Simeon's Bride (24 page)

‘I could, I suppose. She’s been to see her brother. She brought the girl with her. Poor little thing looks like she’s not stopped crying since we arrested Stott. Mrs Kimberley actually asked for the most senior officer available.’

‘Isn’t Superintendent Griffiths there?’

‘Yes, but he doesn’t know the ins and outs of things like you, does he, sir?’

‘I don’t seem to have much choice, do I?’ The power returned as he went upstairs to look for the cat, who had hidden from the storm beneath his bed, from where she refused to be coaxed.

‘The worst thing about my brother is that he can be weak. He’s easily influenced, easily intimidated, and God knows that wife of his could scare the Devil!’ Serena Kimberley, except in height, resembled her brother only remotely, her build strong and muscular, the oak to his sapling whippiness, her personality more defined, her attitude infinitely more assertive. ‘You’ve no idea what that woman has made him suffer, and now she’s doing the same with Jenny.’

Jenny was out of sight and earshot, in the canteen with a policewoman and Dewi Prys.

‘My brother hasn’t done anything, you know,’ Serena added, and McKenna thought Christopher Stott might have spent his whole life both protected and ruled by women; by his mother, his sister, his wife, and possibly by Romy Cheney: willingly ruled, the price of protection from the world. And now the Devil had sent in the bailiffs.

‘Mrs Kimberley, I appreciate your position,’ he said. ‘But Mr Stott has doubtless said why he was arrested.’

‘You haven’t charged him with anything yet.’

‘Not yet, but we shall.’

‘The car?’

‘Probably. And other things.’

‘The other things being to do with that woman’s death.’

‘Mr Stott was in possession of her car for some considerable time after she died. Possibly before she died. He’s not telling us.’

‘D’you mind if I smoke?’ Serena pulled cigarettes and lighter from the pocket of her jacket. ‘Look, Chief Inspector, I’d be lying if I said I knew what’s been going on. I don’t see much of Chris, because I will not visit the house, and he doesn’t get much chance to visit me. Gwen objects. She objects to Jenny staying with me, but it’s the only time the girl gets a holiday. Gwen objects to most things that give people a bit of pleasure because she’s a miserable bitch. She’s like Death, the great leveller, cutting everything and everybody down to the meanest size.’

‘What’s she done to you?’

‘To me? Nothing. I wouldn’t give her the chance. Or the satisfaction.’ She smoked, enjoying the tobacco in her lungs. ‘I’ve seen her do enough harm to Chris, and now Jenny … Gwen has no joy in her heart, you know. If she ever had a soul to start with, it withered long ago, and she drags other people into her misery.’

‘Did you know anything about Mrs Cheney?’

‘Not until this weekend.’ She stubbed out her cigarette, and immediately lit another. ‘That nice young man with Jenny now called me
on Friday, and I came over right away, and had one almighty row with Gwen. She said the most horrible things you could imagine, and Jenny was near frantic, so I bundled the child’s things into a bag and took her home with me.’

‘Didn’t her mother mind?’

‘Yes.’ Serena looked McKenna squarely in the eye. ‘She minded very much indeed. She threatened to report me to the police for kidnapping her child, so I told her she should be arrested for cruelty. She’d been slapping Jenny around, because Jenny wouldn’t stop asking about Chris.’

Self-disgust overwhelmed McKenna, because he had left the child alone with the mother when all the signs were there for any fool to read. Trefor Prosser was acquiring companions on his conscience, whilst he learned nothing.

‘Jenny’s a little more settled,’ Serena continued. ‘Our doctor gave her a sedative on Friday night. She insisted on visiting Chris, even though I don’t think it’s a good idea for a girl to see her father in a police cell.’

‘It’s better than not seeing him at all.’

‘How long are you planning to keep him locked up?’ Serena tapped ash from her cigarette into an over-full ashtray on the desk. ‘He’s terribly worried about Jenny, you know. She’s the only reason he’s stayed in that ghastly mockery of a marriage.’

‘I know you said Mrs Stott slapped her daughter on Friday, but I would imagine they were both under considerable stress at the time.’

‘Who are you making excuses for, Chief Inspector? I think Gwen is so deranged, in the true sense of the word, that she comes over as boringly and utterly sane, as if madness is sort of circular. I think she’s bloody dangerous, and I think her husband and child are terrified of her.’

‘But you don’t know why?’

‘I was hoping you might be able to find out.’ She lit another cigarette, looked at its glowing tip, then stubbed it out. ‘I smoke too much most of the time, let alone when I’m under stress. Chris and Jenny had a long talk, and Chris said Jenny wanted to talk to you because you’d understand. Don’t fail her, Mr McKenna. Both her parents have, in their own way, and that’s what’s eating into Chris like acid. I can’t pat myself on the back either. You’re the only hope left to the child.’

