A Reason to Kill (3 page)

She considered the question thoughtfully, nodding to herself as though some inner dialogue was going on that Mac was not party to. Finally she said, ‘There were two of them. Only one came in, but I know there was another outside. It was late, well after ten, so they probably thought I'd be asleep upstairs, but I've not used the upstairs, you see, not in years. The Red Cross lady came and had my bed brought down and things fixed up for me so I could cope. They put a special shower in the cupboard in the hall, special handles and such, but mostly I just have a lick and a promise in the kitchen sink.' She smiled at Mac. ‘You don't need so much washing and brushing at my age.'

Mac was doubly glad he had refused the tea. ‘And so, what happened? I know you told the officers last night, but sometimes in the fresh light of day …'

She nodded again. ‘I've had a bit of time to think,' she said. ‘I'm sure there was two of them. I went and had a look outside this morning and there's footprints in the flower bed. Two lots.'

‘May I take a look?'

She started to get up and Mac waved her back to her seat. ‘Don't worry. I can manage – that is, if you don't mind?' He was suddenly afraid that he might have offended the old lady's sensibilities.

‘No, you go on, take a look.'

The lock on the back door was new and the surround had been reinforced but the tool marks where it had been forced were still clear. Mac wondered if anyone had photographed them or if anyone was due to come and fingerprint. There had been no reference in the initial report to either possibility.

The yard was tiny, with a few slabs, a wheelie bin and a flower bed maybe three feet by two, unexpectedly well planted with winter pansies. Closer inspection revealed that she was right about the footprints.

Mac may only have lived in Frantham for a couple of weeks but he was already learning to read the weather and as he had walked along the promenade had taken note of the bruised rain clouds collecting out at sea. Another hour and the footprints would be history, washed away by the torrential rain he had read in the clouds. Mac returned to the kitchen and asked if she had a dustbin bag. More out of hope than expectation he photographed the prints with his mobile phone and then covered the footprints with sections of torn bag, weighting it down with garden pebbles.

Mrs Freer listened closely as he explained what he had done. She nodded sagely but Mac could see in her eyes that she had about as much of hope as he did that anything would come of it.

‘There have been three burglaries in the street,' she told him. ‘This week alone. Last week it was Gala Crescent on the Jubilee Estate. Last week and the week before.' She gave gentle emphasis to the ‘and'. ‘Nothing seems to have been done.' She shrugged frail shoulders. ‘Children,' she said.

‘Children?'

‘They were young things, the two that broke in here. Just children. What were they doing out so late at night?'

‘Children?' Mac frowned, realizing he was repeating himself. ‘Could you guess how old they were?'

The frail shoulders lifted again. It looked to Mac as though it cost her to make even so slight a movement. ‘Still in school,' she said. ‘Teenagers. Thirteen or fourteen or so, I'd say. The boy in the kitchen looked no more than that. Scared to death he was.'

Of you?
Mac thought. ‘What did you do?'

‘Oh.' Mrs Freer was nonchalant. ‘I started to tell those officers last night but they had to rush away. Young people, always rushing, they get on planes, you know, the way my generation used to get on buses.'

Mac nodded. This was obviously something that impressed her. ‘You were going to tell the officers what?' he asked.

‘That I showed them my gun,' Mrs Freer told him.

S
everal thoughts skidded through Mac's mind at that point.
Does she mean a real gun?
Should he call for back up?
Where is it now?
He settled for voicing that final thought.

‘Um, Mrs Freer, where is the gun? Can I see it?'

She started to get up but then flopped back down in the chair. ‘Oh, be a dear and get it for me, will you? I don't feel so good today; it's taking a lot of getting around. I expect it's because I had such an interrupted night.'

‘Of course,' Mac told her. ‘Where …?'

She flapped a bony, fragile-looking hand back towards the hall. ‘In the other room, dear. Under my pillow.'

‘Under your …'
This is surreal
, Mac thought. A sudden worry struck him that, if by some quirk the gun was real, he might have to arrest this fragile pensioner. Reluctantly, he made his way into the living room, now converted into a bed-sitting room. The curtains were half open, allowing only a slant of grey light to infiltrate. Mac took in the threadbare carpet and the ageing furniture. The television resembled the one his parents had nursed through years of faithful service before its final demise. The old lady's bed was tucked between the window and the couch and draped with a crocheted blanket and, somewhat to his surprise, a thick and puffy duvet dressed in a very smart purple cover.

