Cruel as the Grave

by Meg Elizabeth Atkins

  ‘Forgive me, Liz. Everybody, up to this point, including you, has given me the impression that Reggie wasn’t capable of doing his own thinking. Now, suddenly, according to you, he’s efficiently going about fixing, organising... What in God’s name has this to do with meetings at bus stops and whisking this woman off Christ knows where — which is no more than a lot of silly farting about.’

  ‘It was. You’re right, you’ve just said it. Someone was telling him what to think, what to do — and no matter how fartingly silly, he’d do it. Then... it might be difficult to approach this man, it might have needed tact, cunning, time... anything. So they had to plan, make arrangements. He could still be dangerous, couldn’t he? Threatened — perhaps with exposure, after all these years when he thought he’d got away with it. You said — we’ve only had Doris’s version. There must be police records, they might tell us something different — they’d certainly tell us more. There could even be some possible clue to his identity.’

  ‘Liz, the police records won’t exist any more. At least, I doubt it very much, not an incident like that — as Doris said, they’re ten a penny round here.’

  Liz was looking at her in amazement. ‘Do you mean — you don’t keep records?’

  ‘Yes, but not necessarily for very long. There’s no legal requirement X number of years, depends entirely on Force policy. It’s only unsolved murders that are never thrown away and that wasn’t murder, it was assault occasioning actual bodily harm. No, you’re going up a blind alley with that one.’

  ‘Doesn’t matter. I’ll have to think of something else.’ She sat concentrating, her face very determined. ‘He’d be quite an age now, possibly retired. At the time he wasn’t a boy, or a young man — he was mature, I’m sure he was from the way Doris spoke about him.’

  ‘Don’t forget she was looking with a child’s eyes. Everyone out of their teens is ancient.’

  ‘I know. But a very young man can change a great deal over the years — almost out of recognition. An older man, though, given ten, twenty years — ’

  ‘Nearer thirty.’

  ‘O.K. But you see what I’m getting at. He’s greyer, he stoops a bit, he’s put on weight, but when Beattie saw his face... she’d see the man she wanted to call Dad.’

  ‘Meanwhile,’ Annette made an effort to sound sensible. She had an uncomfortable feeling that what Liz lacked in training and professional expertise, she made up for with intuition. Supposing she was right? ‘Meanwhile, there’s this mysterious third party behind the scenes, directing everything.’

  ‘Mmm.’

  They were both silent for a while, thinking. Annette folded her napkin. Folded it again. This was going to be difficult.

  ‘Yes?’ Liz was watching her.

  ‘You loved Reggie. You need to prove his innocence. You're a nice girl, and you’re highly intelligent. Every step along this way you’re establishing his association with Beattie — something he denied to us, to his sister. But now you’ve managed to turn him into a white knight, coming to the aid of a damsel in distress. Are you sure you’re not doing this because it’s the only way you can live with his memory?’

  ‘I don’t know, Annette. I don’t know.’

  *

  She lay awake long into the night, her brain refusing to wind down. She fell asleep at last and woke late, stupefied, unable to make sense of anything.

  To clear her mind she went for a hurtling bicycle ride, coming home, keyed-up, to begin a manic house blitz — working from the kitchen to the sitting room, cleaning, vacuuming, rearranging. After a pause for a quick lunch, she flung herself back into her housework and then, in the sitting room, taking the cushion from one of the armchairs, she came to a halt. Puzzled at first, then, after a moment, shocked, staring, motionless.

  When the phone rang she jumped, having no idea how long she had been standing staring at the object she had placed on a side table.

  ‘Liz, it’s Arabella. About your bloody chair.’

  Arabella. Chair. Liz was making connections only slowly. Arabella had a workshop in Hambling, specialising in furniture restoration. ‘Chair... ’

  ‘Oh, Liz, you promised to collect it last week. I know you’ve been having a rotten time lately, ducky, and I do sympathise — but I need the space.’

  ... a Victorian mahogany chair she had bought cheap because it was a singleton and the seat was wrecked. ‘That chair.’

  ‘Give the girl a banana. That chair.’

