Kith and Kill (13 page)

“Where is it?”

“In my handbag.”

They stared at each other for a few moments but with no sign of the will appearing Mark Wilson finally conceded: “I suppose it’ll be all right as long as the others agree. You’d better come in and we’ll see what they say.”

Once inside the door, Jane made to open her bag but Rodgers put her hand on Jane’s and removed it from the clasp.

Mark made no attempt to introduce Rodgers to the family members already assembled, nor the family to her. Instead he went over to the sideboard and poured himself a measure of scotch and topped it up with a squirt from a soda syphon without offering anyone else a drink, alcoholic or otherwise.

“This is Emma,” Jane Wilson said uncomfortably, gripping her handbag tightly as she spoke. “She’s a friend.”

She introduced Agnes, Mark’s wife, Ruth and her husband Ken, and Esther, who had come alone.

“Just waiting for Luke and Mary,” Mark butted in.

Ken looked at his watch.

“Can we get on with this as soon as they arrive?” he asked impatiently. “Some of us have jobs.”

He did not have to wait long. Moments later Luke and his wife Beth made their appearance, soon followed by Mary. The absence of Esther’s husband meant that there were just enough chairs to accommodate everyone including Rodgers, who had not been expected. The latecomers got kitchen chairs, comfortable seats having been bagged by those arriving first.

Mark, who had been left with a less comfortable chair owing to having to answer the door, stood as tall as his five feet nine inches would allow and addressed the gathering.

“You will recall that when the six of us met … ‘’ he began.

“Seven,” Mary interrupted icily. “Agnes came uninvited.”

“When we met,” Mark continued, “Matthew told us of a problem with the will. If anyone here still doesn’t know,” he said shooting a hostile glance at Rodgers, “and are entitled to know, Dad left all his possessions to be divided equally among his children but unfortunately he named all except one of us.

“Matthew suggested that we divide his estate among all six children, rather than the five who inherit under a strict reading of the will, but that would depend on us all agreeing. No-one except Matthew knew whose name was missing.”

“It’ll be me,” Mary butted in again. “It’s bound to be me.Dad took me for granted. I was the one left at home looking after him and Mum while you lot all cleared off to university and got married. I was stuck at home until the day he died and now he’s chucking me aside with nothing. That’s the thanks I get for the sacrifice I had to make. Not that any of you lot care.”

“For goodness sake, I have to get back to work,” Ken protested. “Can we get on with it.”

“Well we can if people stop interrupting,” Mark said testily. “Matthew is now no longer here to speak for himself and in any case he said that we all had to put it in writing if we agreed to a six-way split.

“I assume,” he said, looking to Jane for confirmation, “that Matthew hadn’t done so. For my part, I did write my consent to a six-way split.”

“I didn’t,” Luke chimed in. “I’m prepared to take my chance so I haven’t given written consent.“

“That’s it then,” Ken said irritably. “Who’s got the will? Let’s learn our fate and we can all get on with our lives.”

Mark turned to Jane and one by one each pair of eyes in the room lighted on her. Slowly and unsurely, Jane opened her handbag and drew out the fateful envelope, which she handed to Mark apparently unopened.

Mark extracted the will, unfolded it and looked at the names on it.

“Well, well, well,” he exclaimed. ”The cunning old dog. It wasn’t you after all, Mary. It was Matthew.”

Mary stared at him.

“I don’t believe you,” she said. “This is one of your stupid little jokes. Matthew was always his favourite. He could do no wrong and we were all expected to live up to him. Not that anybody could.”

“It’s no joke,” Mark insisted. “See for yourself. No wonder he was so keen to get us to agree to split the estate six ways. He was left with all the work of getting probate and none of the loot. Presumably Dad thought he didn’t have to put Matthew’s name in because he was named as the executor.”

Mary took the will from her brother and read it. Mark was indeed not joking.

“So it was all for nothing,” she blurted out.

“What was?” Luke asked.

Mary looked taken aback but, recovering her composure, she said uncertainly: “All this business about signing letters. I brought mine with me thinking I was the one left out. I needn’t have bothered.”

