‘The Raging Storm’ Chapters 49-52

‘Ford was the intellectual, very bright, rather intense. Gregory’s parents were farmers and quite wealthy before his father squandered his money on Carter’s scheme at the pub. Bartholomew was on the scene in school holidays too. He came from the landed gentry, even if his father was gambling away most of the cash. Rosco’s mum was a single mother, surviving on seasonal work. So no, he didn’t quite fit into their social circle.’

There was a moment of silence. Venn had never quite fitted in at school either. He hadn’t fitted in anywhere, until he’d joined the police, and found his own role, his own tribe.

‘I think Rosco amused Eleanor,’ Venn went on. ‘She’d never met anyone quite like him. And she certainly loved the adoration. She kept all his love letters. That came in useful later on, of course, when she needed to persuade us that she’d reciprocated the sentiment, that he was her first true love and she couldn’t contemplate killing him.’

‘She talked about Grace Fanshaw’s locket too yesterday,’ Jen said. ‘Once she realized that Gregory was confessing everything to us, she couldn’t stop talking, boasting that the murders were her idea. That she was some sort of mastermind.’

‘Where did the locket fit in?’ Ross might be restricted to the sofa, but he was still impatient.

‘Apparently,’ Venn said, ‘Rosco wanted to sell the necklace as soon as they found it on the beach at Morrisham. All he could see was an immediate profit. Later, he put out the story that he’d thought it might have sentimental value for the owner and that he’d made the effort to track her down. Eleanor claims that she was the one who persuaded him to do that, and that she’d actually found Grace Fanshaw.’

‘He was the person who befriended the old lady, though,’ Ross said. ‘Doing her shopping, keeping her company.’

‘I think he enjoyed her company too. He never had much of a family. Matilda Gregory’s parents recognized that when they took him in.’

Venn shifted his position so he was facing Ross. ‘Eleanor claimed that Rosco would never have had the money to buy the Nellie Wren, would never have become famous, if it weren’t for her.Yet, when Alan and Davy asked Jeremy to contribute to the fund to send Arthur Ford to the States for treatment, he refused. The refusal was her excuse for getting involved.’

‘A lame kind of excuse for murder!’

‘I don’t think murder was suggested at first. The men hoped Eleanor might persuade Rosco to make a donation, or use his celebrity to raise awareness of the campaign. Instead, she came up with the more elaborate plan of luring him to meet her. She chose Greystone as a place where she was relatively unknown, and pointed him to the cottage in Quarry Bank, owned by Gregory’s father. Davy still had a key. The men got caught up with the excitement and adventure of it. The scheme was very elaborate, and pandered to Rosco’s romantic nature.’ Venn paused. ‘She kept him waiting there for two weeks before arranging the rendezvous. She’d have enjoyed that too.’

‘Imogen, Rosco’s girlfriend, said he used a forwarding address to save being tapped for cash by good causes.’ Jen looked up at Venn. ‘Selfish bastard. None of them were very pleasant individuals, were they? They were all as bad as each other.’

Nobody spoke for a moment. Outside in the street, two young mothers were chatting. Venn couldn’t make out the words, but they seemed animated, happy. The women walked on and he turned back to the room.

‘Did they go there intending to kill him?’ Jen still couldn’t quite believe it. ‘Was it premeditated?

‘By Eleanor, though I don’t think any of the group would have committed murder as individuals. They fed off each other’s resentments and fears and Rosco was a convenient scapegoat. Ford’s only thought was for his grandson. He’d have done anything to save Arthur. He knew that Jeremy had left Eleanor money in his will, and she promised it would be used to send the child to the US. I think Davy was swept along, desperate to be a member of the gang again.’

‘How did they set it up?’

‘Eleanor got in touch with Rosco, implying she wanted to rekindle the relationship. His attraction to Imogen was already starting to fade and he responded. The plan fed into Eleanor’s desire to be the object of the man’s passion. After being married for all those years to Bartholomew, she wanted that thrill again. She guessed he’d still be obsessed, interested enough, at least, to do as she said, and to come to Greystone to wait for her to seek him out.’ A pause. Venn tried to find the words to explain. ‘For her it was all about power. Regaining the power of her youth, pulling strings. The thrill of getting the men to do what she asked of them. Even if that was murder.’

