Rafferty felt the atmosphere in the room change. The tension was now a physical thing. Shore's powerful hands had begun to flex and unflex, as if he had Maxie's neck between them. His face was a colour kaleidoscope of deep emotions, and Rafferty, worried Shore's impressive self-control would fail him, wanted to get the boy out before it did.
Quietly, in a voice that was as calming and emotionless as he could make it, Rafferty told the boy. 'You're over fourteen, Maximillian. Over the age of criminal responsibility. You know right from wrong. The murder of your stepmother was carefully planned, premeditated, and I think the courts will agree with me. I must ask you to accompany me to the police station.' He glanced at Hilary Shore 'Perhaps your aunt will help you gather a few things together?'
'No!' Maxie's scream made him falter. Until now, Maxie had remained very quiet, whether from shock or disbelief at what was happening, Rafferty didn't know. But now, his matter-of-fact mention of practicalities seemed to get through to the boy where the previous dramatic re-telling of the murder had failed, and, as grim reality swamped the theories that had obsessed him for so long, he ran across the room to the portrait of Maximillian Shore screaming hysterically. 'Grandfather,' he begged. 'Help me. You've got to help me. It was your idea. I'd never have thought of it on my own. Make them see that I had to kill her.'
Appalled at the ghastly spectacle of the shrieking boy scrambling over the table to reach his grandfather's portrait, Rafferty could only stare helplessly at him.
It was Llewellyn who pulled the sobbing boy away. 'He won't help you, lad,' he soothed. 'Come with me now and get whatever you think you'll need.'
Docile now, as though stunned by the speed of events and the disproving of his omnipotent grandfather's theories, Maxie began to follow the sergeant. But as he passed his father, he clutched his arm in a pleading gesture, as if he had forgotten just who it was he had murdered. 'Father?'
If Maxie had forgotten whom he had killed, Henry hadn't. He stared, with a kind of horrified fascination, at the monster he had spawned, before, quite deliberately, he wrenched his arm from the boy's grasp and stepped back, leaving him utterly alone.
Blinking rapidly, Maxie swallowed hard, before turning to Charles Shore. 'Uncle?' he whispered. 'Tell him he can't do this to me. I'm a Shore. The rich can always evade the law. You taught me that.'
'But you're not rich, are you, boy?' Shore, may have managed to control his urge to physical violence, but his capacity to wound verbally was given full reign. His despised nephew had deprived him of his desire, and it made him cruel. 'You're not even a Shore,' he taunted. 'Your name's Longman and a Longman you'll remain. You gambled Barbara's life on a long shot and lost. Get out of my sight you mindless cretin, before I forget how much I have left to lose, and kill you myself.'
Maxie backed away, his face with its still childish curves, looked even more stunned at this latest rejection. He might be a murderer, but now he looked simply a pathetic child, a child seduced by dreams of wealth, and success, and power. As the family who had helped to twist his personality abandoned him, Rafferty experienced a twinge of pity for the boy. He managed to force it down and told him, 'As I said, you'll be taken from here to the police station.' He glanced at Henry, but couldn't bring himself to remind the man that Maxie was still his son and needed him. Henry had plainly had as much as he could take for one day. 'The state will provide you with legal representation, if necessary.'
He saw through the library window that WPC Green and Constable Hanks had arrived, and he gestured to Llewellyn to take the lad out to the waiting police car. Perhaps the housekeeper would be willing to bring along a few things for the boy later.
The gravel crunched and as the police car moved away, Rafferty caught a glimpse of Maxie's white face staring back at them. He looked frightened, bewildered, and alone, his body curled into a foetal position in the far corner. Rafferty sighed, and was relieved when the car turned onto the main road, and the boy's face, with its look of desperation, was whisked out of sight.
Chapter Seventeen
THE SEARCH FOR MAXIMILLIAN Shore's theoretical manuscript had been successfully concluded. As Rafferty had guessed, Maxie had hidden it in his room. Once he had been brought to the police station, Maxie had ignored all advice to keep quiet, whether from his appointed legal representative, the Social Worker hurriedly summoned, or anyone else, and had insisted on telling them the details. As Rafferty had guessed, Maxie had known of his stepmother's pregnancy, and his reaction had been a predictable fury. He had thought she loved him, he told them, loved him best. She had made so much of him that he had thought he was enough for her. But the discovery that he wasn't, that Barbara was to have a child of her own, made his love turn temporarily to hatred and he had decided that he wasn't going to compete for her love with a baby. If he couldn't have her love for himself, then no-one would have it.
Rafferty believed the shock of his arrest had tipped him over the edge of sanity. The boy appeared to have forgotten the earlier grief he had felt; he had seemed proud of his own cleverness, and boasted of how easy it had been to borrow his uncle's mobile phone, how he had used a handkerchief over the mouthpiece and cotton wool in his cheeks to disguise his voice. As he had gone on to explain how he had punched Barbara in the temple to stun her, before smothering her with one of the pretty cushions he had brought with him specially for the purpose, Rafferty had experienced a growing horror that was still with him several hours after the interview had finished.