“Sorry, love,” Mark said to Jane without sounding as if he meant it. “Looks like you lose out.”

“Hang on,” Luke intervened, “before you alienate Jane we’d better find out what happens now with Dad’s will. Does she take over as executor – she is Matthew’s next of kin after all.”

“I’ll deal with it,” Mark said aggressively in the hope that he would sound convincing. “I’m now the eldest. It’s up to me. It’s nothing to do with Jane now.”

“We’d better get a solicitor,” Ruth said, her first contribution to the proceedings.

“For heaven’s sake,” Luke protested, “They cost money. Why don’t we ask around and see if anyone knows what happens when an executor dies. Mark can hang on to the will for now.”

Jane rose from her chair.

“Your Dad’s hardly cold in his grave and your brother is lying on a mortuary slab murdered,” she said. “And all you can do is argue over who gets what.”

Rodgers also rose to leave, though for a different reason. As soon as she and Jane were out on the pavement, she took the opportunity to switch off the mini cassette taperecorder that she had concealed in her jacket pocket. Its time was nearly running out and it would have given a telltale ping to alert the holder to switch over the cassette.

Chapter 24

For Mark, the end came much more quickly than it had done for his brother Matthew.

Detective Constable Emma Rodgers cursed her bad luck in leaving Mark Wilson’s home so precipitously. No-one would have noticed the beep her taperecorder made when it came to the end of the cassette, as Mark caused great commotion by collapsing without warning, smashing his emptied glass on the floor and almost upsetting the whisky decanter.

Despite the speedy arrival of the ambulance, he was dead by the time the paramedics knocked on the front door.

An hour later, Amos found himself back at Lincoln General Hospital interviewing a second grieving Wilson widow. This one, however, although badly rattled, was more composed than Matthew’s wife had been.

“It’s the stress,” Agnes Wilson kept saying. “He coped fine with his father’s death. Well, that was expected, wasn’t it? He was getting on a bit. But Matthew hit him hard – with Mark being next in line, I mean. He was quite depressed about it. And then the business over his father’s will – it all fell on him when Matthew died.”

“Ah, yes, the will,” Amos said. “That wasn’t actually in his possession, was it? I believe Matthew’s wife brought it to a family meeting this lunchtime.”

Agnes eyed him suspiciously. “Well, Jane certainly wasted no time in telling you. I assume it was her. But if you’re implying something, Mark hadn’t seen the will until this lunchtime and didn’t know what was in it. Matthew was going to tell them all after his father’s funeral. It had nothing to do with Mark.”

“Quite so, Mrs Wilson,” Amos said, “but can you please tell us what happened at the meeting. For a start, who was there?”

“If you know about the meeting I’m surprised you don’t already know who was there,” Agnes said waspishly. “There was me and Mark, obviously, Ruth and her husband Kenneth, Luke and his ghastly wife Agnes, Esther and Mary. All the remaining family and three spouses. Jane, Matthew’s wife, brought some peculiar woman none of us had ever seen before. Heaven knows where she dragged her up from.”

So Emma had managed to hide the fact that she was a police officer. Amos made a mental note to complement her when they got back to HQ.

“And the will was read?” Amos asked. “By whom?”

Swift shifted impatiently. She could not see the point of asking questions that they already knew the answers to thanks to DC Rodgers’ spying trip. Amos, however, preferred not to let on that he had had a full briefing on proceedings up to the point that Matthew’s widow and her police minder had left.

“It was read by Mark. He’s the eldest now so it was only right.”

“Did you serve any food? Tea, coffee?”

“No. I wasn’t providing lunch. There’s nothing pleasant about sitting round discussing what you are getting from dividing up the remains of a dead man’s life. Mark and I wanted to get it over with as quickly as possible.”

“In case someone objected to what was in the will?”

“Of course not. It was all quite straightforward.”

“And what was in the will?”

“I don’t really know. I didn’t take much notice. It wasn’t really anything to do with me. In any case, I don’t feel it’s my place to talk to you about it.”

“You don’t know what was in the will but you know it was straightforward,” Amos remarked. However, since he knew full well the contents of the document, as Agnes did, Amos was not inclined to pursue the matter further. It was better at this early stage to let the woman believe she was in charge of what she did or didn’t say.

