Murder in the Village (DI Hillary Greene)

by Faith Martin

  Hillary knew the type. ‘She have keys to the house?’

  ‘Nope, another thing that put her nose out of joint. The missus was always there to let her in and out.’

  Hillary nodded, but could tell the cleaning woman hadn’t roused anything on Janine’s radar. She’d probably have to have a word or two with the woman herself, of course, but for the moment pushed her to the bottom of the list.

  ‘OK. Tommy, I want you to get on with Mrs Dale’s tyre-changing alibi. Until that’s sorted one way or the other, we’re just spinning our wheels.’

  ‘Guv.’

  ‘Frank, I want you to go house-to-house in the village. Pick up the gossip on the Dales.’

  Frank sneered, but brightened up at the thought that the village was bound to have a pub. And since anyone interesting was bound to drop in, he might as well set up house there. Sod tramping from door to door.

  ‘Janine, want to come with me to Woodstock? I want to have a word with our vic’s main competition. What’s his name again?’

  Janine consulted her notebook. ‘McNamara. George, J. A solicitor,’ she added gloomily.

  Hillary grunted. Along with Shakespeare, she knew what she wanted to do with most of those.

  * * *

  Woodstock, the town that skirted the famous Blenheim Palace, the Duke of Marlborough’s little country pad, was a tourist hotspot in the summer, but on a sunny but cold March day, the ancient streets were mostly deserted. Antique shops, rather than anything useful, were the order of the day, but as she passed a small bakery, Hillary hastily averted her eyes from the chocolate eclairs and iced buns. That didn’t prevent her nose from being assaulted by the delicious aromas of baking bread and melting chocolate though. She cursed at having to park so far away, but like all picturesque and ancient towns, parking was a sod.

  McNamara’s offices turned out to be in a higgledy-piggledy row of black and white cottages, with undulating roof, black ironwork, and window boxes full of scarlet geraniums. That must have set the cameras snapping whenever the Japanese tourists descended from the nearby city of Oxford, Hillary mused. Today, though, she barely gave the architecture a glance.

  The brass plaque mounted to one whitewashed wall confirmed that Mulholand, Grath and McNamara did indeed keep their offices here, and she pushed through the glass-and-wood front door into a tiny anteroom. A secretary/receptionist, working like a troll in the mouth of a cave, peered out at them from a tiny recess under the stairs. She didn’t stand, but then she probably didn’t dare for fear of banging her head.

  Hillary showed her credentials, smiling pleasantly as she did so. ‘DI Greene, Thames Valley. I was wondering if I might have a word with Mr George McNamara?’ She managed to make it sound like an order, not a request, but without throwing too much weight around. Janine wondered just how she did that.

  The secretary nodded quickly and reached for the phone. She seemed like one of those women who’d come back to secretarial work after taking a break to have children, and her dyed blonde head drooped a little over the phone as she all but whispered the summons to her employer upstairs. When she put the receiver down, she turned a tight smile their way.

  ‘Please, go right on up. Mr McNamara’s office is second on the left.’

  Hillary thanked her and climbed the deep, narrow stairs, holding on to the banister carefully as the boards creaked underfoot. At the top, thick and old glass window panes turned the sunlight a sort of milky colour, which reflected oddly against the hard-wearing dark grey carpeting underneath. The door in question opened before they reached it, and a man popped his head out. He wasn’t tall, not much over Hillary’s own five feet nine, and he had sandy blond hair turning silver. She saw his dark brown eyes run over her in quick summation. What he was seeing, she knew, was a woman with a Junoesque figure, a shoulder-length bell of nut-brown hair with chestnut tints, and, if he could see them in the odd light up here, wide brown eyes.

  She was not surprised when his gaze moved on to Janine and widened slightly. Janine, with long blonde hair, ice-blue eyes, and a svelte figure with all the youth of a mere twenty-six-year-old, was used to hogging more than her fair share of male attention.

  ‘DI Greene?’ George McNamara said, his eyes going straight back to Hillary. ‘Please, come in. I must say I was surprised when Clare told me you were here. We don’t do criminal work, you see,’ he added, as she hooked a dark brown eyebrow up in a silent question.

