‘I only went to see him because I’d thought he was the man who ruined my sister. A man named Perkins.’
‘Perhaps that’s what you thought in France. When you deliberately sent him in to check the fuse. But he was the wrong Perkins. The wrong man. Still, you knew when you went to the hotel which Perkins this was.’
‘I can assure you, none of this is true. Miss Carlson will tell you I’d never seen this man before.’
‘In fact, she realized that you did recognize each other. Your grandmother wants her to marry you. You were a better prospect for a Carlson than a lowly clerk. But she loved the lowly clerk, and when you’re on trial for his murder she won’t lie to protect you. She’ll seal your doom.’
Mowbray rose. ‘You have no proof of any of this farce. I can tell you from my professional experience that it won’t fly.’
‘I’m sure your grandmother has a photograph of you I can show to the staff at the hotel dining room.’ Still, Mowbray was right, it would be a difficult case to prove. And so Rutledge took a leap into possibility. ‘And the horses. A white one and a dark one were in the Denholm pasture Wednesday night. Yours and Perkins’? Before you took his back to its stable? You’d hidden the saddles well. I didn’t see them at first. Were you about to fill in the grave, when I walked into the churchyard and interrupted you? I have only to ask Mr Denholm if the mounts were his. Or Miss Carlson, who will know what you ride.’
And it worked.
Frowning, Mowbray said, ‘He attacked me. It was self-defence. When he saw his attempt to kill me had failed, he came at me. We struggled. He drew a knife. And when we both went down, it ended up in his chest. There was nothing I could do. I heard someone coming – and I panicked. I threw his body into the grave.’
‘But there were no signs of a struggle on Perkins’ body. Your own face and hands are not bruised. A jury will wonder why you didn’t go to the police after he’d drugged you – instead of deciding on revenge.’
‘The police? I didn’t want my head of chambers to hear about my humiliating experience. Foolish of me – but there you are.’
‘Here we are, indeed. The inquest will most certainly find cause to bind you over for trial. Let’s see what a jury makes of it. Gerald Mowbray, I’m arresting you for the murder of Frederick Perkins.’
THREESCORE AND TEN
Margaret Yorke
Margaret Yorke was a former Chair of the CWA who was a recipient of the CWA Cartier Diamond Dagger. After writing a number of romantic novels, she turned to crime fiction, with five books featuring Patrick Grant as an amateur detective. No Medals for the Major marked a turning point, and she established a reputation as an outstanding author of novels of psychological suspense. She died in 2012.
On the morning of her husband’s seventieth birthday, a Thursday in September, Ellen Parsons rose as usual at seven o’clock. She went quietly into the bathroom, careful as she moved about not to disturb Maurice, who still slept, a straggle of grey hair falling across his pale, domed forehead.
After she had washed and cleaned her teeth, inserting her dentures, three stark molars on a pink plate, Ellen, in her woollen dressing-gown, went down to the kitchen and put on the kettle. While it boiled she laid the table in the dining room: blue-and-white Cornish crockery, honey and butter, on a linen cloth.
This was the last meal at which she would sit across the table from Maurice, and she hummed under her breath as she finished her early routine. When the kettle boiled, she made the tea and carried the tray upstairs, setting it on the table between their twin beds. After it had had time to stand, she poured out two cups, with two lumps of sugar in Maurice’s. But nothing sweetened him.
‘Tea, Maurice,’ she said and took her own into the bathroom, where she dressed out of his sight.
Maurice did not reply, but she knew he would now sit up, yawn, showing his bare gums, belch, and drink his tea in gulps. She would return to the bedroom to do her hair in time to pour his second cup. When he was ready to rise, she would be downstairs cooking the bacon and egg he was able to eat daily without putting on weight.
She had decided to kill him one Sunday morning a year ago in church, hearing the words from Ecclesiastes: ‘To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: a time to be born and a time to die …’
I have not lived yet, Ellen had thought.
Her mind ranged back over the years of her marriage to when she first met Maurice. Her father, a widower, had died after a long illness through which she had devotedly nursed him. Maurice, then junior partner in the firm of solicitors acting for her father, had called at the house to advise her. He had said she should decide nothing in haste and counselled her to keep the house for the present.
