by Caron Allan
‘Right there the whole time for the whole world to see!’ He leaned back and passed a hand over his eyes. She saw now how tired he looked. He’d had a terrible time lately, she thought. But he smiled at her. ‘After all my original bluster, for which I apologise unreservedly, I’m now convinced that you’re right, you clever, clever girl. I believe there was some kind of official cover-up, concocted between my father and Norman Maynard to avoid any scandal attaching itself to him and blighting his career. Richard Dawlish was murdered.’
Chapter Twenty-one
THEY TALKED LONG INTO the night. By three o’clock Dottie felt she knew exactly what had happened. She had it all worked out in her head, and as she discussed it with Gervase, she became more and more certain she was right. If she had expected him to be hard to convince, she was wrong. He agreed with her on all the main points, and trusted that she was correct on the fine details too.
She wished she had the courage to confront him about Simon, but she wasn’t ready. She timidly ventured to suggest yet again that something urgently needed to be done for the little boy, but Gervase simply said, ‘I’ve been in touch with Margaret’s parents. We’ve had a long chat. They are arriving tomorrow to take him back to live with them. They are good people and will care for the young fellow.’
Dottie decided to leave it at that. She would hear news about Simon through Gervase’s connections with them in the future. She didn’t need to do everything right now.
With all that out of the way, he began to tell her about the arrangements being made for Reggie’s funeral. It would not be for at least another week, as the family had to wait for some relatives to arrive home from overseas.
Dottie began to try to explain that she wanted to go home. She wasn’t quite sure how to tell him she wouldn’t be there for his brother’s funeral, but he stopped her with a kiss, saying a moment later, ‘It’s all right, dearest, I realise you can’t stay here until then. It would have been vastly easier to have you there by my side, if I’m honest, but I know you’ve already stayed longer than you intended to, and you must go home. May I drive you home tomorrow afternoon?’
She leaned her head against his shoulder. She was overwhelmed with relief. ‘Thank you. If you truly don’t mind, I’d like that. It’ll be such a help not to have to worry about catching trains and so on. And I would so like to introduce you to my parents.’
‘And so you shall. But there is one more thing I want you to do for me,’ he said. He placed a kiss on her hair.
‘What?’
‘Don’t you mean, ‘anything for you, my love’?’ He laughed, and Dottie snorted.
‘Oh yes, that’s exactly what I meant. So sorry, your lordship!’ She thumped him gently on the arm. ‘Well, go on, then. What is this onerous task I must fulfil for you?’
‘I want you to do the thing they do in detective stories, where all the suspects are invited, and the detective unmasks the perpetrator.’
She sat up to look at him. ‘I’m not doing that! And just think what the inspector would say!’
He left a short while later. She was glad he had gone by the time Miranda and Penny returned from the Maynard’s at half-past three. It seemed all was forgiven, and Miranda would be moving back to her parents’ home the following afternoon.
‘After all,’ she crowed, ‘It’s awfully late. I doubt I shall be out of bed before lunch-time.’
‘Did you have a terribly dreary evening, Dottie dear?’ Penny asked, with a slight sneer. ‘I must say I’m surprised to find you still up.’
‘I was about to turn in,’ Dottie said now, getting to her feet. ‘I’m so glad you had an enjoyable evening. Goodnight.’
They were all gathered in the drawing room at Gervase’s house that evening. Dottie looked around her and felt a stab of fear. She took a deep breath, then nodded to Gervase. He cleared his throat loudly to quieten everyone. Into the silence, Dottie spoke.
‘For a long time, I believed that Miranda was responsible for these three terrible crimes,’ Dottie began. The room felt oppressively silent. The proverbial pin, dropping now would have given everyone a dreadful fright, she thought. They were all there: Gervase, Miranda and Penny, Algy with Deirdre beside him. Mike Maynard. Norman and Augustine Maynard sat beside their dear friends the Parfitts. And the inspector and sergeant sat on upright chairs by the door, whilst out in the hall, two constables waited.
All eyes were fixed on Dottie, and her voice quavered slightly, showing her nerves. The thought sprang into her mind, what if you’re wrong? You’ll never hold your head up again. And Gervase will despise you. But she wasn’t wrong. She knew it as soon as those treacherous thoughts struck her conscious mind.
