‘Hard work, it were, but I never been afraid of hard work, nor never knew anything different. And Mrs Radley, she were a good mistress.’
Frances’s quick ear picked up the emphasis, slight but definite. ‘And Mr Radley?’
The steely look returned. ‘I don’t never say that bastard’s name. There’s nothing too bad for him, not if he fries in hell till Doomsday. I never spoke of it to no one, but you that’s so clever, you can guess.’
‘He got you pregnant?’
She could hardly bring herself to nod. ‘We was a good family, my ma a regular church-goer, and brought me up to respect myself, but I hadn’t no say, had I? Then she found me crying one day.’
‘Mrs Radley?’
‘Blackleading the grate in the drawing-room, I were, worried sick because I were beginning to show — she got me to tell her, had a sort of way with her. You couldn’t help it, not when she looked at you with them great grey eyes. And she believed me. Plenty would have turned me off, but she knew what he were like. Not at first she didn’t, or she wouldn’t never have married him, but by then she did, poor lady. She knew Joe and me had been walking out of a Sunday, and she made it all right with him, gave him the money so he could marry me right away. So if it weren’t for her, wouldn’t be a respectable married woman, would I? I’d be a tart, and I’d have broke my ma’s heart. So there weren’t nothing I wouldn’t do for her.’
‘And then the baby was born.’
Martha met her eyes defiantly. ‘That’s right. And he were never quite — right, as you might say. But I loved him anyways. He were my boy, and even if he might be — difficult, a bit rough, maybe, he were all I had. Joe took the money, but he never loved me after that — never pretended to—’
‘Mrs Radley was sympathetic about your son?’
‘Well, she would be, being as she knew—’ The woman broke off.
In the corner of the sofa, Frances became very still. They had come, she realized with a prickling of the hairs on the back of her neck, to the dark heart of it.
‘Knew?’
For a moment she feared Martha would not answer. Then the words came tumbling out, as the last defence was breached.
‘All the Radleys. Back as far as we know, they been — strange. Oh, some been all right, mostly. But — violent — anyone could tell you that. Mrs Radley’s ma-in-law, the old lady, she left Radnesfield House after her husband tried to kill her. Oh, we all knew that — but nobody never said. There were never what you might call proof, and we didn’t want nobody poking their nose in here. We all lived with the Radleys, all these years, they’re all right —’
Frances gaped at her. ‘You don’t mean — there haven’t been murders before?’
‘No, not murders, exactly. Just — sort of — accidents. Not within the village, mind.’ She seemed to be offering this as an excuse. ‘Just, maybe, a poacher from Limber, something like that…’
The heart of darkness, indeed. And bloodlines running all through the village, presumably, if the recent late Mr Radley was representative of his ancestors. Sickened, Frances challenged her. ‘Are you saying there is a homicidal strain in the Radleys?’
‘No, no, not that. It’s just — there was always these — accidents—’ Her voice ran down into silence, and she would not look up.
‘And the present generation? Edward? Was that why his mother didn’t want him to marry — so the strain would die out?’
‘That’s right, so they’d be gone, so that was all right.’
She had spoken too eagerly; with professional instinct, Frances pressed the question. ‘Edward?’
‘I promised her — promised her when she were dying!’ The words broke from her like a sob. ‘Said I would look after him, like if he were my own boy... And he weren’t like his brother, no; his brother, he were all bad, like his pa, and going the same way—’
‘The brother who was shot?’ Frances was upright on the edge of the sofa now, and seeing the other woman turn her head away, grabbed her so that she dropped the photograph. ‘Martha, you’ve got to tell me. How — did — he — die?’
‘It were an accident.’ She was mumbling, ducking and weaving her head in evasion. ‘An accident, that’s what it were, that’s what we was told. Mrs Radley, she said it were a tragic accident, so we knew. Her sons, they was, and he were a desperate bad lot, deserved all he got, we reckoned—’
Frances dropped her hands as if they had become red-hot. ‘Are you saying that you all knew he had killed his brother, and you — and his mother — did nothing?’
