He drew up and Jess, peering through the windscreen, said, ‘I had a doll’s house like this when I was little. My dad made it. He liked messing around with wood and glue and paint. He made model aeroplanes for my brother; and I got the doll’s house. The whole facade was hinged and opened up. But it only had four rooms, two up and two down.’
Carter said despondently, ‘I don’t think I ever made anything like that for Millie. I never seemed to have the time.’ Briskly, he added, ‘Let’s face it, I don’t have the talent for that sort of thing, either.’
They both got out, and as Carter shut the car door, the door of the house opened and Malone appeared.
‘Thanks for being prompt,’ he greeted them. ‘Caroline has invited people over later. I didn’t know that when I suggested you come. But come in.’
‘We won’t take up too much of your time,’ Carter assured him and introduced Jess.
‘Nice to meet you, Inspector Campbell,’ said Malone courteously, bestowing on Jess a charming smile. ‘Please, come in.’
The fellow is like a chameleon, thought Carter. This morning he was annoyed at my intrusion and more than a little alarmed. Now he’s the gracious host. Carter didn’t know whether to be irritated or amused. They followed Malone into a sitting room at the rear of the house, where French windows opened on to a vista of another lawn and more shrubs.
‘No flower beds,’ muttered Jess. ‘What’s the betting the grounds are kept tidy by a garden company?’
But Malone was offering them a drink. They both refused politely.
‘Caroline will be here in a jiff,’ said their host.
On cue, the door opened and Caroline Malone entered, or rather, thought Jess, made an entrance. She was tall, slender and elegant in an outfit of royal-blue palazzo pants and a silk tunic. It looked very expensive. She wore her long hair coiled into a twist at the nape of her neck.
‘I’ve been curious to meet you, Superintendent Carter,’ she said. ‘Ever since Peter said he thought he recognised you at the Wayfarer’s Return.’
‘Inspector Campbell was with you there, I think?’ said Malone with just the very slightest hint of malice.
‘Winding down,’ said Jess cheerfully, ‘after a busy day.’
‘We’ve only recently discovered that pub,’ said Caroline. ‘I thought it very good. But crowded, of course. As soon as anywhere gets a good reputation, people flock to it. Are you both quite sure I can’t offer you something? If not alcohol, I can rustle up tea or coffee.’
They assured her, jointly, that they were not in need of anything. Caroline sank on to a white leather sofa and smiled again. Then there was a silence. The visitors were expected to begin.
‘This is a very interesting house,’ said Jess. She and Carter had agreed beforehand that she should open the interview, simply because the Malones would not be expecting that.
‘Thank you!’ said Caroline with a twitch of an eyebrow.
‘It’s my wife’s family home,’ Malone told them. ‘My parents-in-law are sadly no longer with us.’
‘It’s good that a lovely house like this stays in the family,’ Jess responded to this piece of information.
From the corner of her eye, she could see Caroline showing signs of restlessness. Mrs Malone wanted this whole visit over and done with. And it’s not, thought Jess, just because she’s invited guests over later.
‘I was wondering on the way here,’ said Carter, turning to Malone, ‘whether it was at a party in this area that you first met Rebecca Hellington?’
Jess, the observer on this trip, saw Caroline’s face freeze in disapproval and Malone flush red. ‘Yes!’ he said briefly and glanced at his wife.
Caroline effortlessly caught the ball lobbed at her. ‘As a matter of fact we both met Rebecca for the first time that night. The party was held at the home of my uncle and aunt. They were away, and my cousin Nick threw the party.’
Now it was the visitors’ turn to be disconcerted. Carter was startled to hear his theory confirmed so promptly. Besides which, Caroline’s role here was more than as a support for Peter Malone. She’d been at the party. She’d known Rebecca. I slipped up! he thought furiously. I slipped up twenty years ago when I was talking to anyone I could find who knew the missing girl. I spoke to her boyfriend. I spoke to fellow students. I spoke to girls in her hall of residence. But I didn’t speak to anyone who’d been at that party. Malone told me, told me quite openly, how he’d met Rebecca, and how he’d arranged for her to be given refuge elsewhere. But because that had happened weeks before she went missing, and before they started actually dating, it didn’t appear to have any bearing on her disappearance later.
