The Murders of Mrs. Austin and Mrs. Beale

by Jill McGown

  Drake nodded briefly.

  Jonathan thought of his own, prolonged bachelor days. No one

  to do your washing. Make your meals. He had got used to having

  someone to do that.

  ‘Have you found him?’ he asked. ‘Is that why you’re here?’

  ‘Not yet, sir. We don’t know much about him.’

  Jonathan flicked non-existent ash from his newly lit cigarette.

  ‘But you saw him,’ he said.

  ‘In the dark, sir. And I wasn’t really looking at him with a view

  to recognising him again.’

  ‘Why not?’ demanded Jonathan. He was accosting my wife!’

  Drake took a breath. ‘ Sir, I have to say that I got the impression

  that … his attentions were not unwelcome.’

  ‘All I know about him is that she had an on-off sort of relationship

  with him. He was too possessive.’

  She had told him about this boyfriend when he was still just a

  friend, someone who took her out occasionally, someone she

  eventually felt that she could confide in.

  ‘She told me she was frightened of him,’ he said. ‘But presumably

  she felt something for him once. She may have resumed the

  relationship,’ he conceded, reluctantly. ‘I’m sorry for what I said,

  I know it upset you. I’m sure you did all you could.’

  ‘There really was no reason for me to interfere with them,’ said

  Drake. ‘And … there isn’t really any reason to suppose that he

  was responsible for what happened.’

  Jonathan frowned. ‘ Do you still believe I killed her?’ he asked,

  his voice belying the emotion he felt.

  ‘Sir – the murder weapon. You say that you don’t possess an

  ashtray like that.’

  Jonathan shook his head.

  ‘Where could he have got it from?’

  Jonathan stared at Drake. ‘Are you saying that someone went

  there with the intention of killing Leonora?’

  ‘If the ashtray wasn’t there to start with, then—’

  ‘No one would want to kill her! It has to have been someone who lost control, just picked it up!’

  ‘But you say it isn’t yours, sir.’

  It wasn’t. Jonathan had never seen it in his life before.

  ‘Is this your wife’s ring, sir?’ The sergeant handed him a small plastic bag.

  Jonathan took it; through the plastic, he could read the inscription. ‘Yes,’ he said, but his voice had failed. He cleared his throat. ‘Yes. Where did you find it?’

  Drake looked at him for a moment before he answered. ‘ In the ashtray, sir,’ he said, his voice expressionless.

  ‘But – but I …’ Jonathan stared at it.

  Drake took it back from him. ‘Do you know how your wife’s ring came to be in there, sir?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Mr Austin, do you know of anyone who might have a grudge against you?’

  ‘A grudge? No one would kill my wife because of a grudge! Is that what you came here to ask me?’

  ‘No, sir. I’ve just been to your factory. There’s been a fire there.’

  Jonathan’s mouth fell open. ‘What?’ he said. Perhaps it was a dream. His conscience playing tricks on him. ‘How bad? Should I be there?’

  ‘Not too much damage,’ said Drake. ‘ Your factory manager is there, and Mr Pearce is being informed. I don’t think there’s any need for you to be there unless you want to.’

  ‘How did it start?’ Jonathan tried not to think of avenging angels and acts of God, because that wasn’t rational, and he must remain rational, whatever was going on.

  ‘It was deliberate, Mr Austin.’

  Deliberate. No avenging angel, then. An avenging person.

  ‘It started in Mrs Beale’s office,’ the sergeant went on. ‘The damage was confined to that room.’ He cleared his throat. ‘When I was there, I became aware of rumours concerning you and Mrs Beale.’

  Jonathan closed his eyes. Gordon had said that. Last night – my God, was it only last night?

  ‘Are they true?’

  ‘No.’ He stubbed out his cigarette.

  The young man stood up. ‘It’s very warm in here,’ he said. ‘Do you mind if I take my jacket off?’

  Polite. Unusually so, in Jonathan’s experience. He shrugged his indifference, and the sergeant took off the jacket, revealing a short-sleeved shirt, which looked odd with the tie. It must have seemed odd to him too; he pulled the tie loose, and put it in his jacket pocket. His arms were already tanned; he unbuttoned the button at the neck of the shirt, and sat down again. He was well built, well muscled. These loose running tops disguised body shape.

