The day following Doogie’s party was no exception, and seven o’clock found Kendra parking Matt’s car on the broad sweep of gravel in front of the Brewer family home.
Birchwood Hall was a Regency-period country house of some stature and importance with an imposing three-storey facade and a colonnaded front door sufficient to satisfy the most ostentatious of occupants. With upward of thirty main rooms, numerous outbuildings, a stable block, and an orangery that had been converted into a swimming pool, it stood in formal gardens, surrounded by about seventy acres of park and farmland.
Much as Charlie Brewer would have loved to claim it as a family seat, handed down through the generations, the truth was that he’d bought it less than twenty years before; his own antecedents having eked out a far less privileged existence as farm labourers in Suffolk. Her grandfather, according to Kendra, had been a second-hand car dealer.
She and Matt were met at the door by the Brewers’ butler-cum-occasional-chauffeur, Greening, who informed them that the family were assembled in the drawing room. They always were at this time on a Sunday evening, but the politenesses had to be observed.
It was typical that the first person Matt saw as he followed Kendra into the elegant reception room was her father. At forty-six, tanned and bald-headed, he was a muscular six foot or so, with shrewd blue eyes in a strong face that sported a designer moustache and close-cut goatee beard. There was no denying that he was a striking figure, and it was easy to see, in the middle-aged man, the good-looking young lad-about-town who had swept a seventeen-year-old debutante off her feet at a summer ball some twenty-five years before. The intervening period had added to that charm an indefinable presence born of success, so that he seemed to inexorably draw the eye, dominating any gathering at which he was present.
Reclining in a gold brocade wing chair, with a glass of red wine in his hand, Charlie Brewer looked up as his daughter and her fiancé entered, but it was his wife, Joy, who stood and came to meet them across the immaculate cream carpet.
‘Ah, here they are. Hello darling! Oh dear! How’s that ankle of yours, Matt?’ she asked in quick sympathy, her brows drawing down over a pair of fine brown eyes. Slim, with long blonde hair, she was often mistaken for an elder sister rather than the mother of her four grown-up children. Matt was extremely fond of her.
‘It’ll be fine in a day or two,’ he assured her, as they exchanged kisses.
‘Wouldn’t have happened if you hadn’t ridden Smythe’s horse,’ Brewer commented from across the room. ‘Missed out on Secundo, didn’t you?’
‘Yes. That’ll teach me, won’t it?’ Matt observed, with a quizzical smile. ‘Still, Jamie did a good job on him.’
Brewer grunted. ‘That horse would have won whoever was on his back, but that’s not the point. You’re the stable jockey.’
‘Yes, well let’s not start the evening with an argument, darling,’ Joy put in. ‘Matt didn’t hurt his foot on purpose, I imagine.’
Matt was grateful to her. As stable jockey, he was technically employed by Leonard and answerable to him alone, but, because of the trainer’s dependence on Brewer, the issue was a little confused. Brewer was strongly of the opinion that Matt should ride for Rockfield and no other yard, even to the point of offering to subsidise him for any loss of income, but Matt wasn’t prepared to sign up for that. He liked to be busy; he liked variety; and he was also very wary of placing all his eggs in one basket. Besides which, as his reputation continued to grow, he was getting some really good rides from other yards. The Champion Hurdle win had been on a horse from Doogie McKenzie’s yard and the Scottish trainer had a number of youngsters that he was looking forward to riding.
Kendra left his side to go and give her father a kiss and, glancing round the room, Matt waved a hand and voiced an all-encompassing greeting. He did a swift head count. There would be eight sitting down to dinner on this occasion, as the whole family was present. He knew Kendra’s two elder sisters, Grace and Frances, and her younger brother, Deacon, who was seated in one of the wing chairs with one of his two Persian cats on his lap. The only person he didn’t recognise was a young man who was sitting on the settee next to Kendra’s eldest sister, Grace.
‘Come and meet Rupert,’ Joy said, taking Matt’s arm and steering him towards the pair.
