The Killer in the Choir

by Simon Brett

  Carole was forced to admit that it was.

  ‘If that’s the case, then I’ve no doubt about the rest of his revelations. That I never worked professionally as a singer. That I never had a problem with nodules on my vocal chords, which cut short that promising career. That I was basically a fraud. Was that the … burden of his message?’

  Again, there was no escaping a yes.

  ‘Good. I’m glad we’ve got that straight. Well, Carole, I’ve owned up to you readily enough, haven’t I?’

  ‘Yes. Yes, you have.’

  ‘So, do you really believe that keeping people from knowing about my small imposture is sufficient motive for me to kill someone?’

  ‘It does sound unlikely.’

  ‘It sounds more than unlikely. It sounds impossible. So, may I now perhaps be allowed to resume my morning routine of gazing wistfully out to sea?’

  ‘Yes. But can I just ask you one thing?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Why do you do it?’

  ‘Gaze wistfully out to sea?’

  ‘Well, that too, but I really meant why do you build up this tissue of lies about yourself, all that Glyndebourne stuff, the nodules …?’

  ‘I do it, Carole, for the same reason you do it.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘To retain my privacy as a human being. To resist the curiosity of others.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘You haven’t been in the choir, so you wouldn’t know, but I can assure you that none of the other members have ever asked me any personal questions. I’ve overheard them saying, “Oh, don’t for heaven’s sake, don’t get Elizabeth going. Don’t ask her anything, or you’ll get the full routine about her having been a rising star at Glyndebourne, until nodules on her vocal chords cut her career tragically short.”’ The woman spread her hands wide with satisfaction. ‘And in that way, I retain my privacy.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘Except, of course, I do apparently run the risk of people coming up to me out of the blue and accusing me of murder.’

  ‘I’m sorry, I—’

  ‘Oh, no worries. That doesn’t offend me. Amuses me, if anything. Also, brings home to me how wrong people can be.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, if you’re looking for rifts between Heather Mallett and other choir members, both in the church one and the pub one, by focusing your firepower on me, you are – if you will forgive the mixed metaphor – barking up a completely wrong tree.’

  ‘You mean there’s another tree I should be barking up?’ Elizabeth just smiled at her, infuriatingly. ‘Who? Who didn’t Heather get on with?’

  ‘Just a word to the wise … It’s often the case, in a set-up like a choir, that the people who ruffle most feathers are the newest arrivals.’

  ‘Newest arrivals? Are you talking about Jude?’

  ‘No, of course I’m not talking about Jude.’

  ‘Then who?’

  ‘Ask yourself …’ Elizabeth seemed to be having fun, playing with Carole now, ‘who is the most recent arrival in Fethering?’

  ‘Bet Harrison. Are you saying that Bet Harrison was at odds with Heather?’

  ‘Oh, well done. Eventually you got there.’ Elizabeth Browning made a skittish little clapping movement with her hands. ‘But you didn’t hear it from me.’ She looked out towards the English Channel. ‘Mm, I think I should be getting on with my busy task of looking out over the sea.’

  ‘Just a minute …’

  ‘What?’

  Hesitantly, Carole asked, ‘When you talked about the elaborate way in which you protect your privacy, you said I do something similar – what on earth did you mean by that?’

  Elizabeth Browning positively grinned. ‘Oh, come on, Carole. I’ve seen you around Fethering for years, always walking briskly, busy, busy, busy. Rushing from one thing you have to do to the next. Walking that dog of yours on the beach, always with a firm destination in mind, never daring to stop. I know enough about the symptoms to recognize loneliness when I see it, Carole.’

  No words could provide a proper response to this devastatingly accurate analysis. But, as Elizabeth moved towards the sea wall, Carole managed to ask, ‘And that, the gazing out to sea, why do you do that? Are you mourning a lost love? Or is that just another act?’

  ‘It’s a kind of act, maybe,’ came the reply. ‘But also, I do love looking at the sea. It’s like looking at a fire, constantly changing, constantly making new patterns, constantly destroying them and reshaping the pieces. I like that. I find it very soothing.

