by Gregson, J M
Lambert was interested in the way he placed the murder firmly in the days after he had departed for Spain. But of course, that is exactly what an innocent man would do. The superintendent wished once again that they could establish an exact time for this killing. He would like at least to eliminate this calm figure before them from the inquiry. That came not from any predilection in Pritchard’s favour, but merely because he was too well-organized to have as an opponent.
At a nod from his chief, Hook produced a scrap of stationery from his briefcase. He passed it across the small space between them and said, ‘Is that your wife’s handwriting, Mr Pritchard?’
Jim Pritchard read the note aloud, as if that would help him to digest it. I’ll be away this week, after all. Sorry I couldn’t let you know earlier. See you next Tuesday as usual. Laura Pritchard. He looked at it for several seconds after he had read out the few simple words, as if they carried a hidden meaning which he might discover. Then he said dully, ‘Yes. That’s Laura’s writing. And that’s her signature. Was it left for the cleaner? She usually comes on Tuesdays.’
‘Yes. Mrs Evans gave our officers that note. It was waiting for her here on the Tuesday after you left for Spain. Of course, she came as the note suggests she should on the following Tuesday, but there was no one here. Your wife had been dead for several days at least by then.’
‘Yes, I see that. But presumably she was alive until the Tuesday morning, when she left this note.’ For the first time, he seemed near to tears. He kept his eyes on the scrap of paper which he held still in his hand; perhaps the pathos of the few innocent phrases in his wife’s hand was bringing her death home to him at last.
‘It would appear so, yes. Is this the first time you have seen this note?’
He looked puzzled. ‘Yes. I was away when it was written.’
‘Quite. And have you any idea where she planned to spend these days away from home?’
‘No. When I went off abroad, I was sure she was planning to spend the time at The Beeches. Do you think this trip is connected with her disappearance?’
‘Obviously it might be. Can you make any suggestion as to whom she might have been planning to meet?’
‘No.’ He looked down again at the note, as if he could crack its code and produce the vital information. ‘It doesn’t say here that she was planning to meet anyone, of course.’
‘But nor had she indicated to you that she was planning to go off alone. We have to face the possibility that any person she met might have killed her, or might know who killed her.’
If Pritchard knew that his wife had been planning to meet her female lover, he still gave no sign. He seemed to be fighting for control of himself, but his tone remained even as he said, ‘No doubt if that is so you will find that person in due course.’
Lambert said, ‘Mr Pritchard, what can you tell us about your gardener, Everton Smith?’
Perhaps Jim Pritchard was still preoccupied with conjecture about what his wife had planned in his absence; he was silent for so long that it began to seem that he had not heard the question. Then he said in a low voice, ‘Very little. I saw him when he had temporary work at the golf club — you could scarcely call it an interview. I knew from the green-keeper that his work there had been satisfactory. I offered him a full day’s work each week here and he jumped at it. After that, Laura saw far more of him than me: she’s — she was the gardener, you see.’ He looked through the open window at the evidence of that interest, as though noticing it for the first time.
They followed his gaze and, as if in response to their attention, the phone in Lambert’s car shrilled through the bird song, and Hook went out to answer its insistent tones. They listened to his large feet hastening noisily over the gravel before Lambert said, ‘Did Mrs Pritchard find his work here as satisfactory as that you had seen at the golf club?’ He had picked up Pritchard’s adjective, repeating it as if it had some special significance.
‘I think so, yes. They had that one disagreement, which I told you about, when Smith removed some of her plants because he thought they were weeds. It was a mistake anyone without specialist knowledge might have made, but Laura had quite a temper, I’m afraid.’
‘But you don’t think that row has any significance for us now?’
‘No, I’m sure it hasn’t. I can assure you that the lad wouldn’t still be working here if Laura had thought it a serious breach. But you can ask him yourself, Superintendent. That is the noise of his chariot now, unless I’m much mistaken.’