‘Not knew,’ she maintained. ‘Not knew, exactly.’ Her look at Frances was almost sly. ‘Police said it were an accident, anyways, didn’t they? They should know, they should. And she’d lost one son. Where would be the point, taking away the other one?’
Frances had to turn her head to conceal her revulsion. ‘And the murders?’
The woman shifted, uneasily. ‘We didn’t know, rightly…’
‘Dear god, no wonder Radnesfield has tried to keep strangers out! Heaven knows what may come out in the course of time.’
‘Well, he’s in a world of his own, we knew that. But he’s one of the old families, and foreigners who come here, ruining everything—’
She stopped, suddenly aware of where the sentence was leading her.
Professional detachment had gone. Frances looked at her with open horror. ‘I think you’re all mad — all quite, quite mad! And the sooner we get Radley restrained, the safer everyone will be—’
And then she stopped. ‘His alibi,’ she said. ‘He’s got an alibi for Neville Fielding’s murder. It’s the only one that holds water.’
Martha stiffened. ‘An alibi? Do you mean—?’
Frances could read her face as the emotions swept over it. Relief, first and foremost: then rage, that she had been unnecessarily lured into confession.
Her shoulders straightened. ‘Well, that’s all right then, isn’t it? And the other — well, I daresay it were just a lot of talk, load of old gossips we have down the village, talking a lot of rubbish. You just forget what I said to you now, it’ll do nobody no good.’
Frances barely heard her. ‘Last night, I thought I had it at last — he just seemed to fit, somehow. But this morning I went right through that evidence, and there isn’t a crack. He left the house, walked straight to Willie Comberton’s; someone saw him going in there; left at twenty to on the grandfather clock — Comberton’s unshakeable on that — then was met by the vicar seven minutes later—’
Martha was staring at her, her shoulders sagging once more. ‘Comberton’s clock? His alibi?’ Her cackle of laughter was humourless. ‘Well, you lot don’t know nothing around here, do you? Comberton’s clock, that’s a byword in this village.’
‘What do you mean? It was checked by a constable on the Monday after Fielding’s death, and it was almost exactly right.’
‘That were on Monday. Well, Monday it would be right, wouldn’t it? He winds it and sets it right Sunday night, but being he’s a clockmaker, he won’t admit he can’t make his own clock run true. By Saturday, it’s all of twenty minutes out, though he won’t agree to that, will he? Everybody knows that.’
‘Oh yes,’ Frances said bitterly. ‘Everybody who matters doesn’t have to be told. And as a result of your selective discretion, two people are dead, and one has been wrongfully imprisoned. What about poor Helena Radley?’
Martha dropped her eyes. ‘Nothing we could do — nobody asked us, did they, and Mr Edward, he told me she would get off…’
‘Oh, what’s the use? I’m simply wasting my time. I’d better get round to the Red House before he decides that he really has a taste for it.’
She was on the way to the door when she sensed Martha’s unnatural stillness. She turned, to see that the woman’s high colour had drained from her cheeks.
‘I — I couldn’t get in this morning,’ she stammered. ‘You put it out of my mind. But there were a note on the door, saying they was all sleeping late—�
��
Frances was out of the house and running along the street towards the Red House before Martha could get to her feet.
*
Helena’s heart seemed to stop. After a second of frozen immobility, she grabbed Stephanie frantically, turning her over, and her body flopped slowly and horribly on to its back. Too horror-stricken to scream, she felt the cheek; it was still warm, though clammy, and the faintest of faint breaths was still moving the dry, parted lips.
‘Oh, thank god, thank god,’ she sobbed, starting to slap at the girl’s cheeks in an attempt to rouse her. ‘Edward! Edward!’ she screamed, finding her voice, and heard him taking the last flight of stairs two at a time.
‘Stephanie – overdose!’ she gasped as he came in and stood, looking shocked, on the threshold.
‘Oh no! the pills?’
She nodded.
