Murder by Suspicion
Page 8
‘I did, I did! I spoke to her. I warned her! And I did tell you, you know I did!’
‘Too late, too late! You thought you knew best, didn’t you? In your pride, and envy of someone much younger and far more attractive, you let her drift down the path to destruction. And now she is a lost soul!’
Claire ducked her head. ‘I know I did wrong!’
Ambrose put his hand to his brow. ‘It has just occurred to me. Perhaps you struck her, as you struck that boy?’
‘No, I didn’t! I wouldn’t! Oh, Mrs Quicke, can’t you help me? I haven’t any money now, only what I earn, and I know you’re about to turn me out of doors and I don’t blame you really, though I was only following instructions, but I can’t get another job while everyone thinks that I killed that girl, though they can’t prove anything, can they, because I didn’t? You believe me, don’t you? Say you do!’
Ellie felt like Alice in Wonderland, drowning in tears. She looked into Claire’s eyes and saw something move in their depths … Some knowledge that she wasn’t sharing? No, no. She was mistaken. Claire radiated sincerity.
Claire clasped her hands in despair and hope. ‘I’ll work for you for nothing!’
Ellie didn’t want that, either. ‘No, that’s not necessary.’
Claire was radiant. ‘Oh, I will, I will! Just till everyone’s forgotten about those stupid girls and I can get a better job. I’ll be for ever grateful!’
‘I don’t want your gratitude—’
‘Oh, thank you! Thank you!’
‘I’m not promising anything, mind.’
‘But you’ve believed in me, and that’s everything! You are an angel in disguise!’
SIX
Ellie thought, What have I done?
Claire was a happy bunny. ‘Now I can get on with my work. I’ll just pop into the kitchen and see that Rose is all right. Then I’ll work out what we should have to eat this evening. Something wholesome and good for the bowels …’
Ellie let her go, thinking that it had probably been a mistake to let the woman stay, but not at all sure how to deal with the situation.
Ambrose was not happy, either. ‘Mrs Quicke, you have more important things to do with your time than to run around after that sinful woman.’ Did he mean that she ought to be concentrating on his application for funds? Probably.
Ellie felt she’d been driven into a corner. What Ambrose said was quite true; she did have more important things than Claire to think about.
Or did she? If there had been a miscarriage of justice …? Well, of course, Claire hadn’t been convicted of anything, if you overlooked her attack on a child who had probably taunted her into slapping her or something … Yes, but she only had Claire’s word for it, and that needed to be checked.
Ambrose was still talking, saying something about vines bearing no fruit and having to be cut down. Ellie was pretty sure he’d misquoted, but tuned him out. She definitely had more to worry about than that. Perhaps she’d have a word with her contact at the police station, see what she had to say. Meanwhile: ‘Mr Ambrose, you can see I have much to do. Now, if you’d like to get on with your work, I’ll be able to get on with mine.’
Amazingly, this time he accepted his dismissal.
As Ellie saw the pastor out, up the drive came two welcome figures: Amy and Anna, her old cleaners. Ellie welcomed them with open arms. ‘Am I glad to see you two!’
Anna was a bulky forty-year-old with dyed fair hair. Amy was younger and slimmer, but had also dyed her dark hair yellow. They were hard-working, opinionated, tea-drinking, biscuit-devouring gossips. They criticized their menfolk, adored their children, smoked when they knew they shouldn’t and never let anyone down. The salt of the earth.
Both looked pleased to see Ellie. ‘It’s safe to come back? You got rid of that old cow?’ That was Anna.
Ellie winced. ‘Yes and no. Come in, come in. Problems. Look, I’ve agreed to keep Claire on for a bit—’
‘Then we’re off. We can’t work with her in the house.’ That was Amy.
‘I know. I understand. But I’m desperate. I’m letting her stay on for a bit to look after Rose till I can find someone else. Meantime, you take your orders from me and not from her. If she asks you to do anything, you say you have to ask me. Can you manage that?’