For a moment, Mac was taken aback by the very clean nature of the crisp white linen sheets and pillowcases. ‘Clean linen and winter pansies,' Mac muttered. ‘Who takes care of that, then?' He twitched the pillows aside and stepped back.

‘Oh boy.'

Gingerly he lifted the very real revolver from its place beneath the plump white pillow and checked the chamber. To his profound relief it was empty. Mac's knowledge of guns was not vast, but he reckoned the snub-nosed little revolver was probably a .38 and, holding it up to what light managed to get in through the window, read the Smith & Wesson name, much worn but still clearly engraved.

Returning to the kitchen, he laid it down gently on the table. ‘You do know that it's illegal to own this, don't you?'

Again that airy wave of the hand. ‘Oh, stuff and nonsense, my dear. My husband had it decommissioned long ago. Filed through a pin or some such, I don't really remember what he said.'

‘I'll have to take it away, have it examined, just to make sure,' Mac told her gently. ‘Mrs Freer, tell me, have you threatened anyone else with this?'

‘Not for years,' she told him. ‘There's never really been the need.'

Mac needed a cup of tea the next time it was offered. The same type of pansies as he had seen in Mrs Freer's garden were growing happily in large terracotta pots by the door to Peverill Lodge and the pin-neat woman who greeted him at the door had Mac guessing that she must be the provider of clean sheets as well. She looked vaguely familiar, Mac thought, but he couldn't place where he might have seen her before.

‘Mrs Martin?'

‘Yes.'

‘DI McGregor. I've just come from speaking with Mrs Freer.'

She raised an eyebrow and then took his identification from him, inclining it towards the daylight, the better to see.

‘Come in,' she ordered, standing back from the door. ‘I hope you don't mind talking in the kitchen but we're getting lunch. Would you like some tea?'

‘Thank you, I would.' Rina Martin led him through a spotless hall and into a large and sparkling kitchen. The scent of herbs and what his hungry stomach identified as fresh tomato sauce reminded him that he had eaten very little at breakfast and it was now well after one o'clock.

From somewhere off the hall he could hear a piano being played and two pretty if slightly wavery voices singing. A tall man with a mane of steel-grey curls stood beside the kitchen range, stirring a pot from which the enticing fragrance issued. A second man, this one smaller, plumper and rather bald, washed salad at the Belfast sink.

‘That smells good.' Mac couldn't help himself.

Rina Martin turned and raised an eyebrow. She gestured towards the taller man. ‘Mr Matthew Montmorency,' she said, ‘and Mr Steven Montmorency. This is Detective Inspector Sebastian McGregor. Please, do sit down. You make the place look untidy.'

Mac sat down with alacrity. Making the place untidy was, he felt, probably a sin around here. Matthew Montmorency inclined his grey head. ‘Pleased to meet you.'

‘Apparently,' Rina said, ‘Inspector McGregor has just come from interviewing Mrs Freer.'

‘That poor woman!' Steven Montmorency spoke this time. ‘First her husband going off like that and then all this – and it's not as if she has any health left.'

‘Quite.' Rina silenced him.

‘Gone off?' Mac asked.

‘He died,' Rina said quietly. ‘Steven has something of an aversion to speaking about death.'

‘Oh, I see. Was it recent?'

Rina shook her head. ‘No, it must be seven years ago, eight maybe. But they'd been together since she was sixteen and he wasn't much older. It was a terrible blow.'

Mac nodded. ‘It must have been. Mrs Martin, do you know Mrs Freer well?'

‘Well enough. I call in twice a week and see if she needs anything. She has a care package, or so they call it, and a woman comes to do shopping and pay bills and the like. But there are some things she doesn't like her to get. Personal things, you know.'

Mac didn't know but he wasn't sure he was going to ask.

‘I wash her sheets and keep the bed nice.' Rina shook her head. ‘There's not much I can do about the house – she's too proud to let me or anyone else clean and scrub for her – but I think if she can at least sleep in clean sheets, that's something.'

‘And the flowers?'

