by Rebecca Tope
‘Well, it’s up to you. I don’t really care much either way, quite honestly.’
Pauline wriggled restlessly. ‘Well, it’s just that on Monday, when Jim’s back here for the night, you are having open house, I take it?’ Monica nodded. ‘Well, I think you might find some unexpected people turning up. I mean – I’m not sure how much you know about Jim’s social life …’
‘All his women around him at once, you mean?’ Monica spoke lightly, but the words echoed around the room, dancing like imps and demons in the fading light.
‘Ah,’ breathed Pauline. ‘You knew all along then? I needn’t have bothered to come.’
Monica smiled gently. ‘I’m sorry I was such a bitch. It’s nice to have someone to talk to,’ she said. ‘Those sons of mine can hardly bring themselves to show their faces. Got their heads pushed deep into the sand. Terrified of what I might say to them. No, honestly, love, I’m glad you’re here. But I’m not really worried about cats coming out of bags. He never once even thought of leaving me. And I had the best of him.’
‘I’m sure you did,’ gushed Pauline, awash with relief. ‘You’re so balanced. The most sensible woman I know.’
‘Steady on! But don’t worry – I’m not going to scratch anybody’s eyes out. Fair’s fair. Jim wasn’t doing anything that I hadn’t done myself, but just the same …’
‘Yeah.’ Pauline put a hand out, lightly patting Monica’s forearm. ‘I know. It’s the dignity thing again, isn’t it.’
‘In a way, I suppose.’ Monica was dubious. ‘But more that I think we ought to get him safely despatched first.’
‘Right,’ nodded Pauline. ‘Right.’
CHAPTER FIVE
Saturday
Drew and Karen were discussing the full extent of his suspicions and discoveries to date, more for the sake of clarifying Drew’s thoughts than eliciting any help from his wife. Indeed, it had been quite an effort to make her listen to him, following her about as she sorted washing and planned the weekend meals. She had been out at school meetings the previous two evenings, and had not wanted to know about Lapsford or Plant’s or anything else, when she’d finally got home.
‘It’s now or never,’ he reminded her. ‘There’s a whole mass of leads. Once I started on this, it looked as if everybody wanted the man dead. Jealous husbands, unbalanced sons, unfaithful wife, dropout gypsies—’
‘What?’ Karen paused in the middle of putting a new pillowcase on Drew’s pillow. ‘Gypsies, did you say? I didn’t think there were gypsies any more. Aren’t we meant to call them travellers?’
‘Whichever, I didn’t mean it literally. It’s just a woman living in a caravan, all on her own in the middle of a field. Living off the land.’
‘Oh, you mean Roxanne Gibson.’ She resumed shaking the pillow into the case.
‘You know her?’
‘Not personally. One of the kids in my class is her nephew, I think. Or her husband’s nephew. Doesn’t approve of her at all. Draws scary pictures of her, with snakes in her hair and calls her an old witch. What makes you add her to your suspect list?’
‘Lapsford was sleeping with her, according to Vince and the others.’
‘And you think she could have bumped him off with one of her herbal potions.’
Drew shrugged. ‘It’s possible.’
‘Fair enough. So what are we going to do to crack this mystery once and for all? I take it you haven’t heard from Lazarus?’
‘No, but we’ve got the dog now, as well. Whatever happens, I’m not going to let that get cremated.’
‘But why? Once Jim’s turned to ashes, it won’t matter what they find in the dog. It wouldn’t be strong enough evidence on its own. You’ll have to do a lot better than that. Look, love, it seems to me that the only chance you’ve got is for someone to be so confident that they’ve got away with it that they start behaving carelessly. If the man was murdered for some sort of gain, the perpetrator – if that’s the word – will start to behave differently, and draw attention to themselves. And if it was for revenge, they’ll probably be feeling quite pleased with themselves. They say revenge is ever so satisfying.’
‘On the other hand,’ said Drew, with a briefly baffled frown, ‘they might be extremely agitated and on edge until the cremation’s safely over. What this amounts to is watching everyone like a hawk for unusual behaviour. And since I don’t know any of these people, and how they normally carry on, it’s a bit of a fruitless exercise.’
