The Wychford Murders

by Paula Gosling

  ‘I was only fourteen.’

  He pulled back slightly ‘So you do remember.’

  ‘Yes.’ She stepped away, too, afraid of what he was making her feel. ‘I went back, you know. Hours later. I was such a conceited little brat I thought you might still be there. But of course you were gone.’

  ‘You went back.’ For a moment he felt a terrible sense of loss, a tumbling of the years over his head, and sixteen again. Her mouth had been so sweet, then and now. ‘You never told me.’

  ‘No. I think I was ashamed.’

  ‘Of what?’

  She chuckled. ‘Of wanting another kiss.’

  ‘Have it now.’ He took her back into his arms.

  Suddenly there was a step beside them, and a shadowy figure loomed up from the path. ‘All right, then, that’s enough. I’m afraid you’ll have to move on now,’ said a brusque but sympathetic voice. ‘Let’s just . . . ’ A torch flicked on to their faces. Luke released her and squinted into the light, scowling. ‘Oh, Christ!’ came a gasp from the dark figure behind the torch.

  ‘Good evening, Constable,’ Luke said, calmly. ‘All quiet?’

  ‘Yes, sir. Just a few walkers and courting couples, like,’ came the strangled reply. ‘That is . . . ’

  ‘That is good to hear,’ Luke said, gravely. ‘Remember to keep out of sight, won’t you?’

  ‘Yes, sir. Ah . . . sorry, sir.’

  ‘Not at all, you did right. Carry on.’ Luke took Jennifer’s arm and started walking down the towpath, away from the bridge. The river gurgled and lapped the bank beside them. Above them the lights of the houses glowed, and, across the river, they could see an answering glimmer between the trees – the lights of Peacock Manor. Jennifer tried not to look that way, wondering if Mark could see them, which was, of course, ridiculous. As was her almost overwhelming impulse to giggle.

  As they went along, not speaking, another figure appeared from behind a bush. ‘Evening, Constable,’ Luke said, evenly, before the man spoke.

  ‘Sir,’ came the respectful reply, and the figure fell back.

  They went on, and around a bend. A night bird called, then another. ‘How many of them are there?’ Jennifer finally asked, in a small voice.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Luke replied, and she could hear the laughter in his throat. ‘That’s up to the local man in charge. I only said I wanted the towpath watched. Have I destroyed your authority in the town for ever, caught canoodling under the bridge?’

  ‘Never mind me, what about you?’

  ‘Ten-minute wonder – if they believe him at all,’ Luke said, dismissively. ‘I’m not exactly known as a Lothario.’ He rubbed his ear and chuckled. ‘At least, I haven’t been. Very serious chap I am, you know. Very dedicated.’

  ‘Yes.’ Jennifer’s voice was still small, and he turned his head, sharply.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Is that why we came down here? So you could check on your troops?’ she asked.

  He stopped and took hold of her shoulders. ‘How would you like to be thrown into the river?’ he asked.

  ‘Not very much.’

  ‘Then stop being an idiot. Frankly, I forgot why I was here at all. I just wanted to walk with you by the river. It seemed to be a way to keep on remembering, that’s all.’

  ‘But something in you also remembered the real reason why you came back to Wychford,’ Jennifer insisted. ‘I’m certain of it.’

  He dropped his hands and sighed, looking over the river to Peacock Manor. ‘Yes, you’re probably right. I’m sorry. I told you it becomes a habit.’

  ‘While we were having dinner and talking about old times I was also thinking about having to tell a patient the results of her cervical smear test. She has cancer – very advanced.’ Jennifer reached up and touched his face. ‘We’re grown up now, Luke. Only children have the luxury of single-mindedness.’

  ‘And all times like these are stolen,’ he agreed. ‘Perhaps that’s why they’re so precious.’ And he drew her to him, again.

  Dazed and somewhat guilty at his hiatus from duty, Luke returned to the hotel after driving Jennifer home. He had wanted to linger, but Gregson had been there, starting out on a house call. His brusque greeting and scowling departure had jolted them back to reality, and they had both realised that the moment was past. Whether other such moments lay ahead, neither of them knew.

  The whole episode had unnerved them both.

  Luke had returned to Wychford to find a killer, Jennifer to find a vocation. Neither had expected to find one another, nor to discover in such an encounter the fire that had once been set between them but never lit. They had been children – just children, then.

