A Deep Deceit

Ten

The biggest shock was still to come.

‘Why don’t you go home now and someone will call round to see you in a day or two,’ said Sergeant Perry when she eventually returned.

I looked at her in amazement. ‘You can’t just be letting me go, surely,’ I said. ‘I murdered my husband; I killed Robert Foster.’

‘I don’t think so,’ she replied.

I couldn’t believe my ears. ‘But I did!’

‘We have done quite a bit of checking already; we’ve been on to the Metropolitan Police and they have no record at all of the murder you have reported,’ she continued calmly.

I was staggered. ‘W-What does that mean?’ I stammered.

‘I think it means you couldn’t have killed your husband,’ she said quietly.

‘But I did,’ I responded. ‘I stabbed him to death. I can still see the blood. He was lying dead in a pool of blood...’

‘Mrs Peters, we have been round to see your present husband. I told you that. He’s here now, waiting for you. And he’s very upset. He has explained to us all about your terrible nightmares...’

‘This is not a nightmare, it happened!’ I said. I was suddenly very angry. Anger was new to me. Fear and pain I understood well enough, but not anger.

‘Mrs Peters,’ the sergeant went on patiently, ‘the Reverend Robert Foster was not murdered.’

‘B-But he’s dead, isn’t he?’ I cried.

‘I believe so,’ said the sergeant. ‘But I don’t know the details. We will look into it more, of course. However, I see no reason to detain you.’

‘How did he die then, if I didn’t stab him? How?’

‘We don’t know yet. The Met are looking into it and will be sending us a full report.’

‘So how can you be sure that he wasn’t murdered? He was. He was. With my kitchen knife.’

I realised I probably sounded absurd. I could hear the note of hysteria in my voice. Surely never had anyone tried harder to get themselves arrested on a murder charge.

‘There was never a murder investigation, that’s how we know,’ continued the sergeant. ‘Surely there would have been if a man had been found stabbed? That can hardly be natural causes, can it? You must see that.’

I saw all right. DS Perry was barely concentrating on me at all any more. I suspected she just thought I was one of those people unable to differentiate between what was real and what was not.

She could be forgiven, I suppose. My head was reeling. I could feel a dull ache beginning in my temples. ‘What about all the threats, those awful letters I got and the paint daubed on our front door?’ I asked.

She nodded. ‘We’ll look into that too. You thought you were being threatened because somebody knew you had killed your husband. Well, it seems that cannot be so. Can you think of anything else that might lie behind these anonymous threats?’

I shook my head numbly. I really didn’t know what was going on any more.

‘Well, let’s take it a step at a time then, shall we, Mrs Peters?’ said the sergeant, quite incomprehensibly I thought.

The hysteria took a grip of me for a moment or two.

‘It’s not Mrs Peters,’ I yelled at her. ‘I’m still Mrs Foster. I’m not married to Carl. We couldn’t possibly have got married, we would have been found out. It’s not even Suzanne. I had to take a new name because of what I’d done. I’ve been living a lie...’

‘It’s not an offence to change your name, women commonly use the name of a man they live with but have not married. I assumed you preferred to be called Mrs Peters.’ The sergeant sighed. ‘Look, we will get back to you, you can rely on that. Meanwhile go home, get some rest...’

She just wanted to be rid of me, I suspected. Everyone thought I was weak, even the police. Too weak and confused to be a murderer apparently.

She led me into the interview room in the reception area where I had first been installed. Carl was waiting there, sitting on one of the plain wooden chairs. His eyes were red-rimmed. The strain was also apparent in the tight little lines round his mouth. But if he was angry with me he didn’t show it.

His eyes lit up when I walked in, the way they always did when he saw me, and he even managed half a smile as he stood up and wrapped an arm rather awkwardly round me, just as he had on that fateful morning so long ago.

‘You can take her home now, Mr Peters,’ said the sergeant, carefully not calling me by any name at all.

