Murder... Now and Then (40 page)

‘I don't know.' He reached for the directory, and found her number. ‘ But I think I'll make an appointment with the doctor,' he said, with a smile. ‘And find out.'

The phone, as they do on such occasions, rang and rang; Lloyd was about to give up, when it was answered. ‘Finch?' Lloyd said, startled.

‘Sir – I was just about to ring you. I gave up waiting for the Rules to come and give us their prints, and came here to get them.' There was a pause. ‘The uniforms were already here,' he said. ‘Geraldine Rule is dead.'

Lloyd took a moment to take that in, then relayed the information to Judy. The sceptical look vanished, and she grew thoughtful.

‘We'll be right there, Tom,' he said.

They took Judy's car; these days she had one that actually started, and she drove faster than he did. Not that there was any real urgency; the woman was dead, and Finch was already on the scene. But Lloyd felt in his bones that things were coming together somehow, and for once he let Judy exceed speed limits without grumbling at her.

Finch met them at the door. The police surgeon had sent for the pathologist he said, but it was only because it had happened in the middle of the murder enquiry in which she was peripherally involved, because it seemed to him to be straightforward suicide.

At least, that was Lloyd's pained interpretation; what Finch had actually said was that the doc had sent for Freddie just in case it wasn't kosher, but it looked like she had topped herself, all right.

‘Husband's through there,' he said. ‘He looks gutted.'

He did, Lloyd conceded. Charles Rule sat upright on an armchair, staring at nothing. Zelda Driver, of course, was there. But she was a good person to have around in a crisis; Lloyd didn't mind her presence. She made to leave when Lloyd and Judy went in, but her attempt to do so stirred Rule from his trance, and he put out a hand, touching her arm.

‘No,' he said. ‘ Stay.'

Zelda looked at Lloyd, then back at Rule. ‘They might not want me here, Charles,' she said gently.

‘Please stay,' he said.

Lloyd shrugged his indifference; Zelda sat down on the pouffe by Rule's chair, as he continued to hold on to her arm, like a child.

Lloyd glanced at Judy, and plunged in. There wasn't much else he could do. ‘Dr Rule,' he said, ‘I know that this is a dreadful time to have to ask you questions, but I'm afraid it's necessary.'

Rule nodded. His eyes still stared ahead.

Lloyd didn't want to do this, but he had to; he had no choice. ‘Do you have any idea why your wife would take her own life?' he asked.

Rule nodded again, and Lloyd didn't speak. He had to let Rule take his own time.

‘She … she wanted a baby.' He blinked slowly not speaking. ‘ It was all she thought about. Always. But I – I couldn't …' His eyes slid slowly round to Lloyd. ‘I couldn't give her a baby. We tried, but we knew. I couldn't. She … she tried to have another man's baby.'

Lloyd looked at Zelda, who shook her head to indicate that she knew nothing about it.

‘I found out … I put a stop to it,' Charles said. ‘I had to. Not again. I couldn't go through all that – not again.'

‘Whose baby?' asked Judy quietly.

‘Holyoak's. I knew. When we took Catherine up there, and Gerry—' He paused. ‘Geraldine knew where everything was. Where things were kept, which room was the bedroom … I knew.'

Lloyd had barely had time to feel smug before Zelda Driver spoke.

‘But she would,' she said.

Charles Rule's agonized eyes moved towards her.

‘Mrs Holyoak stayed there until the house was ready,' she said. ‘Geraldine saw her there every day. Didn't you realize that that's where she was?'

Rule put a hand to his mouth. ‘ But … I heard Holyoak. I heard Anna Worthing saying she wouldn't be a decoy – I heard her. He wanted people to think it was her so that no one would find out the truth.'

Lloyd wasn't sure which question to ask first. When had he heard Holyoak and Anna Worthing? How had he heard them? What exactly had he heard? He settled on the third.

‘Did Holyoak mention your wife by name?' he asked.

The bleak eyes looked back at him now, and Rule shook his head.

When did you overhear this conversation, Dr Rule?' Judy asked, as a middle-aged man came into the room.

‘Charles – I came as soon as I heard. I don't know what to say—' He broke off and looked at Lloyd. ‘Are you the police?' he asked.

