Murder by Suspicion

by Veronica Heley

  Edward sneered. ‘Malcolm’s got cold feet and wants to get rid of her. He says she’s too expensive, when what he really means is that—’

  ‘Shut up!’ Malcolm reddened. ‘It’s just too risky.’

  Ellie blinked. What was going on here? ‘You mean the police might—’

  ‘Nah,’ said the old man, rubbing his arthritic knees. ‘The police can’t find their own notebooks, never mind girls as want to go missing.’

  Malcolm cracked his knuckles again. He edged forward on his chair. ‘It wasn’t me, but it’s happened twice now. I can’t risk it happening to her as well. We’ve got to get Karen away before …’ He swallowed hard.

  Agnes sighed. ‘What he means is, Mrs Quicke, can you take the girl off our hands? We know you’ve got a trust fund. Perhaps you could get her set up somewhere to learn the beauty business?’

  ‘Yes, but—’ said Malcolm. An uncomfortable silence ensued, which Ellie couldn’t interpret.

  Ellie’s brain went into overdrive. I’m gobsmacked! Do they really think I’d remove the girl and … what! Set her up in business? They must be joking! But at least they don’t mean me any harm … or do they? They’re after my money and not my death. Well, I suppose that’s a relief.

  Agnes recollected her duties as hostess. ‘More tea, anyone? Another beer, boys? Well, Mrs Quicke, I see that we’ve taken you by surprise with our little plan.’

  Our little plan? Was Emmanuel in on this, too? His eyelids were drooping. He was falling into an afternoon doze in his armchair.

  Ellie put her empty cup down. ‘Will someone please start from the beginning?’

  Silence.

  No one was prepared to meet Ellie’s eye. Eventually, she said, ‘Suppose you tell me about Jenna?’

  They all looked at Malcolm. He threw up his hands. ‘She shot out into the road in front of the van. In the dark. Late at night. I nearly ran her over. She was in a bad way. Blood all over, clothes torn. I wanted to take her to the hospital. She wouldn’t let me. She’d found her uncle waiting for her when she got back from school. He raped her, but her family wouldn’t help. Her mother had been pushing her into his arms for weeks, telling her to “be nice to him”, because they all depend on him for a living. Her father and brother both work for him, you see. So she fled, nearly committed suicide under my wheels. I brought her home to—’

  ‘To me,’ said Agnes. ‘I cleaned her up. It was rape, all right. She was exhausted. I wanted to get the police, and she became hysterical, said she’d kill herself. I let her sleep it off in the back bedroom here, thinking that in the morning I’d be able to talk some sense into her, but it was no good. Any mention of the police or the doctor and she became hysterical, saying he’d find and kill her. She swore she’d top herself if we didn’t hide her. I believed her. Malcolm was the only one she’d talk to. She trusted him.’

  ‘I liked her,’ said Malcolm, tears in his eyes, ‘but I swear I never touched her.’

  Ellie believed him. A nasty thought wormed its way up out of the back of her mind. She didn’t want to believe it. How many months had Jenna been pregnant when she died? Four months? If the rapist hadn’t been responsible, then who had been?

  Her eyes switched to Edward, who was smiling at her. Not nicely. ‘It was you!’

  ‘Mum asked me to think of some way to help the girl, and she came on to me.’

  Ellie could feel Agnes wanting to say, Oh, Edward! And restraining herself. After all, Edward was her son.

  Ellie looked at Malcolm, who turned his head away, big hands clenching as they hung between his knees. He wasn’t going to accuse Edward, but it was clear to Ellie what had happened. She switched her eyes back to Edward. ‘Jenna was helpless, and you … comforted her?’

  Those bold eyes of his! He poured on the charm, half smiling, expecting Ellie to be overwhelmed by his good looks and fake sincerity. ‘I married far too young. My fiancé was pregnant, and I wanted to do the right thing. But as soon as she’d got my ring on her finger, she said she’d lost the baby. Between you and me, I don’t think it ever existed. She trapped me into marriage, which wouldn’t be so bad if she’d only be a decent wife, but she’s got such a temper you wouldn’t believe, and she only lets me into her bed when she feels like it, although God knows that, as a man, I have my needs. She’s miscarried several times – she says. All but the once. She never thinks how that makes me feel. Jenna was, well, different. She came on to me.’ He repeated the words in a loud tone. ‘I said, she came on to me. And if I responded … well, I’m only human.’

