‘Connection? I haven’t one, other than they rented the house next to ours.’
He stared at her. ‘So you’ve only known them – how long?’
‘About four weeks. But it was Louise I knew.’
‘This Louise again. Who is she, exactly?’
It was Rona’s turn to stare. ‘Their daughter. The woman you were following round town.’
His eyes bored into hers. ‘Are you being straight with me?’ he demanded.
‘Of course I am. Why?’
‘You mean you really don’t know?’
‘Know what?’
‘The woman you keep calling Louise is Karen Swann, my brother’s widow.’
‘No!’ Rona said involuntarily. ‘She can’t be!’
‘What I don’t understand is, if you don’t know the Franks, why were you making enquiries about them?’
Rona barely heard him. Her mind was spinning, refusing to accept what she’d just heard, and, blocking it, she fastened instead on his earlier reference to Harrogate. ‘That’s how you tracked me down isn’t it? From Harrogate? I’d been wondering.’
‘It’s how I heard of you, yes. We live down here now, but a friend rang to tell me you’d been to their old house, and since you’d left a card, he gave me your address. But you’ve not answered my question: what were you trying to find out?’
‘About Louise,’ Rona said drily. She took a sip of tea, hoping it would steady her. ‘She told me she had amnesia, and could remember nothing of her past life.’
‘How very convenient,’ Swann said harshly.
‘She’d been in a car crash in Canada, and everything that had happened before was a complete blank. She even began to wonder if the Franks were really her parents. There were no photos of her, or anything to do with the past, but they said it had all been burned in a house fire. I had to go to Harrogate on business, and she asked me to find out what I could while I was there.’
‘And what did you find out?’
‘That the Franks had lived where they’d said they did, had a daughter who’d married and emigrated to Canada, as they’d told her she had, but that the daughter’s name was Karen and her husband was David Swann, whereas Louise had married Kevin Stacey.’
‘And what did they say had happened to this Kevin Stacey?’
‘They divorced and he went to work in the Far East.’
‘Did he, now. I think it’s time you had a look at these.’ He bent down and retrieved a briefcase from under the table. Rona watched as he took out a cardboard folder, opened it, and withdrew a sheaf of yellowing news cuttings. He selected the top one and handed it across the table to her.
It was headlined HOUSEWIFE ACCUSED OF DOUBLE MURDER – and beneath it, unbelievably, was a photograph that, though the hairstyle was different, was undeniably Louise.
Rona felt the bile rush into her throat. Instinctively she put a hand to her mouth, and out of the corner of her eye, saw Max start to his feet. Distractedly she shook her head at him – they couldn’t be interrupted now – and after hesitating a moment, he subsided.
She dragged her eyes back to Swann’s. ‘Who . . .?’ Her voice came out in a croak.
‘Dave and the baby.’
‘God, no!’
‘Would you like to see the rest of the clippings?’
‘Not – now. Just tell me what happened.’
‘The only known facts are that the cleaner found them, early one morning. Karen was sitting on the nursery floor, covered in blood and nursing the dead baby, with Dave’s body beside her.’
‘But what did she say? She must have said something?’
‘Oh, believe me, she said plenty. That Dave had been having an affair – which turned out to be true – that he had a violent temper – also true – and that when the baby wouldn’t stop crying, he’d picked him up and shaken him violently. Untrue. She maintained that she’d flown at him to try to make him stop, and when he wouldn’t, she’d seized the nursery lamp and cracked it over his head.’
‘How unbelievably awful,’ Rona whispered.
‘What is even more unbelievably awful,’ Swann said in a low, bitter voice, ‘is that she got away with it. Because of what was referred to as “provocation” – i.e. the affair – and the fact that she’d been suffering from severe post-natal depression, she was given a suspended sentence. For killing my brother and his son.’
‘I thought you said—’
‘She said. There’s no way Dave would have harmed that baby. Oh no; the boot was on the other foot. He found her shaking him, and tried to stop her. And when she realized Timmy was dead and Dave had seen her do it, she bashed him over the head. The God-awful thing, though, is it was her story that held, and everyone believed it. Everyone, that is, except those who knew Dave.’
