by Frank Smith
Laura sucked in her breath and stared at her brother-in-law. “Killed? How? Where?” She swung round to face Paget. “What happened,” she demanded.
Briefly, and choosing his words carefully, Paget repeated what he had told Harry Bolen. Laura’s eyes never left his face throughout the narrative, and when, in answer to her question, he told her how her husband had died, she shuddered.
“What a horrible way to die,” she breathed. “Do you know who did it?”
Paget shook his head. “No, which is why we are trying to trace Mr. Bolen’s movements throughout the evening.”
Paget leaned forward in his chair. “I know this must come as a terrible shock to you,” he said gently, “and I will understand if you don’t feel up to answering questions at this time. But the sooner we know about events leading up to your husband’s death, the better chance we have of finding the person responsible. Mr. Bolen, here, has been most co-operative as it is, but I’m sure there are some things with which only you can help me.”
Laura Bolen was silent for a moment, then nodded slowly. “I want to help in any way I can,” she told him, “but …” She blinked rapidly several times and rose to her feet, wincing as she did so. “Do you mind waiting while I go back upstairs and put my contacts in? Everything is so blurred without them, and I find it hard to concentra—” The word caught in her throat and her eyes were moist as she fought for control. She tried to speak again, then gave up and almost ran from the room.
“Is it really necessary to question Laura now?” Harry demanded. “I mean, good God, man, she’s just this moment learned that her husband has been killed, and you can see she’s upset. Can’t you leave her alone for at least a few hours?”
“I did offer Mrs. Bolen a choice,” Paget reminded him, “and she can still refuse if she wishes. But as I told you in the beginning, the sooner we can talk to people while things are still fresh in their minds, the better.”
Harry snorted. “Some choice!” he muttered, and lapsed into a moody silence.
“Why did you avoid telling me that Mrs. Bolen was here in the house when I told you we had been trying to contact her?” asked Paget.
Harry eyed Paget stonily. “Because you would have jumped to the conclusion that there was something going on between us,” he growled. “Isn’t that what you’re thinking now?”
There was no denying that the thought had crossed Paget’s mind. “I’d prefer to hear your explanation,” he said.
Bolen picked up his glass, looked at it for a moment, then set it aside again. “Look,” he said, keeping his voice low, “the only reason I’m going to tell you this is because I don’t want you badgering Laura. She’s been through enough already, and I’d like your word that what I do tell you will remain confidential. Understand?”
“I understand,” Paget told him, “but you must understand my position as well. Whatever you tell me will remain confidential only if it has no direct bearing on the investigation. If it does, I make no promises.”
“It’s got nothing to do with what happened to Jim,” said Bolen angrily. “I just want to make sure you don’t go away with the wrong impression.” He sighed heavily. “This isn’t easy for me to say, but when I spoke of my brother being obsessed with beating the competition, what I should have said is that his obsession was directed at one particular competitor, Keith Lambert. It’s a long story—it was a personal thing with Jim. It goes back a long time, and to say that it had affected his judgement would be an understatement.”
Lambert. Paget knew the name. It would be hard not to in an area where it sometimes seemed as if the only two builders were Bolen Brothers and Lambert, so ubiquitous were their signs.
Harry glanced at the door before continuing in a low tone. “Laura was very much aware of what it would do to the firm if Jim went ahead with the Ockrington project, so when she realized that Jim intended to rush through a deal with the M.o.D. while I was out of the country, she tried to stop him. They argued …” Harry moved uneasily in his chair. “I don’t know what happened, exactly, but it seems that Jim lost control. Laura said he accused her of interfering, of going behind his back, of being disloyal, and God knows what else. When she tried to reason with him, he hit her. You saw the bruise yourself.
“When Laura telephoned me in Vancouver, she did so from here. You see, when we left, she offered to look in on the house from time to time—you know, water the plants and make sure that everything was all right. So when Jim threw her out, the only place she could think of to go was here. John would have taken her in, but his is a small bachelor flat, so I told Laura she was welcome to stay here as long as she liked.”
