Cleo told Julie and Colin that she had an idea about where to
look for Jessica and hoped she was right. Whether the woman was guilty or not,
she was in a horrific emotional state and Cleo did not think the police would
deal with her gently after she had made fools of them.
“Gary thinks we are in competition,” said Cleo.
“I got that idea, too,” said Colin, but it’s all in Gary’s
imagination, I’m sure.”
“I can’t convince him of that, Colin.”
“Then it really was time to leave him to his own devices,”
said Colin.
***
“Quite apart from not wanting to witness Gary in a panic, there's
a dry cleaner's quite near here. Maybe they can send someone to see to the
carpet," said Julie. “I took some stuff there and they were OK.”
The dry cleaner, who seemed to be the entire workforce, was
quite amicable about the carpet, even after Cleo had described the nature of
the damage. It would be cleaned on the spot. He had a mate who worked free-lance
and would be glad of the dough. No guarantee, mind you, but he had done a good
job many times before. Blood was quite a common problem. That and wine, or both
together.
She found herself insisting that it was only blood. Ignoring
the wide-eyed assistant’s question "Whose blood?", Cleo arranged a
time and date with him and left a business card for the address.
"We charge for coming and going, too," the guy
reminded the as she opened the shop door.
“That’s OK, Mister,” Cleo assured him.
“Cross is the name, Misses,” he called back.
“Hartley here,” said Cleo, but the name’s on my card.
“Have good day then!” called Mr Cross.
***
They got back into Colin’s car.
“Where to now?” Colin asked. “The carpet’s sorted, but I
think you have something else in mind, Cleo,” he said.
“We need to locate Jessica before the police can.”
So it is a competition, thought Colin.
"Don't criminals always return to the scene of the
crime, Cleo?" said Julie.
"We don't know if she has committed a crime."
"But why would she run away if she's innocent?"
"Oh Julie, you know there's a difference between being
innocent and being proved innocent. Maybe she thought the evidence against her
was too strong," said Colin.
"It is too strong," said Cleo. "Let's recap! Jason
goes to the garden shed and opens the door, intending to drag the lawn mower
out and cut the grass. Someone creeps up behind him and hits him over the head
with the meat-hammer from the kitchen. Who else could it have been other than
Jessica? It's unlikely that anyone else would have had time to go into the
kitchen and get the implement without being seen.”
“OK. So Jessica had the tenderizer in her hand and clobbered
Jason with it,” said Colin.
“But that was probably not the cause of death. Jason was
brutally murdered by someone who then proceeded to leave Jessica to take the
rap," said Cleo.
"Which means someone was waiting in the wings,"
said Colin.
"What if someone had borrowed the meat tenderizer at
some earlier time?" Julie wanted to know.
"It seems a silly thing to borrow."
"Not if you plan to use it," said Colin.
"And why would Jessica have left after discovering
Jason?" said Julie. “If she is innocent, wouldn’t it have been better to
call the police, or at least told Cleo?”
"Two answers to that, Julie. Either she had a hand in
what had happened, or she had witnessed whoever it was and was scared out of
her wits," said Cleo.
“We should not forget that someone locked the shed door
after the murder,” added Colin. “So there could be a second key.”
“ I wonder which key Jason used,” said Cleo. “We’ll have to
look into that, too.”
“Maybe next door has a key,” said Julie. “Maybe someone was
allowed to borrow the lawn-mower.”
“Awesome,” said Cleo. “The bungalow was empty for a while.
It would be quite logical to leave a key with a neighbour to make sure the
garden was kept tidy.”
"To cut a story short, someone could be running free
after the killing and it isn’t Jessica," said Colin.
"That's about the size of it. Another good reason to
find her."
Colin thought that given the unlikelihood of someone passing
by and deciding to slit Jason’s throat, Jessica was Jason Finch’s the most
likely killer. Cleo was also starting to believe it possible. Why were her
fingerprints on the meat tenderizer and the lawn mower?
“But someone else wearing gloves might have finished Jason
off,” said Julie. “What if someone seized the opportunity without rhyme or
reason?
“Bloodthirsty?” said Colin. “Vampires have a different
method.”
"Whatever happened, it’s a nightmare situation,"
said Julie.
“You are sure the shed was locked when you found Jason,
aren’t you Cleo?” said Colin.
“Robert came back in the house to get a key so it must have
been. He opened that shed door with the key on Laura’s key ring that I had
carried around.”
“That makes you a suspect, Cleo,” said Colin.
“I expect I could get an alibi if I needed one, Colin,” said
Cleo.
“But that’s how easy it is to become a suspect,” said Colin.
”Circumstantial evidence is a big topic for us law students. You could get in
the shed, so maybe you did.”
“It’s really macabre,” said Julie.