Rina shrugged. ‘Hearts ease. Did you know that was the old name for pansies?'

Mac replied honestly that he hadn't known that.

‘It's a good name. They do ease the heart, I think. Such cheerful little plants. She doesn't get out into the back yard much at this time of year but at least she can see something colourful from the kitchen window.'

‘That's nice of you,' Mac said. ‘Mrs Martin, this might seem like a strange thing to ask, but did you know Mrs Freer had a gun?'

Steven Montmorency laughed. ‘Oh, that old thing,' he said. He piled the washed salad into a spinner and began to turn the handle. ‘Of course we knew. She keeps it under her pillow.'

‘It doesn't work,' Rina said. ‘I made sure of that the first time I saw it. But it made her feel better to have it so I left well alone. You can only interfere so much in other people's affairs.'

‘I've had to have it removed,' Mac told her reluctantly. ‘When she showed it to me, I had to call uniform and get them to take it away, just to be sure.'

Steven tutted. ‘Now what will she do?'

‘Had to be done, Steven,' Matthew returned. ‘We kept telling her it wasn't a good idea.'

‘What do you mean
we
kept telling her?
You
wouldn't set foot in the place. You said it stank.'

‘I never did.'

‘Boys, please! If you must quarrel then take it outside.' Rina turned her attention back to Mac. ‘What can you do?' she said. ‘Brothers always quarrel and I'm sure twins are worse.'

‘Twins? I …'

A tiny, almost imperceptible shake of the head came from Rina and Mac trailed off. ‘Right,' he said, and decided to return to safer ground. ‘The gun. Do you know where she got it from?'

‘I would imagine,' Rina replied, ‘that it belonged to her husband. Matthew, make the tea, would you, I think the kettle is about to screech. Her husband was a member of the local gun club. Years ago that must have been, but she once showed me trophies he had won. I believe he competed all over the country.'

‘It looked to be quite an old gun,' Mac mused.

‘Smith & Wesson, thirty-eight, snub-nosed. At one time it was standard US police issue.'

Mac stared at her. This day was just getting too weird. What was it with elderly ladies in Frantham? Did they all belong to some local militia he hadn't been told about?

‘
Lydia Marchant Investigates
,' Steven Montmorency informed him proudly, pointing to the far wall.

Puzzled, Mac got up to see. ‘Oh, yes.' Suddenly it all became clear. That vague sense of familiarity he had noted when Rina Martin had let him in. The way she knew about the gun. Well, now it made a little more sense. He studied the black and white publicity shot, comparing it with the woman who faced him across the expanse of scrubbed wooden table.

‘Research?'

Rina nodded. ‘Weapons of one sort or another showed up in the scripts on a regular basis. I always thought I had a duty to get the detail right, even if the stories were sometimes frankly unbelievable.'

Mac laughed. ‘My mother loved the series,' he said. ‘My aunt too.'

‘Not you?' Rina's mouth twitched in a half-smile.

‘Mrs Martin, frankly, I can't watch whodunnits of any kind. They feel too much like homework.'

Rina laughed then and the stern face was transformed. Mac caught a glimpse of a much younger, much gentler woman. ‘You were very successful,' he commented. ‘The series ran for years.'

‘More than ten,' she agreed.

‘You can catch it on satellite and cable most days,' Matthew Montmorency told him. ‘And sometimes they show it in the afternoons on proper television. Rina, darling, will you set an extra place for our guest? He's been salivating ever since he came in and if we wait for him to go the pasta will be ruined.'

Mac had been going to refuse but it rapidly became clear that he had no say in the matter – and besides, he was hungry. He'd never had much of an appetite until coming to Frantham and, as his last posting had also been coastal, he didn't think he could blame the sea air. Maybe it was all the walking he'd done. His petrol bill had dropped almost to nothing in the past couple of weeks, while his food consumption had rocketed.

The table in the dining room was set with blue and white china, heavy, old-fashioned cutlery and an odd assortment of pretty but uncoordinated glasses clustered about a large, cut-glass jug. He found himself seated between two women of Rina's age, he guessed, though they could have been anything from fifty to seventy. Carefully applied make-up and a light blonde rinse to take the edge off the grey confused the issue for Mac, who was not all that good at guessing a woman's age anytime.