Paget frowned. “Was your brother normally a violent man, Mr. Bolen? Had anything like this ever happened before?”
“No. That is …” Harry looked troubled. “To be honest, I don’t know,” he confessed. “Laura never said anything, but then, she wouldn’t. I’ve never seen her bruised before, but on the other hand, nothing quite like this has ever happened before. It was only when Keith Lambert—”
He broke off as the door opened and Laura Bolen entered the room.
The change was quite remarkable. She was more self-assured as she walked across the room and took her seat. She was still pale and the rims of her eyes were red, but she’d taken the time to comb her hair, apply a touch of make-up, and put on some slippers. The bruise and swelling were still visible, although not as obvious, and he could see now that his original assessment was confirmed. Laura Bolen was indeed a very handsome woman.
“Sorry if I interrupted,” she told Harry, “but I couldn’t help overhearing Keith’s name as I came in. Surely, you’re not going through all that again?”
Harry shrugged guiltily. “I was explaining to the chief inspector what happened when Keith came round on Friday, and why you were staying here,” he told her. He studied her face for a moment. “You don’t have to do this, you know,” he told her. “It can be left till later.”
Laura shook her head. “It’s all right, Harry,” she assured him. “It is a shock—in fact I don’t think I’ve taken it in yet—but I want to help if I can. It’s the least I can do.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Bolen,” said Paget as Harry slumped back in his seat. He paused for a moment, then began with a question that had puzzled him from the beginning. “Can you tell me why your husband was at the Tudor Hotel last night?”
“He had meetings scheduled there with some ministry officials from London.”
“I understand that, but the meetings aren’t scheduled to begin until tomorrow afternoon, so why did your husband book into the hotel two days before, when he lives not ten minutes’ drive from town? Was he meeting someone else there on the weekend?”
Laura Bolen continued to look at him, but it seemed to Paget that her features had become set. “Jim rarely discussed his business arrangements with me,” she told him. “He stayed at the Tudor occasionally to get away from interruptions; usually when he had some new project he wanted to work on. He said there was never enough time during the week, and there were too many distractions at home.”
Paget frowned. “But with you no longer there, the house would be empty, would it not? Was that the only reason, Mrs. Bolen? I’m told that Mr. Bolen stayed there quite regularly on the weekends.”
Laura Bolen half closed her eyes and brushed a strand of hair away from her face. “I’m sorry, Chief Inspector, but I really can’t help you,” she said firmly. There was a hint of defiance in the tilt of her chin as she met his gaze.
“When was the last time you saw your husband?”
“Friday afternoon. About three o’clock. Which was when I left the house.”
“And you came straight here.”
“After a brief stop at the hospital. I had nowhere else to go.”
“And you were here yesterday when Mr. Bolen”—Paget indicated Harry—“arrived here from Canada?”
“Yes.”
“But you didn’t accompany him when he w
ent off to see your husband at the Tudor?”
“No.”
“Which time was that, Mrs. Bolen? The first time, when Mr. Bolen confronted your husband in the dining-room? Or later, around eleven o’clock, when he returned to the hotel?”
“The first time. I …” Laura stopped and looked puzzled as she saw the look on Harry’s face. He opened his mouth to say something, then thought better of it and closed it again. “What is it, Harry?” she demanded. “What’s wrong?”
“Mr. Bolen told me that when he returned after having the argument with your husband, he went straight to bed,” Paget explained.
Laura Bolen looked perplexed. “What on earth made you say that?” she asked Harry. “We both went the second time; you know we did.”
The colour that had been rising in Harry’s face grew deeper. “I was trying to avoid telling the chief inspector about your being here,” he said, defensively. “And when he said that Jim was killed around midnight, I thought … Well, I thought it would be best if I didn’t mention that we’d been back to the hotel. Not that it really changes anything,” he added hurriedly, “because we were both back here well before midnight.”