As they approached, the young man rose to his feet and Matt found that he was of a similar height and age to himself, with receding blond hair and rather weak, pale blue eyes. His carefully casual clothes screamed money, from the Calvin Klein polo shirt down to the toes of his Timberland leather trainers.
‘Rupert Beaufort,’ the young man announced, before Joy had a chance to introduce him. He stretched out a beautifully manicured hand. ‘And you must be the jockey.’
‘That’s right,’ Matt agreed, shaking the soft-skinned hand and quelling an impulse to tighten his grip and wipe the slightly patronising smile off Beaufort’s face. ‘Matt Shepherd.’
‘Rupert’s father is Jarvis Beaufort,’ Grace announced, in the tone of one imparting a golden nugget of information. She stood up and came forward to put her hand on Beaufort’s designer-jacketed arm. ‘He owns Beaufort’s the Jewellers.’
And diamonds are a girl’s best friend, Matt thought dryly, raising his eyebrows and inclining his head in a spurious show of interest.
Three years older than Kendra, Grace was stick-slim and, in Matt’s estimation, the smile on her face was about as natural as the blondeness of her hair. She had her father’s colouring and rampant ambition, but little of his charm.
‘Rupert has promised to take me on a private tour of the London showroom and studios,’ she said. ‘It’ll be wonderful.’
‘Oh, how exciting!’ Kendra exclaimed, coming over in time to save Matt from having to find something polite to say.
Grace positively glowed with satisfaction, and it occurred to Matt, not for the first time, that she was a little jealous of her younger sister.
When they sat down to dinner at the fifteen-foot-long, mahogany table, under the lights of three cut-glass chandeliers, Matt was pleased to find himself next to Kendra’s second sister, Frances. At twenty-three, she was just a year younger than Grace, but couldn’t have been more different. Taller, bigger built, and plainer than her siblings, she wore her shoulder-length brown hair unbleached, and a minimal amount of make-up and jewellery, but she had an attraction all her own. Intelligent and practical, with a sharp wit, which she wasn’t averse to sharing, she was, to her father’s eternal mystification, training to be a child psychologist.
‘So, what do you think of Grace’s latest conquest?’ she murmured to Matt as they began the meal. ‘Impeccable qualifications, wouldn’t you say?’
He glanced at her in amusement, not pretending to misunderstand.
‘Oh, definitely. Diamonds and an Eton accent â perfect.’
At the head of the table, Brewer cleared his throat.
‘Nasty business that, last night,’ he commented, breaking a roll to dip into his asparagus soup. ‘Deacon had already left, but I think Harry got caught up in it. It was a hell of a business, I gather. Were you there when the police turned up?’
‘No, I’d already left too,’ Matt said.
Kendra looked at him, raising her eyebrows infinitesimally, but didn’t say anything.
‘That poor girl!’ Joy said.
Grace was less sympathetic. ‘It was on the news earlier. They made her sound like such an innocent little thing, but you should have seen the way she was dancing â she was asking for it.’
‘Oh no â you can’t say that!’ her mother responded. ‘God knows she wasn’t a saint, but no one deserves that!’
‘I didn’t see you at the party,’ Matt remarked to Grace. He’d declined the soup, knowing from experience that it was rich and creamy. With two further courses to come, he had to watch his fat intake.
‘Oh, Rupert and I just popped in for a few minutes. We were passing and there was someone he wanted a word with
. Sophie was dancing on one of the tables when I saw her, and Jamie was looking as mad as fire. No wonder; she can’t have had much on under that dress.’
‘I think she looked beautiful,’ Deacon put in.
He was sitting diagonally across the table from Matt, and had been very quiet until then. Even now he spoke as if to himself, his dark eyes dreamy under the fringe that flopped over his fine-boned face. At nineteen he was heir to a business empire worth millions, but, as yet, had shown no great desire to become involved in the running of it. With uncharacteristic patience, his father had been heard to say he had no doubt the lad would come to it in time.
‘She was a slut!’ Grace declared.
‘Now, come on,’ Joy intervened. ‘I think that’s enough. Whatever else she was, she was someone’s daughter and nothing excuses the taking of a life. Let’s talk about something else, shall we?’