They heard the roar of the Honda 750 many seconds before it appeared; their ears followed a series of expert gear changes until the white motorcycle rolled slowly to a halt over the gravel, still invisible on the other side of the house. The noise allowed Bert Hook to return to the room almost in silence, so that his large presence filled the doorway before they were aware of it.
‘That was DI Rushton,’ he said. ‘He’s had a report from forensic which he thought we might like to know about while we were here.’ He looked from Pritchard to his chief, waiting until the tiny nod from Lambert told him that he could reveal this information. Then he said, ‘It seems that Mrs Pritchard’s body was taken to the river in the boot of her own car.’
Chapter Thirteen
Joyce Warner was usually pleased to see her husband when he popped in unexpectedly for lunch. Today she was hoping desperately that he would not come back to the house. She did not like having secrets from her husband, but it was better for both of them that he did not know about this.
She found herself looking repeatedly at the clock as the morning went on; her nervousness was reflected in the sharp way she checked the children when they became fractious with each other. She put Tim in his cot for a sleep at ten-thirty, and was pleased to find when she crept in ten minutes later that he had dropped off; his face was round and innocent, unlined as a doll’s. She would have to take him with her, so it was better that he rested now.
At eleven-thirty, Mark rang from the office to tell her that a long overdue payment had come in. It felt like a bonus to both of them: they had been sure the firm concerned was going into receivership, that Warner Plastics would never be paid. It was only two thousand, but it seemed another omen of better things to come, a confirmation of the new era ushered in by her mother’s death.
‘I just thought you’d like to know,’ said Mark, underlining again how close they were, how open with each other about the things which happened to them. She felt a traitor even as they spoke. But before she rang off, she managed to elicit the information that he was lunching with a customer.
She made sure the children ate, but she could manage only a mug of tea and a biscuit herself. At one-fifteen, she dropped Katie at the nursery school, watching with a mother’s mixture of joy and regret as the child ran happily into the single-storey building without a backward glance.
She checked again that Tim was safe in his car seat and then set off for Gloucester. Listening to his cheerful burblings behind her as she drove, she felt a pang of remorse that she should involve such innocence in a secretive rendezvous like this. But she had no choice — there was nowhere she could have left him without concocting some unconvincing story about her purposes. And another, unworthy part of her mind — the part she was trying to suppress — told her that a toddler was the best possible cover for this meeting. Strangers seeing them in the streets might even take the man she was to meet for Tim’s father — she smiled wryly at that thought.
There were other, smaller places where they could have met. She had chosen Gloucester for the anonymity of a city. It was not a city like London, of course, or even Oxford, but it was a bustling, busy place, where people did not have much time to study those who passed them in the streets.
She did not like multi-storey car parks, but Tim cheered happily behind her as they swung round the tight left-hand turns and spiralled upwards to the fourth floor and a parking space. She looked at her watch as they descended to street level in the lift. They h
ad better not be late.
The man they were meeting was too nervous to be left for long.
*
In the large garden shed at The Beeches, Everton Smith was making a great play of removing the plug from the large cylinder mower. It saved him from looking into the faces of the detectives.
The snag with this tactic was that the CID men knew exactly what he was about, registered the evasion, and immediately began to conjecture about the reason for it. They watched the top of his dark head as he bent to the task, knowing that eventually he must look up into their faces if they chose not to offer him further questions. The tensions were all on his side, and eventually he must succumb to them.
They had followed Smith out here because Pritchard had hovered protectively about his employee in the house, as if anxious to watch how he behaved under their questioning. It was no doubt a natural curiosity in a bereaved husband, but if necessary Lambert would have asked Pritchard to remove himself, even in his own house. The contradictions in suspects’ accounts were often the most significant items — and James Pritchard remained a suspect, even if it seemed that his absence at the time of death might make him no more than an accessory.