When he spoke, he feared his voice sounded quite hoarse. ‘Is this the house to which Rebecca was brought to escape the party? Were you, Mrs Malone, the fellow guest who kindly offered her a bed for the night?’
‘Of course,’ said Caroline with a gracious smile. ‘Didn’t Peter tell you?’
She’s turning the knife, thought Carter, almost feeling the pain. She’s letting me know I should have been talking to her twenty years ago.
‘Of course, Peter and I weren’t married, we weren’t even engaged then,’ Caroline continued smoothly. ‘But he was Nick’s friend and when he asked me to look after a girl who was feeling unwell and wanted to leave, naturally, I agreed.’
‘I told him all that at the time!’ snapped Malone to his wife. He turned to Carter.
‘Well, not exactly, Mr Malone,’ said Carter mildly. ‘Yes, you told me how you arranged for one of the girls at the party to take Rebecca under her wing and take her to her home nearby. But you didn’t tell me your now wife’s name.’
‘There was no point!’ Malone was clearly exasperated. ‘It has no bearing on Rebecca’s later disappearance. Before, when I told you about the party, it was because you wanted to know how she and I met.’
‘Nor did you mention to me this morning at your office, when you suggested we talk to you at home, that you had subsequently married that partygoer.’
Malone stared at him in apparently genuine bewilderment. ‘Why should I? How has what any of us has done, during the twenty years since Rebecca did her vanishing trick, any bearing on what happened to her later? Anyhow, there was no time earlier to explain anything to you, Superintendent! I was expecting a client. My PA had already told you that!’
Carter turned to his wife. ‘What do you remember of Rebecca, Mrs Malone?’
Caroline smoothed the silk of her sleeve where it covered her slim gold wristwatch.
She’s controlling, thought Jess. It’s not much of a hint but it’s a hint, all the same, that our time here is limited.
‘I really only know what I learned at the party, and it wasn’t much. My cousin came to where I was with some other girls. He told us another guest, Peter, had come across a girl, in the conservatory, who wasn’t feeling well. She wanted to go home, but the people she’d come with didn’t want to leave. Peter couldn’t take her himself. He’d been drinking – and anyway, he hadn’t come in his own car. So, I suggested I ferry her over to my home, this house. My parents were out for the evening. I said I’d take Rebecca, as I later learned her name, away from the hurly-burly and bring her here. She could crash in my room. My parents wouldn’t check on me. They knew I’d gone over to Nick’s. He’s my cousin, so they wouldn’t be worrying where I was. They’d just go to bed when they got in. And that’s what happened. I got back from the party in the early hours and Rebecca was asleep on my bed. So, I went into a guest bedroom and slept there for a few hours. Then I woke Rebecca and drove her to the bus stop in time to catch the first service of the day into Gloucester. I left her there and came back here to bed.’
‘Rebecca caught the bus all right,’ Malone said. ‘I went over to her hall of residence the following evening and checked.’
‘Yes, you did,’ said Caroline.
Jess didn’t miss the disapproval in her voice, or the glance she cast her husband. This is all your f
ault, the glance said. You’re responsible for the police sitting here, when we’re expecting other visitors. I wonder, thought Jess, if they really are expecting anyone?
‘Can I have your cousin’s surname, Mrs Malone? The host at the party. Is he still living in the area?’ Carter asked Caroline.
She stared at him in a way that ought to have turned him to stone, but Carter, thought Jess in amusement, was proof against that!
‘I can’t think why you want to know!’ Caroline Malone said. ‘My cousin is Nicolas Ellsworth and he’s a partner in a firm of architects in Cheltenham. Yes, he was the host of that party, but that doesn’t mean he knew Rebecca. People turned up in groups. Friends brought friends, you know how it is. I suppose he might have said hello to her when she arrived. She was hiding in the conservatory when Peter found her. Right, Pete?’
