Nor All Your Tears (25 page)

He nodded, took another sip.

Some starlings descended on the grass by the running track.

Turning to me, he said incredulously, ‘Do you know, she told me that I should get a new car? She said that it was noisy and uncomfortable, and too unreliable.'

‘Golly.'

He snorted. ‘Exactly. The woman's clearly off her head. A damn close-run thing, I think.'

Half an hour later, and on the outside of rather more lemon squash than was entirely good for my driving skills, I left him because I was starting to get itchy feet to be back with Max. I passed the spot where the graffiti message about the ‘YM' and ‘MJ' had been written and then partially expunged. My eyes were automatically drawn to it, then they flicked down beneath it, as if not under my control. Another, partially erased message was some feet below it and slightly to the right. It was largely overwritten and very difficult to make out, but once seen quite clear.

MJ loves JG.

THIRTY-FOUR

‘
I
don't really see the relevance of this, and I'm pretty sure that the Inspector won't be very impressed, either.'

‘That's why I'm telling you first.'

Jean Abelson was sitting with me in my garden. We were drinking (unadulterated) fizzy lemonade and the day was overcast, the atmosphere sullen and brooding. It was the next morning; I had booked it as a day's annual leave a couple of weeks before, intending to set to and start decorating the downstairs cloakroom, but events had intervened; mind you, events always seemed to intervene when the prospect of decorating hove into view. I had told her not only of my discovery on the gymnasium wall, but also of Arthur Silsby's confession.

She went through it again. ‘This piece of graffiti . . .'

‘Graffito, is the technically correct term,' I intervened. It was not appreciated.

‘This
graffito
states that MJ loves JG.'

‘Yes.'

‘And you think that JG refers to Jeremy Gillman. That MJ and JG were having a love affair?'

‘Exactly. Now that gives you a motive for Marlene Jeffries's murder, and a suspect, too.' I had been doing a lot of thinking about this and had formulated some pretty red-hot theories.

‘Yvette Mangon?'

‘She found out the Marlene Jeffries was two-timing her and killed her.'

‘So who killed Yvette Mangon?'

I thought that for a trained police detective she was being a bit obtuse but said patiently, ‘Jeremy Gillman. When he found out what she had done to his lover.'

‘So who killed him?' It was a simple and inevitable question, and one that had given me a bit of a mental tussle. One, unfortunately, that I had not quite overcome. ‘Someone else. Hence the difference in MO,' I said weakly.

‘That would give us three murderers in all, then.'

‘Well, yes, I suppose it would.'

‘It wasn't so long ago – just after George Cotterill had died – that you were scoffing at my suggestion that he might have murdered Marlene Jeffries and someone else might have killed Yvette Mangon. Now, you can't seem to stop coming with theories involving any number of murderers.'

‘Yes, well . . .' I dropped my head.

‘And all this is based on a piece of graffiti . . .' She saw me open my mouth and corrected herself. ‘Graffito, written in spray paint on the back of the school gymnasium.'

‘And what Arthur Silsby said.'

‘Who is seriously ill, and unconscious half the time; and who said it to you, without anyone else present.'

I saw where she was coming from. ‘I can see that it wouldn't stand up in court, but it's a starting point, isn't it?'

‘Do you mind awfully if I don't tell the Inspector this?'

It was a blow, it has to be said. ‘You don't think much of it, then?'

She smiled just enough to reveal perfectly white, perfectly regular teeth. ‘Let me tell you what we already know.'

‘Fair enough. Would you like some more lemonade?' She said yes and I fetched some more. Then she began to tell me the progress they had made. She did it in a careful, thoughtful way, keen to leave nothing out.

‘The killing of Marlene Jeffries took place sometime between nine o'clock and midnight on the evening of the day before she was found; that was the same evening in which the school was open to parents. The pathologist is fairly sure she was battered viciously using the dumb-bells found on the scene, and then hoisted up on the rope; he also thinks she might have been still alive when that last bit happened. We have no witnesses and no forensic evidence to suggest anyone; in fact, we've got too much, because of the number of people who passed through the gymnasium and who had contact with Miss Jeffries.

