by Jill McGown
Lloyd groaned. ‘It only happened today,’ he said. ‘And it’s Christmas Day, Freddie – a day we simple folk celebrate.’
‘Until we’ve got them, you don’t know if you’re looking for an intruder or not,’ Freddie said.
‘Intruder!’ Lloyd snorted. ‘It’s a domestic, Freddie. Pure and simple.’
‘Like your theory?’
Lloyd sighed. ‘Don’t remind me,’ he said. ‘I’ve just sent Sergeant Hill to lean on someone that you tell me was in a pub with a hundred witnesses when the deceased met his maker.’
Freddie bristled slightly. ‘Let’s hope she left her rubber truncheon at home then,’ he said. ‘Look – you shouldn’t have gone on my estimate at the scene. I told you it was rough – I even told you it could be down to eight hours.’
Lloyd held up a conciliatory hand. ‘I know,’ he said. ‘I know. But young Mrs Elstow is not telling the truth about what went on, wherever she was when he was killed,’ he added.
‘When did he stop beating his wife?’ Freddie said.
‘Quite.’ Lloyd shook his head. ‘How you can make jokes in a morgue is beyond me,’ he said, looking at his watch. Four forty-three. Surely Judy would have been and gone by the time he got to the station. ‘I’m off,’ he said. ‘Enjoy yourself with the rest of Mr Elstow.’
‘I shall,’ said Freddie cheerfully. ‘I shall.’
‘It’s Graham’s father,’ said Marian to Joanna. ‘On the phone. I didn’t say you were here.’
She had almost gone in when she’d heard Joanna crying. She had gone in as soon as Sergeant Hill had left. But Joanna had said that everything was fine. It had just caught up with her, she had said. Sergeant Hill had comforted her, she’d said. She hadn’t made her cry. So all that worrying had been in vain.
‘I’ll talk to him,’ said Joanna. ‘I think it’ll be about the funeral arrangements. I called him, but he wasn’t there.’
The funeral. Marian hadn’t given it a thought. It was as if once they had removed his body from the house, that was that. But it wasn’t, of course. It was very far from being that.
‘No one can do anything until the police say so, anyway,’ said Joanna. ‘I ought to go and see him, really.’
‘Yes,’ said Marian absently. ‘Perhaps you ought.’
She could hear the rise and fall of Joanna’s voice on the phone. It would be over, she told herself. One day, it would all be over, and they could get back to normal.
‘The vicar,’ Eleanor said, in answer to the inevitable question that had been an unnaturally long time coming.
Penny’s smile faded. ‘The vicar?’ she repeated. ‘You didn’t tell me you knew them.’
‘I don’t really.’ Eleanor was very fond of her mother-in-law, who had been everything to her for the last two years: her mother, her friend, her adviser, a shoulder to cry on, a baby-sitter. But she was incurably interested in other people’s business.
‘Why was he here?’
Eleanor pushed her chair away from the table, and eyed the remains of the Christmas dinner. Tessa’s plate, abandoned in favour of Dumbo in the other room, was particularly uninviting. Two-year-olds had no preconceived notions about what you could eat with what.
‘We’ll get this done in no time,’ Penny said reassuringly, standing up. She hesitated. ‘You’re not—’ she began, then obviously decided that even she couldn’t continue that particular line of enquiry. ‘Why was he here?’ she asked, taking the direct approach.
‘They’d invited us over,’ Eleanor said. ‘He came to explain what had happened.’
‘Oh.’ Penny began to pile up plates. ‘Are you going to finish your pudding?’ she asked.
Eleanor shook her head.
‘I thought you were worried this morning. Why didn’t you tell me you knew them?’ She made a hideous pile of left-overs.
‘I didn’t want to worry you,’ Eleanor said. ‘One of us worrying was enough.’
‘Who was killed?’ Penny asked, her voice low.
‘I’m not sure,’ said Eleanor, departing from the truth. ‘He didn’t go into details. Someone who was visiting them.’
Penny tutted. ‘How did it happen?’ she asked.
‘They think it was a burglar.’
‘You mean someone just got in and killed someone?’ Penny pushed open the kitchen door. ‘Haven’t they caught anyone?’ she asked, alarmed.
‘No, I don’t think so.’ Eleanor picked up the cream jug and the barely-touched pudding. She didn’t know how much of this third-degree she could take.
