Murder of Innocence Read online

  ‘Come off it, dear. Gus is not the one who—’

  ‘He may have pulled the wool over your eyes, but—’

  ‘He didn’t do it!’ Ellie rarely raised her voice, but she considered the circumstances exceptional. ‘The police cleared him. He had an alibi. His being here doesn’t worry Tod and I wouldn’t turn a cat out unprotected into this weather.’

  ‘You didn’t see him when he was blind drunk and vomiting all over the place.’

  ‘Did you?’

  The doorbell rang again, a key turned in the lock and in came Diana, dressed in her black and white professional gear, looking even angrier than usual. ‘Mother, we have to talk. I’ve just heard that …’ She was facing the kitchen and so caught sight of Gus. Diana was not normally the screaming type, but this time she did give a little yelp of horror. ‘Mother, he’s not still here?’

  ‘Come in, dear. Shouldn’t you be at work at this time of day? That’s right, Tod, make a pot of tea. I’m sure Gus will have one as well, if he’s not going out straight away.’

  ‘Mother, I can’t think what came over us on Sunday to let you take that man in for the night, but …’

  Mrs Dawes nodded. ‘Just what I was saying to your mother.’

  ‘… when I thought he was just a drunk, well, as I told Stewart on the phone, you’ve always been a sucker for lame ducks and would pass him on to the appropriate agency the next day, and he agreed with me that it was a good idea for you to learn from experience that these people never repay your generosity with anything but insult and you were a grown woman and had to make your own mistakes …’

  ‘Thank you, dear.’

  ‘… but when your builder – he’s doing a little job for me today at the flats – told me that this pervert was still with you and making himself quite at home, well, it’s time to put my foot down …’

  Mrs Dawes was nodding. ‘Absolutely, I agree. A pervert. They used to flog them.’

  ‘Oh, really.’ Ellie tried to keep her voice down. ‘Gus is not a pervert. He’s no saint, probably. I don’t say I particularly like him …’

  ‘I should think not!’ said Mrs Dawes

  Tod came in, carrying a mug of tea with enormous care not to spill it. Through the open doorway, Ellie could see Gus standing in the hallway, sagging at the knees, listening. Despairing.

  ‘Thank you, Tod,’ said Ellie. ‘That was very kind of you. Finish your breakfast and we’ll go shopping in a minute.’

  Tod didn’t look at the other two women. He kept his eyes on the floor and went out, closing the door behind him.

  Diana and Mrs Dawes broke out together, ‘You can’t let—’

  ‘This is just not—’

  ‘Sensible?’ said Ellie sweetly, sipping her tea and not bothering to offer either of them any. ‘I must remind you that this is my house and I invite whom I wish to stay. Gus is harmless enough, poor creature.’

  ‘A stinking pervert!’

  ‘Mother, it’s all around the neighbourhood, everyone’s talking about it. You just don’t realize how upset people are about this. Get rid of the man before …’

  ‘Before what?’

  Mrs Dawes wagged her forefinger at Ellie. ‘We’ve been friends for a long time, you and I, and everyone knows you’ve been under a great strain what with your husband’s illness and death. We can make allowances for you, acting completely out of character like this. But it’s got to stop or … well, I don’t like to think what will happen.’

  ‘Why, what could happen?’ asked Ellie with false sweetness.

  Diana shook her head. ‘The neighbours won’t like it.’

  Mrs Dawes nodded. ‘I’m sorry to have to tell you this, Ellie, but someone’s got to. There’s a lot of talk about you going around. I said, I honestly don’t believe that you would stoop to sleeping with that man, but …’

  ‘What?’ Ellie set her mug down with a clatter. ‘Oh, how could you!’

  ‘That’s just it, don’t you see?’ said Diana. ‘People always think the worst and given this man’s dreadful reputation …’

  ‘I wouldn’t dream of …’

  ‘Of course you wouldn’t,’ said Mrs Dawes in a soothing tone. ‘That’s what I said. Ellie wouldn’t, not in a thousand years. But that’s the word that’s going around and there’s no denying that since Frank died, you’ve been keeping company with a number of men who I know you say are just friends, but there’s no smoke without a fire and—’

  Ellie jerked to her feet.‘Lunch with my solicitor. Doing the church minutes with Archie, our church treasurer. Having the occasional drink or meal with my cousin Roy. Are these crimes?’

