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

by Jill McGown

  Caroline Knight looked at her thoughtfully. ‘If you’ve been asking questions, then I expect you already know the answer,’ she said. ‘Diana had . . . well, a problem.’

  ‘A problem?’ queried Lloyd.

  ‘With men. I mean – I’m no psychiatrist, but she seemed to me to be a . . .’ She paused, not wishing to sound melodramatic. But it was the truth, after all. ‘A nymphomaniac, I suppose,’ she said. ‘She was promiscuous, at any rate.’

  ‘Oh?’ said Sergeant Hill. ‘Does that mean she can’t have been raped?’

  ‘No, of course not.’ Caroline didn’t want to think about it; she really ought to tell them, but perhaps she’d imagined it. She wasn’t sure. And, if she said anything, the crazy thought that went through her head at the time might get spoken, and she really couldn’t do that to Sam. She’d been jumpy, that was all. Better not to say anything at all, unless she had to.

  ‘Well,’ said Chief Inspector Lloyd, ‘let’s get away from that. I understand, Mrs Knight, that you intended supervising the children until about eleven, when Mrs Hamlyn was due to relieve you. Is that right?’

  ‘Quite right.’ She pushed her long hair away from her face. ‘I rang the Hall at about quarter to, and was told that she had left about half an hour before that.’

  ‘Were you worried?’

  ‘I thought it was odd, but I wasn’t exactly worried.’

  ‘You must forgive me again,’ Lloyd said. ‘But I’m not all that sure how the school runs. Am I right in thinking that Mrs Hamlyn was not actually employed by the school in any capacity?’

  She nodded. ‘But housemasters’ wives do find themselves in this position,’ she said. ‘And she had said she’d be pleased to let me go at eleven – I was going out, you see.’ She glanced down at herself, all dressed up. ‘So it did seem odd that she hadn’t turned up, but – well, I never dreamed anything had happened to her. Not until Mr Dearden came and—’ She broke off.

  Lloyd nodded. ‘And Mr Hamlyn?’ he asked. ‘Was he worried? I take it that’s who you spoke to at the Hall?’

  ‘No,’ she said slowly. ‘Robert didn’t come to the phone. Barry did. He said he’d have a look round for her, but he didn’t ring back or anything. So I just stayed. I . . . we . . . well, Barry and I both thought she might have gone off with someone.’

  ‘You didn’t ring Mr Treadwell back?’ asked Lloyd.

  ‘No – because my plans had fallen through anyway. The next thing I heard was when Mr Dearden came and told me she was dead. That someone had killed her. I couldn’t believe it.’

  ‘Did he leave you here on your own?’ asked the sergeant.

  ‘Well – you . . . the police were all over the place. I told him I’d be all right.’

  ‘Now,’ said Chief Inspector Lloyd, ‘you didn’t hear from Mrs Hamlyn at all?’

  Caroline shook her head.

  ‘The path across the playing-field,’ he said. ‘It’s a short cut, I take it. How many people would be likely to be using it?’

  ‘No one,’ said Caroline. Sam. Sam must have used it.

  ‘No one?’ Lloyd frowned a little. ‘Why is there a path, then?’

  ‘The younger boys have always used the playing-field to get from the school and the Hall to here. For years. Eventually, they wore a path, so in the end they tarmacked it. Mr and Mrs Hamlyn use it, of course. But everyone else uses the lane.’

  ‘What lane?’ Sergeant Hill and the chief inspector chorused.

  ‘There’s an old lane from the main buildings,’ Caroline explained. ‘The senior boys are in houses – the lane runs past them.’

  ‘How come we didn’t see that?’ asked Lloyd.

  ‘It goes through the buildings,’ she explained. ‘You wouldn’t know it was there unless you were looking for it. That’s why we can’t allow cars to come right in – it would be too dangerous, with boys shooting out of there.’

  ‘And everyone else uses that rather than the footpath?’

  ‘Well – anyone going to the boys’ houses, of course, or any of the other buildings off the lane. Or anyone going to the staff block or the headmaster’s house. The field’s only a short cut to this building. The lane’s the quickest route to everywhere else.’

