‘Something odd,’ Jack Woodford said, as his head appeared round Lloyd’s door. ‘Got a minute?’
‘All the time you want,’ Lloyd said. ‘Something odd means we’re getting there.’
Jack looked less certain of that than Lloyd, as he came in, a sheet of paper in his hand.
Judy arrived before Jack had closed the door. ‘I thought I’d better report in,’ she said.
Lloyd had indeed successfully avoided her the day before, after his visit to the morgue; he had rather hoped that she wouldn’t come in today.
‘You thought you’d get away from your in-laws,’ said Jack.
‘That too,’ she confessed with a smile, taking off the new leather coat that she was wearing.
‘Jack’s about to give us something to go on,’ said Lloyd, glad that Jack was there. Their row had been yesterday; it seemed like a year ago. But it was still only Boxing Day, and this interminable festive season ground on around them, with no shops open and no proper programmes on the telly, even if he’d had the energy to watch.
Jack laid the sheet of paper on Lloyd’s desk. ‘My lads have been checking up on the people Mrs Wheeler visited,’ he said. ‘On Christmas Eve.’
Lloyd glanced down at the list. Beside the names, Jack had jotted down times.
‘They’re only approximate,’ Jack said, as Lloyd opened his mouth to ask. ‘People didn’t think to look at their watches in case the vicar’s wife needed an alibi for murder.’
‘No,’ said Lloyd.
‘But she says she left the vicarage at about ten to eight – right?’ He didn’t wait for the unnecessary confirmation. ‘And the earliest visit we can find is . ..’ He leant over, reading the sheet upside down. ‘Mrs Anthony,’ he said, running his finger down the list of names. ‘And that was at eight twenty-five. The thing is – Mrs Anthony’s house is in a row of cottages right beside the drive up to the vicarage.’
Lloyd remembered passing them just after they had spoken to the snow-plough crew.
‘If Mrs W. had gone on her hands and knees into a force eight,’ Jack went on, ‘she’d have taken no more than five minutes getting there. Which seems to my untrained eye to leave half an hour unaccounted for.’
‘Well, well, well,’ said Lloyd briskly, looking over at Judy. ‘I think we’d better go and talk to this Mrs Anthony – don’t you?’ On the way, Judy expanded a little on the notes she’d left him on her interview with Joanna. She had obviously believed her; Lloyd trusted Judy’s instincts, but he had a question.
‘If she’d made it up with him,’ he asked, ‘why didn’t she go up to see him?’ He slowed down to let Judy read the numbers on the cottages.
‘Eleven, thirteen – seventeen must be that one with the yellow door,’ she said. ‘I don’t know. That is a bit odd.’
‘It’s not like you to miss a trick,’ he said.
She got out of the car without replying. He’d said it to annoy her. She had said nothing at all about their row, or about his parting shot. In fact, she was behaving as though nothing had happened, obeying Lloyd’s own rule that their private relationship mustn’t affect their work. But she was much more of a professional than he would ever be, and the ease with which she donned her policeman’s helmet irritated him. Irrationally, he conceded. But it did.
Mrs Anthony took some time to come to the door; when it opened, they saw a frail old lady backing her wheelchair away. Lloyd introduced himself and Judy, and they were shown into a small, neat living room.
‘Do you remember Mrs Wheeler coming to see you on Christmas Eve?’ Judy asked, raising her voice slightly, enunciating clearly.
Lloyd suppressed a smile as Mrs Anthony regarded Judy with a bleak eye. ‘I am almost eighty years old,’ she said. ‘I sometimes have to use this wheelchair. I would prefer to be thirty-five and walking about, like you, but I do assure you that neither of these disadvantages affects my hearing, my acumen, or my memory.’
Judy’s face grew pink. ‘Oh – I do apologise if I gave the impression—’
‘You did,’ said Mrs Anthony sharply.
It gave Lloyd just a little perverse pleasure to see the efficient Sergeant Hill so firmly on the carpet.
‘I’m sorry,’ Judy said.
‘And now that we have established that I can remember all the way back to the day before yesterday, what did you want to know?’
‘We’d like to know what time she got here,’ Lloyd asked.
‘Eight twenty-five. Between then and half past, that is,’ said Mrs Anthony, without hesitation.
‘Can you be sure about that?’ Judy asked.
‘What was the point of asking me if you don’t think I can tell the time?’ demanded Mrs Anthony.
Judy looked uncomfortable. ‘I just wondered how you could be so precise,’ she said.
‘Because the programme I was watching had just got to the end of part one,’ said Mrs Anthony, relenting slightly. ‘The advertisements were on when the doorbell rang, and I hoped that whoever it was wouldn’t stay. She did, though,’ she added.
‘How did she seem?’ Lloyd asked.
‘Not her usual self,’ said Mrs Anthony.
‘You know her quite well?’ asked Judy.
‘If I didn’t I wouldn’t know what her usual self was, would I?’ snapped the old lady. ‘I’ve known her all her life.’
Lloyd decided that he didn’t really like witnessing Judy being eaten for breakfast after all. ‘And what was her usual self?’ he asked.
The world-weary eyes regarded him. ‘She was always a very determined girl,’ she said, thoughtfully.
‘Oh?’ Lloyd, who had been standing by the radiator, came over and sat near to Mrs Anthony. ‘What makes you say that?’ he asked.