‘Of course, she was the mysterious woman Rosco told the village he was waiting for.’

Venn nodded. ‘It was all very, very carefully planned. Eleanor’s doing. She was bored in that house with nothing to do but walk the ancient dog and feed the hens. Bartholomew was drinking himself to death. I think she was slowly going mad there. The plot to kill Jeremy was a weird distraction, a fantasy.’ He paused, thinking again that wasn’t enough to explain Eleanor’s impulse to murder or the sway she’d held over her co-conspirators. And that she’d held for a while over him. ‘She’s a charming narcissist, completely self-centred. As I said, she loved the power. I don’t think anything that has happened to her since lived up to that sense of being adored by Rosco.’

‘In interview, Gregory said he had no idea that Eleanor was planning to kill Rosco,’ Jen said. ‘He thought she was going to seduce him, to persuade him then to make the donation. He claims he was shocked when he knew what violence had taken place in his dad’s little house.’

‘He helped the others cover it up, though.’ Ross stretched again.

‘Grace Fanshaw’s nephew said he had the impression that she was using Rosco when he met them all those years ago,’ Jen said. ‘She certainly had a way of manipulating people, of getting what she wanted.’

Venn shot her a look. He wondered if Jen was including him in the people who’d been manipulated by the woman. If so, she was right.

‘Which of them actually killed Rosco?’ Ross was getting impatient with all the talk of a time before he’d been born.

‘I think Eleanor and Ford did it together. Gregory gave them the key and they surprised Rosco in the bathroom. She couldn’t have carried Rosco down to the quay on her own. Ford’s still a competent sailor. Perhaps he stole Barton’s dinghy because the man had been giving Mary a bad time. He took the boat round to Scully and anchored it there, before wading ashore. That was when Gregory became involved. We’ve checked Ford’s phone records. He called Davy from Greystone and the taxi was waiting at the top of the cliff to give him a lift back to his daughter’s house. They waited for Ford to get in before they called in the fake lifeboat emergency. Mary said her father was awake when she was called out. It was all about the story, the unreliable narration.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘They kept feeding us stories. And we fell for them. Ford claimed to have seen a mysterious woman get out of a car in the early hours of the morning, but Rosco would have been killed well before that, I think. No wonder Brennan didn’t see anyone. And Ford described Matilda Gregory, knowing absolutely that she had a perfect alibi. It was just to confuse us and to lead us astray.’Venn paused. ‘We couldn’t make it work when we thought there was just one killer. Once I considered the idea of a group working together it all made more sense.’

‘What made you so sure that a group was behind it?’ Ross held out his cup for Mel to refill.

‘In the end, it was too complicated for one person to have been the culprit.’ He paused. ‘It was a construct of Eleanor’s strange imagination and it was bound to unravel.’

‘Why did Bartholomew have to die?’

‘Because he guessed that Eleanor might be involved. He’d known that she’d never actually fallen for Rosco, that the man had been obsessed by her, but that she was too self-centred actually to fall in love with anyone. And perhaps he’d known she’d been out the night Rosco was killed and he challenged her about it. They might have slept in separate rooms, but he could have been aware of her coming and going.’ And she was bored by him. When she killed Rosco, she was given a sense of new possibilities, new adventures.

‘She pushed Bartholomew over the cliff?’

‘Oh yes,’ Venn said. ‘I don’t think anyone else could have done that. Gregory probably gave them a lift, picked them both up from the sailing club after they’d left their car there. Eleanor would have come up with a reason for an evening walk along the path at Scully with her husband. She might have said it was to mourn his father or for old time’s sake. Barty was still susceptible to her charms and, as we know, Scully was a special place for them all.’ He paused. ‘She couldn’t face killing the dog – instead she left him in the cellar for Roxy to find – but she seems to have had no qualms about Rosco or her husband.’

