A Shock to the System (29 page)

He had been prepared to go all the way up to the conference room, but was saved the trouble. Stella and a couple of other tittering secretaries were just emerging from the lift.

He walked straight towards her.

‘I waited for you,' he said.

The other two secretaries split off, giggling, armed with new gossip-fodder for the canteen. Stella gazed up at him. Her eyes were unfocused with alcohol, but full of relief and trust.

They took a cab to her flat. As soon as they were inside the door he seized her. He closed his eyes as their flesh joined, and the recollection of that one push, the image of George Brewer frozen untidily in mid-air, gave Graham Marshall's body a violent power.

The news of George Brewer's suicide, spreading round the office on the Monday morning, prompted much chattering and excitement, but compared to Robert Benham's death, it was a small sensation.

Partly, this was because it had very little surprise value. When most of the staff actually thought about it, they could see that George had been headed that way for a long time. Since the death of his wife, work had been his whole life, and he had made no secret of the dread with which he contemplated the void ahead of him. He was not the first to have done away with himself after a retirement party, and would probably not be the last.

So, though everyone was of course suitably sorry and management tutted over another half-day to be wasted at another funeral, they could recognise the logic of the death. In a way it tidied George up and absolved them from guilt. The idea of his spiralling down to alcoholism in Haywards Heath might have been a spur to recrimination; the idea of him dead made a neat close to his particular chapter of company history.

Graham moved into George's office ‘for convenience', and to give Terry Sworder more room. Terry, he had decided, would, once the Head of Personnel appointment had been officially ratified, make an excellent assistant. His research capabilities, coupled with Graham's ruthless vision, would make an invincible combination.

Stella was not treated in anything more than a professional way, and was kept busy through the day as Graham fired off salvoes of memos and letters under his ‘Assistant Head of Personnel' title. In the afternoon she was called to Miss Pridmore's office, whence she returned in tears, but Graham didn't have the time to ask her the reason.

By the end of the week, Stella was working on the Secretarial Reserve, prior to taking up a more permanent position in another department.

And by the end of the week, too, George Brewer was, like Merrily Marshall and Robert Benham, a mere scattering of ash in a Garden of Remembrance.

Graham worked late on the Friday evening. It was to be a long weekend, with the Spring Bank Holiday on the Monday, and there were preparations he wanted to make for the next week. He also knew that David Birdham was in a management meeting, and half-expected the phone to ring with confirmation of the new Head of Personnel appointment. But it was a confident, not a desperate hope; Graham knew the job was his.

So, though there had been no message, he left the office at eight without anxiety. As he walked out of the Crasoco tower, he felt good. It was a week after George Brewer's death and Graham Marshall felt he deserved a treat. So, without going home first, he took himself out for an expensive dinner at the Grange. He felt no strangeness in being on his own, though as he looked at the pampered couples around him, he wondered if maybe, in time, he might once again look for a female escort. Have to be very glamorous, of course, to match his new status.

Tara Liston, now . . . Hmm. Perhaps he ought to send her a note of sympathy after Robert's death . . .

It was a thought. No hurry, though. He was under no pressure of any sort. He had all the time in the world.

He arrived home after eleven, pleasantly drunk, went straight to bed and slept for twelve hours. All the tensions of the last weeks had caught up with him and, as he relaxed, he felt unbelievably tired. What he needed now was a slow wind-down over the Bank Holiday weekend; he needed to cosset, to pamper himself a little.

He might have slept longer than twelve hours, if he had not been wakened by the sound of a key in the front door lock. He swayed, blinking, on the stairs and looked down into the hall to see Lilian Hinchcliffe.

She looked wizened and unkempt, and was weighed down by a large handbag.

He yawned. ‘Good morning. To what do I owe this pleasure?'

She was silent as he came down the stairs and did not move until he was on the same level. Then, with surprising speed, she snatched something out of her handbag and, with a cry of ‘You're not going to get away with it, Graham!' launched herself at him.

