Killing a Unicorn Page 24

  ‘I shall sell the garden — there won’t be any shortage of buyers. It’ll be up to the boys to decide what to do with the house.’

  Jane’s anger erupts. ‘You must be mad! You’d never have entertained the idea if it hadn’t been for her — that woman — that silly little bitch stuffing you with all that hocus pocus about the stars!’

  Alyssa is shocked. In all the years she’s known Jane, she’s never heard her use strong language. But she knows now that she’s never known Jane at all, something she’s only realized in these last few days. Her heart is so heavy with foreboding and sadness she fears it might stop.

  ‘Humphrey!’ Jane says now, with scorn. ‘He’s all right, I suppose, but what use is he to you?’

  ‘You’re forgetting. He’s a good man, and he’s loved me for years, I know his little ways, and he knows mine. Such as,’ she adds softly, ‘knowing how to make my martini without overdoing the gin. I don’t fall asleep when he makes it.’

  Jane stiffens, her small, taut body braced like a spring. After a while, she says, ‘You work hard enough. It’s no sin to take a drink and a nap.’

  ‘But you really overdid it on Thursday night — made it so strong that I couldn’t drink it at all. I only took a few sips. No, Jane, stay where you are and listen to what I have to say.’ Alyssa lays a strong hand on Jane’s arm and forces her to sit still.

  ‘I’ll admit I’d had a very hard day on Thursday, and I felt pleasantly relaxed over my drink. Perhaps I dozed for a few minutes — it’s a habit you can fall into easily enough when you’re our age, if you’re not careful, without the benefit of gin! But I woke up after a few minutes and you weren’t there. I took the opportunity to pour the rest of the drink away — far too strong, and I’d had quite enough. I watched the telly for a while but I was bored and closed my eyes. I heard you tiptoe in and thought how kind of you not to want to disturb me, so I kept them closed and pretended to be asleep. You were gone at least twenty minutes, Jane -’

  Jane says nothing. Her mouth is turned down in the familiar disapproving curve, but there is wariness in her silence.

  ‘– plenty of time to have followed Bibi down here — and done what there was to do.’

  Alyssa was stunned by what she had been forced to believe was the truth. Jane had killed Bibi. Jane. Who loved Jasie, who loved them all. Jane, who had been her friend for over thirty years. No, it wasn’t possible, she had thought at first.

  But then she remembered how clever Jane was, how she had always succeeded in manipulating everyone in this, her adoptive family, even though they were always aware, at the backs of their minds, of being made to do things they didn’t really want to do. Why had they submitted? Well, for one thing, it was often easier to knuckle under to someone like Jane, with her bright, birdlike fixations, than to fight her — and for another, she was almost always right in what she advised, or coerced, them to do. Alyssa recalled how she used to push them all, her children, especially Jonathan, remembered her absolute devotion to everything appertaining to the Calvert family. Paranoia? Maybe not, but certainly close. Look how devotedly she’d nursed Jonathan day and night through that bad bout of measles, insisting on doing it alone, until she almost collapsed herself from exhaustion. And how she’d given up any thought of holidays of her own and taken the children away to East Anglia every summer to give Alyssa a break when Conrad was at his worst. She had hated Conrad. For a fleeting, horrified moment, Alyssa had a vision of Conrad at the bottom of the stairs, his neck broken.

  No! He had fallen. He was fuddled with drink. That was what Jane had said, and she had been the only one in the house at the time. No one had reason to disbelieve her. She had taken charge of all the arrangements, and Alyssa had let her, unconsciously setting the shape of all the years to come. From then on, Jane had lived a vicarious existence through them all, Alyssa and the boys. And to be fair, it would seem she had genuinely loved them, though she’d loved Jonathan the best of all.

  Poor, twisted Jane. For all that, she hadn’t been able to inspire a return love.

  I only did it for love, Jane says.

  She had laid her plans so carefully. The notion of getting rid of Bibi had been with her for a long time, ever since it became evident that she had every intention of pushing Alyssa into marrying Humphrey, with the consequence that Membery Place Gardens would cease to be open to the public, or be leased off to someone else, and the house itself sold to God knows who. What then would have been left for Jane? A lonely, pointless existence in her little house in Middleton Thorpe. But the idea had only crystallized when she’d read that book of Bibi’s, the one she so fancifully called her book of days, and realized what was happening with Jonathan.

  Almost everyone made excuses for Bibi, saw her as she liked to put herself forward, the victim of some unexplained past, the exception being Humphrey. How had he once put it to Jane, in a rare moment of communication between them? Wants to see herself as virtuous, that one, and that’s where the trouble lies. Interferes. Can’t see that she has a core of selfishness. All I can say is, God save me from the attentions of a good woman. She and Humphrey, despite their differences, have always seen life as it is, unencumbered by romantic notions, like the Calverts. They both saw that Bibi was like two sides of a coin, pretending to herself that she was acting from the best of motives, while destroying everything around her … Alyssa’s life here with me, thought Jane, Chip’s … and especially Jonathan’s.

  Jane had had over two years for her hatred to grow.