'SUCCESS WAS EVERYTHING to the Shore family,' said Rafferty, to Llewellyn later, as they sat over comforting mugs of tea in his office. 'Henry told us as much, if you recall? Young Maxie felt he had been deprived of his rightful inheritance. His grandfather didn't approve of Anne's marriage to Henry, and had removed her from his will. And, although they were reconciled when Maxie was born, the old man was unfortunately murdered before he could change his will back again. Consequently, Maxie was a poor relation, with little prospect of ever being anything more. He and his father lived on sufferance in his grandfather's house.
'I think, as he got older, that fact twisted his mind, which was never very strong to begin with—you've only got to look at his mother to see there's instability in the family. I think he inherited that, as well as his grandfather's self-will, and I doubt if his mother, with the drunken accusations she must have poured into his ears, helped the situation. She was very bitter about being dependant on her brother's charity. She hated Henry for that, and she hated Barbara for the loss of her son. You know, thinking back to some of the things she said, I get the impression she had guessed months earlier about the strength of her brother's feelings for Barbara, and was hoping for some family confrontation from which she could benefit. I bet she didn't anticipate this result, though.'
Llewellyn sighed. 'I wonder how many times Maxie watched his father belittled by his mother and uncle for his lack of achievement?'
'Enough, it would seem. Neither Maxie nor his father was bright enough to make their pile from using their brains. Didn't we hear his cousins tell him as much when we arrived at the house just after Barbara's body had been found? Remember his cousins were taunting him and he retaliated?' Llewellyn nodded. 'Remember how astonished the younger boy seemed that Maxie had stood up for himself?' Llewellyn nodded again.
'I get the impression he had never done that before. Of course he'd killed his step-mother less than twenty-four hours earlier. I imagine he felt filled with power just then and it gave him the courage to stand up for himself that he had lacked before. He was presumably convinced that his life would start to become more successful. It was only later that he began to realise it wasn't going to happen, and that he had killed the only person who truly cared for him, for nothing. I imagine it was a bitter discovery.
'Of course, Henry was happy enough to potter along. He might have resented being beholden to the Shores, but he was enough of a realist to know his life would be a whole lot chillier in the outside world. Even when Hilary conv
inced him that Barbara and Charles were conducting a passionate affair under his nose, it wasn't enough to force him to do something. The difference was that Charles was wrong about the boy—Maxie was a Shore, whatever his actual name, with enough of his grandfather in him to make him ambitious. And he was young; fifteen's a very vulnerable age, and he was more vulnerable than most to the powerful influence of his grandfather—didn't I tell you he was at the root of this case?
'Added to that, he felt his own and his father's failure acutely. His mother tried to imply that Charles had turned the boy against her, but I imagine she did that pretty effectively herself. She had probably humiliated him countless times with her drunken exhibitions. He would hate her for that. Luckily for her, his grandfather's theories on success demanded that the stepmother he loved, rather than the mother he hated, was the appropriate victim.'
Rafferty drained his mug of tea and continued. 'Of course, he'd inherited that ruthless streak from his grandfather, and had apparently managed to convince himself that the murder would make him not only invulnerable but secure, with success guaranteed. It's a pity for him and his victim that he didn't also inherit his grandfather's sharp mind. If he had, he might have realised that, even with the chips all stacked in your favour, life's still a chancy business. By the way,' he broke off. 'Did you get onto the hospital as I asked?'
Llewellyn nodded again, and began tidying the reports that still littered Rafferty's desk. 'You were right. They found yew berries mixed in with the jam that boy Tom Shepherd ate. Dangerous shrubs to have around with children about the place.'
'Especially when one of them was Maxie. Of course, unless he confesses, we'll never be able to prove that he tried to poison his friend—it's just possible those berries got in the jam by accident. But it doesn't really matter. One successful murder is enough to ensure he's put in a secure place for a very long time.'
He sighed. The whole case had depressed him and now, as he made a conscious effort to cheer up, he thought he knew the very thing to do it. Was there anything quite so satisfying, he asked himself, as rubbing the ultra-efficient Welshman's nose in one of his own mistakes? And it wasn't often he got the chance.
'You know,' he said, with a sly glance at Llewellyn. 'It's funny when you think of it, but if that lad had met us before he embarked on his murderous career, he might have reconsidered his grandfather's theory.'
'Oh?' Llewellyn's eyes narrowed. 'What do you mean?'
'Well we both lost our fathers young, and we're neither of us noticeably successful, are we? He got it wrong—just like you when you sent those ill-chosen flowers to Maureen. You know Ma thinks you're playing fast and loose with the girl?'
Loftily, Llewellyn corrected him. 'As it happens, I didn't get it wrong. I asked the shop to send a dozen red roses, and they made a mistake and sent yellow ones. Perhaps you'll both be happy to know that, to make up for it, Maureen’s going to receive two dozen red roses tomorrow. Red roses for love's waxing.' He got up and opened the door. 'If you want me I'll be in the canteen placing the order.'
The office door slammed shut behind him, before Rafferty could come back with a suitable riposte. Llewellyn had got the better of him—again.
But this time Rafferty didn't mind. He even smiled. After all, it wasn't every day that he managed to bring a murder case and a budding romance to a successful conclusion. His Ma would be pleased.
