of it now. Can’t somehow see KK pushing on on his own.’