by Alice Castle
She ground her teeth in frustration but trailed up to bed, still worn to a frazzle, and overslept the next morning. So there was no opportunity for a call with Harry to put her out of her misery before Ben’s ears started flapping. There were so many questions she was dying to have answered – chiefly, was she right in her suspicions?
Picking up Magpie from the vets was the highlight of the day, though the journey past the deserted Potter house and the closed office was a little surreal. It was already as though none of the turbulent events of the last week had ever happened.
Back at home, and with the little doorway of her wicker cell released, Magpie sauntered out, plonked her still well-upholstered backside down in the middle of the hall, and proceeded to give her chin a leisurely scratch with her long back leg, shedding copious drifts of black-and-white fluff onto the pristine tiles. Beth and Ben looked at each other, eyes shining. Normal service had been resumed.
By the time Harry finally arrived that evening, there was a sizeable pile of wrapped presents underneath the slightly ratty Christmas tree, which had been one of the few left at the florists in the Village. And there were paper chains, tinsel, and baubles hanging off everything except Magpie, who sat in front of the fire radiating feline contentment.
He took a seat and the glass that Beth had poured 24 hours earlier – though she didn’t advertise that fact – and looked at her expectant face.
‘I must say, I rather like it this way round, with you asking me the questions, instead of dragging me off to some crime scene just to do a bit of arresting for you,’ he said with a smile.
‘Come on then, tell me. What’s happened?’ said Beth, not bothering to hide her impatience.
‘Well, you’re going to love this, but yes, you were right. It was the piece of paper that did it.’
‘You mean the report from the vet’s? The post mortem on poor old Lancelot?’
‘Exactly,’ Harry said, shaking his head. ‘The levels of zopiclone in his bloodstream were off the scale.’
‘And zopiclone, that’s also known as zimovane, right?’
‘Yes,’ said Harry.
‘That’s what I heard at the chemists – I thought it sounded like Zimmer frame. But it was enough to get me wondering. Why Potter needed the prescription, and why he was bothering to get a report on the dog as well.’
‘He must have suspected that it wasn’t natural causes, even though Great Danes aren’t a long-lived breed – about eight to ten years, usually.’
‘And what about the office scam? Was I right that Potter was diddling all those old folk at the sheltered housing?
‘Yep. I don’t know how you got onto that, but he was indeed siphoning off the money, rewriting the wills to include little, or not so little, bequests to a certain solicitor. And he was always careful to make sure it was the old folk without a lot of inquisitive relatives that he picked on. Mind you, there weren’t enough of them hereabouts to support his lifestyle by the end. He was in serious financial trouble. The mortgage hadn’t been paid for three months, the bank was about to foreclose, even the car was on a lease that wasn’t being serviced.’
Beth was silent. Among the larger victims of Potter’s fraud, there’d also be the smaller casualties – the flute teachers and dog walkers, who’d no doubt be out of pocket with no recourse. She felt for them.
‘So that it explains it, really. Poor man. No wonder he did what he did,’ Harry said, throwing back the last of his wine with a smile. ‘Bed time?’ he said hopefully.
Beth looked at him, agog. ‘You’re kidding, right?’
Harry looked at her, baffled.
‘You know he didn’t do it?’ asked Beth slowly.
‘What do you mean? He offed himself with the sleeping stuff, same as he used on the dog. No question.’
‘No, no, no,’ said Beth, head in her hands. ‘Don’t tell me they’ve got away with it. They haven’t, have they?’ she peeped up at Harry, through her fringe and her fingers, in consternation.
‘What do you mean? It’s all done and dusted, thank heavens. We can think about Christmas. Do you want to come over to my mum’s?’
As taken as she was with this idea, though she now had an immense turkey squatting in the bottom of her fridge, Beth couldn’t help shouting.
‘Don’t you see? Potter didn’t kill himself. Why do you think all those dogs died?’
