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Authors: Marjorie Eccles

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BOOK: Killing a Unicorn
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But what she sees in his face isn't condemnation, only that he knows exactly what's been going through her mind - the suspicions, the fear, the terror — and she sees no blame on her for that. ‘She gave them to me, Fran,' he says quietly. ‘She knew, of course, that I was going to Belgium for a while, and she rang me on Thursday morning and asked me to take Jasie along, too. It was school holidays, she reminded me, and finding something to occupy him was a pain. Knowing how protective of him she was, I couldn't take that on board — I'm afraid I was a bit short with her and I told her it was out of the question — and then it all came out. She'd been getting these threatening letters from her ex, and she'd just had another which had really frightened her. I thought she was overreacting, but within half an hour she'd hobbled down to The Watersplash with them, apart from the one she'd received that morning — that one had really got to her, and she'd immediately destroyed it. “Read them,” she said, “and then see whether you believe me.” Well, you've read them yourself, you must know what I felt. Yes, Fran, I did advise her to go to the police, but there was no way she'd do that — look what had happened last time, she said. I hadn't much time before I had to leave, so in the end I agreed to do what she wanted and let Jasie come with me, on the understanding that when I got back she must go to the police.'
‘You say she rang on
Thursday
? But you left before me on Wednesday morning.'
‘I did, but on my way to London I had a call on my mobile postponing my meeting until the following day, so
I came home and rearranged my schedule to leave for Brussels on Thursday evening. It was sheer chance that I hadn't gone when I was supposed to.'
‘So that was it. I knew the oranges must have been you.'
He blinks. ‘Oranges? What oranges?'
She explains about seeing the fruit in the black bowl, her growing certainty that she hadn't, herself, subliminally arranged them. He smiles wryly. ‘Right, I remember. Seeing the bowl empty, remembering the oranges in the fridge, putting them together … time I stopped having such predictable reflexes.'
‘It started me thinking — that and the owl.' Barely repressing a shudder, she described the shock the image on the mirror had given her. ‘It was weird.
Somebody
must have left the front door open, and I knew I hadn't. After a while I realized it could only have been you.'
‘The front door? Sorry, not me this time. Why should I change the habits of a lifetime and not use the back door?'
Why indeed? They both tend to use the more convenient back door, all the time.
‘In any case, on Wednesday evening, I shut myself up in the studio and got down to some work. I went straight to bed afterwards without going downstairs.' And no doubt, following his usual custom when he worked, had turned the stereo full on, deaf to any sounds below. ‘Well, since I can't believe in the supernatural, the owl must have got in by more normal means — an open door,' he says.
That's something to think hard about. Gooseflesh rises on her arms, the back of her neck.
‘There's a key to the front door up at Membery, Fran, for emergencies. Anyone could have let themselves in — Chip, Alyssa, Jane — even Bibi herself.'
‘Why?'
‘All right then, maybe I should have taken more notice of those noises you've been hearing in the night.'
‘Don't, that's not funny.'
‘Fran, I've never been more serious. As soon as we get back, I mean to get to the bottom of that.'
She said slowly, ‘Anyway, surely — you couldn't have missed seeing the imprint on the mirror when you came down next morning?'
‘Couldn't I?' he asks, smiling wryly.
She has to accede that he might. Mornings are never Mark's best time, he surfaces slowly, not really awake until after the third cup of coffee — especially if, as he says, he was wakened suddenly by that panicky phone call from Bibi, asking him to take Jasie away. If he hadn't done as she asked, would Jasie have been Armstrong's second victim? Thinking about that, she almost forgives him the last few days — almost …
‘You might have saved us a lot of grief if you'd told us all this at the beginning.'
‘Bibi intended telling you that evening — but she never got the chance, did she?'
‘No.' There was a silence. ‘But afterwards, when I told you she was dead? We were frantic about him.'
‘Believe me, that really bugged me,' he said steadily. ‘But it was a toss up between causing anxiety and keeping Jasie safe — which he wasn't anywhere until that bastard was caught.'
