An Expert in Murder (31 page)

Penrose joined him, and watched the actor climb onto his motorbike and move off in the direction of the river. ‘Yes, he confirmed your story.’

‘So what happens now? Am I under arrest?’

‘I’d like you to come back to the station with us so we can take a formal statement and some fingerprints from you. Are you happy with that?’

‘Of course, if it will help.’

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‘Then you’re not under arrest. Do you remember what you were wearing on Friday?’

The fear had returned to Hedley’s face, but he nodded and reached under the bed for a laundry bag. He handed some trousers and a jumper to Fallowfield, who accepted them and then took the whole bag. ‘Go with PC Bartlett, lad,’ Fallowfield said, and his tone was not unkind. ‘We’ll be with you in a minute.’

As Bartlett took White down to the car, Penrose and Fallowfield searched the rest of the room quickly and efficiently, but found nothing of interest. ‘I think a quick look round next door, Sergeant, don’t you?’ Penrose suggested with a wry smile, but the result was the same there. ‘You know, Bill, we’ve got the so-called prime suspect in custody and we’re no further forward now than we were an hour ago,’ he said, unable to hide his disappointment.

‘When are we going to get some help?’

The answer came sooner than he expected. ‘Sir,’ Bartlett said as Penrose shut the car door, ‘there’s an Alice Simmons at the station and she wants to talk to you urgently.’

There were two messages waiting for Penrose when he got back to the Yard. One was from Josephine, who had remembered where she read about the iris, but said it would wait until she saw him later; the other was from Maybrick at the theatre, reporting that Terry had tried to get into the building during the morning and had demanded to know what was going on.

‘Could be a bluff, Sir,’ Fallowfield suggested. ‘After all, he had a lot to gain from Aubrey’s death. He could be making a public display of ignorance to fool us.’

Penrose was doubtful but not in the mood to rule anything out.

‘We’ll have to see him later today, but I’m hoping Alice Simmons will point us in the right direction. In the meantime, perhaps you’d be kind enough to telephone Mr Terry and tell him that his first task as boss of two theatres is to cancel all productions until further notice. That won’t go down well, I’m sure, but it will keep him busy for a few hours until we can get to speak to him. Then come back here. I want you to see Alice Simmons with me.’

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While he was waiting for Fallowfield, Penrose tried to telephone Josephine, but was told her line was engaged. He doubted he’d have time to see her today: there was a lot to do and he wanted to get through as much as possible before he had to report to his super in the morning. And he desperately needed a few hours’

sleep. The only time he remembered being this tired was when his regiment had been on the move and he hadn’t fully recovered from an injury; they’d had to march for hours at a time and he remembered falling over in the road while others staggered round him, too exhausted to lift their feet high enough to step over him. It wasn’t long after Jack’s death, and his nights had been sleepless with sadness and worry about Josephine – it was that more than the physical exhaustion which had really affected him. Nothing, it seemed, made him quite as weary as worrying about Josephine, though she wouldn’t thank him for it.

A mug of strong, black coffee appeared on the desk in front of him and he smiled gratefully at his sergeant. ‘Where do you get your energy from, Bill? Is it all that good Suffolk air you grew up with?’

‘I think it’s more straightforward than that, Sir. You sent me home for a couple of hours, remember? And as predicted, John Terry has gone up in the air and not come down. I didn’t know actors had such a vocabulary, but I’ve learnt a few words that aren’t in any script I know of.’

As they made their way downstairs, Penrose confided his fears to Fallowfield. ‘If Alice Simmons can’t tell us much about Elspeth’s background, we’re in an impossible position,’ he said. ‘We’re relying on there being a link between her and Aubrey but it would take an age to trace it by official records, and this killer’s going at the rate of one a day. There won’t be any room in the mortuary if we don’t soon find a shortcut between the past and the present.’

‘It’s a good sign that she wanted to see you right away, though,’

said Fallowfield, as optimistic as ever. ‘She must have something to say.’

‘She probably wants to know why I haven’t found her daughter’s killer yet,’ Penrose muttered as he opened the door of the interview room. ‘I would in her position.’

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But the woman seated at the small table in the middle of the room did not look as though she had come to complain to anybody; in fact, she looked like someone with no fight left in her at all. There was no blood relationship between Alice and Betty Simmons so it was silly of Penrose to have assumed a resemblance, but he realised now that he had imagined Elspeth’s mother as another version of her aunt. In fact, nothing could have been further from the truth. In her bearing, at least, she had none of the restraint that had been evident in her sister-in-law’s every move; in fact, even in the formal surroundings of a police interview room, she looked more relaxed than Betty had been in her own home.

