“Yes.”
“Did you tell her?”
“Yes, I did. I thought about it for a long time, wondering if it was wise, if she could keep it to herself.”
“You didn’t intend to tell your husband?”
“Certainly not!” She looked at me as if she thought me moronic. Well, it had been a stupid remark, hadn’t it?
“I knew I would have to tell him eventually, of course. But not until Miriam was actually out of the old school. That wouldn’t be until after Christmas, and I wasn’t sure Miriam could stay quiet about it that long. But she’d been so self-possessed when she’d seen me at school, I decided she would be able to keep the secret. And I thought perhaps, if she knew she wouldn’t have to bear the school very much longer, it would make things a little easier for her. So I told her as soon as I picked her up that day.”
“What did she say?”
“That was strange, and rather frightening. She said so little. I tried to lead up to it gradually, because I knew it would be rather a shock. So I told her I knew she had seen me at school, and that I had visited because I was worried about her. Then I asked her if she liked school, if she had good friends, if she liked her teachers. They were foolish questions. I could see quite plainly that she hated it all, but I wanted her to tell me that. She didn’t want to answer, but I pressed her and she said it was all right. Just that: ‘It’s all right.’ So I asked her if she would like to go to my school instead.”
Amanda pushed her heavy hair back with a weary gesture. “She looked at me, and just for a moment I saw something like hope in her eyes. Then she said, ‘Daddy won’t let me,’ and wouldn’t say another word all the way home.”
“I’ve heard,” I said slowly, “that if an animal is caged all its life, sometimes when it is rescued and the door opens and it can go free, it cowers inside, afraid and unsure. It doesn’t know what to do with freedom.”
“That’s just what she looked like. A caged animal. I talked to her some more at home, before I went to the station for John. I said that it was our secret, that we wouldn’t tell Daddy, and that it would be all right. Really, I don’t think I believed it myself. But Miriam—oh, I wasn’t sure I’d done the right thing in telling her. For the next two days, she seemed more miserable and frightened than ever, and I couldn’t get her to talk to me. I had no idea what was going on in her mind, and that frightened me more than anything.”
I was beginning to comprehend the depths of the hell Amanda had been living in, and even though the room had warmed, I shivered. “And then when you found him that morning, you must have thought …”
“I couldn’t think at all. I was almost out of my mind. I couldn’t seem to catch my breath, and the room kept spinning. I cleaned up, I think now, just to pretend things were normal. Or no, that’s not it, exactly—I don’t know.”
“I expect you were in shock. Literally, I mean, physically and emotionally both. I’ve never had to go through anything as awful as that, but I’ve had a few unpleasant experiences in my life. The worst of them was my first husband’s heart attack, and I remember sitting in the hospital waiting room, while he was in the emergency room, tidying up my purse as if it were the most important thing in the world to get it neat. It’s an escape. The mind focuses desperately on something else to keep from thinking about the unthinkable.”
Amanda nodded. Her fingers were slowly shredding a paper napkin, and when she spoke it was in a thin whisper. “I couldn’t let myself think that maybe Miriam … oh, I knew she couldn’t have stabbed her own father, no matter what, I knew that, but …”
It was time to get back to reality, to abandon the nightmare world of might-have-been. I risked a hard question. “Amanda, I hope you don’t mind my asking, but did you really hear nothing that night, or did you just tell the police that because you heard something that you thought implicated Miriam?”
“I really didn’t hear anything.” She folded her hands in her lap. “It was the night of prayer meeting, but John let me stay home because I’d worried myself into a frightful headache, and even he could see I was ill. He said there was another meeting after that, and he’d be late. So I went to bed, and I—I took a sleeping pill.” She said it as though she had just confessed a long-standing addiction to one of the more disreputable street drugs. “I’d never done such a thing before, but I hadn’t been sleeping, and I’d got to the point I was forgetting things and could hardly teach. I’d bought them that afternoon, though of course I’d had to hide them from him. I thought just one wouldn’t hurt, and maybe I’d get a good night’s sleep.”