‘Poor George Wheeler,’ she said, smiling softly, as though at some memory, ‘I don’t imagine he’d still be a vicar if he hadn’t married Marian.’
A silence fell, and Judy jotted something down. She looked up, frowning slightly. ‘What do you mean, Mrs Anthony?’ she asked. ‘Why wouldn’t he still be a vicar?’
Mrs Anthony smiled her soft smile again, but the eyes remained lack-lustre. ‘Lack of faith,’ she said. ‘But Marian thought it was right to encourage George’s scepticism; she thought it made him more accessible. One of the boys. And Marian always thinks she’s right,’ she added.
‘And you don’t think she was right?’
Mrs Anthony raised her eyebrows, ‘I think a leaning toward religion is preferable in a vicar,’ she said, ‘I think if George had married someone else, he would have realised that a lot sooner than he has.’
‘You think he has realised now?’ asked Lloyd.
‘Oh yes,’ she said. ‘His sermon at the midnight service made that obvious. To me, at any rate.’
‘And what was his sermon?’
‘Being true to yourself,’ she said.
Judy and Lloyd exchanged glances as Mrs Anthony wheeled herself closer to the radiator. ‘Marian just wants people to be true to her,’ she said. ‘That’s all she asks. But she couldn’t protect George from his own thoughts,’ she said, turning up the temperature control. ‘She had a damn good try, though. I’ll give her that.’ Judy, perhaps a little apprehensively, looked up. ‘Do you think this has got something to do with what happened at the vicarage?’ she asked.
‘Let’s just say it doesn’t surprise me that you’re asking about Marian Wheeler,’ she said. ‘It doesn’t surprise me in the least.’ She wheeled herself back to where Lloyd and Judy sat. ‘And I’ll tell you how she seemed,’ she said to Lloyd. ‘She seemed upset. Nervous.’
Judy’s face assumed an expression Lloyd knew well. ‘How did this manifest itself?’ she asked, her tone matching the disbelieving look.
‘For one thing,’ said Mrs Anthony, her eyes suddenly alive,
‘her hands were shaking so much that she spilled coffee on her dress.’
And Judy, overmatched, took refuge in her note-taking.
‘Fortunately,’ continued Mrs Anthony, ‘most of it went in the saucer.’
‘Did she say what was upsetting her?’ asked Lloyd.
‘She’d hardly do that, would she, Mr Lloyd?’
It wasn’t a crime to be upset, as Lloyd pointed out to Judy on their way up to the vicarage.
Marian Wheeler opened the door, and gave a short sigh when she saw them.
‘Joanna’s resting,’ she said. ‘Unless it’s really important, I’d rather you didn’t talk to her just now.’
Lloyd smiled. ‘I quite understand,’ he said. ‘But it’s you we’ve really come to see, Mrs Wheeler.’
‘Oh.’ There was a strange mixture of apprehension and relief on her face. ‘You’d better come in.’
They followed her through to the kitchen, where George Wheeler was drying dishes.
‘It’s the police,’ said Mrs Wheeler.
‘Any further forward?’ asked Wheeler, turning round.
‘Things are moving,’ said Lloyd smoothly. ‘Slowly, I’m afraid. But they are moving.’
‘Good.’
‘Why we’re here, Mrs Wheeler, is to clear up a small . . . inconsistency, I suppose.’
He explained the nature of the small inconsistency, while Wheeler dried the cup that he held in his hand until he had almost worn it away.
‘Are you certain that you left the house at ten to eight?’ Lloyd concluded.
Marian Wheeler frowned. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I must have missed someone off the list.’
Judy handed her a copy of the list, and Mrs Wheeler took glasses from her handbag. ‘I can’t think who,’ she said as she looked at it. ‘But I was a bit shaken up when I wrote it out. I can’t honestly remember.’
‘Perhaps you wouldn’t mind thinking about it?’ asked Lloyd. ‘Let me know if you remember.’
‘Certainly I will.’ She handed the list back.
‘Mrs Anthony said you seemed upset,’ said Judy.
‘Did she?’ Marian Wheeler took off her glasses. ‘Yes – yes, I suppose I was. Of course I was, after what had happened to Joanna.’
Wheeler at last put down the cup. ‘What are you suggesting?’ he asked quietly.
‘Nothing at all,’ said Lloyd. ‘But we have to try to account for half an hour that has somehow got itself lost.’ He turned to Marian Wheeler. ‘I’m sure it’ll come back to you,’ he said. ‘You’ve got the number to reach me, haven’t you?’
‘Yes, thank you.’
‘Well – thank you for your time. Don’t worry – we’ll see ourselves out.’
They didn’t stay long at the station, and Judy left before Lloyd did. He decided that now was as good a time as any to make his duty visit to Barbara and the kids.
Two hours later, he went back to his flat, none the better for seeing his family, who had merely added to his worries and irritations. He consoled himself with a large glass of the Woodfords’ present, and a few chapters of Judy’s.
And by the next morning, the things that had been moving slowly started moving fast, now that the world had got itself over the twin difficulties of snow and holidays. Late Saturday afternoon found him reading the first detailed forensic report.
The fingerprints on the poker were Marian Wheeler’s; another set of her prints had been found beside an attempt to clean a blood-stain off the landing floor. One of her shoes bore traces of blood. Lloyd looked up thoughtfully from the report.
