Murder of the Bride (17 page)

Revelations

Rex was itching to
confront Mabel Thorpe. However,
it was not his place to do so, aside from which, much of his information had been gathered outside the official scope of the police investigation. And so he waited impatiently while Mrs. Thorpe completed the writing test in the kitchen vacated by the caterers. In the meantime, he wandered about the great hall attempting to form a cohesive picture with the disparate parts assembled in the case.

At last, Sergeant Dartford followed Mabel out of the second wing, ready to call the next person. Rex caught his eye and raised his eyebrows in question. Dartford responded with a curt shake of his head. Negative result.

“She may just be adept at disguising her writing,” Lucas said, appearing at Rex's elbow.

“Her driving licence. That'll have her signature on it.”

“Good thinking. Wait here.”

Lucas returned with the polycarbonate photocard showing Mabel's digitally reproduced signature on it. “Well, what do you know? Spiky capital
M
, as on the anonymous notes. Similar, anyway.”

Rex studied it carefully and concurred, just as Dartford was rounding up Roger Litton. Lucas motioned his sergeant over to their side of the hall.

“Suspend further testing for now,” he directed. “We have a suspect in the writing of the two notes.” He held the photocard up to Dartford.

“That's good news,” the sergeant said. “I wasn't getting very far with the writing samples.”

In unison, and without further discussion, the three of them went to accost Mabel. The inspector returned her license with his thanks and asked her sons to permit him and his colleagues a few minutes in private with their mother. Dudley got up from the sofa reluctantly, Timmy meekly. When they had left, the men sat in a semicircle surrounding her chair, where she sat primly with her beige cloche hat resting on her knees.

“You are not under arrest,” the inspector assured her with be
nign, freckled charm. “However, the signature on your driving
licence bears a resemblance to the writing on the note in Thomas Newcombe's briefcase. We wondered if perhaps you were in communication with him.”

“I was not. I never knew him.”

“You left Newcombe Court this morning just after nine to collect Gwendolyn Jones from the station in Derby.”

“That is correct. Victoria Newcombe was busy getting ready for the wedding ceremony, so I offered to go.”

How convenient, thought Rex.
And you moved Carter's whisky bottles to create a diversion while you tampered with the cake before leaving for the station
.

“You stopped off at Worley Station first,” the inspector pursued.

“Why would I do that?” Mabel asked with a plausible show of surprise.

“To bring Mr. Newcombe to the church service and reception?”

“I have already told you, I didn't know him.”

“You didn't know Mrs. Jones and yet you went to pick her up from the station.”

“She was expected. As far as I know, nobody knew Mr. New
combe was attending his daughter's wedding, unless it was a closely
kept secret, meant to surprise Polly.”

“Somebody knew,” Lucas told her.

Mabel looked around the room. Timmy was helping himself to coffee from the urn and had his back to her. Dudley, however, was watching the proceedings intently from where he sprawled in a distant armchair.

Lucas gave a hesitant cough, and Rex guessed what was coming next.

“Supposing the baby is not Timmy's—” The inspector leveled his blue gaze upon Mabel.

What little color remained in her face suddenly leached out of it. “What do you mean?”

The inspector turned to Rex.

“Timmy contracted mumps as an adolescent,” Rex obliged.

Anger put the color back in her cheeks. “How did you get hold of that information?”

“The mumps got me thinking. You would never knowingly murder your own grandchild.”

“Of course I wouldn't! What are you talking about?”

“Calm down, Mrs. Thorpe,” Lucas instructed and continued. “You
nursed your husband through his leukemia. You were uniquely qualified to add the arsenic used in his treatment to the icing when Stella Pembleton was called out of the kitchen this morning.”

Mabel stared at him, her skin a bright crimson.

“After the victims were taken away in the ambulance and the reception room was cleared, you snuck in there to get rid of the evidence. Someone saw you go in,” he bluffed.

“I went in to air the room, which was fetid.”

Now Rex knew for sure she was lying. “I had already opened the window,” he informed her. “You removed the miniature bride and
groom from the cake and threw them into the fireplace. You disposed
of the foil base somewhere and hid the leftover cake crumbs and icing
in the dovecote up on the tower roof in the hope birds would eat them so no trace would be left. I'd bet my last Guinness those remains contain the arsenic we've been looking for.”

Lucas dispatched Dartford with a brusque sweep of the hand. “SOCO probably collected them, but check anyway.” The sergeant shambled off toward the spiral stairway in evident reluctance.

“I further suspect that crumbs will be found in your pocket,” Rex resumed.

“Please remove your jacket,” the inspector directed Mabel.

She did so and, snapping on a pair of latex gloves, Lucas carefully turned out the pockets of her beige suit, where tiny crumbs and icing stuck to the lining. He scraped them up for analysis. “What are crumbs doing in your pocket?” he asked.

“I wanted to feed the birds.”

“Up on the tower?”

“No, I was never on the tower. I threw the crumbs out the downstairs window for the sparrows. I didn't know they had arsenic on them.”

“The DJ saw you go up the stone steps,” Rex informed her.

“He must be mistaken. He didn't strike me as being particularly bright.”

