by Jill McGown
Eleanor stared at him. What had he heard? Had she said anything? She’d called him George. Oh, George was a common name – she could have been ringing anyone called George. And why would he care, anyway?
She turned and almost ran from the pub.
*
‘Joanna,’ said her father, as he slowly replaced the receiver. ‘Did you want something?’
She had stayed in his study after she had told him about the call. If she hadn’t, she would have listened in on the hall phone, and conspicuous eavesdropping seemed preferable, morally.
‘What did she want?’ she asked baldly.
‘Just play-group business,’ he said.
‘Play-group business?’ Joanna said angrily. ‘Come off it! All that diary consulting – was that for my benefit? You’re not doing anything just now!’
He slammed his diary shut. ‘I will not be cross-examined about my private phone-calls!’ he shouted.
That was just the problem, thought Joanna. He probably would be. She sat down. ‘That’s where you were on Christmas Eve,’ she said. ‘Isn’t it? You were with her. You told me you’d stayed at the pub.’
‘Yes.’ He sighed. ‘It’s called bearing false witness, in the trade,’ he said.
‘And what you were doing with her?’ Joanna asked sharply. ‘What’s that called?’
His eyes widened. ‘It’s called minding my own business,’ he said. ‘Just like you were minding yours. You weren’t exactly forthcoming about where you’d been.’
But she hadn’t lied to him. And she hadn’t been . . . She closed her eyes. ‘Is that why Mummy was angry with you?’ she asked.
‘She wasn’t angry with me,’ he said, and he sounded almost wistful.
‘Was that another lie?’
‘No!’ He stood up. ‘It was a possible explanation for her burning the dress, that’s all.’
‘Does she know about you and her?’
‘Now, look!’ He banged his fists down on the desk. ‘Whoever this concerns, Joanna, it does not concern you.’
‘Doesn’t it?’ Joanna asked bitterly. ‘Then why did I find myself lying to the police?’
His body sagged a little, and he sat down heavily. ‘I’m sorry about that,’ he said.
‘Why?’ she asked again. ‘So that you didn’t have to admit that you were with her?’
‘I just didn’t want Eleanor’s name brought into it,’ he said, swivelling the chair round, and looking out of the window.
‘I’ll bet you didn’t.’
‘Have you told them where you were?’ he asked.
‘Yes,’ she said, but that wasn’t entirely true.
‘But you still won’t tell me? Or your mother?’
‘No.’ No, no, no. She didn’t want them to know about the baby. Not now. Not ever, but she had very little option about that. Not until they had to, at any rate.
‘Then we’ll just have to respect one another’s privacy, and hope that the police do the same,’ he said.
He was still staring out of the window when Joanna left.
They had spent the afternoon fruitlessly going through the mounds of paperwork that had developed on the Elstow business. Next door, people collated and cross-referenced, and tried to produce some kind of coherent sequence of events from the observations of those not involved, and therefore not likely to be lying. But they were likely to be exaggerating, or imagining things, or simply mistaken. Marian’s movements were checkable, and had been checked. She had called on half a dozen people, staying just a couple of minutes at each place, and would have arrived home at about ten, just as they all said she had. Wheeler had been seen walking up Castle Road; Joanna hadn’t been seen at all. Someone knew that it was the gypsies. If there had been any gypsies, Judy thought, she would have gladly gone and interviewed every one of them. Joanna’s information about the overalls had gone down the pipeline, so now people knew that that might be what they were looking for; at least that was something.
Outside, the afternoon had grown dark, and evening had descended. Another day almost over, and they were no further forward.
‘The overalls are our best lead so far,’ she said, looking up at Lloyd.
‘To what?’ Lloyd got up and stretched, then sat on her desk. ‘To some intruder who went in, saw them, and popped them on just in case he came across someone he wanted very messily to murder?’
Judy shook her head. Lloyd was edgy, ready to dismiss anything she said. He’d been like that since they’d seen Eleanor Langton. ‘Are you still convinced it was one of the family?’ she asked.
Lloyd looked away in disgust. ‘Of course it was,’ he said. ‘I’m still convinced it was Joanna Elstow, if you want to know.’