There was an uncomfortable silence for a moment, broken only by the chink of cutlery on china, and then Grace spoke again.
‘No prizes for guessing who the number one suspect will be, anyway,’ she remarked, and Matt could cheerfully have throttled her.
Her father pushed his empty bowl aside.
‘Who?’
‘Well, Jamie Mullin, of course. She’s been leading him round by the nose for weeks and they had an almighty row last night â right in the middle of the dance floor!’
‘That doesn’t mean he killed her!’ Kendra protested. ‘Jamie wouldn’t do anything like that and you know it!’
‘I didn’t say he would. I just said he’d be the prime suspect.’
Greening came in with a heated trolley, removed the soup bowls, and replaced them with plates for the next course. When he’d departed, leaving the diners to help themselves to a roast dinner of generous proportions, Brewer stated that nothing would surprise him about Mullin.
‘Oh, darling, that’s not fair!’ his wife said reproachfully, and Matt kept his temper with an effort, knowing that the businessman had disliked Jamie ever since the Irishman had told him, with debatable tact, that one of his most expensive horses would never make the grade. In Matt’s opinion, Jamie would almost certainly be proved right in the long run, but, for the sake of a good working relationship, the opinion would really have been better left unaired.
‘I like Jamie,’ Deacon said thoughtfully. ‘Top bloke!’
Kendra looked across curiously. ‘Are you hungover, Deke?’
‘I hope not!’ Brewer frowned heavily, and Matt caught Rupert looking from one to the other in surprise.
Joy had evidently noticed as well.
‘Deacon suffers from migraines,’ she explained to the newcomer. ‘He’s supposed to stay off the alcohol, aren’t you, darling?’
‘Oh, bad luck, old boy,’ Rupert commiserated, but Deacon merely shrugged, looking philosophical.
‘So, have the police spoken to Jamie yet?’ Grace was like a dog worrying at a bone.
‘They’re speaking to everyone who was there,’ Matt hedged, helping himself to a modest helping of roast chicken and veg.
‘I heard they’d arrested him.’
‘They’ve taken him in for questioning, that’s all,’ Matt said, ruthlessly suppressing his natural honesty. ‘It’s just routine. They’ve already spoken to me, and I expect they’ll be after you and Rupert before long.’
‘What for? We didn’t see anything, we were only there about twenty minutes.’
‘Well, I don’t suppose Jamie saw anything either.’
Grace subsided, looking annoyed, and then, with a sweetly malicious smile, picked up the dish of crispy roast potatoes and offered them to Matt.
He returned her smile with a sarcastic one of his own and shook his head. Potatoes, especially roasted or chipped, were one of the things he had to ration when he was racing, and to give in to temptation was to set foot on the slippery slope that would mean long, dreary hours spent in the sauna.
‘No? Oh â sorry, I was forgetting, you have to watch your weight, don’t you? How silly of me.’
‘Grace, you’re a bitch,’ Frances said flatly, but her sister just laughed.
‘That’s enough!’ Brewer finally took a hand, apparently dismissing Sophie’s demise as of no further interest. ‘So what did the doctor say about your ankle, Matt? Will you be fit to ride Cheddah on Wednesday?’
‘Can’t see why not. It’s just badly bruised, that’s all.’
‘You’d have done far better resting it last night, instead of going out partying,’ he groused, balancing three Yorkshire puddings on the edge of his plate, out of the gravy.
Matt didn’t rise to the bait. Brewer had always been a little jealous of his enduring loyalty to Doogie McKenzie. He’d have been even less pleased if he’d been privy to Matt’s nocturnal scramble to the riverside.
‘Yeah, you’re probably right,’ he agreed, evenly.
Having had the wind effectively let out of his sails, Brewer subsided and applied himself to his meal.
When Matt and Kendra got back to Spinney Cottage just before midnight, they found Jamie sitting at the kitchen table, head on arms, asleep. A mug of something that had once been hot stood in front of him, untouched. It seemed that he had slept through the commotion of the dogs’ greetings, but he raised his head sleepily when Matt said his name.
