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Authors: Marjorie Eccles

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BOOK: Killing a Unicorn
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His rosy face was very grave. He sought for words to comfort, and finally got out, ‘Bad business. One hardly knows what to say. Not to worry, though, bound to come right in the wash.' But he agreed, absolutely and utterly, with Fran's assertion that Jasie would never have disappeared of his own accord. ‘Why, bless my soul, he wouldn't do a thing like that!' He considered. ‘Though he might just have taken it into his head to go exploring and got lost. Enterprising little feller.' Which wasn't quite as comforting as it should have been.
And now the inspector was asking what they could tell him about some letters Bibi had apparently been receiving, from someone who, it seemed, had been stalking her. The glances that passed from one to the other were thunderstruck. Letters? Stalking?
‘What are you talking about? You must be mistaken — she never said anything about any letters!' Alyssa declared, but then her eyes widened, as if she was remembering something. She said nothing more, however, and looked down at her shoes. Equally mystified, Fran shook her head. Humphrey's jaw dropped.
‘We have it on good authority — from your son, Chip,' said the inspector to Alyssa.
‘But neither of them ever breathed a word about it!'
‘Are you sure about that? She didn't she confide in any of you?' He searched Alyssa's face, glanced at Fran. ‘Women don't usually keep something so upsetting to themselves.'
‘She told Chip.' Alyssa was annoyed equally at the generalization, and that she should be disbelieved.
The detective said drily, ‘But apparently didn't let him actually see them.' He regarded them all with ill-concealed scepticism. He had big, rather well-shaped hands, with black hairs springing off the backs. Men with hairy hands always made Fran think of bears, this one more than most,
perhaps because she had rarely found anyone before so entirely overpowering and unpleasant. What right did he have to assume they were all lying? Didn't they give them any training in public relations?
‘You didn't know Bibi,' she said shortly, which had the effect of turning his interest directly on her. ‘She was inclined to keep things to herself.' Which, had he but known it, was the ultimate understatement.
‘How well did you know her, Ms er — oh yes, Mrs Mark Calvert, isn't it?' he asked, consulting his notes as if to remind himself who this woman was, though this was ridiculous, since he knew perfectly well from last night, or should have done, since he was the one who'd spoken to her after she'd found Bibi.
‘Francine Calvert, Mrs if you wish,' she said woodenly. She wasn't going to let this man rile her. ‘Bibi and I were good friends, but she never mentioned that she'd been getting anything like that. Although …'
‘Yes?'
‘When she rang me yesterday to arrange for us to meet, I did have the impression, looking back, that she might have something on her mind.' Alyssa looked up quickly and gave a slight nod, as if this confirmed what she'd been thinking. ‘That was mainly why I decided to walk up here to see her.'
‘Despite the note you said you received, cancelling her visit?'
‘Despite the note I received, yes.' With an effort, she kept her voice level.
‘Didn't it occur to you that might have been because she had another appointment?'
‘Yes, it did, but I thought … I suppose I thought it wouldn't do any harm to come up here … oh, I don't know, I just wanted to see if she was all right.'
It was the truth, but it sounded lame, even to her own ears. She thought dully, every word we speak from now on is going to have to be weighed. This, then, was what it was really like, being in the middle of a murder investigation.
Feeling guilty, even if you weren't, an associated guilt because someone you loved was so horribly dead, and you were alive. Looking sideways at even your nearest and dearest, wondering if they were telling the truth, wondering if anything you said was implicating someone else. These were depressing thoughts — it was even preferable to believe that there really was some lunatic who'd been stalking Bibi and had ended up by murdering her.
All right, then, supposing they had? It might be credible — just — but where did Jasie come into it? Who could have wished to harm the little boy, as well as Bibi? The simple hopes of an accident or hiding himself away were fading rapidly as the police combed the grounds and came up with nothing. The waiting was growing intolerable. Fearing the worst — that some poor devil of a policeman might stumble across a small, mutilated or molested body. Hoping against hope for the best — that some communication would be received, demanding ransom in exchange for his safe return. Not even thinking of other alternatives.
She came back to the present to hear Crouch saying disapprovingly, ‘Hmm. It's a pity you destroyed this note she wrote, but what's done's done. How do you think she got it to you?'
‘It's only a guess, but I think probably the boy who works in the garden may have delivered it on his way home. Gary Brooker.'
The inspector exchanged a significant look with Sergeant Colville and there was a small silence. Distantly, the mournful sound of Jonathan on his cello floated into the room. He'd been playing the same passage, over and over again, for the last half-hour. The music room was well away and was insulated for sound, but the windows would be wide open today because of the heat. Crouch looked pained, but it wasn't clear whether this was disapproval of the sort of noise he didn't call music assaulting his ears or at the name of Gary Brooker, Gaz to his mates, well known to him and every other officer at Felsborough police station. ‘So the bad lad's actually got down to
working, has he? Well, well, wonders never cease. But he's not everybody's choice of employee,' he warned, addressing Alyssa. ‘Keep your eye on him, ma'am, that's all I can say.'
‘I make my own judgements about those I employ,' Alyssa said frostily, drawing on the authority she could always summon up when necessary. ‘Everyone is redeemable, or so I find. Besides …'
‘Besides what, Mrs Calvert?'
But Alyssa had thought better of it and closed up. It was an art, the inspector's knack of putting people's backs up, Fran thought. He'd offended Alyssa and now she was leaving him to draw his own conclusions. She'd almost certainly been going to say that it couldn't have been Gary who wrote the letters, he was barely literate. Anything he attempted to write would have given away his identity immediately. Unlettered though he might be, however, Gary was anything but stupid. But the police weren't thick, either, they'd be the first to recognize this.
‘I simply meant,' Alyssa said, relenting slightly, though still in grande-dame mode, ‘it's ridiculous to think of Gary stalking her. And anyway, if she'd thought he was the culprit, she would never have kept such a thing secret from the rest of us,' she added, though clearly with more hope than conviction.
‘Oh, I don't know,' put in Humphrey unexpectedly.
‘Kept herself to herself, didn't she, as Fran says? That stare of hers — put you off your dinner, it would. Sometimes used to wonder if she wasn't all there, in fact.'
‘Humphrey!' Alyssa was mortified. Dear, sweet old Humphrey, for such a well-meaning man, his speech was often tactless in the extreme. Nevertheless, he'd voiced what they were all thinking, they knew what he meant, except for the two detectives, who were looking for an explanation, which no one seemed prepared to give.
‘Sorry, m'dear,' answered Humphrey, 'but that way she had … looked right through you. As if you weren't there.
Unnerving, you must admit.' He broke off. 'Oh Lord, not doing very well, am I?'
‘No,' said Alyssa.
‘It was just a habit,' Fran said. But she thought, Well, it wasn't just my imagination being over-active about Bibi, then. When even Humphrey had noticed it.
The repetitive music had stopped, leaving an oddly breathless vacuum, and Humphrey, too, almost relapsed into silence under Alyssa's accusing look, but then, plainly needing to justify himself, he harrumphed and spoke again. ‘Blame it all on that mumbo-jumbo about looking into the future, myself. Didn't do her a lot of good in the end, did it, all that crystal gazing?'
Crouch looked alert. ‘Crystal gazing?'
‘Oh, Humph!' What on earth had got into him? Alyssa wondered distractedly. If she didn't stop him, he was going to say something everyone would later regret. ‘It wasn't crystal gazing, or anything like that. She was just very interested in the stars.'
‘What do you mean?' said Crouch. ‘Telescopes and things?'
Fran threw him a look, knowing he'd deliberately misunderstood. ‘No, the movements of the stars and planets and how they affect our lives,' she said shortly.
‘Just another habit, eh? I see,' he replied, meeting her glance and coming back at her with her own words.
And then he suddenly seemed inclined to leave it at that, though he managed to convey the impression that he didn't think much of all this family solidarity, and that the matter wasn't by any means finished with. He stood up, and the sergeant closed her notebook, in which she had been carefully writing down everything that had been said. Fran met her eyes and she smiled, and Fran thought, she's nice, but there probably wasn't much she missed. She decided to risk Crouch's scorn again and voice the worrying thought that had been buzzing around in her head like a nasty little wasp: ‘You don't suppose — you don't suppose Jasie could have been taken away because he saw
what had happened to his mother?'
Or that Bibi was murdered because she saw what happened to Jasie?
But she put a hand to her mouth as if that unspoken fear might leap out without her volition.
She knew Crouch had read it though, and could only be thankful for his surprisingly mild reply. Something seemed to happen to him whenever he spoke of Jasie. He didn't entirely lose his abrasiveness, that was probably as much a part of him as his blue chin and his hairy hands, but he was noticeably kinder. ‘We haven't dismissed that possibility, no. But we'll concentrate on looking for him before we start thinking about whether he was abducted — and why.'
 
