Kith and Kill (10 page)

“The more open and honest you are with us now, the less likely it is that we will have to trouble you again.”

Ruth nodded as if agreeing a contract with the inspector, then began.

“I slipped into the bank one lunchtime to draw out some cash. Ken and I have a joint account – or perhaps you know that already if you’ve been snooping into our family’s banking arrangements – and yes, it’s in credit before you ask, or did you know that already?”

Amos shook his head to indicate that he wasn’t interested in her and her husband’s financial affairs – at least not at this stage. There was no suggestion that Ruth Denton and her husband had been sponging off her father, and even if they had been it did not amount convincingly to a motive for killing Matthew.

“It was not unusual for me to pop into the bank at lunchtime to pay in a cheque, draw out cash or pay a bill. We don’t like to have cash lying around the house and we like to pay in and out promptly so we know where we’re up to – part of the lesson I learnt from Matthew.

“On this occasion, though, Mark and Dad happened to be already in the bank when I arrived. I saw Mark stuffing cash into his wallet and I guessed what was going on. Mark was angry I had caught him out and Dad got angry as well, but that was to cover up his sheepishness at bailing Mark out – a grown man with kids still needing handouts from his father, I ask you.

“Dad said heatedly that it was up to him what he did with his money now Mum was gone and he wouldn’t be around much longer. I told him I didn’t need his money and he could do what he wanted with it. I wasn’t angry with Dad but I did have a go at Mark for taking advantage.

“That was when Gibson the bank manager came fussing out of his office. I got out of the bank straight away. I didn’t want anyone thinking this had anything to do with me. I waited outside for a few moments until Gibson ushered Mark and Dad out.

“Then I asked Mark how long this had been going on. And do you know what he said? He had the nerve to tell me he was only collecting what was rightfully his because Dad was helping out Matthew and Luke – he’s my younger brother but I suppose you know that already. He said it was part of his inheritance, Dad didn’t need the money and he couldn’t understand why the girls weren’t asking for their share.

“I said parents were entitled to leave their money to whoever they wanted but children weren’t entitled to expect it. They hadn’t earned it.

“I felt sorry for Dad, not myself. He was dreadfully embarrassed. When Mark asked if I’d heard the parable of the prodigal son and laughed in my face I stormed off. To quote the Bible in front of Dad when Mark didn’t go to church any more was too much. It must have hurt Dad dreadfully.”

“Ah, yes, the prodigal son,” Amos said thoughtfully, as much as anything for Swift’s benefit, as Amos knew she wouldn’t have a clue what the reference was to. Amos recalled the story well from his Sunday School days.

“A reminder of life’s unfairness. One son takes his half of the family fortune and squanders it. When he returns broke, his father serves up the fatted calf, which the son has no right to a share of. No wonder the other brother was narked. You get no reward for staying on the straight and narrow while the ones who go off the rails have all the fun and are readily forgiven.”

“You needn’t think you can trick me like that,” Ruth said shrewdly. “I don’t in the least begrudge Mark or either of my other two brothers anything they’ve had. I’ve no reason to.”

“Did you confront Matthew or Luke about the matter?” Amos asked, changing tack quickly.

“No. I didn’t want the money and if Dad didn’t want to be told they were taking advantage of him I wasn’t going to bang my head against a brick wall.”

“What about your two sisters? Were they sponging off your father? Did you tell them your brothers were?”

“Esther’s like me, independent, in a good job and with a hardworking husband to boot. Poor Mary lives at home and doesn’t understand money. She wouldn’t say boo to a goose. I’m not sure she could read a bank statement if you put one in front of her. She’s never had her own account. She just gets handed money to buy things like food and clothes. I didn’t mention the incident at the bank to either of them.”

As Amos and Swift left Ruth Denton’s house, Amos instructed his sergeant to drive to Mary Wilson’s home.

“Esther has means but no motive as far as we know,” he said. “Ruth has motive – just about – but no means unless the ketamine really was stolen and she was the one who took it. Let’s see if Mary is as financially illiterate as Ruth Denton made out. It’s hard to believe in this day and age.”