  ‘Thank you, Mrs Knight,’ Lloyd said, standing up. ‘I suggest you try to get some sleep now. There will be officers patrolling, so you don’t have to worry.’

  ‘I still don’t think I’ll sleep,’ she said.

  Lloyd and Judy left the junior dormitory and crossed over to the other side of the road. The lane snaked and zig-zagged along, shadowed by the darkened buildings that flanked it; the boys’ houses, the sick-bay, and others that only Bob Sandwell could have sorted out.

  Lloyd glanced at Judy. ‘I want this place searched,’ he said. It seemed to him a much more likely trysting-place than the middle of the playing-field. It was dark, private. Perhaps she had come along here with someone, on their way to the staff block; he tried not to see it as Sam Waters, but without success. Perhaps she had been killed here, and dumped on the playing-field. Freddie might be able to tell them that. It looked like a good place to hide the weapon. Plenty of nooks and crannies.

  The doctor who had been called to Mr Hamlyn had said that he mustn’t be disturbed until the next day, so there was no more to be done until then. The living-in staff were all accounted for now; a couple of other members of staff and the odd guest had gone AWOL from the ball, and that all still had to be sorted out. Lloyd wrapped it up for the night, and four-thirty found them on their way back to Stansfield.

  ‘Do you want to try your car again?’ he asked.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘There’s no point until it dries out a bit.’

  Lloyd smiled. ‘That might not be until August.’ He took her watch from his jacket pocket and handed it to her with a shrug. ‘I’ll take you home,’ he said.

  The road had been cleared, but they could see the debris of the accident.

  Lloyd shivered a little. ‘Any thoughts?’ he asked her.

  ‘Well,’ she said, ‘I think it’s a bit of a coincidence that both Sam Waters and Caroline Knight seem to have had appointments that late at night. If they were going somewhere with each other – I think I’d like to know why the plans fell through.’

  ‘And why Waters was so reluctant to tell us what his plans had been,’ said Lloyd. He sighed as he thought of Waters.

  ‘Aren’t you always trying to convince me that artists are sensitive?’ said Judy, her voice mischievous.

  Lloyd spent a great deal of time trying to educate Judy in the fine arts; it was probably a lost cause, but he tried anyway. ‘Sometimes,’ he said, ‘I feel I should apologise for the male of the species. This is one of the times.’

  And Waters may have thought he had got off lightly, but he hadn’t. He had left the Hall about three-quarters of an hour before Mrs Hamlyn, which hardly suggested a tryst, but he wasn’t prepared to tell them what he had been doing. He would get another visit from Lloyd before he was much older.

  ‘None of them seemed to care all that much,’ he said. ‘At least Waters was truthful about it, I suppose.’

  ‘Caroline Knight was upset about the rape,’ Judy said encouragingly.

  ‘Yes,’ Lloyd said. ‘Though I would have thought that being dead was the more pressing of Mrs Hamlyn’s problems.’ He yawned wearily.

  ‘Do you want me to talk to Treadwell tomorrow?’ she asked, after a moment. ‘I have met him before,’ she added.

  He grinned. She was never going to forgive him for that. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘My first appointment’s going to be with the chief super,’ he said. ‘I’ll meet you at the school after I’ve been to the postmortem. I don’t suppose you want to join me?’

  He didn’t want her to join him. Freddie’s black humour usually went down better with Judy than it did with him, but he had a feeling that he might find himself being the referee if she went this time. It wasn’t difficult to dissuade Judy from attending a postmortem, and she didn�
�t even bother to confirm his supposition.

  The rain stopped suddenly as they came into Stansfield. You could almost hear the sigh of relief.

  ‘It could just have been someone who got in, and was wandering about the grounds,’ Judy said. ‘Is Allison setting up an incident room?’

  ‘They’re sorting out an office for us,’ said Lloyd. He glanced at her. ‘But you know as well as I do that it was probably someone she knew.’

  ‘Why does that sound as though it was all her own fault?’ Judy asked, as the car made its way through Stansfield.

  Lloyd didn’t answer as his tyres threw up spray from the side of the road where the rain had at least made some impression on the heaps of snow. He moved out a little. The car’s tyres hissed through slushy puddles which reflected the orange street-lamps, and Lloyd knew how people felt when Judy was questioning them. She was waiting for him to answer, and the question would hang in the air until he did.

