Rosie Meadows Regrets...

by Catherine Alliott

  ‘I know, I know,’ I said incredulously, ‘it’s extraordinary, isn’t it? I just can’t think how it happens! I’m such a quiet, home-loving girl really, but it’ll all be fine now, Joss, you’ll see.’

  He rubbed his eyebrow wearily with the heel of his hand. ‘Well, let’s hope so. The problem is, though, that fascinating though this crypto-saga of serial rape and annihilation is, I’ve actually got to get on a plane to Germany in precisely,’ he glanced at his watch, ‘four hours’ time. I’ve stupidly promised to do a week of lectures there to promote my new exhibition in Cologne, which despite taking its theme from man’s inhumanity to man doesn’t even begin to compare with your everyday life in terms of lurid shock horror. But the point is, Rosie, I won’t be here, and with bodies falling around you like flies, that bothers me somewhat.’

  ‘Oh, don’t you worry about me, Joss, I’ll be fine, really I will. Now that I know they’re not about to clap me in irons – God, I could almost hear the cell door clanging shut behind me! I had visions of Martha and the children coming to see me at Holloway, holding my hands through the bars, sobbing copiously. God, I thought I was going to be sick!’

  ‘Keep your voice down!’ he hissed, glancing nervously back towards the hall. Through the half-open door we could see the two policemen warming the backs of their legs by last night’s still smouldering fire. They glanced over at our raised voices, then down at their boots again.

  ‘Go on,’ muttered Joss, giving me a little push, ‘go get changed before they get us for conspiracy as well.’

  ‘Will do,’ I grinned. Still feeling wonderfully euphoric, I rather daringly reached up and gave him a little kiss on the cheek. Without pausing to gauge the effect it had had, I turned and ran to the cottage, dressing gown flapping, giggling to myself as I dashed up into my bedroom. You see, I thought happily, that’s what adrenalin does for you. Gives you the courage to be totally brazen.

  When I returned, Joss had gone off to pack. The twins and Toby had woken up and come down in their dressing gowns, wide-eyed with wonder at having real policemen in the house. Having kissed them both and hugged Ivo I left them all in Martha’s hands. ‘How is he?’ I whispered as I gave her a hug.

  ‘Much better,’ she said. ‘You know what, Rosie, I think he’s over the worst.’

  ‘Oh, thank God.’

  ‘So don’t you worry. I’ll look after Ivo while you’re gone – you’re all right.’

  ‘Thanks.’ We hugged each other again and I went outside and got in the back of the police car. The children were enthralled and insisted on seeing me off.

  ‘Are you really going to a police station? Can’t we come too?’ asked Emma, gazing wistfully at the car.

  ‘Sorry, darlings, but I’ll be back soon and I’ll tell you all about it then.’

  ‘Could you put the siren on?’ asked Toby.

  I leaned forward to the sergeant in the passenger seat. ‘Would that be too much trouble?’ I whispered. ‘Just down the drive? They’d really love it.’

  ‘Certainly not,’ he muttered grimly.

  I shook my head at them. ‘Sorry, darlings, it’s for official business only I think but – oops, here we go. ’Bye!’ We were off.

  As we sped down the drive, I waved to them all standing there at the front door until they were out of sight. Then I grinned and relaxed back into the seat. ‘Rather nice actually,’ I raised my voice above the engine. ‘I mean to be sitting down for a change and not charging around getting breakfast. It’s always absolute mayhem in there at this hour of the morning.’

  No answer from the boys in the front. God, they were sour, but then again, working on New Year’s Day couldn’t be much fun, I supposed. I tried again.

  ‘I expect you were busy last night.’

  ‘Why’s that then?’

  ‘Well, you know, New Year’s Eve. Drunken revelry and all that?’

  The sergeant turned round in his seat and regarded me levelly. ‘This isn’t The Bill you know, madam, we’re in homicide.’

  ‘Oh, right.’ Gosh, I’d offended him. ‘I see, so you mean you’re more like the Prime Suspect detectives then. More the sort of gritty plain-clothes types, debriefs in smoky rooms, walls covered in gruesome pictures of the victims, poring over your files till midnight with your ties askew and plastic coffee cups, that sort of thing!’ I was rather pleased with this little thumbnail sketch, but it fell on stony ground. An icy silence prevailed as they declined to answer. I stared at the backs of their necks. Gosh, they were a humourless couple. Still, I decided it might be prudent to keep quiet until we got to the police station which, incidentally, was the other way.

