Murder Takes the Stage (29 page)

Red what?

She realized she was running towards him – it – whatever it was, ghost, man or corpse. Even as she ran, she took in the full horror. It could only be Sandy Smith, and he was dead or near to it. She could see a knife sticking out of his chest. Red was for blood, the red spatters that stood out on the white of his clown's costume. Better that than to look at that ghastly red paint of the clown's face, which still grinned on, although Sandy would never smile again.

She tried to scream, but she couldn't; the sound seemed frozen in her throat, and she heard nothing, lost in her own terror. But it must have made some noise after all, for people were running towards her now, and one of them, thank heavens, was Mike.

‘How are you feeling now, Georgia?' Mike came to sit by her on the far side of the gardens. It seemed only a few minutes, and yet white tape denoted a crime scene and the whole garden was now swarming with police and white-coated Scene of Crime Officers. Even Mike was in white. They looked almost like clowns themselves, she thought crazily.

‘Better, thanks, Mike,' she said truthfully. Cups of tea weren't the be all and end all to recovery from shock, but they most certainly set you on the right path. She had some way to go though; her mind felt completely clogged up. She remembered talking to Mike earlier and to DI Jenkins; and to everyone else, including Peter. He had seemed to be doing most of the talking, but she had tried. Luke had arrived too, summoned by Peter, she gathered. But they seemed to have vanished temporarily, leaving her stuck here on a bench with a couple of legs that didn't seem as though they wanted to take her anywhere.

‘You'd be better inside now, Georgia,' Mike said. ‘If you can take it, Peter's sitting with a group of those most involved, waiting for Jenkins to get round to them.'

‘Involved in Sandy's death?' Surely Jenkins wouldn't permit that.

‘No. Jenkins has those tucked away. Peter's with the Tom Watson group. It's Jenkins's call, but I persuaded him to agree, provided Peter sticks to Watson and not the Winton and Smith murders. I'm still not sure it's wise, but you know what Peter's like.'

That raised a faint smile on her lips. She did. Peter wanted to end the story of Tom Watson and its terrible consequences here and now. Was this always his plan, or had the events of the afternoon precipitated it?

‘Pamela Trent is in the group,' Mike added, ‘but not Matthew Trent, councillor.'

‘I take it you don't like him.'

‘Smarmy git.'

Unusual language for Mike, Georgia thought, and she could understand why.

‘Jenkins is pretending to observe the niceties,' Mike continued, ‘but he's of the same opinion. He'll give him a hard time.'

‘Do you think he did it?' Georgia asked fatuously. Of course Mike couldn't answer.

Mike duly gave her what she would call an old-fashioned look. ‘Did what? Anyway, I think you'll find Peter will have something to say on that. Shall I give you a hand? You look a bit rocky.'

With Mike's hovering support at her side, she returned to the hotel. He led her to a small private room, where she found Peter and Luke superintending tea and cakes for Mavis, Harold, Pamela, Cherry – and Cath. It all looked very homely, but her heart sank. With Peter raring to go, it wouldn't stay that way long. She thought Mike would disappear, but instead he sat back from the main group in a window seat. In plain clothes, he didn't stand out as a police presence – except to her. Was he keeping an eye on Peter? No, that wasn't Mike's style, so he must have had some other reason.

Cath leapt up to find her a chair – and another cup of tea. Well, why not, Georgia thought. Tea and cakes pinned you to the real world, unlike murdered clowns sitting on hotel benches. ‘Christine had her baby today,' Cath told her.

That too was good. Something positive amid the wreckage of today.

‘It's a boy. They're naming him Kenneth.'

‘Ken would have liked that.' Georgia felt her voice wobbling even more. Something even more positive to hang on to.

‘Very nice,' Mavis observed, ‘but why are we all sitting here like dummies, Peter? Waiting for Tom Watson, are we?'

‘Can't we just forget Tom?' Pamela pleaded. ‘If stirring up the old story has led to today's atrocity, surely you should stop meddling in it?'

‘Unfortunately, no,' Peter replied soberly. ‘There's Ken Winton's murder to take into account. If that was brought about by Ken's enquiries, don't you think Christine deserves to know how it came about? And Tom Watson is the key to that,' he added to Georgia's relief, in view of Jenkins's guidelines. ‘But I appreciate your coming here, Mrs Trent. I take it that you do want to know who killed your mother?'

