‘Sit down, madam,’ thundered Maguire. The whole room looked at him in astonishment. ‘And get rid of those dogs, now,’ he added. ‘We have some very serious talking to do and I do not want to be interrupted.’
Simon came forward and caught both dogs by their collars. ‘I’ll put them in the kitchen,’ he said, dragging them away.
Amelia stood again. ‘You can’t tell us what to do in our own home,’ she repeated. ‘And by the way, it’s my house now that Harold’s gone. So I give the orders here, and I’m ordering you to go.’
‘Certainly,’ snapped Adam, ‘if that’s what you wish. In which case I shall ring for reinforcements now, and take the whole lot of you down to the station, charge you all with obstruction, and then we will continue talking there.’
Amelia gasped, and sat down again as Ruth jumped up. ‘Don’t take any notice of him, mother. He can’t do that. I know my rights.’ She confronted Maguire. ‘What have we got to talk about? We’ve all answered your questions until we’re blue in the face, and Fergus isn’t even here. He’s gone back to Salisbury.’
‘I don’t need him,’ said Adam abruptly.
‘There’s nothing left to say,’ said Amelia.
Maguire didn’t reply but waited until Simon came back into the room and sat down before turning to Ruth. ‘Ruth Villiers,’ he said, ‘before we continue our conversation I must caution you. You are not obliged to say anything now, but if you do not say something you may later rely on in court, it may harm your defence. Anything you do say now may be given in evidence.’
An audible gasp went around the room. Maguire has cautioned Ruth, and none of them know why, thought Lizzie. I am sure Ruth is guilty, but no one else knows anything, except Adam, and he must have got my message, although surely he wouldn’t caution her because of my text message! He is not an impulsive man. She was still puzzling this when Phineas stepped into the centre of the room, looking, thought Lizzie, solemn and triumphant.
He passed the black canvas bag that he’d been carrying across to Adam, who opened it and took out a plastic bag, inside which was a large flint. ‘This is the weapon which was used to kill Jemima Villiers,’ said Phineas, pointing to it.
No one spoke. The silence from the dark garden seemed to sweep in and engulf the room like a physical thing. Lizzie looked across at Ruth. Her eyes were staring and bright and she was a deathly white, but she too remained silent.
‘It doesn’t look much,’ continued Phineas. ‘But I can assure you there’s enough DNA evidence on that piece of rock to convince any jury in a court of law that this is the murder weapon.’
‘It’s merely a flint,’ said Ruth, jumping up suddenly and pacing across the room. ‘Just a flint. There are hundreds of them lying at the side of Badger Lane where they used to be dumped after ploughing. Of course, my DNA will be on some of them, and I’m sure other people’s will be as well. We used to have rock fights down there after school. I’ve picked up many a flint in my time and thrown it, and got many a black eye as well. But you can’t prove that’s the only one I picked up, and you can’t prove that I killed Jem from that one rock.’
Simon turned to Adam Maguire. ‘Why have you only cautioned Ruth? Are you accusing her of murder? I bet you could find the DNA of me and Jem on some of those rocks. It’s true we used to mess about down there and have fights with kids from the village. Besides, people still come and collect the rocks for their garden walls, so their DNA will be there if they have picked one up and then put it down. I think you are jumping to conclusions and that…’
‘DNA perhaps,’ interrupted Adam, ‘but not Jemima’s flesh and blood as well.’
‘And that is what is there.’ Phineas indicated the rock in the plastic bag.
‘Of course it wasn’t Ruth who killed Jemima,’ said Amelia Villiers. ‘It couldn’t be. Why are you picking on her? She was at that wretched perfume launch, same as us, and she took the minibus back with the others to Salisbury station, whereas Jem started off back to Avon Hall on a borrowed bike, and got herself murdered by someone.’
Maguire took out his iPhone and scrolled down. ‘Jemima certainly went to the function on the minibus, but, as you say, began to go home on the borrowed bike. We believe she missed the minibus because she’d had an argument with her father. Probably the argument Dr Browne heard in the car park, although we can’t confirm that as both Jemima and her father are now dead. But we can confirm that Ruth was not on the minibus, either going or coming.’
