CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
“I’m not sure
this is such a good idea Sarah,” murmured Mary Bishop, a rising note of
apprehension in her voice, “Suppose Mr Philips returns unexpectedly? Besides,
the police will be watching surely?”
“I hardly think so.” Her
friend was dismissive. “It’s not as if he’s even a suspect. If what I’ve heard is true, all they have to
go on is the word of some child that he might have seen Marc with that
poor girl on what might have been the day she was murdered. I ask you,
what grounds are they for suspecting anyone? Not that it matters if they are
watching…”looking around warily all the same, “…since it’s him they want to
talk to, not us. As for Marc minding us being here, well, you don’t know him
like I do. He’d be okay with it, trust me.” Cotter produced a front door key
and turned it in the lock, “He’s the soul of hospitality. Anyway, “throwing her
a meaningful glance, “…you don’t really want to go back to Sam tonight,
do you?”
Mary Bishop shook her head and meekly followed her friend inside.
“I’ve never met him, of course,” she commented idly, “Not many people have as
far as I know. You’re among the privileged few,” she laughed gaily, “and why
not? You’ve made yourself the heart and soul of this village, after all. I only
wish I knew how on earth you managed it. Sam and I are as much outsiders now as
we ever were. Not that you t haven’t a certain charisma, dear, you do. But that
doesn’t excuse your keeping the elusive Mr Philips practically to yourself. It
would be rather fun to be able to say I knew Monk’s Tallow’s very own mystery
man…”
“Except that we happen to be in Monk’s Porter,” observed the
librarian dryly and wished Mary would shut up about Marc Philips.
Cotter bit his lip. He must stay calm. Mary must suspect nothing. I must be mad. He kept thinking that
even as he let them into the sitting room and headed straight for the drinks
cabinet. I am stark, raving, mad… She had been on his mind for so long now,
Mary Bishop…the caress of her hair against his cheek…the touch of her hand in
his…the fragrance of her perfume…oh, that perfume, it was enough to drive any
man wild with…desire? Did he desire Mary
Bishop? Not in the way most men might, he understood that much, just as he
understood, too, that he could no more have prevented himself from bringing her
here tonight than lying to Daz about his whereabouts. Daz would have understood…only too well. Not only would he have put a
stop to this, but also given him a good hiding for even contemplating what has
haunted and obsessed me since that first meeting with this extraordinarily
sweet woman.
Cotter bit his lip again. Oh,
yes, Daz would have understood alright.
“It’s rather bare, isn’t it?” Mary was saying, “But I suppose you
only need the essentials when you’re a weekender,” she observed and she relaxed
on a sofa that had clearly seen better days. “A decent carpet would make all
the difference and some ornaments, something to make the place more homely,
lived-in at any rate. At least there are curtains. She got up and went to close
them, pausing to accept a second glass of wine from Sarah before sitting down
again. Sarah sat down next to her and they chatted, intimately, without being
intimate, as they so often had during a friendship spanning nearly twenty
years.
Mary Bishop sighed contentedly.
She had never been able to relax quite like this with Sam. He always had
to be doing something. The idea of just sitting and chatting was about as alien
to him as watching out for flying saucers in the night sky. She giggled. Sarah
and she often did that. “I ought to call Sam, I suppose, just to let him know I
won’t be home tonight…” although couldn’t be absolutely sure she wouldn’t.
She’d had too much to drink of course and wasn’t quite herself. But it was a
nice feeling. Besides, it would serve him right to fret a while. He had never
liked Sarah while she, on the other hand, was only too pleased he’d found a
soul mate (of sorts) in Daz Horton.
“You deserve better than Sam,” said Cotter and meant it, unable to
resist placing a hand in hers.
Mary Bishop smiled and made no attempt to withdraw her hand. “You’re
a good friend, Sarah, and Sam’s a good man. It’s just that he and I are just
not …”
“Compatible?”
“We were once. I was head over heels in love with him and vice
versa. People change, I suppose. But for you, I think I would have left Sam
years ago…” She squeezed her friend’s hand and leaned closer, content to lay
her head on the shoulder of the person with whom she had convinced herself she
was far more compatible than her husband.
They would sleep together tonight, she was certain of it. Sarah will seduce me and it will be heaven,
sheer heaven. She could hardly wait to feel her friend’s hands on her naked
body, the mouth smiling at her now planted longingly, lingeringly on her own
lips. They had never discussed it or
even shared a kiss during their entire friendship. But Sarah felt the same way,
of that Mary Bishop was positive.
“More wine?” Cotter did not
wait for Mary to reply but took her glass and went to the cabinet.
Mary Bishop continued to anticipate how the evening would develop
with mounting excitement and some trepidation. She did not see the librarian
slip something into her glass after pouring a liberal measure of Merlot.
