Killing a Unicorn

by Marjorie Eccles

  There was nothing to distinguish Humphrey’s house from its neighbours in the row, except that it was the end one, and a privet hedge limited its outer garden boundary. They were a row of three charming little houses with Gothic front porches and pointed windows in fretted frames. Gingerbread houses. Dolls’ houses. You could amost believe the fronts would swing away to reveal all the rooms inside. The gardens of the other two houses were untidier, but prettier, than Humphrey’s, with Dorothy Perkins clambering round the porches, and sweet peas, marigolds, rigidly staked dahlias, gladioli, rows of beans and tomatoes in clay pots growing happily together in old-fashioned confusion, with nothing so finicky as a plot of grass in the centre. Humphrey, on the other hand, didn’t appear to go in much for flowers, but his square lawn was a tribute to mathematical precision and although the hedge was already barbered with military severity, he was trimming its stray hairs with garden shears to make it even neater. He looked up as her car door slammed and when he saw who it was he immediately put down the shears on the tiny lawn and came down the path to greet her, raising a panama that had seen better days. ‘There’s news of the little fella?’ he asked immediately, his face creased with anxiety.

  His straight shoulders seemed to sag a little when she shook her head. ‘I’d like to have a few words with you, Mr Oliver.’

  ‘By all means. Come in.’ He led her in through the oak-panelled front door with its old-fashioned iron knocker and into a tiny hall. He had to duck to avoid hitting his head on a beam that crossed it. ‘Like a cup of tea? I was just about to put the kettle on.’

  ‘In that case, yes, I’d love one, thank you.’

  He waved his hand to an open door. ‘Make yourself at home. Take a pew. Won’t be a jiff.’

  With a glance into a tiny, and what she guessed was a largely unused room, furnished with an unimaginative three-piece suite, a prickly cactus placed dead centre on a polished table, and smelling strongly of meadow-fresh furniture polish, she said, ‘I don’t mind the kitchen, if you don’t.’

  ‘Rather not. Where I live most of the time, anyway.’

  She could see why when she followed him in through the door. Light came from a big window over the sink in the side wall. There were old-fashioned kitchen appliances, and the old coal range, comforting in winter, had been left in situ, but the far wall had been entirely removed to accommodate an extension that stretched half-way out into the back garden to form a big, light living-room, glazed by long windows, Gothic-arched like the ones at the front of the house. The other walls of the extension were almost entirely covered with shelves which held books, tidily stacked magazines, miscellaneous objects, some plants and a music system. A shipshape, masculine room, unpretentious and comfortable, with nothing extraneous in it. He waved her to a big chair, deep from back to front, with a remote control and the Daily Telegraph on the arm, directly facing a TV set, and while she hesitated between occupying the chair which was plainly his, or turfing off the enormous Persian cat that immovably occupied the other armchair, he busied himself with mugs and the kettle at the kitchen end. ‘Indian, or I think I have Earl Grey somewhere? Can’t offer you any of that herb muck everybody seems to have taken to drinking nowadays, sorry.’

  ‘I actually prefer Indian, thanks.’

  He nodded approvingly. ‘Sugar?’

  ‘No sugar, just a little milk.’ She stroked the cat. It didn’t even open an eye or twitch a whisker. Perhaps it was dead. Not wishing to put it to the test, she perched on the edge of Humphrey’s chair. He approached with two mugs, one in each hand, handed her one, then with a single economical movement he lifted the still-sleeping cat expertly with his free hand and sank into the chair it had occupied with it on his knee. It still didn’t open its eyes.

  ‘So it’s Jasie’s father who took him away, and killed Bibi, eh?’ He explained when she raised her eyebrows, ‘Alyssa rang me. Told me Chip had spilled the beans. Damn fool, first thing he should’ve thought of when she started getting those letters. All this might never have happened then. Wonder sometimes about Chip. Drinking too much, y’know, like his father, and his father too, I hear. Always been a curse in that family, drink, they haven’t the head for it, but they can’t leave it alone. Pity he isn’t more like his mother — one glass after a hard day in the garden and she can hardly keep her eyes open!’ He grinned engagingly. ‘Don’t tell her I said that. And don’t get me wrong — wouldn’ t go so far as to say Chip was a tippler, but he’s bending his elbow more than’s good for him. Understandable, in a way …’ He broke off, then added, almost as an afterthought, ‘Bibi too, on occasions, she could knock the gin back … Ah well. Jasie’s father, eh?’

