Brink of Disaster

Book 90: Murder Room

by Guy Cullingford

Genres: Mystery; Traditional Mysteries

Synopsis

Joyce Cave had her husband, Robert, exactly where she wanted him - in a private gaol with herself, her aunt and her uncle as warders. He had been charged with killing the local good-time girl, who had tried the oldest trick in the world on the panicky Robert and ended up in the canal for her pains. But Joyce hadn't bargained on John Trewen Forbes, a slick operator with schemes to rid himself of his young cousin Lucy, who was following the dangrous course of not parting with any of the proceeds of her inheritance.

Release date: November 14, 2015

Publisher: Orion

Print pages: 222

Sample

“GET OUT the car, Robert,” ordered Joyce harshly. “We’re going over to Auntie’s.”

When she was sufficiently angry with him she always called him by his full name instead of the more familiar ‘Rob’.

He looked up startled, his face blubbered and distorted out of all recognition by the violence of his confession.

“But what about Katie . . .” he hedged feebly. “We can’t leave Katie alone in the house.”

“We can’t take her with us, that’s a sure thing. We can leave the lights on. She’s sound asleep by now. Hurry now and make as little noise as you can. You can’t
afford to attract attention.”

“But I don’t see . . . it’s not as if . . . I’d rather . . . .”

“Do as I tell you,” she commanded forcibly. “And you’d better wash your face before you go. Splash your eyes with cold water from the tap. No, not upstairs. You might
wake Catherine. Do it in the sink and use the roller towel.”

She grabbed her sizeable black handbag and opened it. “Here’s a comb. Make yourself tidy and be quick about it.”

As always her will-power swept him down. Accustomed to following his wife’s bidding, Robert Cave shambled off into the scullery of his small semi-detached house.

She had no need of the comb herself. Shock and dismay had assailed her without putting a hair out of place. As a sop to convention she carried around with her a cheap powder compact but she made
no attempt to use it. Her face was pale but it was always like that. Nor had her expression altered from its usual normal severity. Her cold grey eyes maintained their steady challenge and her thin
lips were no more compressed than when she was about her daily duties. She looked what she was; a woman of determined character, rigid opinions and a quick brain. The only sign of stress she showed
was in her movements. She could not stand still but moved about the small room jerkily, tidying up the evidence of her evening’s occupation, packing away the socks and the mushroom darner
into the wicker work-basket, fastening it by its loop and stowing it away in its place in the corner cupboard. She shook up the two sofa cushions vigorously, sign of the relentless housewife, then
when she heard his steps in the narrow hall outside, she followed him out. Without a word she took down his still damp coat from its peg and helped him into it. He cast a last abject and imploring
glance at her stony features before he turned and went out of the front door. Silently she reached for her own rough tweed draped on its hanger. There was a small square mirror incorporated in the
cheap and nasty stand but this she disdained, cramming on a shapeless felt hat which had bulged to accommodate her bun of hair. Then she drew on a pair of fabric gloves and went back into the
sitting-room to wait for the car to be ready at the gate.

Upstairs, Katie Cave sat up in her bed, her heart beating so hard that it felt as it always did on such occasions, no part of her, but a strange hairy man who hid beneath the mattress and bumped
at it with his head in time with her breathing. Her little face against the oak headboard, was as pale as her mother’s but as irresolute as her father’s. Her door stood ajar as a sole
concession to her night fears. Others might have allowed a nightlight, not Katie’s mother. The child had indeed been in her first deep sleep. What had awakened her was the sound of voices
downstairs; not the loud but unreal voices of television or radio to which she was conditioned, but the quite different flesh and blood accents of an adult quarrel. Even without the rough jerk from
sleep to wide-eyed participation, she could not have made out any words or found sense in them if she had. But the shrill fury of her mother’s tone and the despairing pitch of her
father’s replies was as sharp a contrast from their ordinary monotonous conversational exchanges as black from white. Not only the child’s bed but her whole world shook.

Suddenly the angry voices ceased, leaving a silence even more frightening. For what could be happening? How Katie longed for a drink of water! Her throat was dry with fear, her tongue too large
for her mouth. With what relief she heard footsteps, the slow, heavy ones of her father, treading the route to the kitchen. She heard the tap running. Perhaps he was thirsty too – how she
envied him. Presently the footsteps returned. There was a pause, then someone went out of the front door and someone went back into the sitting-room. But which had done which? Katie dared not call
down. If it was Daddy there below she would have risked a yell but Mother was different. Once she had put you to bed that was it. There you stayed without a murmur or it was the worse for you. Her
small cabin of a bedroom had a window on the side of the house, which was always kept open at the top. The curtains were drawn back and outside gusts of wind blew the rain against the glass.
Straining her ears she thought she caught the sound of the self-starter from the flimsy garage tacked on to the outside wall. Then it was Daddy who had gone out. Lucky for her that she had held her
peace. No sooner had she congratulated herself on this than she sensed a presence in the hall again. This time the front door was reopened and ever so gently closed. Daddy back? No! She held her
breath. She was so tense, so concentrated, that the tiniest human sound would have been as loud to her as a clap of thunder. There was nothing. Nothing. Nothing at all.

