A Trio of Murders: A Perfect Match, Redemption, Death of a Dancer

by Jill McGown

  Judy sighed. ‘Paul said there had been trouble – he very nearly got himself arrested pretending he was there on his own.’

  ‘He would.’ She didn’t look entirely grateful for Paul’s efforts on her behalf. ‘What have you told my dad?’

  ‘Just that you were seen in the area. Not where you were, or who you were with.’

  ‘He’ll find out though, won’t he?’ She made a face. ‘I’ll have to tell him before he reads it in the paper.’ She seemed to have resigned herself to that; she faced Judy brightly. ‘Go on then – what do you want to know?’

  ‘What you saw.’

  ‘Right. A car drove up the lane – it’s a pathway, really, and stopped just opposite us because they had to open the gate. It drove on, and when it came back later, Paul said only the man was in it. There had been a girl in the passenger seat when it went in there.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  Diane looked at her more in sorrow than in anger. ‘How do you suppose? I saw her, that’s how.’

  Judy took out her notebook, and made a production out of consulting it. ‘What time was this, Diane?’

  ‘Half past eight,’ she said immediately. ‘When the car came.’

  ‘It was dark then, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Yes – I know what you’re going to say. But when he got out to open the gate, the car light came oh. And I could see her as well as I can see you now. She was blonde – good-looking, considering.’

  ‘Considering what? Her great age?’

  Diane laughed. ‘Sorry. She was about your age, I’d think.’ She thought for a moment. ‘But I didn’t just mean that – she looked a bit, well – scared.’

  Judy gave Diane the old-fashioned look with which she could infuriate Lloyd on one of his flights of fancy.

  ‘She did! It’s not because I know what happened now – I noticed at the time, really, I did!’

  Judy made a note to come back to that later. ‘Then what?’ she asked.

  ‘Two minutes past nine, the car came back down. Paul was over by the bike – his motor bike, and so he was quite close to it. And he came back and told me that the girl wasn’t in it. He started to worry about it, and wanted to go up and check, but I stopped him.’ She dropped her eyes. ‘I didn’t know,’ she said, ‘I’d never have just gone away if I’d thought anything like that had happened. But Paul – he’s a big kid, really – you’ll know that if you’ve talked to him – and he likes making mysteries. You know, UFOs and the Bermuda Triangle and all that sort of thing. He’d be just as likely to believe the Martians had got her.’

  ‘You didn’t believe him?’

  Diane slid off the bed, and tried to put her feelings into words several times before she actually succeeded.

  ‘I believed him,’ she said finally, looking out of the window, her back to Judy. ‘I believed he hadn’t seen her. But I didn’t think for a minute that anything had happened to her – I thought she’d just bent down, or it was a short cut to where she lived, and he’d dropped her off there.’

  Judy smiled. ‘These were your theories, were they?’

  ‘They weren’t theories! I just didn’t think—’ she broke off. ‘I was wrong. I’m sorry.’ She turned towards Judy, her face worried. ‘Was she – I mean, if we’d gone up, would she have been all right?’

  ‘I doubt it very much, but we don’t know exactly when she died yet. She was strangled – I expect whoever did it made sure.’

  Diane sat down again, her face pale. ‘That’s all there is,’ she said. ‘Paul had taken his number. I thought he might ring up, not give his name – but I should have known he couldn’t do that.’

  ‘Did you see the driver?’

  ‘Not really. Just a man – I couldn’t describe him. I saw her, that’s all.’

  ‘What were you and Paul doing when this car arrived, and left?’

  Diane raised her eyebrows. ‘What do you think?’

  ‘Well,’ Judy said. ‘That is what I thought. But if you were – let’s say otherwise engaged – how come you know exactly when the car came, exactly when it left – what she looked like right down to the expression on her face?’

  ‘It’s got nothing to do with you,’ Diane said sulkily.

  ‘No, it hasn’t, normally.’ Judy stood, since standing seemed to carry rather more authority than perching on the edge of Diane’s bed. ‘And if no one had been found dead, it would have continued to have nothing to do with me. But Mrs Mitchell was strangled. And you and Paul have told me what you saw.’ She stepped closer to the bed. ‘And what you saw seems to have been a murderer arriving with his victim, and leaving without her. Which is rather important evidence – would you agree?’

