Death in Dulwich

by Alice Castle

  Chapter Seven

  Beth’s cheeks burned painfully that evening as she remembered those terrible moments, gazing at the prone form on the counter, certain that kind, smiley Janice – her only friend at Wyatt’s – had been viciously slain; victim number two of the murderer on the loose.

  Her scream had echoed in her own ears – only to be joined by Janice’s voice, also yelling. But not in her death throes. No, she was loudly complaining. ‘Damn, all my sweet chili sauce! That blessed Ocado delivery man must have known it had split.’

  Janice promptly straightened up and abandoned her sprawling attempt to scoop the sauce back into its plastic pouch.

  Sure enough, now that Beth tottered closer to the counter, she could smell the sharp, sweet scent of the gloopy sauce, so different from the iron filings stench of blood. Even the pool at the foot of the counter was the wrong colour – too pale a scarlet, and much too richly flecked with Waitrose’s delicious combination of fresh chili seeds and oriental herbs and spices. Beth clutched the counter with a trembling hand.

  Janice looked up from the sticky mess, wiping dripping hands on a tissue. ‘Sorry, Beth, I think I gave you a bit of a turn there. I’m just so annoyed. It’s not the first time this has happened. And I’m not even supposed to get the shopping delivered here. It’s just so convenient when we’re doing long hours. Quick, help me get the bags out of sight?’

  Beth slipped round and started shoving the Ocado bags into a coat cupboard in the backstage area behind Reception. By a cruel twist of fate, there was no Waitrose supermarket in Dulwich itself. Residents were forced to go online or even venture into neighbouring territories, like Beckenham or Bromley, to bag a taste of the grocery high life. The shopping was hastily stuffed away by the time the Bursar rampaged out of his office to see what was afoot. Both women stood nonchalantly in front of the counter, blocking the mess on the floor.

  ‘Everything alright here?’ said the Bursar, small blue eyes darting back and forth, jaw thrust forward.

  ‘Mmm,’ said Janice, trademark warm smile perfectly in place. ‘I was just explaining to Beth about the period pad machines in the teachers’ loo in the sixth form blocks. So, they get refilled quite regularly with maxi pads…’

  As expected, even this glancing reference to women’s matters worked like extra-strength kryptonite on the burly Seasons. He retreated quickly – though quite why talk of vending machines would make the new archivist scream like a stuck pig was never explained.

  ***

  She had overreacted hugely – her nerves were still badly jangled by Monday’s horrible events, that was plain, thought Beth, as she cleared up slowly after supper. As usual, Ben had massacred a plate of fish fingers, the lavish encrustation of tomato ketchup mixing with the chili sauce in her mind’s eye, but also taking her back inexorably to the scene of the crime itself.

  The splotch of chili sauce on the pale carpet had been swiftly vanquished by Beth’s skill with a stain, then the remnants covered by a small Persian rug Janice had filched from a music practice room. The blood at the crime scene was a different prospect. She remembered the way the clouds had floated past in that great incarnadine pond.

  She scrubbed away at the plates as she thought. The kitchen was so tiny that she had decided not to give up precious space to a dishwasher. They hadn’t needed one as a family of three and now, with only the two of them, it really didn’t seem worth it. But on days like this, it meant that either she used a tankful of hot water scrubbing at these dried clots, or she left the plate to soak, and risked coming back to a sinkful of gory red water later on.

  The doorbell punctured her gloomy musings. As she ripped off her Marigolds and dried her hands on a tea towel, she realised that the caller was going to be Inspector York, that she’d forgotten all about his visit, and that the house was a tip. Her beloved black and white cat leapt up from her comfortable spot on the wicker kitchen chair as though she’d been poked with a cattle prod, and scarpered through the cat flap with a bang. Magpie didn’t discriminate; she hated all visitors to the house equally. She’d be back later, once the coast was clear of strangers.

  Beth wasn’t worried about Magpie; it was more the fact that the place was a mess which left her flustered. Somehow, in her quest to get life under control after the death of James, during the taxing years when Ben was just a baby, she had started to equate tidiness with an ability to cope. Certainly, she knew she now felt as though all was right with the world if her house was tidy. It was a bizarre illusion but it had sustained her through some tricky times. Now she cast an anguished look around at the scattered school books on the table, the remnants of their meal in the kitchen, and even at her beloved son, sprawled in front of the telly, enjoying to the full the short window he was allowed with his beloved PlayStation.

