When Anthony Rathe Investigates

by Matthew Booth

  “I’m not responsible for whatever’s happened here,” snarled Rathe. “I refuse to be held accountable for it. Not this time, not again.”

  “You’ve stirred up the shit and a girl has died.” Cook pointed to the living room door. “In there. She’s dead. Because you couldn’t keep your nose out of someone else’s business. That’s the reality of what’s happened here, Rathe, and if that’s not your fault then I don’t know whose it is.”

  Rathe straightened his back, his eyes refusing to betray how much the words had stung. “Is that why you brought me here, Cook? To tell me that?”

  “Yes.” Cook turned his back. “You can go home now.”

  Rathe grabbed the inspector’s shoulders and spun him around. There was a look on the detective’s face which was a strange marriage of surprise and anger, but Rathe ignored it. “No. I’m going into that living room, Inspector. I’m going in there to do what I can to prove that Elizabeth Newsome is a killer, because somebody has to do that while you stand out here whinging about me trying to understand something which was dumped in my lap without me wanting it or asking for it.”

  Without giving any of the official detectives a chance to stop him, Rathe threw open the door and was inside. Almost at once, his eyes were drawn to the ugly creature which lay sprawled in the centre of the room. He knew that it had been a woman, even an attractive one, with whom he had had an uncomfortable drink only a few nights ago, but now it was nothing but a tangle of motionless limbs and cold, dead flesh. What had once been Michelle Leverton was dressed in a set of silk pyjamas, which had ridden up her forearms and shins, revealing the once delicately pale but now unnaturally white skin. Her dark hair had fallen half across her face, so that only one of her deep blue eyes glared up at him, like the eye of an old doll in a Victorian story of the supernatural. Her hair had been dyed a slight red, Rathe remembered, but the most distinctive red about her now was the blood which had seeped from the wounds to her abdomen and arms, spattering her face and throat. The knife which had inflicted them was lying by the door, a long teardrop of blood sobbing from the tip of the blade. He had not liked the woman on instinct, but Rathe could not help but view the scene with sadness at what could only be described now as a waste of life.

  Rathe felt Cook at his shoulder before the inspector had uttered a word. “Probably best I keep an eye on you while you’re in here. Make sure you don’t bugger up anything else.”

  Rathe smiled, briefly and privately. “I’ll try not to make your job any harder than it is already, Inspector.”

  “How did you know this was Leverton’s house?”

  “The tone of your voice when you summoned me here suggested something significant had happened and you weren’t happy about it. Wasn’t too hard to say that it had to involve the Newsome woman in some way, especially since you and I haven’t spoken to each other since the night of your party. In that whole scenario, only Elizabeth or Michelle could be considered likely victims of murder: Elizabeth by her husband, Michelle by Elizabeth. This house isn’t Elizabeth’s, so… ”

  Cook considered that for a minute. “So, it was a guess.”

  Another brief, private smile passed over Rathe’s lips. “I suppose there’s no doubt Elizabeth did it.”

  Cook walked past Rathe, into the centre of the room. The dead girl lay between them like a guilty secret. “Not in my head. Part of the reason I was so angry with you. Never nice knowing you’ve got to arrest one of your personal friends.”

  “Happened before, has it?”

  “Once.” But Cook was not about to give any more details of that part of his past. “She must have finally snapped and let out all her grief about her daughter and the affair. That accounts for the number of wounds to the body.”

  Rathe had been counting them. “There’s more than a dozen. Some don’t seem as deep as others.”

  “Doctor reckons that’s down to the struggle. Some of the blows won’t have made any discernible contact if Leverton was defending herself and trying to deflect the blade. I’m quoting him there, more or less.”

  “Time of death?”

  “About eleven last night – the medic’s turn to guess. He’ll confirm when he’s had a look inside her.”

  “No witnesses, I suppose?” asked Rathe.

  Cook shrugged. “Not yet. Door to door’s under way, but nothing worth getting worked up about yet.”

