‘One death leads to another,’ he went on, ‘and then another.’
Three deaths? Kathy thought, and, simultaneously with the thought came the words: ‘Laura’s dead baby.’
Beamish-Newell winced as if she had stabbed him.
He turned to her and said, ‘She’s told you?’ and when Kathy nodded, it seemed as if a weight had been lifted from him. ‘Then you do know.’
He took a sip of water from the glass on his desk to summon his strength, then began to speak. ‘You must understand how difficult it was for her, at the end of a long pregnancy and after all the difficulties with my first wife, to lose the child.’ He spoke as if he still couldn’t quite believe that it had happened. ‘But I knew that she was strong and that the pain would pass when she became pregnant again. Only she never has.’
Kathy interrupted softly. ‘Doctor, you understand that I am recording this conversation?’ She placed the small recorder on the desk.
He nodded his head. ‘I only want to explain the background. The stress was immense. How Petrou came to learn about the baby so long after the event, I have no idea. But it was typical of him. He had a way of wriggling his way into people’s lives, discovering things about them, which was quite uncanny. And then he used the things he knew, played with them like a child with a machine-gun. But to use that against Laura was unforgivable.’
He shook his head, lapsing into silence again, still appalled by something which must have happened six months before.
‘Yes, I see that,’ Kathy said, trying to sustain the momentum of his confession. ‘You must have felt obliged to do something.’
But he only spread his hands in a hopeless gesture. She found the change in him since their last encounter disconcerting. Despite the evaporation of his domineering manner, it was unexpectedly difficult to get to grips with him.
‘Why don’t you tell us what happened on that Sunday, 28 October last year?’ she prompted gently, as if to an invalid.
‘I don’t see why. If you’ve spoken to her, surely — ’
‘We have to have your account, Stephen,’ Brock broke in. ‘You met with Petrou at what time?’
‘Er …’ For a moment it seemed he couldn’t recall, then, ‘I met him in the morning, when I came over here to interview incoming patients.’
‘Tell us about that.’
‘I walked over from our cottage at ten or soon after. I came through the basement, and passed Petrou going into the gym downstairs. It had become his sort of … den.’ He gave an odd emphasis to the word.
‘He asked to talk with me in private, and he closed the heavy door behind me. I felt uncomfortable about that and he recognized it immediately. I had noticed before how roa attuned he was to people’s sensitivities. It is a powerful talent, especially for a therapist, and one of the reasons I employed him in the first place. But it was the way he used it — he liked to give the impression that he could see your innermost thoughts.’
Kathy felt that, coming from Beamish-Newell, that was a remarkable acknowledgment.
‘And found them amusing,’ he added. ‘What he had to say was bizarre. I could barely credit it. He said he intended to open a health club in London and wanted my endorsement and help in various ways. The more he went on, the more outrageous he became. His qualifications and experience were quite limited of course; but in any case, what he had in mind seemed more a social or entertainment club — at best. He wanted me to lend my name to it, become a nominal director, encourage our patients to go there, and even expected me to invest in it!
I listened to this for a while and then told him to stop. I wouldn’t have anything to do with that sort of place, I told him, and then I started to express my severe reservations about what he had been doing at Stanhope. I’d been getting quite uneasy about the cavalier way he was behaving. Laura had warned me about it, but I’d put off speaking to him. He was becoming a law unto himself, ignoring instructions and going his own way. The trouble was, he had quite a substantial following among the patients, and some of the staff as well. But I told him that I felt his attitudes were incompatible with the Stanhope way.
‘He laughed! He said I shouldn’t speak to him like that, because, underneath, we were closer than we seemed. He seemed to imply that there was some bond between us.’ Beamish-Newell shook his head, ‘He had an extraordinarily manipulative way about him.’
Again Kathy was struck by the irony of his description of Petrou.
I took exception to the way he spoke to me — quite unapologetic, as if he was the employer and I was the one who needed to be brought into line. Then his manner changed. He told me he didn’t need my help — he had plenty of powerful friends. But I would help him anyway, he said. He told me that some of my patients found the Stanhope way a bit tiresome, a bore. Their tastes ran to things somewhat stronger than carrot juice and hydrotherapy, and he had been able to cater to them. He told me, quite openly, that he had supplied narcotics to them.
‘You can imagine how shocked I was. I lost my temper and then he told me he obtained some of the drugs from a friend of mine, Errol, who supplies greengroceries to the clinic. He began to tell me what Errol had told him about my help for his mother.’
Beamish-Newell stopped talking. He tried to refill his glass from the carafe, but his hand was trembling so much that Kathy had to get up and do it for him. He drank and gasped for air and drank some more. It was a while before he started talking again. ‘That was all. I left him and came up here to my office. I spoke to Errol on the phone and arranged to meet him that afternoon. I wanted to find out what he had really told Petrou. It was all I could think to do.’
‘And when you met Errol, he confirmed that Petrou did know what he claimed to know?’
Beamish-Newell nodded. ‘Eventually, yes. It was a nightmare.’
‘So you returned from seeing Errol at what time?’
‘I’m not sure. It was dark, about five-thirty.’
‘And you saw Petrou again? In the basement gym?’
He shook his head, ‘No, no. I came back here to this room. Almost immediately Laura came in, and I could see from her expression that something was dreadfully wrong. She was pale, tense, seemed to be in a sort of controlled shock, the way nurses sometimes look when something terrible is happening in front of them and they can do nothing but stand still and watch. The odd thing that struck me was that she was clutching her cheque book.’
‘Cheque book?’
‘Yes. She was sort of cradling it to her breast.’ He gulped more water. ‘I asked her what was wrong and she said, “What did Petrou say to you?” and I was surprised, because I hadn’t told her about seeing him or visiting Errol. I began to tell her about his threats if I didn’t help him, and she cut me off. “Yes, yes,” she said, “he threatened me too.” I became angry, but again she stopped me and said that there was no need for me to do anything. There was nothing more to be done, she said. Her brother Geoffrey would help her, and they’d take care of everything.’
Beamish-Newell turned his face to Kathy in appeal. ‘Then I understood about the cheque book, you see. I thought she had bought him off. She and Geoffrey inherited a little money from their parents, and I imagined that was what she meant. I began to protest, but she stopped me, said it was all arranged and I mustn’t mention it again. It was only later, the next morning, when Geoffrey came to me to tell me about Petrou’s body in the temple, that I began to think otherwise. I tried to remember her exact words, what she had been trying to say to me.
‘That evening, after you and your colleagues had all left, Sergeant, she told me how Petrou had known about the baby, and how he had taunted her, said unspeakable things. Then I understood very well how she had been able to bring herself to kill him.’
Kathy and Brock stared at him, stunned.