He wondered about Freddie’s belief that a woman would have had to hold the poker in both hands. Any woman, according to him. So – what would he think of Marian Wheeler, small and slim, wielding the poker one-handed? Not a lot. Much more likely that she had interfered with the scene once she’d found Elstow. She had run into the room, picked up the poker – got blood on her shoe. Then what? Why not just say that that was what she had done?
And yet, Lloyd knew, people reacted oddly under stress. TV and books had done a wonderful job in instilling into the public the vital importance of leaving murder scenes untouched; if only they could direct this talent to pointing out the beneficial effects of not murdering anyone in the first place, he thought irrelevantly.
But it was possible that she thought she shouldn’t have touched anything, and so denied going into the room at all. But she’d hardly have given Elstow a couple of thumps with the poker, he thought, and shrugged, giving his attention once more to the report.
No traces of an intruder, inside or out. No fingerprints other than those of the deceased, Mrs Elstow, and Mr and Mrs Wheeler. Nothing disturbed, nothing taken, nothing vandalised. Just one dead body.
The clothing. Forensic said it was a woman’s dress, probably size 12, in a pink or peach-coloured unpatterned material, judging by the reinforced collar and cuffs which had failed to burn up as well as the rest of it had. There were traces of blood on one cuff. Type B, similar to the deceased’s.
Size 12. Judy was a 14; so was Barbara, and so, if he was any judge, was young Mrs Elstow. Mrs Wheeler would be a 12. Things did not look good for Marian Wheeler.
He felt that there was probably something a little suspect about a man who could sum up a woman’s dress size at a glance, but there it was. Gigolos and detectives were supposed to notice things like that.
Marian Wheeler would have to be brought in.
He dialled Judy’s number, which barely rang out at all before she picked it up.
‘We’ve got work to do,’ he said.
‘Thank God for that.’
He smiled at the dialling tone, and replaced the receiver.
‘A man-made material,’ the inspector said. ‘Plain – probably pink or peach-coloured.’ He looked from Joanna to Marian. ‘Do either of you own such a dress?’
Marian saw George’s head turn involuntarily towards her as the inspector spoke. She heard Joanna try to smother the confirmation that had escaped, despite her efforts.
Christmas was over; the waiting was over. The police, suspicious from the start, had taken away clothes and shoes, had come every day, politely and courteously making them tell their stories over and over again. They had been all over the village, asking questions.
‘If it was an intruder’ – slight accent on the ‘was’ – ‘then someone must have seen him. He would be badly blood-stained.’
That had been the explanation offered for their checking-up on the comings and goings from the vicarage, when Marian had demanded one. It had been given to her by the crisp, concise Sergeant Hill.
Now she was here again, with the inspector. They looked a little stern, a little sad. And they were looking at her.
‘Was it your dress, Mrs Wheeler?’ The sergeant.
They had taken away the ashes from the fires in Joanna’s bedroom and the kitchen, and Marian had endured Christmas somehow. Though it wasn’t really Christmas, not with all that had happened. The house always seemed to have some figure of authority in it. If it wasn’t police, it was clergy. There had been a lot of work to take her mind off it.
‘Mrs Wheeler?’ The sergeant again, not impatiently.
She took almost as much on herself as Chief Inspector Lloyd. Marian found herself inconsequentially wondering if that annoyed him. She decided it couldn’t, or presumably he would have stopped her doing it. Whereas often he would almost melt into the background while she did the asking.
The sergeant came over to her. ‘Mrs Wheeler,’ she said. ‘Was it your, dress?’
‘Yes.’
Inspector Lloyd cleared his throat. ‘Mrs Wheeler, I’d be grateful if you could come with us to the police station,’ he said. ‘There are questions we would like to put to you concerning the murder of Graham Elstow.’
‘This is outrageous!’ George roared.
‘George,’ said Marian. ‘It’s their job – they’re only doing their job.’
George gaped at her, then shook his head.
‘Mrs Wheeler,’ said the sergeant briskly, ‘if you could get your coat—’
‘No!’ Joanna shouted. ‘I don’t understand – what are you doing?’
Inspector Lloyd looked far from happy. ‘Mrs Wheeler has simply agreed to help us with our—’
‘Agreed?’ George said. ‘I didn’t hear her agree.’
Lloyd glanced at Marian. ‘Mrs Wheeler?’ he said.
‘George is right,’ she said. ‘I haven’t actually agreed to come.’
‘Are you going to force me to arrest you?’ asked Lloyd.
‘Yes!’ shouted George. ‘If you want my wife to go with you, you’re going to have to arrest her.’ He took a step towards the inspector. ‘So you had better be very sure of your ground, Chief Inspector Lloyd,’ he said.
Marian saw the inspector shrug slightly at the sergeant, and she was being arrested.
They were telling her she didn’t have to say anything. She knew that. She knew the wording of the caution. She wondered when the British police would feel obliged to alter their simple, direct sentence into whole paragraphs of statutory advice, like the Americans. Or was that just New York? America was funny, with all the states having different laws.
They were taking her out to their car. George was white, and Joanna walked with her arm round his waist, holding on to him like a child. George was saying something about a solicitor. The sergeant got into the back of the car with her, the leather coat she wore creaking slightly, smelling new. There was a constable at the wheel of the car, and he closed the passenger door as George kept the inspector talking.
