Mrs Sylvester had obviously been shopping, cheering herself up as women often do by going out to buy herself something new. There were several carrier bags lying about and she had been showing Tess her purchases – a brightly coloured skirt and jacket were draped over one end of the sofa and on the floor two pairs of shoes nestled in tissue paper in opened boxes. The faces she and Tess turned towards the two policemen were full of weary resignation.
‘Would you like a cup?’ said Tess, getting up with a marked lack of enthusiasm. ‘I can easily make a fresh pot.’
Thanet shook his head reluctantly. He made it a rule never to accept such an offer grudgingly made. ‘We’d like a word with Mrs Sylvester if we may.’
Tess looked at her mother, who nodded. ‘Off you go, lovey.’
‘You’re sure?’
‘Quite sure. Really. Take these up for me, will you?’ Marion Sylvester put the lids back on the shoeboxes and scooped them up, thrusting them into Tess’s arms. Then she draped the skirt and jacket on top. ‘Thanks.’
‘She’s looking a little better today,’ Thanet said, when Tess had gone.
Marion grimaced. ‘She’s putting a brave face on it. But I don’t think she’ll ever get over it, not properly. I’m afraid poor Gerald was always second best. Do sit down, for heaven’s sake. I can’t stand people looming over me.’
On the way over Thanet had given some thought as to the best way to broach the subject, but had come to no satisfactory conclusion. It was, whichever way you looked at it, going to be a tricky interview and he had finally decided to play it by ear.
‘Mrs Sylvester,’ he began, ‘you will appreciate that during the course of a murder investigation we come across all sorts of things which may or may not be relevant. Some of them are, shall we say, delicate matters, and we have to look into them because we have to make up our minds whether they are or not. Relevant, that is.’
She was already looking wary. Today she was wearing cornflower blue leggings and matching sweatshirt exactly the colour of her eyes. Her figure was good and if only she didn’t wear such heavy make-up she would, as Lineham had said, be an attractive woman. Thanet could understand why a womaniser like Max might have made a play for her. But she was waiting. He must press on. ‘I do want to make it clear that if anything . . . private is uncovered, and proves to have nothing to do with the investigation, it will remain absolutely confidential.’
‘I don’t see what you’re getting at, Inspector.’
But her body was betraying her. Her legs were crossed and the foot which was suspended in mid-air had begun to twitch. Thanet knew that extremities are often less controllable than facial muscles.
He persevered. ‘There are two things we couldn’t help noticing about your housekeeper.’
‘Mrs Mallis?’ Her voice was shrill and she must have realised it. Her next words were consciously in a lower register. ‘What’s she got to do with it? Really, Inspector, I haven’t a clue what you’re going on about.’
‘The first,’ said Thanet, ignoring the interruption, ‘is that she does appear to be remarkably affluent for someone in her situation. Her car, for instance, is a much more expensive model than you’d expect a housekeeper to run.’
‘I don’t see what it’s got to do with me, if my housekeeper chooses to spend all her money on a BMW.’
‘It’s puzzling to know how she can afford it.’
‘If you must know,’ said Marion, ‘though frankly I can’t see that it’s any of your business, she bought it with some money she inherited.’
‘From . . .?’
‘From her father, dammit! Do you always go about poking and prying into people’s private affairs like this?’
‘Only if we feel it necessary, Mrs Sylvester. As we do, I’m afraid, in this case. So that’s what she told you, is it? That she inherited the money from her father?’
‘Yes.’ The monosyllable was over-emphatic. There was defiance in it, and a hint of fear, too, as if she could foresee what was coming.
‘Well, I’m afraid you have been grossly misled. Mrs Mallis’s father is very much alive, and living in the East End – in a council flat off the Old Kent Road, if I remember rightly. That’s correct, isn’t it, Sergeant?’
Lineham nodded. ‘He’s a retired bus driver, ma’am.’
‘So you see, even if he had died, which he hasn’t, it doesn’t sound as though he’d be in a position to leave his daughter enough money to buy a BMW.’
