The Case of the Stained Glass Widow

by Douglas Lindsay

  The door opened; Haynes appeared. Jericho didn't turn, just kept on staring across the fields. Haynes came and stood beside him, looking at the view.

  'I hate days like this,' said Haynes.

  Jericho didn't respond. Would never get into that kind of flippant discussion with one of his sergeants. Or anyone else. If he got started on things that he hated, things that annoyed him, would he ever stop? Things about living in Britain, things about being a police officer, and just things about what happened to you from the moment you got out of bed.

  He didn't want to be that person, but it had always been a part of him; since Amanda had gone it had become unavoidably all of him.

  He turned, straightened – winced at the pain in his neck as he did so – and looked up at Haynes.

  'Tell me everything,' he said.

  'Right,' said Haynes, and he looked at his notebook. 'We've established that the wife is definitely in Australia. She was logged out by immigration, she was on the plane, there's a record of her arriving in Sydney, the whole nine yards. The police have been around there to tell her the news and made a positive identi—'

  'What?' barked Jericho, and his face contorted again at the sudden movement in his neck. 'Which part of let me tell her the news escaped you?'

  'The boss...,' said Haynes by way of explanation.

  'What boss?'

  'The boss,' he said again. 'Dylan. She said not to let you tell her. Said you're not great with breaking bad news. Not great with the families.'

  'Did she?'

  'Yes. And you know, having seen you with Mrs. Ravenwood...'

  'Well... Any news on what her reaction was?'

  'She cried a lot.'

  'No fucking shit...'

  'She's arriving back at Heathrow at 10:25 tomorrow evening from Sydney.'

  Jericho nodded, started running his hands together. Felt cold. Needed to go for lunch.

  'You think she had an accomplice?' asked Haynes.

  'Don't know,' said Jericho. 'Let's meet her off the plane and start finding out, eh?'

  He stood up slowly, trying to straighten his neck, embracing the hurt.

  'You got anything?' asked Haynes.

  'Yes,' said Jericho. 'I've got a sore neck. I've also established that the book shop was a money pit but that it didn't matter as the deceased had made millions in the city, and had retired out here to be a gentleman bookshop owner in the country.'

  'So the widow stands to benefit?' said Haynes, nodding sagely.

  'Let's see,' said Jericho. 'Maybe Mrs. Ravenwood stands to benefit. You can get in touch with the lawyers after lunch.'

  'Nice,' said Haynes, clicking his fingers at him. 'Lawyers... They said you were good.'

  Jericho stopped for a second, gave Haynes another look from the grave, and then turned and started walking slowly, as if begrudging every step, towards the canteen.

  'You kind of stink,' said Haynes to his back. 'You know, of Ralgex, or some shit like that. Have you been at the gym?'

  Jericho hesitated, took a deep breath, and then walked on.

  v

  Heathrow, Terminal 3, Passport Control. Jericho and Haynes were waiting for the passengers from flight EK008 from Dubai. They had ascertained that Rosalind Parks had boarded the flight in Sydney, and had been on board after the stop-off in Dubai. Somehow, and for no reason that Jericho could fathom, he still didn't believe it.

  They were standing to the side, looking as obvious as two men in suits invariably look in this situation. They had studied the photos until they had Rosalind Parks' face emblazoned on their eyeballs; meanwhile each of the Border Control officials on duty had had her name and face highlighted.

  As it was, Jericho saw her coming the instant she had turned the corner away to his left, still seventy yards from the gate. Languid steps, as if she was walking in slow motion. She wasn't beautiful, she wasn't tall; her clothes were not particularly striking, her hair did not lend itself to extended inspection. Yet somehow she stood out from the crowd.

  Jericho just saw her from seventy yards and felt the instant pull of attraction. He lowered his head for a second and sighed heavily. It never went well when he wanted to have sex with the suspects/witnesses/family members.

  'You all right?' asked Haynes, glancing at him through a McDonald's chicken burger with extra lettuce. He'd asked for the extra lettuce so that he felt a bit better about the fact that he was eating plastic.

  Jericho lifted his head and nodded in the direction of the widow Parks.

  'That's her,' he said.

