The Sedgemoor Strangler and Other Stories of Crime

The Word of a Lady

Denise Wolsey woke suddenly and felt the touch of a hand on her bare shoulder, fingers curving over, squeezing. She’d been well asleep, and alone in the house... she thought. The nights were a trial in Shillinghurst, a great Elizabethan country house in its own park. She wasn’t raised in a place where the boards creak and the plumbing gurgles and hidden creatures rustle in the tall chimneys and there are rooms no one has looked into in months. She’d spent the first eighteen years of her life in a two-bedroomed terraced house in Fulham, sharing a room with her sister.

Petrified, she lay there while her brain caught up. She hadn’t heard anyone come in — but would she? Shillinghurst was so huge you could have held an auction downstairs and cleared all the furniture and she wouldn’t have heard.

She drew breath to scream.

A man’s voice. “It’s only me.”

“What?”

“Adrian.”

Her husband. He switched on the bedside lamp.

She turned her head on the pillow, looked up through squeezed eyelids and breathed a great sigh of relief. “Oh. I thought...”

“It’s all right, wench.”

He hadn’t used his pet name for her for a long time. It was an endearment, part of their private language. Tonight the tone of his voice wasn’t playful. He was nervous.

“What time is it?”

“Don’t know — after midnight.”

“You didn’t say you were coming home.”

“Right.”

His faraway voice, thinking of other things. That was more typical of Adrian. He could cut off like a phone put down, and then it hurt. She didn’t need reminding that he was from another world — Eton, Oxford, the peerage — and to be fair he didn’t make much of it, but when his voice altered and his eyes glazed over, she took it personally. Then she felt like a piece of low life. She would never have met him except for her skill at drawing and painting that had led to a career in stage design. Their coming together had been so clicheed she didn’t care to talk about it, being asked to produce the sets for an Albee play Adrian happened to be backing; and bumping into him, literally, at the first night party and having red wine poured down her. He’d insisted on replacing the dress, which was a cheap frock out of the January sales, with the latest creation from Galliano, and escorting her to Bond Street to choose it. Then he wanted to see her wearing it at a party, he said, and she sensed with pleasure that he wasn’t merely being the gentleman. He fancied her.

“What is it, Adrian?”

“What?”

“Something’s happened. Why are you here? I thought you were staying over in London.” They had this flat in Eaton Square. She had stayed there often.

“Did you?” Still on autopilot.

After meeting Adrian she’d been scooped into the champagne whirlpool of a society she knew nothing about: dinner parties, Ascot, Cowes. She survived, thanks to Adrian. He never left her side. And she adored swanning from event to event, meeting the same articulate young people in their fine clothes. They accepted her warmly because she was Adrian’s choice; or most did. One or two of the women stared her out and cut her in the powder room, but she understood why and she could handle that. She was increasingly attracted to Adrian, his black, unruly hair, the strong features that put her in mind of a Gypsy rather than a lord, and the infinite trouble he took to make sure she was comfortable among his friends.

They got engaged the same year. Her photo was in all the magazines. The ring was from Cartier, a large emerald, set in diamonds. Emerald was her birth stone (she was a May child) and signified success in love, people told her.

The following April, they married in Bath Abbey and had their reception in the Assembly Rooms where Jane Austen had danced and Johann Strauss and Liszt had played. The honeymoon was a three-month tour of the great European cities, ending in Venice in July. By then she’d fully expected to be pregnant. She’d learned enough about high society to know that producing an heir was a wife’s first duty after marriage. Adrian said it didn’t concern him in the least that she was not expecting, and then suggested she saw a specialist if nothing happened before Christmas.

She stopped work. The theatre simply didn’t fit in with life in the country. The house and staff occupied much of her time. They had a butler, cook, three maids and four gardeners. Adrian was on various boards and committees and couldn’t supervise the running of the house. Thoughtfully, he’d let her sister Janice live free of rent in the gatekeeper’s lodge. She was supposed to be company for Denise, but it hadn’t worked out. Instead of being grateful, Janice had got jealous, and now the sisters rarely spoke.

The gynaecologist had said there was no reason why Denise shouldn’t bear children. He was kind and encouraging and seemed to think it was far too soon in the marriage to be concerned.

Another year went by.

Adrian was increasingly called away to London for meetings. Sometimes he had to stay over. That was when Denise wished she were back in the Fulham terrace, on the lone nights in the great house. None of the servants slept in. Even the butler lived in the village.

Here was Adrian trying to tell her something. For once he was not the polished Old Etonian.

“Horrible. Bloody nightmare. Believe me, it wasn’t anyone’s fault.”

“What wasn’t?”

“The accident.”

She clasped the front of her nightdress, gathering it in a bunch. “Oh, God. Are you—”

“No. Some stupid hitchhiker on the A337, that road through the Forest. Rain bucketing down. Visibility poor. He stepped in the road.”

“You hit him?”

He gave a nod.

“Badly?”

“Dead.”

“Oh, Adrian.” She was appalled.

He muttered, barely audible, “The point is, I didn’t report it. Stopped — oh, yes, I stopped. There was nothing I could do for him. There was a girl with him, hysterical. He was dead all right. I got back in the car and drove on.”

Now her eyes opened wide. “You left them there? Why?”

“Can’t you smell it on my breath? Had a few after the meeting. You know how it is. If they breathalyse me, it’s a prison sentence.”

Denise stared up at her husband. “You left this girl by the roadside?”

Adrian wasn’t thinking about the girl’s distress. “She wouldn’t know me again. She was frantic. Quite a few cars came past. No one stopped, but I’m terrified some busybody noted my number and called the police.”

“They’ll come looking for you.”

