Mrs Bennet and the Body in the Library

By Susannah Donim

Chapter Fourteen – Mrs Bennet Confronts the Killer

The police seem no closer to finding the killer. What will happen to Holly and her Auntie Michelle?

When I found Holly unconscious and covered in blood, I panicked.

I put on the bedroom light and started yelling for help. Derek and Rob burst into the bedroom in a few seconds, closely followed by Amy, Sam and Diane. What was more of a surprise was that two burly policemen were only moments behind them. Where the hell had they been? How come I didn’t see them on my reconnaissance downstairs? And why hadn’t they confronted me?

One of the policemen quickly called for an ambulance. The other calmly but firmly ushered us all out of the room. I was last to leave, reluctant to leave Holly. As the door was closing behind me, I could see the first man checking her breathing.

There was a lot of coming and going of police cars and emergency vehicles that night. Less than an hour later a small group of us watched from a front window on the second floor as Holly – or her body – was carried out on a stretcher to a waiting ambulance. They hadn’t covered her face, which I took as a good sign. I wanted to go to the hospital with her, but the police had their orders from Giddings. I wasn’t allowed to leave, even when my niece/girlfriend might be dying.

Tom put his arm around me – which I didn’t resist – and assured me that as one of the paramedics was carrying a drip or some other medical apparatus alongside the stretcher, the patient must still be alive.

No need for acting; my tears were real. The others had lots of questions – like where had I been when Holly was attacked? But I didn’t feel up to answering and they didn’t press me.

We all went back to bed. I hoped the flimsy lock on our bedroom door was stronger than it looked. Sleep wouldn’t come.

* * *

The following morning the inspector called me into another of our little private meetings in his command centre.

“First the good news,” Giddings began. “Sergeant?”

“I spoke to Miss Woodbridge’s doctor earlier,” said Sharpe. “It seems the assailant only managed one glancing blow before they heard you returning and had to escape. She came round in the ambulance and they dosed her up with painkillers. X-rays showed no skull fracture. She has had a nasty shock and a bad bang on the head, but they expect her to make a full recovery. They’re keeping her in for at least another twenty-four hours in case of concussion.”

Relief flooded through me like a cool mountain stream.

“She was very lucky,” said Giddings. “The assailant was operating in near darkness. Maybe Miss Woodbridge moved slightly so it was just a glancing blow. The hammer tore the skin – hence all the blood – and she’ll have a hell of a bruise, but there’s no serious damage.”

“Will I be allowed to visit her?”

“In due course,” he said. “But you mustn’t worry. She’s in good hands. We think the noise you made going back upstairs disturbed Miss Woodbridge’s assailant so they weren’t able to finish the job. It’s not difficult to knock someone unconscious with a single whack from a hammer, but unless you are very precise or very strong, it usually takes several blows to kill them.”

The hammer, with Holly’s blood and hair still clinging to it, lay on Mr Bennet’s little table in front of us, waiting for Forensics. One of the inspector’s men had found it in a flower bed. The current theory was that the perp had thrown it out of an open window on the second floor. Unfortunately, the most likely window was on the landing; it wasn’t the bedroom window of any of the suspects.

“Of course, we can’t be sure Miss Woodbridge was the intended target. If the assailant didn’t see you going down the stairs, they might have thought it was you they were attacking. We’ve been keeping a close eye on all of you in case the murderer wasn’t finished yet…” he began.

“Which he obviously wasn’t!” I said, gearing up to get angry over how he and his plods nearly let Holly get killed.

“But that level of surveillance is expensive and I wouldn’t be allowed two officers for more than a few days,” he continued patiently, despite my outburst. “At the same time, we wanted to give the killer a little latitude, hoping they would give themselves away. So we installed night-vision cameras.”

“Cameras?”

“Yes, along the landing, on the stairs, in the hall, the drawing room, the kitchen and the staff room. We did the installation upstairs while you were all out on the veranda yesterday afternoon. We finished off downstairs when you’d all gone to bed. They’re motion-activated and the images are fed via wi-fi to screens in the late Mr Miller’s room in the Portakabin. Two officers were monitoring them throughout the night.”

Which explained how the nightwatchmen got to our bedroom so quickly.

Sergeant Sharpe smiled. “We have some very clear pictures of a portly lady in jeans and a flowery top stealthily making her way downstairs at two o’clock in the morning,” she said. “You weren’t planning to leave by any chance, were you?”

