Cousins

by Salley Vickers

  I don’t know exactly when the police became involved. I know that Dad and Mum were invited to go to the Kensington police station and that I went with them and sat in a grubby little waiting area which smelled of disinfectant, while they spoke to officers I never saw. They were incarcerated there for some time and when they reappeared I felt more frightened than I ever remember feeling in my life. Which was hardly surprising as what they had been told was that the police were treating Will’s death as suspicious.

  The pathologist thought he detected evidence of asphyxiation and the contents of Will’s stomach had been sent away for analysis. Because there were no interlopers, no sign of forced entrance to the flat that night, because Rose, the carer, was away on her city break and Graham was in Brussels, my cousin, my aunt and my grandmother had overnight become suspects in a murder inquiry.

  Shortly before seven that morning, police officers had arrived at Bell’s to question Bell, Granny and Cele, who had all been in the flat when Will died. It is not merely in TV dramas that the police work on intuition. I suppose it was inevitable that from the first the greatest suspicion fell on Cele.

  There were two investigating officers, a male Detective Inspector and a woman Detective Constable, who questioned her. They bent over backwards to be civil and the questions, to begin with, were straightforward.

  ‘When did you last see your cousin alive, Mrs McCowan?’

  ‘Before I went to bed.’

  ‘And that was …?’

  ‘Around 11.30. I can’t be quite sure of the exact time.’

  ‘Can you tell us how he was?’

  ‘As he always was.’

  ‘Can you be a little more precise?’

  ‘He seemed OK. I said good night. And I gave him a kiss.’

  ‘Were you in the habit of kissing your cousin?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Where were you sleeping?’

  ‘Next door in Rose’s room, the carer. Will’s carer.’

  ‘Rose was away?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How did that happen?’

  ‘She was owed time off. She wanted a break with her boyfriend.’

  ‘And who was it who arranged this, Mrs McCowan?’

  ‘Will suggested it. As Granny was coming to stay it meant we had a spare room for her if Rose took her break then.’

  ‘Your grandmother came to stay. Why? Any special reason?’

  ‘She wanted to see a production of Othello.’

  ‘Was this her idea or yours?’

  ‘Hers. We go to the theatre together quite often.’

  ‘And you went with her to see Othello?’

  ‘No. Rose was supposed to be with Will that evening but she spent the night at her boyfriend’s because their plane was very early so I stayed behind.’

  ‘But hadn’t you asked your grandmother especially to go to the theatre?’

  ‘No. She invited me.’

  ‘But you had to let her down?’

  ‘She had my mother to go with. She understood that someone had to stay with Will.’

  ‘And were you the obvious choice?’

  ‘Well, Granny had come to London specially to see the play.’

  ‘And your mother? She didn’t offer to stay so you could be with your grandmother?’

  ‘Granny wanted to see her too. She is her daughter.’

  ‘So it would be more natural for you to be the one to stay behind with your cousin?’

  And so it went on. Question after question, always leading to ‘Did you in any way assist your cousin to die?’

  They had already asked in several different ways if Will had expressed a wish to die.

  ‘His life must have been very reduced by his accident. Cruelly reduced. Did he discuss ending it with you?’

  ‘Sometimes.’

  ‘And you maybe thought that it would be a kindness to help him.’

  ‘I did want to. But Will didn’t want that.’

  ‘He didn’t want your help or he didn’t want to die?’

  ‘He didn’t want my help.’

  ‘How did you communicate with your cousin, Mrs McCowan?’

  ‘As I said. He blinked the letters out.’

  ‘That can’t have been easy. Plenty of occasion to misread him, I’d have thought.’

  ‘No. I didn’t misread him.’

  ‘Not ever? You must have been unusually close.’

  ‘We were close, yes. And I didn’t misread him.’

  ‘Can you tell us what he said to you then about dying?’

  ‘He said “I do not want you suffering for me.” He said it more than once.’

  ‘He blinked this?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So you would have been willing to help him to die if he had given permission?’

  The young DC looked across the table at Cele with comprehending eyes. ‘It must have been awful for you. Seeing Will like that.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You knew each other as children?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You must have done a lot of things together. Played together?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I was like that with my cousin Geoff. We got up to all sorts.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘We still do muck about. I would miss all that if anything happened to Geoff.’

  ‘I did,’ Cele said.

  ‘You missed doing things with Will?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But you never thought to maybe help him? I don’t know what I mightn’t do for Geoff.’

  ‘Will made it clear that he didn’t want anything to happen to me.’

  ‘But he asked you to help him to die?’

  ‘He said that he didn’t want me to be involved.’

  ‘So who do you think might have been involved, Mrs McCowan?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Oh, come on, Mrs McCowan.’ This was the DI now. ‘There were only you, your mother and your grandmother at the flat. Your cousin is dead and not from natural causes. If it wasn’t you yourself, you must have an idea who he would have asked for help.’