‘But the doctor confirmed her story,’ said Judy.
Joanna had arrived, a little upset, according to Dr Lomax, some time after half past eight. About quarter to nine, she thought. She had stayed for thirty, forty minutes. Something like that.
‘The friend of the family,’ corrected Lloyd, ‘confirmed her story.’
‘Oh, Lloyd! Do you think the whole village is party to a conspiracy?’
‘I wouldn’t be a bit surprised,’ he said sourly. ‘A domestic. A domestic – you’re supposed to get there and find someone in tears saying that she was cutting some bread when the knife slipped. And that’s that.’
Judy smiled. ‘I don’t believe she killed her husband,’ she said. ‘For one thing, she wasn’t there – and for another, I don’t believe she wanted to.’ She paused. ‘I think we should take a closer look at Elstow. He was sober when he arrived at the vicarage in the first place,’ she said. ‘What made him get drunk?’
Lloyd sighed. ‘Becoming involved with that bloody family, that’s what,’ he said. ‘It would drive anyone to the bottle.’ He ran a tired hand down his face.
‘But he didn’t drink,’ Judy said. ‘Not as a rule. And why would he choose to just then? He was trying to get Joanna back, not put her off.’
‘And yet he succeeded, according to her,’ said Lloyd, tapping Judy’s notebook. ‘Does that seem likely to you? He arrives drunk, gets drunker, beats her up, and it all ends happily ever after? Or would have done, if the invisible man hadn’t popped in and murdered him?’
Put like that, it seemed highly unlikely, but it had seemed true enough when Joanna had told her about it. If Lloyd had been in a more receptive mood, Judy might have tried to explain that.
‘I think our first theory was right,’ Lloyd said. ‘I think Marian Wheeler was right. Joanna went for him with the poker.’
‘But the time of death is wrong,’ Judy pointed out reasonably.
‘I’m going to get Freddie to have another look at that,’ he muttered.
The overalls. White nylon overalls, which George Wheeler had left in the hall, and which had now disappeared. They were important, thought Judy. If they found the overalls, they might get some answers.
Left in the hall. A thought occurred to her. ‘Wheeler,’ she said. ‘He’d know—’
‘Wheeler doesn’t know if he’s coming or going!’ snapped Lloyd. ‘If you ask me, he doesn’t know what day of the week it is, never mind anything else.’
‘If your theory’s right about Joanna, he’d have to know more than he’s telling us,’ said Judy, stubbornly.
‘Not necessarily. He says he heard the bedroom door close as he went in. That could have been Joanna. Shutting herself in the bedroom with her husband, after she had killed him. Wheeler and his wife go upstairs to change, Joanna creeps down, and into the sitting room, where the original fight took place, and where they found her.’
Judy looked up at him.
‘Don’t look like that! It fits all the forensic evidence. It explains why she didn’t come straight out and tell her parents what had happened. And it means that George Wheeler’s telling the truth, and doesn’t know what the hell’s going on.’
‘Except,’ said Judy patiently, ‘that Freddie says Elstow didn’t die until two hours after t
hat, when Joanna was sitting in the pub.’
Lloyd grinned suddenly. ‘That’s its only drawback,’ he said.
‘So you’re going to ask Freddie if by any chance he’s made a two-hour error on the time of death?’
‘You never know,’ Lloyd said. ‘I’m going to ask him to assume that nothing that we have been told is accurate.’
‘But we know it’s accurate! We know what time they arrived home, we know what time Elstow ate—’
‘We only know because people have told us,’ said Lloyd.
‘The barmaid,’ said Judy. ‘The people at the afternoon service – why would they lie, Lloyd?’
‘People can make mistakes. This is a domestic murder, Judy, whatever way you look at it. The intruder theory is laughable.’
‘Maybe,’ said Judy. ‘But he did meet someone at the pub.’
‘According to Joanna,’ said Lloyd.
‘Isn’t there anyone else who might have had it in for him?’ she asked hopefully. She had believed Joanna; she wasn’t going to admit defeat yet.
