“A lot?”
“Fifty pounds. That’s a lot. It would be to Max and Trixie. If they were going away they’d take that with them. They don’t come from wealthy backgrounds. Max’s father is a bank clerk, and Trixie’s dad is a coal miner. It was after exams, but they both still had some course work to address... Really it’s a wonder we didn’t get suspicious sooner.”
“Has their room been relet?”
“Yes, it has, to another couple. And their possessions, Max and Trixie’s that is, their possessions were removed by their parents. That was some few weeks and I mean some few weeks for the course.”
“Oh?”
“Well, that was the time Karen Ovenhouse was kidnapped. You must remember that?”
“I do.”
“She’s on the same course as me, same course that Max and Trixie were on, Medieval English. . Very small course, so we know each other well. Karen doesn’t have much to do with us, holds herself aloof a bit. . but she was on the course... sits in lectures, seminars. . She was abducted just before the exams. . then Max and Trixie vanished just after the exams. Then Karen turned up safe. . Talk about topsy-turvy. I was so glad to go home. Southampton never looked more welcoming.”
“Is that your hometown?”
“For my sins.”
“I see.” Menninot paused. “So Karen Ovenhouse would have known Max and Trixie?”
“Yes... a small course... But there was a bit of a class gap between Karen and the rest of us. We’re all lower middle class or working class. Karen is practically one step down from the Royal Family. But yes, they knew each other.”
“So, a close-knit course of students. Were you upset when Trixie and Max disappeared?”
“I’ll say — people don’t just vanish. But they did. Only Karen didn’t seem upset, but that’s her class, they’re taught from a very early age to control and conceal their emotions.”
“Interesting.” Menninot nodded. “Very interesting.”
Menninot returned to Friargate Police Station. He called in at the detective constables’ room to see if Carmen Pharoah had returned from York City Hospital. She had. He found her sitting at a desk compensating for the lessening of natural light by having switched on the low-wattage anglepoise light on her desk.
“I see you’re back from the P.M.?”
“Yes, sir.” She glanced up at him. “Just writing up Bill Hatch’s findings now. He’ll be faxing his report to us as soon as possible.”
“Can you give me the gist of it?”
“The male appears to have been stabbed in the heart.”
“He can tell that from such an old corpse?”
“Apparently so. The heart muscle is still identifiable, as is the damage caused by the knife, as is the dried blood still evident on the shirt. Death would have been instantaneous. He would have slumped back against the wall.”
“The manner in which he was found, in fact.”
“Yes, sir.”
“So what have we got, a murder/suicide? She kills him then strings herself up? Not unknown.” He glanced at a picture of a black woman in a green swimsuit, standing on a pebble beach beneath palm fronds, and in the background dark clouds of an approaching storm. “Who’s that? Your sister?”
“She’d love you for saying that! No, that’s my mum, taken on a beach in St. Kitts. I was an early child. Very early.”
“I see, so...”
“Well, it may not be so simple, sir. The woman had head injuries, a fractured skull. Probably not sufficient to kill her, but sufficient to render her unconscious, semiconscious at least.”
“Therefore not able to string herself up.”
“Exactly. That’s Bill Hatch’s opinion.”
“So, we’re looking at the hand of a third person in all this.”
Later, in his office, as the sun dipped fully beneath the skyline, Menninot closed the file on Karen Ovenhouse’s kidnapping and picked up the phone on his desk and dialed the D.C.’s room extension.
“D.C. Pharoah.”
“Carmen, Ken Menninot.”
“Yes, sir?”
“Busy?”
“Nothing that can’t wait.”
“Good. Grab your coat, we’re going to Leeds.”
“Leeds?”
“Leeds.”
“Karen was always so, so expensive.” The woman in the scarlet designer dress sniffed into her gin, her feet sunk in the deep pile carpet. Oil paintings hung on panelled walls; the room smelled of wood polish. This was Leeds beyond Soldier’s Field. This was Roundhay.
“Always expensive,” the man echoed. The leather armchair in which he sat squeaked each time he moved. He stroked a Persian cat which lay curled up in his lap. “Not like you, my sweet.”
The woman scowled. “I want to be expensive. I am expensive.”
“I was talking to the cat.”
“Men wouldn’t look at me when I was carrying her.” The woman addressed Menninot and ignored Carmen Pharoah. “So we didn’t have another one. I wouldn’t.”
“Bought cats instead,” mumbled the man.
“Sent her off to school as soon as she was seven.”
“As soon as she was seven. Off she went.”
“Then to university when she was eighteen.”
“From school to university.”
“We had to pay the fees, of course. No grant for the likes of us, for the likes of her. We’re monied, you see.”
“Monied,” echoed the man.
“Then she gets herself kidnapped. Foolish girl. Paid the ransom. Police advised against it, but we paid anyway. One million pounds.”
“Solved the problem, you see,” the man said without taking his eyes off the cat. “She came back, dirty, wanting a bath and a meal. But otherwise unscathed. So our life could proceed.”
“Proceed.” This time it was the woman who echoed.
Ken Menninot and Carmen Pharoah stood and saw themselves out of the Ovenhouse residence. They doubted that their departure was noticed.
The following afternoon, when D.S. Menninot and D.C. Pharoah were once again both working the afternoon shift and so were able to pick up the case, they interviewed Karen Ovenhouse in the dean’s office, at the dean’s invitation, but in his absence.
“I felt they owed me,” Karen Ovenhouse said calmly.
“You would have got more if you had waited to inherit in the fullness of time,” Menninot replied, equally calmly. “I mean, we’ve visited your parents... what they must be worth...”
“That’s it, you see, that’s the motivation. I’m not going to inherit anything.”
“You’ve been disinherited?”
“No, there’s just nothing to inherit. There wouldn’t have been anything to inherit if I had waited until they expired of old age. Short of murdering them, that is.”
“Explain.”
“Well, the house, the contents, it’s all show. My father’s business collapsed and he sold the house and its valuable contents to a finance company on the basis that they continue to live out their lives there... so they keep the image, remain the envy of their friends... They got two million pounds for that house of theirs. Half for me is not unreasonable. They don’t want a fuss, so they paid. I knew they would.”
“Where’s the money now?”
“In my bank account. Confess the manager’s eyes opened when I paid the money in. But there had been no publicity, so no one knew that Karen Ovenhouse had been kidnapped. Better than his customers going into the red. It’s in a high-yield account.”