He was heavy with sleep and unprepared for the attack, but he managed to ward off the upraised knife, though it gouged through the dressing-gown fabric into his forearm. The pain stung him to action. With his right hand he gripped the knife-wrist, at the same time jerking his elbow up against Lilian's chin.

Her free hand clawed up at his face, scoring lines of pain as he snatched his head away. He leant back against the stairs, pulling her off-balance, then slammed her right wrist hard against the newel post until the knife clattered from her grasp. As he did it, he felt the heavy handbag thumping against his side and her free hand clutching on to his ear.

He shook himself painfully free and reached out his right hand to clamp round her jaw, forcing the mouth open as he pushed her away to arm's length. From there her reach was too short to do any harm to his body and she had to content herself with scratching and pinching at his hand.

‘What the bloody hell's all this for?' Graham demanded.

‘I'm going to kill you!' she screamed, fluttering ineffectually in his grasp.

‘Why?' His tone, he knew, was one of infuriating irony.

‘Because you're mad.'

Again the word stung and, before he was aware of doing it, he brought the back of his left hand hard against her mouth. She wheezed with pain and her struggling stopped. A gleam of blood showed where the lip had bruised against her teeth.

‘Now come on.' Graham had control of himself again.

‘What are you talking about?'

‘You killed Merrily.'

He laughed aloud and, still keeping his mother-in-law at arm's length, propelled her into the sitting-room. He positioned her in front of an armchair and gave a little push. She subsided, the violence drained out of her.

Graham sat down on the sofa. ‘So I killed Merrily, did I?'

‘Yes.'

‘If that's the case, how come the police didn't mention it at the inquest? How come that even their second investigation, prompted by your poison-pen letter, also drew a blank?'

Lilian had coloured at the mention of the letter. ‘I know you hated her, Graham. Look at you, you haven't shown a moment of regret since she died. You were just delighted to get rid of her, and the children and me.'

‘That is hardly a crime,' Graham drawled. ‘I think you'd find a good few husbands who, offered the opportunity of painlessly shedding their families, would leap at the chance.'

‘You planned it all. You knew it was going to happen. While you were in Brussels, while Merrily was looking after the house and tidying up for you, you knew she was doomed.'

‘Any proof?' he asked, with a needling smile.

‘I haven't any proof about the electricity. I've got proof . . . proof that . . .' She lost momentum suddenly, her bluster deflated. She tried to disguise the look but Graham had seen her eyes drop to the handbag slumped at her feet.

‘What's in there, Lilian?'

She made only token resistance as he snatched the bag from her and drew out its contents.

‘Well, well, well.' He separated the words with slow irony. He held up the sherry bottle. Time had not helped to dissolve its contents. Still through the green glass he could see the strange sediment of blue granules. Still over the label was stuck his own felt-penned warning: ‘POISON. NOT TO BE TAKEN.'

‘So where did you get this from, Lilian?'

‘Merrily tidied the shed.' Her voice was sulky and resigned.

‘Two days before she died. I helped her.'

Of course. Merrily's last accusatory gesture, the preparation for the scene of marital recrimination she did not survive to play.

‘And you found this bottle. What did Merrily say?'

He was unworried, but intrigued. Had the discovery alerted Merrily's suspicions? He liked the idea, liked the idea of his wife's fearing him, of her last mortal thought in the loft, as the current slammed through her, being the realisation of her husband's power.

Lilian flushed. ‘Merrily . . . didn't see the bottle.'

He understood. His mother-in-law, thinking it to be full, had snatched the sherry from the shelf and hidden it in her bag.

‘And you only saw the “POISON” label when you got it home?'

She was too depleted to make any attempt at denial.

‘Oh, Lilian.' He shook his head in mock-sympathy. Then changed his tone. ‘You spoke of this as proof. Proof of what, may I ask?'

‘Proof that you planned Merrily's death,' she replied, emptying her diminished arsenal of defiance.