‘You’re not asking me to investigate pet killings now, are you? Don’t you think I’ve got enough on my plate?’ Harry was suddenly getting fed up.
‘Look, think about the dogs. First a dachshund. Then a spaniel, then a Staffordshire. Each time a slightly bigger dog. Then, finally, the Great Dane. What does that tell you?’
‘Nothing. Or, maybe that the poisoner was getting more ambitious?’
‘No! That they were adjusting the doses. Finding out how much of the stuff was lethal. Calibrating it carefully. And how big is a Great Dane?’
‘Erm, about up to here?’ said Harry, his hand shoulder-height from the sofa.
‘Exactly. Big. As big as a child. And two Great Danes are as big as…’
‘As a man,’ said Harry, a light unwillingly dawning. ‘It was all a dry run.’
‘From someone who doesn’t like to make mistakes. And who was very serious about what they were up to. And very angry. Very angry – with Potter. Because they knew about the finances going down the tubes. And they weren’t happy about it. And maybe they wanted out.’
‘His wife.’ Harry sat up, electrified, and slowly met Beth’s eyes. ‘But why wouldn’t she just get a divorce?’
‘From a lawyer? Who’d stitch everything up for years? She might have ended up getting nothing that way, if he’d carried on losing money the way he was. No, she had to get rid of him quickly, stop the wealth haemorrhaging away. Preserve her lifestyle.’
‘But she had no job. What did she think she was going to do?’ Harry was baffled.
Beth thought for a moment. Then remembered Tom Seasons, the Bursar, slinking about the Village the other night. He was separated from his wife, thanks to earlier events. And he had admissions to Wyatt’s in his pocket. ‘Get married again,’ she said in a flat voice. There would probably never be any proof, but Beth was as sure as she could be. ‘Where is Letty now?’ she added, urgently.
‘Gone to the holiday house. In Norfolk. I’d better make a few calls,’ he said, shooting up off the sofa. The next thing she heard was the car firing up outside and driving off into the night.
Chapter Twenty
Beth, as she hefted a perfectly-cooked turkey out of the oven on Christmas Day (if you didn’t count singed legs and a distinctly crispy bit on the side where the bird had touched the oven wall), realised she’d learned many things this year. A new job could bring huge satisfaction. Persistence paid off. And sometimes, it was worth taking a chance, whatever the risks. Particularly if it was to preserve the things you loved – in her case, truth, justice, and the Dulwich way.
She felt a pang for the Potter children. They were with their grandparents, as Letty had been refused bail. It was probably just as well. Pet owners were up in arms about her cynical testing of sleeping pills on different sized pooches, to get the right dose to kill a man but not his wife and children. The fact that she had sacrificed her own pet, poor Lancelot, made it all the more horrifying. Letty, everyone said, wouldn’t have stood a dog’s chance out on the streets.
Somehow, there was much more outrage about the deaths of Roxie, Lola, Lancelot, Rosie, and possibly Truffles, too – though Letty wasn’t yet admitting to that one – than about poor old Potter himself. Beth thought it was a tad unfair. Aside from that time when she’d thought he might hit her, or worse, she hadn’t really disliked him. She’d certainly been furious when she’d realised all that dictation was fake, just the regurgitation of favourite old cases.
He’d been in a very odd mental state, knowing that ruin was round the corner. Either the work was going to dry up entirely or someone would notice t
he will fraud, but either way, he was seemingly caught in the headlights of oncoming disaster, helpless to prevent it. In some ways Beth understood Letty’s frustration. And, let’s face it, a lawyer was probably never going to seem as lovable as a miniature dachshund.
Both the Potters had been intent on protecting their family, though in different, equally disastrous ways. She could feel some compassion for both, but by killing pets to get what she wanted – and by trying to poison poor Magpie in an act of pure spite that was nothing to do with her dosage experiments – Letty had crossed all the lines. Sure, her dream was probably common where they lived – a miraculously smooth future, with substantial property assets bringing in an income, and a man waiting in the wings to take up the slack – but most women accepted they might have to work a little harder to achieve it than Letty had, either by putting up with a husband or by getting a job. She’d attempted to jettison the first and avoid the second, via the simple method of stockpiling her husband’s untouched prescriptions of anti-depressants.