  “Someone came in, unseen, and did this… ”

  But, as he spoke, Rathe felt a familiar sensation along his spine, as though an invisible spider of doubt was crawling up his back. He was looking around the room, not seeing things which he knew he should be seeing. The details of the place passed before his eyes, none of them telling him what he wanted to know. The bookcase filled with the classics – Austen, Hardy, Collins, Dickens, the Brontes; the smaller set of shelves filled with poetry, both Romantic and modern; the extensive and diverse collection of CDs; the empty bottles filled with small stones and shells which adorned the mantelpiece and the small window sill; the vase of lilies which stood to the side of the marble hearth, their crisp whiteness so apt in the face of violent death. But none of the things he saw helped him understand what it was which seemed so wrong about the room.

  “No sign of any break in,” Cook was saying. “So she knew her killer, obviously.”

  “What’s in those glasses?” Rathe asked, pointing to two large tumblers which were side by side on a small side table.

  “Waiting to be analysed, but it looks like Coke.”

  Rathe walked over to the glasses and knelt down. Carefully, as though to touch them might signal his own death, he craned his neck so that the tip of his long nose was only a hair’s breadth from the rim of the glasses. He sniffed each one, his brows furrowing in confusion as he did so. He sniffed the contents of the glasses again, paused, and then repeated the action one last time. He rose to his feet and began to pace the room.

  Cook pointed to Michelle’s body. “Stab wounds, remember? Lots of them. No reason to suspect any poison, so why are you going round smelling stuff?”

  Rathe turned to face him, his thoughts seemingly so far away that he could barely register Cook’s presence in the room. “That night, at your party… Elizabeth Newsome was drinking wine.”

  “Drinks too much of it,” muttered Cook. “Doesn’t help much with her head trouble.”

  Rathe wasn’t listening. “Is there any wine in this house?”

  Cook shook his head. “Not found any. Loads of rum though.”

  “Bacardi… ” Rathe’s eyes brightened and seemed to come back into focus and he looked around the room as though seeing it for the first time. Now, the shelves of books, the CD collection, and the stone-filled bottles sang to him like the choruses of those operas Cook seemed so desperate for Rathe to like. “Bacardi, the wounds, and the furniture in this room. These glasses on the table.”

  Cook was looking around him, his lips curled in confusion and his eyes widened in misunderstanding. “What about them?”

  “There are witnesses after all, Cook, crucial witnesses,” Rathe said. “And they’re all in this room. We were wrong about Elizabeth Newsome. She isn’t a killer.”

  “What are you on about?” hissed Cook, stepping forward to confront the younger man who stood now with a look of clear perception on his face.

  “Edward Newsome was never plotting murder,” Rathe said. “All that really was in Elizabeth’s mind. You were right about her and I was wrong. But we’ve both misunderstood what happened here last night.”

  Cook put his hands in his pockets, if only to stop himself from shaking Rathe into talking sense. “And you reckon you understand it all now, do you?”

  “I think so,” replied Rathe.

  “Any chance of telling me?”

  Rathe moved towards the door. “On the way.”

  “On the way where?”

  “To get the truth.” Rathe pointed around the room. “Although it’s all in this room, Cook: all the truth is in
here. And these books, these ornaments, those tumblers on the table, the wounds to the body ‒ they all prove it beyond reasonable doubt… ”

  * * *

  Elizabeth Newsome sprang out of her chair, an expression of defiance on her face. “No. It’s not true. I won’t believe it.”

  Rathe turned to the broken figure huddled in the chair next to him, limbs shaking and head bowed, sobbing softly. “Tell her it’s not true. Tell her you didn’t kill Michelle Leverton.”

  Sean Newsome lifted his tear-stained eyes from his hands and looked up at Rathe first and then across to his parents. Elizabeth was still standing, her hands clenched to her lips and her glare fixed in a terrified plea with her son to convince her that the nightmare was not real. His father had remained seated, leaning forward with his hands on his knees, his lips clenched against the horror of it all, the only sign of visible emotion being the tears in his eyes glistening against the lenses of his spectacles. Sean looked to the rough policeman, standing with his head tilted back, daring the boy to lie; then he looked at the altogether kinder face of the man who had done most of the talking. His eyes were calm, soothing, and his voice held Sean in a blanket of assurance that the truth could be told without fear.