Chapter 19

“I’m getting a bit fed up of this game of musical chairs,” Amos remarked as he and Swift took the five minute drive to Mary Wilson’s home.

“I know what you mean,” Swift said, pausing as she turned into a narrow road near the cathedral. “We seem to be going round in circles from one family member to another. If only it hadn’t been such a large family. And they’re not even Catholics,” she added, displaying her religious prejudice. She had never been a churchgoer of any denomination.

Amos, in contrast, had attended Sunday School in his childhood and weekly church services in his teens before slowly edging away.

“The trouble is, no-one is taking any chairs away,” Swift went on, “so the number of players never gets any smaller.”

“I’m not sure I like the analogy,” Amos remarked with a chuckle. “We don’t want any more family members to be eliminated. Let’s try pass the parcel. Who do you think will be left holding it when the music stops?”

Swift’s response was frustrated by the demands of driving but Amos did not interrupt. He valued her assessment too much.

“Esther still seems most likely,” Swift finally said. “She was the one with access to ketamine and she covered up its disappearance. But if Ruth didn’t tell her about the shrinking legacy, where’s her motive? And if Ruth actually did tell her, why pick on Matthew, and Matthew alone? Because he was the eldest?

“Unless,” she said suddenly after a pause at a road junction, “unless she found out about Matthew independently and didn’t know the other two brothers were fleecing her father as well.”

“If Ruth took the ketamine,” Amos said, “she had enough to kill at least two brothers. Perhaps the opportunity to add Mark or Luke to the list didn’t arise. Or maybe she gave Matthew the lot, not realising how strong the stuff is and that she had enough for another brother.”

“Mary, living at home, was the one with the best opportunity to find out the full extent of what her brothers were up to,” Swift commented. “If she did, though, she would surely have found out some time back, so why wait until now without saying anything to her sisters? Why wait until now to murder Matthew – unless she didn’t see a way of doing it until the ketamine presented the opportunity.

“The trouble is, we are still having to make a lot of assumptions.”

“Yes,” Amos agreed. “Not just about whether it was the ketamine, although that looks almost certain to be the case. We’re assuming it was one of the family, which again seems most likely, and that it was one of the middle generation. The grandchildren are possible suspects, too, although they were in a group together and outside most of the time getting stoned so they had less opportunity.

“If they were out smoking something even fairly innocuous they would surely have stolen ketamine for added kicks or to sell on. Unless they doctored Matthew’s drink for a laugh not realising how strong ketamine is.”

They were now at Mary’s home. She was a while answering the knock and when she did she opened the door only a few inches and looked out suspiciously. However, as soon as she recognised the two police officers she opened it readily enough and invited them in.

Mary had looked mousy before; now she was verging on scruffy in old clothes and with unbrushed hair. She had on her feet a pair of worn slippers that were one size too large and flopped noisily as she walked down the uncarpeted hallway.

“I can’t offer you tea,” she said peremptorily as they sat down in the front room. “No milk. I’ve not been to the shop today. In any case, I can’t afford any more teabags once this box runs out.”

“That’s fine, Miss Wilson,” Amos assured her, “but are you all right? I mean for money – until your father’s estate is sorted out.”

“No,” Mary replied bluntly. “I’m not going to be all right. I’ll be turfed out of my home and get nothing. Then what will happen to me?”

“Surely you have some savings of your own to tide you over for now,” Swift butted in with a tone of astonishment that any woman could allow herself to get into this state in the 1990s.

Amos said nothing. It suited the inquiry to get so quickly and smoothly onto the subject of money.

“Dad looked after all that,” Mary said truculently. “There was no need for me to have anything while I lived here. And how do you think I could have earned money myself when I had Mum and Dad to look after? Not that I ever got any thanks for it. I’ve always been taken for granted. They all took me for granted. They treated me like a skivvy, all of them.”

“Was your father rather generous with his money – to the family, I mean?” Amos asked casually.

“How could he be?” Mary replied indignantly. “He never had all that much money after bringing up the six of us. We always had bread and jam for tea. I hate jam. I’ll never eat it again for the rest of my life.”