‘And then she tried to finish us off,’ Ross said, his voice ridiculously cheerful.

‘Well, I don’t think she started the rockfall. That would have been the men. But yes, it would have been her idea. She persuaded herself, and them, that we were getting too close, perhaps. Or she’d just got caught up in the violence, the stories and the recklessness.’ Venn gave a little smile. ‘The skulls and the bones and the white, white light.’

There was a silence. Mel offered to make more coffee and disappeared into the kitchen.

‘Matilda Gregory can’t have had anything to do with it,’ Jen said. ‘She was distraught when she suspected her husband was involved.’

‘I think Davy had been behaving strangely. Of all of them, he was the least committed. He was the first person to confess to the whole thing last night.’

Mel came in with a tray, more biscuits, but Jen got to her feet. ‘I’m going to see Mary Ford. I want to get it over with. She knows we’ve arrested her father, but I wanted to talk to her. To explain, though I suppose no explanation is going to help. She’s on her own now, with a daughter and a very sick son.’

‘I don’t envy you that.’ Venn wondered if he should offer again to speak to Mary, but he and Jen had discussed it. She’d said she thought that the conversation would be better coming from her.

She looked up at him and smiled. ‘I’m not exactly looking forward to it, myself.’

 

Chapter Fifty-One

IT WAS LUNCHTIME WHEN Jen arrived in Greystone, but she didn’t feel much like eating. Certainly, she wasn’t tempted to go into the Maiden’s Prayer for a half of bitter and a pasty. She thought that after today she never wanted to go back to the village again. A weak sun shone on rain-soaked pavements, but it didn’t make the place seem any more attractive.

In the end, Jen didn’t find Mary Ford alone. Matilda Gregory was there when Jen arrived. She saw them both through the living room window before knocking at the door. They had mugs in hand, but any conversation appeared desultory. Mary let her in. Matilda looked up as they came back into the room, then got to her feet.

‘I should go. Lunch break is nearly over. The kids will be back in class in five minutes.’

‘You’re working today?’ Jen wasn’t sure how the teacher could be doing that. Her world must have collapsed. Her husband had been charged with killing two people. He might get away in the end with facing the charge of being an accomplice to murder, but he’d still spend years in prison. Perhaps the woman’s faith was getting her through it. But then, Jen thought, she’d always fallen back on work when things were tough too.

Matilda nodded. ‘It helps. And I didn’t want to be on my own. Brooding. That’s why I’m here. I didn’t want Mary brooding alone either.’ She gave Mary a quick hug and left.

After the door had shut, Jen turned to Mary. ‘You up for that? The sympathy?’

‘Tilly’s in the same boat, isn’t she? Her bloke’s been charged too. And she really is alone. At least I have the kids.’

‘I’m so sorry,’ Jen said, ‘that Arthur won’t make it to the States any more. Not yet anyway.’ She’d been thinking they could do some fundraising at work. No way was she knitting, but some of the lads were into running. She was thinking sponsored marathons, a bucket in the tea room to collect spare change.

‘He wouldn’t have gone anyway.’ Mary was crying. Great fat tears were running down her cheeks. ‘I looked into the bloke who was supposed to have the miracle cure. It was a con. I tried to tell all the fundraisers in the village that they were wasting their time, but that just seemed ungrateful. I’d told Dad. But he’d got sucked into this social media site about the cure, with all the stories from supporters.’ She looked straight at Jen. ‘Dad’s a scientist. I don’t know how he could believe all that crap. The posts were undermining the real medical research. According to them, all Arthur needed was a change in his diet and an operation that only the professor could provide. It was like the doctor was some sort of God. Or witch doctor.’

‘You’re sure that was why your father got involved in the plot to kill Rosco?’ Jen thought there might be more to it. A background resentment. Jealousy because Rosco, the boy they’d all despised, had done so well. And because Eleanor, who had even conned the boss, had sucked him in and stoked his obsession.

