Element of Doubt Read online

  Lineham was obviously thinking along similar lines. ‘D’you think this really was just an old lady having fun, or d’you think she might have done it on purpose?’

  ‘Just what I was wondering myself.’

  ‘It doesn’t sound as though they were exactly on the best of terms, does it? Sir, you don’t think …’

  ‘I sincerely hope not!’ To have to arrest a senile old lady was the last thing Thanet wanted.

  ‘Old people can be very difficult, when they’re suffering from dementia,’ Lineham persisted. ‘I know a chap whose mother went like that and he said that if she was crossed, she used to go quite beserk. She’d be beyond reason, he said, and she was amazingly strong. It took two of them to hold her back, once, when she wanted to go shopping in the middle of the night, in January, in her nightdress!’

  ‘Hmm … It was around half past three, wasn’t it, when Mrs Haywood said she heard Nerine Tarrant start shooting at her mother-in-law?’

  ‘Yes. I imagine the companion, Miss Barnes, will be able to verify that. Doc Mallard put the earliest time of death at two o’clock, but it looks as though we can push that back at least an hour and a half … And another thing … Surely Mrs Tarrant must have been killed either during or soon after that row, or she would have tidied up in here?’

  ‘Not necessarily. She might well have blamed Miss Barnes for allowing the old lady to give her the slip, and told her she expected her to do the clearing up. But I suppose you could be right … We’d better go and have a word with them.’

  They relocked the door, gave the key to Trace, the SOCO, who would need it when he had finished working on the sitting room next door, and set off in search of old Mrs Tarrant’s quarters. They were crossing the landing when Thanet put out a restraining hand.

  ‘Wait,’ he murmured.

  He had glimpsed a flicker of movement ahead of them and now a figure appeared at the far end of the landing. The two men exchanged glances of astonishment. Nothing they had heard about old Mrs Tarrant had prepared them for this. The slack, puckered flesh of arms and neck, the knotted veins on the hand that now went up to her throat in a dramatic gesture of surprise, betrayed her age. But she was dressed like a young girl, in flowing white muslin skirt, very high heels, an off-the-shoulder blouse and, the final grotesque touch, a white velvet ribbon tied in a large bow on the top of her scanty curls. She had attempted, and failed, to conceal the deeply scored wrinkles of her face with heavy, garish make-up: thick, deep blue eyeshadow, symmetrical circles of rouge on either cheek and a scarlet cupid’s bow of a mouth. Thanet experienced a powerful shaft of compassion as she gave them a brilliant, coquettish smile. Mrs Tarrant might appear to them to be a bizarre, almost clownish figure, but in her own eyes she was clearly beautiful. He and Lineham watched in painful silence as she dipped to gather up the hem of her skirt in her right hand and, wafting it backwards and forwards in rhythm with her steps, began to descend the stairs with an exaggerated, swaying walk. Half-way down she paused to cast the same smile back at them, over one shoulder.

  ‘Now what?’ said Lineham, in a low voice.

  Thanet shrugged. ‘We can but try. Mrs Tarrant?’ he called, as they began to descend the stairs behind her.

  She had reached the bottom now and she paused, putting one hand on the newel post to steady herself. When she looked back at them this time that terrifyingly flirtatious rictus had been replaced by a look of terror.

  ‘Mrs Tarrant?’

  She made a little choking sound in her throat and in a swirl of movement, a diminishing clatter of high heels along the passageway beside the stairs, was gone.

  ‘This isn’t going to be easy,’ said Thanet grimly. ‘Come on. With any luck, she’s run to Miss Barnes.’

  He was right. The sound of voices – or rather, of a voice – led them to a half-open door, and they paused outside.

  ‘Come on, Lavinia, you tell Marilyn.’ A coaxing tone. ‘How can Marilyn help you, if you won’t tell her what’s the matter?’

  Thanet knocked and pushed the door further open. ‘Miss Barnes?’

  It was a kitchen which had obviously been converted from a former sitting room; a heavy marble fireplace still dominated one end of the room. Seated in a rocking chair beside, it crouched Mrs Tarrant, moaning, face in lap, hands clasped at the back of her neck, as if defying anyone to make her raise her head. The woman they had glimpsed earlier, coming out of Tarrant’s study, was kneeling on the floor beside her, stroking her hair. It was, Thanet thought, a remarkably touching picture. He suspected that not many paid companions would in privacy treat their charges with such compassion.

