Guilty Parties Page 4

  ‘What link?’

  ‘You.’

  I almost laughed. ‘You think I …?’

  ‘What I’m saying is that you knew all of them. They’re all in some way associated with you.’

  ‘Very tenuously.’

  ‘Then how do you explain the spiders?’

  ‘I can’t.’

  Croft turned, walked a few paces away from me, strode back.

  ‘You bought a takeaway from Demir a few days before he was murdered. You saw Carolyn at the dentist’s, then shortly after that, she was killed. And now this poor little boy … OK, you haven’t spoken to him recently, but you have done in the past. And then there are the spiders …’ He began pacing again. ‘I’ve checked the distances. Prestige Takeaway is about three-quarters of a mile from here. Jubilee Park no more than half a mile. And here we are on Langley Road – the street where you live.’

  ‘What are you implying?’

  ‘These murders … it’s almost as if they’re closing in on something … or someone.’

  ‘On me?’

  ‘I think that’s the meaning of the spiders left at the scene. A warning.’

  ‘Of what?’

  He looked at me thoughtfully. ‘I think you’re next.’

  ‘That’s ridiculous.’

  ‘Is there someone with a grudge against you? Someone who’s out to get you?’

  I felt a strange sense of calm, the way I always do when a scientific problem is solved.

  ‘Actually, yes. There is someone.’

  We sat in my front room, drinking tea. Croft sat forward on his chair as though afraid of breaking it. He was trying to persuade me to accept twenty-four-hour protection. I refused.

  ‘I spend most of my time at the university where I’m surrounded by students, colleagues, admin staff. If I stay late, there are janitors and nightwatchmen. I’ll be perfectly safe.’

  ‘All the same I’d like to put surveillance cameras in your lab and office.’

  ‘Absolutely not. I couldn’t bear to be under scrutiny all the time. How would I get my work done? How would I think?’

  Croft frowned, looking doubtful.

  ‘I’ll be fine. I’ve done many field trips in inhospitable places. I’ve learnt to look after myself.’

  He ran both hands through his thick fair hair. ‘At least let us put a watch on your home at night. I’d say that’s when you’re most vulnerable.’

  ‘All right, agreed.’ I offered the plate of biscuits but he shook his head. ‘Any news about Jack?’

  ‘He’s not at his flat and no one seems to know where he’s got to. A bit of a loner, I take it?’

  ‘I imagine so. He’s certainly obsessive and unstable.’ I nodded towards the open laptop on the coffee table. ‘You can tell that from the emails I showed you.’

  Croft stood up and reached for his raincoat. ‘Be careful, professor.’

  ‘Don’t worry about me. I know what I’m up against now.’

  I followed the detective’s advice, taking extra care locking doors and windows, not going out alone at night, getting my assistant to vet anyone who came to the office to speak to me.

  Jack’s emails stopped coming. He wasn’t answering his mobile. The police kept an eye on his flat but he didn’t re-appear, and there was no sign of him at his parents’ house. I didn’t like it. Despite what I’d said, it unnerved me. I wanted to flush him out in the open where he could be dealt with. But there was nothing I could do. It was a waiting game.

  One night, when I was working late in the lab, I heard noises – a door opening and closing, footsteps. I raised my head slowly from the microscope. The nightwatchman doing his rounds? But his tread was heavy and slow. These footsteps were rapid, and as they came nearer I heard laboured breathing.

  I slid silently from my stool. Again I felt that sense of icy calm. I could deal with this. Through the glass panel in the door I saw a shadowy shape, then the door was flung open and Jack Lomax stood there, breathing in shallow gasps. He looked ill. His long hair was scraped back into a ragged ponytail, revealing sunken cheeks. His eyes had lost their wildness. They looked blank, like dead men’s eyes.

  ‘Good evening, Jack. Where have you been these past few weeks?’

  ‘On my hols.’ He tried to smile. ‘Lying low – literally – in a tent by a lake, very remote, very quiet – I didn’t see a soul.’ His face crumpled like a child’s. ‘I had to get away – I tried to go home one day and there were policemen outside my flat. I ran.’ His expression switched in a moment from bewilderment to anger. ‘It was you who put them on to me, wasn’t it? What did you accuse me of? Stalking? Harassment?’