  ***

  Inspector York, bringing a gust of early spring chill into the small hall with him, looked around and smiled involuntarily. It was a beautiful house, immaculately kept, yet with all the warm signposts of family life – a jumble of coats, rebellious trainers poking out from a bench – making him feel there was no real rush to return to his own sterile flat. His job took him to all corners of south London, and this was the cosiest he’d felt in months.

  Ostensibly, he was there to assess whether Beth could have any motive for bumping Jenkins off. As well as the hidden stalker shrine which, now that he was here in Beth’s neat and pretty house, he was slightly embarrassed to think he had ever considered, York was on the alert for giveaways to a sudden influx of wealth. If there was evidence of blingy watches, or a new car in the drive, it might suggest a motive. Equally, suddenly falling on hard times could precipitate violence, too. He wasn’t going to prejudge the situation – he never did – but he was pretty sure that he wasn’t going to find anything like either extreme here.

  As he walked in, he trod inadvertently on a well-worn trainer, hailing – if he wasn’t mistaken – from Primark. Beth’s handbag, lying by the bench, was, to his admittedly inexpert eye, nothing wildly special either. The place seemed to be in what estate agents described as ‘excellent decorative order’ but it was by no means fancy. Case pretty much closed, he thought. He could have turned on his heel, saved himself some time, got back and made a start on the pile of paperwork that had already mounted up since Monday, but…

  ‘Would you like some tea? So sorry about the awful mess! I’m afraid you sort of slipped my mind.’

  ‘I’ll try not to take that amiss,’ said York with a smile. He realised he was parched. ‘Tea would be great.’

  Beth reached out a hand for York’s pea coat, looking surprised at how heavy and large it was. She cast around for somewhere to put it, then arranged the coat over the bannister as neatly as she could and bustled to the kitchen.

  York followed slowly along the narrow passage between the bannister and the sitting room wall, admiring Ben’s artwork, stuck in Ikea clip frames, which adorned the pale yellow walls at regular intervals. The boy was no Picasso, but he certainly had gusto. The kitchen, at the end of the passage, was small but pin-neat. He felt enormous as he loomed by the fridge, amused that the usual gathering of random fridge magnets was here dragooned into neat rows, pinioning the school notices he usually saw flapping and dog-eared.

  ***

  ‘Do sit down,’ said Beth, busying herself at the kettle with her back to him, organising mugs. She rapidly stuffed the one emblazoned ‘Sexy Mother’ – a birthday gift from Katie – right at the back of the cupboard, before getting out the tea bags and milk. The kettle was old and made a terrible din when boiling.

  When she turned round again, he had disappeared, and she peeped into the hall in alarm before hearing squawks of excitement from Ben in the sitting room.

  York had plonked himself down on the sofa, taken the other, scarcely used, game controller, and the two were now jointly fighting aliens, or whatever the awful foe was, with all their might. Beth opened her mouth to announce bedtime, then shut it again. As well a
s all the real, day-to-day anxieties she faced, she sometimes indulged in worrying about the ‘optional extras’ that the Sunday papers got so exercised about, like the lack of a male role model in Ben’s life. There was her own beloved brother, Josh, but how often was he around? And, crucially, was it enough to stop Ben joining gangs or getting teenage girls pregnant when the time came, which could be any day now, depending on how often you watched scary documentaries on Channel 4? Reluctant to break the spell, she plonked the tea on the kitchen table and went back to the washing up.

  An hour later, and Ben was miraculously tucked up in bed while Beth and York settled down to talk at the newly gleaming kitchen table with fresh mugs in front of them. Beth had been anticipating a Herculean task in settling her son for the night after the excitement of extra time and a co-conspirator on the PlayStation, but wily Ben – suspecting that good behaviour this time around might allow the ground-breaking treat to be repeated – had been better than gold.

