‘A neighbour of his heard a car engine running inside Prentice’s garage and called the police. They found him sitting at the wheel, dead. There was no mention of Thomas or Vera in his note.’
‘Or of Maureen,’ said Ellie, trying to work it out. ‘I bet if you got hold of Dick Prentice’s phone records, you’d find that Maureen did either go to see him or phoned him last night, in order to warn him that the police were after him.’
‘Would that be enough to make him commit suicide?’
‘It might,’ said Ellie, crossing her fingers. She didn’t know whether or not Maureen had done anything to force the issue, but she had a strong suspicion that Simon had done exactly that. If it was Simon, there would be no trace of the phone call. He’d have been wily enough to have bought a disposable phone, used it, and got rid of it.
‘Well,’ said Lesley, ‘I’m happy with the outcome as it is. I wouldn’t dream of suggesting that we look into anyone’s telephone records. The official position will be that Mr Prentice was depressed and committed suicide. I’ve scared his accomplice into clearing Thomas, and that will be the end of that. Right?’
‘Thank you. Yes, I suppose that is the best possible solution,’ said Ellie.
What a pity that someone else had to die … but also, what a relief. It was, she had to admit, a merciful conclusion to the investigation into the rape, at least for all those left alive.
She put the phone down, wondering if she herself had any responsibility for Dick Prentice’s death. If she hadn’t interfered, if she hadn’t given Lesley those names and told her about Maureen … what would have happened?
She’d acted with the best of intentions, but … No, no. She shook herself back into a sensible state of mind.
Let God be the judge. Justice has been done. Praise be.
Sunday teatime
After the deputation had departed, Ellie found herself unable to settle.
One minute she was amusing Evan, and the next she was gazing out of the window. It was a bright afternoon, and she rather fancied a breath of fresh air. ‘Is it going to rain, do you think? I thought I’d take Evan for a walk around the block. I know Diana said not, but he’s fractious and likes being wheeled along. Do you want to come?’
Thomas yawned. He’d taken a service that morning at short notice, had had a nice long nap in his La-Z-Boy chair, and looked forward to cooking the evening meal. ‘That leg of lamb that Dan brought. An hour and a half in the oven, do you think? With roast potatoes, parsnips and whatever greens we’ve got in the larder? You’re only going round the block, Ellie? You’re not going to do anything silly?’
Anything silly? He shouldn’t have said that. Wasn’t she capable of deciding such things for herself? What was the matter with the man? She’d got him cleared of the abuse charge, hadn’t she? ‘I might call on a neighbour, if he’s in. I’ll ring first, to make sure, and I promise to leave a note of the address if he asks me over there for a cuppa.’
Thomas yawned again and went off to rummage in the larder.
Ellie paused in the hall, listening. Sometimes, if Vera forgot to close the door to the top floor properly, you could hear what was going on up there. Dan wasn’t due for a while. There were faint telly noises upstairs. Nobody was shouting or crying. Three of the clock, and all’s well.
She dithered. Did she really want to go out?
Everything had been cleared up beautifully. Dick Prentice was dead, and his assistant had been dealt with by Lesley. Simon had seemed repentant. He’d made the right noises, and his cheque would help Vera to her dream kitchen. Mikey had established a relationship with his grandfather, and his father’s threats against Vera had been neutralized.
All was hunky dory. Except that the man who’d murdered Dan’s father had never been brought to justice.
She made a phone call. The person who picked up the receiver at the other end wasn’t surprised to hear from her, which told her everything she needed to know. Yes, if she’d like to drop around sometime that afternoon, that would be good.
Ellie left a note for Thomas, tucked an extra blanket around the sleeping form of Evan, who was … oh dear, just beginning to wake from his nap. Time to get his wheels a-rolling, or he’d start screaming. She checked that she had an umbrella in her handbag and pulled on a mac, just in case.
She let herself out of the house, closing the front door gently to behind her.
It was one of two people. She’d known that for a while. One was dead. One lived two roads over. Dead or alive? Take your pick.
Simon had known. Let sleeping dogs die.
