A Deep Deceit

Thirteen

They didn’t explain it all to me, not then. Although Detective Sergeant Perry did tell me how they came to find us. Curious rather than alarmed – Carl and I were, after all, two adults not wanted for any crime – she had talked to Mariette after we disappeared, and asked her if she knew any favourite haunts of ours, places we liked to visit, anywhere we might be. For some reason, perhaps because it was still the season, Mariette had mentioned the hidden-away bluebell wood, which I remembered telling her of when she had asked me questions about my life with Carl. But Mariette had been unable to give precise directions and in any case it had not necessarily been relevant. But then, apparently, a courting couple had heard my screams the night I tried to escape and had reported the incident to the police. When DS Perry learned about this, luckily for me she began to put two and two together.

Carl and I had both regarded the area around the bluebell wood, and certainly the old quarry further along the track where the hut was, as being very remote, but in fact nowhere is far from civilisation in Cornwall. And apparently the rough track both of us had only previously driven along during the day became something of a lovers’ lane at night.

I suppose I was relieved. I was also confused – Carl had been right about that – and my physical condition only added to my distress. I was suddenly over-whelmed by a coughing fit. DS Perry passed me a paper tissue and I coughed dark phlegm into it. It even hurt to breathe. But in spite of feeling so ill – my chest infection was definitely getting worse – my mind was in turmoil.

I had an absolute corker of a headache. I was only vaguely aware of being carried out of the hut and loaded into the waiting ambulance. Even cocooned in blankets, I still couldn’t stop shivering. The paramedic who rode in the back with me listened to my chest, took my temperature and looked anxious. But I remained more worried about all that had happened than I was about my physical state. They drove me to hospital in Penzance where I was wheeled into Casualty. I did not have to wait long before being seen by a young, white-coated doctor.

‘You’re suffering from severe shock,’ he said almost at once.

I didn’t need a medical diagnosis to know that. And I reckoned I was still woozy from whatever drugs Carl had fed me.

‘I also think you may have chronic bronchitis,’ the doctor went on.

I managed a wan smile. ‘I’m used to it,’ I said. ‘It’s OK.’

He gave me a look that indicated he wasn’t quite sure about that. ‘Better have you in for a couple of days,’ he said.

In spite of my protests that I would be absolutely fine I was admitted with surprising alacrity for the National Health Service and tucked into bed. Warm and safe at last, I could feel myself drifting off almost at once. I don’t know whether it was the after effects of the drugs Carl had fed me or some sort of defence mechanism. All I knew was that I wanted to sleep for ever. But I wouldn’t let myself. I was determined to stay awake until someone explained to me exactly what had really happened all those years ago in Hounslow when Robert Foster had died. I was sure it held the key to everything that had happened, to all that Carl had done.

A nurse brought me some medication but certainly I did not intend to swallow any more drugs. ‘I’m not taking anything,’ I announced.

‘Just to make you sleep, and some antibiotics for the chest infection.’

Little did she know how hard I was fighting to keep awake. ‘I don’t want anything to make me sleep. I don’t want to sleep at all until someone explains things to me.’

The nurse sighed and said she’d fetch the ward sister.

‘All right,’ said the ward sister and sighed too. ‘There’s a Sergeant Perry outside. I’ll bring her in.’

I made a big effort and propped myself up on the pillows. My chest felt as if it was being crushed beneath a double-decker bus. I tried to ignore it.

After a couple of minutes the curtains around my bed were pulled slightly to one side and Sergeant Perry stuck her head round. ‘The Führer says I’ve got five minutes,’ she announced with a smile.

I didn’t smile back. I felt much more ill than I was revealing to anyone, but that paled into insignificance compared with my mental state.

I had to know the truth about Robert. I had found my husband covered with blood. I had killed him. I must have killed him. Carl had been determined that we still had to hide, horrifically determined, prepared to go to almost any lengths, it seemed. Yet the police had already told me that Robert had not been murdered. I was beginning to wonder if it was me who was going mad.

‘Just tell me everything you know, please,’ I said.

Sergeant Perry glanced instinctively at her watch, then took a closer look at me. I could see the anxiety in her eyes. I knew I was beginning to sweat and I had given up trying to control my shakes.

‘Please,’ I said again. ‘I have to know. For a start, if my husband Robert Foster wasn’t murdered, what did happen to him?’

Sergeant Perry was still standing at the foot of my bed. As if making a decision she came over and sat down on the chair next to me. ‘Robert Foster died of natural causes,’ she said expressionlessly.