She's not sure she goes along with his reasoning — men, even the best of them, can be so obtuse. But they've crossed a barrier here tonight, so she just says, ‘Well, whatever, you're going to have to face the music when we get back. Wasting police time and all that. Not to mention facing your mother.'
 
 
Crouch was taking a break from questioning Armstrong, back in his own office, with approximately the fifteenth cup of black coffee of the day in front of him, when Kate came in. Summing up the situation at a glance, she raised questioning eyebrows.
‘He's admitted it — to sending the letters.'
‘At last!'
He shrugged. ‘It was only a matter of time, but he's still sticking out that he'd nothing to do with killing Bibi, or taking Jasie.'
He looked gutted. He was due for his second shave of the day and hadn't noticed. She resisted the impulse, even though no one else was there, to give him a wifely, comforting hug. But Crouch wasn't easy to comfort. And it was an unwritten law between them that home and office remained two separate worlds. He pushed his chair back and went to look out over the darkening town, his hands stuck in his pockets.
‘You believe he's telling the truth about the rest, don't you, Dave?'
‘Dammit, he can't be!' He slammed his fist against the window frame and swung round to face her. ‘Who else is responsible, if not him?'
She took a deep breath and counted to ten. She was about to be shot down in flames and didn't want to think about it too much first. Then she said what she had to say, and waited.
‘
Glass
, Kate?' In two words, he made her feel approximately the same size as Alice when she'd drunk the magic potion that enabled her to get down the rabbit hole. ‘You're suggesting the murder weapon's a piece of
glass
?'
She stuck to her guns. ‘That was my first reaction. How could a glass shard have been thrown into the stream without being broken? But you know, it didn't need to have been thrown in with any force, just slipped in, and it didn't have to break, either. Well, it
didn't
break, did it? It just lay there, flat on the gravel at the side.'
‘And Forensics missed it when they were searching for the weapon? Hey, come on, that lot don't miss a grain of sugar in a pile of sand!'
‘They missed this,' she insisted stubbornly. ‘You could easily, you know. They were looking for a knife or something similar and I don't suppose they actually sifted through every pebble in the stream. Glass is transparent,
and I only happened to see it by a trick of the light. Try looking at a piece of glass under water and you'll see what I mean. Anyway, Dave — the size and shape fit, they've looked at it and it seems to be the exact profile.'
He rubbed his chin, still highly sceptical but wanting to be convinced. ‘How the hell would you manage to push it in with enough force, without cutting yourself?'
‘Gary Brooker was picking out the shards of glass from the frame of a broken window — the same one this glass came from, is my guess. He was wearing really tough, heavy-duty gardening gloves.'
‘
Brooker
?' He groaned. ‘
Brooker
? Oh, for God's sake, Kate!'
‘No, I'm not saying he's the one. She was still alive at half-past six, and he says he left Membery after delivering the note at about ten to. We've only his word for that, mind, but his gran would know what time he got home — and it's unlikely the neighbours would miss the sound of his motorbike arriving, either.'
He was still gunning for Graham Armstrong, still hoping to be convinced he was lying. ‘I suppose it's just possible that sad bastard could've been hanging around, noticed the glass and seized the opportunity to use it when he met her -' He broke off, knowing he was grasping at straws, though she could see he hadn't entirely thrown out the idea, knowing that scientific comparison of the glass shard with the wound would confirm whether she was right or wrong.
Kate was damn sure she was right, and there was more she had to say. She had at last pinned down that elusive idea she'd been chasing and, going back yet once more through her notes, there it all was, the possibility at any rate, a possibility so bizarre that she'd needed more time to work on it and let it mature in her own mind before amazing Crouch with her powers of deduction. She felt she'd come up with quite enough weird ideas for the moment, and her theory offered no explanation for the boy's disappearance, but since they appeared to have come
to the end of the line with Armstrong, it could do no harm. She said slowly, ‘Dave, I think you might have got it right. Right at first, when you were so adamant it was a family matter …'
He turned his gaze on her. Under the unforgiving fluorescent lights, she looked tired and anxious. She was wasted as a sergeant, bloody wasted on
him,
come to that, though she thought he didn't appreciate that. He felt remorseful. He would do better. And this time he meant it.
