Shot With Crimson, page 14
He knocked at the door, and the rapping was echoed immediately by a distant gunshot, the perfectly innocent sound of a gamekeeper at work or the partridge season underway, but—to Penrose’s ears—it was a bleak reminder of what had brought them there. There was no response at first, and Hughes set off to find a rear entrance, but Penrose called him back when he heard the sound of footsteps in the hall. The door was opened by a woman with ash-blond hair swept up into a bun. She was tall and elegantly dressed in a fawn and green checked woollen suit, and she could have been anywhere between forty and sixty; only the fine lines on her neck and around her eyes inclined Penrose towards the latter end of the estimate.
He produced his warrant card. ‘I’m Detective Chief Inspector Archie Penrose from the Metropolitan Police,’ he said, ‘and this is Detective Inspector Hughes from the Cambridgeshire Constabulary.’
The woman nodded. ‘Of course. You’re here about Evelyn’s death. We’ve been expecting you. It’s a terrible time.’
‘And you are …?’
‘Oh, I’m sorry—I should have said. Georgia Wells. I’m a friend of the family—well, of Marion, really. I was the one who found her on Monday, and I’ve been looking after her. A few of us are taking shifts to enable her to stay here. If she is going to recover, she’s much more likely to do it in her own home.’
She spoke softly but with authority and no trace of an accent, and Penrose found himself wondering if she had once been a nurse, so perfectly matched was her voice to the calm of a convalescent bedside. ‘Us?’ he queried.
‘Yes. Myself and a handful of women from the church. My husband is the vicar of St Mary’s in Marholm, and Marion was an active member of the congregation in her younger days, so we’re doing what we can to help. And it’s fortunate that we’re here now. Donald is devastated by the news, as you can imagine. He needs all the support he can get.’
‘It’s Mr Young we’d like to speak to. Is he here?’
‘Yes, of course. Come in.’
She ushered them into the hallway and moved to close the door on the right, but not before Penrose caught a glimpse of the sick room beyond. A slight, elderly woman lay as still as death beneath the crisp white sheet, with a crucifix on the wall above her head and a jug of water on the bedside table, next to a crystal rose bowl of fresh flowers. ‘How is Mrs Plummer?’ he asked.
Georgia Wells seemed surprised by his concern, as if she hadn’t expected kindness from a policeman on a murder enquiry. ‘Very frail, I’m afraid. She suffers from osteoporosis, so her body was already under a great strain, and this has taken its toll. She’s conscious, though, and we’re starting to see some small signs of movement, which is encouraging, but it’s going to be a very long road. The best we can do is keep her as comfortable as possible and pray for a miracle.’ She sighed and dropped her voice even lower so that Penrose had to strain to hear her. ‘It’s hard to see a blessing in all this, but at least she’s not aware of what’s happened to Evelyn.’
‘Were they close?’
She paused. ‘Yes, I suppose so.’
‘You sound hesitant. Is there a caveat?’
‘Not really—well, not in the way that I suspect you mean.’ She looked at him shrewdly, a faint smile on her lips. ‘In recent years, as Marion became less independent, she resented her daughter for having to care for her. Donald was a saint in her eyes, the son-in-law who could do no wrong, but Evelyn had the sharp end of her tongue whenever Marion’s bitterness got the better of her. Then there was the Hall, of course. Marion ran that place like a military operation, even before it became one, and I often think it was the worst thing that Evelyn could have done, to try to fill her mother’s shoes—for her own peace of mind and for their relationship. Times change—don’t they?—and things are done differently, but Marion has a tendency to confuse modernisation with revolution. She was always the first to catch a whiff of betrayal where none was intended. Anyway, I must get back to her, so let me take you through to the kitchen. Donald’s in there.’
She headed towards the room at the far end of the corridor but was beaten to it. The door opened from the inside, and a man—Donald Young, presumably—stood leaning on a cane, glaring at them suspiciously. ‘What’s going on?’ he demanded. ‘What are you all talking about?’
‘It’s the police, Donald,’ Mrs Wells said gently. ‘I was just telling them about Marion.’
‘Why are you wasting time on that? You should be out there trying to catch the man who did this to Evelyn.’
It was an interesting assumption, Penrose noted, or perhaps Donald Young was simply the sort who thought of violence as a male preserve. ‘We’re here to talk to you about your wife, sir,’ he said calmly, ‘and I hope that whatever you can tell us will help us to do just that. May we come in and sit down?’
Young nodded and stood aside to let them pass. Georgia Wells squeezed his arm sympathetically and returned to his mother-in-law’s room, and Penrose and Hughes walked through to the kitchen. It was light and spacious, stretching the width of the house at the back, and it functioned as a living room as well, with armchairs at one end by a cluttered dresser, and a dining table next to the stove. Young was obviously not much of a housekeeper, and in his wife’s absence, the line between comfortable and chaotic seemed to have blurred. Several days’ worth of washing up was piled high in the sink and drainer; the floor was covered with muddy footprints, and leaves trailed in from the garden. Over in the corner, next to the back door, a handsome male tabby cat stared plaintively at two empty bowls.
