Winding Up the Serpent

by Priscilla Masters

  ‘Marilyn found it useful to be my friend,’ Pamella said after a long silence. ‘You see, when I finished with a boyfriend they used to go out with her instead, for a while.’ She stopped. ‘They thought they could stay near me that way.’

  Joanna would have accused anyone else but this sad figure of conceit. But Pamella was obviously not conceited.

  ‘I didn’t let her have Jonah.’ Pamella paused as though to think why. ‘He was too precious,’ she said. ‘You see, I loved him myself. And he loved me, you know.’ There was another long pause. ‘But she wanted him too.’

  Joanna hardly dared breathe. She wanted this answer so much...

  ‘I think ... I think things would have been all right but I fell ill,’ Pamella said quietly. ‘You see I had a baby – a little boy. And he made me ill.’ She looked at Joanna. ‘I did love him but he made me ill. He was naughty. He used to cry.’

  She leaned forward and touched Joanna’s knee with a surprisingly soft, gentle stroke. ‘His name was Stevie. He made me ill and I couldn’t work any more. I couldn’t have any old nurse working for Jonah.’ She peered at Joanna with a conspiratorial air. ‘She might have been pretty, like I once was. She might have tempted him.’ The last few words were spoken in a whisper, Pamella Wilson peering around the room for listeners.

  ‘So I asked my old friend. My old, ugly friend. I asked her to do my work for me.’ She licked her lips. ‘The trouble was, she wasn’t my friend. Not at all.’ Pamella’s breath quickened. ‘First of all she wanted money from us. She knew about Stevie being so naughty and she knew I had to punish him.’ Tears started to run down Pamella’s face. She made no attempt to mop them up but let them drip from her chin on to the old, black sweater.

  ‘Jonah didn’t mind. He forgave me. He understood. But she didn’t. She just wanted money.’ Pamella leaned forwards. ‘She was a greedy, greedy woman. And she spent all the money trying to make herself beautiful.’ She paused. ‘I was worried,’ she said. ‘I thought one day the surgeon’s knife would succeed where nature had failed. I thought one day she would come back beautiful. She had a lot of money, you know. At first she was foul and ugly. But she wanted Jonah.’

  She paused and her face clouded over. ‘I ... I wasn’t worried – at first. Jonah loved me ... Then one day she rang me up and told me he had kissed her.’

  She slowly unwound her ankles from the chair leg. ‘I couldn’t manage without Jonah,’ Pamella said in a matter-of-fact voice. ‘I had to be careful. And I had to be clever but I did have to kill her.’ She held her hands out to Joanna. ‘You do understand – don’t you?’

  Joanna nodded.

  ‘Jonah watches me, you know. I don’t have a lot of time on my own. He’s very careful. I know he worries about me.’

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘I planned,’ Pamella said. ‘I planned very carefully. And I wrote her a letter.’ She smiled. ‘I wrote it in Jonah’s handwriting. I’m quite good at that,’ she added. ‘I pretended that he’d slip out when he was on call, pretended that silly Pamella would not be suspicious. I put a capsule in the letter – told her it was a special aphrodisiac.’ She smiled. ‘Marilyn believed anything, you know, especially things she didn’t know about – things like love and sex ...’

  ‘What was really in the capsule?’

  ‘Oh, some medication,’ Pamella said coolly. ‘Phenobarbitone. Remember, Inspector. I used to be a nurse. I know how much to give. The same as the insulin. I knew without reading that article.’

  ‘Where did the insulin come from?’

  Pamella opened her eyes very wide. ‘Jonah’s bag, of course,’ she said.

  Then Joanna asked the all-important question. ‘How could you have known that Jonah would go out that night – and for such a long time? How could you be sure you’d be left alone?’

  Pamella looked pleased with herself. ‘I tell you, Inspector,’ she said. ‘I can be very clever ... very clever.’ She waited for the words to sink in, then asked, ‘You’d like to know that, wouldn’t you?’ She stopped and thought for a moment. ‘I bet you can’t work it out, can you?’

  ‘No.’ Joanna was forced to admit it. The call to the farm had seemed genuine. There was no question of complicity. How could Pamella have known Jonah would leave her for more than half an hour?

  ‘You know,’ she said, ‘in some ways that was the cleverest bit of all. I’ll tell you.’ She smiled. ‘I did have a bit of luck. You see, I asked Marilyn, in the letter, to ring him herself half an hour after she had swallowed the capsule. She was to pretend to be a patient in one of the farthest farms away ... a man with a weak heart. And she was to say she was his neighbour and he had chest pain – again.’ Pamella stopped. ‘Marilyn had a very deep voice,’ she said. ‘Did you know that?’