“Uh-oh. If you’re not used to those things, even the over-the-counter ones can pack a real wallop. I expect you were still groggy in the morning.”
“I could hardly wake up. I don’t know how long the alarm rang before I shut it off, and then, oh, how I wanted to stay in bed. I felt slow and stupid, and then I was so afraid John would notice and make me tell him about the pill, I went downstairs to make tea before waking Miriam.”
“And you were in that state when you saw him! No wonder you behaved a trifle—er—irrationally.”
“I behaved like a fool. I see that now. But what can I—oh, here’s Miriam back!”
There were noises from the back of the house and then Miriam walked into the room, followed by Gillian. The love and warmth that suffused Amanda’s pale, pinched face twisted my heart. What lay ahead for those two? What would happen to them if they were separated, if Amanda were imprisoned? Surely such a thing couldn’t happen. Not in England, where the police were so efficient, so thorough.
“Look, Mummy! Auntie Gillian bought me a new coat and hat! And she took me to have my hair cut, and we had ice cream, and went to feed the ducks, and I petted the sweetest little dog in the park, it licked my hand and wagged its tail. May we have a puppy, Mummy? Auntie Gillian says they’re nice, and not really dirty at all if you bathe them often enough, and I promise I’d take care of it and feed it and brush it all the time and take it for walks. Do you think we might, Mummy?”
For the first time in our acquaintance, Miriam was looking and acting like a child. Her hair, which she had worn scraped back into a tight ponytail, had been cut in short layers. Freed from its confinement, it curled attractively next to her cheeks, which were pink with excitement. She wore a bright red coat and matching hat, a couple of years out of style—Oxfam, I thought—but warm and attractive and infinitely preferable to anything I had seen on her before. She kept chattering, and I smiled at her. Perhaps she was too excited, too shrill, but there seemed some hope that she was beginning to heal. It would, I thought sadly, take a long time before the scars were obliterated, if indeed they ever were.
While Miriam chattered on, Gillian reached in her coat pocket, pulled something out, and held it up in her gloved hand. It was a brown plastic prescription bottle. “What on earth was this doing in your rubbish bin, Mandy?” she said, interrupting Miriam. “It blew out just as we drove up in back. I thought nobody ever took medicine in this house.”
She was close enough that I could read the label. “Lanoxin,” it read, with John Doyle’s name and dosage instructions, and a late-November date.
It was empty.
21
MY throat went dry, but for perhaps the first time in this whole crisis, I managed to keep my head. As Amanda reached for the vial, I stepped forward and got in first, though I had to swallow twice before I could speak. “May I see it, Gillian?”
I had snatched up a paper napkin from the tea tray. “Goodness, it’s a bit grubby, isn’t it?” I said in what I hoped was the right casual tone as Gillian dropped the vial from her gloved hand into the napkin. Had I told anyone about the way John Doyle really died? Would any of them smell a rat? Gillian was no fool, and unlike Amanda, she had probably read detective stories. Would she see the real significance of the paper napkin? Would she wonder what my interest was?
“What on earth do you want with it?”
The question came quick a
nd sharp—exactly the question I’d been afraid of. I thought fast. “I have a young friend whose passion is her dollhouse. You remember Jemima, Miriam. You met her at my house. She likes to use these little bottles to make things for the house, or to store those tiny hinges and doorknobs and things like that.”
I studied Miriam’s face, but I saw no fear, indeed no interest. Her mind was apparently still on the possibility of a dog. Amanda’s face, too, was blank, but it was too late to catch her first reaction. I’d been too busy rescuing the precious bit of evidence to watch her.
At this stage, Gillian was the one to watch out for. She persisted. “Mandy, it has John’s name on it. You told me once he never took drugs, didn’t approve of them.”
“What is it, cold medicine or something?” Amanda didn’t sound very interested, but again she held out her hand.
I kept the vial and pretended to study the label. “‘Lanoxin,’ it says. Anybody know what that is?”
