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

by Jill McGown

  The chief inspector was interested. ‘What did this person look like?’ he asked.

  ‘Oh – I don’t know. It was too dark. It was just a movement – a figure. Maybe nothing at all.’

  ‘Could it have been, say, Mr Waters?’ the sergeant asked. ‘Or me? Or the chief inspector?’

  Philip frowned, then realised what she was doing. If he had seen someone at all, he must have got an impression, however fleeting a glimpse. But he couldn’t be sure he’d really seen something. Maybe he was just giving himself an excuse. He looked at the assembled company. They were all different shapes and sizes. It couldn’t have been Sam. Or the chief inspector.

  ‘It could have been you,’ he said to the sergeant. ‘I thought it was one of the boys, larking about.’

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘Nothing,’ he said quickly. ‘There was no one there when I got to the fire-escape. I thought I must have imagined it.’

  They didn’t comment; they thanked him for his time, and left.

  Sam stood up when they had gone. ‘Maybe we should do a runner before they stitch us both up,’ he said.

  Philip thought it was the mode of speech that probably irritated him most of all. Waters had been educated at a hideously expensive public school before getting a good degree at Oxford; he assumed a pseudo-cockney accent, unless he was rattled, when it would return to the received pronunciation which he more naturally employed.

  ‘Maybe you should go and see your girlfriend,’ Sam said, opening a can. ‘If you can get up the stairs.’

  Philip frowned slightly. ‘Why?’ he asked.

  ‘She seemed a bit upset when I left.’ Sam smiled. ‘Must have been something I said.’

  Slowly, Philip pulled himself up from the sofa. ‘Like what?’ he asked.

  The smile remained. ‘I may have forgotten my manners,’ he said. ‘What are you going to do, Newby? Hit me?’

  Philip didn’t speak.

  ‘Now’s your chance, son. She needs a shoulder to cry on. Nothing wrong with your shoulders, is there?’

  Chapter Five

  Caroline couldn’t stop the tears. They’d started while Sam was still there, and that had made him worse.

  She stared at the door when she heard the knock. Had he remembered some obscenities that he hadn’t used? ‘Who is it?’ she asked, her voice betraying the tears.

  ‘It’s Philip.’

  Philip. Come for his drink. Come to stare at her with his hungry eyes while he pretended to carry on a conversation. She didn’t know why she had asked him up for a drink in the first place. She opened the door.

  ‘What’s he been doing?’ Philip asked, limping badly as he came in.

  She wiped away the tears, but they still kept coming. ‘Didn’t he tell you?’ she asked, closing the door.

  ‘He said he’d upset you,’ said Philip. ‘Why? What did he say to you?’

  Caroline smiled, despite the tears. ‘I really wouldn’t like to repeat any of it,’ she said.

  Philip looked baffled. ‘What’s it all about?’ he asked.

  Caroline shook her head, and wiped the tears again. This time they stayed away.

  ‘Tell me,’ he said. ‘You can delete the expletives.’

  ‘That would leave a few pronouns and the odd conjunction,’ she said.

  There was, of course, a word for people like her. There were, as it turned out, several words. And they might not have shocked her, hurt her so much if he had been railing at her, shouting his graphic abuse; but he hadn’t raised his voice once.

  The gist was that she had caused the police to suspect him owing to an overestimation of her desirability, that she had nothing that other women didn’t have, and that what she did have was less than tantalising. He had not been reduced to a frenzy of sexual frustration because she had denied him her body, and she was deluding herself if she thought that she was capable of inspiring such a thing in anyone other than the sexual inadequate whose sick fantasies’ – given vivid expression – fed her own.

  ‘Let’s forget it,’ she said, as Philip, after much mental preparation for the effort, sat down at last. ‘I promised you a drink.’

  She poured two glasses from the bottle of wine she had bought in the town to give herself both a reason for being there and a drink to offer him.

  ‘Won’t you even tell me what it was about?’ he asked, as she handed him his glass.

  She sat beside him. ‘Maybe he was just telling me some home truths,’ she said.

  Perhaps Sam wouldn’t have upset her so much if she didn’t feel so frightened, all the time. Someone had been watching her, perhaps whoever raped Diana. It hadn’t been her imagination. And she had thought at the time that it was Sam. She shivered.