He lifted his cup again, saw it was empty, and put it down. Rona refilled it.
‘It almost killed my mother,’ Swann continued in a low voice. ‘It became her aim in life to clear Dave’s name, but there seemed no way of doing it. She’s terminally ill now, and when I heard, indirectly through you, that the Franks were back in this country, I felt I owed it to her to get Karen to retract the accusation. It couldn’t make any difference to her now, and it would give such comfort to Ma.
‘And, of course, I also had a personal reason for contacting her. I’ve been torturing myself, wondering if he ever got my letter. I can’t bear to think he died believing I wanted nothing more to do with him. However much she dislikes me, Karen owes me that.’
He drained his teacup.
‘So I decided to look you up and ask you where I could find them. I called at your house and rang the bell, but there was no reply. So I started to walk back to my car, stopped to light a cigarette, and that’s where we almost bumped into each other. I half-wondered if it could be you, so I waited to see where you were going, and when you turned into your gateway, I went back. I was going to ring again, but before I could, the kitchen light suddenly went on. Instinctively, I turned to look down, came eye to eye with you, and, realizing how it must appear, decided to leave it for the moment.
‘So I wrote the note, and when you didn’t call me, phoned, but still you wouldn’t meet me. There seemed nothing for it but to try the house again; but to my amazement, just as I was approaching, who should come out of the next gateway but Karen herself, as large as life. At least, I was ninety per cent sure it was her, though she did look slightly different. I didn’t want to speak till I was certain, and what really threw me was that she gave no sign whatsoever of recognizing me. I mean, OK, she might have cut me dead, but that’s a different thing entirely. There was no flicker of recognition, which seemed – bizarre, somehow. Enough to make me hesitate, anyway.
‘So I followed her at a distance, and when she turned into the café, I went in after her, glad of the chance for a better look. The last time I’d seen her, she’d looked as she does in that photo – short, spiky hair, and so on. But apart from the fact that she blanked me, I was pretty sure it was her, and it seemed to make sense, her living next door to you.’
‘She didn’t recognize you because of the amnesia,’ Rona said. ‘That bit at least must be true.’
‘Perhaps. Oh, and while I think of it, there’s another thing: have you by any chance got a doppelganger?’
‘Otherwise known as a twin; yes, I have.’
‘So that explains it. When I left the café, I saw you coming from the other direction, but before I could reach you, you turned into that furniture shop. So I went on up the road – and then, lo and behold, there you were again, right in front of me! It gave me quite a start, I can tell you.’
‘And your reaction alarmed my sister. But you said you met the Franks?’
‘Yes. I’d an appointment in Marsborough on Friday afternoon – I actually live in Chilswood – and after it, I decided to beard the lions in their den. If I could make Karen admit Dave hadn’t killed the baby, Ma could die in peace. And I could also ask about my letter. But when they
opened the door and I said who I was, they went into a blind panic, and wouldn’t let me in the house. They almost slammed the door in my face.
‘So once more I had to retreat. I was wondering what to do next when I heard of the murders, and it really put the wind up me, I can tell you. I knew that since you’d seen me hanging around, you’d report me and I’d be a prime suspect. But even overriding that, it seemed my last chance of proving Dave’s innocence had gone. My only hope was that Karen might have said something to you.’
He looked at her without hope. ‘In view of the amnesia, I presume she didn’t?’
Rona shook her head.
He sighed, picked up the cutting and put it back inside the folder. Then he looked at her again, and his face changed.
‘I wonder if you’re ready yet to think what I’m thinking?’
Rona said uncertainly, ‘And that is?’
‘That it was Karen herself who murdered her parents. After all, she’d killed before.’
Sixteen
The room seemed to tilt around her. Could this nightmare get any worse?
Rona tried to swallow past the obstruction in her throat. ‘My husband’s across the room,’ she said hoarsely. ‘May I call him over?’