‘We fairly soon discovered her connection with Yvette Mangon and she was interviewed very quickly. She did not tell us the precise nature of their relationship and we didn't ask because at that time we didn't know. Mr Silsby gave us no clue.'

‘He wouldn't have been happy about doing that, but I suppose it was a difficult subject for him to discuss,' I interrupted.

‘Very probably. Anyway, Yvette Mangon allowed us into what she said was her lodger's bedroom – the box room – and everything seemed to be entirely normal. I thought at the time that the room seemed a bit sterile, but took it no further. She wasn't keen to let us poke around the other rooms and we didn't press the point.'

‘No surprise there.'

‘We were left with very little to go on; we had neither the manpower nor the resources to even begin to work out who amongst all the people in the school that night might have had a motive to batter her to death; the house-to-house enquiries led nowhere, and investigation of her previous life gave no indication of anyone who might have meant her harm. It looked as if it was going to be long, slow investigation, and then Yvette Mangon was killed in quite a spectacular fashion. That they lived in the same house was clearly a strong link; that they lived in the way that they did, an even more suggestive one. As you've pointed out, both were frenzied attacks, which suggests that we might be dealing with some form of homophobic attacker. Yet Yvette Mangon's house showed evidence of having been searched. Was that some sort of bluff, intended to give the impression that it was the act of a burglar?'

‘I suppose it could be,' I chimed in, hoping to sound intelligent.

I failed, as became clear when she ignored my contribution completely and continued in a dust-dry voice, ‘Nothing was taken as far as we can tell, though. Certainly the cheque book was there, and her purse was only emptied on to the floor, spilling twenty-three pounds that were just left behind.'

‘Oh.'

‘And then there was interesting coincidence: both had been attacked with the instruments of their work; dumb-bells in the case of Marlene Jeffries, a drawing compass in that of Yvette Mangon. Yet even that wasn't quite right; Miss Jeffries had been killed by the dumb-bells, Miss Mangon merely mutilated.'

‘Tricky to kill someone with drawing compasses,' I put in.

‘That's what we concluded. There was definitely a message, though. Someone appeared to be killing teachers because of what they did, and yet that couldn't be all of it. Why these two? Someone who has it in only for homosexual teachers? They worked at the same school and they lived together, and we have yet to find any other connection. Their lives never crossed before Marlene Jeffries moved to Thornton Heath from Bromley six years ago.'

‘How did the murderer get into the house?'

‘Nothing subtle. As you recall, the house is end of terrace; he climbed the fence from the side alley, broke the glass in the back door, unlocked it and just went in. She was presumably up by then because she was dressed; she had been off sick since the murder of her partner, so wasn't going to go to work. As far as we can tell, he charged in and surprised her where she was later found in the sitting room.'

‘Who found her?'

‘The window-cleaner. He was so shaken up, he had to spend the night in hospital, but he's clearly not in the frame for killing her as he has an alibi for Dr Bentham's estimated time of death.'

I didn't tell her my own personal opinion of how much weight she should place on such an estimate. She had finished her lemonade but assented when I asked her if she wanted yet more. When I returned she was lying back taking in the sun, her suit jacket on the chair beside her. She looked a little feline in the degree of contentment she seemed to exude.

‘And so to Jeremy Gillman's death. You're right that it fits the pattern and yet, in important ways, doesn't. He is a teacher, but he is male. The murder wasn't particularly frenzied, but there was a frog in his mouth – one that Dr Bentham says couldn't possibly have got there without the killer, or someone else, inserting it after Mr Gillman was dead. It looked as if someone was deliberately trying to make it look as if the motive was to kill teachers – and perhaps it was.'

I snorted. ‘Not a particularly good job. A slightly tenuous connection, wouldn't you say?'

She was looking closely at me, her expression neutral. She said simply, ‘Except that Jeremy Gillman was a practising homosexual.' Surprised – nay, bloody staggered – I found nothing to say. She continued, ‘He wasn't living with anyone, but we have found and interviewed his boyfriend – a bank manager in Addiscombe. He has an alibi – from his wife – for the time of the death and we do not consider him a suspect.'

I was still uncharacteristically quiet. She said, ‘So, you see, it's difficult to take the
graffito
seriously.'

