12. A Real Connection

The complexity of twins!

THE BODY IN THE BED

12. A Real Connection

Gathered round DC Megan Braintree’s monitor in the incident room, she and Sergeant Puller couldn’t help feeling excited at what they discovered when they researched local twin births born in the early nineteen nineties because there weren’t any, but there was an incidence of triplets being born in 1991, and one of them failed to survive for more than a few days.

“Which means,” suggested Megan, “that the sad death of one tiny boy led to the growth of what appeared to be a pair of twins!”

The names of the two children were Joshua and Maxwell Samson, and being identical they two were often confused with each other like twins sometimes are, though nobody had established whether their fingerprints were identical because you don’t go round checking the finger prints of growing boys.

“It’s odd that according to this they never thought of themselves as twins,” mused Megan, “It seems that in their minds they were triplets even though there was a gravestone marking the last resting place of the deceased Armand.”

“Which they visited as often as they could,” sighed Sergeant Roger Puller, “and look here: a child development expert worked out that to them, as the dead baby was never going to share their lives, their pleasures, even their troubles, they somehow absorbed his spirit into the way they thought of themselves and lived their lives.”

“I do understand,” sighed Megan, “and it makes a sort of sense. They had never known Armand (he had been days old when he had perished) but they still thought of themselves as being parts of a trio.”

All that was recorded in online observations if you knew where to look. Posted proudly by John and Michelle Samson, and with other observations including one by a member of the social services who had been the first to notice that there might be trouble ahead, trouble that nobody stopped from developing into something much worse than schoolboy mischief-makers.

“Oh dear, listen to this,” said Roger, his voice shocked. “The first real problem for Ian and Michelle came when the boys were fourteen and managed to experiment with girls. Or, to be precise, a girl. She was Wendy Saxelby and because they thought she shared a few physical similarities with them, mostly hair colour if the truth was told, it crossed their joint mind that she might be used as the mother of their dead brother, and hence the three would be reuinted once again.”

“I know,” sighed Megan, “it sounds crazy when you read it like this, but they got the notion that if she became pregnant by them, by both of them if that was possible, and we know it isn’t but they didn’t, and they wondered if it might lead to the rebirth of their third part. The poor girl! It must have been the most horrible kind of rape, and she learned to hate the not so bad looking but to her, evil, twosome. She didn’t conceive, which is a blessing, but when her parents found out they made an issue of what was a hideous piece of juvenile pornography, and the courts were involved.”

“It doesn’t say what happened to them…” muttered DS Puller, “but if it was left to me they’d be locked up and the key dropped into the middle of the deepest ocean.”

“But it does say more!” Megan couldn’t help pointing at the screen in front of her, “look here! Back in those days it was decided that they would be removed from the influence of their parents and put in the care of a child develop expert, and look who it was:”

Roger peered at the screen from over her shoulder. “Magnus Crimpton, with a load of convincing letters after his name. That name rings a bell!”

“A loud one!” agreed Megan, “because that is the name of the Worshipful Councillor Crimpton, Mayor of Brumpton! It’s got to be the same man! And it’s a real connection between the two murders of the other day! The first was the actual father of a boy who was brutally mistreated by his father, and the second was one of the twosome… I can’t call them twins… who lived with that same boy’s mother and whose ex was the boy’s father!”

It was then that the DI strolled in, rubbing his shoulder. “Be careful with me and treat me as if I was made of jelly,” he said, “but I’ve been jabbed! Thank goodness Daisy reminded me, that’s all I can say. Anyway, while I’ve been gone have you two come up with anything?”

“A connection, boss,” grinned Megan, “between the two Johndoes!”

“You have? Well, that is something! Tell all!”

“The first was a bullying father and the second was fostered for a while in his teens by our town mayor before he became worshipful,” explained Roger, “and reading between the lines they hated him. They’d tried to rape a girl in the stupid belief that if she had a baby it might have the spirit of their deceased brother. You see, sir, they were triplets, and one of them died not long after birth..”

“But why kill one of them?” asked Ian, “after all, they were already mourning a dead brother, why create a second dead brother to mourn?”

“He’ll need to be asked,” suggested Megan, “shall we bring him in?”

“If you fancy a trip to Africa and a long mooch around that beautiful continent you can because the one surviving member of the triplets is out there. And I couldn’t put a finger on where he is, just that he did fly out there a week or so ago. When we looked for him before we searched for Joshua Samson, but the only passport issued to anyone with that surname was to Maxwell Samson, and we failed to notice it.”

“So it was Maxwell who did all the travelling and preaching to poor little African children and not Joshua,” sighed Megan.

“Take it to its natural conclusion and you’ll work out that it was probably both of them using the one passport. They both went around as Maxwell, and nobody will have noticed as long as they didn’t overlap each other,” said Ian. “I’ve got my hands on Eileen Shrimpton and she never really believed there were two of them, just had what she thought was a daft idea rolling around in her head because even though the two might have believed that in all things they were identical, they weren’t. Small things gave her clues that they were actually two men living under her roof as one person. And if they never spent anywhere near Conehill Crescent at the same time as each other they might well stand a chance of getting away with it.”

“So Joshua goes to Africa and Maxwell has it off with David Shrimpton’s ma,” whistled Roger, “some arrangement.”

Ian grinned at them. “And it all went wrong because Joshua liked a turn with the ladies, but deep down inside Maxwell was gay, and most of the time it was Maxwell in the house with a man hungry woman.”

“Which is why she killed him,” agreed Ian, “If he wasn’t going to feed her more basic appetite then he was no good to her, and she knew where there was a gun because she’d used it the day before on her ex. And Maxwell had helped her when it came to disposing of the body.”

“And Joshua now?” asked Megan.

“He doesn’t know it but he’ll get in Brumpton tomorrow fresh from Africa, in time to attend his own funeral. That could be amusing. Come on, let’s call it a day.”

© Peter Rogerson 30.05.23

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