The Body of a Woman (16 page)

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Authors: Clare Curzon

BOOK: The Body of a Woman
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There was a silence. I tried to picture her face and couldn't. Then, ‘What photographs?'
It sounded like genuine incredulity. But with someone like Beryl how could I tell?
‘Listen,' she said threateningly. ‘It's not my fault you got sloshed. You ought to be thanking me for what I did for you.'
It was unbelievable. ‘Did what for me?'
‘Got your dad to come out and pick you up. I even undressed you and put you to bed at home. I'm not surprised you don't remember. You were out cold at that point. He was disgusted. Lucky it was your mum's weekend away.
‘And don't forget I want the dress back. It cost somebody a helluva lot of money. Make sure it's dry-cleaned, in case you puked all down it.'
I didn't know what she was talking about, any more than she'd appeared to know about the photographs. I put the receiver down and went, sickly, back to bed.
The thought of Beryl here in my room, touching my things, undressing me, filled me with added disgust. And then, remembering how uneasy she'd sounded at first, I knew why: because of the little sachet of white powder I'd found in my bedding. It could have been in her pocket and dropped out when she manhandled me. Maybe some of my bruises had happened then. But she wasn't sure she'd lost it here. As far as she knew it could be anywhere.
Next morning I knew I had to get away. I would tell Leila I'd arranged with Granny to stay with her for a week or two. I might even do that, but only after I'd been for a medical check-up.
I couldn't trust any local doctor not to gas to Leila or my father, so it would have to be in London or even further away. I'd have to go private and use an assumed name. And the fee must come out of my holiday money.
Meanwhile I saw no point in pushing Beryl any further,
but there was someone else who might be more forthcoming. I wasn't fooled anymore by her apparent niceness when she'd offered me coffee and dry clothes after my drenching. She'd been anything but a friend to me the first time I saw her, forcing that salty drink on me. The image had hardened in my memory and I knew for sure now that it was Morgan. Morgan who might, or might not, be a nurse. And nurses had access to all kinds of drugs.
So that was why I dressed and went out, saying I needed fresh air. Which was how I came to get really involved with the Gregorys, all three of them, just trying to get myself sorted out.
Sunday 4 July
 
Chloë wandered out into the darkening garden and sat on the broken stone seat they'd retrieved from a tangle of brambles. Through the big windows she could see Janey moving about the kitchen illuminated like a stage set by the harsh strip lighting.
Leila had intended changing it, rejigging completely with new cooker, fittings, the lot. Now it would never happen. Everything had been struck dead. A part of her, Chloë knew, had gone the same way.
At Granny's she'd been getting over the shame and the shock of what had happened in her own life, sorting herself out and facing up. Then this unbelievable horror of Leila's killing. Today was the worst ever, so immeasurably long, starting in Nice and then ending in nightmare.
She tried not to see the physical murder in her mind, but that was impossible. It had happened in only one actual way, but a hundred dreadful images of it overwhelmed her. To break free of them she needed to know exactly who, and how, and the full agony of the reality. But she didn't yet dare face up to it. Oh God, not yet.
The sight of Janey getting on with life was offensive. Yet she was showing guts. No one could deny Janey had loved Leila. As I did, Chloë admitted. It was terrible to think did, not does. Because the love was still there, in the great gap that had appeared.
Janey seemed to be hunting for something, pulling out a kitchen chair and climbing up to peer in the top cupboards. Chloë brushed grit off the seat of her jeans and went in to help.
‘Ah,' Janey said. ‘That big brown pottery thing she does
the casseroles in; have you any idea where it's been put? I thought I'd start tomorrow's steak off tonight; let it cook slowly for an hour or two.'
‘Does
the casseroles in …' She was having the same trouble with tenses.
Chloe went through to the conservatory and retrieved the pot from where the cleaned china had been stacked. Under the trestle table Leila's yellow rubber gloves hung over the edge of a bucket, plumped out as if her hands were still curled in them, but weirdly collapsed.
She hugged the pot to her, its bright highlights on the heavy brown glaze comfortingly familiar. Continuity: that was something.
‘Anything you'd like me to do?' she asked Janey, back in the kitchen.
‘Could you trot down to Hetty Chadwick's and say I'd like a word with her when it's convenient. I could phone but it's better face to face since we barely know each other.'
‘Right.'
Passing the first of the old cottages she noticed the absence of lights. No sign of Morgan or her brother. Next-door the chenille curtains had been closed but sounds of the television escaped from an open casement. She recognised the opening music of the Sunday evening serial. Mrs Chadwick wouldn't care to have her regular viewing interrupted.
Chloë hadn't accounted for the woman's priority of the real world over the screen one. Or perhaps it was just unhealthy curiosity. ‘I'll come right away,' she offered. ‘Just a sec while I put me shoes on.'
She riffled through a bulging handbag for her key-ring which she dropped in her skirt pocket. ‘Time was,' she said, ‘when you never needed lock your doors. That's long gone. So how're you all bearing up, dearie? What a terrible thing to happen. I couldn't believe me ears when they told me.'
She slammed the door and they turned into the lane. Chloë was glad she wasn't expected to interrupt Mrs
Chadwick's flow. The sky was growing overcast, like a lid pressing down the day's stale heat. Because the unmade edges of the road were tussocky and shadowed, they walked together in the middle.
‘Gotta nasty bunion on me left foot,' the woman confided, to account for her hobbling.
‘I hope it doesn't stop you …'
Chloe broke off, dazzled by headlights instantly switched on by a car racing towards them.
As she left she'd been vaguely conscious of a vehicle parked beyond Knollhurst with its engine idling. The speed at which it was roaring at them now was terrifying. She grabbed Mrs Chadwick by one arm and dragged her towards the verge, almost made it, but the woman tottered and was on the point of falling as the car struck, tearing her from Chloë's grasp. Falling, the girl saw in slow motion the big pale figure strike the bonnet and seem to leap off into the night as the car screamed past, its red rear lights swallowed up in the dark.
In the awful silence after it she gazed around. Grit in her eyes made them stream and she couldn't see. Hetty Chadwick had disappeared.
Then she made out a dim shape heaped against the far verge. There was no movement, no sound.
Chloë crawled across on hands and knees. She took the heavy, ungainly body in her arms, rocking over it, lifted her head and howled like a dog.
 
