A Spider on the Stairs

by Cassandra Chan

  “Look here,” said Gibbons suddenly, putting down his fork. “Wilfrid Jenks,” he read. “Wasn’t that the name of Jody’s friend whom Rhys-Jones mentioned and Rachel said wasn’t in the area any longer?”

  “I believe so,” said Bethancourt, finding the place on the screen. “Well, that’s very satisfactory, isn’t it?”

  “He purchased a bungalow in Appleton Roebuck for two hundred forty-three thousand pounds on November twenty-fourth,” Gibbons read off the list. “As you thought, it’s a small property—a two-bedroom bungalow it sounds like.” He looked up, his blue eyes bright. “Let’s get on the road, shall we?”

  The Land Rover had been returned the night before, so they took the Jaguar by default. Bethancourt, normally a rather erratic driver, was cautious and attentive on this occasion, particularly once they had left the A road and were creeping along a series of country lanes. These were set amidst fallow fields and were frequently full of water, but he managed to maneuver the low-slung car through. In half an hour or so they had arrived and with a little trouble found the bungalow, a cozy-looking brick-built building standing apart from its neighbors in a small field. There was a light in the front window and a white Volkswagen Transporter van parked in the drive. Bethancourt pulled in behind it and they got out, following a flagged path up to the front door.

  A thin man of about thirty answered their knock. He was a little stoop-shouldered, a rather average-looking man except for his eyes, which were large with long, thick lashes. He seemed more curious than alarmed by their visit and readily invited them in out of the rain. He did not, however, go so far as to usher them into the sitting room, whence the sound of a television came, so they remained standing in the little entrance hall.

  “We’ve come about Jody Farraday,” began Gibbons.

  “Oh, Jody,” said Jenks, smiling and revealing two deep dimples. “I’ve been wondering when she’d turn up again. Did she give me as a reference or something?”

  “Not exactly, sir,” said Gibbons. “She was a friend of yours, then?”

  “Oh, yes,” answered Jenks. “I’ve known her for years. We were at school together in York when we were kids.”

  “Then I’m afraid I have some sad news for you, Mr. Jenks,” said Gibbons. “Miss Farraday was found murdered on Christmas day.”

  Jenks’s eyes narrowed, as if he suspected them of some monstrous practical joke, and then, when Gibbons’s sympathetic expression did not waver, he drew in a sharp breath and passed a hand over his face.

  “That’s—that’s dreadful,” he said in a low voice. “I—I had just seen her, for the first time in months.”

  “It must come as a great shock,” said Bethancourt.

  “Yes. Yes, it does.” Jenks took a deep breath and looked back at Gibbons. “What happened?” he asked. “Where was she?”

  “In York,” answered Gibbons. “She was found at Mittlesdon’s Bookshop, where I understand she was once employed.”

  “Yes, she was there for a while,” said Jenks. “She only left a year or so ago. God, this is awful news, just awful.”

  “We understood,” said Gibbons, “that she had planned to spend the holidays here with you.”

  “That’s right.” Jenks brushed impatiently at his eyes. “I’d invited her up from Cornwall, where she’d been staying. She arrived a couple of days before Christmas, but then she went off on Christmas Eve—I wasn’t sure where.”

  “Isn’t that rather odd, when she was planning on being here with you for Christmas?” asked Gibbons.

  Jenks shrugged. “Well, it is odd, but not for Jody,” he said. “She was terribly impulsive. One got used to it over the years. I was a bit disappointed, but I didn’t think anything more about it.”

  “So there was no argument between you?” asked Gibbons.

  “God, no.” Jenks had been replying automatically, the larger part of his attention occupied with dealing with the blow he had just been dealt, but this suggestion seemed to rouse him. He looked at Gibbons, distressed. “I never thought . . .” He shook his head. “I can see it doesn’t look very good,” he said, “but you must believe me—we were on the best of terms when we parted.”

  Gibbons nodded neutrally.

  “And she gave you no notion of where she might be going or with whom?” he asked.