  Diane didn’t answer, or look at her.

  ‘When you are giving evidence in court, the defence will want to know how come you noticed so much, when you could have been forgiven for not noticing anything. And I want to know now.’

  ‘It was awful,’ Diane said, addressing her pillow. ‘We’d never—’ She looked up then, with a quick smile. ‘Well, not awful, but not very good. I was frightened someone would see us, and it was too hot, and uncomfortable, and—’ She gave a little, nervous laugh. ‘When that car came, I nearly died of fright – and then I thought it was coming back again, because it stopped half way along – I heard its brakes. I didn’t want to do it then, but I’d said.’ She looked back at her pillow then, safe from any reaction. ‘So we stayed.’ Her face coloured. ‘Will I have to tell people this in court?’

  ‘You might have to,’ Judy said, coming back and sitting on the bed. ‘It depends how much other evidence we get.’ She touched the girl’s shoulder. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘But they will want to know how you could be so sure of the times.’

  ‘I’m supposed to be in by half past nine.’ She stared hard at the pillow. ‘I kept asking Paul the time – I was trying to get out of it,’ she said, embarrassed. ‘I made him show me his watch when the car came.’

  She anticipated Judy’s next question.

  ‘It lights up – you know.’ She paused. ‘And then afterwards I’d got all bits of dead grass on me, and I was trying to get them off. He was over at the bike, and he couldn’t get it started, and I didn’t dare come home late, not after—’ She looked up. ‘I asked him what time it was, and he said it was two minutes past nine. And that’s when the car came back.’

  It had been difficult, and Judy gave her a little pat. ‘Did you see the car leave?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes, but I was too far away to see who was in it.’

  ‘Thank you. We will want you to make a formal statement, but you won’t have to put all that in it.’ She smiled. ‘Paul seems a nice lad – why doesn’t your father want you to see him?’

  Diane closed her eyes. ‘It’s stupid,’ she said. ‘We’ve always gone around together. I just thought that if it was getting serious, well, I should – you know. I went on the pill, and my mum found them.’ She opened her eyes. ‘She told him, and he went mad. I told him nothing had happened, but he didn’t believe me.’ She shrugged. ‘So on Saturday I thought – why not?’

  ‘We won’t say any more to your dad than we have to,’ Judy said. ‘But you’d better tell him something before he finds out some other way.’

  ‘Yes.’ Diane wasn’t really listening.

  ‘And don’t worry,’ Judy said, giving a little wink. ‘It gets better with practice.’

  Diane looked up. ‘It couldn’t get much worse,’ she said, with a wry smile. ‘It was awful.’

  Donald sipped his coffee. ‘That was a lovely meal,’ he said to Helen, who always found more solace in cooking than in eating, and hadn’t really done hers justice. ‘It deserves a brandy,’ he said. ‘Would you like one?’

  ‘Yes please. You don’t think that policeman will be back now do you?’

  ‘No.’ Donald consulted his watch. ‘It’s almost ten o’clock. Anyway, a brandy will hardly knock you sideways.’ He poured generous brandies and handed one to Helen.
‘I don’t quite know how to say this,’ he said. ‘It doesn’t seem the right time, but I don’t suppose there can be a right time when something like this happens.’

  Helen, immediately alarmed, almost choked on her first sip. ‘What? Has something else happened?’

  ‘Yes,’ Donald said. He really didn’t know how to put it. The only way was straight out. ‘I don’t suppose you knew – I only know because I’m his executor. It’s about Charles’s will, really. I only thought of it as I came in after seeing Julia. We’re rich, Helen. We’re very rich.’

  Helen took another drink while his words sank in. ‘Because Julia’s dead?’ she asked.

  Donald nodded. ‘Charles left Julia a great deal of money,’ he said, ‘which is hers – I mean, it’ll go to her father, or whoever has a better claim. But the bulk of the estate was in trust.’

  Helen frowned. ‘Why?’

  ‘It’s not unusual – I’d have advised him the same way. You see, he made the will – what – when did they get married? Five years ago? Six?’

  ‘Five – last March.’

