Cold Coffin (19 page)

“Mmm! Mrs. Chapman, I’d like to hold on to this tape for the time being. Sergeant, put someone on checking every retail outlet in the district, and see if anything emerges about who might have bought it. We can be pretty confident that it wouldn’t have been Dr. Trent himself.”

* * * *

A couple more aspirins did nothing to subdue Kate’s headache. She stuck grimly at her desk, trying to cope with the swelling avalanche of reports pouring in from the squad ... routine interviews with each and every one who’d had any contact with either of the two dead men. From Frank Massey she already knew that nothing of import had come to light, but she still read each report meticulously in the hope of finding some hidden nugget.

By around eight-thirty even black coffee failed to keep her going, and she suddenly gave in and slammed the files shut. Her stomach rebelled at the thought of food. Bed beckoned urgently.

At Stonebank Cottage she dealt with Felix’s solicitations in short order, climbed the narrow stairs and shut her bedroom door. Half an hour later, lying down with the curtains drawn against a spectacular sunset, she knew to her infinite relief that the throbbing was at long last abating and sleep was in her grasp.

Downstairs, the telephone rang. Felix answered it after a couple of rings. Kate tensed, awaiting the summons to go down, but it didn’t come. She tried to settle back into the pre-sleep state, but realized from her aunt’s tone of voice that she was arguing with someone. So it probably
was
for her, after all, and Felix was being protective.

With a weary sigh Kate pushed aside the covers and stumped downstairs in her pyjamas.

“It’s Dr. Cheryl Miller,” said Felix, covering the mouthpiece. “I told her you’d gone to bed, but—”

“Hand it over,” Kate said. She was up now, so what the hell? “Chief Inspector Maddox here.”

“Oh, thank the lord. Listen, can I see you?”

“Now,
you mean?”

“Well, yes. I have something to tell you, and the sooner the better. As you’re at home, shall I come to see you there?”

“No, I’ll come to you. I remember where it is you live. About half an hour, right?”

“People are so inconsiderate,” her aunt grumbled as she hung up. “Surely it could have waited till the morning, whatever it is? This won’t do your head any good at all.”

Kate laughed wonderingly. “The strange thing is, my headache seems to have gone.”

“Oh well, I suppose it’s no use arguing with you.”

Minutes later, driving through the deepening twilight, Kate’s head was as clear as a bell. Things were moving and she scented a breakthrough. But her buoyant mood was deflated by envy when she clapped eyes on the Old Rectory at Lower Aston. Dating from the good old days when a congregation of some twenty souls was felt to justify a parsonage of as many bedrooms, it was now converted into perhaps eight flats. You’d imagine, Kate thought sourly, that with so many of these old country residences that were too large for modern life being divided up into smaller units, there’d be a nook somewhere for her.

Cheryl Miller’s flat was on the ground floor. The spacious living room must have once been the dining room. Long sash windows on either side of a central glazed door overlooked a paved terrace with an elegant stone balustrade and Grecian urns.
Oh, Kate, how happy you’d be if only this were yours.

“Lovely place you have here,” she commented.

Cheryl Miller nodded vaguely. This evening there was an air of uncertainty about her, which diluted her high-voltage sexual aura.

“It must be important, for you to ask to see me at this time of night,” Kate went on.

“Yes, er ... sit down, won’t you? Drink?”

Kate sat, choosing for this formal occasion one of the two chairs at a small round table. “Nothing to drink, thanks.”

“I hear you questioned George Jessop again this morning,” Cheryl Miller said, pulling out the other chair for herself.

Kate didn’t reply, keeping her expression neutral.

“It’s about that I want to speak to you. You claim to know that there was a woman at George’s cottage on Wednesday night, so there isn’t much point in his going on denying it. Obviously you’ll never leave him alone until you dig out the truth.”

Good God, Cheryl Miller and George Jessop!
Kate could hardly believe it. She said carefully, “I wish
he
could appreciate that fact.”

“I’ve tried to make him see sense, but he can be so damned stubborn. I can understand his point of view, of course. A man with a record like his is scared to death of tangling with the police.”

Where were the surprises going to end? “You know about all that?”

