The Vanishing Woman Page 20
“A heart attack.”
“Yes.”
“Why did you go through the hassle of dragging her body the length of that bunker? You might just as easily have left her where she was.”
“I couldn’t risk the bunker being discovered and the body being found so close to the house. Agnes or Douglas might have been blamed. But in the event, Agnes was blamed anyway.”
“That was an unfortunate mistake, wasn’t it? When you heard that Agnes and Pamela would be dining together you assumed that Agnes would be a guest at Pamela’s table, since Enid hated Pamela. You assumed that there would be no one at the house that afternoon.”
“Yes. I caught sight of the light in the window only as I reached up to snatch Enid, and by then it was too late. I moved as quickly as I could to ensure I was not seen, but of course Agnes had noticed Enid walking along the path.”
Gabriel was distracted for a moment by Agnes lifting the teapot from the centre of the table. The distraction had the effect of breaking the tension between them. Even the doctor sat back and drew a long breath.
“Doctor, you should have confided in me,” Agnes said. “It would have saved you so much trouble. You could have put her body back on the path, then I could have called for help and said I saw her collapse as she walked towards the house.”
“I’m afraid I did not expect you to be so—” The doctor searched for an appropriate word.
“Heartless? No, I suppose you imagined I’d blame you and start shouting ‘murderer!’ all over the town.”
“You know you would not have been as phlegmatic about it as you imagine,” said Dr Whitehead. “It would have been a disaster if you’d seen what I’d done.”
Agnes shrugged. “We could argue about that forever, but it’s beside the point. No one needs to know. No one will ever guess. And if she just died, there’s no crime, is there?”
“Kidnapping, dumping a body, interfering with a police investigation,” Gabriel ventured. “Probably not manslaughter if it can be proven beyond reasonable doubt that your mother was already in the process of suffering a fatal heart attack when she was snatched. Then there is the small matter of what you did to Mrs Olson’s grave.”
Dr Whitehead sat bolt upright. “She was a generous soul, Father, she would not have minded sharing her grave with a little one.”
“Father, please.” Agnes had taken hold of his hand, which Gabriel found almost unbearable.
“Aggie, it’s quite all right,” Dr Whitehead began. “Leave it now.”
“No, I won’t let you take responsibility for that,” she said emphatically. “Father, I disposed of the baby myself.”
“You can’t possibly have done,” answered Gabriel calmly. “Mrs Olson died all alone. Fr Foley told me that there was only one person at her Requiem—but if the woman was all alone, who would even know she had died? Apart from the person who signed her death certificate.” Gabriel looked at Dr Whitehead. “If I am right, Doctor, when you returned to Enid the next day to report on Agnes, she presented you with a little bundle to dispose of. Am I right?”
Dr Whitehead looked anxiously at Agnes, but she had closed her eyes. “It was not like Enid to be squeamish, but she said she had been unable to bring herself to dispose of it herself.” He glanced at Agnes again, but she was motionless. “I wanted to give the baby a decent burial, but Enid was determined that no one would know of the baby’s existence. She said Agnes could never live with the shame.”
“Not my shame,” whispered Agnes, without moving. “No one asked me.”
“So you went to Mrs Olson’s Requiem the following morning,” continued Gabriel, “and waited behind at the graveside until the gravediggers had finished their work.”
“Yes. It felt horribly macabre to have to stand solemnly at the graveside knowing that I had that tiny baby hidden inside my jacket, but as soon as I was alone, I buried her in the upturned soil of the grave. The baby had a Christian burial of sorts.”
The three of them sat in silence, each one unwilling to be the first to speak. Gabriel felt the urge to get up and switch on the light; the oppressive darkness of the room had become stifling. Eventually, he could bear it no longer, stood up and walked over to the switch. The sudden burst of light caused the other two to blink in surprise as though they had been buried alive for weeks. “That’s better,” he said, sitting back down. “Now we can see one another clearly.”
“What will happen to Dr Whitehead if he confesses to the police?” asked Agnes. “What will happen to his family?”
“I am not a policeman,” said Gabriel, “or a solicitor. Your brother would be better placed to advise on this. There will be a public trial, though there is an outside chance, Doctor, that you might escape prison if you have a good enough defence counsel.”
“I’ll be struck off,” added Dr Whitehead. “I shall lose my reputation. In some ways, I think I’d sooner hang. Father, may I ask a question?”
“Of course.”
“I know the truth should come out, but could it wait six months?”
“Why?”
“Because in six months I shall retire. If necessary, we can move away and my family can start afresh, far from gossiping tongues.”
“And Agnes will be far away,” added Gabriel, looking in Agnes’ direction. “Am I right?”
Agnes gave a startled smile. “Yes, as it happens. I planned to go abroad a long time ago, but I have not been well enough. I was trying to pluck up the courage to tell mother, but she died before I could. I’m going to India.”
Gabriel looked at her in surprise. “But we’ve left India.”
“I’m not going as a colonial, Father,” she explained. “Those days are over. Pamela has found me a position at a new school in Bombay. A Catholic school. New school, new country. It seems a fine place to start a new life.”