Carl did not need a second bidding. ‘Let’s go, honey,’ he muttered, and bundled me outside.

When we were in the car park he gently turned me to face him. ‘My darling,’ he said. ‘Why on earth did you go to the police? Haven’t I told you often enough that I will look after you. It’s dangerous for us to involve anyone in our lives, you know that – let alone the police.’

‘But... but they said there was no murder,’ I stuttered. ‘I don’t understand...’

‘They’ll f-f-find out the truth eventually, they’re b-bound too,’ he hissed through clenched teeth, the strain of it all making him stammer.

I shuddered. Just a while ago I had been so sure of myself – nervous to the point of being afraid, but quite certain I was doing the right thing. Now I didn’t even know what the right thing was any more. DS Perry had made it fairly clear that she thought I was a raving nutter. The front desk clerk had seemed to assume that even before I’d really got going with my story. They certainly appeared to believe, just like Carl and my gran, that I was congenitally unable to cope with the practicalities of life, to sort anything out for myself.

‘Don’t worry, honey, just don’t worry about anything,’ soothed Carl as he steered me through the narrow streets back to Rose Cottage. Sometimes he really did behave as if I were stupid. How could I possibly not worry, for goodness’ sake?

Then, as bad luck would have it, we saw the rear end of Fenella Austen disappearing round the corner by the library. I had been hoping that Carl wouldn’t notice her, neither of us needed any further agitation, but of course he did. I felt him stiffen beside me and he muttered something under his breath, so softly that I couldn’t quite catch the words. I could guess, though. Carl still distrusted Fenella.

‘Carl, you know she can’t be the one, there’s no logic to thinking that,’ I said quietly.

‘Somebody sent those letters and plastered paint over our door. Somebody had a go at our van, tried to drive us out of our minds.’

‘Yes, and we don’t have a clue who it was, not a clue.’

His arm was still across my shoulders and he drew me closer to him. ‘I suppose you’re right,’ he muttered eventually.

‘You know I’m right,’ I replied.

He gave a kind of grumpy snort. ‘I just know that without the threats none of this would have happened. You felt beleaguered, hunted. That’s why you went to the police.’

‘Maybe,’ I said. ‘But I think I might have wanted to do that eventually anyway. I did tell you, try to warn you about how I feel. I’m tired of hiding, Carl, sick of it.’

‘So you haven’t been happy with me all these years; you’ve been living a lie, have you?’ he enquired abruptly in a flat voice and removed his arm from my shoulder.

‘Of course I’ve been happy with you,’ I cried. And that was the truth, for certain. ‘We’ve both been living a kind of lie, but not with each other, never that.’

He put his arm round me again and kissed my cheek. ‘There you are, then,’ he said. ‘If it hadn’t been for those goddamned letters and all the other stuff we’d still be happy. Wouldn’t we?’

I had to agree, reluctantly. ‘In a way we would, I suppose,’ I said. ‘But there has to be more to life than what we have allowed ourselves...’

‘Of course we would still have been happy,’ interrupted Carl heartily, as if he hadn’t been listening to me at all. ‘That’s all that changed it. I just wish I really did know who sent them. There’d be another murder then.’

He set me thinking again. ‘But the police say there wasn’t one in the first place...’ I began.

‘You’re confused. They’ll find out, they’re bound to find out.’

We were almost at the cottage by then, the funny little house that had been our haven for so long.

‘It’ll be all right, Suzanne, it’s just got to be,’ he whispered into my ear as he unlocked our front door.

Inside the house I could not settle.

Carl busied himself in the kitchen cooking supper, but everything seemed different. I had known that what I did that afternoon would change our lives irrevocably, but what had actually happened was nothing like anything I had imagined.

I had foreseen being charged with murder, being arrested and locked up at once in a police cell. It had never occurred to me that I might be told there had been no crime committed and sent home. I just couldn’t get my head around it and, for once, Carl wasn’t helping.

