Murder At Midnight Read online

  Finally, his desperate legal team suggested Molly had been paid by the prosecution to spew out a pack of lies.

  The jury remained poker-faced throughout.

  Could Mitford still wiggle out of it? Slater wondered. He thought Molly’s testimony would cinch the case against him, but now he wasn’t so sure.

  Then something quite astonishing happened. Mitford, who had been keeping a rigidly controlled outward appearance, suddenly began to flinch and cower down in his chair.

  “Don’t let her come near me,” he cried. “Don’t let her get me.”

  The startled courtroom turned in the direction of his terrified eyes, to find a woman with long red hair, dressed in a green cloak. She walked steadily towards him.

  Nobody seemed to know quite what to do.

  “Stop her, I tell you, stop her…” Mitford yelled. “She’s been haunting me for months.” He scrambled out of his chair and made a dash for the jury box.

  “Order in the court.” The Judge whacked down his gavel. And on seeing that Mitford was in no fit state to continue that day, ordered a recess until the following morning.

  Violet was appalled. Her face etched with worry over Philip. “Why you wicked little bitch,” she cried, and pulled off the auburn wig. It was Jessica Drake.

  * * * *

  Scott whistled in amazement while Ben snapped pictures. He remembered how Jessica wept at Boyd’s funeral and confessed later he had once been her husband. She had also been Lisa Craig’s best friend.

  “I hope you’re going to charge her with malicious mischief and harassment,” Violet said to Slater. “She’s been hounding my husband for months.”

  “Since when did it become a crime to wear a red wig and green cloak?” demanded Scott. He was delighted that Jessica’s little masquerade had achieved what all the evidence had not. It had reduced Mitford to a whimpering basket case, at least temporarily. But he could only hope that it would be long enough for Slater to wring a confession out of him.

  He knew that everyone who had witnessed the amazing spectacle––and that included the jury––must be asking themselves, why Mitford was so afraid? Terrified, in fact, of someone dressed up as the woman he was charged with murdering?

  “Good on ya, Jessica,” said Scott, and led her towards the Blue Willow Tearoom.

  “Dinner is on me.”

  She told him that she just couldn’t let Mitford get away with murdering Lisa. “The fact that I had suspected Boyd of her murder all along, made me feel guilty as hell,” she admitted.

  * * * *

  Slater wasted no time in interviewing Philip Mitford. “I must object to this,” protested his lawyer. “Mr. Mitford is in no fit state to be interrogated.”

  “Objection duly noted,” replied Slater. There was no way he was going to allow Mitford to rally his senses and stonewall him yet again. This was a case of now or never. And by God it was going to be now.

  * * * *

  “I can’t believe it Scott, I just can’t believe it,” Violet lamented. She blew her nose with an unnecessary degree of force. They had locked the shop door and were hunched over a pot of coffee in the back room. A small bowl of early blooming crocuses sat in the middle of the table.

  “This was my husband for heaven’s sake.” She looked miserable, her eyes wide with shock and sorrow. “And he turns out to be a cold-blooded murderer. As well as deliberately building the Romney on a contaminated site. I just can’t take it all in I’m afraid…I…I’ll need time…”

  Sensing her mistress’s pain, Gemma moved closer and placed a comforting paw on her lap.

  “I’ll take her out for a walk,” Scott offered.

  Violet poured herself more coffee, and stared at the wisps of steam that rose up from her cup.

  “He made a full confession,” said Scott. “It all happened very much the way Boyd described in his letter. Mitford killed Lisa by beating her on the side of the head with his cane. He also ran Boyd off the road, and tried to do the same thing to me, when he thought I was getting too close to the truth. It was also Mitford who threatened me over the phone, and sent the anonymous letter that fingered Judy Webb as Lisa’s murderer.”

  Scott paused for a moment and rubbed Gemma’s ear. “He did this, of course, to divert attention away from himself.”

  “And he killed his housekeeper too,” Violet wailed. “When that crooked cop told him she had reported his bloody clothes.”

  “Yes, Greg was on firm ground when he accused Len Barthrop of conducting a less than honest investigation. But to think that he’d actually been in Mitford’s pocket for years, is enough to turn the stomach.” He could picture the lurid headlines in the early edition of the Herald.

  “What about Meg?” Violet asked. “Did he admit to attacking her too?”

  “Absolutely not. He totally denied any part in that at all.”

  “Do you believe him?”

  Scott nodded and slipped into his coat. “There would be no reason for him to lie about that, when he has come clean about everything else.“

  “So, who attacked her then? Could it have been Victor Kenny do you suppose?”

  “I don’t think it was Victor.” He clipped on Gemma’s leash. “Meg is so very sure that it was a woman’s voice she heard right before she lost consciousness. Not just a high pitched male voice like Victor has.”

  “Who then?”

  “Well I have a hunch,” Scott confided. “And we’re not going to have to wait too long to find out if I’m right.”

  “Meaning?” The cryptic response tweaked his aunt’s interest, distraught though she was.

  Scott smiled mysteriously. “It will soon be February fourth,” he said cryptically. “The anniversary of Lisa Craig’s murder.”

  * * * *

  Roanoke Park looked much the same as on that sinister midnight when Lisa Craig was murdered there. Silent rows of evergreens loomed eerily overhead, and an owl hooted suddenly from the branches of a cypress tree.

