Murder in Mind

by Veronica Heley

  ‘Murder!’ Angelika, hand to where she, mistakenly, believed her heart to be.

  ‘Murder?’ Ellie looked at Ms Milburn. ‘Not Evan, too?’

  ‘No, no. But he is in hospital.’

  Angelika shrieked and fell back, sobbing wildly. ‘Evan, oh! Not Evan!’ She held out her hand towards Ears, and he caught hold of it. Embarrassed, he didn’t seem to know whether to throw it away, or pat it. Angelika turned tear-filled eyes towards him. ‘My husband! Oh, please tell me it’s not true!’

  Ellie reflected that Angelika could certainly lay it on, especially where an impressionable man was concerned.

  Not everyone was taken in. Ms Milburn looked down her nose. Thomas stroked his beard. Neither of them seemed amused by Angelika’s histrionics.

  Freya stirred in her sleep, murmuring something indistinct. She made a convulsive movement, clutched her teddy bear more tightly and gradually came back to consciousness. ‘Dad?’ She struggled to sit upright. ‘What’s happened? Who are . . . are you police? Is Dad all right?’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ said Ms Milburn, in soothing tones. ‘He’s in hospital. He fell, got a knock on the head.’

  Angelika and Freya looked bewildered.

  ‘How?’

  ‘He fell?’

  Ears disentangled himself from Angelika. ‘So, which of you did it?’

  TWELVE

  Monday afternoon

  ‘He was perfectly all right when we left,’ said Ellie. ‘Irate, but upright.’

  The two girls nodded. ‘On his mobile—’

  ‘Trying to get the Chief Constable.’

  Vera pushed open the door to bring in a tray containing mugs of soup and a small mountain of sandwiches. She took one look at the police and said, ‘Shall I fetch some more plates? Or how about some curry? We’ve enough to feed the five thousand.’

  Ellie reached for some soup and a sandwich. ‘Vera was with me all morning. She can vouch for the fact that Evan Hooper was perfectly all right when we left.’

  ‘And who is “Vera”, pray?’ said Ears.

  ‘That’s me.’ Vera dished out plates and mugs.

  Ellie warmed her hands on her mug. ‘Vera used to clean for me but doesn’t do that any more. She came with me today as a favour, to try to sort out the mess in the Hooper household. But when we got there—’

  Thomas took the tray from Vera and set it down. ‘Far be it from me to interfere, but do you think you could start from the beginning?’

  ‘I don’t know where the beginning is,’ said Ellie. She sipped from her mug and almost burned her mouth. Aaargh. Just what she needed. She took a second sandwich. ‘Bless you, Vera.’

  Ms Milburn flourished her pad. ‘Start with your involvement this morning. I called in on the Hoopers at ten fifteen to take statements relating to the death of the second Mrs Hooper.’

  ‘Fern.’ Angelika nodded. ‘Silly name. Silly woman.’ She took a mug of soup, too, but declined a sandwich.

  Freya reddened. ‘I hadn’t seen Mummy in ages. I wish I’d been nicer to her. She couldn’t help the way she was. That was how she was brought up, free living, and all that. She used to try to make me understand, to be more like her, but I guess there’s too much of my dad in me to . . . But Fiona loved to visit her.’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ said Ms Milburn, anxious to get on. ‘So what happened after I left you?’

  ‘I suppose it wasn’t long after you’d gone, maybe half an hour or so, that a man came to the door, a reporter wanting to talk to us. Dad sent him off, sharpish. Dad went to his study as he was going to work from home this morning, so when the phone in the hall started ringing again, I picked it up. First it was a reporter asking if I was the mother of the murdered child. I was so shocked, I think I laughed. Anyway, I put the phone down and it rang again and this time . . . ugh . . . I’ve never had an obscene phone call before.’

  Vera pushed a mug of soup into Freya’s hand. Freya looked at it, but made no move to drink it.

  ‘Was it a man or a woman, and what did he or she say?’

  Freya reddened. ‘A man, I think. Nasty. Asking what it felt like to have killed your only child. Had I enjoyed it, that sort of thing? Going on to say what he’d like to do to me. Ugh. I went to tell Dad, and he said to take the phone off the hook and he’d report it to the police. He said perhaps we’d have to get our number made ex-directory or something. So I took the phone off the hook. Then I got ready for my morning run.’

