Johnny Swanson - Eleanor Updale [87]
Johnny was stunned. Mrs Langford, a murderess? ‘But she’s an old lady,’ he cried. ‘Old ladies don’t kill people! She loved her husband. He loved her. She can’t have killed him.’
The sergeant interrupted. ‘And where is the body – this Dr Langford?’ he asked.
‘Buried. In Stambleton, before Christmas,’ said Howell.
‘And my mother is in prison, charged with the murder,’ said Johnny. ‘And she didn’t do it!’
‘I don’t understand,’ said Professor Campbell. ‘What has all this got to do with Craig-y-Nos?’
Dr Howell tried to explain. ‘It all started when I took on some … some unconventional work for Dr Langford …’ As the constable struggled to take notes, Howell told the story of how Langford had hoped to develop the BCG to do good, and how, in a panic on Remembrance Day, he himself had asked Langford to come to Wales to help him. ‘I wasn’t expecting Mrs Langford to come too,’ he explained. ‘I didn’t know that she and Bennett had a very different plan for the vaccine.’
Mrs Langford interrupted. ‘I had to come. I knew that if my husband was near a sanatorium he wouldn’t be able to stop himself wandering around, chatting to people and hinting at what he was doing. I had to make sure he stayed in Howell’s cottage. I knew he couldn’t keep a secret. He’d even told that boy!’
Professor Campbell was struggling to keep up. ‘You mean to say you’ve been cultivating a vaccine here? In our laboratory?’
‘That’s right,’ said Howell. ‘But at first my involvement was purely scientific. I was never happy about the idea of selling it.’
‘So why didn’t you tell someone what Bennett and Mrs Langford were planning?’ asked the professor.
‘I was scared,’ said Howell, hanging his head. ‘I’m ashamed to admit it, sir, but I was frightened. At first it was bad enough that I might ruin my career, but by the time I found out they wanted to sell the vaccine I knew that Mrs Langford had already killed once, and that Bennett had looked on while she did it. And I was right to be careful. Look what they tried to do to me when I finally crossed them!’
The sergeant, overwhelmed by the welter of information, opened his mouth to ask a question, but Johnny got in first.
‘But why was Dr Langford murdered?’ he said. ‘You said he knew nothing of what his wife was up to.’
‘Nothing until that final night,’ said Howell, ‘when I thought he was safely back in Stambleton. We’d finished here. The first batch of vaccine was a success, and I was sure I could carry on without Dr Langford’s help. When Bennett came to collect him and his wife from my cottage to drive them home, I thought he was acting as a generous friend, not as a conspirator. They all left in good spirits.’
The policeman tried to intervene again, but Mrs Langford turned on Bennett. ‘And you couldn’t resist it, could you, you fool? Everything would have been all right. We were safely home. Giles would never have suspected a thing. But you had to boast about the money. You had to go and break his heart.’
‘But you’re the one who broke his head!’
The two policemen held Bennett and Mrs Langford back as they flew at each other.
‘You know how angry he was,’ Mrs Langford yelled at Bennett. ‘You saw the fury in his eyes when you told him what we’d planned.’
Bennett sneered, ‘Don’t try to make it sound as if you were defending yourself.’ He turned to the sergeant. ‘She was frantic. First she flung an ashtray at him, and when that missed and went through the window, she bashed his head against the mantelpiece.’
‘Don’t you understand?’ said Mrs Langford. ‘He had to die. I couldn’t live with him knowing that I was selling his dream.’
Howell spoke up. ‘Listen to her. She’s speaking as if she were doing her victim a favour – killing him to protect him from the knowledge of how she was funding their old age. Don’t you see? She’s lost her mind. She’d rather her husband died than that he knew she’d let him down. She killed the person she loved most in the world to shield herself from his disapproval.’
All eyes were on Mrs Langford. She was shaking and staring ahead