Jennifer Stott perched tensely on the edge of a chair in McKenna’s office, anticipating one final ordeal before relief from whatever torment she had endured. McKenna saw his office become a confessional, and prayed he might offer the girl more of use than the platitudes of vicarious absolution. She wore jeans and a white sweatshirt, her hair hanging loose and pretty around a face where youth might still expunge sadness.

‘My mother knew Mrs Cheney,’ Jenny said. ‘She used to visit Gallows Cottage. I went with her once, because Mrs Cheney invited me, and Mummy said I had to go even though I didn’t want to.’ She paused, rubbing a smut from the toe of her white boots. ‘I didn’t like the cottage. It’s a shivery sort of place.’

Serena prompted her. ‘Don’t leave it there, Jenny. Tell Mr McKenna everything you can remember.’

‘Mummy and Daddy used to have terrible rows about Mrs Cheney.’

‘Yes?’ McKenna coaxed. ‘Why?’

‘Daddy didn’t like her. He said she was a bad influence, making Mummy dissatisfied with everything.’

‘Where did your mother meet Mrs Cheney?’

‘At the castle. She went to a party with Daddy, and Mrs Cheney was there. And afterwards, Mrs Cheney kept telephoning Mummy and
inviting
her out and things like that…. She said I should call her Romy, but I wouldn’t because she was grown up and nearly as old as Mummy. Mummy said it was wrong to call her Auntie Romy, because she wasn’t my aunt.’

‘You must remember, Chief Inspector,’ Serena said, ‘Jenny was only ten or eleven at the time.’

‘Yes,’ McKenna said. His hands fidgeted with the papers on the desk.

‘I don’t mind if you smoke,’ Jenny told him. McKenna looked at the eyes gazing gravely into his, eyes which, unlike those of her mother, held the light of life and the darkness of pain.

‘Tell me, Jenny,’ he said, ‘do you remember anything about the car? the grey Scorpio car.’

‘It’s Mrs Cheney’s. She used to drive it very fast.’

‘Did your mother ever drive it?’

‘She can’t drive.’

‘Your father?’

‘He wouldn’t go near it. They had awful rows about that, as well.’

‘Do you remember anything in particular about the inside of the car?’

She looked towards the window, at the rain-stained wall of the telephone exchange. McKenna had pulled up the Venetian blind to let in as much natural light as possible. ‘It smelt a bit. Cigarettes and garlic. Mrs Cheney was always eating things with garlic in them.’

‘Didn’t keep Gwen away, did it?’ Serena muttered.

Jenny’s voice droned on, as if her aunt had not spoken. ‘It was very untidy inside. Mummy was always saying Mrs Cheney was a sloven. I had to look it up in my dictionary. There were a lot of mucky fingermarks, and Mummy said it was because Mrs Cheney was always reading those big newspapers that the print comes off, and never washed her hands afterwards…. Mrs Cheney put my present in the car. Mummy said I ought to give her something for inviting me to the cottage, so I bought her a furry toy, and she hung it up in the back window. Mummy was very rude and said it looked bloody silly.’

‘What did the toy look like?’

‘Red and green and round and not really like anything real. I could do a drawing if you want.’

‘Jenny’s very good at drawing,’ Serena said. ‘Aren’t you, dear?’

A fleeting smile crossed the girl’s face. She stared at McKenna, her eyes dark.

‘Do you know Mr Prosser?’ he asked.

‘Uncle Trefor from the estate office?’ She nodded. ‘Yes.’

‘Does he ever come to your house?’

Her face creased with distress. ‘Mummy and Daddy have worse rows about him than they ever did about Mrs Cheney, and I don’t know why. He’s sweet.’

McKenna fidgeted with his lighter and an unlit cigarette.

‘You were talking about the car,’ Jenny reminded him.

‘Do you remember anything else about it?’

‘I think Mummy stole it from Mrs Cheney.’

‘Do you?’ McKenna was nonplussed. ‘Why should she do that? Your mother can’t drive.’

‘Well, she stole everything else, didn’t she?’ The girl looked at him as if he were a fool. ‘Most of the furniture and stuff in our house belonged to Mrs Cheney.’ She paused. ‘There was another row about that as well. Oh, there’s been such horrible rows!’ She covered her face with her hands, and her shoulders shook. ‘It’s all that Mrs Cheney’s fault.’ Her voice, muffled by the hands, was broken and childish and wailing. ‘I wish Mummy’d never met her.’

