The Murders of Mrs. Austin and Mrs. Beale

by Jill McGown

  ‘That’s who we’re looking for,’ he said.

  Austin nodded slowly, and left.

  His cigarette packet still lay on the table. Mickey looked at it, then picked it up, and closed it with determination.

  ‘Mr Austin,’ he called.

  ‘Lloyd, Stansfield CID. This is WPC Alexander.’

  Pauline had thought it might be Gordon. But it was Lloyd, Stansfield CID, and WPC Alexander. ‘Come in,’ she said, pushing the button, and waiting at the door.

  The lift arrived after a moment, and he got out, with a uniformed policewoman. For an instant, Pauline thought they had come to arrest her.

  ‘Mrs Pearce,’ Lloyd said as they followed her into the sitting-room, ‘your husband is at Stansfield police station, answering questions.’

  She stopped walking, her back to them. ‘ Why?’ she asked.

  ‘Because he has confessed to the murders of Mrs Beale and Mrs Austin.’

  She turned. ‘ Lennie?’ she said. ‘But – but that’s ridiculous! Gordon would no more harm Lennie than – anyway, he was here! He was with me!’

  Lloyd looked totally impassive; the policewoman looked motherly and sympathetic. Pauline didn’t suppose she would be.

  ‘He says you are lying to protect him.’

  Pauline couldn’t believe this was happening. Not this, not the one thing she was sure of. ‘He was here,’ she said again. ‘ He came home at quarter past eleven, and he passed out on that chair!’ She pointed to it, as though its presence somehow proved what she was saying. ‘She was alive at ten past and dead by half past – Gordon couldn’t possibly have killed her!’

  ‘How do you know what time she died, Mrs Pearce?’ he asked.

  Her energy, her will seemed to drain out. She could feel it flow from her body, and she sank down in the chair. ‘I was there,’ she said.

  Lloyd sat down. He didn’t speak.

  ‘I heard someone at the studio door,’ she said, her voice flat, unemotional. ‘And about fifteen minutes later, I heard a car leave. Then Gordon came in. I knew he’d done something wrong. I knew he felt betrayed by her. I thought he’d been in her studio, and I could smell burning. I could smell it on his clothes. I thought he’d set fire to her studio, burnt her paintings. When he passed out, I went down there. But the studio was all right.’

  She looked at him. Clear blue eyes watched her as she spoke.

  ‘Then I thought she must have been in there, and that I had heard Gordon going in. And that he’d done something – maybe even tried to rape her or something.’ She closed her eyes. ‘ I knew he’d done something. So I drove over to Stansfield to ask Lennie what was going on. And – there were police cars, and an ambulance, and no sign of Lennie. Her car wasn’t there – I didn’t know where she’d got to, but I thought then that he’d done something awful to Jonathan.’ She looked at him again. ‘Because I thought Lennie wasn’t there,’ she said. ‘ I thought she had left the studio just minutes before me.’

  ‘You heard a car drive away,’ Lloyd said. ‘You didn’t see it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Had there been a car parked in the street?’

  Pauline frowned a little as she thought. ‘ No,’ she said. ‘No, there wasn’t. I actually remember that there wasn’t, because I was looking for something to account for the noise.’

  Lloyd nodded. ‘Anyway,’ he said. ‘You went over to the Austins’, saw that the police were there, and you came back here, thinking that your husband had killed Jonathan Austin?’

  She nodded. ‘Or that he’d hurt him, at any rate. Then I found out it was Lennie who was dead. And I didn’t even consider Gordon – he couldn’t possibly have done that to her. Then Inspector Hill told me that she’d been seen with Steve Tasker – and that was when Gordon was here with me. So I knew he didn’t have anything to do with it.’

  It was almost easy to forget Rosemary Beale, she thought, enjoying the sheer luxury of telling the truth. She didn’t hold out any hope that the chief inspector had forgotten her, but she very nearly had.

  ‘Why would he say that he killed her?’ asked Lloyd.

  Pauline sighed. ‘ I can only think of one reason,’ she said. ‘He knew I’d been out. He must have thought I’d done it.’