  ‘That’s what we’re working on at the moment.’

  He regarded her shrewdly. ‘Not certain, though?’ She inclined her head non-committally. ‘You’d hardly be questioning me, if you were,’ he said.

  ‘We’re simply trying to get a clearer picture. We might think we know, but nothing’s certain until we’ve got him in our sights, and even then we shall still need witnesses, hard evidence. Meanwhile, we’re anxious to eliminate as many as possible from the enquiry.’

  ‘And that includes me, does it? Am I a suspect?’

  She smiled and drank some of her tea. ‘Not unless you’ve been fiddling the evidence — which doesn’t seem likely.’

  He’d been in Cornwall to attend his daughter’s Silver Wedding. The day before returning home he’d visited the Eden Project with a nephew who was a keen gardener. Their tickets were timed and docketed. On his journey home, he’d filled up with petrol twice, and kept the receipts, both of which were dated and timed. One filling station was near Taunton, another nearer home. ‘Noticed the petrol was two pee a litre down, so I thought I might as well fill up,’ he’d said, producing the receipts. There was no possibility that Humphrey could have been near Membery when Bibi Morgan was killed and Jasie taken away.

  ‘Then if it’s not me, you’re here to talk about the others,’ he answered her shrewdly.

  ‘Well, I suspect you know more about the Calvert family than anyone else.’

  He gave a short bark of laughter. ‘If that’s what you’re after, it’s Jane Arrow you should ask. Not much she doesn’t know about the family, one way or another.’

  Of course. All those photos crowded in her sitting room when she and Crouch had called on her the morning after the murder, before they knew Jasie was missing. The Calvert boys at every age, on every occasion. Dozens of them.

  ‘No family of her own,’ Humphrey went on, ‘Alyssa and the boys mean everything to her. Surrogate sons, isn’t that what they say?’

  She was beginning to like Humphrey. She’d suspected before that his bumbling stereotype was all a bit of an act and that his initial remarks when he’d arrived at Membery to be told of the murder hadn’t been simple gaffes — he might not have said them intentionally, but they were what he had been thinking. He was a shrewd observer, seeing, and interpreting, far more than he saw fit to let everyone think. He might turn out to be a very good witness indeed, she thought, as she met a direct glance from very blue eyes.

  She said, ‘What did you make of Bibi’s arrival at Membery? Didn’t you think it odd that there was this conspiracy of silence about her past?’

  ‘Yes, I did, but that was her business — and Chip’s. Nothing to do with anyone else. Let them get on with their lives, that’s what I told Alyssa. Didn’t affect anyone else, anyway.’ He paused as if to consider his next words. ‘Let me just say — don’t believe all you hear. All that about everyone loving her. Largely a myth. Created by her, if you ask me. Bit of a troublemaker on the quiet, even allowing it wasn’t always intentional.’

  ‘Give me an example.’

  After a moment, he said, ‘For one thing, she was trying to persuade Alyssa it was time to get rid of the garden, and move out.’

  ‘Move out of Membery?’

  He reached out a hand to one of the shelves behind him and picked up a pipe. He stared at
it hard for a moment or two then put it back. ‘Gave it up three months ago, mustn’t start again now.’ Hunching himself forward, he folded his long stork’s legs up into a more comfortable lap for the cat, which he began to stroke compulsively instead.

  She continued to wait patiently for an answer. As a reformed smoker herself, she understood the temptation, but she wondered why he’d needed the prop at that particular moment. It had been to cover his embarrassment, she decided, as he finally said, ‘Fact is, Membery isn’t Alyssa’s. Left in trust for the three boys. She can live there as long as she wants to, but it doesn’t belong to her. There’s no reason for her to stay there, she could move in with me. Get married,’ he finished gruffly.

  She had guessed at something of the sort between them.

  ‘It’d make sense. She could sell the garden, or better still, get a manager in, still make herself a tidy little profit. Can’t understand why she won’t. She had a hell of a life with that husband of hers, and I’ve been a widower over fifty years. M’wife died in childbirth, the child too. Sort of thing doesn’t happen much, nowadays.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘It was a long time ago. Water under the bridge.’