“You think I haven’t worked that out for myself? If they do — and it’s only a possibility—” He paused, and a different, gentler note came into his voice. “—would you be an angel and say I was home with you all evening?”

“Tell a lie?”

He gave a loud, frustrated sigh. “I know. You were brought up to tell the truth — the simple working class morality — but you’re my wife, for God’s sake. If I can’t rely on you, who can I turn to?”

She felt the tug of loyalties. She had a deeply ingrained respect for the truth. She’d never succumbed to the sophistries that were common currency among his class. “Surely, if they do come asking questions, they’ll want to see the car, and they can tell—”

“It isn’t damaged. They’re built like tanks.”

“If you killed him...”

“He bounced off the bullbars like a ninepin. I’ve checked the bodywork. Not a scratch. If they come asking, there’s nothing to show. It’s up to you to tell them I was home by seven and here all evening.”

She was shaking now. “Adrian, in the state you’re in, you may not have noticed marks on the car. I think I’d better look.”

“Go ahead. If I’m right, and there’s nothing, will you back me?”

Probably she would, she thought, and despise herself — as well as Adrian — for the rest of her life. She pulled on her dressing gown.

He’d left the car on the drive. They went out with a flashlamp. He was right. There were no obvious marks. Denise said they ought to put the car out of sight in the garage.

“Good thinking. Would you do it? In my state I might scrape the side.” He gave her the keys and went over to the garage to open it.

She stepped inside the car, took one breath and changed her mind. No way was she going to save him.

Back in the house, he said he needed another drink. Denise went upstairs and called the police from the phone by her bed. She said her husband had come home drunk saying he’d killed a man on the A337.

When he came in, whisky in hand, she said, “Who is she?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“The woman who was with you in the car tonight. It reeked of her cheap perfume.”

He denied it. Not for long. He was too drunk to lie with any conviction. Yes, he’d offered a lift home to a friend, he said. Just doing a good turn. She was going his way and he’d offered. She’d been really upset when the accident happened. After it, he’d driven her home and then come straight here.

“Who is she, this tart?”

“It’s not like that at all, my love.”

“You were going to spend the night with her. You didn’t tell me you were coming home. You’re only here because of what happened, to get an alibi from me.”

“Get a grip, wench. It’s not worth getting upset.”

“Tell me her name, Adrian.”

“I can’t remember.”

“What do you take me for, you two-timing jerk?”

“Calm down, will you?”

“I’ve been alone for weeks in this barn of a place, while you were off with other women. ‘Meetings in London.’ Where — in hotel bedrooms?”

“Denise, this isn’t the time. The police could be on their way here.”

“They are.”

“What?” His bloodshot eyes widened.

“I called them just now. Told them about you.”

“Oh, come on.” He didn’t believe her.

“They’ll be coming up the drive any minute. You’ll see the blue light flashing.”

He lurched across the bedroom and pushed open the big windows to the balcony. Standing out there with his hands on the balustrade, he said, “You’re pathetic. It’s your own sister, Janice. I took her for dinner at the Savoy. We’ve been lovers for months.”

Janice!

Maddened, she rushed at him like the car at that poor hitchhiker. He turned, and her hands hit his chest and pushed. He tipped backwards and the balustrade caught the backs of his legs. Over the top he went, and down, two stories, to the paved area below. She heard his skull crack as he hit the stones.

She had her story ready when the police arrived. She was waiting for them beside her dead husband, playing to perfection the part of the well-bred lady refusing to break down. She’d drunk two straight brandies to steady her nerves.

“You’re too late. I tried to stop him, but he was suicidal.”

They felt for a pulse and decided to call a doctor, but only to confirm the death.

“How did this happen, Lady Wolsey?”

“He came home in a terrible state and told me he’d had a car accident and killed someone and panicked and left the scene. I tried to calm him, but he opened the bedroom windows and threw himself off the balcony.”

“Blamed himself, did he?”

“Yes. He said the man is dead.” Something in the policeman’s look made her hesitate. “That is correct?”

“We have a report that a man was killed on the A337 tonight, yes. And someone got the number of the vehicle, and it’s registered in your husband’s name.”

So her story was watertight. “Dreadful. So sudden, and tragic.”

“Yes, my lady. And now I’d like to look at the car.”

She told him Adrian had put it in the garage.

Twenty minutes later, the policeman was back in the house. “Was everything all right between you and your husband, Lady Wolsey?”

“Perfectly.” She didn’t want scandal about their private life on top of the fuss the papers would make out of the hit-and-run incident.

“It was a happy marriage?”

“Absolutely.”

“How much have you drunk tonight, my lady?”

She gave a withering glare. “Some wine earlier. Brandy, for the shock. I know what I’m saying.”

“We need to breathalyse you.”

“Whatever for? I haven’t been driving. I haven’t been near the car all evening.”

“Before you say any more, Lady Wolsey, I think I should tell you this. The hit-and-run car was driven by a woman. Two witnesses agree on that. And the young girl who was with the victim said a man got out to see if her friend was dead, but a woman was at the wheel.”

A woman? Adrian must have let Janice drive him. Idiot.

“If it wasn’t you, no problem. We’ll check the fresh prints on the door and the steering wheel and compare them with yours. It does smell of scent inside.”

She’d backed the car into the garage. Her prints were all over it. What could she do? Tell them about Janice, and reveal her own motive for killing Adrian? What was it to be — murder, or manslaughter?

“I killed him,” she said with the dignity of a grand lady. “I was at the wheel. I killed the hitchhiker. Adrian was devastated. He knew I’d go to prison for it and he couldn’t bear to be parted from me. That’s the reason he killed himself.”

She served two years for involuntary manslaughter. They accepted the word of a lady.