Winding Up the Serpent

by Priscilla Masters

  She opened the car door. ‘I won’t.’ She smiled. ‘It’s all right, Mike,’ she said. She hesitated. ‘And I’ll be some time. I don’t expect this to be easy. And I don’t want to leave until I’ve all the answers Matthew can give.’

  He put a hand on her arm. ‘I’ll do it if you like.’

  She climbed out. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I’ll do it myself. But thanks anyway.’

  He gave her a thumbs-up sign. ‘Why here, though, Joanna?’

  She glanced around at the rural domesticity. ‘I’m hoping by coming here,’ she said, ‘to shock him into telling me the whole story at last.’

  The house was approached by a narrow path of stone flags. Joanna pushed open the wicket gate and walked up to the door.

  It took courage to drop the knocker down hard enough to make a noise. Her first attempt bounced – soundlessly on the wood. The second clanged loudly enough to wake the dead.

  Jane Levin opened the door. They had not met since the night at the restaurant but Joanna had never forgotten the ice-cold stare of those blue eyes and the pale, Scandinavian beauty of her blonde hair. Nor the tight line of her thin lips. She stared at Joanna.

  ‘You,’ she said.

  ‘Detective Inspector Piercy,’ Joanna said, cursing the quaver in her voice. She cleared her throat. ‘I’d like to talk to Dr Levin.’

  Jane Levin looked down her narrow nose. ‘Couldn’t you contact him at the hospital?’ she said haughtily.

  ‘I’m sorry. I have to talk to him now. It’s about the murder of Marilyn Smith.’

  ‘The nurse?’ Her voice was sharp.

  Yes.’

  The door was slammed in her face and Joanna stood on the doorstep, conscious of Mike’s eyes boring holes into her. She turned and nodded at him, then the door was flung open.

  ‘Joanna ...’ Matthew hissed. ‘What the hell...?’ He was furious.

  ‘I need a statement from you, Dr Levin,’ she said formally. ‘Would you mind if I came inside?’

  He glared at her. ‘Why have you come here?’

  ‘Because I couldn’t waste any more time,’ she said angrily. ‘I’m fed up with half-truths. All along, Matthew,’ she said, ‘you’ve fed me little bits of the truth. I want it all now.’

  ‘Are you here officially?’ He glanced over her shoulder at Mike in the squad car. ‘Because if you are maybe you’d better invite Tarzan in too.’

  ‘Not quite officially,’ she said. ‘And that’s a favour to you ... Matthew,’ she said softly. ‘This is a murder case.’

  He stared at her dumbly, suddenly appalled at her manner. ‘Joanna,’ he begged. ‘Not here. Darling, not here.’ A shadow crossed his face. ‘If you come inside ...’ He took a deep breath. ‘It will violate my home.’

  ‘Then the station,’ she said, ‘and a formal, taped interview. And you’re bloody lucky to get the choice. This case has its own violations, Matthew.’

  ‘All right, Joanna,’ he said. ‘You win.’ He turned round and she followed him into the house.

  There was no sign of his wife as he led Joanna along a dark corridor lined with macs and wellies and an old bike. Matthew brushed against it as he passed and it wobbled and almost fell. He gave a quiet curse and steadied it. His hand was shaking. At the end of the corridor he opened a panelled door into a light, square study, lined with books from ceiling to floor, with two long windows facing out towards the crags in the distance and armchairs either side of the fireplace. He sat in one of them and motioned her to the other.

  She tried not to look at the shelf of photographs, the centre one especially ... Matthew and Jane, bride and groom. And she wondered how many evenings they had sat in these chairs and talked, read, listened to music together.

  Matthew leaned forward, biting his lip. ‘You don’t belong here,’ he said.

  ‘Well, I don’t exactly feel comfortable either,’ she bit back. ‘So you’d better unload yourself and then I needn’t return. I can leave you both alone.’

  He looked serious. ‘Will it all have to come out? Will it mean prosecutions?’

  She shrugged. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘It depends on the circumstances.’ She leaned forward. ‘Matthew, your best chance is to be frank. Please – tell me absolutely everything. As far as I can I’ll help you. I promise.’

  He nodded, settled back in his chair, closed his eyes. ‘Thank God for someone I can trust,’ he said. Then, ‘Actually, you know a lot of it.’

  She grimaced. ‘I think I know about all of it,’ she said. ‘Except the most important parts.’

