Suspicious Death

by Dorothy Simpson

  Lomax was still looking aggrieved. ‘As soon as she’d gone, I got out, I can tell you. I’d just about had enough.’

  FIFTEEN

  ‘I wouldn’t trust him further than I could spit!’ said Lineham.

  They were discussing Lomax on their way back to Telford Green. They had returned to the hairdressing salon to see Josie only to be met by a defiant Gary. ‘I sent her home, poor love. There was no point in her staying on at work, was there, she was too upset …’

  Thanet hadn’t bothered to make a fuss. He wanted to go back to Telford Green anyway, to see Betty Pantry. Now that he knew more about what had happened on Tuesday night there were a number of questions he’d like to put to the housekeeper.

  ‘Maybe not. But that doesn’t necessarily make him a murderer.’

  ‘It makes him a potential murderer, though, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Oh come on, Mike. They say that everyone is a potential murderer, given the right circumstances.’

  ‘You think so? You really think so?’

  ‘I don’t know. I’d like to think not. I’d like to believe that I would never go over the edge, however hard I was pushed. But how can you ever know, unless you actually find yourself in that position? It’s like condemning someone for being a thief because he steals bread to feed his starving children. If my children were starving, would I steal, to keep them alive?’

  ‘I hope you don’t mind me saying so, sir, but when I hear you talk like this it makes me wonder why you’re in the police at all.’

  ‘I wonder myself, sometimes … But to get back to Lomax …’

  ‘Well, there is just one thing in his favour.’

  ‘That he wouldn’t have wanted to kill off the goose that was going to lay the biggest golden egg he was ever likely to see, you mean?’

  ‘That’s right. Unless …’ said Lineham slowly.

  ‘What?’ Thanet could guess what was coming.

  ‘Well, unless he found that Mrs Salden was becoming too much for him to handle.’

  ‘Let’s pull into that lay-by for a few minutes, shall we?’

  Lineham glanced in the mirror and signalled left. The lay-by was empty and he switched off the engine. The sun was warm through the glass and they wound down the windows. Sweet, fresh air rushed in and the car was filled at once with the sound of birdsong. Thanet located its source, a thrush sitting on the topmost branch of a hawthorn tree in the hedge. Reluctantly he turned back to Lineham.

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Well, I was thinking. Suppose Mrs Salden and Lomax set up this deal – she’ll buy his shop at a grossly inflated price if he’ll wangle that planning permission … As extra insurance she introduces him to Josie and tells Josie to keep him happy. Then, say, he gets cold feet. Perhaps someone begins to suspect what’s going on, drops a few hints … Lomax decides to back out. He doesn’t want to end up on a corruption charge and anyway power is sweet, he likes playing God on the Borough Council … He tells Mrs Salden that he’s changed his mind. Naturally she’s furious, she can see her quarter of a million floating away out of her grasp. At this point Josie discovers she’s pregnant. She tells Lomax, who is appalled and Mrs S, who is privately delighted. Here is the lever she wanted. Out come the claws and she tells Lomax that if he pulls out of the plan he’ll be seeing some interesting headlines in the local paper shortly. She’s got him over a barrel. She’s been careful to keep all the paperwork regarding the purchase of his shop above board, so he has nothing on her. It’s his word against hers. Whereas she has Josie and the soon-to-be-obvious pregnancy on her side … Now, in those circumstances he’d be prepared to take pretty drastic action, don’t you think?’

  Lineham was looking very pleased with himself for producing such a neat and cohesive theory.

  Thanet refrained from saying that he’d worked all this out himself some time ago. ‘Very convincing, Mike. Well done. I agree, it’s a possibility we have to keep in mind.’

  ‘A very strong possibility, surely! Motive, means, opportunity, he had them all! If he left the Manor by car between a quarter and twenty past ten …’

  ‘Agreed, but there is one snag.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘We’re basing all this on a possible false premise.’

  Lineham raised his eyebrows.

  ‘That Josie is pregnant. That’s pure assumption, at the moment.’

  ‘Maybe. But surely, even if she isn’t, Lomax could still have decided to pull out and Mrs Salden could still have turned nasty.’