Giddings didn’t bother giving me a chance to deny it.

“Unfortunately, whoever took advantage of your absence to creep into your bedroom and try to kill Miss Woodbridge went to great lengths to avoid appearing on the cameras,” he said gloomily. “Somehow they spotted them and worked out how to move along the landing without ever being in view.” He sighed. “We keep underestimating this person. We may have to get creative. Now here’s what I want to do…”

* * *

He arrested Amy Longhurst later that morning. She was distraught and protested her innocence in floods of tears, but it didn’t stop the sergeant handcuffing her and frog-marching her to a waiting police car. It roared off in the direction of the main gate, closely followed by Giddings in his Vauxhall Astra.

The rest of us gathered in the staff room for lunch. Two deaths (including Hannah’s), a hospitalisation, and an arrest had left our numbers depleted in a way that was becoming impossible to ignore.

“And then there were eight,” said Rob. “Maybe Giddings will let us go home now that he’s caught the killer.”

“But Amy!” said Diane, miserably. “I can hardly believe it. Why does he think it was her?”

“They found one of her aprons covered in Hannah’s blood,” I said. “And they knew each other at school, apparently. That’s the only link he’s been able to find between Hannah and anyone here, apart from Douglas.”

“But why?” Diane persisted. “Why did she do it?”

“Presumably he hopes to sweat the motive out of her down at the station,” Sam suggested.

“And is she supposed to have killed Douglas as well?”

“Giddings’ theory is that he found out what she did and tried to blackmail her,” I said, “so she arranged to meet him up on the roof of the Hall for a private conversation, and pushed him off. But don’t ask me why she tried to kill Holly.”

“Perhaps Holly worked it out too,” said Derek. “How is she, do you know?”

“Touch and go, the sergeant said.”

I let my voice drop to a despairing whisper and tried to fake a tear this time, but that dramatic skill was beyond me. I clearly had a way to go in my development as an actress. Maybe I’d do better as an actor. The inspector had told me to say she was hovering on the brink of death, and to look as miserable as possible.

“Oh, Mi… Michelle, that’s awful,” said Sam, taking my hand. “We’re all here for you.”

I smiled and thanked her. Tom and Linda must have thought it was touching how much Auntie cared for her niece. Everyone else knew Mike was afraid he might be losing the love of his life.

Clearly, one of the company would be delighted if that happened.

* * *

With the presumed killer under lock and key our group relaxed a little. Our minds were now on whether Holly would recover and when Giddings would let us leave. Everyone knew I was desperate to get to the hospital. Surely there could be no reason to hold us here now?

Tom was deputised to approach the officers in the Portakabin to ask, but he returned with no news. They were firm that we were to remain in the house and its surrounding gardens until they heard from the inspector. The older officer, a uniformed sergeant, told us to expect at least one more night at Hadleigh House.

“It can’t be much longer,” said Rob, his glass half-full as always. “We’re running out of food and the milk’s on the turn.

“We’re certainly in danger of starvation the way you’re wolfing down that pie,” said Derek. “It’s supposed to be for four, you know.”

“You didn’t even defrost it properly,” said Diane. “You’ll get food poisoning or something.”

It was hard to maintain a morose demeanour with their cheerful banter. When nine o’clock rolled around, I’d had enough.

“I think I’m going to get an early night, guys,” I said. “Maybe the police will let us go tomorrow. I’ll want to get off to the hospital as early as I can.”

The others said goodnight and I made my way upstairs. How much I ate had next to no impact on my girth, thanks to my bulging abdominal prostheses, but my jeans had never felt so tight. I was more conscious than ever of my big fat rear swinging from side to side as I climbed the stairs.

Assuming we would be released tomorrow, I would go to the hospital, and from there straight to Transformations to be turned back into Mike. I didn’t really mind being a portly woman anymore, but I wanted to be a thin, weedy man again. There were lots of things Mike could do that Michelle couldn’t – squash, running, gym, drinking pints. But I missed more mundane things like driving (Michelle had no licence); socks (Holly had only bought me tights and knee-highs); and standing up at a urinal. And I wouldn’t miss sitting down on a cold toilet seat to find that the gentleman who had preceded me hadn’t bothered to raise it. (Yuck.)

After a quick visit to the bathroom to clean my teeth and wash, I went back into our bedroom. I closed the curtains and removed my wig. I looked forward to this moment every day when I could drop the middle-aged lady act and be something like myself again (although I was beginning to wonder who that might be).