‘I’d rather not,’ said Amy, bunching her formidable forearm muscles. ‘Not after what she done.’
Ellie sympathized. She’d rather not have had to keep Claire about the place, too. But here came the cavalry, in the form of Vera, flying in to the rescue. ‘Dear Amy, dear Anna; how lovely to see you again. I’m not really here, just passing on my way to work. Oh, but I’m so glad you’ve been big-hearted enough to come back. I’ve been so worried about Ellie and Rose being left alone in the house with Claire.’
What could Amy and Anna do but laugh and agree that Yes, they thought they could manage if that woman was going to make herself scarce while they went about their work.
Vera kissed Amy. Vera kissed Anna. Vera also gave Ellie a hug and a kiss, saying she was late for work, but would try to drop in later, or Mikey would, and was that all right?
Then she was off, and the day seemed less bright with her departure.
‘Well,’ said Anna. ‘Let’s get down to it, shall we?’
Ellie said she’d leave them to it, as they knew what needed to be done better than she did. She went off to ring her friend Lesley – or DC Milburn, to use her full name – who worked at the local police station. After which Ellie made a list of people she needed to talk to, and she started on that …
Wednesday afternoon
Ellie surfaced from work in her study at lunchtime when Amy and Anna knocked on the door to say they’d finished and would see her as usual next week. They had restored all the furniture to its usual places and left the kitchen spotless. They said they’d not seen Claire all morning, and that she was probably holed up in her own room, which they had no intention of going in to, not on yours!
Ellie thanked them most sincerely and went to check on Rose, who woke long enough to take a mug of soup and nibble at a sandwich, saying she was perfectly all right. Rose said she’d seen no sign of Claire, either. Ellie wondered if the woman was still in the house, or if she’d popped out for some reason. Claire was supposed to be staying on to look after Rose, but her promises were not to be relied on, were they?
Ellie told herself she was too busy to bother chasing Claire up. She could only be thankful the woman had made herself scarce. Ellie made herself a sandwich and took that back to her desk. Some of her phone calls were being returned and needed to be followed up, and those emails …
Stewart rang, anxious to know how she was getting on with Claire, confirming he and Kate would be turning up on the morrow for their usual Thursday morning meeting.
Diana rang, to make sure Claire had been thrown out of the house; Ellie equivocated. She found it hard to explain why the woman was still hanging around. Diana also wanted Ellie to babysit little Evan that weekend, but Ellie cried off. She loved her grandson dearly, but he could be a little tartar, and now that he was walking he was into everything, and if he didn’t get what he wanted that instant, he’d roar the house down. Ellie didn’t feel up to coping with him at the moment.
There were still sixty-odd emails to deal with. Not all the business for her charitable trust empire was done on email, but a great deal was, and Ellie was always copied in on anything out of the ordinary. Most of the work was routine, but there were queries about appointing a new electrical contractor, as the old one had moved out of London, and some tycoon or other wanting to buy a block of flats down by the river, which might bring them a nice return on their investment, but if he wanted vacant possession would create lots of other problems such as rehousing the tenants. And so on …
Ellie phoned Pat, her part-time secretary. Pat was pleased to hear Ellie had returned and said that she’d be in the following morning to take notes for the trust meeting.
Mar
ia rang from the agency to say Amy and Anna had agreed to continue working for Ellie on the strict understanding that Claire was leaving forthwith. Maria confessed she hadn’t had any luck yet with finding someone suitable to look after Rose. Ellie herself tried a couple of other agencies without luck.
At four the doorbell rang, and there was Lesley Milburn, Ellie’s friend, the plain clothes policewoman. In her late thirties and with a pleasing appearance and personality, Lesley had a reputation for hard work. Her upward climb in the force had been prevented by her immediate boss, who feared and disliked her ability, but surely some day soon she’d break through the glass ceiling he’d imposed on her.
