by J.G. Ellis
*
I drove him home and insisted on going in with him. He immediately poured himself another drink and swallowed it in a single gulp. He said, “Would you like a cup of tea? Or coffee? Perhaps you prefer coffee. The kettle’s full. It’s really no bother. I just have to switch it on.”
I felt a sliver of unease. I said, “Your wife, Mr Mansfield?”
“Sleeping. Sedatives. She’s not well. Hasn’t been for many years. Not since Emma...” He raised the switch on the kettle and an orange light came on. He said, “Sorry. Do you mind?” – indicating the mugs – “I desperately need the loo. Excuse me.”
I spooned instant coffee into two mugs and stood with my arms folded waiting for the kettle to boil. I was pouring hot water into the second mug when I heard, quite calmly and without alarm, a crashing sound from upstairs, like a piece of furniture falling to the floor. I ran up the stairs to investigate. I ignored Adrian’s Den, and entered what I assumed, correctly, was the master bedroom. The room was decorated in shades of cream and green. The curtains were closed. In the subdued light, I could see Anne Mansfield, dressed in pyjamas, lying atop an immaculately made king size bed with something protruding from her chest. I turned the light on, and had time to register a kitchen knife buried in her chest up to the hilt before being distracted by a scuffing noise from across the hall. I ran towards the source of the sound – into a spare bedroom or storeroom. The room was white and unfurnished save for a wardrobe and a thin pair of curtains. The floorboards were naked and speckled with paint. There was a black hole in the ceiling and the silhouette of a man dancing in mid-air, like a marionette with twisted strings. A metal stepladder lay folded on the floor.
Alan Mansfield had hanged himself, or was in the process of so doing. I ran to the kitchen for a knife with which to cut him down, but I was thinking: Cut him down for what? To charge him with the murder of his wife? So he can spend time, lots of time, in prison or a mental institution reflecting on the destruction of his family? Better, surely, that he should die. But I was also thinking: Hanging’s tricky. If you don’t snap the neck, it’s slow strangulation. I ran back up the stairs, armed with a carving knife and a pair of kitchen scissors. Alan Mansfield was blue in the face and had stopped moving save for the occasional grotesque twitch. I put the stepladder up under him, so that his legs would be immediately supported to some extent. I climbed the ladder and attempted to cut the “rope” with the carving knife. It wasn’t easy. He had used a plastic coated washing line or something similar and doubled it. Straining and leaning backwards, I sawed through it rather than cut it cleanly. It snapped and he slid down the front of my body onto the ladder, and then the floor. He lay there like a guy, its face painted purple. I descended the stepladder carefully, as though I were going down rickety stairs, moving forwards rather than backwards, and gingerly hopped over his body from the bottom step. I saw myself doing this – third person, as it were – and had an urge to giggle at the drunken daintiness of it.
I knelt down on the floor and used the kitchen scissors to cut both lines at the back of his neck, where they had been slip-knotted as one, and then used my mobile to call for assistance. My voice sounded oddly detached, like an echo in a tunnel. I left the room and went back into the master bedroom. It was like looking at or into a surrealist painting or a still from a horror film. The room was so neat it might have been a picture from a catalogue – except, of course, for the dead woman lying on the bed with a knife buried in her chest. Her eyes were closed, and her arms were at her sides. But for the knife, she might have been dozing. She had been dead a little while. I assumed Alan had killed her after Simon had left with Martha Bottomley, though it might have been done earlier, possibly after the departure of myself and Simon. I would have to find out if Martha had spoken to Anne Mansfield.
When the doorbell rang, it occurred to me – idly, I have to say – that I might have spent my time attempting to resuscitate Alan. I had cut him down, though, to relieve suffering, not to save his life; and though it wasn’t uppermost in my mind – indeed, I don’t think I was thinking about it at all – I would, if asked, have assumed he was now dead.
I opened the door and normalcy and procedure rushed in. It doubtless had to do with urgency, but there was nonetheless something unseemly about their eagerness to get in and on. I felt curiously invaded, trespassed upon, forced to spectate at a show of vulgar activity. It was an absurd and fleeting sensation, and had something to do with propriety by proxy.
“Are you all right, ma’am?” DC Neil Taylor, looking concerned. Understandably so, since the officer in charge was standing with her arms folded, gazing out the kitchen window; had been so doing for the best part of five minutes – which is a good deal of stillness given what was going on around her. The window overlooked the rear garden, as neatly kept as the house. A stepping-stone path curved gently down the lawn to the bottom of the garden, where a green plastic compost bin stood in a bed of multi-coloured gravel shrouded by a tree.
I smiled, doubtless somewhat bleakly, and said quietly, “Thank you, Neil. Yes, I’m fine.”
