Seeing is Believing (16 page)

Malcolm gave him a whisky, then returned to the chair where he had been sitting, and waited.

Brian was panting slightly, either because of the speed at which he had come up the lane, or because of a sense of excitement that he could not control. At last, he drew a deep breath and seemed to relax, though there was still a look of shock on his face.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Well, that's what's happened. She was found only a few minutes after she'd been killed. Her body was in that alley between the Green Man and the Birds’ house. And as you'll remember, there's a high brick wall
enclosing the Birds’ garden and there's a gate in it, and the alley leads through to the car park behind the pub. A young couple had just left their car in the park and were walking towards the entrance to the alley when they saw the gate open and something dumped out of it. And that was Lynne. She had a black plastic sack over her head and some flex round her throat, and she was quite warm and at first they didn't believe she was dead. They tore the sack off and one of them rushed into the pub to phone for a doctor, but of course a lot of people who were in the pub streamed out to see what had happened, and someone phoned for the police. Your friend Jane Kerwood was there with Hugh Maskell and she took it into her head to phone you. I asked her why she did that and she said it was because you were a friend of Lucille Bird's and would want to help her. By then the people from the pub had got Kevin cornered in his house and handed him over like a present when the police arrived. And he broke down completely. Started to cry and scream and went on to confessing everything. Not just the killing of poor Lynne, but those other women in Edgewater too, besides two or three others we haven't heard about. It was a hideous sight, a human being coming apart at the seams and sheer evil pouring out through all the gaps.’

‘Where was Lucille while this was happening?’ I asked.

‘Out playing bridge somewhere,’ Brian said. ‘I didn't wait for them to find her. I suppose she knows by now what's happened.’

‘But did she know that Kevin was the Edgewater murderer?’ I demanded. ‘Has she kept quiet about it all this time?’

‘I'm sure she hasn't,’ Malcolm said. ‘It may be partly her fault that he's turned into the kind of thing he is, but she can't have known what he'd done. I won't believe that.’

‘But how could Kevin get away to Edgewater as often as he must have without her knowing?’

Malcolm spoke to Brian. ‘Those murders were about a year ago, weren't they?’

‘Yes,’ Brian said.

‘And about a year ago Lucille was in Canada and Kevin had no one to keep an eye on him. That's easily enough explained. But what took Lynne out to the Birds’ house this evening if Lucille wasn't there?’

‘I gathered that she had a telephone call almost as soon as she got back to the pub and she went out again very soon afterwards. The idea about that seems to be that the call was from Kevin, asking her round for a drink without mentioning that his mother wouldn't be there, and it isn't known yet how long he kept her there before killing her. The doctor had only just arrived, and I don't suppose he can tell much. It'll be up to the forensic people to tie up the loose ends. But it seems she'd had a blow on her head before she was strangled. Of course, dumping her like that in the alley was an act of lunacy, which makes one feel that Kevin had really lost all grip on himself. He may even have wanted to be arrested and confess all his crimes. He may not have been able to carry the load of guilt any longer, or perhaps it was a kind of vanity. Don't mass murderers sometimes want to have their great achievements recognized?’

‘I remember when we were in the Green Man at lunch time, Kevin couldn't keep his eyes off Lynne,’ I said. ‘I suppose he'd got her selected already as his next victim.’

‘But why should he murder Peter?’ Malcolm said. ‘That doesn't fit, does it?’

‘There's a possible motive for it now,’ Brian said. ‘If Loxley had somehow found out the truth about Kevin, then it would be worth Kevin's while to get rid of him. And he'd have known where he could lay his hands on a red wig. Frances, could the man you saw at the Loxleys’ gate have been Kevin in a red wig?’

I nodded. ‘It could have been. But it could have been
several other people. I'm not going to try to identify anybody any more.’

‘Anyway, how could he have got hold of Peter's gun?’ Malcolm asked. ‘Or do you think it was Peter who brought out the gun when he realized Kevin was going to attack him, and Kevin managed to wrench it away from him and shot him more or less accidentally? It makes one wonder

‘Yes?’ Brian said as Malcolm hesitated.

‘It makes one wonder if Peter could have been blackmailing Kevin,’ Malcolm said. ‘If he'd somehow found out the truth about him … But no, Peter was as rich as Kevin. He'd no need to get money out of him. But he might simply have been threatening to hand on what he knew to the police. That's more likely.’