‘Yes,' said Lloyd. ‘And you are …?'

‘Brindley. I'm Dr Rule's doctor – and I must ask you to leave. He's in no fit state to answer questions.'

No. Lloyd knew that. It was the very best time to get answers, in his opinion. ‘ We will have to talk to him as soon as possible,' he said.

‘Yes, of course. But if you'll please leave now – and Mrs Driver?'

Charles made no objection this time, and all three of them found themselves firmly on the other side of a closed door.

‘Zelda,' said Lloyd, steering her into an empty room which turned out to be the waiting room. ‘A word.'

Zelda waited until the door was closed, and looked at Lloyd. ‘He's raving,' she said. ‘Geraldine was no more having an affair with Holyoak than I was.'

Lloyd wasn't convinced. ‘Did you know she had a key to Holyoak's flat?' he asked.

‘Yes, of course she did. The lift from the car park is closed down after six thirty.'

‘Why couldn't she just ring the doorbell?'

‘Mrs Holyoak found it quite difficult to reach the button on the door phone from her chair – the one that opens the outside door. Geraldine was given a key because she went there every day. Holyoak insisted. Geraldine said he was over-protective—'

Judy interrupted her, the only way of stopping the flow of words. ‘What about this full-time nurse?' she asked.

‘They've got one again now that Mrs Holyoak's in the house,' Zelda explained briskly. ‘But there was no room for one in the flat – and no need really. She's really only needed full-time care this last month, but that was why Holyoak wanted Geraldine to go every day – because there was no nurse.'

Judy smiled. ‘ Ever thought of joining the police, Mrs Driver?' she asked.

‘Zelda, please.' She looked at Lloyd. ‘And I think I know when Charles must have overheard that conversation,' she said. ‘He went back into the building to find a phone. His bleeper thing went. He went back up in the lift. But he's wrong, Lloyd. I
know
Geraldine – I'd have known if she had been involved with Holyoak.'

She was too bright, too brisk. And she had known Geraldine Rule since they were children. Zelda was fighting tears, and winning. But she shouldn't be. Lloyd led her to a chair. ‘Sit down, Zelda,' he said. ‘ Don't pretend nothing's happened.'

She sat but she determinedly remained in control. ‘ You
can't
think Geraldine was having an affair with Holyoak,' she said.

Lloyd shrugged a little. ‘He was with someone before he died,' he told her, a touch unprofessionally. He supposed that was how come Zelda knew so much about everyone's business.

‘Anna Worthing, of course!'

‘She denies that completely,' said Lloyd.

‘Well, she would! I really don't think you should let your first impressions—' She broke off, ‘Oh – I'm sorry,' she said. ‘Forgive me. But – whoever he was with, it wasn't Geraldine, unless it was in the middle of the night because she was with me from when we left the reception until midnight.'

Lloyd's ears pricked up.

‘We dropped Max off,' she said. ‘But we were both convinced he would just go straight home – and …' She looked at Judy. ‘We were worried about Catherine – with Max behaving so oddly. I mean – well, I'd never seen him like that, and neither had Geraldine. Charles thought we were being very silly, but you have no idea how unlike Max it all was. Have you met Max?' she asked suddenly.

Judy shook her head

‘I know what you must think. All you know of him is that he hit Catherine and you found him at Anna Worthing's flat. But he's a lovely man. Oh, I know – he lied to me about Catherine, and I never really forgave him for that, but I had never thought for one moment that he had anything to do with what happened to Valerie, until—' The tears were bright in her eyes. ‘He … he was so odd. It was horrible thinking that maybe – maybe he really had …' She straightened her shoulders. ‘Anyway, I drove straight to their house, to get there before he did. But Catherine wasn't there.' She looked up at Lloyd. ‘There's a pub across the road,' she said. ‘So we went in there and watched and waited, but neither of them had come home by closing time. I took Geraldine home.' She was trembling as she spoke. ‘I dropped her off here at about midnight – Charles was here, he'll tell you. She had nothing to do with Holyoak!'

The unnatural composure snapped, much to Lloyd's relief, and Judy led her off somewhere.