‘I’m very sorry for your loss,’ Penrose said as Young cleared some bills and an empty whisky bottle away from the dining table, making space for them to sit down.
Young shrugged, an awkward, embarrassed gesture that suggested he was uncomfortable with sympathy. ‘Do you want some tea?’ he asked, putting his hand to the pot on the table. ‘This is cold now, but I can make some fresh.’
‘No, thank you. We don’t want to put you to any trouble, but it’s important that we find out as much as we can about your wife.’
‘Yes, you said.’ Young sat down heavily at the table, his face artificially lit by a nearby lamp, and Penrose saw for the first time how terrible he looked. He was a striking man, youthful for his age, but his eyes were red and swollen from crying, and his hair needed washing, joining with a shadow of stubble to give him an unkempt appearance. His skin was pallid except for two crimson streaks on his cheekbones, livid and surreal, like crudely applied stage makeup. Even from the other side of the table, the whisky on his breath was overpowering. He looked at the notebook that Hughes had taken out of his pocket and rested on the table. ‘What do you want to know?’
‘How long had you been married?’ Penrose asked, avoiding anything confrontational until Young was more relaxed.
‘Just over twenty years. We were wed as soon as the war was over. I couldn’t wait, if I’m honest. Evelyn was so beautiful—I couldn’t believe my luck when she said she’d have me.’
His voice cracked over the last few words, and Penrose waited for him to compose himself. ‘And you met here, while you were convalescing?’
‘That’s right. I was wounded, and she was a nurse back then. They managed to save my leg, but it left me permanently lame, and Evelyn was the only thing that kept me going. I knew I didn’t have a future in the arm—or in any other worthwhile job, for that matter. I was going to spend the rest of my life stuck behind a desk, but Evelyn made that bearable. It gave us something in common, I suppose—losing a job we loved. It was always going to be the army for me, and Evelyn never wanted to give up nursing, but she knew that taking a place up at the house would make her mother happy.’ Although by all accounts it hadn’t, Penrose thought, remembering the resentment that Mrs Wells had spoken of. ‘She did it because of Matthew, you see. She wanted her mother to have some sort of consolation for what had happened, something to be proud of.’
‘Matthew?’
‘Evelyn’s little brother. He lost his sight out there—the same attack that killed Georgia’s son. They were friends, Matthew and Robert, and they joined up together, but Robert didn’t make it back. That’s why Georgia’s always been so good to Mother—to Marion, I mean. They helped each other through it.’
Penrose noted the term of endearment with interest. ‘So Matthew died as well?’
Young nodded. ‘They brought him back here to be nursed with his family, but there was no saving him. He blew his own brains out one day up at the Hall. Marion never forgave herself for leaving him on his own, and she could hardly bear the shame that he brought on her and the house, even though the family was good about it.’ He shook his head, remembering. ‘It was a terrible time, and no one seemed to understand why Matthew had done it—but I did. If I hadn’t had Evelyn, I honestly think I’d have gone the same way, poor devil.’
As tragic as this was, Penrose couldn’t see how it might be connected to Evelyn Young’s murder, and he needed to move things on. ‘When was the last time you saw your wife?’ he asked.
‘When I left for work on Monday morning. It was a big day for me because the first of the lads were arriving, and I was keen to get over there and make a start. I know it’s only office work and it might not be for long, but it felt like I was part of it again after all these years, and it meant a lot to me that Scottie had put a word in and got me the job. He was my best man, you know—we’ve always had each other’s backs.’
Penrose wondered how Young would feel if he knew that ‘Scottie’ had described him as a ‘former friend’. He doubted that he would ever understand this yearning that some men had to return to the camaraderie of war, no matter what the cost, but he kept his silence. If it proved relevant, there would be plenty of time to look into Young’s role in the new set-up at Milton. ‘So your wife was still here when you left?’ he prompted gently.
‘Yes. I was hoping we could walk across together, but she was on a late shift that day.’ He took a packet of cigarettes out of his jacket and patted the other pockets for some matches until Hughes obliged with his own lighter. ‘I was in a hurry to be out of there,’ Young said, struggling again to hold his emotions in check, ‘and I didn’t even kiss her goodbye. It’s stupid, I know, but I can’t stop wishing that I’d gone back and done it, seen her just one more time, but all I could think about was the job. I let her down.’
Penrose watched him carefully, looking for any signs of dissemblance, but if Young was faking his grief, it was one of the most accomplished performances that he had ever seen. ‘What time was she due back?’
‘Ten o’clock, or thereabouts.’
‘Why didn’t you report her missing, Mr Young?’ he asked. ‘Surely when she didn’t come home that night you knew something might be wrong? You must have been worried about her?’ The man in front of him remained stubbornly silent, and Penrose caught Hughes’s disbelieving eye. ‘Had she stayed out all night before?’
Young shook his head. ‘No, of course not.’
‘Then why didn’t you report it? What were you trying to hide?’
A look of genuine horror crossed Young’s face. ‘You think I did this? Is that what you’re accusing me of?’