‘It’s my fault – it’s all my fault!’ He was wringing his hands. ‘I must have left them there, after I gave her one. How could I be so criminally careless, when she was so distraught—’
‘Never mind that! An ambulance, get an ambulance!’
‘My dear,’ he said gently, putting an arm round her shoulders, ‘perhaps the police…’
‘She’s alive!’ she snapped. ‘For heaven’s sake, hurry!’
‘Alive!’ he said, and he was very still. ‘Are you — are you sure?’
‘Yes, yes,’ she sobbed. Now go!’
She barely registered his footsteps going down the stairs again, slow and heavy, as if he were carrying a great weight. She was concentrating on her child, willing her to take the next breath, calling to her, shaking her, trying to bring her back to the life that was almost visibly ebbing away.
She tried to raise Stephanie, but the girl was as big as her mother, and in her inert state too heavy to lift. Perhaps Edward would manage, get her moving, while she phoned.
She flew downstairs, calling, ‘Edward!’
He was standing in the hall, the telephone in his hand, jiggling the rests. ‘That’s strange,’ he said, without turning. ‘It seems to be out of order.’
‘Then fetch the police! They’re only across the square, and they’ll know what to do.’
But he didn’t move. And at that moment, she saw the trailing flex of the telephone, pulled from its jackpoint.
For a fraction of a second, her brain refused to register the implication of what her eyes had seen. Then she was across the hall, wrestling with the key in the front door.
But it was stiff, her fingers were clumsy, and he was on her, his arms pinning her hands to her sides, dragging her back from the doorway to help, safety and sanity.
‘Helena, Helena,’ he kept groaning, as if in pain. ‘I didn’t want this — you made me do it, Helena!’
He was not a great deal taller than she, but his strength seemed to her, in her terror, almost superhuman. But this was her daughter’s life as well as her own, and lashing out, biting, scratching, she fought like an alley cat.
He seemed impervious to the wounds she was inflicting. She was forced to give ground, until at last he had backed her into the corner of the staircase.
They were face to face now, and she could see that there were tears pouring down his cheeks. ‘Edward,’ she begged, frantically, ‘please — don’t do it! Please let me go! I’ll help you, do anything—’
Unspeaking, he shook his head. She was totally cornered now. His body weight held her pinned, her left arm immobilized by the angle of the stairs. Slowly, still shaken by sobs, he raised his hands, and now they were beginning to tighten round her throat.
He had left her right arm free. Groping blindly, with nothing left but the instinct for self-preservation, her fingers encountered something — something fine and feathery; the draping fronds of cupressus.
She had set them there herself, a lifetime ago, on Saturday before party guests started arriving. It had been an effective arrangement; daffodils, freesias, cupressus and winter jasmine in a holder set on top of the huge heavy-based pewter candlestick which always stood on the chest at the foot of the stairs.
Her sudden lunge took him by surprise, and then it was in her hand — two pounds of weighted metal. The flowers cascaded to the ground as she brought it up with all her strength, making sharp contact just above his left ear.
His eyes widened in shock, pain, and, it seemed, reproach, before his hands loosened from about her throat and he slumped to the floor to lie, as if laid out already for burial, on a bier of crumpled spring flowers.
‘Oh god, oh god, what have I done?’ She dropped the candlestick, and with her hands over her mouth as if to stifle a rising scream, backed away from her victim.
In the grip of shock, she knew only that she must open the door, though it needed painful concentration to steady her hands enough to turn the key. At last she wrenched the door wide just as Frances Howarth appeared at the gate, a constable hurrying up in her wake.
At the sight, Helena, dishevelled and frantic, stopped dead, then burst into peal after peal of hysterical laughter.
‘Just — just the person I wanted to see! You can tell me. I’ve killed my husband — do you hear me? I’ve killed him. And what I want to know — what I want to know is, if I’ve served my time for killing one husband when I didn’t, but I’ve killed another one instead, is it all square?’
Chapter Fifteen
It was half-past eight when Frances drove wearily back to Radnesfield. There were files she must collect before she could start making her report, and she preferred to fetch them tonight. Then, with luck, she need never set foot in this evil little place again.