Charles Rule was going to have to answer questions whether his doctor liked it or not. The evidence pointed to a sexual encounter, and Geraldine was no longer in the running as Victor's playmate; was Judy's throwaway remark about Charles Rule being a possibility not so throwaway after all?

Judy came back then. ‘ I've left Zelda making tea for everyone,' she said.

Lloyd smiled. ‘Zelda never just makes tea,' he said. ‘We'll be lucky to escape without a three-course meal. Did you speak to the doctor about when we can talk to Rule?'

‘Yes,' she said. ‘In about twenty minutes, he said.'

Lloyd sat down, and picked up a
Country Life
, flicking through its genteel pages. He was waiting, in a waiting room. He might as well do the right thing.

‘He said something interesting about Geraldine,' said Judy.

Lloyd looked up from the magazine.

‘He said he wasn't surprised at the suicide. That he'd often worried about what would happen when Geraldine realized how unhappy she was.'

‘Because she couldn't have a baby?'

Judy shook her head. ‘He said that before she married Charles Rule she thought that no one should be able to buy good health. She was a fervent believer in the National Health Service – and she was twenty-seven, not a teenager, so it was a real commitment. But she ended up helping run a private clinic for rich capitalists, and jointly running a private practice. He says she hadn't changed her opinion – she just gave in to her husband's. And if she did that about work, she must have done it about everything else. And one day she would realize that she had.'

‘So you don't think her suicide has anything to do with Holyoak?'

‘I'm beginning to wonder,' said Judy, ‘if Holyoak had anything to do with women at all. Anna swears her relationship with him was non-sexual … and Raymond Wilkes was gay.'

Lloyd thought about Raymond Arthur Wilkes. Gay, according to Judy. A faggot, according to the unpleasant Bannister, a poofter according to the odious chief inspector with whom he had spoken. A homosexual in Lloyd's book, and in cahoots with Holyoak in establishing an alibi for some nefarious doings, probably the murder of this man in Warwickshire.

‘It would explain why Holyoak wanted Anna to pose as his mistress, if what Rule said just now is true,' said Judy. ‘His image was of macho man, after all.'

‘Were you serious when you suggested Charles Rule himself?' asked Lloyd.

‘Not entirely,' she said.

It was possible, he supposed. But it was just as possible that Rule had believed his wife to be having an affair with the man. Either way, it was all too possible that he ended up stabbing Holyoak to death. But where was Anna, when all this was going on? If she had left when Rule came to the door, she would have had to have seen him, and why in the world wouldn't she have said?

Lloyd thought about that. And he thought about the wardrobe doors. And about how scared Anna was, all the time.

Max had come to find comfort; the excitement of their previous meetings had gone, and his pleasure was diminished by her lack of response, but he needed to lose himself in her, all the same. And she still needed reassurance. She clung to him now as they lay together, and the afternoon darkened into evening.

‘They think I killed Victor,' she said miserably.

‘No,' he said, kissing her. ‘No, no. No, they don't.'

‘They
do
. Bannister thinks I did. And I didn't, Max – I swear, I didn't!'

‘I know,' he said, his lips on her neck. ‘I know you didn't kill him.'

‘You don't. No one does. But I didn't. Someone came to the door – Bannister thinks I set him up. He'll come after me. I know he will.'

‘Ssh,' Max said, rocking her gently, like a baby. ‘Finch said he'd look out for you.'

‘I don't believe him.'

Max still wasn't sure where this Bannister person fitted in to all of this, except that Anna had sent him up to get into the flat that night, and now she was frightened of him.

‘I'll stay with you,' he said. ‘I won't let him hurt you.'

‘Victor,' she said. ‘ I wish Victor was here. He'd keep him away. He'd keep them all away.'

Max sighed. ‘I'm here,' he said, but he knew that he was a poor substitute.

She suddenly pushed herself free of his arms, and sat up, reaching for the brandy that she had been about to hit when he'd arrived.

‘Anna – that isn't …'

‘No? Well, a quick screw might help you relax, but I need more than that.'

He watched as she poured herself a large measure.

‘I need Victor,' she said, gulping some down.

‘How did you meet him?' asked Max, in the hope that getting her life story might stop her drinking so fast.

‘I met him when he was looking for your wife. She lived across the landing from me,' Anna said.