Marion Sylvester lifted her shoulders. ‘So she got the money somewhere else. I didn’t enquire further. Perhaps she won it on the pools.’
‘Then why not say so?’
‘How should I know?’ Her voice was raised, her self-control slipping. ‘If she chooses to tell lies about it, that’s nothing to do with me!’
Isn’t it?’ said Thanet softly.
She opened her mouth to challenge him, but she didn’t dare. He guessed she was too afraid of the answer. She stared at him. He could see in her eyes what she was thinking. He knows, she was thinking. He knows.
The certainty that he was right about all this was growing all the time. But he had to get her to admit it. As he had said to Barbara Mallis earlier, he didn’t enjoy browbeating anybody, but this could be crucial to the case.
‘You see, the second thing which we couldn’t help noticing about your housekeeper was her manner towards you, her employer. It verges on insolence, especially when she thinks she is unobserved.’
Marion jumped up. ‘Sorry, but I’ve had just about enough of this. I don’t see why I should have to put up with being interrogated in my own house. Would you please leave. Now.’
Thanet stood up. ‘By all means, Mrs Sylvester. But if we do, I’m afraid I shall have to insist that you accompany us to the police station for further questioning.’
She stared at him, her look of desperation heightening the sympathy he already felt for her.
‘Look,’ he said gently. ‘You must accept that one way or another we have to talk about this. Why don’t we try to discuss it calmly? Please, sit down again, won’t you?’
The flash of defiance had evaporated and her shoulders sagged in defeat as she returned slowly to her chair.
Now was the time to bring matters out into the open. ‘She’s blackmailing you, isn’t she?’
Marion’s lips tightened and her hands clenched together.
Please, let her admit it, thought Thanet.
Then, at last, when he had almost decided she was going to persist in her denials, she took in a deep breath as if inhaling courage and gave a reluctant nod.
‘Threatening to tell your husband if you didn’t pay up?’
Another nod.
‘And this has been going on since the May of ’92?’
He saw the flash of astonishment in her eyes, that he should know so much. ‘How . . . How did you find out?’
‘I assume it happened when Max came looking for Tess, as he always did? She was away, wasn’t she?’
‘Stupid!’ she whispered, shaking her head in dismay and disbelief at her own weakness, foolishness. Her voice grew louder. ‘I was so stupid!’ She beat one clenched fist against the palm of the other. ‘Stupid, stupid, stupid! One stupid mistake, and God, how I’ve been paying for it ever since! It was only once, you see. He caught me at the wrong moment. I’d . . . Oh, what’s the point of making excuses. It happened. And I’ve never been allowed to forget it, not for a single day.’
‘I assume Mrs Mallis has some kind of proof with which to back up her story, should it ever come to that? What is it?’
‘Another idiotic mistake,’ Marion said bitterly. ‘I wrote to Max, telling him it must never happen again. I was so ashamed. My husband . . . I love my husband, Inspector, I really do. He’s a good man. I wouldn’t hurt him for anything. And Tess . . . Oh God, there was Tess, too. She’d never forgive me. So I wrote. It was just a note, very brief, but it was difficult to write and I had several goes before I was satisfied. If only I’d burn
ed my first attempts! Another unbelievably stupid mistake, a real catalogue of them, isn’t it? But I just tore the rough drafts up and threw them in the wastepaper basket. I knew Ralph would never dream of going through my waste paper and piecing together stuff I’d thrown away and it was him I was thinking of, he was the one I didn’t want to see them. I never thought of her. How naïve can you get? Oh God, this won’t have to come out, will it, Inspector? You did mean what you said, about it being in confidence if it wasn’t connected with the case?’
‘Yes, I did.’ Thanet didn’t have the heart even to hint that her confession had just doubled her husband’s possible motive for Jeopard’s murder. But he had to prepare her in some way. ‘But if it’s your husband finding out that you’re worried about, I think I ought to warn you . . . You remember the other day, when you were in the hall? Mrs Mallis was going out and you called after her, to ask her to pick something up?’
She nodded, afraid of what was coming.
