A Violent End

Kelsey asked what the Musgrove household consisted of.

‘We haven’t met either Lynn or her mother,’ Ian explained. ‘All we know is what Karen told us. Mrs Musgrove’s a widow, they’re not well off. Mrs Musgrove works an evening shift at a plastics factory. There’s a younger child and Lynn has to keep an eye on her while the mother’s at work–that’s why Lynn was never able to come over here in the evenings, it was always Karen who went there.’

‘Is there any man around?’

‘Karen never mentioned any man. From all she said, Mrs Musgrove seems to be a quiet, hard-working, respectable woman, struggling to bring up her family. I didn’t get the impression she’d have the time or the money for much social life. And Lynn sounds a sensible, steady girl, not in the least flighty.’

‘Did Karen have any boyfriends at the college?’

‘Not as far as we know.’

Kelsey looked at Ian. ‘What about friends or colleagues of your own? Is there anyone who might have met her here, taken a fancy to her? Is there anything you can recall? Anything you noticed?’

Both Ian and Christine shook their heads.

‘Did she ever mention anyone from the college? Someone who was a nuisance perhaps, pestering her, making a pass, trying it on? Some male member of staff, maybe, or a mature student? Or maybe someone she came across on her way to or from the college?’

Again they shook their heads. Karen had never mentioned anything like that.

‘What was her relationship with you?’ Kelsey asked Ian.

‘She was always pleasant and friendly, always coop­erative, wanting to do anything she could to help round the house. There was never any problem. She treated me like a brother, or a friend.’

‘Did she have a crush on you?’

‘No, not in the least.’

‘Did you find her attractive?’

He looked steadily back at the Chief. ‘She was a very pretty girl, but I never regarded her in that way. I looked on her as someone in our care, like a daughter or a younger sister.’

Kelsey asked how Karen usually made her way to and from the college.

‘I took her in the car in the mornings,’ Ian told him. ‘She came home on the bus.’ The time of the bus she caught varied according to the day of the week, the time of her last class, if she was staying on at the college for a club or a meeting, if she was going to the library or to Lynn’s house. Karen always got off the bus by Overmead Wood, a few yards from the junction of the main road with the side road.

‘Did you ever give her a lift home?’ Kelsey asked Ian.

‘No, never.’

‘Did she ever get a lift home from anyone else?’

She had never mentioned a lift to either of them.

‘What would she normally do if she missed her bus? Would she set off to walk home?’

Ian shook his head. ‘It’s a fair distance, especially when you’re carrying books. There’s a good hour between buses, so she couldn’t expect the next one to come along and pick her up on the way. And she’d think walking home would be a waste of time–especially on a cold, wet evening like yesterday–when she could be getting on with her homework in comfort, at the college or in the public library.’

‘I’m positive she wouldn’t try to thumb a lift,’ Christine said with energy. ‘She was well aware of the dangers, we’d warned her about it more than once, and she always agreed it would be a very foolish thing to do.’

‘If she did miss her bus,’ Kelsey persisted, ‘and she did decide to set off walking home, and someone she knew, or knew slightly, pulled up beside her and offered her a lift, someone living in Overmead, perhaps, maybe someone she knew only by sight, do you think she’d be likely to accept the lift?’

‘Yes, I think she probably would,’ Christine answered after a moment.

‘Then again,’ Kelsey said to Ian in an easy tone, ‘if she’d set off walking and you happened to come along, on your way home, and you pulled up beside her, she’d naturally get in.’

Ian frowned. ‘Yes, of course she would, but that never happened. I never gave her a lift home, ever, and I certainly didn’t give her a lift home yesterday.’

‘How did you spend yesterday afternoon?’ Kelsey asked.

‘I was out on site visits all afternoon–that’s how I normally spend Friday afternoon. I drove home from the last site. I had a bath, changed, had something to eat and then went along to the meeting. It started at seven-thirty.’

‘Is that your car outside?’

‘Yes, it is.’

‘Did you use it yesterday to go to work?’

‘Yes, I did.’

‘We’d like to take a look at it.’

‘Certainly.’ Ian led the way outside. Christine followed the Chief and Sergeant Lambert. ‘My wife used the car this morning when she went out on her rounds,’ Ian told them.

Kelsey surveyed the vehicle, a smallish family saloon, claret-red in colour, some four years old. He opened the door and glanced round, opened the boot and looked inside. He returned to the interior of the car and scrutinized it with greater care, being particularly scrupulous in his examin­ation of the pedals, the carpet by the driver’s seat.

‘The sites you visited yesterday,’ he said to Ian. ‘Were they muddy?’

‘Yes. One or two were very muddy.’

The chief peered down again. ‘There’s no sign of any mud here.’

‘I cleaned the car this morning, ready for Christine to take it out.’

‘You gave it a pretty good going over.’

‘It needs a good going over after I’ve been out on the sites, that’s why I clean it on a Saturday morning. I’ve got one of those cordless electric dustettes I use on it, they’re very thorough. I always give the pedals a scrub when I wash the car.’

The Chief straightened up. ‘I’d like to see the shoes you were wearing yesterday when you drove home.’

Ian stuck out one foot. ‘I was wearing these.’ Brown leather slip-ons, bearing evidence now of his morning stint in the garden. ‘I never wear good shoes on a Friday because of going over the sites. These are old but they’re still fairly reasonable. They’re strong and waterproof, they clean up well enough.’

‘The clothes you wore yesterday on your way home, I’d like to see those too. Not just the outdoor garments, everything: socks, underwear, handkerchief, tie, gloves, the lot.’

‘Yes, certainly.’ Ian led them back into the house, taking them first into the front hall. He opened the door of a wardrobe and showed them a jacket, oldish but still respect­able, made of close-woven, proofed gaberdine, medium grey, with a hood, a quilted lining. ‘That’s my Friday jacket,’ he said. ‘It keeps the wind out.’ He took a pair of leather driving gloves from a shelf in the wardrobe. Newish, in good condition.

‘May I see your hands?’ Kelsey asked.

Ian held them out, turned them over. Very well cared for, the skin smooth, the nails neatly trimmed. ‘You look after your hands,’ the Chief observed.