by Jill McGown
‘It’s Sunday,’ Judy said.
‘It normally opens on Sundays,’ Mrs Marsden countered.
Judy smiled. ‘Do you have some information about him?’ She unearthed a piece of paper. ‘But before we start – can I have your full name and address?’
‘Edna Marsden. 27 Livingstone Drive.’ Mrs Marsden waited until she’d written the address. ‘I saw him this morning,’ she said.
‘What?’ Judy couldn’t remember the last time someone with information really had had information. ‘When?’ she asked.
‘At about quarter past five.’
Judy looked startled. ‘You saw him at quarter past five in the morning? Where?’
‘At his garage – I deliver his milk.’
‘Oh! I see.’ Judy laughed, but Mrs Marsden didn’t. ‘And he was there? At that time in the morning?’
‘Yes – he gave me a fright, because I didn’t know. You can’t see the office light from outside, you see.’ Mrs Marsden undid the top button of her coat, getting herself comfortable. She was enjoying herself. She had insisted on seeing Judy as the senior officer – Joe Miller not being good enough. And now she was going to get her money’s worth. Still, thought Judy, she really did have information, which was more than she could have expected.
‘What happened? Anything?’
‘Nothing much – but he was funny. I had just got off the float – I take it right up to the door, you see, and park it behind the pumps. And I was taking the milk out when he spoke, right behind me. He’d got a bottle in his hand, and he was in a state.’
‘A bottle? He was drinking?’ Judy wrote ‘drinking’ on her pad.
‘Not that kind of a bottle. A milk bottle.’
Judy smiled, crossing the word out again. ‘But he was in a state, you said?’
‘He was. I think he had been drinking – he was upset.’
Judy drew a neat dotted line under ‘drinking’, and wrote STET. ‘Upset?’ she queried. ‘How did he show he was upset?’
‘He looked upset. As though he’d just had bad news.’ Edna stood. ‘Do you mind if I take my coat off? It’s hot in here – I’m sure your heating’s up too high.’
‘Probably. Yes – do take your coat off. How do you mean – as if he’d just had bad news?’
‘Oh, you know. He looked pale, and his eyes looked red, as though he’d been crying.’
‘Where were you at this point?’ Judy asked.
Mrs Marsden stared at her. ‘At the garage,’ she said. ‘That’s what I’m telling you.’
‘Yes, of course. But were you in his office at any time, or on the forecourt – where?’
‘Where I said. By the pumps.’
‘So the only light would be from the street lamps on the pavement?’
‘Yes – but I could see all right.’ That Edna resented the implication, Judy could see by the huffy lift of her chin.
‘I know you could,’ she said quickly. ‘I’m just thinking about those lights. They make everyone look a little odd, you know. He probably thought you looked pale with red eyes.’ She laughed a little, but Mrs Marsden didn’t.
‘It wasn’t just that! His shirt was unbuttoned, and it was quite cold after the thunder. And when he took the milk, his hands were shaking.’
‘Could you describe what he was wearing?’
Lloyd came in as she spoke, and moved noiselessly to his desk. If Mrs Marsden only knew that he was an inspector, Judy’s days would be numbered.
‘Not very well,’ she said. ‘The lights make things go funny colours.’ It was as though she were making a new point, as though Judy had never mentioned the lights’ ability to make things look different. ‘Dark clothes,’ she said. ‘That’s all. No jacket.’
‘What sort of shirt was Mr Wade wearing? Can you remember? Short sleeved, long sleeved? Tie?’ She glanced across at Lloyd, who had begun to listen to the conversation. ‘Was it a dark shirt?’
She thought for a moment. ‘No – it was light. It could have been red, because his car was there, and it’s red. The lights make it go a sort of mustard colour. That’s the colour his shirt looked. It had long sleeves – and it was open, so I don’t think he had a tie.’
‘Good. Anything else you noticed about him?’
‘Only that his hands were shaking, like I said. Because I said to put the milk down before he dropped it. And he did,’ she added, with a hint of triumph.
‘He dropped it?’ Lloyd asked, sitting forward.
‘He put it down,’ she replied, with a withering glance in his direction.