The End
DEATH LINE
The Rafferty & Llewellyn British Mystery Series
Geraldine Evans
COPYRIGHT
Death Line
Copyright Geraldine Evans 1995 and 2011
This is a work of fiction. All characters, names, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual people, locations or events is coincidental or fictionalized.
Except for text references by reviewers, the reproduction of this work in any form is forbidden without permission from the author.
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All rights reserved
BLURB Death Line
JASPER MOON, INTERNATIONALLY renowned ‘Seer to the Stars’, had signally failed to foresee his own future. He is found dead on his consulting-room floor, his skull crushed with his own crystal ball and, all, around him, his office in chaos.
Meanwhile, Ma Rafferty does some star-gazing of her own and is sure she can predict Detective Inspector Joe Rafferty’s future – by the simple expedient of organising it herself. She is still engaged on her crusade to get Rafferty married off to a good Catholic girl with child-bearing hips. But Rafferty has a cunning plan to sabotage her machinations. Only trouble is, he needs Sergeant Llewellyn’s cooperation and he isn’t sure he’s going to get it.
During their murder investigations, Inspector Rafferty and Sergeant Llewellyn discover a highly incriminating DVD concealed in Moon’s flat, a DVD which, if made public, could wreck more than one life. Was the famous astrologer really a nasty sexual predator?
Gradually, connections begin to emerge between Moon and others in the small Essex town of Elmhurst. But how is Rafferty to solve the case when all of his suspects have seemingly unbreakable alibis?
Chapter One
JASPER MOON, INTERNATIONALLY renowned "Seer to the Stars" had signally failed to predict his own future. He lay sprawled on the dark carpet of his consulting room with the back of his skull caved-in. A small crystal ball – presumably the murder weapon – lay beside him.
A black silk cloak covered the torso, leaving only the head and feet exposed. Disconcerted to see that, like himself, Moon sported a pair of vivid emerald green socks, Rafferty turned his attention back to the cadaver's other end. The waxy, heavy-jowled, profile was in ghastly relief to the dyed black hair and the midnight richness of the silk. A crescent-shaped scar under his left eye showed up with a lividity it had lacked in life. Rafferty imagined that the reputedly vain Moon would have been glad that the cloak lent his podgy, middle-aged body a certain dignity, a touch of elegance. An elegance certainly not shared by the room.
Obviously Moon hadn't subscribed to the less is more style of interior design. Even Rafferty, not normally one to flinch from the garish, spared only a cursory, deprecatory glance for the night black ceiling with its mother of pearl stars and scale paintings of the planets, and what he assumed were astrological symbols decorating one of the walls.
Unlike Sergeant Llewellyn, whose face evinced its usual Sphinx-like inscrutability, Rafferty had never learned to mask his emotions. He was reminded of this flaw when Edwin Astell, a tall, spare man, and the victim's business partner, commented from the doorway, 'You shouldn't judge Jasper by ordinary standards, Inspector. In his own way, he was as much of a star as his clients—they mostly came from the entertainment world. You could say that Jasper shared their showmanship and taste for the dramatic.'
So did his murderer. There was a TV and DVD in the corner. The DVD was undamaged, though empty of film, but the screen of the television had been smashed in; it looked as though someone had taken a hammer to it. The drawers had been removed from the desk and stacked on top of it, dislodging a vase of late roses. They lay strewn on the floor in front of Moon's desk, as though thrown in tribute by a mourner. The filing cabinet was surrounded by untidily strewn piles of its contents. Glass from a broken pane was scattered under the window. Rafferty walked carefully round the body and over to the window. The bottom sash had been raised to its full extent and a chill wind teased the curtains over the sill, blowing them about in a frenzied dance as he examined the rear of the premises.
An alleyway ran the length of the parade of shops and f
lats. The consulting rooms of the partners were on the first floor, above the Psychic Store, the partnership's side-line, which, Astell had already informed him, sold New Age books and trinkets. A door from the street opened onto a flight of stairs that led directly to the consulting rooms. But Astell had told them that it was seldom used and kept locked. During the day, clients came through the shop and reached the first floor by another, inner staircase; the one they had used. Moon's office was the largest of the three. It shared the back of the premises with a windowless internal kitchen and a small washroom with windows of frosted glass.
Whoever had broken into Moon's office would have found little difficulty, Rafferty realised. Not only had the burglar alarm been switched off, presumably by Moon himself, but access would have been simple as a small, flat-roofed extension from the ground floor of the shop ended just under the window. And, as an additional bonus for the intruder, although Moon's window had a security lock, the key was in it and he guessed that it had been a simple matter for the intruder to stretch an arm through the broken pane and help himself to the key that had presumably dangled from the empty hook less than one yard away.
Rafferty's lips pursed. He could understand the desire to have the key close at hand in case of fire, but surely a man who spent his time peering into the future could find sufficient foresight to put the key out of sight? Unwilling to risk any more mind-reading by Astell, he took the trouble to compose his features before he turned and nodded at the silk-shrouded body. 'You haven't touched anything? Is this exactly how you discovered him? Covered like this?'
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