A Lesser Evil - Lesley Pearse [93]
‘I don’t know for sure. You fire your gun and you see men fall, but there’s lots of others shooting too. You don’t know if it was one of your bullets necessarily.’
‘Well, Angela wasn’t killed with a gun,’ Fifi said. ‘Did they tell you how she was killed?’
Frank shook his head.
‘Well, they think she was smothered with a pillow. That’s hardly the work of an old soldier, is it? Now, let me make you a cup of tea.’
Fifi made the tea, and sat down again in the garden to drinks hers. She wanted to go now, Frank’s gloom was making her feel even worse than she had before. But her customary curiosity wouldn’t quite let her excuse herself and leave. She could see there was something more on his mind, and she felt compelled to winkle it out of him.
‘Tell me what’s bothering you,’ she said after a little while. ‘You know what they say, “A trouble shared” and all that.’
‘If I tell you, will you promise to keep it to yourself?’ he asked.
Fifi promised.
Frank stumbled, faltered and at times stopped altogether as he told her the story of how he’d met Molly on the night of VE Day in Soho. Fifi forgot her own troubles as she listened, hardly believing that staid, rather prim Frank could have sex in a back alley with anyone. But as his story unfolded and he told her of the coincidence that he’d come to live right across the road to the woman, who then blackmailed him, all at once she knew it was entirely true.
‘She snatched everything from me,’ he said bitterly. ‘My savings, the chance of happiness with my daughter and grandchildren in Australia. I could just about forgive all that if she’d left me with peace of mind while June was dying. But she never let up taunting me. Every day I expected that she’d tell June and break her heart.’
‘Are you saying she told the police about this?’ Fifi asked incredulously.
‘Not the truth, so I had to tell them. Like I said before, she said we’d had an affair and I asked her to leave Alfie and run away with me. She claims that I never stopped pestering her, and then when she wouldn’t do as I asked, I got bitter and kept making trouble for her. She reckons I saw them go out for the day and I slipped round the back and killed Angela to spite her.’
‘That is the most preposterous thing I’ve ever heard,’ Fifi exclaimed. ‘But you really mustn’t worry about this. The police know what Molly’s like, and they’ll see this story of hers for what it is, a desperate attempt to blame someone else. If they really thought you’d done it they would’ve arrested you.’ She felt very sorry for Frank and gave him a hug, saying that the police would have to find his fingerprints or some other evidence to prove he’d been in that house.
‘How were you supposed to know they were going out for the day and leaving Angela behind anyway?’ she said firmly. ‘Even if you had known, and wanted to kill her, you weren’t likely to risk going in there first thing in the morning when so many people might spot you.’
He didn’t respond to that, just sat there with his head hanging down, a picture of misery.
‘You’ve been very kind, Fifi,’ he said eventually. ‘But leave me alone now, there’s a good girl. I don’t want to talk about it any more.’
That felt like a real rebuff, and it hurt because she was only trying to help him. She wanted to ask Frank how the police had left it, whether he was a real suspect or not. But she realized that she wasn’t going to get any real sense out of him, and feeling even sorrier for herself than she had earlier, she went over to see Yvette.
When she didn’t answer the door, Fifi tapped on the window. She could hear the radio so she knew she was in.
Yvette came to the front door eventually, but she only opened it a crack, and her eyes were red with crying. ‘Oh, Fifi!’ she said. ‘I cannot talk to you now, I am too upset, ze police have been ’ere, and all the time they are banging and moving things next door. I must go out to get away.’
‘Come over to my flat then,’ Fifi suggested. ‘I’ll make you some tea and we can talk.’
‘Non, I cannot,’ she said, her hands fluttering in agitation. ‘I ’ave the need to