He seemed intent on carrying on as if nothing had happened. Perhaps it was all he knew how to do for the moment. Whatever his motivation, I found it really irritating.

He was clutching a small saucepan when he came to me as I stood by the dining-room table scraping at some wax, which had fallen on to the polished wood from a candle. It wasn’t that I cared a jot for the table at that moment – it was in any case the same rather shabby gate-legged one, which had been in the house when we first moved in – just that I was looking for something to do with my hands.

‘Now, taste this,’ Carl instructed abruptly, thrusting a wooden spoon under my nose.

I wanted to tell him to go way and leave me alone. I didn’t, of course.

‘It’s a new sauce for pasta – crabmeat and clam,’ he continued, almost prodding me with the dripping spoon. ‘Fresh clams, naturally. Steve dropped them round earlier...’

Eventually I obediently complied, stuck out my tongue and licked at the spoon.

‘What do you think?’ he asked, as if my opinion of his blessed pasta sauce were his only anxiety in all the world.

‘Lovely,’ I said flatly. I really couldn’t have cared less.

If he realised this he wasn’t showing it. ‘Is there enough garlic?’

I nodded. I really didn’t want to know.

‘Good. Now, I put some Cajun spices in. It’s not too hot, is it?’

I shook my head.

‘But can you spot my special secret ingredient?’

I couldn’t carry on with this nonsense. ‘No, Carl, I can’t,’ I snapped. ‘I have other things on my mind. Don’t you understand that.’

He hung his head like a schoolboy chastised by his teacher. I was never irritated by Carl. He wasn’t used to this kind of outburst from me, but I couldn’t help it. Couldn’t withdraw it, either. I just wanted time to think. But Carl seemed intent on not giving me that.

He retreated, wounded, to the kitchen but returned within minutes clutching two glasses. ‘Cooking sherry, there was only this little drop left in the bottle after I made the sauce,’ he said. ‘I want to propose a toast.’

I didn’t really want a drink, but I took one nonetheless.

‘To our future,’ said Carl stoutly, raising his glass to mine.

It was not like Carl to be so insensitive. At that moment I couldn’t sort out the present, let alone the future, and I was staggered that he did not seem to have any understanding of this. As for the past, well, I was plain bewildered.

I took a reluctant sip. It might have been me, but I thought the stuff tasted quite disgusting. As soon as he returned to the kitchen, saying it was time to put on the pasta, I took the opportunity to get as far away from him as was possible in our little house.

I went upstairs, stood by our beautiful picture window and gazed blankly out over the bay. For once the spectacular view gave me no pleasure. In fact, I barely saw it, to be honest.

I kept thinking about my surreal experience at the police station. It didn’t make any sense. I felt I had been fobbed off, dismissed as being of no consequence like some kind of prankster. I half wondered that they hadn’t accused me of wasting police time, such had been the attitude of DS Perry.

There were so many unanswered questions I should have asked and didn’t. The Devon and Cornwall Constabulary weren’t really interested, that was the truth of it, or they would not have let me leave without having received a full report from the Metropolitan Police. Perhaps Carl was right to treat me as if I were stupid. I certainly felt it, as well as everything else. I wanted to go back to the police station and demand that they find out at once exactly what the Met believed had happened in my Hounslow manse home seven years previously. And I might have done so, too, were it not for Carl. As it was, I could not face the confrontation with him that I knew such a course of action would bring about. So I just stood there in a vaguely trancelike state.

Because of that, maybe, I did not notice anyone in the street outside before the doorbell rang.

I heard Carl shout ‘just a minute’, followed by a muffled curse as he dropped something in the kitchen and then his heavy footsteps as he made his way across our little dining room to the front door.

‘Hallo, there, brought you some good news,’ said a familiar voice from the alleyway outside.

‘Right,’ said Carl, making no move to invite the caller in.

‘Yes,’ the voice continued. Will Jones, no doubt about that.

There was a pause.

Then Will, obviously puzzled by the absence of Carl’s usual hospitality, spoke again. ‘Aren’t you going to invite me in, then?’

