Echoes of Silence Page 22

  ‘You’re asking me why he did it,’ Denshaw said bluntly. ‘Well, I can’t tell you. Whatever made Peter do anything?’ Despite his asperity, his eyes were pained. He added abruptly, ‘I wasn’t surprised. He was always unstable. Went off at tangents, trouble wherever he went. The last person who should have been a parish priest.’ He brushed a hand across his face. ‘I’m sorry, shouldn’t have said that, but Peter and I never saw eye to eye.’

  ‘Different generations …’ Richmond offered the cliché, just to keep him going.

  ‘It wasn’t just that, I don’t have any difficulty with other younger people, only Peter, and -’ He stood up, picked up his music case. ‘I’m talking too much. I have to get back up to Low Rigg and with the weather as it is … Sorry I couldn’t help you.’

  ‘Yes, of course, I’m keeping you but I would like to talk to you further about your nephew. Can we arrange another time?’

  ‘Another time? Why?’

  ‘Peter’s death is still unexplained.’

  Denshaw heavily resumed his seat. ‘You’d better carry on and get it over with now then. Just tell me what you mean by that.’

  ‘All right. As you wish. He didn’t leave a note and there’d been no indications that he’d ever had suicidal tendencies. We have to be satisfied that there were reasonable causes for him to have taken his own life.’

  ‘What are you suggesting, Mr Richmond? Peter was a very unhappy young man. Apart from his mother’s death, which affected him deeply, he’d suffered two previous bereavements, both of them tragic, and he’d been under suspicion for one of them … I hardly need to remind you of that. He never got over it.’

  ‘He had a certain difficulty with personal relationships, or so I understand.’

  ‘With me, you mean. I can see somebody’s been talking.’

  ‘Not only with you, with Elvira Graham, too, I’m told.’

  If he’d hoped to shock Philip, he’d succeeded. The old man suddenly looked his age. A kindly old man, on the surface, yet there was something that jarred, made Richmond wonder if he might not be a bit of an old humbug …

  ‘Let me help you,’ he said. ‘There was some trouble, I believe, when Elvira was a young teenager, between her and Peter and yourself. It must have been serious to warrant an enmity that’s lasted over what, fifteen years?’

  Philip was silent for so long, Richmond thought he wasn’t going to answer. Finally, he said, ‘Don’t make a big mystery out of this, there’s no need. I’ll tell you exactly what happened and you can draw your own conclusions. I came across Peter painting Elvira. In the nude. She was eleven years old, and he was twenty-one. Elvira meant a great deal to me, and I can tell you I was very shocked. Protestations of innocence from Peter simply art, he said – cut no ice with me, he knew what he was doing. I was very angry with him, told him it must never happen again and that was that, as far as I was concerned. I was prepared to forget it. But Peter’s resentments always went deep. He never spoke to me after that if he could help it, was barely civil when he did. He tried to poison Elvira against me too, and for a long time succeeded. Children in their teens can be very unforgiving. I persisted, though, and we were just about getting somewhere when …’ He looked thoughtfully at Richmond. ‘May I speak frankly about your daughter? It won’t upset you?’

  Richmond waved a hand.

  ‘It seemed to me that Beth needed a lot of love. She’d been very troubled about the divorce and I didn’t think Peter was the best person to act as a stepfather. So I paid her a lot of attention and she responded. I was very fond of her – and she was fond of me, I think. Well, when that terrible thing happened to her, I found that Elvira and I were back where we started. I have to say I think she was just a bit jealous, even at eighteen. She’s a determined little madam, and she’d got it into her head that none of it would have happened if I hadn’t kicked up such a fuss about that painting … Peter wouldn’t have felt so guilty, wouldn’t have got religion, wouldn’t have met Isobel, all that psychological rubbish everyone talks now, nobody responsible for their own actions. Go back far enough and you can find a reason for anything, I say, but Elvira …’ The old man looked at him wearily and stood up. ‘The situation has upset me very much over the years.’

  ‘I can understand that. Thank you for being so frank,’ Richmond said, but waited in vain for more confidences.

  ‘And now I must go.’