Joanna had gone back into the house, obviously on George’s instructions, and re-emerged, carrying coats. She got into her car as George at last walked away from the inspector, turning twice on his way to call something angrily over his shoulder.
The inspector got in then, slamming the door. Marian could see the tension in the back of his neck, as the car moved off through the new fall of snow. Five days of it, Marian thought, and it still hadn’t given up. Not constant, or the vicarage would have disappeared under it. But snow, every day, and the driveway was deep again now. The incessant cars had churned it up into slush, and it might freeze. Someone could break their neck. They said you were responsible, if someone did. If they were there for a reasonable purpose. Postmen, newspaper boys. Policemen.
The sergeant was speaking to her, but she hadn’t been listening.
‘Mrs Wheeler?’
Marian turned to face her. She had a nice face, Marian realised. Not just nice-looking – which she was – but something more. People could have beautiful faces that weren’t attractive. Sergeant Hill wasn’t beautiful; she had a good face, the kind photographers like. Warm brown eyes, and an open friendliness that was there even when she was briskly arresting you.
‘Are you all right, Mrs Wheeler?’
‘Oh – yes. Thank you.’
On, through white-banked roads, into Stansfield, with no one speaking at all. Skirting round the now pedestrianised centre of the town to the police station at the other side. Marian had sat on the Young Offenders Committee in there, in her time. It had folded, not through any lack of young offenders, but because it hadn’t really helped.
The sergeant was opening the door as the driver pulled round to park. She was out of the car as it stopped moving, her hand held out to assist Marian, who was then taken – no doubt about it – taken, the sergeant’s hand lightly holding her elbow, into the building. She was taken to the desk, where another sergeant began filling in forms. He repeated that she didn’t have to say anything, but if she did . . . She signed a form. Then she was taken into a room with a formica table and chairs, like the one the YO committee had used. A woman police officer came in, and the sergeant told Marian to sit down. Told her.
It was odd, for someone who was used to being shown and asked, to be taken and told.
‘Just leave it here,’ said George, as Joanna pulled up at the police station.
‘I can’t,’ she said. ‘It’s double yellow lines.’
Double yellow lines. Marian had just been arrested, and she was worrying about double yellow lines. But that was just like Marian would have been, George thought, if the positions had been reversed.
‘You go in. I’ll take it round to the car park,’ she said.
George strode into the station, and saw Inspector Lloyd talking to Sergeant Hill. Ignoring the desk sergeant, he walked purposefully up to them. ‘Where’s my wife?’ he demanded.
Lloyd broke off his conversation and turned. ‘Mr Wheeler, you can’t see your wife at the moment. I’m sorry.’
‘She has the right to have a solicitor present,’ George said.
‘Of course she has,’ said Lloyd.
‘But how do I get hold of one?’ George found himself asking. Pleading. ‘It’s Saturday afternoon!’
Lloyd pointed back down towards the entrance. ‘Go to the desk sergeant,’ he said. ‘He’ll help you.’
‘Will he?’ George felt bewildered. In the last few days, the police had altered their image for George. They had gone from being symbols of security and order to being invaders of privacy. Now, they just seemed like the enemy. Why would they help?
But help they did, and the solicitor said he would come right away. George looked round helplessly as he finished his call, but he couldn’t see the inspector. He went out the front door, and walked round to the back, where he found the car park, and Joanna’s car.
‘Why would she burn her dress?’ Joanna asked, as he got in.
‘I don’t know.’
‘But why?’ she said again. ‘What possible reason could she have for doing something like that?’
‘I don’t know!’ George shouted, but he wasn’t angry with Joanna. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Perhaps I do.’
‘What?’
Eleanor. It had to be Eleanor. ‘Perhaps,’ he said, hitting the flat of his hand against the dashboard as he spoke. ‘Perhaps I do. She could have burned it because she was angry with me.’
Joanna turned, her eyes wide. ‘What have you done that would have made her angry enough to burn your Christmas present?’ she asked.
George closed his eyes. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ he said. ‘A misunderstanding. It’s possible, that’s all.’
Joanna frowned, but she didn’t ask again.
They waited in the police station car park, not knowing what to say or do. The solicitor was taking his time, thought George. He’d said he’d come right away.
There had to be a simple explanation. There had to be. But she hadn’t given them one. And he had thought that they were just trying to alarm her into producing an explanation, when they’d asked her to go with them. That was why he’d said they would have to arrest her. Because he thought they couldn’t, not just on that. But they had arrested her, as though confirmation about the dress had been all that they had needed. What else could they possibly have found to link Marian to it? And so what if she had burned the dress? It was her dress. She could do what she liked with it.
At the back of his mind, a doubt was creeping in. He’d told her she was wrong about Eleanor. Surely, surely, she would have told him about having burned the dress then? Or was she ashamed of having done it? He’d asked her why she wasn’t wearing it, once he’d noticed. She had said it wasn’t a good fit. Why hadn’t she just told him the truth? Or had she just hoped that he would forget about it? Hadn’t she realised the consequences of failing to mention it to the police? Hadn’t it occurred to her what the police would think when they discovered it? Or did she think that the fire would have destroyed it completely?
Anyway, his mind asked him, despite his conscious effort to make it stop, when did she burn it? Elstow was in the room all the time . . .