  “Not really,” answered Jenks. “But I definitely expected her back at some point—I mean, I didn’t think she had given up the idea of moving back here or anything. She said something about a lead on a job, but she didn’t give me any details. I rather thought,” he added, “that she had decided to go to Rachel’s—another friend from school. She lives right in York, you see, and it would be more convenient for job hunting.”

  Gibbons nodded. “But she gave you the impression she wouldn’t be back the next day?”

  “No; then I should have worried when she didn’t turn up,” said Jenks. “And she took her bags, so I never thought she’d be gone less than a few days.”

  “So you knew,” said Bethancourt, “that Miss Farraday was planning a permanent move back to York?”

  “Yes, we talked about it.” Jenks sounded sad. “I thought it was a wonderful idea. I haven’t been back in the area all that long myself, and I liked the idea that we were both coming back to our roots.”

  “I see,” said Gibbons. “Were you the reason she was returning here, then?”

  Jenks looked confused. “I’m sorry?” he asked.

  “Was Miss Farraday moving to York in order to be with you?” clarified Gibbons.

  Jenks seemed to find this idea distasteful; he drew back a little from them, frowning.

  “You mean in a romantic sense?” he said. “Certainly not. Jody and I were never like that—we were just childhood friends, more like brother and sister than anything else. Frankly, I didn’t fancy her in that way, and I’d be astonished if she’d harbored any sexual feelings towards me.”

  His tone was very firm, almost as if they had indeed been siblings and Gibbons had accused him of incest.

  “I understand, sir,” Gibbons said, interjecting a soothing note into his voice.

  “We had heard,” said Bethancourt, “that although Miss Farraday had been talking of a return to York, she hadn’t definitely decided on it until she heard you were here, you see.”

  “But she knew I was here,” said Jenks. “I contacted her as soon as I came back—she was still at Mittlesdon’s then.”

  It was the detectives’ turn to be confused. “Ah,” said Gibbons, “I think we’ve misunderstood. You only recently purchased this house, but you’ve been living in the area for some time, is that right, sir?”

  “Yes,” said Jenks. “I moved up here almost two years ago when I took a job in Leeds.”

  His tone had gone flat again, his righteous indignation appeased.

  Gibbons nodded. “To return to Miss Farraday’s movements,” he said, “do you recollect what time she left here on Christmas Eve?”

  “Oh, I don’t know.” Jenks drew a deep breath and tried to concentrate. “Sometime after lunch. I had one or two things I wanted to pick up, so we drove in that afternoon. I let her off at Coppergate, she said she’d see me soon and we parted. . . .” He paused for a moment and when he spoke again, his voice was rough. “I didn’t know it would be the last time I would ever see her,” he said.

  “You spent the evening alone then?” asked Gibbons.

  “That’s right,” said Jenks. “I went to the midnight service at the Minster and then came back here.”

  There seemed nothing more to learn from him and he had begun to have to fight to keep his composure, so Gibbons brought the interview to a close and they took their leave. As they left the bungalow and scurried back to the car through the rain, they heard the volume of the television inside turned up high.

  “Making sure we can’t hear him cry,” muttered Gibbons as he slid into the passenger seat and closed the door.

  “Poor sod,” agreed Bethancourt. “Unless you thin
k he killed her?”

  Gibbons considered this question while Bethancourt reversed out of the drive and started back toward the A64.

  “Might have done,” he conceded at last. “If he was lying about his feelings for Jody, that is. Do you think he was?”

  Bethancourt frowned. “He seemed genuinely repulsed at the idea of their being a couple,” he said. “But perhaps he’s a very good actor. It does add up, you know. He invites her for the holidays, intending to propose to her, only she rejects him out of hand. She leaves for York, he follows her, words are exchanged, she tells him he’s a disgusting toad, and he strangles her.”

  “Very pretty,” said Gibbons. “But how did they end up in the bookshop?”

  Bethancourt waved a hand. “Happenstance. They were arguing in the street and Jody didn’t want to make a scene, so she said, ‘Here, let’s get inside—I can let us into this place.’ ”

  “I suppose,” said Gibbons rather doubtfully. “It’s not out of the realm of possibility anyway. But wouldn’t Rachel have known if Jody and Jenks were involved?”