So an ugly, desperate dash for death in the end. When, I wondered, had he prepared the “scaffold”? The “noose” had been securely tied to a rafter in the loft and dropped through the trapdoor. He had climbed the ladder, put the noose around his neck, and then kicked the ladder away. He had been trapped into acting immediately, since he could not risk my discovering his wife’s body. He would have assumed, not unreasonably, that I would have arrested him, thus thwarting his intended suicide. I had – unintentionally – done him a disservice. Had I known everything, I confess I would have allowed him to enter the house alone.
“Ma’am?” Concern tinged with urgency. Something about me was giving cause for concern, quite possibly alarm. I can only assume that my face had drained of colour and that my prolonged stillness seemed somewhat catatonic. Movement was the answer; they wanted to see me do something.
I smiled at Neil and went out into the hallway. Raymond, coming down the stairs, said, “Interesting day, Barbara. A first for me: don’t usually get to meet them ante and post. I won’t bore you with the cause or causes of death. The obvious can wait for its stating in the paperwork.” This was the stage performer speaking for public consumption. Approaching me, however, he said quietly and privately, “Are you quite all right, Barbara? You look rather pale.”
“Yes, I’m fine, Raymond. Nothing a breath of fresh air won’t remedy.” The door was ajar. I opened it and went out onto the porch. The sky had darkened to a slate grey, and it had started to rain. Paul and I enjoy walking in the rain, preferring days when, in Paul’s words, the sun isn’t naked in the sky. In his study, he uses curtains and blinds to ensure that no natural light penetrates when he dislikes the colour of the day.
I drove back to the station. The obvious could wait for its stating in the paperwork. Could it? Superintendent Wilson would want to know – if not immediately, then certainly prior to the press conference. He would not want to be ambushed by questions about a House of Horrors or Death, or some equally lurid press invention. DCI Black, is it true you were actually in the house when Alan Mansfield hanged himself? How could one reasonably reply to such a question without reasonably provoking further questions? Yes, I was. It’s amazing what you can do in a few minutes. There I was making coffee; and before you can say “milk and sugar”, he’s shot upstairs and jumped off a stepladder with a clothes line round his neck. I ask you. Well, yes, I cut him down – course I did. Who wouldn’t? But... well, you know the rest. Dead. Like his wife, and his son, and his daughter. Killed his wife? Oh, yes. Putting her out of her misery, you might say. How do I feel? Well, I’ve had better days. This train of thought probably put a smile on my face, though I didn’t trouble to check in the mirror.
At my desk, I wrote a brief report for Superintendent Wilson and emailed it to him. Afterwards, I got up to make myself coffee in the little square kitchen not far from the office. I intended g
oing through some of the information gleaned by DC Taylor from Adrian Mansfield’s laptop. I was aware – in a vague, distracted way, like the echo of a dream – that my head was still in the Mansfield house, and was vaguely disturbed by my inability to shake the images or after-images from my mind. I came out of the kitchen – armed, as it were, with a mug of black coffee – and saw Ron Turner coming towards me – or, more precisely, moving in my direction, general or otherwise. A commonplace enough occurrence; something like it happened all the time. But I blinked slowly, like a camera shutter on longish exposure. A significant mental nudge. Ron Turner: I had a message for him from a dead man.
“Are you all right, ma’am?”
He’d heard. Of course he had.
“I’m fine, Ron,” I told him. I put my hand on his arm to detain him. “Mr Mansfield wanted me to thank you for the kindness you showed him.”
He nodded in a tight, masculine way. “Thank you, ma’am. It’s good of you to remember under the circumstances.” He reached into his pocket and produced a bunch of keys. “Mr Mansfield’s car keys, ma’am,” he explained.
“Yes,” I said. “Thank you, Ron.” I took them from him for no reason other than that’s what he expected me to do. Since I said nothing further, he not unreasonably assumed we’d finished and continued on his interrupted journey. Something was troubling me, though: a plate with crumbs – a still life thereof. “Ron.” To his back, and rather more loudly and sharply than intended; it had to do with fear of the moment passing. “The sandwich, Ron,” I said; “did you make it?”
“Ma’am?” He seemed bemused. “Oh, I see. Yes, ma’am. Does it matter?”
“Yes, Ron,” I said. “I rather think it does, don’t you? There’s not enough kindness in the world.”
When I returned to the office, the phone was ringing. I picked it up. “Barbara,” – Superintendent Wilson – “come up and see me, please.”
Absurdly, I felt I was being summoned to account for some wrong-doing or lapse in judgement. Much occurred to me in the time it took me to reach his office and knock on the door, most of it wrong, and all of it infected with paranoia. When I’m in this sort of mood, I resolve to act and react as though the world loves me and has only my best interests at heart. As ridiculous as this sounds, it’s far more useful than acting on the contrary assumption.
