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

by Jill McGown

The forensic reports next. They confirmed that she had been in the café; prints matching those found on the steering wheel of Wade’s car, on the whisky bottle taken from the garage, and on the shaving mirror taken from Wade’s house were found in the café in a number of places, including the door into the boatshed, the counter, and the front door. A jacket which had been identified as Wade’s was also found in the café. From the position of the prints on the table, it seemed that he had picked it up and righted it after it had fallen. Another set of prints had yet to be identified; Mr Donald Mitchell would be asked to give a set of prints for elimination purposes. Several prints were found in the boatshed, which had been operational that day, but no clear prints matching any found in the café. Fibres matching those of the deceased’s jacket had been found in Wade’s car, and a set of unidentified prints on the dashboard. The deceased’s prints were not found in the car.

  Judy looked up. ‘Did you read that bit?’ she asked, as Lloyd put the phone down. ‘About her prints not being found in Wade’s car?’

  ‘Yes – but I don’t think it means much, really. If he’s a door opener, for instance. Opens the door – all she has to do is get in. Opens the door for her to leave – and she gets out. She wouldn’t have to touch anything that would leave any prints.’

  Judy pursed her lips. ‘What about the other prints, though?’

  ‘We’ll have to see what Wade says about them. Might be his sister’s, for all we know. We can check that, unless he enlightens us first.’

  ‘You don’t think he could have gone up there with someone else altogether?’ Judy found herself hoping that he had, and didn’t know why.

  ‘I hope not,’ Lloyd said, smiling, ‘or we’d better start looking for another body – he came back without her, remember.’

  ‘And he’s disappeared,’ Judy said, resignedly. ‘I think he must have gone up there with her.’

  ‘Don’t sound so wistful. You haven’t even met him and you’re beginning to sound like his sister. Chris didn’t do it.’

  Judy looked at him. ‘Tell me honestly,’ she said. ‘Are you convinced that he did?’

  ‘She was dead by nine o’clock – right? He took her up there at half past eight. Or at the very least, he left the Shorts’ house with her at twenty past, and was at the café by half past. What else is there to think?’

  ‘He could have dropped her off there, and gone home.’

  ‘Stopping only to leave his jacket and his prints? And anyway, she was dead by the time he left – these people leave a margin for error – you know that.’

  Judy accepted that her theory didn’t really hold water.

  ‘I’ve just asked Mitchell to come in,’ he said. ‘To establish that the other set of prints in the café are his. If they are—’ he shrugged. ‘Like I said, all we have to do is find Wade.’

  Donald went into the kitchen, where Helen was washing up.

  ‘They want me to go in,’ he said. ‘To have my fingerprints taken.

  Helen turned round. ‘Why?’

  ‘Elimination, he says. So that they can sort out what’s what at the café.’ He poured himself some more tea. ‘Do you want another cup? It’s still hot.’

  ‘No, thank you. Did he say anything else?’

  ‘Not really. Just that they would be destroyed immediately.’ He laughed. ‘In case I commit a crime some time in the future. It wouldn’t be playing the game, you see, if they already had my fingerprints.’ He stirred his tea. ‘And they want to clear up a couple of things about Julia, apparently. So I’ll pop up there, and then I’ll go straight for my train – unless you want me here for any reason?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’ Helen looked pale and drawn.

  ‘He says someone will be coming here some time this morning to have another word with you – but you won’t need me for that, will you?’

  Helen agreed that she wouldn’t, and Donald went to get ready.

  He wondered what they wanted to know about Julia. Probably something he couldn’t tell them. They seemed to think he knew her every move. Including, he remembered, her father’s hotel in Spain. He had decided to tell them about the will – it wouldn’t really do for them to find out from someone else. It might look a bit odd.

  ‘I’m going to tell them about the money,’ he said to Helen as she passed him in the hall. He shrugged on his raincoat. ‘I think I’d better, don’t you?’

  ‘What’s it got to do with them?’ Helen asked, with an automatic privacy preserving reaction.

  ‘Nothing. But I think I’d better – just so that they know all the facts. You don’t mind, do you?’

  Helen made a shrugging gesture, and he assumed that she didn’t mind.