  It wasn’t the right moment, when the old man had been so forthcoming, to probe further. Philip followed him to the door and waited outside with him while he locked it. When they reached the car-park, Philip held out his hand. ‘We’ve talked about death – but the death of a child is the worst thing of all. It may comfort you to know that none of us at Low Rigg wished Beth harm.’

  The words had the ring of sincerity, and Richmond wanted to believe them. But again, that feeling of something out of synch. And, unfair though it was, he’d always had a personal antipathy to damp handshakes.

  He watched Philip Denshaw drive out of the car-park and sat on in his own car, weighing the implications of what he’d just heard, wondering whether the conclusions he was coming to could possibly be the right ones, or if his theories weren’t going a little on the wild side.

  He’d learned nothing new tonight, nothing that he hadn’t picked up or been told by Polly, apart from gaining an insight into Philip Denshaw’s character. He thought about that, long and hard, sitting alone in his car in the now deserted car-park, then drove home, pausing only to buy a parcel of what Charlie vowed were the best fish and chips anywhere in the northern union. Whatever or wherever that might be, Charlie was right about the fish and chips, as he usually was.

  Feeling better after his first square meal that day, Richmond settled down in front of the fire with a scotch and allowed himself to think about this compulsion he had – this need to dig into this case. Deep down, right to the very bottom of the affair. To where it had all started. Long before Beth had been killed, he was sure. He had developed a conviction that her death was only incidental to some other purpose, which was not a comfortable conclusion to come to at one o’clock in the morning.

  Perhaps he was wrong.

  But … bits and pieces, the bits and pieces he’d talked about to Polly Winslow, were beginning to attach themselves to one another, like floating amoeba. A small fragment picked up, a sense of something not quite right, his antennae tuned to nuances and echoes from the past.

  Everything in this case turned on the advent of Elvira Graham into the Denshaw family, of that he was sure. And on Philip Graham Denshaw: he thought to himself, here we have the picture of a man with an ailing wife and a beautiful, possibly available, sister-in-law, already with a family of her own. Into this situation comes a new baby, parents having been conveniently killed. The fiction is kept up about Elvira’s parentage so that his wife (and everyone else) would never know the truth. Dot Nagle apart, perhaps. Someone must have helped with the cover-up and he could think of no one more likely to keep her mouth shut. Cynical it might be, but the explanation for all this seemed self-evident to Richmond. Especially since, when his wife had died, Philip had moved in permanently with Freya at Low Rigg. A convenient arrangement that had suited everyone - until Beth’s arrival into the family, when Philip’s attention had turned to her from his own daughter, with whom he was having problems. Philip himself had admitted Elf was a little jealous … perhaps there had been rather more to it than that. Richmond closed his eyes. Supposing Philip had been a little overfond of Beth … and his natural predilection for children masked something more sinister. Beth, thank God, had not been sexually molested, but supposing events had somehow taken a wrong turning before that could have happened? So that, with Eddie Nagle’s paid connivance, her body had to be got rid of. Were it not so tragic, it would be ironic if Nagle had been paid by Philip and by Freya, who had imagined her son to be the culprit.

  And if Elf had known, or guessed, what was happening … that might explain how, despite her d
ifferences with her father, she had been able to buy that expensive flat, that art gallery.

  He sat there until three, back-tracking, rehashing, running it all through his mental computer. Then he went to bed and slept for four hours. Three cups of coffee and a bacon sandwich later, he felt nearly ready for anything the day might bring.

  But it wasn’t to be solved as easily as all that.

  The day was Saturday, Saturday morning, the day of Freya Denshaw’s funeral. It had been scheduled for Wednesday, but had been postponed in view of Peter’s death. The double funeral her daughters would have preferred, not wishing to prolong the trauma of grief any longer than necessary, wasn’t possible, since the coroner had not yet released Peter’s body. Freya Denshaw was going to her grave alone.

  Richmond went to the funeral. The town was busy as he drove through. Regardless of the fresh snow that had fallen overnight, the Saturday morning, pre-Christmas crowds, loving the razzmatazz which everyone professed to hate, were thick as he drove through the town, the market, with its striped awnings over the stalls, doing a brisk trade in cheap wrapping paper and baubles. The Rotary Club’s decorated float carried Father Christmas round the streets to the accompaniment of piped carols. It would be the turn of the Salvation Army next week, but meanwhile Rotarians rattled collecting tins at shoppers and the lunch-time pub trade alike while shepherds watched their flocks … A tall Christmas tree, set up in front of the town hall, sparkled with fairy lights and real snow.