  Agnes stared into the past, not disagreeing out loud, but obviously not liking her thoughts much. So she thought as Ellie did, that Edward had probably taken out his frustrations on a vulnerable girl?

  Malcolm had tears in his eyes. ‘She was such a pretty little thing. I swear I never touched her. Only, after Edward did that to her, she said she’d like to move over into my house, and I made her a lovely bed-sitting-room in what had been the utility room in the basement, next to the garage, and I put up screens to make an outdoor room in the garden so she could get some sun. After a while she calmed down and began to smile again.’

  The difficult bit of the story skated over, Agnes was prepared to tell more. ‘Jenna came over to visit with me whenever she wanted – there’s a communicating door between our two utility rooms. I got her some clothes and women’s things from the market, and we talked it over, and we planned that when she was old enough, eighteen or thereabouts, Malcolm would marry her, and they’d look after the baby between them.’

  ‘I never touched her.’ Malcolm, sending another arrow glance at Edward.

  Ellie did the sums in her head. Jenna had been made pregnant by Edward. Jenna trusted Malcolm, moved over to live with him in secret. Four months after she became pregnant something happened.

  Ellie said, ‘Until the snake entered the Garden of Eden. Was it Claire …?’

  Malcolm lifted his hands in a gesture of defeat. ‘Claire came back one day to fetch an old desk which had been Dad’s. I hadn’t known she’d wanted it. If she’d only said, I’d have taken it over to her flat for her, but I suppose she thought I’d stop her taking it, although honestly, if that was all she wanted, I’d have let her have it. I’d asked her to leave her keys when she left, and she had. I never imagined she’d be sneaky enough to have them copied. I blame myself. I ought to have had the locks changed. But I never thought! When I got back that evening Jenna said that someone who’d said she was my sister had walked in and surprised her, and had got the whole story out of her. Claire promised Jenna – she promised! – that she wouldn’t tell the police. I was dead worried, but nothing happened for a fortnight, and then … oh God! I got back one evening and found Jenna dead. On the bed. Naked.’

  ‘Malcolm thought it was me!’ Edward, through clenched teeth. ‘But it wasn’t. I’d been nowhere near the house that day, and I could prove it.’

  ‘I know, I know.’ Yet Malcolm’s sideways look showed that he still feared it might have been Edward.

  Agnes gestured helplessly. ‘The boys each thought the other had done it. We didn’t dare go to the police. They’d have thought Malcolm had done it, or at the very least have charged him with kidnapping, which it wasn’t, but it couldn’t be proved. Then we thought of burying her in the garden, but Malcolm said her family had the right to bury her, even if they hadn’t treated her well in life. So I bought a niqab from a stall in Southall, thinking this was the nearest we could get to a proper shroud. I told the girl in the shop that it was for a fancy-dress party, and Malcolm took her to the canal and laid her out under the bridge.’

  Oh dear, oh dear. It all made a horrible kind of sense.

  Malcolm said, in a thick voice, ‘I loved her. We could have been happy together.’

  It came to Ellie that, if it wasn’t Edward, she knew who had killed Jenna. Well, she didn’t know. But she had a strong suspicion, which was such a revolting idea that she gasped. Could it possibly be that … Ambrose?
No, no! She’d dismissed him from her mind when she’d had a look at the house in which he lived. And, surely, he wasn’t a killer? She couldn’t quite fit her mind around that thought. She would put it at the back of her mind and deal with it later.

  On the heels of that thought came another one. Once Claire realized she’d got the two young men over a barrel, wouldn’t she have moved on to blackmailing them? Malcolm, the builder, who could easily be fitted up as a murderer. Edward, with the bold eyes and the frustrations that came from marrying a woman who didn’t understand his needs … Well, that was the way he’d put it, but maybe his wife had a different point of view …?