She was tall, with attractive silver blonde hair which refused to be contained in its entirety by a plait, and she wore a suit which was sober only in its colouring; no part of the outfit had escaped a few little finishing-off touches and Penrose, who had never realised that black could be so expressive, searched in vain for a square inch of plain material; even the gloves on the table were attached to velvet flowers, while the hat, which was too big to go anywhere else but on the floor beside its keeper, was the most creative item of mourning attire that he had ever seen. What was most remarkable, though, was that Alice Simmons carried it all off with a dignity and composure which few people achieved with straight lines and understated simplicity.

‘Thank you for coming here so quickly, Mrs Simmons,’ Penrose said, ‘but I’m truly sorry for the circumstances that have brought you.’

‘Everybody’s been very kind,’ she said, so quietly that Penrose could barely hear her. ‘At the . . . the people who are looking after Elspeth couldn’t have been more thoughtful, and Betty said you were all working so hard to find out what happened. I am grateful, you know. Really I am.’

She looked at Penrose for the first time, and it seemed to him that fate had played a cruel trick in deciding that Alice Simmons would share no characteristic, no matter how small, with the daughter she so dearly loved. Her colouring, build and general demeanour were all distinctly at odds with the Elspeth he had seen 219

in Hedley’s photograph, and he wondered if the physical disparity had been a painful reminder to both mother and daughter that their relationship was built on a fragile practical arrangement rather than an unassailable natural bond. ‘We’re doing our best, Mrs Simmons,’ he said, and introduced Fallowfield, who took the empty cup from the table and sent the constable at the door off for a refill. ‘But I have to admit, we could do with a little help and we’re hoping you’ll be able to supply it.’

‘Of course you need help. How can you be expected to get anywhere when you only know half the story?’ She took a handkerchief from her bag, a safeguard against what was to come. ‘They let me sit with Elspeth for a bit, just the two of us,’ she continued.

‘I had to tell her I was sorry. She grew up surrounded by so much misery and the only consolation was that she never knew about it

– we always managed to keep it at bay. Now this has happened, and she’s paid the price after all for something that was never her fault. At a time like this you’re supposed to say you can’t believe it, aren’t you? But that’s not true for me. I hoped Walter’s death would be the end of it, but I think deep down I always knew there’d be worse to come. That’s why I’m here now – to stop it going any further.’

‘Do you know who killed Elspeth, Mrs Simmons?’ Penrose asked gently, hardly daring to believe that the answer could simply have walked through the door. He glanced at Fallowfield, and saw that he was also finding it hard to control his excitement.

‘No, but I can try and explain why it happened. Betty told you that Walter and I couldn’t have any children of our own?’ Penrose nodded. ‘We tried and tried before the war, but it didn’t happen and it was ruining our marriage. I couldn’t think about anything else except having a baby. All the joy I’d felt in just being with Walter, in knowing how much he loved me, disappeared and I couldn’t get it back. Every time I looked at him, all I could see was our failure. It tore him apart inside. There was no pleasure in sex any more. We’d always been really close in that way – he was so tender and loving – but it stopped being an intimate connection between the two of us and became something set apart from our 220

relationship, if you know what I mean. He stopped talking to me, too. I don’t think he had any idea what to say, so we ended up in this no man’s land; we couldn’t turn ourselves into a family, and we couldn’t go back to being happy as a couple. I hope you don’t mind my telling you all this, but it’s important.’

‘Of course not,’ said Penrose, who was genuinely happy to let her talk. Selfishly, though, he hoped that what had brought her to him was something more than a confession for one side of a bad marriage, and was pleased when Fallowfield gently moved things along.

‘So did you suggest adoption to your husband, Mrs Simmons?’

‘No, Sergeant, nothing as sensible as that, I’m afraid.’ She hesitated. ‘I suppose it’s ridiculous of me to be ashamed of what I did suggest when so much else came later, but I
am
ashamed. It was so thoughtless, particularly as we didn’t know whose fault it was that we couldn’t conceive, but I asked Frank if he’d father a child for us. He agreed, but only if Walter and Betty knew about it and were happy with the arrangement. I must have been out of my mind –

Walter’s own brother! No man could stomach that. He was so angry when I told him. I’d never seen that side of him before –

well, I’m not sure it existed until I drove him to it. I don’t think Frank ever got round to telling Betty – there was no need, because Walter would never have agreed. Shortly after that, war broke out and Walter couldn’t sign up quick enough. Anything rather than stay with me and face that betrayal.’