He grinned at her. ‘Amaze me further.'
But before she could do so, the telephone rang. Since she was the nearer, she reached out a hand and answered it. A few minutes later, she replaced the receiver. ‘That was Fran Calvert. She's in Belgium -'
‘
Belgium
?'
‘She's with her husband — and they've got the boy there with them.'
There was a short, sharp silence. ‘So that's one thing Armstrong didn't do.'
‘I don't think he killed Bibi Morgan, either. As we were saying … There are only two possibilities, really, aren't there?'
So, he thought when she'd finished, they now knew who, and they knew how. What they didn't know yet was why. But Crouch didn't feel that was important just now. People who killed had their own agenda, their own motives, quite often inexplicable to other people. It would all come out in the end.
He smiled at Kate and said, as she'd known he would, ‘One up to you, darlin'. Now get me a line to Membery Place.'
It wasn't gracious, but it was enough.
The small gold watch on the black strap was expensive, way out of his league. Try to flog that and they'd have him banged up to rights in no time. Gary had meant to give it to Charleen Smith, but it wasn't her style, not flash enough. And smitten as he was at the moment, he knew she was dumb enough to try selling it if he did give it her. Keeping it here, on the other hand, was equally a nonstarter. His grandmother had eyes like lasers and a nose like a bloodhound that she poked into everything.
He couldn't think now why he'd bothered nicking it, except that, unlike everything else his covetous eyes had lit on, the watch had been a doddle, lying on the floor by that leather chair thing that he'd tried out and found so comfortable he could've nodded off, only at that moment there'd been the sound of a door opening and a blast of music from upstairs. And the frigging house was supposed to be empty!
He'd leaped up like a scalded cat, pocketing a couple of CDs on his way out, just for luck, and then just as he was getting the hell out the same way as he'd come, there was a big soft thud and then a scuffling sort of sound. Something big and grey rushed past his ears. He'd nearly pissed himself. Christ, that was one weird house! Never mind it was stuffed to the gills with all the most up-to-date gear, as he and his mates had reckoned. And nearly all of it built-in, as he'd seen, too late.
So, what about the watch?
He didn't hear the door open, but the next moment his
grandmother was standing there. ‘What's that you've got there then, our Gary?'
 
 
Today Membery is a different place. The relief of knowing that Jasie is safe has made everyone light-headed, the telephone lines between Brussels and Membery have been alive. Jonathan and Jilly are preparing to depart for Philadelphia, with Berlin in between, Chip is returning from London. Mark and Fran, with Jasie, will be here any time.
After all the excitements, Alyssa and Jane walk slowly under the trees towards the head of the waterfall, bypassing the bank of the stream where Bibi died, drawn there by an invisible thread of tension. The sky is a lurid shade of yellow. Purple thunderheads are forming in the distance but nobody is giving much credence to their promise of rain. The weather's tried that trick once or twice too often in the last few days.
They reach the massed boulders above the fall and sit quietly for a while, the only sound the gurgle of the running stream and the splash as it hits the next rock below.
‘I need to talk to you, Jane.'
Jane bends down and works a tiny cushion of moss off its rock, looking like smooth, Lincoln green velvet, but in reality a dense mat of tiny, individual stems and leaves. It resists with all its might but it has met its match in Jane. Triumphantly, she pulls it free.
‘Look at me, Jane.' Alyssa puts a hand on Jane's brown forearm. The skin, like that on her own forearms, is dry and rough. Jane at last looks at her from under the brim of her fawn cotton sun-hat. ‘I think you might have guessed what I'm going to say. I'm going to marry Humphrey, Jane.'
An aeroplane moves across the sky, leaving a vapour trail, heading towards North America, its passengers settling down after take-off, awaiting their first gin and tonic
and the pleasure of a British Airways meal. One of the village rowdies, maybe Gary, roars distantly past the garden gates on a motorbike. A column of gnats rises in the air in front of them. Jane rubs the moss between her fingers until it goes to nothing. ‘You can't do that,' she says.
‘I've already told him I will.'
‘You can't,' Jane repeats, suddenly shaking with anger. ‘I won't let you!'
