A Dreadful Past (9 page)

‘Yes,' Carmen Pharoah nodded, ‘yes, we did know that.'

‘A small farm but a farm just the same,' Anne Graham continued. ‘So that gives you some idea of how much land they had and which they called “the garden”. Have you been there?'

‘Not personally,' Carmen Pharoah admitted. ‘In fact, none of the present team of officers have been to what was the Middleton house. We have no reason to … so much will have changed in the last twenty years. It's not as though it's a fresh crime scene.'

‘Well, if you do go there you'll see what I mean. They had money. Lots of it.' A note of resentment crept into Anne Graham's raspy voice, making it seem even more high-pitched in Carmen Pharoah's view. ‘They had had an education; I left a real dump of a council school at sixteen because I was only good enough to stack shelves in the supermarket. Then I married a rat and when I did that whatever my life amounted to was over. I left him eventually but not until after three children and a few broken ribs later. All my children have been in trouble with the police and only one of them has not been in prison … not yet, anyway, but by the way he's going he's on his way to porridge in the Big House. It's just a matter of time. He's in his forties now and he just can't keep out of petty crime. So I ended up cleaning people's houses, all of them wealthier than me. Well, they have to be otherwise they wouldn't pay for a cleaning woman. So they had everything and I had nothing and I cleaned for them. I was little Miss Nothing, coming to clean for Mr and Mrs Everything and their two children who called me “Miss Graham”. I went back to my maiden name when I divorced the rat I married. My married name was Womack. I was glad to get back to having Graham as a surname. What a name “Womack” was.'

‘I can't say that working for the Middletons sounds to have been much fun,' Carmen Pharoah once again glanced round the room, ‘but you were a volunteer in a sense, were you not? You didn't have to clean for them and you had other customers who seemed to have a more enlightened attitude to you.'

‘Perhaps … perhaps, but like I said, I was feeling their pocket.' Anne Graham dogged her cigarette in an ashtray which sat on the hearth by her feet. ‘And it was a lovely, deep pocket. So I used to think, OK, I am only the cleaner and I am taking you to the cleaners. I had three children to feed and clothe so I wasn't that much of a volunteer. I would have been a lot worse off without their employment moneywise. I would have missed the Middletons' money.'

‘All right, so … tell me more about the security of the house,' Carmen Pharoah asked. ‘You mentioned the locks on the main door and the spare mortise key on a chain. Any alarms … bars on the windows? No guard dog?'

‘No, there was nothing like that,' Anne Graham replied clearly. ‘You would have had to smash a window to gain entry but there were no bars to keep you out. I think they thought the remoteness of their house made it safe from burglars, but me, I thought it made it more vulnerable. I mean, no neighbours to check on suspicious noises or call the police if they hear a disturbance? Neighbours can be nosey but they can be useful at times. One of my boys has been convicted for burglary and he tells me a dog barking is what puts most burglars off a property, but the Middletons had no dog … nothing in the way of security over and above the locks on the door.'

‘I see.' Carmen Pharoah noticed Ventnor taking detailed notes. ‘So would you say that Mr and Mrs Middleton were diligent about keeping the door locked?'

‘Diligent?' Anne Graham queried. ‘What does that mean?'

‘Careful … did they always ensure the door was locked,' Carmen Pharoah explained.

‘Oh yes, he was always going on about the door being kept locked. He was safety conscious, like I said, when he was there at the same time as I was. But I noticed that the key was turned to let me in, then it was turned to lock me in by whoever answered the door and I was told when I called and no one was at home to always lock the door behind me whether I was arriving or leaving. So yes, he was diligent … I like that word. Diligent. Not just him but the whole family was like that. He made sure of that.'

‘All right … so you arrived one morning and you found the bodies,' Carmen Pharoah probed. ‘What did you notice first … anything?'

‘The smashed pane of glass beside the door,' Anne Graham replied, ‘as if someone had broken the glass to reach in and turn the barrel lock but they could not have reached the spare mortise key from the broken glass.'

‘They were fully dressed, so we understand?' Carmen Pharoah glanced at Anne Graham.

‘Yes, all three were in their day clothes. They hadn't retired to bed and got up to investigate sounds in the night,' Anne Graham informed. ‘That was plain.'

‘Do you know where the Middletons kept their valuables?' Carmen Pharoah asked.

