Death in the Garden City

by Jeanne M. Dams

  ‘Pat said you were coming,’ said an expressionless voice. ‘I’m Alice Ingram. Come in.’

  We walked into a room right out of House Beautiful, except it looked lived-in. No designer had ‘done’ this room, just a person with lots of money and excellent taste. Books and magazines lay here and there; a yoga mat lay in front of a window with a view of a gorgeous garden. And a young man got up from a couch as we entered.

  ‘This is my cousin Andrew,’ said the woman, strange and yet not strange. ‘Andrew, some friends of Pat’s. They’re helping the police, and they want to know what happened last Wednesday.’

  ‘We’re not in any way official, Ms Ingram,’ said Alan hastily. ‘We have no legal right to ask you questions. And in any case, I’m sure you have here the same right not to respond that you would in England or America.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter. Please sit down. We want to tell you about it.’ She and her cousin took seats and we did the same, uneasily, for my part.

  ‘Pat tells me you know about my sister.’

  We nodded.

  ‘I never wanted that man dead. That was too easy, too kind. I wanted him humiliated. For years I’ve waited and planned, waited for his ego to lead him into politics, as it inevitably would. I changed my name, not that it would have mattered. He had certainly forgotten all about a grieving sister. I changed my appearance, again needlessly, because he had never met me.’

  ‘But you needed to make sure of attracting his attention.’

  ‘You see a good deal, don’t you, Mrs Martin? Yes, I turned myself into the kind of woman that man enjoyed. I led him on. I teased him. I was despicable, and I didn’t even hate myself, because he was even more despicable.’

  I couldn’t bear her anguish. ‘Alice, we know most of the rest. You planned a campaign of harassment, suggested a problem he could create and then promise, as MP, to solve. Brilliant idea, actually.’

  ‘And then,’ Alan said, taking up the narrative, ‘you planned to reveal what he had done. That would have been the coup de grâce, the end of his political ambitions, of his social acclaim. Why then did you decide to kill him?’

  ‘I didn’t. Let me go on. Andrew is one of my staff, and goes with me to many charitable functions, working backstage, as it were, to make sure everything goes smoothly. As I said that evening, that man was in Ottawa, or was supposed to be, greasing some palms. So when Andrew came in and told me he was in the back, asking for me, I was surprised and not pleased. But I had to keep up the façade a little longer, pretend for a few more days that I was completely under his spell. I wasn’t prepared to find him in a flaming rage.’

  ‘Alice, let me tell them. Don’t upset yourself any more than you have to. I took her to where Hartford was waiting for her, in the back hallway. He began to shout, so we pushed him out the back door onto the loading dock. He was quite literally foaming at the mouth; spittle was spraying everywhere. He had hacked into Alice’s computer and found the press release she had prepared, detailing every nasty thing he had done, including the death of her sister. It was to go out the next day.’

  I nodded to Alan. Nigel had known that someone else had been in the file.

  ‘He started to try to assault her physically, as well, but I wasn’t having any of that. Someone was getting close, in a car, so I opened that overhead door thing and shoved him into the pantry where we wouldn’t be seen. The lights weren’t on, but before I shut the door again I saw a big pair of scissors lying on the counter. Hartford saw them, too. He picked them up and came at me. I’m younger than he was, and in better shape. I grabbed them, trying to twist the scissors out of his hand – and I don’t know yet quite what happened, but he sort of lunged at me, and the next thing I knew, he was lying on the floor and there was blood everywhere.’

  ‘Including all over you, I imagine.’

  ‘Yes, of course. I didn’t know what had happened, but he was obviously losing far too much blood. Alice was the one who kept her head. She found a tablecloth in a drawer somewhere and tried to stop the blood, but it just kept spurting out. It was … Mr Nesbitt, I’ve seen combat. I’ve seen men die. But nothing was as horrible as that room, with the blood—’

  He stopped, and Alice went on, pale but determined. ‘We were very stupid then. We should have called the police and explained what had happened. But there were so many things we couldn’t prove. We’d moved to where no one could hear his tantrum. No one saw what happened at the end. He was a wealthy and influential man. We decided to cover it up. I knew about the storage room, of course; I’ve often had events in that hall. Another tablecloth served to slide him around the outside of the building and into that little stage hallway. We left him there for the moment while we did a fast clean-up of the pantry, and then went back to put him in the storage room, but someone was coming. We had to leave him where he was, and get out.’