  Ellie realized she’d been given another clue to Claire’s behaviour. Edward was a sexual predator. How early had he started? Was it possible that Claire’s story about having been interfered with at an early age was true? Hm. Yes. Malcolm, too? And the other boys, now safely living far away? They’d all alibied one another, hadn’t they?

  Well, they would, wouldn’t they?

  As a child Claire had been the odd one out, the one who was so easy to dislike … If her allegation had been true …? The adults wouldn’t have wanted to believe it, of course. But, if it was true … well, that didn’t explain Claire’s present behaviour altogether, but it did cast a sidelight upon her hang-ups.

  ‘Claire said …’ Malcolm shivered and licked his lips. ‘She said that I had to be punished for breaking God’s laws and the laws of the country, and of course she was right. I had hidden Jenna and put her body where I knew it would be found. Yes, I realized I’d sinned. I said I’d go to the police and explain, and risk them accusing me of murder. Claire said that was too easy. That I had to show I had repented by working for the Vision people at their new place, for free. I said I couldn’t do it for free, or I couldn’t make ends meet. But eventually, I agreed. I had to set aside one whole day a week to do the repairs at their new place.’

  ‘And that’s when you met Gail?’

  He nodded. ‘I was working late. She shot into the yard when I was packing up for the night. She was in a right royal rage. The pastor had had her in and given her a dressing-down, and as she said, he had no right. She wasn’t even a member of his so-called church. She was fizzing with temper at him and at Claire, who’d betrayed her in some way, I couldn’t exactly make out what.

  ‘I tried to get Gail to calm down, because she said she was going to set the Vision place on fire as a goodbye present, and she might have done, she was in such a temper. She said her mother didn’t give tuppence about her, and she was going to run away to meet up with some man, only he’d just told her he was married and couldn’t see her any more. She asked me to give her a lift to the tube station and to lend her some money to get over to her friend’s place and have it out with his wife. I said she mustn’t do that or the police would be after her, and she said they wouldn’t because she was old enough to leave school and take care of herself. She said she was going to be eighteen next week, which was a lie, but I didn’t discover that till later.

  ‘So I told her about Jenna, how she’d taken refuge with us for a while, and how that had turned out so badly, thinking that she’d see the dangers of running away, but she said she’d make it up to me if I took her home. She climbed into the van and said I should get going, so I did, thinking she didn’t really mean it and would ask to be let out any minute, thinking she’d want to go back home after a few hours, or the next day. Agnes was furious with me, but agreed we could keep her overnight. Only … only Edward came by that evening and …’ He clapped both hands over his ears and closed his eyes.

  Edward folded his arms and laughed, uneasy but still showing off about his ‘needs’. ‘She was aching for it. Full strength.’

  Agnes cast her son a look which said that she loved him, but that he’d got a bit above himself. ‘I was furious with him. And her. And Malcolm. It placed us all in such a difficult situation.’

  Edward was belligerent. ‘Being with Gail saved my marriage, and you wanted that, didn’t you? You were always saying it would make you happy if I could only settle down and give you a grandchild or two. Gail didn’t care about anything except sex, watching the telly and having enough cigarettes to smoke and junk food to eat. Oh, and not having to go to school, and not having to work for a living. I kept her happy, didn’t I? Almost every day I managed to pop in and satisfy her. It satisfied me, too, so that my dear wife didn’t annoy me so much. Gail and I had our little disagreements, of course. She wanted me to divorce my wife and marry her, but that was never on the cards. You know my wife; she’d have skinned me alive, taken the house and half my income. I really believe it was being with Gail, being more relaxed at home, that meant I didn’t mind so much when my wife had a tantrum … and I was right, because in the end she did carry a baby to term, and he’s a fine little boy now.’

  Ellie switched her eyes to Malcolm, who had his head in his hands. Poor man; taking girls home for Edward to have fun with. That couldn’t have been a happy time for him. And who had paid to provide Gail with junk food, cigarettes and clothes? Answer: Malcolm.

  Ellie said, ‘Malcolm, why didn’t you go to the police and tell them you’d got Gail?’