  ‘Cirencester’s that way,’ I said, turning round in my seat as we sped past the turning.

  ‘Really.’

  ‘We’re not going to Cirencester?’

  My friend performed another one hundred and eighty degree turn in his seat. ‘We’re from the Oxfordshire constabulary, Mrs Meadows. We’re going to Oxford.’

  ‘Oh! Gosh, what a long way. You mean you’ve come all this way at the crack of dawn just to …’ I tailed off. Pick me up.

  Suddenly I felt a bit nervous. A bit – hot. Right. So we weren’t just popping into town for a friendly chat over a cup of cocoa, and they weren’t just a couple of local bobbies. So what exactly was going on here? I wondered. As we sped along the road I gazed out at the increasingly unfamiliar landscape. Dank, lustreless winter fields with the occasional smattering of sheep, heads bowed and huddled in corners, flashed past, and on the horizon, wet, black trees spread their bare branches against a pale grey sky. I felt a mounting sense of unease, of foreboding.

  Eventually we swept into a car park – correction, swept through a car park – and straight up to the front door. It was as if we were really rather … important. The sergeant leapt out and opened my door. I got out and smiled nervously, but he didn’t look at me, just turned and propped open the swing door to the station. I went through under his arm and waited, my heart pounding. He overtook me and set off at speed down a long, bleak corridor. I scurried after him, with the thus far silent driver of the car at my heels. We came to a halt outside a pale blue door with a tiny, reinforced window. The sergeant pushed it open and jerked his head for me to go through. I walked in cautiously and looked around. It wasn’t actually a cell but it might just as well have been. It was cold and dark, and aside from a table with two chairs on either side, totally bare. The walls were painted in regulation grey gloss. I wondered if gloss was more resistant to wall punching or something. Right up by the ceiling was a long, shallow window, but so high you couldn’t possibly see out.

  ‘Wait here.’

  I swung round to answer, but he’d gone. The door clicked firmly shut behind him. I swallowed hard and after a moment’s indecision went tentatively across to one of the chairs. I sat down gingerly. Which one was mine? I wondered. Was this one all right? I glanced at the door, my mouth as dry as sandpaper now. God, this was awful, what were they trying to do, frighten the living daylights out of me or something? If they were, they were blinking well succeeding, that was for sure, but then again, why on earth should I be frightened? After all, I hadn’t done anything wrong, had I? Suddenly I wished I had a packet of cigarettes to fiddle with. I didn’t smoke but it would give me something to do with my hands, I could have shunted the box around a bit, read the health warning on the side, flicked out a couple of snouts. I knew from years of telly viewing that this was one of the few environments where cigarettes were allowed, indeed positively encouraged. I picked my nails nervously instead.

  Finally the door swung open with a flourish. I jumped as in marched – yes, marched – good grief, it was Helen Mirren. Well, it wasn’t of course but I swear to God it could have been. If ever there was a dead ringer, this was it. She had the same no-nonsense grey-blonde hair tucked efficiently behind unadorned ears, the same ruthlessly scrubbed face with those cool steely eyes, the inquisitive nose, the thin, pinched lips and the same, crisp white s
hirt under the sombre, androgynous dark suit. This was a woman who’d never painted her toenails, woken up with cake crumbs in her bed, or danced to Agadoo. This was a woman whose knickers never went grey in the wash and whose house plants never died. In fact she looked as if she ate glass for breakfast. I instinctively sat up straight as she took the chair opposite me.

  ‘Good morning.’ Her voice was level. Not hostile, but only by a whisker.

  ‘Morning,’ I muttered, resisting the urge to add, ‘ma’am.’

  She took some papers from a plastic file and shuffled them efficiently. Just then the door opened softly and in slid a WPC in uniform. She was fatter and fluffier than her boss and looked as if she could even have a couple of kids at home, along with some rather messy drawers. I smiled hopefully at my potential ally, but she sidled into a corner and stood stock still, eyes trained on a spot above my head. Bloody hell. I swallowed hard and turned back. The Ice Maiden, meanwhile, had taken a tape recorder from her case and set it on the table. She flicked it on and snapped in two tapes. Then she raised her pale, untinted lashes and fixed me with sharp grey eyes.