  Joanna shook her head. ‘No,’ she said. ‘No one told me.’

  ‘Jonah is a conscientious doctor,’ Pamella said. ‘I knew he would have gone straight away. I would have an hour.’ She smiled. ‘It only took fifteen minutes,’ she said. ‘And wasn’t I lucky? Marilyn didn’t need to make that call at all. Mrs Dunwood did it for me.’ She smiled again. ‘And she didn’t even know she was helping me. Isn’t that nice?

  ‘So I walked quickly round to Marilyn’s house.’ A shadow crossed her face. ‘So grand,’ she said disdainfully. ‘So ostentatious, isn’t it? Didn’t you think it was, Inspector?’

  Joanna nodded. ‘But what about Ben? How did you get past him?’

  ‘I had Ben as a puppy,’ Pamella said. ‘I gave him to Marilyn when Stevie was born. It was a present. Didn’t you know that either? He knew me. He welcomed me, licked me all over and when I told him to sit in his basket he did.’

  It was the final clincher.

  Now Joanna had a full case but Pamella wanted to share the details. ‘It was really easy, you know, Inspector,’ she said. ‘You have no idea how very easy it was. If you know just a few things about how people’s bodies work, to kill is extremely easy. She died quite quickly. Not like Stevie.’ She licked her lips. ‘He was naughty. He struggled, quite a lot.’ She smiled. ‘If more people knew how easy killing was perhaps more people would do it.’ She started giggling. ‘Like sex. You see it’s quite quick. One minute there’s a person struggling inside a body. The next minute there’s just a body. And there’s no one there. However hard you shout they don’t answer.’ She stopped. ‘Funny, isn’t it?’

  Joanna felt sick.

  ‘I could probably kill lots of people, if I wanted to. But I don’t. I just hated her. That’s why I killed her. I hated her.’

  The thought flashed through Joanna’s mind that this was how Jane Levin hated her. Pure, concentrated hatred. Hatred that could kill. The thought was overwhelming. And listening to Pamella Wilson’s story was like having a knife turning in her stomach.

  ‘She was lying there all dopey wearing such silly clothes.’ Pamella started to laugh a dry, cracking laugh. ‘Like the harlots of Babylon. Jonah couldn’t have made love to her looking like that even if he had liked her in the first place.’ Her eyes looked blue and clear. ‘And he didn’t like her, Inspector. I am sure now that he didn’t like her. I’ve thought about it and I think I was mistaken. I don’t think he liked her – not one little bit.’

  ‘But she liked him?’

  ‘They told me so at the surgery,’ Pamella said. ‘Maureen came round here one day.’ She stopped. ‘Sally and Maureen are so loyal, Inspector. I know they were on my side. Maureen held my hand and told me I must try to get better. The doctor was being subjected to temptation. I asked her to keep me informed. And she did.’

  ‘May I ask you something else, Mrs Wilson?’ Joanna said.

  Pamella smiled politely. ‘Certainly.’

  ‘They told me you never went out. How did you walk to Silk Street?’

  ‘I never went out,’ Pamella said, ‘because I never wanted to. It isn’t that I’m frightened. You see – here I’m near Stevie. But that night I left him because I had a mission,’ she said
grandly. ‘A job to do.’

  She started picking again at her skirt. ‘She was wrong,’ she said. ‘Evil. She took money off Jonah.’ Her eyes bored into Joanna’s. ‘You see,’ she whispered, looking back over her shoulder before she spoke, ‘she knew about Stevie. She knew. She found out. I don’t know how she found out. I thought she was my friend. But she wasn’t. You see,’ she said simply, ‘the trouble is, you think you can trust a nurse. But sometimes you can’t.’

  There was a terrible poignancy about the words. Pamella Wilson too had been a nurse.

  ‘What did you do with the syringe?’

  Pamella looked at her as though she was stupid. ‘I put it in the sharps box,’ she said. ‘It’s full of syringes. One more wasn’t going to be noticed. Where better to hide one?’

  ‘And the letter?’

  ‘It was on the table. I picked it up.’

  Then again without warning tears started rolling down her cheeks. ‘I want my little boy back,’ she said. ‘I want Stevie ... Sometimes now I think he didn’t mean to be naughty ...’

  Joanna left Pamella Wilson in the custody of two policewomen and returned to Mike in the car.

  ‘Is she crazy?’ he asked.

  She wound back the tape recorder and switched it on. ‘If you know just a few things about how people’s bodies work, to kill is extremely easy.’ Pamella’s voice was calm. ‘One minute there’s a person struggling inside a body. The next minute there’s just a body ...’ She turned the tape recorder off and looked at Mike.