  All this time, ignorant of what exactly was happening, Mum and Dad were becoming frantically anxious. They must have had more than an inkling of what had occurred. They too were questioned about Will’s state of mind when they saw him last, whether he had discussed with them ending his life, his mood, his recent history. Most difficult, I imagine, were the questions about how Will came to be living there, away from Dowlands. It had seemed better for Will to live with Bell for all kinds of practical reasons but my parents will forever believe that, had they not agreed to this, Will might be alive today.

  The person I feel for most in this whole tragedy is my mother. When you fall in love, one of the most rewarding aspects is the chance, with a sympathetic other, to analyse your family, that spider’s web of which we are all a part and in which we are also trapped and from which we struggle to escape. And, with luck, in time and with help, we may come somewhat to understand.

  Theo detects some aspect of affection lacking in my mother. ‘Not,’ as he said, ‘that she is a cold-hearted woman, Hetta, but she has – how would I say? – a guard around her heart.’ He went on to say, ‘I wonder if your mother perhaps shut down a little when Will’s twin died? It would be normal.’

  Since Theo’s parents retired and settled permanently in the south, we have rented their Paris flat and this conversation took place when we first moved in and were painting the bedroom green. (I had always pined for a leaf-green bedroom but after less than a year decided this was a mistake and Theo, with only raised eyebrows and an annoying smile, helped me repaint it white.)

  I remarked that I had sometimes wondered if Mum really preferred girls.

  ‘Or is more comfortable with them?’ he suggested. ‘But she is right, girls are greatly to be preferred. You have some paint in your hair, come here.’

  Lif
ting himself from my body he said, ‘The dead might be absent but they don’t disappoint your ideas for them.’

  I liked it that Theo never really stopped pondering things but I also liked to pretend to be annoyed. ‘Théodore Bazinet, have you been thinking that up while making love to me?’

  ‘Hetta, a musician has to be able to do more than one thing at a time.’

  I would never want to hurt my mother by seeming to impute blame for what must have been an instinctive retreat, like a hurt animal retiring to the back of its cave. But it may be, as Theo suggests, that after the death of his twin she was never quite able to meet Will – for I cannot say I felt any deficit for myself – with enough of that love, or maybe I mean enough expression of that love, which for good or ill shapes us for the rest of our lives. Maybe some small part of Will was always in want of her.

  Certainly, he had a more than usual need to be best. It was why he got into fights about his size, why he fought those he saw as oppressors. And it was the basis of his love for Cele that for her he had always seemed – until Colin – to come first.

  Theo, when he speaks of music, speaks often of silence. He is in love, he says, with gaps, with the speaking spaces in a musical score. It’s a subject where our interests meet because I am fascinated by the gaps made by people and by the gaps in people, and how those gaps get filled, sometimes to our detriment, sometimes to the detriment of others, for maybe I had been granted more of my mother’s love because of the loss of that other sister.

  So much of this story has to do with gaps. I hope I see them better now.

  5

  Granny and Bell were subjected to the same line of police questioning as Cele. When had they last seen Will? How did he seem? Had he mentioned taking his life? Did they or anyone they knew assist his death?

  Both answered in much the same way. They had seen Will before they retired to bed, he had seemed much as he always did and, yes, he had mentioned a wish to die to each of them on other occasions but neither recalled him saying anything like that on that particular night. Neither of them had any idea how his death had come about.

  Bell, from being initially indignant, took being interrogated in her stride. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that she enjoyed it – though perhaps here I am being unfair because I do know that from this moment she became truly concerned about Cele. And Granny, well, Granny will tell her own story. But at the end of the questioning that long afternoon it was Granny who determined on two courses of action. One was to ring the old firm of family solicitors, who, as she liked to say, had been around so long that God had probably instructed them over the conveyancing of paradise; the other was to take Cele off to a hotel.

  Bell went back to the flat alone, which was brave of her. ‘The poor child cannot stay another night there,’ it seems Granny said. It was accepted by everyone that it was Cele who would take Will’s death most hard.

  The old family solicitor must have busied himself because the next day he rang to say that he was sending a partner in the firm round in case the police wanted to continue their questions.

  Anu Singh, a Sikh with a greying beard and a neat black turban, which, Granny said, inspired confidence, called at the hotel while Cele was still up in their room resting. ‘She’s had a dreadful night, poor child,’ Granny said when she went down to have coffee with him. ‘I’m not sure she would be very coherent. They were very close.’

  Anu Singh was sympathetic. ‘I have heard something of this terrible business. Can you enlighten me a little further, Mrs Tye?’

  ‘I wish I could. My grandson has been incapacitated since a bad fall. We found him dead on Saturday morning. We assumed he had choked. He had Locked-in Syndrome, you know.’

  Anu Singh’s amber eyes conveyed distress. ‘How very sad. An awful business. And problems swallowing, yes?’

  ‘Yes. My daughter called the GP who looked after Will. We assumed that he’d choked. But it seems there is a question over how he died.’

  ‘These pathologists overreact to any faint suggestion that all is not quite normal at a post mortem. But is there anything I should know, Mrs Tye? Any matter, or detail relating to your grandson’s death that you might need to tell me before we, so to speak, embark?’

