Molly looked at Charlie, speechless.
‘It was a simple plan, and it would have worked if I’d hired someone better than that young gigolo,’ Charlie said, frowning. ‘It should have been easy. All he needed to do was push you into the damn canal, maybe hold your head under for a while. Instead, he rang me to tell me he hadn’t been able to do it.’ Charlie’s top lip curled. ‘He said he’d tried the second morning, but you’d been startled and ran off before he could stop you.’ Reaching across, he picked up her hand and dropped it. ‘You should be sleepier,’ he muttered.
Molly remembered Pleasant shouting after her. The one word she’d caught, understand. Had he been trying to warn her, was that why he’d wanted to meet her? Maybe he’d discovered it was too big a leap from seducing vulnerable rich women to killing them.
She felt her skin crawl when Charlie picked up her hand and knew she was on dangerous ground when his words sounded frustrated. Her eyes drooping shut, her chin dropped onto her chest; she struggled to lift it and opened her eyes to stare at him. ‘There was something in those capsules you gave me, wasn’t there?’ Her words were slurred.
‘Jack said they made you sleepy. I told you I was going to make sure this time. You are the luckiest woman, but third time lucky is what I say.’
Third time. ‘It was you who pushed me under the car?’
‘It should have worked,’ Charlie growled, ‘and this would all be over.’
‘I don’t understand. Why are you doing this?’
He pushed a hand through his hair. ‘I suppose telling you why you need to die is the least I can do. That moronic husband of yours persuaded me to invest a quarter of a million in some foolproof scheme of his. I borrowed the money from the company. If it had worked, we were going to be very rich. I could have returned the money, and nobody would have been any wiser. But his scheme went belly-up, taking all our money with it.’ Standing, Charlie paced the floor restlessly again. ‘He said he’d get my money back and gambled even more, but he was on a losing streak.’ He stood over her. ‘You’re starting to look paler, about bloody time.’
She knew she was repeating herself, but the only words she seemed able to say were, ‘I don’t understand.’
Reaching a hand down, he brushed back a lock of her hair. ‘You are quite beautiful, you know, it seems a shame.’ He patted her cheek and moved away. ‘Money, Molly. Your life insurance. Once you die, Jack will get it, and he’ll be able to repay me.’ Charlie smiled unpleasantly. ‘He’ll have no choice; I won’t let him out of my sight until he signs it over.’
It was almost a relief to know everything. Almost everything. ‘Lucien Pleasant, did you kill him?’
Charlie shrugged. ‘He insisted on meeting me to explain what had gone wrong. Then he wanted 10K to keep quiet. Luckily, I never go unprepared, and caught him off-guard when I rammed that knife into his belly.’
Molly stared at the pleasant, unremarkable face of a monster. There was one more question she had to ask, one thing she had to know. ‘Does Jack…?’ She couldn’t continue.
Charlie turned and gave a short laugh. ‘Does Jack know what I’m planning? Is that what you want to know?’ He sat beside her again, staring at her the way a lab technician would stare at a specimen. ‘He was really cut up about you and Lucien, you know, convinced the two of you had done the horizontal mambo. And of course, I couldn’t tell him the truth because, no, he doesn’t know. He’d never have played along. For one thing, he really loves you, and for another, apart from his gambling habit, he’s a pretty decent guy.’
‘I thought you were,’ she said, her voice thick.
Charlie shook his head. ‘People see what they want to see, haven’t you learned that by now?’ Standing, he reached for her hand and pulled her to her feet, ignoring her whimper of pain. ‘It’s lovely to sit here chatting with you, Molly, but it’s time for the next phase of my plan. A nice hot bath. When they find you, they’ll assume you got weak and slipped under.’
‘Of course,’ she muttered, swaying as she tried to stay on her feet. ‘It has to look like an accident, doesn’t it?’
He dragged her along. ‘Yes, clever girl, it does. But don’t worry, it will.’
In the hallway, Molly grabbed hold of the banisters with her free hand. She was damned if she was going to make it easy for him. He merely laughed and yanked her away, laughing harder when she squealed with pain.
Then she heard it, distant but unmistakeable. The sound of sirens. Charlie was too busy trying to get her up the stairs to notice. Every time he got one hand free, she’d grab onto the banisters with the other. His expression was growing more frustrated, angrier. He was resisting the temptation to hit her, she guessed that wouldn’t last much longer. She needed to keep him occupied until the police got there.
The sirens were growing louder. Charlie’s head jerked up and he gave a grunt of disbelief before looking down at her face. Whatever he saw there released his rage and with a growl of fury, he raised his hand and punched her.
She staggered from the blow. Already unsteady, she slipped and tumbled down the stairs, landing in a heap at the bottom. He jumped down beside her and fired a kick at her head, missing when she rolled away and curled up. The sirens were deafening, the police had to be outside. With a vicious yell, Charlie pulled his foot back again and took aim.
