Susan couldn’t understand that explanation then. Granny had been dead for four months, the house was lovely again, Mother’s worries were all over. Yet it did make sense to her now after all these years. Her own lid had blown. She’d shot those two people to relieve the unbearable pressure inside her.
Looking back to 1967, she could see now how simple it would have been then to divert her life from the channel it was beginning to run into, if she’d only been a little less willing. Martin didn’t allow their mother’s stroke to interfere with his career and ambitions. Even her father hung on to his job, his home and his hobbies of shooting and golf.
If Susan had been a couple of years older she would already have had a job; if she’d been a couple of years younger, she would have had to go to school. But she was in limbo at that time, having sat her final exams, and her only career plan was a tentative one about going to college in Stratford-upon-Avon in September. She had nothing to excuse her from housekeeping duties.
She got what might be called the thin end of the wedge. But of course at sixteen she wasn’t able to predict, or even guess, what might be on the fatter end, or that once the wedge was driven in, there was no escape. She loved both her parents, she was devastated by her mother’s illness, she was only too anxious to do whatever was best for everyone. And of course she had no real ambition then beyond hoping for marriage and children of her own.
Loneliness was what Susan could remember most about that summer. She would think back to all the fun she and Beth had had in previous years, and end up in tears. Sometimes she would stand in the garden watching the pleasure boats in the lock, and the sound of people’s chatter and laughter made her feel even more lonely.
During August she got the results of her GCEs. To her shame she’d failed everything but Domestic Science and Geography, and that made her feel even more despondent and useless. The holidays ended, and the days seemed even longer then with no school to go to. The only callers at the house were the odd neighbour dropping off some fruit or flowers for her mother. Sometimes, going home on the bus from the hospital, she’d see a couple of girls from her old class, yet much as she longed to go and sit next to them, and explain what had happened and ask them round, she didn’t feel able to.
So she filled the days with jobs – cleaning, dusting, washing and ironing, cutting the grass – striving to do them as well as her mother would have. She undertook the bottling of plums and blackberry and apple for the same reason. She had been helping her mother do it for years; the fruit trees in the garden always had a good yield and it was an annual ritual they’d both enjoyed, like Father digging the trenches for runner beans in the spring. That year it seemed even more imperative to do it alone, to show how adult she was.
Susan could remember going out into the garden early each morning, picking up the fruit that had fallen before the wasps and other insects could get to it. She’d shake the tree to loosen more ripe fruit, and start on the bottling almost as soon as Father went out. There was a bumper crop that year, especially plums, and there was something incredibly satisfying about filling the larder shelves with the full bottles.
By that time Mother was getting a little better. She could move her right arm slowly, and her hand was just strong enough to hold a pencil and write down a few questions. Susan had never felt more proud than when she visited and could announce she’d just bottled another twenty jars of plums and ten of blackberry and apple. ‘Such a good girl,’ Mother wrote one day, and Susan floated home on a cloud of pride, forgetting about being lonely.
Yet she set her fate with it. Had she made a hash of it, burned herself, made the bottles explode, her father might have viewed her differently. But her success showed him how capable she was.
When Father asked Susan if she thought she could take care of her mother when he brought her home, it never occurred to her to think of what this would mean for her. She loved her mother, she wanted her home where she belonged more than anything. She certainly didn’t want a stranger coming into the house.
Besides, Father made it seem quite inviting. He would pay her a wage, and a nurse would call in for an hour each day to help with bathing and physiotherapy. He said Susan could have Saturdays off so she could go out if she wanted to.
‘Don’t blame them,’ Susan said aloud. ‘You weren’t forced into it.’
Yet she couldn’t help but feel they ought to have thought of her future more. Surely they knew that she had let herself be nudged down that path just because she was timid of the outside world?
A couple of years later Martin said with his usual sarcasm that she thought she was going to be another Florence Nightingale, so it served her right. He also said Father had more than enough money to pay for qualified staff, and Mother wouldn’t have had the stroke in the first place if he’d put Granny in a home.