‘There was no special place that I knew of.' Anne Graham cleared her throat. ‘I mean, there was no strong room or safe or anything like that but Mrs Middleton had a jewellery box on her dressing table, as did Miss Sara. The family also had a large collection of pottery. I think they said it was Wedgwood, and that was mostly kept in the display cabinet, but also odd bits of pottery were outside the display cabinet on shelves or tables or windowsills … I think because the display cabinet was full.'

‘Was the door open or shut when you arrived?' Carmen Pharoah asked.

‘Locked and shut,' Anne Graham replied. ‘I told this to the police at the time. I had to use both keys to enter the house once I had knocked and waited for the response despite the broken pane of glass. I did what I had been told to do. Knock and wait, and enter only if there was no reply.'

‘Both keys!' Carmen Pharoah's jaw sagged. ‘Both keys, did you say?'

‘Yes. Both keys,' Anne Graham informed her. ‘I am sure I did.'

‘Was the spare key still attached to the wall by the chain?' Carmen Pharoah inquired. ‘It's hugely important that we know that.'

‘I didn't check. I didn't hang around at all. I just saw the bodies and ran straight away to the nearest house … But it was on a chain, the spare mortise key.' Anne Graham reached for another cigarette. ‘It wouldn't have been easy to remove … and it was quite well-hidden. It wasn't noticeable from the door, you really had to be told about it before you knew that it was there, and what lock the key fitted. It hadn't got a label or anything to tell you what the key was for.'

Carmen Pharoah fell silent. She was in deep thought, as was Thompson Ventnor, who wrote ‘Womack' on his notepad and then circled it, thoughtfully.

The Beeches proved itself to be a large and evidently well-maintained Victorian lodge. It was built of local pale grey York stone on three levels of top hamper with small windows where the stone met the soil, thus betraying the existence of a cellar which, Yellich so observed, with interest, was quite usual for this part of England which was acutely prone to flooding. There were, however, small isolated ‘islands' of higher ground which never flooded, upon one of which The Beeches clearly stood. The building had obviously been repointed and the door and the ground-floor windows gleamed with a fresh coat of varnish. Similarly, the first-and second-floor window frames gleamed with a recent coat of black gloss paint. The corner of the left of the building as one stood looking at it had turret windows; the right corner was a plain right angle. The building was surrounded by a well-maintained garden of closely cut lawns and meticulously kept flowerbeds, causing both Yellich and Webster to reflect upon the physical effort which had gone into the care of the garden. At the foot of the driveway, just within and to the right of the tall, dark grey, stone gateway pillars stood a line of mature beech trees which served to mark the boundary of the property from the pavement and from which the house clearly took its name. Yellich had driven the car up the generously wide red-gravelled driveway and had halted a few feet from the front door, upon which he and Webster got out of the car and walked up the four stone steps to the front door. Yellich took the polished brass knocker in his hand and rapped it twice. Dogs instantly began to bark inside the house.

The door was opened almost immediately and silently by a young man wearing black trousers, a black waistcoat, a white shirt and a black bowtie. He was clean-shaven and had closely cut black hair. He wore polished black shoes. He had, the officers noted, warm eyes and he possessed a ready smile. ‘The police?' he asked. ‘Mrs Rutherford is expecting the police to be calling.'

‘Yes.' Yellich showed the man his ID and Webster did the same. ‘We are the police.'

The man looked at Yellich's card but declined to look at Webster's, declaring that if one was genuine the other would also be genuine. He invited the officers into the house and they entered a wide, high-ceilinged reception area. ‘Mrs Rutherford is in the drawing room,' the man explained. ‘If you'd care to follow me, please?' He stepped aside and shut the door with a gentle ‘click', despite its size, behind the officers and then led Yellich and Webster into the interior of the house. He stopped at a door at the far side of the foyer and tapped gently upon it before opening it. Dogs barked once more from within the room. The young man opened the door and said, ‘Hush, boys.' The dogs fell silent. ‘The police are here, ma'am,' he announced in a strong Welsh accent which caused him to pronounce ‘here' as ‘yur'.

‘Ah …' The owner of the second voice revealed herself to be a frail-looking, silver-haired lady who sat in a solid-looking rocking chair and who had draped herself with a red woollen shawl which was flecked with yellow. She wore a heavy-looking tweed skirt and her feet were encased in solid black shoes. ‘Do please come in,' she said in a strong, confident voice. Then: ‘Thank you, Roger,' upon which the young man withdrew from the room.

