Will Power

by Judith Cutler

  ‘Did you kill her?’ Rod asked.

  ‘As God is my witness, no! I was afraid that she was in so much pain that she would ask me to help her. But ultimately she clung to life. She was afraid to go. And much as I wished to end her suffering, I couldn’t.’

  ‘If we are in any doubt, we can ask for an exhumation order,’ Rod told him.

  ‘Dear God, what sort of man do you think I am? I loved that woman, body and soul. How could I harm her?’

  ‘You never thought her ill enough to call the doctor?’

  ‘Superintendent, I cannot believe that you haven’t checked her medical records. Oh, not you, some underling. She had severely ulcerated legs and feet, and developed a form of septicaemia. The GP called from time to time, but could give her only palliative care, as long as she declined to go into hospital. In the end, she refused to let him see her.’

  ‘Or did you refuse to let him see her?’ Rod pursued.

  Cornfield spread his hands. ‘If he had seen her and been able to prescribe strong painkillers, wouldn’t it have made my life easier? Of course I wanted him to see her. Officer, why don’t you simply charge me and be done with it?’ His voice broke, but he regained control immediately. ‘Here is my passport. I understand from Kate that you wouldn’t want me to leave the country. Or will you oppose bail?’

  Rod smiled. ‘Not if you’re going to be nursing Mrs Hamilton, not to mention her dog.’ He turned to Kate. ‘Might we have a word outside?’

  Kate nodded, telling the tape recorder they were taking a break.

  Cornfield coughed apologetically. ‘I’m sure there are rules about allowing people in my position to wander round in search of a lavatory.’

  ‘Let me accompany you myself,’ Rod said.

  Jane and Kate followed them out of the room, stopping in the corridor.

  ‘God, I could really use a fag,’ Jane said. ‘Kate, does he know about Dr Barton being dead?’

  ‘Not as far as I know. I was thinking of dropping it on him later. Maybe you should take up the questioning for a bit and you could tell him. Might provoke something.’

  ‘You’re sure the boss wouldn’t want to do it?’

  Kate leaned towards her conspiratorially. ‘I don’t know about you, but I reckon his interviewing skills are a bit rusty. I’d rather trust you.’

  ‘Fair enough. Look, I wouldn’t mind a pee myself. Where’s the ladies’?’

  ‘Like the man said, “Let me accompany you myself.”’

  Rod was waiting for the women by the interview room door. Jane went in ahead.

  ‘What did you want to talk about, Gaffer?’

  ‘Whether, to be honest, you wanted to continue with this. Even if we get the DPP to take it on, if he pleads guilty, he’ll get a year’s suspended sentence, that’s all.’

  ‘And lose everything. You know he never had any salary all that time he was working for her? That he lived all that time in a badly converted garage? That he nursed her all that time for nothing? What’s the justice in it?’

  He shook his head sadly. ‘It’s not justice we’re talking about, Kate. It’s the law.’ Without consulting the others, Rod started the questioning. But his enquiry sounded genuinely curious. ‘Tell me, Max, how have you been surviving financially?’

  ‘The same way I survived while Mrs Barr was bedridden. She gave me power of attorney – the one time I managed to get her to see a solicitor – so I could deal with all her financial affairs. You will find all the cheque stubs in her bureau.’

  ‘I never doubted I would.’ Rod could have instilled a threatening note into his voice, but didn’t. ‘But since her death?’

  A shadow of distaste crossed his face. ‘I was forced to borrow.’

  ‘From?’ Kate didn’t want to hear a compromising answer. She didn’t want to hear he was in debt to Steiner or Horowitz, lest it add weight to the conspiracy idea. Or would failure to ask them look like a guilty conscience?

  ‘From Mrs Hamilton. I had known her for years, if not with any intimacy. I asked the day after Mrs Barr’s death. You will find the receipt in these papers of hers. She particularly asked me to give them to you in person.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Kate said, meaning it. But on edge, now. Why on earth should Mrs Hamilton want her to have anything? She stowed the box folder under her chair.

