Innocent Victims

by Minette Walters

  “Can you prove it?”

  “I thought that was your job.”

  He opened his notebook again, looking more like an earnest student than an officer of the law. “Do you know who might have been responsible?”

  She reached inside the car for her handbag. “Probably the same people who wrote ‘IRISH TRASH’ across their front wall,” she said, slamming the door and locking it. “Or maybe it’s the ones who broke into the house two weeks ago during the night and smashed Bridey’s Madonna and Child before urinating all over the pieces on the carpet. Who knows?” She gave him credit for looking disturbed at what she was saying. “Look, forget it,” she said wearily. “It’s late and I’m tired, and I want to get home to my children. Can you make that radio call so I don’t get held up at the other end?”

  “I’ll do it from the car.” He started to turn away, then changed his mind. “I’ll be reporting what you’ve told me, Mrs. Lavenham, including your suggestion that the police have been negligent in their duty.”

  She smiled slightly. “Is that a threat or a promise, Officer?”

  “It’s a promise.”

  “Then I hope you have better luck than I’ve had. I might have been speaking in Gaelic for all the notice your colleagues took of my warnings.” She set off for the footpath.

  “You’re supposed to put complaints in writing,” he called after her.

  “Oh, but I did,” she assured him over her shoulder. “I may be Irish, but I’m not illiterate.”

  “I didn’t mean—”

  But the rest of his apology was lost on her as she rounded the corner of the church and vanished from sight.

  Thursday, 18th February, 1999

  It had been several days before Siobhan found the courage to confront Bridey with what the detective inspector had told her. It made her feel like a thief even to think about it. Secrets were such fragile things. Little parts of oneself that couldn’t be exposed without inviting changed perceptions towards the whole. But distrust was corroding her sympathy and she needed reassurance that Bridey at least believed in Patrick’s innocence.

  She followed the old woman’s wheelchair into the sitting room and perched on the edge of the grubby sofa that Liam always lounged upon in his oil-stained boiler suit after spending hours poking around under his unsightly wrecks. It was a mystery to Siobhan what he did under them, as none of them appeared to be driveable, and she wondered sometimes if he simply used them as a canopy under which to sleep his days away. He complained often enough that his withered right hand, which he kept tucked out of sight inside his pockets to avoid upsetting people, had deprived him of any chance of a livelihood, but the truth was, he was a lazy man who was only ever seen to rouse himself when his wife left a trailing leg as she transferred from her chair to the passenger seat of their old Ford.

  “There’s nothing wrong with his left hand,” Cynthia Haversley would snort indignantly as she watched the regular little pantomine outside Kilkenny Cottage, “but you’d think he’d lost the use of both hands the way he carries on about his disabilities.”

  Privately, and with some amusement, Siobhan guessed the demonstrations were put on entirely for the benefit of the Honourable Mrs. Haversley, who made no bones about her irritation at the level of state welfare which the O’Riordans enjoyed. It was axiomatic, after all, that any woman who had enough strength in her arms to heave herself upstairs on her bottom, as Bridey did every night, could lift her own leg into a car. . . .

  The Kilkenny Cottage sitting room—Bridey called it her “parlour”—was full of religious artefacts: a shrine to the Madonna and Child on the mantelpiece, a foot-high wooden cross on one wall, a print of William Holman Hunt’s “The Light of the World” on another, a rosary hanging from a hook. In Siobhan, for whom religion was more of a trial than a comfort, the room invariably induced a sort of spiritual claustrophobia which made her long to get out and breathe fresh air again.

  In ordinary circumstances, the paths of the O’Riordans, descendants of a roaming tinker family, and Siobhan Lavenham (nee Kerry), daughter of an Irish landowner, would never have crossed. Indeed, when she and her husband, Ian, first visited Fording Farm and fell in love with it, Siobhan had pointed out the eyesore of Kilkenny Cottage with a shudder and had predicted accurately the kind of people who were living there. Irish gypsies, she said.

  “Will that make life difficult for you?” Ian had asked.

  “Only if people assume we’re related,” she answered with a laugh, never assuming for one moment that anyone would. . . .

