by Rhys Bowen
“It was stupid of me, really. I don’t know why I panicked. I could have just gone down and told him I’d changed my mind. What could he have done on the street?”
“Bundled you into a car and driven off with you. Poked a gun into your side.”
She laughed. “A gun, Evan? Aren’t you being overdramatic?”
“He had a gun when my father was shot. He didn’t do the actual shooting, but it was his gun.”
“Oh,” she said. Then, “Evan, do you think you could get me down now, please?”
“I’ll go for help.”
“Take care,” she called as he went down the fire escape, “and please hurry back.”
“Well, here you are then, thank goodness for that,” Mrs. Evans said as they came in through the front door. “I was worried something might have happened to you. You’ve never been out partying all night, surely? At least you’re back just in time for chapel.”
Chapter 24
Evan left Bronwen tucked in bed with a glass of warm Ovaltine, and hastily changed his clothes to escort his mother to chapel. Trying to get out of going would take more effort than accompanying her, besides he could sleep through the sermon. It was pleasantly cool inside the chapel building, with the comforting smell of generations of furniture polish. Jingo and Peterson, he thought. How were the two connected? If Jingo had been going to take Bronwen to Peterson’s, did that somehow mean that Peterson was in charge, or was a builder’s yard beside the docks a convenient place to dispose of somebody? The pleasant coolness suddenly made him shiver. Bronwen had joked about it and made light of her night stuck on the rooftop as they drove home. He wondered if she knew how close she had come to dying.
Did the Turnbulls suspect Charles Peterson? Was he worth protecting, or did he have some hold over them? He was certainly the type nobody would suspect—large, awkward, bumbling. Evan resolved to go back to the Hartley’s immediately after he had taken his mother home to see if Mrs. Hartley was alert enough to answer questions today. He felt sleep overcoming him and closed his eyes. Through the open window he could hear outdoor sounds—a cricket match being broadcast on somebody’s TV. Children playing in a back garden. A dog barking.
Evan opened his eyes again. The Turnbulls’ dog—Peterson had said it started barking so he decided to leave. But the dog had not barked when Tony Mancini was told to go, and he overheard Alison arguing with someone. Why was that? Wouldn’t the dog have been shut in the kitchen all evening if one of the women was afraid of it? In which case how did it hear one person and not another? Yet one more question to try and ask Mrs. Hartley.
Evan felt a dig in his side and found the congregation had risen to its feet for the singing of “Calon Lan,” one of the good old Welsh hymns he usually loved to belt out with everyone else. Now he couldn’t wait for it to be over. His mother dawdled her way out of chapel, stopping to talk to everybody and proudly introducing her son. He gritted his teeth with impatience. Then at last he got her into the car.
“There’s no need to rush, it’s Sunday,” she admonished him.
When he deposited her outside the front door and claimed he had to run a quick errand before lunch, she started to protest. “You’re never going shopping on a Sunday.”
“Not shopping, Ma. Just someone I have to talk to.”
“And you’re not still trying to meddle in that police case, are you?”
“I’ll be right back, Ma.” He got into the car and drove away, watching her staring after him in the rearview mirror. The Sunday morning streets were deserted and steaming as the sun evaporated last night’s rain. As he drove into the cul-de-sac, he saw an ambulance in the Hartley’s drive. He jumped out and ran up to the front door. It was open and he went in. Through the open French doors, he could see people out in the back garden. A blanket covered something on the patio. Two ambulance men were setting up a stretcher while Dr. Hartley watched, one hand over his mouth. Dr. Hartley heard Evan’s footsteps and looked up. The pain on his face was transparent.
“She did it,” he said in a choked voice. “She managed to get the window open, and she fell out. Well, I suppose it’s for the best, really. Her suffering is finally over.”
“I am so sorry,” Evan said. “What an awful shock for you.”
Dr. Hartley nodded. “I told you she was strong and cunning, didn’t I? But I didn’t think she’d find a way to unlock those windows. Some days she couldn’t even remember how to open a drawer. It’s my fault. I should never have left her.”
