The Dark Room (48 page)

wicked  wicked

GOD
the father made simon d
EVIL

Where are they? Not in Hammersmith. The birds have flown because Jinx made them    it was a
SECRET
but simon made Jinx tell

kill kill kill    no
WEAPON

god loves Jinx miracles for her not for simon

she is
SAVED

she follows simon to leo’s house and simon says gods will be done amen

But why does god save Jinx? Three times simon tried to kill her and three times god saved her. He didn’t save Meg or Leo. They tried to save themselves with

lies

you don’t want the cat to die, Simon you love the cat let me go to hammersmith and feed the cat let the cat live the cat’s imprisoned

she means leo  leo’s imprisoned in simon’s boot  dead already

like jinx imprisoned in a box in chelsea, buried

alive in her coffin, dead if Meg disobeys

no one sees no one hears  she begs for life  too late  too
late

please
SIMON
   pretty please simon   simon says
NO

forget forget forget forget forget forget forget forget forget

simon says sorry

Epilogue

Friday, 1 July, Nightingale Clinic, Salisbury – 11.00 a.m.

DETECTIVE SUPERINTENDENT CHEEVER
and DS Fraser waited in silence while Jinx read the letter that Simon Harris had left behind on his desk before setting out to take
his own life. It was a chilling document, not least because the sickness it revealed was echoed nowhere else in his house, except, perhaps, in a single cassock which, although it had been cleaned,
still showed positive where blood had splattered the front. Despite this and the letter, however, there was considerable unease about Simon’s suicide, particularly in respect of the open
petrol cans that had turned his car into a fireball, destroying all chance of forensic analysis, and the extraordinary order in his life that was in such contrast to the apparent disorder in his
mind.

The police had not been able to discover a single parishioner in Frampton who found their vicar’s homicidal tendencies even halfway credible. ‘He was a sweet man.’
‘Nothing was ever too much trouble for him.’ ‘Father Harris wouldn’t hurt a fly.’ ‘He was the hardest working priest we’ve ever had.’

There was circumstantial evidence to show that he had been absent from the vicarage from lunchtime on Sunday, 12 June, to the morning of Tuesday, 14 June, but it hardly stood up to
close scrutiny. ‘I noticed Simon’s car wasn’t outside on the Sunday or Monday night,’ said his next-door neighbour, ‘but he used to park it in his garage sometimes, so
it may have been in there. I don’t remember seeing him after morning service but that wasn’t unusual. We’re busy people and we don’t keep track of each other’s
movements. The car was certainly there on Tuesday morning. I had a form for him to sign and I had to walk round it to reach the front door. No, I didn’t notice anything odd about him. He was
in his usual good spirits.’

Caroline Harris, quite destroyed by the disasters that had overtaken her family, swore that Simon had been with her and Charles on the Sunday and Monday night. She also claimed that
he had been staying with them on June the twenty-seventh, when Protheroe was attacked. But when her husband was asked later to corroborate these stories he shook his head. ‘No,’ he said
quietly, ‘I’m afraid neither is true.’ He had read his son’s letter without obvious emotion and handed it back to Cheever with a request that his wife should never see it.
‘I blame myself,’ he said. ‘I should have realized how damaging it was to grow up in a house where the sexual act was viewed as something degrading and disgusting. Selfishly, I
thought it was only I who was affected but, clearly, Meg confused it with love and Simon confused it with hate . . .’

To begin with, Flossie Hale and Samantha Garrison were doubtful that Simon was the man who assaulted them. ‘He didn’t wear glasses, you see,’ said Flossie, studying
the photograph of the earnest young vicar, ‘and he was better looking.’ But when shown a snap-shot of a younger smiling Simon minus spectacles and in casual clothes, they were more
confident. ‘Little Lord Fauntleroy,’ said Flossie triumphantly, ‘and he’s not so different from the first one I picked out either. Same eyes. It’s the innocence. Gawd,
I’ll remember never to be taken in by pretty blue eyes again.’

