The Tapestry Bag

by Isabella Muir

  As soon as I turned to get a better look, she also turned and started to walk away.

  ‘Zara, wait,’ I called out.

  A couple of people looked over at me, but she didn’t turn around and despite my fastest pace I couldn’t catch up with her.

  ‘Zara, stop.’

  Perhaps it was the urgency in my voice, or perhaps she felt sorry for her poor pregnant friend. She stopped walking and waited while Luke’s admirers filtered past.

  ‘How are you? Have you been staying with Dee? Luke said he thought you might have been there?’ I gestured to a bench, encouraging her to sit beside me.

  We sat side by side and I watched her as she looked into the distance, her focus on the skyline. ‘Yes, Dee is a good friend, she’s had a tough time of it, but I’m sure she’s through the worst of it now.’

  ‘I hope I’m a good friend too?’

  ‘Yes, of course, I didn’t mean…it’s just that Dee has been coming off drugs, she’s made it up with her parents, they’ve been great. I stayed with her, helped her through it, at least I like to think I helped.’

  ‘I’m sure you did, you know exactly what it’s like to be in a dark place. You can understand better than most.’

  She was wearing a brightly coloured Indian cotton dress, with a burgundy woollen shawl wrapped around her shoulders.

  ‘I love that dress, it brings out all the very best in you.’

  ‘It was a gift from Dee, the positive news is she is really back on track. She’s off the drugs completely and even talking about going back to college.’

  ‘That’s down to you. Sounds like she’s been through a lot, but then so have you. Will you let me help you, just like you helped Dee?’

  ‘You’ve already done a lot for me. You and Greg. You put up with me for a year, it can’t have been easy.’

  ‘What made you go that day, Zara? Did something happen? Did someone threaten or scare you?’

  She looked at me and shook her head. ‘I’d been a burden on you for a whole year, it wasn’t fair.’

  ‘Was that the only reason? Are you sure you weren’t scared of something, of someone?’

  ‘A year had passed and I felt exactly the same. The pain didn’t get any easier. I just realised that day it would never get easier. I’ve been reliving every minute and it never changes, it’s always black. That’s when I knew I had to get out of your lives.’

  ‘Zara, can you bear to tell me what happened that night, the night of Joel’s accident. The thing is, well I’ve found out a few things, there are other people who might have wanted to harm Joel.’

  ‘No-one else was there,’ she said, but there was a hesitancy in her voice.

  ‘Tell me what happened.’

  She took a deep breath and then started to speak and as she did her whole body seemed to relax, as though she was relieved to be able to share the dreadful memories.

  ‘You remember Joel had taken up running. Well, a few times he’d gone out late, when it was almost dark, and when he got back there was a smell about him that was nothing to do with sweat. It was a smell I knew too well, a perfume. So that evening I followed him. I kept back in the shadows, he didn’t know I was there. I was right of course.’

  ‘Right about what? What did you see?’

  ‘Not what, who. My sister. Joel and Gabrielle hugging and kissing, that’s what I saw.’

  ‘Your sister? But surely she wouldn’t…’

  ‘Oh, my sister would and has, with every boy I’ve ever loved.’

  ‘But Joel, he doted on you. He wouldn’t have cheated on you, and with your own sister?’

  ‘He would and did. I knew, at least I suspected. I waited until they’d finished their assignation. She walked off and when she was out of sight I caught up with him, confronted him. We had a blazing row. He shouted at me, told me I had no right to follow him, said I didn’t own him, he could do what he wanted and there was nothing I could do about it.’

  ‘It must have been terrible.’

  ‘Then I started pleading with him, I told him I loved him, that he’d hurt me and that I’d forgive him, provided he promised never to see her again.’

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘He laughed at me. Then he grabbed me and kissed me, long and hard on the lips. There was no love in that kiss, it was the last kiss we had.’

  ‘Oh, Zara, you poor thing. What happened next?’