“Please – sit down, Barbara.” He was sitting behind his desk, and had risen briefly in deference to my gender. “How are you?”
“I’m fine, thank you, sir,” I replied.
“I’d fully understand if you wanted some time away. It wouldn’t be a problem.”
“No, sir; I’m fine – truly. I’ll let you know if I wake up screaming tonight.”
We were making light – or trying to make light – of a potentially serious situation: that is, the unfortunate tendency to soldier on regardless. Depending on what you do, this can have disastrous consequences. A tired doctor with a hangover and relationship worries would better serve the world and their profession by staying at home. The same – or something like it – is true of police officers; and it is sometimes necessary to take this decision for someone, though usually this will mean that they comply unwillingly, and will occasionally feel moved to challenge the decision. It is never a decision taken lightly, and generally means that gentle and less gentle suggestions to the effect that they take some time away have been stubbornly resisted or ignored. I am not someone wedded to my job, nor am I defined by it or the doing of it. If you become defined by your job to the point where you compulsively have to be doing it or can become undefined by not doing it or losing it, then there is surely something askew or amiss with the rest of your life.
I would have been appalled had I thought that Superintendent Wilson was doing anything other than extending a routine professional courtesy. I could, of course, have gone home – without career prejudice if not office gossip – but it didn’t occur to me then or later that I ought to have done so. Did I later wake up screaming? No, I did not, though I did have an anxiety dream two nights later, sufficiently over-powering as to provoke a strong sensation of relief on waking, in which I witnessed – with an uncomfortable feeling of ambivalence – a man hang himself. I always know or – to be more modest about it – think I know the wellspring of my dreams and what they signify, what hope or fear they’re expressing to me. Certainly I believe myself better qualified than anyone else to interpret my dreams.
Superintendent Wilson asked, “How do you intend handling this at the press conference?” The assumption being – not unreasonably – that I must have considered this. Someone was bound to ask how the parents were bearing up. It was an obvious question, and journalists like distraught/angry/devastated/anguished – delete as appropriate – parents. Those who take the news stoically are, journalistically speaking, “bearing up with dignity”, though the press would prefer raw emotions vividly expressed. Stoicism – “bearing up with dignity” – is not playing the press game, and is rather a bore from their point of view. Ideally, the parents will be publicly devastated. They will cry on mike and/or camera. And, again ideally, will have issues, or come to have issues, with some agency of authority – usually the police or social services, or possibly hospital staff. This allows for “Let down by...” claims or headlines, and serves to keep the story going. None of which would be likely to apply in this case, unless there were relatives, potentially outraged, that we didn’t know about. For no very good reason, other than her connection to the case, Martha Bottomley crossed my mind as someone who would be prepared to use the media to further her own agenda.
But to answer Superintendent Wilson, I said somewhat disingenuously, “I thought, sir, I might tell them the truth.”
He smiled. “I’m sure you did, Barbara, and I wouldn’t quibble with your good intentions. The issue is how. It has to be sensitively handled, and it doesn’t hurt to be prepared in this respect.”
“You mean rehearsed?” I said.
He leaned back and tented his fingers. Looking over my head, he said in a detached tone, barristerial rather than journalistic, “Chief Inspector Black, how are Adrian’s parents coping with their loss?”
I said, “I regret to have to inform you that both his parents are dead. It seems they were unable to cope with the tragic loss of a second child. Their daughter sadly committed suicide four years ago.”
“And now the parents have committed suicide – is that right?” The tone had sharpened a notch.
I said, “We’re certain that Mr Mansfield did, indeed, take his own life, and we’re not looking for anyone else in connection with Mrs Mansfield’s death. Precise circumstances are still under investigation.”
He smiled again and resumed eye-contact. “That’s not bad on a sticky wicket, Barbara.”
“Yes, well, the media expect and forgive formal phlegmatism from the police. I think it taps into traditional notions of procedural ploddery. And it’s surely unreasonable for them to press for too much detail so soon after the event.”
Superintendent Wilson asked the question he had asked me in all serious investigations: “Do we have anything to worry about, Barbara?” This covered a multitude of anxieties: Had we missed anything obvious? Had anyone – on the investigating team – blundered or spoken inappropriately to the press or others? Were we, in short, as reasonably placed as could reasonably be expected at this stage of the investigation?
“No, sir,” I said; “I don’t think we do. Unless...” The pause was simply an invitation to inquire.
“Unless what, Barbara?”
“Unless you think I could have handled Alan Mansfield rather better.”
“I don’t think you have anything whatever with which to reproach yourself, Barbara. The worst that can be said is that you unfortuitously denied him a leisurely suicide and put yourself through some considerable trauma in so doing. Better for all concerned if you’d just dropped him off.”
