by Frank Smith
‘Unfortunately, Mrs Ballantyne, while we may think we know what happened, we do have to make sure that every other possibility is explored.’ Paget told her. ‘Tell me, when was the last time you were in the Holbrook house?’
Moira frowned in concentration ‘It must be a couple of weeks ago,’ she said. ‘Yes, it was. We’d been to see the local production of Noises Off, and we went in for a drink afterwards.’
‘And when did you last see Mrs Holbrook?’
Moira looked down at her hands. ‘Last Tuesday,’ she said quietly. ‘At the club. Our regular nights are Mondays and Thursdays, but Laura was away in London or somewhere on business Monday, so we played on Tuesday instead.’
‘And how was she? Did she say anything to you that suggested she might like to get out of going to see that particular film on Wednesday?’
Moira hesitated before saying, ‘No, but I know she wasn’t all that keen on going because it wasn’t her kind of film, but she didn’t say anything.’ Her frown deepened. ‘Are you suggesting that she didn’t have a migraine, but used that as an excuse to beg off?’
‘As I said, Mrs Ballantyne, we have to explore every possibility, and the fact that you chose not to go as well made me wonder if the two of you had decided on a mild deception to avoid going.’
Moira shook her head. ‘I’ll admit that I used it as an excuse, myself; it’s not my kind of movie either, but there was no collusion, if that’s what you’re getting at.’
Paget nodded understandingly and sat back in his seat, a signal for Tregalles to take over.
‘You mentioned playing badminton together, Mrs Ballantyne,’ he said. ‘You must enjoy the game if you play twice a week. The four of you play doubles, do you?’
‘We used to when I was playing,’ she said with a rueful smile, ‘but now I’m the odd man out. It used to be Trevor and me against Simon and Susan, Laura’s sister, but that changed when I broke my wrist a couple of years ago, and Susan brought Laura along to take my place. Since then it’s been Trevor and Susan against Simon and Laura.’
‘You still don’t play after all this time?’
‘I do, but I’m not in their league any more,’ Moira told him. She raised both hands to display a right wrist that was clearly offset compared to its mate. ‘They had to fuse some of the bones,’ she explained, ‘and the wrist just doesn’t work as well as it used to. I go along with them, and I play singles with the juniors, in fact I teach a little, but the flexibility is gone, and I doubt if I will ever get it back.’
‘Pity.’ Tregalles made a note, then looked up again. ‘Two years ago,’ he said. ‘Would that be when you first met Laura Holbrook?’
‘That’s right. It was when Susan and Laura’s mother died. Susan was having some difficulty settling the estate, so Laura stayed on after the funeral to help sort things out. I had just broken my wrist, so Susan persuaded her sister to come along and play in my place – which was a big mistake.’
‘Why do you say that?’
Moira shrugged guiltily as she waved a dismissive hand. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, ‘I shouldn’t have said that. It has nothing to do with what’s happened now.’ Tregalles continued to look at her, one eyebrow raised in a silent question, clearly waiting for her to go on. A flicker of annoyance crossed her face. ‘It’s just that everyone expected to see Susan and Simon tie the knot one day,’ she explained, ‘but once Laura appeared on the scene, it was game over for Susan. Laura became Simon’s partner, and Susan took my place as Trevor’s partner.’
Tregalles made a face. ‘Don’t imagine Susan Chase would be very happy about that,’ he said.
But Moira shook her head. ‘I’m sure it must have been a blow,’ she said, ‘but Susan is the sort of person who takes everything in her stride. She really is a lovely person. Everyone likes Susan.’
‘Still . . .’ Tregalles began, but stopped when Paget rose to his feet. ‘I think we’ve kept you quite long enough, Mrs Ballantyne,’ he said. ‘You’ve been most helpful, and we do appreciate your patience. I hope we haven’t disrupted your morning too much?’
Moira didn’t reply as she followed them to the door.