  Haynes glanced towards the crowd. Parks had joined the back of a queue, and for Haynes at least, she did not stand out from the crowd.

  'Don't see her,' he said. 'Is she in black?'

  'She's wearing a lilac pashmina, at the back of the third queue from the left.'

  'What's a pashmina?'

  Jericho gave him another look.

  'Can you at least work out third queue from the left? Or are you having trouble with left?'

  'Ours or hers?... No, got her.... Purple shawl?'

  'That's the one.'

  'Doesn't look too upset,' said Haynes. 'For someone who's just lost her husband to a brutal murder.'

  ***

  Jericho did not want to treat the woman who had been in Australia at the time of the crime as a suspect, so they were having coffee at Costa on the ground floor of Terminal 3, just outside arrivals. Two normal people having coffee after a long flight, before hitting the M4. Jericho had dispatched Haynes to wait in the car, and was already wondering why it was that he'd brought him along in the first place.

  They sipped coffee in brief silence. Jericho could smell her, a delicate oriental scent. He was glad he'd showered, glad he hadn't felt the need to wear any Deep Heat that day.

  'When was the last time you saw him?' he asked eventually. Had to stop himself staring at her lips, the pink mark they left on her coffee cup.

  'Ten days ago,' she said. 'I spent a couple of days in London with my sister before I went to Oz.'

  'I thought your sister lived in Sydney?' he said, and was immediately grateful that Haynes hadn't been there to hear the stupidity of the question.

  'I have more than one sister,' she said coolly.

  'Of course,' muttered Jericho.

  She smiled, something wicked about the movement of her lips. He shook himself mentally, tried to detach, tried to get back to treating her like he treated all interviewees.

  'You don't seem particularly bothered that he's dead,' he said bluntly.

  She laughed gently, a genuine smile stayed on her lips. He couldn't tell if she was toying with him, or whether this disarming and beautiful act was as real as the smile.

  'He was awful,' she said, 'why would I care? He was a rude, abusive, miserable, miserable man. God knows how he managed to find three mistresses.'

  'We got the report that you cried a lot when you heard the news.'

  He caught the flash of uncertainty on her face, the hint of discomfort, which was then effortlessly shrugged away.

  'It's what they expected. I wasn't going to get into discussions about my husband's failings with the local police out there, was I?'

  He nodded, looked disinterested.

  'Three mistresses?' he said. 'Tell me about them. Must have been because he was rich,' he added.

  'Well, yes, that would account for two of them. Mrs. Ravenwood, on the other hand,' she said, saying the name with a tone which suggested envy, 'seemed to love him for who he was. If you can believe that.'

  'Do you have the names of the other two?'

  'Of course. Wells is a very small place. Even if we do have the most famous detective on the planet,' she added, her lips curling into the wicked smile again.

  'Surprised you came back,' said Jericho glibly. 'Just making sure he's dead?'

  She smiled again, ran a hand through her hair.

  'The good wife,' she said. 'Just playing the good wife. It's what's expected of me. I probably ought to go
to the funeral.'

  vi

  Jericho stood looking out of the window of the small terraced house. All he could see was the other side of the street. Haynes was looking at that morning's Daily Star. The object of their visit, Margaret Belham, the next in line of Parks' mistresses, had insisted on making a cup of tea.

  'Apparently Jordon's getting her breasts deflated,' said Haynes, turning the page.

  Jericho stared absent-mindedly out the window. He was thinking about the murder of Jeffrey Parks, 57, and the likelihood of it being related to the fact that he had four women in his life. Anyone who was sleeping with four women at the same time, thought Jericho, probably deserved to get murdered. He turned eventually, long after Haynes had moved on to the next story.

  'Who's she?' he asked.

  'Who?' said Haynes, looking up.

  'Jordan? Am I supposed to know who that is?'

  'Jordan. You know Jordan. She's em... you know, she does stuff.'

  Jericho gave him one of his best you-just-crawled-out-from-under-a-log looks.

  'What the fuck are you talking about? The country of Jordan? The river?'

  'The model with the big tits...' said Haynes. 'At least, the tits that used to be big but now might be a bit smaller. Jordan of Katie and Pete.'