‘Of course,’ said Carl unenthusiastically and I could hear a shuffle as he stepped aside, then Will’s footsteps, followed by the slight bang and click of the door closing.

No wonder Will sounded puzzled. We both liked him but his occasional unexpected visits to our little home were welcome for more reasons than that. He had only ever been turned away once before, the night of the pink champagne, and I think he had understood that I had always felt a bit guilty about that. Apart from anything else, he usually brought with him an envelope full of money when he called. Will knew how broke Carl and I almost invariably were and was in the habit of passing on the cash to Carl almost immediately after he sold a painting. A call from Will usually meant a sale, so he was nearly always a welcome visitor.

‘Where’s Suzanne?’ he asked. If Carl was in the house it was unusual for me not to be there with him, particularly in the evening, and Will knew that.

‘She’s upstairs,’ said Carl.

Will must have made a move as if he were intending to climb the staircase – after all, he knew well enough that we more or less lived in our airy top room with its stunning picture window and that was where we usually entertained him when he brought us ‘good news’ – because I heard Carl tell him not to go upstairs.

‘She’s in a bit of a state, you see,’ he muttered by way of explanation.

‘What’s wrong, Carl, can I help at all?’ enquired Will predictably. He was the kind of man who always seemed to want to help if he could. Mind you, I just wished he’d go away and I suspected Carl felt the same. There are times when the last thing you want is someone else’s help. And Will could be very persistent in his attentions to us.

Very quietly I made my way to the top of the staircase. There was a bend in it, and if you were both silent and careful you could squat there and watch what was going on below through the banisters without being spotted. Why is it that overhearing yourself being talked about is always so irresistible? Even in my confused and depressed state of mind I wanted to know exactly what Carl was going to say about me and how Will would react.

At first Carl just sighed. For a moment I thought he might try to pass it off and show Will the door. But he didn’t. After a few seconds he gestured to Will to sit down and joined him on one of the old upright chairs round the table.

‘It’s this hate campaign against us, if that’s what it is...’ Carl began.

I saw Will’s expression change, a kind of shadow fall across his face. He did not speak, just sat waiting for Carl to continue, which he eventually did.

‘I knew she’d be upset, but I never thought she’d be quite so bad. I think it was the nightmares. She thinks they’re never going to go away, not now these letters and all the rest of it have started...’

‘What nightmares?’ asked Will.

Carl hesitated. ‘Oh, she’s always had them,’ he said eventually. ‘Since childhood. But I think she thought they had finished. The threats brought them back, worse than ever.’

‘I didn’t know. Poor Suzanne,’ said Will and I was touched by the concern in his voice.

‘She went to the police today,’ Carl continued.

Will appeared to be almost as anxious as Carl. ‘What did they say?’

‘About the letters, you mean?’

Will really did sound puzzled then. ‘Yes, of course, the letters. What else?’ he asked.

Carl blinked rapidly. ‘Of course,’ he repeated quickly. ‘The letters and the other threats. It’s what they’re referring to, that’s what’s worrying us.’

Will looked and sounded surprised now. ‘You know what they’re about then, do you?’

Carl nodded.

‘Are you sure?’ asked Will.

‘We’re sure all right,’ said Carl.

Will half looked as if he might say more, but he didn’t. Neither did Carl speak for a bit. I didn’t see that it really mattered whether he told Will any more of it anyway, and half hoped that he would. The whole world was going to know soon enough, I assumed, so we might as well get it over with. There wasn’t really a secret any longer, was there?

However, Carl just drew in a deep breath, as if making a great effort to pull himself together. ‘Look, Will, thanks for coming round, but I’m afraid we’re just not very sociable today,’ he said then. ‘I need to be alone with Suzanne. I’m sorry. We’re both upset.’

Will stared at him for a moment or two. ‘Why don’t you let me go up and talk to her for a minute. I’m sure I could help,’ he said.