Ellen, weary from the strain of her father’s illness, was glad to agree. She set about the neglected garden and washed curtains and paintwork indoors. Maurice watched both her and the house revive under this treatment. One day he brought her some violets – another time, a book of poetry. She looked forward to his visits; he had a sweet smile.
Soon she exchanged one form of bondage for another. She and Maurice, after their marriage, continued to live in the large old house on the edge of the village, and here they were still. Their only child, a daughter they named Priscilla, was born. Priscilla, against her father’s wishes, had married a young farmer and the couple had at once emigrated to Australia. Priscilla wrote happy letters every fortnight and sent snapshots of her four children. She urged Ellen to come out for a visit and see her grandchildren, but Maurice wouldn’t go himself and absolutely refused to permit Ellen to go without him.
Maurice required his life to be organised smoothly. The smile that had once charmed Ellen was seen rarely after marriage. He insisted that meals be punctual to the second. A small girl should be seen and not heard. Arguments were not allowed. And only Maurice’s opinions might be expressed.
He controlled the money Ellen inherited from her father, allowing her small amounts for her personal needs. During their short engagement Ellen had anticipated long talks with him such as she had enjoyed with her father, and discussions about books they might both enjoy – Dickens and Trollope – but Maurice read only legal tomes and the biographies of the eminent. He enjoyed silence.
Priscilla, as a child, was allowed no parties, and her friends were not encouraged to visit the house, though Ellen was able to welcome them while Maurice was at the office. Later, as Priscilla grew older, if any dared to enter the house while he was there, they were subjected to such an interrogation about their lives and views that few risked a second encounter. It was not surprising that Priscilla escaped as soon as she could. The only guests Maurice invited were business acquaintances he took to his study for brandy. Once a year his partners and their wives came to dinner.
Ellen’s fragile links with other people grew weaker after Maurice retired. If she invited anyone to tea he would sit scowling and looking at his watch, finally leaving the room with some remark like, ‘See that dinner’s on time, Ellen,’ and thereby humiliating her.
But now all this would end. The resentment that had simmered for so long had at last boiled over. The house was hers and all the money – both what she had inherited and what Maurice had made – would be hers too.
The days of our age are threescore years and ten …
Ellen had read the words, many times. Maurice had now ended his seventieth year: she had made her plans and at last the time had come to carry them out.
The post that morning brought nothing from Priscilla. She had never yet forgotten her father’s birthday: something must be on the way. What a pity Maurice would not now receive the card, Ellen thought, buttering her toast.
She gave him her own present when he had finished The Times leader, a thick woollen dressing-gown. She had bought it with Ben, the jobbing gardener, in mind, for Maurice would never wear it. Maurice thanked her without enthusiasm, saying he would have preferred camel colour to maroon. Ellen knew that cheerful B
en would like the maroon better.
Breakfast over, Maurice went to his study and Ellen set about her chores. After she had made the beds and tidied round, she went into the garden and cut three large marrows: they would get hard and woody if left on the plants and Maurice had pointed them out to her the day before. She carried them into the house and down the flight of stairs leading to the cellar. The door was locked and bolted. Taking the key from a hook beside the door, Ellen unlocked it and laid the marrows on a stone ledge inside. Strings of onions already hung on the walls but otherwise the cellar was quite bare. It was dark, lit only by a tiny window high on one wall.
The marrows deposited, Ellen left the cellar. She closed the door, which opened outwards, but did not lock it.
Now it was time to prepare for her weekly shopping expedition. Every Thursday she made the trip into town, her one outing in the car, for Maurice decreed that once a week was sufficient. She backed the car out of the garage until the corner of the rear bumper and the exhaust pipe were exactly opposite the cellar window which, seen from outside the house, was a narrow slit a few inches above the ground, the glass protected by chicken wire which was now rotten with age. There was a blackened area, caused by exhaust fumes, on the brickwork around the window for the car was always reversed into this position.
But today Ellen reversed too far and broke the window. She smiled as she switched off the engine and uttered a shriek.
Maurice had heard the crash. He came storming out of the house to inspect the damage. The corner of the bumper had gone straight through the rotten wire and the glass; Ellen had practised the manoeuvre until she could have done it blindfold. She stood wringing her hands and apologising meekly while being scolded. If Maurice had not heard the impact, she would have found him to confess, for, as she knew he would, he immediately went to discover what had happened in the cellar, into which most of the glass had fallen. She followed him.