‘How does this prove that?' He held the bottle daintily between thumb and forefinger. ‘Merrily died in an electrical accident due to faulty wiring in an old house.'

‘This bottle proves that you planned to kill her, that you tried out poison as a first option, that you hoped you might be able to make her drink it in error, that then you realised it wouldn't work and . .

The words could have been worrying, so close did they come to the truth, but the tone of defeat with which they were delivered and the hopelessness in which they petered out, showed how little even their speaker was convinced by them. With a little surge of delight, Graham realised again his immunity, his invisibility from the searching eyes of suspicion.

‘And this bottle proves all that?' He placed it on the mantelpiece and shook his head. ‘Why now suddenly? Why didn't you produce your “evidence” when you sent off your letter to the police?'

‘I hadn't worked it all out then,' she mumbled.

‘And you still haven't,' he riposted harshly. ‘Still haven't by a mile. Because there's nothing to work out. God knows what play this scene comes from, Lilian, but, as ever, you're all melodrama – you always have been. With you, everything gets inflated into full-scale comic opera. Whether it's how Charmian's behaved, or do your grandchildren love you, or your non-affair with the late, great,
gay
William Essex, it all –' He stopped for her to speak, but she thought better of her interruption, so he continued. ‘It all gets overblown and ridiculous. Which is one of the reasons why I am glad to be shot of you. But . . .' He raised a finger to silence her. ‘But it's now ceasing to be funny. Any more allegations of murder and I'll have you prosecuted. I don't think the police are going to be over-impressed by your sherry bottle. They might if it had been found in the shed the week after Merrily's death, but now . . . well, you could so easily have set it up to frame me. They're already suspicious of you, Lilian. I actually had to deter them from taking action after the letter. Now there's this knife attack this morning. Bother me again, Lilian, and I'll get you put away.'

She was still silent as he rose. ‘I am going to get dressed. When I come down again, I would prefer not to find you here. Oh, and, incidentally, I will be watching out for further knife attacks.'

At the door he stopped, curious. ‘By the way, what was the knife attack in aid of? Did you intend to kill me?'

‘Yes,' she hissed. ‘But not with the knife.'

‘How then?'

She made a limp, disspirited gesture to the bottle on the mantelpiece.

‘You were going to make me drink that?' He could hardly believe her little nod of assent. ‘At knife point?'

The second small nod released his laughter. The joke still seemed good as he picked up the knife in the hall and placed it out of harm's way. And during the leisurely process of shaving and dressing, little chuckles kept bubbling through.

When he went back down to the sitting-room, Lilian was still there. She appeared not to have moved. Her face sagged, old and wretched.

‘I am going out,' Graham announced. ‘I'd be grateful if, when you go, you would leave my house key on the hall table. But if you don't, I am sure I can get it returned by my solicitors.'

He was at the door before she spoke.

‘You killed Merrily, Graham. And I'm going to be revenged on you. If it's the last thing I do.'

‘No, Lilian.' He favoured her with a condescending smile. ‘Not even if it's the last thing you do.'

He walked out of the house to encounter a new problem.

It was a bright day, the green of the new leaves intensified by the sunlight. He started walking towards the river with no very clear intentions. He felt deliciously free; it didn't matter where he went, what he did.

‘Graham.'

He turned at the sound of his name to see Stella hurrying towards him from a Mini parked opposite the house. He said nothing as she approached.

‘Graham, I want to know what's happening.'

‘Why are you here?' he asked coldly.

‘I've got to see you.'

‘You are seeing me. Why have you come here? Why are you stopping me in the street?'

‘I was going to go to the house, but just as I got there a woman arrived.'

‘My mother-in-law,' he enunciated. ‘The mother of my late wife.'

‘Graham . . .' Stella looked at him in a way that was meant to be appealing.

‘What do you want?' He was getting annoyed. Fortunately there were few people around, but he didn't want scenes in the street.

‘I want to know where we stand, Graham.'