‘We were on the landing and saw what happened. You didn’t realise but your husband, thinking that you were calling him, perhaps, came to the sitting-room doorway. He heard the way she spoke to you. I could see the look on his face.’
Still she said nothing, but a horrified awareness crept into her expression as she understood the significance of what Thanet was telling her.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I think he knows – or at least suspects. Not the details, perhaps, but in principle.’
As he watched, tears welled up in her eyes and spilled over, running down her cheeks unheeded. ‘No,’ she whispered, shaking her head. ‘No. You’re wrong.’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘He would have said. He would have told me.’
‘Would he?’ said Thanet. ‘Are you sure that, like you, he didn’t simply prefer to pretend it wasn’t happening?’
She buried her head in her hands. ‘Oh God,’ she sobbed. ‘What’ll I do? What’ll I do?’
Suddenly the door opened and Sylvester burst into the room, rushed to his wife, dropped to his knees beside her and gathered her protectively into his arms. ‘It’s all right, darl,’ he murmured, it’s all right. Ralphie’s here now. Hush, it’s all right.’ He ignored the two policemen completely.
Tess must have left the door ajar, Thanet realised, burdened as she had been with her mother’s purchases, and Sylvester must have been listening outside. Engrossed in the interview Thanet hadn’t heard him arrive and wondered how long he had been there. Long enough for his chief emotion to be concern for his wife rather than anger that Thanet appeared to have reduced her to tears, anyway.
Lineham raised his eyebrows at Thanet and jerked his head towards the door.
Thanet shook his head. His instinct too was to leave the Sylvesters alone for a while, give them some space and privacy, but he couldn’t afford to.
Now, if ever, could be the moment for the truth to come out.
TWENTY
Marion Sylvester’s sobs gradually diminished and her husband fished a handkerchief out of his pocket and pushed it into her hand. Without raising her head to look at him she eased herself away a little, wiped her eyes, and blew her nose. Finally, still without meeting his gaze, she whispered, ‘You heard?’
Sylvester nodded, his face grim. ‘The bastard! I could – ’ Awareness of what he had almost said pulled him up short and he looked uneasily at Thanet.
‘And did you?’ said Thanet. ‘Kill him?’
‘No!’
‘But you knew there was something wrong between your wife and Mrs Mallis. We could tell, the other day.’ And Thanet explained what they had seen.
Sylvester stood up and taking his wife gently by the hands tugged her out of her chair to sit beside him on the sofa. There he put his arm around her and she leaned into his shoulder, drawing comfort from his proximity. Her mascara was smudged, her face tear-stained, her eyelids swollen with crying and she looked subdued, but it was obviously an immense relief to her to know that her husband knew the truth and had apparently forgiven her. If Sylvester had heard her admission of what had happened between her and Max, Thanet realised, he had also heard her declaration of love for her husband, and it was obvious which mattered to him most. It was equally obvious that she still hadn’t perceived the new danger in which her admission had put him.
‘Something wrong, yes,’ said Sylvester. ‘But I didn’t know what, until a few minutes ago.’ He squeezed his wife’s hand and gave her a loving look. ‘You should have told me, darl,’ he said. ‘Putting yourself through all that for nothing.’
Now, for the first time, she met his gaze squarely and returned his look of affection with a tremulous smile. ‘I couldn’t,’ she said. ‘I was afraid you’d . . .’
‘What? Beat you or something? Not my style, darl, you know that.’
‘No, that you’d leave me,’ she said.
‘Leave you? You can’t get rid of me as easily as that, you ought to know that by now!’
She smiled again, shook her head.
‘We’ve only got your word for it,’ said Thanet, ‘that you didn’t know until a few moments ago.’
‘Well, you’re never going to prove otherwise, are you? You couldn’t, anyway, because it’s true.’
‘Even if it is, you must see that you are still are a prime suspect.’
‘What?’ cried Marion. ‘Ralph is? You can’t be serious!’
