Death in the Family

by Jill McGown

  No, Kayleigh didn’t suppose she would be. But she hadn’t thought for a moment that Andrea would be able to keep her job; she was really happy for her, and relieved that Andrea had forgiven her for putting her through all that. And if Mrs. Crawford was being like that about it, maybe the police wouldn’t prosecute Andrea for not saying anything.

  Andrea had heard on the radio that someone had been charged with murdering her mum and trying to murder Ian, and that had to be Dean. Kayleigh still didn’t understand why he hadn’t just waited for her at the bridge.

  But at least it wasn’t her dad; he had been to see her, to tell her that he would be moving in with Theresa Black. She hadn’t realized that he even knew her, and she wondered what Ian would think about that; she thought he might be a little jealous.

  Lloyd had come home early, having thought that he was going to have to put in a full day, but far from being pleased at having Sunday at home, he had been unnaturally quiet and withdrawn, and even Charlotte at her beaming best hadn’t been able to cheer him up much.

  Judy’s suggestions as to what they might do with this unexpected free time had met with a shrug of the shoulders, so they hadn’t done anything. He had watched an old film in the afternoon, and in the evening he had bathed Charlotte and put her to bed. Apart from that, he had sat lost in thought, answering when he was spoken to but otherwise silent.

  Judy could hear the rise and fall of his voice as he told Charlotte a bedtime story, something he had done since the day Charlotte had been brought home, on the grounds that the more she heard the language, the quicker she would learn it, and the sooner she would love it.

  Judy hoped that might make him feel better, because she had a proposal to put to him and she wasn’t sure whether she should while he was in this mood, one with which she was, despite having known him so long, unfamiliar. But time was getting short, and if he didn’t like the idea, she would have to know now.

  “I’ve been thinking,” she said when he came back in.

  He sucked in his breath. “Oh, you don’t want to do that. It’s bad for you. Much better just to accept everything, and think about nothing.”

  Oh, great. “Yes, well, anyway. I’ve been thinking that my mother’s in London, on her own, and for all I know she’s having a high old time, but I doubt it. My father was the one who made friends, really. She isn’t nearly as outgoing as he was—I think she might be quite lonely. And we need someone we can trust to look after Charlotte.” She paused, trying to gauge his reaction, but she could never do that at the best of times. “So what do you think? She might not want to do it, of course. But . . . what do you think about asking her?”

  He looked at her the way she had seen him look at suspects. A slight frown, his head to one side, as though he was deciding whether or not she was a genuine van Gogh or a fake.

  “You mean what do I think about having my mother-in-law living with me twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week?”

  Judy had hoped, since he got on so well with her, that he might not mind that aspect of it. “Oh, well,” she said. “We’ll forget that.”

  He grinned and joined her on the sofa, putting his arm round her. “I asked her on Friday morning before I even told you that I wasn’t getting early retirement. She said she’d be here like a flash if you wanted her, but I had to let you make up your own mind what you wanted to do, because she didn’t want you thinking you had to ask her.”

  She smacked him. “One day I’ll know when you’re doing that to me.” At least he was in a good mood again, even if he was being irritating.

  “Never. It gets you every time.” He kissed her. “You do realize it means we have to find a proper house to live in—one with a granny flat or something, so as your mother can have her own space. I promised her that.”

  “Yes, dear.”

  “And that means you have to make a commitment. Sign on a dotted line.”

  “Yes, dear.”

  “And that you do actually have to move. That is, take your possessions from here to there, and . . .” He sighed.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Sorry. I’d managed to put it out of my mind until I started talking about moving house.”

  “Why has it got to you like this?”

  “I think we’ve charged the wrong man.” He rubbed his eyes tiredly. “I know he’s a villain, as Tom would say. And I know that at the very least he took advantage of Kayleigh. But I believe that what happened to Waring was an accident, and I don’t believe he murdered Lesley Newton.”

  “Why are you so certain that he didn’t?”

  “Well, you know yourself you get a feel for whether or not someone’s lying. But it’s more than that.” He pulled away a little and looked at her. “He asked me to keep on making inquiries, because, he said, every time I did, I found that he was telling the truth. And he was right—he told the truth about everything that I was able to check. But my prime suspects all have perfect alibis. I think someone’s getting away with murder, and I don’t like it.” He sat back and closed his eyes. “But what do I know? I was working on the wrong little puzzles all along.”

  “Were you?” It wasn’t like Lloyd to do that. His interpretation of them was free-ranging, but he usually homed in on what mattered.

  “Oh, yes. Right from the word go.” His eyes were still closed as he went through the things that had misled him. “When we went into the cottage, and saw that they were in the middle of a move, I thought they were moving out, because why would Lesley be unpacking clothes in the utility room? But they were moving in. I thought that Kayleigh was there when it happened, because why else would she ask where Ian was rather than her mother? But Kayleigh was in Malworth. I thought it had to have been premeditated murder, because Theresa Black told me that the doorstop didn’t belong to the cottage, and she wasn’t a suspect, so she had no reason to lie about that. Ergo, someone had to have taken it with them.”