  ‘I’m conducting this interview with Mrs Rosie Meadows on January the first, at,’ she consulted her watch, ‘eight thirty-two a.m.’

  I gazed at her in horror. ‘You’re taping this?’

  She gave a thin smile. ‘It tends to be the accepted thing these days. It’s for your own protection as much as anything else.’

  Heavens. My own protection. ‘Should I – should I, you know, have a brief or something then?’ I asked hesitantly, slipping crassly into Bill-speak.

  ‘You’re entitled to a solicitor, of course.’ She waited, hands folded.

  ‘Well, I … well. I mean I’ve got nothing to hide, so …’

  ‘So shall we go on?’

  ‘Yes. Fine,’ I muttered. ‘Go on.’

  She folded her arms and leaned forward, suddenly adopting what I imagine she thought was a benign expression. But I wasn’t fooled, oh no, not likely. This woman was about as benign as a polecat.

  ‘Now, Mrs Meadows …’ she consulted her file, ‘Rosie.’ She looked up. ‘I believe your husband died on the night of the sixth of November, thirty-six hours after eating a poisonous mushroom commonly known as the Panther Cap, is that correct?’

  ‘Yes, that’s right,’ I whispered.

  ‘I have here,’ she reached into a plastic bag, ‘just such a mushroom.’ She drew out a white-stemmed fungus with a brownish cap. ‘I also have,’ she delved into another bag, ‘a field mushroom, a cep, and a chanterelle which I believe are the types your late husband had ostensibly been collecting.’ She drew out three more mushrooms and put them beside the Panther Cap. She looked up at me. ‘All quite different, wouldn’t you say?’

  I cleared my throat and dug deep for courage. No, I would not be intimidated. ‘Yes, but if I might say so you have some very extreme examples there. That Panther Cap is particularly small and rather spotty, whereas there are, in fact, some much larger, pure brown specimens, and your cep is pretty big. Small fresh ones straight from the woods can be quite mottled and about the same size as a largish Panther.’

  ‘I see.’ She paused. ‘So the two could be confused?’

  I gauged this. ‘Well, they could be, although to my eye they’re still jolly different.’ Pays to be honest, I thought.

  ‘Quite. But then you do know rather a lot about fungi, don’t you? I gather you studied with Antonio Carluccio?’

  ‘Well, I did a four-day course, yes.’

  ‘Which makes it all the more extraordinary then, don’t you think, that you didn’t spot the difference as you cooked them?’

  I sighed. ‘Yes, except that as I’ve said before, I really only gave them a cursory glance in the pan. I was distracted at the time, thinking about something else, and he’d collected all sorts of other mushrooms too, not just the ones you’ve got there, but oysters, parasols, so it was quite a mixture.’

  ‘Even so, this one,’ she persisted, picking the Panther Cap up, ‘is still remarkably distinctive, wouldn’t you say?’

  ‘Yes, I would,’ I agreed, ‘and it’s a mystery to me how I missed it, but I did, and I’m sorry. I’ve already said so.’

  ‘You’re sorry you missed it or you’re sorry your husband’s dead?’

  I flushed. ‘Look, I’ve been through all this once already with the Gloucester police. I answered all these questions then, is there really any need to interrogate me like this?’

  ‘I’m afraid there is, Mrs Meadows. You see, since your earlier interview and the routine interview your family gave, certain facts have come to light. The coroner’s office have therefore passed the inquiry over to us for full investigation.’

  ‘Oh, really? Why?’ I tried to make this sound merely curious, but it came out as a bleat of alarm.

  Silence. She turned a page in her file, reading, or pretending to read, ignoring me. I could feel myself burning up now. My hands were clammy and sweat was beginning to prickle my forehead. Finally she raised her eyes. Her look was impenetrable.

  ‘Mrs Meadows, you mentioned in your earlier interview – and you’ve said as much again just now – that you were distracted at the time your husband showed you the mushrooms. That you were thinking of something else. Would you mind telling me what?’

  ‘Well, I – can’t remember exactly.’

  ‘Would you have been thinking about divorcing him, for instance?’

  ‘Oh! Well, yes, yes, I suppose I might.’