‘I was on it,’ said Ruth forcefully. ‘How else would I have got there?’
‘No one can remember you,’ said Steve Grayson. ‘No one that we’ve checked with anyway.’
Ruth leapt on his words. ‘Exactly. No one that you’ve checked. You see, you haven’t checked everyone have you?’
Steve cursed himself for allowing himself to fall into such an easy trap, and Maguire looked annoyed. ‘No,’ he agreed, ‘we’ve not checked everyone yet, but we will have done so by tomorrow, and I am certain that no one will be able to give you an alibi.’
‘But sir,’ interrupted Tom. ‘Ruth was with me before and after that perfume launch, and as I understand from what you’ve told the press, my car was involved in the murder. But how could Ruth have taken the car without me knowing? It’s impossible. The garage can be seen from the house.’
‘Not in the dark it can’t,’ said Kevin quickly. ‘I’ve checked that. There are no security lights on the house. It’s been getting dark quite early lately, especially when it’s been cloudy, and it was cloudy that week.’
Tom ignored him and carried on. ‘And then a few days later when I went to get the car so that we could go out, the keys were still hanging up in the hallway of our house. I’m sure they were there all the time, I would have noticed if they had been missing. It was only when I got inside the garage that I found that the car was gone. And then later it turned up, dumped and burned in the ballast hole in Salisbury.’
‘Yes, all that is true,’ said Maguire. ‘So there must have been another set of keys, it’s as simple as that. As for Ruth, was she with you all the time that evening? Did you see her leave and actually catch the minibus; did you see her come home later that night, or in the early morning? According to my notes,’ Maguire looked at his iPhone again, ‘you were sound asleep, and didn’t awake until the morning by which time she was showered and dressed, ready for the day. It’s possible that she had not been to bed at all.’
‘Yes, but…,’ began Tom.
Amelia stood up once more. ‘This is all quite ridiculous,’ she said in a high thin voice. ‘Of course Ruth couldn’t have murdered Jemima. She had no reason to. She was her cousin. She loved her.’
‘Was she my cousin?’ asked Ruth slowly. She reached into her pocket and withdrew a piece of paper. ‘I’m afraid I have evidence here to the contrary.’ She passed the paper to her mother.
‘Oh my God. How.. how? Oh my God.’ Amelia Villiers suddenly collapsed back down on the chaise longue, and covering her face with her hands began to shiver.
Ruth looked at her, gave a long sigh, then shrugged her shoulders in a defeated fashion. ‘At least I know that you are my mother,’ she said dully, ‘if nothing else.’
Simon looked puzzled and stared first at his distraught mother and then at Ruth. ‘What are you two talking about? What’s going on?’
Ruth stood up very slowly. Tom tried to put his arms around her and pull her back, but she shook him off, and he sat down again. She looked straight at Maguire and said in a low trembling voice, ‘Yes, you are right. I did kill Jem. I didn’t mean to. When I gave her a lift I didn’t intend to kill her, but we had an argument. She was so cock a hoop about being a Villiers and about me being a bastard. That’s what she called me. A bastard. And more to the point, she laughed. “Now,” she said, “I will inherit because I am Harold’s daughter, and you will get nothing. You are not one of the family. You’re a nobody. Not even a Villiers. No one knows who your father is. Not even your precious mot
her.”
‘But I…’ began Amelia.
Ruth swung round and faced her. ‘Yes,’ she hissed. ‘You, you with your aristocratic ways! But there’s nothing aristocratic about you. You’re a slut who slept around, everyone in the village knows that. And I am the product of it. A bloody bastard. Even the Villiers name is not my own.’
‘What the hell do you mean?’ Simon was standing now and shouting at Ruth. ‘Not one of the family. You are my sister.’
‘I’m not your sister,’ Ruth said fiercely. ‘I’m not a Villiers; I don’t know who I am. What a family we are! Even Jem only found out the identity of her father this last week. She’s suspected it for years. That’s why she had the DNA tests done so that she could find out. Her father is your father. But she found out more than that. She found out Amelia’s big secret. She found out about me. Bastard, bastard she kept repeating.’
