Chapter Forty-Five #2
“That’s right. A double negative. You’re right, Tyler.
I don’t know nothing. In fact, I know rather a lot.
I know that you took Desmond up onto the roof.
You had a key. I know that the cleaner stopped vacuuming because she saw you do it.
Is that why she had to be sacked? What did you do, Elisa?
Send her off to Thailand for a few months as a redundancy package?
And, Tyler, I also know that you bludgeoned him on the head with the gardening mallet—with your left hand.
See, I thought you were right-handed, but then Catherine said something about her grandson.
Plays cricket with his right hand, tennis with his left.
Some people are like that, aren’t they? Ambidextrous?
You’re very comfortable on those decks. I guess you fix fences with your right hand and murder with your left.
What happened to the rope fence by the way?
You never finished the job. Did you lose your mallet?
Or did you decide you had to throw it away?
“And then, finally, you pushed him. That’s a very distinctive jumper you’re wearing, Tyler.
The trace of fiber it left on Desmond led us to Polly.
But Polly didn’t murder Desmond. Polly is in a world of her own and that’s all thanks to you, Tyler, because you’ve been providing her with hash cakes.
Which is why she knitted you the jumper.
As a thank-you.” Carol smiled. “I love it when the different generations get along.”
Tyler’s eyes were darting around the room.
“You could try and make a run for it, but I don’t think you’d get very far.
The police are sitting right over there.
Why don’t you just sit still for a moment and I’ll tell everyone why you did it?
I’ve got something that may help to reduce your sentence.
You didn’t do it on your own. You were only helping your mother. Wasn’t he, Elisa?”
Elisa stood frozen, by the bar.
“Ferragudo. That’s where our friend Elisa is from. I’ve never been but it’s beautiful, isn’t it, Polly?”
Polly slowly nodded.
“I know Elisa doesn’t look it, but would you believe she turns fifty next year?
Funnily enough, fifty years ago was when Polly and Desmond went to Ferragudo on their honeymoon.
Desmond got a waitress pregnant. That waitress was Elisa’s mother.
When you showed me the picture, I wondered why anyone would want to leave such a place.
You were looking for your father. I wondered where a lady of your complexion might have got those bright blue eyes.
I don’t know how long it took for him to show an interest, but you were so determined that when he retired, you came to work here.
Got your son a job here too. Elisa, you got to know your dad at Sheldon Oaks, and Desmond was a gentler man in his later years.
He didn’t shun you, I imagine, but did he show you love? ”
Elisa took her glasses off and wiped her eyes.
“Not enough, I’m sure, to make up for all the lost time.
Certainly not enough to put you in his will.
Think of the life you and Tyler could have had if he’d supported you the way he did these embarrassments.
” Carol gestured toward the Newsoms. “I empathize, Elisa, I really do. He made you both angry, and that is reason enough to kill someone. Certainly was for me. Of course, you were the one who told me Polly had been married to Desmond. You were looking to give me a suspect to throw me off the scent, but all you did was lead me to your door. Did you hold a grudge against Polly? That doesn’t seem fair. All she did was marry the wrong man.”
Polly now had a thousand-mile stare, lost in the past.
“I was up all night on Facebook,” said Carol.
“You young folks, you don’t bother with Facebook anymore, do you?
It’s all Instagram—and what’s that other one, Tyler?
TokTok? TikTok? But plenty of us old folks love Facebook.
Some of us put everything on there! I suppose it’s a way of feeling like we’re still in touch with the world and you told us all to learn how to use it fifteen years ago and now that we’ve figured it out you’re telling us we need to go on some other app. It’s ridiculous!”
There was a murmur of approval from the residents at Carol’s brief rant.
“Desmond had a Facebook account, you see. You probably didn’t even know. He wrote a status on the day he died. Do you know what it said?”
Elisa shook her head.
“Looking forward to cottage pie with my daughter today. Yum yum! Little did he know that you would pack his cottage pie with deadly nightshade. I went for a walk in the gardens this morning and checked the flower beds. Among the deadly nightshade, there’s a clump missing.
It’s been pulled right off the stalks. You knew it could kill, didn’t you, Elisa?
That’s what a quick Google search will tell you. ”
Elisa held on to the edge of the bar, her other hand shaking.
“Who killed Giles?” shouted Agatha. “And what color were they?”
“Yes! Giles!” said Carol, clapping her hands together.
“Funny you should ask that, Agatha. I’ll rattle through this one as quick as I can.
I know you were all looking forward to the karaoke.
I don’t think I’ll surprise any of you if I say that Giles Temple was a suspect.
I’ve had a look through his accounts, and the man was in trouble.
The fact is, money is a good enough reason for anyone to kill, but why Desmond Crisp?
If Giles had a motive, I never found it, and when he himself was murdered, I knew he wasn’t responsible.
“Elisa couldn’t stand to see an idiot like Giles Temple be given so many breaks in life, only to cock them all up.