The operation was winding down and the trailer was in darkness, the extra manpower that had been drafted in already deployed elsewhere. She let herself in, snapped on the light and looked round at the piles of papers on the worktop with revulsion.
It had been a long, gruelling day. The lingering pressmen still staked out in the square had found themselves with ringside seats for the dramatic events of the morning, and tomorrow’s papers would no doubt feature sensational headlines and a lot of rhetorical questions about police effectiveness. What fun it must be, she thought savagely, as she sorted through a mountain of statements, to be able to ask questions without dealing with the answers people gave you.
There had been television cameras, too, of course, and poor Joe Coppins dragged out of his meeting to explain this mayhem during a police investigation. He had done a sturdy job of stone-walling, but in the context of shots of Stephanie being carried out on a stretcher, and Edward, the square of plaster on his head clearly visible, being marched to a car in handcuffs, it all sounded distinctly lame. They had dragged out all the footage from Helena’s trial too, and got one of the more magisterial interviewers to make the point that surely this must raise the question of wrongful imprisonment, to which the answer could only be yes.
It didn’t feel quite like that from this side. Helena had pleaded guilty on the expensive advice of a leading barrister, after all, and for the record books, cleaning up Lilian Sheldon’s murder in less than forty-eight hours wasn’t so bad. But she would have to admit that it didn’t look good, and that she felt responsible.
Coppins was in the front line, because it was his case. Technically. But by a conspiracy of events — no, she corrected herself scrupulously, by a conspiracy of events and her own determination to fly solo, she had become involved, as bystander, catalyst and even participant. She hadn’t taken him into her confidence, exposing her fledgling theories to his shrewd scrutiny, partly because she didn’t like being wrong and partly because she had wanted, childishly, to lay down all the cards and say ‘Gin!’
She had gone to him before she left for Radnesfield, and offered to put in her resignation. She had been sincere, but in her current mood of acid self-appraisal she admitted there had also been a touch of secret pride in her own high-mindedness.
Across the desk, he had looked at her sardonically from under heavy brows.
‘
Nice little spot of drama to round off the day? I should have thought today’s events would have satisfied anyone’s appetite for histrionics.’
‘Sir—’ she protested, but he held up his hand.
‘Spare me! I’ve had a long day. You’ve still got an awful lot to learn, sergeant, haven’t you? If this is the worst you ever have to take in the police force, you can count yourself lucky. And if you offer yourself up as a martyr, you’re inviting people to throw stones.
‘You didn’t point out that I should have listened to you in the first place, and I might even agree with you, if I were into self-flagellation, which I’m not. Take it from me, as a sport, it’s over-rated.
‘Just use the wits the good lord gave you, Frances, will you? Write it up so it looks as good as you can make it, then we’ll keep our heads down for a bit. They’ll be so grateful to find we didn’t beat anyone up round the back of the station or plant evidence on them that they’ll probably give us a citation.’
So she still felt responsible, but now she felt foolish as well. Yes, it had been a very gruelling day. She was tired, and foul-tempered, and when the tap came at the door, even the sight of Mr Tiggywinkle poking his nose round it, almost sniffing the air like his namesake, was not engaging.
‘Can I help you?’ she said, ice forming on the words as she spoke.
He looked comically crestfallen. ‘That’s a very forbidding greeting, I always think, don’t you? I don’t want to disturb you—’
She did not quite say, ‘Then go away,’ but the thought hung almost audibly on the air between them.
‘I’m sorry. I shall, of course, withdraw immediately and leave you to your labours. It was merely that I happened to see your car arrive, and wondered whether you had eaten? Jane has left me a quite enormous beef carbonnade — she has rather a way with it, I fancy — and if I had a guest, it would justify opening a bottle of an interesting Rioja I’ve been anxious to try.’
Beef carbonnade. She had not eaten since an early breakfast, but she shook her head. ‘You’re very kind, but I have one or two things to finish here, and then I must get back.’
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