  ‘So, in fact, Bibi was actually on your side, persuading her to move out?’

  He snorted. ‘Bibi was never on anybody’s side but her own, whatever they tell you! No, she hated Membery, found it dark and depressing. Reason she was manipulating Alyssa into leaving was so that Chip and the boys could sell up.’

  ‘Would they do that?’

  He shrugged. ‘Hard to say. Bound to have caused dissension. Though maybe Mark wouldn’t have been averse. And Jonathan, too, perhaps. I’m not sure about him. He’s not there enough for it to matter, but he’s very attached to the place. She’d have had a hard job with Chip, but she had a lever there …’

  ‘Is that what you meant by saying Chip’s drinking is understandable? She was holding her favours out as a carrot on the end of a stick, so to speak?’

  ‘Something like that,’ he muttered, making her think she’d gone a little too far beyond what he’d be prepared to answer. She should have remembered that men of his age - men of his type, anyway — didn’t think such topics suitable for women to discuss, but after a moment he growled, ‘Bibi … supposed to be his “partner” but — well, egging the poor devil on to think … let’s say it wouldn’t have done for me when I was his age! Used to have a word for her sort when I was younger.’ He looked down into the empty bowl of his pipe. ‘Forget I said that. Rotten bad taste. How about another cuppa tea, eh?’

  Reaching the flower-filled roundabout at the bottom of the hill, Fran turned in the direction of the station, where she could take advantage of its car park and walk up into the town. Free of commuters’ cars today, it was relatively empty, since most people would rather jostle for a space in the town centre than walk the half mile or so from the station.

  The question of whether to go in to work on Monday morning resolved itself as she walked across the river bridge and then up into the town. There were certain tasks on her agenda that she needed to deal with personally, she told herself, knowing it was a specious argument, more to do with the fact that she was experiencing a guilty longing to remove herself from what was happening here. The lurch of the heart whenever she remembered Jasie. The silence of the forest she loved that was beginning to feel threatening. Maybe this was partly what Mark had meant, when he’d talked about her vulnerability, living in this house without any gates that could be locked to keep out intruders. She suddenly had a yen for the big city, people, even one of those mad shopping sprees with Claire — like buying expensive shoes she didn’t really need. For people who hadn’t been overtaken by a tragedy happening in their midst. Gossip. A little fun. O.S.O.T., in fact. Yes, she’d definitely go in on Monday, she’d be contributing nothing by staying at home.

  She hurried through her errands as quickly as possible, ending up at the market. No one wanted to eat heavy meals in this sultry, oppressive heat, and she queued impatiently at a greengrocer’s stall, in search of salad like every other shopper today, smothering thoughts of what Alyssa would say if she knew she was actually buying things she could have had for free from the kitchen garden at Membery. But Alyssa had enough on her plate at the moment, without being bothered with requests for tomatoes and stuff.

  When it came to her turn, Fran bought tiny, locally grown new potatoes, some misshapen, non-supermarket-graded tomatoes, guaranteed delicious. She asked for a pound of juicy purple plums, a couple of ripe Cornice pears, and looked at the big pile of oranges at the front of the stall. She picked one up, feeling its gravid weight in her hand. Oranges? What did she need with more oranges? There were still five big Jaffas in the fridge. The remaining ones from those she’d removed from the glass-topped table on Thursday evening, when she’d arrived home from work …

  ‘You gonna buy that orange, love?’ asked the stallholder.

  ‘What? Oh no, sorry, I was miles away.’ She put the orange back on top of its pile. ‘I’ll have one of those cos lettuces, please.’

  ‘Wish I was. Miles away,’ said the stallholder, wiping his forehead with the back of his wrist. ‘Iceland for preference, eh? Good downpour and we’d all feel better, clear the air. That all? Four pound twenty pee to you then, my lover.’

  She drove unchallenged through the gates at Membery and left her car by the front door, the idea being to make her way on foot down to The Watersplash. That way she’d avoid coming across any of the inquisitive reporters Alyssa had rung and warned her to beware of. It seemed her fears in that direction might have been unwarranted. She’d approached the house cautiously, half expecting to be stopped, but everywhere was quiet, with no sign of the press — or, for that matter, police. The number of their vehicles had diminished to only two, parked to one side, under the shade thrown by the big Cedar of Lebanon in the front lawn. Perhaps the reporters had got tired of waiting for any activity.