  Bridey’s habitually cowed expression reminded Siobhan of an ill-treated dog, and she put the detective inspector’s accusations reluctantly, asking Bridey if she had lied about the car crash and about Patrick never striking his father. The woman wept, washing her hands in her lap as if, like Lady Macbeth, she could cleanse herself of sin.

  “If I did, Siobhan, it was only to have you think well of us. You’re a lovely young lady with a kind heart, but you’d not have let Patrick play with your children if you’d known what he did to his father, and you’d not have taken Rosheen into your house if you’d known her uncle Liam was a thief.”

  “You should have trusted me, Bridey. If I didn’t ask Rosheen to leave when Patrick was arrested for murder, why would I have refused to employ her just because Liam spent time in prison?”

  “Because your husband would have persuaded you against her,” said Bridey truthfully. “He’s never been happy about Rosheen being related to us, never mind she grew up in Ireland and hardly knew us till you said she could come here to work for you.”

  There was no point denying it. Ian tolerated Rosheen O’Riordan for Siobhan’s sake, and because his little boys loved her, but in an ideal world he would have preferred a nanny from a more conventional background. Rosheen’s relaxed attitude to child rearing, based on her own upbringing in a three-bedroomed cottage in the hills of Donegal where the children had slept four to a bed and play was adventurous, carefree, and fun, was so different from the strict supervision of his own childhood that he constantly worried about it. “They’ll grow up wild,” he would say. “She’s not disciplining them enough.” And Siobhan would look at her happy, lively, affectionate sons and wonder why the English were so fond of repression.

  “He worries about his children, Bridey, more so since Patrick’s arrest. We get telephone calls too, you know. Every­one knows Rosheen’s his cousin.”

  She remembered the first such call she had taken. She had answered it in the kitchen while Rosheen was making supper for the children, and she had been shocked by the torrent of anti-Irish abuse that had poured down the line. She raised stricken eyes to Rosheen’s and saw by the girl’s frightened expression that it wasn’t the first such call that had been made. After that, she had had an answerphone installed, and forebade Rosheen from lifting the receiver unless she was sure of the caller’s identity.

  Bridey’s sad gaze lifted towards the Madonna on the mantelpiece. “I pray for you every day, Siobhan, just as I pray for my Patrick. God knows, I never wished this trouble on a sweet lady like you. And for why? Is it a sin to be Irish?”

  Siobhan sighed to herself, hating Bridey’s dreary insistence on calling her a “lady.” She did not doubt Bridey’s faith, nor that she prayed every day, but she doubted God’s ability to undo Lavinia Fanshaw’s murder eight months after the event.

  And if Patrick was guilty of it, and Bridey knew he was guilty . . .

  “The issue isn’t about being Irish,” she said bluntly, “it’s about whether or not Patrick’s a murderer. I’d much rather you were honest with me, Bridey. At the moment, I don’t trust any of you, and that includes Rosheen. Does she know about his past? Has she been lying to me, too?” She paused, waiting for an answer, but Bridey just shook her head. “I’m not going to blame you for your son’s behaviour,” she said more gently, �
��but you can’t expect me to go on pleading his cause if he’s guilty.”

  “Indeed, and I wouldn’t ask you to,” said the old woman with dignity. “And you can rest your mind about Rosheen. We kept the truth to ourselves fifteen years ago. Liam wouldn’t have his son blamed for something that wasn’t his fault. We’ll call it a car accident, he said, and may God strike me dead if I ever raise my hand in anger again.” She grasped the rims of her chair wheels and slowly rotated them through half a turn. “I’ll tell you honestly, though I’m a cripple and though I’ve been married to Liam for nearly forty years, it’s only in these last fifteen that I’ve been able to sleep peacefully in my bed. Oh yes, Liam was a bad man, and oh yes, my Patrick lost his temper once and struck out at him, but I swear by the Mother of God that this family changed for the better the day my poor son wept for what he’d done and rang the police himself. Will you believe me, Siobhan? Will you trust an old woman when she tells you her Patrick could no more have murdered Mrs. Fanshaw than I can get out of this wheelchair and walk. To be sure, he took some jewellery from her—and to be sure, he was wrong to do it—but he was only trying to get back what had been cheated out of him.”