  Chris opened his eyes, which met the rusting walls. He blinked for a moment, then tried to move, but every muscle ached from the exertions of the night. He sat up slowly, light-headed and sore. His ankle throbbed painfully as he tried to stand, and he fell back on to the bench, his back against the moist wall. The swimming sensation left him at last, as he opened his eyes again. At least he didn’t feel sick any more. He felt exhausted, and frightened, but he didn’t feel sick. He took a deep breath, and launched himself out into the open, stumbling round, searching for something that would serve as a walking stick. Hopping from tree to tree, his hands clutching the wet bark, he scanned the ground until at last he saw a thin branch long enough and strong enough to support him.

  The rain was falling in a steady drizzle as he made rather quicker progress through the trees back to his den. He couldn’t make it up to the town. He’d wait there until he saw a policeman. He was bound to see one sooner or later.

  ‘Did they come here at all to your knowledge, Mrs Mitchell?’

  Helen wasn’t sure how good she was going to be at lying to this efficient young woman with the frank brown eyes.

  ‘No – but they could have. I wasn’t here all the time.’

  ‘Oh?’ Sergeant Hill seemed to be showing nothing more than polite interest.

  They were in the sitting room, and the sergeant sat where Chris had. Helen looked out at the garden, which sloped gently towards the pine wood, and she wondered where he was, hiding in its denseness. She wished she was out there, walking through its green solitude, dreaming of life as it should be.

  Life as it was sat opposite her, pen in hand, notebook on the coffee table, smart and cool and organised. Her life, Helen felt sure, wouldn’t dare to have messy edges.

  ‘Yes. I had to take a friend to the station. She decided to get the earlier train – the 8.50. We left just after Donald phoned for Julia. About half past, I suppose. Perhaps a little later.’

  ‘Do you know why your husband wanted to speak to Julia?’

  Helen picked up her cigarettes. ‘They’d had an argument – he wanted to apologise, I believe.’ She felt guilty even when she was telling the truth. She lit a cigarette, and waited for the next question. The sergeant was writing it all down, and she was talking too much. Don’t volunteer information, she told herself. Let her ask.

  ‘Could I have your friend’s name and address, please?’

  ‘Is that really necessary? I’d much rather she wasn’t dragged into this—’

  ‘I’m afraid so, Mrs Mitchell. We have to check.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because all that we know for a fact is that your sister-in-law is dead, and that Mr Wade is missing. We don’t know if he’s still alive – so we have to know what everyone was doing at the material time.’

  Helen reluctantly agreed that that seemed reasonable. Poor Margaret – she only came for the day, and now she was going to get policemen demanding to know her movements. Margaret was an old school friend, with whom Helen had kept up for the thirty-five years that had passed since their hockey-playing days. She wished she were here now, so down to earth and sensible – she’d know how to deal with this. She wouldn’t feel afraid of a young woman with a notebook and pencil.

  Helen told the sergeant Margaret’s name and addres
s, with a heavy heart. Her opinion of Julia hadn’t exactly been glowing, either, she remembered, with a smile. As soon as she had established that Julia and Helen weren’t bosom friends, they had had a lovely gossip about her. She stubbed out her cigarette.

  ‘So – you ran your friend to the station, and she caught her train. What time did you get back?’

  ‘About half past nine,’ Helen said. ‘Maybe twenty-five to ten.’

  The sergeant looked up then, with an enquiring look.

  Don’t volunteer, Helen told herself again. Let her ask. Let her ask.

  ‘It was Stansfield station?’ she asked, pleasantly enough.

  ‘Yes.’

  Was it her imagination, or was Sergeant Hill allowing irritation to cross her composed features?

  ‘And what time did you leave the station?’ Still the routine pleasantness. No bare light bulbs, no rubber hoses. Just an attractive young woman, in Helen’s own dining room, wearing a cool, pastel-striped shirt that in other circumstances Helen. would have asked her about.

  ‘I’m not sure – I stayed there a few moments. A couple of minutes to nine, I imagine.’

  ‘So you didn’t come straight home?’

  ‘Yes.’ She had to enlarge on that. ‘I did, but the storm broke as I came into Thorpe Wood Road, and I couldn’t see a thing. I waited in the lay-by until the rain had eased up.’