‘I don’t like the idea of your being here alone,’ Penny said. ‘Why don’t you and Tessa come back with me? Spend the rest of the holiday in Stansfield?’
Eleanor managed a smile. ‘I’m not really on holiday except for today and tomorrow,’ she said.
‘It seems so lonely here,’ Penny persisted. ‘Tessa’s all on her own.’
‘Not usually. There’s the play-group – there are lots of children in the village.’
‘But for Christmas, I mean. The people next door to me have got a little boy a few months older than Tessa – that would be company for her, wouldn’t it?’
‘We’re perfectly all right here, Penny. We won’t be murdered in our beds, I promise.’
Penny sighed, and went into the kitchen. For a moment, all that could be heard was water running into the dish basin. Then it was turned off, and there was a little silence.
‘Someone was,’ she called through. ‘Don’t forget that.’
Chapter Five
‘Something odd,’ Jack Woodford said, as his head appeared round Lloyd’s door. ‘Got a minute?’
‘All the time you want,’ Lloyd said. ‘Something odd means we’re getting there.’
Jack looked less certain of that than Lloyd, as he came in, a sheet of paper in his hand.
Judy arrived before Jack had closed the door. ‘I thought I’d better report in,’ she said.
Lloyd had indeed successfully avoided her the day before, after his visit to the morgue; he had rather hoped that she wouldn’t come in today.
‘You thought you’d get away from your in-laws,’ said Jack.
‘That too,’ she confessed with a smile, taking off the new leather coat that she was wearing.
‘Jack’s about to give us something to go on,’ said Lloyd, glad that Jack was there. Their row had been yesterday; it seemed like a year ago. But it was still only Boxing Day, and this interminable festive season ground on around them, with no shops open and no proper programmes on the telly, even if he’d had the energy to watch.
Jack laid the sheet of paper on Lloyd’s desk. ‘My lads have been checking up on the people Mrs Wheeler visited,’ he said. ‘On Christmas Eve.’
Lloyd glanced down at the list. Beside the names, Jack had jotted down times.
‘They’re only approximate,’ Jack said, as Lloyd opened his mouth to ask. ‘People didn’t think to look at their watches in case the vicar’s wife needed an alibi for murder.’
‘No,’ said Lloyd.
‘But she says she left the vicarage at about ten to eight – right?’ He didn’t wait for the unnecessary confirmation. ‘And the earliest visit we can find is . . .’ He leant over, reading the sheet upside down. ‘Mrs Anthony,’ he said, running his finger down the list of names. ‘And that was at eight twenty-five. The thing is – Mrs Anthony’s house is in a row of cottages right beside the drive up to the vicarage.’
Lloyd remembered passing them just after they had spoken to the snow-plough crew.
‘If Mrs W. had gone on her hands and knees into a force eight,’ Jack went on, ‘she’d have taken no more than five minutes getting there. Which seems to my untrained eye to leave half an hour unaccounted for.’
‘Well, well, well,’ said Lloyd briskly, looking over at Judy. ‘I think we’d better go and talk to this Mrs Anthony – don’t you?’
On the way, Judy expanded a little on the notes she’d left him on her interview with Joanna. She ha
d obviously believed her; Lloyd trusted Judy’s instincts, but he had a question.
‘If she’d made it up with him,’ he asked, ‘why didn’t she go up to see him?’ He slowed down to let Judy read the numbers on the cottages.
‘Eleven, thirteen – seventeen must be that one with the yellow door,’ she said. ‘I don’t know. That is a bit odd.’
‘It’s not like you to miss a trick,’ he said.
She got out of the car without replying. He’d said it to annoy her. She had said nothing at all about their row, or about his parting shot. In fact, she was behaving as though nothing had happened, obeying Lloyd’s own rule that their private relationship mustn’t affect their work. But she was much more of a professional than he would ever be, and the ease with which she donned her policeman’s helmet irritated him. Irrationally, he conceded. But it did.
Mrs Anthony took some time to come to the door; when it opened, they saw a frail old lady backing her wheelchair away. Lloyd introduced himself and Judy, and they were shown into a small, neat living room.
‘Do you remember Mrs Wheeler coming to see you on Christmas Eve?’ Judy asked, raising her voice slightly, enunciating clearly.