Ellie had found Lesley to be a good friend as well as a good detective, and she ushered her in, saying, ‘Am I glad to see you! Tea and a biscuit? I’ve only just got back home, so there’s no cake yet.’
They had known one another long enough not to stand on ceremony, so went straight through to the kitchen. Bright voices emanated from Rose’s room where she was probably dozing on her bed with the television on. There was no sign of Claire, but Midge was curled up, asleep, in Rose’s big chair … which was another sign that Claire couldn’t be anywhere nearby.
Lesley said, ‘When does Thomas get back?’
‘Early next week, with luck. I could do with him now. What do you know about a cult called the Vision, who are supposed to be doing good works all over the place?’
Lesley knew where the biscuit tin was kept, and she hoicked it out. ‘The Vision? Um, yes. I’ve heard about them. A good thing, no?’
‘I believe they’re supposed to rescue drug addicts and alcoholics and cure them by giving them a job and a place to live under strict supervision. Is that what you’ve heard?’
A bland look. ‘Sounds just what our broken society needs. Why? Are you looking for dirt on them?’
‘Is that what I’m doing?’ Ellie made her voice as sweet as sugar.
‘Knowing you, yes.’
‘Let’s take our tea into the sitting room. You bring the biscuits. I honestly don’t think there’ll be anything in the police files to their detriment, although … No, I don’t suppose there is.’
‘You asked me for the low-down on someone called Claire Bonner. Why?’
‘She’s latched on to Rose, and she introduced me to someone from their group. They want my charitable trust to stump up the money to buy the house which they’re currently renting. I’m looking for a good reason to turn them down.’
‘Sorry, I haven’t heard anything which would help you there, but I have sorted out some background on Claire.’ Lesley seated herself on the settee, allowing Midge to jump up on to her lap. She pushed him aside to rummage in her bag for a notebook.
‘We had a look at her at the beginning of the year, when a young girl disappeared locally. The boss headed up the investigation. I was only involved in background checks, sitting with the mother, that sort of thing. Basically, when this girl Gail was reported missing by her mother – no father in sight; they said he’d died in an accident, but it was a drug overdose – we homed in on the girl’s boyfriend. He had an alibi. He’d gone away for the weekend. We checked, and he was definitely not in London that evening. We interviewed Claire because she’d given the girl a lift home in her car on the evening she disappeared.’
‘Gail’s mobile phone was subsequently found in her car?’
‘There was that. Also, no one seems to have seen hair or hide of her after she got into Claire’s car. We interviewed Claire up hill and down dale—’
‘Did she have hysterics?’
‘Every five minutes. Her capacity for tears was quite astonishing. The boss got nowhere with her, though he tried hard enough. I was present some of the time, and I don’t think I could have done any better. She stuck to her story like glue. Hard though it was to accept, we came to the conclusion that, even if she had done away with the girl, we couldn’t prove diddly-squat. There was no forensic in her car, in her garage, nor in her flat. Then Gail rang to say she was perfectly all right and enjoying herself in the arms of a new boyfriend. She was technically under-age, but only by a month …’ A shrug. ‘So we kept on looking for that month …’
‘But without any great urgency?’
‘As you say. It let Claire off the hook. We had looked at her very hard in the first place because she’d been involved in an earlier incident—’
‘Ah, a problem at a school? Claire lost her temper and smacked a kid?’
‘Not half, she did! I interviewed both him and his mother. Mind you, he’s a nasty little tyke, likes to wind people up and then step out of harm’s way just before retribution descends. His mother thinks he’s an angel. The teaching staff think that the sooner he’s locked up, the longer he’ll live. Like all bullies, he’d homed in on the weakest of the flock. Claire was support staff; helped out in the art classes, ran errands—’
‘Not in the office?’
A stare. ‘No. Support staff in the classroom. She wasn’t a trained teacher. Why?’
‘Why did I get the impression that she worked in an office?’
