Chapter Forty-Three

The telephone calls had been made. Now all they could do was sit and wait and hope that Peter Prance was right. He had been allowed a short rest in one of the cells. Chris McGill had also taken the opportunity to get a couple of hours’ sleep in Tim’s office. Tim himself, bursting with a kind of fevered energy, had meantime been briefing members of his team by phone.

“You say that you want to help us now, Mr. Prance. Perhaps you might care to tell us what you know.”

It was 6.45 on Friday morning. Chris McGill, who a few hours previously had seemed almost comatose with fatigue, was bright and alert now. Peter Prance himself had also regained some of his former ebullience. Tim was on an adrenalin high, determined to power on.

“I’m not going to tell you anything that you couldn’t have worked out for yourself,” said Peter Prance, chipper and combative once more.

“That may be. I’m assuming, however, that you may not only have outwitted us, but also got Hedley Atkins to endorse your version of events?”

“Yes, indeed.”

“I congratulate you. Please continue.”

Peter Prance looked at Chris McGill.

“You don’t have to co-operate, Mr. Prance, but given what you’ve just told us, I strongly suggest that you do. Detective Inspector Yates may be better disposed to discover some mitigating circumstances.”

Peter Prance shot Tim a malicious glance.

“Indeed.” He steepled his fingers.

“I am quite prepared to admit that I cultivated Hedley, for a number of reasons. One of these was undoubtedly that I thought that he would be likely to offer me a home if my mother refused to renew the lease on the flat where I was living. Another was that I had discovered who his mother was and I was intrigued. I’d very much like to have met her.”

“Why is that?”

“Oh, one meets so few people of distinction – and notoriety is a form of distinction, or at least of distinctiveness, don’t you think? Almost everyone of a certain age can tell you that Dorothy Atkins was the woman who murdered her mother-in-law, even now.

“Anyway, at first I didn’t tell Hedley that I knew who his mother was, mainly because he hadn’t mentioned her to me. It was obvious that he was sensitive about her. But I did take a profound interest in the murder case. When Hedley was out at work,” – he rolled his eyes, and stressed the word with distaste – “I made it my business to research it as thoroughly as I could. I’m quite a keen amateur sleuth, you know,” – he batted his eyelids at Tim – “and as I gathered more and more information, I made a list of the things which puzzled me. Allow me to enumerate them now.” He shot back his cuffs and held up one slender immaculately manicured hand. He ticked off the points that he was making on his fingers, striking them lightly with the index finger of the other hand.

“Number One, Tirzah – I will call her Tirzah, since Hedley always does – had no motive for murdering her mother-in-law. Number Two, no-one managed to get to the bottom of the cryptic comment about Doris Atkins being ‘too fond’ of gardening. Number Three, Tirzah did not admit to the murder, but she did not deny it either. She must have had a reason for this. Number Four, all of these previous points could be explained if Tirzah were insane at the time, but I have found absolutely no convincing evidence to suggest that she was, and a great deal to the contrary. Number Five, some of the inmates of the shop at Westlode Street appeared never to have been questioned, even routinely, about Doris Atkins’ death – especially Bryony, her grand-daughter. In fact,” Peter Prance added, looking up at Tim with his black eyes snapping, “Tirzah’s daughter’s existence was so well-concealed that I have to confess that I did not find out about it during the course of my researches. No, no, it was Hedley who told me about her. Inadvertently he gave away some information about her, and one or two other things as well, during the course of the most terrible tantrum. I was quite frightened by it, I can tell you.”

Peter Prance nodded his head vigorously several times.

“Now,” he said, “this tantrum of Hedley’s was very important, because it helped me to make sense of some of these strange details – made the stranger, I have to say, by the fact that the police of the time did not pick up on them either.” He shot Tim a look of defiance. Tim returned his gaze steadily.