‘Are you OK?’ Kendra asked. ‘When did you get back?’
Jamie rubbed a hand over his face. He looked pale and there were dark circles under his eyes.
‘Absolutely shattered. Got back about …’ he looked at his watch, ‘an hour ago.’
Kendra put a hand on his arm.
‘I’m so sorry about Sophie, Jamie. What a horrible thing to have happened.’
‘They think I did it,’ he said bleakly.
‘Is that what they said?’ Kendra asked indignantly. ‘That’s ridiculous!’
‘If they really thought that, they wouldn’t have let you go,’ Matt reasoned.
‘Well, they haven’t got any evidence, have they? Only circumstantial â nothing definite.’
‘Well, that’s all right then, because they won’t find any, will they?’ Kendra took the fabric of his shirt between her fingers. ‘Did they dress you from lost property, too?’
Jamie glanced down at the red and black checks.
‘Yeah, they took my clothes for forensic testing. It was either these or one of those white boiler suit decontamination things you see them wearing on telly.’ He looked at Matt. ‘They took your clothes too then. Have they questioned you?’
‘Yeah. Last night. It was me that found her.’
‘You? Where was she? They wouldn’t tell me. I think they thought I knew and were hoping I’d let it slip.’
‘Just a couple of hundred yards down the road from the club; there’s a bridge over a river â she was at the bottom of the bank.’
‘So how come you were there?’
‘I was looking for you and I saw Sophie’s shawl-thing caught in the bushes as I drove by,’ Matt told him, taking the kettle to the sink and filling it. ‘Where the hell had you got to, anyway?’
‘I went the other way. I wanted a drink and I thought there was a pub up the road, but it was closed â boarded up and everything. I started walking back and then this lorry driver stopped and offered me a lift. I was feeling really pissed off by then, so I thought â why not?’
‘So did anyone see you, apart from the lorry driver?’
‘No. That’s what the police asked me. There’s nothing much up that way, except that industrial estate and the pub. Well, not even that now. I didn’t see a soul. There weren’t even many cars on the road.’
‘And what about the lorry? Do you remember anything about that?’
Jamie shook his head.
‘You don’t see much when it’s coming towards you, just lights. It was foreign. The driver didn’t speak much English. I think he might have been Romanian or something. To be honest, I didn’t take much notice, I was just grateful
not to have to walk. He dropped me in Charlborough and I went to a nightclub. Gino’s, I think it was. I just wanted to get blotto.’
‘And is that where Bartholomew’s lot found you?’
‘Yeah. I came out for a smoke and there was a car sitting outside with a couple of coppers in it. I think they were just there keeping an eye on the clubbers, but they must have had my description.’
‘I thought you’d given up smoking,’ Kendra put in, accusingly.
‘Yeah, well I have â mostly. Anyway, these coppers wandered over, kind of casually, and asked me my name. I told them. I mean, I didn’t know what was going on â not knowing about Sophie. And then they arrested me. God â what a shock! I couldn’t believe it.’
‘Tea or coffee?’ Matt’s hand hovered over the tea caddy.
‘Er … Tea’s fine.’
‘Me too,’ Kendra said. ‘So, what started it all? I mean, what was the argument about?’
Jamie pulled a face.
‘Her ex-boyfriend was there â at the party. Darren something-or-other. She was flirting with him when we got there and then she danced with him. God, you should have seen them! His fucking hands were all over her. I told her I wasn’t happy about it, that’s all.’
‘And she said … ?’
‘She said it was my problem, not hers, and I could fuck off for all she cared.’
Matt could imagine Sophie saying that. He was sure there was nothing she’d have liked better than to have two men fighting over her, especially in public.
‘So you grabbed her and she slapped you,’ he said. ‘You should have let it go, you know. She wasn’t worth it.’
Jamie groaned.
‘I know, but I’d had a couple of drinks â I wasn’t thinking straight. But she’s never been like that before. It’s not like her.’
In Matt’s opinion it was just like her, but he didn’t say so. Jamie would find out soon enough; there was bound to be talk.
Murder in Mind Page 4