Family Drama 4 E-Book Bundle (87 page)

Now at last, John began to understand what Reg was up to. Dottie had just given him the motive he was looking for. He put his hand up and took in his breath to say as much but one look from the sergeant silenced him immediately.

The questioning went on and on. Did she regret having Patsy? How did Reg feel about having his own baby on the way? Was it Reg’s child?

Dottie was beginning to look exhausted. The circles under her eyes were growing darker than ever. John was just about to demand that they stop questioning her when the sergeant stood up.

‘Thank you for your co-operation, Mrs Cox,’ he said formally. ‘We shall be in touch.’

Dottie was gazing somewhere into space. ‘There was someone else.’

Connelly stopped by the door and turned around. ‘Someone else you say? Where?’

‘In the bungalow.’

‘Who?’

‘I don’t know, but now I think about it, I feel sure Reg was talking to someone.’

‘A neighbour, perhaps?’

‘No, it wasn’t him.’

They waited a moment or two, but Dottie shook her head. ‘I can’t remember.’

‘We’ll speak to you again as soon as we’ve spoken to the little girl,’ said PC Smart.

Dottie sat bolt upright. ‘What do you mean?’ she demanded.

‘We have to verify your story,’ said the sergeant.

‘No, no,’ cried Dottie. ‘What do you mean, talk to the little girl? What little girl?’ Dottie’s heart was beginning to pound.

‘Patsy, of course,’ said PC Connelly.

‘You mean, she’s alive?’ cried Dottie. ‘She’s really alive? But that’s wonderful.’ She looked wildly from John back to the policeman. ‘But why didn’t you tell me? How is she? Is she going to be all right?’

John’s mouth gaped. ‘But I thought you knew. The sister said …’

‘The sister wouldn’t tell me anything,’ Dottie cried.

‘She’s been very ill,’ the constable said, his voice a little softer, ‘but she is improving all the time.’

Dottie smiled and burst into tears. Oh wonderful, wonderful day … Patsy was alive. Alive and getting well. ‘Is she asking after me?’ she went on eagerly. ‘When can I see her?’

‘No, Mrs Cox, I’m afraid you can’t,’ said the sergeant coldly.

Dottie took in her breath. ‘But why not?’

‘Because I have given instructions that she’s to have no visitors – not even you, Doctor.’ The sergeant frowned. ‘All that can wait until Connelly and I have spoken to her.’

Dottie relaxed back onto the pillows and began to laugh softly. ‘But she’s alive. I can’t believe it. She’s alive.’

‘If you remember anything else, Mrs Cox,’ the sergeant said as he headed for the door, ‘let us know.’

‘Give her my love, won’t you?’ Dottie called after them.

The door closed and John moved back to the bed. ‘I am so sorry you didn’t know.’

‘It doesn’t matter now,’ Dottie sighed. ‘Oh, isn’t it wonderful? She’s alive.’

‘I think you’d better rest now.’

‘They don’t believe me about someone else being there, do they?’

John chewed his bottom lip. ‘Perhaps if you could have been a little more specific …’

She looked up, willing him to touch her, hold her hand, stroke her hair, anything … but instead he picked up her chart from the foot of the bed and studied it.

‘John …’

‘Anyway, you’re getting better all the time,’ he said, glancing up. The coolness in his voice hurt.

The door burst open and PC Connelly came back into the room. ‘Whoops-a-daisy,’ he cried. ‘Forgot me pen.’ He smiled at Dottie and added, ‘Now don’t forget, if you remember anything else, just give us a shout.’

John headed towards the door with him, knowing full well that the pen had been left as an excuse to check on whether there was anything between Dottie and him. For a while he’d better keep up the pretence.

‘I hope you make a full recovery, Mrs Cox,’ he said stiffly.

The policeman held the door open for him to pass.

Dottie stared at the closing door, then lay back and stared at the ceiling.

Outside in the corridor, John fell into step with the two policemen.

‘When do you plan to talk to Patsy?’ he asked.

‘As soon as we’ve got her father over here,’ said the sergeant. ‘She’ll probably feel a lot safer with a relative.’

‘I’m not sure that’s a good idea,’ said John. All three men stopped walking. ‘Look,’ John went on, ‘I’m not one to cast aspersions, but I think Mr Cox may know more than he lets on.’

The sergeant gave him a strange look. ‘And perhaps
Mrs
Cox does too, sir.’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ John protested. ‘You saw how pleased she was that Patsy had survived. I tell you, she loves that child.’

‘Tell me, Doctor,’ said the sergeant. ‘How close are you and Mrs Cox?’