  ‘Hardly the worst of your crimes.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘How long have you been back?’

  ‘A few days. I’ve tried to see you, but there’s a policeman outside your house all night. I’ve tried to get into the department several times but they’ve changed the security code. Every evening, if your light was on, I’ve tried the basement service door. No good. Then tonight, for the first time, it was unlocked.’

  ‘That was me. I thought you might come. Tomorrow is your big day after all.’

  ‘My meeting with the dean, yes. I’ll tell him how you’ve treated me.’

  ‘Up to now, Jack, I’ve treated you very fairly.’ My voice was calm but my palms were clammy with sweat. ‘But I’m afraid that’s about to change.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Three murders, Jack. You must be called to account. You must pay for your crimes.’

  His eyes narrowed. ‘Murders …?’

  ‘Your campaign against me has been very useful.’ I reached into my pocket for the smooth familiar handle of the bowie knife I used on field trips. ‘The police believe the others were a warning, a premonition if you like, that I was your real target, your final victim.’

  ‘You … a victim?’ He tried to laugh, but only managed a rattling cough.

  I closed the short space between us, sliding the blade into his chest. It went in easily, between the ribs and into the heart.

  As he staggered and folded to the floor I felt a pang of sorrow for Jack. After all, he had never killed a spider.

  I’d seen people destroy spiders before and it had always made me angry. But that was nothing compared to the fury I felt when Demir, shouting absurdly with panic, picked up a huge sauce dispenser and crushed the beautiful Brazilian wandering spider that scuttled across the counter, then flung it out of the back door. Something inside me splintered and a desire for justice overwhelmed me. As a newly-appointed professor I was growing used to making important decisions. Choosing to kill Demir was one of the most crucial. It was like crossing a boundary from one country into another, where the rules were different and I was the one who made them. Jack was right – I was a dictator.

  Carolyn had stamped on the spider harmlessly traversing the grey carpet at the dentist’s. As for Scott, I’d noticed him acting suspiciously from my window. I fetched my binoculars and saw what he was doing – plucking the legs from a live wolf spider before throwing it on the ground and hitting it with a stone. I knew the research – boys who perpetrate unspeakable acts of cruelty on animals eventually become serial killers. I was doing the world a favour.

  Each time, I had rescued the corpse of the spider, planned my revenge and carried it out without a moment’s regret. Impaling the dead spiders on their black hearts was a private gesture, of meaning to me alone. Now I saw that it forged a suspicious link between the killings, a link that would now end. In future there would be no connections. The deaths would appear random and inexplicable.

  Jack’s blood was seeping across the floor. I stepped around him and reached for my phone.

  ‘Detective Inspector Croft,’ I said when he answered. ‘It’s Professor Staples.’ I let my voice shake. ‘Something terrible has happened.’

  MOMENTS MUSICAUX

  Judith Cutler

  Judith Cutler has produced no fewer than f
ive series of crime novels, and thirty-four books in all. Her first regular detective was Sophie Rivers, and since then she has featured Fran Harman, Josie Welford, Tobias Campion and Lina Townend. She has also published two stand-alone novels.

  ‘Mrs Welford! How lovely to see you!’ Sir Charles Orpen greeted me as if I were an honoured guest, not the caterer. Tucking my arm under his, he set off to find his wife. The Orpens of Duncombe Hall were hosting a charity chamber concert. I was providing refreshments for the interval and the post-concert buffet.

  ‘I hear you’ve brought your own team of waiters,’ he observed, sounding doubtful.

  ‘They’re all properly trained professionals. I don’t want any accidents to spoil the evening. And please call me Josie.’

  ‘I like a spot of professionalism, Josie,’ he said, patting my hand. ‘Not like this lot playing tonight. They’ve made a fuss about everything. Couldn’t even agree whether to have the piano lid up or down. Madame Thingie wanted it up so that her sound would prrrrrrrroject. Monsieur Something pointed out that her projection would make his an impossibilité. There was a lot of mon dieuing all round. At last, I told her straight: that lid will be fixed halfway up, and no more argument. She didn’t like that, but the others did – had a good snigger.’