‘But how?…this is ridiculous, I don’t believe it.’ Simon spread his arms out in helpless disbelief. ‘And I can’t believe you really killed Jem. Killed her,’ he repeated in a low voice, ‘just because she called you names.’
Ruth snatched the paper back from her mother. ‘There it is,’ she said in a trembling voice, throwing it at Simon. ‘Down in black and white. Our DNA and genes and all the things which make us who we are.’
‘But why did you kill her?’ repeated Simon, still shaking his head in disbelief.
‘If she hadn’t laughed. If she hadn’t got out of the car and picked up that flint and thrown it at me, it never would have happened. If. If only.’
‘But why did you take the car in the first place?’ Maguire’s calm voice interrupted. ‘If you had taken the bus, the pair of you would never have been alone. And a murder could not have happened.’
‘Yes,’ said Tom, beginning to sound angry. ‘Why did you take the car?’
Ruth turned on him, and started pacing about the room. ‘You were so mean about that damned car. Refusing to pay for the road tax! I needed a car, so I took it. I took it lots of times. You never knew. I had a spare set of keys, and unbeknown to you, I used them. I took a chance that I’d be picked up for not having the licence, but I never was. So that night I took it as usual, so that I could arrive without being hot and sweaty from either riding my bike or using that damned mini bus. I wish now, of course, that I hadn’t taken it. But it’s too late. She’s dead.’
‘When did you decide to kill her?’ asked Phineas very quietly.
‘Never. I never actually decided to do anything,’ said Ruth, still pacing about. ‘I can hardly remember it. I was so angry. All I could see was Jem’s laughing face. I don’t remember even picking up the flint she’d thrown at me, but I must have done, because I remember her eyes when I hit her with it. Oh yes,’ her voice sank to a whisper, ‘I remember her eyes. She was surprised when I hit her. I hit her so, so hard.’ She clenched her fists and cried out fiercely. ‘I could have smashed her to a pulp, I wanted to, but I didn’t. I hit her just once, and she fell down.’
Ruth then sat back down on the chaise longue beside Tom.
The silence in the room was palpable. Lizzie looked around at everyone. All were staring at Ruth with horrified expressions. No one spoke.
Then Ruth added in a hoarse voice. ‘She was dead. I didn’t need to check. I just knew it. She was dead, and I had killed her.’
The silence continued until eventually Simon let out a long sobbing wail. ‘Oh my God,’ he groaned, and put his head in his hands.
EPILOGUE
Adam Maguire and his team duly wrote up their reports on the Jemima Villiers’ murder and completed all the necessary formalities. Lizzie was disappointed at first that all the evidence she had collected so carefully from the wheelbarrows was not really used, but Adam told her that it had been noted, and had yielded DNA and other matter which had been put on record. It was there to be used in the court case, if necessary, when it took place.
Ruth Villiers was charged with murder, and remained in custody. The family applied for her to be released on bail, on the grounds that she was not a danger to anyone. The authorities, however, were of the opinion that she was a danger to herself, and she was detained and put on suicide watch.
‘What do you think of that decision?’ Adam asked Lizzie. ‘You’re a doctor. Do you think she’s likely to harm herself?’
Lizzie was uncertain. ‘I really don’t know. She’s a bit of an unknown quantity, as she’s shown such a myriad of emotions. She was tough and resourceful, didn’t show any sign of remorse to begin with, and now she is distraught as well as being contrite and regretful. Which is the real Ruth? I’m not sure, therefore, I think that it is better to keep her under observation, for now at any rate. Better to be safe than sorry. We don’t want another death on our hands.’
‘Amen to that,’ said Adam.
*
The summer turned into a golden autumn, and Avon Hall, now run by a firm of administrators did excellent business, although the family were not allowed to participate. The estate had to be valued in the courts and then put up for sale, much to Amelia Villiers dismay.
The notoriety of the murder attracted the punters, all anxious to see the icehouse as well as the gardens where the roses grew. Apparently Simon’s perfume, Desert Dew was selling well both in England and on the continent, so Louise told her mother, and it was being launched in the United States the following year. It was being sold under the name Deadly Dew there, as the American firm who had the licence thought the murder connection would help sell it.
