by Jill McGown
Size 12. Judy was a 14; so was Barbara, and so, if he was any judge, was young Mrs Elstow. Mrs Wheeler would be a 12. Things did not look good for Marian Wheeler.
He felt that there was probably something a little suspect about a man who could sum up a woman’s dress size at a glance, but there it was. Gigolos and detectives were supposed to notice things like that.
Marian Wheeler would have to be brought in.
He dialled Judy’s number, which barely rang out at all before she picked it up.
‘We’ve got work to do,’ he said.
‘Thank God for that.’
He smiled at the dialling tone, and replaced the receiver.
‘A man-made material,’ the inspector said. ‘Plain – probably pink or peach-coloured.’ He looked from Joanna to Marian. ‘Do either of you own such a dress?’
Marian saw George’s head turn involuntarily towards her as the inspector spoke. She heard Joanna try to smother the confirmation that had escaped, despite her efforts.
Christmas was over; the waiting was over. The police, suspicious from the start, had taken away clothes and shoes, had come every day, politely and courteously making them tell their stories over and over again. They had been all over the village, asking questions.
‘If it was an intruder’ – slight accent on the ‘was’ – ‘then someone must have seen him. He would be badly blood-stained.’
That had been the explanation offered for their checking-up on the comings and goings from the vicarage, when Marian had demanded one. It had been given to her by the crisp, concise Sergeant Hill.
Now she was here again, with the inspector. They looked a little stern, a little sad. And they were looking at her.
‘Was it your dress, Mrs Wheeler?’ The sergeant.
They had taken away the ashes from the fires in Joanna’s bedroom and the kitchen, and Marian had endured Christmas somehow. Though it wasn’t really Christmas, not with all that had happened. The house always seemed to have some figure of authority in it. If it wasn’t police, it was clergy. There had been a lot of work to take her mind off it.
‘Mrs Wheeler?’ The sergeant again, not impatiently.
She took almost as much on herself as Chief Inspector Lloyd. Marian found herself inconsequentially wondering if that annoyed him. She decided it couldn’t, or presumably he would have stopped her doing it. Whereas often he would almost melt into the background while she did the asking.
The sergeant came over to her. ‘Mrs Wheeler,’ she said. ‘Was it your, dress?’
‘Yes.’
Inspector Lloyd cleared his throat. ‘Mrs Wheeler, I’d be grateful if you could come with us to the police station,’ he said. ‘There are questions we would like to put to you concerning the murder of Graham Elstow.’
‘This is outrageous!’ George roared.
‘George,’ said Marian. ‘It’s their job – they’re only doing their job.’
George gaped at her, then shook his head.
‘Mrs Wheeler,’ said the sergeant briskly, ‘if you could get your coat—’
‘No!’ Joanna shouted. ‘I don’t understand – what are you doing?’
Inspector Lloyd looked far from happy. ‘Mrs Wheeler has simply agreed to help us with our—’
‘Agreed?’ George said. ‘I didn’t hear her agree.’
Lloyd glanced at Marian. ‘Mrs Wheeler?’ he said.
‘George is right,’ she said. ‘I haven’t actually agreed to come.’
‘Are you going to force me to arrest you?’ asked Lloyd.
‘Yes!’ shouted George. ‘If you want my wife to go with you, you’re going to have to arrest her.’ He took a step towards the inspector. ‘So you had better be very sure of your ground, Chief Inspector Lloyd,’ he said.
Marian saw the inspector shrug slightly at the sergeant, and she was being arrested.
They were telling her she didn’t have to say anything. She knew that. She knew the wording of the caution. She wondered when the British police would feel obliged to alter their simple, direct sentence into whole paragraphs of statutory advice, like the Americans. Or was that just New York? America was funny, with all the states having different laws.
They were taking her out to their car. George was white, and Joanna walked with her arm round his waist, holding on to him like a child. George was saying something about a solicitor. The sergeant got into the back of the car with her, the leather coat she wore creaking slightly, smelling new. There was a constable at the wheel of the car, and he closed the passenger door as George kept the inspector talking.