  The young woman scrambled to her feet, pushing long lanky brown hair back off her face.

  ‘Who …? Oh, you must be the policemen.’

  ‘That’s right.’ Thanet made the introductions. No one would give Marilyn Barnes a second glance, he thought (and yet, someone had – the child existed, to prove it). She was neither pretty nor ugly, dark or fair, fat or thin, tall or short, but always somewhere in between. Even her eyes were an indeterminate bluish-greyish-greenish brown. ‘I’m afraid we gave Mrs Tarrant a fright just now, appearing upstairs like that.’

  Cautiously, the old woman raised her head, revealing eyes still drowning in tears, cheeks streaked with mascara.

  ‘That’s better!’ said Miss Barnes with genuine pleasure in her voice, unconsciously displaying her best feature, a wide generous smile which illuminated her face and briefly gave an illusion of attractiveness. And to Thanet and Lineham, ‘Perhaps you’d like to sit down? I won’t be a minute.’ Snatching up a box of tissues she tenderly wiped the old lady’s eyes. ‘There, that is better, isn’t it?’

  Mrs Tarrant’s eyes, fixed until now on her companion’s face, flickered briefly in the direction of the two policemen. She beckoned her companion to come closer. Her whisper was quite audible.

  ‘Have they come to take me away?’

  Miss Barnes laughed and patted her employer’s hand. ‘No, of course not. They just want to talk to us about Nerine, I expect. You remember, I told you, she’s had an accident.’

  The old lady’s eyes clouded with incomprehension. ‘An accident?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Miss Barnes patiently. ‘She fell, from her balcony. I told you.’

  Mrs Tarrant shook her head. ‘I don’t remember.’ She clutched suddenly at Miss Barnes’s arm. ‘You won’t let her send me away, will you?’

  A firm shake of the head. ‘No. No, of course not. No one is going to send you away. You’re going to stay here with me.’

  Mrs Tarrant gazed doubtfully at her companion. ‘She said she was going to.’ Her face puckered. ‘She shouted at me.’ It was the whining, petulant tone of a child.

  ‘I know. But it’s all right now. I promise.’ Taking up a shawl which hung over the back of a nearby chair, Miss Barnes draped it around the old lady’s shoulders, covering up the unsuitable blouse, the scrawny, knobbly shoulders. ‘There, that’s better isn’t it?’ Then she sank down into a chair at the table, facing Thanet. ‘I’m sorry, I’m afraid she’s rather upset.’

  ‘Because of the row with young Mrs Tarrant, this afternoon?’

  Miss Barnes sighed. ‘You heard about that, then. Yes. She’s been very unsettled ever since.’

  The old lady seemed to have withdrawn into herself. Rocking gently to and fro, she was stroking the soft, fine muslin of her skirt.

  Thanet glanced at Lineham. Your turn.

  ‘What time was this, Miss Barnes?’ said Lineham. ‘The row?’

  ‘About half past three. Lavinia – I hope you don’t mind if I call her that, but it’s so confusing, with two Mrs Tarrants in the house, that we decided it was the sensible thing to do – Lavinia usually has a rest in the afternoon, from two until three thirty, then I get her up so that by the time Nicky – my son – gets home from school at a quarter to four, I’m free to attend to him.’

  ‘So what went wrong, this afternoon?’

  ‘How did Lavi
nia get into young Mrs Tarrant’s bedroom, you mean?’ Miss Barnes shrugged. ‘Just an unfortunate combination of circumstances. I did look in on her at a quarter past two, to make sure she’d dozed off, but she must have been faking.’ Miss Barnes shook her head and sighed. The trouble is, she absolutely adores dressing up – well, you can see that for yourselves – and Mrs Tarrant has such beautiful clothes … That room is like a magnet to Lavinia. I don’t know how she does it, but it’s uncanny, she always seems to know, every time Mrs Tarrant leaves the door unlocked – which is rarely, I can tell you. Anyway, that hour and a half is the only time of the day that I get to myself, so once I’d satisfied myself she was settled I came back down here, made myself a cup of tea and read a magazine. Just before half past three I made a cup for Lavinia, and I was on my way upstairs when I heard Mrs Tarrant shouting.’