I looked at her askance. ‘How could he have done?’ I asked. ‘I saw all the blood, I got it all over me...’

I stopped. I still didn’t want to think about it, even after all these years. That had always been one of the problems. I couldn’t face the thought that I had stabbed a man to death, not even a man I hated so much, and with such good reason. When I had confessed at the police station I had, I suppose, hoped in some silly kind of way that, whatever happened to me, I wouldn’t have to confront Robert’s death again. I had confessed to killing him and that would be that. I knew well enough, now, that whatever the truth, it wasn’t going to be as simple as that. I had to concentrate, to try to remember.

‘I went into the bedroom and saw him lying there in his own blood,’ I went on. ‘I have never been able to remember exactly what happened in the night. Like I told you before. I have just always assumed that when I got the chance I got hold of the knife and used it on him. What else could I have thought? There was nobody other than me who could have killed him, nobody else was in the house until I called Carl. I am absolutely sure Robert was dead before Carl arrived. And all that blood – he had to have died a violent death.’

DS Perry shook her head. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Well, not in the way you mean, anyway.’

I opened my mouth to speak and all that came out was another fit of coughing. It came from deep inside me and I felt as if my body was tearing apart. I held a tissue to my mouth and tried not to let DS Perry see the black phlegm that I spat into it.

‘How did he die, then, how could he have died?’ I asked quietly when I was finally able.

‘Did you know that your husband had sclerosis of the liver?’ the policewoman asked.

I shook my head, amazed. Although I don’t know quite why I should have been surprised. I had known so little about Robert, really. For a start I had never known why he had wanted to hurt me so much.

‘He was an alcoholic, you must have known that,’ she went on.

I half nodded. I suppose I had realised that he was an alcoholic. I must have known, although I never thought of it in those terms. Just that he drank vast quantities of alcohol, and the more he drank the more violent and dangerous he became.

‘He was a minister in the Chapel of the Advent. They are opposed to alcohol. He wasn’t supposed to drink at all,’ I said. ‘But he did, constantly.’

‘That kind is often the worst, but you’d know that more than me, I expect.’

I nodded again. I didn’t want to talk about the terrible beatings I had suffered from a drunken Robert. I just hoped that one day I would be able to forget them.

‘Sclerosis of the liver is a vicious illness,’ the police sergeant went on. ‘One of the most extreme results is haematemesis – when the liver ceases to function so drastically that blood leaks into the stomach where it becomes a potentially lethal irritant. The victim vomits blood, vast quantities of it.’ She paused. ‘Your husband died of chronic blood loss... caused by his sclerosis. He was not murdered. You did not kill him and neither did anyone else.’

‘B-but when I came to in the bathroom in the morning I was covered with blood, Robert’s blood. How did it get all over me if I didn’t kill him?’

Julie Perry shrugged. ‘I’ve been thinking about that. You used the phrase “came to”. Almost certainly you’d been knocked out. I reckon Robert Foster must have started haemorrhaging blood while he was beating you. That’s how you got his blood on you. You had concussion, you didn’t know what was happening. You just crawled off to hide in the bathroom as soon as you got the chance.’

‘Carl always said I had killed him,’ I said quietly. ‘He let me believe it... he showed me the knife covered with Robert’s blood...’

Sergeant Perry nodded. ‘Yes, I realise that,’ she said.

Carl had not been half hysterical. Carl hadn’t been beaten unconscious in the night. He had seen Robert lying naked on the bed. Surely he must have realised that there were no stab wounds in his body. Was this another of his tricks, like the threatening letters?

‘So did Carl deliberately deceive me, then, for all those years?’ I asked, thinking aloud.

Julie Perry shrugged again. ‘Hard to tell. Not necessarily. He found the knife, he saw the blood, just like you did...’

I struggled to make sense of it. Carl was always so cool and calm, even under extreme stress. The kind of man who double-checked everything – even a blood-covered body for stab wounds.

I felt as if my ribcage was about to cave in. I wanted to cough, but I wasn’t capable.

‘Look, there’s more, something else...’ I heard DS Perry say somewhere in the distance.

Most clearly I could hear my own breathing. It was coming in desperate wheezing gasps. I suspected DS Perry could hear it too.

‘I tell you what, why don’t you rest,’ she said, not for the first time sounding like all the others who had tried to protect me throughout my life. ‘Let me talk to you tomorrow.’

‘No,’ I said, surprisingly firmly for me in any situation and particularly when I felt so ill that I was having difficulty even in breathing let alone speaking. ‘I want to know now,’ I croaked.