Lloyd suppressed a smile as Mrs Anthony regarded Judy with a bleak eye. ‘I am almost eighty years old,’ she said. ‘I sometimes have to use this wheelchair. I would prefer to be thirty-five and walking about, like you, but I do assure you that neither of these disadvantages affects my hearing, my acumen, or my memory.’
Judy’s face grew pink. ‘Oh – I do apologise if I gave the impression—’
‘You did,’ said Mrs Anthony sharply.
It gave Lloyd just a little perverse pleasure to see the efficient Sergeant Hill so firmly on the carpet.
‘I’m sorry,’ Judy said.
‘And now that we have established that I can remember all the way back to the day before yesterday, what did you want to know?’
‘We’d like to know what time she got here,’ Lloyd asked.
‘Eight twenty-five. Between then and half past, that is,’ said Mrs Anthony, without hesitation.
‘Can you be sure about that?’ Judy asked.
‘What was the point of asking me if you don’t think I can tell the time?’ demanded Mrs Anthony.
Judy looked uncomfortable. ‘I just wondered how you could be so precise,’ she said.
‘Because the programme I was watching had just got to the end of part one,’ said Mrs Anthony, relenting slightly. ‘The advertisements were on when the doorbell rang, and I hoped that whoever it was wouldn’t stay. She did, though,’ she added.
‘How did she seem?’ Lloyd asked.
‘Not her usual self,’ said Mrs Anthony.
‘You know her quite well?’ asked Judy.
‘If I didn’t I wouldn’t know what her usual self was, would I?’ snapped the old lady. ‘I’ve known her all her life.’
Lloyd decided that he didn’t really like witnessing Judy being eaten for breakfast after all. ‘And what was her usual self?’ he asked.
The world-weary eyes regarded him. ‘She was always a very determined girl,’ she said, thoughtfully.
‘Oh?’ Lloyd, who had been standing by the radiator, came over and sat near to Mrs Anthony. ‘What makes you say that?’ he asked.
‘Poor George Wheeler,’ she said, smiling softly, as though at some memory, ‘I don’t imagine he’d still be a vicar if he hadn’t married Marian.’
A silence fell, and Judy jotted something down. She looked up, frowning slightly. ‘What do you mean, Mrs Anthony?’ she asked. ‘Why wouldn’t he still be a vicar?’
Mrs Anthony smiled her soft smile again, but the eyes remained lack-lustre. ‘Lack of faith,’ she said. ‘But Marian thought it was right to encourage George’s scepticism; she thought it made him more accessible. One of the boys. And Marian always thinks she’s right,’ she added.
‘And you don’t think she was right?’
Mrs Anthony raised her eyebrows, ‘I think a leaning toward religion is preferable in a vicar,’ she said, ‘I think if George had married someone else, he would have realised that a lot sooner than he has.’
‘You think he has realised now?’ asked Lloyd.
‘Oh yes,’ she said. ‘His sermon at the midnight service made that obvious. To me, at any rate.’
‘And what was his sermon?’
‘Being true to yourself,’ she said.
Judy and Lloyd exchanged glances as Mrs Anthony wheeled herself closer to the radiator. ‘Marian just wants people to be true to her,’ she said. ‘That’s all she asks. But she couldn’t protect George from his own thoughts,’ she said, turning up the temperature control. ‘She had a damn good try, though. I’ll give her that.’
Judy, perhaps a little apprehensively, looked up. ‘Do you think this has got something to do with what happened at the vicarage?’ she asked.
‘Let’s just say it doesn’t surprise me that you’re asking about Marian Wheeler,’ she said. ‘It doesn’t surprise me in the least.’
She wheeled herself back to where Lloyd and Judy sat. ‘And I’ll tell you how she seemed,’ she said to Lloyd. ‘She seemed upset. Nervous.’
Judy’s face assumed an expression Lloyd knew well. ‘How did this manifest itself?’ she asked, her tone matching the disbelieving look.
‘For one thing,’ said Mrs Anthony, her eyes suddenly alive, ‘her hands were shaking so much that she spilled coffee on her dress.’
And Judy, overmatched, took refuge in her note-taking.
‘Fortunately,’ continued Mrs Anthony, ‘most of it went in the saucer.’
‘Did she say what was upsetting her?’ asked Lloyd.
‘She’d hardly do that, would she, Mr Lloyd?’