Joanna had gone back into the house, obviously on George’s instructions, and re-emerged, carrying coats. She got into her car as George at last walked away from the inspector, turning twice on his way to call something angrily over his shoulder.
The inspector got in then, slamming the door. Marian could see the tension in the back of his neck, as the car moved off through the new fall of snow. Five days of it, Marian thought, and it still hadn’t given up. Not constant, or the vicarage would have disappeared under it. But snow, every day, and the driveway was deep again now. The incessant cars had churned it up into slush, and it might freeze. Someone could break their neck. They said you were responsible, if someone did. If they were there for a reasonable purpose. Postmen, newspaper boys. Policemen.
The sergeant was speaking to her, but she hadn’t been listening.
‘Mrs Wheeler?’
Marian turned to face her. She had a nice face, Marian realised. Not just nice-looking – which she was – but something more. People could have beautiful faces that weren’t attractive. Sergeant Hill wasn’t beautiful; she had a good face, the kind photographers like. Warm brown eyes, and an open friendliness that was there even when she was briskly arresting you.
‘Are you all right, Mrs Wheeler?’
‘Oh – yes. Thank you.’
On, through white-banked roads, into Stansfield, with no one speaking at all. Skirting round the now pedestrianised centre of the town to the police station at the other side. Marian had sat on the Young Offenders Committee in there, in her time. It had folded, not through any lack of young offenders, but because it hadn’t really helped.
The sergeant was opening the door as the driver pulled round to park. She was out of the car as it stopped moving, her hand held out to assist Marian, who was then taken – no doubt about it – taken, the sergeant’s hand lightly holding her elbow, into the building. She was taken to the desk, where another sergeant began filling in forms. He repeated that she didn’t have to say anything, but if she did . . . She signed a form. Then she was taken into a room with a formica table and chairs, like the one the YO committee had used. A woman police officer came in, and the sergeant told Marian to sit down. Told her.
It was odd, for someone who was used to being shown and asked, to be taken and told.
‘Just leave it here,’ said George, as Joanna pulled up at the police station.
‘I can’t,’ she said. ‘It’s double yellow lines.’
Double yellow lines. Marian had just been arrested, and she was worrying about double yellow lines. But that was just like Marian would have been, George thought, if the positions had been reversed.
‘You go in. I’ll take it round to the car park,’ she said.
George strode into the station, and saw Inspector Lloyd talking to Sergeant Hill. Ignoring the desk sergeant, he walked purposefully up to them. ‘Where’s my wife?’ he demanded.
Lloyd broke off his conversation and turned. ‘Mr Wheeler, you can’t see your wife at the moment. I’m sorry.’
‘She has the right to have a solicitor present,’ George said.
‘Of course she has,’ said Lloyd.
‘But how do I get hold of one?’ George found himself asking. Pleading. ‘It’s Saturday afternoon!’
Lloyd pointed back down towards the entrance. ‘Go to the desk sergeant,’ he said. ‘He’ll help you.’
‘Will he?’ George felt
bewildered. In the last few days, the police had altered their image for George. They had gone from being symbols of security and order to being invaders of privacy. Now, they just seemed like the enemy. Why would they help?
But help they did, and the solicitor said he would come right away. George looked round helplessly as he finished his call, but he couldn’t see the inspector. He went out the front door, and walked round to the back, where he found the car park, and Joanna’s car.
‘Why would she burn her dress?’ Joanna asked, as he got in.
‘I don’t know.’
‘But why?’ she said again. ‘What possible reason could she have for doing something like that?’
‘I don’t know!’ George shouted, but he wasn’t angry with Joanna. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Perhaps I do.’
‘What?’
Eleanor. It had to be Eleanor. ‘Perhaps,’ he said, hitting the flat of his hand against the dashboard as he spoke. ‘Perhaps I do. She could have burned it because she was angry with me.’