Miranda, blowing out cigarette smoke, sat forward in her seat. She shrugged off Mike’s arm and stared at Dottie with undisguised hatred, her eyes daring Dottie to say any more.
Dottie rose to the challenge. She cleared her throat and continued, happy that her voice was strong now. ‘As I say, for a long time I thought it was Miranda who was behind the murders. Let’s call them what they are. We’re not talking about something minor such as a few shillings missing from someone’s piggy-bank. We’re talking about the cold act of snuffing out a human life, as if they were of no more importance than an annoying fly at a picnic. Not once, but three times.’
Gervase was watching her with frank admiration. She spared a moment to be thankful that he was not the guilty party. She couldn’t have borne that.
‘As soon as I met Miranda, or, I may say, even before I met her, I was aware that she was the sort of person who always had to be the centre of attention. No matter whom that attention came from, she wanted it to be focused and dancing upon her. It was almost entirely male attention she craved, and as I quickly saw, she basked in it. Men fell over themselves to talk to her, to do things for her, they competed for her smiles and her gratitude.’
There was a snort of derision from Penny, in the corner of the sofa beside Gervase. Dottie turned to her. ‘It’s true. Anyone who spends more than a few minutes with all of you in your group will see it immediately. Miranda has always been very much the flame around which the moths flutter, at their peril.’
‘This is completely ridiculous,’ Miranda said. She stubbed out her cigarette in three or four sharp angry movements, and getting to her feet, she grabbed her little evening bag. Turning back to face the rest of them, with a wave of her hand at Dottie, she said, ‘She doesn’t have any right to do this! She’s just making up all these ludicrous accusations, there’s no basis, no truth to any of them. Why are the police letting her do it? I’m going to contact my lawyer immediately, she can’t do this, it’s libel.’
‘Slander,’ Gervase corrected automatically.
‘Shut up! Mike, take me home! I’m going back to Mummy’s.’
Mike, also looking furious, leapt up, all too willing to comply. Gervase stepped in front of him, and placing a hand on Mike’s chest, he said, ‘I’m sorry, old chap, but I’d very much like you to stay and listen to what Dottie has to say.’
Miranda shoved Gervase’s hand aside and grabbed Mike by the arm. ‘I’ve had enough of your silly little tart, Gerry, I’m leaving. You can’t stop me.’
‘You’re staying put and that’s that,’ Gervase said firmly but quietly. ‘Mike, sit down. We all need to hear this.’ They locked eyes, then after a few seconds, Mike shrugged and resumed his seat.
Miranda was not so easily persuaded. She gave an angry laugh, tried to step around Gervase who was there ahead of her at every turn. She lost her temper then, and made to slap him, but he was again too quick, catching her hand before it touched his face, and none too gently he pushed her back into her seat. The police officers watched with interest, but didn’t need to stir themselves. With a nod at Dottie, Gervase said mildly, ‘Do go on, darling.’
There was a definite frisson through the room. All eyes turned once more on Dottie.
She said, ‘All along I’ve asked myself the question, why did Richa
rd Dawlish kill himself? I know I wasn’t there, and I know I’m very young, but I do understand people.’ Her voice faltered over the sudden intrusion of William Hardy’s face into her thoughts. Mentally she pushed it away, adding, with slightly less confidence, ‘Well, some people.’ She took a deep sigh and brought herself back to her point once more. ‘The thing is, everyone talked about his good moral character and his strong religious faith. Penny and Margaret both told me he was gentlemanly and not given to crude jokes or taking liberties with the ladies. And he had been decorated twice for valour.’
‘That doesn’t mean a thing,’ Mike pointed out, ‘You’re too young to remember, but I was there and I know how terrible it was. Plenty of chaps came back from the war and found they couldn’t hack it. Normal life was just too much for them.’
