The Bad Samaritan

by Robert Barnard

  She paused, having allowed herself to be sidetracked. She tried to get back to those early days.

  “It was the happiest time of my life. Stephen was working with a building society, but he was anxious to start his own business. Dad was captivated by him and willing to do everything in the way of helping him and introducing him to people. In the little spare time he had we went places together—plays, concerts, church do’s of one sort or another. After a respectable amount of time—after the middle-class, English amount of time—we got engaged. Dad was over the moon. So was I. We didn’t sleep together. It seems funny to think of now. Stephen was acting his part well, but perhaps overacting a little. Did you realize he was only uncertainly English? He lived in Yugoslavia till he was seventeen. Of course now I know he must have been getting what he wanted from someone, perhaps many, but at the time I knew or suspected nothing. Dad gave me away at St Saviour’s, and I think it was the happiest moment of his life as well as mine.” She paused, then suddenly spat out: “I burnt the wedding pictures later. I couldn’t bear to look at them. I couldn’t even say I’d been sold. I’d sold myself.”

  There was silence in the room for a moment.

  “How soon did things start going wrong?” Oddie asked gently. She answered him only indirectly.

  “I once read about Lord Byron, and how he told his wife on their wedding night that he’d only married her for revenge. In my case it wasn’t revenge, it was because of all Dad could offer, but he did make things pretty clear right from the start . . . . I wasn’t very good in bed. Not at all what he had been used to. He wasn’t gentle or understanding—he was contemptuous. He just gave up on me as soon as he’d had me. By the end of the honeymoon he wasn’t bothering to hide his impatience to get home and get down to what really interested him in life: making money. He felt sure that, now we were married, Dad would be willing to make a big investment in him, and he was right. By the end of the honeymoon I knew I was an irrelevance in his life, a means, a steppingstone. It hurt.”

  “Did you both put up a front for your father’s benefit?” Charlie asked.

  “Oh yes—at first. Later on Stephen stopped bothering, because Dad didn’t notice. I’d been around all his life, and though he’d been forced to make do with what he’d got he’d never thought much to daughters. It was Stephen who fascinated him, and before long I stopped interesting him at all. He set Stephen up in business and was taken with the whole idea of European Opportunities Ltd. He’d come round to our house, Stephen would be round at his. Meanwhile the marriage became nothing more than a facade, a shell, a charade—call it what you will.”

  “But you didn’t think of leaving him?”

  “I thought. . . . But what would I do? Go back to live with Dad? I’d have seen more of Stephen there than if I’d stayed married to him. Get a job? But what could I do? I had no training, no experience, no confidence. And after a time Dad began to fail with very bad arthritis. I could see it happening, and in the end we moved into his house, our old home, and built a little flat on the back for him, and that seemed about as satisfactory a solution as I could hope for. I wasn’t happy, but it worked.”

  She stopped. The men thought they’d asked too many questions, and they let her continue in her own fashion.

  “I said the marriage was a shell. That was true for a long time. We would have the odd meal together, almost by accident, and that was it. Otherwise a meal was always there when he came in, and some days we hardly saw each other, hardly exchanged a word. That was perfectly satisfactory as far as I was concerned. Of course we didn’t sleep together—the mere thought of it nauseated me—and I knew he had plenty of substitutes: paid, casual, sometimes a bit more than that, but never anything involving real feeling. Stephen was incapable of real feeling. Mostly what was involved was humiliation. I know because . . . There was a change, you see. For a time he was so busy running two businesses, Dad’s and his own, that our marriage more or less ceased to exist. Eventually even Dad would have noticed that, but he was becoming more inward-looking, not noticing anything except his immediate comforts. Then Stephen got rid of the furniture business, and I think around that time he started getting into all sorts of dodgy businesses—organised crime in the East European countries, and so on. That was much more exciting than any boring old furniture firm, and more profitable too. It gave spice to his life, he began to relish living on the edge of danger. It brought out the buccaneer in him.”

  She looked up and straight at them.

