by Simon Brett
‘How does this prove that?’ He held the bottle daintily between thumb and forefinger. ‘Merrily died in an electrical accident due to faulty wiring in an old house.’
‘This bottle proves that you planned to kill her, that you tried out poison as a first option, that you hoped you might be able to make her drink it in error, that then you realised it wouldn’t work and.
The words could have been worrying, so close did they come to the truth, but the tone of defeat with which they were delivered and the hopelessness in which they petered out, showed how little even their speaker was convinced by them. With a little surge of delight, Graham realised again his immunity, his invisibility from the searching eyes of suspicion.
‘And this bottle proves all that?’ He placed it on the mantelpiece and shook his head. ‘Why now suddenly? Why didn’t you produce your “evidence” when you sent off your letter to the police?’
‘I hadn’t worked it all out then,’ she mumbled.
‘And you still haven’t,’ he riposted harshly. ‘Still haven’t by a mile. Because there’s nothing to work out. God knows what play this scene comes from, Lilian, but, as ever, you’re all melodrama — you always have been. With you, everything gets inflated into full-scale comic opera. Whether it’s how Charmian’s behaved, or do your grandchildren love you, or your non-affair with the late, great, gay William Essex, it all — ’ He stopped for her to speak, but she thought better of her interruption, so he continued. ‘It all gets overblown and ridiculous. Which is one of the reasons why I am glad to be shot of you. But. .’ He raised a finger to silence her. ‘But it’s now ceasing to be funny. Any more allegations of murder and I’ll have you prosecuted. I don’t think the police are going to be over-impressed by your sherry bottle. They might if it had been found in the shed the week after Merrily’s death, but now. . well, you could so easily have set it up to frame me. They’re already suspicious of you, Lilian. I actually had to deter them from taking action after the letter. Now there’s this knife attack this morning. Bother me again, Lilian, and I’ll get you put away.’
She was still silent as he rose. ‘I am going to get dressed. When I come down again, I would prefer not to find you here. Oh, and, incidentally, I will be watching out for further knife attacks.’
At the door he stopped, curious. ‘By the way, what was the knife attack in aid of? Did you intend to kill me?’
‘Yes,’ she hissed. ‘But not with the knife.’
‘How then?’
She made a limp, disspirited gesture to the bottle on the mantelpiece.
‘You were going to make me drink that?’ He could hardly believe her little nod of assent. ‘At knife point?’
The second small nod released his laughter. The joke still seemed good as he picked up the knife in the hall and placed it out of harm’s way. And during the leisurely process of shaving and dressing, little chuckles kept bubbling through.
When he went back down to the sitting-room, Lilian was still there. She appeared not to have moved. Her face sagged, old and wretched.
‘I am going out,’ Graham announced. ‘I’d be grateful if, when you go, you would leave my house key on the hall table. But if you don’t, I am sure I can get it returned by my solicitors.’
He was at the door before she spoke.
‘You killed Merrily, Graham. And I’m going to be revenged on you. If it’s the last thing I do.’
‘No, Lilian.’ He favoured her with a condescending smile. ‘Not even if it’s the last thing you do.’
He walked out of the house to encounter a new problem.
It was a bright day, the green of the new leaves intensified by the sunlight. He started walking towards the river with no very clear intentions. He felt deliciously free; it didn’t matter where he went, what he did.
‘Graham.’
He turned at the sound of his name to see Stella hurrying towards him from a Mini parked opposite the house. He said nothing as she approached.
‘Graham, I want to know what’s happening.’
‘Why are you here?’ he asked coldly.
‘I’ve got to see you.’
‘You are seeing me. Why have you come here? Why are you stopping me in the street?’
‘I was going to go to the house, but just as I got there a woman arrived.’
‘My mother-in-law,’ he enunciated. ‘The mother of my late wife.’
‘Graham. .’ Stella looked at him in a way that was meant to be appealing.