She looked at me for a moment or two as if appraising both my physical and mental state. Then she sighed. ‘We have been checking out Carl in the States. Something happened there a long time ago too...’

I wanted to know so much and yet in spite of my entreaties for her to continue I was beginning to have serious trouble concentrating on what she was saying. My chest hurt more than I could ever remember, more even than it had during the severe bronchial attacks of my childhood. My forehead was burning, and by then I was wet with sweat.

I finally managed a cough and it was as if some kind of barrier inside me burst open. I was engulfed in a coughing fit much more violent than any that had preceded it. At first black phlegm dribbled out of my mouth and then I began to cough up blood. Suddenly I was very frightened indeed. It felt as if my ribs had finally caved in on to my vital organs.

I was vaguely aware of DS Perry jumping to her feet and crying out. Then I think I must have passed out.

I didn’t know a lot about what happened next or for some time afterwards. I was vaguely aware of being moved out of my bed and on to a trolley again, and of being trundled off to the intensive care unit. At some time, somewhere, I know I heard the words ‘pneumonia, Mrs Peters.’ That was about it. Nothing meant much, really, except the overwhelming desire to stay alive. Instinctively, somewhere inside my head, I knew I truly was that ill.

The act of breathing became a terrible agonising struggle. The pain grasped me round my middle like a particularly vicious straitjacket. At some stage I remember shadowy people forcing some kind of tube down my throat, and trying to fight them off and not being able to. Most of the rest of it remains a blank – a bit like so much of the night when Robert died.

I was later to learn that I had bilateral pneumonia, which then turned to pleurisy. This meant that not only were both my lungs infected but also the lining of my chest wall. I spent several days in intensive care on a ventilator and it was getting on for two weeks before I returned properly to the world.

By then an awful lot had happened.

I was back on the ward, stupor-like most of the time, when I woke from a fitful sleep to find Mariette sitting by my bed.

‘They said you were a lot better, but I didn’t want to wake you,’ she told me with a small smile. ‘You do look better, I must say.’

I was puzzled. ‘What do you mean? Have you been to see me before?’ I asked.

She nodded. ‘A couple of times, you know, when I could,’ she said.

I was touched. I needed a friend. One thing about being as ill as I had been is that you don’t have time to think about anything except your physical misery. I was starting to think again, beginning to remember, and Carl filled my jumbled thoughts. Carl had not been to see me. Of course not. He had been arrested.

‘I suppose you know what’s happened?’ I enquired of Mariette.

‘More or less,’ she replied. ‘It’s the talk of the town, the kidnap and everything.’

I managed a small smile myself. ‘It wasn’t really a kidnap,’ I stated.

‘Sounded like one to me,’ she said. ‘Who’d have thought that of your Carl?’

‘I still don’t understand it.’

‘No. And you thought you’d murdered your first husband, as if you’d be capable of anything like that.’

‘Good God, does everyone know about that too?’

‘You know St Ives. Some of it was in the papers, don’t know where the rest of it came from. Mind you, they always say the nick leaks like a sieve...’

Mariette was kind and attentive, and completely unjudgemental. I had somehow always known so much about her life, but she had never known anything of mine. If she was shocked by anything she had learned she did not show it. But, unsurprisingly perhaps in the circumstances, she did not really know what to say to me.

At one point she started to say speak, then seemed to change her mind. ‘There was talk of something that happened in America, too, but, oh, it’s sure to be only rumour...’

‘What, Mariette? DS Perry mentioned something about America, just before I collapsed.’

Mariette grasped the opportunity with which I had presented her. ‘Then it’s DS Perry you should be talking to, not me. I should know better than even to start repeating the gossip of St Ives. It’s invariably a load of old nonsense.’

I could tell she didn’t really believe that, but she wasn’t saying any more. She could be very stubborn when she wanted, could Mariette. She left pretty quickly then, and I asked a passing nurse for a telephone.

After waiting fruitlessly for at least half an hour I asked another nurse. Then I fell asleep. When I woke up there was still no sign of a telephone.

Ultimately it was nearly the end of the day before one of those cumbersome trolleys was brought to me. Strange, with all the modern technology available, that nothing has changed in most NHS hospitals in this respect for several decades.

I called Directory Enquiries to get the number of the police station, dialled it and asked for DS Perry. She wasn’t there.

‘She’s away,’ I was told. I was pretty sure it was the same desk clerk I had spoken to when I went there.

I gave my name, mentioned Carl’s, said it was urgent and asked if there was anywhere else I could speak to her.