  “Just tell them the truth, Sean,” Rathe said. “It’s the only thing we have left now and it needs to be said. Trust me, please, and tell us what happened.”

  Sean faltered, swallowing his fear, before lowering his head once more. “I’ve not done anything wrong.”

  Rathe sighed quietly at the lie, as though accepting that his efforts so far had been in vain and it was time to withdraw any chance of mercy. “If you don’t do it, Sean, I’ll have to do it for you. And that isn’t what I want to do.”

  “I haven’t done anything wrong,” the boy repeated, his voice muffled by his hands and tears.

  Rathe walked towards the boy’s father. “I owe you an apology, Mr Newsome. I took your wife’s fears at face value, because I couldn’t believe that she would approach a stranger with such a serious allegation if it wasn’t true. What I had underestimated was just how deeply her grief over your daughter’s death had overwhelmed her. I can see now that you were right when you said she had a pre-occupation with death and I understand that it has clouded her view of things. I did believe you at first,” he continued, turning to Elizabeth, “but the time has come now for the truth. Your husband doesn’t want you dead. He may not want to be married to you, but he doesn’t want to harm you either. You have to accept the help he’s offered you in the past. You have to deal with your grief over Jane.”

  Elizabeth forced herself to look from her son to her husband. “I was sure you wanted to kill me.”

  Newsome rose from his chair is a flurry of distress which seemed to overwhelm him without warning. “And look where that certainty has got us, Elizabeth! Look at the state of us all now!”

  Elizabeth cowered at the words, raising her palms to her face as if in an effort to block them out. Cook put a hand on Newsome’s shoulder and eased him back into his chair. Rathe waited for the room to fall silent once more before taking any further action. He walked across the room to the sideboard which he had seen on his first visit to the house. He pointed initially to the crucifix on the wall and then he picked up the rosary which was laid out in front of the family photographs. He turned them around in his fingers as he spoke, the beads clicking in an irregular rhythm.

  “You despise these as much as your father does, don’t you, Sean?” he asked. “The ties of faith that bind your family together are the same ties which are forcing your family to fall apart. Isn’t that right? Because without your religion, your parents could just divorce. But, because of that religion, you see your mum going mad and your dad living in misery, hating her and his life here more and more each day. And seeing these beads and that cross on the wall just reminds you of the truth of that situation every passing day, doesn’t it, Sean?”

  The boy didn’t reply, but his tears grew in intensity which was, perhaps, the only answer Rathe needed.

  “Your dad told me about the time you heard your mum accuse him of trying to kill her,” Rathe said, his voice gentle once more, “after she’d found the sleeping pills. He told me about how you have a habit of walking into a room without anyone knowing it. You did just that when I was here the other day, remember? But you hadn’t just walked in, had you? You’d been outside for a while, silently listening to us. You’d overheard me talking to your mum, just as you’d overheard her accusing your dad. And you heard her telling a stranger about her fears that your dad was going to kill her. Didn’t you?”

  This time, the boy fought for his voice. “Yeah… ”

  Rathe replaced the rosary and moved behind the chair in which Sean was sitting. He leaned over the back of it, his voice soft against the boy’s ear, the same sense of assurance of the safety of truth coming back into it. “How did that make you feel, Sean, hearing what your mum was saying to me? And what she said to your dad that time?”

  Sean twisted in his seat like a snake under attack. His eyes flashed fire at Rathe and his lips were curled back in a snarl of bitterness. “Hate. All I felt was hate. For her… for the bitch who’d screwed everything up.”

  Rathe looked across at the Newsomes. Elizabeth’s eyes had grown wide with shock, her jaw dropping open in mute and fearful disbelief. Edward rose from his chair and turned his back on the scene, his hands raised to his head in frantic but futile pain.