A silence, then a whispered, ‘Yes, but that's nothing to do with today's murder.'

‘Oh, but it is,' Peter said. ‘It's all the same sad story, and it's time it was told. You agree, Harold?'

For a moment Georgia thought he would leave, because his face darkened, but if so, he decided against it.

‘Go on,' he said.

A story of lost love, Georgia thought dully. Tom Watson's, Rick's and Jack Point's. No.
Don't
try to fit them together, she told herself. Try to think logically, because in a way these murders had been logical, even Sandy's.

Peter wasted no time. ‘Don't think of what you've heard and read or what you remember about Tom Watson. Think of it as a story about someone you've never heard of before. Tom was just an ordinary sort of fellow, except when he was onstage and had an identity. He was a clown, but underneath the paint he had an emotional life that no one knew about. At first he poured his love out at the feet of his wife, but then he found out she was disloyal and unfaithful. Then he met a girl who adored him and thought he was the best thing since ice cream.'

Georgia, sitting next to Cherry, heard her quiet moan, and Harold, on her far side, put his arm round her.

‘Being an ordinary fellow,' Peter continued, ‘Tom fell in love and wanted to marry her, although he was a lot older than her. Divorce was more difficult in the 1950s: his wife could not divorce him because she had no evidence; he did not want his sweetheart's name to be used in court, nor would he fake evidence of another woman in his life. Nor did he really want to divorce his wife, because once he had loved her. Moreover he adored his daughter Pamela.'

Georgia could see Pamela's eyes fixed on Peter, her expression unreadable, whereas Cherry was whispering, ‘No, no  . . . he did  . . .'

‘Then on the sixteenth of August one year matters came to a head,' Peter continued. ‘I believe
his
story is this: Tom told his wife that her affairs must stop or he would divorce her. She laughed at him. So he poured his woes out to his sweetheart and they arranged to meet at a pub, knowing his wife had gone straight home. This wasn't the Black Lion, because they wanted to talk the situation over quietly.

‘But something went wrong, and his sweetheart did go to the Black Lion. Not knowing that, he sat there waiting for her in the hope she would arrive. When Tom at last reached his home, he found his wife dead. He was distraught. He called the police, but he did not confess to killing Joan. He allowed them to think that he had, and he allowed them to go on thinking that all through the trial and afterwards. He let it be thought that he must have committed suicide, but instead he created a new life for himself in London. It was his bad luck that during that new life which brought him comfort of a sort, Tom ran into one or two of his former associates and recognized them.'

Peter must be holding back because of Sandy's death, Georgia thought, or was he for once taking heed of police instructions?

‘Years later,' Peter continued, ‘when Tom decided to give his daughter a birthday present by reappearing briefly in her life, he was attacked and killed. His body was driven some distance away and put in a barn that was then set on fire. Without identification, our Tom had disappeared for good, or so it was thought. But now it's possible for Tom to have justice and a burial at last. His DNA can establish whether that burnt body was Tom's or not, because, although he has no living relatives that we know of, his sweetheart kept a lock of his hair.'

What was Cherry making of all this? Georgia wondered uneasily. She was showing no reaction.

Peter had not quite finished. ‘This is only Tom's story, of course. His sweetheart, however, has a quite different one, a story that has finished today with Sandy's murder. Hasn't it, Cherry?'

Cherry threw off Harold's arm and stood up, smiling at them vacantly. ‘I had to do it, you see,' she explained earnestly. ‘Once I realized that Sandy had killed my Tom, I had to do it for Tom's sake. Just like the first time.'

It was a much smaller group now. Mike had stepped forward to escort Cherry as she left the room, with Harold anxiously following them. Of course, Georgia realized, Mike must have known all the time that it wasn't Matthew who had killed Sandy; it had been Cherry.

She still had to battle to believe it, even though the process had begun when Harold had told them about Tom's visit to him. There had been no mention of Cherry, and surely Tom would have asked after her, whether or not he knew of her short marriage to Harold. But Harold had not mentioned her, because he was protecting her. No longer. Unlike the night when she murdered Joan, there was no one to deal with fingerprints today, no one to save her, and that was as well, for she was surely certifiable. Georgia had wondered whether Harold would go with her to the police station, but he did not. Looking his full age, he had come back into the room again.