‘It’s true, I wasn’t there,’ Dottie admitted. ‘And I never met Richard or got to know him as all of you did. But I’ve learned a lot about him from talking to all of you. Mainly I’ve learned that actually no one much liked him, purely on account of the colour of his skin; that he was despised, and his truly outstanding war record was largely dismissed even though it was as good if not better than most white-skinned soldiers, men who were—quite rightly—lauded and treated as the heroes they were. And even though everyone said that they knew nothing about an engagement between Miranda and Richard, even though everyone agreed Richard and Miranda were little more than casual friends, when he was found dead, Miranda stated that they were engaged to be married, and no one ever questioned that.’
Miranda screamed vile words at Dottie, and Mike had to forcibly hold her down in her chair when she would have launched herself at Dottie. The two constables looked as if they might come into the room.
Dottie looked her full in the eye and said, ‘There was no engagement, there never was. You made it up on the spur of the moment. Even in death you couldn’t bear the thought that he might take the attention away from you. And you couldn’t allow him to overshadow you there at the front of the stage, could you? You invented the story of the engagement so that all of the sympathy and concern was not for Richard as it should have been, but was directed at you, the suffering lover.’
‘You bitch! You nasty little bitch!’ With almost superhuman strength Miranda threw off Mike’s arms and rushed at Dottie, who fell backwards and bumped her head on the edge of the coffee table. She was shocked but unhurt. Gervase and Algy both helped her to her feet. Penny was in front of Miranda and there was the sound of a slap, and Penny’s hand was swinging back to her side. Across Miranda’s cheek was the livid outline of a hand. Miranda fell back onto the sofa whimpering, all the fight gone out of her.
Penny, tucking her skirt neatly about her as she sat, smiled gently at Dottie and said, ‘Sorry about that, Dottie dear. Do go on.’
Dottie, somewhat shaken, took a seat on the other side of Gervase, who pressed her hand gently then released it. Dottie looked around the room. The police inspector was looking extremely interested, and by comparison, Gervase’s father looked as though he’d like to be anywhere than here. His wife was cold and impassive.
‘As I was saying, there was no engagement. Richard had no desire to stay in England. He longed to go home to Jamaica, to his family and, more importantly, to his fiancée there. Her name is Lois, in case anyone is interested. She still has the engagement ring he gave her. She’s never married, and she keeps house for her father who is a much-respected veterinary surgeon. Richard was planning on training as a vet too, and the idea had been that he would go into partnership with Lois’s father once he qualified.’
She paused, then said, with scorn in her voice and her nose wrinkled in disgust, ‘He didn’t want to work as an office boy in Norman Maynard’s business. He was going to have a profession. I know it’s hard for all of you to understand. You never wanted him here in this country, he was only here because he was useful in a time of crisis. Once the crisis was over, well, he’d served his purpose, and he and all the other thousands of men of colour, could be, should be, sent back to ‘where they came from’. Never once did it occur to any of you that he might not want to stay here in this cold, unfriendly place. No. Richard’s life was there in Jamaica all along: his love, his family, his career. He wasn’t depressed. He just wanted to go home. He didn’t kill himself, he was murdered.’
There was a soft gasp from someone, though Dottie didn’t know who. It had sounded like a woman, but she couldn’t discern who it was between Augustine and Deirdre. They both were staring at her, pale, shocked. They all were. Only Miranda smiled.
‘But you said it wasn’t Miranda,’ Penny said. ‘You did say that, didn’t you? That at first you thought it was her but now you realised it wasn’t. So if it wasn’t Miranda, then who on earth was it?’
Dottie sighed. ‘Oh Penny, it could only have been one person. It was you.’
Chapter Twenty-two
IT WAS AS IF THE EARTH had stopped turning. Then into the silence came Penny’s grating little laugh.
‘Oh Dottie! My dear child! What a perfectly idiotic thing to say!’
Everyone looked from Penny to Dottie and back again. They all looked incredulous. Mike was shaking his head. Only Miranda looked down at her hands, no longer interested in what was, for her, old news. The spotlight had moved off her now and it was cold in the shadows.
‘It was you, Penny,’ Dottie repeated. ‘Your love of attention is, if anything, even greater than your sister’s, though you lack her daring, her audacity. You were always overshadowed by her, I imagine: the big sister, so confident, so popular. You tagged along behind everyone like a little puppy, eager to be included but always dismissed as Miranda’s sweet little kid sister. You told me that yourself. And I’d even heard you talking to Gervase about how you had a crush on him when you were a teenager but how he didn’t even notice you.
