Death of a Stranger (23 page)

“I understand what you're saying Benjamin,'' the DI at last responded, quietly. “But do
you
understand – what you're doing to yourself by telling me all this?''

“I don't care what happens to
me
!'' Benjamin heard himself shout passionately, although his insides were like jelly with panic as he thought of the future he had just brought on himself.

Detective Inspector Le Page turned to the social worker. “ Can you stay with Benjamin for the moment? Have a chat? We'll find somewhere more cheerful for you to sit.''

“Of course,'' she said, turning to smile reassuringly at Benjamin. He still thought she was nice, but in the new icy world which he had entered of his own free will it didn't seem to matter any more whether she – or anyone else apart from his mother and father – was nice or nasty. “Let's go, shall we, Benjamin?''

He mumbled agreement, and they followed the detectives out of the room and along the corridor. Benjamin had the odd sensation that he was floating along, that his feet weren't quite touching the ground, and at one point he pinched his thigh in the sudden desperate hope that he was asleep in bed and could wake up and find that the choice was still with him to leave well alone. But nothing happened, he was still following policemen along a corridor the way he'd be following other people in uniform along corridors for years and years into the future.

It was so awful he couldn't really think about it. The DS showed him and the social worker into a room with upholstered chairs, a television set – switched off – and a low table, said they would soon be back, and disappeared. Benjamin's legs went weak as the door closed, and the social worker helped him across the room to the brown sofa and sat him down beside her.

“I'm Miss Curley,'' she said, “ in case you didn't catch my name the first time. It's an odd name, isn't it?''

Benjamin agreed that it was.

“Fortunately I had curly hair as a little girl or I might have been teased rather, don't you think?''

“You could have been,'' Benjamin said. He was amazed that he had been able to detach himself from the nightmare for a moment, long enough to consider Miss Curley's question and decide he agreed with what she had suggested.

“What made you come in and speak to Mr Le Page?'' Miss Curley asked him.

“It was because I didn't want my Mum and Dad to lose the insurance money for the pictures for something they hadn't done. For something I'd done.''

“They could have told Mr Le Page themselves, Benjamin,'' she said, taking his hand. “ But they preferred to keep you out of trouble than to have the money.''

She had turned the worm of doubt into a snake, twisting through every corner of his brain. “ Don't say that!'' he shouted, pulling his hand away and leaping to his feet. “They shouldn't! They mustn't! They love the Golden Rose and I wanted them to be able to make it bigger and not have to worry about money. I wanted them to be
happy
!''

“Oh, Benjamin.'' She reached up to take his hand again, and eventually, sulkily, he let her have it and slumped back beside her. “No money could make up for them being without you. And you'll have to go away from them for a time now, you know.''

“I know. I'd thought of that.'' But not properly. Not imagining how he would feel when he'd made sure it would happen.

“Both you and your parents have been very loving and unselfish to one another,'' Miss Curley said. “ Your parents kept your secret for your sake, and you gave it away for theirs.'' He saw her face cloud. She couldn't believe, any more than he could, now, that what he had done could help them. “ You must think of that all the time, Benjamin,'' Miss Curley went on insistently. “All the time, through whatever happens. You love one another, and that will make it all right in the end.''

There was no answer he could give her and she didn't seem to expect one, she sat back in her seat and went on holding his hand in a silence he found surprisingly comforting.

When Tim and his DS reached Tim's office they stood a few moments in silence too, but questioning each other with their eyes.

Then Tim sighed, and Ted said, “ Poor little sod. He's shot the three of them down with one bullet. That's it, isn't it, sir?''

“It has to be, sergeant.''

But as Tim flopped into his chair he failed to experience the lightness of heart, the sense of a pattern being completed, which always accompanied the solving of a case. Perhaps it was because, in this case, a child was involved, a child who had just ensured his removal from his family. Perhaps that was all it was. It was enough.

“The child's just given the father the strongest motive for murder I've ever encountered,'' DS Mahy was continuing as he straddled a chair the wrong way and rested his arms on the back. “ To say nothing of the one Charters already had, to get hold of enough money to ensure his future.''

“Yes.'' Tim was back on his feet. “The boy must be detained for his own protection as well as for what he says he's done. He seems to be getting on well with Miss Curley. Let's leave them together and get someone here to contact the social workers and arrange accommodation for him.''

“I'll see to it. Better take a WPC with us to leave with Mrs Charters, she'll have neither husband nor son tonight.''

“Of course, Ted.'' He should have thought of it. “ I'll get the warrant.''

They filled the WPC in on the way to the Golden Rose. Bernard Charters opened the door to them and stood mutely questioning.

“This is WPC Gallienne,'' Tim told him. “Benjamin came to the station to see me. In view of what he told me we must keep him there for the time being and I thought your wife—''

“She has me.''

“Ah,'' Ted said. “May we come in?''

Mute again, Bernard Charters stood aside. In the hall Tim came straight to the point.

“Bernard Charters,'' he said, “I am arresting you for the murder of Simon Shaw on the night of Tuesday, 7th August, in the Rue de Glycine.'' He was aware of a cry from the staircase, and that the WPC was running up towards it, but he had to go on. “You do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence.''

There was a raging fury in Tim as he spoke, and he had expected to have difficulty restraining himself from putting his hands round Bernard Charters' neck and squeezing the life out of him for having squeezed the life out of his brother.

But to his uneasy surprise he was unable to focus his fury on the man standing so defiantly before him, head thrown back and eyes blazing with a fury of his own.

A
nna had found her morning at the practice so restorative she awoke the next day with the anxious hope that Lorna would again feel well enough to be left alone for a few hours.