  She took a sip of the soup, then gulped it down greedily.

  ‘Why didn’t you exercise in the gym?’

  ‘I never do. Angelika doesn’t like anyone but her to use it. She made an exception for Fiona but I wasn’t going to beg her for it, and anyway, I prefer to run in the open air. I was just leaving when Mrs Quicke and Vera arrived and I let them in.’

  Vera pushed the sandwiches in Freya’s direction again. She took two and started to wolf them down. A fraction more colour returned to her face.

  ‘Over to you, Mrs Quicke,’ said Ms Milburn, taking notes.

  Ellie was on her third sandwich. ‘My daughter Diana had asked me to get some domestic help to clean up at the Hoopers. I was visiting Vera this morning . . .’ Should she explain about the Pryce family connection? No, probably not. ‘So we went along together to see what needed to be done. We saw two men and a woman, I think it was, talking to some people in the street outside the house. I suppose they were reporters, but they didn’t see us turn into the drive and didn’t try to stop us getting into the house. Freya let us in as she was just on her way out. She told us they’d been bothered by a reporter earlier, but that Evan had sent him off.

  ‘The house was in a right mess. The phone was off the hook in the hall. I put it back on and yes, there was an obscene phone call, so I left the phone off the hook. Vera started work in the kitchen. I found Angelika in the gym, and we talked a bit. She went upstairs to have a shower, and suddenly everything went haywire. Someone – a reporter? One, or maybe two – was in the garden and started taking photographs of us through the kitchen windows. It was more than a bit scary. Is there another sandwich, or a drop more soup, perhaps?’

  ‘Actually in the garden? I don’t believe it.’ That was Ears.

  Vera collected empty mugs. ‘It’s true, though. I’ll get seconds.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Angelika, meltingly beautiful as she gazed at Ears. ‘It was terrifying. I was so frightened!’

  Ellie recollected that Angelika had been upstairs at that time, but said nothing. She continued, ‘That’s when Freya started to bang on the front door and to ring the bell, trying to get back in. There were reporters right round her, but we got her in somehow—’

  ‘How many? Describe them.’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Ellie looked at the others for help.

  Freya said, ‘They were all round me, shouting. Three or four? Terrifying. One of them grabbed my arm.’ She rubbed it, where the bruise was beginning to colour up. ‘Ouch! They wanted me to say, to confirm . . . I couldn’t take it in. They were taking photos, snap, snap, non-stop. They seemed to think I was Abigail’s mother and that I’d . . . that I’d killed her!’ Her voice shook.

  ‘Going out for a run was foolhardy in the extreme,’ said Ears. ‘Naturally, they thought you were making yourself available for questioning.’

  There were tears in Freya’s eyes. ‘I didn’t realize.’ She brushed crumbs from herself. Looked for another sandwich.

  Ears was censorious. ‘You should all have stayed inside and shut the doors.’

  ‘Until they broke in?’ said Ellie. ‘What ought we to have done then?’

  ‘Dialled nine nine nine.’

  ‘We tried that and got cut off. The line went dead. Then we tried one oh one which is the new number, and we argued about whether it was for non-emergency use only but we did get through to someone, and when you’re in a difficult situation you don’t always remember things like the number for the police being changed. I tried to raise Ms Milburn on my mobile but sh
e wasn’t available, and when Vera did get through to one oh one, the operator told her to try the other number.’

  ‘There really wasn’t any reason for you to call the police. Reporters don’t behave the way you’ve described.’

  Ellie nodded. ‘That’s what I thought, too. It’s disturbing, isn’t it? We heard a window smash at the back of the house and assumed someone had broken into the conservatory. I’d locked the door that leads from the conservatory into the kitchen, and after a while we could hear someone trying to break through that. I knew that once they were into the kitchen, there was no means of keeping them out of the rest of the house. We thought they were going to be on us at any minute.’

  Freya nodded. ‘I was so frightened.’