It wasn’t a crime to be upset, as Lloyd pointed out to Judy on their way up to the vicarage.
Marian Wheeler opened the door, and gave a short sigh when she saw them.
‘Joanna’s resting,’ she said. ‘Unless it’s really important, I’d rather you didn’t talk to her just now.’
Lloyd smiled. ‘I quite understand,’ he said. ‘But it’s you we’ve really come to see, Mrs Wheeler.’
‘Oh.’ There was a strange mixture of apprehension and relief on her face. ‘You’d better come in.’
They followed her through to the kitchen, where George Wheeler was drying dishes.
‘It’s the police,’ said Mrs Wheeler.
‘Any further forward?’ asked Wheeler, turning round.
‘Things are moving,’ said Lloyd smoothly. ‘Slowly, I’m afraid. But they are moving.’
‘Good.’
‘Why we’re here, Mrs Wheeler, is to clear up a small . . . inconsistency, I suppose.’
He explained the nature of the small inconsistency, while Wheeler dried the cup that he held in his hand until he had almost worn it away.
‘Are you certain that you left the house at ten to eight?’ Lloyd concluded.
Marian Wheeler frowned. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I must have missed someone off the list.’
Judy handed her a copy of the list, and Mrs Wheeler took glasses from her handbag. ‘I can’t think who,’ she said as she looked at it. ‘But I was a bit shaken up when I wrote it out. I can’t honestly remember.’
‘Perhaps you wouldn’t mind thinking about it?’ asked Lloyd. ‘Let me know if you remember.’
‘Certainly I will.’ She handed the list back.
‘Mrs Anthony said you seemed upset,’ said Judy.
‘Did she?’ Marian Wheeler took off her glasses. ‘Yes – yes, I suppose I was. Of course I was, after what had happened to Joanna.’
Wheeler at last put down the cup. ‘What are you suggesting?’ he asked quietly.
‘Nothing at all,’ said Lloyd. ‘But we have to try to account for half an hour that has somehow got itself lost.’ He turned to Marian Wheeler. ‘I’m sure it’ll come back to you,’ he said. ‘You’ve got the number to reach me, haven’t you?’
‘Yes, thank you
.’
‘Well – thank you for your time. Don’t worry – we’ll see ourselves out.’
They didn’t stay long at the station, and Judy left before Lloyd did. He decided that now was as good a time as any to make his duty visit to Barbara and the kids.
Two hours later, he went back to his flat, none the better for seeing his family, who had merely added to his worries and irritations. He consoled himself with a large glass of the Woodfords’ present, and a few chapters of Judy’s.
And by the next morning, the things that had been moving slowly started moving fast, now that the world had got itself over the twin difficulties of snow and holidays. Late Saturday afternoon found him reading the first detailed forensic report.
The fingerprints on the poker were Marian Wheeler’s; another set of her prints had been found beside an attempt to clean a blood-stain off the landing floor. One of her shoes bore traces of blood. Lloyd looked up thoughtfully from the report.
He wondered about Freddie’s belief that a woman would have had to hold the poker in both hands. Any woman, according to him. So – what would he think of Marian Wheeler, small and slim, wielding the poker one-handed? Not a lot. Much more likely that she had interfered with the scene once she’d found Elstow. She had run into the room, picked up the poker – got blood on her shoe. Then what? Why not just say that that was what she had done?
And yet, Lloyd knew, people reacted oddly under stress. TV and books had done a wonderful job in instilling into the public the vital importance of leaving murder scenes untouched; if only they could direct this talent to pointing out the beneficial effects of not murdering anyone in the first place, he thought irrelevantly.
But it was possible that she thought she shouldn’t have touched anything, and so denied going into the room at all. But she’d hardly have given Elstow a couple of thumps with the poker, he thought, and shrugged, giving his attention once more to the report.
No traces of an intruder, inside or out. No fingerprints other than those of the deceased, Mrs Elstow, and Mr and Mrs Wheeler. Nothing disturbed, nothing taken, nothing vandalised. Just one dead body.
The clothing. Forensic said it was a woman’s dress, probably size 12, in a pink or peach-coloured unpatterned material, judging by the reinforced collar and cuffs which had failed to burn up as well as the rest of it had. There were traces of blood on one cuff. Type B, similar to the deceased’s.