It was wonderful, she thought gratefully as she stretched relaxed limbs beside a still sleeping Tim, to have nothing more vital to be anxious about. Except, of course, Tim's state of mind, and she had accepted that she would be anxious about that for a long time to come. He had arrived home the night before comparatively early, to tell her about Benjamin Charters' visit to the station and the subsequent arrest of his father for the murder of Simon. He had also told her – and she had seen for herself in his restlessness and the absence of the sense of achievement he normally radiated when he had successfully concluded a case – that for some reason he couldn't understand he didn't feel good about it.

“You mean you don't think he did it?''

“How can I think that?'' He set his whisky glass down on the table by her chair. “He has to have done it. He denied it, of course, but they usually do. And with the boy in his innocence giving him a second motive of parental concern as well as his survival instincts, well …''

He had been on the floor at her feet, and this was the moment he had twisted round to face her and she had parted her knees. His eyes had come to rest at last, on hers, and she had known in that moment that he would not exclude her again. It was the best moment of their honeymoon. Of their relationship, perhaps.

“So what is it?''

“It's the craziest thing, darling. Hey!''

Whitby had somehow insinuated his large body between Tim and his wife, balancing for a precarious moment across her bisected lap. His decision that he had not made a sensible move coincided with Tim's friendly shove, and he landed heavily on Duffy, spread out beside Anna's chair. The dog leapt up with a ferocious burst of barking, but it was only a reflex from shock and within seconds Whitby was crouched in the curve of his stomach, washing him to sleep.

Anna repeated her question as the peace flowed back. “So – what is it, Tim?''

“It's … I didn't hate him, I didn't want to do to him what he did to Simon. I expected to want to kill whoever murdered Simon and – I didn't. I didn't even feel the anger I felt against the insurance man who sent Simon out that night. I didn't feel anything. Except a sort of dismay. But it has to be all right, Anna. It has to be. It's only that I don't understand myself.''

“Revenge is a bit of a sickly diet. I discovered that once myself when I gave in to it.'' When her first real love had walked out on her. “You feel terrible.''

“I couldn't give in to it. Because it wasn't there.''

“Well … You just said the man had the two strongest motives in the world. And you had to be unhappy about the boy and what's to become of him.''

“I suppose so. But I had no idea I was so nice, darling.''

It wasn't a very good joke, and they smiled rather than laughed, but Anna felt it could have turned a page.

Tim asked how his mother was.

“She seems all right. She survived my absence this morning, most of which she said she spent under the tree. And rather to her disgust she's got interested in a couple of morning TV programmes. We took Duffy to L'Ancresse again this afternoon and ate ice-creams in the car. Lorna still managed quite a good dinner, and she seemed ready for sleep when I left her about an hour ago. But Tim … It's not going to be as easy as that.''
For you, either
.

“I know. I shan't be surprised if she wants to go home soon. And if she never wants to come back. Oh, Anna …''

She'd cradled his head for a while, and then they had gone up to bed and made love. Tim's stomach had started rumbling in the small hours, and he had answered Anna's whispered query with another surprised negative. So she had gone downstairs and made him a sandwich and both of them mugs of coffee and they had had them in bed and let the animals into the room as a rare indulgence (which meant on to the bed for Whitby under Duffy's forlorn gaze) before falling asleep again in each other's arms.

It was strange but nice to have Tim getting up for work reluctantly, no longer driven by his demon. But he was still early, and it was only nine o'clock by the time Anna had tidied around and was carrying a breakfast tray in to Lorna.

She was glad to see that her mother-in-law was asleep, her face touchingly young in the innocence of unconsciousness. As she drew the curtains back and stood looking down the garden, where the grass despite the sunshine was still heavily bedewed with the foretaste of autumn, Anna heard her move and sigh, and when she turned back to the bed Lorna was struggling upright, her eyes on the tray Anna had put down on the bedside table.

“Dear Anna … You spoil me.''

“I don't think so.'' Anna put the tray across Lorna's knees. “How are you?''

“Aches and pains are much better. Except for the one in my heart. But I don't want to lose that one, Anna. I don't want to forget.''

“You won't.'' Anna took the napkin out of its ring, spread it over the sheet in front of the tray. “You don't. What you do is find one day that you're living with it, not just existing the way you did at first.''

“Oh, you're such a help!'' Lorna's elegant freckled hand caught Anna's and squeezed it. “You'll go to work again this morning, won't you? All day if you feel—''

“This morning, yes.'' What Anna felt was a surge of relief. “The afternoon's for you.''

“Lovely!'' Lorna tensed like a child anticipating a treat, bringing her hands up under her chin and squeezing her elbows into her sides. “Can we go out again?''

“Of course.'' Anna poured tea. “ Now, I'll get ready for work, then I'll help you dress and go downstairs.''

“Not this morning. I can manage, and I've got to be independent.'' Lorna hesitated, a piece of toast in her hand. “I must go home soon, Anna. Pick up my life. Be with Gina. I'm almost ready.''

“Yes. Tim said last night he thought you might be. Lorna …'' Anna perched on the bed. “ He's arrested Bernard Charters for Simon's murder. Apparently his son undertook a bit of private enterprise: he set fire to the greenhouse when the value of the pictures was called in question, so that his father, he said, could collect the insurance money and carry out his plans to extend the Golden Rose. The poor boy came in to confess to Tim off his own bat, without telling his parents, obviously not realising he was sealing his father's fate when he told Tim he'd confessed to him as well. So the father would have known that his son would be taken away from them if what he'd done ever came to light. Which Tim said gives him two of the strongest motives in the world for murder. We don't know what Simon photographed, but it must have been something that would have shown up one of the motives, and with Simon's blood on his sleeves …'' Lorna knew about the blood, and all she did now was to put the toast in her hand back on to the plate. “He looked in to tell you himself last night but you were asleep.''