Rex had to give her credit. Mabel Thorpe was nobody's fool. Wringing a confession out of her was not going to prove easy. He ploughed on, so as not to lose momentum, in the hope she would trip herself up under the unrelenting pressure.

“Inconveniently, Aunt Gwen did not eat the cake, so you fabricated a note from an admirer. Imagine her surprise when she sees you at the top of the tower instead. Harder to imagine how you got her up on the parapet. Did your hat pin provide the necessary threat? Is that what you used on Tom Newcombe?”

“These accusations are insane!” She turned to Inspector Lucas for support, but received no sympathy from that quarter, only a severe expression of rebuke.

“Once you found out Mr. Newcombe was alive, you had to add him to your death list. Now that Timmy was marrying into money, you saw a chance to live a life of ease and help Dudley out of his financial difficulties. You brought charcoal tablets to help absorb the poison, having warned Timmy not to eat more than a tiny morsel of cake since he was suffering from what he termed a ‘funny tummy.' Incidentally, do you routinely carry charcoal tablets around in your handbag?”

Mabel's impassive face gave nothing away. “I do. It's good for stomach upsets.”

“And just to be sure, you've been trying to inure him from arsenic poisoning by feeding him small doses over a period of time.”

“I never.”

“Mrs. Thorpe, Timmy exhibits outward physical signs of chronic exposure,” Rex said, lightly dismissing her outrage. “His nails, for example. Dudley, you knew, would not touch the cake. You didn't care about Mrs. Newcombe, Polly, or even the baby, which you suspected wasn't Timmy's and didn't know was Dudley's.”

“It can't be!”

“The child is, indeed, his.”

Mabel jumped to her feet. “You're lying.” She spun around wildly. “Is it true?” she screamed at Dudley. “Is Polly's baby yours? Why didn't you tell me?”

Dudley just stared at her, as if her current reaction were reason enough. Helen, Carter, and the Littons sat up in their seats while Meredith and Reggie watched the drama from a secluded sofa.

“What is she going on about?” Timmy asked no one in particular, the cup of coffee he was holding rattling in its saucer.

Inspector Lucas approached him and put a hand on his shoulder, preparing to lead him away and, Rex assumed, give him the bad news about Polly's baby. Shrugging the inspector off, Timmy handed him the cup of coffee and strode over to his brother.

“You bastard,” he cried, pulling Dudley out of his armchair by the collar. They stood glaring at each other. Timmy had the advantage of blind rage.

“It meant nothing, I swear!” his twin entreated.

“Stop it. Stop it!” Mabel cried out, but not before Dudley received a blow from his brother that knocked him back in his chair. She flew to Dudley's side while Timmy stared at his fist in amazement and flexed his fingers to make sure nothing was broken.

“I dare say you had reason to strike your brother, Timmy,” his mother said, kneeling on the rug and dabbing at Dudley's cut lip with a paper napkin. “But I warned you against marrying that slut.”

“It's none of your business. You had no right to interfere!”

“Such ingratitude! Everything I've done has been for you and your brother.”

“You forced me to drink tea every morning, which you said was fortified with vitamins, and all the time I felt sicker. Were you trying to kill me?”

“Of course not. I was trying to protect you from a poisoner. That's what I've always done! Taken care of you.”

“Was Dudley in on this plot to get rid of the Newcombes?” Rex asked, attacking her Achilles' heel—her sons.

“No! Dudley didn't know I'd kept his father's Trisenox.”

There it was. In her anxiety to protect Dudley, she had confessed to the arsenic.

“Mother, are you stark raving mad?” Timmy lunged at her, but Rex stepped into his path.

“Timmy, I believe your mother thought the baby was Mack Simmons' but waited to do anything until after the wedding, when she was assured of your future at Newcombe Court.”

“I don't care about Newcombe Court. Polly's the only girl who ever loved me!”

Inspector Lucas set down Timmy's coffee cup.

“Mrs. Thorpe,” he addressed Mabel in a solemn voice that belied the glow of satisfaction in his pale blue eyes. “I'm arresting you on suspicion of murder in the deaths of Reverend Alfred Snood, Gwendolyn Newcombe Jones, Thomas Newcombe, Victoria Newcombe, and the attempted murder of Polly Newcombe and her unborn child.”

What's in a Name?

“A productive day's work,”
Inspector Lucas congratulated himself
after his sergeant had recalled PC Perrin from Aston and taken Mabel Thorpe into custody, the suspect protesting her innocence and admitting only to having had arsenic in her possession at home. Her two sons left shortly thereafter, as did the Littons and Bobby Carter, who wanted to be by Polly's bedside with Timmy.

“I felt sure Carter was implicated,” the inspector told Rex, hovering by the portcullis door, on the point of departure.

“Whether he helped Tom Newcombe disappear, we may never know,” Rex replied.

“One thing for sure, Mabel Thorpe will never benefit from her crimes. Even if she retracts her confession about the arsenic, which she says was stolen from her house, we have the crumb samples found on her person, the notes which an expert can compare with her writing, and the hat pin, conforming to the instrument used in the murder of Thomas Newcombe.”