“Yes, I know.”

“Let us get this quite straight, Dr. Miller, so there’s no possibility of misunderstanding. You’re saying that the woman with Jessop at his cottage on Wednesday night was yourself?”

“Yes.”

“You and he are lovers?”

“No, we are not lovers.” Some of her old spark returned. She said, ironically, “You find it hard to believe, don’t you, Mrs. Maddox, that I could have any sort of non-sexual relationship with a man?”

“Jessop doesn’t strike me as a man with whom a highly intelligent woman like you would find an intellectual rapport.”

“George—or rather, Keith—wasn’t always a caretaker. But then you know that.”

“I understand he was formerly a schoolteacher. Is that sufficient to account for your interest in him? Or is it just that you like helping lame dogs? Incidentally, I’d be interested to hear how you came to know about Jessop’s past. Who told you?”

“I didn’t need to be told.”

“You remembered the case, you mean, and somehow connected Jessop with it when he came here?”

“You could say that.”

“Please, Dr. Miller, don’t fence with me. You wanted to see me this evening because you had something to impart. So I suggest you get on with it.”

Cheryl Miller’s hands lay on the polished table top. She made no effort to conceal the fact that her fingers were clutching convulsively. “I told you that I was the woman with Keith that night. Surely that’s enough?”

“It isn’t nearly enough. I have to know
why.”

In the silence could be heard, faintly, the sound of television from another flat. Kate waited, looking at her very directly. Ten seconds, twenty ... then Cheryl Miller stood up in such a hasty movement that her chair toppled and fell to the carpet with a thump. She took no notice, but went to the empty fireplace and stood with her back to Kate, leaning her hands on the high marble mantelpiece. Then she suddenly swung round, and her eyes were bright with bitterness.

“All right, then, you’ll find out in the end, so why not now? Keith Jessop is my husband.”

Kate concealed her astonishment at this revelation. She said evenly,

“Come and sit down and tell me all about it.”

Dr. Miller hesitated a moment, then grimaced. “It’ll be a relief in a way to talk, after keeping it dark for so long. Er ... are you sure you won’t have a drink?”

“Not for me, thanks. But you go ahead if you feel you could use one.” Kate’s brain, after the fuzz of the day, was now needle sharp; she didn’t want to blunt it with alcohol. She watched while Cheryl Miller went to a small cabinet and brought out a bottle of gin and a twist-stem glass.

Pouring a stiff measure, she swallowed it neat, then came back to sit at the table.

“Keith and I split up ages ago,” she said. “We never bothered to get a divorce, though. Neither of us relished the publicity, for one thing, after that awful court case.”

“Was that what caused the separation, his arrest and imprisonment?”

“Oh no, it happened a couple of years before that.”

“How did you come to marry him in the first place?”

“You find it odd?” The wry laugh held a thread of sadness. “Keith didn’t always look the no-hoper he does now. When we were at university together he was rather dishy. But then so were plenty of other men I knew, and I’d already had several flings. None of them serious. No way was I planning to get married at the tender age of twenty-two ... there was far too much I wanted to do first. But with Keith there was something more than just physical attraction between us. Not love, exactly ... not really. The point about Keith was—and still is, come to that—that he wasn’t too strong on self-confidence. Not like I was. He needed someone to prop him up, to build his self-esteem, and the prospect of being the person to do that appealed to me. You see, all my growing up years I’d been unwanted. My mother died when I was only three, and my father remarried and started a new family. I was just a leftover, an encumbrance. Nobody ever
needed
me, not until Keith came along. It gave me a really great feeling to be important in somebody’s life. That’s why I married him.”

“But it didn’t last, that feeling?”

“In a certain way it did—and it’s still there, even now. The problem was, Keith’s sexuality was always somewhat ambivalent. I knew that he’d had a couple of homosexual experiments at university, but so had a number of other chaps. It didn’t shock me. But when we’d been married about three years I discovered that he was fooling around with adolescent boys— kids he was teaching. We had a blazing row and Keith begged me to forgive him and swore that it wouldn’t ever happen again. But then it did. Apart from feeling bitterly hurt—betrayed—I tried to argue him out of it for his
own
sake. I pointed out that he was playing with fire and that he’d lose his job if it ever came to light. Not to mention the potential for blackmail. But it wasn’t long before I found that I’d been wasting my breath. That’s when I decided I wanted out. Keith begged me not to leave him. He actually cried when I refused to change my mind.”