  “Except there’s no proof he was cheated out of anything. The police say there’s very little evidence that any odd jobs had been done in the manor. They mentioned that one or two cracks in the plaster had been filled, but not enough to indicate a contract worth three hundred pounds.”

  “He was up there for two weeks,” said Bridey in despair. “Twelve hours a day every day.”

  “Then why is there nothing to show for it?”

  “I don’t know,” said the old woman with difficulty. “All I can tell you is that he came home every night with stories about what he’d been doing. One day it was getting the heating system to work, the next re-laying the floor tiles in the kitchen where they’d come loose. It was Miss Jenkins who was telling him what needed doing, and she was thrilled to have all the little irritations sorted out once and for all.”

  Siobhan recalled the detective inspector’s words. “There’s no one left to agree or disagree,” he had said. “Mrs. Fanshaw’s grandson denies knowing anything about it, although he admits there might have been a private arrangement between Patrick and the nurse. She’s known to have been on friendly terms with him. . . .”

  “The police are saying Patrick only invented the contract in order to explain why his fingerprints were all over the Manor House.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “Are you sure? Wasn’t it the first idea that came into his head when the police produced the search warrant? They questioned him for two days, Bridey, and the only explanation he gave for his fingerprints and his toolbox being in the manor was that Lavinia’s nurse had asked him to sort out the dripping taps in the kitchen and bathroom. Why didn’t he mention a contract earlier? Why did he wait until they found the jewellery under his floorboards before saying he was owed money?”

  Teardrops watered the washing hands. “Because he’s been in prison and doesn’t trust the police . . . because he didn’t kill Mrs. Fanshaw . . . because he was more worried about being charged with the theft of her jewellery than he was about being charged with murder. Do you think he’d have invented a contract that didn’t exist? My boy isn’t stupid, Siobhan. He doesn’t tell stories that he can’t back up. Not when he’s had two whole days to think about them.”

  Siobhan shook her head. “Except he couldn’t back it up. You’re the only person, other than Patrick, who claims to know anything about it, and your word means nothing because you’re his mother.”

  “But don’t you see?” the woman pleaded. “That’s why you can be sure Patrick’s telling the truth. If he’d believed for one moment it would all be denied, he’d have given some other reason for why he took the jewellery. Do you hear what I’m saying? He’s a good liar, Siobhan—for his sins, he always has been—and he’d not have invented a poor, weak story like the one he’s been saddled with.”

  3.

  Tuesday, 23rd June, 1998

  It was a rambling defence that Patrick finally produced when it dawned on him that the police were serious about charging him with the murders. Siobhan heard both Bridey’s and the inspector’s versions of it, and she wasn’t surprised that the police found it difficult to swallow. It depended almost entirely on the words and actions of the murdered nurse.

  Patrick claimed Dorothy Jenkins had come to Kilkenny Cottage and asked him if he was willing to do some odd jobs at the Manor House for a cash sum of three hundred pounds. “I’ve finally persuaded her miserable skinflint of a grandson that I’ll walk out one day and not come back if he doesn’t do something about my working conditions, so he’s agreed to pay up,” she had said triumphantly. “Are you interested, Patrick? It’s a bit of moonlighting . . . no VAT . . . no Inland Revenue . . . just a couple of weeks’ work for money in hand. But for goodness’ sake don’t go talking about it,” she had warned him, “or you can be sure Cynthia Haversley will notify social services that you’re working and you’ll lose your unemployment benefit. You know what an interfering busybody she is.”