  Lloyd agreed. ‘I have a pathologist who could have told him that that was out of the question,’ he said. ‘It would have saved a lot of heartache.’

  ‘You do believe me, then? That Gordon was here?’

  ‘I don’t have to believe you, Mrs Pearce. Your husband hadn’t the faintest idea what had gone on in the Austin flat.’

  Pauline felt scared. ‘What did happen to her?’ she asked.

  Lloyd thought for a moment before he spoke. ‘ She was hit on the head with the ashtray that your husband left outside the Austins’ door,’ he said. ‘But that isn’t the whole story.’

  It was all she was going to be told. All she wanted to be told.

  ‘That leaves us with Mrs Beale,’ said Lloyd,

  Pauline said nothing.

  ‘Did you know Mrs Beale was dead when Inspector Hill came to see her that night?’

  ‘No,’ said Pauline.

  The short holiday from lying was over.

  It was Wednesday afternoon.

  Jonathan looked out of the hotel window at the people who hurried past, hot and bothered and busy. Once, Wednesday had been early closing; people didn’t believe in that any more.

  He was hot – the hotel didn’t run to air-conditioning. But he wasn’t busy – he wasn’t expected to go to work, so he had nothing to do. And he was bothered. Not like these women with their bulging plastic carrier bags, who somehow manhandled them, a pushchair and a toddler through the town; they were another species. His future constituents, he hoped, still, despite everything. He just had to get through. He’d come through this far.

  They had come, offering their condolences, from the party. It was hard enough under normal circumstances to know what to say to the suddenly bereaved; they were completely out of their depth with murder. An intruder, they seemed to have decided, amongst themselves. He could almost imagine the sub-committee, formed to discuss the best approach to the husband of a murder victim. Ignore the fact that the spouse is always automatically under suspicion; ignore the rumours that she had been out on the town with some man who was just out of prison. Offer condolences, and refer vaguely to an intruder.

  But Leonora’s murder shouldn’t affect his chances. The public had a short memory, and anyway, he would be cleared of any suspicion once they picked this person up.

  Until then, there was nothing he could do, except worry about what was going to happen. All the people that he had regarded as his friends, were, now he came to think of it, Leonora’s friends, and they were giving him a wide berth. The police had offered to take him to friends; that was when it had come home to him that he really didn’t have any.

  But it was Wednesday, and the prospect of unquestioning human companionship beckoned. Not friendship, not by any stretch of the imagination. Not even the ill-at-ease sympathy of his party acquaintances would be offered, and that was, in a strange way, the attraction. People who didn’t know who he was, or care. People who had no interest whatever in what was happening to him, and did not feel obliged to pretend any.

  A couple of hours off, that was all it was. All it ever had been. It wasn’t so much to ask. He hadn’t been going to go, but he would. He deserved some time off, because his mind, despite his efforts to stop it, kept reviewing what had happened, what Leonora had been frightened might happen.

  But they had to find this man; even though Sergeant Drake had seen her, and she seemed to have been at the pub with him – he wouldn’t be cleared of suspicion until they actually had him. His boss. Leonora had threatened to tell his boss. Jonathan frowned. In what circumstances would telling his boss have any effect on his behaviour? He had merely been making a nuisance of himself. Hanging about, trying to talk to her. His boss could hardly be expected to do anything ab
out that. He hadn’t been paying much attention when Leonora told him.

  And maybe that wasn’t who she was with at all; they said it was this ex-convict, and it seemed unlikely that he would have a boss at all. If he wasn’t the one who had been hanging around, that would leave it all up in the air again.

  He needed some time off.

  ‘No surprises,’ said Freddie, when he’d finished. ‘She died of asphyxiation. I can’t narrow the time down any more than you already know, I’m afraid. Between eleven and one, give or take.’

  Judy nodded.

  ‘No struggle. She tried to pull the restriction away, but she doesn’t seem to have got hold of her attacker at all. Taken entirely by surprise, I’d say. No other assault of any sort.’ He washed his hands, and ushered her out of the room.

  ‘I don’t suppose there’s any evidence that the same person attacked both of them?’ Judy said.