  The interment was to be in the cemetery where, at Charlie’s request, Isobel and later Beth, had been buried, near to Connie, and knowing how testing the occasion would be for him, Richmond might well have cried off. Remembering the last times he’d been there, he knew the occasion was bound to be painful, and he had no idea if he was likely to gain anything from putting himself through the mincer by being there.

  There was no need for him to have gone, but something drove him to be there, perhaps the traditional belief of police officers that a murderer might have a compulsion to attend the funeral of his victim and thereby reveal his guilt in some way. Freya Denshaw’s death had not been suspicious, but all the people who were involved in his investigation would be present, and the more he could observe them, the better.

  The name Denshaw still meant a lot in Steynton, and there was a fair crowd, which meant that Richmond was able to keep to the back and remain unnoticed by the mourners as they stood round the graveside. Leon Katz, exuding gravitas, holding Ginny’s elbow. Polly, straight-backed and looking at no one. Sonia, hands clasped, head bowed. Eddie Nagle and Philip Denshaw, with Elvira Graham and Dot Nagle, two small women standing close together between them. Philip put out a hand and placed it on Elvira’s sleeve. It wasn’t repulsed.

  A strange thing happened as Richmond looked at this quartet, at Nagle – his split lip scabbing over and obscenely swelling even further his wide, fleshy mouth, at Philip Denshaw, plump and secretive, at Dot Nagle, and Elf. For the first time, he seemed able to see them objectively. Several thoughts which had been separately nagging at his conscience ever since the night he’d spoken to Philip Denshaw came together as he looked at them all, and a subtle reversal of ideas took place. The players began to move around, grouping and regrouping and, standing there watching them, he began to see the emerging pattern. Bizarre. Looking at them all, at Elvira Graham, however, he really didn’t think it was so very bizarre.

  17

  It was after the funeral, late in the afternoon, and the sun was a little, angry red ball going down behind the moor, the branches of the elms were soot-black against the cold, pale green sky, the crows noisily flying home to their ragged nests in the forks of the trees. Elvira Graham pedalled her mountain bike up the familiar road, past the Moorcock and up towards Low Rigg Hall.

  The cold had brought fresh colour into her normally pale cheeks. She was blown and breathless with the exercise, but the blood pumping oxygen and endorphins strongly through her veins was making her feel alive, clearing her brain, letting her ignore her trembling muscles. Riding to and from school had never been like this. She’d thought more than twice about taking up cycling again for pleasure (or rather from guilt that in her present existence she didn’t take nearly enough exercise) when she remembered the daily grind they’d all had to endure as children, in all weathers. But that had been on heavy old bikes with not enough gears, which had to be pushed up hills too steep to ride. Blood, sweat and very nearly real tears that might have induced, had she been the crying type. Sadistic it was, at the end of a school day. Wonderful, though, when you got your first sight of the Moorcock, signalling the last stage to home. Only when the weather was too bad had Eddie Nagle driven them in the car, and then merely three miles, just to where they could catch the nearest bus to take them to and from school.

  Nobody had ever guessed, when the others had left school and Elf had to make the daily journey alone, that she’d made her own arrangements. Thereafter, she’d cycled those three miles to the bus stop, jettisoned her bike in a friend’s garden, and ridden to and from school in comfort on the bus, paying the fares out of her lunch money and making do with a bag of crisps. She’d always been devious. Nobody had ever seemed to notice that she was home so much earlier. Nobody had cared, she’d thought then, pretending she didn’t care, either.

  For years she’d smarted under a sense of injustice. Feeling sorry for herself. Deliberately ignoring what was right under her nose, because she didn’t want to see and acknowledge it. It had taken Peter’s death to show her that. She drew in a breath of the sharp air, like knives into her dry throat, stinging her eyes. It was the cold that was bringing the tears – she wouldn’t cry. She would not. It was inappropriate – feeble – to cry when you weren’t sad, just bloody angry at what he’d done, the fool.