‘But how could he have found out the truth about Kevin?’ I asked.

‘Finding that out is a job for the police, fortunately,’ Malcolm answered.

‘And they may never find out the truth,’ Brian said, ‘unless Kevin, in his present mood, pours it all out to them. That's quite possible. On the other hand, he may withdraw everything he's said once his mother's in charge and she's found him a lawyer. At the least, he ought to get away with a plea of diminished responsibility.’

‘I suppose there's no question that what he's saying about having murdered Lynne is true,’ I said. ‘Did that young couple who found her actually see Kevin at the gate in the wall?’

‘I'm not sure, but I don't think there's any question that what he's said himself is true,’ Brian answered. ‘He's determined now to be convicted.’

I finished my drink and went out to the kitchen to make the omelettes for supper, but I did not think much of what I was doing and they were not very successful. But it did not matter as no one had any appetite. That a woman who had been talking to us in the afternoon should in the
little time since then have been atrociously killed made the meal seem singularly unimportant. Yet habit made it seem essential to provide it. The ordinary routine of the day had to be maintained. Whether I should have felt that so strongly if I had been younger, I did not know. Probably not, I thought. But as things were, routine seemed something to cling to. After the omelettes, we had coffee, set the dishwasher going and settled down once more in the sitting room. It was only a little while after that that Inspector Holroyd arrived.

He and the usual sergeant sat down in the sitting room, gratefully accepted drinks and agreed with one another that it felt good to take the weight off their feet.

Then the inspector said, ‘I imagine you know why we've come. There's some information we believe you can give us.’

‘About Lynne Denison?’ Malcolm said.

‘Yes, for one thing,’ the inspector agreed. ‘And about Fred Dyer, too. We believe they were both here in the late afternoon.’

‘That's right,’ Malcolm said. ‘You must ask my wife about them. Most of the time they were here, I was upstairs working, and Mr Hewlett, I believe, was in his room, sound asleep. Is that right, Brian?’

‘Absolutely,’ Brian said. ‘But how did you know they'd been here, Inspector?’

‘Dyer's girlfriend, Sharon Sawyer, told us,’ the inspector answered. ‘Her story is that Dyer came in, said, “That's one murder they can't suspect me of,” gave her a rough outline of how he'd met Lynne Denison here and had stayed until after you got the news of the murder, then packed a bag, got in his van and drove away. He didn't tell her where he was thinking of going, but the van's gone all right and there's no sign of him.’

‘But why should he choose to vanish just when there really can't be any suspicion of him?’ I said. ‘It sounds very strange.’

‘Perhaps not as strange as all that,’ Inspector Holroyd said. ‘As I think Mr Hewlett found out when he was down at the Green Man a little while ago, Kevin Bird has confessed to the murder of Mrs Denison, as well as to the three in Edgewater. In fact, there was no stopping him confessing. And along with it all, he claims to have been paying blackmail to Dyer, and if that's true, it's pretty serious for Dyer. Not only is blackmail itself a serious offence, but when it's related to the covering up of several murders it looks very black indeed. But before we go into that, I'd like to check on the truth of Dyer's alibi for Mrs Denison's murder. Was he here with you, Mrs Chance, at the significant time?’

‘Oh yes, there's no doubt of that,’ I said. ‘First Mrs Denison came and when she'd been here a little while, Fred Dyer turned up, and they talked to each other for a short time about nothing in particular, then she left, and I remember he said that it wouldn't have been very tactful of him to offer to see her down to the pub, as he was suspected of murdering several women, and he stayed on until we had a telephone call from Miss Kerwood, telling us that Mrs Denison had been killed, at which he left in rather a hurry. It seemed a bit odd, the way he took off, particularly as I remember saying to myself that this time there was no question that he had an alibi, but what you've just told us about the blackmail explains that.’

‘Why did he come to see you?’ the inspector asked. ‘Did he explain that?’