George’s eyes were tight shut. ‘I need some air,’ he said, scrambling out of the car. He ran to the bushy hedge that ran along one side of the car park, and was violently sick.
Joanna watched impassively as her father bent over in the bushes, his shoulders heaving. She couldn’t help him.
Whatever nonsensical idea the police had got would be disproved; if her mother had burned the dress in a fit of pique – though that was hardly like her, but if she had – then she would tell them, and they would let her go. But she obviously hadn’t told them, doubtless in a misguided attempt to shield her father from embarrassment. And if that was the case, then he should go in now, and tell them why he thought she’d burned the dress.
It was ridiculous, her mother being in there, under arrest. Almost laughable. She supposed her father thought that eventually they would realise what a ludicrous mistake they were making, without his intervention. And they would, of course, in time.
Joanna was rather looking forward to the moment when the sharp-eyed, sharp-tongued Sergeant Hill would have to climb down and apologise. Because she would have to; there was no possibility of their continuing to imagine her mother guilty. None. It was a combination of circumstances, that was all. It would get sorted out. It probably took them hours to unarrest someone. It would get sorted out. It had to. Tears rolled down her face, unchecked. But crying wouldn’t help. Throwing up in the bushes wouldn’t help.
She dried her eyes, and got out of the car. Up some steps to a door, slightly ajar. Joanna took a deep breath, and went in.
She was in a corridor, with doors off it, all closed. There must be someone somewhere, she thought, as she walked along. She heard footsteps behind her, and turned to see a young constable.
‘Can I help you?’
‘I want to see Sergeant Hill,’ she said.
‘If you’ll come with me,’ he said, ‘I’ll see if we can find her for you.’
She followed him round into the main entrance, where he asked her to wait.
A few minutes later, he came back, and she followed him once again, through a room full of people, into an ante-room. Sergeant Hill stood up when she came in.
‘Joanna,’ she said, her face concerned. ‘Have a seat.’
‘No, thank you.’ Joanna didn’t know what to say now that she was here. Screaming abuse at her would hardly help, but that was all she really wanted to do.
‘We were given no option but to do what we did,’ Sergeant Hill said.
‘No option?’ Joanna shouted. ‘You can’t seriously believe my mother killed Graham!’
‘We just wanted to ask her some questions, Joanna. It needn’t have been like that.’
Somewhere, at the back of her mind, behind her desire to call her names, Joanna knew that she was right. Her father had forced them into a corner.
‘But why?’ she demanded. ‘Why did you want to question her? Because of the dress? My father thinks she did it because she was angry with him – it was his Christmas present to her.’
‘Oh?’ said Sergeant Hill. ‘Why was she angry with him?’
‘I don’t know! You’ll have to ask him that.’
‘Where is he?’ she asked.
‘Being sick!’
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘Please sit down, Joanna.’
Joanna felt some of the anger drain away, to be replaced by hopelessness. She sat down. ‘Why have you arrested my mother?’ she said again.
‘I can’t discuss it with you,’ Sergeant Hill said. ‘But in view of what you’ve said about the dress, I would like to talk to your father.’
Joanna went to find her father; he was angry with her for telling the sergeant.
‘If you think she had a good reason for burning the dress, you have to tell them!’ Joanna said.
‘I didn’t say she had a—’ He sighed. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘It’s not your fault.’
Joanna waited for him by the desk. It would get sorted out.
‘Yes,’ Eleanor said, as brightly as she could, ‘I will think about it. I promise.’ And she waved as her visitor drove out of the courtyard, then closed the door with a sigh.
‘You should go,’ said Penny, as she went back in.
‘I can’t see myself at a New Year party,’ said Eleanor.
Penny shook her head. ‘You’ve got to start some time,’ she said. ‘And the sooner the better. You don’t have to stay long. But you should start going out.’
Eleanor knew all that. But how could she start going out now, for God’s sake? Penny didn’t understand. And she wouldn’t, for as long as Eleanor could keep it that way.
‘I’d look after Tessa,’ Penny went on. ‘You know that.’
Eleanor smiled, ‘I know,’ she said. ‘You’re right. But I just don’t think I could face it.’
‘At least do what you said you’d do,’ Penny said. ‘Think about it.’ ‘I will.’
‘I was wondering,’ said Penny, ‘I know you won’t come – but would you mind if I took Tessa back with me when I go tomorrow night? There’s nothing much for her to do here, is there – and you’ll be working. It would be more fun for her. There’s a little boy next door that she could play with.’
‘You told me,’ said Eleanor, with a smile.
‘Well? It would be a few days rest for you, and I’d love to have her.’
‘Yes, of course,’ said Eleanor.
‘If she wants to come, that is,’ said Penny.
Tessa would want to go. There was only one thing she liked better than visiting anyone, and that was visiting her grandmother. They couldn’t ask her then and there because she was off visiting the Brewsters, who had three of the children that Penny kept insisting were non-existent in Byford.
‘Thank you,’ Eleanor said. ‘It would be nice to have a break.’
George Wheeler hadn’t been very forthcoming as to why his wife should have been angry with him. He had just sat there, looking like death, saying that it was a misunderstanding, until Judy had told him he could go.
Lloyd raised his eyebrows when she told him. ‘Sounds a bit desperate to me,’ he said. ‘The best excuse he could come up with.’