  ‘You were planning to divorce him?’

  ‘Yes, I was.’

  ‘And you’d informed him of this?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And what was his reaction?’

  ‘Well, he wasn’t … very keen.’

  ‘He wasn’t very keen. He resisted, in other words.’

  ‘Yes.’

  She leaned forward intently. ‘Isn’t it true to say that he resisted to such an extent that he said he was prepared to fight you in court? And not only that, but, to quote your sister, that he’d fight you for custody of your son? Something which, it seems, he was confident he’d get?’

  ‘Yes, he did want Ivo.’

  ‘And didn’t he say he’d lie, cheat, blacken your name, brand you an unfit mother – in short, stop at nothing, be it reasonable or unreasonable, to take him away from you?’

  ‘Yes, he did, but –’

  ‘Quite convenient then, wouldn’t you say, that he died before events could come to such a head?’

  I looked at her in horror. ‘You’re surely not suggesting I killed him to stop him taking Ivo away?’

  ‘I don’t know, Rosie. Why did you kill him?’

  ‘No – I didn’t! I didn’t mean it like that, I just meant – God, no, of course I didn’t kill him!’

  Her eyes bored into mine and it seemed to me they probed right through to the back of my head. I felt a kind of rushing pressure in my brain. The silence was unbearable. I dug my nails deep into the palms of my hands under the table. Keep calm, Rosie, keep calm. Eventually she lowered her eyes and slowly turned a page in her file. She folded her hands.

  ‘Tell me, did your husband make a habit of collecting mushrooms for breakfast?’

  ‘If we –’ my voice sounded high, unnatural. I cleared my throat. ‘If we were staying at my parents’ house, yes, he did. He was very keen on his food and fungi grow pretty abundantly there. It was a bit of a treat for him.’

  ‘So, it would have been as easy as anything to pre-empt this, wouldn’t it? To pick a particular mushroom, say the day before, pocket it, bide your time and then when no one was looking simply add it to the pan?’

  ‘I did no such thing!’ I stood up, knocking my chair backwards. My heart was pounding.

  ‘I merely hypothesized that it would be easy,’ she said evenly. ‘Please sit down, Mrs Meadows.’

  With a trembling hand I picked up my chair and sat down again.

  ‘Mrs Meadows stood up in anger, she’s now seated
again,’ she said for the benefit of the tape. I stared at her, feeling damp, clammy now, scared to death.

  ‘Tell me, does the name Timothy McWerther mean anything to you?’

  ‘No, it doesn’t. Why?’

  ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘Yes, I’m sure.’

  She pursed her lips and drew from inside her file a photograph. She passed it over to me. I knew she was watching my face. I prepared to hand it straight back, but then – ‘Oh! It’s Tim.’

  ‘So you do know him.’

  ‘Well, yes, but only as Tim, not Timothy Whatever-you-said.’ I passed it back to her. ‘He works in the Wandsworth Sainsbury’s, as a packer. I knew him vaguely and we just sort of chatted a bit. Had a laugh.’

  ‘Did you have an affair with him?’

  ‘No!’ I gasped. ‘Certainly not!’

  ‘And yet your husband, returning home unexpectedly one day, surprised you with him in your bedroom.’

  My mouth fell open. ‘How did you –’

  ‘Know that? We’re detectives, Mrs Meadows.’

  I flushed, bit my lip. ‘Look, I know it sounds – peculiar, incriminating even, but it wasn’t like that. He helped me home from Sainsbury’s once with some shopping and while I was on the telephone he took some soap and bubble bath and things upstairs to the bathroom.’

  ‘And then into the bedroom.’

  ‘Yes, but –’

  ‘Where you followed him a few moments later and where your husband later discovered you both. Quite familiar, don’t you think, for a housewife and a young lad from the local supermarket? One wonders,’ she mused, puckering her brow and tapping her pencil thoughtfully, ‘what might have happened had your husband not arrived home at that particular moment. One wonders how that scenario might have unfolded. One wonders, too, how often this lad made a habit of helping you home with your groceries, popping upstairs to put the soap in the bathroom, tissues in the bedroom, pausing by the bed, sitting down –’

  ‘Never!’ I yelled, choked by angry tears now. ‘That’s not true, any of it, it wasn’t like that. God, ask him if you don’t believe me!’