All I could say (and that in a rather embarrassed tone) was, ‘Of course.'

‘But we are left with three teachers at the same school, all of them associated in their deaths in some way with a symbol of their speciality, all of them non-heterosexual. That's starting to sound like quite a compelling link.' I didn't think any argument on my part would be either welcomed or valuable. She added, ‘As for Mr Silsby's ramblings, I would say there probably is some truth in what he says. Gillman was a very frustrated man, eager for advancement, and according to his surviving colleagues, intensely envious of Mr Silsby. I don't see how it's relevant, though.'

I would have agreed with her, except that the front door opened and then closed. Max's voice called out, ‘I'm home.'

I stood up and went to the back door to kiss her; this we did, but it was cut abruptly short when she caught site of Jean Abelson. Max's face took on a dark and dangerous expression. ‘What's
she
doing here?' she hissed, none too quietly.

‘We were discussing the murders and about what Mr Silsby said and . . .'

‘Were you really?' Her eyes were alive with anger. She seemed to swell up slightly, to shake, to become somehow inflamed, but with one last venomous look at the Sergeant, she pulled away from me and stalked out of the kitchen, saying over her shoulder, ‘I've got to get back to work.'

‘But you've only just got in,' I pointed out, following her.

I got to the front door just as it was slammed in my face. I stared at it for a few seconds, trying to make sense of it all as Jean Abelson came into the hall behind me. She said in a quiet voice, ‘I think I'd better get back to work, too. I'm really sorry.'

THIRTY-FIVE

W
ell, I was sorry, too, although I didn't quite know why. During the course of the next hour I repeatedly rang the vets' surgery but apparently Max was having a busy time of it resuscitating guinea pigs and whatnot, so couldn't come to the phone. When I insisted that I absolutely had to speak to her, the receptionist went away and this time there was a pause of five minutes before she came back on the line to tell me (and in a voice that was noticeably embarrassed) that Max was going to go back to her own house that evening, and that she would be grateful if I would leave her alone. It was to no avail that I remonstrated.

Max was being stupid but there was nothing I could do about it. Her refusal to speak to me was childish and potentially was going to be disastrous; she was leaving herself unprotected when Tristan was out there and stalking her. In desperation, I went immediately around to the vets' practice, which was located in Beulah Road, but I was told that she had left for the day, feeling unwell. I went to her house, in Whitehorse Lane, but there was no answer; inevitably I looked around for Tristan and, equally inevitably, saw no one. Perhaps she had gone to her parents'. I wondered and thought about ringing them, then thought again. We were not on particularly amiable terms (they thought the age gap too great) and I didn't especially want to have them intruding any more than was absolutely necessary into the private lives of Max and me. Frustrated and worried, I sat in the car for a while, wondering what to do; the only thing I knew for certain was that I wasn't going to start decorating the bloody downstairs cloakroom any time soon.

My journey back home took me past Bensham Manor School; it was, I suppose, some sort of displacement activity that had me driving in, almost on automatic pilot. It was a quarter to four. As I parked in one of the visitors' spaces – still unadorned by any local government dignitaries, I noted – and got out. I went around the main building to the back of the gymnasium. Why had I come? Well, I suppose part of me wondered if I would catch Dad there so that I could chinwag with him, and part of me wanted to look at that wall again.

Dad wasn't there; the vegetable plot was deserted, save for a black-and-white cat of scrawny appearance who was doing his business in between the parsnips. I turned my attention to the wall. As I approached it, I had the distinct feeling that the graffiti had been supplemented; presumably some self-proclaimed ‘artist' had been at play whilst Mr Silsby languished in Mayday Hospital, his liver slowly turning to mush. Try as I might, however, I couldn't identify what had changed. I went to the drainpipe, searching again for the graffito, finding it fairly easily. There it was –
MJ loves JG
. What did it mean? The simplest explanation was that
MJ
and
JG
weren't Marlene Jeffries and Jeremy Gillman, but two other teachers or pupils at the school. It seemed odd that the conjunction should be scribed just beneath the announcement that
YM loves MJ
; surely that must have been referring to the two teachers . . .