“I wish I was joking,” said Colin, “but I wanted to
emphasize how easy it is to be suspected of something.“
***
Cleo phoned Dorothy on her mobile and told her that under no
circumstances was she to open the door to anyone. No, not even to Jessica. She
would explain later.
***
Information on where Jason was before he turned up in Upper
Grumpsfield was needed. The relationship between him and Jessica was still
shrouded in mystery and his activities were a matter of speculation. Maybe he'd
been drug-trafficking. In that case the Norton brothers could have been his
contacts. He had met an unknown guy in
London. It was not a Norton, but it could have been a Norton assistant.
Cleo was trying to make sense of it all by thinking out
loud.
"What about the connection between the two murders?"
said Colin.
"Let's drive to Laura's Bungalow. If we could find a
diary of some kind it might give us a clue."
“Haven’t the police searched?”
“Sure, but Jessica has been in an out since then.”
Cleo did not really believe they would find anything, but there
was a slim chance that Jessica had forgotten something in her haste. Cleo would
also slip next door and ask the Crightons if they still had the key of Laura’s
shed.
***
“No, we haven’t got a key,” said Mrs Crighton.
“Didn’t you look after the garden while the bungalow was
empty?” Cleo persisted.
“Betjeman might have, but he always loses things. That’s why
I don’t give him a house-key anymore.”
Cleo had to be satisfied with that explanation, though she
had her doubts. But if Betjeman really had a key, he was hardly likely to admit
using it on the day Jason was killed even if he remembered.
***
"Where did Jessica sleep?" Julie asked.
"There's a guest room here and she slept in your room
at our cottage the night before she came back to the bungalow after the
forensic team had left."
"She might have dropped something under the bed at your
cottage, Cleo."
"Things are only that simple in books, Julie,"
laughed Colin.
"If it was a
diary, she might have missed it, but not been able to retrieve it.”
"So perhaps she has gone back to look for it now?"
said Julie.
“At the cottage? I never thought of that.”
***
Someone had tidies everything in Laura’s bedroom. There was
fresh linen on the bed, presumable so that the used linen could be checked for
traces of DNA.
Colin pulled at the bed and it detached itself from the
bedhead.
To her immense surprise, Cleo found a rucksack that must
have been jammed between the two halves of the bed construction. It was black and
had probably been invisible in torchlight. There was no incriminating evidence
in it, except for a small diary in a side pocket. Cleo put it into her handbag.
“That’s progress,” said Julie.
“That’s evidence that the search was not thorough enough,”
said Colin.
***
Back at the cottage, Colin went round checking while Cleo
made them all coffee opened a packet of cookies to tide them over until they
had time for a meal.
Cleo started flipping through the pages looking for anything
she could find.
"Listen, kids," she called out. "This is not
Jason's notebook at all. It's Jessica's."
"But it was Jason’s rucksack, wasn’t it?” said Julie.
“I think I remember that Jessica had a red one, so must have
been.”
“In that case, why did Jason have the diary?"
“A good question, Julie.”
Cleo then read something out loud that took everyone by
surprise.
"Jason's going off his rocker again," Jessica had
written.
"She must have been afraid of him," said Julie.
"If she was afraid of him, why was the diary in Jason's
bag?" said Cleo. “I’ve been wondering about a motive Jessica might have
for killing Jason. Did he take the diary from her because it contained
incriminating words about his mental state?”
"It sounds possible," said Colin.
"But what did she mean by 'off his rocker'?" said
Cleo. “Those are pretty drastic words.”
“It usually means insanity,” said Colin.
“When I was studying sociology, insanity was a big topic.
People are often insane but appear normal. They can influence the way people
think and then act. That’s why it’s important that guys in authority are
mentally well-balanced.”
“But you can’t always tell if they are,” said Julie.
“No, until they do something that is irrational or just
plain crazy. Or maybe never. They go to their death without ever have been
revealed for what they are.”
“That’s two thousand years of history in a nutshell,” said
Colin.
***
“Let’s recapitulate,” said Julie. "You two think that
Jason killed Laura in some kind of insane rage. Jessica knew about it but did
not want to betray him," said Julie.
"It does rather suggest itself," said Colin.
"In a novel I would call that matricide. There have been enough matricides
to fill a library of books. Murdering a brother is fratricide, and there are
good examples of that in British history books, too, without resorting to Greek gods."
“Crimes of passion,” said Julie.
“Or hatred, or even fear,” said Cloe
***
It was agreed that finding Jessica’s diary was a step forward.
On the following pages of the diary, Jessica complained that
Jay was shouting at her like in the old days. Cleo looked down the list of
addresses at the back. Among them she found some addresses of sanatoriums in
the north of England. One of them was underlined in red.
"I wonder if one of the Finches was ever a patient
there," Cleo mused, "Jason, for instance. I'm going to phone and find
out."