  ‘Because women do sometimes play with fire,’ he said carefully. ‘Sex is an aggressive act. From the male point of view.’

  She snorted.

  ‘All right, assertive, then. If the assertiveness wasn’t there, it couldn’t happen at all. And it doesn’t take much to turn it to aggression – there is sometimes a very thin line between sex and violence. It’s not always nonsense when the man says he was led on.’

  ‘And being led on gives him the right to rape her?’

  ‘No,’ he said vehemently, shaking his head. ‘It doesn’t excuse it. But it gives him a reason.’

  ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘So it’s reasonable for him to rape her?’

  Lloyd sighed. ‘Yes, in a manner of speaking,’ he said. ‘It implies that he had not lost his reason. That he knew what he was doing.’

  ‘Is that better or worse than if he had lost his reason?’ she asked.

  Lloyd shook his head. ‘I don’t know,’ he said tiredly. ‘But it’s more likely to be someone she was with – someone she felt safe with. Safe enough to cross a pitch-dark field with.’

  ‘You ended at least two sentences with prepositions there,’ she said wickedly, as she got out of the car. ‘I’ll report you.’ She leaned back in. ‘I’m telling Michael today,’ she said, kissing him on the cheek. ‘I’ll have left by tonight, I promise.’ She smiled, and closed the door.

  He was startled, as she had intended; he smiled broadly as she walked up her front path, her shoulders set in the way he recognised when nothing and no one was going to stop her doing what she intended to do. He had almost given up hope of seeing that resolve being used out of working hours. But this time she meant it, and he watched until she went into the house. She waved, and he drove off.

  He knew that the suggestion that the victim might have played a part upset Judy, but it was something which had to be considered. Because if it wasn’t someone Diana Hamlyn was with, then they could soon be playing a repeat performance of tonight, and that sort of show could run and run.

  That was why the victim’s own contribution was important; if she had made one, it made investigation easier, and a solution more likely. It reduced the likelihood of further crimes, and the proportions of the one being investigated to ones that he could understand. That a lot of men could understand, including judges. And that was what angered a lot of women, including Judy.

  Back in his flat, he poured himself a large whisky, and put on an episode of an old, entirely escapist, quite ridiculous television series, the entire rerun of which he had taped. He went to bed at half-past six, allowing himself two hours’ sleep.

  Judy would think he was quite, quite mad.

  Judy’s alarm brought her to consciousness, and she opened her eyes to Saturday morning proper with some reluctance. The injury received in the line of duty had caused her to see what a mess she was making of everyone’s life; she had made her original promise to Lloyd, and had used the excuse of a painful leg to move into the spare room. She had never moved out again. She pulled on her dressing-gown, and went downstairs, to find Michael in uncharacteristic pose, at the cooker.

  ‘Good morning,’ she said.

  ‘Morning. I didn’t think you’d be getting up yet,’ he said, serving himself his large English breakfast as he spoke. ‘I heard about the murder on Radio Barton.’

  Judy raised her eyebrows. ‘Do you actually listen to local radio?’ she asked. ‘I mean, when there are no extremes of weather?’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘I do when my wife’s out all night, and I want to know why. You didn’t leave a note.’

  ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I didn’t know it would take so long. There was a bad accident as well – it held everything up for hours.’

  ‘Where’s your car?’ he asked, as he picked up his knife and fork.

  ‘It wouldn’t start,’ she said. ‘I had to leave it.’ It was so easy, telling selective truths. So easy and, now, completely automatic. But it had to stop.

  ‘Oh, of course,’ he said, and carried on eating, unfolding the morning paper. ‘The rain.’

  ‘Michael,’ she said.

  There was a silence after she had spoken his name, during which he pretended to read. Then he shut his eyes briefly, and looked up at her.

  ‘The car’s at Lloyd’s,’ she said. ‘I was with him when we got called out. That’s why I didn’t leave a note. Because I wasn’t here.’

  ‘I see,’ he said, arranging a look of slight puzzlement on his face, then turned back to the paper.

  ‘Don’t pretend you don’t know what I mean!’