But Pritchard was not a stupid man; he took the hint when they said they were going to see Smith in the garden and left them to it. The young black man seemed curiously reluctant to leave the house, although from both their accounts he and the owner had scarcely seen each other since Pritchard had offered him the gardening job, so that they could hardly know each other well. But Smith was nervous and suspicious of the police, as they had seen even on his home ground; probably he considered that the presence of his eminently middle-class employer offered some sort of protection against whatever ordeal was in store for him.
In an attempt to put Smith at his ease, Lambert indicated to his detective sergeant that he should begin the questioning. Bert Hook said, ‘Bike must be useful for getting to a place like this, Everton. You’ve always come here on the Honda, I expect?’
It was not as artless and introductory as it seemed. Judging by the noise of Smith’s arrival today, it was probable that any unscheduled visits would have been noticed by someone in the village. Smith merely nodded his answer, as if he did not trust himself to speak. But perhaps it was them he did not trust; young blacks who have grown up in Birmingham do not accept the police at face value. He said reluctantly, as if he suspected a trap he could not divine, ‘Yes. Makes travelling a pleasure, she does. Well, you couldn’t get here without your own transport, could you?’
‘Indeed you couldn’t, unless you lived round here and could walk.’ It was a fact which was relevant to this death, now that it seemed that the victim might well have died here before she was taken to the river in her own car.
‘You can obviously handle that bike, Everton. I presume you can drive a car as well,’ said Hook.
‘Yeah, course I can. Was going to get me a job, being able to drive, wasn’t it?’ He smiled at the bitter irony of the thought, pleased with it in spite of himself. Irony was an effect not often attempted in Everton Smith’s world. Then he looked at Hook suspiciously, fearing that vanity might have led him into an indiscretion.
‘But you always came here on the Honda?’
‘Yes. I’m not stupid enough to pinch cars.’
‘And far too honest, no doubt.’ Hook, exuding stolidity like a protective disguise, also enjoyed the occasional irony. ‘How often do you come to The Beeches, Everton?’
‘Once a week in winter, twice a week from Easter to the end of October.’ The formula came so pat that he had obviously used it before: probably it had been for him the most important phrase in the original verbal agreement.
‘So twice a week at present. Which days?’
‘Usually a Tuesday afternoon and a Friday morning. But it varies a bit — I’ve come other times as well.’
‘Yes. You told us when we saw you before. When the black economy offers you other unofficial work, you’re permitted to vary your times to allow you to go elsewhere.’
Smith looked sullen. ‘Within reason, so long as I give reasonable notice of any change.’ The pitch of his voice showed that he was carefully recalling the dead woman’s wording. Her precise phrases came suddenly clearly to them from this strange source, as if they had caught a fleeting glimpse of her through distant trees. ‘But it wasn’t just me: sometimes I came at other times to fit in with Mrs Pritchard’s arrangements. She liked to be here when I was, to work with me, see?’
‘I see. Ever since the day when you pulled out some of her plants by mistake, was it?’
His face fell, as clearly as that of a child reminded of some ancient misdemeanour he hoped had been forgotten. ‘That was about the only time I worked without her,’ he confessed.
‘Which means that you saw Laura Pritchard once a week throughout the winter and twice a week for the last eight weeks or so. More often than all except a very few people — probably more often than her family, apart from Mr Pritchard.’
Smith looked surprised. ‘I suppose so.’
‘And did your relationship ever go beyond that of employer and employee?’ Hook looked at the smooth, uncomprehending features. ‘Did you become friends, Everton? Did you become lovers?’ Trying not to see Lambert as he studied the incredulity on the other side of the big mower, he asked desperately, ‘Were you giving her one, Everton? It’s not unknown, and you know it.’