‘I think it was mostly to make sure that I was going to stick to it that the man I saw at the Loxleys’ gate wasn't him, but someone in disguise. But he told me a good deal about himself as well. He told me how he'd killed a child, joy-riding, and had gone to prison for it, and how he hadn't been able to get a job when he came out, and had taken to odd jobs as the only way to keep going. I think he just drifted into Edgewater by chance, and there he did manage to get a job in a garage. He left it, he said, because
he couldn't stand the atmosphere of suspicion that had developed around him after he'd been identified by a woman there as a murderer. But he also claimed to have arrived in Raneswood by chance, and now we know better about that, don't we?’

‘Yes, it seems probable that having discovered who the real murderer was, he followed him here,’ the inspector said, ‘and has been milking him ever since. We don't know yet how he discovered Bird was the killer — a pathological killer if there ever was one — but it was probably just a chance that he saw one of the crimes being committed.’

‘Inspector, has Bird confessed to the killing of Peter Loxley?’ Brian asked.

‘No, and he gets very indignant when he's questioned about it,’ the inspector said. ‘He seems to take it as a kind of insult. It's not
his
kind of murder, that's what he seems to be saying.’

‘And you're no further on with that?’ Malcolm said.

‘No, though we've been finding out a thing or two about Loxley. Did you know that he was once engaged to Miss Kerwood? It was only after he married Avril Loxley that Miss Kerwood took off on her travels and writing her book. That might give her a motive for wanting Loxley killed, but whatever disguise the man whom Mrs Chance saw was wearing, I think you're quite certain he couldn't have been a woman, aren't you, Mrs Chance?’

‘Absolutely,’ I said. ‘He was much too tall and muscular.’

But here was the explanation of Jane's broken heart, I thought, and was ashamed to find myself wondering if she could have persuaded some tall and muscular man to take her revenge for her.

When the police left, I said that I was going to call in on Lucille. We had never been close friends, but the thought of what she must be suffering now was not one that could easily be put aside. She had other friends, and it seemed
certain that they would be taking care of her, but simply to say that and find it an adequate excuse for doing nothing myself did not agree with how I was feeling. Malcolm said that he would come with me and he was just about to set out to get the Rover out of the garage when the doorbell rang.

This time it was Sharon Sawyer.

She stood on the doorstep, looking at me speechlessly, as if she expected me to tell her why she was there. She looked so pretty and so forlorn that I unthinkingly put an arm round her to draw her inside. She was as stiff in my embrace as if she were made of wood. I dropped my arm, but I took one of her hands. It was tense and stiff and very cold.

‘What is it, Sharon?’ I asked.

‘He's gone,’ she said.

‘Fred?’

‘Yes.’

‘He's left you?’

‘Yes.’

That did not quite explain why she had come to us, but it was enough to make me delay my visit to Lucille. I drew her into the sitting room. Malcolm offered her a drink, but she shook her head. I offered her coffee, but she muttered, ‘No, thank you — nothing. I just want to ask you something. I don't want to be a nuisance.’

‘It wouldn't be any nuisance,’ I said, but she shook her head again and even seemed doubtful if she ought to sit down.

We persuaded her to do that, however, and to take off the anorak that she was wearing; an action that seemed to help her to overcome her extreme shyness, or whatever it was that made her so frightened of us. She leant back in the chair, crossing one foot over the other and locking her hands together and looking from one to the other of us again as if she expected us to explain her presence. She
had the scared look in her eyes that I had seen there at lunch in the Green Man.

Suddenly I wondered if someone had advised her to come to us, and she really did not know why. But who would have done that?

‘Sharon, did Fred tell you to come to us?’ I asked.

She nodded, but did not answer.

‘Why?’ I said.

At last she said, ‘He told me you could give him an alibi and I needn't be afraid there'd be anything phoney about it.’ Her voice was so low that it was almost inaudible. ‘I gave him a phoney alibi, you see. He said if I didn't, he'd kill me. Of course, he didn't mean it, he just meant he'd do something horrible to me, and he'd got me so scared of him by then I couldn't think. I often got like that with him. I don't know why I loved him when he frightened me so. He used to frighten me in all sorts of ways. He'd hurt me just a little and make me think he was going to do more. For instance, he'd take hold of one of my hands and bend the fingers backwards till I almost screamed with the pain, and he'd tell me he could easily break the lot if he felt like it. Only he never did; I mean, it never went beyond a certain point, but all the same, when he said I'd got to give him an alibi, I didn't dream of saying I wouldn't. And I did love him, you see. I wanted to help him if he needed it.’