Simon had implied it was the young one. Maybe it had been. But when Ellie had been told to look for a woman, her old friend hadn’t been talking about a lippy girl from the chippy, but about a mature, manipulative woman, who could charm the birds off the trees … or seduce an old family friend into comforting her after a shock. Comforting her into her bed? Mm. Possibly not. Though the suggestion might have hovered in the air, so to speak.
On the night of the murder, Dan had needed help in the aftermath of the party. His cousins had been whipped off to hospital. The house had been ransacked. His guests had gone. He was alone and needed help.
So what had he done? He’d rung an old family friend. Mr Scott had driven over with his son, who’d been at the party earlier but who had got home safely. Raff stayed on in the house while Mr Scott drove Dan to the hospital. Mr Scott had then returned to look after the house and to be there to explain to Dr and Mrs McKenzie, when they returned, what had happened. Mrs McKenzie had gone inside alone, while the doctor had stayed outside to garage their car.
Mrs McKenzie had been met by Mr Scott. He was their old family friend, solicitous and helpful. Charming, fragile Mrs McKenzie would have been distraught at seeing what had happened to her beautiful home. Mr Scott had calmed her down. Mr Scott had gone up to her bedroom with her and made sure there weren’t any nasty burglars still lurking under the bed or in the cupboard. He’d looked behind the shower curtain and soothed her until she was able to cope and see herself to bed. Mr Scott had then gone back downstairs and taken a seat, waiting for the doctor to return … and fallen asleep. He said.
What had Raff been doing all that time?
Ellie was about to find out.
EIGHTEEN
Mr Scott lived in a large, detached house, circa 1910, red brick, a turret on one corner. It wasn’t as huge a house as some, but it had been built for someone who intended to employ servants to look after it. Ellie would have taken a bet that there’d be a billiard room or a conservatory at the back and that the kitchen would be large and inconvenient. She manoeuvred Evan in his buggy into the porch and rang the bell. One bell only. The house was still occupied by one family, and it had not been divided into flats.
Evan had been turning his head from side to side to look up at the trees as Ellie pushed him along. Now his view was limited to the inside of a large, dark porch, and he screwed up his face, ready to yell out an objection.
The door was opened by an imp of the feminine gender. ‘Grandpa says he’s out in the back.’ She clung to the door, balancing herself on roller skates. Her feet went every which way until she regained her balance, when she shot off across the hall and down a short passage into the back garden.
Ellie pulled the buggy into the hall and shut the front door. There were clashing sounds nearby. Someone washing up the lunch dishes? A slight odour of dog. A clutter of coats of all sizes and colours, a hat stand containing umbrellas, sticks and a kite. Yes, a kite.
The imp had been about Mikey’s age. She had fair, tightly curled hair. Both the colour and the curls were natural.
Raff’s child?
An ancient dog of indeterminate breed appeared, enquiring who the visitor might be. Too old and rheumy to be a threat. ‘Good dog,’ said Ellie, who knew more about cats than dogs. Apparently, that was the right thing to say, for he turned himself round with an effort and padded off back down the passage to the garden. Ellie follo
wed.
A couple of steps at the back led up to a pleasant but nondescript garden, bounded by brick walls. There was a lawn with shrubs around the perimeter and, full in the sunshine, a plastic table surrounded by chairs. Scattered around the long lawn were a trampoline, a barbecue under wraps, a climbing frame, a half sized football net, and a paved path on which the girl with the curly hair was trying out her roller skates.
A white-haired man in his sixties was sawing away at an overgrown lilac bush, half of which had been brought down by the wind and was lying on the lawn. He stopped when he saw Ellie and laid down his saw. ‘Did Hedda see you come in?’ He gestured to the chairs. ‘Are they dry enough to sit on, do you think? Will you be warm enough out here?’
Ellie manoeuvred the buggy up the steps and put the brake on. ‘They look fine. My grandson likes the great outdoors.’
‘Such as it is. I’m afraid I’m no gardener. It’s as much as I can do to keep the place tidy. Tea or coffee?’