Smith looked at him for another moment. Then his face cracked into a grin which seemed all white teeth, a grin in which amusement at the idea swiftly overcame his initial outrage. ‘You got some strange ideas, man.’ He guyed the relaxed West Indian speech of his father, which he had often envied but never found natural in himself. ‘Yo’ read all these things about black men’s ding-a-lings being bigger and better, about how respectable white women just caaan’t resist us, man! And yo’ think young Everton’s dipping his bread with the fine lady. Well, let me tell you, it ain’t true. But don’t you stop spreadin’ it around, just ’cause of that.’ He dropped the cameo abruptly, as if he had suddenly remembered the calling of the men he was addressing.
Hook said stiffly, ‘It’s nothing to do with colour. It’s not unknown for older women to fancy a roll with young limbs. Sometimes they take their pleasures wherever they can find them; just like a lot of men, in fact.’
Smith nodded, still amused. But he did not resume his parody of Caribbean tones as he said, ‘Fancy a bit of rough, you mean. Yeah, I’m sure it happens. But it didn’t here. If you’d known the lady, you wouldn’t even have asked.’
‘But we didn’t know her, you see, Everton. That’s why we had to ask. We’re dependent on people like you for the picture we get of her. Fierce lady, was she, Mrs Pritchard?’
Smith thought for a moment. The sparking plug was back in the mower now, and he wiped his oily hands on a piece of rag. This unhurried physical movement seemed to calm the febrile excitement which had been increasingly evident in his previous reactions. ‘No, not really, when you got to know her. She seemed a very severe woman at first, but when she got to know you she was quite different. She was fair. Once you realized you weren’t going to get away with skimping things — that’s what she called it when we talked — she left you quite a lot to yourself. I think in the end she trusted me to work without much supervision from her.’
Despite himself, despite the fact that he would have denied it fiercely to his friends, he was proud of the fact that a middle-aged woman had trusted him, had believed that he would not slack even if the chance came. Everton Smith put a high value on trust, because he had not enjoyed very much of it in his short adult life.
‘Who do you think killed her, Everton?’
Hook threw it in almost casually when Smith had displayed some feeling for his employer, and the young face with its delicately handsome features was immediately blanked with caution. ‘Don’t know, do I? How could I know?’
Hook paused, noted the caution, flung out his next questi
on as though it was a brutal weapon. ‘Did you steal from her, Everton? Take money from the house, when she wasn’t around?’
‘No! Ain’t ever taken things like that, not from anyone.’ His indignation crashed like stones off the wooden walls of the shed. His outrage did not include surprise: men like him expected to be accused of theft, whenever anything around them was missing. ‘Anyway, I told you. I wasn’t left here on my own. Hardly ever.’
Hook carried on as if he had not even heard the protestation. ‘Did Mrs Pritchard find you’d taken things, Everton? Did you kill her to shut her up, when she accused you?’
‘No! No, you’re on the wrong track. I never laid a finger on her.’ The fear showed in Smith’s wide eyes. ‘You can’t fit me up with this!’ He did not sound either convinced or convincing.
Bert Hook wished the whole of the CID section could see him weighing into this startled young man. That would have killed the jibes about him favouring the underdog. Yet Lambert, watching this forcefulness, thought how mild Hook’s attitude was compared with that of some of the men on his section. It was the superintendent who now said quietly, ‘Then where did the money come from, Mr Smith?’
As he turned to face this new threat, Smith’s pupils shone black in the dim light of the hut. But the whites of them were getting ever wider — he looked like a trapped animal. Now Lambert’s quiet voice tolled its facts like a knell in his ear. ‘You paid off the remaining instalments on your motorbike a fortnight ago. Well over a thousand pounds. Just before Mrs Pritchard died. Don’t bother to make things worse by denying it: finance companies have to open their records to the police, when we’re investigating serious crime.’
Lambert’s matter-of-fact tone unnerved Smith as much as the facts he was presented with. ‘I — I work hard. I don’t spend much, you know. I had — had a bit of luck on the horses.’
‘Oh, Everton, you can do better than that, surely. That’s too old a tale for even a young lad like you to think we might believe it.’