The Night She Died

by Dorothy Simpson

  Thanet waited, but Holmes did not go on.

  ‘You didn’t notice that the door was open, as you passed the house?’ Thanet asked Byfleet.

  ‘No. Why should I? We’d said good-bye, that was it, as far as I was concerned. I was thinking of my train.’

  ‘You didn’t glance back at all?’ Thanet persisted.

  ‘No. No bloody no. Like I said, why should I?’

  He would have to leave it for the moment, important though the point was. Thanet sighed. ‘All right, Mr Byfleet. So you would say that no more than fifteen or twenty seconds elapsed between the time you parted and the moment when you heard Mr Holmes shout?’

  ‘Got it in one,’ said Byfleet sarcastically, folding his arms.

  Time enough for Holmes to have stabbed his wife? Thanet thought. Time enough for her to have died? He glanced at Holmes who, eyes glazed, hands lying limply along the arm of the chair, seemed to have withdrawn himself from the proceedings. Thanet lowered his voice as he said to Byfleet. ‘Was there any sign of life when you first saw her?’

  Byfleet shot a quick, concerned glance at Holmes and apparently reassured that his friend had not heard the question, shook his head. ‘No.’ He looked at Holmes again and then, as if making up his mind, came to sit beside Thanet on the settee. When he next spoke the belligerence had gone and he said quietly, ‘Look, Inspector, John had nothing to do with it, honest he didn’t. I was with him all evening, like I said and when we got here there just wouldn’t have been time for him to … She was dead before ever he opened the door, I’d swear to that.’

  ‘Did either of you touch her?’

  ‘No. John just stood there, like he’d been turned to stone. Well, I mean, you could tell just by looking at her with that bloody great knife sticking out of her.’

  He would have to ask Doc Mallard exactly how long it would have taken Julie Holmes to die, Thanet thought. As if the thought had conjured up the police surgeon there was a knock on the door. Lineham put his head around it. ‘Doc’s here, sir.’

  ‘Right, I’m coming.’ Thanet stood up. ‘Thank you Mr Byfleet. If you could bear with us just a little longer, I’ll send someone in to take down your statement and then we’ll get it typed out for you to sign tomorrow.’ At the door he paused. ‘Just one point, Mr Holmes.’ He waited, repeated the man’s name twice before the dazed face turned towards him. ‘Mr Holmes,’ he said gently, ‘did your wife usually carry a handbag?’

  A moment’s pause and then, ‘Yes.’

  ‘What was it like?’

  Holmes’s forehead creased as he tried to focus his mind on the question. ‘Brown,’ he said at last. ‘Big. A shoulder thing.’

  Fairly obstrusive, by the sound of it. And certainly nowhere in this room, Thanet thought, glancing about him again. They’d check properly later on, of course, but … ‘Thank you,’ he said.

  Constable Bingham moved unobtrusively back into the room as Thanet left.

  In the narrow hall Mallard was bending over the body, his bald pate reflecting the light from the unshaded overhead bulb.

  ‘I know, I know,’ he said testily, glancing up at Thanet. ‘Don’t bother to say it. You can’t imagine how boring it gets, hearing the same old questions every time.’

  Thanet and Lineham exchanged amused glances and waited in silence while Mallard continued his examination.

  ‘Well,’ Mallard said, finally straightening up, ‘We won’t know for sure, of course, until after the P.M., but it looks as though she died instantly. And,’ with a quelling glance as Thanet opened his mouth, ‘sticking my neck out as you always press me to do, I’d say, provisionally, that she’s been dead between one and two hours. That, of course, is unofficial.’ He snapped his bag shut and stood up.

  Thanet glanced at his watch. Half past ten. She must have died, if Mallard was right – and despite his caution he usually was – between eight-thirty and nine-thirty. No, between eight-thirty and nine-twenty, when her body had been found.

  ‘Thanks Doc,’ he said.

  Mallard scowled at him. He had never learned to receive compliments or expressions of gratitude gracefully. ‘How’s that back of yours?’

  ‘Improving.’

  ‘Hmph. Teach you to go doing damnfool things like heaving lawn-mowers about,’ growled Mallard, heading for the door.