“Please, Father, please consider this,” said Dr Whitehead. “If I had killed Enid Jennings, I would be prepared to account for her death immediately, even if it meant going to the gallows. I am not asking you to bury the truth, simply to postpone telling the police what you know.”
Gabriel pondered the two expectant faces. He had not thought much beyond confronting Dr Whitehead with what he knew, and he hesitated now, shaken by an unexpected sense of uncertainty. “Applegate is no longer in charge of the case,” said Gabriel slowly. “Once it was established that Enid Jennings was unlikely to have been murdered, the case was transferred to more junior hands. I think it unlikely that the police will ever work out what happened, more through indifference than anything else. The public expect a murder to be solved and punished. A case like this, whilst intriguing, is unlikely to be a priority for busy constables trying to keep the peace.” He looked at Dr Whitehead. “Doctor, I want you to do something for me.”
“Yes?” he asked warily.
“I want you to write me a confession. I want you to write a truthful account of your actions, including your motives for acting as you did. Sign it and seal it, then entrust it to me. In six months’ time, I will hand over your confession to a policeman I trust. Your fate will then be in the hands of the law.”
Dr Whitehead nodded resignedly. “Thank you.”
Gabriel got up to leave. “There’s something else I should say, Doctor. I have no doubt that you are a good man, and I for one am grateful that providence prevented you from committing such a crime, but I find it hard to believe that you only meant to frighten her. In your heart, you had already committed murder. Perhaps you should ask yourself how you came to hate another person—however wicked she was—to the point of being prepared to go to such lengths to end her life.”
Dr Whitehead stepped past Gabriel as though to escort him to the front door. “Father, may I come to you for confession later today? I’ll bring Therese with me.”
Gabriel nodded. “Come this evening when you have had some time to think over things. I’ll be expecting you.”
“Thank you.” He paused, glancing back to see if Agnes had fo
llowed them out of the kitchen, but she was not there. “I suppose, in answer to your question, it came down to justice. I have attended many patients who have been hurt by others, and it is hard not to feel quite overcome with rage at times, especially when it is clear that there will be no justice for them. If Enid had beaten a grown woman to within an inch of her life, she would have faced a lengthy prison sentence for grievous bodily harm, but Agnes was only a child and nobody cared. When she did everything she could to stop me from saving her own daughter’s life, her actions came perilously close to attempted murder, but even if Agnes had died, Enid would never have been punished. When I heard her threatening to destroy Pamela’s life, I knew Enid could get away with that too, but this time I could stop her. So, I did. It was almost too easy.”
“Not so easy,” Gabriel put in, winding his long black scarf around his neck. He was aware of the hundreds of stitches Mrs Whitehead had knitted to make the thing and the hours she had expended on his behalf. “It was one of the most needlessly complicated, carefully planned crimes I have ever come across. There were so many opportunities to resist the temptation to carry it through.”
“For what it’s worth, I wish I hadn’t done it,” answered Dr Whitehead, frankly. “As soon as I had dragged her down those steps, I began to panic. I’m not sure precisely what I would have done if she had not obliged me by dying like that.”
Gabriel opened the door and stepped onto the path outside. “Take some comfort from that then,” he said.
“Thank you.”
It was painfully cold, but Gabriel suspected the worst was yet to come. “I hope we are not heading for another terrible winter.”
“I cannot say I am in any hurry for the summer to come, Father,” answered Dr Whitehead from the shelter of the doorway. “I shall see you again this evening.”
16
“So I shan’t be getting rid of you just yet after all,” said Fr Foley, reading the letter Gabriel had handed to him over dinner. “Well, I can’t say I’m not a little relieved. I’ve grown rather used to the company.”
Gabriel helped himself to the pile of potato cakes Dorothy had prepared for them. It was at times such as this that he tried to imagine what a steak looked like—a great big juicy rump steak covering his entire plate, replete with mushrooms and potatoes and carrots and peas. But mostly just the steak, oozing with blood to suit his one continental taste. “Excellent potato cakes,” he said flatly. “Nicely seasoned.”
“It’s good of your abbot to spare you for another nine months. I expected that you would be called back to the abbey after Christmas.”
“I asked permission to stay with you a little longer,” Gabriel explained, “just to make sure you are entirely recovered. I’m starting to feel quite at home.”
Gabriel returned Fr Foley’s indulgent smile across the table and thought of Agnes, who was preparing to sail thousands of miles away to a new life far from everything she had ever known. He felt quite ashamed when he thought of the fear he had felt when he had made the decision to enter the religious life after his own life had taken an unexpected course. Such fear and trepidation, so many second thoughts, so many backward glances. But then, no new beginning was easy, wherever it occurred.
Gabriel slipped his hand into his pocket and let his fingertips brush over the velvet material of his purple keepsake bag. It was almost a genuflection to the past, but now it contained Dr Whitehead’s letter, the cream envelope sealed with wax to make extra sure no one would open it in error. For the first time in his entire life, Gabriel was in no hurry for the summer to come either.
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