  After David had driven off, Luke had touched Jennifer’s face, gently. ‘We’d best be wary of dry tinder,’ he said. ‘We’ve both been alone a long time. We’ll have to decide whether we want a blaze or a slow burning, Jenny. And we’ll have to be careful not to kick the fire out.’

  She’d laughed. ‘Meaning good night?’

  ‘Meaning good night.’ He kissed her lightly. ‘I’ll ring you, tomorrow. I hope you can do something for your lady patient.’

  ‘So do I,’ Jennifer said, and watched him get into his car and drive away. He waved as he drove out the gate. When she closed the door she found herself shaking, and was grateful for the darkness of the hall.

  The minute Luke walked in, Paddy could see that he was unsettled and restless, but made no comment, although he’d been awaiting Luke’s return with mounting impatience.

  ‘I called in at the station on my way back from the hospital this evening,’ he said. ‘We’ve had a break. Two of them, in a way.’

  ‘Tell me.’ Luke went into the bathroom and washed his face and hands, staring at himself for a moment. He looked like a stranger, no sign of the boy he had been, little sign of the man he had become before returning to Wychford. And yet they were both within him, along with this new person they were having to accommodate. He felt very odd.

  ‘First of all, you may remember telling Bennett to keep in contact with the dry cleaners in town.’

  ‘Routine.’

  ‘Which may have paid off. Pair of trousers brought in that seem to have blood on the lower leg. Cyril has them.’

  Luke came out of the bathroom and leaned against the doorpost to look at his partner. ‘And?’

  ‘And what?’

  Luke smiled. ‘Come on – there’s more, isn’t there?’

  ‘There is. Hannah Putnam, from the craft centre. Came in to make a statement just as I was leaving.’ He paused.

  ‘And?’ Luke was growing impatient.

  ‘And she told me she thought she knew who the Frenholm woman was going to meet the night she was killed. Seems that in addition to fielding all comers, Ms Frenholm was having an affair with some guy from the estate. Miss Putnam doesn’t know his full name, but she gave us a lot of detail that added up to someone. We checked it out.’ He paused again.

  ‘And?’ Luke said, in a terrible voice.

  Paddy smiled. ‘Looks like it might be a guy by the name of Fred Baldwin. He works up at the photo-processing plant, and does weekend gardening over at Peacock Manor.’ Paddy started to pause again, then thought better of it. ‘It was Baldwin’s wife who brought the bloody trousers to the dry cleaners,’ he concluded.

  ‘Oh, hell,’ Luke muttered.

  ‘I thought you’d be pleased,’ Paddy said, drily. ‘What’s wrong, don’t you want to close the case?’

  ‘Yes, of course I do,’ Luke snapped. He reached backwards to turn off the bathroom light. He didn’t look into the mirror again.

  Chapter Twenty

  ‘But I threw those trousers away!’ Fred Baldwin turned to his wife, accusingly. ‘I put them out with the rubbish, dammit, I didn’t want them any more!’ He was a stocky young man, with thick white-blond cur
ly hair. He wore jeans and a shirt, and seemed in imminent danger of bursting out of both. He stood over his wife, who looked up at him with a mixture of fear and confusion.

  ‘Well, I found them and they looked perfectly all right except for the stains, so . . . ’ She was on the verge of tears. ‘I thought I could save them, they were perfectly all right, just a little tear at the knee – ’ Tricia Baldwin said, quickly, avoiding her husband’s eye, and fixing on Paddy’s not unsympathetic face. ‘I wanted to surprise Fred, you see. To show him I’d saved them for him, because he was very fond of them.’ She looked at her husband and then away. ‘I don’t understand,’ she said miserably.

  Fred Baldwin turned away from his wife with a groan. His eyes met Luke’s and there was both fear and resignation there.

  ‘Am I under arrest?’ he asked.

  ‘We’d like to talk to you,’ Luke said, carefully.

  ‘Not here,’ Baldwin said.

  ‘What is it, Fred? What’s wrong?’ Tricia Baldwin’s voice was despairing. From above them through the thin floor, came the sound of a baby, crying.

  ‘Not here,’ Baldwin said, again. ‘I’ll get my coat.’