DI Maddocks was liaising with the Metropolitan police in an attempt to discover whether any London prostitutes had suffered similar assaults to Hale’s and Garrison’s
during the five years that Simon had worked there. If they could establish a prolonged pattern of criminal assault on prostitutes, it would ease police doubts over the meagre evidence pointing to
Simon’s involvement in the murders of Landy, Wallader and Harris. For, as Maddocks said to Cheever when he’d read Simon’s letter: ‘Someone beat the crap out of him to make
him write this, sir. It’s got bloodstains on it.’

Frank watched Jinx lower the letter to her knees. ‘As you see, Miss Kingsley,’ he said, ‘there are one or two questions left unanswered. We’re still looking
for the weapon, but there was a cassock in his house that appears to have bloodstains on it. However, it will be some time before we can say definitely that the blood was Meg’s and
Leo’s. The likely scenario is that he removed the cassock after he killed your two friends, which would explain why we had no reported sightings of someone wearing bloodstained clothes. We
believe he probably used the same method to kill your husband, donned his cassock in other words, to keep the blood off his clothes.’ She looked paler and more drawn than ever, he thought,
and the hand that held the letter shook violently. ‘I don’t wish to upset you further, but we would be grateful for any details you can give us.’

She glanced towards Alan Protheroe for support, then nodded.

‘Perhaps we could begin with Saturday, the eleventh of June, the day you phoned your father to tell him the wedding was off. Do you remember that day, Miss Kingsley?’

‘Most of it, yes.’

‘Do you remember going to Meg’s flat in the evening and being angry when she or Leo opened the door to you?’

Jinx nodded.

‘Could you tell me about that? We assume they were supposed to be long gone, so what made you think they were still there? Why did you go?’

‘To collect Marmaduke and take him home with me,’ she said simply. ‘I couldn’t believe it when I saw Leo’s car parked outside. I was furious.’
Tears welled in her eyes. ‘I’d gone to so much trouble and they just thought I was being paranoid.’

‘So you had a key to Meg’s flat?’

She shook her head. ‘I was supposed to collect it from the neighbour. But I could see Leo in the sitting room, so I hammered on the door instead and let rip at them.’ She
dabbed miserably at her eyes. ‘I wish I hadn’t now. It was the last time I really spoke to either of them and I was so bad-tempered. You see, I knew they were in danger. I had this
feeling all the time that something terrible was going to happen.’

Frank waited a moment till he felt she was back in control of herself. ‘What happened then?’

‘Meg gave me this big spiel about Josh and how badly she was behaving towards him. She said it was my fault, that I was using Russell’s murder as a stick to beat her and
Leo with because I wanted to make life as uncomfortable for them as I could. We really did have an awful row.’ She looked at her hands. ‘Well, that’s not relevant any more. I
bullied them into going to Leo’s house in Chelsea until Monday. I said, at least they’d be safer there than in Hammersmith because I was the only other person who knew the
address.’

‘Did they go?’

‘Yes.’

‘What time was that?’

‘I think it was around midnight. Meg insisted on leaving the flat spick and span so that prospective purchasers wouldn’t be put off when they went round it.’

‘So she was selling it?’

‘Yes,’ said Jinx again. ‘I was going to put it with an estate agent as soon as they left for France. That was part of the deal. Meg’s business needed an
injection of cash, and I promised to try and raise it through the sale of her flat if she and Leo would agree to make themselves scarce for a while. The plan was for me to explain it to Josh after
they’d left . . .’ She faltered. ‘But Meg got cold feet when she spoke to him on the phone on Saturday and decided to postpone the trip so she could tell him in person.’ She
licked the tears from her lips. ‘Josh threatened to pull out of the partnership unless she gave him a few guarantees about her commitment, and they’d been going through such a rough
patch recently that she believed he’d do it unless she took the trouble to calm him down.’

Frank studied her bent head curiously. ‘I have some problems understanding why they were prepared to go along with all the secrecy, Miss Kingsley, particularly if, as you say,
they thought you were being paranoid.’

She stared at him rather bleakly for a moment. ‘Meg had done the dirty on me twice. She was in no real position to argue. In any case, Leo was on my side. He was cock-a-hoop
about being in France when the news broke. The last thing he wanted was to face the embarrassment of a cancelled wedding. He’d have gone immediately if Meg had been free to leave.’

‘Why wasn’t she?’

‘She had a client she didn’t want to lose, and a couple of meetings with the bank manager. She said he’d pull the plug on the business if she tried to cancel them.
The earliest she could leave was the eleventh.’ She fell silent.