Lloyd laughed, but Mrs Marsden didn’t.
At Thorpe Wood, sunlight chased the shadows across the dark surface of the lake as the quickening wind blew the clouds away, and the ducks watched interestedly as the teams of police, who had fanned out from where the body had lain, took a temporary breather. Her clothes had been found, caught up in the tangle of undergrowth. Skirt, blouse and jacket, rolled up together, caught on the thorns of a wild rose-bush. Shoes, some way distant from each other, lying on the ground. No underwear, and no sign of Wade, so they would keep on looking.
The squad cars, Panda cars, private cars, vans and wagons left room for only one lane of traffic. Each car, few and far between, was stopped at the temporary traffic signals, and its passengers questioned. Traffic cones and orange-jacketed police slowed drivers down on every exit road, the men yawning with boredom while they waited for the sparse Sunday traffic. Watchful eyes assessed the handful of people using British Rail’s reduced Sunday service; buses were observed, but there was no sign of Wade.
An unmarked car, containing two plainclothes officers, sat quietly in the road that ran down the side of Wade Motors. The building itself had received the attentions of the evidence-gatherers. He wouldn’t come back there, but you had to watch, just in case. Another watched his house, another still kept a less obtrusive eye on the Mitchells’ house, yet another on the Shorts’. They had just finished in his own house, but they weren’t optimistic. There was no reason to believe that he’d been home. Nothing to suggest where he might be now.
By two o’clock, it had settled down to near-routine, but this wasn’t routine, certainly not in Stansfield. Drunken stabbings, and domestic rows that got out of hand got headlines in the local papers because they were rare enough.
But this was news, and the ducks were doing well out of the currently access denied reporters and film-crews whose estate cars littered the grass. This was murder, not the unintentional result of a frustrated marriage or a night out with the lads. This was Hunt for Killer of Rich Widow. This was Naked Blonde Death Riddle. This would sell newspapers; this would make good television.
This would feed a lot of ducks.
Chapter Three
Donald thanked the young woman who had driven him home, and stepped thankfully from the car into the invigorating breeze. It had been Julia all right. He had had a dread of not being able to tell whether it was her or not, but he could. When it was over, he had felt light-headed, but relief rather than shock had caused the giddiness. He wondered if that was the usual reason for people fainting – your mind building the thing up to such a pitch that you are prepared for anything. And what you feel is relief that it isn’t as bad as you thought.
He was a rich man now that Julia was dead. But that wasn’t what was in his mind as he looked at her. Some things were more important than money.
Helen shushed him as he came in the door, and he stood to listen to the news.
‘The naked body of thirty-five year old Julia Mitchell, widow of the late Charles Mitchell, was found this morning in the woodland round Stansfield boating lake. The police say that Mrs Mitchell appeared to have been strangled, but that there is no immediate evidence of a sexual assault.
‘Her husband, Charles Mitchell, died just seven weeks ago of a heart attack, and Mrs Mitchell was in the area on business connected with her husband’s estate. Her body was found less than a mile from her brother-in-law’s house, where she had
been staying.
‘The couple, who lived in London, had strong local connections, Mr Mitchell being the founder of Mitchell Engineering, the largest single employer in Stansfield. When he retired from the engineering world six years ago, Mr Mitchell’s keen business eye enabled him to make a second fortune in London property development . . .’
The radio went into a rehashed obituary which now included Julia.
‘Are you all right?’ Helen asked. ‘You look pale.’
‘Yes, I’m fine. It wasn’t too bad, considering.’
Helen held up the whisky decanter. ‘Drink?’ she asked.
‘Please.’
‘Are you hungry yet? I’ve made a salad, and there’s cold chicken.’
‘Later.’ He picked up the paper. ‘Oh – that reminds me. The police want a photograph of Julia – to jog people’s memory, they said.’ He looked at Helen over the top of the newspaper. ‘It could have been anyone,’ he said. ‘It might not have been Chris.’
But Helen shook her head. ‘Have you got one?’