  ‘I wanted to. She said that if I did, she’d tell them about how I’d hidden Jenna and then killed her. I couldn’t prove I hadn’t. I didn’t like it. I tried to get her to ring her mother and tell her she was all right, but she said …’

  Edward laughed. ‘She said, “Let the cow suffer for a bit.”’

  Malcolm’s big hands wrung one another. ‘It wasn’t right. Well, she did ring in the end. She had me over a barrel. I hated it, actually. But I was stuck.’

  Ellie saw how it was. Once started down the slippery slope … ‘How soon did Claire suspect that it was you who’d taken Gail?’

  ‘Almost straight away. She caught up with me when I was working on the plumbing at the Vision and taxed me with it. I told her what had happened and that Gail was refusing to go home. Claire said she could see how it was and that she’d try to cover for me because I was her brother, but that the police did suspect her of doing away with Gail, so if they charged her with murder, she’d have to give me away. I was on tenterhooks.’

  ‘What! What?!’ Emmanuel roused himself from his forty winks.

  Edward said, ‘Gail understood that telling the police would have ruined me.’

  Wait a minute! How did Claire cotton on to the fact that Gail had run off with Malcolm so quickly? Had she remembered his van had been in the drive the evening Gail disappeared and put two and two together? I’m amazed she didn’t give him away to the police … but then the Vision would have lost their handyman and … How much did Edward have to pay for her silence? I wonder how long she’d have kept his secret if the police had charged her with murder?

  Ellie turned back to Malcolm. ‘Then one day you returned from work to find Gail dead, in the same way as Jenna? And you still had no idea who’d done it?’

  He snorted, nodded, wiped his nose with the back of his hand. Agnes said, ‘Tck,’ and handed him a box of tissues. He blew his nose.

  Let’s think about Ambrose being the killer. Claire would have told Ambrose everything, wouldn’t she? I did wonder who was keeping his bed warm at night. He might be celibate, but on balance I think it unlikely. Perhaps he tried to be celibate, fought against temptation, until he learned about poor little Jenna, who’d already been raped by her uncle and by Edward. Perhaps he went to visit her in a spirit of kindness … No, he is not kind. He went to denounce and rape. The same with Gail. In his mind he probably thought that any woman was fair game, but he hadn’t any in his congregation of misfits and addicts who appealed to him. He borrowed the keys from Claire and killed both girls. Do the boys realize that? No, I don’t think they do. But Claire must suspect …

  I must talk to Lesley about this.

  She tried to tie up some loose ends. ‘Malcolm, was it you who dropped Gail’s body into the canal, near where you’d left Jenna?’r />
  ‘Edward did that,’ said Malcolm. ‘I said that she was his girl, and I wouldn’t have anything to do with getting rid of her body.’

  He hadn’t liked Edward taking Gail over, had he? Ellie wondered at the tangled relationships between the two families, growing up together, experimenting together and sharing the same girls. Not a healthy situation.

  What about Agnes and Emmanuel? What share had they had in all this? Had they been innocent bystanders, driven to helping out because their boys had got into something too difficult for them to deal with? Probably. Neither of them seemed to enjoy knowing about what had happened.

  ‘What about Karen?’ said Ellie. ‘Malcolm, was that you as well? A third time? You were over at the Vision house at least once a week. You saw the girls coming and going. You could see Karen was ripe for conquest, going the same way as Gail. Surely, Malcolm, you must have guessed that if you took another girl in, Edward would only move in on her?’

  Malcolm groaned, rubbing his forehead. ‘I … I always lagged behind the others, and they made fun of me; always late, they used to say. And I was. I didn’t even think about girls much until … but Jenna was so sweet, and I had thought we might make a go of it in spite of the baby, and we’d talked about it, and she’d liked the idea of settling down with me, and I’d been looking at engagement rings when … I wouldn’t have harmed a hair of her head.’

  ‘Yes, but Gail was different. When she crawled into your van, it must have crossed your mind that this time she might be the one to break your duck. She wasn’t one to hold back, was she? You must have felt jealous when Edward moved in on her.’

  He flared up. ‘I didn’t kill her. I didn’t even like her, much. She was …’ He threw his arms up. ‘She wasn’t my sort.’

  ‘Granted. Is Karen any different?’