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

by Jill McGown

‘Disrupting his schooling? What do you think all this has done to him?’

  ‘Very little, from what I can see!’

  ‘You’d send him back to a school that allowed that sort of woman amongst growing boys?’ She looked at Sergeant Hill. ‘What sort of man would do that?’ she asked her.

  His father turned to him again. ‘Did she try anything on?’ he demanded to know.

  Matthew shook his head.

  ‘See? She left the boys alone – and the school didn’t know what she was like.’

  ‘Of course they did! And Treadwell couldn’t care less!’

  ‘He has resigned,’ said his father, as though he was talking to a small child. ‘That’s why he doesn’t care. They’re appointing someone else. They’ve got the guy that did it. It’s all over now.’

  ‘You’ve just taken him out of that place,’ said his mother. ‘You can’t change your mind now.’

  ‘I’ll tell you what I’ve just done!’ his father yelled. ‘I’ve just paid for a whole year’s schooling! I’ve just forked out for a whole new bloody uniform! I’ve just heard how much that solicitor’s charging, and I’ve just lost the chance of a bloody good contract because I had to be here, that’s what I’ve just done! And he’s going back, understand?’

  Matthew saw his mother’s head tilt slightly as the truth dawned, and she really did understand.

  ‘That man at the hotel this morning,’ she said. ‘The one with the moustache. He offered you some sort of deal, didn’t he?’

  His father didn’t reply.

  ‘He did! You’re going to send your son back to that place sooner than have to pay another school! That’s why he was there in the first place, because it was cheap – and now what? A rebate? Is that what it is? A free term? Money’s all you can think about when your son’s life is in danger?’

  ‘His life isn’t in danger, you stupid woman! It was an isolated incident. Matthew only got involved because he was breaking the law himself. He’s damn lucky not to be charged with it!’ He turned again to Matthew. ‘What the hell were you playing at?’

  ‘It was fun,’ said Matthew.

  ‘Was it?’ said his father. ‘And this pen – that was fun, was it, taking it from right under this woman’s nose?’

  ‘It was getting too easy the other way. And I wanted to confuse them.’

  ‘What?’ His father frowned. ‘What do you mean, confuse them? You’re confusing me, I can tell you that.’

  ‘They all thought it was Mrs Knight,’ Matthew explained patiently. ‘She wasn’t at the ball, so if I could take something from the top table it would make them all suspect one another. It would have been better that way. It was a joke,’ he said, with a shrug.

  ‘Who’s Mrs Knight?’ asked his father.

  ‘The history teacher.’

  ‘What made them think it must have been her in the first place?’

  ‘Her husband was killed in a car accident – she went a bit strange for a while.’

  ‘In that place?’ said his mother. ‘How could you tell?’

  Matthew laughed.

  ‘You think that’s funny?’ asked his father. ‘You thought it was funny to let everyone think she was stealing? Because she’d lost her husband?’

  Matthew shrugged again; this time the blow did land. Tears of surprise and pain sprang to Matthew’s eyes as his father turned to Chief Inspector Lloyd, and shouted over his wife’s shocked protests. ‘We’re going, don’t worry.’

  Matthew found himself being pulled to his feet and propelled from the office. The final humiliation was when his father, still holding his collar, turned back.

  ‘It’s the school that wants protecting from him!’ he roared.

  Almost four o’clock, and Caroline was trying to conduct a class. It wasn’t easy. She placed the card on the easel. ‘This, for instance, might be how the tabloids would have reported the sinking of the Spanish Armada,’ she said.

  The facsimile paper, which she had drawn with painstaking care, should have produced a laugh. The banner headline read ‘MY NIGHTS OF LOVE WITH WILL – EXCLUSIVE: ANNE HATHAWAY TALKS TO THE SUN’, and down in the left-hand corner, with a couple of column inches, was ‘ADIOS, AMIGOS!’

  A couple of the boys smiled politely.

  ‘Well,’ she said. ‘That’s the idea, anyway.’ She left it there; some of them might stop and read some of the other news items that she had culled from the history books to amuse them.