Anyway, although the liberation was much less satisfying without Holly, I gratefully stripped off all my tight clothes. The relief of getting out of my jeans was partly offset by the discomfort of the great round globes on my chest descending. It was always good to get them out of their buttressing bra, but now they pulled down painfully on my skin. I reached for my least glamorous nightie to provide them with some support, though thanks to Holly, everything I had was pretty sexy.

Our two camp beds were still separate. There was no point in pulling them together now. Perhaps I would do some reading before lights out. That always made me sleepy. I had a Salman Rushdie novel in my bag. It was holiday reading, prescribed by our English Lit professor. If that didn’t put me to sleep, nothing would.

There being no furniture in our ‘Spartan’ room, all my belongings were on the floor. So I had to bend over to retrieve the book from my rucksack, exposing my enormous pantied behind to anyone in the doorway.

“Boy, that’s a sight to remember!” said a voice behind me. “Wish I’d brought a camera with me.”

It was Sam with a silly grin on her face.

“Oh, hi Sam,” I said, in Mike’s voice. I tried to hide my embarrassment at her seeing, and clearly relishing, the sight of my curvy backside in frilly black nylon knickers. “You might as well take a good look,” I said, “because this will be your last opportunity. As of tomorrow, ‘Michelle’ will be gone forever. She will just be some lumps of flesh-coloured plastic in a recycling bin.”

I sat down on my camp bed, trying to pull the shortie nightie down to cover my exposed panties.

“That’s a pity,” she said, sitting down on the other bed, facing me. Our knees were practically touching. “I was just getting used to her. I never understood how Holly – God rest her soul – could prefer her to Mike, but there’s definitely something…”

“Hey, Holly’s not dead yet!” I protested. “And she didn’t – doesn’t – prefer Michelle to Mike!”

“That’s not what she told me. But I warned her not to admit it to you; that you wouldn’t like it.”

“Well, you were dead right!” I winced at the unfortunate choice of words. “She’ll just have to get used to boring old Mike again.”

I couldn’t believe Holly had said that to Sam!

“I don’t think you’re boring, Mike,” she said. “Perhaps you and Holly aren’t meant for each other after all. You remember her trying to snog Derek in front of everybody?”

“That was… just acting.”

“Was it?” she said sceptically. “Anyway, my point is, I would be much better for you. I would never have made you dress up as her ‘Auntie Michelle’ and spend the summer in bras and knickers and corsets and petticoats.”

She got up off the other camp bed and joined me on mine.

“So why don’t you let me prove it?” she said.

She ran her fingers around my neck and pushed the spaghetti strap of my nightie off my shoulder. My right boob was almost completely exposed, its nipple poking cheekily out of the nightie’s cup. She moved even closer and started nuzzling my neck.

“Sam,” I said, “you’re amazing and gorgeous, but this isn’t a good idea.”

“I knew you found me attractive,” she said. “It’s been obvious since we first met! So why don’t we just carry on where we left off the last time Holly was away?” she said. “You were just about to show me how that little zip thingy between your legs works. Isn’t it uncomfortable? Let me help you out of it.”

She was gently pushing me backwards onto the bed with one hand while the other was working its way up toward my faux vagina. When she tried this before I had dismissed her actions as merely flirtatious. This time she had a determined look in her eye, and she was strong. Any more of this and I would be properly aroused – but sex with Sam was not in the plan.

I rolled over sideways to get away from her and jumped to my feet, pulling the shoulder strap of my nightie back up.

“No, Sam!” I said firmly. “I’m not going to have sex with you!”

Her seductive smile vanished instantly, to be replaced by blazing anger.

“Why not?”

“You know why not! I’m in love with Holly.”

“That doesn’t matter. Anyway, she’s as good as dead!”

How could she be so callous?

“I really hope that’s not true, but anyway I’m not in love with you.”

“You could be. You would be, if you knew everything I’ve done for you!”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that you’re my future and I’m yours, and we’ll have everything we want! We’ll be rich now Hannah’s gone and her father’s dying. You’re the only heir, aren’t you? I’ve been poor all my life and I’m fed up with it!”

The light in her eyes was quite different now. It was cold, calculating. This was a Sam I had never seen before.

“You might as well know it all now, if we’re going to be together,” she said fiercely. “You won’t be able to tell anyone anyway, because you’re implicated, aren’t you?”

