Murder by Suicide

by Veronica Heley

  ‘Neither can you.’

  ‘Oh, I could make a fuss about it, I suppose. Go to the police, make life difficult for you.’

  ‘I don’t think you will. I’m not the only one who …’

  ‘Ah. I thought so. Who is the other person? The one who types her letters?’

  Sue laughed again. ‘Torture me, if you like. I shan’t tell you. So you’ll have to behave properly, or I’ll tell on you and then you’ll be sorry.’

  ‘Tell what?’ said Ellie, feeling rather tired. ‘There’s nothing to tell, except in your overactive imagination.’

  Sue leaned forward over the table, hissing. ‘She says there’s nothing to know, does she? What about the men visiting her at all hours? And the rich aunt disinheriting her? And the daughter having to come down to look after her stupid mother, who doesn’t even know when the wool’s being pulled over her eyes because she’s too busy fancying all the men in sight, with her husband not yet cold in his grave!’

  Ellie took a step back, but Sue advanced around the table, picking up the boiling kettle as she went. ‘Who’s a stupid little woman then, coming here with her pretty face and her pretty clothes, with a lovely sleeping little toddler, walking into the spider’s den without a thought for what boiling water can do? So which of you shall have it in the face, then, the little boy or his whore of a granny?’

  Ellie screamed, looking round for something – anything – to use to protect herself. An apron, a towel, anything … She lunged for the pushchair and thrust it forward as Sue flung the contents of the kettle at little Frank.

  The pushchair skidded along the floor and Frank woke up with a whimper as the first drops of scalding water hit Ellie. By this time Sue was both screeching and laughing.

  Ellie grabbed the pushchair with one hand and the kitchen door handle with the other, just as John pushed open the door from the hall.

  ‘What’s going on?’

  Sue, still screaming, got hold of Ellie’s coat and, with amazing strength, flung her round and away from the pushchair. The chair tipped over and Frank roared in shock and anger. Ellie’s shopping tumbled out all over the floor. John, bewildered, tried ineffectually to stop his wife kicking and clawing at Ellie, who was doing her best to protect the toddler with her own body.

  ‘They’ll kill you!’ screeched Sue. ‘I’ll tell them and they’ll come after you and they won’t rest … you don’t know them, but they’ll not rest till they kill you, just as they killed Nora!’

  John managed to get his arms round Sue from behind, and shouted at Ellie to get the pills, quick, upstairs in the bathroom cabinet!

  Ellie righted Frank’s pushchair, unstrapped him and carried him with her in a rush up the unfamiliar stairs, opening doors at random till she found the bathroom and the cabinet. Frank bawled all the time, but she couldn’t stop to calm him. She found the bottle and took it back down with her.

  On John’s instructions, she poured out a glass of water and tried not to be intimidated by the foul language Sue was directing at her. Luckily John was very strong, and could restrain his wife even when she tried to break his grip by lunging suddenly at Ellie. Ellie looked away as John forced Sue to take a couple of tablets with the glass of water.

  She rescued Gog from the floor, and sat down to cuddle and quieten Frank. After a few minutes, John got Sue to sit down in a chair while he collapsed in another beside her. Sue’s head drooped. She began to cry.

  ‘What happened?’ said John.

  ‘I showed her the poison-pen letters I’d received, because there was a stain on one side matching the stain on the note you sent me about who had bought the pads. The letters came from your pad.’

  John rubbed his face with both hands. ‘Sue did that? No, she couldn’t have. Sue? Sue, tell me you didn’t.’

  Sue looked up at him. ‘No, of course I didn’t. She’s making it up, just like she makes lots of things up. She’s evil, John. You really shouldn’t go to lunch with her, or accept presents from her, or run her errands. You really shouldn’t.’

  ‘Is that what this is all about?’ said Ellie, who felt very much like crying herself. ‘Did you send me those letters just because I gave John a Christmas present, and invited him to lunch with Rose and me? I invited you as well, Sue.’

  ‘But you didn’t mean it, did you? You didn’t really want me.’

  This was so true that Ellie did not reply.

