The Bad Samaritan (24 page)

“And that was—when?”

“Getting on for half past ten. The evening news had been at ten past ten, and I'd heard the item about the illegal immigrants who had died. It was quite horrible. I'd wondered whether Stephen was involved. He was, wasn't he?”

“Yes, he was.”

“I knew that much about what he was up to, you see. Anyway, I walked down to the Ilkley Road, crossed it, keeping my eye skimmed all the time for Moggs, dreading to see him hit by a car or already lying dead in the road. It's a horrible sight, isn't it, a dead cat in the middle of the road? They're so fragile . . . . The edge of the park is only five or six minutes from our house, and as soon as I got there I started calling for Moggs. It was dark, of course, and I was rather afraid. It's not a place most people would willingly go on to at night, particularly women. First I kept near the road, close to the lights, but then I thought that defeated the purpose of looking for him because Moggs certainly didn't need street lights . . . . Anyway, I'd gone away from the road and was over towards the tennis courts when I jumped with fear. I'd thought I heard shouts.”

“Where from?”

“From the other end of the park—from the edge of the clump of trees on the rise. It was the fight, of course. I was terrified. All those nasty incidents on the park—you know about them, of course—came flooding into my mind. I started to hurry to the road, but the quickest route to it didn't take me away from the fight but towards it. And the fight seemed to be coming in that direction. They were coming away from the trees and towards the road, one running, the other following. And as I looked and began to hurry away in the other direction I thought that one of the men looked like Stephen.”

She stopped, remembering. Oddie and Charlie left her a moment or two to collect her thoughts. In those moments Charlie
suddenly asked himself: why is she telling us this? He could not find an answer.

“What did you do?” Oddie asked at last, gently.

“I hid behind a tree. I thought, you see, that I probably wasn't in any danger. I thought it was most likely a husband or a boyfriend of someone that Stephen had . . . To tell you the truth I was pleased he was getting what he deserved. I wanted to watch it.” She looked at them, not pleading, but to see if they understood. “I'm sorry, it sounds disgusting but that's the truth of it . . . . The other man was doing all sorts of things with his outstretched hands and arms—like men I've seen on television slicing bricks in half and that kind of thing. He was using his feet too—like a modern ballet. Stephen was crying out. I knew it was him by now. Then suddenly there was a blow to the head and it was all over. Stephen was lying stretched out on the ground, and the other man was running away in the direction of the Ilkley Road.”

“What did you do?”

“I stood there under a tree for a moment or two, uncertain what to do. The sensible thing would have been to go straight home. I don't know why I didn't, or why . . . I walked over to where Stephen was lying. He was quite unconscious, and I could see blood on him. But he was breathing. I stood there looking down on him. A great wash of feeling came over me, as if I was drowning, and everything he had ever done, to me, to Dad, to others, came over me like a big wave . . . . I can't explain the feeling, but it seemed somehow too little . . . . After
all
he'd done: the hateful things, the criminal things, the humiliating things. I think it must have been what the victims feel when a judge imposes a very light sentence on someone who has done really dreadful things to them. It was how he'd treated
everyone
that I was thinking of, not just me. The heartlessness, the hypocrisy,
the double-dealing. It seemed too little . . . . I can't explain what I did,
why
I did it. I don't think I thought. But somewhere in the back of my mind there may have been the idea that if I didn't do it
now
, then so good an opportunity would never come again . . . . I bent down and took from his pocket the little knife I knew he always carried. It's small but very sharp—deadly. I pressed the catch and the blade sprung forward. He stirred. I knew if I was going to do it, it had to be then. I bent down and slit his throat.”

There was utter silence in the little room. Oddie said, at last, “Just like that?”

“Just like that. Without any emotion.”

“What did you do then?”

“I stood for a moment watching him die. Only that way could it seem
enough
.” She looked at them to see if she had shocked them, but they remained impassive. “Then I walked back across the park on my way home, calling to Moggs all the time. I slipped the knife down a drain when I got to the road, and I held a scarf in my hand to hide the fact that my hands were bloody. Moggs was on the front doorstep when I got home—it's always the way, isn't it? I ran water into an old plastic bowl and washed the blood off myself. I've seen all those police things on television, you know, and I knew they can trace the tiniest bit of blood left in a sink. Then I went out again and disposed of the bowl in a skip, and the scarf too. Then I went home and began to prepare for all the pretence that would be necessary the next day. I decided I had to at least pretend to be the devoted wife. If I'd told the truth about him and me I'd be the first to be suspected. And what would Dad do if I was sent to prison? So I thought hard about what I'd say to you when you came. But I slept—I slept very well. I didn't have any doubts or pricks of conscience, and I haven't had since either. That's odd, isn't it? Someone who used to be a regular churchgoer. I suppose it's a measure of the sort of
man Stephen was . . . . Is that enough? Will your tape have all that?”

“Yes, that's enough,” said Oddie. He moved to switch off the tape, but Charlie put out his hand to stop him. He still hadn't found the answer to his question. He looked at the woman opposite, at her only good feature—her deep eyes, almost black: eyes that looked at him and told him nothing, except that what they probably concealed was pain, loneliness and the emptiness of being unloved. It seemed almost an act of cruelty to ask her anything more, but Charlie felt he had to chance his arm.

“Why did they call your father ‘Onions'?” he asked.

She looked at him, quickly and sharply.

“What? What do you mean? Why on earth are you asking me about that?”

“His nickname in Abbingley. ‘Onions.' Was it because he could cry at will at those revivalist meetings he went in for? Real, wet tears like he turned on for us?”

“I don't understand. Why are you saying those nasty things about him?”

“When did he find out that Stephen had sold his beloved business, and when did he start hating him as much as you did?”