Joanna turned, her eyes wide. ‘What have you done that would have made her angry enough to burn your Christmas present?’ she asked.
George closed his eyes. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ he said. ‘A misunderstanding. It’s possible, that’s all.’
Joanna frowned, but she didn’t ask again.
They waited in the police station car park, not knowing what to say or do. The solicitor was taking his time, thought George. He’d said he’d come right away.
There had to be a simple explanation. There had to be. But she hadn’t given them one. And he had thought that they were just trying to alarm her into producing an explanation, when they’d asked her to go with them. That was why he’d said they would have to arrest her. Because he thought they couldn’t, not just on that. But they had arrested her, as though confirmation about the dress had been all that they had needed. What else could they possibly have found to link Marian to it? And so what if she had burned the dress? It was her dress. She could do what she liked with it.
At the back of his mind, a doubt was creeping in. He’d told her she was wrong about Eleanor. Surely, surely, she would have told him about having burned the dress then? Or was she ashamed of having done it? He’d asked her why she wasn’t wearing it, once he’d noticed. She had said it wasn’t a good fit. Why hadn’t she just told him the truth? Or had she just hoped that he would forget about it? Hadn’t she realised the consequences of failing to mention it to the police? Hadn’t it occurred to her what the police would think when they discovered it? Or did she think that the fire would have destroyed it completely?
Anyway, his mind asked him, despite his conscious effort to make it stop, when did she burn it? Elstow was in the room all the time . . .
George’s eyes were tight shut. ‘I need some air,’ he said, scrambling out of the car. He ran to the bushy hedge that ran along one side of the car park, and was violently sick.
Joanna watched impassively as her father bent over in the bushes, his shoulders heaving. She couldn’t help him.
Whatever nonsensical idea the police had got would be disproved; if her mother had burned the dress in a fit of pique – though that was hardly like her, but if she had – then she would tell them, and they would let her go. But she obviously hadn’t told them, doubtless in a misguided attempt to shield her father from embarrassment. And if that was the case, then he should go in now, and tell them why he thought she’d burned the dress.
It was ridiculous, her mother being in there, under arrest. Almost laughable. She supposed her father thought that eventually they would realise what a ludicrous mistake they were making, without his intervention. And they would, of course, in time.
Joanna was rather looking forward to the moment when the sharp-eyed, sharp-tongued Sergeant Hill would have to climb down and apologise. Because she would have to; there was no possibility of their continuing to imagine her mother guilty. None. It was a combination of circumstances, that was all. It would get sorted out. It probably took them hours to unarrest someone. It would get sorted out. It had to. Tears rolled down her face, unchecked. But crying wouldn’t help. Throwing up in the bushes wouldn’t help.
She dried her eyes, and got out of the car. Up some steps to a door, slightly ajar. Joanna took a deep breath, and went in.
She was in a corridor, with doors off it, all closed. There must be someone somewhere, she thought, as she walked along. She heard footsteps behind her, and turned to see a young constable.
‘Can I help you?’
‘I want to see Sergeant Hill,’ she said.
‘If you’ll come with me,’ he said, ‘I’ll see if we can find her for you.’
She followed him round into the main entrance, where he asked her to wait.
A few minutes later, he came back, and she followed him once again, through a room full of people, into an ante-room. Sergeant Hill stood up when she came in.
‘Joanna,’ she said, her face concerned. ‘Have a seat.’
‘No, thank you.’ Joanna didn’t know what to say now that she was here. Screaming abuse at her would hardly help, but that was all she really wanted to do.
‘We were given no option but to do what we did,’ Sergeant Hill said.
‘No option?’ Joanna shouted. ‘You can’t seriously believe my mother killed Graham!’
‘We just wanted to ask her some questions, Joanna. It needn’t have been like that.’
Somewhere, at the back of her mind, behind her desire to call her names, Joanna knew that she was right. Her father had forced them into a corner.
