“You asked me earlier where I was while all this was going on. I was bringing up my own children, my dear, and if you have any yourself you will know it’s hard enough to cope with them, let alone interfere with someone else’s. I do regret now that I didn’t say anything at the time, but, really, what could I have done? In any case, I felt it was the school’s responsibility.” She spread her hands.
“But there you are, it’s so easy with hindsight, and who could possibly have guessed that Olive would do what she did? I don’t suppose anyone realised just how disturbed she was.” She dropped her hands to her lap and looked helplessly at her husband.
Mr. Hopwood pondered for a moment.
“Still,” he said slowly, ‘there’s no point pretending we’ve ever believed she killed Amber. I went to the police about that, you know, told them I thought it was very unlikely. They said my disquiet was based on out-of-date information.” He sucked his teeth.
“Which of course waA true. It was five years or so since we’d had any dealings with the family, and in five years the sisters could well have learned to dislike each other.” He fell silent.
“But if Olive didn’t kill Amber,” Roz prompted, ‘then who did?”
“Gwen,” he said with surprise, as if it went without saying.
He smoothed his white hair.
“We think Olive walked in on her mother battering Amber. That would have been quite enough to send her berserk, assuming she had retained her fondness for the girl.”
“Was Gwen capable of doing such a thing?”
They looked at each other.
“We’ve always thought so,” said Mr. Hopwood.
“She was very hostile towards Amber, probably because Amber was so like her father.”
“What did the police say?” asked Roz.
“I gather Robert Martin had already suggested the same thing.
They put it to Olive and she denied it.”
Roz stared at him.
“You’re saying Olive’s father told the police that he thought his wife had battered his younger daughter to death and that Olive then killed her mother?”
He nodded.
“God!” she breathed.
“His solicitor never said a word about that.” She thought for a moment.
“It implies, you know, that Gwen had battered the child before. No man would make an accusation like that unless he had grounds for it, would he?”
“Perhaps he just shared our disbelief that Olive could kill her sister.”
Roz chewed her thumbnail and stared at the carpet.
“She claimed in her statement that her relationship with her sister had never been close. Now, I might go along with that if I accept that in the years after school they drifted apart, but I can’t go along with it if her own father thought they were still so close that Olive would kill to revenge her.” She shook her head.
“I’m damn sure Olive’s barrister never got to hear about this. The poor man was trying to conjure a defence out of thin air.” She looked up.
“Why did Robert Martin give up on it? Why did he let her plead guilty?
According to her she did it to spare him the anguish of a trial.”
Mr. Hopwood shook his head.
“I really couldn’t say. We never saw him again. Presumably, he somehow became convinced of her guilt.” He massaged arthritic fingers.
“The problem for all of us is trying to accept that a person we know is capable of doing something so horrible, perhaps because it shows up the fallibility of our judgement. We knew her before it happened. You, I imagine, have met her since. In both cases, we have failed to see the flaw in her character that led her to murder her mother and sister, and we look for excuses. In the end, though, I don’t think there are any.
It’s not as if the police had to beat her confession out of her. As far as I understand it, it was they who insisted she wait till her solicitor was present.”
Roz frowned.
“And yet you’re still troubled by it.”
He smiled slightly.
“Only when someone pops up to stir the dregs again. By and large we rarely think about it. There’s no getting away from the fact that she signed a confession saying she did it.”
“People are always confessing to crimes they didn’t commit,” countered Roz bluntly.
“Timothy Evans was hanged for his confession, while downstairs Christie went on burying his victims under the floorboards. Sister Bridget said Olive lied about everything, you and your daughter have both cited lies she told. What makes you think she was telling the truth in this one instance?”
They didn’t say anything.
“I’m so sorry,” said Roz with an apologetic smile.
“I don’t mean to harangue you. I just wish I understood what it was all about. There are so many inconsistencies. I mean why, for example, did Robert Martin stay in the house after the deaths?
You’d expect him to move heaven and earth to get out of it.”
“You must talk to the police,” said Mr. Hopwood.
“They know more about it than anyone.”
“Yes,” Roz said quietly, “I must.” She picked up her cup and saucer from the floor and put them on the table.
“Can I ask you three more things? Then I’ll leave you in peace. First, is there anyone else you can think of who might be able to help me?”
Mrs. Hopwood shook her head.
“I really know very little about her after she left school. You’ll have to trace the people she worked with.”
“Fair enough. Second, did you know that Amber had a baby when she was thirteen years old?” She read the astonishment in their faces.
“Good Heavens!” said Mrs. Hopwood.
“Quite. Third…” She paused for a moment, remembering Graham Deedes’ amused reaction. Was it fair to make Olive a figure of fun?
“Third,” she repeated firmly, “Gwen persuaded Olive to have an abortion. Do you know anything about that?”
Mrs. Hopwood looked thoughtful.
“Would that have been at the beginning of eighty-seven?”
Roz, unsure how to answer, nodded.
“I was having problems of my own with a prolonged menopause,” said Mrs.
Hopwood, matter of factly.
“I bumped into her and Gwen quite by chance at the hospital. It was the last time I saw them. Gwen was very jumpy. She tried to pretend they were there for a gynaecological reason of her own but I couldn’t help noticing that it was clearly Olive who had the problem. The poor girl was in tears.” She tut-tutted crossly.
“What a mistake not to let her have it. It explains the murders, of course. They must have happened around the time the baby would have been due. No wonder she was disturbed.”
Roz drove back to Leven Road. This time the door to number 22 stood ajar and a young woman was clipping the low hedge that bordered the front garden. Roz drew her car into the kerb and stepped out.
“Hi,” she said, holding out her hand and shaking the other’s firmly.
Immediate, friendly contact, she hoped, would stop this woman barring the door to her as her neighbour had done.
“I’m Rosalind Leigh. I came the other day but you were out. I can see your time’s precious so I won’t stop you working, but can we talk while you’re doing it?”
The young woman shrugged as she resumed her clipping.
“If you’re selling anything, and that includes religion, then you’re wasting your time.”
“I want to talk about your house.”
“Oh, Christ!” said the other in disgust.
“Sometimes I wish we’d never bought the flaming thing. What are you?
Psychical bloody research? They’re all nutters. They seem to think the kitchen is oozing with ectoplasm or something equally disgusting.”
“No. Far more earthbound. I’m writing a follow-up report on the Olive Martin case.”
“Why?”
“There are some unanswered questions. Like, for example, why did Robert Martin remain here after the murders?”
“And you’re expecting me to answer that?” She snorted.
“I never even met him. He was long dead before we moved in.