Automatically he reached for the key and found it missing from the hook.
‘You’ve been down here this morning, Ellen,’ he accused.
‘Yes, Maurice, I brought those three marrows in. You told me to cut them.’
‘You didn’t lock the door. How many times must I tell you everything?’ he exclaimed, opening the door and striding angrily inside.
Ellen had never seen the point of locking the cellar, but now she was glad it was one of Maurice’s rules. In an instant she had slammed the heavy, close-fitting door behind him, turned the key, and thrust the bolt across.
For a moment she leaned against it, panting, her heart pounding. It had been easy! She had spent hours devising the perfect scheme, thinking of first one plan and then another. Now she could truthfully say, when she was questioned, that she had forgotten to lock the cellar door after taking in the marrows and had returned to do it. How could she have known Maurice was in there?
She hurried up the stairs before he had time to begin beating upon the door. In a few minutes she had started the engine of the car, reversed it still closer to the wall so that the exhaust was tight against the broken cellar window, and left it to run, leaving the choke well out. Maurice always insisted she warm the car up thoroughly before driving away. The rich mixture filling the cellar with fumes would make Maurice unconscious very quickly. A mere five minutes in a closed garage with a large car could prove fatal, she had discovered during her research in the public library, and Maurice was due for a much longer diet of fumes from their medium-sized vehicle.
She left the car and walked away, for there were sounds coming from the cellar, shouts and cries, and she could not stay to listen. There was nothing Maurice could stand on to reach the window far above his head. He would go to the door, but he would not be able to break it open.
Ellen went into the house and fetched a bottle of water. She returned to the car, not hurrying, opened the bonnet and topped up the windscreen washer, concentrating on the task, ignoring the cellar.
There was no sound now apart from the car’s engine, which was beginning to run unevenly as it warmed up. She pushed in the choke, and the windscreen washer dealt with, she closed the garage. Maurice would never allow it to be left open when the car was out for fear of passing thieves, although it was behind the house and couldn’t be seen from the road. Then she went into the house. She could scarcely hear the car now, its engine purred so sweetly.
She went to her sewing-box and took from it the wad of leaflets about travelling to Australia hidden there for weeks under her tapestry. How would she go? By boat, she thought: a large and luxurious liner which would call at exotic ports on the way, and first-class, of course. No one came to the door while she turned the pages of the brochures. The only regular callers were the milkman and the postman, and on Tuesdays the cleaning woman. Few door-to-door salesmen bothered to come to the isolated house at the end of the village. Occasionally she rose to listen to the car. It still ran, not stalling. At last she decided she had waited long enough and she went out to it.
It had got rather hot and the temperature of the water showed high on the gauge. Ellen moved the car forward. She laid a sheet of slate that normally covered the kitchen drain against the broken windowpane to keep the fumes inside. No sound came from the cellar.
Then she drove to town and did her shopping.
When she returned more than an hour later, Ellen removed the slate and replaced it over the drain. She backed the car up to the window again and left the engine running while she unloaded her shopping. Finally she opened the garage doors and drove the car inside.
It was now time to prepare lunch, and for once it would not matter if the meal was late. How wasteful, she reflected, peeling Maurice’s usual two medium-sized potatoes and slicing runner beans fresh from the garden. She had made his favourite pudding, crème caramel, the day before: a birthday treat. She put the grill on for the chops.
Soon she would have to start looking for him. She could spend some time searching the house and garden and then go into the village to inquire if anyone had seen him. She needn’t think about the cellar until later, much later. Perhaps she need not think of it at all, until she told the police he was missing. That was the part she dreaded: finding him. But by then he would have been dead for a long time: most certainly by now he had been dead for hours. He would not have suffered for long, but his hands might be torn and bruised if he had clawed at the cellar door.
She dished up the meal and put it in the slow oven. Then she went upstairs to wash and do her hair before calling him, as she always did.
She didn’t see the sleepy wasp among the bristles of her tortoiseshell hairbrush as she raised it to her head. She felt only the sharp, searing stab of the sting above her temple.
Ellen grew giddy almost at once. Three years ago she had been stung on her arm, fainted, and recovered only because Maurice had been there, seen her cyanosed face, and called the doctor instantly.
This time, he could not save her.
Deadly Pleasures Page 25
