She chose not to take the car as far as she could along the lane. Better to stop well short of the house and then walk under cover of the dark to the back of the house; he’d surely be watching the front. So she coasted down the lane, her engine and lights switched off, as far as she judged was safe, then crept out of the car, leaving it unlocked and the keys hidden just under the driver’s seat. She might need to switch on and get away in a hurry when she got back.
The geography and the weather were on her side. It was a clear night, but moonless, and just windy enough for there to be a steady soughing from the trees and a regular hissing and rattling in the hedges. Even if she did make a sound as she walked, it wouldn’t be identifiable amongst the rest of the night noises, and she slid along under the lee of the hedge towards the darker bulk in front of her, which was the two houses.
Getting round the back wasn’t too difficult either; the main hedge ran all the way round and on one side there was a high old brick wall. Kitchen garden? wondered George, who had visited her share of English country houses. Probably. And that meant the house’s kitchen door wouldn’t be too far away.
The wall was equipped with a door and she leaned on it gently and it gave way. Unlocked: someone up there loves me she told herself with a lift of excitement as she slid in through the smallest opening she could make (remembering suddenly with a frisson of horror the way Richard must have felt as he squeezed through into the Spitalfields storeroom) to find herself in a fairly narrow area of bushes and, underfoot, soft damp earth.
Great, she thought, and deliberately walked in the earth, using it to muffle her footsteps. The path, she could see, was brick and might make a noise under her heels; it didn’t matter that tomorrow, in daylight, evidence of her visit would be clearly visible. All she needed now was silence.
It was, she thought with elation, incredibly easy. The back door was unlatched and she was able to push the door open and step inside. Here the floor was tiled. She looked down at it dubiously in the dimness and decided to risk it. In the event, the earth clinging to her shoes acted as a soft sole to her otherwise noisy shoes and she was able to cross the kitchen as silently as she had crossed the garden.
Outside the kitchen she could see a dull glow coming from the fireplace and felt its fading warmth. He bas been here, she thought with a lift of pure joy. Otherwise, why the fire? Nanny Lyons hasn’t been here all day to light it, so it has to be him. Or Jasper. And in the end we want them both. And if one or both of them are here, so is Marietta.
It wasn’t till she got to the foot of the stairs that she found herself wondering what she would do if she got to the bedroom and found them both there. Edward and Jasper, together with Marietta. Tip her hat to them and say, ‘Good evening, you guys. I’ve just popped in for Marietta,’ and calmly scoop her up and take her away? She stood on the bottom step for a while, thinking. Perhaps she should have waited for the police after all; but then she shook her head. They had already refused to do as she had asked. How could she have trusted them to intervene? All she could do, now she was here, was to try to find Marietta without anyone hearing her, and then – suddenly her spirits lifted – then leave the way she had come and tell the police she’d found the girl and to come and break in at once. If she could assure them she’d seen Marietta with her own eyes, they’d have to believe her. Wouldn’t they?
Encouraged, she began to move again, creeping up the stairs with as light a tread as she could, terrified of squeaking boards. But the house, though old, had been well built and was thickly carpeted. Not a sound did she make, and she reached the top of the stairs, breathing a little more rapidly, but still in full control of herself.
It was then she heard it. From across the hall came a faint mewing sound. She stood as though she’d been frozen but it wasn’t repeated. She peered into the darkness to identify the source and saw a thinner blackness in the darkness ahead of her. The edge of the door, she thought, staring through slitted eyes to sharpen her vision. A half-open door, and whoever had mewed was on the other side of it. Mewed up, she thought absurdly, Marietta mewed up, and wanted to giggle. Fear, she thought, makes you do strange things.
She took a couple of deep slow breaths to restore her self-control. It was all too easy to get hysterical in a situation like this. She had to relax; relax and think relaxed if she was to get anywhere. And after a moment she felt better and began to move again.