  ‘No, but perhaps a little too rich a diet for a new widow?’

  Ellie felt herself redden, because in fact all three of these men had expressed a desire to deepen their relationship with her since Frank died. Of course she had rebuffed them, but … She wanted to slap the two women’s self-satisfied, smirking faces. Both of them. She gripped her hands together. She was trembling.

  Diana put her arm around Ellie’s shoulders. ‘There, now. You see how it happens. We don’t want this sort of gossip, do we? Give the little man his bus fare to the hostel or wherever he wants to go and the talk will soon die down.’

  Mrs Dawes heaved herself to her feet. ‘That’s about the size of it. I’ll spread the word that you acted foolishly but now realize your mistake. Oh, and by the way, you asked about when you should transplant your snowdrops. Do it while they’re still green. Don’t wait till the leaves die down or they’ll never thrive.’

  ‘We’ll let ourselves out,’ said Diana, taking out her mobile to check for messages. ‘Whoops, I should have been at the flats ten minutes ago …’

  ‘And I still have my shopping to do.’

  They went out, closing the door with care behind them. Ellie heard Diana’s voice in the hall, telling Gus to get his things together as he was going now, that instant.

  What was Ellie to do? She did what she always did in times of trouble. She went to the window overlooking her back garden, so that she could look up the slope to the church. The rain had stopped, but gleaming droplets hung from every leaf and twig. The sun was coming out, picking out a rainbow in the sky. An omen, to those who could read it.

  She couldn’t read it. She had no idea at all what to do.

  Seven

  Buying a computer was easy with a gold card. Tod knew exactly what he needed. He wanted a few games, he said, but really he’d grown out of all that stuff and needed to have good Internet access nowadays. He didn’t want to go to one of the specialist computer shops, but had heard of a shabby little place out towards the hospital which had good after-sales service, really knew how to build a computer package, and didn’t rip you off.

  All Ellie had to do was stand back and admire when Tod talked computers with the people in the shop, and produce her card on demand. They would deliver and install the following day. Ellie thought, Oh, I’ve missed my computer lesson again. Then, But I think the plumber’s coming to me tomorrow or have I got in a muddle about who’s coming and when? I’ll sort it out later.

  She dropped her art-nouveau clock into the repairers for a clean and an adjustment. It had been losing about five minutes a day for a while and it was more than due a going-over. Now was as good a time as any.

  ‘Would your mother mind if I got you some new clothes?’ Tod said, ‘No, she wouldn’t mind. She said last night that I needed them, but she hadn’t a clue how she was going to afford them.’

  So clothes next. Again Tod was a joy to shop with. A replacement set of school clothes from M&S was easy, though the price of a new pair of black shoes almost stunned Ellie into silence. Then casual gear. Tod knew exactly what he wanted and he was clear that casual gear wasn’t to be bought from Marks & Spencer. He knew where to get the best, of course. Jeans, sweatshirt, a couple of T-shirts, new trainers. Tod wouldn’t remove his old cap even to try on a new one and Ellie didn’t insist. His hair was growing unevenly around
the shaved bit. She suggested a new haircut, but he would have none of it.

  As they passed the window of the Belgian chocolate shop Tod stopped, looking at the biggest box in the window. For his mother. Ellie produced her card yet again. Well, she could afford it … She’d always had to watch the pennies when Frank was alive and now she could spend freely, she found she didn’t really want to. She’d hardly spent any money at all since Frank died, except for the conservatory. Mind you, today had been expensive. But worth it.

  They caught the bus back to the Avenue and had lunch at the Sunflowers Café. Beefburger, beans and chips for Tod. Moussaka for Ellie.

  Their favourite waitress was on a trip round the world, and her replacement was a skinny little thing with wispy hair hanging over her eyes and no sense of how to apply lipstick, which was all over her mouth and round the edges. And blurred with it, too.