‘Thank you, but I’ve just had some. Apologies for breaking in on your Sunday.’
The dog laid himself out on the paving stones beside the chairs, placed his head on his paws and closed his eyes.
The girl sang out, ‘Grandpa, watch what I can do!’ She tripped, recovered herself and tore on up the path.
He sang back, ‘I’m watching you!’
‘Raff’s child?’ said Ellie.
A long sigh. ‘Yes. So, it’s over at last.’
‘You knew you’d be called to account some day?’
A nod. ‘I’ve made provision for Hedda and the child. My wife passed away long ago. You want me to go to the police with you? I’d rather they didn’t come here. I don’t want the child to see me taken off … although I suppose it can’t be kept from her much longer.’
Evan was grizzling. Ellie adjusted the angle of the buggy so that he could see around him. He chewed on his fist. He was definitely teething again. Where, oh where, had she put his dummy?
Ellie said, ‘Could you bear to tell me about it, Mr Scott?’
A long sigh. ‘Where to begin? We’d known the McKenzies for years, ever since they moved into the area. He was our doctor, we dined with them and they with us. We made up parties to go to the theatre, even went on holiday with them once. Our sons went to the same school. They were not best buddies, but if we had a barbecue evening, they came to us and vice versa. Raff loved their pool and wanted one, too, but as you can see, we haven’t enough room. Then my wife began to ail and became so painfully thin – cancer, untreatable – that she didn’t want to go out, though she encouraged me to do so. Marcella – Mrs McKenzie – was wonderful. She insisted on including me in all their social activities. She said I mustn’t mope because it would do my wife no good. She recommended that we had an au pair. That’s how Hedda came to stay with us. She made such a difference to our lives. She ran the house for us, which was a tremendous relief as I’ve never been much of a cook or bottle-washer. I can’t change a bed or iron a shirt for the life of me.’
‘Ah,’ said Ellie. ‘Hedda and Raff …?’
A nod. ‘Hedda and Raff. She was – is – a good girl. She kicked him out when she found him in her bed. She told us she must leave. My wife wept. We didn’t know what to do. We’d grown to depend on her, and besides, we were really fond of her. Raff was at a difficult age, about to leave school, impatient to get on with his life. He said he was in love with Hedda and wanted to marry her. Of course, we said he was too young. We asked him to be mature enough to consider what it would do to his mother if Hedda had to leave. He was planning to go into the Army as soon as he left school. We said that if he still wanted to marry Hedda after he’d been away for six months in the Army, then we’d agree to it.’
‘And Hedda?’
He shifted in his chair. ‘She was in tears most of the time. She couldn’t make up her mind what to do. She’d originally planned to come to us for just a year to improve her English, after which she was supposed to return to Germany and go to university. My poor wife was pretty well confined to her bed by that time and didn’t want to have to get used to someone else.’
The older couple, anxious and ailing. The young buck, feeling his oats.
The little girl screamed, ‘Look at me, Grandpa!’ She was on the trampoline, still wearing her roller skates.
Mr Scott got out of his chair in a hurry. ‘Darling, you must take off your roller skates before you go on the trampoline.’
A voice floated out through the kitchen window. Presumably, it was the child’s mother, Hedda? ‘Come here, Liebchen. I’ll take them off for you.’
The child disappeared indoors. Evan started to grizzle. Ellie scrabbled in her handbag, hoping against hope she could find his dummy, and found the second one, still in its packaging. Relief. Where had the first one gone? Well, never mind that now. She thrust the dummy into his mouth. Peace and quiet descended.
Mr Scott said, ‘My wife would never have any truck with those things.’
‘I don’t approve of them, either, but nothing else seems to satisfy him when he’s like this.’ She jiggled the buggy, and Evan relaxed, lying back, sucking rhythmically on his dummy, watching the clouds as if they were a peep show laid on specially for his benefit.
Ellie said, ‘So when Raff went to the party at the McKenzies, he was feeling frustrated. Why didn’t he take Hedda with him?’
‘She refused to go. She said my wife needed her. We were relieved because we didn’t know how he’d behave towards her if people started to pair off to visit the bedrooms, that sort of thing. He went on his own.’