Yellich and Webster entered the room, which was bathed in mid-afternoon sunlight. The windows, which were tall and narrow and three in number looked out on to an expansive lawn, closely cut, which lay to the rear of the house. The lawn was as big, Yellich thought, as a football pitch. The rear garden was encased in an ivy-clad wall which was about, Yellich guessed, ten feet high. Better get that ivy off, he thought to himself. It might look green and gentle and attractive but it's sucking the moisture out of the mortar and the wall will eventually collapse. But he kept his own counsel and sat, as did Webster, on Mrs Rutherford's invitation.

‘I couldn't do anything without Roger,' Mrs Rutherford remarked. She had a strong voice and her mind was clearly sharp and active. Her body might be frail, but her mind, thankfully for the officers, was not. ‘Dear Roger, he answered an ad which I placed in the local paper for a live-in handyman and, darling boy, he soon became more like a butler, but still seeking only handyman's wages, one day off a week and his keep. I have a visiting cook and a visiting gardener, daily and weekly respectively, but I find it is so comforting having a man sleeping in the house – one hears so many horror stories these days and my spaniels, Tom and Dick,' she smiled at the two dogs who sat eyeing the two police officers with deep suspicion, ‘as you can see, are more companions than guard dogs. Roger is a real godsend.'

‘I see.' Yellich smiled.

‘I have a son, I have grandchildren, I have great grandchildren,' Mrs Rutherford continued. ‘My son works overseas. He's in international finance. He comes home when he can but that is still very infrequently. He's in the Republic of South Africa at the moment. In fact, I got a postcard from him just yesterday. But you don't want to talk about him. You mentioned the murder of the Middleton family when you phoned?'

‘Yes.' Yellich sat forward in his seat. ‘We phoned a number of households hereabouts and you seem to be the only person in the vicinity who remembers them and remembers the murders.'

‘Yes … it's a sparsely populated area,' Mrs Rutherford nodded, ‘and many families have moved away since that night. Other persons, like my husband, have sadly passed away.'

‘I am sorry,' Yellich replied.

‘Actually, I am not,' Mrs Rutherford smiled. ‘I was and still am very pleased for him. He was a lovely, lovely man but he always used his mind and when his mind began to leave him he became very distressed … it really was very upsetting for him. The doctor said his body could live for another ten years but his mind had only a few months to live and I think my husband sensed that. So he wrote a note in what by then had become his very childish form of handwriting and also with very childlike spelling. Once, near the end, for example, he wrote a shopping list with sausages spelled “s-o-s-s-i-g-e-s”. He had little of his brain left but he had sufficient to know what he was doing and he …' Mrs Rutherford paused as the
eee … aww
of an express train's horn sounded in the distance, ‘… well, he went out one dark and windy night and stood in front of one of those things. That's the train on the London to Edinburgh line you can hear – the track is about three small fields distant. I do so like hearing the railway locomotives horn, especially at night; I find that it is a very reassuring sound. It's like being assured that all is well with the world. It helps you sleep. It helps me sleep, anyway … but Freddie … dear Freddie, knew that he could not live without his mind. He composed music, you see. Mainly for the film industry and so he needed his mind. Without his mind he felt himself to be nothing. He could live without a kidney, or with a pacemaker, or he could live if confined to a wheelchair – he could even live without his hearing, as did Beethoven, or even without his eyesight, because he could dictate the score as he heard it in his head – but without his mind he felt himself to be worthless. He expressed a fear that he was going to be nothing more than a vegetable. So he left me a note and went out one night, cut his way through the fence by the railway line with a pair of wire-cutters and stood in front of the London Express. They travel at ninety miles an hour on that stretch of line. He went when he felt he had to go and in the way he wanted to go. So I am happy for him and I cherish his memory.' Mrs Rutherford paused before continuing: ‘Freddie always said that each of us has a bullet with our name on it, but vegetating with no mind is like dodging the bullet which was worse, he said. Some bullets you can dodge like narrowly avoiding a fatal accident when you're in your twenties, but the last one … you can't dodge the last one and you shouldn't try … so he said, and so he went out one night when he only had a little bit of his beautiful mind remaining and stepped in front of an express train. He knew his time had come, you see.'