14. A Confused Confession

It turns out that the red wine had an unknowns special ingredient...

THE BODY IN THE BED

14. A Confused Confession

DI Ian Bincott gazed at his suspect, Eileen Mason (even though Mason wasn’t a legal name in that she had never been married to Joshua Mason in either of his guises, but she wouldn’t answer to Shrimpton) and he needed to move the enquiry on and, anyway, he thought, what’s in a name?

“You knew that your son had committed murder?” he asked, “and you said nothing to stop him? In fact, you provided the wherewithal that he needed in order to do it? And you were happy to do that? Doesn’t sound very motherly to me.”

“It was the right thing to do,” she muttered, “only I know how evil the man was, how spiteful, how cruel even to a small boy in short pants. It was time for him to see that everything has, what’s the word? Consequences. Yes, everything has consequences, and the consequence of his treatment of the lad was being shot in his first girlfriend’s bed by the one he tormented!”

“How did you get him to the headmistress of Cotedove school’s house?” asked Ian. It had always struck him unlikely that a man with the kind of personality he had concluded that Benjamin Shrimpton had would hardly cooperate with his own march to certain death. He would have put up a fight, surely?

“Joshua found it,” she smirked, “my bible-bashing saviour! He found all sorts of things. He collected them, I suppose you might say, weeds and seeds and stuff like that, and he had one little packet of very secret stuff…”

“Poison, you mean? He asked.

“Nah, it never killed no-one. He brought it with him after one of his trips out and he said that the person who was given some would do anything you wanted him to do without giving it a thought. And it worked like a charm. Get undressed I said to him when he stood by the old woman’s bed, and he did just that, stripped off, even to his socks! Then get in that bed and he did just that. Then sit up and sit up he did. And I gave our David the gun Joshua had brought back with him and David shot him, just like that, stone dead! So it was Joshua as killed him and not me, so I don’t know why you’ve got me sitting here in the chair and answering all these questions when the real killer’s out there somewhere!”

“The last big war,” he said, “the German Chancellor Hitler, he ordered all sorts of horrors to happen, and the poor devils that were gassed on his orders, he had them marched to their deaths, so are you saying he wasn’t responsible for the mass murders in the holocaust because he got someone else to build the gas chambers and other people to push the poor blighters in?”

She shook her head. “It’s not the same,” she said, “Benjamin was only one bad man and it was right for him to die.”

“So if it’s a small scale it doesn’t matter?” he asked, “if only one person dies it’s nobody’s fault but guilt created in the past?”

“It’s honest justice,” she spat at him, and anyway, two people died that night, and our David did for both of them.”

“Tell me about the second one,” he urged, “the man with his bible.” Why did he have to die?”

“It was our David that killed him,” muttered the woman, a little uncertainly, “you can’t even try to put that down to me. They both liked a glass of that special wine I’d put some clever stuff in. African stuff, and my man Joshua knew all about what it did.”

“Are you sure it was Joshua? Or might it have ben Maxwell?” he asked.

“Who the hell is Maxwell?”

He shook his head sadly. “You know the answer to that one. It was you who put us onto the idea of there being twins.”

“It’s just that Joshua sometimes seemed to be a different person, like he had two, what’s the word? Personalities. Like he were two different people, that’s all.”

“Oh, there were two survivors from a trio of triplets born back in the nineties,” Ian told her, “and they were so clever that they both managed to behave as one person so that nobody suspected that there were actully two of them. You, Ms Samson, might be in bed with one of them on a Tuesday night and the other on a Thursday and not know. But the awkward thing as far as they were concerned is that one of them was gay and not really into hi jinks with the fair sex.”

“Oh.” His suspect looked as if quite suddenly a penny had dropped and she could see what hitherto had been hidden from her.

“So you see,” Ian said, rubbing it in, “you never really knew who was in your house. Was it Joshua or was it Maxwell? I’m sure they both acted the part of playing each other in the most convincing of ways, except for the one, of course. Maxwell could never quite manage to be the ardent lover, could he?”

“He were no good,” she sniffed, “a woman has appetites, you know, not just you men, and if he couldn’t rise to the occasion then he was no darned good for me!”

“And that’s why you killed him?” asked ian.

“It’s why our David killed him! I ain’t no killer! I thought you understood that! I just went along to help out if I was needed!”

“And David talked him into the Mayor’s fancy house? Through a downstairs window that was also the bedroom window?”

“And undressed him! And like an angel the fat slob pulled his own clothes off and got into bed with his worship the Mayor!”

“And David pulled the trigger? Oh, you had it all worked out, didn’t you, Ms Salmon?”

She smiled back at him. “Of course I did,” she grinned, “There are no flies on me!”

“And you’ll be able to tell all the butch ladies at the ladies jail you’ll be going to all about it,” grated Ian, “because your son may have pulled the trigger, but it was your instruction in his doped up ears! I bet he enjoyed a glass of red wine too, didn’t he?”

“So what! Never did nobody any harm, did a glass or two of grape juice!”

“W’ll see what a judge says,” replied Ian, knowing who he believed should bear the guilt.

© Peter Rogerson 01.06.23

(Please note: I’m off on my holidays the day after the date shown as the © date just here, and it’ll be a week or more before I’m back to create more chapters.)