‘What do you want?’ He was getting annoyed. Fortunately there were few people around, but he didn’t want scenes in the street.
‘I want to know where we stand, Graham.’
He felt a flash of anger. Bloody women. Even someone like Stella, with her vaunted independence, Stella, the quick office fuck, wanted to immobilise him with commitment and responsibility.
‘We stand apart,’ he hissed.
She flinched as if he had hit her. Then, clenching back the tears, she announced quietly, ‘Graham, you’ll regret it. Just wait. Next time you want something from me, you’re going to be disappointed.’
‘I cannot envisage,’ he replied, equally quietly, ‘any occasion when I would ever want anything from you.’
That released the tears. ‘You won’t get away from me. I’ll wait here for you, Graham. I’ll get you!’
He walked away as she started to speak, and, though her voice came after him, it did not get any closer. He kept on walking and did not look back until he was at the end of Boileau Avenue. The Mini had not moved and he could see the hunched figure inside it.
By the time he reached Castelnau and the approach to Hammersmith Bridge, the glow of freedom had returned. With it came hunger. The morning’s first interruption had kept him from his breakfast. He looked at his watch. One o’clock.
He went into a Mini-Market where he bought a couple of pork pies, an orange and two cans of beer. The Pakistani girl on the check-out did not look up as he handed over his money.
As he walked towards the bridge, there was a bubbling excitement inside his head. There was nothing to restrain him. Lilian. Stella. They were as irrelevant to his life as his dead wife and his discarded children. No one was relevant but Graham Marshall.
Near the bridge he suddenly crossed the road and walked down to the tow-path. It was a little delaying tactic, a teasing foreplay before he revisited the scene of his triumph.
He walked along the towpath in front of St Paul’s School Playing Fields and sat down on a bench to eat his picnic. The sun had summer force and glinted on the river before him. Must sort out a holiday, he thought, as he opened the second can of beer. Somewhere nice, abroad, luxurious.
He dawdled some of the way along the footpath towards Barnes Railway Bridge, prolonging the foreplay, but then gave in indulgently and returned to the scene of the old man’s death. He lingered sentimentally by the parapet, even caressed the rail over which his first victim had plunged, already dead. He no longer feared drawing attention to himself. Graham Marshall was invisible, secure in his impenetrable aura of success.
He used his afternoon’s freedom to go to the cinema in Hammersmith. The film was Monty Python’s Life of Brian. The bits he saw he enjoyed, but the combination of his exhausted state and the lunchtime beer meant that he slept through most of it. He emerged round half-past five, feeling rested, and thought about going home.
But why should he? He had no reason to return to Boileau Avenue. There was nothing he wanted there — or, if Lilian or Stella were still around, there were things he positively didn’t want there.
And he was, after all, meant to be pampering himself. For the first time in nearly fifteen years he was free to act on impulse.
An impulse decided him where he wanted to go.
He managed to get to a couple of King Street shops before they closed and bought a shirt, underwear, pyjamas and shaving tackle, together with a neat overnight case to put them in. Then, in spite of the afternoon traffic, with the luck that
he knew now would never desert him, he hailed a cab and told the driver to take him to Paddington Station.
He caught the next train to Oxford, and took a taxi to the Randolph Hotel. Yes, they did have a single room for two nights. Graham Marshall booked in.
He ate well, pampering himself. The credit cards could cope. Soon, after all, he would have the Head of Personnel’s salary to fund him.
On the Saturday evening, as he drank through a second bottle of Chambolle Musigny, he thought about the sequence of events which had brought him to this point.
He was now where he should be. It was amusing to speculate what might have happened had he been appointed Head of Department when he first applied.
Presumably he would not have killed the old man. If they had met, Graham would not have felt the same repressed violence, and another derelict would have survived a few more years.
And if he had never inadvertently broken the taboo, presumably Merrily and Robert Benham would still be around to irritate and frustrate him. Even dear old George would be alive, drunk and lonely in Haywards Heath.