‘You have to ask people who do know them.’
She moved out of the bedroom, and went into the bathroom, where she started cleaning the bath. ‘I’ll do that,’ offered Drew.
‘No, you can do the loo. And water the plant, would you? So – who’s your prime suspect?’
‘The son, David,’ he replied without hesitation. ‘Murder’s usually committed by somebody in the family, and he was certainly behaving very strangely indeed on Tuesday.’
‘Do you know where he lives?’
‘No idea. Why?’
‘Well, maybe we ought to try and get to know him better. Let’s see if he’s in the phonebook.’
Karen fetched the book, while Drew tidied up the bathroom. She came upstairs with the open book in her hands. ‘Lapsford, J., Lapsford, P. That’s all. David must be sharing a flat, and the other person’s responsible for the phone. Or maybe he’s out of the area.’
‘One or other,’ Drew agreed. ‘I tell you what, though – the two old dears from next door aren’t stupid. One of them invited me to go back and have a little chat with them. That’s what we’ll do. Right after lunch. They’d be better placed than anyone to know of the goings-on at the Lapsfords’ house.’
‘We?’
‘Of course. You wouldn’t want to be left out, now would you?’
She grinned at him, like a schoolgirl. ‘Thanks, mister. Playing detective has always been my biggest ambition. But why wait till after lunch?’
‘I thought I’d check out this – this Roxanne woman – this morning, if you don’t want me for anything else. I can do the shopping on the way back.’ He could feel himself blushing.
She narrowed her eyes. ‘Hmmm. They say she’s got a way with men. Animal magnetism seems to be the favourite phrase for it.’
‘I’m a one-woman man though, aren’t I?’
‘So what about these other suspects?’ She changed the subject with a careless shake of her head. ‘So far you’ve only told me about Roxanne and David.’
‘The dentist is my second favourite. Gerald Proctor. Mrs Lapsford works for him, and the gossip is that they’ve been more than good friends for some time.’
Karen blew out a huff of surprised laughter. ‘It gets better and better. He’d have access to all sorts of poisonous substances, wouldn’t he? He could have filled Jim’s tooth with slow-acting toxin, that finally finished him off. That would be brilliant. You could get his teeth analysed for evidence.’
‘It strikes me that you’re enjoying this a bit too much,’ he said reprovingly. ‘It’s not a game, you know.’
‘It’s a puzzle, though, and you know how much I like puzzles. If you want me to help, then let me do it in my own way. That’s only fair. Now, we can’t just stand about all morning. Tell me the rest while I get the old papers ready for the bin men. There’s a mountain of them waiting to go. After that, you can go and see Roxanne, with my blessing.’
Drew told her about the previous Lapsford funeral that George had remembered, as well as more about his encounter with the old ladies next door to Monica, and the vague suggestion that Jim had had another girlfriend beside Roxanne. As he spoke, some of the threads began to untangle in his mind. He described his visit to the printworks, and the effect Jodie had had on him. ‘She’s quite uncommunicative, but I think she knows the Lapsford family better than anyone. Jim’s company prints labels for a pharmaceutical company – most of them for poisons, to judge by what I saw. I wonder if that’s significant?’
‘Pushing it,
I’d say,’ she decided. ‘Once you start looking for poisonous substances, they’re everywhere. Cleaning fluids, photographic developer, plants, medicines – you name it.’
‘Hey!’ Drew remembered. ‘I never told you about the Viagra, did I?’
She frowned her bewilderment and shook her head.
‘I managed to sneak a peep at Lapsford’s medicine cabinet, and there was a jar of them. At least thirty tablets, I’d say. Where do you suppose he got them?’
‘No idea. You have to have a prescription, don’t you? Maybe he went to a different doctor for them. Or a private clinic.’
Drew shook his head. ‘Doesn’t sound right, somehow. The man I’ve been hearing about would never openly admit to impotence.’
‘Well, he must have had some reason for wanting it.’
‘I reckon he must have bought it on the black market, from someone who’d ask no questions. You can get it on the Internet, and Jim was a big fan of all that.’