Martin was right about the last two things, Susan had realized that herself already, and she hadn’t expected him to take her part because he’d always despised her. But then, how was she to know at sixteen what caring for an invalid meant? Or that her mother would never make a full recovery? Father had always said she would.
Chapter four
Beth had just got in from work at six o’clock the following evening when her phone rang.
Susan Fellows had made a brief appearance at Bristol magistrates’ court that afternoon while the police applied for permission to hold her pending further investigation. Beth had hoped a night in the cells might have made her feel like talking, but it hadn’t, she was even less co-operative. She had stubbornly refused to answer any questions and wouldn’t even look at Beth.
‘Hullo,’ Beth said, wearily, but brightened a little when she realized it was Roy. She had given him her home number on an impulse, just in case he had any further information about Susan and couldn’t contact her during the day.
‘You sound ground down,’ he said sympathetically. ‘Had a bad day?’
‘A frustrating one,’ she admitted. ‘Susan Fellows still wouldn’t tell me anything. You’d think with the whole of England outraged by what she’s done, she’d welcome someone in her corner.’
It had of course been on the television news the previous evening, and on the front page of every national that morning. In Bristol it was the major subject for discussion in the streets, in shops and offices.
‘Well, maybe my news might make you feel more cheerful,’ he said. ‘First, she’s got no record, and we’ve found out where she lives. The boys have been going through her place this afternoon.’
‘Great.’ Beth’s spirits instantly lifted. Where is it? Did you find anything helpful?’
He gave a little chuckle at her enthusiasm. ‘It’s just a room in Clifton Wood. Very little in it.’
‘Come on!’ she said. ‘How did she live? Was it a pig-sty of rubbish and empty bottles? Give me something to work on!’
‘Not at all, very Spartan,’ he said, laughter in his voice. ‘I rang because I thought you might like to see it for yourself.’
Beth was taken aback by such a suggestion. The police never invited either defence or prosecution lawyers to scenes of crime, or the homes of a defendant, unless there was some very special reason to do so.
‘I’d like nothing better. But won’t it get you into trouble?’ she asked.
‘Not if you keep it to yourself.’ He chuckled again. ‘You’ll have to understand, if you breathe a word about going there, at any time in this case, I’ll have to deny it. Okay?’
Beth was puzzled now. ‘Of course,’ she agreed. ‘But why are you prepared to bend the rules for me?’
‘I think you need to see it,’ he said simply. ‘You’ll understand why when we get there.’
‘Okay,’ she said, her curiosity aroused.
‘Right, I’ll pick you up in about ten minutes,’ he said. ‘Wait outside in Park Row.’
On the drive there, Roy explained that Belle Vue was a terrace of large Georgian houses. He said that when he first joined Bristol’s p
olice force, some of the houses were virtually slums, but gradually property developers bought them up and now many had been converted into luxury flats.
‘There’s still a few dodgy ones left though,’ Roy said as he squeezed his car into the only parking space left in the street. ‘The one Fellows lived in is one of them.’
A street lamp outside number 30 gleamed down on rubbish sacks left by the railings, the contents oozing out on to the pavement. Huge weeds were sprouting out from the basement area and it smelled fetid.
The front door was open. A couple of young girls looked out at them with interest from the lighted first-floor window.
‘How did you find out where she lived?’ Beth asked as they went in, side-stepping a pushchair and a couple of bikes in the hall.
‘A man rang in,’ Roy said. ‘He’d heard on the grapevine that it was the woman who sat in Dowry Square who did the shooting, and he knew she lived in this street because he lives three doors down.’
The staircase grew dirtier the higher they went, and the lights on a timer switch kept plunging them into darkness. The last few stairs which led to the attic rooms were bare boards. Susan’s room was at the front of the house.