  ‘I see.’ She smiled at Helen. ‘So you were at the lay-by at about – what – five past nine, or so? Possibly earlier?’

  ‘I must have been.’

  ‘Did you see Mr Wade’s car – or any car, for that matter?’

  Helen’s heart was beating so loudly that she was sure it could be heard outside the room. Her throat muscles tightened. How much of the truth?

  ‘No,’ she said, trying to sound natural, and failing. She twisted her ring round and round. When was she going to stop asking questions?

  ‘Why didn’t you mention this to the inspector yesterday?’ she was asking.

  ‘I didn’t think. I’m sorry.’

  ‘But we were asking for anyone who was in the area – you did realise that you might be a witness?’

  ‘No – the radio said anyone who had seen them. I didn’t see them.’

  The sergeant seemed to accept this, and moved on.

  ‘You got back to the house at about half past nine or so – I believe your husband had been trying to contact you?’

  How did they know that, for crying out loud? ‘Yes,’ she said grudgingly.

  ‘Why?’

  It’s none of your business, Helen thought. Aloud, she said: ‘To tell me he was waiting for the storm to ease off, and he’d be later than he thought.’

  ‘Did you discuss Mrs Mitchell?’

  ‘No. Well – yes, he asked if she was there, and I said not yet, or something.’

  Sergeant Hill wrote something in her notebook, and Helen stood up, stiff with tension. ‘Would you like a cup of tea, Sergeant Hill?’

  ‘No thank you, Mrs Mitchell. I don’t want to keep you any longer than necessary.’

  Helen cast an almost furtive glance at the clock. Nearly eleven o’clock. She’d been here for three-quarters of an hour.

  ‘Soon be finished,’ Sergeant Hill said cheerfully, as though she’d read her mind.

  It was almost over then. Helen sat down again quickly, feeling giddy with relief.

  ‘I’d just like you to think back to when you came back from the station,’ she said evenly, as though the subject hadn’t come up before. ‘Did you see any cars on the way back?’

  Helen didn’t answer, as she tried desperately to think of something to say.

  ‘Mrs Mitchell?’ There was a no-nonsense air about her now, like a nanny.

  ‘Of course there were cars,’ she said testily. ‘Am I supposed to remember them all?’

  ‘What ones do you remember?’ She spoke in the same, even tones.

  What difference does it make?’ Helen jumped up, and took another cigarette out of the packet. ‘You’ve made your mind up, anyway. You’ve given his description on the radio – you’re talking about using dogs!’

  The sergeant also stood, and offered her a cigarette lighter.

  Helen waved it away, half-turning so that she was not facing her inquisitor.

  ‘We want to talk to him,’ she said. ‘And either something’s happened to him too, or he’s hiding from us. Whichever – we do have to look for him.’ She sat down again, composed and collected, and looked up at Helen. ‘Did you see Mr Wade’s car on Saturday night?’

  Helen found a box of matches, and shook it, only to find that it was empty. With an exclamation of annoyance, she threw it down on to the table, where it bounced off and fell to the ground.

  Coolly, as ever, Sergeant Hill took out the lighter again, suggesting with her eyes that Helen sit down. Despite being irritated almost beyond endurance, Helen complied, and Sergeant Hill flicked the lighter, which lit first time. Helen knew that if the roles had been reversed, her lighter would have clicked impotently and destroyed the whole effect. The flame burned steadily, and her need for a cigarette overcame her desire to leave her sitting there like the Statue of Liberty.

  ‘Did you see Mr Wade’s car?’

  Helen inhaled deeply, and expelled blue-grey smoke into the fresh, sunlit room. It hung almost motionless in the shaft of light from the window, and it was through the haze of smoke and sun that she looked defiantly at the sergeant, a small muscle working at the side of her face. She had been lulled into a false sense of security, and she resented it.

  ‘There were cars,’ she said. ‘Other cars.’

  ‘Tell me about them.’ She held her pen at the ready over her notebook.

  ‘I don’t know – there was a motorbike just beyond the lay-by as I drew in. They were stopped just by the pathway to the boating lake.’

  ‘They?’

