Episode 14 - The trespasser

Sunday cont.

Sleep was, however, something that even Robert was going to have to postpone. Shortly after that squabble, an extremely agitated Mrs Riddle phoned.

“Someone’s trying to get in, Miss Hartley. What shall I do?”

“Have you called the police?”

“Not yet.”

“Well, please do that. I’ll be over as soon as I can.”

“What was all that about?” Robert wanted to know.

“Someone’s prowling round the Marble villa.”

“I thought there was a police guard there.”

“There should be unless it’s been called off, Robert. At one point we did discuss taking the guard away, but I thought Gary had thought better of it. An error of judgement, it seems.”

“Yours or his?” said Robert, glad to have something to be ironic about.

“I don’t order the police about, Robert!”

“I thought you did – at least your pet Chief Inspector,” sneered Robert. Cleo clenched her teeth so as not to argue with him over Gary. ”If Mrs Riddle does what you told her and rings the police, you won’t be needed, will you?”

“I can’t risk that, Robert.”

***

Robert told Cleo that if she was going he was too and insisted on driving. It took only a few minutes to get to Thumpton Close. They parked out of sight of the villa. The close was deserted.

“We’ll go all the way round the house,” said Robert. “Don’t leave my side, Cleo!”

“I’m not scared.”

“But whoever it is prowling may be afraid and could take drastic action.”

Cleo was forced to admit that that was a sensible conclusion. She resented Robert being there at all, but she was glad that he was, despite herself.

There was little light from the only street lamp nearby. Whoever it was had not been able to get into the villa. After Cleo and Robert had tiptoed all the way round, checking windows and doors to make sure they were shut properly, they stood in front of the villa and were trying to decide what to do next when an upstairs window was flung open and Mrs Riddle screamed at them that the police were on their way. Any chance of the prowler hanging around after that was unlikely.

“Can you let us in, Mrs Riddle?” Cleo called.

“Who is the man?”

“It’s me, Mrs Riddle. Jones the butcher.”

“I’m married to him, Mrs Riddle.”

“I’ll come down,” the housekeeper said. Before long they were all sitting in the kitchen reluctantly drinking perfumed tea. Mrs Riddle was still very nervous.

“You shouldn’t have shouted like that, Mrs Riddle,” said Robert.

“I don’t know why I did that.”

“Did you see who it was?” Cleo asked.

“Not exactly, but it could have been a woman. He or she was quite small.”

 “It could be Jessie, couldn’t it? said Cleo to Robert.

“Who’s Jessie?” Mrs Riddle asked.

“Jessie Coppins. She has escaped from a mental ward, Mrs Riddle,” Cleo explained.

“Oh dear!”

“She’s not after anything except food and shelter.”

“She should not be prowling round decent people’s houses at dead of night.”

Robert volunteered to look round again. He would look inside the garden shed. What a stroke of luck if she could be recaptured. Remembering that the last time he had found someone in a garden shed that person had been dead with his throat slit, Robert would be extremely cautious. As he suspected, Jessie had bunked down. She was shivering and terrified when Robert found her. But at least she wasn’t dead.

“Come on Jessie. It’s Jones the butcher. No need to be afraid.”

Jessie offered no resistance to Robert grasping her arm and marching her into the kitchen.

“Look what I’ve found,” he said.

“Were you trying to get into the house, Jessie?” Cleo asked.

“Yes, Miss. I’m hungry.”

“I expect you are if you’ve eaten all the stuff you stole from Miss Price.”

“Sorry, Miss.”

“You are in one hell of a mess, young lady,” said Robert.

“Are you going to hand me over to the bloody cops?”

“We’ll have to otherwise we’ll face charges, Jessie. You know that,” said Cleo.

“But you can have something to eat first,” said Mrs Riddle, now overcome by pity for the girl.

“Call me Jessie.”

Mrs Riddle shook off any remaining nervousness and busied herself getting Jessie some food. The girl was famished. She wolfed down everything the housekeeper put on the table, some of it out of the bag Mrs Riddle had packed for her excursion next morning. Jessie washed it all down with orange juice drunk straight out of the bottle.

“You should not have run away,” scolded Cleo. “You must have realized that it was only a matter of time before you were found.”

“I’m not bloody mad, Miss Hartley,” the girl said.

“But you made the judge think you were,” said Robert.

“And I didn’t bloody kill Mrs Oldfield. It was that horrible Mrs Baines what done it all.”

“But you confessed to murdering that cook, Jessie,” said Cleo.

“I bloody ‘ad to, didn’t I?”

Amazingly, Jessie was more indignant than anything else.

“If you didn’t do it, why did you confess?”

That question silenced Jessie for a moment. Cleo realized there must be something they had not known or even thought of during the case that had put Jessie behind bars.

“I thought it was bloody medicine I was giving her, didn’t I?”

“Did you?” Cleo knew the answer to the next question even before she asked it. “Who gave you the medicine?”

“Mrs Baines and she told me how much to give her. But I wasn’t to tell anyone.”

If that was true, Jessie had been an innocent instrument of Mrs Baines’s evil purpose. Something must happen to set matters straight. On the other hand, Jessie had stolen arsenic from the garden shed and she had knowingly put some into a coffee cup. She had wanted the cook to suffer if not die, wishing it would happen over a long period of time. But wanting someone to suffer or die is not a punishable offence.

“In the end you did put a large dose of arsenic in Mrs Oldfield’s coffee, didn’t you?”