  “Well, Jody didn’t tell her she was moving back here,” pointed out Bethancourt. He paused, and then said, “Oh, God.”

  Gibbons had been gazing out his window at the rain, but this jerked his attention back to his companion.

  “What?” he demanded as the car slowed and then came to a halt.

  “It’s a puddle,” said Bethancourt in a discouraged tone, and Gibbons peered out the windscreen to see a small pond of water in their path, its surface puckered by the falling rain.

  “That looks a lot deeper than when we came through,” said Gibbons.

  “So it does,” said Bethancourt. “The question is: is it too deep for the car to get through it? On the other hand, I can’t think of any other way we could take, so I suppose we might as well try.”

  “Go very slow,” advised Gibbons. “And steadily.”

  “Right,” said Bethancourt, letting in the clutch. “You’d better look out and give a shout if the water looks too deep.”

  “I knew you were going to say that,” said Gibbons resignedly.

  He rolled down his window and stuck his head out into the rain as Bethancourt eased the Jaguar into the water.

  “You’re all right,” he called, shaking the water out of his eyes. “It’s not even up to the middle of the tire yet.”

  Bethancourt continued their slow progress while Gibbons watched the water rise and then, at last, watched it begin to retreat.

  “I do hope we don’t have to do that again,” he said, rolling his window back up as they cleared the flooded roadway. “It was most uncomfortable and I am now quite depressingly wet.”

  “I hope your police friends are going to rescue us if we get stuck. Otherwise, it’s a very long tramp back to York.”

  But as they crept along the sodden roads, he found himself playing lookout more than once again, and by the time they drove into York he badly needed a change of clothes.

  It was still early in the day when at length they reemerged from the house in St. Savioursgate and made a dash through the rain along the snickelways to Mittlesdon’s.

  The shop had been allowed to reopen its doors that morning, an event noted in the local media but not overwhelmingly attended by the public, most of whom were worrying about their cellars flooding as the rain continued to fall. Bethancourt and Gibbons had intended to turn out for it, but the Jenks interview put them behindhand, and the bookshop had been open for the better part of an hour when they arrived.

  Most of the staff was present, including an unctuous Alice, who seemed to have recovered from Bethancourt’s morning faux pas. His smile became more brittle with each encounter with her.

  Fortunately, she was mostly kept busy. The staff in general seemed to be throwing themselves into their work with an air of relief, tidying away the detritus left over from the Christmas shoppers and straightening up the shelves. There was much coming and going between the sales floor and the office, whilst behind the counter Libby Alston, the oldest member of the staff, made telephone calls to patrons, checking them off on a long list.

  There was a sprinkling of customers, though not many of them showed much interest in books; they mostly wandered about, surreptitiously looking for the site of the murder. One tourist actually came in with a camera and asked outright; Rhys-Jones informed him with chilly politeness that access to the office was limited to staff.

  Gibbons’s goal was unobtrusive observation, which in a bookshop was not difficult: he simply browsed. Bethancourt, joining him in this, paused in front of a display of bestsellers.

  “That looks interesting,” said Gibbons, indicating a book titled Bad Science. “I like his columns in The Guardian.”

  “I’ve read it,” answered Bethancourt. “It was fascinating.”

  He reached for the book, but volume next to it caught his eye, and he picked that up instead.

  “I wonder if this is that diet everyone’s been talking about,” he said.

  Gibbons peered at the cover, which portrayed a smiling woman in her forties with perfectly tinted honey-blonde hair and beautifully applied makeup, showing a respectable amount of cleavage.

  “Isn’t that that American telly star?” he asked. “Yes, there’s her name—Dana Dugan.”

  “Right,” said Bethancourt. “I think my aunt said something about it coming from America.” He adjusted his glasses to look at the cover photograph. “My, she’s well preserved, isn’t she?”

  “Just what I was thinking,” said Gibbons. “Anyway, what do you want a diet book for? You can’t possibly think you need to lose weight.”

  “No, no,” said Bethancourt, “nothing like that. I was just curious, that’s all. Apparently this thing is the talk of the town—or at least the middle-aged-women’s part of town. My aunt’s lost nearly a stone on it.”