  He ignored her comment. ‘Jonah, Paul and I were in medical school together.’ He paused. ‘Paul always had peculiar tendencies.’ He stopped. ‘You know the rest of that bit. So then there was Jonah and me. We muddled along, got drunk, did our studies, sat exams together. And then he met Pamella ...’ He smiled. ‘Fell for her, hook, line and sinker.’ He stopped again. ‘Pamella was really lovely,’ he said. ‘Sexy and beautiful and very clever. And Marilyn was her great friend. Plump and plain. But she was clever too, in a devious way. She’d hang around Pamella and pick up all the discarded boyfriends – came to think of them as her right. Until Jonah. Pamella didn’t give him up and I think Marilyn just waited. Anyway,’ he carried on, ‘Pamella and Jonah got married. I was best man, Marilyn their bridesmaid. And Jonah came into general practice here in Leek. Then Pamella got pregnant.’ He paused and rubbed his forehead with the palm of his hand.

  ‘Right from the start we all knew something was terribly wrong. Even in the early weeks she was very strange.’ He looked at Joanna. ‘Do you know what the phrase puerperal psychosis means?’

  ‘A sort of madness,’ she ventured, ‘connected with having a baby?’

  He nodded and smiled. A glimpse of the old Matthew returned. ‘So you do listen when I lecture you! Anyway, when the baby was born she got quite a lot worse.’

  ‘Stevie,’ she said, beginning to understand.

  Matthew’s face crumpled. ‘Oh, God,’ he said. ‘You have no idea. He was so sweet... plump and pink and always chuckling. They called him Stevie after Pamella’s father. He had been a surgeon in Manchester – a very clever man. He died a month before Stevie was born.’

  ‘Go on. What happened?’

  ‘After Stevie was born,’ Matthew said, ‘Jonah hardly dared leave her. He was so worried about what would happen.’ He paused. ‘I think we all had the most appalling sense of dread. We knew something was going to happen. We could feel it getting nearer. But there wasn’t anything any of us could do to prevent it. Jonah tried. He stayed at home for as long as he could but financially he had to return to work or lose his practice. And all the time we were all terrified to leave them alone together.’

  ‘Couldn’t she have gone to hospital?’

  ‘She had a short stay but got much worse. They wanted to separate mother and son and she got hysterical and threatened to kill herself. Jonah felt she might get better if she could remain at home. We all thought it was the only chance she had – if we treated her as a normal mum we thought she might snap out of it.’

  ‘God, Matthew,’ Joanna said. ‘You’re a doctor. Had you no judgement?’

  Matthew looked away. ‘It’s easy with hindsight,’ he said bitterly. ‘Bloody easy after the event. We took turns in going round and checking on her. Things did seem to get a bit better.’ He stopped. ‘I suppose we all relaxed.

  ‘Then one day Jonah came home a bit late from work. Pamella was sitting on the stairs. He told us afterwards it was very quiet in the house. Pamella told him Stevie was asleep.’ Matthew closed his eyes. ‘Pamella said not to worry, Stevie wouldn’t cry again. Joanna ...’ Matthew’s eyes were bright with unshed tears. ‘He was dead in his cot. There wasn’t a mark on him. He just looked asleep.

  We hoped it was a cot death. But underneath we were so afraid.’ He waited and watched Joanna carefully and she knew there was more.

  ‘I had to do the post-mortem ... This little child I’d rocked to sleep f
or most of his short life, Jo,’ he said brokenly. ‘There were cotton fibres in his lungs.’

  She frowned. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I don’t understand.’ Matthew gave a tight smile. ‘You don’t know everything yet, then, Detective Inspector,’ he said. ‘Stevie had been smothered. He had inhaled cotton fibres from a pillow. And there were other findings too. When I went to Jonah’s house later that night I saw a pillow on the spare bed. It was dented. And when I looked at the cot the blankets were all over the place.’ He dropped his head down into his hands. ‘He must have struggled,’ he said.

  Joanna felt her face grow stiff with shock. The picture was the ugliest of all the pictures this case had brought to mind. The baby struggling ... The expression of the mother pressing the pillow into the baby’s face until it fell quiet.

  The room was silent.

  And now she understood. ‘You certified it as a cot death,’ she said, ‘when Pamella Wilson belonged in Broadmoor. She was criminally insane.’

