Small Town Suspicions (Some Very English Murders Book 3) (24 page)

“I’ve got something to tell you, though. Before I go.
Please don’t be mad at me. You can’t blame me any more than I blame myself…”

Now Penny’s odd feeling turned her belly to water. “What
have you done?”

“I was trying to look after Kali. I wanted to have fun with
her. I wanted her to like me.”

“She does!”

“I wanted to give her treats. And I think that is what made
her ill. She wasn’t poisoned by anyone. Except me.”

Penny’s palms were slippery with sweat and she felt hot.
She reminded herself that Kali had recovered and was doing fine. “What on earth
did you feed her?”

“A chocolate bar.”

“You stupid–” Penny rolled her eyes to the ceiling and bit
her own tongue.
Deep breaths, Penny. There was no lasting harm.
“Oh,
Francine. You can’t give chocolate to a dog.”

“I know that … now.”

Penny sighed. “Come here.”

“Why?”

“For a hug. You look like you need one.”

“But I…”

“You do. Come here.” Penny advanced upon Francine and
grabbed her. “It was a mistake. I could never, ever believe that you would
cause harm to Kali, or any living creature. Thank you for being honest.”

Penny squeezed Francine for a few long seconds before
releasing her. “And now, tell me where you’re going. Because I am going to miss
you, you know.”

“I’m not going far,” Francine said. “In fact, I’m in
negotiations to buy Alec Goodwin’s house. I’ve had an offer on my London place;
the tenants that I let it to want to buy it. I’m staying in Upper Glenfield.”

“Wow,” Penny said, followed by, “Oh no. I just can’t get
rid of you, can I?”

“The universe wills it.”

“The universe has got it in for me,” Cath grumbled,
entering suddenly, followed by Inspector Travis. “I was supposed to be at home
right now.”

There was a flurry of introductions between the
beetle-browed Inspector, and Francine, who pinked and smiled and nearly
curtseyed.

“Sorry about the delay, ladies,” Inspector Travis said.
Penny loathed being called a lady, for reasons she was not entirely sure about
but if pressed she would have said “feminism.” Francine, on the other hand,
delighted in the reference.

“It’s quite all right!” Francine said. “Your job is very
important. You people don’t get enough recognition.”

Penny smiled. If being called a lady was bad, “you people”
was probably worse.

Inspector Travis held Francine’s gaze for a second too
long, trying to work out if she was being sarcastic. Then he gave a slight
shake of his head, and said, “Well, quite. Thank you. We’ve just being talking
to Carl Fredericks.”

Penny stiffened. “Where is he?” she said, looking around as
if he were about to burst through the door.

“Making himself comfortable, as much as he can, in one of
our cells for the moment,” Cath said.

“Oh my goodness!” Penny blurted out. “Has he confessed? Was
I
right
?”

“He wants to talk to you,” Inspector Travis said. “I would
suggest that this is unwise, and I told him so, but he was insistent. I had to
I promise him I’d come to tell you. And I already know what you’re going to
say.”

“Of course I’ll talk with him!” Penny said. “Oh, wait … not
alone, right? I don’t think I want to be alone with him.”

“Definitely not,” Inspector Travis said. “Okay. I suppose
all four of us, and him … we’re going to need more chairs. Cath, if you could
…”

“I’m on it.”

* * * *

Carl Fredericks shuffled into the interview room, flanked
by a uniformed officer who nodded to Inspector Travis, and quickly disappeared.
He was wearing a plaid shirt and jeans, and wasn’t cuffed.

Cath was messing around with a recording machine that sat
on the desk.

“You still use tapes?” Penny said. “That’s retro, that is.”

“We’ve got quite a stock to get through,” Cath said. “And
it’s simple technology. A lot of forces are going digital, and I suppose we
will, in the end. But for now … yes, we’re old school.”

Penny was feeling quite excited until Cath said, “Anyway, I’m
just getting this ready for the formal interview later. You won’t be here for
that. Sorry.”

“Oh.”

Carl glared at Penny. “Yeah, but no doubt you lot will tell
this meddling idiot everything.”