“I’m sure it wasn’t your fault,” Evan said.
“I only popped out to get milk. The milkman didn’t leave our usual pint, and she does like her milky coffee in the mornings. I checked the neighbors but nobody was home, so I thought it would be all right if I just drove to the nearest shop that’s open on Sundays. I hadn’t realized it would be all the way in Oystermouth. I came back to find the window open and her—lying there.”
“You didn’t pass any cars on your street, did you?” Evan asked. “A large white van, for instance?”
“No. Nobody. Why?”
“Just a thought,” Evan said.
Dr. Hartley face clouded. “What are suggesting?”
“Could anyone have got into the house while you were away, do you think?”
Dr. Hartley looked puzzled. “I locked the front door after me. All the other doors and windows are kept locked because of her.”
“And nobody else has a key?”
“Well, the neighbors on both sides know where I keep my spare key. Just in case, you know.”
“But the neighbors were out, you say?”
“Yes. The Havershams on the left are away on holiday in France. The Turnbulls were out. He always golfs on Sundays. She goes to church. Why are you asking these questions? Do you think it might not have been an accident?”
He looked at Dr. Hartley’s worried face. Poor man, he was suffering enough without any extra guilt and worry. “It’s my policeman’s mentality, always being too suspicious. I’m sure it happened exactly as you said. She managed to open the window and was trying to escape again.” He put his hand on Dr. Hartley’s shoulder. “Look, I’m very sorry about your wife. I’ll be back if there’s anything you’d like me to do for you.” “Thank you. You’re most kind, but there’s nothing anyone can do now.”
He felt a twinge of conscience as he left Dr. Hartley and made his way back to his car. Was it too much of a coincidence that the Turnbulls knew where the spare key was? And even more of a coincidence that the milk wasn’t delivered and Mrs. Hartley fell to her death the very day after Evan had started digging deeper into the Turnbull set?
The least he could do was to check on alibis—the Turnbulls first, since they knew where the spare key was. He put his foot down along the Oystermouth Road until he came to the Langland Bay Golf Club. The girl at the reception desk told him that Mr. Turnbull was part of a foursome that started at nine-thirty. “They’ll still be out on the course,” she told him. “They always walk. Not into carts, these older players.”
He took her word for it and drove back to the church. The service had ended and the church was deserted, so Evan rang the bell at the vicarage. This time it was the vicar himself who answered, a thin, worried-looking man with a bald head that made him look older than he really was. No, Mrs. Turnbull wasn’t at the service this morning. He was surprised she wasn’t there and hoped nothing was wrong. She never missed matins. In fact she usually came early to do the flowers.
“Poor woman,” he said. “I’m afraid this has been too much for her. I had hoped that she would find comfort in her faith. But sometimes faith isn’t enough, is it? She must be suffering. I suspect she has suffered a lot over the years, one way and another.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“One hears things. Not the easiest of husbands. A very demanding social calendar. And now this—her child, the most precious thing in the world to her. I tried to find comforting words, but I’m sure they were inadequate.”
He sighed. “And I have always suspected that she was rather fragile, emotionally, even though she concealed it well.”
Evan walked back to the street along the little flagstone path. Flowers were blooming in herbaceous borders. Bees were buzzing among the lavendar. Rooks were cawing in the churchyard on the other side of the wall. The peaceful scene contrasted with the turmoil of thoughts racing around inside his head.
There were just too many coincidences for Evan’s liking. Mrs. Hartley had chosen that very morning to fall from a locked window. Mrs. Turnbull had not gone to church. Why hadn’t she gone? Where was she now? Why wasn’t the milk delivered to Dr. Hartley’s house?