  Ellie asked the new girl if she knew how her predecessor was getting on in Australia. The girl shrugged. Not the talking kind.

  Tod finished off his meal and leaned back in his chair. His expression changed. ‘Hey, I can reach the floor with my feet.’

  Ellie grinned at him. ‘That’s your new trainers.’

  ‘Can I ask you something?’

  ‘Mm? Cup of tea? Coca-Cola?’

  ‘Coca-Cola. Why don’t you drive a car? Everyone else does.’

  Ellie blinked. ‘I never learned. You see, when I was growing up, there weren’t so many cars around and my father didn’t have one, even. He could walk to work and I walked to school. My mother didn’t work but stayed at home to look after us. Then my father died and we weren’t well off and I married Frank but even he didn’t have a car at first. Then I got a job near home so I didn’t have to have a car and …’

  ‘My mother said it was because you were afraid of the traffic. She says lots of older people are and that they shouldn’t be on the roads anyway.’

  ‘That’s probably true,’ said Ellie, thinking of the hours she’d wasted trying to learn how to drive. Her instructor had made it clear from the start that he didn’t expect her ever to pass her test, and that had sapped her confidence. Frank had never thought she’d be able to learn how to drive. Perhaps that was something she would never learn to do. Tod was looking at her with a calm, assessing gaze. As if he were seeing her for the first time.

  She returned his look, realizing with a chill that a stranger was sitting across the table to her. The bones of his face had sharpened, his mouth hardened, his chin become stronger. He was no longer a cuddly, mercurial little boy whom she could hug and spoil with chocolate biscuits.

  He was distracted by something outside the café and became his old self again. It had been merely a trick of the light, making him look like a teenager.

  She remembered that look, though. She must not assume he was the same person as he had been before. She also wondered whether that very clear judgemental gaze meant that he was over his early confusion of mind. There had been knowledge in his eyes, she thought.

  If so, it seemed likely that he had remembered – if he had ever forgotten and hadn’t just been shying away from the knowledge – everything that had happened to him.

  ‘Can I have a banana split?’

  ‘On top of all those chips? You’ll be sick.’

  ‘No, I won’t.’

  No, he probably wouldn’t.

  She said, in a very casual tone, looking out of the window as she spoke, ‘Did you see that nice policewoman at the station? I forget her name, but she had long red hair.’

  He shrugged, didn’t answer.

  ‘Did the police come to your house, then?’

  ‘I can’t remember. It’s no good their asking.’ He was looking at her without panic, without expression. Adult to adult. He wasn’t being rude, merely factual. He wasn’t going to remember or, if he did remember anything, he wasn’t going to talk about it.

  She could understand that. She nodded, accepting his position, and he relaxed.

  ‘Raining again,’ he said.

  ‘What am I going to do about Gus?’ She hadn’t meant that to come out as adult to adult, but it had.

  ‘I suppose he could live in my shed at the bottom of your garden.’

  Now he was back to being a child again. She smiled, agreed, and ordered his banana split.

  ‘You said it was rude to stare,’ said Tod, in an injured tone. Ellie looked where he was pointing. ‘It’s rude to point, too.’ Ellie knew both of the women, slightly; she didn’t know them well

  enough to remember their names, but they usually said hello when they passed in the street. They saw her looking at them and turned their backs on her. That hurt. She set her teeth and shifted her shopping from one arm to the other.

  ‘Is it because of me?’ asked Tod, in a small voice.

  ‘I think it’s because of Gus. They don’t like having him in the neighbourhood and they think my head needs seeing to because I took him in.’

  ‘Oh. I thought it might have been because of me.’

  ‘That will all have been forgotten about in a couple of days’ time.’

  She hoped. Glancing down at him, she caught a glimpse of an unchildlike, suffering expression on his face. She said, ‘Of course, we can give in, if we wish. We can let them see they’ve hurt us. We can turn Gus out and say bad riddance. We can lie down in the street and wave our legs in the air and scream for mercy. If we want to.’

  He grasped a fold of her coat, but kept his eyes down.

  ‘Do you want to give up?’ she asked.

  ‘Would you pay to send me away to boarding school?’