  ‘Ah,’ she said. Not the traditional enemy then. More of a neutral? ‘I’m afraid we’re here on a criminal inquiry, however, Mr McNamara,’ Hillary said, as she took a quick glance around the office. A pair of uninspired but well-enough executed watercolours, one of Port Meadow in Oxford, the other of Worcester Cathedral, hung on opposite walls. Tomes and tomes of thick books in dark shades of leather lined both sides of a disused fireplace, and a couple of green and thriving pot plants sat on a broad windowsill. The floorboards underneath undulated as much as the roof, and she saw Janine totter slightly as she made her way to one of the comfortable-looking padded chairs facing a cherry-wood desk. Obviously, the firm did well for itself.

  ‘Really? I’m intrigued. Tea, coffee?’ the solicitor offered, waving her towards the other unoccupied chair.

  Hillary never turned down the chance of caffeine.

  In spite of the appearance of working in a lawyer’s office that could have been lifted straight from Dickens, George McNamara reached out to press down the switch of a very modern intercom system and asked somebody called Daisy if they wouldn’t mind popping in with the coffee pot.

  ‘Well, I can’t think which of my current clients could have fallen foul of the law, Inspector,’ George McNamara said, leaning back in his chair. He was well-padded, with amiable button-like eyes, and wore a dark blue bow tie. Hillary hadn’t seen a bow tie in years.

  ‘It’s about your political rival, Mr McNamara. Mr Malcolm Dale,’ Hillary corrected him calmly.

  McNamara’s eyebrows shot up, and he suddenly straightened in the chair. ‘Malcolm? But surely he can’t have got into any trouble.’ For all the words expressed doubt, Hillary saw definite hope and glee spring up in the other man’s face.

  ‘But if he had been caught out doing something he shouldn’t, it wouldn’t exactly break your heart, perhaps?’ she asked, allowing just a touch of knowing amusement to creep into her voice.

  As she’d expected, McNamara suddenly spread his hands in a helpless gesture, and a small, reluctant smile spread across his face. He had, she noticed for the first time, a moustache. It was so small and pale she’d almost missed it.

  ‘Well, let’s just say, all’s fair in love and politics.’

  ‘Mr Dale’s campaign secretary seemed to think he had a good chance of getting the nomination,’ Hillary said, throwing it into the pot just as the door opened and a plump elderly lady came in with a tray. On it was a genuine silver coffee pot, made somewhere around the 1840s, Hillary guessed, and what looked like genuine Spode cups and saucers. A matching silver creamer contained cream, not milk, and a sugar bowl was full to the brim with loose sugar, not lumps, with a small silver spoon nestling beside it.

  ‘Ah, thanks, Daisy. Wonderful as ever,’ McNamara complimented. Not one of the three women present knew whether he was referring to Daisy or the coffee, but Daisy smiled briefly and went out, without saying a word.

  ‘Well, of course, his own campaign secretary would have to say that,’ George McNamara said in response to Hillary’s statement, reaching for the pot as he did so. ‘But I’m hardly likely to agree. Yes, Malcolm has a lot of support, but most of it comes from the higher echelon of the party. My own strength is at grass roots level, which can sometimes be much more of an advantage. Cream? Sugar?’

  Hillary murmured her choices and took a moment to think. So far, everything seemed on the up and up. McNamara was still talking about Malcolm Dale in the present tense, and seeing as the news of his death hadn’t yet hit the papers, or been released to the local radio stations
, there was no reason why the solicitor should know that his rival was dead. And right from the start, George McNamara had seemed to think that Malcolm Dale had been caught in some peccadillo that had for some reason caught the attention of the police.

  But of course it could all be camouflage.

  ‘So, tell me how I can help, Inspector,’ McNamara said, raising the coffee cup to his lips.

  ‘I’m afraid Mr Malcolm Dale was brutally murdered last night, Mr McNamara,’ Hillary said calmly, lifting her own cup and taking a sip. Ah, wonderful. No mere instant spooned from a jar, this, but properly percolated Brazilian coffee.

