[Lambert and Hook 20] - Something Is Rotten

by J M Gregson

  He knew he had one unusual thing to report to the revered Chief Superintendent Lambert, and he couldn’t quite keep the excitement out of his voice as he said, ‘We found just one thing we wouldn’t have expected to find. It was in the right-hand pocket of his jacket.’

  ‘And what was that?’

  The SOCO chief led them across to the little portable table which he had set up to receive the gatherings from the area of the death. He pointed to the central item in its carefully sealed plastic bag, trying not to feel like a conjurer completing a trick.

  The small Beretta pistol looked almost like a toy or a stage prop in a more modern production than Hamlet. As if to assure them that it was something more genuine and dangerous, the SOCO man said softly, ‘It’s loaded. It hasn’t been fired.’ He looked across to the point where the legs of the corpse were disappearing without much dignity into the van. ‘Probably the poor bugger never had a chance to use it.’

  ‘But it does mean that he was probably expecting trouble,’ said Lambert.

  Ten

  Andrew Dalrymple opened the wide oak door at the top of the three stone steps. The detached Edwardian house with the Virginia creeper clothing its walls was one of the tangible proofs of his success as a businessman. Normally he enjoyed strolling through its high rooms and corridors, but today was different. He looked down at the two CID men below him. His gaze was not welcoming.

  Andrew had heard of this man Lambert, who was something of a local legend, but he’d never seen him before. He couldn’t have said what his image of a successful detective was, but this wasn’t it. He decided that he’d been expecting someone shorter and more powerful, and certainly squatter of feature and less intelligent-looking. The man who now introduced himself as Chief Superintendent Lambert was tall and slim, with a long, lined face and grey eyes which seemed to see more than you wanted to offer him. He seemed to be already assessing Dalrymple, who wasn’t even the person he had come here to see.

  Andrew turned his attention to the shorter, less threatening figure whom his chief designated as Detective Sergeant Hook. He managed to give this man with the weatherbeaten outdoor face a smile before he said, ‘Maggie already knows you, doesn’t she?’

  ‘Mrs Dalrymple was the one who got me involved in the play,’ said Bert Hook. He had meant this merely as an explanation, but it had emerged sounding rather like a complaint.

  ‘Yes.’ Andrew smiled again, more genuinely this time. ‘Maggie’s a bit of an organizer, isn’t she? And she’s a habit of getting her own way. But she was pleased she’d got you involved. She said you were going to be good.’

  Lambert said impatiently, ‘We need to see Mrs Dalrymple, as DS Hook explained on the phone.’

  ‘She’s not fit to see anyone. She’s - well, as you’d expect, she’s shocked and upset at the moment.’

  Hook said, ‘Everyone involved in the play will be shocked and upset by what happened to Terry Logan last night, Mr Dalrymple. Nevertheless, we need to speak to your wife now, whilst anything from last night which may be relevant remains fresh in her mind.’

  Andrew Dalrymple gave Hook a look of distrust. He said firmly, ‘You’ll have to come back again. Perhaps this evening, perhaps tomorrow. I’ll let you know later today when you can—’

  He stopped at the sound of a door opening in the hall behind him. Margaret Dalrymple came forward and spoke with a quietness which was unusual for her. ‘It’s all right, Andrew, I’ll see them now. They have a job to do. Just the same as you have a business to run.’

  It sounded like an appeal for him to be on his way out of the house, but he said stubbornly, ‘If you’re going to insist on being brave, I’m going to insist on staying with you for this meeting.’

  She shrugged, as if she hadn’t the strength or the will to argue further, or to overrule him with her usual forcefulness. She turned away and led them through the first door off the hall and into a front room which was obviously used as a dining room. There she invited them to sit down. They pulled out upright chairs and sat down facing her across the antique mahogany table. After a moment’s hesitation, her husband sat down awkwardly beside her.

  She jutted her jaw at her visitors and said with a suggestion of her normal assertiveness, ‘I shan’t be able to help you, but fire away with your questions. I understand why you’re here. I know a little about the law and the way you operate. I realize that you have to follow your usual procedures and go through the formalities of questioning me.’