‘I know.’
‘All the same,’ said Lloyd. ‘I don’t think Freddie’s going to go much for Mrs Wheeler as a likely candidate.’
‘Has she said anything yet?’
‘No,’ said Lloyd. ‘Do you want to come and have a go?’
Judy got up. ‘Is her solicitor here?’
‘No. I suppose Wheeler did ring one,’ he said. ‘Every time I see him, he’s rushing into the loo.’
Judy went to the door. ‘Are you coming?’ she asked.
‘Yes,’ he said wearily. ‘Why not?’
Marian Wheeler sat at the table in the interview room, looking entirely unperturbed.
Judy sat down. ‘Have you remembered where you were on Christmas Eve?’ she asked.
‘No.’
‘Can you give us an explanation for your fingerprints being on the poker?’
‘No.’
Judy clasped her hands, and thought for a moment. ‘Did you go into the room when you found Elstow’s body?’
‘No.’
‘Were you in that room at all on Christmas Eve?’
‘I was in and out during the day,’ she said. ‘The last time would have been at about two, I think. Just before I went out in the afternoon. I made up the fire.’
‘You’re sure that was the last time you were in there?’
‘Yes.’
‘Oh, come on, Mrs Wheeler!’ Lloyd suddenly spun round to face her from having his back to her.
His voice startled Judy, but Mrs Wheeler looked as calm as ever.
‘Your fingerprints were on the poker. There had been an attempt to burn a dress – your dress, which had blood on it. Type B, Mrs Wheeler. Elstow’s type.’
Marian Wheeler didn’t speak.
‘You must give us some explanation for these facts, Mrs Wheeler,’ Judy said, her voice as calm as Mrs Wheeler’s.
‘I understood I didn’t have to speak to you at all.’
Judy sighed. ‘You’ll have to give an explanation to someone, some time,’ she said. ‘You will have to defend the charges, won’t you?’
‘You haven’t charged me, have you?’ Mrs Wheeler looked eager; interested. Not as though it was happening to her at all.
‘No,’ said Judy. ‘We haven’t. But we will, Mrs Wheeler, unless you have an explanation. Do you?’
‘No,’ said Mrs Wheeler.
‘No?’ Lloyd said. ‘You mean you don’t know how the blood got on your dress? You don’t know how your fingerprints got on the poker?’
He leant over the table, and Mrs Wheeler pulled back a little.
‘You say you were never in the room, Mrs Wheeler. So how come blood got walked out of that room on to the landing on the sole of your shoe?’
‘I don’t know. I’m sorry.’
‘You don’t know,’ he said, his voice menacingly low and Welsh. ‘Someone tried to clean up the blood on the landing – did you know that? Someone who left their fingerprints by the stain.’ His own hand, fingers spread, thumped down on the table. ‘Your fingerprints, Mrs Wheeler. You don’t know how that happened?’
She was getting to Lloyd. Judy could tell when simulated anger was turning to real frustration. ‘I’ve just been talking to Joanna,’ she said, conversationally.
Mrs Wheeler stiffened.
‘She suggests that you burned the dress because you were angry with her father.’
‘Does she?’ A frown crossed the serene face.
‘Were you angry with him?’
‘No.’
‘So that isn’t why you burned the dress?’
‘No, of course it isn’t.’
A silence fell, and Lloyd sat down, leaning back, relaxed.
‘But you did burn it, didn’t you, Mrs Wheeler?’ Judy asked quietly.
Mrs Wheeler nodded, and Judy felt her heart skip a little.
‘I wanted him to leave,’ Marian Wheeler said. ‘I wanted him out of the house just as much as George did. I just wanted to ask him to leave. To go away, and stop hurting Joanna. So I went up. But – but when I spoke to him, he just . . . came at me. He was drunk, I suppose. I told him to stop, but he was threatening me. I picked up the poker. I told him to stop. I told him I’d hit him.’
Judy glanced at Lloyd, whose eyebrows twitched a little.
‘Are you saying it was self-defence?’ she asked Mrs Wheeler.
‘Yes,’ she replied, ‘I was frightened. I warned him. But he kept coming. Then he lunged at me, and I hit him. He fell,’ she said. ‘I realised he was dead.’
‘We don’t think it was self-defence,’ Judy said carefully. ‘Our evidence suggests that he was lying on the bed when he was attacked.’
Marian Wheeler’s eyes widened and for a moment she said nothing. Then she shook her head.
‘He wasn’t lying on the bed?’
‘No. He was coming at me.’
‘Where was he when you hit him?’ Lloyd asked.
‘Near the fireplace,’ said Mrs Wheeler. ‘That’s why I could pick up the poker.’
‘And that’s where you’re saying you struck the first blow?’ ‘Yes,’ she said.
Lloyd looked at her for a long time, without speaking. Mrs Wheeler looked back, wide-eyed. Judy stayed out of it. After a while, Lloyd sighed heavily, and rubbed his face. ‘I told you that everything in that room had a story to tell, Mrs Wheeler.’
Mrs Wheeler looked away from both of them, as though something had caught her attention.
‘Blood stains,’ Lloyd went on. ‘They talk, Mrs Wheeler. Elstow was nowhere near the fireplace.’
She looked back then, her eyes defiant. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘He was.’