  ‘I’m glad you came,’ said Beth. York looked over at her tired face and opened his mouth to reply, but Beth rushed on. ‘Because, I don’t know if I’m speaking out of turn or not, but something’s going on at Wyatt’s that I think you should know about.’

  She’d been rehearsing what she was going to say while she’d scraped the last of the ketchup stains off the supper plates, while the ‘boys’ were playing, and her words now came out in a bit of a rush.

  York was intrigued. ‘Go on,’ he said, sitting back in the surprisingly comfortable chair, a cheap online knock-off Beth had found of a ‘50s design classic, currently taking the kitchens of the intelligentsia by storm.

  ‘Well, today, the Bursar – that’s Tom Seasons – called together all the teachers who were on the premises at the right times on Monday, and basically has asked us to go through all our movements with him.’

  ‘Hmmm. Sounds like he’s doing my job for me. Or Hercule Poirot’s?’ said York with his usual hint of a smile.

  ‘Doesn’t that make you angry?’ said Beth, amazed at his imperturbability. If someone had peremptorily decided to put her own archive in order, say, she’d be furious, she thought. But actually, not that furious, because it was beginning to seem more and more like an impossible task.

  ‘Angry? No. But, of course, I do wonder why he’s doing it, and what he hopes to gain from it.’

  ‘The other thing is that the timings he’s asking for seem a bit off. I reminded him that I’d seen Dr Jenkins at just past 9 and then found him a little past 12, but he wanted to know about 8.30 to 11.30.’

  ‘That’s interesting,’ said York, but to Beth’s disappointment he said no more on the subject. ‘I think I’d like a list of the teachers who were in the right place at the right time, so to speak. Could you email it to the address on my card?’

  Beth immediately looked around, panic-stricken. She had a bad feeling that she’d just stuck his latest card in the recycling. York sighed inwardly again and silently handed over another. ‘What did you make of the teachers, incidentally?’

  ‘Oh, it’s hard to say, they’re all very different, of course, but still all very Wyatt’s, if you know what I mean. I got a few impressions – the English teacher seemed a bit scatty, and I don’t think the Bursar likes her. Radley, the Maths guy, seems very touchy, maybe a bit aggressive – though I don’t mean stabbing aggressive, of course. The head of French – Miss Godfrey, I think – got herself off the hook and was absolutely delighted, and then flounced out and left the rest of us looking as guilty as sin, somehow. But since I don’t know any of them properly, and didn’t know Jenkins either, it’s impossible to say who might have wanted to do something that awful.’

  ‘Of course, it doesn’t have to be a teacher, anyway,’ York said, sipping his tea appreciatively.

  ‘Doesn’t it? I thought the grounds and catering people had been ruled out? That’s what you said this afternoon,’ said Beth, astonished.

  York gave her a steady look and, as usual, refused to confirm, deny or elucidate. She suddenly felt very tired. All this restraint was admirable, she supposed – but it didn’t get her much further.

  ‘Well, let’s think, if we exclude the teachers, I suppose there’s still the Bursar himself, not to mention the Head, Janice, even me… but I didn’t do it, obviously!’ she said, looking up at York in alarm. Had she accidentally managed to implicate herself even further than her alibi-less, corpse-finding state already did? But York was smiling gently, amused rather than poised to clap the handcuffs on her.

  Beth paused for a moment. Maybe it was time to come clean about her yoga session with Seasons’ wife.

  ‘Um, on Tuesday, I happened to be doing a yoga class in the village with the Bursar’s wife, Judith.’ Was it her imagination, or did York suddenly snap to attention? It wasn’t his posture, which remained relaxed. But there was something about his gaze which, she realised, indicated that his alertness levels had shot from a languid 4 to a hyper-vigilant 10.

  ‘Oh yes?’ he said.

  ‘Yes, she’s very agile, I must say, really brilliant at some of the more difficult poses, she must have been practising yoga for years.’

  York didn’t say that she was spouting irrelevant nonsense. But she still tailed off into silence. He wasn’t sitting there to enjoy an eager discussion of middle-aged ladies’ prowess at keep fit.

  ‘Did you have a chance to discuss the killing?’ he asked evenly, as though he was pretty sure what the answer would be.

