Faith (49 page)

‘Then suddenly I get a glimpse of heaven, but a glimpse is all I am ever going to have. I couldn’t be with Jackie for more than a couple of hours here and there, I had to go home and take care of Peggie. Can you imagine washing a woman, helping her to the toilet, cooking her meals and cleaning the house when all the time she is sullen and bitter? She acted like the accident was my fault, nothing I could do or say would please her. And she’s still that way. I can understand why people kill, I’ll admit now there have been times when I have been sorely tempted.’

Tears began to flow down Ted’s face, and Stuart leaned forward and squeezed the man’s arm in sympathy. ‘I might not have been through that myself, man,’ he said softly. ‘But I can imagine.’

Ted mopped his face with a handkerchief and tried to pull himself together. ‘When Barney was killed I thought our love affair would die too. Jackie took it so hard, and I couldn’t be there all the time to comfort her.’

‘Did she ever say anything about the accident to you?’ Stuart asked.

‘Only that the other car came round the bend in the middle of the road straight towards her and she heard Barney scream. She said the next thing she remembered was a fireman talking to her, explaining how he had to cut away part of the car to get her out. Miraculously she wasn’t that badly hurt. I saw her car later that day and it was so badly crushed you wouldn’t have thought anyone could have survived the crash, but all she had was a broken arm, and some very nasty cuts and bruises.’

‘Did she recognize the driver of the other car?’

‘She said she didn’t.’

‘Did you believe her?’

Ted hesitated. ‘No, to be honest I didn’t. I don’t know why, after all it was in summer when there are lots of strangers around. I just got the idea in the back of my mind that she was hiding something, but I couldn’t keep probing, she was too upset about the wee boy.’

‘Were the police thorough in their investigation?’

Ted nodded. ‘They called everywhere, a virtual house-to-house search. Every garage owner was questioned, they called in at every pub and hotel. But if the other car wasn’t too badly damaged it could have got half-way to the Forth Bridge before the ambulance even arrived; another couple of hours and it could well have been in England.’

‘Is it at all possible that the driver could have been Charles Howell?’ Stuart knew he shouldn’t ask such direct questions but he had to.

Ted looked horrified. ‘No, it can’t have been. Whatever makes you think such a thing?’

‘Just something someone said,’ Stuart replied.

‘Well, they had no business to be saying such things,’ Ted said indignantly. ‘Besides, he was down in London at the time.’

‘How do you know that? Stuart asked.

‘Because Jackie told me. Belle went in to visit her in the hospital the evening it happened. She said Charles couldn’t come with her because he was in London. He flew back the following day, stayed a few days until Jackie was discharged from hospital, then went back to London to collect his car. I remember it clearly because Belle stayed at the farm with Jackie to look after her, and that meant I couldn’t go there.’

‘He left his car in London, did he?’

‘Yes, well, it was an emergency, Belle needed him and driving it back would have taken too long.’

From what Stuart remembered of Charles he was hardly the type to rush home just because Belle needed him. ‘Isn’t it possible he was having his car repaired?’

Ted looked shocked. ‘Surely not!’

‘I sincerely hope I’m wrong,’ Stuart said. ‘I’ve never liked Charles, but I don’t want to think he was responsible for killing Barney. But tell me, Ted, how was Jackie with Charles after that accident?’

‘I don’t think I was ever with them both together,’ Ted said, frowning as if he was trying to remember. ‘Jackie had never really liked him. What she actually said was that he was “an insincere, lying, womanizing bastard”.’ Ted half smiled. Jackie didn’t mince her words about people.’

Stuart laughed. ‘It was one of the things I liked best about her,’ he said. ‘But can you remember her making any remarks about him after Barney’s death?’

‘She did say once that she’d make sure he never got a penny of her money when she died,’ Ted said. ‘I asked how she was going to do that when he was married to Belle.’

‘And what was her answer?’

Ted smiled. ‘She laughed and said something about Belle being almost as greedy as Charles and if she offered Belle money to leave him, she’d take it. But I didn’t take any of that seriously. Jackie often made off-the-cuff remarks. Besides, Charles was a good ten years older than Jackie. I thought he’d pop his clogs long before she did.’