  ‘You can let them take her away now,’ Thanet said to Lineham. ‘And have another look around for her handbag – shoulder bag, actually. Brown, fairly big.’ He hurried after Mallard. Thanet was always punctilious in observing the courtesies. The police owed a great deal to the surgeons who frequently turned out of bed in the early hours to come to the scene of a murder and in any case, despite Mallard’s testiness, Thanet was fond of him.

  ‘How’s young Ben?’ Mallard asked as he tossed his case on to the passenger seat and settled himself behind the wheel.

  ‘Teething,’ Thanet said tersely.

  Mallard chuckled. ‘Ah, the joys of parenthood,’ he said. ‘And I’m told it gets worse, not better. Give my love to Joan – and watch that back, now.’ And with a smile and a wave, he was gone.

  Thanet stood looking after him for a moment and then made his way thoughtfully back to the house, stepping back on to the lawn to avoid the ambulance men who were carrying a covered stretcher down the narrow front path. He watched as they slid their burden into the ambulance and closed the doors.

  The end of a life, he thought. How inadequate were those few words to convey the aftermath of suffering always left by sudden death. And they marked, of course, only the beginning for him. Over the next days, weeks, months, perhaps, Julie Holmes would come alive for him in a unique way. Each of the people who had known her would have his own limited, individual view of her and Thanet would somehow have to reconcile all those views, assemble them into a composite whole.

  It was possible, of course, that this might not happen, that the case might move to a swift conclusion. Most murders are committed by someone close to the victim and the most obvious person frequently turns out to be the murderer. Remembering that with good reason the police are always most suspicious of the person who finds the body, Thanet knew he must look long and hard at Holmes himself. Would there have been time for Holmes to have killed his wife, in the instant of opening the door? Impossible to say, as yet. Mallard’s guess might be wrong. The girl might have been killed before her husband left for night school – analysis of her stomach contents would speak here. But if Mallard was right – as he usually was – and she had been killed between eight-thirty and nine-twenty, why had she been wearing her outdoor clothes? Had she just come in, or had she been about to go out? Thanet shook his head. There were too many imponderables as yet. It was pointless to speculate at this stage.

  Lineham met him at the front door, visibly excited. ‘No sign of her handbag, sir. They’d finished fingerprinting the kitchen, so I hope you don’t mind, but I …’

  ‘Don’t be so apologetic, Mike,’ Thanet said testily. ‘Of course you searched it, it’s your job to use your initiative, isn’t it? It’s the knife, I suppose?’ And felt ashamed of himself as Lineham visibly deflated. I really must not let his diffidence irritate me, he told himself. Apart from anything else it wasn’t the best way to go about building up the sergeant’s confidence. ‘Come on,’ he said, touching Lineham on the shoulder and heading for the kitchen, ‘show me. It’s an interesting bit of news.’

  The kitchen knives were kept in a special board, in one of the drawers. They had probably, Thanet thought, been a wedding present. There should have been six, but one, the carving knife by the look of it, was missing. Looking at the largest knife of all, a gleaming small butcher’s cleaver, Thanet thought that they ought to be grateful for small mercies. Holmes’s ordeal (assuming he were not the murderer) would have been a great deal more unpleasant if that one had been used. They would check, of course, but it looked as though Julie Holmes had been killed with her own knife.

  Suicide then? But by stabbing herself (a method
rarely chosen by suicides) and in the hall, by the front door? And, what was more, dressed to go out? Highly unlikely, Thanet thought, but then people did sometimes behave in the most incredible, irrational ways. The possibility would have to be borne in mind, remote though it seemed.

  But her handbag was missing.

  A ring at the bell, then. Julie snatches up the carving knife(!), opens the door (why, if she was afraid?), mugger grabs handbag, seizes knife, stabs her, departs with the loot. Oh yes, he told himself sarcastically, very likely. He must stop all this nonsense and get on with the job. ‘Find anything else?’ he said.

  ‘There’s this.’ Lineham pointed to the table on which sat a brown, simulated-leather box some three inches by two. A film of powder indicated that it had already been tested for prints. Nearby was a scrumple of tissue paper. ‘I found it on the window sill. The paper was in the waste bin.’

  ‘Have you opened it?’

  Lineham shook his head. ‘Johnson was still working on it when I went to tell you about the knife.’