  ‘The thing is,’ Sergeant Drake said, his manner changing slightly with the removal of the formal trappings, ‘it doesn’t really matter whether or not it was true. What matters is that people believe it.’

  ‘And you think all these things have happened just because someone dislikes me?’

  ‘I know it sounds a bit unlikely,’ said Drake.

  ‘It sounds very unlikely. Why wouldn’t whoever it was just kill me and be done with it?’

  Drake shrugged. ‘We’re talking about a psychopath,’ he said.

  ‘Is that official thinking?’

  ‘We’re keeping an open mind, sir.’ Drake’s eyes were half shut against the sunlight streaming in the window; he held his hand over his eyes.

  ‘I’ll close the blinds,’ said Jonathan.

  He looked down at the busy shopping street, pedestrianised before its time, and a victim of such forward thinking. It looked old-fashioned now, and people went to more up-to-date shopping centres at the weekends. But during the week, it still bustled. Black London cabs formed a constantly moving U-shape at the hotel end of the street, where the pedestrian area met the ring roads. A queue of people formed and reformed. Others stood at the bus-stops. It was an odd mixture, Stansfield. Classless: buses, taxis, private cars – you travelled in the way that suited, not in a way dictated by your circumstances. Leonora liked to use her car. He could have gone to collect it for her when she asked. He could have. And if he had, then …

  He remembered why he was at the window, and let down the blind, turning to check that he had remedied Mr Drake’s problem. The chair in which he had sat was no longer in the sun’s glare, but Drake wasn’t in it. He stood, looking at the painting on the wall, lost in thoughts of his own, his hands in the back pockets of his trousers.

  ‘That’s one of Leonora’s,’ said Jonathan. ‘The hotel bought quite a few.’

  ‘Restful,’ said the sergeant.

  Jonathan could see a strip of sweat down the back of his shirt.

  ‘Would you like a cold drink?’ he asked, opening the fridge.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘I’ll have orange juice, if there is some.’

  Jonathan poured him his drink. ‘So what is the official thinking?’ he asked, handing it to him as he resumed his seat.

  The sergeant hesitated before he spoke, then took Jonathan into his confidence. ‘ One possibility is that your wife may have overheard something on the phone – something that put Mrs Beale’s killer at risk. We think it’s possible that the fire in Mrs Beale’s office was to destroy some sort of evidence.’

  Jonathan sat down on the bed.

  ‘So we’re looking at the possibility of an Austin-Pearce connection.’

  ‘And I’m it?’

  ‘Were you having an affair with Mrs Beale, sir? You do understand that I have to know, if I’m going to get anywhere with the investigation.’

  The very idea. Jonathan shook his head.

  ‘But you were in the habit of spending long periods of time with her alone?’

  Jonathan turned to look at him. ‘You and I,’ he said steadily, ‘have spent a long period of time in my hotel room. Alone. You have even removed some of your cloth
es. What construction would

  you put on that, Mr Drake?’

  He saw the muscles tense just a little, for just a moment, then

  the young man relaxed, and smiled. ‘Point taken,’ he said.

  ‘We had confidential business to discuss,’ said Jonathan.

  ‘Would that have concerned Mr Pearce?’

  It was Jonathan’s turn to tense up. ‘Amongst others,’ he said.

  ‘You said that your meeting with Mr Pearce was going to be

  difficult. Why?’

  Jonathan didn’t want to tell him what had happened at their

  meeting. It was ridiculous. Their theory was ridiculous. ‘ I had to

  ask him to resign from the board,’ he said.

  ‘And how did he take that?’

  He would have to tell him. Gordon’s bewildered anger, his

  accusations …

  But Gordon would never have harmed a hair on Leonora’s head.

  Never. He couldn’t let them suspect Gordon. He didn’t have to tell

  them everything.

  He lit another cigarette.

  ‘Not very well,’ he said.

  ‘How did you get on?’ asked Judy, as Bob Sandwell emerged from the flats, and they walked to his car.

  ‘I didn’t. No one saw anything unusual, no one heard anything unusual. They all did the usual things at the usual times – this must be the most usual place in the universe.’