“Or Jessica herself,” said Colin.
***
After introducing herself as Peggy Smith from Canada on a
short visit to the UK, Cleo was told that she could not be given any
information about patients, however urgent it was.
"But you could tell me if a Mr or Miss Finch signed in
as a visitor," Cleo insisted.
"It's against the rules," said the person at the
other end.
"It's only about
a visitor. Surely that is not top secret," insisted Cleo. "Or would
you prefer to tell the police?"
"Well, I suppose you're right," was the startled
reply. Cleo wondered about the authenticity of the institution. She would ask
Gary about that, if possible without clueing him in as to why.
"A Mr Finch was here to see his sister, but don't say I
told you."
"Really! That would be Jessica. When did he visit her?"
"About two months ago."
"Thank you. You've been most helpful," said Cleo
and rang off. She was glad she had set the phone not to reveal her phone
number.
“You were right, Colin,” said Cleo.
"So Jessica was in that sanatorium, was she?" said
Julie.
“And that seems to confirm that they were brother and sister
rather than husband and wife," said Cleo. At least, that’s what the woman
on the phone said.”
"But Jason could have said that to get in. It needn't
be the truth if Jessica was there to get away from a bloody-minded husband or
brother or had been put there by him," said Colin. "She might have
been drugged, by that brother or whoever he was."
"What a tangled web we are weaving," said Julie.
"It seems like it, but the visit was 2 months ago. On
the other hand it may be a clue to the relationship between the two. Not the
legal one, but the psychological component. Maybe Jessica really was scared of
Jason, or she was behaving so oddly that Jason had to seek help."
“And the sanatorium did not notice that Jason was off his
rocker,” said Colin.
“Insane people sometimes appear to be sane, Colin,” said
Cleo. “We’ve discussed that already and now it seems more urgent than ever to find
out if one, or both of them were nuts.”
"Why go such a long way from London to get help?"
"Who knows, I don’t think Jessica ever came near the
woman who might have been her mother, but the sanatorium may have been arranged
by Laura Finch. We know so little about the months before these murders."
“And we don’t know anything about Laura Finch’s family,”
said Colin. “Perhaps they were all crazy.”
“There’s so much we don’t know about Laura,” said Cleo.
"Maybe Jessica committed murder while the balance of her
mind was disturbed,” said Colin. “Schizophrenia or multiple personalities, for example.”
"We should not get hysterical about all this,"
Cleo felt bound to say. "Whatever the relationship between those people
was, Jessica is a Finch by name. It's possible that she wanted to find out who
killed her mother, or mother-in-law, as the case may be. Supposing Jason really
had threatened her?"
"Or supposing they had a sort of love-hate
relationship," said Julie. "He threatens her. She gets in first. Both
are violent and unpredictable, but she is quicker off the mark."
"It sounds as if one of them had to die," said
Colin, who was already plotting the first chapter of his book.
"We must find
her," said Cleo, as the kitchen door opened.
"You can stop looking. I'm here," said Jessica.
***
Cleo was the first to react to the new situation.
"Sit down, Jessica. I'll get you a drink."
"No. Stay where you are, all of you. Just stay where
you are."
Jessica pointed a gun at them.
"Put that thing away, Jessica. You're scaring us,"
said Cleo.
"Don't move and nothing will happen to you."
Colin looked at Jessica closely and said "I know you.
You are the woman we followed in London."
"Why did you follow me?"
"Actually we were following your brother."
"My brother?"
"Jason."
"He's not my brother."
Cleo decided they really had nothing to lose. She could only
hope that Robert would come home soon.
"Were you married to Jason?"
"No. I’m still married to a guy named Jim, remember?
Jason insisted that I played the role of his sister. He said Laura Finch's
neighbours were nosy."
"But Laura hadn't lived in that house long enough for
anyone to find out. They were only curious about who had moved in."
"That's as maybe."
"Why did you run away from the police?"
"You already know the answer. They think I killed
Jason, but I didn't."
"Running away acts like a confession, Jessica,"
said Colin.
"Who are these people, Cleo?"
"That's Julie. She's Robert's daughter. And that's Colin,
her boyfriend."
"Where's Robert?"
"In his shop, I expect," said Cleo.
"Jessica, please stop pointing that gun at us,"
said Julie.
"I don't want you turning me in," said Jessica.
"We won't do that, but put the gun away, please."
"I don't think it's loaded, anyway," said Jessica,
throwing it onto the floor.
"Where did you get it?"
"Those security guards are even stupider than I expected.
One had the gun in the back pocket of his trousers. Even easier to pinch than a
wallet."
"So sit down and tell us the whole story,” said Cleo. “We
can't help you if we don't know the facts.”
They all sat down around the dining table.