Cotter braced himself before returning to the sofa, having already
drained and refilled his glass for Dutch courage. His hand shook slightly as he
handed her the glass. “I propose a toast… to us.”
“To us,” she echoed warmly. They clinked glasses, drank, chatted
about nothing and everything for a while longer until, yawning, Mary Bishop
rested her head yet again on the shoulder she had come so to rely on in recent
years, failing miserably to stifle several more yawns before, finally, her eyes
closed and she drifted into a delightfully sensual, all-embracing
unconsciousness. She would have no recollection being lifted up, arms hugging
her close as they carried her into the bedroom…or of being undressed slowly and
deliberately until, her naked body lay on the flowery duvet as if on display.
To Cotter’s adoring eyes she manifested all the alluring qualities of a
fairytale Sleeping Beauty.
Cotter leaned over and kissed the slightly parted lips, the breasts
he’d envied and longed to caress for years.
Hastily, frantically, he kicked off the sensible shoes (try as he might,
he had never been able to get the hang of high heels) then ripped off his
clothes, glad for once to be rid of the turquoise silk suit, black stockings
and (especially) the padded bra. Gone was Sarah Manners, librarian, as if in a
puff of smoke. In her place, not Ralph Cotter (he was dead, after all) but one,
Marc Philips, every inch a hot-blooded male desperate to prove his libido. Nor was it anything like that sordid business
with the girl from the fair. This was
special, exquisite, more fulfilling than he could have dreamed.
He savoured every moment of raping Mary Bishop.
Later, he was content just to lay there, his arms wrapped around
her, the feel and smell of her body more intoxicating than any liquor he had
tasted in his whole life. At the same
time, it saddened him to think how it made a mockery not only of his marriage
to Jean (a sorry sham from the start)
but also (whatever am I thinking?) his
relationship with Daz. “What have I done,” he sobbed quietly, “What have I
done?”
Eventually, he extricated himself, reluctantly, from Mary Bishop’s
unwitting embrace. Padding to the bathroom like a man sleepwalking, he suddenly
quickened his step as if forced rudely awake and was soon retching, violently,
over a washbasin much the same colour as his face. He started at that face in a
mirror on the wall and the lines of another fairy story came back to haunt him,.
‘Mirror, Mirror on the wall, who is the fairest of them all?’ Thou
art fair, oh queen,” returned the mirror acidly, “but…” His disturbed
mind lingered on that ‘but’ for so long that he lost all track of time.
It seemed only minutes before he returned to the bedroom. He only
realised his mistake a split second before Mary Bishop sat bolt upright and
screamed.
Cotter panicked. The wretched woman would not stop screaming. He
took a running dive and straddled the heaving body on the bed, forcing her
against the pillows, a hand held tightly over her mouth. Mary, though, continued to make muffled,
protesting noises, her eyes wide with terror.
Confused and upset, Cotter did not understand at first. How could
she be afraid of him? Didn’t she know he would never hurt her? Then he felt a
throbbing between his legs and peered, involuntarily, at his sex. It seemed to
grow to giant proportions even as he watched, fascinated, as if not fully
realizing what it was.
Wide eyes on the pillow followed his gaze and Mary Bishop’s muffled
screams gained a new momentum.
It seemed to Cotter that the hot breath against his palm was set on
branding his flesh forever with the images of her fear, rage, disgust… until he
could bear it no longer. Smashing his free hand into the quivering jaw, he
knocked the distraught woman senseless.
Amazed at first by what he had done, Cotter could only stare at the
beloved face on the pillow, its pink flesh already starting to turn an ugly
puce. Then he burst into tears. The longer and harder he cried, the more he
began to comprehend the full import of his actions. She would have to die now.
There could be no reprieve. He would lose her. Worse, he might be caught and
sent to prison. The tears became a flood. No,
not that. He could never
cope with that. He would rather die. Oh, God, what have I done? What
do I do? Daz will kill me. But that was nonsense, of course. Hadn’t Daz
always taken care of him? Why should
anything change now? He looked steadily
at the unconscious woman on the bed and knew the answer. Daz must never know he loved Mary Bishop as a
man loves a woman. He might guess (probably
has?) but he must never know for sure. “He’ll never know, Mary,” he told
the motionless, appealingly vulnerable figure of Sam Bishop’s wife, “It will be
our secret.”
“What the hell do you think…?” A blast from
the doorway jerked Cotter into a semblance of comprehension. He sprang to his feet to confront Liam Brady
like a man possessed.
Harry Smith stared, disbelieving, from the naked woman on the bed to
the wide-eyed lunatic who might have stepped out of a gothic novel. He opened his mouth to demand, abuse,
protest…and much more besides. But the eyes cut him short, glued his lips and
parched his tongue. He knew those eyes. “Sarah?” he croaked at last. The
lunatic made no reply. “You’re…Sarah Manners.” It was not a question. The eyes
continued to burn into his face.