‘We’re friends, that’s all,’ John insisted.

‘Could it be that she wanted more?’ the sergeant suggested. ‘Patients fall for their doctors all the time. Unrequited love is a very powerful thing.’

‘It’s not like that at all.’ John went cold. ‘And I can tell you now that you’re barking up the wrong tree, Sergeant.’

‘We’ll see, Doctor. We’ll see.’

They parted somewhere near the front entrance. On his way out, John passed a petite blonde woman carrying a large bunch of flowers.

‘Excuse me,’ she said exuding a waft of cheap perfume. ‘Could you tell me the way to the women’s ward?’

‘Down the corridor, and turn left at the top of the stairs,’ said John.

The woman smiled. ‘Thank you. Much obliged, I’m sure.’

‘Peaches!’

Dottie was walking down the ward between two nurses because she had asked to go to the toilet rather than have a bedpan.

Peaches followed them all into her room and waited until the nurses had put her back into bed. As soon as they were alone, the two friends embraced warmly.

‘Oh, Peaches,’ said Dottie tearfully. ‘I was having a baby, but I’ve lost it.’

Peaches was shocked. ‘Oh, Dottie, how awful.’ She hesitated. ‘But I didn’t think you and Reg … No, no, I’m sorry.’

‘I have never been unfaithful to Reg,’ Dottie said stoutly.

Peaches squeezed her hand. ‘Of course you haven’t and I wouldn’t suggest anything of the sort. Oh, Dottie, I’m so sorry about the baby.’

A nurse bustled in with the tea trolley and to Dottie’s delight, Peaches was allowed to have one too.

‘How’s Gary?’

‘He’s doing really well,’ said Peaches, pulling up a chair and sitting down. ‘He has to keep on with the exercises. Jack’s much better at it than I am. Gary gets a bit cross about it and as you know, I’m not very patient, but his leg is getting stronger all the time.’ As she relaxed in the chair, Dottie smiled at her friend. She was looking really good. She’d regained her figure after the baby and she’d obviously taken great care with her clothes. She was wearing a pretty tangerine twinset, a colour which suited her very well.

‘I wish you could have brought Mandy with you,’ sighed Dottie. ‘I still haven’t seen her.’

‘I know, I’m sorry.’

‘How did you know I was here?’ Dottie asked when the nurse had gone.

‘Jack,’ said Peaches. ‘He was doing a run to Worthing station and overheard Marney talking and, of course, you’re in all the papers.’

‘The papers?’

‘Only no one realised it was you,’ said Peaches. She held out her hand, headlining, ‘Mystery woman and child in gas tragedy.’

Dottie pursed her lips.

‘Oh, Dottie, I’m an idiot,’ said Peaches. ‘Listen to me prattling on … me and my big mouth. How is Patsy? Has she said anything?’

Shaking her head, Dottie reached for her handkerchief, wet from use. Peaches fished in her handbag and gave her a clean one. Dottie blew her nose. ‘I’m not allowed to see her. Can you find out how she is? I’m so worried about her.’

‘Of course, darling,’ said Peaches. ‘I’ll go and see her on my way home. It’s the least I can do.’

As Dottie grasped her hand in gratitude, Peaches chewed her bottom lip.

‘You know something else, don’t you?’ said Dottie. ‘Tell me, Peaches.’

‘I don’t like to say …’

‘Tell me … please!’

Peaches lowered her head and stared at her own hands. ‘The papers say you had something to do with what happened to Patsy.’

‘But that’s not true!’ cried Dottie. ‘The windows were all boarded up on the inside. I couldn’t break them …’ She was becoming agitated. ‘Peaches, Reg left us there but I don’t remember why. And when I smelled gas, I couldn’t get us out.’ She broke off and stared at Peaches wide-eyed.

‘I’m sorry, Dottie. I wish I didn’t have to tell you,’ said Peaches gripping her hand. ‘But, darling, Reg is telling everyone you did it on purpose.’

Forty-Three

‘If you ask me, they’ll do her for attempted murder,’ said Kipper.

‘But we both know Reg Cox is lying,’ said John angrily. ‘Lying through his teeth.’

John had gone over and over everything again and again. There was something wrong with the story Reg was putting about but, no matter how hard he tried, it eluded him. The suspicions raised by Ernest Franks were still being checked out. The military moved very slowly.

‘You may be right, Dr Landers,’ said Kipper, ‘but the law says, and I quote, ‘If an attempted suicide failed, but killed someone else instead, by the doctrine of transferred malice, they are guilty of murder.’ Nobody died in this incident, but it looks as if Dottie was responsible for what happened to Patsy.’