  “It spilled over into the marriage. Indifference, living our own lives separately, wasn’t enough any more. It was as if he resented the fact that he’d trapped himself in a loveless, unexciting marriage when all the time there were these more thrilling ways of making money and getting on that he hadn’t thought about when he used me to do that.” She paused, and her mouth involuntarily went into a little moue. “He began to be around more, to torment me. He would sit at the breakfast table and read aloud from love letters begging him to leave his boring wife and go off with whoever it was. ‘Why don’t you?’ I’d say. He began bringing girls home—all sorts of girls—and flaunting them in front of me before taking them upstairs to make love . . . . What a phrase: ‘make love’! . . . I hated that, I have to admit. I couldn’t cope with that, and I couldn’t tell you why to this day. Some of them were tarts, but some of them were really nice girls like Janet Sheffield, and that was worse. I was sorry for them . . . . One day he raped me. I don’t want to go into that. I told him that if it ever happened again I’d murder him.”

  “Did it?”

  “No. He knew I meant it.”

  “Why didn’t you turn him out of the house?”

  “His own house? Dad had made it over to him the same time as he’d handed over the business to him . . . . Oh, I know there are ways, but I’ve never been a strong person. Not determined or single-minded. I felt trapped. If Dad had died I’d have done something, but he’s still well apart from the arthritis, though his mind has been going for some time. Stephen found that mightily amusing, of course. Now and again he’d tell people at church about silly things Dad had said or done, exaggerating, to show what he’d sunk to . . . . I’d almost stopped going to church myself soon after we were married.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t think I’d lost my faith, at least not then, but I didn’t want to be part of Stephen’s using religion. It demeaned it. Stephen didn’t have a faith! He didn’t even have a moral code, not even the faintest ethical barrier beyond which he wouldn’t go . . . . Stephen would do anything . . . . Shall I tell you about Saturday evening?”

  “Please.”

  She paused, collecting her thoughts.

  “I had no intention of going to the church party. I never went to any function with Stephen unless he forced me, which he did now and then when the whim took him, mainly to establish respectable-married-man credentials. But it was true that the cat was missing. I’m very fond of Moggs. Sometimes he just sits there looking at Stephen, as if judging him, deciding he’s lower than an insect he wouldn’t waste his time catching. I like that . . . . Stephen came in to change about seven. There’d been a phone call earlier—a foreign man, sounding very upset. He didn’t leave a message, but I told Stephen about it. He just shrugged. He went out shouting goodbye to Dad: ‘’Bye, Dad—have a good time.’ His idea of humour.” She frowned in thought. “That was the last time I’ll ever hear his voice.”

  She paused, as if trying to order events in her own mind.

  “During the evening I watched a bit of television, listened to Radio Three. I kept going out into the garden and calling for Moggs, then along the road too. He’s a neutered tom, but he’s a real prowler when the mood takes him. I always worry when he goes missing because we’re so close to the Ilkley Road. I lied about his never crossing that. Once we found him in Herrick Park. Anyway I got Dad his nightcap. He always has Ovaltine around half past nine. Then I went out again, back home, out again. Eventuall
y, after the ITV news, I decided to go across to Herrick Park. It was silly, I know: the only sensible thing when a cat is lost is to wait for him to come home. But when it’s the only thing you’ve got, almost . . .”

  “And that was—when?”

  “Getting on for half past ten. The evening news had been at ten past ten, and I’d heard the item about the illegal immigrants who had died. It was quite horrible. I’d wondered whether Stephen was involved. He was, wasn’t he?”

  “Yes, he was.”

  “I knew that much about what he was up to, you see. Anyway, I walked down to the Ilkley Road, crossed it, keeping my eye skimmed all the time for Moggs, dreading to see him hit by a car or already lying dead in the road. It’s a horrible sight, isn’t it, a dead cat in the middle of the road? They’re so fragile . . . . The edge of the park is only five or six minutes from our house, and as soon as I got there I started calling for Moggs. It was dark, of course, and I was rather afraid. It’s not a place most people would willingly go on to at night, particularly women. First I kept near the road, close to the lights, but then I thought that defeated the purpose of looking for him because Moggs certainly didn’t need street lights . . . . Anyway, I’d gone away from the road and was over towards the tennis courts when I jumped with fear. I’d thought I heard shouts.”