“That was a mistake,” said Jessie. “The coffee was meant for Mrs Baines, wasn’t it?”

“Was it?” Robert was horrified and Cleo was taken aback by this admission and wondering what to do about it. That was certainly another quandary for Dorothy to chew over. It was obvious that Jessie either had no conscience at all or didn’t get beyond her own needs in respect of her actions and reactions.  It was understandable that she had not liked Mrs Baines, but that was not a reason to kill her.

***

Mrs Riddle was naturally out of her depth. Cleo promised to tell her the whole miserable story while they were driving to Middlethumpton to catch the train next morning, but if that was not possible, she would tell her when she returned. Cleo was not at that that moment sure if she could manage to give Mrs Riddle a lift, so she warned her that a taxi might have to stand in for her.

“I usually go on the bus, Miss Hartley.”

“You won’t have to pay for the taxi, Mrs Riddle,” said Cleo.

***

Cleo watched Jessie guzzling with apparent enjoyment.

“I’ll tell you what, Jessie,” she said. “We’ll have to hand you over to the police, but cross my heart, I’ll make sure you get justice as soon as possible.”

“Haven’t you forgotten something, Cleo?” said Robert.

“What?”

“There’s Mrs Coppins to think of.”

“What about her, Mr.?”  said Jessie. “That’s my mum.”

“You haven’t been home, have you?” said Robert.

“No.”

“Your mother is dead, Jessie.”

Jessie fainted.

***

“Now look what you’ve done,” said Mrs Riddle in a very stern voice.

“We had to tell her, Mrs Riddle,” said Cleo. “She is suspected of killing her mother.”

“Nonsense. You can see what the news has done to her.”

“Unfortunately, Jessie does a lot of play-acting,” said Cleo. “She might not really have fainted and she might have already known about her mother or even had something to do with her death. It is also on the cards that she was putting small amounts of arsenic in her superior’s food at the school where she was a scullery maid, Mrs Riddle. She wanted the cook’s job.”

“Well, I never,” said Mrs Riddle.

***

Jessie put on a convincing act of coming round and with Robert’s help and Mrs Riddle’s smelling salts assailing her nostrils she dragged herself back onto the chair she had been sitting on. What she was going through was not play-acting in Mrs Riddle’s view.

Robert had been a witness to Jessie’s antics more than once. He did not like being made a fool of, so he took a tough line with her.

“Did you kill your mother, Jessie?” he asked and Jessie winced.

“No, I bloody didn’t.” she whined.

“Isn’t that why you broke out of prison?” he persisted. “To get at her?”

“No, I wouldn’t do that. She’s still my bloody mother.”

Then, to everyone’s astonishment, Jessie smiled and started swanking. “But the break-out was good, wasn’t it, Miss Hartley? I bet no one has done that before.”

So Jessie regarded her break-out as an accomplishment. Her attack of appendicitis that had got her out of her heavily guarded room into the less strict atmosphere of the hospital wing had also made it possible for her to escape. Shades of schizophrenia could be the reason for the switch in reaction. Cleo suspected that the girl had Asperger’s syndrome as well. As if she had read Cleo’s mind, Mrs Riddle announced “Asperger’s. Typical behaviour, Miss Hartley.”

“It would explain a lot,” said Cleo.

“Jessie, I’m sure you won’t be going back to that penitentiary,” she said.

“That bloody what?”

“Prison. I’ll get Colin Peck onto the case.”

“Who the bloody hell is that?”

“He’s a trained lawyer, Jessie, and he will know what to do or will know who can best help you. But you’d better not say that nasty word too often.”

“As long as they don’t put me away with any bloody nutcases again.”

“They won’t, and we’ll make sure that Mrs Baines takes full responsibility for what happened to Mrs Oldfield.”

That was a rather optimistic comment by Cleo, but it served the purpose.

“Then I’ll go quietly, Miss Hartley.”

“Good girl,” said Robert. “We’ll take you there now.”

***

Robert did not think for a moment that Jessie was in any way out of control emotionally. The girl was odd, but not mentally deranged.

“Eat up first, Miss Coppins,” Mrs Riddle instructed.

“I’ll phone you first thing about the taxi if I can’t come myself, Mrs Riddle.“

“I’ll have to leave by a quarter to nine, Miss Hartley.”

“That’s just fine, Mrs Riddle.”

***

Cleo phoned HQ to notify them of Jessie’s discovery in the garden shed at the villa. Gary took the call for homicide and was not amused. Cleo’s action had led to the girl being found, and he had again missed the boat because Robert was still in Cleo’s life, which is where Gary wanted to be, but seemed destined not to.

Robert grabbed Cleo’s cell phone.

“So now you know what it feels like when decent folks get you out of bed, Gary!” he shouted.

“I’m working,” said Gary.

Cleo snatched her cell phone back. Mrs Riddle watched the proceedings with astonishment. That marriage was doomed, she decided.

“See you at HQ, Gary.”

“I’m going home now, Cleo. I won’t wait for Jessie. See you tomorrow.”

On Gary’s instructions Jessie was handed over to security at HQ. Seeing as it was after midnight, Cleo merely signed to say they were responsible for Jessie’s capture before they drove home.

***

There were so many things to consider in the Jessie, Coppins and Marble cases that Cleo could not have slept late even if she had wanted to. Robert slept like a top. He would get up and go to the wholesaler’s to get some fresh meat to start the day and place a large order for delivery. As far as he was concerned, it was business as usual.