Past Praying For (34 page)

‘
Looking for me?’ the sergeant said to the constable who had taken Elizabeth away, and was now peering anxiously about him in the smoky, foggy confusion. He greeted a senior officer with relief.

‘
Sir. Bit of a funny thing about the lady there. She’s not saying a word, and I can’t budge her from the fence there where she’s watching the fire. Maybe it’s just shock, but it still doesn’t seem natural, if you know what I mean. And she’s reeking of brandy, though she’s not really acting drunk. She looks as if she’s been in a fight, or something too; I’ve seen enough scratched faces in my time to recognize nail marks when I see them. And that’s hardly what you’d expect with a lady like her.’

The
sergeant looked across the chaos of machines and men to where Elizabeth stood, a little apart, her face impassive apart from that faint, lingering half-smile. He raised his brows.

‘
Well, well, well. I wonder. Be a bit of a feather in our caps if we cracked this before the clever dicks even got here, wouldn’t it?’

‘
Go and ask her if she’d be prepared to go and sit in a police car – nicely, mind you – charm school stuff – and see there are two of you with her at all times. Grab one of the girls. Then just ask her some gentle questions, and if she starts to say anything, give her her rights quick, in case some smart lawyer comes along later. She’s not under arrest, of course. We’re just asking her to be a public-spirited citizen and help us along with our enquiries.

‘
OK? You’ve heard of finesse, have you, lad? Well, go ahead and use it.’

So
when Rod Vezey, with Moon and Smethurst, arrived, it was to be told that Piers McEvoy was out on the town, the children were being looked after by neighbours, and Elizabeth was sitting in a police car, singing like a canary to two frantic officers, one male and one female, both wishing they had done more about learning speedwriting.

He
was not pleased. There were so many rules hedging you about nowadays; put a foot wrong, and that was your conviction out of the window. He strode to the car door, flung it open, and said to the startled pair inside, ‘Out. Now.’

They
hastened to comply. Elizabeth did not move, still sitting unperturbed in the back seat with a trace of that satisfied smile still turning up the corners of her mouth and her hands folded demurely in her lap.

‘
Mrs McEvoy,’ he said.

She
looked at him coolly out of the corner of her eye, without bothering to turn her head.

He
tried again. ‘Mrs McEvoy, we would like to take you over to police headquarters. Would you like us to try to trace your husband, so that he knows where you are?’

She
turned her head at that. ‘Oh, I really wouldn’t bother to do that, if I were you.’

‘
Very well. Would you be good enough to come with us then, Mrs McEvoy? I know you’ve been talking to the officers here, but there are a few things I would like to ask you, and it would be easier for you to make a statement at headquarters.’

She
looked full at him now, and the smile grew broader. Her eyes danced like those of a little girl.

‘
Oh, inspector, of course I will. Have I got something to tell you that will make your eyes pop! But call me Missy, won’t you?’

***

It was six o’clock in the morning when, with the fire almost out, one of the firemen – also a local man – was having a break and a cigarette with his friend Tom Compton. It had been a heavy night; both men were weary. The fog was starting to lift a bit now, though it was still dark, and the full scale of the damage would not emerge until the ashes were cooler and daylight came.

‘
Dreadful, isn’t it?’ the fireman said. ‘It was a beautiful house; McEvoy’ll do his nut, won’t he?’

The
story of the man’s imminent embarrassment was too good for Compton to keep to himself, and he told it with relish.

His
friend was curious. ‘Out, is he?’ he said. ‘Well, it has to be somewhere local. That car of his – BMW, nice machine – is sitting in the garage; we were dousing it with foam a while back, to make sure it didn’t go up as well.’

Compton
tapped the side of his nose with his finger. ‘That Mrs Cutler, by what I’ve heard. She’s a bit of all right, as they say, and only just down the road there.’

The
other man looked startled. ‘The American lady? Blonde hair, bit of an armful? I saw her hours ago, standing there in the crowd. If he was round there, it’s funny he hasn’t come sneaking back before now.’

‘
Probably waiting until the fuss dies down,’ said Compton, but it was an automatic response; they were both uneasy. ‘You don’t think – ’

‘
Surely not,’ the fireman said, then, ‘But I think I might have a word with my chief, just in case. It’s probably OK, but still…’

His
anxiety prompted him to break into a run, his heavy boots squelching in the puddles of water and foam as he hurried across to where the fire chief stood beside his little red car supervizing the scaling-down of the operation.

Tom
Compton looked after him, easing the cap on his head which suddenly seemed to have become too tight. He stared into the smoking cavities which had once been windows and now showed a chaos of fallen beams and debris.

If
anyone was inside there, a minute saved now was hardly going to matter, one way or the other.

14

Margaret Moon had been able to sleep only fitfully that night. She had sat downstairs with the Brancombes till almost midnight, speculating, with Jean mainly, about poor Missy, her sad past and her possible present state. Ted had fallen asleep in his chair by then, and eventually Margaret insisted they all went to bed. A working farmer had to be on the go early, and there was no saying how late Robert might be.

Jean
had protested that she wouldn’t be able to sleep a wink, but during her own wakeful spells Margaret could hear through the wall her delicate and ladylike snores providing a soprano counterpoint to Ted’s basso profundo.

Perhaps
it was the painkiller she was still taking, but when she did drop into sleep it was to suffer vivid, confused and anxious dreams from which she woke with relief. She was deeply troubled by her failure to reach this woman who had so needed her help; it was difficult not to blame herself for persisting so long in the dismissive attitude that creature comforts made for an untroubled soul.