  “That’s bad grammar, as you never fail to remind me.”

  He opened his eyes and squinted at her. “It’s slowly becoming accepted usage, to denote a person of either sex. A plural word being used as a singular does have a precedent in English grammar.”

  “Does it?” Judy frowned. “What, like media and phenomena?”

  “No, not like media and phenomena, which are plural, and are wrongly used as singulars with the singular form of the verb. I mean like you rather than thou. A plural word, taking the plural verb form, but used as a singular. As such, I have admitted them as a singular to my vocabulary.”

  “Oh, good. Can I admit it to mine?”

  “If you employ it only when you wish to be non-genderspecific.”

  “I’m not sure I’d know whether I did or not.” She smiled. Lloyd wasn’t so bothered by this business that he couldn’t lecture her. “So why should someone taking the doorstop with them constitute a puzzle?”

  “Because I was in that house with every door standing open, on a breezy day. If ever any of them was going to close of its own accord, it would have been then—she couldn’t have found a door that wouldn’t stay open. And the more I found out about Lesley Newton, the more of a puzzle it became. Why would someone as organized as she was take an inessential doorstop with her? Especially one that had a very specific use in the house it did belong to?” He shook his head. “That was why I was convinced that she hadn’t taken it and that was my theory. That someone else must have taken it, with the intention of murdering her with it.” He sighed. “But she had taken it. And if she hadn’t, she might not be dead.”

  “If a thing’s not there to be picked up . . .” said Judy, with a smile.

  “Well, it’s true! The reason America has so many murders by shooting is that guns are around to be picked up. If they weren’t, a lot of people would still be alive—including the ones that did the shooting. And that damned doorstop was around for no good reason that I could see.”

  “She might have wanted it as something other than a doorstop. To weigh som
ething down, perhaps. Like you said, it was breezy. She might have wanted to stop something blowing away.”

  He looked a little fazed by that. “I never thought of that. So, there you are,” he said with a shrug. “I got that wrong as well. The only thing I got right was that the baby was Emma, and I talked myself out of that when we found the pram, because I thought no one would throw away a perfectly good pram. But they had. All my puzzles turned out to be just that—the puzzling things that people do, and nothing more. What qualifies me to think I know best about Fletcher mystifies even me.”

  “Maybe there was a real intruder, one that nobody saw.”

  Lloyd nodded. “It’s possible, in theory. As far as we can work out, there was ten minutes between Fletcher seeing Roddam leave and arriving at the cottage himself. So she was alone for about fourteen minutes all told. Someone could have come through the woods, gone into the house, and killed her. But they—still using it in its singular sense, I presume—would have had to do it straightaway, and then leave. And why? There wouldn’t be time to have a violent quarrel. Nothing was stolen. She wasn’t sexually assaulted. It makes no sense at all.”

  Judy smiled sympathetically. Lloyd’s theories almost always came unstuck, but his little puzzles usually pointed him in the right direction, even if he had no idea what direction that was. This time, they had let him down, and he had been taken in by a plausible liar. His pride was hurt. He wanted it to have been anyone at all but Dean Fletcher.

  She kissed him. “Cheer up,” she said. “Maybe it was the postman.”

  * * *

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Dean lay on his bunk, reading a paperback, inasmuch as his eyes were scanning the pages, but his mind was on his forthcoming trial. Last time had been bad enough, but this time he was being accused of murder, and even he felt that the prosecution had a watertight case. He closed the book and stopped pretending to read. This was what he had been doing exactly a year ago today, he realized. For all he knew, it was the same paperback.

  On the first of August last year, he had been picked up for skipping bail, and he had been remanded in custody to await trial; it had been the end of May before he’d seen the outside world again. Two weeks of freedom, and he’d found himself back in prison, but this time . . .

  Dean felt sick. This time, there was a real possibility that the outside world would become nothing more than a distant memory.

  His solicitor and barrister had once again told him, in effect, that he should admit it; they would plead diminished responsibility. Not that they gave that defense much chance of succeeding, but it might just work, they said, given a liberal jury and a fair wind; if it did, the resultant verdict of manslaughter would give the judge some leeway when it came to sentencing. They held out little hope at all for a straight not-guilty plea, in view of the evidence, and if the verdict went against him, it was automatic life imprisonment. And he had told them, once again, that he had no intention of pleading guilty to something he had not done.

  He would be found guilty—apart from anything else, there seemed to have been no one else who could have done it. But unless his responsibility for his actions was truly diminished, to the extent that he had no recollection whatever of doing anything other than falling over the woman’s body, he had not done it, and therefore someone else had. The lawyers said they believed him, but it was professional belief, and Dean couldn’t really blame them for being skeptical.

  They were doing their best for him, as they were obliged to do; they were trying to find out if anyone else had been seen in the area, if there was some way in which suspicion could be if not actually directed at someone else specifically, then at least lifted from him, if any of the evidence against him was tainted or otherwise inadmissible, if any of the witnesses could be proved to be lying or mistaken. But Dean knew it was a hopeless task. He knew because he had been there and, apart from the man he had inadvertently run down, there had been no one else in that cottage, the witnesses were telling the truth, and there was no challenge they could make to the physical evidence. Either his explanation as to how it got there would be accepted or it wouldn’t.