It took the acutely nervous child about ten seconds to decide that she was alone in the house. They had deserted her. This was far more of a shock than the ugly voices. It was akin to finding
the impossible possible. Whenever her parents went out together old Mrs. Franks came in from next door. More often than not, if they were only going over to Great Auntie’s, she went with them
even if it would make her late for bed. Never, never was she left alone. Now the night terrors took over in real earnest. It was simply no good to say as her mother did that things were the same in
the dark as they were in the light. Was the dressing-gown on its hook on the door a witch by day? Would the heap of neatly folded clothes on the chair beside her bed, heave and sink again as if
some small, hardly to be imagined, animal was striving to fight its way to the surface? The narrow panel of wardrobe mirror was full of grey ghosts. The dun-coloured ceiling seemed to tilt towards
her. At that she forgot the hidden man waiting to clutch at her ankles. Fear speeded her actions. The bedclothes were thrust back and with a rush of bare feet over the cold linoleum, she gained the
prickly comfort of the carpet at the head of the stairs. There she stood, braced against the bony banister rail, gazing fearfully down into the empty cavern of the hall. The low-powered bulb which
had been left on to light it, only emphasised its secret corners. Cramped and angular as it was; to a child’s eye it loomed large with loneliness.

Suddenly, from behind her in the forsaken bedroom came a rasp, a whirr, and then a metallic “Cuckoo!” The child swung her head but not in fright. The spring which had released that
absurd bird released more than that. She began to count with it. “One, two, three, four . . .” until they both reached nine. Her own age exactly! Whatever else had happened, the
cuckoo’s routine remained regular and reliable, and all at once she wanted to be with him. She scampered back and into the warm bed. Head buried in the pillow she promised herself, ‘I
shan’t go to sleep until they come in. I shan’t sleep a wink until they get back from wherever they are. I’ll be here awake and I’ll just tell them what I think of them.
Serve them right, the horrid things. I shall say . . . I shall say . . .’ And then drowsiness overcame her. With the words she planned to say still drifting in her mind, she was fast asleep
again.

In the moving car, Katie’s parents sat side by side in separation. The rain which scarred her window-panes flushed the windscreen and was cleared away by one persistent
wiper, giving the driver a semi-circle of vision whilst his passenger saw nothing but blots of rain and shifting light. Joyce Cave had plenty to look at inside herself. Another person might have
been warmed by rage and there was need of it for the car was icy in spite of its musty second-hand smell. But her anger was always cold and bitter and tonight it was implacable as well. Yet it had
not prevented her from making a quick assessment of the situation, nor did it now stop her from continuing to prepare for the protection of her own self-interest and the future of her daughter. If
these moves would also have the effect of saving Robert from the consequences of his folly, it would not be because she desired to spare him but simply because the two things were inseparable. She
sat silent, deciding what to say at the end of their journey and how to say it.

Robert drove like a Zombie. This trip from suburb to suburb was one he had been doing regularly for years. He knew every inch of its detested way, a way charted by practical experience to give
the shortest distance between two given points. Once he had crossed the main road, his direction took him through a series of squalid terraced streets where ownership of unhoused cars left only a
restricted passage down the centre. There was no one about. Water streamed off the metal roofs or made puddles in the shrouding tarpaulins. As he rounded the familiar corners and pointed the nose
of the car down yet another damp tunnel of sooty brick, he might have reflected that it was odd that the worst deed of his life was so far only bringing him back to his usual little hell, a visit
to Uncle and Auntie. But he was in a state of daze, incapable of reasoning and subject to a superior will. Even his own hands on the wheel did not seem to belong to him. The lighting system
changed, the road broadened; they were in a different borough. And twenty minutes from the time when they had left their own home, they were outside another which might have been erected by the
same builder given a thousand pounds more to play with. Only then was he jerked into some semblance of reality and coming round from his door to open hers, asked anxiously, “What are you
going to say?”

“You’ll see,” she answered. Having shaped these words, the lips returned to their ominous line.

The porch lantern came on in response to the bell-push and there was Aunt Em framed in her mock-Tudor doorway in her most welcoming mood. She was bundled up in cardigans inches deep out of which
thrust her tortoise neck, seamed face and scanty poll. With eyes slightly jellied behind magnifying-lenses, she accepted their arrival with a mixture of surprise and pleasure.

“Why, Joycey, I didn’t expect you till tomorrow. Come along in. Where’s Katykins? Where’s my dear little Katykins?”

She implanted a kiss on Joyce’s cheek, ignoring Robert entirely.

“What a horrid night you’ve brought with you. Leave your coat in the hall, dear. I thought you were someone collecting for something.”

“Where’s Uncle?” asked Joyce, taking off her hat and leaving the rest of the conversation to flow by – a necessity where Auntie was concerned.