Over breakfast on Monday Superintendent Yeadings paused after the first bite into his marmalade toast and wondered aloud where the proverbial prejudice against stepmothers had sprung from.
‘Fairy tales,' Nan supplied. ‘Snow White and the Wicked Queen, that sort of thing. Or maybe it goes further back, to the Ancient Greeks. They were pretty smart about funky families.'
She reached out to retrieve young Luke's yoghurt spoon which had unaccountably come sailing across the table in a wide parabola. ‘I hope you aren't considering a replacement for my useless self.'
‘That'd be the day,' her husband said, grinning fiercely. ‘I just hoped you could shed some light on the stepchild's point of view.'
Nan planted her elbows on the table, earning a squeak of priggish protest from their daughter. ‘Well, at best a new mum means comfort and support for a lonely little person who's rather adrift. For an older child who's into independence it can seem an invasion, a rupture of a standing relationship with the father, as well as an insult to the memory of the real mother. That leaves a sizeable area in-between.
‘Does this sudden interest stem from the two boys who killed themselves in the stolen car?' She meant the case which had made front-page news in last week's local paper.
‘No. Both had a full complement of biological parents, however inadequate they may have been. You recall the incident in Shotters Wood that we came across on Friday night? Nine years back the dead woman had married a widowed professor with two young children. The son's abroad at present, but I've met the daughter and she gives every sign of being devoted to her late stepmother. In fact she's devastated by her death.'
‘How old?'
‘An intelligent fifteen.'
‘It's not simply shock at the idea of murder?'
‘I'm sure it's much more.'
‘In that case the new mother could have replaced her own early on when she needed basic nurturing. Or else the girl's at odds with her father and welcomed the new mother as an ally.'
‘Or both,' said Yeadings. ‘Thanks, Nan. That backs up the impression I get from the whole set-up.'
Nan made a grimace of distaste. ‘Will the murder turn out to be a domestic?'
‘Could be. It depends what Angus has made of the husband overnight,' Yeadings allowed, rising from the table. ‘Then again it could be a lot more complicated than that. There are some definite undercurrents that make me wonder.'
‘Are the Press on to it yet?'
‘They will be shortly. The PR office is putting out a brief statement today after I've checked it. So the
Evening Standard
will give it a para or two tonight, the morning dailies tomorrow.'
So she could read about it there, and that would be her lot. She could see Mike wasn't going to loose-mouth on this one. Not at this juncture anyway.
He brushed off his toast crumbs, solemnly kissed his way round the table, wiped the resultant stickiness off his mouth and went with Nan to the door. ‘What's for tonight?'
‘I'd better make it lamb, slow roast. Safest when I can't be sure how late you'll be.'
‘Right. New case: lots'a spadework.'
She watched him drive out on to the road and reflected that any digging was rightly the team's. But Mike was no slouch when it came to active policing. No way was his desk the full-time obsession the top brass had meant it to be.
 