Swann looked startled, and his eyes quickly scanned the room. ‘Yes,’ he stammered. ‘Yes, of course.’
But Max had already seen her reaction, and was on his way over. ‘Darling, what is it? What’s happened?’
She gestured weakly at Swann. ‘You tell him,’ she said.
Briefly, Swann did so, removing once more the yellowed clippings from the Canadian newspapers. Max glanced at them briefly, swore under his breath, and reached for Rona’s hand.
‘There’s no doubt?’ he asked then.
‘Not about who she is. Who killed her parents is a moot point.’
Max flung him an accusing look. ‘Whatever your motives, you put the fear of God into my wife.’
‘I know, and I’ve already apologized. It was quite un-intentional.’
‘You have a job, presumably, and you say you live in Chilswood. How have you found time to keep coming here and following people?’
‘Max!’ Rona protested weakly.
Swann made a placatory gesture. ‘It’s a fair enough question. The first time I saw your wife was a Sunday evening, and I’d come over specifically to speak to her. But I have a business meeting in Marsborough every Tuesday; when I was here last week, I saw Karen and your wife’s sister, and later put the note through your door. Then something cropped up at work, and I had to come back on Friday; so when I’d finished, I took the chance to call on the Franks. And today, as you know, it’s Tuesday again.
‘Incidentally,’ he glanced at Rona as he took another clipping from the pile, ‘you said they told Karen they lost everything in a fire. That happens to be true. The brother of the woman Dave had been seeing was so incensed at the lightness of the sentence that he torched their house. They were lucky to get out alive. There’s a report of it here.’
He pushed it across, but neither Rona nor Max made any attempt to read it.
Max said dully, ‘So what will you do now?’
‘As I said, go straight to the police station. Armed with these cuttings, together with my cast-iron alibi, I doubt if they’ll detain me.’
‘Max and I could still be suspects,’ Rona pointed out.
Swann shook his head. ‘Not for long. The first thing the police will do is contact their opposite numbers in Toronto. The case might not have reached the papers here, but it was headline news for weeks in Canada. The name Karen Swann was plastered all over them. No wonder they wanted to change it.’
‘That would be why they hid her passport.’ Rona remembered the detective’s hesitation when she’d mentioned it; the one the bank held would be in Karen’s name, not Louise’s.
‘But it still doesn’t mean she killed them,’ she added. ‘And if she can’t remember what she did, isn’t it possible she’s a different person now? A different personality, at least? I really can’t see Louise harming anyone; she’s too timid.’
Swann shook his head. ‘In all conscience, who else could it be? Not a burglar; it said in the papers nothing was taken. And the Franks weren’t the kind of people to make enemies.’
‘Why didn’t they tell her the truth, though?’ Rona pursued. ‘Her memory will come back in time, and it’ll be even more of a shock.’
Swann shrugged. ‘I suppose they were trying to protect her, reckoning it was all for the best if she couldn’t remember. God, she’s got it made, hasn’t she? Unlike Dave and little Timmy, she’s alive and well, away from all the hoo-ha and with a new life ahead of her. And the icing on the cake is that she doesn’t even remember what’s she done.’
There was no more to be said. Rona and Max stood up, and Swann with them. This time he did hold out his hand, and both of them took it.
‘Good luck,’ Rona said.
‘Thanks. You too.’
They left him at the table and walked out of the hotel into the blinding sunlight, by unspoken consent turning into Dean’s Crescent North.
Only as they reached the little sitting room at Farthings did Rona say, ‘Do you really think she did it, Max?’
‘Killed her parents? God knows, but it seems quite likely.’
‘But why?’
‘Perhaps Swann’s visit somehow upset the apple cart.’
‘So if she’s not being held somewhere, as we thought, where is she?’
‘Again, God knows. Done a runner, no doubt. Don’t worry, darling; I doubt if we’ll see her again, other than on the news if they find her.’
‘I just can’t believe . . .’
