Down Among the Dead Men Page 20

  'It's funny,' Rafferty added almost to himself, 'but I remember noticing the day we found her body how straight the river was once it left Elmhurst, and I never considered it as a possible means of reaching the meadow. All I thought of was the road, and how long it would take to get to the meadow through those winding roads from here or Elmhurst. To reach the meadow via the river would have taken only half the time, but, because I never took that into account, I dismissed you as a possible suspect almost straight away. You obviously cared a lot for your stepmother and you couldn't drive, wouldn't have been able to reach the meadow in time - or so I thought. But I was wrong, wasn't I, Maximillian? At least about the second aspect, though I agree with your father that you were genuinely fond of her. There would have been no point in killing her if her death caused you no grief. And then, of course, there were the flowers that were scattered under and around your step-mother's body. They puzzled me.

  'Mrs Longman would never have ripped up the rare flowers that meant so much to her. So who had? It finally dawned on me who, and why. Firstly, you needed a reason to encourage her to come into the meadow, because as soon as she saw Thomson's tractor wasn't there, she would leave. So you waved a bunch of the wild flowers that you had just picked, to gain her attention, and when she challenged you, you carried on picking them. You weren't sure you would be able to overpower her, which was why you wanted her partly over-balanced leaning over, trying to stop you picking more flowers.'

  Maxie raised his head. He made no attempt to deny Rafferty's accusation, instead, his gaze fixed on his grandfather's portrait. It was as if some communication passed between them. It appeared to give the boy strength. He turned to his father, his face expressionless, but his voice was filled with contempt. 'Mother's right, you're a failure, a nobody, a nothing. I wanted to be a success like Grandfather.' He frowned and after gazing thoughtfully at his grandfather as if for reassurance, he added softly, to himself, 'Perhaps I still can. Maybe it takes longer than I thought for the grief to work its magic?'

  Rafferty felt the atmosphere in the room change. The tension was now a physical thing. Shore's powerful hands had begun to flex and unflex, as if he had Maxie's neck between them, his face was a colour kaleidoscope of deep emotions and Rafferty, worried Shore's impressive self-control would fail him, wanted to get the boy out before it did.

  Quietly, in a voice that was as calming and emotionless as he could make it, Rafferty told the boy. 'You're over fourteen, Maximillian. Over the age of criminal responsibility. You know right from wrong. The murder of your stepmother was carefully planned, premeditated, and I think the courts will agree with me. I must ask you to accompany me to the police station.' He glanced at Hilary Shore 'Perhaps your aunt will help you gather a few things together?'

  'No!' Maxie's scream made him falter. Until now, Maxie had remained very quiet, whether from shock or disbelief at what was happening, Rafferty didn't know. But now, his matter-of-fact mention of practicalities seemed to get through to the boy where the previous dramatic re-telling of the murder had failed, and, as grim reality swamped the theories that had obsessed him for so long, he ran across the room to the portrait of Maximillian Shore screaming hysterically. 'Grandfather,' he begged. 'Help me. You've got to help me. It was your idea. I'd never have thought of it on my own. Make them see that I had to kill her.'

  Appalled at the ghastly spectacle of the shrieking boy scrambling over the table to reach his grandfather's portrait, Rafferty could only stare helplessly at him.

  It was Llewellyn who pulled the sobbing boy away. 'He won't help you, lad,' he soothed. 'Come with me now and get whatever you think you'll need.'

  Docile now, as though stunned by the speed of events and the disproving of his omnipotent grandfather's theories, Maxie began to follow the sergeant. But as he passed his father, he clutched his arm in a pleading gesture, as if he had forgotten just who it was he had murdered. 'Father?'

  If Maxie had forgotten whom he had killed, Henry hadn't. He stared, with a kind of horrified fascination, at the monster he had spawned, before, quite deliberately, he wrenched his arm from the boy's grasp and stepped back, leaving him utterly alone.

  Blinking rapidly, Maxie swallowed hard, before turning to Charles Shore. 'Uncle?' he whispered. 'Tell him he can't do this to me. I'm a Shore. The rich can always evade the law. You taught me that.'

  'But you're not rich, are you, boy?' Shore, may have managed to control his urge to physical violence, but his capacity to wound verbally was given full reign. His despised nephew had deprived him of his desire, and it made him cruel. 'You're not even a Shore,' he taunted. 'Your name's Longman and a Longman you'll remain. You gambled Barbara's life on a long shot and lost. Get out of my sight, you mindless cretin, before I forget how much I have left to lose, and kill you myself.'