  John said, ‘Sue, let’s get you up to bed, so that you can have a nice rest. You could do with a lie down now, couldn’t you? And I’ll bring you up a cup of tea in a little while. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?’

  Sue smiled up at him. ‘Oh yes, John. That would be lovely.’

  John helped his wife to her feet and half-carried her limp form to the door. Looking back, he said to Ellie, ‘Don’t go away, will you?’

  Ellie had no intention of going away, or even of moving from her chair. Except that young Frank was getting restless. He was also smelly and wet. It was more than time for his lunch, too. She rescued the Pampers which had got wedged in the shopping tray of the pushchair, and changed him. Then she strapped him securely back into his pushchair, despite his forcible objections.

  Before popping the dirty nappy in the bin, she remembered to rescue the fragments of torn-up letters, and the telltale original pad. These she put in her handbag before washing her hands and feeding Frank a soft bun she had bought that morning. Luckily she had thought to bring a bottle of milk for him. More or less content now, he began to kick rhythmically as he sucked.

  Frank was getting over his fright quicker than Ellie was. What a narrow escape she’d had. How appalling of her to have put little Frank into danger! She ought never to have brought him out with her. Suppose he had been scarred for life? She discovered that she was trembling. One side of her face and one of her hands were stinging. Scalding water can do a lot of damage. She ran her hand under the cold tap and bathed her face.

  Her coat felt uncomfortable, although she couldn’t see why. Taking it off, she found the lining had been torn from nape to hem. ‘My coat!’ she said, on the verge of tears. ‘I’ll never be able to repair that.’

  ‘You can afford to buy yourself another one,’ said John, returning with a grim face.

  ‘Who says?’

  ‘Sue says it’s common knowledge that you’ve been left a million. I must say, I do think you might have told your old friends. But perhaps you don’t consider us old friends any more.’

  ‘The amount Frank left me was supposed to be a secret. Perhaps it was rather a childish attitude, but I was warned by my solicitor not to let anyone know that I’d been left well off, in case I was targeted by con men and fortune-hunters.’ Which, she thought, is exactly what has been happening. So who leaked the good news?

  ‘How did Sue hear of it? From someone in the charity shop?’

  ‘No, I don’t think so. Ellie, sit down. We must talk. You realize Sue is a very, very sick woman. She has been saying terrible things about you. I can’t think they’re true, but …’

  ‘Your wife isn’t just sick, but dangerous! She attacked Frank with boiling water!’

  ‘I realize she’s not herself at the moment. The least little thing seems to upset her.’

  ‘Is it all right for her to upset me with her poisonous letters? And drive Nora to her death? There was somebody else, too. A woman who married her first cousin and … you know about that.’

  ‘Now look, Ellie. I just don’t believe this.’

  ‘Let me show you.’ Ellie placed the torn pieces of letter on the table, next to the pad. Piecing together a couple of pages, she pushed them at John. He pushed them back.

  ‘No, no. That’s not her handwriting.’

  ‘Perhaps she did them with her left hand, or wearing gloves. She admitted to me that she had written them. See where your pad is stained down one side? The same stain is down the side of these letters. Therefore, they came from your pad, and she wrote them. You didn’t suspect her at all?’
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  ‘No, of course not.’

  ‘She hasn’t talked to you about me? Or about Nora? Or about the woman who married her first cousin and now has cancer?’

  ‘She did mention that she’d given some neighbours a piece of her mind when they got married, but that was months ago. You see, Sue’s parents were first cousins, and Sue always thought that was why she’s had these bad times.’

  ‘Bad times! Lasting for months? She deeply distressed her first victims, drove Nora to suicide …’

  ‘No, no!’ John shifted on his chair. ‘You’re exaggerating!’

  ‘I can show you some of her letters to Nora, if you wish. They destroyed her. Then Sue started on me. If you hadn’t tried to help me by making a list of those people who had bought the pads through the shop, I probably would never have realized it was Sue behind them.

  ‘It’s horrible, John. She made up the most dreadful allegations, about sex and … oh, everything. Twisting everything till I can hardly look anyone in the face any more. You didn’t suspect her at all?’