  Matthew shook his head. ‘She was disturbed,’ he said, ‘but it was to do with having a baby. No more pregnancies and she would be fine. There was no danger to any one else. It was not the psychology of a murderer.’

  She clenched her fists. ‘Oh, really, Matthew?’ she said. ‘I think you should think again. It was another error of judgement, wasn’t it?’

  He bowed his head.

  And now she was merciless. ‘It was a huge bloody cover-up! The whole damned medical profession ganged up together. She murdered her baby!’ She was silent for a moment, then her anger erupted. ‘How bloody convenient to have you as a friend, Matthew. It must be great having a pathologist as a pal when your wife’s just murdered your baby.’

  Matthew winced. ‘It wasn’t like that,’ he protested. ‘The trial ... the court case ... the interrogation ...’

  ‘By some heavy-footed police person like me,’ she demanded, ‘who happens to believe murder is wrong? Damn it, Mat,’ she said, ‘the law can be sensitive too, you know. She would simply have received psychiatric treatment.’

  ‘And where would that have left the family doctor? Who would have gone to him with their problems? It would have finished Jonah.’

  ‘He could have moved,’ she said. ‘He could have practised elsewhere.’

  Matthew stared beyond her, out of the window to the grey crags in the distance. ‘Yes,’ he said.

  ‘So where did Marilyn fit into all this?’

  ‘Jonah advertised for a nurse to help him with the work,’ Matthew said reluctantly. ‘She answered and Jonah thought an old friend might be good for Pamella.’

  ‘Instead of which she blackmailed Jonah ...’ Joanna finished. ‘And, I suppose, tried to pick up her friend’s husband. So how did she find out about the baby?’

  ‘I’d kept a copy of the old original post-mortem report,’ Matthew said slowly. ‘Jonah and I agreed that it might be necessary. It was in the safe with sensitive information. Marilyn had access to the safe for staff notes, drugs information. We never thought she’d snoop ... you trust a nurse.’

  He stopped. ‘I know what else was in there,’ he said. ‘The psychiatrist’s report on Paul Haddon. He was assessed following some treatment ...’ He looked at Joanna.

  ‘And then she started blackmailing,’ Joanna said. ‘I suppose she got money out of a lot of other people as well as Jonah.’

  ‘He increased her salary,’ he said. ‘But what she really wanted was for him to divorce Pamella, put her away somewhere in an institution and marry her. She fancied being the doctor’s wife.’ Matthew stared hard at Joanna. ‘You understand what I’m saying,’ he said. ‘It was the status she wanted.’ He paused. ‘She kept having all those bloody operations – breast implants, liposuction, teeth crowned in porcelain. What she didn’t realize was that everything she did made Jonah more repulsed.’

  ‘So he killed her.’

  The door burst open and a small girl in jodhpurs and a yellow sweater ran in and threw her arms around Matthew. ‘Daddy, Daddy, Daddy ... you said you’d watch me jump Sparky before tea. I’ve gone over four times and I didn’t fall off once.’ She tugged at his hand. ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘Come on.’

  Matthew looked fondly down at his wife’s clone. ‘In a minute, Eloise,’ he said, stroking the girl’s pale plait. ‘In a minute.’

  Joanna stood up. ‘I’ll see myself out,’ she said.

  Mike was sitting far down in the seat, his feet propped up on the dashboard. He struggled to sit up as she opened the door. ‘Get what you want, Joanna?’

  She slammed the door. ‘Yes and no,’ she said.

  But she was hauling them in, kicking and struggling: Paul Haddon, Grenville Machin ... Jonah, Matthew, and the pathetic Pamella. They could fight as hard as they liked but it was futile. They were caught and she would spill them out into the legal system, one by one.

  Chapter 17

  The forensic report on the coat dug up in Evelyn Shiers’ garden was sitting on her desk the following morning. The coat had been buried for around five years and held no blood, no skin, but there were some white hairs. Jock Shiers had been renowned for having a full head of jet black hair.

  Joanna sat, puzzled, disappointed that there was so little to be gleaned from what had seemed so promising. She glanced again at the report. It stressed that no one had met a bloody end while wearing the coat. So why bury it? And where was Jock Shiers? She sighed, pushed the report aside and looked at Mike.

  ‘I want to talk to the woman Jonah Wilson visited the night of the murder.’

  Mike looked puzzled. ‘We’ve already been there once.’

