FORTY-THREE

‘This is a deeply dysfunctional family. Both parents had been married before, and none too happily. Both of them brought a child from those marriages. Mike Clarke was a man of violent tendencies with little ability to control them; Tricia was equally combative, especially when it came to her son, David. Mike’s relationship to his mother, Ada, and to his daughter, Joanna, verged on the paranoid. Clearly there was – or at least had been – some sort of bond of affection between Tricia and Mike, but between David and his stepfather there was very rapidly marked antipathy. At best, Mike ignored him; at worst, he looked for every opportunity to make him suffer. Often, I think, physically. Not surprisingly, it was the source of a lot of resentment between Tricia and Mike.’

‘How the hell do you know all this?’

Jean suggested, ‘Your father?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘And I saw them in action, too.’ Both of which were the truth, just not all of it.

Masson grunted. ‘Sounds like another fairy story, Doctor.’

Despite this less than glowing review of my performance up to that point, I continued. ‘And then Joanna developed a schoolgirl crush on Marlene Jeffries; one which, moreover, was reciprocated. There was no way that it wasn’t going to become the subject for a lot of rumours around the school, which meant that David got to hear about it; he in turn used it as a way of getting at both his stepsister and stepfather. I wonder if he found some letters that Marlene Jeffries had written to Joanna. He knew that Mike Clarke would find the concept of his daughter being involved in a lesbian relationship beyond his ability to bear so, of course, he at once told him. It was as cruel as killing a kitten, but it was done in a deliciously subtle way. He waited until they had returned home from the parents’ evening at the school to show him the letters that Marlene Jeffries had written to his daughter. They had met Miss Jeffries just a couple of hours before, and she had appeared to be nothing more than a caring teacher; this deception only magnified exponentially the effect. Mike Clarke was primed and ready to kill.’

‘How did he know she’d still be at the school?’ Masson sounded churlish, like a man who felt cuckolded.

I shrugged. ‘I don’t suppose he planned ahead. From my experience of Mike Clarke, he didn’t think more than ten minutes into the future. He went to the school first and that was where he found her. She was alone in the gym and he let rip.’

‘This is all speculation.’

‘Some of it,’ I admitted, but I wasn’t about to feel cowed. ‘Can you prove it’s wrong?’

Which he couldn’t.

Jean suggested gently, ‘Why did he kill Yvette Mangon?’

‘Because David Clarke pointed out that not only were there letters from Marlene Jeffries to Joanna, there were also possibly letters going in the opposite direction. He left his stepfather to ponder the potential consequences. He manipulated him into a state of paranoia about them.’

‘And he just went around there and killed her for them?’

‘I don’t know, but I should think he went around there in a state of extreme fear that Yvette Mangon had some evidence that could give him a motive for a vicious murder. I imagine that he lost his temper once again.’

Masson looked less than impressed. ‘Have you got anything to substantiate any of this?’

Jean was a little more accepting. ‘Do you know if he found the letters?’ she asked.

‘I haven’t the foggiest,’ I replied cheerfully because, as far as I was concerned, it didn’t matter. Apparently it did to the good Inspector, for he made the kind of sound that people make when they have something stuck to the roof of their mouth. I continued, ‘I would suspect that he didn’t, because I can testify he was a bit jumpy about that time.’ The bruise on my jaw line had faded, but there was still an ache in the mandible beneath.

Jean said thoughtfully, ‘So, you think that David then forged a blackmail note from Jeremy Gillman so that his stepfather would seek him out and kill him?’

‘David’s always had problems at school. If you ask his teachers, he’s been something of a trial for a lot of them, but especially for Yvette Mangon and Jeremy Gillman. Those two he had real run-ins with. Those two hated him and he hated them, and he had found the perfect weapon with which to get his revenge. His stepfather was none too bright, and easy to manipulate; David knew exactly which levers to pull, and he pulled them.’

She asked, ‘Where does Arthur Silsby fit into all this?’

‘Nowhere. He’s just punishing himself because he had been told what was going on between one of his pupils and a member of the teaching staff, and he didn’t want to know; he allowed himself to be fobbed with Miss Jeffries’ convincing denials. He feels worthless and ashamed; he believes he has betrayed a sacred trust.’

Jean’s face was closed down, a frown twisting it, although not in an unattractive way. Masson had his eyes closed and when it came, his sigh could have inflated a bouncy castle but he said nothing. Both Jean and I were left waiting for his next withering comment or sarcastic question.

Neither of which came through.

In the end, he enquired of no one in particular, ‘These notes –’ he indicated the ones I had produced for his delectation – ‘these are practice notes, right?’

‘I think so. I think that David Clarke can be extremely conscientious when he wants to be.’

Suddenly it was Jean’s turn to be the epitome of doubt. ‘Are you really expecting us to accept this story without a single shred of physical evidence? There is no forensic evidence connecting Mike Clarke to the deaths, let alone providing some basis for the idea that he was in turn manipulated by his stepson.’ What could I say? She was right. ‘And how did Mike Clarke find out who had sent the note, and where he lived?’

To my surprise and, I think, Jean’s, Masson got there first. ‘David told him. Probably not in an obvious way, but done subtly, done so that Mike Clarke wouldn’t know he was being used.’ He spoke in a voice that sounded, if not totally convinced, at least not completely contemptuous.

‘Yes,’ I said, encouraged. Jean looked as if she had just discovered that her cocktail sausage was a piece of poodle poo.

He nodded in the deepest of deep consideration. ‘If I were David Clarke – evil mastermind, perhaps the most manipulative teenager on God’s green earth – I wouldn’t have hung on to my practice attempts at the blackmail note. I’d have got rid of them pretty sharpish.’

‘He thought that he had.’

He cocked his head at me, one eyebrow raised. ‘But he hadn’t?’

‘He threw them away in the dustbin,’ I said.

Jean scoffed. ‘Mike Clarke made a habit of going through the bins, did he?’

I asked, ‘Aren’t you forgetting something . . . or someone?’

She looked at Masson, who looked at me and then said, ‘Joanna Clarke.’