  He opened the book and was flipping randomly through it when a female voice exclaimed, “Good Lord. What are you doing here?”

  Both men turned to regard a willowy blond woman with sleepy green eyes. She did not look pleased to see Bethancourt.

  “Catherine,” he said gallantly. “What a delightful surprise. Do let me introduce you to my friend Jack Gibbons. Jack, this is Catherine, the lady I mentioned to you last night.”

  Catherine shook hands with Gibbons automatically, her eyes returning immediately to Bethancourt.

  “How did you find out where I work?” she demanded.

  “Work?” repeated Bethancourt blankly, as though he had never heard of the concept. “You don’t mean . . . oh, dear.”

  Gibbons’s eyes lit up. “Oh, are you Catherine Stockton?”

  She nodded stiffly, but before things could be sorted, they were interrupted by a large man in a regrettable striped waistcoat.

  “Catherine, my dear,” he said heartily, swooping in to put an arm around her and plant a kiss on her cheek, all of which she received with a marked air of reserve. “Good to see you—I wanted to tell you that my little niece was bowled over with that lovely edition of The Wizard of Oz you found for me. Nothing like the classics, eh?”

  “Mr. Sanderson,” said Catherine, smiling, but also removing herself from the circle of his arm. “I’m so glad little Anna was pleased.”

  Sanderson’s eyes had lit upon Bethancourt. “Well, if it isn’t Mr. Bethancourt,” he said. “That’s right, isn’t it? We met the other night at the Heywoods’, didn’t we?”

  “We did,” said Bethancourt, reaching to shake hands. “Very pleased to see you again, sir. This is my friend Jack Gibbons.”

  “Good to meet you,” said Sanderson. “Stop a minute—you aren’t the police chap investigating the murder here, are you?”

  “That’s me,” said Gibbons, his blue eyes suddenly regarding Sanderson with more than ordinary interest. “Detective Sergeant Gibbons of New Scotland Yard.” His smile was bland.

  Catherine was looking from one to the other of them with an almost dazed expression. Then he
r eyes narrowed as she looked back at Bethancourt.

  “Oh my God,” she said.

  “So is there any news?” Sanderson was asking Gibbons. “I do hope you manage to clear this nasty business up quickly—not the sort of thing Mittlesdon wants hanging over his head.”

  He had the air of the Man in Charge, and Gibbons raised an eyebrow.

  “Certainly not,” he agreed genially.

  Bethancourt had the unpleasant sensation that the situation was rapidly getting away from him. He smiled weakly at Catherine.

  “Perhaps—” he began, only to be interrupted once again, this time by Mittlesdon.

  “There you are, Catherine,” he said, bustling up. “I’ve got a list of messages a mile long waiting for you in your office. And Mrs. Broadley has rung up three times already this morning.”

  “I’d better ring her back,” said Catherine. “Has anything come in for me?”

  Mittlesdon waved his hand. “Tony’s still sorting through everything in the back. Oh, hello, Brian,” he added, catching sight of Sanderson. “Anything I can do for you, or were you just browsing today?”

  Catherine was moving off toward the stairs, but not before looking daggers at Bethancourt, who smiled bravely and called after her, “See you later, then?”

  She did not reply.

  “I just wanted to see if you’d got that copy of Burke in for me,” Sanderson told Mittlesdon.

  Mittlesdon shook his head. “I’m afraid I haven’t had a chance to look yet,” he said. “But come along to the stockroom and see if Tony’s come across it.”

  They moved off, leaving Bethancourt and Gibbons alone. Gibbons eyed his friend with a bemused expression on his face.

  “Catherine,” he said.

  “Yes,” replied Bethancourt, wretchedly. “That was Catherine.”

  “The girl at the nightclub.”

  “Yes,” said Bethancourt in a very small voice.

  “Let’s see,” said Gibbons. “Your ex-girlfriend from school works here, and just as we’ve eliminated her as a suspect, you go and hook up with the children’s-literature expert.”

  “Well, I didn’t know she was the children’s-literature expert,” protested Bethancourt. “She certainly doesn’t look like one.”