Graham Marshall couldn’t regret any of it. The murders had given him strength when he needed it, identity and power when he had none.
He wondered again about Lilian’s charge of madness. Certainly he had been in a tense state, yes; but not mad, no. He had been logical and efficient.
And, above all, it had worked.
Four murders. He couldn’t resist a little, complacent smile at the thought.
But, with slight regret, he knew that that must be the end. His luck had been incredible, but the risk was always there. So many times he could have been seen and had proved invisible. So many times he could have been caught and hadn’t. It was exhilarating, but dangerous.
Besides, he had achieved all that he had wanted.
He felt like a world motor racing champion retiring at the peak of his success. He had taken all the risks, he had survived, and could now enjoy the benefits of his achievement.
And, anyway, he reflected, if it became necessary, he could always come out of retirement.
With that comforting thought, he signed his dinner bill and retired to the delicious anonymity of his hotel room.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
He pampered himself all weekend. Expensive meals, leisurely strolls around the colleges, a trip on the river. He felt he deserved it.
After a large lunch in the hotel on the Monday, he paid his bill with a credit card and had a taxi summoned to take him to the station.
He did not regret leaving. He felt rested and indulged and was keen to get back to work. The next day, whether or not the appointment was officially ratified, Graham Marshall would take over as Head of Personnel.
And he was determined that no one in the Department would be unaware of the change.
He took the Metropolitan Line from Paddington to Hammersmith and walked to Boileau Avenue.
He knew there was no one in when he put the key in the lock. Lilian must have taken her bitterness away, no doubt to plan further ineffectual gestures.
As he walked, he had been thinking. Except for another moment of homage on Hammersmith Bridge, he had concentrated on work. His mind was relaxed and well tuned, and he thought he saw a solution to an interminable dispute between Personnel Department and the Staff Association over a new grading system. The idea had grown as he walked along, and he was impatient to check its feasibility with some figures Terry Sworder had produced from the computer.
Graham rushed up to his study as soon as he got home and pulled Terry’s report out of his briefcase. He jotted a few notes as he galloped down the columns, then sat back with satisfaction. It would work. Put a few backs up, certainly, but his scheme had the required mix of appeal to greed and illusion of consultation; it couldn’t fail to be accepted.
Preoccupied, he hadn’t noticed until that moment the flashing light on his new Ansaphone, which registered the messages left. It had been switched on to record before he left on the Friday morning and he hadn’t had time to check it since.
He was reaching to set the machine to ‘Playback’ when the phone rang. He switched off the recorder and picked up the receiver.
It was Charmian.
‘Hello,’ he responded guardedly, anticipating a new tirade about his shortcomings as a father.
‘You’ve heard?’
‘Heard what?’
‘About. . Mummy.’
‘No.’ What the hell had Lilian done now? But Charmian didn’t give him any time for conjecture. ‘She’s dead.’
‘Hmm?’
‘She killed herself.’
‘Good God.’ Graham provided a conventional response while he tried to define what his real reaction was. He rather suspected it might be delight.
‘I’ve been trying to contact you for the best part of forty-eight hours. So have the police. Where’ve you been?’
‘Out,’ he replied laconically.
‘So she finally succeeded. Obviously it wasn’t all talk. I should have listened, should have. .’ Charmian’s voice broke. The shock had transformed her bottled-up emotion for her mother into guilt.
‘Well, I suppose it was only to be expected.’ He spoke with judicious authority, a detached voice of reason.
‘Oh yes, “only to be expected”!’ Charmian snapped. ‘And I bet you’re bloody over the moon about it!’
‘Charmian, I can’t pretend that — ’
‘Now you’ve got rid of everyone, haven’t you? Now you can go back to being the fucking emotional eunuch you always were!’
‘There’s no need to — ’
‘I just thank God I’ve got Henry and Emma away from you, that’s all, before you somehow managed to destroy them too!’