  “I needed convincing she wasn’t pulling a fast one,” Patrick told the police. “I’ve been warned off in the past by that bastard grandson of Mrs. F’s and the whole thing seemed bloody unlikely to me. So she takes me along to see him and he’s nice as pie, shakes me by the hand and says it’s a kosher contract. We’ll let bygones be bygones, he says. I worked like a dog for two weeks and, yes, of course I went into Mrs. Fanshaw’s bedroom. I popped in every morning because she and I were mates. I would say ‘hi,’ and she would giggle and say ‘hi’ back. And yes, I touched almost everything in the house—most of the time I was moving furniture around for Miss Jenkins. ‘It’s so boring when you get too old to change things,’ she’d say to me. ‘Let’s see how that table looks in here.’ Then she’d clap her hands and say: ‘Isn’t this exciting?’ I thought she was almost as barmy as the old lady, but I wasn’t going to argue with her. I mean, three hundred quid is three hundred quid, and if that’s what was wanted I was happy to do the business.”

  On the second Saturday—“the day I was supposed to be paid . . . shit . . . I should have known it was a scam. . . .” —Mrs. Fanshaw’s grandson was in the Manor House hall waiting for him when he arrived.

  “I thought the bastard had come to give me my wages, but instead he accuses me of nicking a necklace. I called him a bloody liar, so he took a swing at me and landed one on my jaw. Next thing I know, I’m out the front door, facedown on the gravel. Yeah, of course that’s how I got the scratches. I’ve never hit a woman in my life, and I certainly didn’t get into a fight with either of the old biddies at the manor.”

  There was a two-hour hiatus during which he claimed to have driven around in a fury wondering how “to get the bastard to pay what he owed.” He toyed with the idea of going to the police—“I was pretty sure Miss Jenkins would back me up, she was that mad with him, but I didn’t reckon you lot could do anything, not without social services getting to hear about it, and then I’d be worse off than I was before. . . .”—but in the end he opted for more direct action and sneaked back to Sowerbridge Manor through the gate at the bottom of the garden.

  “I knew Miss Jenkins would see me right if she could. And she did. ‘Take this, Patrick,’ she said, handing me some of Mrs. F’s jewellery, ‘and if there’s any comeback I’ll say it was my idea.’ I tell you,” he finished aggressively, “I’m gutted she and Mrs. F are dead. At least they treated me like a friend, which is more than can be said of the rest of Sowerbridge.”

  He was asked why he hadn’t mentioned any of this before. “Because I’m not a fool,” he said. “Word has it Mrs. F was killed for her jewellery. Do you think I’m going to admit having some of it under my floorboards when she was battered to death a few hours later?”

  Thursday, 18th February
, 1999

  Siobhan pondered in silence for a minute or two. “Weak or not, Bridey, it’s the one he has to go to trial with, and at the moment no one believes it. It would be different if he could prove any of it.”

  “How?”

  “I don’t know.” She shook her head. “Did he show the jewellery to anyone before Lavinia was killed?”

  A sly expression crept into the woman’s eyes as if a new idea had suddenly occurred to her. “Only to me and Rosheen,” she said, “but, as you know, Siobhan, not a word we say is believed.”

  “Did either of you mention it to anyone else?”

  “Why would we? When all’s said and done, he took the things without permission, never mind it was Miss Jenkins who gave them to him.”

  “Well, it’s a pity Rosheen didn’t tell me about it. It would make a world of difference if I could say I knew on the Saturday afternoon that Patrick already had Lavinia’s necklace in his possession.”

  Bridey looked away towards her Madonna, crossing herself as she did so, and Siobhan knew she was lying. “She thinks the world of you, Siobhan. She’d not embarrass you by making you a party to her cousin’s troubles. In any case, you’d not have been interested. Was your mind not taken up with cooking that day? Was that not the Saturday you were entertaining Mr. and Mrs. Haversley to dinner to pay off all the dinners you’ve had from them but never wanted?”

  There were no secrets in a village, thought Siobhan, and if Bridey knew how much Ian and she detested the grinding tedium of Sowerbridge social life, which revolved around the all-too-regular “dinner party,” presumably the rest of Sowerbridge did as well. “Are we really that obvious, Bridey?”

  “To the Irish, maybe, but not to the English,” said the old woman with a crooked smile. “The English see what they want to see. If you don’t believe me, Siobhan, look at the way they’ve condemned my poor Patrick as a murdering thief before he’s even been tried.”