  ‘The idea is to write up brief newspaper accounts of anything that takes your fancy during Elizabeth’s reign. Any style you like. But factual, please. If you want to do mock-up newspapers like I’ve done, I can let you—’ She stopped speaking as she saw Sam through the small glass pane in the door.

  ‘I’ve got card and felt pens, and so on. Just tell me what you need. And these old history books – you might find the style a bit odd, but they’re full of little anecdotes and things that you might like. Historians today don’t believe in telling you that Drake finished his game of bowls before he sailed.’ She had expected there to be some interest by this point. ‘Kitty says that you can use the typewriter in the office when it’s available.’

  ‘When do you want them by, Mrs Knight?’ asked a voice at the back.

  She smiled. ‘End of term,’ she said. ‘You don’t have to do it at all, if you don’t want to. But, if you do, I suggest you do it in groups of three or four.’

  ‘We’ll be lucky if there are three or four of us left by the end of the term,’ said another.

  ‘Then, whoever is still here, if they want to do it, can do it!’ Caroline shouted.

  They looked startled; she would have thought that they would be beyond that by now.

  ‘Look,’ she said. ‘This is difficult for everyone. I think the best thing we can do is put it to the back of our minds, and carry on as normal.’

  Someone laughed. Sam was still hanging about. She looked back at the class.

  ‘Will you be taking us for English, Mrs Knight?’

  Oh, God. Philip. ‘I don’t know,’ she said.

  ‘Did he really kill Mrs Hamlyn?’

  ‘I don’t want this topic discussed,’ she said. ‘As far as I am concerned, this is a history period, and that is what we should be doing.’

  The bell rang, and the last few words were drowned in the chair-scraping exodus. When the doorway had cleared of grey blazers, Sam was still there.

  Caroline started putting things away in her briefcase.

  ‘Did you do this?’ Sam asked, after a moment.

  ‘Yes.’ She closed her briefcase.

  ‘It’s good. I didn’t know you were artistic.’

  ‘I’m not.’ She got up.

  ‘You’d have made a good draughtsman.’

  He turned, catching her arm as she passed.

  ‘Let go,’ she said.

  ‘Now, Caroline,’ he said. ‘I’m not a murderer. That’s your other friend.’

  ‘What are you doing here? What do you want?’

  ‘I’ve started a painting.’

  ‘Have you?’

  ‘Yep.’ He turned back, and smiled at the mock-up. ‘But I don’t actually paint – not for a while. I mustn’t. I mustn’t paint, or it goes wrong.’ He let go of her arm.

  She was listening, interested despite her desire to run away, and she put down the briefcase.

  ‘This is a kind of gestation period,’ he said. ‘It makes me hungry.’

  He was moving all the time. His hands would be in his pockets, then out; he rocked slightly on the balls of his feet. He was fidgety, nervous. She had never seen him like that.

  ‘Then maybe you should go and have something to eat,’ she said.

  ‘I will,’ he said, his head turned away, looking at the mock-up. ‘But it’s more than that. It sharpens my senses. My reactions. My appetites.’ He turned to her. ‘And you and I have some unfinished business,’ he said.

  ‘It’s going to stay unfinished.’

  ‘No,’ he said. �
�No, it’s not. I’ll come to your flat, and we’ll finish it. OK?’

  ‘I don’t want you in my flat.’

  ‘Fine. You come to mine. I’ll be alone. My flatmate’s moved out.’

  ‘Find someone else, Sam.’

  ‘That’s like telling me to read the end of another book,’ he said.

  ‘What does that matter?’ she asked, picking up her briefcase again. ‘If you don’t know which book you were reading in the first place?’

  ‘Look – maybe . . . well, maybe I was a little quick off the mark. I’ll behave better this time if you will.’

  ‘There isn’t a this time. I thought perhaps I needed you. I was wrong. I did behave badly, and I’m sorry.’

  She walked out, leaving him standing by the easel.

  Boys flowed like a grey river through the building, on the staircases, in the corridors, swollen by tributaries from the open classroom doors. She stood on the landing, and watched the building empty, pouring its contents out on to the cobbles. The grey streams ran down the slope, seeping along the lane, dribbling into the houses.

  She became aware, gradually, that Sam was standing beside her.

