Village Affairs (39 page)

Julie, Carmichael noticed, did not appear much relieved. She patted Mrs. Potts’s shoulder with true affection, but her eyes were tense as they turned toward the stairs and her brother.

“Hullo, all,” said James, coming down slowly. “Didn’t realize the police were here. Is something up?”

“You haven’t been answering your door, sir,” said Carmichael, genially enough. “The constable and I have been trying to raise someone here for some time.”

“Oh, sorry,” said James. “I’m afraid I fell asleep upstairs. Marty and Julie will tell you, I’m a sound sleeper when I go off. Can sleep through most anything. I must not have heard the door. Were you looking for me?”

He was wearing slippers, and had a thick robe tossed over his shirt and trousers, but his hair appeared recently brushed and there was no sign of sleep in his eyes.

Carmichael opened his mouth to reply, and then hesitated, a sudden thought occurring to him. He glanced at Constable Stikes, praying she would not queer the pitch he was about to try; he wished Gibbons had returned in time. His sergeant would always follow his lead.

“I wasn’t looking for you in particular, sir,” he said to James. “It was actually Mrs. Potts I was hoping to have a word with.” He turned back to her, one eye on Stikes, but she behaved beautifully, her face remaining impassive.

Mrs. Potts was regarding him alertly. “With me?” she asked. “What is it?”

“On the Sunday of Mr. Bingham’s death,” said Carmichael, a little ponderously, “I understand you went to church with the Bensons here, returned here to the house, and, after a meal, drove straight off to Somerset. Is that correct?”

Mrs. Potts looked surprised. “Why, yes,” she said. “That’s right.”

“You did not, then, stop by Mr. Bingham’s cottage?”

While Mrs. Potts denied this, Carmichael, out of the corner of his eye, saw James was desperately trying to communicate something silently to his sister. Her face remained set and tense.

“But I also understand,” continued Carmichael, “that you had your signet ring at the service, but subsequently lost it later that day?”

Mrs. Potts appeared amazed that her ring should be of interest to the police. “Yes,” she answered. “I don’t know where it’s gone to.” A sudden light appeared in her eyes. “Are you saying you found it, Chief Inspector?”

“Yes, Mrs. Potts, we have,” said Carmichael.

She smiled broadly, obviously pleased, while Julie at her side stiffened.

“That’s a great relief to my mind,” said Mrs. Potts. “I’m always losing it, I admit, but I usually find it again right away. Thank you so much, Chief Inspector. May I have it back now?”

“I’m afraid not,” said Carmichael. “You see, it was found in the drive of Mr. Bingham’s cottage on the Sunday night, while you were supposedly at your sister’s.”

“Supposedly?” Mrs. Potts frowned, trying to work this out. Slowly, her expression changed. “But you can’t think that I—”

“You’ve just denied you were there on Sunday,” said Carmichael.

“Well, I wasn’t—”

“She could have dropped it there anytime,” broke in James.

Carmichael raised an eyebrow. “When?” he demanded. “She had it at church that Sunday. The ring was found that night.”

“Charlie probably found it himself somewhere,” said Julie. “No doubt it dropped out of his pocket while he was getting in or out of his car. That would explain it.”

“But Mr. Bingham did not leave his cottage that day until he went to London,” replied Carmichael. “And that was after Mrs. Potts had supposedly left for Somerset. No, I’m afraid the conclusion is inescapable: Mrs. Potts was at that house sometime on Sunday, very likely after dark.”

Mrs. Potts was looking stunned.

“No,” said Julie. Her eyes were desperate. “Wait a moment, how do you know Marty had the ring in church? She probably lost it earlier.”

Mrs. Potts roused herself. “No, Julie,” she said gently, “I know I had it that morning. It was the day I dropped it in the collection plate, remember?”

“Oh, that.” Julie gave a short laugh. It had a hint of hysteria in it. “No, you’re wrong, Marty, that was the Sunday before. Isn’t that right, James?”

“Of course,” he replied at once. “I remember it perfectly.”

Mrs. Potts hesitated, a puzzled frown on her face. “No,” she said, half to herself, “I’m certain it was that Sunday …”

“So are several other people who noticed the incident,” said Carmichael sternly. “Mrs. Martha Potts, I am arresting you on suspicion of murder.”