‘There is just one more thing,’ Paget said. ‘Our people found a great many fingerprints at the crime scene, and the more we can eliminate, the better. So, since you say you and your husband have been inside the house recently, I’d like you to come down to Charter Lane in the next day or two, and we’ll take your prints. It’s just a formality, and they will be destroyed later. Your husband did the same for us the other day. I’m sure he must have mentioned it.’
‘Yes. Yes, he did,’ said Moira faintly.
‘Good. Perhaps first thing Monday, if that’s convenient? I’ll have someone ring to arrange a time. It only takes a few minutes.’
Moira smiled mechanically as she closed the door, then leaned against it for support. Her legs were shaking, and several minutes passed before she felt confident enough to walk back to the room and sink into a chair.
‘Oh, God!’ she breathed as she sat down. Had he noticed? she wondered. He must have noticed. She’d felt the blood literally drain from her face when he’d mentioned fingerprints, and yet he hadn’t said anything. But then, he wouldn’t, would he if he suspected . . .
Or if he knew!
‘Oh, God!’ she whispered again, burying her face in her hands.
Nine
The front door of Simon Holbrook’s house was open, and the sound of a vacuum cleaner could be heard. Paget knocked, but when it became clear that no one could hear it, he led the way inside.
The woman using the vacuum cleaner didn’t see them at first, her attention focused as it was on what she was doing. Dressed for the task, she wore a faded T-shirt, jeans, scuffed and torn at the knees, moccasins that looked as if they were about to fall apart, and a light silk scarf holding her hair in place. If they hadn’t been told in advance that Simon Holbrook’s sister-in-law was in the house, they might have mistaken her for the cleaning lady.
Clearly startled by the appearance of the two men as they moved into her line of sight, she pulled back and shut the vacuum off. Paget held up his warrant card and introduced himself and Tregalles. ‘Sorry if we startled you,’ he apologized. ‘We did knock, but . . .’ He nodded in the direction of the now silent machine. ‘We’re looking for Mr Holbrook; is he here?’
The woman nodded. ‘You must be the detectives who came here after Laura –’ she drew a deep breath – ‘after Laura was killed,’ she said. She had a pleasant voice, low and slightly husky. ‘I’m Susan Chase, Laura’s sister. I came over to help Simon clear up the mess.’ She raised anxious eyes to meet his own. ‘I suppose it’s too early to hope you’ve brought good news?’
They were nice eyes, grey-green, set wide in an oval face beneath a mop of dark hair. Paget had the feeling that he had seen that face before, but it was the earrings that clinched it: golden circlets, rings within rings that almost brushed her shoulders. He knew he’d seen those before, and yet he still couldn’t place her.
‘I’m afraid it is,’ said Paget. ‘Unfortunately, these things take time . . .’ He paused, his curiosity getting the better of him. ‘Tell me, Miss Chase, have we met before?’
Susan Chase smiled. ‘Several times, Chief Inspector,’ she told him, ‘although I didn’t know you were a policeman until now. I own the flower shop in the market square. Does two dozen roses ring a bell?’
‘Of course! The Basket of Flowers. I’m sorry, Miss Chase,’ he apologized. ‘It’s just that seeing you here like this – I didn’t make the connection.’
‘Dressed like this, I’m not surprised,’ Susan said wryly, ‘but there’s no need to apologize; it’s happened before. But you didn’t come here to see me, did you? I’ll take you to Simon.’
They found Simon Holbrook rubbing down walls and furniture with a damp cloth. ‘Don’t know who left the most mess,’ he complained when he saw them, ‘the bastards who killed my wife or your forensic people. Seems
like they blew dust over everything in the house, and it’s the very devil to get off. I should sue for damages.’
‘It’s unfortunate,’ Paget agreed, ‘but necessary, I’m afraid.’
‘They don’t seem to think it’s necessary to stop and clean up, though, do they?’ Holbrook set a chair back in place, then turned to face them. ‘And by the look on your faces, I don’t suppose you’re here to tell me you’ve caught the bastards, are you? Laura would be alive today if you’d been doing your job.’
‘I’m sure they’re doing their best, Simon,’ Susan said soothingly. ‘I don’t imagine it’s easy.’