“He didn't! He loved him!”

“Oh no, he didn't. Because it wasn't your cat you went to look for on Herrick Park, was it? It was your father. And by the time you found him he'd killed your husband.”

The great eyes suddenly filled with tears and she fell forward on to the table, racked with sobs. They waited, listening to her barely distinguishable words. The only ones Charlie thought he could make out were, “Why did you let me go on? How did you know?”

I
t was several weeks before Charlie had any conversation about the case with Rosemary Sheffield. When he did he said rather more than, strictly, he ought to have done, mainly because in the course of the case he had come not only to like her but to trust her too. And it was not as though there was any prospect of the case coming to court.

It happened one Sunday, when he was jogging around Herrick Park, as he generally did on days off, though in no fanatical spirit. Running down the gentle incline from the small wooded area, very near the place where Stephen Mills's body had lain, he saw the Reverend Sheffield making pedantic little dabs at the door handle of his car with a cloth; and he saw Rosemary come out, a puppy in her arms. She kissed her husband and raised her hand as he drove off on his way to morning service. Charlie in turn raised his hand to her, then turned aside from his usual route and ran over to her. They both knew perfectly well what they were going to talk about, and when Rosemary had set the puppy down safely in the front garden they sat against the garden wall of the vicarage that abutted the road, Charlie panting slightly.

“They say the old man has been institutionalised—is that true?” Rosemary asked. Charlie nodded.

“Yes. It was the devil's own job to get a place for him at a secure establishment, but in the end, one had to be found. These days it's no good being mentally ill—you have to have cut someone's throat as well.”

“Dorothy's had a lot of well-wishers from the congregation.”

Charlie laughed cynically.

“I
bet
she has! They left her pretty well alone when she was the neglected and mistreated wife.”

“Yes, we all did. To be fair, I was as guilty as anyone.”

“And to be fair on the other side, she didn't want to have much to do with a church that could have Stephen as an honoured member.”

Rosemary nodded.

“Yes, that always worried me too, but what could you do? He was, to all intents and purposes, an upright citizen . . . . She told one of the well-wishers that she had confessed to the murder. Is that true?”

“Yes, it is.”

“I believe a lot of people do that during murder enquiries. Is that why you didn't just accept her confession?”

“We always look closely at confessions. They have to stand up in court . . . .” Charlie pulled himself up. He was starting to sound like a PR man. “But, well, the fact is that we very nearly did accept it, at least for a time. The fact is that most of what she told us the first time we talked to her was lies. The devoted husband and son-in-law stuff was the only thing she could think of to shield her father—and herself, by then his accomplice. Most of what she told us during the second interview was true. But not all. And there were significant gaps. You know, you sit there listening
to someone confess, and if everything fits neatly with the facts—and it did in her confession, mainly because it was very
nearly
the truth—then your mind doesn't make the leap away from the facts to ask itself the bigger questions.”

“Such as?”

“Such as: why is she making this confession at all? We had nothing on her, beyond her lying about her relationship with her husband—perfectly easily explained, when her husband had just been murdered. But we no sooner confronted her with those lies than she upped and confessed.”

“She's such a depressed and depressing little thing that I think I'd have decided that she just didn't have the gumption to go on lying any more.”

“I'm not sure I agree with the assessment,” said Charlie thoughtfully. “Maybe you don't know her very well.”

Rosemary nodded.

“I don't. I admit it.”

“There's more
there
than you allow for. Though what exactly it
is
I'm not sure I could say. But however you assess her character, I would have expected her to go on protesting her innocence to protect the position of her father, who depended on her. That's one person she loves, even if that love isn't returned with any great enthusiasm. As they always say: he's all she's got. Her thought, her solicitude, were all for him. And yet her confession, her arrest, would leave him alone. So at one point I asked myself: why?”

“And the answer?”

“The only convincing answer I could come up with was that the alternative was worse.”

“His arrest and trial?”

“Yes. Of course it hasn't come to that because he's been found unfit to plead.”

There was a hesitancy in Charlie's manner that made Rosemary ask, “And are you happy with that?”

“Happy? Oh yes, happy we don't have to put an eighty-year-old on trial and imprison him for the few years he has left in a thoroughly unsuitable institution.”

“Well, to put it another way: do you think it was the right decision?”

Charlie sat in the dim sunlight, pondering.

“The psychiatrist was the best of the bunch we have to call on: sensible, down to earth, not one of those who's crazier than the patient. He examined Unwin over a two-month period. At the end he was willing to declare him unfit to plead. Everyone breathed a sigh of relief.”

“But it wasn't an open-and-shut matter?”

“No, it wasn't. He had several reservations which he put in his report, no doubt to satisfy his professional conscience. There were aspects of Unwin's behaviour that were not in accordance with the usual progress of Alzheimer's disease or senile dementia. But he was the first to admit that you can't be dogmatic about such things. And the fact is that the idea that Unwin is senile depends on his behaviour since the murder, his daughter's testimony—one of the places where she was lying, I suspect—and a few stories Mills told about him to the St Saviour's congregation. How often had you seen him in the last six or seven years?”

“Just the once—the time I told you about.”

“I should think that was true of everyone. His contemporaries had either died off or were in a similar situation to his own. Old people do get forgetful, confuse names, muddle up past and present. Mills could no doubt have told true stories about the old man that suggested he was far gone mentally.”

“But what makes you think he wasn't?”

“The tears when he heard about Mills's death. First I thought they were genuine grief. But later I heard from you about his nickname, ‘Onions.' And I wondered whether this wasn't a satirical commentary on his being able to produce tears at will.”

“It was,” said Rosemary with relish. “The real waterworks. ‘Oh Lord, I have been a great sinner!' with abundant liquid evidence of repentance.”