‘But you didn’t have your sister’s flair for creating drama, did you? You’d never have thought of claiming a dead man as your lover and fainting, or running away from home to India. No, you stayed meekly at home and married the brother of the man you really loved but who saw you only as a friend. Men just never looked at you the way they looked at Miranda, did they? Even the black man you threw yourself at when he walked you back to the house that night. Surely his standards were lower than that of the others? But no, even he rejected you.
‘But it wasn’t just Richard Dawlish who failed to please you. It was you who killed both Margaret Scott and Reggie Parfitt.’
Around the room there were gasps and protests. Mike once again had to be persuaded to resume his seat, and Norman Maynard began to harangue the inspector. The constables came in and ‘helped’ Maynard to find his seat. Eventually order was restored, and this time it was the inspector who told Dottie she may continue.
‘Margaret knew you went out that afternoon just before Reggie was found dead. We came back from the lunch with Reggie and Deirdre, and immediately you and Miranda went up to lie down. You could easily have gone out again. No one would have known. I was in my room packing. Margaret would have been in the kitchen, I should think. Gervase has discovered that a phone call was made from your house to the Parfitts’ in the afternoon. I imagine it was picked up in the study by Reggie himself. You arranged to go and see him.
‘It would have been simple to go out of the house, drive over to Reggie’s, to go around to the study door and get him to let you in. He was expecting you. You probably said you needed to talk to him about Miranda. He wouldn’t have paused for a second. And then... it took no time at all. All you had to do then was to lock the study door to stop anyone getting in that way before you were ready. Close the study curtains. Break the pane of glass to make it look as though someone had broken in from outside. Then get home and lie down in your room. Easy.
‘But your coat was wet from going out in the rain. I noticed it when I went to use the phone, although the significance just didn’t dawn on me at the time. Somehow Margaret knew what you had done. Perhaps it wa
s Reggie dying so soon after his scene with Miranda. Margaret wouldn’t have heard his comment about, ‘After all I’ve done’, which at the time I didn’t understand, but now it makes perfect sense. At first, she couldn’t believe it was true, but she thought about it and realised what had happened.’
‘This is all so entertaining, Dottie dear, really you ought to go in for writing adventure stories for Girls’ Own!’ Penny smiled, still poised and secure. ‘How exactly did Margaret find me out, pray do tell!’
‘I’m not sure. She saw you leave, perhaps,’ Dottie said, ‘Or she might have looked into your room, bringing you a cup of tea, or something like that, and found you gone. Or perhaps she saw your wet coat later and that gave her the idea. It could even have been that she heard the car start up. The garage is quite close to the kitchen, and if she was in there, working quietly, darning Simon’s socks for example, she would have heard you start up the car and drive away.’
‘Oh, this is fascinating!’ Penny clapped her hands softly as if applauding a play. Gervase, Mike, and the others frowned at her. She didn’t seem to notice that they were no longer on her side, but drinking in every word of Dottie’s, they were becoming convinced by her argument. ‘And I suppose I killed Margaret because she threatened to rat on me, I think that’s the word.’
‘Yes. She was horrified by what you’d done. And you knew she would tell Gervase everything, and he, as assistant chief constable couldn’t possibly ignore or overlook her information.’
‘Perhaps it was Reggie, not Artie, who was the father of her brat? Perhaps she thought I’d killed her lover?’ Penny’s voice was heavy with malice, and out of the corner of her eye, Dottie saw Deirdre start. Dottie couldn’t have Deirdre’s memory of her husband so tainted.
‘Neither Artie, nor Reggie was Simon’s father,’ she said softly. ‘I think we all know that much.’ There was an awkward silence around the room. She couldn’t bring herself to look at Gervase. But there was no point, that didn’t matter right now. ‘But yes, I think she told you what she knew, I think she told you she was going to the police. Perhaps she asked you for more money. She had her child to think of, after all, and wanted to get away to make a new life for herself and Simon. So yes, you lured her out to the garage on some pretext and hit her over the head. You bundled her body into the car, and then, at night when everyone was in bed, you disposed of her in the pond.’