  Liz apologised, still dazed by her discovery, certain only of one thing: that she must go to Hunter with it. She explained she would stop off on her way into Chatfield — ‘about fifteen minutes.’

  Which was how she came to be trapped, with no hope of escape, loading the chair into the back of her car. Paula appeared beside her. ‘Here, let me give you a hand. Push this way... ’

  They managed it between them; Liz with the conviction she would have expended a great deal less energy if she’d been left to do it alone.

  Paula was pleased. ‘Good job I was here to help. Come and have a cup of tea.’

  ‘I’m sorry, I — ’

  ‘Come on, I need to talk. You’re not one to bear a grudge.’ She looked so woebegone, shabby and bedraggled, her face greasy. Liz, about to refuse, hesitated. It was too late then. Paula said, ‘Good, come on.’

  ‘O.K. But I really haven’t got time to go back to your place. Let’s nip into the caff on the corner. I’ll pay.’

  It was a cheap, plastic place, not somewhere she would normally have chosen. But it was close by, and anything was better than being dragged back into Paula's manic kitchen. When they had got their tea, a huge slice of cake for Paula, and were sitting down, Liz said, ‘What grudge do you mean?’

  ‘I know the funeral was difficult — my nerves, I was so traumatised, finding Reggie’s body. I don’t think I was altogether fair, saying that about your mother not being closely related and everything.’

  ‘Let’s forget it, Paula. It was a bad time for both us.’

  ‘Well, I think that’s the point, it couldn’t possibly be as bad for you as for me. Things sort of just roll off you, you don’t take them to heart — but he was my brother and I have to live the rest of my life knowing he’s marked down as a self-confessed murderer.’

  ‘Paula, that’s just not true.’

  ‘What — that you don’t take things to heart?’

  ‘Oh, shut up, of course I do. He didn’t do it, Paula, that's not true — ’

  Paula looked at her blankly. ‘But you said — his suicide note — we agreed — you agreed — ’

  ‘I know I did. At the time I was so overwhelmed I couldn’t think straight. I can now. His alibi, he couldn’t possibly have done it if he was the other side of Cheshire, we forgot that, we didn’t take it into account under the stress of the moment. I can think more clearly now, even if you’re too obviously upset to. None of us, none of us, have to live with that awful... acceptance. I’m going to see to it we don’t. I’m going to find out who did it. Paula, you’re spilling your tea.’

  Paula ignored the dribbling cup. When she found her voice she said, ‘You don’t mean... You don’t mean you know who it was.’

  ‘Not yet, but I will.’ She reached across the table, firmly put the cup down in the swilling saucer.

  ‘But... how? If the police.

  ‘They’re wrong. Get that into your head. And I’m going to prove it to them.’

  Paula sounded bewildered. ‘But they’ve closed the case. They won’t listen to you, will they?’

  ‘If they don’t, I’ll just carry on.’

  Paula sat back, frowning. ‘Carry on with what? I mean, have you got clues and things?’

  ‘Well, not exactly... ’ Caution. If she said too much Paula would go rushing off to Helen who was beginning to find her emotional balance again. And there was something else. For the first time the importance of secrecy occurred to Liz; Annette’s professional discretion would protect her theory — give it to
Paula and before the day was out everyone in Hambling would know that Liz was on the track of a murderer living undiscovered in their very midst...

  ‘Not exactly... ’ Paula, staring at her intently, reverted to her combative self. ‘Oh, don’t think I can’t see what you’re up to. Helen and I have been through a traumatic experience and you can’t stand being out of the limelight, can you? Honestly, you’re so childish. You always want Helen to be looking at you, taking notice of you — you’d say anything — ’

  ‘I haven’t said a word of this to her, and don't you. It would be cruel to raise her hopes before I have proof, or at least something more positive — ’

  Liz was trying to hang on to her patience, but she was aware their voices were rising. In her present state Paula could work up into an instant blazing scene and it would be all over Hambling, with someone only too eager to carry news of it to Helen before the shouting had died down.

