The Sculptress Part 15

"Supposing she didn't do it? You've considered that, haven't you?"

"It's not my affair." She started to close the door.

"Then whose affair is it, for G.o.d's sake?" demanded Roz, suddenly angry.

"Your daughter paints a picture of two sisters, both of whom were so insecure that one told lies and cheated to give herself some status and the other was afraid to say no in case people didn't like her. What the h.e.l.l was happening to them at home to make them like that? And where were you then? Where was anybody? The only real friend either of them had was the other." She saw the thin compression of the woman's lips through the gap in the door and she shook her head contemptuously.

"Your daughter misled me, I'm afraid. From something she said I thought you might be a Samaritan." She smiled coldly.

"I see you're a Pharisee, after all. Goodbye, Mrs. Hopwood."

The other clicked her tongue impatiently.

"You'd better come in, but I'm warning you, I shall insist on a transcript of this interview. I will not have words put into my mouth afterwards simply to fit some sentimental view you have of Olive."

Roz produced her tape-recorder.

"I'll tape the whole thing. If you have a recorder you can tape it at the same time, or I can send you a copy of mine."

Mrs. Hopwood nodded approval as she unhooked the chain and opened the door.

"We have our own. My husband can set it up while I make a cup of tea.

Come in, and wipe your feet, please."

Ten minutes later they were ready. Mrs. Hopwood took natural control.

"The easiest way is for me to tell you everything I remember. When I've finished you can ask me questions.

Agreed?"

"Agreed."

"I said I hardly knew Olive. That's true. She came here perhaps five or six times in all, twice to Geraldine's birthday parties, and on three or four occasions to tea. I didn't take to her. She was a clumsy girl, slow, impossible to talk to, lacking in humour, and, frankly, extremely unattractive. This may sound harsh and unkind but there you are you can't pretend feelings that you don't have. I wasn't sorry when her friendship with Geraldine died a natural death." She paused to collect her thoughts.

"After that, I really had very little to do with her. She never came to this house again. I heard stories, of course, from Geraldine and Geraldine's friends. The impression I formed was very much along the lines you set out earlier a sad, unloved, and unlovely child, who had resorted to boasting about holidays she hadn't taken and boyfriends she didn't have to make up for unhappiness at home. The cheating, I think, was the result of her mother's constant pressure to do well, as indeed was the compulsive eating. She was always plump but during her adolescence her eating habits became pathological.

According to Geraldine, she used to steal food from the school kitchen and cram it, in its entirety, into her mouth, as if she were afraid someone would take it away from her before she had finished.

"Now, you would interpret this behaviour, I imagine, as a symptom of a troubled home background." She looked enquiringly at Roz, who nodded.

"Yes, well, I think I'd agree with you. It wasn't natural, and nor was Amber's submissiveness, although I must stress I never witnessed either girl in action, so to speak. I am relating only what I was told by Geraldine and her friends. In any event, it did trouble me, mostly because I had met Gwen and Robert Martin when I went to collect Geraldine on the few occasions she was invited to their house. They were a very strange couple. They hardly spoke.

He lived in a downstairs room at the back of the house and she and the two girls lived at the front. As far as I could make out, virtually all contact between them was conducted through Olive and Amber." Seeing Roz's expression, she stopped.

"No one's told you this yet?"

Roz shook her head.

"I never did know how many people were aware of it. She kept up appearances, of course, and, frankly, had Geraldine not told me she had seen a bed in Mr. Martin's study, I wouldn't have guessed what was going on." She wrinkled her brow.

"But it's always the way, isn't it? Once you begin to suspect something, then everything you see confirms that suspicion.

They were never together, except at the odd parents' evening, and then there would always be a third party with them, usually one of the teachers." She smiled self-consciously.

"I used to watch them, you know, not out of malice my husband will confirm that but just to prove myself wrong." She shook her head.

"I came to the conclusion that they simply loathed each other. And it wasn't just that they never spoke, they couldn't bring themselves to exchange anything touches, glances anything. Does that make sense to you?"

"Oh, yes," said Roz with feeling.

"Hatred has as strong a body language as love."

"It was she, I think, who was the instigator of it all. I've always a.s.sumed he must have had an affair which she found out about, though I must stress I don't know that. He was a nice looking man, very easy to talk to, and, of course, he got out and about with his job. Whereas she, as far as I could see, had no friends at all, a few acquaintances perhaps, but one never came across her socially. She was a very controlled woman, cold and unemotional. Really rather unpleasant.

Certainly not the type one could ever grow fond of." She was silent for a moment.

"Olive was very much her daughter, of Course, both in looks and personality, and Amber his. Poor Olive," she said with genuine compa.s.sion.

"She did have very little going for her."

Mrs. Hopwood looked at Roz and sighed heavily.

"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, a.s.suming 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.

"G.o.d!" 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 d.a.m.n 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 ma.s.saged 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. Thirda" 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 b.u.mped 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?"