Whoa! How was I implicated? I hadn’t hurt anyone! Was she suggesting all the deaths are somehow my fault because she did them for me?

“You and I met in our first year,” she said, “but you were already besotted with Holly and never looked at me properly. It was so frustrating!”

“What are you saying? Surely you didn’t…?”

She looked at me pityingly, but not unkindly.

“Am I really going to have to spell it all out for you? I thought you were smarter than that. All right then – Hannah first. I’m not sure when you mentioned you had a stepsister, but when we were introduced at a party in London last summer, I recognised her name.”

“So you did know her?” I said.

“I just said that, didn’t I? Keep up,” she sneered. “I was there with Douglas. I told her the three of us were all in the same class at Uni. We were both surprised by her reaction.”

“Pretty hostile, I imagine?”

I sat down on the bed again – just out of her reach. I needed to keep her talking – to get her mind off sex, and to get her to reveal more of her secrets.

“To say the least! But her description of you didn’t match our experience. To start with, you had no money. So it was hard to see how you were diminishing Hannah’s inheritance by stealing her Daddy’s fortune.” She laughed. “After all, we knew you sponged off Holly for everything.”

“That’s not fair! I paid my way; at least… I always did in the end.”

But only after my various holiday jobs had replenished my coffers. OK, I could see how it might seem I was living off Holly to an outside observer.

“Anyway, as you probably know, Hannah had her own three-bedroom flat – paid for by Daddy, of course – but she had fallen out with her flatmates, so she invited me and Douglas to move in for the summer holidays. She needed money. She was sure she was God’s gift to the fashion industry, but she had totally failed to get a job there. Also her father had halved her allowance for over-spending. She knew Douglas and I would be going back to Uni for our second year in October but she hoped to be back on her feet by then, or that she could find new tenants.

“Then one day a sleazy businessman friend of her father’s dropped in. She had smarmed and charmed him when he had been to their place for dinner, and it seemed he had made certain assumptions… Anyway, he made her an offer she couldn’t refuse – well, one that she was only too happy to accept, actually. He stayed the night in her room and the next day she had a brand new Louis Vuitton handbag.

“And he had friends. During that summer she became intimately acquainted with a circle of rich older men. They’d arrange meetings in London and stay with us, rather than go to a hotel. They paid in cash; they took her out for meals; and also bought her ‘little presents’, like jewellery. Her new business boomed and she soon had more clients than she could handle. I could see she was having a great time and I was easily persuaded to join in the fun. I’ve never had so much money in my life! Poor Douglas got fed up with seeing an endless stream of men padding to the bathroom from my room or Hannah’s, and he moved out.”

She paused to gauge my reaction, but after the big reveal that Sam knew Hannah well – really well – I wasn’t that surprised to find that she had joined my sister in the world’s oldest profession. I knew she had a healthy libido and that she had grown up poor. It must have been hard to resist. She didn’t seem the least bit ashamed; if anything, she was proud of herself.

“Hannah was always talking about you, you know,” Sam continued. “I couldn’t believe how much she hated you. I got to know her pretty well that summer when I was whoring with her. I was actually better at it than her, and most of our clients asked for me first, but Hannah kept three quarters of the money, because it was her flat and her contacts. She was selfish and lazy, and she thought the world owed her a living. When I left in late September I took half of the cash she’d hidden under the floorboards, which I reckoned I was due. She kept sending me threatening texts and e-mails for weeks after I left. In the end I turned her in to the police anonymously, to get her off my back.”

The next question would be crucial, but she seemed to be on a roll.

“So did you see her this week when she came here?” I said.

“Of course I did,” she said scornfully. “I’d have thought you’d have worked that out by now. Diane and I were helping out in the Hall when she showed up for her costume. Obviously I recognised her immediately, but I didn’t know whether she had come to Hadleigh to see me or you. I passed her on to Diane for dressing but I arranged to meet her in the Library at half-past three to talk. I was afraid she would make trouble, so when no one was looking I borrowed the letter opener from Mr Bennet’s desk – just in case.”

This was exciting but also worrying. I always enjoyed Sam’s company; I had always thought her one of the most interesting people I had ever met; but for the first time in the two years since I had known her, I began to think that she might actually be deranged. Her childhood must have been even worse than I thought. And what would she do after telling me all this?