  ‘He what?’ McNamara said blankly. ‘Malcolm? Dead? But . . .’ He slowly lowered his cup to the table, then looked at Hillary with a deliberate hardening of his face. ‘I see,’ he said, his voice taking on a much more solicitor-like tone. ‘And you want to know where I was at the time?’

  Hillary felt like smiling. He reminded her of nothing so much as a bird who’d had his feathers unexpectedly ruffled.

  ‘Well, that would be a good start, sir,’ she murmured blandly.

  ‘And when was he murdered exactly?’ McNamara asked, with a definite hint of you-don’t-catch-me in his tone, which made Hillary feel like grinning. Or saying something equally fatuous, like ‘touché.’

  ‘If you can just tell me what you did from, say, five o’clock onwards last night, sir?’ she said instead.

  Somewhat appeased, McNamara nodded. ‘Let’s see. I left here at my usual time, that is, five thirty. The receptionist downstairs can confirm that. I live in Kidlington, so it took me, oh, say half an hour to get home. You know what traffic is like. My wife was home by then, and we made dinner together. Something simple — pasta of some sort, I think it was. We ate, and then I had some work to do in my study. Campaign work. I watched some television with my wife about ten — the news, that sort of thing. And we were in bed by eleven.’

  ‘And did your wife disturb you in the study?’

  ‘My wife, Inspector, I assure you, knows better,’ McNamara said with a wry smile. ‘Besides, she’s a teacher, and had a lot of marking to do herself.’

  ‘And when was it, would you say, that you retired to your study?’

  ‘I don’t know — seven thirty. Somewhere around then.’

  ‘And did you take any phone calls in that time? Did you receive any callers?’

  ‘No, and no,’ the solicitor said, matching her matter-of-fact tone in unconscious mimicry.

  So, Hillary thought, no real alibi. He could easily have slipped out, driven to Lower Heyford, clobbered his rival and come back. But would his wife not have heard the car? She’d have to send either Janine or Tommy over to have a word with Mrs McNamara before hubby could get home and give her some coaching.

  ‘I see,’ she said flatly.

  ‘I rather doubt it,’ George McNamara said wryly, having read with ease the way her mind was working. ‘Let me enlighten you, Inspector. I’ve been a member of the Tory party all my life. I’ve now reached a point in my professional career where I have a solid client basis, and can afford a little time to devote to running for Parliament. But I’m not likely to be broken-hearted if I don’t get nominated, nor am I likely to kill Malcolm Dale, for heaven’s sake, in order to narrow down the competition. It’s just not feasible, Inspector. I’m a law-abiding man. And not a violent one.’

  Hillary nodded. She didn’t think he was a particularly likely candidate either. In her experience, the power-hungry usually made their bid for the cherry long before they’d reached this man’s — what — forty-odd years of age? Besides, she’d already summed up George McNamara to her satisfaction. A middle-of-the-road, unspectacularly successful man, having a mild mid-life crisis, he’d looked out for something to spice up his life. Not the type to have an affair, he’d seen the opportunity to try and run as his constituency’s Tory MP as just the ticket. A respectable enough ambition not to frighten off his clients, or win the disapproval of the other partners in the office, but exciting enough to stir the blood.

  It wouldn’t surprise her, either, if McNamara wasn’t really after a seat on the local county council, and saw being an honourable loser in a much higher stakes game as a clever way in.

  ‘You know, I can’t really believe anyone would actually murder Malcolm,’ McNamara said now, distracting Hillary from her thoughts. It was as if the solicitor was only now taking on board the true enormity of what had happened. This reaction didn’t particularly surprise her. Most people assessed news and dealt with it on a strictly personal level first — how does this affect me, what will it do for or to me —before taking on board its wider, more general effect.

  ‘You surely don’t suspect Valerie?’ he added, his voice rising a touch in genuine indignation. ‘I mean, I know that’s the first thing people think of, but Valerie . . . I mean, I didn’t know her all that well, but . . . well, she’s just not the type.’

  Hillary let that go without comment. How often had she heard that before?