  “Her name was Michelle,” said Rathe.

  “I know what her fucking name was,” hissed Sean.

  “She recognised you when you went to her house, let you in, offered you a drink?”

  “Can of Coke. It was all she had. I hate Coke.”

  Rathe almost smiled at the petulance of the detail. “She drank it with Bacardi. I could smell it in one glass on that table, but there was no trace of it in the other. That one just had… Coke, pure and simple. Your mum drinks wine, but Michelle had none of that to offer. So, if it had been your mum there last night, with no wine to drink, would Michelle have offered her Coke? I don’t think so. She’d have offered your mum a coffee, I reckon. An adult wouldn’t offer another adult a soft drink if no stronger drink was available. But a kid… ? When there was Coke in the fridge… ”

  Cook felt it was time to speak. “And then there were the wounds to the victim. Some deep, some not. The pathologist took that as evidence of a struggle, the shallow wounds being inflicted as the victim was trying to swipe away the blade.”

  Rathe interjected. “But the bookshelves and the ornaments in the room were all in place. Nothing had been knocked over, spilled, or disturbed. There wasn’t any struggle, was there, Sean? You stabbed Michelle once, deeply, and as she fell to the floor dying, you took out all your anger on her. But you wore yourself out quickly and, at your age, you’re not as strong as you think you are.”

  A long, tragic silence fell over the room. After some moments, the sound of crying became evident and Rathe knew without looking across the room that the last piece of Elizabeth Newsome’s world had come crashing down around her. He put his hand on Sean Newsome’s shoulder, but the boy flicked it away with a twist of his body.

  “I just wanted them to be happy again,” Sean said. His voice had lost much of its fear. It was as though he had found some new form of strength once he had been forced to confront his own guilt. “Mum and Dad – I just wanted them to be happy. Wanted things to be back how they were, at first. But then, I just wanted them to be OK and it didn’t matter no more if they weren’t together, just as long as they were happy.”

  “I can understand that,” said Rathe.

  Sean glared at him. “You don’t understand shit. I hated that bitch for everything, yeah? She was taking my dad away from my mum and me, right? And I hated her for it. I wish she’d just leave us alone, leave my dad alone, and let him see that really – deep down – he loved my mum and not her. But she wasn’t going nowhere, was she?”

  Edward
Newsome turned to face his son. “She loved me, Sean. Can’t you understand that?”

  The boy raged in his chair, his knuckles whitening under the pressure of his fingers clutching the arms rests. “No, I don’t understand it! Why did she have to choose you? Why couldn’t she have someone else, anyone else? Why you?”

  Elizabeth Newsome made a move towards her son, her instinct now to protect and comfort him, no matter what atrocity he had committed. Her eyes and arms and heart reached out to him, but they were stopped in their tracks by Sean’s arm lashing out towards her, his finger pointing at her like the accusatory sword of judgement

  “Don’t come near me!” he screamed. “Don’t you understand yet, Mum? I hated that woman for what she’d done, yes, but I hated you for not letting Dad go! She wouldn’t leave us alone, but you could have let him be happy. You could have let him walk away and be OK. We could have managed that, couldn’t we? You just made it worse. You and your bastard religion made it worse. Because it was more important to you than any of us being happy.”

  Sean had got up from his chair and gone to confront his mother. Rathe, uncertain what was about to happen, had felt compelled to follow the boy, in case he was obliged to pull Sean away from his mother. Rathe could see that Cook had had a similar thought, because he moved behind Elizabeth, ready to catch her if she moved unwisely. Edward Newsome remained motionless, the situation beyond his control.

  “If we couldn’t be happy together,” Sean was saying between choking, rasping sobs, “we could have been happy apart. Why couldn’t we have just been like that? But you wouldn’t let it happen, Mum. It was because of you!”

  Elizabeth reached out a hand, tentatively, but withdrew it almost at once, as she saw the venom and hate spill out of her son’s eyes, nose, and throat. To anyone else, she thought stupidly, all that malice might look like tears of sadness.