  ‘Not that I can think of. And it’s Betsy, please.’

  ‘I am sorry, Betsy, to intrude on your family’s grief but you understand I have to ask these questions.’

  He promised to return the following day and was present when the police arrived at the hotel and asked if Granny and Cele would be kind enough to come to the police station to answer some further questions.

  ‘A moment,’ Anu Singh said, ‘while I have a word.’

  He came back from a conversation with the two officers looking worried. The analysis of the stomach contents had not yet come back but Bell, he was told, was also being questioned again and her flat was now sealed and being searched.

  ‘They appear to be moving to a position of treating Will’s death as suspicious, which I devoutly hope is not the case. Cecilia, forgive me but I need to be very clear. You are sure that you know nothing about how your cousin came to die?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Nothing?’

  ‘No. I mean, yes, nothing.’

  Anu Singh accompanied them to the station where the questioning became more penetrating. Granny, I can imagine, handled the interrogations with seeming composure but Cele found it hard to answer without collapsing into tears.

  ‘Mrs McCowan, we believe barbiturates may have been found in your cousin’s stomach. Can you tell us how they might have got there?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘As the wife of a GP, it must have been fairly easy for you to obtain a script from your husband, fill it out, put a squiggle for his name. You must have had many occasions to sign for him.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You see, Celia …’

  ‘Cecilia.’

  ‘I do apologize. Do you mind if I call you Cecilia?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I was saying, we understand. You were helping your cousin. You were helping Will.’

  ‘I wasn’t. He didn’t want my help.’

  ‘Let us put it this way, Mrs McCowan, the courts take a dim view of a not-guilty plea when there is compelling evidence of guilt. You tell us what happened and we’ll do our best for you. We understand it was a mercy killing. We do understand that you were doing your best for your cousin. We do understand.’

  Terrible to be so terribly understood. They were kind, she told me. Very kind. And with Will gone she was more than ever in need of kindness.

  ‘I would like to propose,’ Anu Singh said at some point, ‘that my client be given a break.’

  When he was alone again with Cele he said, ‘I am going to suggest to them that you write a full statement. They have no concrete evidence for anything and you don’t look well. I shall request no further questioning pending your written statement. Your grandmother and your aunt too should do this.’

  Granny and Cele spent the following day at the dismal hotel, trying to compose statements. I have read these but I am not going to record them here because before long they became irrelevant.

  Piecing everything together, I would guess that the pathologist had smelled a rat pretty soon. The analysis of the stomach contents revealed undigested fragments of tablets which led him to suspect, before the results proved it, that Will had ingested some sort of drug. This, plus signs of asphyxiation, were not enough to charge Cele, since in theory any one of the three women could have been responsible. And for this reason not one of them could have been charged were it not for the testimony of Noreen.

  Rose was questioned but her stay in Barcelona was a definitive alibi as far as the circumstances of the death went. She was able to shed no more light on things than anyone else had. Noreen was another matter.

  Tracked down easily via the agency from which she was hired, and only too eager to help the pol
ice, Noreen described how she had seen a bottle of pills, ‘Soneryl’ she thought it said on the label, in Mrs McCowan’s drawer where she kept her underwear. She, Noreen, had been looking in the drawer for a camisole of her own that had gone missing. Not that she was trying to pry. Little pink pills and she did wonder what they were doing there as there was a gentleman’s name on the label. Not McCowan, no, another name, but she couldn’t remember what it was.

  Will was always such a pleasure to look after. Not at all down in the dumps. Quite cheerful, in fact, he seemed when she was with him. But Mrs McCowan was always so keen to look after him herself, which she, Noreen, always thought funny. She did wonder what her husband Dr McCowan made of it all.

  When murder is suspected the process is swift and serious. Swifter and more serious than the average person, fed on TV drama, might suppose. On the Thursday after Will’s death, the police arrived at the hotel and cautioned Cele, who was taken to the police station where she was formally charged with murder. She was photographed, her fingerprints were taken as well as swabs for her DNA.

  She did not, as seemed for a while likely, have to spend the night in a police cell. Thanks to a legal bigwig friend of Granny’s, another firm of solicitors, more on the ball, was instructed and they argued successfully for Cele’s release from custody overnight, since, rather clearly, she was not a danger to society but far more probably a danger to herself.

  Cele was permitted on recognizance to sleep another night at the hotel with Granny. God knows what they talked about. The following day she was rearrested and taken back to Kensington Police Station and from there she was taken to the magistrates’ court, where she was formally committed for trial at the Central Criminal Court. I can only guess at how profoundly terrifying all this must have seemed.

  6

  Granny’s friend, Giles Truelove, had put her on to a firm of solicitors specializing in criminal defence and it was Giles Truelove, who was apparently once a barrister himself, who recommended a senior QC called Cuthbert Baines. Granny, once she heard the name, insisted that he was the right man to defend Cele. I don’t know whether it was he or the new solicitor who thought they should hear more about Will and Cele’s last holiday together. I had already written a statement but I was invited to go to speak to Cele’s brief in his room at the Inner Temple.