‘Now just a minute. Lilian destroyed herself. I had nothing to do with it.’
‘You drove her to it.’
‘You can’t shift your guilt on to me that easily, Charmian. She had been threatening it for years.’
A sob broke from the other end of the phone. ‘You’ve got it all now, Graham, haven’t you? The whole bloody lot. God, there’s no justice. Everything’s just random. That someone like you should be granted the kind of luck that … If I had any belief in a God, that’d destroy it. And to think — you’ll get all the other money as well now.’
‘What other money?’ he asked, puzzled.
‘Don’t pretend you don’t know. But if you’ve got any spark of decency in you, see that the children get some of it. Otherwise, just do one thing for me.’
‘What?’
‘Keep out of my life. I never want to see you again. You bastard!’
He replaced his receiver more gently than she had hers. She really was becoming more and more like her mother.
He corrected himself. Her late mother. The thought amused him. To those who have shall be given. The removal of the inconvenience of Lilian was a bonus he had not expected. But what had Charmian meant about the other money?
He switched the recording machine on and played back his messages.
The first voice he recognised as David Birdham’s.
‘Graham, I’ve just come out of the management meeting. I’d hoped to contact you at the office, but it went on a bit. Anyway, the outcome’s good. Your appointment’s agreed.
You are Head of Personnel — or, if you prefer it, Head of Human Resources. The announcement will be made officially on Tuesday. Congratulations, Graham. Have a nice weekend.’
He stretched back with pleasure on his swivel chair and let the tape run on.
‘Graham, it’s Charmian. I just missed you at the office and I’ve been trying all evening, but you’re obviously out. .’ That identified the timing of the message as the Friday evening, when he’d treated himself to dinner at the Grange. Her voice sounded drunk and angry. ‘Listen, it’s about Mummy. She rang me to tell me, just to crow, the cow, but she said she hadn’t told you yet. About William Essex. Apparently that affair she was always on about actually did happ
en, because the only will the old poof left dates from that time — and she cops the lot. Now all I’m saying is — I’m just warning you — I know she’s cut me out of her will and when she goes, you’ll get it all — but you’ve got to make some over to Henry and Emma. Got to! Do you understand that? That’s all I wanted to say.’
The end of the message was almost apologetic.
She sounded sheepish, suddenly aware of her drunkenness.
But the news, the hard fact that the recording contained, was more bounty. Now Graham had the last piece of the jigsaw that his upbringing had denied him. Not only was he to have the benefits of an increased earned income; he was also now to have the unfair advantage of inherited wealth.
The random gods of chance were in munificent mood; and Graham Marshall was their chosen son.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
The doorbell rang and he answered it.
Detective-Inspector Laker stood there, holding a briefcase, looking up with his habitual expression of sadness. ‘Ah, you’re back, Mr. Marshall,’ he said, though it was no surprise. He had watched Graham’s return from the Ford Escort parked opposite.
‘Yes.’
‘I’ve come in connection with your mother-in-law, Mrs Lilian Hinchcliffe.’
‘Yes, I’ve only just heard the news. From Charmian, my. . sister-in-law.’ Graham estimated that his voice sounded properly shocked. ‘Won’t you come in, Detective-Inspector?’
‘Thank you.’
In the sitting-room instinctively they took the chairs they had used on their previous encounter.
‘It’s terrible,’ said Graham. ‘You know there have been a couple of previous attempts?’
‘Yes, yes.’ The Detective-Inspector nodded slowly. ‘I’ve been investigating all the background.’
‘She was rather unstable, I’m afraid. Prone to dramatic gestures.’
‘Yes. Like sending that anonymous letter we discussed when I was last here.’
‘Exactly.’ Graham liked the reference; it seemed to recapture some of the sympathy of the previous occasion. He smiled wryly, before an unwelcome thought arrived. ‘Surely there’s nothing about my wife’s death that. .’
