by Jill McGown
‘Why did Mrs Hamlyn run away from Treadwell?’ she asked.
The chairman had left, thank God, and Treadwell closed the front door with a deeply grateful sigh. The man seemed to think that he should have done something about Sam Waters barricading himself into the art room. There really wasn’t much he could have done, even if he had wanted to, but Sergeant Hill had winkled him out, somehow. He didn’t know where Sam was now, and he didn’t care. He was having nothing to do with it. He didn’t hire him, and he wasn’t going to fire him. He would gladly hand that pleasure over to Mr Dearden and Mrs Knight.
He went through to the kitchen where Marcia was putting away the crockery. ‘Lovely lunch,’ he said. ‘You almost put the old sod in a good mood.’
‘Don’t swear,’ she said.
‘You should have joined us.’
‘It was none of my business,’ she said.
‘Marcia, Marcia. My sudden retirement from academic life is your business.’ He stretched. ‘Early retirement,’ he said. ‘I can see us now, pottering about the garden, joining the Darby and Joan Club—’
‘Where?’ she said. ‘Where will this garden be? Where will we go? What will we do?’
‘Don’t panic.’ He sat down at the kitchen table. ‘He says he can get Stansfield District Council to house us. A flat, probably.’ He smiled. ‘We’ll have to potter about the window-box, I suppose.’
‘You’ve been drinking,’ she said, and turned away.
He watched as she put away plates and cups, and stood up. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I’ve been drinking.’ He slipped his arms round her waist. ‘Dance with me,’ he said.
She stiffened.
‘I’m not drunk.’ He smiled at her. ‘Not yet. We used to go dancing,’ he said. ‘You wouldn’t dance with me on Friday night. You danced with young Cawston, but you wouldn’t dance with me.’
‘He wasn’t drunk.’
He held her tight. ‘Dance with me now,’ he said.
‘Don’t be ridiculous! Let me go!’
Dance, Marcia. Dance wildly. Once. Just once. But you couldn’t force someone to dance, he discovered, as he tried vainly to push her round the room. You couldn’t overpower a woman just to dance with her.
The doorbell brought the undignified grappling to an end. ‘I’ll get it,’ he said.
Detective Chief Inspector Lloyd and Detective Sergeant Hill. Wonderful. Come to arrest him for attempted dancing.
‘I’m afraid we’re going to have to take up some more of your time, Mr Treadwell,’ said Lloyd.
‘Well, I’ve got plenty of that,’ said Treadwell, showing them into the sitting-room. ‘Can I interest either of you in a drink? I’m going to have several.’
They shook their heads in unison.
‘What embarrassing questions do you have for me today?’ he asked, pouring himself a Scotch of magnificent proportions.
‘We would like to ask you some questions,’ Lloyd confirmed. ‘And I would like you to get Matthew Cawston here, if you would.’
Treadwell frowned. ‘What do you want with him?’ he asked.
‘We think he may have information which is relevant to this inquiry,’ said the sergeant.
Treadwell picked up the phone, and caused Matthew to be found.
‘On Friday night,’ Lloyd said, as they were waiting, ‘you went into the Barn. Were the big doors open or closed?’
‘Closed,’ said Treadwell. ‘I couldn’t see Diana until she opened one of them.’
Lloyd nodded, and asked no more questions until Matthew arrived, and was invited to sit down.
Lloyd asked Matthew the same question about the doors, and Matthew gave the same answer.
‘And, when you were interrupted, which way did whoever it was come in?’
A frown crossed Matthew’s brow. ‘From the Hall,’ he said. ‘He came in the small door.’
‘He?’
‘Well . . . whoever.’
‘And which way did you run?’ asked Lloyd.
‘The other way.’
‘You had to open one of the big doors?’
‘Yes.’
Lloyd looked at Treadwell, then back at Matthew. ‘You were running away,’ he said. ‘I presume you didn’t close it again.’
‘No,’ said Matthew guardedly.
‘So who did?’ Lloyd asked Treadwell.
‘It’s surely quite obvious,’ said Treadwell, forced into talking about this again, with not only a woman but also a boy present. ‘They wanted privacy,’ he said, in a stage whisper.
‘They?’
