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

by Jill McGown

  He pulled stuff out of the cupboard until he could lay the gun down inside, and covered it with the papers and bits and pieces until it couldn’t be seen. He closed and locked the door, then went back to his desk, looked at what he had written, and tore it into tiny pieces, letting them fall from his hands into the waste-paper basket.

  Eleanor, turning away from him. ‘Eggs are supposed to hatch out,’ she had said. She must have had to dress quickly, after he had knocked at the door; the sweater label stuck up at the nape of her neck. And he had gone back to her, and tucked the label in.

  ‘Eggs are supposed to hatch out.’ Yes. Yes, they were.

  If the little bird inside couldn’t break the shell, then it died in there.

  And here was Eleanor Langton again, Lloyd thought, popping up for the third time in this investigation. He scanned the page. Could Graham Elstow have been going to show his wife something else altogether? It was possible. Anything was possible. But it surely had to be something important, something that over-rode the fact that he wasn’t on the best of terms with his wife at that particular moment? Lloyd thought back to the huffy silences which had descended on him and Barbara. You didn’t break them for a discussion on the dangers of asbestos, or the desirability of Sunday trading.

  He read the Sunday trading piece, in case Wheeler’s views had been sought, and Graham had been looking for an argument about Joanna’s father. But no, there was nothing there.

  Joanna seemed as mystified as they were. The unnamed motor-cyclist on whose bike Langton had been riding pillion was reported as having been ‘saddened’ by Langton’s death. But he wasn’t Elstow, because he was also reported as having just returned from working in West Germany for eighteen months.

  ‘We’ll check it out,’ he said.

  Joanna nodded.

  They were all in the office now. Joanna sat at Judy’s desk, and Lloyd at his own; that way he had the width of the room between them. He could get up, walk round. Affect deep interest in wall charts and floor tiles. It all helped to confuse the enemy.

  Judy was talking to Joanna, jotting down the odd thing now and then. She gave him a cool glance as he toured the office with no apparent aim; he wished things could be different, as he had at the pub. But the regret was pushed to one side by the thought that then occurred to him, and he went back to his desk, opening his diary to give himself something to do while he thought it through.

  ‘But you don’t recall him ever mentioning Richard Langton?’ said Judy.

  His ever mentioning, thought Lloyd, automatically.

  ‘No, never.’

  Lloyd looked up, and smiled at Joanna. ‘Forgive me,’ he said, ‘but something is bothering me a little, Mrs Elstow.’

  She looked across at him, her eyebrows raised in enquiry.

  ‘Sergeant Hill tells me that you and your husband had reached some sort of understanding after . . .’ He finished the sentence with a wave of his hand in the general direction of Joanna’s bruises.

  ‘Some sort,’ she said dully. ‘I think I really only began to understand this morning.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘What I was doing to him,’ she said. ‘What I was letting her do to him.’

  ‘Your mother?’ Lloyd stood up, and leant on the edge of the desk.

  She nodded again.

  ‘And yet – you didn’t make any attempt to communicate with him afterwards,’ he said. ‘In case it upset your mother.’

  Joanna looked at Judy, not at him. ‘I didn’t want to cause any more trouble,’ she said.

  ‘So you left him upstairs,’ Lloyd said, his voice slightly raised. ‘Not knowing whether he should come down and face the music, or start knotting sheets together.’ He shook his head. ‘I don’t believe that, Mrs Elstow.’

  Joanna shot Judy a desperate look, but she was involved with her notebook.

  ‘I – I didn’t get the chance,’ said Joanna. ‘My father took me to the pub.’

  ‘Ah, yes,’ said Lloyd. ‘The pub.’ He pushed himself away from the desk. ‘It was your father’s idea, wasn’t it?’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘Not really. It was my mother who suggested it.’

  ‘But it was your father who persuaded you to go?’ Lloyd sat down again. ‘Yes?’ he said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I don’t imagine that you wanted to,’ he said. ‘Not after what had happened. You must have felt a bit rough. And – forgive me again – you must have looked a bit rough.’

  ‘He said it would just look worse later,’ said Joanna. ‘He was right.’

  ‘So he persuaded you to go with him.’

  ‘Yes.’ Joanna sounded wary.

  ‘And having persuaded you, he just got up and left you there, on your own?’

  Joanna’s mouth opened slightly, but no words came out. Again, she looked at Judy for help.

  ‘Did he, Joanna?’ Judy asked.

