The Copper Peacock
Page 14
‘No doubt she supposed Sophie would find the body. An unpleasant thought. No mother would do that to her child? Perhaps not. Perhaps Hilary intended to come back later and find the body herself. In the event the next-door neighbour found Ann Waterton.’
Burden said, ‘It doesn’t work, Reg. You’re forgetting the suicide note. Ann left a note for the coroner.’
‘I’m not forgetting it. The suicide note is at the heart of all this. We have to go back to last May or June, whenever it was. Ann Waterton attempted to kill herself but the attempt was frustrated by Sophie Grant and her mother. There was no suicide note – or was there? Has anyone heard of the existence of a suicide note? On the other hand, has the existence of such a note been denied? Let us postulate that there was such a note. On the mantelpiece or in a pocket of Ann’s dress or by her bed. Remember that suicides, especially “home” suicides almost always leave a note.’
‘Yes, but we’ve discussed this. That first time Hilary and Sophie wanted to keep it dark that there’d been a suicide attempt. For Ann’s sake.’
‘What are you saying, Inspector Burden? And you a policeman! Are you saying they destroyed a suicide note for no more reason than to protect the reputation of a woman who was then no more than an acquaintance? No, of course you aren’t and of course they didn’t. It’s quite possible indeed that Sophie knew nothing about it but that Hilary, spotting what it was, picked it up and took it away with her.’
‘But didn’t destroy it?’
‘No, no. Remember Cousin Henry. She took it. She had no prevision of any future need for it, Ann at that time had done her no harm and there was no hint that she would. She took it, as I say, and read it, as Cousin Henry read his uncle’s will, and decided to tell no one about it. Ann had been found in time, Ann would survive. And, by the way, I’d suggest at that time the note was in its envelope but unsealed. Hilary later did the sealing.
‘She preserved it. Not for any nefarious purpose then but simply because it had become an official document, a document of great weight and significance, fraught almost with magic. Perhaps she thought she would give it back to Ann one day. Ann would be happy again and they would – dare she expect it? – laugh about it together. But I think the real reason for preserving it was Cousin Henry’s, she was afraid to destroy it. And why do so anyway? Easier than destroying it was to slip it inside a book in the way Cousin Henry concealed the will, a book no one in the household was ever likely to want toread or even take down and look at.
‘In Cousin Henry’s case it was Jeremy Taylor’s sermons. What book Hilary Stacey used we shall never know and it doesn’t matter. Perhaps, anyway, she kepi: it in a drawer with her underclothes.
‘But possession of the suicide note gave her the idea for Ann Waterton’s murder. After she had put Ann into the car she had only to place the note on the table and, making sure she had left no fingerprints, return home and leave the body to be discovered.’
Burden, who had listened to the last part of this in silence and with his head bowed, now looked up. He shook his head a little, but rather as if in wonder at human depravity than in any particular cloubt at what Wexford had told him. It might be true, Hilary Stacey had been angry enough, desperate enough. He realised he had never really liked her.
‘You’ll never prove it,’ he said, and as he spoke he was confident Wexford would agree with him. Wexford would give him a rueful smile, accept the inevitable. His chief often, still, surprised him.
‘I shall have a damn good try,’ said Wexford.
Staying out drinking wasn’t Burden’s way. It never had been. He was an uxorious man, a home-loving man. Anyway, he liked to be with his little boy before Mark went to bed, liked if possible to put him to bed himself. If the licensing hours hadn’t changed from a cast-iron regularity to depend instead upon the whim of the landlord, he wouldn’t have been able to have a beer with Wexford at ten to five. As it was he was still early, though the evening was as dark as midnight. He walked home, thinking about Hilary Stacey. It seemed to him unfortunate she had been Jenny’s friend. How much, he wondered, did Jenny care for her? And should he tell Jenny something of all this?
It might be best to wait a while, see what unfolded, see how Wexford progressed. There would be a point at which he would know the time had come to divulge horrors, undreamt-of intrigue. He found Jenny in an armchair by the fire, the child on her knee. Mark was in pyjamas and a blue dressing gown of classic cut, piped in navy and tied with a silk cord. Jenny was reading to him, Beatrix Potter this time, the one about the kitten who traps a mouse in her pocket handkerchief, but the mouse escapes through a hole. Mark was mad about literature, he would soon be able to read himself. Rather gloomily, Burden saw a future with a son always talking about books.
Mark got down from Jenny’s lap and came over to his father. Another adventure of some thwarted predator or enterprising rodent was demanded. While Burden was looking through the collection on the bookshelf, the doorbell rang.
After dark he answered the door himself to unexpected visitors. You never could tell. He went out into the hall, Jenny behind him with the boy, holding his hand because he was nearly too heavy to carry. Burden opened the door and the girl came in. She stepped in quickly and stood for a moment in the hall, a suitcase in each hand.
‘I’ve come,’ Sophie said, smiling. ‘I’ll cook for you, I’ll look after Mark, I won’t be any trouble. Don’t bother to come with me, Mike, I’ll just take these straight up to the spare room.’
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Published by Arrow Books 1992
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© Kingsmarkham Enterprises Ltd 1991
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First published in Great Britain in 1991 by Hutchinson
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