Hilary Bonner: When the Dead Cry Out

Doing his best to cast aside all doubts, Talbot sat down next to Detective Sergeant Mike Malone and Detective Constable Janet Parkin. Marshall was alone on the opposite side of the table. He had not even asked for a solicitor.

“Right, switch on then, Mike,” said the DCI briskly, gesturing to the big double tape recorder, with its giant spools, which sat on the table before him. Malone did so and then announced the interview for the record, listing the officers who were present in the small brightly lit room.

“I want to go over it all again, Mr. Marshall, every detail, from the beginning,” said Talbot.

“What, again?” The big man’s response was weary, but it was the weariness of someone dealing with a tiresome irritation rather than that of an anxious suspect.

“Yes, again.”

“I’ve told you everything.”

“Do so again, please.”

Marshall sighed. He raised his eyes so that he was looking at the ceiling rather than at the three police officers before he began to speak. His voice was calm, with that hint of weariness still about it, and his manner patiently tolerant as if he were addressing a rather dim child of whom he was nonetheless quite fond.

“On the last Sunday in June last year my wife told me that she was leaving me. It was not unexpected. We had not been getting on well for some time. I also suspected that she was having an affair.”

“She quite suddenly confirmed my suspicions and said that she was leaving me for another man. He was an Australian over here on an extended visit. He was little more than a backpacker, it seemed. There was no way they could look after the children, she told me. She planned to start another life with her new boyfriend.”

Marshall paused, and stretched out his long arms, hands palm-upwards as if begging for understanding. “There was nothing I could have done even if I’d wanted to. Clara was always a very determined woman.”

There was a pause. “Go on,” prompted Talbot.

“I persuaded a neighbour, Mrs. Meadows next door, to look after the girls. It was June, one of our busiest months. We were full at Parkview. Clara did all the cooking. She abandoned us to total chaos. I didn’t have the time or energy to think about anything except somehow keeping things going, keeping all the balls up in the air. All I did was concentrate on the practicalities. I set about finding somebody to stand in for Clara, while at first trying to provide meals myself. And I didn’t do a very good job of it. I’m no cook. The guests were not very forgiving, either.”

“Then two days later Clara turned up again. She said she couldn’t live without the girls. She begged me to let her take them. With all that was going on I didn’t see how I could look after them, so I agreed that she could have them. You can’t know how much I’ve regretted that since, but I wasn’t thinking straight. I was just taking it all a minute at a time. And she is their mother after all. Fathers aren’t the same, are they?”

Again outstretched arms and this time a sideways inclination of the head asked for understanding. None of the police officers responded. Marshall continued without prompting.

“I have not seen my wife and children since that day. Neither have I heard from them. And that’s all I know.”

“Is it, Mr. Marshall?”

“I’ve told you again and again that it is.”

“Yes. But are you telling the truth?”

Marshall shrugged. “I’m sick of this,” he said. “I’m trying to cooperate. I want this cleared up as much as you do. But you lot don’t seem prepared to listen. You’re as bad as all the local gossips. You’ve made up your own minds about what happened to Clara and the kids and nothing I have to say makes any difference, does it?”

Talbot ignored the question.

“You were having an affair at the time of your wife’s disappearance, Mr. Marshall,” he continued quietly.

“Yes, I was. But only out of a kind of retaliation, really. I loved my wife. I didn’t want to do anything to harm our marriage.”

“Mr. Marshall, you have a reputation as a womanizer. You have been married three times — or very nearly...”

Marshall half-smiled. He actually looked almost pleased with himself. When only in his twenties he had married his second “wife” while still wed to his first. He actually had a conviction for bigamy as well as for fraud. But at his trial he had escaped with only a suspended jail sentence after a doctor had given evidence about the state of stress he was allegedly in and, rather more remarkably, both women had spoken in his defence. Talbot looked the other man up and down appraisingly. Women, in particular, always seemed totally taken in by Richard Marshall, he reflected, for reasons which baffled DCI Talbot.

“We have no cause at all, except your version of things,” Talbot continued, “to believe that your wife was ever involved with anyone else. But you had a string of affairs during your marriage, didn’t you?”

“I wouldn’t call them affairs exactly.”

“All right. You moved Mrs. Esther Hunter into your home just one month after Clara disappeared, did you not?”

“After Clara left.”

“Don’t play word games with me, Marshall. Answer the question.”

“You know I did. You also know why. Her husband found out she’d been seeing me and chucked her out. She just turned up on my doorstep. What was I supposed to do? Send her away? Anyway, I needed help in the hotel. I just couldn’t manage and I couldn’t afford the wages I was paying out.”

“Very gracious, Mr. Marshall.”

The big man smiled again and reached up with one hand to straighten the knot of his tie. It didn’t need straightening. Talbot found his gaze drawn to it. He was pretty sure the striped green-and-red tie was from a rather prestigious guards regiment and that Marshall, although he had been called up for National Service as a younger man, had no right to wear it. Which was typical, of course. Marshall dropped his hand onto the table again and leaned forward until his face was just inches away from Talbot’s. He was almost conspiratorial.

“The truth, Detective Chief Inspector,” he said. “Just the truth.”

Instinctively Talbot pulled away, then mentally kicked himself. “Two days after your children were last seen you were spotted taking your boat out of Torquay Harbour,” he continued resolutely. “You motored around the bay towards Berry Head, then out to deep water, where you seemed to hover for some time.”

“I was fishing. I used to go fishing most evenings when I could get away, and take the children with me whenever I could. They loved it...”

Suddenly there was a catch in Richard Marshall’s voice. It was the first time he had shown any emotion at all.

Talbot did his best to grasp the moment.

“I put it to you that you murdered your wife and children and that you went out in your boat that night in order to dump their bodies at sea.”

Talbot could see Marshall’s body tensing at last. Just as his had done earlier. The other man’s hands, once more clasped before him, were trembling. For a moment Talbot hoped he might be about to break through his composure after all. But no. Marshall was a tough cookie.

You could almost see him physically and mentally taking a hold of himself.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” he said.

They came to Laurel House at ten o’clock the following morning, a Saturday, arriving in the middle of a summer thunderstorm, so that they stood in the hallway dripping water from their sodden raincoats all over the threadbare carpet. Karen’s mother was sober, thank God, and no longer in a state of near-hysterics, but she was still in bed, of course, recovering from her excesses of the previous day. Her father was playing golf. It was what he did when he wasn’t working. “At least it gets me out of this damned house,” he would shamelessly announce.