‘If he’s been popping Viagra pills on a regular basis, wouldn’t that be enough to give him heart failure?’
‘Not on its own, no,’ Drew informed her. ‘But it isn’t a good idea to use it without regular checkups – and we know Jim never went for anything like that. I wonder if I should try and have a chat with Sid’s Susie. She’d know more about it.’ He tapped his teeth while he pondered.
‘It’s not going to be easy,’ Karen pronounced, dumping three large stringed-up parcels of newspaper on the kitchen table. She sighed. ‘Us being such amateurs. Police detectives can just turn up and demand to have their questions answered. Are you really sure you want to go on with it?’
‘Yes,’ he said firmly. ‘I’m really sure. First stop, Roxanne Gibson. I’ve a feeling she won’t be all that surprised to see me.’
Karen had told him where Roxanne’s caravan was, with some reluctance, after further thought about it. ‘I don’t see why you want to go and talk to her,’ she’d grumbled. ‘Not without me, anyway.’
He hadn’t even tried to explain. Now, walking across the field, the grass very damp from a rainy night, he had no idea what he would say. The door of the caravan was closed, and he could see no sign of life inside. Yet he knew somehow that the woman was there. He knew, too, that she was watching his approach. When the door swung open before he could knock, he walked in as if hypnotised.
‘You’re the chap from Plant’s,’ she told him calmly. Close up, he could see creases in her neck, a lack of elasticity in the skin under her eyes, and white hairs growing above her ears. But she was also warmer, cleverer and more normal than he expected from his glimpse in the churchyard. Yet still he felt brave as he stepped into the steamed-up caravan and let her pull the door shut behind him.
‘I can’t really explain why I’ve come,’ he started, looking around as he spoke. Swags of drying vegetables and herbs hung from the ceiling, jars and pots of all shapes and sizes stood on shelves. Hand-stitched covers protected the seats, and the floor had a long, narrow mat woven from some sort of hairy fibre. It was the closest he’d ever come to experiencing the home of a New Age Traveller – except that Roxanne showed no sign of travelling anywhere. And she might not regard herself as especially New Age either, he suspected.
‘I can safely assume it has to do with Jim Lapsford,’ she said. ‘Although I do get tourists coming to see me now and then. I know I’m fairly unusual. But then, that’s probably because this is the dullest town in the western world. I get the feeling that you haven’t lived here very long.’
‘That’s right.’ He was still casting his eyes around the cluttered surfaces, and hadn’t properly met her gaze. He wouldn’t admit to himself that he was nervous of doing so.
‘I hope it doesn’t drive you mad,’ she continued. ‘That has happened, in the past. It’s a town without a soul.’
He did look at her then, his eyes wide and baffled. ‘What do you mean?’ he said, his voice loud in the enclosed space. ‘The place seems fine to me.’
She sighed. ‘Next time you’re in the High Street, just look around you. Miserable, squalling kids, couples bickering, aimless teenagers with nothing to do and nowhere to go. Shops selling garbage that nobody needs, money the only thing that counts. Nobody makes anything any more. They buy a thing, use it once and throw it away.’ She pulled her arms tightly across her stomach, rounding her shoulders, sighing again more deeply. ‘Take no notice of me,’ she added. ‘I’m just a middle-aged hippy. If that isn’t how it seems to you, I don’t suppose I’ll be able to persuade you to see it my way. I don’t usually start on like this the minute I meet someone. I just thought you seemed sort of – sympatico.’
He smiled at that. ‘I’m not sure whether I am or not,’ he admitted. ‘I grew up closer to the moors, with not so many people around. I used to think I was missing something, a lot of the time.’
‘So you never knew Jim Lapsford?’ Drew shook his head. ‘But you’re curious about him. You’ve heard a lot of gossip and you’re intrigued by his wife and sons.’
‘Pretty well spot on,’ he confirmed. ‘They said you were a gypsy – you must have been using your crystal ball.’ He grinned teasingly.