‘Diana and . . . whoever she was with,’ said Treadwell. Lloyd considered that. ‘Privacy,’ he said. ‘Yes. Yes, they would. So they closed the big door again.’
Treadwell grunted.
‘So why did they leave both the car door and the small door open?’ asked Lloyd. ‘Not much privacy there. You could hear everything that was going on.’
Oh God. Not in front of Matthew, of all people.
Lloyd smiled. ‘I don’t expect an answer, Mr Treadwell,’ he said. ‘I just wanted to be certain that we understood about the doors.’
Matthew half-rose from his chair.
‘Oh – the sergeant has a few more questions for you, Matthew,’ Lloyd said. He turned to Treadwell. ‘I’m afraid you will have to be present,’ he added.
Treadwell shrugged. He was still the boy’s headmaster, just.
‘The thefts, Matthew,’ said the sergeant.
My God, the woman never gave up, thought Treadwell. ‘Oh, really,’ he said crossly. ‘The school has agreed not to prosecute. And you are certainly not going to take up any of my time, plentiful though it is, going over all that again.’
‘Before I ask you anything, Matthew,’ said Sergeant Hill, as though Treadwell hadn’t spoken, ‘I have to tell you that you are not obliged to say anything, but anything that you do say will be taken down, and may be given in evidence.’
It would be taken down all right, thought Treadwell, as the sergeant’s thick notebook made its usual appearance.
‘And you can have a solicitor present, if you wish.’
Matthew shook his head, puzzled, smiling.
‘You were stealing for eighteen months,’ she said.
Matthew nodded briefly.
‘Eighteen months,’ she repeated. ‘That’s a long time.’
Matthew said nothing. There wasn’t much he could say, Treadwell supposed. Time was relative, after all. It was a long time compared to a day. It was a very short time compared to a millennium. Treadwell didn’t even try to sip his drink.
‘No one ever saw you,’ she said. ‘No one caught you. No one suspected you. They even suspected someone else altogether, because you wanted them to. That was clever, Matthew.’
Poor Matthew, thought Treadwell. How do you react to that? A self-deprecatory smile hardly fitted the bill. Modest denial was just as bad. He almost felt sorry for him.
‘So why did you get caught on Friday night?’ she asked.
‘Bad luck,’ Matthew said.
‘No. You were good, Matthew. You never took anything that mattered to anyone. You would wait for weeks and weeks between thefts, so that you could pick just the right moment, and just the right item.’ She leaned forward. ‘But this time you took something expensive. Something that meant a great deal to someone. Because it didn’t matter what you took, did it? This time, you wanted to get caught.’
Treadwell’s glass stopped at his lips, as he looked at Matthew.
Matthew frowned. ‘Why would I want to get caught?’ he asked.
‘So you could get Mrs Hamlyn alone,’ she said.
Treadwell put down his glass.
‘If she actually saw you steal, she would have to do something about it,’ the sergeant went on. ‘And she wouldn’t take you to task in front of all those people. She would take you aside.’
Matthew shifted a little in his seat. ‘I don’t see why I would want her to do that,’ he said.
‘You knew what
she was like,’ said the sergeant. ‘You’d seen her in action. Trying to seduce Mr Newby the very day he arrived at the school. It got you going, didn’t it? You wanted her. That would be even better than stealing – that would really be cocking a snook at everyone. Having a teacher’s wife. And easy. All you had to do was get her alone, and indicate your interest. She was anyone’s, wasn’t she?’
Treadwell picked up his glass again. He wasn’t sure how much of this he could take. If Marcia had ever spoken like that, he would . . . but, then, perhaps the sergeant danced.
‘And she did take you aside. It started raining, and you went into the Barn. Even better.’
Matthew was shaking his head, smiling a little.
‘When we began this investigation, it looked like a straightforward rape and murder,’ she said. ‘Then all sorts of things came to light. We found out what Mrs Hamlyn had been like, and we found out that the sexual intercourse probably hadn’t happened on the field at all. So it was possible that she hadn’t been raped. We found out that it had actually happened in Mr Newby’s car – Mr Newby found her underwear there, so he knew she hadn’t been raped. Mr Treadwell actually heard her with someone. He knew she hadn’t been raped.’