My heart sank. I didn’t want to have to talk to anyone.

Thankfully, Carl dissuaded him. ‘I don’t think so, Will. I think she would really like to be on her own for a while.’

‘Of course.’ Will stood up at once as if he were about to leave, then reached into his pocket and brought out one of the brown envelopes we were invariably so grateful to receive. ‘I nearly forgot. Sold two of your landscapes last week,’ he said.

Carl muttered his thanks and escorted Will towards the door.

‘Give Suzanne my love, then.’

Carl nodded as Will stepped outside. On the doorstep he turned and put a big hand on Carl’s arm. ‘I’m so sorry about all this. Tell her, won’t you?’ he said quietly.

‘I know you are, Will, thank you, and of course I’ll tell her.’

He went back into the kitchen. He must have guessed I had been listening, even if not watching, but he didn’t look up as he passed the bottom of the staircase.

There was silence for a few minutes more and then Carl called me to eat my supper. Obediently I trotted downstairs and sat at the table.

‘You heard Will, I expect,’ he said casually.

I nodded my assent. He didn’t say any more. He had spread a white cloth over the old table and put a small vase containing a few flowers in the centre. A candle stood next to it, its flame flickering palely. Strange when all that is normal becomes suddenly abnormal. I had experienced that sensation before.

I think the pasta was very good, Carl’s cooking was usually excellent, but I barely remember eating it and did so only because I thought it would be the easiest option. I couldn’t stand the thought of Carl making a fuss. At first we ate in silence. I really did feel drained. In any case there was only one thing I wanted to talk to him about and he had made it quite clear that he did not want to talk about it at all.

There was fresh pineapple and local Cornish ice cream for dessert. While we were eating it the candle flickered more dramatically and blew out. The only light in the room then was from the single spotlight aimed at my Pumpkin Soup painting, and suddenly it seemed quite harsh and unforgiving. I thought Carl had probably opened the small kitchen window while he was cooking – he often did. He must have been more preoccupied than he was letting on because he made no move to relight the candle, which was unlike him.

When the meal was over I made one last attempt to question him about his recollections of Robert’s death but he still didn’t want to talk about it.

‘You saw Robert, didn’t you, bleeding from the knife wounds, from where I’d stabbed him...’ I began.

‘Go to bed and I’ll bring you up a hot drink.’

‘Carl, I do not understand what the police are saying to me. I really need to get to the bottom of it. Don’t you, Carl? Don’t you want that too?’ I persisted lamely.

‘The less we have to do with the police or any other officials in our lives the better,’ he replied obliquely. ‘We’ve always agreed on that, haven’t we?’

I nodded. ‘But things are different now, Carl, this can’t go on.’

Carl looked weary. ‘Honey, why don’t you go to bed?’ he asked again. ‘We’re both tired. There’s nothing we can do about the cops until they’ve completed their silly investigation. There can only be one result. You and I know the truth and so, soon enough, slow as they seem to be, will the Devon and Cornwall Constabulary. That’s what I’m afraid of. It’ll spoil everything, won’t it?

‘But right now, why don’t you just go to bed. Things will look brighter and clearer in the morning. They always do, don’t they?’

I nodded in a resigned sort of way. But I didn’t really think so, not in this case.

‘Go on, I’ll make you some creamy cocoa,’ Carl encouraged.

Again I meekly obeyed him, from habit, I suppose, as much as anything. And in the end I was actually quite happy to do as he said. My brain was in turmoil. I was bewildered. I longed for oblivion.

I climbed the funny old staircase, proceeded to unfold the futon sofa and turn it into our double bed, a task I had performed so many times in this house. I opened the old seaman’s chest in which we kept our bedding, removed the duvet, bottom sheet and pillows, and flung them on the futon in a tangled lump.