Molly had only one weapon left; she opened her mouth and screamed, a blood-curdling sound that echoed around the hallway.
It worked. Instead of kicking her, he turned away and looked frantically around. There were shouts from outside the front door. Panicked, he bent down, grabbed her hair and yanked it. ‘Is there another way out?’
‘Yes,’ she said, gritting her teeth as he wrenched her head harder. ‘Go out the patio door. At the end of the garden there’s a gate that’ll take you out onto the road behind.’ She was lying. The garden was long and narrow and surrounded by a high wall. But it was dark, it would take him a while to discover she’d lied and by then the police would have broken through the front.
Unfortunately, Charlie wasn’t a fool. His hand still gripping her hair, he dragged her to her feet. ‘Show me,’ he said, pushing her towards the living room.
Another shout from outside distracted him for a second, and Molly broke free. But she was too slow, he grabbed hold of her shirt and pulled her back, catching hold of her arm and twisting it painfully as he pushed her into the living room, his eyes darting towards the patio door. She yelled out, dragging her feet both from pain and a determination that she would not be taken with him.
A loud crash was followed by the sound of voices. Charlie, with a final jerk of Molly’s arm, gave up the idea of taking her with him. He shoved her away and ran for the garden.
Molly lay dazed on the floor as heavy feet came running in, passing her to follow Charlie, shouts and calls fading as they chased after him.
‘Where can he go?’ a quiet voice asked, and she looked up to see Fanshawe bending over her.
She managed a satisfied smile. ‘Nowhere, it’s a walled garden. He can’t escape.’ The pain in her arm easing, she struggled to sit up. Fanshawe put an arm around her waist and helped her to the sofa. ‘You heard everything?’ she said, indicating her phone.
He nodded. ‘Every word, that was very clever, and very brave of you.’
‘It was lucky I’d put your number in speed dial,’ she said, hugging her injured arm to her chest.
Fanshawe sat in the chair opposite, ignoring the shouts coming from the garden. ‘What about those pills he gave you? Should you go to the hospital?’
Molly slid her fingers down the side of the sofa, felt around for a few seconds, then pulled up the two capsules Forster had handed her earlier. ‘I don’t like taking pills, so I palmed them. The ones the hospital gave me made me feel very woozy.’ She rolled the capsules on the palm of her hand. ‘I wouldn’t have taken them anyway, but I’m almost certain these aren’t the same ones.’
Fanshawe pulled an evidence bag from his pocket, opened it and held it out. She knocked them into it. ‘Where do you keep the remainder?’ he asked, holding the bag up to look at the two capsules.
‘In the en-suite bathroom cabinet, top of the stairs, first on the left.’
‘I’ll get them before I leave, forensics will be able to compare them.’
‘He’ll be put away, won’t he?’
‘We have him for attempted murder,’ Fanshawe said, ‘and I have no doubt that when we search his home and check his phone and computer, we’ll find enough evidence to prove he murdered Pleasant.’
Molly gave a long sigh of relief and turned when she heard raised voices and heavy steps.
Charlie was looking pale and subdued, handcuffs on his wrists, a police officer gripping each arm. He didn’t look at her as they passed by and left through the front door.
‘You’ll need to get the Yale lock fixed,’ Fanshawe said, staring after them.
‘It’s not a problem, we normally use the sash lock for security anyway.’ She rubbed eyes that were prickling with tiredness and tears.
‘We’ll need you to write a statement.’ Fanshawe got to his feet and looked down at her. ‘The sooner you do so the better, but I think tomorrow will be time enough. You look done in.’ He stood a moment more. ‘We would still like to speak to your husband, Mrs Chatwell. He’ll be able to corroborate some of what Mr Forster said.’
‘Charlie said he was staying at his place.’ She saw the detective’s surprise. ‘He must have told me before I pressed the speed dial for you.’
‘We’ll have a warrant to search Mr Forster’s apartment within an hour. If your husband’s still there I’ll fill him in on what’s happened. I’m sure he’ll want to come home.’
When Fanshawe left, Molly turned the key in the lock, slipped the security chain in place and hobbled back to the sofa. When Jack heard what had happened, she was sure he’d rush home, there was no point in dragging herself up the stairs.
Her head ached where Charlie had wrenched her hair. She put a hand up to it and rubbed it gently. She supposed she should feel horror and disbelief that a man she knew had tried to kill her, but all she could seem to feel was intense relief. Jack’s gambling problem, their precarious financial state, they paled into insignificance in comparison.
Exhausted, she lifted her legs onto the sofa and relaxed back. With her mind whirling, she didn’t think she’d sleep but she did, a restless sleep where Charlie chased her and caught her again and again.