  ‘I got my minicab people to send a car for us; we grabbed a few things and left. Evan was in the hall, trying to get through to the Chief Constable on his mobile. We asked him to come with us, but he wouldn’t.’

  ‘Pig obstinate. He abandoned us to our fate!’ Angelika fixed large blue eyes on Ears. Blue eyes? Ellie did a double take. Her eyes had been green yesterday, hadn’t they? Coloured contact lenses?

  ‘I’m worried about Dad,’ said Freya. ‘We shouldn’t have left him. Is he all right?’

  Ears pointed at her. ‘You pushed him over, perhaps, trying to get him to leave with you?’

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ said Freya, exhaustion overruling the need for politeness.

  Ellie said, ‘We got out just in time. Some of the reporters followed us, but we managed to get away from them, and came here. So what’s happened to Evan?’

  Ms Milburn checked with her boss, and he nodded for her to continue. ‘Two constables attended your one oh one call. They found three reporters sitting outside the front door. They said they knew someone was inside the house but that no one was answering the door. They denied threatening behaviour, said they’d not overstepped the mark in any way.

  ‘The constables went round to the back of the house, found the glass door into the conservatory had been smashed in. The door from the conservatory into the kitchen had been broken open, too. There was no one in the house except for Mr Hooper, who was lying on the floor in the hall. He was unconscious, but beginning to come round. His foot was tangled in the handle of a large leather handbag, which someone had carelessly left on the floor—’

  ‘My Gucci bag!’ cried Angelika. ‘I wondered where I’d dropped it.’

  ‘Indeed,’ said Ears, with a sour look. ‘It seems obvious that Mr Hooper tripped over the bag and hit his head on the edge of the hall table as he fell.’

  ‘He’s all right?’ A pale Freya.

  Vera returned with refilled mugs of soup. Also a tin of biscuits. Ellie grabbed the soup. The first helping had hardly touched the sides as it went down.

  Ms Milburn said, ‘He seemed confused, not sure what was happening. The constables called an ambulance and removed Mr Hooper to hospital where they suspect concussion. They’ll probably keep him in overnight.’

  ‘A storm in a teacup,’ said Ears. ‘A waste of police time. You women get hysterical at the slightest opportunity. A couple of reporters exceed their brief, and you scream blue murder and run away. The only damage done is to Mr Hooper, who trips over a carelessly dropped bag and gives himself a headache. You ought to be thoroughly ashamed of yourselves.’

  Thomas was forking curry into his mouth at speed. ‘And the smashed doors?’

  Ears had an answer for everything. ‘There was, apparently, a young cub reporter who left the premises before we arrived. It seems she may have taken her desire to get an exclusive too far. When she started to go round the house—’

  ‘She?’ said Ellie. ‘Are you sure it was a “she”?’

  ‘Of course I’m sure.’ His ears, which had been fading to pale pink, flushed to deep rose. ‘When she started to go round the house, the other reporters told her to be careful, but she wouldn’t listen. They didn’t hear her break in—’

  ‘No, they wouldn’t, if they were at the front of the house.’

  ‘They didn’t see her leave, either. She’d disappeared before we arrived. I imagine the insurance will cover the damage. So ends the tale of the molehill which you women turned into a mountain. I should charge you all with wasting police time. Hah!’

  ‘So,’ said Ellie, ‘who cut the phone line? And why?’

  ‘What?’ Ears didn’t want to hear anything to disturb his neat reconstruction of events.

  ‘We were on the landline phone, waiting to get through to the police, and the line went dead. So, who cut the phone line? The missing girl reporter?’

  Ears looked as if he were going to strangle himself. ‘What, what? Now you’re being ridiculous, trying to make something out of nothing, in order to talk yourselves out of trouble. If there did happen to be a reporter who disappeared before we got there, then presumably she had got her scoop and left, so—’

  He stopped in mid-tirade, for DC Milburn had frowned and murmured something about a back exit.

  Freya clutched her teddy bear, even more tightly. ‘There’s a gate at the end of the back garden which leads into an alleyway. It comes out into the next road. It’s rather overgrown because we don’t use it any more. She could have got out that way.’