  He looked stricken. ‘No, I didn’t. I thought she’d been so much better lately, more cheerful, even getting out and about a couple of times a week in the daytime. She’s on medication permanently, of course, but the doctor was very pleased with her. We talked about going away on holiday for a few days. Oh, God. This is terrible.’

  He went over to the sink and washed his face. Little Frank starting bawling. He’d lost his bottle and his Gog. Ellie replaced both.

  John dried his face and his hands, taking his time. ‘What are you going to do, Ellie? About Sue, I mean. You won’t go to the police, will you? She’d be sectioned again and pumped full of drugs till she’s a zombie. Then they’ll send her home and I’d have to get someone to sit with her whenever I went out to the charity shop or did the shopping. I have to have that outlet, or I’ll go mad too.’

  ‘She ought to have some sort of treatment.’

  ‘I’ll see to it,’ he said, eagerly. ‘I’ll ring the doctor this afternoon, and get something underway. There’s no great harm been done, is there?’

  Frank threw his bottle across the floor and tried to burst out of the straps containing him. ‘I must go,’ said Ellie. ‘I wouldn’t agree that no great harm has been done, John, but I do agree about not going to the police, at least for the time being. On one condition: somehow or other Sue must be stopped from making other people’s lives a misery. Can you get her to sign some sort of confession, which we can lodge at the bank together with the evidence, the letters she sent me, and the pad of paper she used? Then, if she gets some more treatment … dear John, I can see that it would just make life more hellish than ever for you, if I did anything else.’

  ‘Bless you, Ellie. I’m often at my wits’ end …’

  ‘Yes, yes. But I forgot – do keep still for a moment, Frank; yes, we’re going, we really are, back to see Mummy – John, there is one other thing. Sue hasn’t been doing this all by herself. There’s at least one other person involved, someone who types letters. I’ve also been sent a wax image of myself with a pin through it.’

  ‘What? You’re not serious? In this day and age?’

  ‘In this day and age. Yes, I’m very serious. I asked Sue who else was involved and she refused to tell me. She also threatened me, saying that the others would kill me when she told them. It’s absurd to think that anyone would actually want to harm me, but then Sue did try to pour boiling water over Frank. So I don’t quite know what to do – yes, in a minute, Frank – but John, perhaps you could find out who else has got it in for me? Does anybody spring to mind?’

  ‘No. No! She hardly goes out in the daytime, except to her exercise class once a week, and a creative writing class that meets in the library, which they thought might do her good.’

  Ellie struggled into her torn coat, reflecting that Sue’s efforts at creative writing had been very effective, if not precisely what the course tutor might have had in mind.

  John held the front door open so that Ellie could manoeuvre the pushchair outside. The house lay quiet around them. Dead quiet. Ellie shivered, and set off at a brisk pace back home.

  14

  By the time Ellie reached home again, Frank was kicking and screaming fit to burst. Hungry, of course. Tired of being cooped up in the pushchair, and probably dirty again as well. He was like that. Above the clamour that he was making, Ellie could hear someone leaving a message on the answerphone, but she was too distracted to attend to it.

  As she was settling Frank into the baby seat that fitted over one of the kitchen chairs, Diana swept in, demanding lunch.

  ‘What’s the time? I have to be at the flats by two. Those wretched decorators want to do the whole place out in magnolia paint; definitely too boring for words, and when I said – isn’t lunch ready yet? – I said to them that I thought we could do better than that, and where were their shade cards, they had the nerve to tell me that Miss Quicke always has everything done out in magnolia. So I have to go back to the old trout and get her signature on a letter saying that I’m managing the flats in future … and what is my baby crying for, then?’

  ‘Hungry,’ said Ellie, throwing bread, cheese, butter and some salad stuffs onto the table. ‘Would you sort out something for him to eat? For yourself as well, of course.’

  ‘Give him anything he likes. Cheese on toast, some homemade soup, something like that. I’ll make myself a sandwich quickly. Have you managed to get him into a nursery yet?’

  ‘No.’ Anger welled up in Ellie. She wanted to throw something at Diana, scream, lie on the floor and have hysterics.