She
heard the farm noises: the sheep restless in the fields, a cow lowing in the byre. She heard owls, and the reassuring tread of the young policeman as he passed on his round underneath their windows. But the farm lay at the farther end of the village; she did not hear the sirens of police cars or fire engines, and was still ignorant of the night’s disturbances when the crunch on the gravel of the police car drawing up, and her brother’s carefully-lowered voice thanking the driver jerked her once again into wakefulness. She looked at her watch; it was six o’clock.

Pyewacket
eyed her askance from his comfortable nest in the duvet but did not stir as she got up and, opening her bedroom door as quietly as she could, slipped downstairs. There was no way she was going to let Robert sneak off to bed and sleep for hours without telling her what had kept him at police headquarters for such an unconscionable length of time.

When
he came in through the back door to the kitchen, she thought suddenly, with a pang, that he looked not only worn out, but old. He was four years older than she, but she was accustomed to thinking of them both as being, like Miss Jean Brodie, in their prime. Tonight his appearance (and no doubt hers too, if she were unwise enough to search out a mirror) endorsed that lady’s later discovery, that this prime too swiftly passes.

When
he saw her he raised his eyebrows and surveyed her with his characteristic quizzical gaze over the top of his spectacles.

‘
I couldn’t sleep,’ she said. ‘Look, you’re obviously desperate to get to bed, but just tell me if you’ve found out who Missy is, and what’s been happening. I couldn’t stand the thought of having to wait until you woke up again.’

‘
What’s been happening?’ he said, rubbing his hand tiredly across his face so that it rasped on the greying stubble on his chin. ‘What hasn’t been happening!’

He
collapsed on to a chair by the big pine table in the centre of the kitchen.

‘
Actually, I’m not ready to sleep yet. It’s all still going round and round in my head. Make me a cup of tea and I’ll talk to you until I feel I’ll be able to fall into bed and crash out.’

She
had already lifted one of the covers on the Raeburn and shunted the heavy kettle which always stood on the surface on to the plate to heat, where it began singing almost at once. She set out the big brown teapot, mugs, milk and sugar.

‘
OK. Start.’

‘
Start? I don’t know where to start.’

‘
Missy,’ Margaret said without hesitation. ‘Have you found poor Missy?’

‘
Oh, we’ve found her. We’ve found her because she tried to burn down her own house, with her kids inside it. She very nearly succeeded, and now she’s flipped completely. Elizabeth McEvoy.’

‘
What!’ In her shock, Margaret tipped the boiling water she was attempting to pour into the teapot all over the surface, and was forced to leap back before it spilled over the edge and scalded her slippered feet. ‘Lizzie McEvoy tried to kill her children? I can’t believe it!’

‘
Oh, not as deliberately as that. As far as I can make out, she just wanted to set the house on fire, and the children being asleep inside was purely incidental. Most likely she’d forgotten all about them.

‘
She’s not Lizzie, you see, she’s Missy, and she has no feelings of affection or responsibility or even relationship to Lizzie’s children. If it comes to that, I doubt if she has feelings of any kind.

‘
But if you could see your way to concentrating on the job in hand and coordinating the kettle and the pot, I would certainly appreciate my tea.’

‘
Sorry,’ Margaret said mechanically, resuming the task which shock had interrupted. ‘I feel – gobsmacked, I think is the
mot
juste.
But I take it there’s no doubt?’

‘
No possible doubt whatever. She’s been at headquarters now for a couple of hours, refusing flatly to see doctors or lawyers, and answering any questions we care to put to her. She seems to be revelling in the attention.’

‘
Does she know what she’s saying?’

Robert
blew vulgarly on his tea to cool it. ‘Who knows? At one level, yes certainly. It’s both internally and externally consistent. But she clearly has no sense at all of the enormity of her confession. She is a stranger to remorse, and even the attack on you is justified by the calm explanation that she felt threatened, as if once we grasped that point we would understand.

‘
She produced the matches from her pocket to show us; she told us that tonight she had to use McEvoy’s best brandy because there were no firelighters. She seemed faintly aggrieved that they hadn’t been provided.’

‘
But if she was so afraid that I would realize who she was that she tried to kill me, why is she telling you all this now?’

‘
As far as you can adduce a rationale, it would be that tonight was her grand finale, the thing she had been rehearsing for all along. That’s what she’s saying now, though I don’t myself think it’s as straightforward as that. Whether she admits it or not, she was actually responding to other factors too. She professes to despise Dumbo, but burning down the Boltons’ garage suggested itself because Suzanne had upset Lizzie. And as far as I can make out, Hayley Cutler might have been in trouble as well, only Milla had a cold the night before last and Lizzie stayed up and kept Missy in her cage.

‘
But there’s no doubt that Piers was the most important target. It would have ruined everything if we’d caught her before she had a chance to destroy his house. It’s not how she put it, of course, but clearly what she feels is that it has been an instrument of oppression for Lizzie as well as a sort of temple he has set up to his personality.’

‘
Does she realize she’s going to end up in prison – or confined, anyway?’

‘
Ah, I’m not sure that she has really worked that out. Looking ahead is not in general her strong point, and she’s just been taking enormous pleasure in explaining to us how clever she has been to outwit us all. I daresay she might think vaguely that if things get difficult she’ll be able to retreat again and leave Lizzie to carry the can.’

‘
And will she?’

Robert
shrugged. ‘You tell me. Psychology – ’

‘
Is not an exact science,’ Margaret finished for him. ‘I know. But what a dreadful, tragic business.