That explained why Alice never came to London, Penrose thought, and he wondered if Frank Simmons had ever regretted his honesty. Was his interest in Elspeth a way of making up for that missed opportunity to be a father? And what on earth had he been thinking while they sat there yesterday discussing Walter and Alice’s marriage? ‘Frank told us that Walter arranged Elspeth’s adoption with someone in the army,’ he said. ‘Do you know who Elspeth’s real parents are?’

‘Yes, at least I know who her father was. I didn’t at the time, though – I was so grateful just to have Elspeth that I didn’t dare question anything about how I got her. All I knew then was that 221

there was no one to bring her up. She was only a month old when Walter brought her home to me, and the prettiest little thing you could imagine – so good-natured, even at that age. We called her Elspeth – it was Walter’s mother’s name and I wanted him to have a connection with her as strong as the one I felt. After that, I never looked back. It was only last year, when Walter realised he was dying, that he told me everything he knew.’

‘Was her father’s name Arthur?’

Alice looked astonished. ‘So you know? Yes. He was an engineer in the war. How did you find out?’

‘Elspeth’s death is connected to another murder which happened shortly afterwards.’ Penrose was about to explain further, but Alice interrupted him.

‘Is Bernard Aubrey dead?’ Now it was the Inspector’s turn to look surprised. ‘If there’s been another killing, it had to be him.

Apart from me – and whoever’s doing this, obviously – he’s the only other person left alive who knew what really happened.

Arthur was his nephew. Bernard kept in touch with Walter after the war. He sent us money to help with Elspeth – on her birthday, every year without fail.’

‘With a note, asking you to let him know if you changed your mind about the adoption?’

‘Oh no. I mean, he did send a note but it wasn’t about the adoption. He knew we’d never change our mind about that and he was satisfied that Elspeth was well cared for. No, he wanted Walter’s help and Walter wouldn’t give it to him – that’s what Aubrey wanted him to change his mind about. You see, Inspector, Walter did something terrible to get Elspeth, something he never forgave himself for. He confessed to me, just before he died and it explains everything – why he changed so much, why his love for Elspeth always had a sense of regret about it. I don’t think she knew – I hope to God she didn’t – but Walter was capable of a much more generous love than he ever showed to her. I know everyone was affected by the war – how could they not be? – and if I’m being honest, it was easy for me to put his behaviour down to that because I couldn’t be expected to make it better for him. But there 222

was a much deeper grief. I wish more than anything that he’d told me earlier, because as soon as he did the old Walter came back. I’m making it sound like a sudden confession and it wasn’t that – he told me everything gradually, a bit more each day; you could tell it was a terrible strain for him, but it gave me long enough before he died to remember how much I loved him and I’m grateful for that, even though it made his loss so much harder.’

‘What did he tell you, Mrs Simmons?’ Penrose asked after a long silence, bringing her back from wherever her story had taken her.

‘I’m sorry. Of course – you need to get on. Well, Walter was an infantryman and his regiment worked closely with the tunnelling operation. We were hardly speaking when he went away because of what happened with Frank, but he soon began to write – it was so much more terrible out there than he could have imagined, and I think any connection with home helped. The very first thing he had to do was bury people. He’d never seen a dead body before, and there he was – faced with two or three hundred of them. I’ll never forget that letter. He told me how they had to pack them in the dirt so that the bottom of the trench was springy like a mat-tress because of all the bodies underneath. The stench was horrific, he said, but the flies were the worst thing; they lined the trenches like some sort of moving cloth and no matter how many the men killed with their spades, every day was just as bad. He liked the democracy of the trenches, though, the fact that everyone was in the same boat no matter who they’d been in civilian life. That was naive of him, I think, because not everyone saw it that way – it was just a case of getting by however you could, and it soon changed back when peace came. But one of the officers took him on as his batman, and they looked out for each other. Walter mistook that for friendship and he must have opened up to him about the trouble we were going through, because this man – the Captain, Walter always called him – got to know how desperately I wanted a child.