‘Of course! Dad really believed he was doing it for us. Eleanor just fed into his certainties and convinced him that with Rosco gone, there’d be a happy ending.’ A pause. ‘There were times when I wanted to believe too, to think that we could sit on a plane and fly into the sunset and suddenly Arthur would be well again. But I couldn’t.’

‘What will you do now?’

‘The same as every parent with a child with a life-limiting illness. I’ll wait and hope, and make sure that what life Arthur has left is as good as it can possibly be.’ She wiped her tears with a grubby sleeve, and looked like a child herself. ‘Peter Smale has put him forward for a trial in Oxford. We won’t know if he’s had the drug or the placebo, but it’s something to hang on to.’ A pause. ‘When your colleagues first phoned me about Dad, I was going to run away. I couldn’t face the village. All the gossip. The judgement. I thought I’d have to move, even if it was only to his house.’

‘But now?’

Mary shrugged. ‘Matilda was here to offer to babysit a few nights a month. So I can go out. Or put my name on the lifeboat rota. A kindness. Maybe there are worse things than gossip.’

‘Did you have any idea what your dad was up to?’

Mary didn’t reply immediately. ‘He’d been weird for a while, disappearing down this rabbit hole of the internet, following the stories of wonder cures, believing the lies. I thought it was depression – Mum dying and Artie being ill. He had no energy, no plans for new adventures. He’d taken early retirement to lead tours all over the world before Mum was ill. Then more recently, he’d been his old self again. I thought the depression was lifting. He was off to meet people, getting texts and phone calls.’ She gave a wry little laugh. ‘I thought he’d got back into the natural history group, was spending time with his old colleagues. But when he talked about planning meetings, I guess there was something completely different on the agenda.’

The word was unspoken between them.

Murder.

Jen got to her feet. ‘I should go. You will be okay?’

Mary stood up too and looked out at the sea. ‘Yeah,’ she said. Then: ‘I’ll have to be, won’t I? That’s what parents do.’

 

Chapter Fifty-Two

ON HIS WAY BACK from Ross and Mel’s house, Matthew stopped at the police station. Ford and Gregory had given their formal statements the evening before, but Eleanor had wanted a lawyer, and nobody had been immediately available. Now, they sat in the grey room and went through the formalities. Venn had Vicki Robb with him, but the conversation was between him and Eleanor, and the others remained silent.

He’d thought she might try to bluff her way out of the charges. She had, after all, deceived him from the beginning. She had the charisma of a brilliant general leading his troops into an unwinnable battle, or a guru convincing his followers to sell all their worldly goods and believe in him. She could tell a good story and she’d had time to make one up.

In the end, though, she admitted that she was behind the plan to kill Jeremy Rosco. She almost seemed proud of the fact.

‘He was such a mean and greedy little man. Petty. He’d have done anything for Alan when they were boys. That summer he joined the sailing club, he so wanted to belong to our group.

Then when Alan asked him for a donation to Arthur’s fund, he didn’t even reply. Alan wrote again, and Rosco just sent a two-line response: he was sorry but there were so many demands on him that he couldn’t help. He supported his own charities.’ A pause. ‘He still owned that flat in Morrisham, which he never used. If he’d sold that, the cost of Arthur’s treatment would have been covered. After all, he had no dependents. Nobody to leave it to.’

‘That was hardly a motive for murder,’ Venn said. ‘You have no dependents, and your house is far too big for you. You could have sold that.’

She answered immediately. ‘Impossible! The house has been in our family for more than a hundred years. Besides, Barty had a position in the county. We couldn’t have lived in some box on an estate.’ Her mouth snapped shut, and Venn realized now that the monstrous events of the past weeks had nothing to do with charity, or a sick little boy. It was about an older woman feeling alive and powerful again, and pushing to the limits the men who followed her. A strange game of chicken or dare.

‘Why did Bartholomew have to die?’