He jumped into his car and drove back along the waterfront. Traffic in the other direction was bumper to bumper as everyone left the city for the beaches. A church bell was ringing somewhere in the distance. Boats were bobbing on blue water. Evan’s pulse was racing, still on high alert after the terror of his sleepless night. Deep down he was sure that Mrs. Hartley’s death was connected to Alison’s. Did the murderer believe that Mrs. Hartley was more lucid than she really was and had seen him that night? Evan remembered mentioning to Charles Peterson that he had been seen in the garden. Had he signed Mrs. Hartley’s death warrant by telling him? He pushed the accelerator pedal toward the floor so that the old car groaned in protest. He wasn’t even sure where he was going, but the sense of danger that had accompanied him last night was still hovering.
Obviously the logical thing to do would be to go to the police station. Bill Howells was on duty. Evan could tell him his suspicions. This would probably bring down the wrath of the DCI and the rest of the station on him again, but surely they would have to see that Mrs. Hartley’s untimely fall meant that a killer was still on the loose. He’d suggest to the police that they dust the Hartleys’ house for fingerprints and see if they matched Charles Peterson’s. He could also tell them that the name Peterson had come up in Jingo Roberts’s overheard conversation. What was the connection there?
He was passing the road that led to the Turnbulls’ house, and it occurred to him that he should at least warn Dr. Hartley not to touch anything before the police had had a chance to dust surfaces. He pulled up outside the Hartleys’ house. As he started up the driveway, he became aware of a dog’s insistent barking. It seemed to be coming from inside the Turnbulls’ house. It wasn’t the deep, threatening bark that had greeted him each time he had approached the house before. It was a high, strangled yelp of a dog in obvious distress, and it went on and on.
Why hadn’t Mrs. Turnbull gone to church? Evan’s heart was racing as he ran down the Turnbulls’ driveway. The front door was unlocked. He opened it, fearing an attack from the dog, but the barking was coming from upstairs. He went up the stairs, following the sound through a large bedroom with a four-poster bed and rich brocade drapes then into the bathroom beyond. The dog looked up at him and growled.
“Good boy,” he said uncertainly. “Good boy.”
Then he saw what the dog had been barking at. Mrs. Turnbull lay in the bathtub. The water was pink, and blood was oozing from her wrists.
He forgot to worry about the dog. He pushed past it and lent forward to feel a faint pulse at her neck. He was still in time. The dog must have sensed he was trying to help and had dropped to the floor, whining now. Evan snatched a couple of towels from the towel rail and grabbed Mrs. Turnbull’s wrists, lifting her arms up and pressing the fabric hard against the slashes. It looked as though he might be in luck. She hadn’t succeeded in severing the arteries properly. When he had kept the wounds clamped shut for long enough to risk letting go for a few seconds, he dragged her from the bathtub and wrapped her in the biggest towels. He bound smaller towels around her wrists, then dashed through into the bedroom to find a phone.
As he hurried back to her, he wondered how he could have been so stupid and so blind. All the signs had been there. She was the one who had complained to the police that he was harassing her and her friends. The vicar had said she was fragile emotionally. A woman on the edge, living a stressful life in the spotlight, hearing the gossip about her husband’s infidelities. Alison was growing up beautiful just as she was losing her looks. Alison’s friends had said that her mother was jealous of her and sent her away to school. And Alison hated her mother. It seemed significant that there wasn’t a single picture of Alison in the Turnbulls’ living room and yet there was that big, beautiful picture on Mr. Turnbull’s desk. Evan wondered what had made Mrs. Turnbull snap that evening. Had she seen Alison and Tony together when she went to get her headache pills?
The bigger question was—how could she have killed her?
She was a tall woman and Alison might have just taken some of the cocaine Tony had brought. Evan wasn’t quite sure of the effects of cocaine, but surely any drug would make reality and danger seem less real until too late.
He checked the wrists and noted they had almost stopped oozing blood, so her apparent unconsciousness was strange. From the color of the bath water, she hadn’t yet lost enough blood to kill her.
“Mrs. Turnbull,” he shouted. “Can you hear me?”
Eyelids fluttered open.
“Did you take something?”
The eyelids closed again. “Sleeping pills.”
“You’re going to be okay,” he said. “Stay awake. Don’t close your eyes. The ambulance is on its way.”