“No!” cried out James before Carmichael could continue with the formal words of the caution. “Julie, do something. You can’t let them take Marty! You can’t!”

“I’m afraid there’s nothing your sister can do, Mr. Benson,” said Carmichael.

“But it wasn’t Marty,” James protested. “It was me. I dropped the damn ring—”

“James, shut up!” said Julie urgently.

“I dropped it, I say,” shouted James, his deeper voice drowning out that of his sister’s. “I found it in the car after Marty had gone and put it in my pocket. She must have lost it on the drive back from church. I thought I had it safe, but it must have dropped out when I was trying to get Charlie out of the car. Oh, God, we never meant to hurt Charlie—”

Julie was still shouting at him to be quiet, not to be a fool. Mrs. Potts had smiled indulgently at his first words, but the smile had faded from her face now and there was a growing horror in her eyes. Constable Stikes was doing her best to remain impassive, but her eyes had widened in surprise as James went on.

Carmichael was smiling very slightly.

“We?” he said coolly. “Who do you mean by ‘we,’ Mr. Benson?”

“No one,” James replied, stricken. “There’s no one else. Marty had nothing to do with it, it was I who killed Charlie. I didn’t mean to …”

Mrs. Potts was staring at him. “It can’t be true,” she whispered, horror-struck. “Why would you even think of—Oh, God, not your mother, too …”

Her eyes sought Julie’s, as if for comfort, but Julie looked away, and Mrs. Potts gasped and grabbed at the edge of the table. “Dear heavens,” she murmured. “Julie, tell me you knew nothing about this. Tell me!”

“Of course not,” said Julie shortly, but she did not look at her.

“But of course she knew,” said Carmichael relentlessly. “If she hadn’t, she would have no reason to lie and claim Mr. Benson was with her that night.”

Julie pressed her lips together tightly, but the way in which Mrs. Potts put a hand over her mouth showed whom she believed.

“How could you even think such a thing?” she said brokenly.

“I’m very sorry,” Carmichael told her as he moved to take James’s arm and give him the caution. At his nod, Stikes did the same with Julie, while Mrs. Potts shook her head in shock, her haunted gaze going from one to the other of the twins, as though they were changing before her eyes.

CHAPTER
18

A
stley-Cooper rolled down the window of his Range Rover and leaned his face into the cold, damp wind that blew into the car.

“Almost there,” he muttered to himself.

It was the very wee hours of the morning and he was tired. He had felt obligated to wait with Tothill until Leandra came out of the operating theatre; it had seemed the only decent thing to do.

“She’s going to be fine,” the surgeon had told them, standing wearily in the hallway, still in his scrubs. “The blow she sustained to her head did result in some slight bleeding into her brain. We hoped that might resolve of its own accord, but in the end it was necessary to relieve the pressure before it did any damage. It all went very well, and she’ll be right as rain when she wakes up, beyond having a beast of a headache.”

“Oh, splendid,” Astley-Cooper had said. “Good man.”

“Can I see her?” asked Tothill anxiously.

“They haven’t brought her down yet,” replied the surgeon, glancing at the clock. “They’ll watch over her for a bit before they shift her to a room, but it will be several hours before she wakes up. The best thing you can do is go home, get a bit of sleep, and come back in the morning.”

Tothill had refused this excellent advice. He had contained himself quite well during the hours they had waited, praying quietly at times, but otherwise remaining still and responding reasonably to whatever cheering remarks Astley-Cooper thought to make. He was nonetheless distraught for all that, as the quiver in his voice showed.

“I think I might as well stay for a bit,” he had said. “At least until they bring Leandra down and I can see her. I’ll never sleep before then, anyhow. But you should certainly go home, Clarence. You’ve been too patient as it is, waiting with me all this while.”

Though by that time Astley-Cooper had been longing for his bed, he had not been able to leave his friend sitting alone in the sterility of the hospital waiting room. Privately, he had been rather touched by such devotion, although of course it was not how he had been brought up. His parents had been of the old school, and if it had been his mother in that hospital bed, his father would have stiffened his upper lip, gone home as advised; and at least pretended to sleep even if it gave him an ulcer. Which, Astley-Cooper reflected, he had indeed suffered from at the end.