  ‘So childish,’ Paula said again. ‘So transparently childish. Helen’s always said you do the wrong thing for the right reasons — I suppose you think that’s what you’re doing now. Well, you’re not — you’re just wrong all the way. You’re trying to be clever. And you’re trying to impress her — What’s it going to be like for her with you going about on all this cloak and dagger nonsense — ’

  Liz kept her voice low, but forceful. ‘I told you. She knows absolutely nothing about it and I don’t intend — ’

  ‘She’d be so upset — you getting the family talked about. She ought to be told, she ought to know — ’

  ‘Paula, you’re not listening — ’

  ‘You bloody listen. If there’d been the least suspicion falling on anyone else — I’d have been the one to know about it. There’s very little goes on in Hambling I don’t hear about — you’re not here half the time, what can you find out? But me, I keep my ear to the ground — ’

  Pity someone doesn’t stamp on your head. Me, for instance. If the price of peace was letting Paula exercise her scorn, she’d bite her tongue and let her get on with it.

  ‘— I mean, are you going to go around asking for everyone’s alibi? Well, I’ll give you mine here and now. And what about your own, eh? Eh? You were very mysteriously missing that weekend — ’

  ‘Paula, don’t be ridiculous — ’

  ‘You’re the one who’s going to make herself ridiculous — going around with your magnifying glass and deerstalker — ’

  ‘I don’t need this. I have to go, anyway, I have an appointment.’ It wasn’t; it was an errand. She wasn’t looking forward to it but it certainly gave her a great deal of savage satisfaction to keep its purpose from Paula.

  Eighteen

  Hunter had a Senior Officers’ meeting just about to start — ‘I’m sorry, Liz, it’s lovely to see you but I’m terribly pushed. I can only spare you ten minutes.’

  Liz, moving from foot to foot like an awkward schoolgirl, said, ‘I’m not sure you will be pleased. But it is important.’

  ‘Sit down, let’s make a start, then we’ll see where we can take it. I’m not letting you walk out of here now.’

  She drew the bracelet from an envelope, where she had placed it, wrapped in tissue paper, not wanting to handle it directly. ‘After I went back to school, at the beginning of September, I discovered — when I came home at weekends — that Reggie had been — entertaining someone in my house. He knew where the key was hidden. He thought I wouldn’t mind. It only happened a few times, always on a Thursday night. I never knew who the person was. This morning, I was having a blitz — cleaning, tidying. In one of the armchairs in the sitting room, tucked down by the side of the cushion, I found this.’

  She put the packet on his desk. He sat unmoving, big, capable hands clasped. She leaned forward, opened the paper, fingers trembling slightly. She had never before experienced silence of such density. ‘You see, it’s a bracelet. They’ve been all the rage recently, I’ve had to confiscate one or two from the girls at school, they’re not allowed jewellery, well, not during class... ’ She swore at herself under her breath to stop talking drivel. ‘The thing about these... ’ It was a gaudy object, flimsy and rattling. She spread it flat. ‘You see — they have initials worked into the design — er — the owner’s initials.’

  After what seemed a long silence, he took a pencil, moved the bracelet with it, said, ‘B.B.’

  ‘Yes. Please believe me, I never, never thought, for one moment, that the woman he was entertaining was Beattie.’

  ‘But you were in possession of that information, and you withheld it. Do you realise what it would have meant at that stage of the investigation, how much work it would have saved — and how it would have influenced the outcome? Yes... I could have used it to fight the old man to keep the investigation open.’

  She couldn’t allow herself to think of the significance of that. She could only think she had been waiting for his fury to fall on her and now that it had it was all the more unnerving for being so controlled...

  He said, ‘I’m going to keep this,’ picked up the phone, said something curt and incomprehensible into it about an entry in something that seemed to be called the other-than-found-property book. Turned back to her. ‘Well, girl? What else?’

  How did he know? ‘I went to the Railway last night and talked to Doris.’

  Amazement displaced everything. ‘What in God’s name for?’

  ‘Because I knew that if I spoke to her, woman to woman, I’d find something out. I did. It’s too complicated to tell you now, but, er... Oh, and Annette came with me. You mustn't be angry with her.’ She was quite confident of coming between Annette and his wrath, at least for the present, knowing that Annette had that very morning begun several days’ leave, off to visit her parents. ‘She tried to talk me out of it, I had to persuade her. She didn’t want me going there on my own.’