  ‘Well,’ said Beth, turning her mug around in her hands nervously, ‘it turns out Mrs Seasons was good friends with Dr Jenkins. Very good friends was the impression I got, if you know what I mean,’ said Beth, her cheeks flushing pink. ‘You know, she’s the only person I’ve met who seems even a tiny bit sad that he’s dead. And she told me all kinds of stories about him working at MI5 – which don’t seem to be true.’

  ‘And you know that because… you checked him out yourself?’ York asked heavily.

  ‘Well, yes. I know you’re going to say that I shouldn’t poke around in this… and I know that I can’t find out as much as the police can, you must have much better sources of information than just Google and a bit of persistence. But having, well, found Dr Jenkins, I do feel I’m involved. He may not have been a nice man but it was so pitiful seeing him there… and, of course, there is the fact that I haven’t got an alibi and, erm, well, all the rest of it.’ Beth tailed off, not wishing to reinforce the case against her.

  ‘There are plenty of other people in the frame; there always are. No shortage of suspects at all,’ said York, taking a sip of tea.

  Beth wondered briefly whether that was meant to be reassuring. To her, it sounded a little as though the leafy lanes of Dulwich were now being prowled by multiple potential murderers. Not a comforting thought at all.

  ‘Did Mrs Seasons say anything else?’ he asked.

  ‘She did mention that she usually sees Mrs Jenkins on Monday mornings, but that she couldn’t make it this time for some reason… meaning, I suppose, that she doesn’t have an alibi either?’

  ‘Don’t worry about Mrs Jenkins, we’ll get round to her in good time. And I’m glad you’ve said what you have about poking around. That means I don’t have to tell you what a seriously terrible idea it is to meddle in a crime like this – you already know.’ He took a look around the sparkling kitchen and hall as he stood and finished off his tea, his gaze lingering on one of Ben’s splashy paintings. ‘You have a lot to lose,’ he said, plonking the cup down firmly.

  Beth stood, too, and the house suddenly seemed tiny again as he strode into the hall, plucked his coat off the bannister, and shrugged into it.

  ‘Thanks for the tea. Take care now,’ he said meaningfully, then he smiled as she opened the door for him and he was off out into the cold night. Promptly, the cat flap in the kitchen pinged as Magpie sauntered back in again, as though nothing had happened and she hadn’t spent the last few hours skulking crossly in the garden.

  Yes, she di
d have a lot to lose, thought Beth, catching her own serious gaze in the slightly-too-high hall mirror. That was why she didn’t want to risk being accused of the crime, if no-one else emerged as a credible suspect. It was all very well, York saying there was no shortage of people in the frame. But, from where Beth was standing, there didn’t seem to be nearly enough of them.

  What the policeman didn’t seem to understand was that Dulwich was a very small place. It wouldn’t be long before gossip got round, linking her to the crime. In a way, she was surprised that there wasn’t tattle about it already – though she supposed she would probably be the last to hear. She couldn’t afford to become Dulwich’s favourite prime suspect.

  What would happen to Ben, if she were arrested? Logically, she knew that her mother and brother would always step in. But fear drove out reason. She had to carry on poking around. And no amount of well-meaning warnings was going to stop her.

  Chapter Eight

  It was Thursday already and nearing the end of the strangest working week Beth had ever had. She had done hardly anything worthy of the name of work – she kept shifting papers around her tiny office, but, diligent though she usually was, the murder now weighed more heavily on her conscience than the need to justify her pay packet.

  She needed to talk to Dr Jenkins’ wife. Yes, there were the three teacher suspects, but they were all being cross-questioned by the Bursar, and she couldn’t see them taking kindly to going over their movements with another amateur. She might as well follow up on her conversation with Judith Seasons and see if she could get the measure of Mrs Jenkins instead.

  Taking a look around the cluttered office, she decided she’d be doing everyone a favour if she packed up Jenkins’ belongings – effects, they called them, didn’t they, once someone was dead? – and returned them to the grieving widow. It would give her the perfect excuse for a nice little chat which, with any luck, would shed some light on Mrs Jenkins’ mysterious behaviour on the fatal morning. Not to mention clearing a tiny bit of space in her ridiculously cramped office.