Read Online Deliver Us from Evil by Peter Turnbull - Free Book Online Page A

always damned cold it was. I would often say I would not be dreaming of a white Christmas this year, I am going to see one.’ His chest heaved with suppressed laughter as he gripped his mug in large, reddened hands. ‘Occasionally we’d go across in the summer but usually we visited at Christmas; my in-laws liked to have their family around them at Christmas. It was a bit of a tradition with them. Well she, the Canadienne, the one you know as Edith and I knew as Julia, knew Toronto very well, very well indeed, like she was a native of the city. She and I would talk about it, the city, and she knew the place, she knew it all right, knew little streets and bars and parks in the suburbs, but she always insisted that Barrie was her home. She might have been born in Montmorency but her roots were in Barrie. It’s about an hour’s drive north of Toronto which is close in Canadian terms. Very close, believe me. In fact one of my brothers-in-law used to drive two hours to work and two hours back again. He thought nothing of it, which astounded me.’
    Webster groaned. ‘Astounds me also, sir.’
    â€˜Yes,’ Beattie glanced at him, ‘hardly bears thinking about, does it? Up at six, leave for work at seven, back home again twelve hours later having driven over four hundred miles . . . five days a week. He spent the weekend recovering and then was up again at six on Monday morning and off he’d go. I used to commute from Beverley to Hull – I was a buyer for a shipping line until I retired twenty years ago – and my brother-in-law once said he thought my journey to work was like a walk to the bottom of the garden and back.’
    â€˜Edith . . . Julia,’ Yellich appealed.
    â€˜Yes . . . sorry.’
    â€˜Do you know how or why she came to be living in the UK?’
    â€˜No, I don’t, she never said why. She came to me from a fox-hunting family in East Yorkshire. It turned out that the glowing reference she came with was a piece of convincing fiction. Fellow wrote it to get rid of her. Now I know why.’
    â€˜We’ll have to visit him. Can you let us have his address?’
    â€˜Yes. No problem . . . I have it filed away.’
    â€˜So what did she do in this house?’
    â€˜In terms of her employment or her crimes?’ Beattie raised his eyebrows.
    â€˜Both.’
    â€˜She arrived carrying just one suitcase . . . and quickly settled in, seemed to be quite pleased, quite content. She seemed to have a no-one-can-get-at-me-here sort of attitude. You remember the French Foreign Legion Syndrome I mentioned? She was escaping; she was running away . . . that was a strong impression I had and my old and remote house seemed to suit her purpose, admirably so.’
    â€˜Yes . . . you said, it appears to be a significant observation.’
    â€˜So, she was supposed to be a daily help and a companion, a housekeeper all rolled into one. No precise job description. She used the car to go shopping – the Wolseley, she couldn’t handle the Land Rover, so she used the Wolseley. I gave her an allowance for that, to buy petrol and food for the both of us, and she was a little liberal with it, more than a little liberal if truth be told.’
    â€˜Oh?’ Yellich sipped his tea.
    â€˜For example, she left at three p.m. to drive to the village to buy some food for the old boy,’ Beattie tapped his chest, ‘and she would return at midnight smelling of alcohol and the old boy went without his supper.’
    â€˜I see.’
    â€˜That tended only to happen latterly. She was here for about six months and she tended to stay out late drinking the food money only in the last week or two. But by the time she left my bank account had been plundered.’
    â€˜How did she manage that?’
    â€˜She had access to the cheque book for my current account. She forged my signature and