  Marilyn Barnes broke off and glanced anxiously at the old lady, who was still rocking gently, stroking her muslin skirt and gazing blankly into space. She lowered her voice. ‘I don’t want to upset her again, now she’s settled down.’

  Thanet and Lineham leaned closer.

  ‘Mrs Tarrant was dragging Lavinia along the corridor towards the stairs. She was really livid.

  “You bloody woman. You ought to be put away, you know that? Locked up, where you can’t be a nuisance to anyone. And where the hell d’you think you’ve been, Marilyn? Lazing the afternoon away in the kitchen, I suppose, while this wretched old woman has been busy turning my bedroom upside down again. What d’you think we pay you for, that’s what I’d like to know?”

  “Don’t cry, Lavinia. I’m sorry, Mrs Tarrant, I thought she was asleep.”

  “You thought. You thought. Well, it’s not good enough. I’ve had enough, I really have. I’ve told you, over and over again, you ought to lock her in, in the afternoons …”

  “But I can’t do that. I have no right …”

  “You have every right. We have every right. We employ you and I’m telling you, you lock that bloody door or I’m warning you, for the last time, you’ll be finding yourself out of a job and my dear mother-in-law can take herself off to a nursing home. Or the loony-bin, which is where she really belongs.”

  “She can’t help it, Mrs Tarrant. It’s her illness.”

  “Don’t make excuses to met Ill or not, no one in their right mind would put up with this sort of performance for a moment longer than they had to … Oh, do stop snivelling, Lavinia. Here, take her away, for God’s sake. But you needn’t think you’ve heard the last of this. I shall speak to my husband tonight.”’

  They all glanced at the old lady as Marilyn reached the end of her story, but there was still no change. Old Mrs Tarrant had, consciously or unconsciously, decided that it was more comfortable to blank out reality for the moment.

  ‘Do you think she meant it?’ said Thanet ‘About the nursing home?’

  Marilyn shrugged. ‘Oh, she meant it, all right. Whether Mr Tarrant would have agreed is another matter. The house belongs to his mother, you see. She wants to stay here and so far he has always refused to try to get her committed. You may not think it, looking at her now, but sometimes you can have a perfectly rational conversation with her. And she’s really a very sweet person. So appreciative. And the rest of the time … Well, I just tell myself to treat her as if she was a child, and it usually works.’

  ‘You don’t find it very frustrating, at times?’

  ‘Well of course. But what job isn’t? And I can’t be too fussy.’ She glanced down at her left hand. ‘I’m not married, as you’ll have gathered, and jobs aren’t exactly thick on the ground. Especially ones that keep school hours and allow you to be at home during the holidays. And this one pays bed and board for Nicky and me, too, so …’ Again she shrugged. ‘I’ve always thought, well, he’s only got one parent, so I must try and be available when he needs me, to make it up to him … This suits me very well, until he’s a bit older.’

  ‘How old is he?’

  ‘Ten.’

  ‘Where is he now?’

  ‘I’ve arranged for him to spend the night with some friends in the village.’

  ‘Good idea.’ Though if Nicky were anything like Ben, he’d be furious at being summarily removed from the scene of the action, thought Thanet.

  ‘Of course,’ said Marilyn, ‘the trouble is that every time this sort of thing happens, Lavinia lives in fear and trembling for ages afterwards.’

  ‘In case she’s sent away, you mean?’

  ‘Yes. That’s why she was so frightened when she saw you. She thought you’d come for her.’

  Quite possible, thought Thanet. Though there could be another, more sinister explanation … He glanced at Lineham. Take over again.

  ‘So what happened after all the fuss had died down?’ said Lineham.

  Marilyn grimaced. ‘It was all a bit hectic. Lavinia was in a state and Nicky was due home, so I brought her down here and gave her a cup of tea, tried to calm her down, while Nicky had a glass of squash and an apple. Then he went out to play and I put Lavinia to bed for an hour – she hadn’t had a sleep this afternoon, and the fuss had worn her out. She went up quite happily, and I sat with her until she dozed off. Before I came downstairs I knocked at the door of Mrs Tarrant’s bedroom and when she didn’t answer I checked that it was locked. I didn’t want the same thing happening again.’