  His eyes didn’t leave the newspaper. ‘You were in bed with Lloyd,’ he said. ‘Is that what you mean?’

  ‘No, as it happens,’ said Judy. ‘But I have been, and I would have been if we hadn’t got called out. And I’d have stayed the night, and I would have told you when you asked where I’d been.’

  He nodded slowly at the newspaper. ‘And despite fate’s intervention you’re telling me anyway?’ he said.

  ‘I’ve been trying to tell you for weeks.’

  ‘I know. I didn’t want you to tell me.’ He looked up, and it was her turn to look away.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said.

  ‘Are you?’

  ‘I’m sorry about the whole thing! I should have told you a long time ago. I shouldn’t have married you, come to that.’ She met his eyes.

  ‘Was it going on when we got married?’ he asked.

  Judy had met Lloyd in London, when she was a WPC and he was a detective sergeant. Almost sixteen years ago. What a waste of time. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I wasn’t sleeping with him, but . . . yes.’

  ‘Why did you marry me?’ He sat down, and looked at her, his thin face showing no emotion as he asked the question.

  She took out cigarettes and lit one before answering. ‘Because I liked you,’ she said. ‘Because we got on well together, and because you were going back to live in Nottingham, which was a long way away from Lloyd and Barbara and the children.’

  ‘How very strong-minded of you.’

  ‘I didn’t see myself as a home-wrecker,’ she said wearily.

  ‘But you don’t mind wrecking this one?’

  ‘This isn’t a home! We share a house – it’s all we’ve ever done. And it’s my fault, I’m not pretending it isn’t.’

  ‘How long has it been going on?’ he asked. ‘If you’ll forgive the cliché – one can hardly avoid them.’

  ‘Does it matter?’

  ‘Yes.’ He picked up his plate and tipped its contents into the swing-bin. ‘Did you know he was in Stansfield? When I applied for this job?’

  She nodded. ‘And I knew he’d been divorced,’ she said. Lloyd’s marriage had ended the year before Judy arrived in Stansfield.

  ‘You kept in touch with him? All that time?’

  She nodded again.

  ‘So when did it start? As soon as you got here?’

  She shook her head. ‘It wasn’t quite the way it sounds,’ she said, and gave a short sigh. ‘It was about six months after we
came here.’

  ‘And I didn’t know,’ said Michael. ‘Not for certain. I’ve no doubt everyone else did – all your friends at the police station, for instance – but I didn’t.’ He smiled coldly. ‘Until you moved out of my bed, I was sharing you with Mr Lloyd. And I didn’t know.’

  Lloyd had envied Michael that; he had hated knowing. And poor Michael was under a handicap just discussing it. Lloyd’s first name was so awful that even she didn’t know it, and he was universally referred to by his surname. Michael had to put in the ‘Mr’ to indicate his hostility.

  ‘You’ve had other women,’ she said. ‘Don’t pretend you haven’t.’

  ‘I’m not. But a one-night stand in Brussels isn’t quite the same thing, is it? I think I could have lived with it if you’d been filling in time between planes, as it were. But that’s not how it is.’

  ‘No, it isn’t,’ she agreed hotly.

  ‘For God’s sake, Judy, you knew about all that! They didn’t mean anything – they were casual girlfriends, that’s all!’

  ‘A girl in every port?’ said Judy. ‘I know, Michael. I was one of them. And it should have stayed like that. But you decided it was time you were married. Now you’ve decided it’s time you had a family. But the fact is that it’s time we were divorced.’

  He shook his head.

  ‘I don’t care, Michael,’ Judy said. ‘Don’t you see? I don’t care, I’ve never cared about other women. This has never been a marriage – we’ve never been a unit. You should have someone else,’ she said. ‘Someone who loves you. Someone who wants children – someone you love. You don’t love me.’

  ‘Don’t I?’

  ‘Do you?’ she asked, getting up.

  ‘It rather depends on what we mean by it. If it means not being able to live without you, then – no, I don’t love you. I don’t claim the grand passion that you and Mr Lloyd have apparently found.’ He looked away. ‘I don’t know, Judy,’ he said. ‘I know how I felt when you got hurt. You can’t live with someone for ten years and feel nothing for them!’ He looked up at her. ‘Or can you?’