  ‘I don’t know, that’s just the thing. I left him there laughing, I could hear his laughter as I ran away. I still hear it now, at night, it’s inside my head, sometimes I think I’m going mad.’ She had grabbed the edge of her shawl and was twisting it into a tight ball. Her voice was shaky and her breathing heavy.

  ‘It wasn’t your fault, don’t you see. He must have just run out in front of the car, you can’t blame yourself.’ I tried to take her hands in mine for reassurance, but she pulled away from me and stood up.

  ‘If I’d stayed with him, then it wouldn’t have happened. Or if I’d never gone there in the first place, if we hadn’t argued. It’s my fault, Janie, I killed him.’

  Chapter 31

  ‘Don’t say it! Oh, don’t say it! It isn’t true! I don’t know what put such a wild – such a dreadful – idea into my head!’

  ‘I am right, am I not?’ asked Poirot.

  ‘Yes, yes; you must be a wizard to have guessed. But it can’t be so – it’s too monstrous, too impossible.‘

  The Mysterious Affair at Styles - Agatha Christie

  I had all I needed and there was just one person I had to confront. I noticed a taxi parked outside Gabrielle’s flat when I arrived. I rang the bell and heard her call out, ‘I’ll be right down.’ I was about to ring again to announce myself, when the door opened and there she stood, wearing an emerald green coat and carrying a multi-coloured bag.

  ‘Oh, it’s you,’ she said.

  ‘Yes, I want to ask you a few more questions, about Zara.’

  ‘I can’t stop, that’s my taxi and he won’t want to be kept waiting.’

  ‘Are you going for long?’ I nodded towards the bag, which she handed to the taxi driver.

  ‘A few days, maybe longer, it’s not fixed.’

  ‘I’d like to talk to you, when you’re back?’

  ‘There’s nothing I can tell you that I haven’t already. To be honest with you, you’re becoming rather tiresome. Zara will appear if or when she wants to. I have my own life to lead and she has hers. Now I must go.’

  ‘Right, yes, well,’ I said and with that she got into the taxi.

  There has been more than one occasion during this search when I wished I had a camera with me. I didn’t yet know the implications, but I did know that a photograph of Gabrielle’s bag, now in the boot of the taxi would have piqued the interest of the police. The tapestry bag was identical to the one I packed for Zara on the day Joel had died, the same one that sat on the chair beside her bed all the time she lived with us. The same bag that Mr Peters had mentioned that Zara was carrying the day he saw her in the cemetery, the day she disappeared.

  I opened the car door and slid onto the back seat, next to Gabrielle.

  ‘What do you think you’re doing?’

  ‘I’m coming with you. I’m staying with you until you give me some answers, until you tell me the whole truth.’

  ‘Where do you get off poking your nose into other people’s business? You’re not a policewoman, you’re just a pathetic librarian. Go back to your books, Janie, and leave me in peace.’

  The taxi driver was waiting for an instruction to pull away, either with or without his additional passenger.

  ‘I’m going nowhere, at least I’m going wherever you’re going,’ I said. ‘Where is that? The driver is waiting for you to tell him.’

  ‘Tidehaven Railway Station, please driver.’ Gabrielle’s voice quivered with irritation.

  ‘Where are we going from there?’ I kept my voice firm and steady, but was beginning to wonder what would happen once Gabrielle s
tepped onto a train. I could hardly follow her once she’d left Tidehaven, or I’d be returning to divorce proceedings.

  ‘I’ve nothing more to say to you. You can keep asking, but you’ll get no more from me,’ she said.

  ‘How is it that you have Zara’s bag?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Zara’s bag, the holdall you gave to the driver to put in the boot. I know it’s Zara’s because I packed it for her the night Joel died, the night she came to stay with us.’

  ‘It’s not Zara’s, it’s mine.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘We’re twins, our mother delighted in buying us identical presents. So lacking in originality.’

  ‘You both have tapestry bags?’