  ‘Also,’ she added, ‘you’d be surprised. Out here by the sea wall is, actually, quite a good place to pick up men.’

  And she moved back into her tragic French Lieutenant’s Woman pose, looking out over the unforgiving sea. Once again, thought Carole, remembering the words of Ruskin Dewitt, a reminder that it’s the quiet ones you have to watch.

  It was later the same day that Jude answered the telephone in Woodside Cottage.

  ‘Good afternoon,’ said the familiar regimental voice. ‘This is Brian Skelton here. Roddy’s father.’

  ‘Oh, hello.’

  ‘Listen, I hope you don’t mind my asking you this – and please say no if it’s inconvenient …’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Roddy’s come back. I said I’d let you know if anything happened … and he’s come back.’

  ‘That’s really good news.’

  ‘Yes.’ Brian Skelton didn’t sound totally convinced.

  ‘Why, what’s happened? Have you told the police he’s back?’

  ‘Of course. They’ve been questioning him ever since I told them he was here. They’ve only just finished with him.’

  ‘And …?’ asked Jude. ‘They haven’t arrested him?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘That’s good.’

  ‘Yes.’ Again, without complete conviction.

  ‘Did they actually say they’d eliminated him from their enquiries?’

  ‘Nothing as definite as that. In fact, they implied that they would need to question him further.’ The old man sounded very weary, uncertain how much more he could take. ‘Roddy’s in a bad way, Jude.’

  ‘Physically?’

  ‘A few scratches. Nothing that won’t heal. But it’s more the other aspect …’

  ‘His mental health?’

  ‘I suppose we have to call it that.’ It was said with the unwillingness of someone who had never in his life spoken of such matters.

  ‘Would it help if I were to come and see him?’

  ‘That’s what I was going to ask. I know it’s a cheek, but after what you did for my golfing buddy …’

  ‘I’ll be there as soon as I can.’

  TWENTY-ONE

  Smalting was along the coast to the west of Fethering. Its residents thought of it as the more upmarket of the two villages. The residents of Fethering thought the reverse, but on the objective valuations of estate agents, prices in Smalting were marginally higher. Which explained the air of smugness worn by many of the locals.

  The house in which Brian Skelton lived was small and neat, with probably, Jude judged from the exterior, only two bedrooms. She got the feeling that, when Roddy had been young and meeting Alice at the Fethering Yacht Club, the family would have lived in a bigger property. Whether the downsizing had occurred before or after the death of Mrs Skelton, she did not know. She dismissed her taxi driver. It was a Fethering-based firm she used often, and she said she might call him back for the return trip.

  The man who opened the front door to her was, as she had expected, the man she’d seen at the wedding. Tall and wiry, with white hair and fiercely black brows over pure blue eyes. Brian Skelton was slightly stooped with age, but still looked capable of a completing a couple of rounds of golf a week.

  ‘It’s good of you to come,’ he said.

  ‘No problem.’

  ‘Roddy’s very low.’ As he ushered her into the small, anonymous hall, he
asked, ‘Can I get you a coffee or …?’

  ‘No, thanks. I had some just before I left.’

  ‘He’s hardly talking to me. I don’t know if you’ll be able to get anything out of him.’

  ‘We’ll see. Is he in bed?’

  ‘No. In the sitting room at the back.’

  ‘Does he know I’m coming?’

  ‘I said you were. Whether he took it in …’ He shrugged.

  ‘Let’s go and see him.’

  ‘Yes. Do you want me to … er …?’ he asked awkwardly.

  ‘I think if you’re around when I first talk to him … then we’ll play it by ear.’

  ‘Fine.’ Still, he didn’t move towards the back of the house. ‘It is terrible for me, seeing my son in this condition. He was pretty shaken each time he came back from Afghanistan, but nothing like this.’

  ‘He’s probably reacting to the accumulated stress.’

  ‘Perhaps. I was a career soldier too, but we never had … Attitudes were different. I don’t know, perhaps we weren’t subjected to the same pressures. Certainly, we never talked about stuff like that.’

  ‘And do you think that was a good thing?’ asked Jude gently.