  ‘Two people – a boy and a girl.’ Helen smoked quickly in between sentences. ‘And another car – I don’t know what kind. It was open, in all that rain, and the driver was getting soaked.’ She was talking quickly now – too quickly, the words tumbling out. ‘That was while I had the windscreen wipers going, but then I switched them off and I didn’t see anything else. I wasn’t taking particular—’ she stopped, perilously close to tears. ‘Why couldn’t it have been one of them? Why does it have to be Chris?’ She turned her head away to try to hide the tears.

  ‘It doesn’t have to be,’ the sergeant said. ‘That’s why I’m asking you what you saw.’

  Liar, thought Helen, looking back at her as a kind of control asserted itself.

  ‘What colour was the car with the open top?’

  ‘Dark – I’m not sure what colour. It was dark.’ Smoke came with the words. ‘I mean – it was night time, and the car was dark.’

  ‘Did you see Mr Wade’s car?’ Still exactly the same tone of voice, as though it was the first time she’d asked.

  ‘No.’

  ‘I know Mr Wade is a friend of yours,’ she said.

  Helen drew herself up. She would have no criticism of their friendship, not from her or anyone else. ‘We’ve made no secret of it,’ she said. ‘My husband told your Inspector.’

  ‘You might think you’re helping him, but you’re not – believe me, you’re not.’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean.’ Smoke curled up from the cigarette between her fingers, and twisted into thinning strands.

  ‘We have witnesses, Mrs Mitchell. Witnesses who saw Mr Wade’s car leave the boating lake at nine o’clock, and turn right towards the village. Towards his garage, we presume, since he was seen there later. Towards the station, come to that. Did you see his car?’

  It was her house. She could just walk out of the room. She could tell Sergeant Hill to leave – she had the right. ‘I don’t have to answer you,’ she said.

  ‘But you do. You know you do. You can’t withhold information, Mrs Mitchell. I don’t think I have to tell you that.’

  He
len made a small, defeated noise. ‘All right. Yes, I saw his car. Does that satisfy you?’

  ‘When did you see it?’ Her expression hadn’t changed. No triumph.

  ‘Just before it rained. He passed me. That doesn’t mean he killed her.’

  ‘Did he see you?’

  ‘I don’t know. It was at the mini-roundabout where Thorpe Wood Road and Main Street join – he was waiting for a car. I could see him, but I don’t think he saw me.’ She thought for a moment, then realised that her statement was misleading. ‘I don’t mean I could see him – I could see the car. I didn’t see who was inside it, so I assumed Julia was with him.’ She saw the look on the sergeant’s face. ‘I’m not just saying that,’ she said. ‘I just saw the car. It was at the opposite side of the road, on the other side of the roundabout, and there was a car going round between us. When Donald rang, I said Chris must have found no one in and taken her back to his house – I just assumed she was with him.’

  The sergeant wrote all this down with what seemed to Helen like exaggerated care.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Helen said. ‘I should have told you in the first place. I just didn’t know what to do.’

  ‘We do understand, Mrs Mitchell.’

  ‘We!’ Helen put as much contempt into the single syllable as she could. ‘Why do you people always call yourselves “we”?’

  ‘All right – I understand, then.’

  Helen shook her head.

  ‘Sir?’

  Lloyd looked up, and then up again. ‘Yes, Constable Sandwell.’

  ‘I was just thinking – do you remember when they built that road?’

  ‘Which road would that be?’ Lloyd stood up to mark off on the map the latest part of the wood to be searched. Turning to face Sandwell, he decided to sit down again, to minimise the inadequacy of his height.

  ‘Thorpe Wood Road. They built it alongside the wood, and then they planted the pine trees. It would be about ten years ago.’

  ‘No. I’d left Stansfield then – I was in the big city. What about it?’

  ‘Well, sir,’ Sandwell began. ‘I was about nine or ten then.’

  Lloyd groaned.

  ‘Sorry, sir.’ Sandwell smiled. ‘But when they’d finished, there was one of these workmen’s huts left on site. And there were arguments about which of the contractors had used it, and which should move it and so on – and me and my mates used to play in it. Nobody would do anything about it – and we used it for ages. When they began planting the new trees – to extend the pine wood, they shifted it back from the road, and eventually you couldn’t see it at all. I don’t think anyone ever moved it.’