Laura pursed her lips and slowly shook her head from side to side. “Really, Harry,” she chided gently, “I suppose you thought you were doing it for the best, but now the chief inspector is going to wonder, isn’t he?”
She turned back to Paget. “But the truth of the matter is that, when Harry came back and told me what had happened in the dining-room, and the lengths to which Jim was prepared to go, I felt we couldn’t let matters rest there. There had to be some way to make Jim see reason. I felt so guilty about bringing all this to a head by allowing Keith to come to the house to talk to Jim directly, but something had to be done. And I really thought that Keith was getting through to Jim. But when Keith left the house, it was as if a dam had burst. I’ve never seen Jim in such a rage.” Tears glistened in her eyes. “He accused me of selling out to Keith, of going behind his back, of …”—Laura swallowed hard—“of all sorts of things,” she ended in a whisper.
Paget straightened in his chair. “This is Keith Lambert you are talking about, Mrs. Bolen?” he said.
“Why, yes.” Laura looked puzzled. “Didn’t Harry tell you?”
Paget looked at Harry Bolen. “He may have been about to when you came in,” he said, “but perhaps you can tell me now.”
Harry groaned. “It’s five-thirty in the morning, for God’s sake. Can’t you let it alone?” He picked up his drink. “You don’t have to do this, you know, Laura,” he reminded her again.
The chief inspector looked to Laura Bolen. She did look tired, desperately tired, but she brushed her brother-in-law’s objections aside with a wave of her hand. “It’s all right, Harry,” she told him. “It’s straightforward enough.”
She turned back to Paget. “Keith Lambert approached me a short time ago and asked me to try to persuade Jim to drop this ridiculous feud that’s been going on for so many years. He told me that if Jim kept on the way he was going, both firms would suffer, but Bolen Brothers would suffer the most.” Laura paused and looked at Harry. “In fact,” she went on, “both Harry and I knew that. If Jim had been allowed to have his way, the firm would have gone bankrupt.
“Keith suggested splitting the Ockrington project between the two firms. That way the initial investment would be halved and both firms could make a tidy profit in the long run. But when I tried to point that out to Jim, and he learned that I had been talking to Keith, he went straight up the wall and told me I was never to speak to Keith again.
“But I couldn’t simply leave it there, so I did speak to Keith again, and that’s when he offered to come to the house and make the proposition to Jim himself. Which he did, and I’ve already told you what a fiasco that turned out to be.”
Paget would have liked to pursue the subject further. Why, for example, if everyone but Jim Bolen was convinced that this Ockrington project would bankrupt the company, would Lambert come along with an offer to save it? Surely it would have been to his advantage to have his biggest rival fold. What could possibly be in it for him? And what was it that lay behind Bolen’s obsessive behaviour?
But despite her brave face, Laura Bolen looked to be on the point of collapse, and questions such as those could wait till later.
“So you and Mr. Bolen, here, decided to give it one more try last night,” he prompted. “Will you tell me what happened?”
“Initially, I intended to go with Harry to Jim’s room,” said Laura. “But we talked about it on the way, and I realized that my presence there might make matters even worse. Jim was convinced that I had gone over to Keith’s side, and nothing I could say would convince him otherwise. So I stayed in the car. Not that it made much difference, because Jim wasn’t in his room. His car was there in the car-park, but he wasn’t in the hotel. Harry searched all over, but there was no sign of him.”
Harry took up the story. “I should have told you earlier,” he admitted sheepishly, “but after having that fight with Jim in the dining-room, I was afraid of what you might think if I told you I’d gone back again. But as Laura said, Jim wasn’t in his room. I checked the bar, which was just closing, but they hadn’t seen him, and neither had the girl at the desk. You can check with her if you like. Her name is Rita. She offered to try to find him for me, but she was just going off shift, so I told her not to bother.
“Anyway, I went out to the car and told Laura that Jim didn’t seem to be in the hotel. Laura and I talked about it for a few minutes, then decided there was nothing we could do until morning. So we came back here. And that’s it.”