“No,” Inspector Travis said. “Now, this is all contrary to
our usual protocols; Carl, this is instead of your phone call. We’re making a
concession. You can rest assured, however, that whatever you tell us – in the
formal interview later – will remain part of police investigations and Ms May
will only know what is allowed to be in the public domain.”

Carl spluttered with indignation. “Ar, but this is
Lincolnshire, so
everything
is in the public domain. You can’t sneeze
without your neighbours knowing and making up some tale about it.”

“Mr Fredericks,” Penny said, folding her arms. “You have
asked to talk with me. I’m sorry if you feel I have been meddling. I simply
take an interest in community matters.”

He rolled his eyes at her. “Hark at you.”

“We know you killed Alec,” she said, ignoring Inspector
Travis’s warning hiss. “I am simply curious as to why you did it.”

Carl shrugged and stayed quiet.

Penny started to tick the evidence off on her fingers. “Look,
your dirty van was seen there. Your business handles exactly the type of plant
that poisoned him. You knew how he lived so you must have visited him. You knew
he was reclusive and not involved in the community.”

“Ar, so what? Why would I have wanted to do him in?”

“Mr Fredericks, did you know that your ex-wife was innocent
when she was convicted of a part in that jewellery heist?”

Carl’s eyes closed in a slow blink. “She was found guilty,”
he said.

“Yes, but she wasn’t guilty, was she?”

“I thought she was, at the time. Alec had recognised her
from the description in the court case when he was working as an artist.”

Cath interrupted. “That’s not enough to convict anyone.”

Carl looked sad. “It is when that person also has a large
sum of money in her possession that she can’t account for, especially when
she’d had her hours cut at work. Which I didn’t know about at the time, I might
add.”

“That her hours had been cut?”

“Ar, that. She lied to me. She said she were still working
full time. But she weren’t. Thing is … she had a bit of an issue with gambling,
did our Mandy.”

Penny nodded. “We know. She told us.”

“Ah, did she?” He looked a little relieved. “Right. Okay,
then. So she won big, but she didn’t want to tell me where she’d got the money
from. Obviously once she’d been arrested, she tried to say, but she weren’t
believed because there was no record. She’d been going to Skegness and all
over, to dodgy betting shops. This was before you could gamble away on the
internet at home. She were going to places that didn’t even have cctv or decent
records. So she couldn’t prove nothing, and I didn’t believe her, and she were
sent down.”

“But did
Alec
know she was innocent? Did he do this
deliberately?” Penny asked.

At the mention of Alec’s name, Carl’s sad expression faded
into one of anger, his brows lowering and his jaw becoming tight. “Ar. Nah.
Maybe. He reckoned that he didn’t know she were innocent at first. He said he
would never have given evidence. But when he did find out he never, ever
retracted his statement. Thing is, that Alec Goodwin were a first class coward.
Why do you think he lived out there on his own? Why do you think he never spoke
to no one? Coward. He just couldn’t handle life.”

“But he was your friend…”

“Was. He had been. But I had no time for him once I knew
what he’d done, and nothing he could say would change that. Mandy … she were
stupid for forgiving him.”

“You tried to frame her for the murder!”

“No, no, no,” Carl said, shaking his head. He rubbed his
hand over his face, and his voice was muffled. “I didn’t want to. I just wanted
to get you guys off my back. You were closing in. And she were stupid, really,
she were. She shouldn’t have forgiven him. She shouldn’t have met up with him.
He ruined it all, between us, our life, her life, everything. He had to pay.”

Carl was choking back sobs now, and Penny felt a pang of
sympathy as she watched him unravel in front of her. He kept rubbing at his
eyes, and coughing. “Alec were a snob, a coward and a snob, and he didn’t
deserve the nice things he had, and he didn’t deserve her forgiveness, and he
definitely didn’t deserve to enjoy the things that he did.”

“Like posh coffee.”

“None of it,” Carl said huskily. “He deserved only to die.”

With that bald statement, Penny’s sympathy faded abruptly
and she turned to Cath and Inspector Travis.

She didn’t need to say anything. Cath led Penny and
Francine out of the interview room and back along the corridor to the public
reception area.