Tired eyes opened again. “I couldn’t even get this right,” she said. Tears started to well up in her eyes. “A hopeless failure, all my life. I couldn’t do anything properly. I tried to protect her, but it wasn’t enough. I messed that up too.”
“To protect her?” Evan demanded. “Protect her from whom?”
“From him.”
The eyes fluttered closed again. Evan shook her awake. “Him?”
“My husband, of course.” She barely mouthed the words. “I heard them, you see, when I went up to get my headache pills. The bathroom window was open.” She closed her eyes as if the memory was too painful to think about.
Evan could hardly get the words out. “Your husband killed Alison—why?”
“He didn’t mean to. He swore he didn’t mean to. She said she was going to tell everyone the truth about him, starting with those ladies who were playing bridge with me.”
“What truth?”
The words were scarcely more than a whisper. “Why do you think I packed her off to school in a hurry? Why do you think I never left her alone?” she asked. Another long pause, then she raised her head painfully. “I caught him, in her bedroom, when she was just a little girl. He promised me it would never happen again, but I saw the way he looked at her.”
She drifted into silence. Evan shook her awake again. “So your husband came home and found her with a boy. Is that what happened?” He shook her. “Mrs. Turnbull—is that what happened?”
“I heard them arguing. I heard him saying, ‘You’re nothing but a cheap little tart!’ And she said, ‘You can talk, after what you did to me. You think I’ve forgotten, don’t you, but I’ll never forget. I’ll tell the whole world how you used to creep into my bedroom and then see who will elect you as lord mayor. I’ll tell Mummy’s bridge ladies right now …’”
Evan stared at her for a moment in shocked silence. He collected himself. “Why didn’t you stop him?” he asked.
“Because of my stupid pride, of course. I didn’t want them to know, did I? I ran down the stairs and told them refreshments were ready. I had to wait until I’d pushed them into the dining room. I didn’t think … I never, ever thought that he …” A tear trickled down her pale cheek. “When I went outside, it was too late. She was lying in a huddle at his feet. He said, ‘I think I’ve killed her, Margaret. I didn’t mean to.’” A great sob convulsed her body.
“Why didn’t you tell anyone? How could you go on living with him as if nothing had happened?”
“Because I’d lose everything if I lost him. I’d have nothing left at all.” She glared at Evan fiercely. “W
hy did you have to come here? Why couldn’t you have left everything as it was? Once you’d opened the can of worms, it was too late. So I decided it would be better if they thought it was me. Frank is valuable to society, you see. I’m not worth anything to anybody. Please don’t tell them the truth. Let them think that I did it. Better for everyone, don’t you think?”
“I don’t think your husband deserves you,” Evan said. “Neither he nor your daughter appreciated what a remarkable woman you are.”
An ambulance siren cut through his words. Doors slammed. Feet rushed up the stairs. Evan stood to one side as the paramedics ministered to Mrs. Turnbull then carried her downstairs and away. Evan followed them down, shut the front door, and went back to his car. He didn’t feel that he could honor Mrs. Turnbull’s request to remain silent. Somebody ought to know the truth.
He drove straight back to the golf club. As he played over the conversation again in his mind, he realized that Mrs. Hartley had witnessed that final confrontation after all. She’d heard the whole thing, only in her diseased mind she had garbled the words into something that happened long ago and far away. If only the Turnbulls had realized that she could be no threat to them.
Mr. Turnbull was just walking off the final green when Evan spotted him.
“Sorry to interrupt you, sir, but could I have a word?” he asked quietly.
Turnbull stared at him. “Good God, man, it’s Sunday. I’m about to go the nineteenth hole. Your questions will have to wait.”
“What I have to say to you can’t wait,” Evan insisted. “You can hear it from me or from the police. It’s about your wife.”
Turnbull moved aside from his fellow golfers and grabbed Evan’s arm. “Has something happened to Margaret?”
“She just tried to kill herself. I found her with slashed wrists, lying in the bath. She’d also taken sleeping pills.”
“Oh, my God. Is she going to be all right?”
“I think I got there in time. She’s just been taken away in an ambulance.”