  ‘No,’ said Freddie. ‘I’m told there are some fibres on Mrs Beale’s clothes that should be able to be matched up once you’ve got a suspect, but nothing that ties in with Mrs Austin.’ He walked with her to the door, opening it for her. ‘And there’s no similarity in the type of attack, or the amount of strength required – a woman could have killed Mrs Beale, but not Mrs Austin.’ He cleared his throat a little. ‘I was sorry to hear that she was a friend of yours,’ he said.

  It almost took Judy by surprise to hear Freddie being serious. She gave a short sigh, and nodded.

  ‘Can’t be easy for you,’ he said. ‘I hope it’s over soon.’

  Yes. Judy went out into the late afternoon, and walked to her car, which had been sitting in the sun for two hours before the clouds had rolled in, making the sky dark and depressing. She spent some moments, her mind on other things, trying to get into the car with Lloyd’s key. She found her own, and opened the door to heat that she was quite certain would have happily cooked a small chicken. In winter, the cold would have kept the same chicken fresh for days.

  She joined the shoppers and commuters on their way back from Barton to Stansfield, getting stopped at every red light. The open windows made it a noisy, smelly journey out of the city; the oppressive, dark heat was depressing her as she sat waiting at an unexplained hold-up.

  A water-main had been ruptured by telephone workers; Judy glared at the orange-jacketed constable who waved her right, on to a diversion through Barton’s seedier back-streets. In unfamiliar territory, she slowed the car down as she negotiated tiny cobbled one-way streets barely wide enough for the car. Frank Beale would have been risking scraping the Rolls on the walls of the buildings; he needed two spaces to park at Andwell House.

  Another hold-up, waiting to join the side-street which took traffic back to the main road. Escape from this hot stuffy city was almost in sight, but the main stream of traffic would not give way; perspiration trickled down her neck from her hairline, and Judy pulled on the hand-brake, resigned to her fate.

  A tall, fair man walked briskly past the line of traffic; Judy watched as he made his way along the litter-strewn pavement, past a cinema the attraction of whose bill eluded her, and in through the door of something called the Apollo Gymnasium.

  Judy looked ahead, counting the cars between her and freedom; the traffic on the main road, having escaped whatever dire diversion it had had to endure, was not about to let anyone in. She pulled the car over, driving its nearside wheels on to the pavement, and got out, walking quickly towards the door.

  ‘Sorry, love – men only.’ The large, suntanned tattooed figure had appeared as if by magic, as soon as she had touched the door.

  ‘I thought that was against the law these days,’ she said.

  ‘Yeah, well – you take us to court, darling.’

  She produced her identification. ‘Do your members sign in?’ she asked.

  ‘Have you got a warrant?’

  ‘No,’ she said, and smiled. ‘I just want a look at the book,’ she said. ‘That’s all.’

  She had not, it would appear, pulled the car over far enough. The traffic ahead of her car was moving, and horns started to sound.

  ‘I’m going to get lynched,’ she said. ‘ Go on – just one look, that’s all.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘Nothing to do with the club,’ she said. ‘Look – I’m not vice squad – I’m not even Barton. Not my problem. Someone who attacks women is – and I’m told he was in here today. I just want a quick look at your book to see if his name’s there.’ It was stretching the truth water-thin, but sex offenders weren’t protected by the honour amongst thieves code, and it might work.

  It was beginning to sound like Paris on a bad day. She glanced back, and her heart sank as she saw a yellow-banded cap make its sinister way along the double yellow-lined road. ‘One look,’ she pleaded.

  He reached into the void behind him, and produced the book, open at the appropriate page. ‘ He won’t use his right name,’ he said.

  Judy looked at the last signature, and smiled again. ‘You’re a toff,’ she said.

  The dreaded ticket was being placed under her windscreen wiper by a traffic warden who was enjoying unheard-of popularity as a cheer went up.

  ‘Sorry, sorry!’ Judy grabbed the polythene package, and thanked God that the threatening downpour had had the decency to stay off, or the car wouldn’t have started.