  ‘He made it when they got married, and he expected there to be children. To be honest, I think that’s why he married her, despite all the comments.’

  ‘Mostly from you,’ Helen reminded him.

  ‘I know, I know. But it did invite comment. I really believe he thought she was expecting his baby. I don’t mean he wouldn’t have married her otherwise, but she might not have found it too easy.’

  ‘You mean she tricked him?’

  ‘Quite,’ Donald said. ‘And when he made the will, he assumed children. And so he left her very well off, but he left the rest of the estate to any children of the marriage. He hated all that, you know. It was all I could do to get him to make a will in the first place, and then he had to change it all.’ He could see Charles making a nice, general all-purpose will when he got married, so that he wouldn’t have to keep coming back to change it.

  ‘If there were no children,’ he carried on, ‘then the money was to be held in trust for Julia – in other words, she couldn’t use it without the say-so of the trustees, and they were his solicitor and the bank. So that she wouldn’t do anything silly with it.’

  ‘So what happens now that Julia’s dead?’ Helen asked. ‘How do we end up with it?’

  ‘If Julia died, it was to come to me – just that. Not held in trust – he presumably thought I wouldn’t do anything too silly. If I predeceased Julia, which at the time would have seemed more than likely, then it had to go to the boys, and so on. Keeping it in the family.’

  ‘So you get it now?’

  Donald nodded. ‘When I went up to see his solicitor, I read that bit, but I just laughed. It was so like Charles, covering every eventuality he could think of with one great big complicated will. When I remembered, I rang Harper to check. And it’s true,’ he said. ‘We’re very rich.’ He’d leave the rest until later.

  The wind whistled through the trees, moving their branches, filling the air with rustling and sighing. The wood, black and shifting, looked like a wood where someone could die.

  The lake, breaking the reflection of the stars into a thousand pieces as the water rippled and turned, looked like a bad place for ducks. But the ducks bobbed and weaved on the water, grimly seeing the night out.

  The café stood dark and empty, its door nailed up, its secrets given up.

  All, that is, except one.

  Chapter Five

  Sergeant Jack Woodford knocked and came in. ‘Good evening,’ he said to Judy, then looked across at Lloyd, who was stifling a yawn.

  ‘I’m on nightshift,’ he said. ‘What’s your excuse?’ Lloyd waved a non-committal hand.

  ‘It’s quarter to eleven,’ Jack persisted. ‘How long have you two been working?’

  ‘Don’t work it out,’ Judy warned. ‘It’ll only make us feel worse than ever.’

  ‘I,’ said Jack, ‘have taken pity on the defective branch of the police farce, and any minute now coffee should be appearing—’ he twisted round and looked at the door. ‘I don’t do it often,’ he told Judy, his eyes still on the door, ‘so grovel if you like.’

  ‘Can I just be pathetically grateful?’

  The door swung open, and the young constable whose name Judy could never remember walked in backwards with three steaming mugs on a tray. ‘Coffee, sir,’ he said awkwardly, having completed a tricky turn to face Lloyd.

  ‘You’ve got it wrong,’ Jack said. ‘How many times do I have to tell you? You walk out backwards.’

  Lloyd smiled tiredly, and reached out a hand for his coffee. Jack was very jovial tonight – he didn’t know whether he could take it. He didn’t know why he was still there. It would be a damn sight easier if they didn’t know who they were looking for; he could be doing something then. Something he could get his teeth into. As it was, no one needed him on a door-to-door. Garages and outhouses could get searched without his experienced hand in the matter. All he could do was speak to the people who might be hiding him, and build up the case for the prosecution. And he could do precious little of that until he got the full post mortem results and the forensic reports. Finding him was the only real obstacle, and that just took manpower.

  He drank some coffee, burning his mouth. Since they had left the MacPhersons, he and Judy had sorted out the various accounts of what had happened and the only question remaining was why. Why had Wade suddenly turned on a total stranger and strangled her? Why was she naked? Why had her clothes been rolled up into a bundle? Why were her underclothes missing?

  ‘The reason I came in,’ Jack was saying, ‘was that we got a telephone call from an anonymous caller saying that Wade had been seen at the Queen’s Estate shops. Probably rubbish, but I’ve sent a car.’