  Tricia stood up. ‘I’ll come, too,’ she said. ‘I’ll call Janet to come over to Darren and —’

  Baldwin turned. ‘—No,’ he said.

  ‘But, Fred . . . ’

  ‘No.’ His voice was dead. She seemed to crumple up before them, sinking down again in her chair, eyes wide under the urchin fringe of blonde hair, not more than twenty, until a moment ago happy in her clean house with her lovely baby and her dependable husband, everything nice about her, everything fine.

  ‘I think it might be a good thing if you called a friend over,’ Paddy said to her, gently. ‘A bit of company for you.’

  ‘Be all over the estate in no time if she does,’ Baldwin said, to the air above the door. ‘Go to bed, Tricia. See to the baby and go to bed, like a good girl.’

  As they went down the path to the car, they could hear her stumbling up the steps to her child, her own weeping nearly as loud as his.

  ‘Bastards,’ Baldwin said, as he got in the car. ‘Couldn’t have waited until morning could you?’

  ‘I didn’t kill her.’

  ‘There was blood on your trousers, Baldwin. Blood that matches hers.’ The report had just come through. Luke’s voice was hoarse with weariness, as was Baldwin’s. Luke had asked many questions, different questions, but Baldwin’s reply had never varied. He had simply repeated the same thing, over and over.

  ‘I didn’t kill her.’

  ‘But you were having an affair with her, weren’t you?’ Paddy asked.

  ‘I didn’t kill her.’

  ‘You were going to meet her that night, weren’t you?’

  ‘I didn’t kill her.’

  ‘You called her and arranged to meet her, the way you’d done many times before. To meet her on the towpath, to go to that old boathouse, where you always went.’ Paddy’s voice was insistent, irresistible.

  ‘I didn’t kill her.’

  ‘Did she say she wouldn’t be meeting you any more, was that it? Or did she taunt you, say you weren’t much of a lover? That was one of her tricks, you know. She said that to all the men she made love to, when she got tired of them. Said they bored her, said they were rotten lovers. Did she say that to you?’ Luke asked.

  Baldwin’s head came up, suddenly. ‘There weren’t any others,’ he said.

  Luke leaned forward, very, very slightly, the abrupt change in Baldwin instantly erasing his weariness, bringing his mind to point. Had he found the way in? His face remained blank. Quietly, Paddy sat back, letting him take over. ‘Oh, but there were, I’m afraid.’ Luke put a slight edge of malice on his voice. A cutting edge, he hoped. ‘The night she died she’d made love to at least three men – we have medical evidence of that. There was a party you see. She made herself available – as usual. Were you one of them?’

  ‘You’re lying, you bastard. You’re just saying that. You’re lying!’ Baldwin’s rage was almost total. His eyes blazed with fury, but within them was also the despair of suspicion – was it true? He was angry at Abbott for saying these things, and angry at himself – for almost believing them.

  ‘I’m afraid not,’ Abbott said, with regret. Poor bastard, he thought, did you love her? Does it matter so much?

  ‘She wasn’t like that,’ Baldwin went on. ‘Oh, I’m not saying she was a saint, but she was trying to get away from all that. Men had used her, been cruel to her, poor kid. She hated them all. But not me. She didn’t hate me, see. Because I never touched her . . . like that. I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t.’

  Tell me about your relationship with Win Frenholm.’

  ‘You wouldn’t understand. Nobody would.’ His voice was bleak.

  ‘Try me.’

  Baldwin shrugged. ‘We talked. That’s all. We talked.’

  ‘How did you meet her?’

  ‘Walking on the towpath. It was while Tricia was pregnant, about a month before she had Darren. She was kind of weepy and short-tempered, not like herself at all, and . . . I was a bit frustrated, I guess, one way and another. You know.’

  ‘I know. Go on.’

  Baldwin sighed. ‘So, I used to get out of the house when it got too bad. Walk it off, like. So I wouldn’t hurt her, you understand. I love Trish . . . I don’t know how I’m going to tell her about all this.’

  ‘About all what?’

  ‘Win Frenholm and . . . everything.’

  ‘What is there to tell?’

  ‘Nothing. Nothing! We just used to talk, I told you. I found her on the towpath one night, sitting on an old piling, just sitting there in the moonlight, like some kind of . . . water fairy or something. What is it . . . ’

  ‘Sprite?’