“It’s digitalis,” said Gillian in that dry voice of hers. “It’s for heart trouble. Did John have heart trouble, Mandy?”
“And exactly how do you think I would know that? He never told me anything, but I’ve never seen him take mediine of any kind. He didn’t approve of medicine.”
“Or anything else,” muttered Gillian.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake take the bottle, Dorothy, and welcome to it. Gillian, you must be longing for some tea. I know, I’ll make scones. Would you like that, darling, just as a little treat?”
Miriam grinned. “We can have treats now, can’t we, Mummy? Will you teach me to make scones? Do you think a puppy would like scones?”
If there was guilt behind the facade of either mother or daughter, Miriam was the best child actress since Shirley Temple, and Amanda wasn’t far behind. I gave up on the psychology of the thing and decided to be content with the physical evidence. It might not be much, but it was something. There was only a slim chance of fingerprints, but the real point was that, once the police had their hands on the vial, they’d be in a much better position to trace who put it there. Of course, they’d be around to question everyone, and at that point I was going to be as popular in Amanda’s household as a skunk at a picnic.
Should I stay and try to make a little more hay in the brief period of sunshine left to me? Or should I get out while the getting was good?
Discretion is the better part of valor. I couldn’t remember who’d said that, but it seemed at the moment to be the epitome of wisdom. “Well,” I said brightly, dropping the pill bottle into my coat pocket, “you don’t need me to carry on the puppy discussion. I’m more of a cat person, though I do think puppies are sweet. I’ll just—”
“Just a moment.” Gillian’s voice was as cold and sharp as chilled steel. “I think I’ll have that bit of rubbish back, if you don’t mind.”
“Gill!” Amanda sounded shocked. “There’s nothing in it, you said so. You surely don’t think Dorothy’s stealing something, do you?”
Gillian moved so that she could look me full in the face, and paid no attention to Amanda. “Exactly what did John die of, Dorothy?”
“Gill, I really can’t have this! Miriam, darling, put your coat away and wash your hands and face, and then come back and we’ll make scones.”
Miriam, all the animation wiped from her face as though by a sponge, moved away silently.
“I’d have thought you’d have better sense!” said Amanda, her voice low but full of anger. “Talking about it in front of—”
“Well?” said Gillian, interrupting. “Is someone going to tell me? And are you going to give that vial back to me?”
“He was stabbed,” said Amanda in fury. “I had to come down in the morning, half awake, and find my husband lying on the kitchen floor with a knife in his back. I didn’t tell you because the thought still makes me sick and I don’t want to talk about it. Now are you happy?”
“And was that what killed him?” Gillian was still talking to me, and her voice never wavered.
“No.” I was tired of it, suddenly. “No, it wasn’t. I’m sorry, Amanda. I didn’t tell you, because I wasn’t sure I should, but your husband was already dead when he was stabbed. He died of an overdose of digitalis, probably from the vial I have in my pocket. And no, I’m not going to give it back to you, Gillian. I’m going to give it to the police. They may be able to trace the murderer with it. And before you go into a screaming tantrum, either of you, let me remind you that I do not believe either you, Amanda, or your daughter had anything to do with the murder.”
“I notice you left me off your little list.” Gillian stood between me and the doorway of the room.
“Yes, I did, didn’t I? Excuse me.”
She stood still for a moment, and then moved aside and let me pass.
I made for the back door in case any reporters had come back. Miriam was in the kitchen, looking like a pale little ghost.
“Oh, sweetheart, it’ll be all right! Really, it will. You see if you can’t talk your mother into that puppy. It would do you both a world of good.”
She said nothing, and after a moment’s indecision, I let myself out and trudged to my car.
I went straight to the police station with my story and my bottle. Derek wasn’t there, so I had to talk to one of the lower orders, an impassive woman who didn’t know me. She wasn’t impressed.
“Thank you, Mrs. Martin,” she said in a bored tone when I had finished talking and had handed over the little brown vial. “I’m sure we’re grateful for your trouble, though of course you know it would have been better to leave this where you found it.”