So he had stayed with Tothill until Leandra was brought back to her room, still unconscious, with a bandage on her head, and dark circles beneath her eyes. By that time, the young constable stationed there had left, saying he would return in the morning to collect Mrs. Tothill’s statement, but they were not to worry: the chief inspector had arrested the guilty parties, so Leandra would be safe now.

It was then, while the vicar moved a chair up by the bed and settled himself beside his wife, taking her limp hand in his, that Astley-Cooper had crept away and at last driven himself back to Stutely Manor and his well-deserved bed.

As he turned the car into the drive, he began to shiver in the breeze from the open window.

“Overtired,” he mumbled to himself, but he did not close the window; the bracing wind was all that was keeping him awake. He wondered if Bethancourt had come in yet, though in truth he rather suspected his houseguest had long since returned and gone to bed. And yet, tired as he was, he would have welcomed a full explanation of the night’s events. He had got hold of Bethancourt once during the long wait, but all he had gathered from that was a confused story about Martha’s ring and the fact that the Bensons had been arrested. Why either of them should have attacked Leandra, he still could not imagine. Neither could the vicar, who seemed principally confused over why his wife had not been at the Women’s Institute meeting, but Bethancourt had not mentioned the WI at all. In fact, thought Astley-Cooper, he was still not sure exactly where Leandra had been attacked, or how they had come to find her.

The gabled front of Stutely Manor was dark against the starstudded night sky as he came up the drive and pulled to a halt, and he was very grateful to see it. He did not bother with putting the car away, simply getting out and heading straight for the front door.

Someone had left a light on for him in the hall, but otherwise the manor was dark and hushed, speaking of a household long since gone to their rest. Even Whiff had fallen asleep waiting for him, and lifted his head blearily as he heard his master enter. Pulling off his gloves, Astley-Cooper saw that Bethancourt’s coat was among those hung on the coatrack and was conscious of a certain disappointment that his curiosity would go unsatisfied.

“It’s probably for the best,” he told the dog. “If he did start telling me, I’d no doubt fall asleep before he’d finished. I’m all in.”

Sighing, he added his coat to the rack and trotted off to his own bed where, despite his curiosity, he was soon fast asleep.

Gibbons yawned hugely as he sat before his computer late the next morning. He stole a look at his watch, but the minute hand did not seem to have moved any closer to noon since the last time he had looked. And he could not possibly expect Carmichael to return and sweep him off to lunch until at half twelve at the earliest. He sighed, took a sip of coffee to revive himself, and returned his attention to the chief constable’s report, yawning again as he did so.

He and Carmichael had been up most of the night, persuading James Benson to make a statement while his sister sat mute in a separate room, refusing to say a word until her solicitor arrived. They had not got to bed until well after three, but neither of them had thought of sleeping in. They were eager to tie up the loose ends of the case and prepare their reports.

Accordingly, they had been on the road to Stow-on-the-Wold by nine the next morning. By eleven they had found and interviewed the unsuspecting friend who had had drinks with Julie Benson the night of Bingham’s murder, gone on to have his photograph identified by the landlord of the pub in Lower Oddington, and arranged for both men to come in to sign statements later in the afternoon.

Afterward, Carmichael had decided to run out to the old farmhouse to see how forensics were coming along.

“It would be nice,” he had said, “if we could find even a scintilla of physical evidence.”

Gibbons agreed and had offered to drive his superior, but instead had been relegated to make a start on the chief constable’s report. This he had done, but he was finding it much more difficult to keep awake sitting at Constable Stikes’s desk than it had been when he was more actively engaged, and his mind kept straying to thoughts of Bethancourt, whom he had not heard from all morning and who was presumably sleeping in. He was just turning back to the computer when his mobile rang and, hoping for more good news from Carmichael, he answered it quickly.

But instead it was Eve Bingham.

“Sergeant Gibbons?” she said.

“Speaking,” he replied, a little discomfited. In the press of events, he had forgotten her existence, much less her status as onetime suspect.

Her voice was hesitant. “I’ve just heard that you made an arrest last night. Is that true?”

“Yes, miss,” said Gibbons. “Quite true. The Bensons are presently in custody.”

He thought he heard a little sigh escape her before she said, “You believe they killed my father?”