Serena hugged her niece, rocking her gently back and forth. Watching the woman and the girl, McKenna felt outside his body,
outside this room, watching the drama as might a minor god presiding over the destruction of a family and a childhood.

Jenny rubbed at her face with a fist, and clutched her aunt’s hand. ‘I’m all right.’ Her voice was weary. ‘What else do you want to know?’

‘About your mother stealing Mrs Cheney’s things?’

‘She told me Mrs Cheney’d gone away. She was always going away, anyway. She only stayed at the cottage for a few weekends, and Mummy said it was criminal to leave all that expensive furniture and carpets and books and ornaments to get stolen or ruined with damp.’ Jenny raised her eyes to McKenna. ‘I didn’t know she was dead, Mr McKenna. Honestly I didn’t! I didn’t know ’till I saw the newspaper the other week.’

Serena stroked her hair. ‘Of course you didn’t know. Mr McKenna knows that.’

‘But I knew Mummy must’ve stolen Mrs Cheney’s things. What will you do to me?’ she whispered.

McKenna wondered if this child would live the rest of her days beset with fears and dread triggered by the smallest word or incident, the most innocent memory. ‘No one will do anything to you. You’ve done nothing wrong. Do you understand that, Jenny?’

‘I’ve kept Mummy’s secret,’ she told him, and there was no answer to be made. ‘Mrs Cheney’s car was outside the house one day when I came back from school, and it was odd because she only ever came at weekends, and never before a Friday evening. Only it wasn’t her, it was that horrible Jamie Thief from the council estate, and Mummy went off with him in the car and I had to get my own tea. And the next day, when I got back from school, there was all this furniture in the house, and Mummy’d put the things Daddy’d bought out in the back yard for rubbish. There were carpets as well, and Mummy cut them up to fit. She went on and on about a carpet she said would’ve fitted in the sitting-room if Mrs Cheney hadn’t been her usual slovenly self and spilt a lot of wine and even ground out cigarettes on it and it was brand new. Daddy was so upset he cried, and it was horrible, and Mummy laughed in his face, and sat on the sofas, bouncing up and down shrieking about how they made such a change from the broken springs of a future which was all he could give her…. I didn’t understand what she was talking about, but I knew it was awful. Mummy made me have things from Gallows Cottage in my bedroom. I don’t like them, even though they’re very pretty, because they don’t belong to me.’

McKenna sat in his office, lights switched off, thunder still growling intermittently in the distance, battle-weary and heartsick. He waited until twilight deepened almost to night before asking for Christopher Stott to be brought from the cells.

‘Tell me the rest of it,’ he said to the man who sat where the girl had
poured out her tale of secrets and greed and spite and human frailty. ‘There’s no point keeping quiet any longer.’

‘What did Jenny say?’ Stott asked. After two days, the beard was growing straggly about a face become almost cadaverous.

‘Enough.’

‘Where is she?’ Fear sharpened Stott’s tone.

‘Dewi Prys is taking her back to Rhyl with your sister,’ McKenna said, watching the man slump in relief. ‘I want to know about the car. I want to know about Mrs Cheney and your wife. And most of all, I want to know about Jamie.’

Stott spread his hands, palm upwards. ‘Where shall I begin?’

‘Try the beginning.’ Tired, McKenna was becoming irritable. ‘When did your wife meet Mrs Cheney?’

‘Not long after Mrs Cheney rented that dump of a cottage and started spending money like it grew on trees. She latched on to Gwen, and to this day, I don’t know why.’ He stared at nothing. ‘I was pleased Gwen had a friend, because she’d never had a proper woman friend before, but I couldn’t take to Romy Cheney. I thought she was a fake, with a fake name pinched from that book by Vita Sackville-West…. She drank too much as well. I often wondered if she was trying to drink herself into an early grave.’

‘She found an early grave one way or another, didn’t she? Maybe she was just looking for oblivion.’

‘I don’t know what she was looking for.’ Lost in thought, Stott’s features relaxed. ‘Whatever it was, I doubt she found it with my wife.’ He laughed, a bitter harsh sound. ‘Romy Cheney fared no better than the rest of us where Gwen’s concerned. I used to hear her weeping on the phone, begging Gwen to visit, and Gwen would look at me and smirk, and tell Romy she didn’t know if I’d let her go, which wasn’t true because I was glad to see the back of her.’ Stott paused. ‘And, of course, she couldn’t go because it wasn’t safe to leave Jenny alone with me.’

‘Why not?’