  ‘Do you know of anyone who might have a grudge against Mr Dale?’ she asked instead. ‘Your other running mate, perhaps?’

  ‘Daniel Page? Good grief, no.’ McNamara dismissed this suggestion with a wave of his hand. But then his whole face altered. ‘Of course! Old man Matthews might have! I should have thought of him right away. He threatened to kill Malcolm often enough, heaven knows.’

  Beside her, she sensed Janine nearly fall out of her seat. Hillary took another careful sip of her coffee. The man in front of her was now fairly bouncing around on his seat with excitement. ‘Percy Matthews. Have you spoken to him yet?’

  ‘This is the first time that name has come up in our enquiry, sir,’ Hillary said flatly, trying to calm him down a little. ‘You say this man actually threatened to kill Mr Dale? You actually heard this for yourself?’

  ‘Oh yes. On more than one occasion too. He seemed to make no secret of it.’ Some of the animation seemed to seep out of him, however, as he added reluctantly, ‘Of course, Matthews is a bit barmy, and he is an old man. I mean, he’s collecting his pension, and must be about seventy odd by now. But still, he’s fit. Yes, he is fit.’

  Hillary nodded. ‘And do you know this Mr Matthews’ address?’

  ‘No, not offhand. But it’s in the same village where Malcolm lived.’

  ‘How do you come to know that?’ Hillary asked curiously. ‘Did Mr Dale ever confide in you that he was afraid of this man, especially as he was living so close?’

  Surprisingly, George McNamara snorted with sudden laughter. ‘Hell, no. Malcolm never gave the man a second thought. Mind you, he was being a bit of a nuisance. He brought the local press in, you know, and gained a lot of sympathy in some quarters. But since none of them were eligible to vote for or against Malcolm’s name being put forward as a candidate, it didn’t worry him as much as it could have.’

  Hillary, out of the corner of her eye, saw Janine give her a ‘what-the-hell’ look, and noticed her pen was no longer scribbling shorthand notes. Hillary shared her confusion.

  ‘The local press?’ she repeated, bewildered. ‘Mr McNamara, perhaps you can make yourself a little more clear?’

  ‘Oh, yes, sorry. Not very professional of me. Let’s see. Well, it all happened — oh, was years ago now. Malcolm was the master of Lower Heyford Hunt — a small gathering, and very new. It was only five years old or so. Anyway, during one Boxing Day hunt, the master of the hounds lost control of his dogs as they were passing through the village, and they got into one of the cottage gardens there and killed a family pet. A cat, I think it was.’

  ‘Mr Percy Matthews’ cat,’ Hillary said flatly, picturing the scene. A cat, cornered by twenty or so hounds, wouldn’t have stood a chance. By the time the pack had finished with it, it would be nothing more than a broken, almost fluid, hank of fur.

  ‘Yes,’ McNamara confirmed. ‘Anyway, old man Matthews was furious. And I mean furious. I know one of the hunt members, and he told me the old man was lite
rally beside himself with rage. Thought the old chap was going to have some sort of fit and pop his clogs then and there. Naturally, Percy Matthews swore up and down that he’d sue, that he’d kill every dog in the pack, that he’d kill Malcolm himself and so on.’ George McNamara took a sip of now rapidly cooling coffee and shrugged. ‘Of course, he didn’t have enough money to take Malcolm to court, and although the local press and many of the villagers were on Matthews’ side, nothing really came of it. Well, you know how these things go.’

  Hillary smiled grimly. Oh yes, she knew how these things went all right. In spite of everything, and no matter what social historians said, the class system still ruled — especially in the villages. And she could well imagine the old man’s sense of helplessness as he slowly came to realise that there was nothing he could do to get justice for his pet.

  ‘Then hunting was banned, and the hunt sort of petered out,’ McNamara went on, ‘and things might have calmed down some but of course Malcolm wasn’t going to take it lying down. Told everyone who would listen that Parliament had no right to dictate such matters. He even made it one of his pledges that, if elected, he would do everything in his power to get hunting reinstated. And that of course was popular with a lot of people. The Country Alliance was behind him one hundred per cent, as you might expect.’