  Thanet picked up the box, pressed the catch. The lid flew open, revealing a white satin lining in which there was a shallow, curved depression. In the lid was printed in black: A. Mallowby, Jeweller. High Street, Sturrenden. Thanet glanced at Lineham. ‘That mermaid brooch she was wearing, do you think?’

  ‘That’s what I thought,’ Lineham said eagerly. ‘Looks as though the box might have been wrapped in that tissue paper. In which case, he probably gave it to her tonight. The paper was right on top, in the waste bin.’

  Thanet handed the box over. ‘Find out. I’m just going to take a look around upstairs.’

  Lineham nodded and disappeared into the living-room.

  Thanet moved quietly up the uncarpeted stairs. There were, he discovered, three bedrooms, two good-sized rooms and one minute one. The tiny one and the bedroom at the back of the house were both stacked haphazardly with a jumble of furniture and unpacked cardboard boxes. Surely, Thanet thought, they ought to have made more progress than this in six weeks? Though Julie Holmes had been out at work all day, he reminded himself.

  The third and biggest bedroom, however, showed where the time had been spent. Thanet switched on the light and stood looking about him with surprised interest. The room was carpeted in deep pink and had been freshly papered in a white wallpaper with a delicately pretty design of wild flowers in two shades of pink and a soft green. Curtains of exactly the same design hung at the big bay window.

  ‘Well, well,’ murmured Thanet, moving further out into the room. The bedspread was white lace over a deep pink backing which accentuated the pattern and along the whole of one wall was ranged a series of units of white furniture – good quality stuff too, Thanet thought, going to take a closer look – two wardrobes with a dressing-table built between them. There was an oval mirror fixed to the wall above the dressing-table. The overall effect of the room was fresh, pretty and strangely impersonal. It looked exactly like a magazine illustration, and was just as lifeless. There were the pretty ornaments, the carefully arranged posy of flowers on the bedside table, the tasteful prints. But there was a complete absence of clutter. The top of the dressing-table was bare, the surface of the twin bedside tables empty save for an alarm clock on one side (his, presumably) and the flowers (hers). There was absolutely nothing visible in the room to reveal the personality of its owners.

  The small drawers at the top of the bedside cupboards were slightly more fruitful. In Julie’s was a bottle of sleeping tablets and a neatly folded clean handkerchief. In Holmes’s was a well-thumbed stack of girlie magazines. Thanet pursed his lips over these, wondering how long the Holmeses had been married. Surely not long enough for him to turn to these, as a substitute for the real thing? Perhaps they were a legacy of Holmes’s three months of relative celibacy, Thanet reflected as he carefully replaced them. Or perhaps not. Thanet looked around the room with new eyes. Holmes had, clearly, indulged all his wife’s whims to get this room exactly as she wanted it. As a bribe? A distasteful thought, but one to be taken seriously.

  Thanet moved across to the dressing-table. The top drawers contained neatly arranged cosmetics, the lower ones tights, underclothes, scarves, sweaters, all clean and carefully folded. The contents of the two wardrobes were much more revealing. Holmes’s was almost empty, containing only one suit, two pairs of jeans, a pair of casual trousers, a denim jacket and, on the top shelf, a small pile of underclothes and two sweaters. On the floor were lined up two pairs of suede shoes, one pair of leather, a pair of slippers and some track shoes.

  Julie’s wardrobe was a very different matter. Thanet whistled softly as the doors slid back to reveal a full rack of dresses, coats, skirts, trousers, all of them good quality and many expensive. Thanet riffled through them, then stooped to examine a purple plastic carrier bag with TOPS in gold lettering on the side. Expensive indeed. Joan had bought an evening dress at TOPS for the first police ball after Thanet had been promoted to Inspector and the memory of the bill had made Thanet wince for months afterwards. It was a gorgeous dress, Joan had looked marvellous in it and he hadn’t begrudged a penny of it, but still …

  He slid the door closed, thoughtfully, and took one last glance about him before making his way downstairs. Holmes, then, had been over-indulgent, uxorious. Remembering those magazines the word ‘bribe’ slid again into Thanet’s mind. What had Holmes been trying to buy? Love? Sexual compliance? And if so, how would he have reacted if his wife had continued to reject him, if – remembering that she had evidently been out when she had said that she would be staying at home like a good little wife – he had been supplanted by a rival?