It was people like her who deserved a chance.
She knew that Giles wasn’t on top of his finances, never understood his statements, never spoke to his accountant.
His money seemed to keep disappearing. He couldn’t understand it.
You were stealing it, weren’t you, Elisa?
The Sheldon Oaks accounts at Companies House look awfully peculiar.
You’ve got a little account somewhere, haven’t you?
An awful lot of money from Sheldon Oaks Ltd.
seems to be going to a business in Portugal.
You also managed to change his will. That office of his is such a mess.
Documents everywhere. I managed to take a peep at a few when you nipped out for a conversation with your son.
What were you talking about? Murder? You knew Giles never looked at the documents you gave him to sign.
But then, on the day he was murdered, he texted you to say he was about to sell this place to someone who had just come into some money: Shep Newsom. ”
Helen Newsom dropped a glass in cartoon fashion.
“Oh dear,” said Carol. “Maybe Shep was going to tell you for your birthday, Helen. ‘I’ve bought you an old folks’ home, darling.
’ Elisa, you couldn’t let that happen, could you?
You’d worked so hard to get everything in place.
When the police had lost interest, you’d find a way to knock off Giles, and this place would be yours.
But him saying he’d sell it to Shep, well, that was a spanner in the works.
The timing was far from ideal, Polly was at the police station, but you had to kill him before he sold it off.
You knew he’d burn through the money he got for it in weeks and then there’d be nothing for you in the will. ”
Elisa tried to scream, but her vocal cords were tight and it came out like a whimper. “I didn’t kill Giles!”
“No, you didn’t. Maybe it was just a case of someone beating you to it, or maybe two murders was one too many for you. Lightweight.”
Margaret laughed at her serial killer friend’s joke.
“Elisa didn’t kill Giles Temple,” said Carol. “Detective Chief Inspector Bob Beattie did.”
Audible gasps hit Carol in stereo. Bob felt Laura’s gaze on him and looked away.
“Giles Temple only ever had one successful business: growing marijuana on the Sheldon Oaks roof. Rather a lot of it, in fact. Much of it ended up in cakes. Good to know that the baking group and I weren’t the only ones using the communal kitchen.
Running an operation that big in the middle of London required help.
Giles was a pampered posh boy. He didn’t have connections in the underworld.
How would he sell all that dope? Jim…Jim still had a foot in a local operation and was able to help Giles get his crop out to the market.
Some of my old prison friends were able to confirm that one for me.
“Jim gave him a connection in the underworld, but in order for Giles’s little business to work, he needed one in the—I don’t know, what would you call the police?
The overworld? You can’t grow that much weed on a Hampstead roof without paying off the cops.
Right, Detective Chief Inspector Beattie?
The only way you could afford to put your mum in here is because it didn’t cost you a penny.
There’s a reason why the roof was cordoned off, why you never let Laura up there, and it was nothing to do with how Desmond died.
You just didn’t want Laura to know about your dodgy side hustle.
I hope you at least get the rounds in at the pub, Bob. ”
Laura’s jaw dropped.
“But Giles had real money problems and they were driving him crazy, making him do silly things. Like blackmailing you. Did he threaten to tell Internal Investigations that you were just another dodgy cop? Whatever he said, you knew you had to get rid of him. You know what they do to cops in prison. Things had got out of hand. Giles was too chaotic, couldn’t be trusted.
So you did it then. You burned him alive.
I had Catherine check for me, and you signed the Sheldon Oaks visitors’ book just before Giles was locked in the sauna.
I’m sure, being a man on the inside, you had your own key. ”
Bob, now chewing on nicotine gum, was fighting for his life. “I was visiting my mum! You can’t prove nothing! I was visiting my mum!”
Carol spoke softly: “But, Detective Chief Inspector Beattie, your mother wasn’t here. She was on the trip to see Mamma Mia! I watched her getting into the minibus.”
Bob Beattie slumped, crumbling into himself, another man beaten by Carol Quinn.
“I hope you enjoyed the show, Agatha. What’s your favorite ABBA song?
I always liked ‘Does Your Mother Know.’ I feel for you, Bob, I really do.
I’ve always tried not to get involved in other people’s murders, but the only way I could keep my friends was by clearing my name.
You see…” Carol looked at Margaret, Catherine, and Geoffrey, who all smiled at her in admiration. “My friends mean a lot to me.”
The room sat in stunned silence. So much information, all of it shocking.
“That’s how you do a dénouement,” said Margaret.
“Let’s have some music, shall we?” said Carol, leaning over Tyler’s desk and pushing up the volume, karaoke panpipes from the opening bars of “My Heart Will Go On” filling the room.
Laura stared daggers at Bob Beattie. Elisa stepped behind the bar and poured herself a large whiskey.
Tyler continued to sob. With no one knowing quite what to do, Carol chose to sing the song.