  She hadn’t meant to come here when she set out, but half-way through her designated route, she’d at last given in to the compulsion that had been driving her towards this ever since Freya had died, the sense that matters were coming to a head. In one way she was glad, but as she turned off towards the moors, she was primarily very afraid of facing what she’d been trying for most of her adult life to avoid. All the same, she wouldn’t have ridden up here had she thought it through, remembered that it would be dark when she cycled home, that it might well snow again. She didn’t relish the thought. There was always her old room at Low Rigg, only needing the bed to be made up, but that wasn’t a solution she cared to contemplate, either.

  Seeing that funny little red car of Polly’s pulled up in front of the house, and light pouring from Freya’s old bedroom, she dismounted and wheeled her machine through the gates and round to the back.

  A dark glow from the kitchen flooded out into the yard as she came round the corner, and she paused to peer in through the window as she passed. Dot had left open the door of the stove, as she often did for warmth, and the ruddy heat from the glowing anthracite filled the huge, unlit cavern of the kitchen, making the sky outside suddenly dark by contrast. Her white face was stained with colour from the incandescent heart of the boiler, and wreathed in smoke from her cigarette; the whole thing looked like a picture from Dante’s Inferno.

  What was she doing, still there, staring at nothing, smoking, drinking tea? Why hadn’t she gone straight home after the funeral? But let’s face it, she’d always spent more time here than in the cottage, with Eddie – and who could blame her? Not me, thought Elf, who had wasted years blaming Dot for many things. But her responsibilities filled her with dread and foreboding, her inadequacies overwhelmed her.

  It was clear she would have to do something about Dot. She was going to pieces now that Freya was gone, empty days to fill and nothing to fill them with – no gossip, no pleasurable bickering. She was in limbo, left alone with Eddie. Elf shuddered and suddenly decided she would rather face Polly’s clear-eyed questioning than Dot at the moment, though that wasn’t going to be easy, either, what she had to say to her. She bypassed the kitchen and made her way upsta
irs. The door to Freya’s old room was open, and she could hear Polly moving around inside.

  Polly looked up and saw Elf standing in the doorway. ‘Dot’s going to need a removal van for all this lot,’ she remarked, indicating the cardboard boxes and packing cases containing Freya’s clothes, occupying much of the floor space.

  ‘Crikey! What’s she going to do with them?’

  Polly shrugged. ‘Auction them, maybe. Private buyers, or some museum will want them as a collection. God knows what they’re worth.’ The boxes represented three days’ careful work on Dot’s part, folding and swathing the gowns and coats and suits in the same sort of acid-free tissue paper that had kept them in a perfect state of preservation all these years. ‘Better that than leaving them hanging useless in the cupboards.’ She seemed to notice the way Elf was dressed for the first time. ‘You haven’t cycled up here?’

  ‘I suddenly decided. Wish I hadn’t, now.’

  ‘I’ll give you a lift back. I can’t get your bike in my car, but you can pick it up in your own, later.’

  ‘Thanks.’ Elf stood awkwardly, on the verge of saying something more. Polly, who had only come back to pick up some clean clothes for herself and Harriet, and was impatient to get back to Garth House, and wondering what on earth Elf was doing here, waited for an explanation, but Elf stayed silent, biting her lip, looking uncertain.

  After light refreshments at the Woolpack, Ginny had invited back to Garth House for a cup of tea anyone who wished, but Dot had looked at her as though she was being invited to some Bacchanalian orgy and said she and Eddie would be getting back to Low Rigg, thank you.

  Polly had followed them, and been trailed all the way by a battered Volkswagen. She guessed it would be the Press again and, sure enough, the VW had followed her right in through the gates and up to the front door. Freya was still news, in certain quarters. Let them speculate, she’d thought, refusing to comment to the young woman who’d jumped out of the car’s passenger seat, notebook at the ready, manoeuvring to stop Polly entering the house. Polly had been adroit enough to unlock the door, slip inside and close it firmly behind her, without answering any questions. Probably not wise, she reflected afterwards, better to have fed them platitudes, but she hadn’t felt up to answering questions about Freya Cass’s life since she’d retired to this back of beyond, nor about the circumstances of Peter’s suicide, which was bound to have leaked out … and it was more than possible that Freya’s connection with Wyn Austwick would have been sussed out … even Beth’s murder could have been resurrected …