‘No,’ said Lloyd. ‘You know there isn’t. He didn’t gamble, he didn’t owe money except in the usual way. We can’t find anything on other women – his own wife admits he didn’t even drink to excess. The one offensive thing he did was to beat his wife.’ He smiled. ‘The house looks as if a bomb’s hit it, but that seems to have been Elstow himself rather than the Battered Wives’ Liberation Army.’
‘Do you think it’s funny?’ Judy asked sharply.
Lloyd sighed. ‘No,’ he said. ‘You know I don’t. But if you don’t laugh at this job . . .’ He shrugged.
You cry, thought Judy.
‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘But what have we got here? We’ve got a caveman. Dressed up like an accountant, but a cave-man, all the same. Frustrated and inarticulate – you said that yourself. A man who beats his wife, Judy – you find him with his head bashed in, who do you look for?’
Judy nodded sadly, and Lloyd looked at her, his face serious.
‘You’ve got too involved,’ he said. ‘You like her. You want to believe her. You don’t blame her, do you?’
‘No,’ Judy admitted. ‘Not after what he did to her.’
‘See?’ said Lloyd. ‘What are you defending, Judy? Her innocence? Or her actions?’
She’d walked right into the trap. But there was no triumph in his voice.
‘Joanna was home before anyone else,’ Lloyd went on. ‘Saying she had been locked out.’
‘She had been,’ Judy said. ‘Marian had locked the doors.’
‘Why?’ asked Lloyd.
‘Because she’d found Elstow’s body,’ said Judy.
‘Why lock the doors?’ Lloyd repeated.
Judy had just accepted it, until now. Marian had locked up the house in order that no one would find Elstow’s body. But why shouldn’t it have been found? What difference did it make?
‘I don’t know,’ she said slowly.
‘She didn’t,’ Lloyd said. ‘She didn’t lock the doors at all. There was no reason to, whether or not there was a body in the bedroom. But there wasn’t, because Elstow was in the bedroom, alive. And whoever murdered him locked the doors.’ He sat back. ‘And then claimed that she had been locked out all along,’ he added.
‘The time of death is still wrong,’ said Judy. ‘Elstow had been dead half an hour before Joanna got back from Dr Lomax.’
Lloyd made an impatient noise. ‘No one was synchronising their watches, Judy! It’s all arounds and abouts. Joanna says she got back at around nine-thirty – Freddie says Elstow died at about nine o’clock. Easy enough to lose half an hour that way.’
‘Before nine o’clock,’ Judy reminded him, then realised that she had been steered completely off course. ‘And anyway,’ she said. ‘There’s the overalls.’
‘What about them?’
‘You’ve seen the house,’ she said. ‘Whatever else Mrs Wheeler may be, she’s a very conscientious housewife.’ Lloyd had entertained her to a number of things which, in his opinion, Mrs Wheeler was. ‘And it seems that he left these overalls in the hall,’ Judy said. ‘Mrs W. was doing a washing, wasn’t she? I don’t think she’d leave a pair of dirty overalls in the hall for long – especially not when it was all decked out for Christmas. I think,’ she said simply, ‘that she would have washed them.’
Lloyd got off her desk and walked around, which meant that he was actually thinking about what she had said. ‘And if she did wash them,’ he said slowly, ‘then the intruder would have had to know that he was going to need overalls. And that he could find a nice pair all washed and tumble-dried in the machine.’
Judy nodded. ‘And when we took the washing away, Marian Wheeler knew the overalls should have been there,’ she said. ‘But they weren’t.’
Lloyd stared at her. ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘Of course. That’s when she bundled Joanna off to bed.’ He sat on her desk again. ‘Did you notice what she was like when she came back?’ he asked.
Judy had. Marian Wheeler had been distracted, unsettled. Her mind seemed to be somewhere else altogether. ‘She kept looking at George,’ Judy said. ‘And he’s the one who threatened Elstow in the first place. He’s the one who lied about where he was.’ At last, Lloyd was really listening. ‘Marian Wheeler wasn’t protecting Joanna at all,’ said Judy. ‘She was protecting George. Because if Elstow had died at five, we would hardly have been asking her where she was two hours later, would we? She knew that. Perhaps it was never Joanna she suspected in the first place.’