‘Stuck in a corner crying,’ confirmed her husband. ‘Caroline and I smuggled her out through the door into the garden and round the side of the house to where Caro had parked. We didn’t want others to see her – see someone in distress.’
‘I’d like your cousin’s address or a contact number,’ Carter said. ‘I could, of course, call at his office—’
‘Just drop in, as you did on me!’ said Malone, resentfully.
His wife cast him a warning look. She turned to Carter and said, ‘Nick lives in Weston St Ambrose. His house is called the Old Forge.’ She was now definitely cross. ‘Are you going to bother him? Because he and his wife have three little kids, all under five. And he won’t be able to tell you anything. I don’t suppose he even remembers her at the party.’
‘I take the point,’ said Carter. ‘I will be tactful and may not have to trouble him for long. I know Weston St Ambrose. Have you a home phone number for him?’
She rose silently and went to a little Victorian bureau in the corner. When she returned she handed him a slip of paper, in silence.
Carter thanked her and pocketed the paper. On impulse, he asked, ‘Does this house also have a conservatory?’
She stared at him. ‘This one? Yes, as it happens.’
‘Could we see it?’
‘Whatever for?’ Now Caroline couldn’t hide her exasperation, but she was ready to do anything to get them out of the house. ‘Show them, Peter, would you? I have to go and check on the canapés.’ She rose in a rustle of silk. Their audience with her was over.
‘This way,’ said her husband.
To reach the conservatory they had to pass through a dining room. At one end of the long, well-polished table a small stack of plates, napkins and cutlery awaited the expected guests. There was to be some sort of finger buffet, he guessed.
The conservatory was a large one, of a date with the house. It contained comfortable soft furnishings but not a lot of plants. As if he read Carter’s mind, Malone said, ‘In my mother-in-law’s day, this place was full of potted plants and vines of all sorts. It was like Kew Gardens. She had what they call green fingers.’
Jess murmured, ‘No one could hide away in here!’
Malone stared at her as if he’d forgotten she was there. ‘What? Oh, no, well, I’m no gardener and neither is my wife.’
‘But you have an attractive garden outside.’ Carter indicated the view through the conservatory’s glass walls.
‘Some garden maintenance firm looks after it!’ snapped Malone, confirming Jess’s guess. ‘Always did, I guess. My late mother-in-law didn’t trouble herself with outdoor planting, the muddy sort of gardening. She liked to garden in comfort, in here.’ He waved a hand carelessly around him.
‘And the house where the party was held? The house belonging to Mr Ellsworth’s parents? The conservatory there would be very like this one?’
‘Originally the houses were exactly the same,’ Malone told them. ‘My wife’s grandfather and his brother were builders; they built both houses as family homes, one for each of them. The houses were identical.’
‘And did your wife’s cousin inherit the family home, as your wife did?’ Carter asked.
Malone drew a deep breath. ‘I can’t imagine where you’re going with all these questions. They have nothing to do with – with Rebecca’s disappearance. If you must know, Nick’s parents, Caroline’s uncle and aunt, sold up and retired to a cottage near the coast. So, Nick didn’t get the chance. He might not have wanted to keep it, anyway. He and Cassie, his wife, like living in Weston St Ambrose.’
‘When I first saw Weston St Ambrose,’ Carter said, reminiscing, ‘the place had virtually closed down. Now it seems to be expanding again.’
‘Well,’ Malone conceded, ‘you know how it is. Places get fashionable. Weston St Ambrose is on the up, or so Nick tells me. It still wouldn’t suit me.’
Caroline Malone had not reappeared. The canapés obviously needed a lot of attention.
‘Well, thank you for showing us,’ Carter said. ‘We’ll be on our way. Please say goodbye to your wife from us.’
Malone couldn’t hide his relief.
‘Well?’ asked Carter when he and Jess were driving back. ‘What do you think? Are there really guests, or were those knives and forks just decoration?’
‘There probably are guests, last-minute ones!’ Jess gave her opinion. ‘We might have lingered, and if no one turned up, they’d look foolish. I reckon Caroline rang round a few friends hastily, when her husband called her to let her know we’d be dropping by at six.’