  ‘You’re not that sharp, are you? No wonder you can’t find Zara.’

  ‘That’s where you’re wrong.’

  ‘Am I?’

  ‘Yes, I’ve found her. I’ve known where she is for a while now.’

  ‘Where is she? I’m her sister, I’m entitled to know.’

  ‘You are not entitled to anything. I have no intention of disclosing her whereabouts.’

  ‘Have you told the police?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You can be charged for withholding evidence. Perhaps I’ll tell the police. I’m sure they’d be pleased to hear from me.’

  ‘Yes, why don’t you do that. I’m sure they’ll be very keen to hear what you’ve got to say. In fact, we could go to the police station together. I can tell them what I know about what really happened the night Joel died, and you can fill in the rest.’

  ‘What do you know? You weren’t there.’

  ‘No, but your sister was, wasn’t she? She followed Joel, she saw him and you kissing. She found out about the two of you and your seedy affair.’

  ‘My poor sister. Her first boyfriend gets beaten up and her last one gets run over. It’s quite funny when you think about it.’

  ‘Funny? You think it’s funny what she’s had to go through?’

  I’d been trying to keep my voice level and calm, but now I was so incensed I wanted to shake her. I noticed the taxi driver looking anxiously in the rear-view mirror and guessed that he couldn’t wait to reach the station so he could finally rid himself of the pair of us. We passed the rest of the journey in silence. I let Zara pay once we arrived and kept close to her as she walked through the covered entrance into the railway station.

  ‘You think she’s whiter than white?’ she said. ‘Poor little Zara, always the victim. Well, the truth of it is that she’s manipulative, controlling and selfish.’

  ‘Selfish? What’s she ever done that’s been selfish?’

  ‘She knew how I felt about Joel. He and I would have made a real go of it, we were both the same, driven, ruthless. He knew what he wanted and so did I. But Zara, oh no, she wasn’t prepared to let him go. She wanted him for herself, even though they’d never have been really happy. She was too much of a pushover for a man like Joel.’

  ‘You stole him from her though, didn’t you?’

  ‘She probably threatened him, told him she’d kill herself if he ended it. Whatever it was, he fell for it.’

  ‘I don’t understand, what is it you think happened?’

  ‘I don’t think, I know. I saw them.’

  ‘What did you see?’

  ‘I saw him kiss her. He’d promised me, he said he’d finish with her, but he lied to me.’

  We stood to one side of the ticket office. People were milling around us, but thankfully no-one was within earshot.

  ‘What did you do, Gabrielle?’

  ‘Why do you think I did anything?’ She glared at me, her mouth set in a thin line, her forehead creased with tension.

  ‘You can’t run away from this. It will haunt you for the rest of your life.’

  She started to walk away and I followed her to an empty bench near to the ticket barrier.

  ‘I only meant to scare him, to let him know I’d caught them together, teach him a lesson. I was so angry.’ Her voice was quieter now, uncertain, almost childlike.

  ‘It was you? You drove into him?’

  ‘I was raging. I must have pressed too hard on the accelerator.’ She looked beyond me as she spoke, as though she was back in that moment, behind her steering wheel, heading towards the man she professed to love.

  ‘You stupid woman, you’re the one who’s not that sharp,’ I said, so angry I wanted to shake her. ‘There was no love in that kiss, he was taunting your sister, he never loved her.’

  She stared at me, unblinking, in shock. Then, she took a deep breath and all her haughtiness fell away, leaving a pathetic figure.

  ‘You could have saved him,’ I said, ‘instead you were too worried about saving your own skin. You left him to die.’

  People brushed past us on their way to their platforms, but neither of us moved.

  ‘He must have seen you driving towards him.’ The dreadful waste and injustice of what I was being told made me seethe.

  ‘I see his face. When I close my eyes I can see his expression, the disbelief. He didn’t move, he just stood there.’

  As I looked at her face all the beauty of Zara reflected back at me.