  ‘I know ...’ Joanna was fumbling with the truth. ‘I just don’t think we asked the right questions. We checked up that he’d been. I want exact times. I want to know how long he was out for. How long it would have taken him to get there. How long he spent in the house.’

  ‘OK.’ Mike stood up.

  They drove to the end of the road where Jonah Wilson lived and Joanna set her watch. ‘Drive slowly,’ she said to Mike. ‘I think he would be a cautious driver. I’ll allow two minutes for him to unlock the car door, get in and drive off ...’

  Twenty minutes later they stopped outside the farmhouse door, after a long, slow drive over narrow moorland roads with tight bends and steep hills. The farm was at the end of a long, gated drive.

  Fay Dunwood looked unhappily at them. ‘He did come here,’ she insisted. ‘Dr Wilson did come ... I did have a headache. He gave me an injection and waited for it to work.’

  ‘How long was he here for?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ She was impatient with the police, protective of her doctor. ‘All I know is I was worried. I’d rung earlier on in the day. Mrs Wilson said there was a lot of meningitis around. She said to ring back at eleven o’clock. The headache got worse ... Ask my husband there.’

  Joanna looked at Mike. ‘And he came straight out?’ The man in the corner grunted. ‘He must have done. I did ring again but after that there was no answer. I thought I’d better give him instructions... This place isn’t easy to find. He could have got lost. But he was already on his way. Got here a quarter of an hour later. I was going to tell him I’d meet him at the bottom with a torch. Open them gates for him. But he weren’t in.’

  ‘And his wife?’ Joanna struggled to sound casual.

  ‘She weren’t in neither – unless she’d gone to bed.’

  ‘So, he went on the visit.’ Joanna looked at Mike. ‘And she must have left the house.’

  ‘But everyone says she never goes out.’

  ‘Does that give her an alibi?’ She paused. ‘What do you think, Mike? She wasn’t there. Mr Dunwood rang the house and she wasn’t there. I think she was in the house in Silk Street murdering her old friend who she feared was going to rob her of her husband or expose the murder of her child.’

  Mike shook his head. ‘Joanna,’ he said. ‘It won’t work. How did she get past the dog? And how could she possibly have known that her husba
nd would get called out, be gone for an hour?’

  Her face dropped. ‘That’s the only bit I haven’t worked out yet, Mike.’ She grinned. ‘Give me time.’

  They pulled up outside Jonah Wilson’s house and she sat and looked at the modest, run-down semi. ‘Marilyn Smith must have milked them of an awful lot of money,’ she said. She walked up the path and saw Pamella peering through the frosted glass in the front door.

  ‘Can I come in?’ Joanna called out. ‘It’s the police.’ She held up her card, knowing Pamella would not be able to read it.

  Pamella opened the door and peeped round like a shy child. ‘Hello,’ she said. ‘I remember you.’

  ‘Is the doctor in?’

  ‘Jonah’s at work.’ Pamella smiled self-consciously. ‘He works very hard, you know.’

  ‘Yes, I do know.’

  ‘Do you want to wait for him? You can sit with me.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  Joanna sat opposite Pamella Wilson and watched her fiddle with the material of her skirt. Then Pamella looked up and smiled. ‘She is dead, isn’t she?’

  Joanna nodded and Pamella curled her ankles around the legs of the chair. ‘Did you know,’ she asked pleasantly, ‘we used to be friends? Quite good friends.’ She paused. ‘Best friends.’

  Joanna smiled back. ‘Really?’ she said. ‘Would you like to tell me about it?’

  Pamella put her head on one side, considering, then she gave an abrupt laugh. ‘I suppose I could, couldn’t I?’ She stopped. ‘Well,’ she said. ‘We were student nurses together. Washed the bedpans in the same machine.’

  Joanna nodded. ‘Why did you kill her, Pamella?’ she asked.

  Pamella looked surprised. ‘I didn’t think anyone knew,’ she said thoughtfully, then she turned her clear gaze on Joanna. ‘How did you know?’ she asked.

  ‘It’s my job,’ Joanna said.

  Pamella seemed to accept this. ‘Well, if you know already,’ she said, almost crossly, ‘what’s the point of me telling you?’

  ‘I don’t know it all.’

  Pamella looked pleased. ‘Don’t you?’ She looked across the room, abstracted and vague, and Joanna waited patiently.