Holbrook gave a non-committal grunt as he turned his attention to Tregalles. ‘As for you, Sergeant,’ he said harshly, ‘I thought I’d answered all your questions yesterday.’
‘Most of them, yes, sir,’ Tregalles agreed, ‘and we appreciate your cooperation, but we’re now pursuing another line of enquiry.’
Holbrook frowned as he turned to Paget. ‘I don’t understand,’ he said. ‘Another line of enquiry? What’s he talking about?’
‘There is evidence to suggest that the person who killed your wife did so deliberately,’ said Paget, ‘then tried to make it look as if it was done by the vandals who have been breaking into houses. If that turns out to be true, it opens up an entirely new line of investigation.’
‘But that’s preposterous!’ Holbrook spluttered. ‘Who would want to kill Laura? Of course it was done by the same people. They came in here to steal and wreck the place, and panicked when they found someone in the house.’
‘I can assure you we would not be pursuing this line of investigation if we didn’t think it relevant,’ Paget said firmly. ‘I’m not prepared to go into any details as yet, but what I can tell you is that there are elements of this crime that do not fit the pattern of the previous burglaries, and it would help us a great deal if we have your cooperation. I need to know as much as you can tell me about your wife, her background, who might benefit by her death, and if she had any enemies. I need to know if she has been involved in any arguments, received any threats, either at work or outside.’
Holbrook stared at him. ‘Enemies?’ he repeated. ‘Laura? You can’t be serious. We’re talking about my wife, for God’s sake! And what the hell are you implying when you say you want to know who benefits by her death? Are you suggesting that I had something to do with my own wife’s murder?’
‘Unfortunately, Mr Holbrook, it’s a question that must be asked in such cases,’ Paget told him. ‘We are looking for a motive, and that is always a possibility.’
Holbrook opened his mouth to protest again, but Susan reached out to put a restraining hand on his arm before he could speak. ‘Don’t, Simon,’ she said quickly. ‘There’s no point in getting upset. We all want to know who killed Laura, and if the chief inspector believes this may help, then let’s do what we can to help him.’
Angrily, Holbrook shook her hand off. ‘But that’s what they’re really saying, isn’t it?’ he snorted. ‘In their eyes, if I benefit by her death, then I must have killed her. Never mind that I was somewhere else at the time. That’s the way they think, Sue.’
‘No one’s accusing you, Simon,’ she said quickly.
‘Not much, they aren’t!’ he said heatedly, then rounded on Paget. ‘And for what it’s worth, I inherit everything Laura had, including her share of the business, and you can make what you like of that! But I did not kill my wife; so go ahead and ask your questions if you think it will do any good.’
Susan squeezed Holbrook’s arm. ‘Let’s go through to the kitchen, where we can all sit down and talk about this calmly,’ she said soothingly. ‘It’s the only room in the house that’s really clean,’ she explained. ‘I’ll put the kettle on.’
Paget was silent as they drove back to Charter Lane. It had been hard at first, getting Holbrook to calm down and talk rationally about his wife, and Paget suspected that it would have been a lot harder if Susan Chase hadn’t been there. But he had talked more freely and seemed more comfortable talking about his company.
He confirmed much of what Ormside had told them earlier. He acknowledged that the fledgling company he had begun with such high hopes had not done well in the beginning. ‘I was naïve,’ he confessed. ‘Developing products to meet specific needs wasn’t a problem; it’s what I’ve been doing for years, but what I failed to take into account was the importance of the sales and marketing side of things. If I do say so myself, I have a certain reputation in the field of miniaturization, and I suppose I thought that would be good enough, and buyers would come knocking on my door. Oh, a few with whom I’d had dealings when I was with Drexler-Davies did come, and we managed to stay afloat, but we were losing ground and on the point of going under when Laura came along. If she hadn’t come to the rescue, I might have had to consider going back to work for Drexler-Davies – they certainly kept after me to go back, but I would only have done that as a last resort.’
He’d stopped there, but Paget had prompted him to go on, asking for details. What was Laura’s background? Where had she come from? And what had she done to turn the company around in such a short space of time? He’d put the question to Holbrook, but it was Susan who had told them how Laura had become involved in the first place.