  There was a short pause.

  ‘What I’d really like to ask you,’ Jane began, ‘is about Mr Barr’s death all those years ago. You see, I don’t like it. Mr Barr sounds as if he was a really nasty piece of knitting, sir; into child abuse and I don’t know what. Now, young Michael was away at medical school, wasn’t he, Max?’

  ‘That’s right, at Nottingham University.’

  ‘And Edna had a big row with the family about her sex life and you escorted her to Berlin?’

  ‘That’s right. My friend Joseph tried to care for her but she left him, and became, I suspect, a prostitute. He told you this the other day, I understand,’ he said, bowing gently to Kate.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And Mr Barr very conveniently died shovelling snow at about this time?’

  ‘Yes. And I know one should never speak ill of the dead, but the world was a better, cleaner place without him.’

  ‘Who killed him?’ Kate asked.

  Cornfield started. ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘We have a medical student with access to drugs, we have a girl raped by her father, we have you, a young man in love with Barr’s wife. Are you seriously telling me that no one spiked his tea?’

  ‘Kate! That’s a terrible thing to suggest.’ He said it with so little emphasis she was disconcerted.

  ‘Terrible things happen in terrible families,’ Rod prompted.

  ‘Terrible things did happen in that terrible family. Barr raped his daughter and impregnated her. I took her to Berlin, Kate, to find an abortionist. We are talking about the days before the nineteen sixty-seven Act,’ he added, as if Rod wouldn’t understand. ‘As for Barr’s death. I always regarded it as an act of God. If only He existed.’

  So you’re denying any part in Barr’s murder?’

  ‘Absolutely. My dear sir, I’m sure you’re mistaken. I’m sure no one would have touched him. They were all far too afraid of him for one thing. Me too,’ he added ruefully.

  ‘I’m not talking about touching him,’ Rod said. ‘I’m talking about popping something in his morning tea to cause heart failure. You were the gardener – you had access to foxgloves. Michael had access to digitalis. Didn’t one of you—?’

  ‘I give you my word,’ Cornfield said. ‘My word of honour. And I’m sure Michael would never … What does he say? Ask him!’

  Rod leaned forward and coughed, gently. ‘Mr Cornfield: perhaps we should have broken this news to you earlier. Dr Barton passed away last week.’

  ‘Dear God. Dear God. What a tragic family. Did he – I’m sorry, I have to ask – did he die … naturally?’

  ‘Do you doubt that he would?’ Rod asked.

  ‘Officer, if you and your colleagues have been poking around in his sad past, he might easily have wanted to end it all. He might equally, of course, have died of a broken heart. Can you tell me how he died?’

  ‘A depressingly mundane death. He fell downstairs and broke his neck. Kate and Jane found him.’

  Cornfield lowered his eyes to the table, as if in prayer. But he turned suddenly to Kate. ‘When we were talking about Edna’s flight to Berlin, I sensed that you – no, sensed is too strong a word. Did something, some flicker, come into your eyes? Is poor Edna dead, too?’

  Kate nodded. ‘Many years ago. A sadly predictable death.’

  ‘Drugs? Prostitution?’

  ‘Killed by her pimp.’

  Cornfield closed his eyes. ‘Oh,’ he said, opening them again, ‘how I wish I could believe in God and offer a prayer for their sad souls.’

  ‘You’re letting me go, officer?’ Cornfield asked Rod a few minutes later. ‘I expected you to charge me. I’ve even
brought my overnight things.’

  Poor naïve bugger.

  Rod ushered him gently out of the room. ‘Stay in Birmingham. Don’t attempt to go anywhere without notifying us. We may have to talk again, and I can’t guarantee that you won’t be charged at a later date.’

  ‘Tell me,’ Cornfield began, ‘what I should do about the house. Presumably everything goes to the government if there are no relatives.’

  ‘Yes, the Crown. Who will, of course, make strenuous efforts to find next of kin.’