“You didn’t divorce him, though.”

“One way and another I just never got around to it. I was in no mood to get married again. And I very much doubt that I shall ever want to now.” She made a face at Kate. “You must have gathered my opinion of men.”

“You’ve made that fairly clear.”

“Would I be right in thinking you feel much the same way?”

“You’d be wrong. I was very happily married., some years back now, but my husband was killed.” Kate forebore to mention that her three-year-old daughter had been killed at the same time; she wasn’t looking for sympathy.

“Oh, I see. Tough luck! But you’re on your own now, aren’t you? There’s been a lot of talk around here about you—that strange beast, a
female
Detective Chief Inspector.”

“Being talked about is the price one has to pay for getting anywhere as a professional woman. You must know that.”

“Don’t I just! But you don’t seem to mind.”

“I mind like hell,” Kate said, with feeling. “But there’s not a lot I can do about it.”

“No? I’ve found a few effective ways of cutting men down to size. They have such sensitive egos.”

“You’re an odd mixture, Dr. Miller. Contemptuous of men in general, yet protective towards one particular man.”

“Must be a stray mother-hen gene in me, eh?”

“You haven’t explained how it came about that Keith ... that George Jessop came to work at Croptech.”

Cheryl Miller’s face clouded. “He’d had a rough time, poor devil. That boy who got killed ... it was a pure accident, as Keith insisted in his defence. Of that I’m convinced. I’m not making excuses for him, Keith was a bloody fool. But that’s all he was. He just isn’t capable of deliberately killing someone to save his own skin—even though that boy was holding him to ransom. Yet the public was baying for Keith’s blood as if he were a murderer. When he came out of gaol, he found that he hadn’t a hope in hell of getting a job. No job of any kind. His reputation followed him around. I’d kept vaguely in touch with him while he was inside. There was never any question of our getting back together again, but neither could I abandon Keith completely. Anyway, when the caretaker at Croptech left, I jumped in and recommended Keith for the vacancy. I was totally straight with old Kimberley, and to do him justice he took it in his stride. I was able to guarantee Keith’s honesty, and I pointed out that he had a practical bent when it came to doing odd jobs and repairs. Kimberley and I agreed that the truth had to be kept strictly under wraps. If it were to emerge, Keith would have been hounded out of his job by local public opinion. And very likely so would I.”

“And you’ve managed to keep your relationship secret all this time? You must have taken a lot of care.”

“And then some! Whenever we meet up at work, we never do more than just acknowledge one another, but we get together quite often. You may think that strange, but we always did get along on an intellectual level. Keith’s got a good brain, a keen mind, and we enjoy talking things over. Besides, it’s a relief to us both to be able to drop the pretence and just be ourselves. I always go to Keith’s place, rather than have him come here, as there aren’t so many people around. And I always go late in the evening, to be on the safe side. But it seems our luck ran out. Who was it who bloody saw us?”

“You’re not entitled to know that,” Kate said briskly. “I’ll have to ask you to give me a formal statement about all this, Dr. Miller. But you needn’t worry, it will remain confidential. Unless, of course, we have to bring a charge against either one of you. Or both of you.”

Cheryl Miller’s cool deserted her. “But I’ve explained everything,” she protested. “Keith and I had nothing whatever to do with those murders. So what’s all this about bringing charges?”

“Calm down and listen to me. You’re far too intelligent to really expect that what you’ve told me puts you in the clear as far as those murders go. It’s a well-known fact that you harboured a professional grudge against both victims. Added to which, you and Jessop made false statements about where you were last Wednesday night, the night Trent was killed. At this stage of my enquiry that puts you both on the suspect list. You must see that.”

“I guess so, but—”

“But nothing! You’ve just claimed to be the woman seen with Jessop that night, but it turns out that you two are married. All the more reason, it could be argued, for you to lie to protect Jessop. Or you could both be in this together.”