‘No, not on me. Why would I have a photograph of Julia?’ He turned the page, having read nothing. ‘That’s why I’m telling you. I’ll have to go to their place tomorrow and see what I can find. The press are pestering the police for one, anyway. And they want to know where her father’s staying in Spain so that he can be told. So I’ll have to see if there’s a note of that anywhere.’ He wondered about her definite shake of the head when he suggested someone other than Chris might be ‘being sought’ as the radio put it. ‘Did Chris say anything to you?’ he asked.
‘Nothing that made sense.’ She poured herself a gin and tonic, and Donald noticed the empty bottle of tonic on the sideboard. He hoped she knew what she was doing.
‘Helen?’ he said, as people only do when they are about to broach a sensitive subject.
She looked across enquiringly, perhaps a little apprehensively. ‘Yes?’ she said, trying to sound off-hand.
‘Do you know where Chris is?’
She looked faintly surprised. ‘No, of course not.’ She looked away. ‘Why would I know where Chris is?’
The deliberate parody of his reply about Julia’s photograph did not serve to make Donald feel any more sanguine. He just hoped Helen wasn’t getting herself – and by extension, him – into deep water.
‘You could get into real trouble,’ he warned her. ‘If you’re withholding information – it’s an offence.’ He drank some of his whisky, and waited for it to make him feel just a little bit better, but it didn’t.
‘You didn’t tell them you’d seen him,’ she said defensively, spearing the lemon slice with the cocktail stick, and freshening the drink with a new one.
Donald knew this mood. The ‘I’m going to get tight so there’ mood that happened once in a blue moon. He wondered how many she’d had.
‘Only because you lied to the man!’ he said snappishly, then wished he hadn’t, because that wasn’t the only reason. ‘And be careful how much you drink, because he’ll be back.’
‘Oh.’ Helen screwed the top on the tonic bottle. ‘All right.’
Donald closed his eyes. He could see Maria when he was in London. That would make him feel better.
Lloyd looked up. ‘When you saw him,’ he said to Mrs Marsden. ‘When he spoke and startled you – did you by any chance ask him what he was doing there in the middle of the night?’
‘Well, I said “You’re an early bird” or something like that. I don’t think of it as the middle of the night,’ she explained.
‘No, quite. Did he say anything?’ As witnesses went, Mrs Marsden was pretty good. And patient – he’d been through the whole thing again with her.
‘He said he had a big job on,’ she said. ‘But he was slurring his words, and I didn’t see how he could be doing anything.’
Lloyd nodded.
‘And he wasn’t wearing old clothes,’ she volunteered. ‘Not the kind of clothes you mend cars in.’
‘It might not have been that sort of job, of course,’ Lloyd suggested.
‘No,’ she agreed. ‘But if it was paperwork – you’d probably do that at home. I don’t think you’d go to work at five in the morning.’
‘Possibly not.’ His stomach was rumbling, and he coughed to mask the sound, sneaking a look at his watch. Two fifteen – why wasn’t he at home having roast beef and two veg like other people? For a moment, he wished the divorce had never happened; that when he did go home it would be to his wife and children. But it was only for a moment.
‘Well, thank you Mrs Marsden,’ he said, standing up and extending his hand. ‘You have been a considerable help.’
Mrs Marsden submitted limply to a handshake. ‘People say not to get involved,’ she said. ‘But I don’t think that’s any way to be.’
‘Quite, quite,’ Lloyd agreed heartily. ‘I’m afraid we haven’t quite stopped imposing on your time – would you just go with the constable, and he’ll write out your statement. It won’t take long.’ All the time, he was ushering her to the door, and now he stood awkwardly, holding it open with one hand and signaling to Sandwell with the other, as Mrs Marsden wrestled with her coat.
‘You’ll all catch your deaths,’ she warned him. ‘Having the heating on that high in September.’ Lloyd smiled uncertainly. The central heating hadn’t been on since sun decided to visit Britain for the fourth time in living memory, and it needed an Act of Parliament ever to get it switched on again. When she was gone, he grinned at Judy.
‘So,’ he said. Judy was looking in the drawer for something, and Lloyd took the opportunity of perching on the corner of her desk without being glared at. ‘What’s the story so far?’
She made an exasperated face as she surfaced. ‘What’s wrong with the chairs?’ she asked.