‘That’s what I thought,’ he agreed. ‘It wasn’t arranged a long while ago.’
‘Absolutely not!’ Jess grinned. ‘Or Malone wouldn’t have invited you to come this evening. Plus, it’s inconceivable that his wife had arranged something and hadn’t told him about it, despite his claim when we arrived. The minute you were out of his office this morning, he was on the phone to warn her and give her time to set up something, so that we wouldn’t hang about.’
‘He doesn’t want me back in his life,’ said Carter after another couple of minutes.
‘No disrespect, but people do feel that way about us, the police…’ She paused. ‘Are you going to talk to this cousin?’
‘Certainly am! He probably won’t have anything to tell us, but I want to rattle Malone’s cage a bit more!’ After a few moments of silence, he added, ‘Tell me, Jess, why do I now think that party was so important in all this? I didn’t think so at the time of Rebecca’s disappearance. Now I just feel as if those two houses, belonging to related families, located close together and built to the same design… I feel as if they hold the key.’
‘It’s called instinct,’ Jess told him.
‘Coppers don’t act on instinct, they act on evidence,’ he retorted.
‘Then call it experience,’ she said.
They drove on in silence for a little while and then Carter asked, ‘What happened to the doll’s house your father made for you?’
‘It got put up in the attic when I was too big to play with it any more. I dare say it’s still there.’ Jess smiled. ‘My mother never throws anything away.’
‘And your parents still live in the same house?’
‘My mother does. My dad died.’
‘Of course, sorry, you did tell me that before. So, it’s a family home, and one day either you, or your brother, may live in it?’
‘Probably not,’ said Jess, staring out of the window. ‘It’s a family house. It needs a family.’
‘No sign of any children in Malone’s house,’ Carter commented. ‘Not even a photograph. But that was built as a family house and has stayed in the family, Caroline’s family.’
‘You know,’ Jess returned after another pause, ‘somehow I don’t see Caroline in the role of mother. In a way…’ She paused.
‘Go on,’ he prompted.
‘Well, in a way, Peter Malone isn’t just her husband. He’s sort of her child, too. I mean, she’d defend him to the last. And she’s possessive, yes!’ Jess’s voice suddenly held a note of satisfaction. ‘Yes, that’s the word that came into my head when I first
saw her! She’s kept her family’s house and she’s got her grip firmly on her husband. I bet,’ Jess added thoughtfully, ‘that when they were younger, she didn’t like Rebecca hanging around.’
‘I’m beginning to think nobody did,’ Carter replied. ‘Even when I first interviewed Malone, twenty years back, he was keen to underline that his relationship with Rebecca wasn’t serious.’
‘That could just be because he wanted to distance himself from the investigation into her disappearance,’ Jess pointed out. ‘Having a detective turn up and quiz him must have made him jittery. He was very young.’
‘Now he’s not so young but still as jittery!’ Carter returned grimly. ‘It makes me very curious to meet Nick Ellsworth, the party-giving cousin.’
* * *
When his unwelcome visitors had departed, Peter Malone returned indoors to find his wife in the kitchen, making up a cup of the herbal tea she drank. She believed it helped her to control her weight.
From the worktop, over her shoulder, she asked, ‘Gone?’
‘Gone.’
‘Let’s hope they don’t come back.’ Chink, chink went the spoon against the china mug.
‘That stuff,’ her husband said, ‘looks like something you’d mix up to feed pot plants.’
‘You ought to try it.’
‘I did – once. By the way, I don’t think they were fooled by those plates you set out in the dining room. They knew it was a last-minute thing.’
She turned, nursing the mug in her hands. ‘Did they say so?’
‘Didn’t need to. I thought the redhead might laugh out loud.’
‘Let her do what she likes. They’ve gone, and that’s all that matters.’
Malone eyed his wife. ‘So, am I expecting any mystery guests? Who?’
‘No one.’ She smiled. ‘They sent a last-minute cancellation.’
An Unfinished Murder Page 16