‘Now, Jane, it can't come as any surprise to you. You know he's been asking me for years.'
‘What's going to happen to — all this?' The wide sweep of Jane's arm encompasses the acres surrounding Membery Place, the garden, and the house itself. The family.
‘I shall sell the garden — there won't be any shortage of buyers. It'll be up to the boys to decide what to do with the house.'
Jane's anger erupts. ‘You must be mad! You'd never have entertained the idea if it hadn't been for her — that woman — that silly little bitch stuffing you with all that hocus pocus about the stars!'
Alyssa is shocked. In all the years she's known Jane, she's never heard her use strong language. But she knows now that she's never known Jane at all, something she's only realized in these last few days. Her heart is so heavy with foreboding and sadness she fears it might stop.
‘Humphrey!' Jane says now, with scorn. ‘He's all right, I suppose, but what use is he to you?'
‘You're forgetting. He's a good man, and he's loved me for years, I know his little ways, and he knows mine. Such as,' she adds softly, ‘knowing how to make my martini without overdoing the gin. I don't fall asleep when he makes it.'
Jane stiffens, her small, taut body braced like a spring. After a while, she says, ‘You work hard enough. It's no sin to take a drink and a nap.'
‘But you really overdid it on Thursday night — made it so strong that I couldn't drink it at all. I only took a few sips. No, Jane, stay where you are and listen to what I have
to say.' Alyssa lays a strong hand on Jane's arm and forces her to sit still.
‘I'll admit I'd had a very hard day on Thursday, and I felt pleasantly relaxed over my drink. Perhaps I dozed for a few minutes — it's a habit you can fall into easily enough when you're our age, if you're not careful, without the benefit of gin! But I woke up after a few minutes and you weren't there. I took the opportunity to pour the rest of the drink away — far too strong, and I'd had quite enough. I watched the telly for a while but I was bored and closed my eyes. I heard you tiptoe in and thought how kind of you not to want to disturb me, so I kept them closed and pretended to be asleep. You were gone at least twenty minutes, Jane -'
Jane says nothing. Her mouth is turned down in the familiar disapproving curve, but there is wariness in her silence.
‘– plenty of time to have followed Bibi down here — and done what there was to do.'
Alyssa was stunned by what she had been forced to believe was the truth. Jane had killed Bibi. Jane. Who loved Jasie, who loved them all. Jane, who had been her friend for over thirty years. No, it wasn't possible, she had thought at first.
But then she remembered how clever Jane was, how she had always succeeded in manipulating everyone in this, her adoptive family, even though they were always aware, at the backs of their minds, of being made to do things they didn't really want to do. Why had they submitted? Well, for one thing, it was often easier to knuckle under to someone like Jane, with her bright, birdlike fixations, than to fight her — and for another, she was almost always right in what she advised, or coerced, them to do. Alyssa recalled how she used to push them all, her children, especially Jonathan, remembered her absolute devotion to everything appertaining to the Calvert family. Paranoia? Maybe not, but certainly close. Look how devotedly she'd nursed Jonathan day and night through that bad bout of
measles, insisting on doing it alone, until she almost collapsed herself from exhaustion. And how she'd given up any thought of holidays of her own and taken the children away to East Anglia every summer to give Alyssa a break when Conrad was at his worst. She had hated Conrad. For a fleeting, horrified moment, Alyssa had a vision of Conrad at the bottom of the stairs, his neck broken.
No! He had fallen. He was fuddled with drink. That was what Jane had said, and she had been the only one in the house at the time. No one had reason to disbelieve her. She had taken charge of all the arrangements, and Alyssa had let her, unconsciously setting the shape of all the years to come. From then on, Jane had lived a vicarious existence through them all, Alyssa and the boys. And to be fair, it would seem she had genuinely loved them, though she'd loved Jonathan the best of all.
Poor, twisted Jane. For all that, she hadn't been able to inspire a return love.
 
 
I only did it for love, Jane says.