  “It’s almost midnight,” Ben whispered. He and Scott huddled in almost total darkness, bedside the azara bush where Lisa’s body had been found. It was a damp overcast night, with no moon or stars to act as lamps from the heavens. “I’m freezing,” he added, dragging the old car blanket closer around him.

  “Shush…” Scott warned, moving a cramped foot gingerly into a more comfortable position.

  Their vigil had begun over an hour ago. The minutes passed slowly in this dark and lonely place, with its history of tragic memories. It was too dark to actually see the Humpback Bridge, which loomed at Scott out of so many nightmares. But he could sense its malevolent presence on the other side of the elm grove.

  Suddenly there was a strange sound, a definite intrusion into this silent world of foliage and forest spirits. Scott held his breath and stared through the sooty blackness. He could sense Ben doing the same. There it was again. Now there was no mistaking what it was, the sound of heavy footsteps walking cautiously towards them.

  They waited scarcely breathing until they could see the figure clearly, looming above them at the edge of the glade. Then Scott shone his flashlight directly onto it, training it high enough to illuminate the face.

  “Bernice,” he exclaimed, although there was no surprise in his voice. “It’s Scott Preston from the Morning Herald, and this is Ben Hyslop our photographer.”

  At the mention of the word photographer, Bernice gasped and made as if to run away. “No…” she gasped, wringing her large hands together in distress.“I don’t want any publicity.”

  Scott did his best to reassure her. “We’ll respect your privacy,” he promised.

  She backed away from him until she was directly over the spot where Lisa’s murdered body had been found. Then she knelt and crossed herself.

  They left the park together, a strange trio moving through a deserted landscape, underneath a grim sky.

  “I’ve come here at midnight, every year since Lisa was murdered,” whispered Bernice. “To pay my re
spects.” Scott could understand that to her this was a sacred place, like a great cathedral where the spirit of her beloved niece would roam free forever. He felt much the same himself.

  “So you must have been here last year, at the same time as Meg Bryant?”

  “Don’t remind me of that,” Bernice shot back angrily. “That wicked girl was mimicking my poor slain niece. She wore her clothes and flaunted herself with no respect, at this shrine. It was a desecration!”

  They were now under a streetlight, and he could see Bernice’s wild eyes with their unsettling spark of insanity.

  “She was pretending to be Lisa,” she agonised. “And Lisa was murdered! ”

  “So you decided that she was deserving of the same fate?” Scott prompted.

  “Well don’t you?” The unbalanced woman had never looked madder. “It was a simple matter of poetic justice.”

  * * * *

  Scott gazed out his window at the lights of Vancouver, glittering like Christmas decorations on a forest of tall stone trees.

  “So as Victor Kenny was released from his prison for the criminally insane, Bernice Craig was admitted to one,” stated Ben.

  Scott nodded. “Philip Mitford has also been locked up for a very long time.”

  “Boyd was quite the beaut though, wasn’t he? Blackmailing Webb and Mitford over the same murder. He knew that Mitford had killed Lisa, and yet he put the arm on Webb as well.”

  “That’s right. Webb was convinced that his wife, Judy, committed the crime. He just couldn’t face the publicity that would have wrecked his career.”

  “Yes, and Mitford was not only paying hush money to Boyd, but to Len Barthrop as well.”

  “Ah, the high cost of crime.”

  Violet had recovered from her shock, in a plush beach resort in the Bahamas. “I really have no luck when it comes to husbands,” she confessed to Scott. While vacationing there, she met a tie salesman from Idaho, who quite literally swept her off her feet. It happened while they were dancing the tango on the highly polished floor of the Coconut Lounge.

  * * * *

  That night Scott dreamt he went to Roanoke Park again. It was the same nightmare he’d had so many times before. It was midnight, and the park was deserted and bitterly cold. The lofty green giants towered over him with malicious intent, clustering together and holding their leafy breaths for what was to come. He could feel the sinister atmosphere of the accursed place penetrate deep into his bones and render him immobile with fear and dread.

  Standing in a state of paralysed terror beside the azara bush, he could see the menacing form of the Humpback Bridge and the figure that stood upon it. Lisa! Her glorious mass of auburn hair tumbled down her back, over the folds of the billowing green cloak.

  Her back was to him, but she was slowly turning, so that soon he would be able to see her face. At this point in the dream, he was usually filled with such panic and horror that it galvanised him into struggling frantically to awaken, clawing his way out of the abyss with wildly pounding heart and a mouth like sawdust.

  But tonight was different. He knew instinctively that only by gazing on the murdered girl’s face would he finally be set free.

  Scott stared transfixed as this perfect vision of Lisa completed her slow turn, under the watchful eye of a silvery moon. She looked directly at him, her green eyes seeming to burrow deep into his very soul. And she was smiling––beaming out a calm serenity that lifted him up from his mood of fear and misery––transforming the oppressive atmosphere around him to one of tranquillity and peace.

  ~The End~

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Karen Lewis is an internationally best selling author. She won an award for her suspense play, Hit and Run, and her short story, The Cellar Door. Her novels are an intriguing blend of mystery, suspense and erotica. They usually feature Detective Neil Slater. She lives in Vancouver, Canada.