  ‘Happiest days of your life?’ he said.

  She shook her head.

  ‘They were of mine,’ he said.

  All things considered, Lloyd thought, as evening fell, it hadn’t been a bad day. Cawston senior had made junior apologise to Allison before they left, and he in his turn had been almost pleasant to Lloyd.

  Freddie had promised to give top priority to an examination of all the things they had discovered; soon, it would all be over.

  They had found the missing buttons in Newby’s car, and they would find something on the stick, however carefully he’d cleaned it. The silver top was engraved with an intricate pattern, and anyone who had ever stripped paint from carved wood knew just how difficult it was to remove all traces. Microscopes were wonderful inventions.

  And the clothes spoke for themselves. They had found his shirt under the bed, and you didn’t have to be a pathologist to recognise blood-stains when you saw them on a white shirt. The mud on the suit gave all the classic indications.

  But he wanted to know why. Why he had done it, why he had made such a half-hearted job of covering his tracks, come to that. Why had he just taken the suit back to the shop, for instance? Judy had asked that last night, and it still bothered Lloyd.

  He had told himself that if law-breakers had brains the crime detection rate would be even lower than it was. He had told himself that the man must be severely disturbed, and didn’t even think about the consequences. He had told himself that it was deliberate; he was, after all, already receiving psychiatric help, and he had subconsciously wanted to get caught, knowing that he’d gone over the edge.

  But Philip Newby came across as a sane, level-headed, intelligent man who was suffering permanent injury from the car crash, and who was being treated for the depression which had resulted. So why, having done it, did he not either give himself up, or work a little harder to conceal the evidence?

  Maybe he would be going for diminished responsibility, and try to cite his lack of a cover-up as proof that he was a brick short of the load. Maybe he had prepared some sort of story that would have satisfied the shop, had they asked, and thought that the police would never know. But he knew it wouldn’t satisfy Lloyd, so he simply wasn’t even trying it on him.

  Lloyd stopped at the machine, got one plastic cup full of lethally steaming liquid for Judy, and punched the buttons again. He got his own, and looked round for a plastic thing with holes in it, but there wasn’t one, and he had to grit his teeth, a red-hot cup in each hand, all the way down the corridor. Once, people had made him coffee. Brought it in. Instant, but better than this stuff which seemed to have been designed purely as a weapon. He had had to give instructions that it must never be served to a prisoner until it had cooled.

  He got into the office, gave Judy her coffee, and sat down still feeling disconsolate. He was about to be given all the evidence he needed for a conviction, and he had expected to feel something. Maybe triumphant, if he had felt he was putting away someone who deliberately preyed on women. Maybe even sad, if he felt that the murderer was just as much a prey to his own impulses. But all he felt, when he thought about Newby, was puzzled. Why would he suddenly do a thing like that?

  Some of them were called by God. Seek out wicked women, use them, destroy them. Newby seemed to have about as much truck with God as Lloyd himself, and it did seem, now he came to think of it, a little bit as though he himself had suddenly raped and murdered someone. He smiled. Maybe he could be a character witness. It must have been totally out of character, a complete bolt from the blue, because Newby didn’t split infinitives.

  The phone rang; Judy answered it. ‘Freddie,’ she said. ‘For you.’

  ‘Freddie,’ he said, picking up his extension. ‘You’ve surpassed yourself this time.’

  ‘I’ve had everyone working on it,’ said Freddie. ‘Since the crack of dawn. But it’s not as simple as it seems. Before I start, I agree that Newby’s clothes show all the signs. I know that you found what appeared to be the murder weapon in his wardrobe.’

  Lloyd closed his eyes. ‘Appeared to be?’ he repeated dully.

  ‘Lloyd – if Newby raped and murdered someone, it certainly wasn’t Mrs Hamlyn.’

  Chapter Eight

  Lloyd looked at Newby for a long time without speaking. Judy settled herself at the table with her notebook.

  ‘Well, Mr Newby,’ he said, when he had got Newby practically squirming in his chair. ‘It seems your stick didn’t kill Diana Hamlyn – it’s made from a different kind of wood from the murder weapon, and bears no traces of having been used to assault anyone. It seems that the blood on your suit is probably your own, and it seems that you are not the man who had sexual relations with her.’