  The blue eyes looked piercingly into her brown ones. ‘I don’t know. Sometimes I do, sometimes I don’t.’

  ‘Let’s go and see Roddy.’

  ‘Yes.’

  The small sitting room opened on to a conservatory which caught the afternoon sunshine. Like the hall, it was furnished efficiently rather than affectionately. The only personal touches were family photographs, Roddy and a sister at various ages in various seaside and boating situations. There was no photographic evidence of the late Mrs Skelton. On the small table beside the armchair in which Roddy sat was a framed picture of him in his full uniformed glory, probably taken at his Sandhurst passing-out ceremony.

  The contrast between the beaming young man in the photograph and the figure who shrank into the armchair beside it could not have been more marked. Though their bulk was much the same. At the end of his Sandhurst training, Roddy had been at the peak of his physical fitness. In the years since he had put on enough weight to become almost chubby. But whatever he had been doing since the previous Saturday had stripped him of those excess pounds. He looked thin, gaunt, haunted. The jogging suit he wore hung loose on his frame. Though the scratches and bruises on his face had been cleaned up, they still looked livid and painful. His eyes were open, but unfocused.

  ‘Roddy,’ she said gently. ‘It’s Jude. Do you remember me?’

  He showed no signs of recognition. No signs of hearing her. He seemed locked into his own silence.

  ‘This is pretty much how he was when he arrived here,’ said his father. ‘Filthy dirty, scratched all over. I cleaned him up. He didn’t say much.’

  ‘Did he come here of his own accord?’

  ‘I think so. Nobody drove him, if that’s what you mean. Just a couple of days ago, there was a knock on the front door, and there he was.’

  ‘I think that’s a good sign, that he knew where to come back to.’

  ‘Maybe,’ said the old man, in the manner of someone who had clutched at so many straws recently that he wasn’t much excited by being offered a new one.

  ‘And you say he did talk to the police?’

  ‘Yes. They didn’t want me to be there while they questioned him, but I could hear his voice from the kitchen. He was definitely talking to them.’

  ‘And did he tell you where he’d been since he left the Craigmullen?’

  ‘He sort of implied he’d been on the Downs. He used to spend a lot of time out there when he was a boy, and his training taught him basic fieldcraft, so he wouldn’t have had a problem surviving.’

  ‘And those wounds on his face – was he attacked by someone?’

  ‘I don’t know for sure, but I think they’re probably just scratches from brambles and what-have-you.’

  ‘Hm.’ Gently, Jude took the young man’s hand. ‘Roddy. Can you hear me, Roddy?’ There was no reaction.

  ‘My instinct,’ said Brian Skelton, ‘is just to tell him to snap out of it.’

  ‘I don’t think that’s a good idea, Mr Skelton. Your son is seriously ill.’

  ‘Mentally ill?’

  ‘Yes.’

  The old man groaned. He was out of his depth in such talk. ‘I just never imagined … He was always such a happy child, full of enthusiasm for everything. And he loves the army. All right, he’s probably seen some pretty nasty stuff at times, Afghanistan certainly, but he’s basically always been as sane as I am.’

  Jude didn’t comment. She wasn’t about to challenge Brian Skelton’s lifetime disbelief in the existence of mental illness. Instead, she said, ‘If you wouldn’t mind, I’d like to spend some time with Roddy on his own …?’

  ‘Yes, yes, of course. Absolutely fine. I’ll go and … er … make myself a cup of coffee. Get you one?’

  ‘No thank you, I’m fine.’

  ‘Oh yes, you said. Good, excellent. Well, I’ll … erm …’ And he shuffled awkwardly out of the room, closing the door behind him.

  ‘Roddy …’ Jude kept her voice very low. ‘I’m just going to try a healing technique that will relax you. It doesn’t involve my actually touching you, but …’

  She stopped, because she suddenly noticed that a spark of life had come into his eyes.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I just can’t talk when the Aged P is in the room. I know I’ve let everyone down, but I’ve let him down most of all.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘He always wanted me to be a son he could be proud of. That’s why I went into the army. To please him. And I’ve let him down. He wanted a son who could cope with life, not a bloody basket case.’ Unbidden, tears were now trickling down his scratched cheeks. ‘Oh God, and now I’m blubbing like a new bug on his first day at prep school. Thank God the Aged P isn’t in the room to witness this!’