As far as Beth understood, the bathroom cabinet at the Potter house had been bursting with packets of zopiclone, from the prescriptions that Paul was bringing home but not taking. It would have been the work of a moment for Letty to crush them with the bottom of one of her vast wine glasses, sprinkling the powder on dog treats, which she’d sneaked to dogs of the right size in the park in her cruel experiments. How she’d induced Potter to take his overdose was a secret that, for the time being, she was refusing to tell, though Beth remembered that mug upside-down on the draining board when she’d got to work on the fateful day she’d found the body. And the office key had been missing. Maybe she’d let herself in, surprised him by making them both a lovely cup of tea, even laced his with the rum Beth had found on the desk to disguise the taste, and he’d drunk it because he loved her.
Why Beth herself, or Magpie, had become the target of Letty’s extra malevolence, she didn’t know, and she was happy to keep it that way. Maybe Letty sensed that Beth was about to uncover the shaming secret of Potter’s empty, fraudulent business. Or maybe she’d just got so into killing pets that she couldn’t stop. But Beth couldn’t help feeling a little satisfaction that, after her attack on Magpie, Letty would be off the streets for the next ten to fifteen years at least – Her Majesty’s guest in the sort of minimalist interior she’d always seemed to enjoy. Only this time, she wouldn’t be able to customise it with those little touches of silver she so adored.
Thinking of silver reminded her of the two photos she’d been sent this morning. The first was a lovely selfie of Katie, Charlie, and Michael, grinning wildly into the camera on the side of an expensive mountain, the perfect snow behind them glinting while the gold and silver paper hats they were wearing added a cheesy, festive note. They were having the most wonderful time, and she was glad – but she was happier still that they’d be back in a few days. She’d have a lot to tell Katie over their next cappuccino. Maybe even while poor Ben finally did a practice paper or two for the Wyatt’s exam. He’d hate that less if he could do it with Charlie.
The second picture was equally lovely, and perfect for this day of all days. It was a modern Nativity, with Janice perfect in the role of Madonna. There she was, sitting up in a hospital gown as fetching as any cashmere, wearing a beautiful new silvery heart-shaped necklace and with a tiny pink rosebud of a daughter furled in her arms. Dr Grover gazed at them both with the slightly stunned look of a man whose life had just changed forever. Beth smiled. Her first goddaughter. She was looking forward to getting to know her. Janice would be on maternity leave, but Beth would pop in whenever her work on the Wyatt’s slavery book allowed. Which was going to be pretty often, let’s face it.
Beth glanced round the table at her mother, brother, and son. None of them, including herself, were perfect, or within a million miles of it. Their foibles were many and glaring but were balanced and smoothed out by deep affection and love. They might have rows. They might drive each other mad. But they were essentially good people. She could understand some of the frustrations that had driven Letty; Beth saw the pressures and stresses, as well as the pleasures, of a certain lifestyle every day on the streets of Dulwich. But no-one who truly felt compassion or affection towards others could deliberately hurt an animal. Unless, of course, it was a Christmas turkey.
She plonked the roast down to satisfying oohs and aahs, and heard a tiny ping from her phone. Sauntering over to the counter on the pretext of picking up the sprouts, she saw it was a message from Harry.
Beneath her fringe, she wrinkled her brow. That was another thing she’d definitely learned over the past few months. People didn’t always like it when you were smarter than them. Though, in her view, if they had any character at all, they really ought to try to rise above that. Steeling herself, she clicked to open up the text. ‘Happy Christmas xxxx.’
A sudden glow of contentment told Beth that maybe she’d just found herself a little Christmas miracle after all.
THE END
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