  Thanet grimaced. It looked as though this case might be all too predictable.

  2

  Something was tickling his nose, tugging at his attention, dragging him up and away from the luxury of sleep. Thanet opened his eyes. Bridget was peering anxiously into his face.

  ‘OK, Sprig,’ he whispered. ‘I’m awake. I’ll be out in a minute.’

  Satisfied, she trotted off towards the door.

  Thanet, careful of his back, glanced over his shoulder to make sure that Joan was still asleep, then levered himself out of bed.

  In the bathroom he splashed his face in cold water, to wake himself up properly before shaving. It had been half past three in the morning by the time he had finished his preliminary report, four by the time he got to bed, and shaving could be hazardous business when one was still three-quarters asleep. Joan had often tried to persuade him to use an electric razor but he didn’t like them. Perhaps he ought to grow a beard? He peered at his narrow, unexceptional face beneath its thatch of thick brown hair, trying to visualise how he would look. Pointless speculation, really. Joan didn’t like beards.

  By the time he had finished shaving and had cleaned his teeth he was beginning to feel human again. He would shower later, before dressing. He opened the door on to the landing and with perfect timing three-year-old Bridget came out of her room, trailing dressing-gown and slippers. He helped her into them and then, unable to carry her as he usually did because of his back, he took her hand and they tiptoed downstairs to the kitchen.

  This was their special time. Making use of Bridget’s inbuilt alarm clock which always woke her at half past six, Thanet had instigated this morning routine when Ben was born. It suited everybody. Joan could sleep on a little after night feeding and Thanet was able to spend some time with his daughter. The demands of his work were such that he frequently missed seeing Bridget in the evenings and all too often a week would go by without his having been able to spend more than a few fleeting moments with her. Bridget loved this early-morning time. At this hour Daddy was hers alone, his attention undivided and guaranteed.

  Together they had evolved their own ritual, Bridget laying the table with extreme concentration while Thanet made tea and toast and dispensed cereal and fruit juice. After breakfast he would take Joan a cup of tea in bed before the day began in earnest.

  ‘Bridget
saw a baby horse yesterday,’ she announced, when they were settled at the table.

  ‘Oh? That was nice. A baby horse is called a foal. Where was that?’

  Bridget’s forehead creased while she thought about it. ‘By the shops,’ she said triumphantly at last.

  Sounded most unlikely, Thanet thought. But why worry? It didn’t matter what they talked about as long as they talked, enjoyed each other’s company. As Bridget chattered on he watched her indulgently. She had inherited Joan’s fair, clear skin and candid grey eyes, her honey-coloured hair. Whereas Joan’s was short and curly, though, Bridget’s was soft and fine, its silky tendrils brushing her shoulders. She would, Thanet thought, one day be a very beautiful girl.

  At this time of day he tried never to think about his work but suddenly Julie Holmes’s face was in his mind. She, too, had been a beautiful girl. If anything like that ever happened to Sprig …

  ‘Is your toast nasty, Daddy?’

  Thanet realised that he was scowling, relaxed, shook his head. ‘No, just something I was thinking of …’

  Sturrenden was a thriving market town of some 45,000 inhabitants. It lay deep in the Kent countryside, surrounded by some of the finest farmland in the South of England. Cattle and crops, fruit and hops all flourished, feeding the life of the town which was their heart.

  In Thanet’s opinion Sturrenden had everything: good shops, excellent schools, a plentiful supply of pubs, a number of churches, two cinemas and even, for the culturally minded, a small but first-rate theatre. It enjoyed all the benefits of country living, yet it was only an hour and a half by fast train to London and close enough to the coast to make summer picnics by the sea an attractive proposition.

  As he drove to work on this fine May morning he looked about him with satisfaction. Not for him the dirt and grime of the metropolis, thank you very much. The police force in Sturrenden was well manned and, with very few exceptions, people worked smoothly together, which was good both for morale and efficiency.

  There was a delay at the bridge and Thanet had time to notice that the flowering cherries along the tow-paths on either side of the river were just coming into bloom. In a couple of weeks he must remember to take Joan on one of their favourite outings, a drive through the orchards at blossom time.