“The Atkins family – both Atkins families, the ones who lived at the shop and the ones who lived in Chestnut Avenue – were not close, as I think you will agree. Individuals within each family weren’t close, either, with the exception of Colin Atkins and his mother, who idolised each other. The first thing you may ask yourself, therefore,” – he steepled his fingers, and shot Tim another of his sidelong looks: Tim wondered if he was consciously parodying the typical language of a judge’s instructions to a jury – “is what persuaded the younger Atkins family, by which I mean the Chestnut Avenue branch, to move in, even temporarily, with the older branch, by which I mean the residents of Westlode Street.”

“Dorothy Atkins said that it was to help Colin look after his aged mother.”

“Yes, indeed: I know that she said that; and I also believe it to have been true. As I think we are both aware, Tirzah usually told the truth. But I’m not talking about Colin’s reason for their taking up residence in his house: I’m talking about Tirzah’s reason. Why did she agree to it? What possible reason could she have had for humouring her husband’s uncle?”

“Ronald Atkins thought that it was because she wanted to ingratiate herself with Colin, so that he would leave Ronald the house – as in fact he did in the end, though because it was not entirely his to leave – it had never formally been given to him by his brothers after their father died – it took rather a long time for him to get probate.”

“Yes, yes, but now you’re giving me Ronald Atkins’s reason. I don’t doubt that is correct, too. And also more or less proven is Tirzah’s acquisitiveness. I’m sure that she would have loved to get her hands on that property. But consider again: there is evidence that she was thinking of leaving Ronald. Presumably she would have stood to gain nothing from her husband’s relatives if she and he were separated or divorced.”

He paused to see what effect his words would have, and was evidently disappointed when Tim replied:

“If you’re talking about her affair with Frank Needham, I have met Mr. Needham now, and he tells me that the affair more or less fizzled out after Doris Atkins’ death.”

Peter Prance recovered his composure quickly.

“Yes, yes,” he said again, rather testily this time. “But that was with hindsight: for some reason she did not want to continue the affair with Mr. Needham after the calamitous events that happened to her in the autumn of 1975. According to Mr. Needham, whose recollections you have evidently gathered and whom presumably we have no reason to doubt. That is all part of the mystery, don’t you think? At least one of the people in that household – I mean the Westlode Street household – had some kind of hold over Tirzah. Whatever it was, it prompted her to do three things: to make the temporary move to Westlode Street to assist with the care of her husband’s grandmother; to break off the relationship with Frank Needham; and to take the blame for a murder which she didn’t commit.” Peter Prance allowed his voice to crescendo, then tossed his head back with a little laugh. He could see that this time he had both surprised and intrigued his listener.

“Oh, yes, Inspector. I realise that I can’t prove it conclusively, but I am absolutely persuaded that Tirzah was innocent of murder. Not only did she have no motive, but there was someone else in that house who had a very strong reason for killing Doris.”

“I suppose that you are going to tell me that it was Hedley? Ironical, isn’t it, that you seem to be exerting a hold over him in the same way that you say that someone was also threatening Dorothy Atkins?”

“Oh, I wouldn’t say I was threatening Hedley. That is a very ugly word indeed! One has ultimately to face up to one’s heritage, a fact that Hedley appears to be able to confront with only the most extreme reluctance. But you are wrong about the irony – or shall we say, what you perceive to be a coincidence? Because actually it isn’t a coincidence at all, but the self-same thing. Hedley is afraid of the same thing that also terrified Tirzah. Would you like me to continue?”

Tim felt a very strong urge to slap Peter Prance’s malicious little face.

“Let’s have less beating about the bush, shall we? I know that there is an art to the building up of suspense, but you’ve had your bit of fun now. Tell us what this fucking ‘secret’ was that in your opinion seems to have haunted the Atkins’ family, and I’ll tell you whether I think that there is an ounce of credibility in it, or whether I just think that you’ve been wasting police time.”

“Oh dear, that isn’t very nice, is it? I shall have to . . .”

Andy Carstairs burst into the room.

“You’re wanted on the phone, sir, immediately. It is Chief Inspector Collins of the Liverpool Police.”