  ‘It was you, wasn’t it? It was you who Mr Peters saw in the cemetery that day, you who put the note behind the gravestone? He thought you were Zara. It was the anniversary of Joel’s death.’

  ‘How do you know about the note?’

  ‘I found it. I still have it. I’ll be giving it to the police. You know you’ll have to confess, don’t you?’

  ‘No-one knows, only you. You could let me go, I’m not a killer. I didn’t mean to do it.’

  She went to grab my hand, to plead with me, but I stood back from her.

  ‘Why did you have your holdall with you? I thought it was Zara who Mr Peters saw, because of that bag.’ I pointed at the tapestry holdall that now sat beside her.

  ‘How do you expect me to remember what bag I had with me?’

  I could see now that she was devious enough to make any scenario work in her favour, although how could she have known that Zara was going to leave our house that day, taking the holdall with her? Perhaps what they say about twins is true, after all.

  ‘Just tell me one thing, why did you stay in Tamarisk Bay? You could have moved far away. You might have got away with it.’

  ‘I needed to be near him. I did love him, you know.’ Her head was bowed now and her voice quiet and wavering.

  As I looked at her the remaining pieces of my unfinished jigsaw slotted into place.

  ‘You wrote the letters, didn’t you? You tried to point the finger at your sister. You steal her boyfriend, run him down, leave him for dead and then you try to frame her for it. You are evil. You don’t deserve to have a sister.’

  ‘You can’t prove any of it,’ the vitriol was back. Any contrition she might have felt was short-lived and now she was begging for her life once more. ‘Anything you tell the police I’ll just deny. It’ll be your word against mine.’

  ‘What about fingerprints?’ I said. ‘They’ll be all over those letters, your fingerprints, all the proof the police will need that you planned to frame your sister. You are the only person who knows the truth about what happened that night and that’s because you did it, you murdered Joel.’

  I wished I had handcuffs so that I could cuff her there and then, but she made no attempt to move. She said no more and in the end, I think she was relieved the truth was finally out.

  I called the same taxi driver over and asked him to take us to the police station. He was reluctant at first, I’m sure he was loath to get mixed up with the strangest customers he must have had that day.

  As I handed her over to the disparaging Detective Sergeant Bright, I allowed myself a moment to feel smug. It would have been nice if he’d given me a pat on the back for my efforts, but I wasn’t holding my breath. For all I had learned from Poirot, one distinct difference between us was that I had no des
ire to jump for joy that the crime had been solved. Uncovering the truth was the right thing to do, but it gave me no pleasure to know such evil could hide away in someone’s heart.

  While Gabrielle was being processed, I asked to speak to DS Bright in private and we returned to the little airless room that I’d sat in on two previous occasions.

  ‘There’s something that’s been puzzling me all along,’ I said, anticipating a stonewalling by way of reply.

  ‘You know I can’t talk about the case. We’re grateful for what you’ve done, but that’s as far as it goes.’

  ‘It’s just that I don’t understand why you announced the new lead.’

  ‘Which new lead?’

  ‘Well, you only had one, didn’t you? Mr Peters, the chap who said he’d seen Zara the day she left our house. At the cemetery. Although it turns out it wasn’t even her, it was her sister.’

  ‘I’m not at liberty to explain to you the machinations of the police force. However, one good turn deserves another, I suppose. The information Mr Peters gave us wasn’t significant in any way. Miss Carpenter left your house that day and if she went via the cemetery, well, it didn’t give us any pointers as to where she had gone from there.’

  ‘Why was it on the news then? You must have thought it important to announce it to the press?’

  ‘The decision was a tactical one. Our investigation into Miss Carpenter’s whereabouts had drawn a blank. It’s unusual for someone to disappear like that, with no indication she was planning to leave. That, together with the circumstances in which her boyfriend died, it left a question mark, it made us believe there was more to the case. ‘

  ‘And every time I came in here you made out I was making a fuss, that it was perfectly normal for her to just disappear.’