“What time was this, exactly?” Paget asked.
“Somewhere between ten-thirty and eleven. We were back here shortly after eleven.”
“And then?”
“I went to bed. I was dead tired and couldn’t keep my eyes open.” He looked at his sister-in-law.
“I was exhausted,” she told Paget, “but I knew it would be impossible to sleep unless I took a sleeping pill. Unfortunately, I was in such a state that I took two before I realized it, which is why I feel so groggy now.”
Paget rose to his feet. “Thank you both for your help,” he told them, “but just one more question before I go. Can either of you think of anyone who might have hated Mr. Bolen enough to kill him?”
They looked at one another, then shook their heads. Harry Bolen clambered to his feet. “I’ll see you out,” he said as he moved toward the door.
Paget followed, then paused. “We will need to have a member of the family make a formal identification of the body as soon as possible,” he said. He looked inquiringly from one to the other.
“I’ll go,” said Harry. “When and where?”
“Shall we say ten o’clock this morning at the hospital? Identify yourself at the desk, and I’ll arrange for the coroner’s officer to meet you there.”
There was a nip in the air as Paget stepped outside, and there was heavy dew on the car. As he wiped off the windows, he thought about the two people he’d just left. He was inclined to believe much of what they’d told him, but he had reservations about their relationship. The evidence suggested that Jim Bolen had been killed by a woman he’d been entertaining in his room, but should that prove not to be the case, both Harry and Laura Bolen would be at the top of his list of suspects.
CHAPTER 7
She was cold. Not just cold, but freezing! She couldn’t feel her feet at all, and her fingers felt like lumps of ice as she tried to draw the bedclothes tighter. She could hear someone from far away, but she didn’t want to get up. She just wanted to snuggle down and get warm.
Vikki burrowed deeper, and felt the pain. Her arms, her legs, her head … The bed was uncomfortable, hard and lumpy. The eiderdown was stiff beneath her frozen fingers; it crackled when she moved. It felt like … canvas?
Slowly, painfully, memory returned, and she felt again the fear of being hunted. She recalled how v
ulnerable she’d felt, alone on the moonlit road that seemed to go on forever. And she remembered scrambling into the ditch and crouching low against the hedge each time a car went by, wishing she had the courage to ask for a lift. She remembered, too, sitting on the roadside, tears streaming down her face as she tore the scarf in half to bind her swollen feet, and forcing the shoes back on again.
Vikki couldn’t remember turning off the main road, but she must have done because her next memory was of seeing the pub and the sign with a dog on it and the blank space where there should have been a man. The Invisible Man. So, Joanna hadn’t been pulling her leg after all.
The path behind the pub was easy enough to follow through the trees, dappled as it was by moonlight, and Vikki remembered the overwhelming wave of relief she’d felt when she saw the narrow boat tied up beside the abandoned locks. But from that point on, her memory failed, and she had no recollection of coming aboard.
But there was something else tugging at her memory. Lurking there in the dark recesses of her mind; something evil, something …
Suddenly, the events of the night before came rushing back, and she cried aloud.
“I think she’s waking up.”
The cover was being pulled away. Canvas crackled. Vikki tried to cover her eyes, but her arms wouldn’t move and no matter how hard she squeezed her eyelids shut, light kept exploding inside her head.
“Oh, my God!”
Vikki didn’t recognize the voice. Didn’t want to open her eyes to see who was speaking, afraid that it would be a policewoman waiting to arrest her.
It had all been for nothing, she thought bitterly, and began to cry.
“Let’s have this tarp off her and get her inside. Put her in my bunk, but be careful.” Hands, gentle hands, moved over her body. Vikki felt herself being lifted. Was that Joanna’s voice she’d heard? Or was she dreaming?
The voices began to fade, and she could feel herself slipping away again.
“She should be in hospital.”
“You’re right,” agreed a second voice. “I’ll ring for an ambulance from the call-box outside the pub. I’ll stay there to show them the way in.”