  ‘Oh, God — ’ whatever he had been about to say, the phone interrupted him. He grabbed it up, listened, barked, ‘Straight away,’ crashed it back. He stood up. ‘Come on, I’ll see you off the premises, I don’t want you hanging round here suborning my staff.’ Then they were striding down a corridor and she had to skip to keep up with him. He said, ‘I’ll be tied up till about five or six, I’ll phone you. I’ll see you this evening. Don’t say you’re busy. We have to talk. And I’ll have calmed down by then.’ He held a door open, stood unmoving. 'Now, go away, girl, before I charge you with something. Anything. The mood I’m in I’m not fussy.’

  *

  She jumped when the phone rang at 6.30. Tried to gauge the tone of his, ‘Hallo, Liz.’

  ‘How are you?’ she asked diffidently.

  ‘Clothed and in my right mind.’

  A pause, then her sudden laughter. Thank God, she wasn’t going to spend the evening being wretched and apologising for her existence.

  He arranged to pick her up. She had expected some local pub; no, it was Stavely Manor. She had to rush upstairs, start throwing clothes about. Stavely was Helen’s favourite place, it was where they’d gone the day she’d come rushing back from school after Paula’s phone call, to find Helen making a bonfire in the back garden.

  The luxury of Stavely was restrained by perfect taste. There could not be an atmosphere smoother, more restful. Hunter looked impressive, expensively tailored; he was discreetly addressed by name. She wondered if he was often there, with whom. She said, ‘If I make a kind of comprehensive apology now, will that do? I really mean it. Helen’s always saying I do the wrong thing for the right reason.’

  He had to sledgehammer his thoughts to order. She sat exquisitely opposite him in a narrow amber silk dress that followed every supple movement of her body; silver belt and sandals and bangles; he had never seen pearls look voluptuous before, as they did against her skin.

  ‘Er — so you’re going to tell me now — what you’ve done and why?’

  ‘Well... not instantly. Do you mind if I just give my attention to this marvellous menu. You see, I have a theory and it’s go
ing to take quite a lot of explaining.’

  ‘Of course. A theory... ’ He managed to look interested and not condescending. When, eventually, mellowed by wine, delicious food and charmingly inconsequential conversation, she did tell him, he gave her a long, careful look.

  She heard again in her head all her arguments: muddled, inconclusive. ‘I haven’t made sense, have I?’

  ‘I didn’t say that. Let’s go through it systematically. From the beginning — for you that’s when you found out Reggie was using your house to — entertain someone. You must have spoken to him about it.’

  ‘Only in a general way. I didn’t want to pry. I said I’d rather he didn’t do it again — you know the sort of thing.’

  ‘No, I don’t. As far as I’m concerned your entire family are straight out of P. G. Wodehouse — how do I know how you speak to one another?’

  She swallowed a giggle. Could he possibly mean it?

  ‘You said — it was always on a Thursday. Did he tell you that?’

  ‘Oh, gosh, no, he didn’t really tell me anything. He was awfully evasive — secretive. If you’d known him, he could talk for ages and say absolutely nothing. No, I worked it out, it was simple enough. The dustbin’s emptied on a Thursday morning — there was always a wine bottle in it on Friday.’ She felt the incongruity of talking about dustbins in the most expensive restaurant for miles around. If he found it exceptional he gave no indication, perhaps his life was constantly ambushed by such mundane matters.

  ‘So — he went to Cheltenham. You came to see me and I told you Beattie’s name. Surely you asked him then if he knew her?’

  ‘Well, no, I never had the chance. You see, I’d been away for a fortnight, which was unusual. The weekend I didn't come home was when it all happened, so when I did come back to Hambling a week later Reggie had become very upset about the situation, actually it had made him quite ill. On the day he left for Cheltenham, he — um — he wouldn’t see me.’ She was silent for a space. It had hurt her to say it, but she knew she had to be truthful.