The staircase was good preparation for the room. It was cold, damp and grim, with ancient wallpaper peeling away from the walls and sparse, rickety furniture. A sagging double bed that looked like a relic from the war years had all the covers stripped from it, presumably in the police search. A naked bulb swung in the draught from the window, illuminating the grimness. Beth shuddered, thinking of the stark contrast between this and her comfortable, warm flat.
‘We haven’t taken away anything yet, other than a box of ammo,’ Roy said. He handed her a pair of plastic gloves. ‘Put those on and have a poke around. I’d like your opinion on what you feel about it.’
Beth looked around her first. ‘What is there to poke into?’ she asked, staggered by the bareness of the place. ‘There’s no personal possessions. Not a radio, ornament or anything.’
Roy made no comment, so she opened a cupboard by the sink. ‘Even the crockery and stuff looks as if it was supplied by the landlord. Yet it’s all very clean and tidy,’ she said with some surprise.
She turned to a chest of drawers and opened it. It contained a few very shabby clothes, yet they were clean and neatly folded. In fact the whole room was clean, at least as clean as it could be, given that the window frames were rotten and the carpet threadbare.
She opened the wardrobe and found only an old coat hanging there. ‘It’s quite remarkable,’ she said, surprise registering in her face. ‘Not what you’d expect from a deranged wino.’
Roy nodded. ‘We expected it to be a slum,’ he said. ‘But there were no empty bottles. No mess anywhere. She’d even emptied the rubbish bin.’
‘I’d say then that she knew she wasn’t coming back,’ Beth said. ‘Interesting! She was planning murder, but she either had too much pride to leave a mess for you to find, or she cleared out everything that might incriminate her.’
‘I think the first,’ he said, ‘or she wouldn’t have left the ammo. Now, take a look at this!’ He bent down and pulled out a small battered brown suitcase from under the bedstead.
Beth bent down and opened the lid, rifling through the neatly packed things on the top. A wash-bag, slippers, a nightdress, underwear, and three books.
‘It reminds me of a case packed to go into hospital,’ she said, looking up at Roy and frowning. ‘Perhaps she was intending to do the shooting, get back, grab this and make a run for it?’
‘I think that’s unlikely. If that was her plan, she’d have left it somewhere nearer the surgery,’ he said. ‘I’d say she packed it ready for prison. Look further down.’
Beth carefully lifted out the top things. She saw a photograph album beneath, a large pink plastic padded one, similar to the kind people put their wedding photographs in.
‘This?’ she asked, looking questioningly at Roy.
He nodded.
The first page had many pictures of a new baby, and as Beth turned the leaves, she saw that the whole album was devoted to the same child, a little dark-haired girl. The pictures were arranged chronologically, showing her from birth to about four.
Beth looked at them hard, disturbed by the same odd feeling of familiarity she’d had when she first saw Susan in the cells. ‘Her daughter?’ she asked, looking up at Roy.
‘I reckon so,’ he said. He pointed to one of the last ones where the child had a plump round face surrounded by dark wavy hair. She was wearing a paper crown. ‘I can see a likeness in that one.’
Beth studied it. The child wasn’t exactly pretty, but she had a very appealing face, full of character. She couldn’t see a real likeness to Susan herself, only that they both had round faces. But there was something about the child’s sweet, somewhat shy smile that affected her. ‘It could be just a niece, or even a godchild,’ she said. ‘There’s no evidence that a child ever lived here, thank heavens. It’s hardly fit to keep an animal in.’
‘There’s a date printed on the back of one of the earliest pictures,’ Roy said. ‘It’s 1987. That would make her eight now. Why do you reckon the pictures stop when she’s about four?’
Beth’s skin came up in goose bumps. She looked sharply at Roy. ‘She died?’
‘Well, that’s my hunch,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘Of course, she could have had the child taken away from her, either by her husband or the authorities.’
Beth nodded. It could have been through Susan’s drinking, she thought, or maybe she began drinking after having the child taken from her. Yet somehow she thought it was more likely that the child had died.