  Joanna’s shoulders sagged. ‘No,’ she said.

  ‘No,’ said Lloyd. ‘Your father left the pub alone, but he left after you, not before you. Right?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘When did you leave?’

  ‘About eight,’ she said, and there was no expression in her voice. ‘I knew my mother was going out, so I gave her time to be well away.’ Her hand absently touched the bruise under her eye. ‘I wanted to get Graham to come with me to Dr Lomax,’ she said. ‘But I couldn’t get him to open the door. I thought he’d locked it,’ she said. ‘I thought he’d got in a mood again, and—’

  Judy looked up from her notes. ‘But your mother didn’t lock the house up until after nine,’ she said.

  ‘My mother didn’t lock up the house at all! Don’t you see? She thinks I killed Graham. She thinks I locked the doors. But it wasn’t me! Graham let someone in, and they locked the doors so that they wouldn’t be disturbed. Don’t you see?’

  ‘Someone?’ said Lloyd.

  ‘Whoever he met at the pub,’ said Joanna.

  ‘We can’t find any trace of his meeting anyone at the pub,’ said Lloyd. ‘He came in alone, drank alone, ate alone, and was ejected. Alone.’

  ‘He said he met someone,’ Joanna repeated mutinously.

  Lloyd stroked his chin. ‘Perhaps you’ll tell us why you didn’t volunteer this information?’

  ‘I couldn’t,’ she said. ‘Not after my father said he’d been with me all evening.’

  Lloyd picked up a pen, balancing it on his finger as he spoke. ‘And why did he say that, do you suppose?’ he asked.

  ‘Because he thinks I did it! They both do!’ Her eyes filled with tears. ‘So do you,’ she said. ‘But I didn’t. I didn’t.’ She got up, and came over to him, jabbing a finger down on the newspaper. ‘What about this?’ she said.

  Lloyd picked up the paper. ‘You think your husband knew Richard Langton,’ he said. ‘And by extension, Eleanor Langton.’

  ‘Yes, of course I do.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ said Lloyd. ‘But knowing him hardly constitutes motive for murder.’ He looked at Joanna’s bruises as he spoke. On the other hand, he thought, perhaps it did. ‘And Mrs Langton was at home,’ he said. ‘All evening. According to both of your parents.’

  Joanna stood up, very erect. ‘Are you going to check this?’ she asked.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ Lloyd said. ‘We’ll check it. Thank you for coming in, Mrs Elstow.’

  The door closed behind her, and Lloyd picked up the phone. ‘Bob? Come in a moment, please.’

  ‘Let’s see what Eleanor Langton has to say,’ Judy suggested.

  ‘No,’ Lloyd said quickly. ‘Not yet.’

  ‘Why not?’ asked Judy.

  Lloyd was loath to explain why not. Because she made him feel uncomfortable. Because she didn’t look at people, she watched them. Because if he were to engage in a battle of wits with Eleanor Langton, he wasn’t at all sure that he would win.

  ‘Because,’ he said, as Sandwell knocked and came in. ‘When we go to see Mrs Langton, I don’t want to ask her if she knew Elsto
w, I want to tell her she knew him.’ He looked up, and handed Sandwell the paper, with the report ringed in red. ‘Details,’ he said. ‘As quickly as that dreadful machine can produce them.’

  ‘There’s sometimes a bit of a delay, sir. It depends on whether—’

  ‘No lectures about ROM and RAM and downtime,’ groaned Lloyd.

  ‘No, nothing like that, sir.’ He opened his mouth, then wilted under Lloyd’s stare. ‘Sir,’ he said, taking the paper and leaving.

  Lloyd sat down as Judy began flicking through the pages of her notebook. He smiled as he watched her. No one took notes like Judy did. Perhaps she was going to write a book one day.

  ‘Besides,’ he said. ‘We’ve only got Joanna Elstow’s word for how she came by it.’

  Judy closed the notebook. ‘The paper is dated the day she went into hospital,’ she said. ‘And if we’re embarking on a course of taking no one’s word for anything, we’ll never do anything at all. How can you take Sandwell’s word for it that the computer gives him whatever answer it does? Perhaps he’ll make it all up.’

  ‘Sandwell has not proved time and time again to be telling lies,’ Lloyd pointed out. ‘She has. And her parents.’

  ‘You don’t like it because it’s putting a dent in your domestic theory,’ she said.