  ‘And was it? Locked?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What time was this?’

  ‘About four thirty, I should think.’

  ‘Did you see anyone about?’

  Marilyn shook her head. ‘Not a soul.’

  ‘So what did you do then?’

  For the first time she hesitated.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ said Lineham.

  ‘It’s just that … Well, I suppose I’m wondering why you want to know all these details.’

  Lineham glanced at Thanet, who gave an almost imperceptible shake of the head. ‘It’s simply that whenever there’s an accidental death, we have to try to build up a complete picture of the movements of all the people in the household … In case one of them might have seen or heard something significant, you understand.’

  ‘But I haven’t. I didn’t.’

  ‘The point is, you can never tell. It may not seem significant or important to you, but it can be very helpful to us.’

  Thanet was watching Marilyn closely. She seemed to be taking Lineham’s explanation at its face value. It was, after all, true.

  She shrugged. ‘Fair enough. What was it you wanted to know?’

  ‘What you did after putting old Mrs Tarrant to bed, and checking that her daughter-in-law’s bedroom door was locked.’

  ‘I came down and got Nicky’s tea ready. I usually cook him something simple and he has it about a quarter to five. I did pop upstairs to check on Lavinia before I called him in, but she was still fast asleep. I sat with him while he ate it, then I washed up, cleared away, and went back upstairs, to get Lavinia up.’

  ‘What time was it then?’

  ‘About half past five.’

  ‘And did you see anyone about, either then or on the earlier occasion?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What about earlier in the afternoon?’

  ‘I saw Mrs Haywood, going upstairs, soon after lunch. She was going to look out some jumble in the attic, I believe.’

  ‘Ah, yes, she told us … Did you see her leave, later on?’

  Marilyn shook her head.

  ‘Anyone else?’

  ‘I don’t think so … Not in the house, anyway.’

  Thanet saw Lineham restrain himself from pouncing too eagerly. The sergeant was doing very well.

  ‘And outside?’

  ‘Well, I did see Miss Linacre come home, not long before I called Nicky in for his tea.’

  ‘Around twenty to five, then?’

  ‘Yes. I noticed especially because I was surprised to see her home so early. She doesn’t usually come until an hour or so later.�
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  ‘She has a migraine.’

  ‘I thought that might be it. She goes down with them every few months or so … Miserable things … She looks like death warmed up for days afterwards.’

  ‘Anyone else, outside?’

  ‘Only Damon. At least, I assume it was Damon. I glanced out of the landing window when I was coming downstairs with Lavinia, the second time, and I saw his car backing out of the garage.’

  ‘This was at half past five?’

  ‘Well, five or ten minutes later, I should say. Because although I didn’t have to dress Lavinia after her rest – I’d only slipped her shoes off, earlier – it took me five or ten minutes to coax her out of her room.’ She glanced at her charge, leaned forward and lowered her voice again. ‘She was very upset again. When I went into the bedroom I couldn’t see her anywhere, and I almost panicked. I thought, Oh God, if she’s somehow managed to get at Mrs Tarrant’s things again … But she made a little sound, and I found her. She was sitting on the floor in a corner, on the far side of the bed. She was all ready to come back downstairs – she’d put her shoes and cardigan on … but I think she’d been afraid that if she went out onto the landing, she might meet Mrs Tarrant, and there’d be another scene.’

  Lineham glanced at Thanet. I think you’d better take over now, sir.

  ‘She was frightened,’ said Thanet.

  ‘In case there was another row, yes.’

  ‘Or,’ said Thanet delicately, ‘possibly because she had already been out of her room, before you came up to fetch her, and had seen something to upset her …?’ Or done something to upset her, he silently added, mentally shuddering away from the picture of the old lady, with a strength born of desperation and dementia, grabbing the shapely legs of the woman who was threatening to lock her away for ever and heaving, tilting, shoving and finally watching, as Nerine’s body smashed down on the paving stones and lay still, still … A moment of appalled clarity, as she realises what she has done, then flight, back to her room and into a corner to hide …