Aunt Em put one arthritic finger to her lips. “He’s doing his bills, dear. In the back room. Miss Rudd is off sick. Such a trial. He’s had to put Janey in the desk. But of
course she isn’t up to the accounts. She can give change but she can’t add – that’s the way they educate them nowadays. Better not disturb him yet. You come in with me.
I’ve been watching the T.V. but I’ll turn it off now. It’s one of those silly panel games. Can’t make head nor tail of it anyway.”

She led the way into a room furnished for comfort without taste in which a standard lamp with a hideous shade reigned supreme. The heavy velvet curtains were drawn under their stiffened pelmet
and she had on a gas fire at full blast which brought the temperature up to tropical heat. She had been sitting close up to the television set, as if determined not to lose a word or action of
something for which she was paying four pounds a year. That, too, was roaring away. When she twisted the knob, quiet should have descended like a benison. But this silence was so loud that it
pierced even Aunt Em’s ancient muzziness and she exclaimed sharply “What is it? What’s up?”

“Robert’s in another scrape. With a girl,” said Joyce biting the words off short.

“Oh dear, oh dear.” There was a pause and then Auntie said as if carrying on from some earlier private conversation with her niece alone. “You should never have married him. I
said you should never have married him.”

“It’s a bit late for that, isn’t it?” remarked Joyce, impatient.

“He never was our class, dear. And you brought up with every advantage that Joe could give his poor sister’s child. I shan’t ever forget how proud of you we were on
prize-giving days. Then you were in your glory. And I remember . . .”

“Aunt Em,” said Joyce harshly, “this isn’t the past, this is the present. I know how generous you and Uncle Joe have been to me. Now I need your help more than
ever!”

“I . . . I hope it’s not money,” said Aunt Em, her bottom lip beginning to tremble.

“No, it’s not. It’s simply that you’ve got to say something. You’ve got to say that we’ve been here with you since seven o’clock.”

“But that would be a story, dear.”

“Well, it’s a story you’ve got to stick to unless you want us all dragged into terrible disgrace!”

“But I don’t go about a lot now. Who’s likely to ask, dear?”

“The police,” said Joyce.

“Oh dear, oh dear.”

“I must see Uncle Joe,” Joyce went on firmly.

“He’ll never agree, dear.”

“He’ll agree all right. I’m going along to him now.”

“He won’t like being interrupted once he’s got into the swing of it.”

“If he doesn’t stop to listen to what I have to tell him there won’t be many accounts to write next month.”

“You don’t say!” Horror-struck, Aunt Em watched her headstrong niece leave the room, closing the door firmly behind her.

‘So that’s her game,’ thought Robert, ‘the unshakeable alibi.’ Strange that it had never occurred to him – though he could never have managed it off his own
bat. The old couple hated him too much for that. When he was getting the car out of the garage, he had an idea that she might be after cash to get him out of the country, or even perhaps to see
what prospects there were of a new home for herself and Katie if she left him. But this was simpler and far more likely to succeed because it asked nothing of them but a lie to save their own
blessed respectability. For the first time he felt stirrings of hope. If no one had seen . . . if no one had seen . . . His knees trembled and he had to sit down.

Up to now both women had paid no attention to him. His movement gave him existence. Aunt Em took off her glasses, polished them, and said “Aren’t you ashamed of yourself,
Robert?” She might have spoken thus to a small child and he made no answer.

“It isn’t the first time, you know. What about when you lost your month’s salary at the races? Fifty pounds Joyce’s Uncle Joe had to find to keep the pair of you afloat.
Then throwing up that good job at Casey’s just because you didn’t like the look of the new manager. You’d have been in a fine mess – an accounts clerk without a reference
– if Joseph hadn’t spoken for you to his friend Mr. Glover in the wholesale. A personal favour to him it was. Not to mention when you used the rent to pay the car repair bills and
nearly left my poor Joycey without a roof over her head.”

Still Robert made no attempt to defend himself.

“Larking away down at that low public-house in the village whilst your wife sits at home darning and patching to keep you all decent. You aren’t fit to be the father of a lovely girl
like Katie.”

“Shut up!” said Robert savagely.

The old lady was startled out of her muddled wits. Never before had he spoken to her like this. To soothe her nerves, she turned to her sweet-box, selected a boiled sweet and untwisted it from
its wrapper. Soon she was sucking away at it while staring at him in shocked surprise. Each suck felt to him as if a rough animal tongue was licking mercilessly at his taut nerves. Here they were
left, the two of them, locked in the same struggle, hers now senile, his reduced to frustration, which had begun since his marriage to Joyce. Time seemed endless. It was even a relief when the door
opened to admit Uncle Joe with Joyce at his back. Joseph Clark was like something left over from the last century. He was craggy and full-bearded and tonight looked more like a minor prophet than
ever – one full of doom. Robert rose to face him with fear in his heart. With that dome of a forehead, beetling brows, and strong features, he was certainly a formidable sight, though he
could coo like a dove over his own counter.

“You need not speak,” he said in a harsh, grating voice lined with contempt. “Your wife has done that for you. If the worst happens and I have to stand by you and jeopardise my
immortal soul, it’s for her sake, not for yours. Now, get out of here, back to y. . .