  Concerned eyes looked into hers, and then he gave a little smile. ‘Sam’, he said, clinking his glass with hers, ‘is a fake from head to toe. He wouldn’t know a home truth from a home perm. If he happened to hit on one or two, then it was because he used machine-gun tactics, and he had to hit something.’

  That was when she knew why what he had said about Philip had been the most hurtful part; that was what had made her cry. Because every now and then she could see the man that Philip was, behind the constant pain and the frustration about which Sam had been so crudely eloquent.

  The Philip that Andrew had told her about; the Philip who lived his life and let other people live theirs, the Philip to whom people turned if they had a problem. Who always had some girl in love with him, who was always going to write a novel, and who had once described himself as living life in the bus lane. She smiled at the memory; Philip asked why she was smiling, and she told him.

  He laughed. ‘I’ve never understood yuppies,’ he said. ‘Screaming down a car phone in your Porsche and giving yourself ulcers doesn’t sound like fun to me.’

  ‘Why are you teaching at a school full of embryonic yuppies?’ she asked. The wine was beginning to make her feel better. Philip was, too; for the first time, they were just talking.

  ‘I liked the idea of being in the countryside,’ he said. ‘And of working with Andrew—’ He broke off, his face slightly pink. ‘Sorry,’ he said.

  ‘It’s all right,’ she said. ‘I like talking about him.’

  He nodded. ‘And maybe I hoped I could get one or two of the boys to smell the roses.’

  ‘Are you succeeding?’

  ‘I have quite high hopes of Matthew Cawston,’ said Philip. ‘He likes reading – it’s a start.’

  ‘Andrew liked Matthew,’ said Caroline. ‘I’m never very sure that I do.’

  ‘What’s wrong with him?’ Philip asked.

  ‘I always feel as though he follows me about,’ she said, and then wondered what Sam would have to say about that. ‘He does follow me about,’ she said defiantly, as though Sam were there.

  ‘I don’t blame him,’ was all Philip said.

  ‘And he’s a bit too smooth,’ she said. ‘Too charming.’

  Philip grinned. ‘Well, there you are,’ he said. ‘That’s one complaint you can’t have about Sam.’

  ‘There must be a happy medium,’ she laughed.

  ‘There is,’ he said. ‘Me.’ He smiled at her for a moment without speaking. Then his face grew serious. ‘Do the police really suspect Sam?’ he asked.

  ‘He’s done his best to make himself seem suspicious,’ Caroline said. ‘It was only because they were asking about him that I ever told them about—’ She broke off.

  ‘About what?’ he asked gently.

  ‘Oh – I just . . .’ She could feel herself begin to blush. At the memory, at Sam’s subsequent thoughts on the matter. ‘Sam made a pass at me last night,’ she said. ‘I encouraged him, I suppose. Well – not really. But I didn’t discourage him. And then I . . .’ She smiled, gave a little shrug. ‘I would have said that I let him down, but he says it was no let-down at all, so I’m overestimating myself, as he pointed out.’

  And it was true, she conceded, that the discovery that his pen
was missing had made Sam even angrier than she had; she had put it down to sheer frustration, but Sam had assured her during his visit that it was because the pen meant more to him than anything she had to offer. Or a colourful phrase to that effect.

  Philip put down his glass. ‘This morning you said that you and he weren’t involved.’

  ‘We’re not,’ Caroline said quickly. ‘I don’t even like him!’

  So why had she encouraged him at all? She waited, but Philip didn’t ask the question.

  ‘I know it makes no sense,’ she said. ‘But it’s the truth.’

  ‘I’d better be going,’ Philip said suddenly, arranging the stick to take his weight.

  ‘Philip – it’s the truth. There’s nothing between me and Sam.’

  ‘None of my business if there is,’ he said, grunting with the strain as he heaved himself to his feet.

  ‘I want you to understand,’ she said.

  ‘Why?’ But he sat down again, with a little grunt of pain. Caroline wished he would see a doctor; and maybe Sam was right, she thought. Maybe she was attracted to Philip because they were two of a kind.

  They had both been damaged in an accident that was none of their making.