Treadwell looked at Lloyd, who seemed to be having nothing to do with any of this. It was nonsense, anyway. Whatever Diana Hamlyn may have been, she certainly didn’t get involved with pupils, and this woman was suggesting that it was Cawston she was with when he heard . . . He didn’t finish the sentence, not even in his head.
‘But sometimes, Matthew,’ said the sergeant, ‘things are just the way they seem.’
Matthew had lost the supercilious look.
‘Right at the start, we were asked who the hell would need to rape Diana Hamlyn. And the answer is – a pupil would need to rape her, if he wanted her. Mrs Hamlyn would have nothing to do with you, would she, Matthew?’
Matthew’s face had the closed expression that Treadwell had seen when he had apologised to him, as Sergeant Hill went on.
‘It did happen in Mr Newby’s car. But Mrs Hamlyn didn’t get in voluntarily, did she? You opened the door, and you pushed her in. She tried to struggle – kick. Her shoes came off. Outside the car. She was pinned down in the back of a small car – she couldn’t fight you off. And when you had had enough you ran. Your first thought was to get rid of the pen, deny everything. So you ran to where you kept the things you had taken. And you left by the small door.’ She glanced at Treadwell. ‘That’s why you found it open,’ she said, and turned back to Matthew.
‘You had stolen everything that had gone missing here for the last eighteen months,’ she said. ‘And when you put the pen away you saw the golf-club. Because you had stolen it, of course. Who else would want to? Sometimes things are just the way they seem.’
Treadwell took a gulp of whisky.
‘You realised what you had done. You had hurt her – you knew you were in deep trouble. She would tell. She would report it. You couldn’t rely on lying your way out of violent rape. There she was, making all that fuss, and there it was, a ready-made weapon.’
Not a flicker of emotion showed on Matthew’s composed, blank face as he spoke. ‘You said that Mr Treadwell heard her with someone,’ he said. ‘According to you, I was at the other end of the school by then.’ He looked at Lloyd. ‘She can’t have it both ways,’ he said.
‘Mr Treadwell went into the Barn,’ said the sergeant. ‘Diana Hamlyn got out of the car, and pushed open one of the big doors. Just moments later, Mr Newby drove his car out, having spent some time removing the articles he had found in the back. So if she had been in the car with someone, then Mr Newby would have found whoever it was still in his car, wouldn’t he? But all he found were the tights and pants that she pulled away from her ankles in order to run away before anyone saw her. And what Mr Treadwell heard was someone shocked, hurt, in pain . . .’ She paused. ‘And alone,’ she said, looking at Treadwell. ‘Moaning. Trying to catch her breath. And asking God to help her.’
‘Not waving, Mr Treadwell,’ Lloyd said quietly, ‘but drowning.’
Treadwell looked away. He didn’t need poetry quoted at him to know that he had jumped to the wrong conclusion. The sergeant was doing well enough in her own more prosaic way. But he had gone in. He would have helped her. ‘She ran away!’ he said, in his own defence.
‘Yes,’ said Sergeant Hill. ‘She ran away. She ran towards the playing-field. Towards home.’ She turned back to Matthew. ‘You knew she wouldn’t go back into the Hall, not in the state you had left her in. She would go home. You ran to the junior dormitory, and you went up the fire-escape. But you saw Mrs Knight and you realised not only that Mrs Hamlyn hadn’t reached home, but also that when she did Mrs Knight would see her. Now you really panicked. You had to get to Mrs Hamlyn before she got home. So you ran back down. And that’s when Mr Newby saw you. He saw you on your way down, not up. That’s why there was no one around when he got there. But he had caught a glimpse of you; he said he thought it was a boy, and sometimes, Matthew, things are just the way they seem.’
Treadwell knew that he ought to be on the phone to the solicitor. But, if Matthew hadn’t thought of it, why should he? Everyone knew he was a drunken incompetent.
‘You ran across the field; you met Mrs Hamlyn, trying to get home. And you made certain that she never did.’