‘Not sure about that,’ said the clerk. He seemed about as interested and dynamic as he had the first time I had encountered him.

‘I don’t even know where Carl is,’ I muttered vaguely.

‘He’s been remanded in custody, abduction is a serious offence, Mrs Peters,’ said the clerk and that was about as informative as he was going to be. ‘I can get PC Partridge to call you, if you like. He’s about the only one around today.’

I groaned inwardly. I didn’t have a lot of confidence in PC Partridge. I also left a message for DS Perry and ultimately the promise of a call-back from one or other of them was what I had to settle for. I explained that it might be difficult for anyone to get through to me in hospital and asked that they keep insisting. The clerk muttered something inaudible.

I waited all that late afternoon and evening, and the next morning, before impatience got the better of me and I called again. I still reached a brick wall. This time I talked to an uninterested female voice.

‘DS Perry is still away, I’m afraid.’

I asked for PC Partridge again.

‘He’s in court today.’

‘Can you get a message to him? I called yesterday but he hasn’t got back to me...’

‘Did you leave a message for him then?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, he’s sure to have got it.’

‘But I haven’t heard from him.’

‘He’ll call when he can, I’m sure. You’re in hospital you say? Not always easy to get through, is it?’

‘You can say that again,’ I said with feeling. ‘Look, I want to talk to someone about my husband Carl Peters. Can you help.’

‘I’m afraid not. You could try Penzance. I believe it’s being dealt with from there now.’

‘But I was told PC Partridge could help me.’

‘I’m sure he probably can. He did work on the case with DS Perry.’

I stifled an impatient sigh. ‘Please give him another message. I really do need to speak to him urgently.’

I got nowhere. But I still felt too weak to put up much of a fight. All I could do was lie back in my hospital bed and carry on waiting for Rob Partridge to call.

That afternoon there was a bit of a diversion. Will Jones paid me a visit, bringing with him a beautiful book about Patrick Heron, which I received gratefully. I was still in a bit of a daze but, in spite of my befuddled and anxious state, it was good to have company, to chat for a bit.

At first we made a rather strained kind of small talk, but it was better than nothing. As with Mariette’s visit, it was good just to think that someone cared enough to come calling.

At one point, after quite a long silence, Will enquired if I had any money on me. Typically, I hadn’t even thought about it. And the answer was that I didn’t have a penny. Will took his wallet from his pocket and handed me two twenty-pound notes. ‘I owe you more, I’ve sold some of Carl’s paintings,’ he said. ‘I’ll work out how much by the time you get out of here...’

I thanked him. The money should have gone to Carl, I supposed. There was another vaguely uncomfortable silence. Then Will began to ask me a lot of questions, most of which I either could not or did not wish to answer.

‘So he just sort of went off the rails, really?’ he muttered.

I nodded.

‘What pushed him, do you know?’

I sighed. Not sure whether I wanted to talk like this or not. ‘Fear, more than anything,’ I said. ‘Fear of losing me. Fear of what might happen to us.’

‘And you thought all this time that you’d killed your husband?’

‘Absolutely,’ I confirmed.

‘And you both thought that was what the letters and the rest of it referred to?’

‘Oh, the letters, yes, of course...’

I hadn’t thought about any of that for a while. I had had other things on my mind, like being imprisoned against my will by the man I loved, and fighting off critical bouts of pneumonia and pleurisy. ‘Well, I thought that, but not Carl, of course,’ I went on. ‘Carl sent the letters, I’m sure of that now.’

Will looked startled. ‘Did he admit it?’

‘I think so,’ I wasn’t quite sure, come to think of it. ‘What does it matter anyway, after all that has happened?’

‘No, I suppose not. So Carl really has turned into a villain, hasn’t he?’

He was right enough, of course, but I still didn’t like to hear it.

‘Fancy letting you think you’d killed someone all these years...’

‘We don’t know that for sure,’ I managed to protest, clutching at straws, maybe.

Will gave me that look of his, which he switched on when he was demonstrating just how much cleverer he was than you. Fond as I was of him, it never failed to irritate me. ‘Well, of course, you must believe what you want to believe, Suzanne,’ he began. Then he was interrupted by a large nurse bearing a thermometer, which she placed uncompromisingly in my mouth. Which might have been all for the best.

The thermometer was still there when Will left.

‘I’ll pop round when you’re home,’ he had said before he departed.

I tried to mutter something and reached for the thermometer. The large nurse tapped my hand reprovingly. And in my condition I didn’t have the strength to argue, even had I not had a thermometer wedged between my lips.