“I didn’t find it. I just told you. Ms. Blake found it, and if I’d left it with her, she would either have thrown it away or covered it with her own fingerprints, or both.”
“Yes, I’m sure you did what you thought was best.”
She sounded soothing and complacent, as if she’d been to nanny school and was practicing her lesson on a difficult toddler. I was nettled. “You will tell Chief Inspector Morrison the minute he gets in? It’s important that he send someone to talk to the family right away, because—”
“I will deal with it, rest assured, Mrs. Martin.”
With that I had to be satisfied, if not content. There is a certain level of English officialdom, in no matter what business or agency, that delights in condescension. It was the same in America, of course, or had been when I’d lived there. In America, though, the rudeness wasn’t disguised as courtesy. “Okay, okay, lady,” would have been the response from a bored cop in my hometown.
I thought it might have been easier to take. You can get mad at people when they’re overtly rude.
I went home and told Alan all about it. “And I’ll bet I’d have been treated better if you were still in charge!”
“Well, yes. You’d have been the wife of the boss, wouldn’t you?”
“I mean—”
“I know what you mean, but I’m afraid the supercilious, like the poor, we have always with us. They usually either learn better or leave the force, though I’ve known a few senior officers …” He shook his head.
“Well, it’s infuriating. That miserable little piece of plastic cost me all the headway I’d made with Amanda. The police might at least have acted grateful.”
“I’m sure Derek will be ecstatic when he finds out about it.”
“If he finds out about it.”
“Oh, he will. The woman you talked to—sergeant?”
“Just a constable, I think.”
“In any case, she’d know better than to make a mistake in a major investigation. She’ll see he gets the report, however much she might resent being told what to do by the wife of a retired CC.”
“Oh. Yes, I suppose that was part of it. She’d know who I am, you think?”
“Yes, my dear. Gloria mundi may transit, but not quite that quickly, not in a small town. Yes, everyone on the police is quite aware that you are my wife.”
“She didn’t act a
s if she knew.”
“Of course not. She would have had to act deferential, and it didn’t suit her. Now, what are you going to do while you wait for Derek to call and heap laurels on your head?”
I stuck my tongue out at him. “I don’t quite know. I had planned to ask Amanda if she had any idea, herself, who might have murdered her husband. Yes, I know the police will have asked her, but she might open up more to me. Might have before all this, I mean. Now—I think I’m at a loose end.”
“In that case, why don’t we pop ’round to the hospital?”
“The hospital? What for? You’re not feeling—oh! The baby?”
“The baby. A little boy, Nigel Peter. Mother and child doing splendidly. Born late last night, but no one got around to telling us till this afternoon.”
“Oh, that’s exactly what I need to take my mind off everything else! Yes, let’s go. Right away, before visiting hours are over for the day.”
There was a time in my life when I, an achingly childless woman, found it hard to visit a maternity ward. All those babies, when I had none. Fortunately, I’d eventually outgrown the oversensitivity. We stopped to buy flowers and thoroughly enjoyed seeing Inga (weary but beautiful), Nigel (haggard, with a bristly five o’clock shadow, but bursting with pride), and small Nigel Peter (red of face, black of hair, and roaring lustily).
We didn’t stay long. Everyone concerned needed rest, and so did I. Though I absolutely hate admitting it, I’m not as young as I once was, and both physical and emotional exertion tire me more than they used to. I wanted to go home, thaw out something for supper, and put my feet up while I considered what role, if any, I could continue to play in the Doyle drama.
The phone rang when I was staring into the freezer, searching for inspiration. Alan answered it in his study and came padding slipper shod into the kitchen a couple of minutes later.
“You were right, love. Derek got your message, but not until he’d been back at the station for some time. He was livid about the delay, by the way. I think that young woman will have her ears pinned back. Anyway, he decided to go to the Doyle house himself, because he was quite certain that there had been no medicine vial in the rubbish bin, or anywhere else, when the house was first searched. And he was too late. The birds have flown.”
Sins Out of School Page 14