  She did none of those things, of course. She began to put out the ingredients to make some soup while passing a biscuit to young Frank, who swept it off his tray onto the floor. The cat flap flipped, as Midge made a hasty exit.

  ‘What was that?’ said Diana. ‘Don’t tell me you’ve got a stray cat coming in. Really, mother. You must know that cats give diseases to young children. You’ve been feeding it on the floor, I see. Well …’ as she picked up Midge’s plates and threw them into the sink, ‘… we can’t have that with little Frank around, can we? Your stray will have to find himself another home.’

  It was too much. Ellie banged an onion down on the table so hard that Frank gave a great start and stopped yelling – for a moment. ‘Midge is my cat,’ said Ellie, controlling herself with an effort. ‘He lives here.’

  ‘Oh really, mother! You’re so comical. A cat, indeed! Whatever next? Oh, must dash. I’ve got to see Aunt Drusilla and get on top of those decorators, or they’ll think they can rule the roost. I told them, “I’m in charge now, and what I say goes!” They wanted to argue, talked about ringing up Aunt Drusilla to check on me – what a nerve! I told them the old bat’s not up to much these days, and they’d better mind their manners because it’s me who’s going to pay the bills in future.’

  Ellie sat down, trembling at the knees. ‘Aunt Drusilla has used those same decorators for ever. They do a good job and she’s satisfied with them. What do you mean about her not being up to much nowadays? When I saw her the other day, she was fine.’

  ‘Oh, she’s going downhill fast, I reckon. She said she wanted to see you urgently, but I told her you were busy baby-sitting and couldn’t spare the time. I’ll have to see about getting her into an old people’s home.’

  Ellie said, ‘But …’

  She spoke to the air, for Diana had scooped up her keys, kissed the top of Frank’s head and disappeared. Ellie whizzed up the vegetables she had been sautéing, dunked some bread in it, and started to feed Frank. He fell asleep halfway through. Ellie took Frank upstairs for his nap and finished the bowl off herself.

  Midge came back through the cat flap and yowled for his dishes, which were in the sink. When he’d been fed, too, Ellie sat with him on her lap, trying to work out what she ought to do next. It was a temptation to fall asleep, but she resisted it.

  She was worried about Aunt Drusilla. Diana meant well, o
f course, but she was a bit of a steamroller and it sounded as if Aunt Drusilla had come off worst in their morning’s encounter. Perhaps it would be a good idea to give her a ring later.

  Sue’s threats of retribution worried her. Perhaps she should get what evidence she had to the bank, without waiting for Sue’s confession, which could be added later. Yes, she would feel a lot safer if she did that, even though she balked at pushing Frank along the Avenue twice in one day.

  She picked up the post, which had arrived after she’d left, and found another missive from Sue. That went, unread, into her handbag with the rest of them. Someone had also pushed an envelope containing notes for the church notices next Sunday through the door.

  On the answerphone was a message from Roy, asking her to call him. And one from Kate explaining that she’d only got back very late on Sunday evening, but she and Armand were very keen on Ellie doing something with the garden, and they’d be in touch as soon as either of them had a free moment, possibly Tuesday morning when Armand had a couple of free periods.

  With Frank still peacefully sleeping, Ellie went into the study to phone around the agencies for a baby-sitter or day nanny. They all seemed expensive to her. The two local council day nurseries were both full. Eventually one of the organizers of a day nursery recommended her younger sister, who perhaps wouldn’t mind looking after Frank during the day, since her two were now both settled at school. She would, of course, have to meet Frank and his mother first.

  Ellie recognized the girl’s name – Betty’s grandmother was a regular at church and the girl had been in Sunday school there some years ago. A nice child, Ellie remembered. So she got Betty’s telephone number and had a long chat – yes, her granny was well enough, except for her asthma; Betty had married young, two boys now at school, waiting to go to college in the autumn and at a loose end.

  Being extra careful, Ellie took up her references and was satisfied that she had discovered a treasure. Phoning Betty back, Ellie invited her round to meet Diana and Frank that evening. Only after Ellie had put the phone down did she remember that she herself would be out at choir practice. She didn’t alter the arrangement. Let Diana cope.