  ‘True … Well, we’d better be getting on.’

  Lineham started the engine and checked his mirror. ‘Now we know about Mrs Trimble’s visit to the Manor on Tuesday night … You remember you said you thought Josie passed out because she had just realised who the murderer might be, that he must be someone close to her … D’you think it was her mother she had in mind?’

  ‘Possibly. A bit far-fetched, though, don’t you think? Plenty of parents get steamed up about their offspring’s girlfriends or boyfriends, but they don’t go around murdering the person who introduced them.’

  ‘Unless they’re unbalanced. And Lomax seemed to think Mrs Trimble is.’

  ‘That may have been a figure of speech. Anyway, we’ll soon find out, won’t we? With any luck she’ll be at home.’

  But their luck was out, it seemed. A red-eyed Josie answered the door. The house was small, Victorian and semi-detached, built of ugly yellow brick, with a skimpy front garden in which regimented tulips stood stiffly in rows. The cramped living-room into which she led them was spotlessly clean and looked as though it was rarely used. A three-piece suite covered in brown moquette, back and arms protected by antimacassars, stood on a faded Art Deco carpet square in shades of green. There were no signs of occupation, not even a television set, and very few ornaments. Net curtains shielded the room from prying eyes.

  Mrs Trimble, Josie told them, worked as a cleaner four mornings a week. On Thursdays, like today, she always went shopping in Sturrenden and didn’t get back until half-past five.

  ‘I see … look, Josie, I’m sorry to trouble you again so soon, but there are some more questions we really must ask you.’

  She gave a tight little nod, a barely perceptible movement of her head. She was sitting perched on the edge of the armchair, arms tightly folded, legs tucked sideways. It was a stiff, uncomfortable pose, with tension in every line. She had changed into jeans, track shoes and sweater, and had caught the luxuriant mass of her hair back into an elastic band at the nape of her neck. She looked young, defenceless and forlorn. Thanet experienced a pang of conscience. Should he have brought a policewoman with him, instead of Lineham? But despite her appearance Josie was an adult, he reminded himself, and this was potentially a murder case. He would press on.

  ‘You told us that when Mr Salden rang at about half-past ten, and you told him Mrs Salden had not yet arrived home, you both assumed she was still on her way.’

  ‘That’s right, yeah.’

  ‘Did you know she’d had to walk down because her car wouldn’t start?’

  A shake of the head. ‘No, she didn’t say.’

  ‘So you thought she’d be turning up any minute, I suppose.’

  ‘’S right.’

  ‘So, when she didn’t, why didn’t you ring Mr Salden, to tell him?’

  ‘I told you. I thought she’d changed her mind, didn’t I, gone back to the cottage.’

  For a moment Thanet thought she was going to start crying again, but she took a deep breath, held it and exhaled slowly.

  ‘Look,’ she said, ‘I been thinking. It’s easy to look back and say, “I should’ve done this” or “I should’ve done that”. But at the time you, well, you just go on from minute to minute, if you see what I mean. On Tuesday, well, it’d been an ’orrible day, one way and the other, and I was dead tired, all I wanted to do was go ’ome and go to bed. But I’d said I’d stay till she got back, so I ’ung on and ’ung on … And when she didn’t come I
just got madder and madder. I really did think she must’ve got part of the way ’ome and then turned round and gone back, meaning to ring us when she got there. And then she found ’er mum had taken a turn for the worse and she’d decided to stay, forgot all about us. After all, ’er mum must’ve been pretty bad that night, mustn’t she, she died later on, didn’t she? Anyway, I worked all this out, but at the same time I couldn’t ’elp being mad with ’er for not ringing and letting me know … And like I said, the longer I waited the madder I got. So in the end I decided to come ’ome.’

  ‘Yes, I see. But if you felt like that why didn’t you simply ring the cottage to say you were tired and couldn’t wait any longer?’