‘Then what?’ said Lloyd, abandoning the topic.
‘There was blood on my dress. I took it off, and put it on the fire. It wouldn’t burn properly, because the fire was almost out. So I used matches, and firelighters. Then when I left, I could see I’d made marks on the landing. I cleaned my shoe, and then I cleaned up the stain.’
She paused. ‘I washed, and went into my own room. I put on different clothes, and different shoes, and then I went out to check up on the old people, since that was what I had been going to do in the first place. And I did lock the doors,’ she said. ‘So that no one would find him.’
Judy noted the emphasis – ‘I did lock the doors’ – but its significance escaped her.
Mrs Wheeler’s statement was being typed when her solicitor arrived, full of apologies to his client for the long delay, occasioned by his car breaking down in the middle of nowhere. He couldn’t even find a phone; he had had to walk to a garage through the snow. He advised her against signing the statement, but she did anyway. Lloyd still didn’t charge her; her solicitor wasn’t happy about that either, but Judy understood his reluctance.
Back in the office, Judy tidied up her desk. They had informed Mr Wheeler of the course of events, and he’d gone rushing outside. Joanna Elstow had stared uncomprehendingly at them, then followed him. The solicitor had sighed, and gone after both of them.
‘Let’s go and talk to Freddie,’ said Lloyd.
Judy looked at her watch. ‘At the hospital?’ she said. ‘Will he be there this late on a Saturday?’
‘Of course he will. He practically lives there.’
Judy drove them in her car; Lloyd’s had been left at home in favour of the front-wheel drive of official vehicles. Her car might not be in the first flush of youth, she pointed out, but it didn’t get the vapours at a little snow and ice.
Freddie was, as predicted, at the path lab, as joyful as ever with his choice of profession. ‘Confessed?’ he beamed. ‘Well, there you are. You do win some.’
‘Do we?’ Lloyd said. ‘By the time it gets to court, she may well have changed her mind.’
Judy hated the smell of the place. She didn’t want to be there, and she wasn’t sure why she was. But Freddie was always pleased to see her, so that cheered her slightly.
Lloyd continued. ‘She’s either going to plead self-defence or not guilty,’ he said. ‘How good a case have I got?’
‘She won’t plead self-defence,’ Freddie said decidedly. ‘If she brings in her own pathologist, he can’t not agree with me. The man was lying on the bed when the first blow was struck.’
‘She says he was by the fireplace,’ said Lloyd.
‘Well, you know he wasn’t.’
‘Could he have fallen on to the bed? From being hit?’
Freddie shook his head. ‘He was on the bed,’ he said. ‘There’s no argument – look at the bedclothes, man!’
‘I’d rather not,’ said Lloyd.
‘All right,’ sighed Freddie. ‘Let’s suppose we get given an argument. Wherever he was, he wasn’t standing up. Or if he was, then his attacker was standing on a step-ladder. There is no way a blow of that force could have been delivered except from someone with a considerable height advantage – so if you’ve got someone nine feet tall on your list, that’s your man.’
Lloyd smiled. ‘So what will the defence do with a not guilty plea?’ he asked. ‘Apart from produce a nine-foot tall suspect?’
‘Well,’ said Freddie, ‘if I was defending, I would go on build. I wouldn’t produce the giant theory, but I would point out how small and slim Mrs Wheeler is.’
‘You said a woman could have done it,’ Lloyd said in injured tones.
‘Certainly. But Mrs Wheeler’s height and weight would suggest that she’d need two hands to produce blows that strong.’ He warmed to his task. ‘She only used one hand on the poker. So if I can produce a good reason for her prints being there, and ram home her diminutive stature . . .’ He left the rest of the sentence eloquently unfinished.
‘Are you saying she’ll get off?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘Because she could have done it. If she was frightened enough. Or angry enough.’
‘So what are you saying?’ Lloyd asked testily.
Freddie smiled. ‘If she sticks to self-defence, she’s got no chance,’ he said. ‘If she simply says she didn’t do it, well – you’ve got her confession, her prints, and the burnt dress on your side. She’s got the fact that she’s small, pretty, female and a vicar’s wife on hers.’
‘And the fact that she was alone with him in the house at the material time,’ Lloyd said. ‘I’ve got that on my side, too.’ He thought for a moment. ‘Suppose she did hit him by the fireplace?’ he said. ‘Ineffectually. Making him dizzy – he grabs hold of her as he falls. So she’s only got one hand free, and she’s terrified. What then?’
‘Is that what she says?’ asked Freddie.
‘No,’ Lloyd said. ‘But could that produce what you’ve found?’
‘If he happened to fall on to the bed,’ said Freddie. ‘Which I suppose he could have done. It’s highly unlikely.’
‘But self-defence might work?’
Freddie shook his head slowly. ‘No,’ he said. ‘That could just conceivably have been what happened. But he must have let go. And she didn’t stop hitting him. Two blows were after he was dead, remember.’
‘Yes, I know,’ said Lloyd. ‘That’s what puzzles me.’ He got up. ‘Thanks, Freddie,’ he said. ‘See you in court.’
‘Are you going to charge her?’ Judy asked, as they got back to the car.
‘Not tonight,’ he said. ‘I’m not happy with any of this. Why would she hit him twice after he was dead? And why wouldn’t she tell us that she had?’