  Ears turned on her. ‘So you’ve remembered her now, have you? You can describe her in detail? Perhaps she was one of the reporters who clustered round you when you came back from your run?’

  Freya blenched, hugging her bear close to her face, but didn’t give ground. ‘I can’t say. It was all so confusing. On my way back from my run I turned into the drive, and I didn’t see anyone between me and the door, and then someone shouted—’

  ‘Man or woman?’

  ‘Man. I think. Shouted, “There she is!” and they were all round me, yelling at me. I think one of them tried to trip me up, but . . .’ She shook her head. ‘I panicked, I suppose. Tried to sidestep one that got in front of me. Someone caught my arm just here . . .’ She rubbed her upper arm again. ‘I don’t think I could tell you what any of them looked like. It was all a blur. And then I realized I’d forgotten my front door key. I usually keep it in this tiny pocket here.’ She indicated a pocket in her running shorts, and flushed. ‘Oh. It is there. I was trying to fish it out and couldn’t find it, so I rang the bell, and they all crowded round me in the porch. It was frightening.’

  ‘Well,’ said Ears. ‘That seems to wind it up satisfactorily. I gave the reporters a good talking to, and they’ll keep their distance from now on. You ladies can return home as soon as you like.’

  ‘Except,’ said Thomas, with narrowed eyes, ‘for a cut telephone line and a couple of smashed doors. Is the back of the house still open to all comers?’

  Ears was anxious to get away. ‘I expect you can arrange for someone to board over the door into the conservatory.’

  Freya managed to get to her feet. ‘I think I’d better get to the hospital first. See if Dad’s all right.’ She was still very pale, her hair had come loose, and her running shorts and top were stained and rumpled. She looked a mess beside the immaculate Angelika, but Ellie knew which of the girls she admired. And it wasn’t Angelika.

  Angelika had been trying to raise someone on her mobile phone, but realized this was a cue for faithful wifey to show willing, too. ‘I’ll come with you. Then we can take him back home with us. And –’ with a dark look at Ellie – ‘return all our belongings that we were forced to bring away with us.’

  ‘Splendid,’ said Ears, accessing his mobile. ‘Now, I’ve rather more important matters to deal with, if you don’t mind.’

  He set off for the door, and Thomas followed. ‘Let me show you out.’

  DC Milburn lingered for a word with Ellie. ‘You really think the phone line was cut? I’ll have a look in the morning.’

  Ellie murmured, ‘I’m not sure it’s safe for them to return. Will there be someone on duty outside the house tonight, particularly if we can’t get the smashed door boarded over in t
ime?’

  DC Milburn clucked her tongue. ‘Maybe. I’ll try. But we’re short-handed.’

  She disappeared after her boss.

  Thomas returned, looking thoughtful. ‘Ladies, may I offer you a lift to the hospital?’

  Angelika put her hand on his arm and lifted her face, a flower turning to the sun. ‘Oh, that would be so kind of you. After all the trouble your wife has caused us.’

  Thomas blinked, but nobly endured the caress. ‘I was thinking we might be able to do something about the broken door, too. Ellie . . .?’

  Ellie’s mobile rang. ‘It is just possible that it’s already been attended to.’ She lifted the phone to her ear. ‘Yes, Diana. I was hoping it was you.’

  ‘Mother, do you have any idea what’s going on? I couldn’t get any reply from Evan’s landline or his mobile, so I went over there to find reporters camped out on his doorstep, who said that the police have taken him away and—’

  ‘They found him lying unconscious in the hall and—’

  ‘The reporters said his daughter or his wife had knocked him out and fled!’

  ‘Absolute nonsense. I told you, they’re here with me, but about to visit Evan in the hospital.’

  ‘Which hospital?’

  ‘Come to think of it, I don’t know. I’ll have to ring around and—’

  ‘Don’t disturb yourself. I’m on to it. Did you know the house had been broken into and was open to the elements? I’ve sent someone down to board the door over. I’m surprised the reporters haven’t already been through the house taking photographs and looking into any paperwork they can find.’

  ‘The police had words with them. They’ll be on their best behaviour from now on.’

  ‘They’ve got a nerve! They wanted to know what relation I am to the family. I told them to mind their own business.’