  Plenty of people had been at the cottage, all those people the police had lined up to explain exactly how Dean could be proved to be the only person who was there at the material time and leave the jury to come to the inevitable conclusion that in the few minutes at his disposal Dean had murdered Lesley Newton, stolen her car, and attempted to murder the sole witness. Even if the motive the police ascribed to Dean were to be deemed inadmissible, it would make no difference; the prosecution were under no obligation to prove motive.

  He might study law during all those years he would have at his disposal; petty criminals always had a head start in matters legal, knowing exactly which laws they had broken and which they had not, which defenses were valid and which were not. He certainly hadn’t needed a solicitor to tell him he was in the shit.

  He wondered what they were doing now, all those people who would not be spending the rest of their lives in prison. Because that, though his mind flinched away from the enormity of it, was what it amounted to; eventual release on license was given only to lifers who finally admitted their guilt, accepted responsibility, and felt remorse for their offense, and Dean would never, never do that, because he hadn’t murdered anyone. Thus guilty men went free and innocent men stayed behind bars.

  So how were all these people with whom he had become involved one sunny weekend in June spending their Saturday morning? What were they doing right now?

  And what was the real murderer doing?

  “This place in which you are now met has been duly sanctioned according to law for the celebration of marriages.” The superintendent registrar’s voice was quiet and clear. “And before you are joined in matrimony, I have to remind you of the solemn and binding character of the vows you are about to make.”

  They looked at each other and smiled a little.

  “A marriage according to the law of this country is the union of one man with one woman voluntarily entered into for life to the exclusion of all others. But it is more than just that. Marriage is the desire of two people to share with one another the ups and downs, the joys and sorrows, that come into every life, to offer help, encouragement, and support to one another in moments of adversity, and to appreciate and enjoy one another’s good fortune. You are here to witness the celebration of this marriage, to hear the vows that will be made, and to share in the joy of this union.”

  She dropped her voice a little. “Are you, Philip Jeremy Roddam, legally free to lawfully marry Theresa Anne Black?”

  “I am.”

  Phil had whispered to her, as they had walked from the registrar’s office into the marriage room, that she still had time to change her mind, but she knew the commitment she was making and she was prepared to make it. Everyone thought she was mad, of course, especially her brother.

  She and Phil had talked to each other, to social workers, to lawyers, to adoption agencies, they had gone into every existing and potential problem that anyone could think of, and she had seen no reason to change her mind. The marriage was necessary if Phil was ever to be allowed to adopt Kayleigh, and Kayleigh was a commitment he had made nine years ago, without the need for vows to be made. It was a commitment that Theresa was quite prepared to share. She wasn’t Lesley; she didn’t have a burning desire to sort out Kayleigh’s or anyone else’s world. But it wasn’t a compromise—Theresa wasn’t accepting Kayleigh as the downside of her relationship with Phil. If she had felt like that, she would have backed off.

  The registrar turned to her, then, and she, a little self-consciously, certain that she sounded as though she had a string of bigamous marriages behind her, agreed that she was legally free to marry Phil.

  Kayleigh was still awaiting trial, but she was now receiving psychiatric treatment; Theresa didn’t know her well enough yet to know how successful the treatment was likely to be, but she knew that its success or failure matt
ered to Phil only inasmuch as he wanted to see Kayleigh well. If nothing could be done for her, it wouldn’t make any difference to how he felt. And it wouldn’t make any difference to how Theresa felt about Phil.

  The registrar turned back to Phil. “Please repeat after me. I promise that I will try to keep our . . .”

  Tommy is a bright and capable student, but an aversion to written work has marred what could otherwise have been excellent academic progress. He is popular with both staff and fellow students, and cannot be faulted on enthusiasm and effort when a subject interests him. Provided he curbs his tendency to avoid (or at best pay lip service to) whatever he perceives as boring, he could and should succeed in whichever field he chooses to pursue.

  “Tom? What are you doing up there? We’re going to be late! Have you found it?”

  “Yes, I’ve got it. Won’t be a minute.”

  Tom, crouching under the roof beams, balanced precariously on the joists, closed the end-of-term report on his final year at the Liverpool comprehensive that had concluded his formal education, and put it back in the box of family treasures. Quite why it qualified as a treasure he wasn’t sure, except that it so accurately summed him up; Judy Hill had said virtually the same thing at his last assessment. He smiled to himself. Now that his crown of golden curls had grown back to its full glory, he even looked virtually the same as he had then; the last fifteen years had seen little change, and all his irredeemable, sometimes inconvenient, characteristics remained firmly in place.

  But that didn’t matter, he thought as he lowered himself down through the hatch, feeling gingerly with his foot for the top step of the ladder, because by the time the Lloyds came back from their honeymoon and he had done his preappointment course, Tommy Finch would be Detective Inspector Tom Finch, Malworth CID. Providing he didn’t break his leg getting down from the loft, that was.