  Judy smiled. ‘ Well, it is. Isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes,’ sighed Sandwell. ‘Well, it was.’ He looked at her. ‘You look all in,’ he said. ‘You should go home and get some sleep.’

  ‘I know,’ she said. ‘ But we have to go to Stansfield. Mr Allison wants a meeting, going on the assumption that all these incidents are connected.’

  Sandwell started the car. ‘After that you should go home,’ he said.

  ‘I feel all right,’ she said. ‘ But I didn’t really get any sleep the night before last either – I was a bit keyed up about starting this job.’ She put her notebook, for once not used, into her handbag. ‘Where nothing ever happens,’ she added.

  Sandwell smiled.

  ‘Anyway – did you believe all your usual people?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Sandwell, a little hopelessly. ‘I don’t think any of them knew anything was going on at all.’

  ‘I’m not so sure about the Pearces,’ said Judy.

  Sandwell raised his eyebrows. ‘Do you think one of them’s lying?’ he asked.

  ‘Oh, Bob, I think we were all lying,’ she said. ‘I hated not telling them about Mrs Austin. They say the ashtray was there yesterday.’

  Detective Chief Superintendent Allison had told her she must interview them without reference to the other murder, but to find out about the ashtray; obviously the thinking was that Pearce was involved. But she still felt a nagging doubt about that phone-call.

  ‘Beale’s going back to his own flat today,’ said Sandwell.

  Judy wasn’t looking forward to that. Beale, she had discovered, had been in, of all places, Malworth police station when someone was strangling his wife. There had been trouble at the Riverside Inn, and he and the man with whom he had been fighting had both been taken in to cool off. Rosemary Beale had walked home alone.

  Beale had taken the news with apparent stoicism, but Judy knew his reputation well enough to know that that was for show. On being released from custody he had spent the rest of the night with friends, and she hadn’t bothered him with questions. But the incident at the Riverside Inn was odd, for two reasons. One, it wasn’t the sort of pub which had incidents of any sort and two, if Frank Beale had trouble, he had lots of very unsavoury characters to cause it for him. He very rarely caused it himself. Except where Rosemary was concerned. He was jealous of Rosemary, and had reason to be, according to Sandwell. But she had to be careful; Frank held the purse-strings, and Rosemary knew which side her bread was buttered. So was the trouble about Rosemary? And had she really walked home alone?

  ‘I’ll have to talk to him,’ said Judy. ‘ But I want to have a word with Mr Pearce first. Without his wife’s ventriloquist act.’

  ‘So much for getting some sleep,’ said Sandwell.

  Lloyd and Allison were deep in conversation when they got to the station. Judy’s own divisional DCI was on holiday; she had rung his deputy last night to discover that he had been taken to hospital that afternoon, having been inconsiderate enough to fall off a ladder and break his leg. And the connection between the two murders was obvious; it all combined to put her in a very awkward position.

  Judy hadn’t seen the extension since it had been brought into use, and they all took a few moments off to discuss the merits and demerits, and the smell of paint. It seemed quite pleasing at first, then just made you want to run as the midday sunshine warmed it up.

  Lloyd opened all the windows wide, and ordered coffee.

  ‘All right,’ Allison said, when they were settled with their coffee. ‘Facts. Yesterday Mr Austin invited his wife to come home and cook a meal for him and Mr Pearce, in which enterprise Mrs Austin was assisted by Mr Beale, who gave her a lift home in his Rolls.’

  Drake stirred his coffee thoughtfully, a slight frown suggesting that he was pursuing thoughts of his own.

  ‘Sergeant Drake here saw Mrs Austin with a man shortly before she died, at eleven thirty. Mrs Beale died some time between approximately eleven p.m. and one a.m. and an arson attempt has been made on the Austin-Pearce factory, of which company Mrs Beale is a director.’

  Why? Judy wondered if Beale could throw any light on Rosemary’s sudden interest in engineering.

  ‘Mrs Beale was apparently strangled while making a phone-call to the Austin house,’ Allison went on, ‘and so far we do not know at what time that call was made or to which of the occupants. Mr Austin denies receiving any call from Mrs Beale or anyone else at any time during the evening. Mrs Austin was hit with a heavy metal ashtray, and Mr Austin denies knowledge of any such object. Mrs Austin’s wedding ring was found inside the ashtray. An exactly similar ashtray is in the lobby of Andwell House, where the Beales have their flat.’