‘I’m not accusing you of anything, but I don’t understand why you wouldn’t do everything in your power to find your wife. Even if you didn’t report her disappearance to the police, surely you would ask after her at the house or check with her friends and colleagues? But you didn’t. In fact, you lied to everyone and said she was with her aunt when you knew perfectly well that she wasn’t. And all this at a time when your mother-in-law was gravely ill and needed your wife at her bedside. Why, Mr Young, if you claim to love her?’
It was the final suggestion that broke Young’s resolve, as Penrose had suspected it would. ‘Because I thought she was with someone else,’ he shouted, slamming his hand down hard on the table in an effort to bring an end to the questioning. ‘I thought she was leaving me for another man, and I couldn’t bear it, all right? Are you satisfied now?’
He stood up and walked over to a cupboard to fetch another bottle of whisky, but his hands were shaking too badly to open it, and in the end Penrose poured the drink for him. ‘Why did you think that?’ he asked.
‘Because I saw her with him. I went to find Evelyn to tell her how well things were going and to thank her for putting up with me …’
‘For putting up with you?’ Penrose interrupted.
‘Yes. I’m not the easiest man to live with, I’ll admit that. I hate the things I can’t do any more, and I get frustrated when I think about the life I could have had, and sometimes I take that out on Evelyn. Not physically,’ he added quickly, correctly anticipating Penrose’s train of thought. ‘I’d never hurt her like that, I swear. But I have dark days, and they must be just as hard to live with sometimes.’
‘So you were lying just now about the last time you saw your wife?’
Young nodded. ‘Yes, I’m sorry. I saw her again later on, with him—about midday, it must have been. They were standing outside the porch together, talking. I watched them for a few minutes, and then I couldn’t bear it any longer.’
‘Did they see you?’
‘No, I don’t think so.’
‘Do you know this man?’ Penrose asked, thinking how easy it would be to invent a mysterious stranger and send them all off on a wild goose chase. After the convincing lie that had already escaped him, he felt much more wary of Young’s sincerity.
‘Yes. He was an orderly here during the war—a bloody conchie, at that.’
‘Do you remember his name?’
‘Of course I do. I remember everything about James Bartholomew. Teaching us to build matchstick bloody models while our boys were being shot to pieces—what sort of man is that? What did she see in him?’
More than a uniform, obviously, Penrose thought. ‘Did you see any physical contact between them?’ he asked carefully, and Young shook his head. ‘So why did you assume—’
‘Because she was in love with him, all right? All those years ago—she never said anything, but I knew it. She worshipped the ground he walked on, thought he was a bloody saint because of the way he cared for Matthew and the other men, me included.’ He ground the stub of his cigarette hard into the ashtray and reached immediately for the packet again. ‘And he was good at that,’ he admitted grudgingly. ‘If he hadn’t been such a fucking coward, I’d probably have liked him. All the others did. Marion was the only person who could see through him.’
‘What happened to James Bartholomew?’
‘I don’t know. He left Milton before the war was over. I never knew why, and I didn’t ask. I was just glad to see the back of him.’
‘And you hadn’t seen him since?’
‘Not until Monday.’
Penrose looked at Young’s left hand as it gripped the walking cane, turning his knuckles white with the strain. ‘It must have been a shock for you,’ he observed. ‘You must have been very angry to see them together like that.’
‘Of course I was bloody angry! I wanted to punish her, God forgive me, and when I found out what had happened to Marion, I thought it would serve Evelyn right. She loved her mother, and I thought it would teach her a lesson if she missed the chance to say goodbye. She was forever feeling guilty about something.’
It was an uncomfortable comment, and Young seemed to take pleasure from it. ‘Do you know why Mr Bartholomew was here?’ Penrose asked. ‘If he was a conscientious objector, he obviously didn’t arrive with the army.’
‘No—leopards don’t change their spots, do they? There was a film crew here, and he was part of that. They’d been photographing the house for a few days, apparently. I had no idea he was with them until I saw him, but it explained a lot. Evelyn had been behaving oddly for a couple of days—she was quiet and withdrawn, and I got on her nerves even more than usual. She must have known he was there, and God knows what they’d been getting up to behind my back. The crew left on Monday, so that’s why I thought she’d gone with him when she didn’t come home. I thought he’d sweet-talked her into going back to America with him and starting a new life together.’
‘Do you know it was an American crew?’
‘Yes. Scottie told me. Like I said, Bartholomew was a fucking coward, so it’s just like him to be as far away from the war as he can get.’ He smiled, but there was no humour in it. ‘Hollywood, eh? When you put it like that, why wouldn’t she have gone with him? He could offer her more than I ever could.’
‘But you were wrong about that,’ Penrose pointed out. ‘She hadn’t gone anywhere, had she?’
‘No, and I suppose this is my punishment for doubting her.’ He looked pleadingly at Penrose, tears once again in his eyes. ‘You will get him for this, won’t you? He can’t get away with it.’
‘We’ll certainly track him down, yes, and see what he has to say.’
‘What he has to say?’ Young stared at him in indignant disbelief. ‘Isn’t it obvious what happened? Evelyn refused him and he got angry. She didn’t go back to work after she met him. Surely you’re not going to let him wriggle out of it?’