‘Maybe I should arrange a murder for all my functions,’ Louise joked. ‘We certainly made the headlines in all the magazines and it’s done our company a power of good. Everyone knows our name now.’
‘Don’t say that,’ said Lizzie. ‘You might be doing well from it, but the family are not. I’ve heard on the grapevine that the admin company has asked them to leave Avon Hall now. Apparently it’s going to be turned into a hotel.’
*
Two weeks later, much to Lizzie’s surprise, Freddie Randall, of Randall, Randall and Randall, contacted her. ‘It’s concerning Miss Villiers’ estate,’ he said.
‘Who?’ For a moment, Lizzie was puzzled.
‘You know her as Nellie Barnaby, but Villiers is her official name,’ said Mr Randall in his creaky old voice. ‘She wants you to witness some official documents she’s had drawn up. Says you are the only sensible person she knows, apart from me, of course.’ A wheezing chuckle echoed down the phone line. ‘Can you be at the nursing home tomorrow at about midday?
Lizzie smiled. ‘I’m very flattered to be asked, and yes, I’ll certainly be there.’
*
The next day Lizzie presented herself at the nursing home. Nellie was sitting out in a chair by the open French windows, Roger by her side in a blue and pink basket.
Nellie noticed Lizzie looking at the multi-coloured basket. ‘It’s blue and pink,’ she said, ‘because although I call him Roger, he’s actually a girl. It’s a transgender basket for a transgender dog. But he’s not having any operations.’
‘I expect the vet is glad to hear that!’ said Lizzie.
Freddie Randall arrived with a young secretary in tow, before the conversation regarding Roger could develop, much to Lizzie’s relief.
‘Such a lot of paperwork, Nellie,’ he grumbled. ‘See, I’ve had to spend extra money on a secretary to help me out.’
‘You can afford it, Freddie,’ said Nellie briskly, ‘and anyway you’ll charge it all to me.’
*
‘The paperwork which Freddie Randall presented to me,’ said Lizzie, as she related all this to Adam and Phineas and his wife later that evening over dinner, ‘was the setting up of a new company called Villiers Enterprises. It will be staffed by business people hired by the bank’s administrators and Freddie Randall and Nellie Villiers. It will run the house, only the public bit, and gardens as a charity. The family are going to be allocated one wing of the house for private use, to be paid for
from the charity, and Simon can continue using the laboratory in the garden for his work using the herbs and flowers growing there, as well as receiving a small annual remittance. Mrs Amelia Villiers will receive a widow’s pension (£20,000 a year), and money will be put in trust for Ruth Villiers, the amount hasn’t been decided yet.’
‘It all seems very sensible and well organized,’ remarked Adam when Lizzie paused for breath.
Phineas, who’d been sitting open mouthed with a bottle of wine in his hand, now took a deep breath and started pouring the wine. ‘What about Nellie?’ he asked, ‘Is she going back on the road?
Lizzie shook her head and laughed. ‘No, she told me that Roger has made the decision for her. He refused to go out for a walk the other day when it was raining. He prefers staying indoors in his comfy basket, and Nellie doesn’t want to go out on her own. I suppose it’s because now he knows that he’s really a girl not a boy, he wants to behave like a girl. He’s tired of being transgender.’
Adam sipped his wine. ‘A transgender dog,’ he mused. ‘What rubbish you do talk sometimes, Lizzie.’
‘The trouble with you is, you don’t move with the times,’ said Lizzie, helping herself to a glass of red wine. ‘Anyway, who would have thought the old tramp, Nellie Barnaby, would come to the rescue of the Villiers’s family.’
‘She wouldn’t have done if you hadn’t discovered her lying injured in the bushes,’ said Audrey. ‘As Phineas said to me, we need people like Lizzie, always willing to investigate where other people might pass on by.’
Huh! said Adam. ‘I’m not sure I want too many people investigating things.’
Lizzie felt mischievous. ‘I could always come on board as your assistant,’ she said. ‘Unofficially, of course.’
Adam didn’t reply, merely held out his glass to Phineas for a refill.
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