‘Have you got it all straight yet?’ He ignored her complaint.
‘A young man – Paul Sklodowski – I’ve even learned his name, came in on his way to work this morning to say that he was worried about a girl.’ She glanced at the statement, and began to read aloud.
‘I saw the car arrive at the boating lake at about half past eight. There were two people in it, a man and a woman. When it left at approximately nine o’clock, only the man was in it. I took the number of the car in case something had happened.’ She looked up at Lloyd. ‘He didn’t have anything to do with it?’ she asked.
‘Not as far as we can tell – he didn’t come last night because he thought we’d laugh at him. But he was worried about it all night, and so he came in first thing this morning.’
‘Do you believe him?’
Lloyd made a face. ‘I’m not sure. I thought we could go and have a talk with him this afternoon – I haven’t seen him myself, anyway. But Tom saw him – he thinks he’s telling the truth.’ He sighed. ‘I’m not so sure – maybe he and Wade were up there, and he got cold feet this morning. I’ve got someone hanging about his house to make sure he doesn’t go underground like Wade.’
Judy looked back at her notes. ‘Sandwell, acting on Sklodowski’s information, went to the boating lake at ten past six, where he found the body of Julia Mitchell.’
‘Right. And we now know that she left Donald Mitchell’s house at half past seven, went with him to the boating lake, where they had a row, left and went to the Shorts’, where they arrived at about twenty past eight.’
‘How far is it from the boating lake to the Shorts’ house?’
‘About five minutes in a car,’ Lloyd said.
‘What were they doing there all that time? Having this row?’
‘Well – the Shorts think there might be rather more to it than that. It seems Donald wasn’t obeying all the commandments.’ Lloyd took from his pocket the pre-wrapped and sterilised sandwiches that the canteen had sold him, and began unenthusiastically to unwrap them. ‘They think it was Julia giving him the brush-off now that she was rich.’
‘Lovely – what with that and Wade being Mrs Mitchell’s fancy man – still. Go on.’
‘She stayed at the Shorts’ for less than two minutes, because Mitchell called her names. As she was leaving, Wade offered to drive her back – she wasn’t too keen on that, apparently, but he persuaded her.’
‘Did she know Wade?’
‘No. That was the first time they’d met.’
‘Just as well,’ said Judy dryly.
Lloyd bit into his plastic sandwich. ‘You can only tell by the colour whether it’s ham or cheese,’ he complained, opening it gingerly to see what colour this one was. It was pink, with a tiny white border. ‘Donald Mitchell stayed at the Shorts’ until after eleven, because of the storm. Though,’ he said, thoughtfully, ‘Elaine Short did tell me to ask Helen Mitchell where she was – apparently she couldn’t be raised.’
‘They’ve found her clothes, by the way,’ Judy said. ‘And the preliminary medical report confirms the doctor’s theory that there was no sexual assault. It says, in fact, that the clothes were removed with care.’
Lloyd sighed. ‘Blows my theory, though,’ he said. Wade, turned rapist and killer by the death of his wife in a car crash for which he felt responsible. Nice and neat. Then he brightened. ‘No assault, but—’
‘No sexual activity before or after death,’ Judy quoted. ‘See for yourself.’
Frowning, Lloyd read the short, much qualified report. If there was no sexual activity, why didn’t she have any clothes on?
‘It wasn’t that hot,’ he said. ‘Unless—’ But he decided to keep it to himself for the moment.
‘Unless what?’ Judy asked eagerly.
He leant over conspiratorially. ‘I’m not sure. I’ll tell you later.’ He laughed at her aggravated expression. ‘A man’s got to retain some mystery,’ he said, with a toss of the head.
Donald slept in the chair, the Observer having slipped from his grasp to the floor. He hadn’t eaten lunch, but he looked better than he had, Helen thought, as his deep regular breathing filled the room. The wind moved into the fresh to strong league, catching the window which wasn’t fastened properly, and as she closed it, Donald woke and stretched.
‘That’s better,’ he said, instantly awake, as he always was. He picked up the paper and folded it. ‘Has Martin told you about last night?’ he asked.