She sat back. ‘You thought you’d got away with it. But we got on to the pen, and you had to think fast. You tried to make us think it was Mr Newby. You had your story about him, which was true. You had raped Mrs Hamlyn in his car; that had to help. But it didn’t work, did it? You had to think of someone else. Someone plausible. Since no one believed it was rape any more, it didn’t have to be a man. But it did have to be someone who could have stolen the golf-club. And who was the only other person ever suspected of stealing? She even had a motive – you discovered that when Jim Lacey came here. You were there, Matthew. You heard him – everyone heard him. He was talking to Des, and Des is deaf.’
Treadwell put down his glass. ‘That’s why you came here talking about the accident!’ he said. ‘Making sure I remembered she had a motive. Knowing that she was with me when we found that club, because you were there, too, weren’t you? Following her about, waiting for your chance to steal something.’
There was a silence after Treadwell had spoken; everyone looked at Matthew, who never took his eyes off the sergeant.
‘You’ve got no evidence,’ he said at last. ‘You’ve twisted things to fit. But you’ve got no evidence to back it up, because it isn’t true.’
‘I think I have evidence,’ she said. ‘Or, rather, a witness.’
Treadwell looked at Matthew, who seemed distinctly uncomfortable. He looked back at the sergeant, waiting to see what she did next, his drink forgotten. He would have paid good money for a ticket to this show.
‘You see, Matthew, you must have got terribly wet. We know you didn’t get any blood on your clothes, but the golf-club just wasn’t heavy enough. You had to get down into the snow and the slush to finish the job. You must have been wet through.’
Matthew sat up a little in his chair.
‘And you went back to the school, once you’d killed her. You disposed of the club in the boiler room, and went into the Hall from the inside door. You were there only minutes after you had murdered Diana Hamlyn, and your clothes must still have been wet.’
Matthew’s eyebrows lifted a little. ‘Has anyone told you that they were?’ he asked.
‘They might not have looked wet,’ she said. ‘But you wanted to establish that you were in the Hall. So you asked the headmaster’s wife to dance with you.’ She moved forward again. ‘Shall I ask her?’
Matthew didn’t react.
‘Marcia!’ Treadwell shouted, making everyone jump.
She appeared, looking even more flushed and flustered than ever beside the cool, collected Sergeant Hill.
‘Mrs Treadwell,’ said the sergeant, ‘you told me that Matthew da
nced with you on Friday night. Once when all the boys danced with the ladies, and once later on. Do you know what time that was?’
Marcia looked at Treadwell.
‘Tell the woman!’
‘About twenty past eleven, or so,’ she said. ‘I know, because I—’
‘I want you to think carefully, Mrs Treadwell,’ said Sergeant Hill, gently interrupting her. ‘Were Matthew’s clothes wet?’
She frowned. ‘I’m sorry. I don’t know what you mean.’
‘It’s hardly an oblique question, Marcia,’ groaned Treadwell. ‘Were his clothes wet or weren’t they?’
‘Wet?’ she repeated. There was a long silence while she puzzled over the question.
The sergeant gave her an encouraging smile. ‘Perhaps not wet,’ she said. ‘But were they damp?’
‘No,’ said Marcia.
‘Are you sure?’ the sergeant persisted, but it was a lost cause, and she knew it.
‘I’m quite sure,’ said Marcia. ‘His clothes were dry.’
Trust Marcia. Trust her to be decided for the first time in her life when everyone else wanted her to be undecided. Treadwell watched her as she walked back into the kitchen, then turned to look at the sergeant.
She looked at Matthew, and gave a little shrug. ‘I was wrong,’ she said. ‘Your clothes were dry.’
Matthew inclined his head a little.
There wasn’t a lot more she could say, Treadwell thought. Cawston senior would have a field day with this. Sergeant Hill would be lucky to be directing traffic come nightfall. No wonder her boss had stayed out of it.
But she did have more to say, her voice crisp and clear in the silence.
‘Why were they dry, Matthew?’ she asked.
Matthew felt the dread again. He didn’t speak; he didn’t look at her, as her voice went on.
‘According to you, you went out to speak to Mrs Hamlyn, and it started to rain. You went into the Barn. You were interrupted by someone, and ran away. Through the rain. The rain that was so hard that Mr Waters’s jacket was still damp hours later. But you didn’t get wet.’
‘I waited in the House. For a long time. I told you that. I got dry while I was waiting.’