Downstairs I could hear Carl moving about. He would clear up meticulously before he brought me the promised hot drink. That was in his nature. Crisis or no crisis, I had no doubt that all the dishes would be washed and put away, and both kitchen and dining room restored to perfect order. I had often thought that it was a good job I had been brought up by Gran to be tidy, because I couldn’t imagine Carl being able to live with someone who wasn’t.

I turned on the bedside radio in the hope of being able to listen to something restful and beautiful, which might calm me, but it was on CD mode and, predictably, the strains of Leonard Cohen filled the room. I wasn’t in the mood. I switched it on to radio, fiddling with the dial until I found Classic FM. Something I vaguely recognised as being Mozart, although I couldn’t have said what, was playing. It was both gentle and beautiful but I doubted anything would have done much to improve my distraught state of mind.

With a great effort of will I unfolded the bottom sheet and spread it over the futon, placed the pillows neatly side by side and shook the duvet into some semblance of order.

I really needed comfort so I sought out a pair of Carl’s heavy cotton pyjamas, warm and cosy, and engulfed myself in them. Then I climbed into the bed and pulled the cover up to my neck. It was all so familiar, so comfortable, but it gave me no solace at all.

I just lay there, wide awake and fretting, until I heard Carl go through his nightly routine of checking that both front and back doors were locked, then returning to check them both again as he almost always seemed to, and eventually his footsteps on the stairs. He put a steaming mug of cocoa on the floor next to my side of the bed and sat down alongside me.

He kissed me on the end of my nose. ‘I bet you’ve got my pyjamas on tonight,’ he said. He knew me so well. I allowed him to tug the duvet back an inch or two. ‘You have too. I really fancy you in my jim-jams, do you know that,’ he went on.

I forced a smile. I didn’t think I could face sex.

‘It’s all right,’ he said, gently stroking my hair and reading my mind as usual. ‘I just want you to sleep well tonight, that’s all. Now drink your cocoa before it gets cold.’

He passed me the mug. It was my favourite, with a reproduction of Monet’s Westminster Bridge over the Thames all round it. It reminded me of long Thames-side walks with Gran when I was a child. I took a series of deep drafts and after a bit I did start to feel much more calm and relaxed. My eyelids began to droop. My last memory that night was of Carl smiling at me, his face misting over before my eyes.

The next thing I was aware of was him shaking my shoulder gently, trying to wake me. Eventually and reluctantly I opened my eyes and blinked in the glare of daylight. Another glorious April day, it seemed. The sun was streaming in the window and I was vaguely aware that it was quite high in the sky. I glanced at the clock on the bedside table. It was 11.15 a.m. I tried to raise myself off the bed. My limbs felt leaden and my head was still muzzy.

‘You’ve had a good long sleep,’ said Carl. ‘Time to wake up now.’

‘I can’t believe it,’ I said. ‘I must have slept for over twelve hours.’

‘Good thing too,’ he said. ‘Just what you needed.’

‘I suppose so.’ I shook my head tentatively. It felt a bit as if it belonged to somebody else. ‘I don’t feel all that hot this morning though.’

‘You soon will,’ he assured me. ‘This is going to be one of the good days.’

I smiled wanly. The memory of all the events of the previous day was already vivid in spite of my slight wooziness and, in the circumstances, I thought it unlikely that this new day could be much of an improvement.

‘Dress now, sweetheart,’ he told me. ‘Wear something warm. Don’t be long.’

Unquestioningly, I did as he bade me, maybe out of habit, maybe because I didn’t have the energy to resist. I pulled on jeans, a T-shirt and a big, thick sweater on top. Then I went downstairs. He had made tea and laid a light breakfast on the dining-room table.

I found to my surprise that I was ravenously hungry.

He watched with open delight as I demolished a brimming bowl of cornflakes, downed three large mugs of tea and consumed several slices of toast and honey. ‘Good, that will get your strength up,’ he told me.

‘Yes, and I guess I’m going to need to be strong,’ I remarked wryly.

‘You certainly are,’ he said. ‘I’m going to spirit you away. I’m taking you somewhere nobody can find us.’