For a start, why did you whack Jason over the head with the
meat tenderizer?"
"I didn't. We were fooling around. I'd been banging
away at some schnitzels, so I had it in my hand. Jason had his back to me and I
really only wanted to tap gently, but he raised his head and banged it on the
door frame. Then he slumped forward and I ran to the house to phone for a
doctor. But I didn't have a number because every single scrap of paper seemed
to have been removed….even the phonebook…"
"…as evidence, by the police."
"So I had to dial 999. I explained the situation and
they said they would come fast soon. Then I went back to the shed and found
Jason dead. I pulled the secateurs out of his throat, Cleo. Then I tried to
move the lawn mower, but Jason's body was lying across it and I couldn't shift
it."
"You should have told the police all that."
"Would they have believed me?"
"I don't know. I'm not even sure I believe you. I can
only give you the benefit of the doubt, Jessica. We've got to find the person
who did kill Jason if it wasn't you. Did you see anyone around who could have
been stalking you?"
"No one, except for the crazy guy next door when I went
to borrow some bread. But he wasn't actually stalking me."
"Next door? Do you mean the Crightons?"
"That's them. I don't think they liked me and the
feeling was mutual."
"Betjeman is supposed to have been away the day Laura
was killed, Cleo. But that doesn't mean he really was away, even if they thought
he was, or if they were giving him an alibi. "
"Jason told me he'd had a problem with Betjeman last
time he was over visiting Laura, about two weeks before she was killed. He was
hanging around Laura's place and accused Jason of being Laura's toy-boy. He
told Jason to clear off as it lowered the tone of the neighbourhood. He also
said it was his job to get rid of vermin and I know he spent a lot of time
spying on people. He was some kind of self-styled moral apostle" said
Jessica.
"And probably insane," said Cleo. “Did you leave
the shed door open after finding Jason?”
“No, I slammed it and ran away.”
“So you didn’t lock it.”
“No. Jason took the key to open up. I didn’t see a key.”
“So the murderer could have come back, found it and locked
the shed, couldn’t he?”
“What a scenario!” said Colin “The murderer went back to the
scene of his crime and locked the door.”
“We found your diary, Jessica.”
“Where? I left it under my pillow, but when I looked for it,
it has gone.”
“Jason had it in his rucksack.”
“I thought he was behaving normally again. He could be
really good company when he was normal. I asked him about the diary and he told
me he had not seen it.”
“He was schizophrenic, wasn’t he?” Colin said.
“Something like that. He had weird phases.”
"Why were you in that nursing home in the north?" Cleo asked.
"Burnout, I think you call it. Laura put me there. I'd
visited her secretly in Lower Grumpsfield. Jason was not to find out. Laura was
afraid that he’d turn violent again if he did.”
“Again?” said Colin.
“There were rumours in the old days …. But nothing was
proved. I didn’t really believe he would be violent to me. We got on well most
of the time. But Laura thought I should disappear for a while. She didn't think
he would find me at the clinic. Jason was irrational and insanely jealous."
“But if you weren’t married to him, he had no right to be
jealous,” Cleo argued.
“He thought he was married to me,” Jessica said.
The whole story was ridiculous, thought Colin, and said as
much. How sane was Jessica, he wondered.
***
Cleo thought that hiding Jessica away could have been a
motive for Jason killing his mother, but she thought it wiser to keep that idea
to herself. Whatever interrogation was awaiting Jessica, she seemed to be ready
for it. Cleo could not find a loophole in her explanations. Gary could not
possibly come for supper. She would have to keep him up to date without
mentioning Jessica. She would have to find some other excuse for not allowing
him to come to the cottage.”
"I'm going to phone Gary now," she said. "I'll
tell him the dinner’s cancelled, but I’ll have to tip him off about Betjeman Crighton.
Once they've got him, I'm sure you'll be cleared. Until then, you can stay
here, Jessica, unless you want to go back to the Laura’s bungalow."
“I’ve just come from there, Cleo. I hid in the loft most of
the time.”
***
Gary was very sensitive to the tone of Cleo’s voice, so he
was immediately suspicious.
“I think you’re bluffing, Cleo. What’s up?”
“Migraine, Gary. I’ll be OK tomorrow.”
Gary was tempted to drive to Upper Grumpsfield, and in the
end he did.
***
Julie and Colin cried off the dinner invitation.
“We need to talk,” said Colin. “Thanks for inviting
us. You look as if you need a quiet evening.”
“Feel at home here, you two,” said Cleo. “The
migraine was an excuse. I don’t want Gary confronting Jessica yet.”
“I’m living with Julie now,” said Colin. “We also
need to talk about ourselves.”
“Wow,” said Cleo. “I’m happy about that and Robert
will be once he’s got over his strange ideas about being the father of an adult
woman.”
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