  “Where from?”

  “From the other end of the park—from the edge of the clump of trees on the rise. It was the fight, of course. I was terrified. All those nasty incidents on the park—you know about them, of course—came flooding into my mind. I started to hurry to the road, but the quickest route to it didn’t take me away from the fight but towards it. And the fight seemed to be coming in that direction. They were coming away from the trees and towards the road, one running, the other following. And as I looked and began to hurry away in the other direction I thought that one of the men looked like Stephen.”

  She stopped, remembering. Oddie and Charlie left her a moment or two to collect her thoughts. In those moments Charlie suddenly asked himself: why is she telling us this? He could not find an answer.

  “What did you do?” Oddie asked at last, gently.

  “I hid behind a tree. I thought, you see, that I probably wasn’t in any danger. I thought it was most likely a husband or a boyfriend of someone that Stephen had . . . To tell you the truth I was pleased he was getting what he deserved. I wanted to watch it.” She looked at them, not pleading, but to see if they understood. “I’m sorry, it sounds disgusting but that’s the truth of it . . . . The other man was doing all sorts of things with his outstretched hands and arms—like men I’ve seen on television slicing bricks in half and that kind of thing. He was using his feet too—like a modern ballet. Stephen was crying out. I knew it was him by now. Then suddenly there was a blow to the head and it was all over. Stephen was lying stretched out on the ground, and the other man was running away in the direction of the Ilkley Road.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I stood there under a tree for a moment or two, uncertain what to do. The sensible thing would have been to go straight home. I don’t know why I didn’t, or why . . . I walked over to where Stephen was lying. He was quite unconscious, and I could see blood on him. But he was breathing. I stood there looking down on him. A great wash of feeling came over me, as if I was drowning, and everything he had ever done, to me, to Dad, to others, came over me like a big wave . . . . I can’t explain the feeling, but it seemed somehow too little . . . . After all he’d done: the hateful things, the criminal things, the humiliating things. I think it must have been what the victims feel when a judge imposes a very light sentence on someone who has done really dreadful things to them. It was how he’d treated everyone that I was thinking of, not just me. The heartlessness, the hypocrisy, the double-dealing. It seemed too little . . . . I can’t explain what I did, why I did it. I don’t think I thought. But somewhere in the back of my mind there may have been the idea that if I didn’t do it now, then so good an opportunity would never come again . . . . I bent down and took from his pocket the little knife I knew he always carried. It’s small but very sharp—deadly. I pressed the catch and the blade sprung forward. He stirred. I knew if I was going to do it, it had to be then. I bent down and slit his throat.”

  There was utter silence in the little room. Oddie said, at last, “Just like that?”

  “Just like that. Without any emotion.”

  “What did you do then?”

  “I stood for a moment watching him die. Only that way could it seem enough.” She looked at them to see if she had shocked them, but they remained impassive. “Then I walked back across the park on my way home, calling to Moggs all the time. I slipped the knife down a drain when I got to the road, and I held a scarf in my hand to hide the fact that my hands were bloody. Moggs was on the front doorstep when I got home—it’s always the way, isn’t it? I ran water into an old plastic bowl and washed the blood off myself. I’ve seen all those police things on television, you know, and I knew they can trace the tiniest bit of blood left in a sink. Then I went out again and disposed of the bowl in a skip, and the scarf too. Then I went home and began to prepare for all the pretence that would be necessary the next day. I decided I had to at least pretend to be the devoted wife. If I’d told the truth about him and me I’d be the first to be suspected. And what would Dad do if I was sent to prison? So I thought hard about what I’d say to you when you came. But I slept—I slept very well. I didn’t have any doubts or pricks of conscience, and I haven’t had since either. That’s odd, isn’t it? Someone who used to be a regular churchgoer. I suppose it’s a measure of the sort of man Stephen was . . . . Is that enough? Will your tape have all that?”