Instead, the inspector pursued the line he was most interested in: “So no-one consumed anything?”

“No. Nothing. Except Mark. I think he had a scotch. Only to steady his nerves, mind you. It was pretty stressful for him, I can tell you. That’s probably why he had the heart attack.”

“He drank whisky?” Amos asked urgently. DC Rodgers had not mentioned that Mark was drinking. It probably hadn’t seemed important to her. She saw her brief as recording what was said and she was not to know that Mark would collapse after she left.

It was a bad oversight, though, given that Matthew Wilson may well have died from the poisoning of his drink, as Matthew had done.

“It was only one drink,” Agnes repeated, “and no-one could have touched it. He had the glass in his hand all the time. I saw him.”

“Could someone have got to the bottle – before he poured the drink?”

“It wasn’t out of a bottle. Mark kept his scotch in a decanter. Only he was allowed to touch it.”

“Where was the decanter?”

“On the top of the sideboard, where it always is.”

“So anyone in the room could have had access to it?”

The enormity of what Amos was saying suddenly dawned on Agnes.

“You mean …? But I thought it was a heart attack.”

“Has anyone touched the decanter since?”

“I … I don’t think so. I’m sure it was still there when Mark collapsed. I think I’m sure. I’m not sure what happened afterwards, when the ambulance arrived.”

“Who locked up? Did you leave any of the family inside the house?”

“Yes, the others were there. I just got in the ambulance with Mark. They said they’d see themselves out. I wasn’t paying much attention.”

“So you left everyone there?”

“Well not Jane, of course. She’d left before it all happened. But yes, they were Mark’s family. I trusted them. I hadn’t much choice. I was desperate to get Mark to hospital as quickly as possible.”

Amos knew why Jane had left. With Matthew excluded from the will, she had no further interest in the proceedings.

“Mrs Wilson,” Amos said firmly. “We must get to your house quickly. You can’t do any more for Mark now. We have to know if this really was a heart attack or something else.”

Amos brushed aside Agnes’s protestations.

“We’ll drive you back, Mrs Wilson,” he said rising to his feet. “Come on.”

Chapter 25

Agnes was unwilling or able to grasp the urgency of the situation, reluctant as she was to accept that there was any possible connection between Mark’s death and that of his brother Matthew.

“You drive, Juliet,” he said as they steered the reluctant widow down the corridor to where they had parked the police car. “Blues and twos.”

It was more haste and less speed as Amos tried to bundle Agnes Wilson into the rear of the police car while Swift strode purposefully round to the driver’s door. She had the engine going by the time Amos opened the front passenger door and the car was already edging forwards as the inspector climbed on board, the movement causing him to plop back into the seat and the car door to slam shut.

Amos switched on the blue flashing light and the two-tone siren before fastening his seat belt. Swift needed no further encouragement to put her foot down. They reached their destination in a few minutes.

As soon as they were pulling up at the kerb with a screech, Amos was unfastening his seat belt and he leapt out of the car without a momentary glance at Agnes. He tried the front door of her house. It was locked.

The inspector turned back impatiently to see Agnes still sitting in the car. He wrenched open the rear door. Only then did Mark’s wife, who had evidently been expecting this courtesy, deign to step out onto the pavement.

“Mark always opened the door for me,” she said acidly.

“Did Mark open the door for you to make up for hitting you?” asked Swift, who had already joined them on the pavement.

Agnes gasped and started to splutter a protestation.

“Don’t bother denying it,” Swift cut in. “You’ve had a bruise coming up on the side of your face that you been trying to keep your hand over ever since we turned up and you’ve another older one that you’ve put make-up over.”

Agnes stifled her response, fished out her key and turned the mortise lock on her front door.

“Which room were you all in?” Amos demanded, almost pushing Agnes aside in his haste to reach the scene of Mark’s demise before she did.

She pointed to the relevant door.

The room looked quite tidy considering the haste with which it had been abandoned. The decanter of scotch and the soda water dispenser still stood on the sideboard. However, there was no obvious sign of the glass that Mark had been drinking from.