  ‘I’m afraid they will search in vain. Call me petty, Superintendent, but while I would happily have helped Michael, and possibly less happily helped Maeve, sort out the house and garden, I can’t feel I could do the same for the government.’

  ‘You must feel very bitter,’ Rod observed.

  Cornfield shrugged massively. ‘I came with next to nothing; I leave with next to nothing. I’ve managed, as Kate will no doubt tell you, on next to nothing. So long as I have my health, my friends and my chess, what’s the problem?’ He dropped his voice, averting his eyes. Did he add something? Something about losing the love of his life? Kate couldn’t be sure.

  Whatever he might have said, he braced his shoulders. ‘This evening I will pack my things and move – pro tem – to Mrs Hamilton’s. And I do assure you that I will be drawing a small salary, and that her will is lodged with her bank. I witnessed it. I am not a beneficiary,’ he added dryly. ‘Good day to you. Kate. Jane.’ He nodded and began a dignified progress down the long corridor, Rod at his elbow.

  ‘Poor old bugger,’ Jane said. ‘All that in the palm of his hand and then – phut. How’ll he manage? Hey, what’s up, our kid?’

  Kate was clutching her head, and beginning to laugh. ‘Jane – where’s your notebook? The one we had when we talked to Barton. There’s a statement there, signed and witnessed by two police officers. Remember?’

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  At first Kate feared Max would faint. She should have announced it more tactfully. But the words had burst out, and not in the order she’d intended.

  ‘Here you are,’ she’d gasped, stumbling to a halt ahead of him. ‘All signed and witnessed by two police officers. Max, the Law may be about to punish you, but at least you’re going to get justice.’

  Rod stared. ‘Kate?’ he asked coldly.

  She tried to gather her wits. ‘The other day Jane and I were talking to Michael Barton. And he made us write this down and witness his signature.’ She flourished the notebook. ‘Goodness knows how the law stands, but it looks to me as if you’re a genuine beneficiary in a genuine will. Unless,’ she added more soberly, ‘he’s made a later one.’

  Max leaned against the wall, speechless.

  Rod asked with commendable presence of mind, ‘Has a search been made for one?’

  ‘That’d be the local force’s job. But I’ll get on to it. Rod – can someone inherit in these circumstances?’

  ‘Don’t rely on me – I’m only a policeman.’ He turned to Max, who was now regaining his colour. ‘But for God’s sake get your solicitor on to this now.’

  ‘Time for home, I’d say,’ Rod observed, draining his cup – they were in his room having a self-congratulatory coffee, courtesy of Rod’s wonderful machine.

  ‘What about Mrs Hamilton’s papers?’ Kate asked. She was intrigued, almost intrigued enough to push back her meal with Rod. But she didn’t want to say that in front of Jane.

  Probably Rod didn’t want the meal postponed. But it seemed he didn’t want to say that in front of Jane either.

  ‘Leave them till the morning,’ he said. ‘Probably no more use than Michael Barton’s papers. Interesting observations on the mores of the period, but nothing else,’ he explained to Jane. He got to his feet, looking at his watch.

  The rush hour had already begun. Kate contemplated the queues to Kings Heath with less than enthusiasm: it would be so much easier to nip out and buy a dress for tonight. That way she could come back to look at those papers. They couldn’t wait till the morning, could they? It would save Rod a long circular trip, too, as she pointed out over the internal phone; though he insisted he’d have been perfectly happy to make it, she could tell he was relieved. If she’d got a box-file of papers, he’d got a whole in-tray.

  A very swift sortie to Rackhams – even quicker because the saleswomen left her in very little doubt that it was extremely close to closing time – for a beautifully cut short layered dress and some strappy sandals and it was back to the papers. And not all that long before she was knocking on Rod’s door and shoving a sheet under his nose.

  ‘We’ve got ourselves our murderer,’ she said quietly. ‘It’s all here. She’s had a bad heart for years, apparently. I wonder how she’s survived so long.’