Longing to reach for a handkerchief and wipe away the sweat, Harry
Smith did not dare for fear of losing a thread of concentration that was
leading him…where? He glanced again at
the woman on the bed. Only, the image had changed dramatically. In her place lay a man, on the floor, someone
bending over him. A small boy clutching a teddy bear was also on the very edge
of the picture, poised to step into it.
The child glanced in his direction before running to the man who was no
longer leaning over the body on the floor but looking at the child, a glazed
expression in the eyes and blood on his clothes. He, too, spared Harry Smith a
fleeting look before focussing all his attention on the small boy. “I know
you,” Harry Smith murmured without realizing he had said a word, “You’re…” But
he got no further.
Liam Brady crumpled to the floor in a dead
faint.
…………………………
“You’ve done what?”
Daz Horton exploded after being shaken awake before even the dawn chorus had
stirred. He stared at Cotter in utter disbelief. Not for long, however. He could tell by the
state the other man was in that Cotter was deadly serious. Quickly, almost
methodically, he took in the male clothes. “You haven’t gone off on another
rape and throttle jaunt have you?” he demanded crudely and did not need to be
told. “My God, you have, you idiot, you stupid, bloody IDIOT.” He leapt out of bed and lunged at Cotter’s
throat.
“They’re not dead,” whimpered Cotter, stumbling backwards against
the wall. “We can get rid of them, can’t we? No one need know…”
“What do you mean, ‘they’re not dead? Horton’s jaw dropped. “Who’s ‘they’? What have
you gone and done, you stupid, stupid bastard?”
Cotter’s subsequent revelation stopped Horton in his tracks.
“I tied ‘em up and gagged ’em then locked ’em in the pantry…” Cotter
whined. At the same time, he managed to sound pleased with himself, anxious as
he was to win Horton’s approval. His
partner’s expression less than reassuring, however, he soon began to cry. “They
know, Daz, they know…” he stammered.
Horton, appearing to relent, gathered his lover in his arms and gave
him a brief, conciliatory hug before propelling him out of the room. “Black
coffee for you, flower, and plenty of it I’m thinking,” he declared, whereupon
he dumped a tearful Cotter unceremoniously into a chair at the kitchen table. Adrenalin
racing, he grabbed two mugs and poured black, steaming liquid from a
percolator. “You’re certain Liam recognized you?”
“Why else would he pass out like that?”
Cotter sobbed.
“Yes, well, you’re no painter’s dream in the nude, my turtle dove,
let’s face it. I don’t imagine Mary made a pretty sight with her jaw swelling
up like a barrage balloon either…”
“I had no choice. I had to shut her up. She was screaming the place
down, for heaven’s sake. She saw my cock, Daz, she saw my cock!” Horton merely guffawed. “It’s no laughing
matter, Daz. They’ll have to go, the pair of ’em.”
“So what did you have in mind? Don’t tell me, the Devil’s Elbow. Oh,
my turtle dove, you really are something. But don’t you think that’s pushing
our luck rather?”
“It’s always worked before…”
“That’s true, but not slap bang in the middle of a local murder
hunt.” Horton scratched his head. “I suppose we could always arrange to put the
blame on our old friend Marc Philips.”
“Yes, yes!”
Cotter shouted in his excitement, “We kill two birds with one stone,
Mary and Phillips. No one will ever be any the wiser. Better still, the police
will be certain Phillips is their man. And we know how far that will get them,
don’t we?” he added with a nervous giggle.
Horton shook his head. “It’s too pat,
flower, too pat, too convenient, by half. No, we need something
more…convincing, if not original.”
“You could be right. Especially now that bastard Fred Winter and
Carol Brady are sniffing around,” Cotter had to concede but was unprepared for
Horton’s daggers drawn expression.
“The Brady woman, did you say? Are you telling me that Carol Brady
and Fred Winter are sniffing around in Monk’s Tallow?”
“I spotted them earlier. Don’t panic, they didn’t see me. They were
outside the church talking to…oh, God…Sam Bishop! You don’t think…?”
“That they might just put two and two together and get their
arithmetic right for once? We can’t take
that chance. Come on, let’s go.”
“But…”
“But nothing…If they decide to sniff around the cottage and find
Liam and the Bishop woman, we’re as good as done for. Besides…” He began to
mull over the possibility (or impossibility) of killing four birds with one
stone. “Get changed and make it quick. I reckon it’s time Sarah bloody Manners
stuck her oar in…with a little help from a friend of course,” he added with a
wicked grin that sent Cotter’s heart racing.
Daz, he could tell, either had a plan or was close to formulating one.
They came across Fred Winter’s car parked about some way from the
cottage at Monk’s Porter. “They’re either up to something, expect to find
something…or both,” observed Horton, his voice shaking with emotion.