  She thought, Ouch. She said, ‘I’d have to think about that. I could afford it, I suppose, but would it be the right thing to do? Wouldn’t it be running away?’

  He sighed, long and deep, but released her coat. ‘If I lied down in the road and kicked my arms and legs in the air, I’d look just like an insect. Except I’d need another pair of arms or legs to make up the six. Or eight. Did you know a centipede doesn’t really have a hundred legs?’

  ‘Goodness. I was sure it had.’

  They came in sight of her front door. Gus was sitting on the doorstep, hands folded into his armpits, looking miserable.

  ‘Do you think,’ asked Tod, ‘that a grown-up ought to have as many chocolate biscuits as a boy of ten, nearly eleven, who’s growing fast?’

  ‘Depends how hungry he is, I suppose.’

  ‘Gus does look hungry. But couldn’t he have a sandwich first, to fill him up a bit, so he doesn’t need so many chocolate biscuits?’

  She laughed. ‘I’ll see what I can do.’

  So obviously she had to let Gus back into the house and prepare tea for them both. It seemed oddly quiet without the builders crashing and banging around the place. On the answerphone were the usual fraught messages from plumbers, central-heating engineers, Diana, Aunt Drusilla, Roy … and one from the curate, who proposed to call on her later that evening.

  There was also one from Kate, who’d picked up Ellie’s message on her answerphone. Kate had been at a meeting out of town which had finished early. Rather than go back into the City, she was calling it a day and proposed to pop in to see Ellie at tea time … and there she was on the doorstep.

  Ellie left Tod and Gus to compete for the last chocolate biscuit in the kitchen and took some mugs of Earl Grey tea into the living room. Kate was unlacing some expensive-looking high-heeled boots and easing her toes.

  ‘I think I must have done them up too tightly. Thought I was going to get Business-Class Syndrome if the meeting went on any longer … oh thanks, wow, that’s hot.’

  She leaned back in the big chair, throwing one arm up above her head. She was wearing a black trouser suit over a white blouse, rather like Diana. Diana bought from Harvey Nichols and sometimes she went a frill too far. Kate’s business clothes looked as if they’d come from a men’s tailor in Savile Row.

  Ellie also sank down into a big chair and closed her eyes, cupping her hands
around the mug, hooking a stool forward to put up her feet. ‘I took Tod shopping. Spent a fortune. He wanted to know if I’d stump up to send him to boarding school.’

  ‘You’re mad about the boy,’ said Kate, closing her eyes and relaxing. ‘Diana won’t half be jealous.’

  ‘Mm. Don’t care.’ But the barb struck home. Ellie had to admit, if she was honest with herself, that she was mad about Tod. That she cared for him far more than she cared for her grandson, and possibly more than … no, of course she loved her only daughter. Of course she did.

  But she did feel slightly guilty that she’d spent so much money on Tod when, come to think of it, she hadn’t bought anything for Diana or even for little Frank for a long time. Not since Christmas. And birthdays before that. She’d never asked Diana to join her out for a special lunch, or bought her a banana split …

  The thought of Diana being faced with a banana split made her laugh.

  ‘Oh dear.’

  ‘Oh-dear-what-in-particular?’

  ‘Just oh-dear-generally. I had a deputation from the Decent Women of this parish this morning, warning me that I was being gossiped about because of Gus. Telling me to get rid of him.’

  ‘I thought I saw him in the—’

  ‘Yes. He was out all day. Sitting on the front doorstep like a drowned rat when we came back from shopping.’

  ‘He does look a bit like a rodent, come to think of it.’

  ‘I know.’ Ellie flipped her own shoes off and wiggled her toes. ‘That’s better. Kate, I’m worried about Tod. I was going to see if I could get him some private counselling, but that’s no good if he won’t co-operate.’

  She told Kate how Tod had been reacting, from his early morning refusal to get out of bed, to his shifts of mood, one minute almost adult and the next childlike. And his stolid refusal to admit that he remembered anything.

  ‘Perhaps he really doesn’t remember,’ said Kate. ‘That knock on the head …’

  ‘I know. He knows, too. I think he has remembered but has chosen to put it out of his head. In many ways I can’t blame him.’