  ‘Remember the creaking gate proverb,’ he said. ‘So how and why?’

  ‘Why: because she could hear, and often see, the damage he was doing his kids. How: by grinding up some tablets and giving them to Edna to put on his breakfast porridge! He was the only one allowed to have sugar on his cereal, apparently – a hangover from rationing, Mrs Hamilton says. Rod, now what?’

  ‘She wanted you to know. You.’

  ‘A sort of deathbed confession?’

  He shook his head. ‘You’ll have to ask her. When the medics say she’s ready for that sort of questioning. God, Kate, she won’t live long enough to go on trial. If she did, she wouldn’t get a sentence. Can you imagine any jury convicting? A judge sending her down? Jesus!’ He closed his eyes, ageing his face five years.

  Kate put a hand out to touch his arm. The last few days had been as bad for him as for anyone, hadn’t they?

  ‘The great thing is that this absolves Max,’ she said. ‘Oh, God, you don’t think that that’s why she’s done it?’

  ‘Are you going to give her the third degree to find out?’

  ‘Not unless you authorise me to.’

  ‘Not in a million years! Hell, I’m going to have to take advice about this, Kate. In the meantime, come on. Time to celebrate.’

  The champagne was making Kate giggly. Not that she hadn’t been before. Giggly and tearful and over the moon about the Barton business and outraged by the strippogram and puzzled by Lizzie and weeping inside for Graham and grateful to Rod for his amused forbearance.

  ‘The next stage is where I fall asleep with my face in the soup,’ she announced, as he held her chair for her.

  ‘How very fortunate that we’ve chosen the hors d’oeuvre,’ he said.

  ‘And ordered mineral water, I hope.’

  ‘Indeed.’ He leaned forward, elbows on the table. ‘I’ve never seen you so relaxed before.’

  ‘For relaxed read pissed,’ she grinned. ‘What a day, Rod! Oh, I do hope that old man gets his loot.’ She clasped her hands in mock prayer.

  ‘I’m sure …’ he began, before his face clouded. ‘I gather …’ His eyes dropped to her ring. ‘I’ve wanted to ask all day … Do I gather that Graham …?’

  She shook her head emphatically. ‘I bought it for myself. There’s a very serious explanation I’ll favour you with on a less festive occasion, but this was from me with love to me.’ She spread her hand. The big ruby flared in the candlelight. ‘I hope – you don’t think it’s vulgar, do you?’

  ‘Are friends allowed to say that deep rich reds suit you? With hair as dark as yours and skin so fine … Sorry, that doesn’t sound like a friend at all.’

  ‘My Irish ancestry, I suppose,’ she reflected, realising that she was hardly rebuffing him. ‘But I’ve descended further than most. I’ve never even been to Ireland to check out my roots.’

  ‘It’s very fashionable. One day I’d like … Ah, I’d forgotten this.’ He burrowed under the table and passed her a large, heavy parcel.

  She stared at the professional wrapping. ‘It’s a shame to undo it.’ Why had he left it till now? Why not simply handed it over in the car? Perhaps Rod had less of the policeman, more of the showman, in his veins than she
’d realised. Anyway, she took the knife he proffered and slit her way gingerly in. An encyclopaedia of antiques. ‘Rod, it’s wonderful. It’s just what I need. God, what clichés. But I mean them. Thank you.’

  Of course, he’d handed it across the table so she wouldn’t have to kiss him – and perhaps so that he wouldn’t have to risk the rejection of not being kissed. But the look in his eyes told her that he hoped a book concerned with the past might bring them together in the future.

  Only time could tell. They were both adult enough to understand words like rebound and second-best, which would float unbidden between them until she’d evaluated her feelings for Graham. Evaluated? Conquered!

  Her ring flashed again. Only when she’d learned to love herself, it said, could she start returning someone else’s love. Rod’s or whoever’s.

  ‘Hors d’oeuvres, madam?’ the waiter enquired.