  Her eyes went blank, flickering from side to side as if seeking a means of escape. This was a question whose answer she didn’t want to admit even to herself. The silence stretched out. ‘Didn’t like to, did I?’ she said at last, in a voice blank of emotion. ‘Didn’t think it was right, not if ’er mum was that ill.’ She shook her head, a brief, violent movement as if to clear it of confusion. ‘No!’ she burst out. ‘That in’t right. I was sick and tired of being kept dangling, that’s the truth. And I thought, if she can’t be bothered to ring me, then I’m damned if I’ll ring her. And if she’s cross when she gets back and finds I didn’t wait, then too bad!’

  ‘And now you’re feeling guilty.’

  She nodded, lips compressed, the tears starting to flow again.

  ‘You think that if only you hadn’t allowed yourself to be angry, if only you’d rung Mr Salden, Mrs Salden might still be alive.’

  More nods as she wiped her eyes, snuffled, blew her nose.

  Thanet sighed. ‘Well, I can understand how you feel, but the fact of the matter is, there’s just no reason why you should. To put it bluntly, Mrs Salden couldn’t swim, she would have drowned very quickly, and quite soon after leaving her mother’s cottage. It’s even possible she might already have been dead by the time Mr Salden rang you at half-past ten. So you see …’

  She had given an involuntary shudder of distress while he was talking, but at least she had stopped crying. ‘You mean that?’ She gave her nose one final blow and sat up a little straighter.

  ‘I wouldn’t have said so, if I didn’t. All the same …’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’m afraid that doesn’t let you entirely off the hook. Josie … why weren’t you frank with us about your relationship with Mr Lomax?’

  A wary look crept into her eyes and the muscles along her jawline clenched. ‘What d’you mean?’

  ‘You told us you’d only met him three or four times in all, and always when you were with Mrs Salden.’

  She tried to bluff it out. ‘But I did meet ’im when I was with ’er …’

  ‘Josie …’ Thanet was reproachful. ‘Come on, now. We’re not stupid, you know, and we do have ways of finding things out. What about all those lunch hours, for example?’

  She stared at him for a moment longer and then tossed her head. ‘I didn’t think it was any of your business.’

  ‘Maybe not, in normal circumstances. But these are not normal circumstances.’

  Her flash of defiance had gone and once again she was looking frightened, vulnerable. ‘You said …’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘The last time I saw you … At the salon … You said, it may not’ve been an accident.’

  ‘That’s right, yes.’

  ‘But you’re not sure?’

  ‘Not yet, no.’

  ‘Oh …’ She looked relieved.

  ‘But it’s still a possibility we have to consider. Which is why I asked you if you knew of anyone who had a grudge against Mrs Salden.’

  ‘I’ve been thinking …’

  ‘Yes?’ Thanet could see quite clearly what Josie was up to. She had decided to employ diversionary tactics in order to steer their attention away from her affair with Lomax and also, perhaps, away from her mother. All the same, this could be interesting.

  ‘Well, I don’t know if I ought to tell you …’

  Thanet smiled. ‘I can’t let you get away with that, now can I? Not now you’ve begun …’

  ‘It’s just that … Well, I was up at the Manor that afternoon and I ’appened to oyer’ear something …’

  She glanced from Thanet’s face to Lineham’s, as if to ensure that she had their complete attention.

  ‘Marcia – Mrs Salden – was going on at ’er secretary, that Miss Phipps …’

  ‘… We’ve lost it, d’you realise that? Lost it! An absolutely prime site in Week Street in Maidstone, and we’ve lost it. And why? Because someone else got a written offer in ahead of us! And what is more, Edith, my dear, efficient little secretary, you may be interested to hear that my written offer never in fact arrived. NEVER ARRIVED! Now why do you suppose that is?’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘Of course you don’t understand. You never do understand, do you, when things go wrong because of your inefficiency? Well, it occurs to me that the reason why it never arrived could just be because it was never posted. Where’s that so-called handbag of yours? Go on, get it. My God, beats me how you ever find anything in it. Now empty it out on the desk. Empty it out, go on. Ah … Surprise, surprise. Three unposted letters. One of which is addressed to Page and Wells, Estate Agents, 52–54 King Street, Maidstone. What have you got to say about that? Not a lot, obviously.’

  ‘Marcia, I’m sorry, I really am. I can’t think what could have happened.’