  Once on the dual carriageway, everything on the road was determined to pass her with a growl of its engine and a rush of air that made the car shudder; all the people she had kept waiting outside the Apollo, she reckoned. Lloyd would be telling her to get a new car. One that was less likely to fall apart if a lorry passed it. One that could possibly pass other vehicles.

  The traffic slowed to a crawl, and stopped. Judy didn’t believe it. Defeated by the nameless, darting hedgerow insects and the dirty exhaust of the van in front of her, she closed the windows, and baked as the line inched its way towards temporary traffic lights erected for roadworks that no one seemed to be working on. A new car wouldn’t have prevented this, she told herself. No, but a new car would have a fan which would distribute cold air. And hot air, when the occasion arose. Unlike hers, which hadn’t worked for years, and confirmed the car in its belief that it was actually a piece of kitchen equipment.

  Her thoughts strayed to Mrs Austin’s car. The lab said that only the mechanic’s prints were on the ignition key under the seat; he would hardly have taken it for a joyride, not knowing when it was likely to be picked up. Anyone else using it would either have destroyed his prints or left their own. The rest of it was clean; that could be accounted for by the fact that it had just been valeted. Therefore, it had never moved from the spot, and Jonathan Austin was lying. And now she knew that Drake was right – well, she’d check with him. He’d know Barton’s dives. She wasn’t sure where it got her, but she felt as though something had clicked into place. She wasn’t sure what; she’d have to go over her notes.

  She drove through Stansfield, thanking God for its traffic-light-Free streets, making for Malworth, now very late for Lloyd, with whom she was supposed to be eating before they started organising the reconstruction, and arrived at the station hot, crumpled, sweaty and bad-tempered. It did nothing for her morale to discover Detective Chief Superintendent Allison passing the time of day with the desk sergeant.

  ‘Ah, Mrs Hill,’ he said. ‘May I take up some more of your valuable time?’

  Freddie being serious and Allison being positively gallant; Lloyd would be putting it down to body snatchers. Well, she thought, as they went through the usual impossibility of who went through doors first, if this, is my first taste of sexual harassment, it won’t last long, the state I’m in.

  ‘This is what you might call baptism by fire,’ he said.

  You might, she thought. If you talked in clichés. Oh, my God, she was getting just like Lloyd. She’d be correcting the man’s grammar next. Not that she could. ‘Yes, sir,’ she said.

  ‘Your divisional chief inspector is in Marbella or s
omewhere, and his deputy, I am reliably informed, has just managed to break his leg.’

  ‘Yes, sir. Painting his window-frames.’

  Allison nodded. ‘ The problem is,’ he said, ‘ that on-the-spot decisions do have to be made, and Chief Inspector Lloyd is making them at the moment.’

  Judy was puzzled. Had she said something this morning that had made Allison think she wasn’t showing Lloyd due deference? He was only one rank above her, after all. Did she have to behave as though he was the Chief Constable to prove that they weren’t going to start having domestic differences at work? They weren’t even having them at home yet.

  Anyway – he’d just said himself that the circumstances were quite exceptional. Under normal circumstances, she would be taking her orders from her own DCI, and they would not be investigating a crime which happened to be in telephonic communication with another one in another division. It was hardly her fault that despite transferring out of the division she was finding herself working with him still. And quite apart from all that, Allison had never even hinted that he knew about their private lives, so why start complaining now that she had transferred?

  ‘But DCI Lloyd is Stansfield division, and one of the murders occurred in this division. The incident room will be here, and some decisions which may have to be made on a purely local basis can only be made at chief inspector level or above. If neither Mr Lloyd or myself is available, this could cause problems. Your divisional superintendent is very heavily committed with a major enquiry, and can’t really leave divisional headquarters.’

  Oh, that’s what it was. So we’re sending in someone from another division to take local charge, Mrs Hill, and we all know that as a rabid feminist you are extremely touchy about women not being regarded as capable, so I’ve come here to pacify you by going on about your valuable time, instead of just getting on with it.

  ‘It is therefore felt that you should – for the duration of this investigation, or until the return of your divisional chief inspector – take the temporary rank of Acting DCI.’

  And she hadn’t even had to wink at him.