  ‘No, that’s not why,’ said Lloyd, thoughtfully and truthfully. ‘Why I don’t like it is that it’s yet another puzzle. We’ve got more little puzzles than enough.’

  Judy opened her notebook again. ‘I think I’ll write them down,’ she said.

  Lloyd laughed. ‘Writing them down does not solve them,’ he said.

  ‘Who says? We think they’re connected to the case, don’t we? So if they’re all written down together. It might . . .’ Her voice tailed off, as a good reason failed to present itself. ‘Help,’ she finished lamely.

  Lloyd was having nothing to do with it. He needed answers to questions, not parlour games.

  His shoes had deposited enough of George’s ash on the floor of his car to constitute a sample, and it had gone to the lab. At least that was an answer to one question.

  He watched as Judy worked her way through her copious notes, in which every little puzzle had of course been entered, and he found himself thinking how soft and shining her hair looked, how pleasing the line of her jaw.

  Unprofessional. He had never admired Sandwell’s hair, or Jack Woodford’s jaw-line, fine specimens though they doubtless were.

  She worked carefully, checking every page so as not to miss anything, making a neat list on a sheet of paper. Anything less sordid than Judy was impossible to imagine. And he had probably ruined everything, throwing words about in the way other people might throw crockery. Crockery was less dangerous. Perhaps even someone like Elstow was less dangerous. He had hurt Judy just as surely as if he had punched her.

  She sat back and looked at the list, the tip of her tongue brushing her upper lip as she thought hard about something. Unfair, thought Lloyd. She turned to look at him, and neither of them said anything, until they both spoke at once.

  ‘Judy, look, I’ve—’

  ‘Lloyd – listen to this.’

  He held out a hand. ‘You first,’ he said, because what he had been going to say had had very little to do with the murder of Graham Elstow.

  ‘The things that puzzled us,’ she said. ‘We know the answers to some of them.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘We wondered what Mrs Anthony was hinting about George,’ she said, and then looked at him enquiringly.

  ‘Presumably she’d noticed that he was taking too healthy an interest in the beautiful Mrs Langton,’ said Lloyd.

  ‘Yes. And why Marian Wheeler was still so upset when she was at Mrs Anthony’s. She’d just been to see . . .’ She held out a hand, waiting for him to supply the answer.

  ‘Eleanor Langton.’

  ‘And we wondered what Wheeler thought could have made his wife so angry that she would destroy his Christmas present.’

  ‘Eleanor Langton,’ said Lloyd, slowly, tipping his chair back as he thought about the little puzzles, and the ubiquitous Mrs Langton at the bottom of every one of them, including today’s. Everywhere he looked, there she was, with her long blonde hair and her fine features, and her watchful eyes. Who had provided Marian with her alibi? Who had provided George with his? And who was careful to unprovide Joanna with hers?

  ‘You’ll fall one day,’ said Judy.

  ‘That’s the beauty of it,’ said Lloyd, righting the chair, and the allusion was not lost on Judy. ‘Any more puzzles?’ he asked.

  ‘Who Elstow met at the pub, and why he got drunk,’ said Judy.

  Eleanor Langton? But they mustn’t jump to conclusions. And Sandwell’s computer wasn’t going to come across for a while yet. Its coaxial cable must have got caught in its zip.

  He stood up, and felt a little like an adolescent seeking his first date. ‘I . . . er . . . I’d like to go somewhere nice for lunch,’ he said. ‘And I’d like it much better if you came with me.’

  She looked as if she might be going to find some words of her own to throw at him, but then her eyes softened a little. ‘Good idea,’ she said.

  It was a long way to the pub he had in mind, especially when it was necessary to negotiate ungritted country roads and the impacted snow of the by-passed village in which it lived. But it would be worth it for the food, and the atmosphere. They could talk there, perhaps. At least they could relax there.

  It had changed hands.

  ‘Not one of my better ideas,’ Lloyd said, as they were leaving, encouraged to do so by the simple expedient of the staff suddenly appearing in outdoor clothing, and putting out as many lights as they could.

  Judy, who had chosen the less than inspired Chef’s Special, laughed, and got into the car, shivering.

  It had even been cold. There was a notice apologising, but that hadn’t made it any warmer. They had had to stay, since they were miles from anywhere else that sold food at all.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

  ‘You couldn’t help it,’ she answered.

  ‘That’s not what I’m sorry about.’