  'Jesus, now you're talking about Katie and Pete. Who the fuck are they?'

  'Katie's name for when she gets her tits out is Jordan. She uses Katie when she writes books and shit. Although, she doesn't actually write the books, just has her name put on them.'

  Jericho rubbed his forehead, looking pained. 'Promise me,' he said, 'that from now on you'll only read grown-up papers.'

  Haynes smiled. 'If you can find one in the UK, I'll give it a shot.'

  Margaret Belham walked into the room, without the expected tea tray in her hands, and sat down on the sofa opposite Haynes. She sighed heavily and leaned forward, elbows on her knees.

  'Tea's off,' she said, looking at Jericho.

  There was a pause. Jericho shrugged.

  'I didn't kill him,' she said abruptly. 'But I know who might have.'

  Haynes laid the paper down and sat forward.

  'Oh, for crying out loud,' said Jericho.

  'What?' she asked.

  Jericho took a small notebook from his pocket, scribbled something on a piece of paper, tore the paper out, folded it and handed it to Haynes.

  'Go on, Mrs. Belham,' said Jericho. 'Who do you think?'

  She looked slightly concerned at Jericho's peculiar behaviour, glanced at Haynes, and then said, 'Ilsa Ravenwood. That little witch who worked with Jeffrey at the bookshop.'

  She stopped talking as Jericho nodded to Haynes, and Haynes unfolded the piece of paper. The handwriting was hurried and dreadful, yet Haynes could still make out the name of Ilsa Ravenwood. He folded the paper back into his pocket, smiling ruefully to himself.

  'What?' asked Margaret Belham.

  ***

  'How d'you do that stuff?' asked Haynes as they walked up past Tesco, on their way to the small house near St. Cuthbert's, where they would find the fourth woman in Jeffrey Parks' abruptly terminated life.

  'Are you learning?' asked Jericho.

  'I ain't learning shit,' said Haynes. 'But I'm impressed. What's the secret?'

  'The secret, Sergeant, is paying attention.'

  He walked on; Haynes followed, unsurprised at his taciturnity.

  'Should I pay attention to this next one?' he asked.

  'If you like,' said Jericho. 'Although you'll find that she also believes Mrs. Ravenwood guilty of the murder.'

  Haynes shook his head but managed to stop himself asking how he knew. Maybe, he thought, it would be best if he just paid attention.

  ***

  5.30 in the evening of a gloomy Friday. The supermarkets aside, the shops were closing for the night; darkness had already fallen. There were still people abroad on Wells High Street, a majority of them in the uniforms of the Cathedral School or the Blue School, teenagers who didn't care about the cold rain, who still walked happily in the cold and bleak murk of early evening.

  As Jericho and Haynes walked back down through the town to the station, bent into the wind and the rain, at the other end of town the blinds had been drawn on the book shop out on the old Bath Road. Ilsa Ravenwood had, sure enough, been pegged as the murderer by the third of Jeffrey Parks' girlfriends, Catherine Pitt. It seemed that each one of Parks' women had known about the others; and at least one of them had not been happy about it.

  However, as night fell on the city, and the doors were closed and the metal blinds pulled on the city's shoplife, one thing was certain. The murderous one of the quartet was not Ilsa Ravenwood.

  She sat in the same chair behind the counter into which Haynes had eased her two days previously. After two days, distraught at the death of her lover, her tears had stopped; to be replaced by the slow drip of blood, from the knife which had been thrust into her neck from behind, ending her life in a sudden and unexpected moment of searing pain.

  The same angle of attack as that which had killed Parks, the same method, the same brand of knife left buried to the hilt in the flesh.

  ***

  Jericho and Haynes were sitting in his office looking at the board on the wall. There was a photograph of Parks' dead body in the middle, pictures of his four women surrounding it, various arrows drawn between them.

  'It doesn't have to be one of the women,' said Haynes, after a period of silence. 'The guy was an asshole. There could be a queue of people with a grudge.'