  ‘He’s not moaning about the musicians again, is he?’ Lady Orpen demanded. ‘Hello, Josie, you do look nice. And everything’s in place in the kitchen?’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  Everyone who was anyone in the district was there in the gold drawing room; being tone deaf, or even stone deaf, was clearly no excuse. DJs and LBJs were de rigueur, mothballs vying with Chanel.

  ‘Richard!’ He summoned a middle-aged man. ‘My good friend Josie Welford.’

  ‘The Mrs Welford of White Hart gastro pub?’ Richard smiled.

  ‘There, I can see you’re going to get on like a house on fire.’ Chuffie patted my hand and left us to it.

  ‘The Mrs Welford who has a nasty habit of telling the police how to do their job? I’m the chief constable,’ he said, no longer smiling.

  ‘Chief constable! Does that mean I should curtsy?’

  Not a glimmer of a smile. We were both relieved when Dr Kinnersley, the village GP, hove into view, steering me to the long gallery where the concert was being held.

  They’d popped the musicians on to a temporary stage in a window embrasure halfway along the room. They couldn’t heave the grand piano up onto this, of course, so the string players would have to sit behind it.

  The musicians, giving perfunctory bows, might have been about to play at a funeral. Madame looked meaningfully at the half-closed lid – or, of course, if you were a string player, at the half-open lid.

  One of the men didn’t even nod; he was the double-bass player, needed for the first piece, something short by Bach, but then redundant for the next, a piano quartet by Brahms. The poor man would be kicking his heels for some forty minutes.

  The Bach sounded thin to me, like an expensive chocolate with the centre sucked out of it. Only the pianist seemed to enjoy herself; perhaps her choccie had some nougat in it. Wishing I knew more about music, I occupied myself reading their biographies. It seemed that the double-bass player was married to a plastic surgeon, the cellist to a woman who bred poodles. Martine de la Court, the pianist, was a keen photographer. The second violinist played squash. The violist had won some prize at the Paris Conservatoire. All the string instruments were at least three hundred years old. How about that?

  At last the Bach was over.

  Leaving his instrument where it was, the double bassist took himself off to the side of the room, where he propped himself up against a door wearing an expression I can only describe as saturnine

  During the Brahms, I had time to think about the way the musicians were placed. Surely each should have been able to see what the others were doing? At the orchestral concerts I’d been to, they’d all been in a semi-circle, the conductor at the focal point: just the arrangement I’d have wanted in his place. Now the pianist couldn’t see the others at all, and all they could see of her was her head. You could see that the musicians were giving their all. See but not hear: all the string players were completely drowned by Madame.

  At long last, after a lot of noise from the piano – quite exciting stuff, I have to admit, some of it – Marion Orpen stood to lead the applause. This was where I stood too, to signal to my team to pop those corks and don their best smiles. For some reason the musicians didn’t acknowledge the applause with even a PR smile; if I’d been their manager I’d have given them the bollocking of a lifetime.

  Refreshments were served to guests in the gold drawing room, but Madame had demanded a green room. Chuffie was clearly nonplussed. When he saw a tray of champagne and canapés, what did he do but seize it himself and take it off to the room where the players were ensconced.

  At length we all trooped back for the second instalment. ‘The Trout Quintet’; I knew that – lovely tunes. Someone had closed the piano lid, so we might at least hear some of the string players. Madame, all teeth and poor complexion, opened it fully. Chuffie coughed meaningfully; it returned to halfway.

  They all seemed to start together, and probably stayed that way. We couldn’t hear them, of course – only Madame and her fortissimo pounding.

  At least they all finished together and stood as one to take their bow. The cellist looked profoundly bored, and the violist’s mouth still drooped. But if I’m any judge of people I would say that the double-bass player was looking puzzled.

  Puzzled?

  And then Chuffie got to his feet. As he opened his mouth, his complexion darkened and he tried to stumble from the gallery. Vomiting, he choked. Hands flailing for his throat, he fell face down, clearly in the most agonising throes, just by the door to the green room.

  Shouting through the screams, Richard Pierce cleared the room on the instant.