 
Mott was in early and Yeadings stopped off at the CID office. ‘Anything promising with Knightley, Angus?'
‘Nothing worth charging him with. I took it gently, but I'll be pulling him in again today. Why is it that clever people are often so stupid? He doesn't seem to realise how serious this is. He's scared for himself, but he doesn't really believe he could be in the shit. He refuses to give an account of where he's been for the past four days. If ever anyone was qualified for a doctorate in arrogance …'
‘So you sent him home?'
‘Yup. Silver dropped him off at his gate. Not exactly welcomed by the Hadfields, it seems. The cat among the pigeons, hopefully. Something useful might come out of that.'
‘A womanising wimp, according to Janey. That's a line we'll need to follow up. It seems to have been generally accepted, but by now the family may have decided to close ranks and cover up his philandering. Anyway, however much the others may slate him on that count it's too late to help the dead woman.'
‘We've no reason to think she was any better than her husband. Z picked up a hint from the cleaner …'
‘Not in so many words. Body language and then a suddenly buttoned-up mouth.' Yeadings realised he was defending Leila's reputation and pulled up short of taking sides.
‘Staying stumm out of loyalty to her employer? That's an old-fashioned principle. Is it possible the woman expects to use her knowledge elsewhere?' Mott offered.
‘Small-town blackmail?'
‘Probably not. But if there's any truth behind the hint …'
‘Cherchez l'homme?'
Yeadings' black eyebrows shot up to his hairline.
‘That's something I'll check on anyway. If Z doesn't get any further with Mrs Chadwick she can try having a word with Leila's neighbours.'
Yeadings grunted agreement. ‘The Piggots. I spotted one of the lads yesterday up in a tree, with field-glasses trained on the house.'
Mott hummed. ‘Right; I'll send her round after school hours. You'll find a tape of my interview with Knightley on your desk, sir.'
‘Thanks.' Yeadings knew that when Mott called him ‘sir' it was as good as a dismissal. He grinned wryly. ‘Bring the others along when they get in and you can rough out your general briefing.'
In his own office Yeadings skimmed through the newspaper resumes and cuttings which the PR office had extracted from the morning papers. There was a leader on the handling of juvenile crime from the local
Clarion,
but the two teenage joyriders' bloody end merited only a couple of paragraphs in most London sheets.
Max Harris, Z's columnist friend, had an article headed Where's the Joy in Joyriding? in which he considered the j194
police chase as a reaction. At least he saw two sides to the problem and dwelt on the courts' inability to deal with eleven-year-old habitual offenders. It was a problem to hand back to Parliament. The legislators, he insisted, had failed to respond to current needs.
From that consideration Yeadings progressed to the coffeemaker, spooned liberal quantities of ground Mocha mix into a filter paper, topped up with Highland bottled water and switched on. The machine's gentle burbling accompanied his running of Mott's taped interview with the widower Knightley.
The man managed to sound at the same time pompous and offended. He had refused the offer of a duty solicitor to represent him and clammed up when the questioning became personal, even when warned that present silence might be prejudicial. One thing he had denied outright was having accompanied his wife to any private or hotel party during his four-day absence.
As he eventually realised that he could be setting himself up as prime suspect to murder, he had querulously pleaded shock, grief and loss of sleep. At that point Mott had let him go. Timed at 20.47.
Not at all bad, Yeadings thought. The man had been given plenty to ponder. The release was a bit of a bungee jump: he'd be coming back time and again, on each occasion with a little less bounce. The resultant tension could ensure a more co-operative mood in future.
At a knock on his door Yeadings shouted, ‘Ready.' At present it amused him to use the same cry that young Luke gave when welcoming either parent to a successful potty session.
Mott ushered in the two sergeants, and Beaumont produced three mugs while the others found seats.
‘Well,' Yeadings invited, ‘what's today's menu?' Beaumont reeled off a list of hotels and country clubs which he had contacted regarding a masked entertainment on Friday night. ‘Negative throughout,' he confessed, ‘so I checked what stage or cabaret shows had been put on, in case Leila K was an exotic dancer or suchlike. So far no joy, but there are three clubs I haven't got to yet. Not to mention the unlimited London list.'

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