They were sitting in the police house in front of a roaring fire. The room itself was masculine, with none of the prettiness that comes with a feminine touch, but it was neat and tidy: a room with a place for everything and everything in its place.

John had just come back from Eastbourne and, although it was out of office hours, Kipper had invited him in to share ‘a spot of whisky’ after his long journey. John was pleasantly surprised to find that he liked Kipper a great deal. He was a thinker and maybe a tad slow to make judgements, but he was fair and he was candid.

‘My God,’ John breathed. ‘You mean they’d actually do that? Accuse her of attempted murder?’

‘I’m afraid so,’ said Kipper. ‘Look, I don’t believe she’s a killer any more than you do but all we’ve got in our favour is purely circumstantial evidence.’

‘Dottie says someone tampered with the tap,’ said John. ‘Doesn’t that prove something?’

‘She could have done it herself.’

‘And the boarded-up windows?’

‘They’ll say she planned it.’

‘Surely you can’t argue about the door being locked from the outside? How could she have done that?’

‘The key was on the floor,’ said Kipper. ‘There is a theory that she locked the door and then pushed the key under the door.’

John frowned. ‘Even so, you think differently.’

‘I was too hasty when the well caved in,’ said Kipper, knocking out his pipe against the hearth. ‘I’m just a country copper, not a detective, but if I’m to get Worthing Central to take note, I’ll have to have more than feeling and hearsay. I need good hard evidence. Ernest Franks knew the truth but that blow to the head scrambled his brain as well.’

John frowned. ‘Ernest Franks?’

‘He said that Reg was in the house the day Bessie Thornton died.’

John gasped and then smiled broadly. ‘Arrest him, arrest him now!’

Kipper reached for his tobacco pouch. ‘I can’t. He died before I could get a signed statement and I’m not sure it would have been much use anyway, given the circumstances.’

John groaned and they lapsed into a troubled silence.

‘I knew Reg was up to no good from the word go,’ said John. ‘I was watching his face when we told him his wife was alive in that office and it was obvious that he knew far more than he was letting on.’

‘He’s a slippery one, I’ll grant you that, but what have we got so far?’ Kipper went on. ‘According to him, he was a devoted father, but she was a woman who found it hard to adjust to a fully grown child in the family …’

‘More likely the other way around,’ John retorted.

‘He takes them off on holiday,’ said Kipper, putting the tobacco pouch down on the table, ‘and she walks out of the hotel. Hours later, she’s drugged the child and gassed them both.’

‘You knew she was having his baby, didn’t you?’

Kipper looked away. ‘I knew she was pregnant, but was it her husband’s child, that’s the burning question.’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ John demanded.

‘There’s some talk that the baby was yours.’

‘Mine! But that’s ridiculous. Whatever gave you that idea?’

‘You’ve been seen in the company of Mrs Cox,’ said Kipper earnestly. He leaned forward in his chair. ‘Often and alone.’

‘I’ve only ever been with her when Patsy was around,’ said John truthfully. ‘Anyway, who saw me? Where?’

‘I am not at liberty to say, but the gossip in the village is rife,’ said Kipper, relaxing back in his chair. He began pushing the tobacco down in his pipe, reluctant to tell him that Gerald Gilbert and Vera Carter had come to him with stories of car rides, late-night lifts and walks along the seafront. And although Dr Fitzgerald assured him that Dottie was the soul of discretion, Mariah Fitzgerald considered that she had changed recently from a hard-working woman into a liability, and Janet Cooper was on the verge of giving her the sack. It seemed that her relationship with John Landers was the catalyst.

‘Can I speak candidly?’ said John.

‘Please do.’

‘I won’t deny that I have strong feelings for Dott … Mrs Cox,’ said John. ‘But she and I have never … that is to say … She has always remained absolutely faithful to her husband.’

‘For what it’s worth,’ Kipper said, striking a match. ‘I believe you.’

John pressed his lips together and nodded. ‘Just tell me what evidence you need to prove her innocence,’ he went on, ‘and I’ll make sure you get it.’

‘She talked about a hired car,’ Kipper puffed, ‘but nobody saw it, and Reg says he can’t drive. And who wanted to buy that bungalow? She says he did, but the estate agent says he spoke to a woman on the telephone. Did Dottie write that suicide note? It certainly looks like her handwriting. And all that nonsense with the chickens. What was that all about? There was no way the fox got those birds, yet Reg was adamant.’