Roxanne gave no reaction, but continued. The words poured out as if rehearsed. ‘Jim was a lost soul, it seemed to me. He was always making plans, never satisfied with the status quo, driven by fear of getting old without having lived life to the full. He was forever promising himself he’d leave Bradbourne, travel to South America, or some Pacific island – somewhere he could find a new world. But he could never get up the nerve to do it. I tried to encourage him. I might even have gone with him. He was worried about what people would think, if he deserted Monica and the boys. Not to mention the printworks and Jodie. He thought of her as a daughter – or sister. You probably don’t know about his real sister, Julia? She was his twin. He never talked about her, but I remember when she died. I lived in the same street as her, before she went into a nursing home. He – they – were only thirty-one, and it wasn’t in any sense sudden, but Jim was wrecked by it. It must have been awful for Monica.’
She was speaking in a toneless outpouring, which Drew had difficulty in absorbing. Finally he put up a hand to stop her, at a loss to understand why he was being treated to so much unsolicited information. ‘Wait,’ he pleaded. ‘You’re losing me.’
She blinked. ‘Sorry,’ she muttered. ‘You caught me in one of my moods. Don’t you find that people talk very freely to undertakers? The shock of a death must loosen lots of tongues.’
‘I’m new at the job,’ he told her. ‘And I don’t see much of the families until the funeral itself. But when I was nursing, people would often talk to me.’
‘Nursing? What made you leave?’
And then it was Drew’s turn to speak his mind. He screwed his eyes up against the impulse to tell her the whole story, and then gave in to it. He didn’t recall anybody asking quite this question before, and the answer had been lurking in a dark corner for many months. Even Karen shied away from listening to the story again.
‘Officially, because I was offered night shifts for an unlimited period, and I didn’t fancy that. It wouldn’t have done my marriage much good, for one thing.’
‘But unofficially? Which I assume means the real reason?’
‘I couldn’t cope with it any more. A baby died, under my care, and I just bottled out. The thought that something like that could happen again haunted me. I was getting so neurotic about levels of medication and checking everything over and over, I couldn’t really do the job properly any more. I wasn’t openly blamed for the baby’s death, but it was close. I failed to notice warning signs, and just – did nothing. Sat there and let it die. It’s so easy to do nothing, you see. And so difficult to follow your gut feeling and act. I knew it wasn’t right, but didn’t have the balls to say anything. He turned out to be a lot sicker than we’d realised. We might not have saved him anyway. But none of that made me feel any better. So that’s why—’
�
�Why you’re not happy about the official cause of Jim’s death,’ she finished for him. ‘Now I understand.’
‘Do you? Do you really?’ He was suddenly eager, even excited. ‘And what do you think?’
She sighed again and hugged herself even tighter. ‘If it’s confession time, then I suppose I’d better come clean. I think he died of a heart attack, and I think it was probably my fault. But I didn’t murder him. If I’m right, then it was an accident, and I don’t think there’s any need to call in the police.’
‘An accident?’ The word seemed false, unconvincing. How did a man die in his bed by accident? And what did she mean about it being her fault?
‘An accidental overdose of a rather dodgy substance,’ she elaborated, with a rueful grimace.
‘You don’t seem terribly upset about it,’ Drew ventured. ‘I mean—’
‘I’m extremely upset to have lost him, believe me,’ she corrected, with sudden animation. Her eyes met his with a fierce look, making him quail. ‘But what’s done’s done, and nothing’s going to bring him back. After the first shock, I even thought it might be just as well that he isn’t going to live to be old. He’d only get more and more dissatisfied and look for more idiotic magic cures for ageing. He was utterly terrified of losing his sex drive, for one thing.’
‘So it seems,’ said Drew, without thinking.
‘What do you mean?’ She was sharper than ever, fixing him with her large black eyes.
‘Well, he’s got erotic books in his bedroom and Viagra in his bathroom,’ Drew began.
‘You’re joking! He wouldn’t be such a fool.’
Drew shrugged, silenced by her stormy reaction. Slowly he retrieved the tablet from his pocket and held it up in front of her face. ‘Viagra,’ he said again. ‘I know what a Viagra tablet looks like. And I don’t think he got it from his doctor.’
‘Well, that clinches it,’ she said heavily. ‘If he was mixing that with what I’d been giving him, he was a lot more stupid than I ever would have guessed.’