  ‘That’s it. Water sprite.’ Baldwin’s tough face took on a kind of luminosity that Abbott found slightly unnerving. ‘There she was, dressed all in silver. Shining. Just . . . shining. Said it was a kind of costume or something she’d been wearing to model in, something like that. I don’t remember much, except the sight of her there. I felt like I’d come into some kind of fairy tale or something, it was so . . . I don’t know words for it.’ Baldwin was struggling for expression of this wondrous thing that had happened to him. ‘It was special, that’s all. As if she’d rose up out of the water just for me. But she spoke, she said “Hello” just like anyone would. Voice soft as silk, it was. Made me tingle all over.’

  ‘You mean she turned you on?’ Abbott asked, and instantly regretted it. Baldwin’s face lost its luminosity and returned to its former sullen lines.

  ‘Said you wouldn’t understand,’ he muttered.

  Abbott took a deep breath. ‘I’m sorry. It’s just that magical things don’t happen to policemen very often. I think I can understand . . . a little, anyway . . . of what you felt. Water and moonlight have had strange effects on people all through history, after all. But she wasn’t really a water sprite, was she?’

  Baldwin became annoyed with what he considered Abbott’s patronising tone. He suddenly felt he was being humoured. ‘Well, of course she wasn’t. I was only trying to tell you how it was that first night, that’s all. How it struck me, like. Why I wasn’t myself, so to speak. Once we started in talking – she was just like anyone else, really. Well . . . not quite.’ Again came the luminous expression. Abbott, to his own discomfort, recognised the emotions behind it. Touched by a little magic himself a few hours before, he felt some of Baldwin’s disorientation, and understood the power of a beautiful woman in the moonlight far better than was good for his interrogation. ‘See, I’m not anybody special,’ Baldwin went on, awkwardly. ‘I know that. But that first time – and all the other times – I felt special, with her. She told me I was, and I was. Then.’

  ‘And how many other times were there?’
r />   Baldwin looked defensive. ‘Not so many.’

  ‘How many?’

  ‘Maybe . . . once a week. Sometimes more.’

  ‘More when your wife went into hospital, for example?’

  Caught, Baldwin looked uneasy. ‘Well, yes. Visiting hours was over by eight . . . you can’t look at television all your bloody life, can you?’

  ‘Friends? Your local?’

  Baldwin muttered something, and Abbott leaned forward. ‘What was that?’

  ‘I said, it’s not the same.’

  ‘No,’ Abbott agreed, gravely. ‘It isn’t. And how did you get in touch with Miss Frenholm – or did she contact you?’

  ‘Sometimes she’d phone me at work and ask me to meet her – if she felt down and wanted to talk. Once in a while I’d phone her. But . . . mostly it just happened. I’d go on the towpath, feeling rotten, and there she’d be. Waiting for me.’

  ‘Like magic?’

  ‘Dammit, don’t laugh at me!’ Baldwin’s voice rose and he began to leave his chair, fists clenched. Paddy stood up, too, abruptly, and stared him back down into his seat before resuming his own. Baldwin was breathing hard and held Paddy’s eyes for a moment, a muscle working in his jaw.

  ‘You don’t like being laughed at,’ Luke commented. It was not a question.

  ‘Do you?’ Baldwin’s tone was still belligerent. It was clear he had a loose hold on a short temper. Had Win Frenholm set off that temper? Clearly the relationship had been a complex one, completely beyond the man’s previous experience. Baldwin was a stolid type, slow-thinking and close to the earth. He resembled a heavy-headed ram, ponderous and deliberate. He’d been walking the towpath filled with his own troubles and frustrations, in the dark in every way. Suddenly his life had changed. Win Frenholm had appeared like something out of a dream. Quicksilver and ethereal, playing with him, literally enchanting him, with the gift of her attention and time. How she must have savoured her power. Rather than taking his body, she’d taken his mind, flattering him beyond anything he’d ever known. Not a sexual spell, but one far more seductive to a man accustomed to the merely physical. What had been in it for her? Had she been drawn to his animal strength, as with Ray Moss, or had it been a game, this ‘magical’ spiritual enchantment of a stumbling male? A game she’d tired of, in the end? Had she broken the magic at last? And paid for it? Baldwin had a powerful body, he was about the right height.