  ‘Oh, but I can. It’s quite simple, isn’t it, Edith? You just forgot, as usual. Well, let me tell you this. I’ve had it up to here with your little lapses of memory, and this time they’ve cost me just too much. I’ve wanted a Week Street site in Maidstone for years, and if it hadn’t been for you I’d have got it.’

  ‘Couldn’t you …?’

  ‘It’s not your business to tell me what I can or can’t do!’

  ‘I was only going to suggest …’

  ‘To hell with your suggestions! I don’t need a secretary to make suggestions. I need a secretary who is efficient, who does what I want her to do when I want her to do it. Such as posting important letters when they’re written. No, I’m sorry, Edith, I’ve put this off as long as I can, but I’m afraid I shall have to ask you to look for another job.’

  ‘But …’

  ‘No! I’m not going to listen. I know you’re in a difficult position, but you’ve become too expensive for me. I have the business to think of. I haven’t put years of my life into building it up to have it undermined by your inefficiency. You can have a month to find somewhere else.’

  Josie stopped talking. Her eyes still glittered with the excitement of recounting the drama she had overheard.

  Thanet remembered Edith Phipps’s prim, tight face, the undertone of resentment, jealousy, even, as she had talked about Marcia’s success. Then there was her invalid mother, the convenience of working so close to home … Would she have had to move out of the gatehouse, if she had lost her job?

  And she had lied about not going out that night.

  Like Lomax, means, opportunity and now motive, she had had them all.

  SIXTEEN

  ‘She’s not back from lunch yet.’ Mrs Pantry’s eyes flickered in the direction of the avenue of trees, as if she half-expected to see Edith Phipps walking up the drive. Despite the fact that it was pouring with rain, she did not ask them in. The sun had suddenly clouded over and a heavy April shower had materialised with very little warning.

  Thanet hunched his shoulders against the water which was trickling down the back of his neck. He and Lineham had unwisely not bothered to put on their raincoats for the short distance between house and car, and Mrs Pantry’s inhospitality had caught them unprepared. He was annoyed that she had not invited them to take shelter from the downpour and annoyed, too, that he had not thought of calling in at the gatehouse on the way. He had, after all, been well aware that Edith always spent her lunch hours at home.
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br />   Still, there were various points he wanted to raise with the housekeeper.

  ‘In that case, I’d like another word with you, while we’re waiting.’

  Grudgingly she opened the massive door a little wider and moved aside to allow them to pass. They stepped inside, brushing the rain off their jackets and wiping their faces.

  There was a pungent smell of polish in the hall and halfway up the staircase lay an open tin and some dusters. Without asking permission, Mrs Pantry climbed the remaining stairs, plumped down on her knees and resumed the task which they had evidently interrupted. ‘You won’t mind if I get on with my work?’

  Thanet was about to protest that yes, he did object, when he changed his mind. This was more than Mrs Pantry’s natural ungraciousness, it was a calculated snub, and it intrigued him. He would play it her way, for the moment. What had aroused her hostility? he wondered. Despite Edith Phipps’s brief account of Mrs Pantry’s unhappy past, Thanet found that his dislike of the housekeeper had not diminished. What was it about her that provoked this instinctive recoil? It certainly wasn’t her size. He had met any number of large women in the past, and some of them he had found very attractive. Nor was it the fact that she was physically unprepossessing. Perhaps it was her lack of femininity, her gracelessness, her uncompromising harshness. Or perhaps it was no one thing, but a combination of many. Irrelevantly, he found himself wondering about the husband who had absconded. What sort of man would be attracted to a woman like this?

  Anxious to avoid the sight of her massive buttocks and treelike thighs advancing slowly towards him down the stairs, he crossed to the oak table against the wall on the other side of the hall and hitched himself up on to it. From here he had a good view of her profile through the banisters. Lineham stationed himself beside the staircase, his head just below the level of hers.

  ‘Is Mr Salden about?’ Thanet wanted to be sure that this conversation was not going to be overheard.

  ‘No, he’s gone into Sturrenden to make the arrangements for his mother-in-law’s funeral.’

  All clear, then.