‘I know,’ he said gently. He glanced at the clock on the mantelpiece. ‘The sun probably hasn’t reached the yard-arm, but I’m opening the bar. For medicinal reasons, if nothing else; you’ve had one shock after another, and by default, so have I.’
He glanced at her downcast face. ‘Would you like to stay here for the evening, and we can go home together?’
She straightened, shaking her head. ‘No, Gus will be waiting. I’ll be all right. I’ll just have a drink with you, and be on my way.’
Max handed her a glass. ‘Then let’s drink to the resumption of normal services.’
‘I’ll join you in that,’ she said.
After the next press conference, the news hit the papers. MISSING DAUGHTER TRIED FOR MURDER IN CANADA, screamed the headlines, and this time, alongside Rona’s photofit, was a reproduction of the picture from the Canadian press. The net was tightening; surely it could only be a matter of time before Karen/Louise was found.
Lindsey phoned, and both parents, in varying degrees of anxiety.
‘But you were friendly with her!’ Lindsey kept saying. ‘She could have slit your throat!’
‘Well, she didn’t, did she?’ Rona snapped, her own discomfort shortening her temper. ‘Just forget it, will you, Linz? I’m trying to.’
‘God knows how you keep getting into these situations,’ Lindsey snapped back, irritable in her turn. ‘Journalists on glossy mags don’t usually require danger money!’
‘Being a journalist has nothing to do with it – at least, not this time. I just happened to be living next door to a murderer; lots of people find themselves in that position. You see them on the news, saying, “But he was always such a quiet boy,” and so on, as though he should have had “murderer” stamped on his forehead. Well, now I know how they feel. I was taken in, too.’
Lindsey’s voice softened. ‘Sorry, sis; I didn’t mean to jump down your throat. I’m worried about you, that’s all, and so is Dominic.’
Rona couldn’t help smiling. ‘Now, that makes me feel a whole lot better!’
‘There’s no need to be sarky, he really is.’ She paused. ‘At least we don’t have to worry about the stalker any more.’
‘That’s something, I suppose,’ Rona said tiredly.
After a quick phone call to check she�
��d not be in the way, Rona spent the next two days at Oak Avenue. One would have been sufficient, but the last week had left her shaky, and she needed to have other people around.
Julian, having continued to make steady progress, was due back at the weekend, and in the meantime his parents were still in residence. Rona and Felicity had their planned coffee together, and later Graham came up to the archive room for a chat, glancing with interest through the typescript she handed him.
‘It’ll be good to have it all collated,’ he commented. ‘We knew there was a wealth of information buried in there, but it was a daunting task to find anything. Now that you’ve indexed it, specific information will be readily accessible.’
He laid the typescript back on the table. ‘I hear from Felicity that all this business in the papers relates to your neighbours.’
‘Unfortunately, yes.’
‘A bad business all round. Personally, I doubt if they’ll ever track down the daughter; she could be anywhere by now – she’d a good few hours’ start before her parents were discovered. If she’s any sense, she’ll have fled abroad.’
‘She hadn’t got her passport,’ Rona said, and explained it was held at the bank.
‘Ah! Then that will have limited her choices.’
‘I still can’t believe she did it, any of it,’ Rona said sadly. ‘I always thought she was the vulnerable one.’
‘Appearances can be deceptive,’ rejoined Graham Willow owlishly.
Friday. The week had seemed interminable. Max had spoken to his father, and provided the police had no objection, they hoped to fly up to Northumberland on Monday. It would be good to see Roland again, not to mention Cynthia, Paul, and the boys; even better, to get away from Marsborough for a while.
The day was overcast and humid, and Rona saw from the study window that the plants in their containers were beginning to droop. Abandoning her computer, she ran downstairs and went into the garden. Gus followed her, amiably wagging his tail.
‘We’ll go for a walk later,’ she promised him, filling the watering can at the outside tap. As she moved methodically among the tubs and urns, returning every now and then to refill the can, her actions seemed suddenly charged with significance: and she remembered the day the Franks had moved in, when, while watering, she’d looked up at the house and seen a curtain move.
Next Door to Murder Page 23