‘He was still awake when I got in the night that Rosco died. A little less drunk than usual. Everyone thinks he was very stupid, but I could never have married a stupid man. I could see him wondering ... I hadn’t thought he’d mind my killing Rosco. He never had any time for him, called him feral. But he was a magistrate and had this pompous notion about the law. And when he’d been drinking, he was unreliable. He might have shared his suspicions.’

‘Did Davy Gregory drive you from the sailing club to the coast path that night?’

She paused. ‘No, Davy was becoming unreliable too by then. No spine. I picked Barty up before he could get into the building and I drove us there. He thought we were going on a romantic walk. He was standing with his back to the edge. I had my arms around him and he thought I was leaning in to kiss him. It didn’t take much of a push.’ She looked up at Venn and gave a wicked grin, mischievous, almost appealing, so he could understand again why Rosco had been so obsessed by her. ‘He might have had his suspicions, but he died happy, believing that I cared for him.’

‘And then you just drove home.’ Venn paused. ‘Were you able to sleep that night?’

‘Oh yes! I’ve never had any problem sleeping.’ She looked directly into his eyes. ‘I really thought everybody would believe he’d killed Rosco and had thrown himself over the cliff in remorse.’

‘I almost believed that,’ Venn said.

‘I wasn’t sure, you see. I thought you suspected me.’

‘How did you manage the blood in the bath? It was yours?’

She gave a little smile. ‘Oh yes! I’ve suffered from nosebleeds since I was a child. I needed to throw you off the scent.’

‘Hence the charade with your disappearance, and the Scully Maid found floundering in the cove. I suppose Alan Ford took that out.’ Wearing a hat knitted by one of the fundraisers.

‘You think that was a little over the top?’ There was the same smile, which now made her seem a little unbalanced. ‘By then, I admit, I was rather getting caught up in the adventure.’

‘Causing a rockfall, which almost killed my sergeant, was certainly over the top.’

The smile again. ‘Come now, Inspector, I think I’ve confessed to enough, don’t you? I’m sure confession’s good for the soul, but you have enough here to send me to prison for the rest of my life.’

So that wasn’t you? And in the end, do the details matter?

Venn felt exhausted by the business now. Eleanor might enjoy drama but he was very much happier without it.

+++

When he got home, Jonathan was there. It was raining again and the wind was singing through the bare trees in the garden. Usually, at this time of the evening, they went for a walk together, but today Jonathan lit a fire and they sat there together on the rug, their backs to the sofa, somehow wanting the comfort, even though it wasn’t a cold day. Jonathan had suggested opening champagne to celebrate the successful end to the case, but Matthew said it was too early. An excuse of sorts.

‘Tea,’ he said. ‘If that’s okay with you. It doesn’t feel as if there’s much to celebrate. I was duped by Eleanor Lawson. I imagined what it might be like to be part of all that, that house, that family. She was an exciting and appealing woman.’ And I was very happy there, when I was a boy, on the swing under the tree. That memory coloured my sense of the place and of her.

‘Ah, boring Dorothy suits you much better.’

‘You’re saying I’m boring?’ He leaned his head on his husband’s shoulder. ‘Well, you’re probably right.’

‘Not at all!’ Jonathan threw another log onto the fire. ‘I’ve been thinking about mothers too.’ He took a breath. ‘You’re not the only one with a screwed-up parental relationship. I’ve decided to see if I can find my natural mum, to find out if she’d like to meet me.’

Matthew’s first response was dismay. He knew that Jonathan had never felt at ease with his adoptive parents, but he’d hoped that they were enough for each other, that neither of them needed more family around them. Then he saw how eager Jonathan was, and how anxious, and he was flooded with guilt that he could be so selfish.

‘Of course she’d want to meet you! And once she does, she’ll adore you.’ He got to his feet. ‘I’ll get that tea.’

In the kitchen, he looked out over the dark garden, waiting for the kettle to boil. A red light-buoy marked the entrance to the estuary. It was all very ordinary, rather mundane, but he had the sense that nothing would quite be the same again.

—The End—

 

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