 
‘Well now,' Alyssa announced into the silence the police left behind them, and with a reproachful glance at Humphrey went to see about sandwiches.
‘Made rather a hash of that, didn't I?' remarked Humphrey unhappily to her departing back. ‘Foot and mouth disease, always been my problem.'
Fran smiled a little, as she was meant to. But it had to be said that Humphrey, with his awkward silences, like many another frequently inarticulate person, did have an unfortunate propensity for screwing things up when he finally found himself able to speak.
‘Poor woman's dead, after all, what does it matter what I thought of her antics?' he said, not noticeably improving matters.
‘Don't look so upset,' Fran consoled him. ‘You only spoke the truth. I don't suppose it matters in the least.'
The Judge looked heavily down from his frame above the mantel, as if he could tell them a thing or two about such half-baked attitudes, which no doubt he would if he were still alive.
 
 
‘I see what they meant now,' remarked Crouch after the
first dazed impact, looking round the bedroom Bibi Morgan had occupied. ‘Well, I suppose it takes all sorts!'
The weird effect of the room was enhanced because, despite it being broad daylight outside, here the curtains had been drawn and the centre light left burning. Instructions had been given for the room not to be touched, and they'd been literally adhered to. It was just as its occupant had left it before she went out for the last time. It was on that side of the house which didn't get the sun until late afternoon and early evening, the time when she had presumably drawn the heavy, dark blue chenille curtains against it, and then left, forgetting to switch off the light.
It hung low from the ceiling, a pendant light-fitting with a deep fringe, directly over a table on which were several lumps of what Kate thought might be New Age crystals — rose quartz love stones, some crystal palm stones, clear quartz for energy and focus. On various chairs around the room were throws decorated with the signs of the zodiac, more zodiac signs on the velvet cushions, a mandela on the wall above the bed.
‘What's that smell?'
Kate sniffed. ‘Joss sticks, incense? Scented candles?'
Crouch rolled his eyes, then swivelled his gaze round the room, coming to rest on the narrow bed, three foot wide at the most. His eyebrows rose. ‘Can that be the matrimonial bed?'
‘Maybe they liked to cosy up.'
‘Very cosy it must have been, with a bloke Chip Calvert's size.' He flung open the wardrobe door and rattled a few hangers, then walked into the tiny, adjoining bathroom, where he could be heard opening and closing cabinet doors. ‘They didn't share a room,' he announced as he came back. ‘Nothing of his anywhere. What d'you make of that?'
BOOK: Killing a Unicorn
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