  ‘I still haven’t told you about my further enquiries into the thefts,’ Judy said.

  They had met up at Lloyd’s car, the atmosphere between them frostier than the weather.

  Lloyd grunted, uninterested, as they drove through the interminable snow to the main building. That was the second time she’d tried to give him chapter and verse on the thefts. All right, so she was going to make a federal case out of it. Let her. He hadn’t wanted her to stay there, with Waters making remarks. It wasn’t that he had one rule for Judy and another for other officers, he told himself. Her presence was hampering the interview, that was all. But he had wanted to annoy her. It was childish, but there it was.

  ‘We’ve got a murder inquiry,’ he said. ‘I’m not interested in petty theft right now.’ He pushed open the door at the top of the steps, standing to one side to let Judy through. Their footsteps on the wooden flooring echoed round the emptiness of the school building. But it wasn’t like any other school Lloyd had ever come across.

  ‘Is the entire teaching profession comprised of weirdos, or do they just come here to die?’ he asked, as they climbed the stairs to Treadwell’s office.

  ‘Ssh,’ said Judy. ‘Someone might be in.’

  ‘Would they care? Most of them seem quite proud of it.’

  ‘Well,’ said Judy, ‘I did some checking when I had to come about the thefts in the first place.’ The sentence was accompanied by a glare in his direction. ‘And it costs less to send your child here, and it pays less to teach here, than at any other school of comparable size. So . . .’ She shrugged. ‘You get what you pay for, I suppose. Though it has as good if not better an academic record as the others.’

  Lloyd toyed with the grammar lesson, but decided that it was too advanced, and too likely to get him a smack in the mouth. He wished he hadn’t snapped at her. He wished he hadn’t done a lot of things.

  ‘So weirdos make good teachers?’ he said.

  ‘Looks like it,’ she said. ‘But, to be fair, Sam Waters is the only out-and-out weirdo, isn’t he?’

  ‘Is he?’ said Lloyd, pushing Treadwell’s open door. ‘What about Hamlyn?’

  A man rose as they came in. Not tall; thin, bespectacled, well into his fifties, possibly sixties. ‘Mr Lloyd?’ he said.

  Lloyd, startled, nodded. ‘I don’t believe we’ve—’

  ‘No,’ he said, a little shyly. ‘Robert Hamlyn.’ He extended a hand.

  Oh, God. Well, nothing to do about it now. Lloyd grasped the outstretched hand more warmly than he might otherwise have done. He had expected a much younger man. ‘Mr Hamlyn,’ he said, ‘I am very sorry about your wife. We’re doing all we can.’

  He nodded, and looked down at the floor.

  ‘This is Sergeant Hill,’ said Lloyd. ‘We didn’t want to bother you with questions until you felt up to it.’

  ‘I realise,’ he said, lifting his eyes with difficulty, ‘that you will have a great many questions. But – I would like to say something to you first, if I may.’

  ‘Of course,’ Lloyd said, sitting behind the desk. ‘Would you have any objection to my sergeant taking notes?’

  ‘None,’ said Hamlyn, but he still stood.

  Lloyd watched Judy become aware that Hamlyn wasn’t going to sit down until she did. She took a chair from the wall, and she and Hamlyn sat down in unison.

  ‘People here,’ said Hamlyn, in his quiet, clear voice, ‘find – found – my relationship with my wife difficult to understand.’ He smiled a little. ‘Perhaps I should say even people here,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t help overhearing your conversation.’

  Judy shifted a little in her chair. Lloyd nodded slightly. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, there not being much more he could say.

  ‘No need for apology,’ said Hamlyn. ‘Sam Waters calls us flotsam and jetsam – you call us weirdos. People have a need to label others.’

  Lloyd took a breath, intending to defend himself, until he realised he really didn’t have a defence.

  Hamlyn continued. ‘And it’s true,’ he said. ‘In a way. The school has a – well, policy would be too definite a word – a tendency, let’s say, to recruit from the ranks of non-career teachers, to put it politely. It’s a matter of economy as far as the school is concerned, but it does have an odd side-effect. You see, sometimes those who aim for the top forget what they originally set out to do. By employing those who would be rejected by a more rigid system, the school gets – as your sergeant said – as good a result as schools charging several times the fee.’

