by J M Gregson
She didn’t answer him directly. Instead, she said unexpectedly, ‘I thought you were on to me on Saturday, when you asked why I’d chosen to come here without any promotion being involved. It was to get as near as I could to Alfred Norbury without being spotted. I’d known I was going to kill him ever since we burnt Adam.’
It was the second time she had used that harsh expression. Perhaps she had needed to keep the literal truth before her, to fire her mind towards her revenge. Clyde Northcott smiled at her now, as if he had followed all of this and considered it wholly understandable. He said quietly, ‘It took you a little while to get your opportunity, didn’t it, Ellie?’
‘Oh, not very long really. I’d have been prepared to wait much longer. It seemed like fate when I found he was going to attend the book club. I’d almost said no to Sharon Burgess when she asked me to join, but I decided to give it a go because I knew Norbury was part of the Brunton literary set. Then a couple of days later Sharon rang me to run the names of the group past me for my approval and I found that Norbury was to be one of them. So that was fate, wasn’t it?’
‘Everything seemed to be working out well for you.’
‘It was, wasn’t it? And then when we met for the first time Alfred Norbury boasted about having that pistol in his old car. It was almost as if some force outside this world was organizing things for me.’ She cast her eyes speculatively towards the ceiling, and both of them thought she was going to mention Adam again. But then she shook her head firmly and said, ‘But I don’t believe in that sort of thing. Perhaps this death was some sort of poetic justice. That would appeal to me more.’
She looked interrogatively at Northcott then, as if convincing him of this was far more important than any admission of murder. He nodded and said, ‘I expect it was you who put Mrs Burgess’s glove under the passenger seat in that car, wasn’t it, Ellie?’
‘It was. Yes. She’d left it behind after my evening class on the nineteenth-century novel. I’d kept it carefully to return it to her, but then when I got the opportunity to shoot Norbury I thought it would confuse things if I left it in his car. I wouldn’t have allowed her to suffer, you know. If you’d arrested her for murder, I’d have come forward and said I put that glove there.’
‘Yes, I expect you would have done that, Ellie.’ She would indeed, Clyde thought. When it came to the reckoning, Ellie Garside, aka Jane Preston, wouldn’t have allowed anyone else to take what she saw as the credit for this wholly merited death. ‘We’re going to arrest you now, Ellie. You realize that, don’t you?’
‘Yes. People will understand, when they hear about it.’
She was perfectly serene as Peach, who had not spoken now for what seemed a long time, stepped forward and pronounced the words of arrest. Clyde Northcott wondered what a good defence counsel would make of her reasons for this death, how much the eventual sentence would be mitigated by the reasons she had for killing Alfred Norbury. He was glad that he would not be involved in any way in those decisions.
They didn’t handcuff her, after she assured them that she would make no attempt to escape. She held herself very upright as she accompanied them through noisy crowds of students, who had no idea of the drama which was being enacted within their midst. Peach drove the car back to the station and the cells at Brunton. Their murderer sat straight-backed in the rear of the vehicle beside the vigilant Clyde Northcott, with both of them thinking of what might have been if she had never seen or heard of Alfred Norbury.