She had laid her plans so carefully. The notion of getting rid of Bibi had been with her for a long time, ever since it became evident that she had every intention of pushing Alyssa into marrying Humphrey, with the consequence that Membery Place Gardens would cease to be open to the public, or be leased off to someone else, and the house itself sold to God knows who. What then would have been left for Jane? A lonely, pointless existence in her little house in Middleton Thorpe. But the idea had only crystallized when she'd read that book of Bibi's, the one she so fancifully called her book of days, and realized what was happening with Jonathan.
Almost everyone made excuses for Bibi, saw her as she liked to put herself forward, the victim of some unexplained past, the exception being Humphrey. How had he once put it to Jane, in a rare moment of communication between them?
Wants to see herself as virtuous, that one, and
that's where the trouble lies. Interferes. Can't see that she has a core of selfishness
. All I can say is, God save me from the attentions of a good woman.
She and Humphrey, despite their differences, have always seen life as it is, unencumbered by romantic notions, like the Calverts. They both saw that Bibi was like two sides of a coin, pretending to herself that she was acting from the best of motives, while destroying everything around her … Alyssa's life here with me, thought Jane, Chip's … and especially Jonathan's.
Jane had had over two years for her hatred to grow.
It had come to a head when she'd read the entry in that book of Bibi's about what Jonathan had so uncharacteristically and foolishly confessed to her. If she hadn't read that book, Jane would never have known, but having noted how secretive Bibi was about it, she had watched until she found out where she kept it hidden: in her room, of course, but whenever had privacy stopped Jane?
There might have been other ways of getting rid of Bibi, but killing her was the surest. She'd been content to wait for the right opportunity, which had come with the arrival of those letters, that Bibi kept tucked inside the front of that same book, no doubt in case they were ever needed for evidence.
There were three of them. When Jane wrote the fourth, and last, she'd looked for the others to copy the same style and discovered that Bibi had removed them to some safer place — or perhaps destroyed them. So she'd had to rely on memory when she'd typed her own on the old Remington they'd used before Chip had urged them to computerize the office records. It was a pity she hadn't been able to find any of the same sort of paper, but she didn't think it would matter — and it hadn't. It worried her that she hadn't been able to copy the little unicorn signature on the bottom; it niggled her also as to what it meant, but Bibi had apparently never questioned that the letter had come from the same source as the others. Jane had watched her the morning it arrived through the post and had noted with satisfaction that she was entirely panic-stricken.
It was the wicked-looking pile of glass from the window Gary Brooker had broken that had suddenly given her the idea of how she could do it. She'd chosen a likely-looking piece and hidden it outside until the time arose when she would be ready for it.
Everything had gone her way. When Bibi had announced she was going out for some air, Jane had made Alyssa an extra-stiff drink, knowing she was certain to drop off over it, as had become her habit every evening. When she was sure she had, Jane had slipped out and picked up the heavy-duty gloves in the porch at the back door where she'd had them in readiness. No one would ever remark upon a pair of gardening gloves lying around anywhere in this house. She had followed Bibi down towards the stream, so absorbed in her own thoughts she never heard Jane creeping up behind her, didn't know what was happening until the cane was knocked away and she fell. A quick stab with the glass after that was all that was needed. Her nursing training during the war meant she knew exactly where to aim for. Bibi had scarcely moved before losing consciousness. Jane had felt for her pulse and when it stopped, had tipped her into the stream, and the glass shard after her and gone back to the house. It had all been so easy.
It was only when she reached the back porch that she found she had taken possession of the walking stick, that she was leaning on it, as a matter of fact, unable to walk without it because her breath was coming in great, painful gulps. But she had pulled herself together, stuck the cane into the stand amongst the other sticks and umbrellas, joined Alyssa and acted thereafter as though nothing had happened.
The following morning, before it was certain Bibi had been murdered, she'd burnt the book of days in the big garden incinerator, watching its red silk covers curl back like a monstrous, voluptuous flower, finally to disintegrate, along with the damaging secrets it contained. After it she had thrown the Judge's cane, waiting until the malacca
had burnt through, then retrieving the blackened silver knob and ferrule. She'd taken them home and buried them in her herb plot. Someone, sometime might recover them and wonder what they were.
BOOK: Killing a Unicorn
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