  “Yes, that’s enough,” said Oddie. He moved to switch off the tape, but Charlie put out his hand to stop him. He still hadn’t found the answer to his question. He looked at the woman opposite, at her only good feature—her deep eyes, almost black: eyes that looked at him and told him nothing, except that what they probably concealed was pain, loneliness and the emptiness of being unloved. It seemed almost an act of cruelty to ask her anything more, but Charlie felt he had to chance his arm.

  “Why did they call your father ‘Onions’?” he asked.

  She looked at him, quickly and sharply.

  “What? What do you mean? Why on earth are you asking me about that?”

  “His nickname in Abbingley. ‘Onions.’ Was it because he could cry at will at those revivalist meetings he went in for? Real, wet tears like he turned on for us?”

  “I don’t understand. Why are you saying those nasty things about him?”

  “When did he find out that Stephen had sold his beloved business, and when did he start hating him as much as you did?”

  “He didn’t! He loved him!”

  “Oh no, he didn’t. Because it wasn’t your cat you went to look for on Herrick Park, was it? It was your father. And by the time you found him he’d killed your husband.”

  The great eyes suddenly filled with tears and she fell forward on to the table, racked with sobs. They waited, listening to her barely distinguishable words. The only ones Charlie thought he could make out were, “Why did you let me go on? How did you know?”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Envoi

  It was several weeks before Charlie had any conversation about the case with Rosemary Sheffield. When he did he said rather more than, strictly, he ought to have done, mainly because in the course of the case he had come not only to like her but to trust her too. And it was not as though there was any prospect of the case coming to court.

  It happened one Sunday, when he was jogging around Herrick Park, as he generally did on days off, though in no fanatical spirit. Running down the gentle incline from the small wooded area, very near the place where Stephen Mills’s body had lain, he saw the Reverend Sheffield making pedantic little dabs at the door handle of his car with a cloth; and he saw Rosemary come out, a puppy in her arms. She kissed her husband and r
aised her hand as he drove off on his way to morning service. Charlie in turn raised his hand to her, then turned aside from his usual route and ran over to her. They both knew perfectly well what they were going to talk about, and when Rosemary had set the puppy down safely in the front garden they sat against the garden wall of the vicarage that abutted the road, Charlie panting slightly.

  “They say the old man has been institutionalised—is that true?” Rosemary asked. Charlie nodded.

  “Yes. It was the devil’s own job to get a place for him at a secure establishment, but in the end, one had to be found. These days it’s no good being mentally ill—you have to have cut someone’s throat as well.”

  “Dorothy’s had a lot of well-wishers from the congregation.”

  Charlie laughed cynically.

  “I bet she has! They left her pretty well alone when she was the neglected and mistreated wife.”

  “Yes, we all did. To be fair, I was as guilty as anyone.”

  “And to be fair on the other side, she didn’t want to have much to do with a church that could have Stephen as an honoured member.”

  Rosemary nodded.

  “Yes, that always worried me too, but what could you do? He was, to all intents and purposes, an upright citizen . . . . She told one of the well-wishers that she had confessed to the murder. Is that true?”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “I believe a lot of people do that during murder enquiries. Is that why you didn’t just accept her confession?”

  “We always look closely at confessions. They have to stand up in court . . . .” Charlie pulled himself up. He was starting to sound like a PR man. “But, well, the fact is that we very nearly did accept it, at least for a time. The fact is that most of what she told us the first time we talked to her was lies. The devoted husband and son-in-law stuff was the only thing she could think of to shield her father—and herself, by then his accomplice. Most of what she told us during the second interview was true. But not all. And there were significant gaps. You know, you sit there listening to someone confess, and if everything fits neatly with the facts—and it did in her confession, mainly because it was very nearly the truth—then your mind doesn’t make the leap away from the facts to ask itself the bigger questions.”