Suddenly at Home

by Graham Ison

  Detective Sergeant Liz Carpenter’s eye-witness account of the murder of John Appleby by Chantal Flaubert was lightened a little by a stupid question from defence counsel.

  Rising ponderously from the front bench to cross-examine, he adjusted his gown. That done, he tipped his glasses forward and peered over them at his brief.

  ‘Was it absolutely necessary for you have shot my client, Sergeant?’ Defence counsel waved his brief vaguely in the air and finally dropped it on to the desk in front of him.

  ‘Yes,’ said Carpenter.

  ‘Would you care to explain why, Sergeant?’

  ‘Yes, it was a case of shoot or be shot. And I didn’t intend to get shot.’

  ‘Seems to answer your question,’ the judge observed drily.

  The Common Serjeant’s succinct summing-up took only an hour and a half. Liz Carpenter’s virtually unchallenged account of the murder of Detective Constable Appleby and Chantal Flaubert’s undisputed confession to the other three killings obviously caused the jury to wonder why the hell they were there. They returned verdicts of guilty on all four counts within the hour.

  ‘It has been brought to my attention,’ began the Common Serjeant as a preamble to sentencing the prisoner at the bar, ‘that you have been instrumental in furnishing the police with information that has led, or will lead, to the prosecution of certain individuals allegedly engaged in prostitution and other related and somewhat distasteful matters. I have no doubt that this willingness to assist was motivated simply and solely by the hope of securing a lesser sentence, and for no other reason. However—’ At this point the judge paused and glanced at the press box. ‘However, I cannot overlook the fact that you murdered a police officer engaged in the execution of his duty in an attempt to prevent your apprehension for the three other murders you had committed. Whatever assistance you might have afforded the police subsequently, I cannot in all conscience lessen the sentence. Chantal Flaubert, you will go to prison for life without parole.’

  The severity of the sentence caused frantic scribbling in the press box, and gasps and whimpering little cries of ‘Oh no!’ from among the do-gooders and chattering classes who had nothing better to do all day than sit in the public gallery at the Old Bailey.

  A stunned Chantal Flaubert gripped the dock rail for support. After a moment’s pause, she glared down at where Kate, Dave and I were sitting in the well of the court.

  ‘You bastards!’ she screamed at the top of her voice. ‘I’ve been screwed!’

  ‘And not for the first time,’ Dave observed quietly.

  Immediately after the Chantal Flaubert trial, Dennis Jones appeared in the dock in the same courtroom at the Old Bailey. Looking pale and scared, he glanced around the impressive location of his trial and gripped the rail firmly.

  ‘Dennis Jones,’ began the clerk of the court, ‘you are charged in that you did on divers dates in July this year of Our Lord, conspire with Chantal Flaubert, otherwise known as Katherine Thompson, and others not in custody or deceased, to murder Dirk Cuyper, otherwise known as Richard Cooper, at Apartment E, Cockcroft Lodge, Cockcroft Grove, North Sheen. How say you upon this indictment, guilty or not guilty?’

  ‘Not guilty, sir,’ mumbled Jones.

  But despite a valiant effort by his counsel, the jury wasted no time in finding him guilty. There was little doubt that mention of Detective Constable John Appleby’s murder may have swayed the jury in arriving at that verdict.

  When it came to sentencing, the judge didn’t waste any time either. ‘Dennis Jones, you have been found guilty of a heinous crime. You will go to prison for ten years. Take him down.’

  Whimpering and half fainting, the pitiful figure of Dennis Jones was almost carried down the steps to the cells beneath the court. It was of no comfort when one of the prison officers – an amateur historian – mentioned that Hawley Harvey Crippen, a famous murderer, had descended that same flight of steps on his way to the condemned cell in 1910.

  During the course of Jones’s brief trial, his counsel had become heartily sick of his client’s repeated demands that he should ‘get me off this stupid charge’, despite being told that the case against him was rock solid. Once the trial was over and Jones asked what was to happen about the matter of his sexual liaison with his pupil Sally Grey, the barrister replied, with some sadistic pleasure, that the case would be adjourned sine die.

  ‘What does that mean?’ asked Jones.

  ‘It means they’ll try you for it when you come out of prison and then send you straight back again,’ said counsel maliciously. But erroneously.

  Every murder investigation has fall-out, usually concerning other crimes that have come to the notice of the police during the course of that investigation, and which leads to further, but unrelated, arrests.

  Chantal Flaubert had provided extensive information about Victor Downs’s widespread sex empire that I’d passed on to the Trafficking and Prostitution Unit, as a result of which its officers made a large number of arrests during the next few weeks.

  The murder of John Appleby and the arrest of Chantal Flaubert occurred before all the enquiries into the three previous murders had been completed. But thanks to Flaubert’s confession we were able to abandon quite a few follow-ups.