  It had come to a head when she’d read the entry in that book of Bibi’s about what Jonathan had so uncharacteristically and foolishly confessed to her. If she hadn’t read that book, Jane would never have known, but having noted how secretive Bibi was about it, she had watched until she found out where she kept it hidden: in her room, of course, but whenever had privacy stopped Jane?

  There might have been other ways of getting rid of Bibi, but killing her was the surest. She’d been content to wait for the right opportunity, which had come with the arrival of those letters, that Bibi kept tucked inside the front of that same book, no doubt in case they were ever needed for evidence.

  There were three of them. When Jane wrote the fourth, and last, she’d looked for the others to copy the same style and discovered that Bibi had removed them to some safer place — or perhaps destroyed them. So she’d had to rely on memory when she’d typed her own on the old Remington they’d used before Chip had urged them to computerize the office records. It was a pity she hadn’t been able to find any of the same sort of paper, but she didn’t think it would matter — and it hadn’t. It worried her that she hadn’t been able to copy the little unicorn signature on the bottom; it niggled her also as to what it meant, but Bibi had apparently never questioned that the letter had come from the same source as the others. Jane had watched her the morning it arrived through the post and had noted with satisfaction that she was entirely panic-stricken.

  It was the wicked-looking pile of glass from the window Gary Brooker had broken that had suddenly given her the idea of how she could do it. She’d chosen a likely-looking piece and hidden it outside until the time arose when she would be ready for it.

  Everything had gone her way. When Bibi had announced she was going out for some air, Jane had made Alyssa an extra-stiff drink, knowing she was certain to drop off over it, as had become her habit every evening. When she was sure she had, Jane had slipped out and picked up the heavy-duty gloves in the porch at the back door where she’d had them in readiness. No one would ever remark upon a pair of gardening gloves lying around anywhere in this house. She had followed Bibi down towards the stream, so absorbed in her own thoughts she never heard Jane creeping up behind her, didn’t know what was happening until the cane was knocked away and she fell. A quick stab with the glass after that was all that was needed. Her nursing training during the war meant she knew exactly where to aim for. Bibi had scarcely moved before losing consciousness. Jane had felt for her pul
se and when it stopped, had tipped her into the stream, and the glass shard after her and gone back to the house. It had all been so easy.

  It was only when she reached the back porch that she found she had taken possession of the walking stick, that she was leaning on it, as a matter of fact, unable to walk without it because her breath was coming in great, painful gulps. But she had pulled herself together, stuck the cane into the stand amongst the other sticks and umbrellas, joined Alyssa and acted thereafter as though nothing had happened.

  The following morning, before it was certain Bibi had been murdered, she’d burnt the book of days in the big garden incinerator, watching its red silk covers curl back like a monstrous, voluptuous flower, finally to disintegrate, along with the damaging secrets it contained. After it she had thrown the Judge’s cane, waiting until the malacca had burnt through, then retrieving the blackened silver knob and ferrule. She’d taken them home and buried them in her herb plot. Someone, sometime might recover them and wonder what they were.

  She had been as confounded as anyone when she learned that Jasie had disappeared. It upset her. Almost as much as her own inexplicable lapse of failing to consider how his mother’s death would affect him.

  ‘The police are on their way, Jane.’ Alyssa’s voice was tremulous. She was more upset than Jane. ‘They suspect, but they don’t know.’

  Jane Arrow said nothing. The sun glinted through the trees on to the windows of The Watersplash below, the pathway down to it was steep and rocky, the romantically ruined bridge spanned the stream as it ran swift, falling in a shining curl over the lip of the stepped fall, down into the pool below. She stood up but shook her head as Alyssa turned to go back to the house.

  Alyssa left her standing there, a tiny upright figure in sturdy shoes and a sun-hat, and when she reached the bend of the stream, she heard the splintering crash as the rotten planks of the bridge gave way. When she turned back, there was no sign of her friend.

  Also by Marjorie Eccles

  Cast a Cold Eye

  Death of a Good Woman

  Requiem for a Dove

  More Deaths Than One

  Late of This Parish

  The Company She Kept

  An Accidental Shroud

  A Death of Distinction

  A Species of Revenge

  Killing Me Softly

  The Superintendent’s Daughter

  A Sunset Touch

  Echoes of Silence

  Untimely Graves

  KILLING A UNICORN. Copyright © 2002 by Marjorie Eccles. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

  THOMAS DUNNE BOOKS.

  An imprint of St. Martin’s Press.

  www.minotaurbooks.com

  eISBN 9781466822696

  First eBook Edition : June 2012

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Eccles, Marjorie.

  Killing a unicorn / Marjorie Eccles.—1st U.S. ed.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 0-312-32411-1

  EAN 978-0312-32411-7

  1. Women—Crimes against—Fiction. 2. Architects’ spouses—

  Fiction. 3. Missing children—Fiction. 4. Brothers—Fiction.

  5. England—Fiction. I. Title.

  PR6055.C33K54 2005

  823’.914—dc22

  2004051397

  First published in Great Britain by Constable,

  an imprint of Constable & Robinson Ltd

  First U.S. Edition: January 2005