They heard the singing first. ‘Nymphs and Shepherds’, in Alice’s pure soprano.
Then they saw her through the windows, sitting at her stepmother’s baby grand, accompanying herself from memory. She seemed unaware of the man behind her, carefully loosening the cravat around his neck, preparatory to tightening it around hers.
‘Stop it!’ Carole bellowed.
He looked up mildly at the two approaching woman. ‘Ah,’ said Jonny Virgo. ‘Rather too much to hope that I would get away with it twice.’
Shortly afterwards they were seated on the chintzy three-piece suite. Alice had made tea and served it in her stepmother’s best bone china. What a very genteel, Fethering way to hold a conversation with a murderer.
‘I knew I had to,’ said Jonny, his cravat once again neatly around his neck. ‘I became obsessed by it. Heather knew, and I felt certain that it was only a matter of time before she would tell someone. I had to stop her.’
‘So, what did you do?’ asked Carole.
‘I gave Mother a sleeping pill. She doesn’t always sleep well, wakes up not knowing what time of day or night it is, but the sleeping pills do work. So, I knew she’d be dead to the world for a while. And what I was going to do wouldn’t take long. Then, knowing that the music for the dancing in the church hall would have to stop at ten thirty, I went down there and waited until Heather came out. I had to wait quite a while.’ He sounded aggrieved at the delay. ‘People are very long-winded about saying their goodbyes, particularly after a few drinks.
‘But finally, Heather came out on her own. I knew she was the last one, because she locked up the hall. Presumably, she would return the key the next day.’ A troublesome thought struck him. ‘Oh dear. I wonder what happened to the key. It’ll be very inconvenient if they can’t find it, you know, next time the place is booked.’
‘I’m sure they’ve got a spare,’ said Jude.
‘Yes, I hope so.’ He sounded more worried about the missing key than the crime he’d committed.
‘Then what happened?’ asked Carole, quite sharply.
‘Well, I said “Good evening” to Heather, and said I was just taking a late-night stroll, and I’d see her a bit of the way home. She was in a very happy state, very pleased with the way the day had gone, extravagantly flattering to me about the music.’ A strange little smile hovered on his lips. ‘I was glad that her last thoughts were happy ones.’
He saw that no one else was smiling and went on hastily. ‘As you know, if you were going from All Saints to the Shorelands Estate, you’d follow the river down to the Fethering Yacht Club. And that’s the way we went. Down there, as you also know, there’s the sea wall at the mouth of the Fether.’
I was right about the Scene of the Crime, Carole told herself. But the thought didn’t bring her much satisfaction.
‘I knew that’s where I had to do it. I’d slipped off my cravat in readiness. I think she was too surprised to resist when I put it round her neck. She died very quickly. It wasn’t easy lifting her body over the sea wall, but I managed it,’ he concluded with an air of satisfaction.
There was a silence.
‘It was what Heather said after the wedding ceremony, wasn’t it?’ asked Jude. ‘The reason you killed her. When she was talking about Alice knowing Blake Woodruff’s secrets, knowing about “everyone who’s ever been in love with him” …?’
‘Yes,’ Jonny admitted. ‘I knew she wasn’t really talking about Alice. I’d followed Blake’s career all the way from when he was a chorister. I knew that he and Heather had had a … thing while they were at university. And, from when I first met her, I was worried she might mention something about Blake. What she said in the church hall made me certain that she knew what I’d … what I’d said to him. I thought she was challenging me with the information. I thought she was threatening to tell everyone about it.’
Jude sighed. To think that such a trivial misunderstanding could have led to a woman’s death.
Other details fell into place, though. Carole remembered Bet Harrison saying how vehemently Jonny had been against the idea of giving singing lessons to Rory Harrison. Throughout his career, he must have avoided any situation that might leave him alone with a young boy.
‘I couldn’t let Mother find out,’ Jonny went on. ‘She’d always had this image of me as … It would have killed her.’
‘But why,’ asked Carole, ‘once you’d silenced Heather, did you feel the need to silence Alice too?’
‘It just got to me,’ Jonny replied. ‘Once Heather had died, I felt a kind of peace. I thought the danger had gone. But then, as the days went by, I felt less and less secure. I knew Heather and Alice were close. Increasingly, I started to think that Heather must have confided in her, passed on what Blake had told her. I couldn’t relax, I didn’t know what to do … and then I had the call from Alice, asking me to come here to give her a singing lesson, and it was like a sign to me.’ He spoke as if his actions had been dictated by an ineluctable logic.
There were a lot of things that Jude wanted to say. That, in this day and age, nobody cared about anyone else’s sexuality. That what he’d said to the young Blake Woodruff did not constitute an offence.
But she was dealing with someone from a different generation, someone who’d grown up at the time when homosexual acts were still criminal. Jonny Virgo’s overriding sense of guilt had prevented him, right through his life, from any kind of sexual expression.
And, most ironic of all, he was someone whose mother was way beyond understanding any charge levelled against him. He was trying to protect her from information she no longer had any means of processing. Jonny Virgo’s murder of Heather Mallett – and his attempted murder of Alice Mallett – had been completely unnecessary acts. But he would never understand that.
Carole looked at her watch. ‘The police said they’d be here within the half-hour.’
‘Yes.’ Jonny Virgo nodded, with something approaching satisfaction. ‘At least I’ve finished my recordings,’ he said.
‘Recordings?’ echoed Jude.
‘I’ve been recording all the Beethoven piano sonatas … for Mother to listen to … if I have to go somewhere else.’
Jude realized that he was quite as out of touch with the real world as Mrs Virgo was. They had lived all their lives, just the two of them, in a capsule of togetherness.
She looked across at Alice Mallett, transfixed by the man who had killed her much-adored stepmother. On the girl’s face there was no anger, only pity.
TWENTY-FIVE
‘Roddy. Someone to see you.’
Jude spoke from the doorway to the sitting room. Brian Skelton had ‘thought it might be a good idea’ if he went and did some shopping. So, Jude was the only witness to Roddy and Alice’s reunion.
The bride brought up a chair to sit beside her groom. He touched her hand briefly, and she didn’t recoil. But both knew they had a long journey to travel.
‘I know people who can help you,’ said Jude. ‘I really do.’
It was surprising how quickly Fethering gossip accommodated the arrest of Jonny Virgo. A lot of people, it turned out, had deduced some time before that he was the murderer. Barney Poulton, in his favourite role as a buttonholing Ancient Mariner, assured an increasingly glassy-eyed Ted Crisp – and indeed anyone else at the bar of the Crown & Anchor – that he had ‘known all along.’
At his trial, Jonny Virgo admitted killing Heather Mallett. He was sentenced to life and, once inside, made himself popular by playing piano for all of the prison entertainments. He also formed a reciprocated attachment for a fellow prisoner. Though there was no physical contact, he had finally found a way of expressing his true emotions. They remained a very devoted couple to the end of their incarcerated lives. Their only worry, that one would inevitably be released before the other, was not realized because they both died, within days of each other, before the end of their sentences.