‘But why?’ she demanded. ‘Why did you want to question her? Because of the dress? My father thinks she did it because she was angry with him – it was his Christmas present to her.’
‘Oh?’ said Sergeant Hill. ‘Why was she angry with him?’
‘I don’t know! You’ll have to ask him that.’
‘Where is he?’ she asked.
‘Being sick!’
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘Please sit down, Joanna.’
Joanna felt some of the anger drain away, to be replaced by hopelessness. She sat down. ‘Why have you arrested my mother?’ she said again.
‘I can’t discuss it with you,’ Sergeant Hill said. ‘But in view of what you’ve said about the dress, I would like to talk to your father.’
Joanna went to find her father; he was angry with her for telling the sergeant.
‘If you think she had a good reason for burning the dress, you have to tell them!’ Joanna said.
‘I didn’t say she had a—’ He sighed. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘It’s not your fault.’
Joanna waited for him by the desk. It would get sorted out.
‘Yes,’ Eleanor said, as brightly as she could, ‘I will think about it. I promise.’ And she waved as her visitor drove out of the courtyard, then closed the door with a sigh.
‘You should go,’ said Penny, as she went back in.
‘I can’t see myself at a New Year party,’ said Eleanor.
Penny shook her head. ‘You’ve got to start some time,’ she said. ‘And the sooner the better. You don’t have to stay long. But you should start going out.’
Eleanor knew all that. But how could she start going out now, for God’s sake? Penny didn’t understand. And she wouldn’t, for as long as Eleanor could keep it that way.
‘I’d look after Tessa,’ Penny went on. ‘You know that.’
Eleanor smiled, ‘I know,’ she said. ‘You’re right. But I just don’t think I could face it.’
‘At least do what you said you’d do,’ Penny said. ‘Think about it.’
‘I will.’
‘I was wondering,’ said Penny, ‘I know you won’t come – but would you mind if I took Tessa back with me when I go tomorrow night? There’s nothing much for her to do here, is there – and you’ll be working. It would be more fun for her. There’s a little boy next door that she could play with.’
‘You told me,’ said Eleanor
, with a smile.
‘Well? It would be a few days rest for you, and I’d love to have her.’
‘Yes, of course,’ said Eleanor.
‘If she wants to come, that is,’ said Penny.
Tessa would want to go. There was only one thing she liked better than visiting anyone, and that was visiting her grandmother. They couldn’t ask her then and there because she was off visiting the Brewsters, who had three of the children that Penny kept insisting were non-existent in Byford.
‘Thank you,’ Eleanor said. ‘It would be nice to have a break.’
George Wheeler hadn’t been very forthcoming as to why his wife should have been angry with him. He had just sat there, looking like death, saying that it was a misunderstanding, until Judy had told him he could go.
Lloyd raised his eyebrows when she told him. ‘Sounds a bit desperate to me,’ he said. ‘The best excuse he could come up with.’
‘I know.’
‘All the same,’ said Lloyd. ‘I don’t think Freddie’s going to go much for Mrs Wheeler as a likely candidate.’
‘Has she said anything yet?’
‘No,’ said Lloyd. ‘Do you want to come and have a go?’
Judy got up. ‘Is her solicitor here?’
‘No. I suppose Wheeler did ring one,’ he said. ‘Every time I see him, he’s rushing into the loo.’
Judy went to the door. ‘Are you coming?’ she asked.
‘Yes,’ he said wearily. ‘Why not?’
Marian Wheeler sat at the table in the interview room, looking entirely unperturbed.
Judy sat down. ‘Have you remembered where you were on Christmas Eve?’ she asked.
‘No.’
‘Can you give us an explanation for your fingerprints being on the poker?’
‘No.’
Judy clasped her hands, and thought for a moment. ‘Did you go into the room when you found Elstow’s body?’
‘No.’
‘Were you in that room at all on Christmas Eve?’
‘I was in and out during the day,’ she said. ‘The last time would have been at about two, I think. Just before I went out in the afternoon. I made up the fire.’