‘On the lookout for another girl?’
‘Oh, no. I don’t think so. What happened, it was by chance, a terrible mistake.’
‘You know what Raff did?’
‘He told me when he got back. Half boasting, half sorry. He told me the girl had had too much to drink and was anybody’s for the asking.’
‘You knew the family well. You knew she was Dan’s girl, and that she’d never looked at anyone else. You’d probably met her on one of your social occasions. And, knowing Mrs McKenzie, she’d undoubtedly have bent your ear about how much she disliked Dan’s taking up with Vera, just as you in turn confided in her about Raff and Hedda. You must have been terribly shocked when Raff told you … boasted to you … what he’d done with Vera.’
‘Yes. I was. And the worst of it was that Hedda overheard us. We’d both raised our voices, I’m afraid. She came out of her room, demanding to know what had happened. She said she was going to pack and leave next day. Raff was furious with her, said it was all her fault for refusing him. I couldn’t think what to say or do. My own son! Acting like that! And then the phone rang.’
Ellie nodded. ‘And it was Dan, who didn’t know that Vera had been raped or that Raff had been involved. He told you he’d tried and failed to get in touch with his parents. He asked for your help to get him to hospital. You agreed. And took Raff with you.’
‘I couldn’t leave him alone in the house with Hedda.’
‘Your wife …?’
‘Sleeping pills. She didn’t wake. She never knew. We thought it best.’
‘So you picked Dan up from his house and took him to the hospital, leaving Raff at the McKenzie’s?’
‘Yes. Raff hadn’t passed his driving test at that time so I drove. Dan was in a terrible state. I thought the hospital should have admitted him, too, but he refused to be examined. He fretted about his cousins and about what his parents would say, and if Vera had got home safely. I knew what had happened to her, of course, but I couldn’t tell him that Raff, among others, had … I couldn’t. I promised him I’d stay at his house till his parents returned. We hoped they’d be back soon, but of course they weren’t. Afterwards, I thought of many different ways I should have handled it. I could have gone straight to the golf club and got them out. I could have sent Raff in to do the same thing except, of course, that he couldn’t drive and we didn’t want to leave the house open. I tried ringing
the golf club myself, but they’d switched to an after-hours service.
‘So after I’d dropped Dan at the hospital, I went back to the McKenzies’. Raff had found something to drink; there were bottles of the hard stuff lying around, abandoned by the gatecrashers, I suppose. He hadn’t even attempted to clear up the mess. I hardly knew where to begin. The thought of Marcella coming home to that …! I got some black plastic bags out of the kitchen and a broom and made Raff help me to clear the hall. There was broken glass, plates, and food strewn everywhere. I thought I’d heard somewhere that glass ought to be put in a carton, but I couldn’t find one, and all the time I was worrying what to say to Dan, and to Hedda, and how to explain it to my wife … how to deal with Raff.
‘Finally, Raff said he was bushed and would go and have a kip in the doctor’s study. It wasn’t too bad in there. Stuff thrown around, but there were some comfortable chairs. He fell asleep, just like that! As if he hadn’t a care in the world. I couldn’t sleep. The kitchen was OKish, a couple of glasses broken, a bit of mess. I made a cup of coffee to keep myself awake – about the only thing I know how to do in a kitchen. I suppose I must have dozed off. The next thing I knew was someone turning the key in the lock of the front door. I shot out to intercept whoever it was. It was Marcella. I had to tell her that Dan was at the hospital, but not gravely injured, and prepare her for the worst. She had hysterics.’
He paused, eyes shifting. He was going to lie?
He said, ‘Raff woke up, asked where the doctor was. Marcella was in a terrible state. I wanted to get her up the stairs to bed, but … Raff said he’d go for the doctor, who was the only one who could deal with her when she got like that, but I said no, that he should coax Marcella up the stairs and that I’d go. Break the bad news. I said it would come better from me as one of his oldest friends.’
Liar, liar; your pants are on fire.
Murder in Time Page 25