  ‘I told you that,’ said Newby. ‘Does this mean I can go?’

  ‘I don’t think you really believe that,’ said Lloyd. ‘You are a witness. A reluctant one, at that.’

  ‘I had nothing to do with Mrs Hamlyn.’

  ‘No,’ said Lloyd. ‘It seems that whatever you were doing to get into that state, you weren’t doing it with Mrs Hamlyn. Her clothes are not muddy at all. None the less, it is your duty, Mr Newby, to help the police in any way you can.’

  ‘I don’t have to, though, do I? I mean – duty is a very nebulous concept. I am under no obligation to speak to you.’

  Lloyd gave a concessionary nod. ‘But then again,’ he said, ‘you have no right of silence. You did have – when we were accusing you of something. But we’re not any more. And, clearly, you wouldn’t be indulging in philosophical musings about duty unless there was something you’re not telling us.’ He sat down.

  ‘Oh – so because I haven’t committed a crime . . .’ Newby’s righteous indignation petered out, and he covered his face.

  ‘However,’ Lloyd said.

  Newby took his hands away, slowly.

  ‘Your blood is a match for the stains found at the foot of the fire-escape,’ said Lloyd.

  Newby’s face coloured painfully, and Lloyd glanced at Judy.

  ‘Don’t you think you had better just tell us?’ she asked gently. ‘We want to know what happened to you. Did you see someone? Was it a fight, or something?’

  ‘No.’ The word was muffled as his hands went over his face again.

  Newby waited for her to speak, but Judy could play that game better even than Lloyd, though he would never admit that to her. Very few people could stand silence in the middle of an interview. They almost always felt obliged to expand upon the last thing said.

  Judy just sat, and waited for him. Newby had spoken, and she would wait for ever for him to continue, if she had to. At least, that was the impression she gave, even to Lloyd. He took a stroll round the room, stopping to read the notices. He had read over half of the advice to people in police custody before Newby spoke again.
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br />   ‘I drove down to the flat, and I waited in the car park for the light to go out,’ Newby said. ‘I didn’t want to see Sam, not after what I’d found in the car. I felt . . .’

  Lloyd groaned silently. Not the same story again, please. He strained to hear what Newby was saying.

  ‘I felt as though I’d been used. I had been. My car had been. Other than that, I wasn’t much use to anyone. I didn’t want to see Sam.’

  Lloyd sat down opposite Newby as he spoke.

  ‘My head still felt a bit woozy, so I ran the window down for some air. And . . . and I heard feet on the steps. And I thought I saw someone.’

  There was another long, long silence.

  ‘I went up after whoever it was. I’d had too much to drink – it was crazy. It’s metal, it was wet and slippery – anyway, I went up.’

  Newby’s head was on his hands, his fingers digging into his scalp. ‘There was no one there,’ he said, his voice clearer now. ‘But – but there was a gap in the curtains, and I saw Caroline. She – she was changing, and . . . and I . . .’ His face was crimson. ‘I watched her,’ he whispered.

  ‘You watched her undressing,’ said Lloyd, getting up. So that’s what it was all about, he thought tiredly.

  ‘Yes.’ He took his hands away, but his head was still bowed, his face still painfully red. ‘And then she saw me, and I turned to get away. I put all my weight on the stick, and it snapped.’ He looked up. ‘It had a crack in it,’ he said helplessly. ‘I shouldn’t have been using it.’

  Lloyd sighed. Deeply, audibly, dramatically.

  ‘I fell, but the jacket pocket got caught on the railing. Then it ripped, and I went headlong down the steps. I tried to get up, and I couldn’t. Eventually, I managed to kneel, and I realised my nose was bleeding.’

  Lloyd started walking round the room while Newby spoke. He listened to him with half an ear, because the evidence from the fire-escape already bore him out, more or less, and they had discovered a thumbprint on the handle of the rear door of the car which wasn’t Newby’s.

  ‘When you went into the Barn,’ he said, interrupting whatever Newby was saying, ‘did you touch the rear door of your car?’

  ‘I closed it,’ said Newby.