“You don’t think…?” Cotter became increasingly alarmed and could not
finish the question, his face a picture of raw anxiety.
“I don’t think anything and neither will you,” Horton snapped,
moving forwards, “There’s a time for thinking and there’s a time for doing.
This is no time for playing mind games, flower, we need to see what the hell’s
going on with those two and get stuck in.”
“Stuck in?” Cotter was curious in spite of a growing trepidation
making him want to pee all of a sudden.
“Pick a tree and get a move on,” Horton snapped, recognizing the
signs. Cotter did as he was told.
Minutes later, the pair could not only see the cottage clearly but
also make out Winter and Carol Brady peering through separate windows. Before
Cotter had a chance to collect himself, Horton had already made strides towards
the couple, calling out and waving cheerfully. Cotter’s heart sunk. Even so, he
forced his legs to follow at a safe distance.
“Looking for Marc?” Horton asked, casually enough, as he approached
a very surprised looking couple. “Who isn’t eh?” he chuckled. “I doubt if he’ll
be home but come in and see if you want, Sarah and I have a key. We send on any
mail, you see, not that much gets delivered to this address, what with him only
being here occasional weekends and all that…” Horton fumbled for the front door
key.
Once inside, Horton ushered all three into the sitting room and
poured them all a drink, ignoring Carol Brady’s expressed preference for a cup
of strong coffee. “I feel whacked all of a sudden,” she confessed and sank into
an armchair. “A drop of the hard stuff, that’s what you need,” retorted Horton
and she felt too tired to argue. “I’ve
never known such a time of it around here,” he commented and poured four large
whiskeys.
Winter thought he heard a scuffling sound and pricked up his
ears. Cotter noticed and his blood ran
cold. “Marc thinks he has rats,” he murmured unconvincingly.
“So when was the last time you saw him?”
Winter asked the librarian.
Cotter shrugged. “It must be a few weeks ago at least. Time flies
so. It’s hard enough catching up with oneself, let alone anyone else. It’s
quite scary really?” He uttered a silly titter
that grated on Carol Brady’s nerves. She had almost forgotten how much she
disliked the woman.
“No one seems to be catching up with that poor girl’s killer, that’s
for sure,” observed Carol bluntly and accepted a glass from Horton with a
bright smile requiring no small degree of effort. Something was wrong or, at
least, not quite kosher. Freddy sensed it too, she could tell by the way he
kept scratching his nose, a habit she’d always deplored, but try as she might,
never managed to break him of during those long-ago days when they had been an
item…of sorts. She reached for a cigarette and would have lit up then changed
her mind and began to replace it in a pack of twenty when Sarah Manners flung
her such a disapproving look that she, leisurely, went ahead and lit up after
all. The librarian took a chair directly
opposite her and continued to glower with undisguised disapproval.
“I dare say you’d like to take a look around,” said Horton equably,
remaining on his feet, as did both men.
“All in good time, eh? Marc has always been generous with his scotch,”
he chuckled and topped up their glasses. No one objected. Neither Carol nor
Winter saw Horton slip a small tablet into their glasses from the hollow of his
palm. “What was that?” He cocked an ear.
“Mice, maybe…?”
Everyone listened. No one touched their drinks. The anonymous
tablet dissolved unnoticed, ready to go to work on its wary yet, on the whole,
unsuspecting victims. The latter took another sip of the excellent malt and
experienced nothing untoward for several minutes.
Carol yawned and closed her eyes, only half-listening to the chatter
of voices around her that kept coming and going, like her old transistor radio
at the Camden flat that had been on the blink for ages. The comparison made her
want to laugh but she had lapsed into unconsciousness before the sound reached
her mouth. Winter watched her, half-smiling, suppressing a yawn himself.
Instantly, he was on the alert. Looking from the rim of his glass at first
Sarah Manners then her partner’s watchful expression, he knew he had been
duped. You fool, Fred Winter, you bloody fool. He put the glass down and
struggled to keep his eyes open. “I must use the loo, I’m afraid,” he managed to say and took three faltering
steps towards the door before he went sprawling.
A warning bell ran in Horton’s head. Winter hadn’t asked for the loo
but merely expressed his intention to use it. That could only mean one
thing. “He’s been here before, flower.
This is worse than I thought. Still, he couldn’t have discovered your pals in
the pantry - there hasn’t been time for that. And there’s nothing else for him
to find here, is there, nothing you haven’t got rid of like I told you…?” But
Cotter’s expression was not encouraging.
Instinctively, Horton dashed into the bedroom. He saw it at once, sat on the floor below the
windowsill looking as pathetic as Cotter’s expression in the wardrobe mirror.
“What did I tell you? Get rid of that bloody bear, I said, not bring it here
you stupid, STUPID woman!” He swung round and lashed out at Cotter who made no
attempt to sidestep the blow.
To be continued