  Maxie backed away, his face with its still childish curves, looked even more stunned at this latest rejection. He might be a murderer, but now he looked simply a pathetic child, a child seduced by dreams of wealth and success and power. As the family who had helped to twist his personality abandoned him, Rafferty experienced a twinge of pity for the boy. He managed to force it down and told him, 'As I said, you'll be taken from here to the police station.' He glanced at Henry, but couldn't bring himself to remind the man that Maxie was still his son and needed him. Henry had plainly had as much as he could take for one day. 'The state will provide you with legal representation, if necessary.'

  He saw through the library window that WPC Green and Constable Hanks had arrived, and he gestured to Llewellyn to take the lad out to the waiting police car. Perhaps the housekeeper would be willing to bring along a few things for the boy later?

  The gravel crunched and as the police car moved away, Rafferty caught a glimpse of Maxie's white face staring back at them. He looked frightened, bewildered and alone, his body curled into a foetal position in the far corner. Rafferty sighed and was relieved when the car turned onto the main road and the boy's face, with its look of desperation, was whisked out of sight.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  The search for Maximillian Shore's theoretical manuscript had been successfully concluded. As Rafferty had guessed, Maxie had hidden it in his room. Once he had been brought to the police station, Maxie had ignored all advice to keep quiet, whether from his appointed legal representative or anyone else, and had insisted on telling them the details. As Rafferty had guessed, Maxie had known of his step-mother's pregnancy and his reaction had been a predictable fury. He had thought she loved him, he had told them, loved him best. She had made so much of him that he had thought he was enough for her. But the discovery that he wasn't, that Barbara was to have a child of her own made his love turn temporarily to hatred and he had decided that he wasn't going to compete for her love with a baby. If he couldn't have her love for himself, then no-one would have it.

  Rafferty believed the shock of his arrest had tipped him over the edge of sanity. The boy appeared to have forgotten the earlier grief he had felt; he had seemed proud of his own cleverness and boasted of how easy it had been to borrow his uncle's mobile phone, how he had used a handkerchief over the mouthpiece and cottonwool in his cheeks to disguise his voice. As he had gone on to explain how he had punched Barbara in the temple to stun her, before smothering her with one of the pretty cushions he had brought with him specially for the purpose, Rafferty had experienced a growing horror that was still with him several hours after the interview had finished.

  'Success was everything to the Shore family,' said Rafferty, to Llewellyn later, as they sat over comforting mugs of tea in his office. 'Henry told us as much, if you recall? Young Maxie felt he had been deprived of his rightful inheritance. His grandfather didn't approve of Anne's marriage to Henry, and had removed her from his will. And, although they were reconciled when Maxie was born, the old man was unfortunately murdered before he could change his will back again. Consequently, Maxie was a poor relation, with little prospect of ever being anything more. He and his father
lived on sufferance in his grandfather's house.

  'I think, as he got older, that fact twisted his mind, which was never very strong to begin with - you've only got to look at his mother to see there's instability in the family. I think he inherited that, as well as his grandfather's self-will, and I doubt if his mother, with the drunken accusations she must have poured into his ears, helped the situation. She was very bitter about being dependant on her brother's charity. She hated Henry for that and she hated Barbara for the loss of her son. You know, thinking back to some of the things she said, I get the impression she had guessed months earlier about the strength of her brother's feelings for Barbara, and was hoping for some family confrontation from which she could benefit. I bet she didn't anticipate this result, though.'

  Llewellyn sighed. 'I wonder how many times Maxie watched his father belittled by his mother and uncle for his lack of achievement?'

  'Enough, it would seem. Neither Maxie nor his father were bright enough to make their pile from using their brains. Didn't we hear his cousins tell him as much when we arrived at the house just after Barbara's body had been found? Remember his cousins were taunting him and he retaliated?' Llewellyn nodded. 'Remember how astonished the younger boy seemed that Maxie had stood up for himself?' Llewellyn nodded again.

  'I get the impression he had never done that before. Of course he'd killed his step-mother less than twenty-four hours earlier. I imagine he felt filled with power just then and it gave him the courage to stand up for himself that he had lacked before. He was presumably convinced that his life would start to become more successful. It was only later that he began to realise it wasn't going to happen, and that he had killed the only person who truly cared for him for nothing. I imagine it was a bitter discovery.

  'Of course, Henry was happy enough to potter along. He might have resented being beholden to the Shores, but he was enough of a realist to know his life would be a whole lot chillier in the outside world. Even when Hilary convinced him that Barbara and Charles were conducting a passionate affair under his nose, it wasn't enough to force him to do something. The difference was that Charles was wrong about the boy - Maxie was a Shore, whatever his actual name, with enough of his grandfather in him to make him ambitious. And he was young; fifteen's a very vulnerable age, and he was more vulnerable than most to the powerful influence of his grandfather - didn't I tell you he was at the root of this case?