Lesley shifted, looked down at her notes. ‘I think she had worked in an office before. Yes, sometime before she moved to her present address, she’d been working as office manageress in the accounts section of one of the big supermarkets in the northern part of the borough. Not that that’s relevant.’
‘Claire’s career seems to have been a downhill progression from a peak as the manageress of an accounts section, to living on bread and water at the beck and call of the Vision people. Why did she leave the supermarket?’
‘Family reasons. She’d been living at home – I’ve got the address somewhere – Perivale? The other side of the A40. She’d been attending this cult or sect, or whatever they are, in the evenings. Then her mother died—’
‘Leaving her money to the Vision?’
‘No, I don’t think so. I suppose Claire felt that when her mother died, it was time to grow up and move on. So she upped sticks and moved down here. She rented a nice flat, ran a car, looked around for another job, but only managed some temporary, part-time work which always petered out. She didn’t get beyond the interview stage for a full-time job anywhere, and I suppose you can see why. So, to keep her hand in, she went to work for the school while continuing to go to interviews.’
Lesley tapped her teeth with her pen. ‘She was on edge when we questioned her about Gail, but in a way I can understand it, because she had the assault charge on the schoolboy hanging over her at that time. That had happened at the end of the Christmas term, but the case didn’t come up in court—’
‘It was actually taken to court? For such a minor offence?’
‘The child’s parents didn’t think it was minor. They insisted on prosecution, but the case didn’t come to court till February. It was a foregone conclusion that Claire was going to be found guilty, although, being a first offence and not having any previous convictions, she was pretty well bound to get a suspended sentence. Meanwhile, she couldn’t work at the school any more and went to look after some old lady or other.’
‘How did she come across Gail?’
‘Claire had a nice flat in the house rented by the Vision people. It’s a big house, divided into flats. It’s actually owned by the council and administered by Housing and Social Services. The people of the Vision rent the ground floor and some rooms at the side, while the rest of the building is occupied by tenants, some of whom have been living there for a long time, though some are transient. Gail and her mother occupied one of the top flats in the main building, but they all used a common staircase and front door. That’s how Claire came into contact with Gail and her mother. According to Claire, Gail was rude to her from the start. Perhaps she was. Anyway, there was no love lost between them. I can imagine Gail having fun at Claire’s expense when it came out that she’d slapped a schoolboy, and Claire getting back at Gail by telling tales on her. An unhappy situation, though not uncommon.
‘A stiff sentence, perhaps more than she deserved?’
A shrug from Lesley. ‘We checked with the elderly lady Claire went to work for. She was a bit confused about dates, but insisted that Claire was a real treasure and that she’d never been so well looked after in her life. She said this included her no-good son and daughter who lived on the other side of the world and never visited her. She said that when she died she intended to leave half the value of the house to people who deserved it. I don’t know if she did or not, but that’s what she said she was going to do.’
Ellie helped herself to a couple of biscuits and passed the tin over. ‘Then you don’t know whether or not she did leave her house to the Vision … or to Claire?’
Lesley shrugged. ‘She was still alive when we were investigating the case.’
Ellie wondered how long a disputed will would take to go through the courts. Months, presumably. ‘There’s nothing in Claire’s previous life to indicate she was interested in young girls, was there?’
‘What? What do you mean “interested in”? If you’re asking about evidence of short temper, well … yes. I could see her sloshing Gail all right. I could even see Claire killing her by mistake. Knocking her down so that she hit her head on a kerbstone, something like that.’
‘Gail was an annoying teenager?’
‘Grade One. Sulky, not interested in anything but make-up and hair. Bursting out of her blouse. Her mother showed me some photos. She’s probably shacked up with an indulgent “protector” somewhere.’
Ellie was amused. ‘Even if Claire had killed the girl—’
‘Which she didn’t. I’ve told you, Gail contacted her mother later on, saying she was fine and dandy. Yes, we did suspect Claire at first, but she had a pretty good alibi for the rest of the evening after Gail disappeared, attending some service or other run by these Vision people. No, Claire is in the clear.’