‘I'm sorry,' he said to Peter in particular. ‘After you had told us all about Tom's return visit, she became convinced she was going to meet Tom again at today's reunion. She came to me to ask – I'm afraid – what I thought she should wear. I decided enough was enough and told her what I had always thought had happened to him. That he'd met a sticky end after his Broadstairs visit.'

‘Including Sandy's name?' Peter asked.

‘I'm not that stupid, but then neither is she. She's highly intelligent in some ways, and I now realize that from what I did tell her she could guess who I thought was responsible for Tom's death. I'm not proud of myself.'

‘It could have happened anyway,' Peter replied. ‘At least this way she'll be in safe custody. There'll be plenty of evidence that she killed Sandy, whereas there would be difficulty in proving she killed Joan Watson.'

‘I tried to warn you.' Harold looked helplessly at Georgia.

‘It was her who set fire to the barn?' she exclaimed in horror. ‘I thought it was Sandy who organized it.'

‘No. I suspect she got the idea into her head and told herself she was doing it for Tom.'

Georgia shuddered. ‘I suppose we were lucky it wasn't Medlars.'

‘It might have been next time.'

Pamela had been very quiet. ‘How did she kill my mother?' she asked Peter. ‘I need to know. I
liked
Cherry.'

Peter looked as if he had no taste for this, but it had to be done. ‘She probably thought Tom would be pleased at what she had done. From her viewpoint she had solved their problem so that Tom and she could get married. She might not even have realized that Tom would be blamed. She was entirely focused on her own desire to be with Tom. Joan probably made fun of Cherry as she did her husband, and even if Cherry had gone with the purpose of pleading with Joan, that could have been the last straw. She seized the knife and poured out all her hate on the unsuspecting Joan, who had no doubt dismissed her as a nonentity.'

‘Mistake,' muttered Harold.

‘My theory is that she had deliberately sent Tom to another pub so that he would wait for her there. If they'd gone to the Black Lion and she had then made an excuse to leave early, then Tom would have gone home straight away. Instead, she put in a brief appearance at the Black Lion, then made an excuse and left. When Tom came home, he found her waiting at the foot of the steps to tell him all about it. He rushed up to the flat with her following him and found Joan's body. She told him that she had done it for him, so he believed that he was to blame. How could he give her away to the police? Cherry was probably still looking at him with those trusting, hopeful eyes, even though she had committed terrible murder – for him. Tom felt he had to go into action on her behalf, however repelled he was by what she done. He probably gave her one of Joan's coats to hide any blood spatters on her that her parents might spot and bundled her down the steps to the yard. That's when his neighbour spotted Joan, as she thought. Then he called the police. He'd done what he could. He took the knife out of the wound so that his prints would be on it. The blood might have begun to coagulate by then, but even if not, it wouldn't matter if the blood spattered him. He realized he had no alibi, because if he asked the people at the pub he'd been in to confirm his presence there, it would be clear that Cherry had not turned up, which would automatically put her under suspicion. So he said he had been in the Black Lion and awaited the inevitable – which he might have thought was only right, as he had been the cause of her actions. Tom was acquitted but then realized that his love for Cherry had completely vanished because of her actions. He had no wish to marry her. He decided instead to find a new life and returned only once on Pamela's birthday. Meanwhile, Cherry waited on in vain.' Peter paused. ‘Is that right, Harold?'

‘Nearly,' Harold replied, stony faced.

‘And the rest?'

He sighed. ‘I've told you most of it. What I didn't include was that Tom came to me in London not only to ask about Sandy but about Cherry's whereabouts. He'd found out that she'd married me but that we were divorced. He seemed worried when I said she had returned to Broadstairs. He didn't want to run into her by chance. After we were married, I began to suspect she might have killed Joan, and once that idea was in my head, it killed the marriage. I couldn't stand her, but I still felt an obligation towards her. I still did – up until today, and perhaps even now. I wanted to warn you off with my letter to you, Luke, because I knew she wasn't functioning on all cylinders. When Ken died, I was terrified she'd been responsible, but that isn't the case, is it?'