  They were alone in the car park, the staff having beaten them to the exit, and he kissed her, as he’d wanted to do all day. Her response was less than passionate.

  ‘Are you still angry with me?’ he asked.

  She frowned. ‘Angry?’

  ‘About what I said.’ He looked down. ‘My tongue runs away with me,’ he said. ‘It always has. You should hear some of the things I say to my sisters – even my mum, once.’

  ‘Your mother?’

  He smiled at Judy’s horrified expression. ‘My dad clouted me for that,’ he said. ‘And he’d have clouted me again if he’d heard what I said last night.’ He took her hand. ‘He thinks you’re the greatest thing since rugby union,’ he said, kissing it.

  ‘But you must think it’s sordid,’ she said. ‘Or you wouldn’t have said it.’

  Lloyd sighed. ‘That’s the whole point,’ he said. ‘I don’t think. At all. I’ve never thought anything of the sort.’ He let go her hand. ‘Am I forgiven?’ he asked.

  ‘I suppose so.’

  It was as much as he could hope for. He drove back to Stansfield, only to discover that he could no longer delay his visit to the dreaded Mrs Langton. For a visit, if you could believe Sandwell’s computer, was undoubtedly called for.

  Graham Elstow had been the driver of the car which had hit Eleanor Langton’s husband. Elstow had lived with his parents, next door to the Langtons, and had been coming out of the road just as the motorbike had turned in.

  ‘He clipped its rear wheel when he tried to avoid it,’ Judy said.

  She was reading the print-out while Lloyd drove towards Byford. He was beginning to hate the place, which was a pity.

  ‘The pillion passenger fell off, and went under Elstow’s car.’ Judy folded the sheets. ‘Richard Langton,’ she said. ‘But the motor-cyclist hadn’t passed a
test, and shouldn’t have had a passenger anyway – and Richard Langton wasn’t wearing a helmet, or it might not have been so serious.’

  ‘And the upshot was that Elstow was charged with driving without due care,’ Lloyd said thoughtfully.

  Judy put the print-out into the glove compartment. ‘A bit hard to take,’ she said.

  ‘Quite,’ said Lloyd. ‘She might well be prepared to give Wheeler an alibi, given her relationship with him, and this.’ He turned almost reluctantly into the castle grounds, ‘I rather think that’s what Joanna is afraid happened,’ he said, slowing to a snail’s pace along the narrow road. His car’s heater had trumped Judy’s car’s road-holding qualities.

  Eleanor Langton admitted them, a resigned look on her face. ‘I’m working,’ she said. ‘Will it take long?’

  ‘I couldn’t honestly say, Mrs Langton,’ replied Lloyd.

  ‘Well,’ she said, leading the way into the sitting room. ‘I don’t suppose you’d be here if it wasn’t important.’

  Other people might have meant that he wouldn’t waste valuable time on trifles. But Lloyd was uncomfortably certain that Eleanor Langton knew that she intimidated him.

  She stood by the window. ‘Please sit down,’ she said.

  ‘I’ll stand, thank you,’ said Lloyd.

  Judy sat down, producing the notebook.

  ‘Mrs Langton,’ said Lloyd. ‘Did you know Graham Elstow?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, without hesitation.

  ‘You didn’t tell us.’

  ‘You didn’t ask.’ She sat down on the low seat by the window. ‘Richard and I lived next door to him and his parents,’ she said.

  ‘There’s a bit more to it than that,’ said Lloyd.

  Her face hardly registered any emotion. But something changed about it. ‘He was responsible for my husband’s accident,’ she said, her voice clear but quiet.

  ‘And you didn’t tell us that because we didn’t ask,’ said Lloyd.

  ‘No,’ she said, looking away from him, out of the window behind her. ‘I didn’t tell you because I wasn’t very proud of what I’d done.’

  Lloyd glanced at Judy.

  ‘I met him,’ she said. ‘That lunch time. At the Duke’s Arms.’ She turned back. ‘I’d gone to phone my mother-in-law,’ she said. ‘And I met Graham Elstow as I was coming out.’ Her fair skin began to grow a painful red. ‘I’d had a difficult morning. I’d been talking about Richard, and seeing Graham was the last straw.’ She turned her head again. ‘I asked him how he’d been for the last three years,’ she said. ‘I told him how I’d been. Every detail. I told him what it had been like, what Richard had been like. I told him about Tessa, being born to someone who just lay there and did nothing, and said nothing, and never would again.’