  ‘Marvellous how they all know who we’re looking for,’ Lloyd said. ‘That’s the fourth time he’s been seen today.’

  ‘Why don’t you go home? We’ll let you know if anything happens, don’t worry. You first, then the Super, so long as you don’t tell him.’

  ‘I’ll wait and see how the Queen’s thing turns out.’ He did know why he was staying. He didn’t want to go home – he was turning into the kind of policeman who wanted to bring a sleeping bag in and never leave the station. The kind of policeman he swore he’d never be. Or maybe it was because Judy was here – he’d prefer to think that that was why.

  ‘Why are you still here?’ he asked Judy. ‘You’ve been up even longer than me.’

  Judy used her eyebrows in a sort of facial shrug. ‘I thought we’d find him, I suppose,’ she said. ‘And it could all be wrapped up tonight.’

  It didn’t sound much more convincing than his reasons. He wondered – hoped, perhaps, that she was staying because he was there.

  ‘We’ll see what happens about this so-called sighting,’ he said. ‘Then go.’

  ‘Do you want a lift?’ Judy asked. ‘I take it your car’s still out of commission?’

  ‘I do, and it is,’

  Jack left to see how the lads were getting on in Queen’s Estate, and came back to report a false alarm.

  ‘Right,’ said Lloyd, putting on his raincoat.

  He and Judy walked out of the station into the wind that swirled the rubbish round the car park. Judy’s Ford Anglia had seen better days, and Lloyd positively winced at its general condition.

  ‘If you want a lift in a clean car, you’d better ask someone else,’ she said. ‘It’s the dirt that holds this one together.’

  He lifted the door slightly before pulling it shut, as he had learned to do now. ‘Why don’t you buy a new one? A newer one, at any rate?’ he asked.

  ‘I like this one – it gets me where I’m going, which is more than you can say for yours at the moment.’ She started the engine, a process not to be undertaken lightly, but which with patience usually worked.

  ‘I just wish I knew why,’ Lloyd said.

  ‘Why I won’t buy a new car?’

  He leant back, and rubbed
the back of his neck. ‘Why someone would want to kill someone else that he’d known for about five minutes. I’d like to know if we’re dealing with a nutcase or what. You saw her – there certainly wasn’t much of a struggle. So he must have taken her by surprise, and just killed her. No rape – no nothing. Just killed her, as though he’d planned it.’

  Judy moved off. ‘Maybe he did,’ she said. ‘Except that he apparently didn’t know the girl from Adam – I think we should look more closely there.’

  Lloyd nodded. They drove out into the deserted town centre— streets. The pubs were closed, and their customers had dispersed. At eleven o’clock, the town could have been innocent of inhabitants.

  ‘Or he just had a brainstorm,’ Judy suggested.

  ‘But what sort? He took her clothes off – or she did. Why? Nothing happened.’

  ‘That might have been the problem. We’ll know better when we get the post mortem.’ Judy drove past the Mitchell’s house, and towards the boating lake, along the tree-lined road to where Lloyd lived, in a flat that she had so far resisted visiting. Lloyd felt that tonight was not the night to try again.

  ‘Suppose he did know her?’ Judy said, pursuing her theory. ‘That could be why she didn’t want him to give her a lift – why she didn’t want to stay in the first place. She did know him, and she wasn’t supposed to – two-timing Donald?’

  ‘I’ve thought of that,’ he sighed. ‘However unlikely, I’ve thought of it. But if that was the case, and he just wanted her dead for some reason, why go to the trouble of making it look like some nut had killed her, and then run away? Surely he’d just have gone home, or back to his sister’s, said she’d walked, or—’ he broke off. ‘What am I doing? I don’t discuss work when I’m finished for the day. Did Michael get off all right, then?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ she said, with an edge to her voice. ‘Michael got off all right. Doesn’t he always?’

  Lloyd wondered, not for the first time, why she had married Michael, whom at best she merely tolerated. He had known Judy a long time, and he knew when she married that it wasn’t likely to work. But you didn’t say that to people – you just said you hoped they would be very happy. And he had hoped she would – if she had been, he wouldn’t be making even the gentle overtures that he was now. Would he? He liked to think that he wouldn’t.