“She vehemently denies murdering the victims,” Rex said, playing devil's advocate.

“Why did she keep the arsenic after her husband died? Rather irresponsible, if you ask me. She must've thought it might come in handy one day. Timmy Thorpe is heartbroken over his mother. Showed spunk when he turned on his brother.”

“Not surprisingly. Dudley deceived his wife as well. I can only imagine the reception he'll get when he arrives home. Will you drop the charges against Donna?”

Lucas sighed magnanimously. “Staging your own kidnapping in an attempt to extort money is a serious business, but no one got hurt, and you say she was helpful in the investigation.”

“She was the one who told me about the arsenic used in Dr. Thorpe's cancer treatment, and she provided me with the first clue that her husband might be Polly's father.”

When Rex had spoken to Dr. Williamitis on the phone and discovered that the canceled check hidden at Mabel's house might be for a termination, he remembered the argument Jasmina had said she witnessed between Dudley and Polly—apparently a lovers' tiff.

Rex and Lucas took leave of each other. It had been a long and eventful night, and Rex was beginning to feel how the inspector looked—drawn and frayed. He rounded up Helen and their young houseguests.

“Some wedding,” Reggie said, exiting the front door.

The rain, Rex was pleased to see, had stopped.

“Are you sure you still want to get married?” he asked Helen on the way to the car.

“What are you getting at, Rex?” she asked, blue eyes narrowing at him. “Are you getting cold feet?”

“Och, no!” He decided this wasn't the moment to admit that he was. “I just mean, well, as far as weddings go, this one was a bit of a disaster, don't you think?”

“You could call multiple murders a disaster,” she agreed.

“I suppose now we'll have to go to the funerals.” It was the respectful thing to do, after all. Rex wondered if he could get away with wearing the same suit.

Helen looked at him strangely. “That's all right, dear. I think it might be better if I attend the funerals by myself. Murder seems to have a habit of turning up whenever you're around.”

Rex couldn't argue with that fact, and didn't try.

The four of them piled into the blue car, Helen at the wheel.

“I wonder if the Malt Shovel in Aston is still serving bar food,” Rex said. “It's got a comfortable lounge.”

“How do you know?” Helen asked, pulling her seat belt over her
shoulder.

“I was there this evening for the purpose of research. A local from the village knew about Tom Newcombe's affair with the Romanian au pair.” Rex was curious to see if old Jessop had been allowed back into the establishment. “In any case, it's a fine old pub. Definitely worth a visit.”

“Or, in your case—two,” Helen said dryly. “And I'll just bet the beer is good.”

“Fine ales, and cider for you.”

“Oh, all right then. You've managed to twist my arm. Okay with
you two?” she asked the young couple in the back, who responded enthusiastically.

“Don't care if I never see that horror again,” Meredith said with a backward glance at Newcombe Court as they took off down the driveway lined with statues shining ethereally in the gloom. “None of this might've happened if Polly hadn't tried to hide the truth about the baby.”

“She didn't know her uncle Bobby had paid Simmons off,” Rex explained. “But if she suspected her mother of having had something to do with his disappearance, she may have kept the truth about Dudley and the baby from her out of spite. Or shame.”

“So she decided to palm the baby off on Timmy,” Helen took over the narrative. “Victoria was happy that her daughter had finally settled down. Everyone was happy, except Mabel. Seems she was not going to let Polly ruin her son's life, but nor was she going to pass up the opportunity of a lifetime. Once Timmy was married into the Newcombe family, he stood to inherit a modest fortune—once a few people were out of the way. And what better time to eliminate the other side of the family than at the wedding?”

“Tom Newcombe, eager for a reconciliation with his daughter, agreed to the rendezvous at Worley Station,” Rex pursued, gazing out of the passenger window at the dark countryside. “Returning for the first time from Romania, Worley was his fatal destination. A hat pin through the heart and he fell over the bridge. The attack proved efficacious enough for Mabel to repeat it later at the top of the tower. Evidently, she did not anticipate Polly's tenacious hold on life. But for Polly and the baby, she would have succeeded in her mission to eradicate all Newcombe blood.”

“So sad for Polly,” Meredith lamented. “I wonder how Madonna will feel about Dudley's illegitimate child. She and Polly used to be best friends.”

“Madonna?” Rex queried.

“She goes by Donna now, but back in school she was Madonna.
We had the same initials: Meredith Matthews and Madonna
Maddox. Her mum was a big Madonna fan, had all her albums and dressed just like her, which embarrassed Donna no end.”

Rex recalled the fake diamond studs in Susan's ear. “I see,” he said, beginning, indeed, to see what he had missed. Now all the pieces tumbled neatly into place.

When the car reached the pub, he told Helen and their young guests to go ahead and order, explaining he had some unfinished business to attend to in the village. As he took off for Donna Thorpe's house, he could feel his blood roiling from having been so roundly had, his good nature taken advantage of by a scheming and vindictive woman, one even more evil in her way than he had supposed Mabel to be.

If ever two people deserved each other, it was Donna and Dudley Thorpe. Theirs had been a marriage made not in heaven but hell.