Beth glanced through the pictures again and noted that the background to all of them looked like an ordinary home. There were homely things like a fireguard, a Christmas tree, a birthday cake, flowers in a vase, even a Renoir print on the wall behind the child. ‘If she was married,’ she mused, ‘why aren’t there any pictures with the father? Or some with Susan, that he’d taken? I get the impression they lived alone. The kid looks bonny and well cared for too.’
‘We think alike,’ Roy said, taking the album and putting it back in the case, and replacing the clothes on top of it. ‘We’re making enquiries about the child now. I wouldn’t mind putting a bet on it that she was seen by Doctor Wetherall.’
Suddenly Beth saw why he’d brought her here. He was not only touched by the photograph album and the ideas it suggested to him. He also saw a motive for the shooting emerging.
‘Have you got any children, Roy?’ she asked.
‘I did have a little boy, ten years ago,’ he said, turning away from her, his voice low and hesitant. ‘He died too, of a heart disease when he was three.’
Beth looked at him in consternation. ‘Oh Roy, I’m so sorry,’ she said. ‘And this album brought it right back?’
He looked round at her, chewing on his lower lip. ‘Yeah. Yesterday, I thought Susan Fellows was a madwoman. Today, I see a different picture emerging, one I can understand. If anyone had been responsible for my son’s death, I might have gone gunning for them.’
Beth gulped. She was no stranger to sad stories, yet somehow this one, bluntly told by a tough and forthright man, struck her to her core.
They left the room then, Roy taking the case and locking the door behind him. He didn’t speak again until they were down in the street.
‘Strange how just a little bit more information can change your opinion about someone,’ he said suddenly. ‘Yesterday, I would have brought back hanging for that woman. Now,’ he shrugged, ‘well, you know!’
‘You’re a good man,’ Beth said softly, all at once seeing his motive for bringing her here. ‘I’ll do my best for her. Will you let me know what you find out about the child?’
‘Of course,’ he said, and although it was dark in the street, she thought the glistening in his eyes was tears.
That night Beth couldn’t sleep. Each time she closed her eyes she
was back in that cold, miserable room, imagining Susan crying over that album. Beth had never been maternal, she’d never played with dolls, babies bored her. But she could imagine the pain of losing a child, and she knew what it was to be truly alone. She thought the two things together were likely to send anyone over the edge.
She was dressing for work the following morning when Roy rang again. ‘It was her child,’ he said simply. ‘Annabel Lucy, born 18 April 1987 in St Michael’s Hospital, here in Bristol. Died 12 May 1991, shortly after being admitted to the Children’s Hospital. Cause of death, meningitis. The GP was Doctor Wetherall. Susan was a single mother and at that time she was living at a different address in Clifton Wood.’
Beth hardly knew what to say. As a lawyer, it was exactly what she wanted to hear, something meaty to build Susan’s defence on. Yet as a woman, her heart would have been lighter if she’d heard Susan had escaped from a mental home, and the child was just a distant relative.
She managed to thank Roy for letting her know so quickly. He said they now had enough information to charge Susan formally, and she would be appearing in court later that morning.
‘I must warn you,’ Roy said, his voice suddenly a little stern, ‘there isn’t any sympathy here at the nick for her, or out on the streets, the general view is that she’s a monster. On top of that, Roland Parks, the receptionist’s husband, is in the Mail today. I only glanced through it quickly, but it’s what you’d expect, schmaltzy stuff, pictures of the couple and their children. There will almost certainly be a crowd at the court waiting to catch a glimpse of Fellows, the press will certainly be there in force. It could be nasty.’
‘Then I need to find out why Susan shot her too,’ Beth said. ‘You know what they say about fighting fire with fire.’
Beth found it hard to concentrate on either of her two appointments that morning. One was with a man of thirty who was accused of date rape, and the other was a woman serial shop-lifter, who knew she faced a prison sentence this time round. Under normal circumstances Beth would be listening carefully to them, and even if it was patently obvious that they were guilty, she would be looking for an angle to build her defence case on.