Lloyd tore a piece off her blotter, and rolled it into a ball as he thought. ‘But when did he do it?’ he asked, flicking the pellet at the wastepaper bin, and missing.
‘Would Mrs Langton give him an alibi, do you think?’ Judy asked.
Another pellet pinged against the metal bin, and landed on the floor. ‘She seemed to think she was spoiling one,’ said Lloyd.
‘Not his,’ argued Judy. ‘Joanna’s. She was very keen to put suspicion on Joanna – and take it right off George.’
Lloyd flicked another pellet, which landed satisfactorily in the bin. ‘Arrest the whole lot of them,’ he said, getting to his feet. ‘That’s the answer.’
‘Including Eleanor?’ Judy asked wickedly. ‘You mustn’t get too involved, Inspector Lloyd.’
‘With her?’ said Lloyd, with genuine horror. ‘Don’t worry.’
They laughed, and the moment could have been seized, but Judy let it go. Two rejections were enough for anyone.
‘Elstow met someone at the pub,’ mused Lloyd, trying one more attempt at the waste-bin. He missed. ‘There are too many little puzzles,’ he said, picking the coats off the pegs, and – throwing Judy’s to her. ‘Let’s call it a day.’
And they called it a day, going to their separate cars. Judy drove towards home, considering giving her car star markings to indicate its freezing capacity, as her feet and hands began to lose their feeling. Other people looked forward to going home, she thought.
But she was going home to the Hills, and earnest discussions about whether gas or electric central heating was better, about whether their furniture had really been a sensible buy, about how the future really mattered, because it was what you gave your children. ‘When they come along,’ Mrs Hill had said, with a twinkle, as though she and Michael were newly-weds. And Judy didn’t believe that Mrs Hill had missed a word of the Christmas morning discussion between her and Michael.
The Hills might have been sitting with her in the car, pointing out how hard Michael had worked to get their beautiful house, which would be even more beautiful once it had all the necessary things done to it. Pointing out that Judy didn’t really need to work now, because Michael was doing so well. Pointing out that time was going on – it was hard to believe that it was ten years . . .
She was almost home. Just next left, and then a right, and her twenty-minute journey would be over; she would be safe in the bosom of Michael’s family. She pulled the car into the kerb, and sat for
some minutes, the engine running. Then she started the car, passed the left turn, stopped, and reversed into it. She stopped again, for a long time, until her breath began to mist the cold windscreen; she wiped it with a tissue, and started the car, indicating right. Back along the road she had just travelled. Twenty minutes later, she passed the police station. Left at the big roundabout at the bottom of the hill. Left, to the old village.
She parked her car beside Lloyd’s, remembering the last time. The jolt to her ego of his rejection had been considerable, and she walked almost on tiptoe.
He might have heard the car, and simply not answer the door, she thought, as she pushed open the glass door to the flats.
He might be out. You couldn’t tell with the thick curtains and that silly lamp. He’d strain his eyes if he read by it.
He would just tell her to go away again, she decided miserably, as she climbed the stair.
When she got to his door, she was out of breath; she had been holding it all the way up. All the way there. She gave herself a moment before ringing the bell, then heard the inside door open, saw the light going on. She could see him through the fluted glass. The door opened, and she was inside, in his arms. He was apologising. Why was he apologising?
‘You’re frozen,’ he said, letting her go, ushering her into the warmth of the sitting room. He helped her with her coat, and put a finger to her lips as she tried to speak. ‘Later,’ he said. ‘We can discuss things later. Let’s get you thawed out first.’
She sat down, while he went to the kitchen, coming back some minutes later with a steaming jug of coffee and the brandy.
‘Just coffee,’ she said.
‘Fine.’
The coffee warmed her, but the silence unnerved her. It must have unnerved Lloyd too, because he began making conversation in the way that he’d told her he did with Barbara. Carefully avoiding any mention of work; even more carefully avoiding any mention of their situation. She took as much of – it as she could stand, then waited for a lull.
‘I thought you would be—’ she began.
‘I’m just glad you’re here,’ he said, interrupting her. He smiled. ‘Do you want to eat?’
