24. A Small and Useless Pistol

A Chapter by Peter Rogerson

REMEMBERING REBECCA - Part 24

While The DI and DS were tackling Samuel Stlyes and getting nowhere, DC Sheila Robinson made her way to the home of the mournful Candice Kristen. She’d been there recently with her Inspector but this time she was on her own and well aware how important her judgement might end up being. Many a twist and turn in an investigation can stand or fall by the subtlety of interpretation, not just of words but also of body language, and Miss Kristen’s body language had been depressing to say the least, the remnants left by a savage cruelty in her childhood, one that had tarnished the rest of her life. Sheila knocked the door, and after a short pause it was opened.

“Why hello dear,” croaked Candice Kristen, “what can I do for our local boys and girls in blue?” She was trying to smile when she opened her door, dressed in a dowdy grey but wearing a more than ample pinafore with a huge floral pocket.

Detective Constable Sheila Robinson looked at the elderly woman, and sighed. She supposed the pinafore helped. It provided the least suggest of that day having a purpose of sorts.

“I hear you’re getting married soon,” Sheila said when they were in the woman’s front room, “I’m so happy for you,” which was a lie because she was pretty sure that the older woman’s intended only really wanted a servant to do his domestic chores so that he didn’t have to.

“Oh that,” muttered Miss Kristen, and for the first time her face crinkled into the semblance of a smile, “that’s over and done with, that is. Mr Styles said he had a bed for me, but it was up his stairs with him sleeping in his room downstairs, and I’m not having that! I only ever climbed his stairs his once. I use a stick, you know.”

“So it’s off? The wedding? The reception? The honeymoon?” asked Sheila, wondering what kind of honeymoon might have been planned anyway.

“All off,” she agreed, “all in the bin!”

“I suppose it’s a shame,” sighed Sheila, “I got a warm feeling when I thought how love can grow even when we’re not so young.”

“Not young at all, you cheeky thing! And it wasn’t love, you know. We never loved each other. I suppose I only ever loved Rebecca, and when she was taken from me I was left with a friendship cast in stone, and just as permanent. It was unchangeable, never growing, just two kids who skipped and did handstands together in the playground of their school, for all of eternity trapped in those happy days.”

It was a long speech for the older woman, and it seemed to sap the strength from her.

“Well, at least you have memories,” sighed Sheila, at a loss as to what to say.

“And this.” The other woman produced, from the floral pocket of her ample pinafore, a deadly looking pistol. It froze Sheila’s heart when she saw it. It must, she thought, be the weapon that had taken the life from the Reverend Richard Roper.

“Is that?” she asked, begging an answer.

“Sit down, and I’ll tell you the whole story,” mumbled Candice, nervously. “I meant it to be but it weren’t, and I failed my best ever friend at this eleventh hour. Because that’s what it is, at my age and with my medical problems: my eleventh hour.”

Sheila sat in the chair offered and hoped that the dampness she felt through her clothing had nothing to do with incontinence.

“I’d like to think so, lass, but it ain’t,” mumbled Candice Kristen, “I’d like to think it were, but the darned thing don’t work. I pinched it from silly old Styles’s upstairs room. In a drawer, it was, waiting for me.”

“And you took it?” asked Sheila.

“The silly old fool had told me he had it,” whispered Candice, secretively, “he brought it back with him from the Falklands when he got his leg smashed. Said it was a souvenir, but he never told me that he didn’t have any bullets for it!”

“So what gun was used to kill the Reverend if it wasn’t that one?” asked a rather confused Sheila.

“I dunno, but good on whoever it was! It was meant to be me taking revenge for Rebecca. But someone got there before me. I’d have happily gone to jail and certainly died there if I’d shot the … I can’t think of a foul enough name to call that so-called man of God! You know what he did in the school playground? Can you guess, when he wasn’t stabbing Rebecca! Looking up skirts as we did our handstands, that’s what he did. Disgusting he was back then. What do you think of that, dear?”

“Is that why you wanted him dead?”

Candice paused for a moment, then answered quite simple, “I wanted him dead for spoiling everything,” she said, “when he killed Rebecca.”

“I’ll take that gun,” Mrs Kristen, “even an unloaded gun can be dangerous in the wrong hands. Do you mind?”

“I was going to put it back in Samuel’s bedroom, not his downstairs one where he kips because his legs are worse than mine, but up those rotten stairs of hi. That’s why I went, and to tell him the wedding was off, but what the heck? I couldn’t face the climb. I have to use a stick, my dear, and it’s not easy. So you’ll see he gets it back, will you?”

“I’ll do the right thing,” promised Sheila, “so who do you think shot the Reverend?”

“In my head I don’t call him that! But who do I think shot him? I dunno because I don’t know who’s got the means to do it, so if I was you I’d find the gun and that’ll take you straight to the killer!”

“Of course, but easier said that doine, Miss Kristen. Was there anything else you think I should know?”

“I’m an old lady, dear, and I’m stuck in my house all the time. I don’t see owt and I don’t hear owt. I just sit here and think, and that can hurt.”

“I understand, Miss Kristen. I’ll take the pistol then, and you shouldn’t hear anything more about it.”

“That’s a good girl, dear,” almost crooned the drab old woman, “for Rebecca.”

Sheila nodded.

“I’ll see myself out,” she said, tucking the pistol into a handbag that was almost too small to take it.

“Goodbye then, dear,” muttered Candice, “it’s all a load off my mind, you know, not having to go back to the Styles place with that horrid gun.”

Back in her car Sheila slumped for a moment in her seat and hoped that the Inspector and Sergeant had more luck than she’d had. True, she’d been given a gun, but it wasn’t working. It can’t have been the murder weapon.

Could it?