“He would if he’d walked out,” said Roz, ‘and left her alone in the hotel.”
“Why would he do that?”
“Because she told him that but for her sister’s earlier illegitimate baby and her mother’s horror of it happening again he would by now be a proud father.”
Deedes looked at his watch.
“What illegitimate baby?”
“The one Amber had when she was thirteen.
There’s no dispute about that. The child is mentioned in Robert Martin’s will. Gwen managed to hush it up but, as she couldn’t hope to do the same thing with Olive, she persuaded her to abort.”
He clicked his tongue impatiently.
“This is all highly fanciful, Miss Leigh. As far as I can see, you’ve absolutely nothing to support these allegations and you can’t go into print accusing somebody else of the murders without either some very strong evidence or enough capital behind you to pay a fortune in libel damages.” He looked at his watch again, torn between going and staying.
“Let’s suppose for a moment your hypothesis is right. So, where was Olive’s father while Gwen and Amber were being butchered in his kitchen? If I remember correctly he was in the house that night and left for work as usual the following morning. Are you suggesting he didn’t know what had happened?”
“Yes, that’s exactly what I’m suggesting.”
Deedes’s pleasant face scowled in perplexity.
“That’s absurd.”
“Not if he was never there. The only people who said he was were Olive, Robert himself, and the nextdoor neighbour, and she only mentioned him in the context of claiming that Gwen and Amber were still alive at eight thirty He shook his head in complete bewilderment.
“So every body’s lying? That’s too ridiculous. Why should the neighbour lie?”
Roz sighed.
“I know it’s hard to swallow. I’ve had a lot of time to think about it, so it’s easier for me. Robert Martin was a closet homosexual. I’ve found the gay pub that he used for his pick-ups. He was well known there as Mark Agnew. The landlord recognised his picture immediately.
If he was with a lover the night of the murders and went straight to work from there, he wouldn’t have known anything about what had happened in the kitchen until he was told by the police.” She raised a cynical eyebrow.
“And he never had to reveal where he really was because Olive, who assumed he must have been in the house, claimed in her statement that she didn’t attack her mother until after her father had left.”
“Hang on, hang on,” barked Deedes, as if he were haranguing a difficult witness, ‘you can’t have it both ways. A minute ago you were suggesting that Olive’s lover dashed off in the middle of the night to have it out with Gwen.” He ran a smooth hand over his hair, collecting his thoughts.
“But, as Robert’s body wasn’t lying in the kitchen when Olive got back, she must have known he hadn’t been there. Why claim in her statement he was?”
“Because he should have been. Look, it really doesn’t matter what time her lover left her the middle of the night, early morning it’s irrelevant as far as she was concerned. She didn’t have a car, she was probably quite upset about being abandoned, plus she’d taken the day off work, presumably to spend it with her man, so the chances were she didn’t get home till after lunch. She must have assumed her lover waited until Robert left for work before going in to tackle Gwen and Amber, soit was quite natural for her to include her father in her statement. He lived and slept downstairs in a back room but it doesn’t appear to have occurred to any of them, except possibly Gwen, that he was slipping out at night for casual gay sex.”
He glanced at his watch for a third time.
“It’s no good. I shall have to go.” He reached for his coat and folded it over his ann.
“You haven’t explained why the neighbour lied.” He ushered her through the door and closed it behind them.
She spoke over her shoulder as she started down the stairs.
“Because I suspect that when the police told her Gwen and Amber had been murdered she jumped to the immediate conclusion that Robert had done it after a row over her husband.” She shrugged at his snort of disbelief.
“She knew all about the strained relationships in that house, knew that her husband spent hours shut up with Robert in the back room, knew jolly well, I should think, that Robert was a homosexual and by inference that her husband was one as well. She must have been beside herself until she heard that Olive had confessed to the murders. The scandal, if Robert had done it for love of Edward, would have been devastating, so, in a rather pathetic attempt to keep him out of it, she said that Gwen and Amber were alive after Edward left for work.”
She led him across the hallway.
“Luckily for her the statement was never questioned because it tied in very neatly with what Olive said.”
They pushed through the main doors and walked down the front steps to the pavement.
“Too neatly?” he murmured.
“Olive’s version is so simple. Yours is so complicated.”
“The truth always is,” she said with feeling.
“But in actual fact, all three of them only described what was, in effect, a normal Wednesday morning. Not so