  Judy told them her findings on that, such as they were, and Allison sat down.

  ‘Any suggestions?’ he said, with more than a hint of humour.

  ‘Someone with a grudge against the company, sir?’ said Sandwell.

  Lloyd moved his head from side to side in a gesture which indicated that he wasn’t happy with that suggestion. ‘It might explain – at a push – the factory fire and Mrs Beale’s death, sir,’ he said. ‘But a director’s wife seems, a bit over the top, even for a homicidal maniac.’

  ‘Wholesale insurance claim,’ Judy ventured, not entirely seriously, but not entirely facetiously.

  ‘Ah,’ said Allison. ‘Another fact Mr Austin is not what you would call short of money. In fact – he’s rolling in it.’

  Lloyd frowned. ‘ Why does he live in the Mitchell Estate flats?’

  ‘I thought the Mitchell Estate was quite middle-class these days,’ said Sandwell. ‘And it was always quite a nice area.’

  ‘Still is,’ said Lloyd. ‘But it’s very ordinary.’ He smiled. ‘Let’s face it, I could afford to buy one of those flats.’

  ‘Man of the people,’ said Judy.

  ‘Probably,’ said Allison. ‘I met him at a council dinner the other night. When I broached the subject – out of sheer nosiness, I admit – he said that he had his eye on a property outside Stansfield, which he intends to buy when it comes on the market. Which, as far as I can gather, will be when the old lady who currently owns it has the decency to fall off her perch.’

  ‘Anyone checked that she hasn’t, sir?’ asked Sandwell ‘Perhaps he was having a clear-out.’

  They all laughed, even Judy. Laughter was one way to deal with it.

  ‘Grudge against Austin, sir,’ said Drake. ‘I’m told that he and Rosemary Beale were thought to be having a fling. So he would deny getting a call from her, wou
ldn’t he?’

  Judy stared at him. ‘ Jonathan Austin and Rosemary Beale?’ she repeated, incredulously.

  He smiled. ‘That’s the story. The factory manager reckons he caught them behind a lorry. I checked, to make sure the man wasn’t subject to delusions, and it is definitely a firm belief in the factory. He has denied it, of course, and I—’ He changed his mind about what he was going to say, and shrugged. ‘A hundred years ago it was practically the done thing for men like Austin, of course,’ he said.

  Judy frowned. True. And Lennie had always said that he was like a Victorian. But Victorian women weren’t exactly encouraged to be hot stuff between the sheets, and if a man wanted a bit of excitement, he had to have a woman of rather easier virtue than his wife. If anything, from what Judy had gathered from the always frank Lennie, her problem was the other way round.

  ‘I rather got the impression that Austin wasn’t that interested,’ she said.

  ‘Probably didn’t have any energy left after his sessions behind the lorries with Mrs Beale,’ said Lloyd.

  Allison smiled. ‘Before this conversation plumbs even greater depths,’ he said, ‘I’m not really concerned with motive. People get murdered for the most trivial of reasons. I’m assuming we all agree that the murders are connected. I’d like suggestions as to how. Other than by a telephone line.’

  ‘Well, sir,’ said Sandwell. ‘ It occurred to Sergeant Drake and I that as Mrs Beale seems to have been strangled while she was actually making the call, the killer might have known who the call was to, and think that he’d given himself away somehow.’

  Judy suppressed a smile as Lloyd smothered a correction of the serious Sandwell’s grammar.

  ‘It’s only ten minutes from those flats to the Austins’ flat,’ he went on. ‘ Less, if you put your foot down, and I expect he would. And if he was looking for a likely weapon – he could have picked up one of the ashtrays on his way out.’

  Lloyd tipped his chair back on to its back legs as he thought. Then he let it fall forward. ‘ How did Mrs Austin’s wedding ring end up in it?’ he asked.

  Sandwell looked a little shy.

  ‘Sorry, Bob,’ said Lloyd, with a smile. ‘I do think that’s worth pursuing, myself. We’ll find out in the end how Mrs Austin’s ring ended up in there, I’m sure. It’s just a little puzzle that has to be solved. It may already have been in—’ He broke off. ‘Well,’ he said. ‘We’ll work on it, anyway.’