‘Would you say that Jackie disliked him more after Barney’s death?’

‘Not that I noticed. She spoke about him in much the same way she always had – witheringly! Nothing to give me the idea he might be responsible, and I’m sure that is what you are getting at. But that first year was hideous: Jackie was grieving for the boy, full of guilt that he’d died while in her care, and worried about Laura too. I felt powerless to help, I couldn’t even stay overnight to hold and comfort her. So I wasn’t taking note of things she said about Charles or Belle.’

‘Did she think Laura blamed her?’

‘She did in the first year. And she couldn’t understand why Laura didn’t attack her for it, verbally or physically. But from what I understood Laura held herself responsible, no one else. You must understand that I never met Laura, so my opinion is only based on gut reaction to what I was told. But after she went off to work in Italy, Jackie often showed me cards and letters from her, and believe me, there was no blame, no nasty little digs or sarcasm in them. I’d say Laura felt her boy’s death was her punishment for the kind of life she’d been living.’

Stuart nodded. That was exactly the impression he’d formed too from Laura, and it was good to hear the same from a man who had no reason to want to defend her.

‘Did Jackie tell you about Laura’s life, or did you only find out during the trial?’

‘A bit of both,’ Ted said. ‘Jackie was a loyal friend, she wasn’t one for dishing dirt. But in the two years prior to Barney’s death she had confided in me about the pornography and the drugs. She didn’t want to, but I asked a great many questions about why she had Barney there so often, and why she often seemed so worried sometimes. She had to talk to someone. And once our affair began we hoped that one day we could be together for ever.’

‘Why then didn’t she call you on the day she died?’ Stuart asked.

‘That is a question I’ve asked myself a million times,’ Ted said with a sigh. ‘I’ve also asked myself just as many times why I didn’t sense something bad was happening to her and go over there. I didn’t hear about it till the evening when it was on the news. They only said that a woman had been killed in an isolated house near Crail, nothing much else, but even before they showed a picture of the house I kind of knew it was Jackie. But to go back to your question about why she didn’t phone me – she never phoned me at home. She knew the number, I always said she must keep it by her in case of an emergency, but she never used it. I usually phoned her from a public box because Peggie has ears like radar.’

‘I take it Peggie was your reason for not going to the police too?’ Stuart said with a touch of sarcasm.

Ted blushed. ‘Yes, she was,’ he said, hanging his head. ‘But not the way you are thinking. Let me explain how it was at the time.’

12 May was a beautiful day. Ted had been working out in the garden all afternoon. Peggie was indoors sitting by the patio doors doing a jigsaw on a large tray across her wheelchair.

Around five it became chilly, and he went in to prepare the evening meal. He put his head round the sitting-room door to ask Peggie if she’d like a cup of tea, and how she was getting on with the jigsaw. She ignored both questions so he went back into the kitchen.

Once the meal was ready and the table laid in the dining part of the kitchen, he turned on the television there, and went back into the sitting room to get Peggie.

‘Turn the sound up,’ she snapped at him as he wheeled her up to the table.

It was one of those moments that he had had so often in the last few years, when he fervently wished the riding accident had killed her. She hadn’t been the easiest of women to live with even before that. She was domineering, insensitive and self-centred and if she didn’t get her way she sulked for days on end. But she had been an asset to him in his business, the perfect hostess, a great cook, and it was she who was responsible for bringing so many clients to his firm of surveyors. She’d been a good mother too; both Robert and Joan had done very well at school and gone on to university. It was only when they left home for good, moving down to London to better-paid work than they could get in Scotland, that Ted realized he and Peggie had nothing left in common. She lived for riding, while he liked reading, painting and gardening.

The accident changed everything. Peggie had always cared about her appearance; she was an attractive, slender woman with long brown hair, and she wore her clothes with style. But once she knew she would never walk again she lost all interest in the way she looked. She resented that Ted had sold their beautiful old house in South Street, right in the centre of St Andrews, even though it was obvious she could never live there, and she said she hated the bungalow.

Robert and Joan had nothing but praise for it. They remarked on how the sun came in all day and they thought the view of the golf course beyond the garden was wonderful, for the old house had only had a small garden and no view at all.