“She had kept in touch with Douglas after he moved out and he told her what we were all doing this summer, so she came down to see both of us. She wanted to talk to you about her father’s new will – she’d had his letter but at that point you hadn’t got yours. She looked around the House and grounds but couldn’t find you. She didn’t know you were playing Mrs Bennet, of course, so she had only been checking out the men.

“She wanted to see me to get her money back – it was well over two thousand pounds. She was skint again, and someone nasty in London was threatening her. She told me about her father’s letter but she couldn’t afford to wait for the first payment from her new trust fund. I refused and she threatened to make my little stint as a high-class hooker public. I laughed at that. Somehow she’d managed to hide her conviction from her parents. I told her that if she exposed me, I’d make sure they found out about her. Then she flew into a rage and attacked me. She was bigger and stronger than me, so it was a good thing I was prepared. The next thing I knew, she was lying on the floor with Mr Bennet’s letter opener sticking out of her chest. I didn’t actually mean to kill her, but I suppose it was inevitable.”

“And Amy’s apron?”

“What?”

“How did Amy’s apron get covered in blood and end up in the laundry basket in the room you shared?”

“Oh, that.” She looked shifty. “Well, OK, I admit I did half expect things would get nasty with Hannah. We’d had a bad fight once before when she refused to pay me my share of the money. It got physical. I didn’t want my Lydia dress to get dirty or torn, so I grabbed one of Amy’s spare aprons from our room and put it on before I went to the library. It seemed more sensible than wearing my own costume’s apron.”

That was premeditation, of course. With that and taking the letter opener, there would be no pleading self-defence for this.

“And what about Douglas?”

“Well, when we were getting ready for our first dancing session of the day, he saw Hannah through the music room window. Rob and Derek were just arriving on horseback, and she was waiting for them, presumably thinking you’d be one of them. I grabbed Douglas and we went out of the back of the house by the Portakabin for a private chat. I wanted to make sure he would keep quiet about how I’d spent the previous summer with Hannah. I warned him what would happen if he blabbed. His parents and the police would find out he’d been living in a flat with two prostitutes. No one would believe he wasn’t involved.

“Later, it wasn’t difficult for him to guess what had happened to Hannah, and he confronted me about it. He started making demands – money, sex, and more. I couldn’t let him have that kind of hold on me. I knew I wouldn’t be able to take him on physically. I thought about poisoning him or arranging an accident with a gun, but I couldn’t see how to do either without being seen in the kitchen or at the shooting range – places where Lydia had no business being. So I said we needed to talk somewhere secluded, and why didn’t we go up on the roof of the Hall? It was quite a romantic spot in the early dawn, I said. Apparently, the present Earl had proposed to the Countess up there, I said.”

“And he fell for it?” I said, aware of the awful pun.

“Literally,” she grinned, apparently pleased that I was getting into the spirit of her tale of derring-do. “But Douglas was always that fatal combination of arrogance and stupidity. I’m just amazed no one had pushed him off a roof before.”

“And what about Holly?”

“What about her?” she snapped. “Her death is your fault, Mike. You weren’t getting the hint. You and I are supposed to be together. If you had just dumped her, she might be miserable for a while but she’d still be alive!”

“Where did you get the hammer?”

“Why on earth does that matter?” She looked puzzled. She had been expecting me to declare my undying love for her. I said nothing. She tutted. “You know the renovations of Hadleigh House aren’t finished? The workmen left quite a few tools lying around at the back of the house. The hammer was in a toolbox in a cupboard under the sink in the bathroom.”

Surely that would be enough for Giddings? I was running out of things to say, and I have to admit I was getting a little afraid of Sam. There was that look in her eyes…

“So, we’re agreed then?” she said. “You and Holly are finished; I comfort you and help you get over her; and then we’re an item. We should plan a wedding for immediately after we graduate, OK? I look great in a long, white dress – unless you want to be the bride, Michelle?”

I couldn’t think of anything I could say now that wouldn’t enrage her. She was less than two feet away from me and getting closer.

Fortunately, someone else was happy to speak for me.

“Samantha Spears, I am arresting you for the murders of Hannah Matthews and Douglas Miller, and the attempted murder of Holly Woodbridge,” said Giddings from the doorway. “You do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defence if you do not mention, when questioned, something which you later rely on in court. Do you understand?”

Sam looked at Giddings and Sharpe and then at me. Complete madness took over and she flung herself at me, slapping and biting and scratching.

Next: What Mrs Bennet Did Next