  ‘I hope so,’ she said with feeling. ‘Because if that’s sane ...’ She sighed. ‘We’ll let the experts work out her mental state. Thank God that isn’t part of my job.’

  Chapter 18

  The Super was happy. Jowls vibrating, eyebrows meeting in the middle, he grinned. He offered Joanna a glass of sherry and she accepted.

  ‘Sit down, Piercy,’ he said enthusiastically. ‘Sit down. You’ve earned a rest. Well done.’ He handed her a thimbleful of pale sherry. ‘Well done. I’m glad to have it wrapped up so neatly.’

  She sipped the sherry and wondered. How he could call it neatly...?

  ‘She won’t go to prison,’ he said cheerfully. ‘Not like Machin ... Now he was a crook.’ His eyes looked merry. ‘There’s a difference, Piercy.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  He walked round to the front of the desk and startled her by slapping her hard on the shoulder. ‘I think we can safely say you’ve justified our belief in you, Piercy.’

  She finished her sherry. ‘Thank you, sir.’

  ‘Greater things ...’ he said cryptically.

  ‘I’m happy where I am,’ she said. ‘I like doing the job, not writing about it.’

  ‘We’re watching you,’ he said, and it felt more of a threat than a promise. Big Brother ...

  He stared at her. ‘Just watch your personal life, Piercy.’ He stopped. ‘You know what I mean.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘So on with the paperwork,’ he said, back to the comradeship.

  She took a detour on the way home and passed Marilyn Smith’s house in Silk Street. Vivian Smith hadn’t wasted much time. The For Sale sign was firmly stuck in the front garden. And there was no sign of the red car.

  On impulse she stopped and walked up the path to the bungalow.

  Evelyn Shiers opened the door. ‘They got the person, then,’ she said.

  Joanna nodded. ‘I came to talk to you,’ she said. ‘I came to warn you. We won’t give up on your husband. He’ll remain on our files until you tell me where he is. You do know, don’t you?’

  Evelyn scratched her chin. ‘I don’t see it’s any of your business,’ she said. ‘He’s my husband. If I don’t report him missing what business is it of yours?’

  ‘It’s our business,’ Joanna assured her. ‘And you know what a nuisance we can be. Be reasonable. Why don’t you tell me?’ she urged. ‘What was Marilyn blackmailing you about? Whose was the coat?’

  Evelyn seemed to crumple at mention of the coat. ‘If Jock found out,’ she said. ‘If he found out, Inspector, I think he’d kill me.’

  ‘He probably won’t need to find out.’

  She looked sulky. ‘I won’t have him back,’ she said.

  ‘Nobody expects you to.’ Joanna was getting exasperated. She wanted to get home to a long soak in the bath. She was tired, and flat, in the way that she always was after an intensive and exhausting case. She wanted to wind it up, finish the paperwork – and forget it.

  ‘He took off on his boat,’ Evelyn said. ‘Told me he wanted to go round the world. That was four years ago. Left me no money.’ Her eyes opened wide. ‘He wanted me to go with him.’

  Joanna smothered a giggle. The picture of Evelyn Shiers a round-the-world yachtswoman, tied to a ship’s wheel, was too much after all the ugly visual conjurings of the last week or so. She laughed out loud and watched the bristling fox look offended. ‘I’m sorry.’ She quickly apologized, then added, ‘So whose was the coat?’

  Evelyn looked down at the floor. ‘I was lonely,’ she said. ‘I went to the pub one night.’ She looked up. ‘No harm in that,’ she said. ‘I’m not used to drinking. He brought me home. Left his coat. I didn’t know his name. Marilyn must have seen. I was worried Jock might come home and find it. And she was threatening to say all sorts of things.’ Her eyes were bloodshot. ‘Jock is a jealous man,’ she said. ‘He would have believed her – all the lies. He would have swallowed them all. I didn’t know what to do,’ she said. ‘There was no one ... no one I could talk to. So I buried the coat.’

  Joanna sighed. How often had she heard that same phrase, ‘There was no one I could talk to.’

  ‘Would you like us to try and find Jock?’

  Evelyn pressed her lips together and gave a sudden confused look. ‘I don’t know, Inspector,’ she said. ‘I really don’t know. It’s been a very long time.’

  Joanna lay in the bath, luxuriating in scented oils, listening to the answerphone switch itself on ... She heard Matthew’s voice. ‘Jo ...’ then silence, and peace.

  She stayed in the bath until the water grew cold.