‘Oh, but I am,’ said Thanet. ‘Just think about it for a moment. To begin with, you didn’t like Jeopard, did you, Mr Sylvester, and you especially didn’t like the way he kept messing your daughter about, blowing hot and cold so that she never knew where she was with him. Also, I believe you genuinely thought she would be unhappy with him. You suspected he’d be unfaithful to her, cause her a lot of heartache, and you couldn’t bear the prospect of that. No, you much preferred the idea of having Gerald Argent as a prospective son-in-law, didn’t you, and so did you, Mrs Sylvester. That was obvious, from the way you both tried to keep him out of our discussion the other day. He’s so much more suitable in every way, isn’t he – a nice, steady sort of bloke with a good, respectable job, and if Tess had married him she would have continued to live locally, you’d have seen a lot of her and have been able to watch your grandchildren grow up. Jeopard, on the other hand, was going to whisk her off to London where you’d hardly ever see her and, worse, would more than likely sometimes take her off on those long trips of his. She would, in short, to a greater or lesser extent be lost to you and you hated the idea of that, especially as your son, in his own way, tragically already is.
‘So it seems to me quite possible that when Tess finally succumbed to his blandishments once more, broke off her engagement to Gerald and agreed to marry Max instead – and seemed so eager to do so that she was even prepared to utilise all the wedding arrangements you had already made instead of delaying matters by having to start all over again – you decided the time had come to act. I’m not saying you actually planned to kill him. Perhaps you thought it would be worth trying to buy him off, as so many men have done before you when confronted with unsuitable suitors for their daughters . . .’ And yes, that shaft had found its mark, Thanet could tell. Was this, in fact, what had happened? Had Sylvester tried a bribe, and failed, lost his temper and shoved Jeopard in the pool instead? ‘I’m right, aren’t I?’
‘What if you are?’ said Sylvester. ‘Right about trying to buy him off, that is. But wrong about everything else.’
‘You didn’t tell me you’d offered him money, Ralph.’
Sylvester patted her hand. ‘No need for you to know, darl, was there? And we must make sure Tess never finds out, either. She’d never forgive me.’
‘How could she find out? I’m certainly not about to tell her.’
‘What do you mean, wrong about everything else?’ said Thanet.
‘I tried offering him a nice fat bribe over a week ago, the day after Tess told me she was going to marry him instead of Gerald. Met him in town, gave him a slap-
up lunch. Offered him a hundred thou.’
Thanet saw Lineham’s lips pursed in a soundless whistle.
‘But it wasn’t enough,’ said Sylvester bitterly.
‘He refused?’
‘He knew which side his bread was buttered. I’m a wealthy man, Inspector. He could see that the long-term benefits would outweigh anything I offered him now. Travel writer! What sort of job is that? Money coming in in dribs and drabs and never a secure income from one year to the next! Oh no, he knew that if he married Tess I’d never see her go short, he’d have a meal ticket for life. Of course he refused.’
‘Nevertheless,’ said Thanet, ‘you must see that all this builds up into a strong case against you.’
‘Then all I can say, Inspector, as I said before, is prove it. And you never will. Not ever. Because it didn’t happen.’
Thanet could see he wasn’t going to get anywhere. He stood up.
‘Hang on, not so fast,’ said Sylvester.
Thanet raised his eyebrows.
‘Before you go, we’ve got some unfinished business to deal with.’
‘What?’ said Marion.
‘That woman upstairs, that’s what.’ Sylvester sounded savage. He stood up.
His wife clutched at his trouser leg. ‘What are you going to do?’
‘See she gets what she deserves, of course.’
‘What do you mean exactly, Ralph?’
‘Well, first I’m going to make damn sure she knows it’s all out in the open now and there’s no point in her trying to put anything over on you ever again, and then I’m going to tell her, with the Inspector and the Sergeant as witnesses, that we’re going to take great pleasure in prosecuting her. We have got grounds, haven’t we, Inspector?’
Thanet nodded. ‘No doubt about that. I assume you have records of the payments you’ve made, somewhere, Mrs Sylvester?’
‘Yes. But I don’t want to! Bring it to Court, I mean.’
‘Why not?’ Sylvester sat down beside her again with a thump. ‘You can’t mean that, surely, darl, not after all she’s put you through!’
Day for Dying Page 20