  ‘Of course. There were your bloodstained clothes to deal with.’

  ‘And … our bloodstained souls. The clothes were easy. We jumped in the fountain in the park. You know cold water takes out most bloodstains. That meant we wouldn’t get much blood in the car. Of course we burned our clothes later.’

  ‘And the weapon? The scissors?’

  ‘In the harbour. I’m sure the Event Centre people missed them. They were heavy duty ones, meant I suppose for opening canvas bags of flour and rice and the like. But scissors are always going missing.’

  Alice heaved a great sigh. ‘I don’t know if anyone will believe us. I’m not sure I care, except for Andrew’s sake. The world is rid of that man, and I can’t even feel any satisfaction. I don’t feel anything. I think I’m dead, too.’

  ‘Accidental death,’ said Alan as we drove slowly home. ‘We were all wrong. All our elaborate scenarios, and we were wrong. What are we going to do about it?’

  ‘I don’t know. Andrew is young. This could blight his life, and he did nothing wrong. Alice committed no crime, only the corrosive sin of hatred. She may recover. She may not. Did you notice she couldn’t even speak his name?’

  We drove the rest of the way in silence.

  I badly needed sleep, but I knew it wouldn’t come. I paced. Out to the balcony, in again. Washed my face in cold water. Paced.

  My phone rang. I almost didn’t answer, but it might be important.

  ‘Mrs Martin, Pat Underwood. I got your number from Amy. They told you.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘I don’t know. Everything I think of is the wrong thing.’

  ‘Yes. But I’ll tell you what I’m going to do. I’m sending them away. I’m not going to tell you, or anyone else, where they’re going. It may not be enough to give them a new life, but it’s all I can do.’

  ‘Yes.’

  I ended the call, took out of my purse the slip of paper with Pat’s address and phone number, and slowly tore it into tiny bits.

  Finally making a decision, we told John everything except Pat’s name. Somewhat to our surprise, he was philosophical about it. ‘There’s no proof of anything. They could be found, but to what purpose? In the end, it was an accident.’

  ‘Or perhaps a judgement,’ I suggested.

  ‘Perhaps. I’ll say a quiet word to the DCC, and he’ll quietly ramp down the investigation. It’s going to be one of those high-profile cases that never get solved.’

  ‘The media will crucify the police.’

  ‘Yes, but they’ll get tired of it eventually. Something new will crop up. All in a day’s work.’

  ‘Teresa will be devastated,’ I mourned. ‘She wants his murderer caught and punished, but there is no murderer.’

  ‘I’ve told her about identifying Elizabeth’s killer. Not his name, but the fact of his arrest. That helped her a bit. She went straight up to Duncan to talk to the family. Dorothy, I’ll keep a look-out for her. I think she might move to Duncan to be near the Cowichan people; I can try to find her a job there. Closer to her roots, I think she’ll heal. In time.�
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  He drove us to the airport two days later. ‘It’s a pity we never solved the murder,’ he said loudly and cheerfully as he left us. There were several bystanders. ‘But we will, eventually. We’re still trying to trace Alice Ingram and her friend, but it’s as if they’ve vanished into thin air. I still think she may be dead.’

  ‘You may be right.’ I meant it.

  ‘And I’m sorry we never had that tea at the Empress. Next time.’

  ‘Next time.’ But Alan and I both knew it might be a very long time before we wanted to come back.

  Our flight was booked straight to London without a stopover, though we had to change planes in Toronto. As we took off and passed into American air space, Alan pointed out the window. ‘Fireworks.’

  ‘Oh. Oh! Alan, it’s the Fourth of July!’

  He smiled, understanding my mixed feelings, and said nothing.

  Stiff and tired, we landed hours later at Heathrow, where Nigel met us and drove us home. Home to our dogs and cat, our garden, the friends we loved. Home, where we could begin to forget.