The door opened softly in front of her and her eyes, now well used to the dark, saw tolerably well. A bed, with the hump of a figure in it. And other furniture too. But no other figures, and she stood very still, listening to someone breathe, trying to hear if there were more than one person doing it. There wasn’t, she decided and moved forwards to the bedside.
It was Marietta; she could have bent and hugged her. The woman was somehow less still than she had been; there was a sense of movement about her, rather than the dead comatose dullness that had so characterized her before. She was coming out of it, George’s doctor’s mind told her. Maybe she had had enough of Dr Kelley’s treatment to start her off on recovery at least. I have to get her out of here and back to hospital; and that means I have to get the police here fast.
She got as far as the kitchen on her way back, could see the open back door and the garden outside, even got a glimpse of the door in the wall beyond it, and then it all collapsed.
He was behind her. She knew it as surely as she knew that her feet were cold and heavy with the mud on her shoes and that her pulse was beating so thickly in her throat it threatened to choke her. She turned very slowly, staring into the darkness and saw a shape. A human figure undoubtedly, but topped with a large flattened head. The cap, she thought. The flat country-style cap he always wore. The body, as far as she could judge, was bulky and soft and she stood and stared and thought, overalls. Flat cap and overalls. And then braced herself as the figure came towards her in a sudden rush.
How long she spent grappling on the floor she did not know. He cut her; of that she was very aware. Both hands, across the palms. She’d worked out where the knife was, and had reached for it, following a complicated thought process mixed with an almost instinctual awareness; knowing that she had to hold the blade, because even if it cut her palms, it wouldn’t kill her there. Her blood was hot and sticky on her fingers and her hands slipped and she reached forwards again and pulled on the figure. This time, because there was no knife in his hands, he reached for her throat and she remembered just in time that he usually strangled his victims first and sliced afterwards. So why was he wielding a knife now? The thought whirled in her head and she knew it was stupid when what she should have been thinking about was finding the muscle power to fend him off. And though they were evenly matched for weight, for the body beneath the rough fabric of the overalls was quite slight, still she was losing. He seemed harder, tougher and altogether more determined than she was.
He had both hands round her throat and she was beginning to feel dizzy, the darkness threatening at the edge of her vision, when she heard it. The distant sound of police sirens. And at once he was gone, vanishing from on top of her, and she lay gasping, weeping soundlessly as the sirens got louder and closer. She couldn’t have made a sound even if she’d tried to because her throat, she was certain, would never function again.
36
Gus held her so tightly that it hurt, but she wouldn’t have told him so for the world. She just lay there, very aware of the ice pack round her throat, and listened to him. His voice was fortunately gentler than his grip.
‘You’re the biggest bloody fool there is,’ he said. ‘You go in bald headed where even a halfwit would have the sense to stay outside and mind her own business. You’re not even a quarter-wit.’
‘I’ve done pretty well for a –’ she began and then stopped and swallowed. Her voice was harsh and painful; it was easier to let him go on insulting her.
‘I know, I know. You worked it all out. But, ducky, so had good old Roop. No, don’t shake your
head at me. You’ll knock the ice off and Dr Kelley’ll have my guts for garters. He’d been beavering away in his dull old way and found out a good deal of stuff that bears out what you came at the brilliant way – and the dangerous way – just by stirring up your thoughts, jumping to conclusions, running into trouble and other daft athletic-type pursuits.’
‘Shut up,’ she managed. ‘Just tell me what he –’ And stopped again. This was frustration of a sort she’d never known. Not to be able to talk? It was a hell of the most excruciating kind.
Gus grinned hugely. ‘Oh, George, George, who’d ha’ thought it! My own little duck, speechless! Got to listen for a change! Oh dear, oh dear!’
She tried to pull away from him then, furious, but he held on.
‘I’m sorry, sweetheart. I have to tease you, though. How else can I get over the horrible fright you gave me?’
She looked up at him and saw the brightness in his eyes and was filled with compunction. She lifted her chin and he bent and kissed her very gently. She had to reach up and pull him down towards her to show him that whatever her throat felt like, her mouth was still in excellent condition.