  Dr Kinnersley was already on his knees, trying to see what he could do. Poor Marion mutely did as she was told. I stood where I was and dialled 999: ambulance, and police too.

  Since the musicians baulked at stepping over their host to get into the green room, I herded them off to join the guests, disposing of all that valuable wood in a sort of corral of chairs. Madame’s valedictory hiss indicated that she would sue if there were the slightest damage.

  At last Kinnersley had to admit that despite all his efforts with CPR and injections, he had lost his patient. He moved aside to let the widow say farewell.

  We stood together at the door in a spontaneous moment of silence. Then Richard wandered back in, puzzled by the wails of emergency vehicles – clearly more than just one ambulance. He stared at me furiously. ‘Why all this for what’s obviously a death by obviously natural causes?’

  ‘I was in such a panic,’ I said, reluctant, with our courteous host still warm on his own floor, to cross swords, ‘that I’m surprised we didn’t get a fire engine too. Anyway, they can always guard those instruments …’

  Kinnersley spoke up. ‘I saw poor Chuffie only two days ago and he was in perfect health then.’

  ‘The man was eighty-six, for God’s sake! All this must have put his heart under tremendous strain!’

  ‘I’ve been to even worse concerts than this, and I’ve never had a corpse on my hands before! Now, if you’ll excuse me, I must see to Lady Orpen.’ He escorted her gently from the room.

  Within seconds, Madame de la Court appeared, arms akimbo, demanding to be allowed to leave. ‘We have a ferry reservation from Dover; we must not miss it,’ she declared.

  I spread my hands in a gesture as Gallic as hers. ‘As you can see, Madame, it will be very difficult to gain access to your belongings for just a few more minutes.’

  The cellist joined her. And now came Monsieur Viola, too. ‘You cannot leave valuable instruments lying around unprotected!’

  I pointed silently at the officers. But M. Viola set off for the green room. ‘I fear to lose my – my boutons de manchette?�
�� he announced.

  ‘And where might your buttons be, sir?’ A stolid country constable came to my aid.

  ‘Cufflinks,’ I explained in an undervoice.

  ‘On a table.’

  ‘Any particular table?’

  ‘It has the glasses on it. No, not les lunettes: les verres.’

  You could see that the man was in half a mind to grant permission, but police training asserted itself, almost visibly. He pointed in silence to the corpse.

  The musicians withdrew.

  Kinnersley reappeared. ‘What a woman! They’d been married for fifty-odd years, but Marion still manages to be dignified. And to keep her wits about her. She can’t understand why he should die so suddenly. Bless her, she’s absolutely demanding a post mortem!’

  ‘Does that make this a crime scene, then, or can I collect up the dirty glasses from the green room?’ I asked.

  Richard Pierce spread his hands indecisively. Taking that as permission I knew I shouldn’t have, I went on through. The empty instrument cases jostled each other on what I strongly suspected was priceless furniture, which shouldn’t have had so much as a morning paper laid on it. An assortment of clothes lay on a silk upholstered armchair. And there was my quarry, a tray with seven or eight champagne flutes. There were no cufflinks on it, nor could I see any lying around elsewhere. All the canapés might have gone, but one of the flutes was still half-full. And no wonder. It smelt decidedly unpleasant. Could one of the bottles of fizz have been off? But if it had, why had the others swigged down such vile-smelling stuff? Had they tried it and poured it politely into one of those priceless bowls or vases?

  My God: what if my champagne had killed my poor old friend? Without touching the glass itself, I dipped a finger into the remaining liquid and tasted it. No, even the worst wine never had that aftertaste. So it wasn’t corked. And if it wasn’t corked …? More finger-dips established that all the other dregs were fine.

  Leaving everything exactly where it was, I returned to the gallery, to locate Richard Pierce, under attack from the pianist. She was waving her hands around as if still at the keyboard, furious that she and her colleagues had to stay. The fact that the room in which she complained of being incarcerated was one of the most elegant in the beautiful building, with exquisite furniture to match, seemed to have escaped her notice. And her more taciturn but equally irate-looking colleagues seemed equally immune to its charms. I searched each face for evidence of guilt, but all remained phlegmatically blank.