  Judy wasn’t taking notes, but surely she should be, Lloyd thought. Wasn’t this a lecture? Lloyd hoped that Hamlyn would get to the point in the end.

  ‘And I am one such,’ he said. ‘I love what I teach. And I love being able to teach my way. Not teaching by numbers.’

  There was a pause, but Lloyd knew that it was still not his turn to speak.

  ‘I didn’t become a teacher until I was almost forty. I was a bachelor, I was in industry, and one day I realised how much I hated it. They needed teachers, in those days, and I went back to college. I started out teaching in a private day-school, twenty years ago.’

  The man spoke like a book. In neat paragraphs, with a space left between them. It was like listening to the radio.

  ‘Diana was fourteen years old when I met her.’

  Lloyd’s eyes widened slightly, and he refrained from catching Judy’s.

  Hamlyn’s hands were clasped in front of him. They twisted constantly and nervously, belying the calm delivery. ‘It was wrong, obviously. I didn’t even want it to be like that, but Diana . . .’ He hunched his shoulders slightly.

  ‘Well, it was what she wanted, and I didn’t want to lose her.’

  Humbert Humbert lives, thought Lloyd. Lolita, on the other hand . . .

  ‘We married when she was eighteen,’ he said. ‘We ran away; at the age of forty-three, I eloped with an eighteen-year-old girl, Mr Lloyd. It doesn’t do a lot for your career chances.’

  Lloyd could see that it wouldn’t.

  ‘I think it had probably started by then. Her . . . infidelity.’ He looked up. ‘I am assuming that someone – if not everyone – has told you about Diana,’ he said. ‘I was the first. But I was very far from being the last.’

  ‘Someone did mention that she might have had a bit of a problem,’ said Judy carefully, rescuing Lloyd.

  Hamlyn nodded. ‘I shudder to think how she would have lived if she hadn’t married me,’ he said, then looked away again. ‘But, then, she might not have died.’ He gave a long sigh. ‘She couldn’t help herself,’ he said. ‘She was perfectly ordinary in other respects.’ He smiled sadly. ‘She was sensible about everything,’ he said. ‘Except men.’

  This time Lloyd couldn’t resist sneaking a look at Judy. Baff
led brown eyes looked back for an instant, before returning to her notebook.

  ‘When I could no longer pretend that it wasn’t happening, we had rows. We separated, even. But we weren’t happy apart. You see’ – the hands clasped and unclasped, the fingers twisting round one another – ‘we were very fond of each other,’ he said. ‘But I was never very keen on . . . the physical . . .’His hands came together in a helpless little mime. ‘In a way, I think that that’s what Diana liked about me.’

  Lloyd became aware that his mouth was slightly open.

  ‘And I realised that I simply wasn’t being logical. I was acting the aggrieved husband. I was doing what I thought other people would do. What other people expected me to do. But she needed me, and I needed her. So, we settled for a platonic relationship, which we both enjoyed very much. What Diana did was no concern of mine.’

  Lloyd nodded, trying to look as if he came across this every day.

  ‘It had begun to concern me – that is – I was concerned about Diana, with all the talk of disease, and so on. But other than that . . .’ He shook his head.

  ‘Mr Hamlyn—’ Lloyd began, but Hamlyn moved his hand just enough to indicate that he had not finished. Lloyd glanced at Judy again, but she was steadfastly writing in her notebook.

  ‘I understand,’ he said, ‘that you have been questioning Sam Waters about my wife’s death.’

  Lloyd was taken by surprise at the sudden return to the matter in hand.

  ‘I – we – are talking to everyone, Mr Hamlyn.’

  ‘But you are paying very close attention to Sam.’

  ‘I’m sorry – I can’t . . .’

  ‘No,’ said Hamlyn. ‘Of course not. But I feel that I may inadvertently have caused you to suspect Sam rather more definitely than you should.’ He paused. ‘Last night, at dinner, I deliberately indicated that I believed Sam was with Diana.’

  Lloyd scratched his forehead. ‘But you didn’t believe that?’ he asked, tentative for the first time that he could remember since childhood.