She confirmed what Moira Ballantyne had told them earlier. Laura, she said, had come down from London to attend their mother’s funeral two-and-a-half years ago, intending to go back the day after the funeral. But when she saw the state of their mother’s finances, she’d stayed on to help straighten things out.
‘Dad’s been in a nursing home for years, Alzheimer’s,’ Susan explained, ‘so he couldn’t help, but it was relatively easy for Laura because of her job as a forensic accountant. She’d been involved in auditing the books of some of London’s biggest companies, so sorting out mum’s finances was no problem for her, whereas it was nothing but a headache to me.’
She said it was while Laura was staying with her that Moira Ballantyne broke her wrist, and Susan persuaded her sister to take Moira’s place in their badminton foursome. ‘I forget how it came about, but something was said about Simon’s cash-flow problems. Laura became interested, and the next thing I knew, Laura said she was staying on to see if she could help Simon out.’
‘She understood exactly what our problems were,’ Holbrook broke in, ‘and she didn’t mince words. She said we needed to do three things in order to survive, and the first thing I had to do was get back in the lab where I belonged and lock the door. She was pretty blunt about it, too. “You’re a scientist, an innovator, and a good one,” she told me, “but you have absolutely none of the skills required to run a business, so get back to your bench and let someone who knows what they’re doing take over.” I must say it rankled a bit at first, but I knew she was right.
‘She said she’d been looking for an opportunity to get out of her present job and start a business of her own, but after looking at what we were trying to do here, she felt confident that, properly run, the firm had potential for growth and expansion, and she would like to be part of it. She said she’d be prepared to put up enough cash to pay off our debts and carry us through the next couple of years – Michael Southern, her late husband, was a financier in the City, and he left her very well off when he died – but only if I would agree to certain conditions.
‘She was prepared to buy into the firm in return for a twenty-five per cent slice of the pie, but she insisted on being given a free hand to run the administrative and marketing side of the business. In effect, she was asking me to turn over the running of my company to her, and I must admit that it took a leap of faith on my part. But I didn’t have a choice, so we agreed on a one-year trial period, at which time we would assess the situation.’
Holbrook leaned back in his chair. ‘Best decision I ever made,’ he said, ‘because from that day on we never looked back. Laura went through the company from top to bottom, and one of the first things she did was move us out of
our old cramped quarters into the building we’re in now. But best of all, she had contacts everywhere, some through her previous job, and some through the social circles in which she and Michael had moved, and orders began to roll in. Laura was . . .’
He stopped speaking in mid-sentence, and the faraway look in his eyes faded.
‘What is the point of all this?’ he demanded. ‘Because as far as I’m concerned, it isn’t getting us anywhere. None of this has anything to do with finding Laura’s killer.’
‘I realize it must look that way to you, but it does help,’ Paget told him, ‘because if we are right, and this burglary was staged to cover the killing of your wife, we need to know as much as possible about your wife, her background, her work, her friends and so on. And speaking of her work, I suspect there must have been quite an upheaval when she first joined your company. How did that go down with your employees?’
Holbrook made a face. ‘I’ll admit it wasn’t easy, those first few months,’ he said, ‘but people adapt; they realized that change had to come if their jobs were to be saved.’
‘Even so, sometimes people resent change, even when the objective is to save their jobs. And some can harbour grievances for a long time. Did anyone lose their job?’
‘No. Besides, that’s all in the past, so you’re wasting your time going down that road, Chief Insp—’ He broke off as the muffled sound of ‘Alexander’s Ragtime Band’ interrupted what he was about to say.
‘BlackBerry,’ he said tersely. ‘Turn the damned thing off, Sue. It’s in the jacket behind you. I’ll get it later.’
Dutifully, Susan reached into the pocket of his jacket and switched it off.
‘As I was saying,’ Holbrook continued, ‘if that is where this so-called evidence of yours is leading, it’s a non-starter. It may sound like a cliché, but I regard the people who work for me more like part of my family rather than employees.’