They sat quietly for a while then, she looking up at the ceiling of the small side room on Hainault’s companion ward, Plaistow, very aware of the pain in her throat, but curiously detached for all that. Whether it was whatever drug Dr Kelley had given her to ease the pain, or a reaction to the tension and fear of the past couple of hours, she could not be sure, and she moved her neck gingerly inside its collar of ice and grimaced.
‘Keep still,’ he ordered. ‘Dr Kelley said –’
‘Bugger Dr Kelley,’ she whispered. ‘Tell me, for pity’s sake.’
‘OK, OK, I’ll tell you. Dudley got the message you’d left about Marietta, and set out at once to get down here to sort things out. He didn’t want to alert the local force because he wasn’t sure what sort of relationship Edward might have with ’em. Even with properly trained coppers it can happen in small communities that old friendships get in the way of police procedures. Edward – all the CWGs for that matter – have been swells in these parts so long … Well, anyway, Roop set out to come down here. Then he got a message from PC Waverley, whom he’d appointed watcher of the computer data, that Julie had pulled off the computer the stuff about Edward’s visits to Brussels and that you’d asked her for it – she had to tell him that to get the data – and he realized you’d got something on him. He’d suspected Edward from the start himself, simply because he was the brother of two of the victims, and, like we always say, us being old coppers, never mind the fancy stuff, look for the usual. Which is domestic crime committed by family members. Dress it up how you like, Roop said to me, this is one of them. He might have a few other scores he’s trying to settle here, but there’s a reason for these killings.’
He stopped then and leaned over and looked down into her face. The lamp beside the bed, which was partly covered by a piece of pink fabric, threw a soft glow on his features and she could have wept for the sheer joy of having him there.
‘You said the same, didn’t you?’ he murmured. ‘That it was a crime with reason, not just a mindless set of serial killings.’
She nodded, closing her eyes in assent, and then looked at him again, her brows up. Learning how to converse without speech was getting easier.
He straightened up. ‘Would you believe, even those politicians said the same. Mike Urquhart said that when he went to talk to Bodling and Twiley she said it had to be a family, not a political, motive. Oh, well. This time I was the one barking up the wrong tree, looking for a classic serial killer. I can’t win ’em all.’
She grinned at him, but didn’t try to speak. Or to crow.
‘OK,’ he said. ‘So Roop set out to look for the sort of boring old police evidence that gets cases into court and to a satisfactory conclusion. First off, he got them checking on the man’s trips to Brussels and, like you heard, he could have been in London for all the murders. It took a lot of planning, some jiggery-pokery with different names used in hotel registers, and a bit of his friend Powell posing as him and booking into hotels in his name, but he did it. He was available right here in London on all the relevant days at the relevant times. It took Interpol some time to compile the data, but they came up with it eventually. Not that that’s proof, of course, but it is important that opportunity is clearly in evidence. Then Roop started digging into the CWG family history.’
Gus stopped and took a deep breath. ‘I’ll grant you, ducks, he hadn’t uncovered this business of the twins born the wrong way round and Edward losing his inheritance in consequence. But he did find out the brothers had been at each other’s throats – if you’ll forgive the expression – all their lives pretty well, though they put on a great show of amity for public consumption. The old Lord Durleigh – the twins’ and David’s father – said in a letter Roop found among David’s effects that public squabbling was “unseemly”. He got them all to promise they’d behave “prudently”. Nice word, isn’t it, in the circumstances? Anyway, whatever the show they put on, it seems Edward never forgave his brother for being born before him. It was partly because of the poisonous atmosphere in the family that David turned so vehemently against them all. It made him a socialist of the first water.’ He chuckled then. ‘So it isn’t all bad news. Or it wouldn’t have been if the poor bugger had lived.’
She risked speech again. ‘This was known?’