  'Added to that, he felt his own and his father's failure acutely. His mother tried to imply that Charles had turned the boy against her, but I imagine she did that pretty effectively herself. She had probably humiliated him countless times with her drunken exhibitions. He would hate her for that. Luckily for her, his grandfather's theories on success demanded that the stepmother he loved, rather than the mother he hated, was the appropriate victim.'

  He drained his mug of tea and went on. 'Of course, he'd inherited that ruthless streak from his grandfather and had apparently managed to convince himself that the murder would make him not only invulnerable but secure, with success guaranteed. It's a pity for him and his victim that he didn't also inherit his grandfather's sharp mind. If he had, he might have realised that, even with the chips all stacked in your favour, life's still a chancy business. By the way,' he broke off. 'Did you get onto the hospital as I asked?'

  Llewellyn nodded again, and began tidying the reports that still littered Rafferty's desk. 'You were right. They found yew berries mixed in with the jam that boy Tom Shepherd ate. Dangerous shrubs to have around with children about the place.'

  'Especially when one of them was Maxie. Of course, unless he confesses, we'll never be able to prove that he tried to poison his friend - it's just possible those berries got in the jam by accident. But it doesn't really matter. One successful murder is enough to ensure he's put in a secure place for a very long time.'

  He sighed. The whole case had depressed him and now, as he made a conscious effort to cheer up, he thought he knew the very thing to do it. Was there anything quite so satisfying, he asked himself, as rubbing the ultra-efficient Welshman's nose in one of his own mistakes? And it wasn't often he got the chance.

  'You know,' he said, with a sly glance at Llewellyn. 'It's funny when you think of it, but if that lad had met us before he embarked on his murderous career, he might have reconsidered his grandfather's theory.'

  'Oh?' Llewellyn's eyes narrowed. 'What do you mean?'

  'Well we both lost our fathers young, and we're neither of us noticeably successful, are we? He got it wrong - just like you when you sent those ill-chosen flowers to Maureen.You know ma thinks you're playing fast and loose with the girl?'

  'As it happens, I didn't get it wrong,' loftily, Llewellyn corrected him. 'I asked the shop to send a dozen red roses, and they made a mistake. Perhaps you'll both be happy to know that, to make up for it, she's going to receive two dozen red roses. Red roses for love's waxing.' He got up and opened the door. 'If you want me I'll be in the canteen placing the order.'

  The office door slammed shut behind him, before Rafferty could come back with a suitable riposte. Llewellyn had got the better of him - again. But this time Rafferty didn't mind. He even smiled. After all, it wasn't every day that he managed to bring a murder case and a budding romance to a successful conclusion. His ma would be pleased.

  The End

  About the Author

  Geraldine Evans

  Crime author

  Geraldine Evans is a British writer. She was born in London, England of Irish parents and although she didn't attend university, she has learned throughout her life, from a variety of jobs and interests. Her two crime series, Rafferty & Llewellyn and Casey & Catt are police procedurals with a lot of humour.

  As well as her crime novels, she has also had published an historical, Reluctant Queen. This tells the story of Mary Rose Tudor, the little sister of Henry VIII, and was written under the name Geraldine Hartnett. She has also had published a romance, Land of Dreams, as well as articles on a variety of topics, including historical biography, writing and New Age subjects. She has also written a dramatisation of Dead Before Morning, the first novel in her humorous Rafferty & Llewellyn series.

  She is married to George and now lives in Norfolk, England.

  Geraldine's print books are available from booksellers near you or online.

  To learn more about Geraldine's novels, take a look at her website: www.geraldineevans.com

  Other Titles by Geraldine Evans

  A Killing Karma (#2 in Casey and Catt)

  Love Lies Bleeding (Rafferty #8)

  Reluctant Queen under the name Geraldine Hartnett

  The Hanging Tree (Rafferty #4)

  A Thrust to the Vitals (Rafferty #10)

  Absolute Poison (Rafferty #5)

  All the Lonely People (Rafferty #12)

  Bad Blood (Rafferty #7)

  Blood on the Bones (Rafferty #9)

  Dead Before Morning (Rafferty #1)

  Death Dance

  Death Dues (Rafferty #11)

  Down Among the Dead Men (Rafferty #2)

  Dying for You (Rafferty #6)

  Up in Flames (#1 in Casey and Catt)