  And so ended that particular investigation. Well, not quite. In my case, there was a consequence that had nothing to do with the four murders. At least, not directly.

  It was the first Saturday in November and my first weekend off following the end of the Dennis Jones trial. I was lounging about at home trying to get some semblance of purpose and order back into my life. In short, it was a case of working out how to fill the void left by the departure of Gail Sutton to Hollywood, and the realization that she would not be returning.

  Until now, my mind had been fully occupied with the two trials. As far as the police are concerned, a murder trial doesn’t stop when the court rises at the end of each day. The evenings are taken up with ensuring that the right papers and right exhibits are in place for the following day’s proceedings. Sometimes there are hurried conferences with prosecuting counsel in the well of the court, particularly if an additional witness is needed to plug an unforeseen gap in the Crown’s case. Especially one that has been created by a wily defence counsel.

  As a result, there was no food in my fridge, simply because I’d not had the time to shop. I was on the point of venturing out to Kingston to have a lonely pub lunch somewhere when the phone rang.

  Please, not another bloody murder, surely, I thought. There must be another DCI available.

  ‘Brock,’ I snapped. ‘What the hell is it now?’

  ‘Bloody hell! That’s a nice way to greet an old friend, I must say. You’re not pissed already, are you, Harry?’

  ‘Who is this?’

  ‘Bill Hunter.’

  I laughed. ‘Sorry, Bill. No, I’m not pissed, just pissed off. Anyway, what can I do for you?’ Bill Hunter and his actress wife, Charlotte, known always as Charlie, were old friends from way back.

  ‘Thank God I’ve reached you at last, Harry. I’ve been trying to get hold of you all week. Why don’t you buy an answering machine?’

  ‘Not bloody likely!’ I responded. ‘You should’ve called my mobile.’

  ‘I did, but you’d changed the number without telling anyone,’ said Bill tersely. ‘Anyway, I’ve got hold of you at last. Does the name Lydia Maxwell mean anything to you?’

  ‘Yes, of course it does. She lived in an apartment in North Sheen opposite the one where a murder was committed in July and a second in August. Why d’you ask?’

  ‘She’s just moved into the house next door to ours, Harry. She knocked on the door a week or so ago to introduce herself. We invited her in for a drink and she told us that she’d moved from North Sheen because she didn’t feel safe there any more, after the murders. I asked if she knew who’d investigated them, and when she mentioned your name I told her you were an old friend of mine and Charlie’s. Small world, isn’t
it?’

  ‘She told me she was going to move, Bill, and mentioned Strand-on-the-Green, but she later said she couldn’t find anything in that area that suited her. She did mention Surrey, but wasn’t specific. I didn’t know where she’d gone.’

  ‘Weren’t you interested enough to find out, Harry? I’d have thought that a young and rather gorgeous wealthy widow like her would have grabbed your attention immediately. Why on earth didn’t you track her down? After all, you are supposed to be a detective. But all that aside, I have to warn you, Harry, now that Gail’s deserted you for the bright lights of Tinseltown, Charlie is plotting.’

  ‘Lydia’s certainly an attractive woman, Bill, but at one time I thought she was quite a strong suspect. It wasn’t until after the fourth murder occurred, and we’d made an arrest, that I ruled her out completely. But you needn’t mention that to her.’

  ‘Ye Gods!’ exclaimed Hunter. ‘You coppers are suspicious bastards. However, Charlie and I have invited Lydia for dinner this evening and Charlie very much wants you to join us. And what Charlie wants, Charlie gets. What d’you say?’

  Charlie Hunter was obviously matchmaking. Although I wasn’t averse to the idea, I wasn’t altogether sure about accepting. Nor was I sure that I wanted to go back to the Hunters’ house where Bill and I had enjoyed summer afternoons watching Gail and Charlie cavorting in the pool while we drank copious amounts of wine. After all, the Hunters had been Gail’s friends; or more particularly, Gail and Charlie were friends, having met on the stage. But the real point was that I wasn’t sure I was ready to start a new relationship that might end the way the last one did.

  Gail Sutton had accepted a part in a Hollywood ‘soap’ in February, but at the end of March she had emailed me to say that her contract had been extended indefinitely and she had put her Kingston townhouse on the market. I knew instinctively that she would remain in Los Angeles and that I’d never see her again.

  ‘Harry, are you still there?’

  ‘Yes, I’m still here, Bill.’

  ‘Well, old boy, you’d better say yes or you’ll have Charlie to answer to. She doesn’t like having her dinner arrangements buggered up.’

  ‘Yes, of course, Bill, thank you. Tell Charlie I’ll be delighted to come.’ Nevertheless, I was still a little apprehensive. If I was honest with myself, I didn’t really know Lydia Maxwell at all.