They stood for a moment in silence. Penny ran it all
through her mind again. She wished she could have asked
how
it had all
happened, but she knew she’d have to wait for the official reports. Instead,
she said, “Cath, why do you think Alec didn’t stand up for Mandy once he knew
she’d been wrongfully convicted?”

“He would have lost his job, and possibly gone to jail
himself.”

“My goodness,” Penny said. “The lengths people go to just
to keep their jobs.”

Cath frowned. “Jobs are not so easy to come by that most
people can throw them away,” she said sternly.

“Ouch. Yes, you are totally right. I’m sorry. I am a crass
idiot.”

Francine threw her arm around Penny and hugged her. “It’s
okay,” she said, soothingly. “You’re
our
crass idiot. Come on. Shall we
go grab some food?”

“Are you paying?”

“A burger it is, then.”

The cottage was empty.

Well, not quite. Penny and
Kali sat in the front room, at either end of the sofa, each submerged in their
own thoughts. Penny was thinking about how quiet it was, without Francine. Kali
was probably thinking about food.

It was two weeks since Carl
Fredericks had confessed to murdering Alec Goodwin, and one week since Francine
had moved out. She wasn’t yet able to move into the house that she was buying;
the wheels of probate turned very slowly and Alec’s estate was still being
unravelled by the solicitors. Penny wondered if the sale would fall through.
Nothing, yet, was certain.

But Francine was hopeful,
and for Francine, hope was a bright and perfect thing.

The universe would sort it
out, Francine had told Penny. Things will happen as they happen.

Not if you don’t make
them happen,
Penny thought.
But
Francine is happy, and so I am happy.

It was going to take a while
to get used to the peace of her space once more. Francine had taken a
short-term let in a flat in Lincoln. She told Penny that she had encroached on
her good nature for long enough, and now it was time to stand on her own two
feet.

Penny wondered how much this
had to do with the twinkle in the eye of Inspector Travis. But she kept her
suspicions to herself, this time.

Francine had pre-emptively
been to visit Barry, and assured him that he would be able to continue renting
his shack. She also promised to do some maintenance on it. Barry seemed happy.

She also spoke of taking in
a lodger. Penny wondered if Steve would go for it, at least while he got
himself back on track. Privately she hoped that Steve would get up and go –
travel the world, work in a bar in Australia, sleep on a beach in Bangkok – but
he probably wouldn’t. He was rooted in Glenfield.

Again, she kept her advice
to herself.

The culprit who had trashed
the Sculpture Trail had never owned up, but she felt, in her gut, it had been
Steve. She saw no reason to pursue it.

Perhaps, like Mandy Jones –
Amanda Fredericks – she, too, was learning to move on from things.

The details of the murder of
Alec had emerged in the press, with gaps that Penny was able to fill in from
her own knowledge and guesswork.

The newspapers had said that
Carl had gone to see Alec, taking a gift of fine coffee, into which he had
ground a large amount of poet’s narcissus bulb. The bitter taste of the
alkaloid had been disguised by the coffee.

The papers hadn’t explained
why Carl had suddenly been compelled to visit Alec and wreak his vengeance on
him. Penny could piece it together, though.

Francine had gone to see
Alec the day before he was killed. Alec had seen her peering through the glass,
and hidden from her. That was a fact.

What happened then, Penny
could only guess at. He had a fresh artwork on his easel and he had painted a
woman that looked like Francine – but it was Mandy, from his past. The woman
he’d sent to prison, and about whom he had been too cowardly to confess his
perjury. It seemed to Penny that he had spent the night in a painting frenzy,
unsettled by the sight of the woman who looked like Mandy.

The next day, still
unsettled, and probably suffering from lack of sleep, he had called Carl,
wanting to talk to Mandy. Carl had warned Mandy about it. Mandy, however, had
fought and faced her demons, and told Carl that “Alec was forgiven” and more
than that – she’d gone to meet him.

Carl’s fury at Mandy’s
apparent acquiescence had been revealed in the day in the police station, and
Penny knew that this was his trigger to seek Alec out, and destroy him.