“Surely things were better as your older siblings grew up and left.”

Mary shrugged her shoulders.

“It didn’t seem a lot different,” she said. “Except we got a week’s holiday.”

“And your father had paid off the mortgage, hadn’t he?”

“I don’t know,” she said simply. “I don’t understand this mortgage business. Dad looked after all that.”

“You must have some idea,” Swift gasped in amazement. “You’ve surely looked at his bank statements since he died.”

Mary shrugged her shoulders again.

“A suppose they’ll all be locked up in his bureau,” she said. “I wouldn’t be able to work them out even if I saw them. Matthew was supposed to be looking after the will,” she added, going off at a tangent. “I don’t know what’s going to happen now, except I’ll be homeless.”

“May we see the papers in the bureau?” Amos asked politely.

“It’s locked.”

There must be a key to it,” Amos insisted.

“Dad had it,” Mary replied. “I don’t know where he kept it.”

“I’m sure we can find it,” Amos said, rising to his feet. “If we could please see the bureau and his bedroom.”

Mary looked distinctly uncomfortable at this proposed intrusion into her father’s space but she reluctantly showed the officers into a small room with a roll-top bureau standing against one wall.

“Family heirloom,” Mary said proudly. “It belonged to my great-grandparents.”

Amos pulled unsuccessfully at a couple of drawers and attempted, to no avail, to roll up the sliding top.

“It’s locked,” Mary said triumphantly, “as I told you.”

“Let’s see if we can find the key, then,” Amos said lightly as he began looking in little pots on the desk top and then in the drawers of a dresser on the opposite wall. The two large items of furniture, plus a kitchen chair at the desk – the family heirloom had apparently not come complete with an office-style chair – left little room for anything else, although there was also a small bookcase containing a few tomes including a Sankeys hymn book.

No key was lodged anywhere.

“It’s probably in his bedroom,” Amos conceded eventually. “Could you show us which it is, please.”

The inspector’s suspicion that the key – or keys, as it turned out – was actually in Mary’s possession proved unfounded. They were in a bedside drawer next to the double bed that Joseph Wilson and his wife once shared.

There were three keys on a thick key ring. The fob bore the inscription of the Methodist church that Mr and Mrs Wilson had attended and marked its centenary.

One key fitted the roll-top but when Amos tried to slide it open it still stuck on a catch. The other two keys fitted the drawers of the bureau and they slid open easily when unlocked. Mary watched intently.

Amos sifted through an assortment of papers in the drawers without finding anything he felt was directly relevant to the case. There were various newspaper cuttings about church events over many years, some with photographs that included members of the Wilson family. One such photograph showed the entire family in which the children were aged from five years upwards.

There were quite a number of play programmes. The chapel was evidently keen on amateur dramatics. Amos flicked through a few and occasionally spotted Mary’s name in juvenile parts. He glanced up and saw her smiling proudly.

Her face darkened, though – as Swift, who was watching her carefully, told Amos later – when he opened another drawer with photographs and newspaper cuttings recording the graduation of the other five offspring.

Amos felt around for the hidden catch that prevented the top from sliding open and he finally located it. The roll-top jumped open about an inch and could then be pushed right back to reveal a row of pigeonholes.

In one was a thick bunch of large papers tied in pink ribbon that protruded well out from the slot. As Amos guessed, these were the deeds to the house. The property was in the name of Joseph Wilson alone. A sheet of paper declared that the building society no longer had a charge over the property as all monies outstanding had been paid.

“Monies?” Amos thought, “Monies? Money doesn’t need a plural.”

Another pigeonhole contained a savings account book and a chequebook. The savings book had a corner snipped off and all the pages were stamped CANCELLED. A glance at the last page with figures on it showed why: the account had been cleared out.

Joseph Wilson was just over half way through the chequebook. Amos looked at the stubs. Apart from utilities, the stubs recorded the withdrawal of cash or payments to the three sons for various amounts.

A previous chequebook was next to the one in use. This had lasted much longer and, apart from bills and small amounts of cash, the stubs showed only two payments, both to Matthew.