‘Do you still think she just tried to tidy up after someone else?’
Lloyd looked tired, as he shook his head. ‘I can’t see when,’ he said.
Judy frowned. ‘So what do you think?’ she asked, puzzled.
Lloyd smiled. ‘You’ll give me one of your looks if I tell you,’ he said.
‘Try me.’
‘Well,’ he began a little sheepishly. ‘I’m beginning to think she wasn’t there at all.’
Judy stared at him, giving him one of her looks. ‘Someone else burned her dress?’ she said incredulously. ‘Someone else put blood on her shoe?’
He nodded.
‘And she’s letting them?’ Judy shook her head. ‘What about the prints on the poker?’ she said.
‘Ah, yes. There are those.’
Judy smiled, and started the car, and there was silence then, as though leaving the lab was a signal that the working day had ended, and now she and Lloyd were back to being just two people who didn’t know what to say to one another.
The headlights lit the snow-covered verges as the car sped along a country road now dry and cold, and it was the first time they had been alone together, out of working hours, since Christmas morning. It seemed to Judy that Lloyd had engineered their lack of privacy; perhaps it was because she hadn’t responded to what she assumed had been a proposal of marriage, or perhaps because he was regretting it already, and wanted to avoid any discussion on the matter.
Judy thought of several things she should be saying, but she didn’t voice them. A minute and painful examination of her position had forced her to see things from Lloyd’s point of view. She did want everything her own way. She did want to run back to the safety of her marriage, and it wasn’t a marriage, not really. It never had been. But where she and Michael bickered and complained at one another, she and Lloyd had rows. Real rows, where feelings were involved. Lloyd, with his quick Celtic temper, could forget them five minutes later. Judy couldn’t. It was all too raw and emotional for her, and the rows would haunt her for days. But this one, despite having ended in the odd way that it had, seemed to have left its mark on Lloyd too, and she knew why.
‘I didn’t know I was hurting you,’ she said.
‘You’re not,’ Lloyd said, his voice surprised. But Lloyd could do that. Surprise, sorrow, anger. Whatever was needed.
‘You said you felt like a bottle of aspirin,’ she said.
‘That’s irritating,’ he said, as she slowed the car down, and signalled left. ‘It doesn’t hurt.’
‘Then why have you been avoiding me?’
He didn’t answer for a moment, and Judy affected deep concentration on her negotiation of the turn into the old village, where Lloyd had his flat. Stansfield, town of supermarkets and light industrial estates, of civic theatres and car showrooms like the one she was passing, had once just been a farming village, like Byford.
She could abandon the decision she had come to in the path lab; she could drop Lloyd off by the alleyway. But she drove on, turning through the entrance to the garages, parking beside Lloyd’s car.
‘I had no right to say these things,’ Lloyd almost muttered.
‘But they’re true,’ Judy said gloomily, stopping the engine. She looked out at the blackness of the garage area, only marginally relieved by stray beams from a failing street-lamp, and not at all in the shadow of the ornamental wall. She was surprised as always that the place wasn’t littered with the unconscious bodies of muggees. But throwing empty bottles at the garage doors seemed to be the most popular pastime in this particular back alley.
‘No,’ Lloyd protested, ‘I knew the position all along. You were right.’
This wasn’t helping, thought Judy. Trust Lloyd, who could always be relied upon to defend himself, to turn sweetly reasonable on her.
‘I am being selfish,’ she said, ‘I know I am. But—’ She stopped. How could she explain it to Lloyd? She and Michael didn’t need one another; they needed the marriage. That was why Michael had thought up his ridiculous notion of starting a family – it was one way to keep the marriage going. A marriage they both needed because it was safe, and predictable, and pleasantly boring, like a cricket match which will inevitably end in a draw.
‘So what if you are?’ said Lloyd. He gave a short, unamused laugh. ‘If you’d given in to my lustful advances in the first place, you’d have the bachelor flat, and I’d be the one hanging on to my marriage.’
It was a joke, of sorts. But it wasn’t true.
‘No,’ she said. ‘You’re braver than me.’
‘Why won’t you tell him about us, Judy?’ he asked.
She didn’t reply.
‘I can’t believe he hasn’t guessed,’ Lloyd went on.
He may have guessed, thought Judy. But she didn’t think so. And guessing wasn’t the same as finding out for certain. And it certainly wasn’t the same as being told.
‘Why?’ he asked again.
Judy tried to explain. ‘There’s only ever been Michael and you,’ she said. ‘And you could come from different planets.’
‘The trouble is,’ said Lloyd, ‘we’re on the same planet.’
‘Yes,’ she said. Worse; they were in the same town. But she had to run some risks for Lloyd, or it was all too selfish for words. ‘I’m here now,’ she said. ‘But I can’t stay long – you do understand that.’
It had been a hard decision to make; she hadn’t reckoned on Lloyd’s reaction.
‘What?’ he said, taking his arm away.
‘What’s wrong?’ she asked. It was an innocent question. ‘What’s wrong? What’s wrong?’ His voice grew louder. ‘You can’t see, can you? You still don’t understand!’
He was shouting so loudly that Judy glanced fearfully up at the flats in case someone might hear.
‘I told you what was wrong on Christmas morning,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to share you any more, Judy. Do you understand? I don’t want to share you any more!’ And he got out and slammed the door so hard that the car rocked.