  Her ideas of the place being guarded suffered a distinct jolt when she found that even the front door was unlocked, so that anyone could have walked straight in, as she did herself. Inside, apart from the ever present, distant sound of Jonathan on his cello, silence reigned. She peered into several rooms, and for a moment stood in the centre of the big hall, undecided. Jane had most likely bullied Alyssa into going over into the garden to do some work, and quite rightly too. Nothing ever perked her up quite as much as poking about among her plants when she was worried, or upset.

  She was about to wander across there when the distant cello notes caught her attention again. Any time that Jonathan was known to be practising, it was an unwritten rule that he should not be interrupted, but the difference in this particular music indicated he wasn’t alone. Intrigued, she went outside and round the side of the house, to where she could see the french windows of the music room wide open.

  They were so preoccupied, even the sounds of her footsteps scrunching on the gravel went unnoticed. She stood outside, reluctant to interrupt the scene within. Rehearsals for Jonathan’s concert in London were to start tomorrow, but this wasn’t the Schubert Quintet he was practising.

  The room was in semi-darkness, with the dark green rep curtains on the opposite window fully drawn, and those on the french doors pulled half-way across. Through the gap in the open doors, Fran could see the sun streaming in a shaft and lying along the polished wood floorboards, dust motes dancing in the air. At the piano was Jilly, looking amazingly different without her glasses, presumably wearing contact lenses, tanned and smiling in an ankle-length dark blue sundress, patterned in turquoise. Jonathan in white T-shirt and jeans, one finger plucking a sophisticated, syncopated rhythm that Fran half recognized. She stood, rooted to the spot, as Jilly sang softly to the music, not in the sparrow’s chirp that might have been expected from her but in a sweet, husky, seductive voice.

  ‘Tell me the truth about …’ she sang in a minor key, her eyes all the time on Jonathan. ‘Tell me the tru
th about … love.’ The last notes hung on the air as the song came to an end on a dying fall. In the silence, the smile they gave each other was one whose meaning would not be mistaken by anyone in the world. And then, quite suddenly, Jilly burst into tears. Jonathan put his cello aside and in one stride was by her side. ‘Oh, Jonathan, what are we going to do?’

  ‘We can’t do anything, my love, except go on as we have done.’ He was kneeling on the floor, her hands in his. ‘If we keep on sitting tight, no one’s going to have any reason to suspect.’

  ‘It’s all going to come out now, anyway.’

  ‘Not now it isn’t,’ he said sharply. ‘Seeing she was the only one who knew.’

  ‘Oh, how can you be sure of that?’

  ‘Because I was the bloody fool who told her, wasn’t I? And I’ve never said a word to anyone else.’

  There was a silence.

  ‘You know you can’t go on like this, Jon. Make an end of it.’

  The silence lengthened. At length he said, in a quietly desperate voice, totally unlike his normally controlled tones, almost pleading, ‘Let me have the concert, Jilly, and then I promise. I can at least ask that much.’

  Fran fled, regardless of the sound of her footsteps on the gravel.

  She wouldn’t have cared now whether she met a dozen reporters, if she’d given it a thought. She grabbed from the car the tote bag into which she’d packed her shopping, her fruit and vegetables, now grown unaccountably heavy, slung it over her shoulder, and hardly noticing its weight, slithered and scrambled her way back down to The Watersplash, ignoring the grazes on the palms of her hands she received when she slipped on the rough path and tried to save herself.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Crouch would much have preferred to go haring off up the motorway to Leeds in person, looking for Armstrong, he could scarcely restrain himself from doing so, but Vincent had said no, leave it to the locals until there was something concrete, until they’d gone further along the road towards locating him, so it was Sergeant Nick Hingley up in Yorkshire who responded to the call from Mrs Mavis Brayshaw on Sunday morning. She was Graham Armstrong’s maternal aunt, and attempts had been made to contact her previously, but she and her husband, veterans in the international army of globe-trotting pensioners, had been abroad for the last fortnight. They arrived home late on Saturday evening and she rang the police station at ten o’clock on Sunday morning.