Like his daughter, Christopher Stott rubbed his eyes with his fist. ‘I was supposed to be abusing the child, Mr McKenna. Sexually abusing her. And letting Trefor Prosser do the same. Gwen used to bring Romy to the house, you know, and they’d sit on the sofa, the pair of them, and Gwen would bounce up and down, and say “Oops!”, and Romy would laugh and say “Broken springs!”, then they’d both start screeching and tittering. Gwen told me Romy spent more on one of her sofas than I earned in a month.’ He laughed himself. ‘Well, she’s got both of Romy’s posh sofas now, hasn’t she? You might have noticed.’

‘What did they say about your daughter?’

‘They used to quiz Jenny about Trefor Prosser and how often he visited, and what he did, and what I did … then they’d have a bit more sport with me. They were a very strange pair together,’ Stott added. ‘I could never
work out who was leading who. There was something unhealthy about it all, though I don’t know why or what…. Why aren’t you taking notes?’

‘We have to record statements, and I’m not sure what I want to record yet. I must ask,’ McKenna said, ‘about your relationship with Trefor Prosser, and the accusations made by your wife.’

‘You must ask Jenny yourself, Mr McKenna.’

‘And Trefor Prosser?’

‘He’s a friend. A close friend. He got me the job at the castle, and I’ll forever be grateful to him for that. I’m not qualified for anything.’

‘There have been suggestions that your relationship with him is sexual.’

‘I’m sure there have, but it isn’t. I doubt either of us would have the guts, even if we wanted to.’

‘Then why did Prosser keep the mail for Gallows Cottage? What did he do with it? And why did he run away and crash his car when we asked him?’

‘Keeping the post was Trefor’s side of the bargain. Keeping quiet about Jenny was Gwen’s.’ Stott smiled gently. ‘D’you know, I’m telling you things I thought I’d have to keep to myself ’til the day I die.’

‘It makes you feel better, does it?’

‘Better? No, not really. Even if you know you’re weak and stupid, it’s not very pleasant when your sins of omission find you out, is it? I’ve done nothing and said nothing and thought I could make things go away by pretending they weren’t there. It doesn’t work, does it? Once Gwen acquired the taste for power, she had to have more and more.’

‘Why did you marry her?’

Stott laughed then, a bellow of genuine amusement. ‘Why d’you think? She was pregnant, and I’ve often wondered how much that moment of wayward passion actually cost me. Being married to Gwen is rather like catching an incurable disease, an AIDS of the spirit … but then, I suppose you might say we deserve each other.’

‘Tell me about Mrs Cheney.’

‘I’ve told you. I thought she was a fake, so I never took much notice of her.’ He fell silent, trawling again those dark alleyways of his past. ‘She was unstable and neurotic. Maybe impulsive … what the psychologists call prone to inconsequential behaviour. Women like her are silly, selfish creatures. She and Gwen fed off each other in a way, like parasites, copying each other so you could never tell where one ended and the other began … bringing out the worst in each other. She copied Gwen’s thinking and behaving; Gwen copied her clothes and drinking and smoking. Romy even bought clothes for her.’

‘What sort of clothes?’

‘Fancy silk scarves, underwear. She bought her a suit, as well, a grey one with a patterned jacket. It was too tight, but Gwen always has her clothes tight because she thinks she looks thinner that way.’

‘Has she still got the suit?’

‘Probably.’

‘What happened to the money from the sale of the Scorpio?’

‘Gwen had it. She has all the money. I keep about twenty pounds a week for fares and odds and ends.’

‘What did she do with it?’

‘She said she was putting it by for a rainy day, as there were sure to be plenty as long as she was married to me.’

‘You astound me, Mr Stott. Why on earth have you stayed married to each other?’

‘Now there’s a question.’ Stott smiled a little. ‘I suppose we stay together because we know no one else would want us, and anything’s better than being alone. Perhaps we simply became a habit for each other, a very bad habit like smoking or heroin addiction.’

‘Let’s talk about when Mrs Cheney died, shall we?’

‘I don’t know when she died. I didn’t know she was dead until you found her body.’

‘You expect me to believe that?’

Stott shrugged. ‘Gwen said Romy had gone back to England when the lease on the cottage ran out. She couldn’t be bothered moving out the furniture, and gave it to Gwen.’

‘And the car?’

‘Gwen said it was a present.’

‘Why should she give your wife a car when your wife can’t drive? And a very expensive car into the bargain. Are you really so naive? Do you really think I am?’

‘Mr McKenna, I’m telling you what my wife said, and it doesn’t in the least matter whether you or I believe her. If Gwen says a thing is so, then it is so, as far as she or anyone else is concerned. And you must bear in mind there was nothing unusual about Romy Cheney disappearing for weeks on end. I doubt if she spent more than a month in that cottage all told.’ Stott paused. ‘What would you have done in my position, Mr McKenna? How would you have set about proving Gwen a liar and a thief? And why? What purpose would it serve?’