But all Peggie did was complain. Ted understood her frustration at not being able to walk, but she didn’t even try to do things for herself. There was a constant whinge of ‘That must be done’, or ‘How many more times must I point out you haven’t done so and so yet?’ When he had to go out to do a survey, she was on to him the moment he got back. If he went into his study to write a report, she interrupted him. There was no reason why she couldn’t make a cup of tea herself, iron a few clothes sitting down, or even cook simple meals, for everything in the kitchen had been designed for a person in a wheelchair, but she refused point-blank, as if she were totally incapacitated.

Her weight had ballooned up to fourteen stone since returning home from hospital, and most days she didn’t even bother to brush her hair. She would stay in her nightdress if Ted didn’t insist he helped her dress. None of the carers he took on to help lasted long, for she was as nasty to them as she was to him. Even Robert’s and Joan’s visits home were getting less frequent. Peggie did always improve when they were there, but she morally blackmailed them, making them feel guilty they lived and worked so far away.

Ted turned up the sound on the television just as the local news began.

‘A woman was found dead this afternoon in a house near Crail in Fife,’ the pretty blonde newscaster said, and even before a shot of Brodie Farm came on the screen, he knew it was Jackie and it was all he could do not to scream out his shock and pain.

He supposed there must have been some more information about Jackie and that the police had arrested someone because he remembered Peggie questioning him.

‘Isn’t that the woman you’ve surveyed properties for?’ she asked. ‘I always thought there was something fishy about a Londoner wanting to come and live there. And she was the woman driving the car when a boy was killed! She had it coming to her. I bet she made her money from drugs.’

‘Shut your mouth, you stupid cow, you know nothing about her!’ Ted yelled at her, then jumping up from the table he ran into the bathroom where he was violently sick.

Over the next couple of days, as he waited for the whole story of what had happened to filter down to him, he was so distraught that he contemplated taking his car out into a remote place and killing himself with the exhaust fumes. He didn’t care what would become of Peggie, he didn’t even care if the whole world found out about his affair with Jackie. If he couldn’t have her in his life, he didn’t want to live.

But reason prevailed. He knew Robert and Joan would never understand his committing suicide and leaving their mother alone. Whilst he thought he ought to go to the police and tell them about his relationship with Jackie just in case he could help them in any way with their investigation, if Peggie found out she’d be impossible.

He had only managed to stay and care for her all these years because of the few hours of happiness he had with Jackie each week. Griefstricken and without that respite, he knew he couldn’t cope with Peggie raging and ranting at him all day about Jackie on top of everything else. And that was what she would do, for if she saw a chink in anyone’s armour, she liked nothing better than sliding the knife in. Ted knew he might snap and attack her, and he couldn’t put himself in that position.

From what he heard at the time it was an open and shut case that Laura had killed her anyway. He had never met Laura and all he could tell the police about her relationship with Jackie was hearsay. Belle and Charles knew everything about her, so he would leave it to them to pass it on.

‘So that’s why,’ Ted said with a shrug, when he’d finished saying his piece. ‘I dare say that makes me look cowardly, but at the time I felt it was the best course for everyone. I suppose too that I was so blinded by my own grief that it never occurred to me Laura might be innocent.’

‘You must have followed the trial very closely?’

‘Yes, I read all the accounts in the papers and watched the news.’

‘Did anyone ever say anything you knew to be untrue?’

‘Yes, it was brought up, I think by Roger, Jackie’s husband, that Laura owed Jackie a lot of money. I know for a fact that wasn’t true. Jackie gave Laura the start-up money for the shop. It was a gift.’

‘Really?’ Stuart exclaimed. ‘Are you absolutely sure of that?’

‘Totally. I was with Jackie the night she wrote the cheque. I actually posted the letter to Laura on my way home. She told me that she’d gone with Laura to see the shop in Morningside, and that over lunch the pair of them had costed out what she would need – the lease money, legal fees, rails, decorations and some advertisements to attract women to bring their clothes in. Laura was intending to go to the bank for a loan, but Jackie was afraid they would make the repayments larger than that kind of business could stand. Her exact words were ‘Bugger it, I’m going to give it to her. After all she’s been through she deserves it.’