  ‘Roddy, don’t worry about it. Listen, you’re seriously ill.’

  ‘Ill? Sick in the head. Unable to hack it. The Aged P wouldn’t regard that as a proper illness.’

  ‘In this case, his opinion doesn’t matter. I’ve had some medical training …’ (She didn’t mention the fact that some people, like Carole, would not regard the courses she had undergone as proper medical training.) ‘… and I’m telling you you’re ill.’

  ‘Finished,’ he said despairingly. ‘Come to the end of the road.’

  ‘No, Roddy. You’ve got a lot more road to travel.’

  ‘I don’t think I can face it. I want it all to end. I can’t take any more.’

  ‘What did you do,’ asked Jude softly, ‘after you left Alice at the Craigmullen last Saturday night?’

  ‘I drove up into the Downs. There’s an abandoned barn there, somewhere I used to play as a kid, somewhere I used to take girlfriends to … when … I was older, you know, teenager … I hid my car in there and I … went out into the Downs, for … I don’t know how long … I just wandered around … I didn’t look where I was going, I … couldn’t think what to do. And I saw it, I saw the solution to all my problems. I saw how to stop hurting the Aged P … how to stop hurting Alice … how to stop hurting everyone who ever came into contact with me. And I knew what I had to do.

  ‘I went back to the car. There was a hunting knife in the glove compartment, I don’t know how long it had been there, left over from some expedition I’d been on. Anyway, I took it. There was a place I knew, used to go blackberrying there as a kid. Knot of trees, surrounded by brambles, nearly impossible to get into. But I did make my way in – that’s when I got these.’ He rubbed a hand over his thorn-raked face.

  ‘And I knew it was the right place. A body could stay there undiscovered for years, or at least until the next blackberry season. And I knew that was where I would solve my problems.’

  There was a silence. Then, with searing self-contempt, he said, ‘But when it came to the crunch, I couldn’t do it. I put the k
nife to my throat, I was geared up to do it, but when the moment came, I … couldn’t do it. I couldn’t bring about that simple solution to all the things that are wrong with my life. I was a failure at that, just as I’d always been a failure at everything else.

  ‘So, I threw the knife into the brambles and went back to the car. I drove back here … I don’t know why … maybe to admit to the Aged P how totally I had let him down.’

  There was a silence. Then Jude said, ‘And presumably, when you came back here, that was the first you knew about Heather’s death?’

  ‘Yes. Another disaster, to add to all of the existing disasters.’

  Silence again. Then, from Jude, ‘I have spoken to Alice, you know.’

  ‘Have you?’ He sounded as interested as if she’d mentioned someone he’d never met, in another country.

  ‘She will be so relieved to know that you’re all right.’

  ‘All right!’ he bellowed suddenly. ‘All right? Is this what you call bloody “all right”?’

  ‘Has someone told her?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘That you’re still alive?’

  ‘I don’t know. The Aged P said she had kept ringing. Maybe he told her.’ Again, it was not a matter of consequence to him.

  ‘Roddy … Alice did tell me … what happened between you at the Craigmullen.’

  ‘Or rather what didn’t happen between us at the Craigmullen.’

  ‘And I know you blame yourself, but—’

  ‘Of course I bloody blame myself! Who else is there to blame?’

  Jude didn’t reply at that moment. She knew there was only one answer to his question. Leonard Mallett. But that was a story that would require careful, gradual telling.

  ‘Alice still loves you, and I am sure, with appropriate help, you can get back together and—’

  ‘Get back together to be a laughing stock to the entire bloody world!’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You wouldn’t know, because you’ve never spent time in an all-male environment like the army. You don’t know what men talk about, you don’t know the jokes they throw back and forth. Jokes about potency, jokes about being able to keep it up, jokes about wedding night disasters. And they’ll find out … They certainly will, if Alice is going to go around telling what happened to all and sundry!’