‘Then she reneged at the last minute?’

Jinx nodded. ‘She only agreed to go along with it in the first place because Leo was in favour, but the minute Josh came down on her like a ton of bricks she dug her heels in,
kept calling me neurotic and absurd.’ The tears ran down her cheeks again. ‘I think she wanted to say she was sorry afterwards, but she was too afraid of Simon to look at me. It was
very sad.’

‘I understand.’ He waited again. ‘So they left for Chelsea at about midnight on the Saturday? Are you sure they went there?’

‘Oh, yes. I followed them. Leo parked in the garage, and I watched them both go inside. Then I went home.’

‘What about the cat? What happened to him?’

‘We stuck with the original plan, but delayed it until Monday. We left poor old Marmaduke in the hall with some food and the cat tray, but he was only going to be there for
thirty-six hours at the most. I would collect the key from the neighbour, rescue Marmaduke, and explain about the flat going on the market. Meg was supposed to call them the minute she got to
France, tell them I was kosher and ask them to let me in.’

‘But why was it so necessary to keep Mr and Mrs Helms in the dark?’ asked Fraser. ‘You can’t have suspected them of being involved in Russell’s
death.’

‘Of course not.’ There was a long silence. ‘I thought it was my father we needed to be afraid of,’ she said at last, ‘and I couldn’t be sure how
much he already knew about Leo and Meg’s affair. I know he found out about Meg and Russell because Miles told me afterwards. That’s one of the reasons I thought he might have had
Russell killed.’ She rubbed her head. ‘Leo swore his parents wouldn’t have said a word to anyone, but’ – she raised her hands in a small gesture of helplessness
– ‘Adam has a way of finding out. If Mr and Mrs Helms knew anything in advance, they would tell the first person who asked them. In fact, Meg said it was worse, that Mrs Helms
wouldn’t wait to be asked, she’d stand on the street corner and broadcast it to the world.’

‘Why weren’t you worried about Leo parking his car in Shoebury Terrace if you thought your father was having him and Meg watched?’ asked the Superintendent.

She lifted her head to look at him and for the first time he understood some of the agonies she had been through. ‘I was. I tried to persuade him to leave it in Richmond but he
wouldn’t go along with it. He said that was taking the whole thing to ridiculous lengths. But, you see, I knew what had been done to Russell and they didn’t. I spent a nightmare week at
the Hall, worrying myself sick. I made Leo phone every day to let me know they were all right and to make my family think everything was normal. Then he phoned on the Friday afternoon to say they
were leaving first thing the next morning, and it was safe to come back and make the announcements. And I thought, thank God, it’s all over. I’ve made a complete idiot of myself, but I
don’t care.’ She held a handkerchief to her eyes. ‘I can’t explain it because I don’t believe in second-sight or precognition, but I knew the minute Leo told me he
wanted to marry Meg that they were going to die. It was like having cold water thrown over me.’ She looked wretchedly towards Alan. ‘So I put two and two together and came up with Adam
and, if I hadn’t, then maybe, just maybe, they’d still be alive.’

‘No,’ he said. ‘It would have made no difference. At least Adam was a terrifying enough prospect to force them to listen to you. They’d have been dead a week
earlier otherwise.’

She held out Simon’s letter. ‘Except that I made them keep the secret,’ she said, ‘and that’s why he killed them. It was the secrecy that made him do
it.’

‘No,’ said Alan, who had read the letter before he took the two policemen to Jinx’s room. ‘He was a very disturbed man, Jinx. It was his illness that made him
do it, and nothing you could have done would have stopped that.’

‘The doctor’s right, Miss Kingsley,’ said Superintendent Cheever. ‘The only person who might have guessed that Simon murdered Russell was Meg. She was closer
to him than anyone else, in all conscience. If it never occurred to her to be afraid of him, then there’s no reason why it should have occurred to you.’ He paused. ‘Did she ever
show any fear of him?’

‘Not in the way you mean. She’s been afraid
for
him as long as I’ve known her. If only Simon were more like me, she always said, he’d be OK. She was
worried that he was becoming a bit of a loner. He never seemed to have any friends. I remember her saying once, he never plays at anything except being a priest.’