  'Let's not ignore what's in front of our faces. The guy was a horrible piece of crap, horrible enough to have quite happily let all his lovers know that they were one of a crowd. He made his money legitimately, he sold up his business in a straightforward manner. There are going to be people he pissed off, certainly, but murder, that's just....... Let's concentrate on what we know, what we've got a feeling for.'

  He pointed at the board, his hand moving around the pictures of the four women.

  'One of these women,' he said. 'It's about the women.'

  'What if there's a fifth woman?' said Haynes. 'One that the others didn't know about.'

  'Good thought,' said Jericho. 'However, Patterson's been all over his computer and his phone. Parks e-mailed a lot, well, to three of them, not his wife. It's plausible that he didn't tell them about a fifth woman, but seems implausible that he never contacted her. Let's stick to these four women for now. Only if we exhaust the obvious, do we progress to the dubious.'

  Haynes laughed.

  'See,' he said. 'That's the kind of shit Sherlock Holmes used to come out with.'

  'I'll make sure not to say it again,' muttered Jericho.

  There was a brusque knock at the door, which Jericho immediately recognised as that of DC Patterson, who then entered and looked with a raised eyebrow at the graphics on the board.

  'You've lost one of your suspects,' he said abruptly.

  'Hah!' said Jericho, straightening up. 'Has to be Mrs. Ravenwood.'

  Patterson nodded, with a glance at Haynes. Jericho immediately eased himself out of his seat.

  'Let's get over there. Knife in the neck?'

  'Knife in the neck,' repeated Patterson.

  And off they went, a killer to chase down.

  viii

  The man from the Wells Journal was nosing around outside the shop. A few other gloaters were at the police barriers, hoping for a view of the kill. There were nine police officers at the scene, plus four SOCOs who'd come up from Taunton.

  As was usual in these circumstances, Jericho was leaving all the work to those better qualified, and was standing to the side watching the post-murder investigation unfold. The body had been discovered by Mr. Ravenwood, who had come looking for his wife, late home from work. He was currently sitting in a back room, holding an un-drunk cup of tea, staring at the floor, being attended to by a constable who had previously excelled on the Immediate Trauma Counselling & Victim Support course.


  Jericho looked sullen, perhaps even bored; however, beneath the surly and aloof exterior, his mind was flying over all the possibilities. The man Ravenwood, while not appearing to be aware that his wife had been romantically involved with Parks, could have taken out his wife and her lover. Perhaps someone had a grudge against the shop in particular, and would now be going after Caroline, the Saturday girl.

  Haynes appeared from the back room and approached Jericho, hands in pockets. The body was just about to be bagged and removed.

  'How's your theory standing up, Sir?' asked Haynes. 'Do we include the husband in the list of obvious suspects, or do we reduce it to two?'

  Jericho ignored the tone, and raised his eyebrow at the latter observation.

  'Two?' he said.

  'Two girlfriends left. Margaret Belham and Catherine Pitt.'

  'You're ruling the wife out?' said Jericho.

  'She was in Australia,' said Haynes.

  Jericho stared sceptically at the corpse of Ilsa Ravenwood, as it was manhandled into a large, black plastic executive bin liner.

  'I'd like you to get hold of her mobile phone records for the last ten days. No... call it the last month. Let's see if her phone actually went to Australia.'

  'You're thinking that if it didn't, she didn't?'

  Jericho turned and gave him a smile of confirmation.

  'What about Mr. Ravenwood?'

  Jericho turned distractedly back to the corpse, now enveloped in black.

  'I'll get Patterson or Collins to look into it. You get on with.... you know, the phone records. And these sisters of hers, do some digging on them 'n' all.'

  ix

  He knocked on the door at a little after 8:15pm; Rosalind Parks answered in her pyjamas. She smiled; he looked over her shoulder, expecting to see some other man there for the evening.

  'Already in bed?' he asked.

  'Curled up on the sofa, eating ice cream, watching a movie,' she said. 'Come in.'

  She stood back to let him in, he could smell her as he walked past. She closed the door and led him into the front room. There was a large television in the corner, a film paused mid-frame. On the table were three tubs of ice cream. Triple Chocolate; Strawberry; and Raspberry & Vanilla. She lifted the chocolate tub, and settled back onto the sofa, flicking the movie back on as she went.