‘Oh, there are always people who talk. Not the old girl here – they’d tried her. Sent someone under cover to chat her up, but she was stumm. It took you to get her talking. Well done you!’
Absurdly, she glowed. ‘And then?’
He shrugged. ‘So he – Roop, that is – began to look into the other victims’ backgrounds. He, too, discovered the Bishop had once been a local GP here – he wasn’t best pleased we’d made the same discovery before him! – and accepted that something had happened, he didn’t know what, to get up our friend Edward’s nose. And as for Scroop …’ He hesitated.
Her eyes lit up. This had been the puzzle for her. ‘Well,’ she croaked. ‘I must know, quick. Tell me.’ And coughed painfully.
He tutted at her, looking worried, but the cough eased and he went on in response to the imploring look she gave him. ‘He was an odd chap. You mentioned in the post-mortem report that he had undeveloped genitals. Remember?’
She wrinkled her brow and then nodded.
‘Well, we’ve got a lot of this stuff out of Jasper Powell, who’s been singing his heart out to Roop down at the local station. He was in the other house when Roop got there, hiding. A really repellent character that one. Always did what Edward wanted him to, no matter what it was, and especially when it coincided with his own interests. And they were always financial. Edward knew about his scam with Alice, and wouldn’t have hesitated to turn him in if he hadn’t co-operated. Even after Powell had enough evidence against Edward to have fought back he went on co-operating – he bought the barbiturates used on Marietta. I reckon he thought that if he helped Edward to his bloody earldom he’d get future cash rewards, via blackmail probably. He’d do anything to help Edward, even to the extent of engineering the accident to you. For that alone I could kill him myself, but I’ll settle for squeezing him till his pips squeak for mercy, getting all the info out of him I can. Anyway, now he’s terrified. He’ll tell us anything we need to know in the hope it’ll get him an easier sentence. He should be so lucky! Not that we’re telling him that, you understand. We just encourage him to talk. Which he does. Oh, yes, he does.’ He made a sharp little sound at the back of his throat. ‘Which is how we got this stuff.’
‘Why did he –?’ To her relief he understood.
‘Engineer the accident?’ Gus said. ‘He was suspicious of you, he said. Wanted to find out who you were and why you’d been chatting up the girl in Sloane’s.’ He chuckled then. ‘And you fooled him, believe it or not. He decided you were harmless. You! The man’s an idiot.’
‘Oh yes, Scroop. Well, it seems that the boy Edward, who was always somewhat dubious about his own sexuality, hated Scroop because he’d deceived him. Or so he told Powell.’
‘Deceived?’ Her voice was still thick but a little less painful now. The injection Dr Kelley had given her a little while ago was biting at last, she decided sleepily. I certainly don’t hurt so much but I must stay awake.
Gus sighed and made a face. ‘I have to say this stuff isn’t my idea of fun and games at all, but there you go. I dare say I’m just a boring old fart. There was a club they all went to, it seems. Gays, lesbians and the people who like their company. It was in the City, near Mitre Square, believe it or not. And Scroop used to go when he was younger and, well, better looking I suppose. Or maybe looks don’t matter and Edward liked a bit of rough trade, and it was Scroop’s working-class toughness that attracted him. Anyway, Edward fell for him like a plumb line, but then Scroop dropped him. It turned out that Scroop, who everyone at this club thought was transvestite as well as gay, was more transsexual. Or born with some sort of anomaly down there. Hell, you’ll know more about this than I do!’
George wrinkled her eyes, looking back into her memory of the Scroop post-mortem. It had been a nasty one, for the body had been half rotted, of course. But she’d identified the empty scrotum, or what she had assumed was a scrotum, though she knew quite well it could have been overgrown labia minora, a sort of abnormal extrusion of the normal vulva. She’d also found what she had thought was the stump of a penis. Could it have been a misshapen clitoris? She tried hard to visualize it again, but her eidetic memory was stubborn. She had found some degenerated material on the shoulder, and because of the other cases had accepted that it was the excised genitalia. But suppose …
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