  Lambert let that pass. ‘How long had you known Mr Logan?’

  A quick, instinctive glance between the two people opposite him. Then Margaret Dalrymple looked back at him with a slightly guilty air. ‘A long time. Fifteen to twenty years, I suppose. You must understand that I’m very much involved in local affairs. I’m a JP and a parish councillor, and have chaired various committees. I come across a lot of people. Most of them I don’t know very well.’ She stopped abruptly, seemingly aware that she was talking too much in answer to a simple opening question.

  ‘Mrs Dalrymple, can you—?’

  ‘Call me Maggie. Everyone else seems to. I’ll feel easier if you do. DS Hook already knows me as Maggie from the play. And I’ve got used to calling him Bert.’ Her little, uncharacteristic giggle emphasized how nervous she was. She gave another involuntary glance at her husband.

  Lambert relaxed his own intensity with a small answering smile. ‘How did you meet Mr Logan?’

  ‘Let me see. I was on his school governing body, many years ago. I came across him because of the plays he produced there. He was excellent at drawing good work from children, you know.’

  Bert Hook said, ‘He was a good director in any context, I should think. I appreciated that much, even from my very limited experience with him. Was it you who recruited him for the Mettlesham Players?’

  ‘No.’ The negative came too promptly and too vehemently on the heels of his question. ‘I don’t know who did that. It might have been anyone concerned with the group. Terry was, as you say, Bert, a very talented man. He acted quite a bit in his early days with the Players, and he was very good. But I think we all realized that his greatest talent was for direction, and we were always happy to persuade him to exercise it. In amateur dramatics, a lot of people want to be on stage; there are not many people who are both able and willing to direct productions.’ Her husband reached across and put his hand briefly on top of hers; he seemed to be trying to stop her saying too much for it to seem like a natural reaction to a simple question. She was plainly in shock; she stared down at his hand as if she could not fathom how it had come to be there. They could see by the hollowness of her eyes and the swelling of her cheeks that she had been crying.

  ‘You were clearly very fond of Mr Logan,’ Lambert said.

  She looked up at him as if that were an accusation. ‘We had known each other a long time. When you work as a team in the theatre, it brings you very close. His death is a great shock to me.’

  Lambert studied her for a moment, in the dispassionate, objective way which people always found disconcerting. ‘It must have been a great shock to everyone who was at Mettlesham Village Hall last night. Except for one person. Or perhaps two, if we decide that this killing was a joint crime.’

  ‘I can’t believe that it was one of us who did this.’ Her voice faltered a little.

  Hook could scarcely recognize in this suffering woman the dominant middle-class female whom he had found so intimidating as she had dragooned him into Hamlet.

  Lambert said, ‘It’s theoretically possible that the killer could be someone outside that group, but a random killing does not seem likely. Nothing seems to have been removed from the body, so we can rule out theft as a motive.’

  Andrew Dalrymple resisted the temptation to look at his wife. ‘Logan was a man with many enemies. You shouldn’t just assume that it was one of the people involved in the play. Someone else could have known that he was going to be in the village hall and waited for his opportunity.’


  Lambert did not take his eyes off the woman beside him. ‘Would you agree with that, Mrs Dalrymple?’

  She glanced from one to the other of the detectives, and Hook thought for a moment that she was going to insist again on being addressed as Maggie. Then she dropped her eyes to the table and said, ‘Andrew’s right. Of course he is. Terry was a very talented man, but he went his own way. I’m sure he made enemies along that way.’

  Lambert knew that silence could only work in his favour with a woman as much on edge as this one. He allowed several seconds to stretch out before he spoke again. ‘Indeed. And of the people who were with you last night, which ones do you think hated him enough to kill him?’

  Andrew Dalrymple was about to intervene again, but she raised her hand no more than three inches, in a strangely moving and compelling gesture which all of their eyes followed. ‘That’s an impossible question, Mr Lambert. I scarcely know some of the people there.’

  ‘You know more than I do, Maggie.’ For the first time, he used the name she had asked him to use. ‘One of the problems with murder is that the victim can never speak for himself. We are left to build up a picture of his life and his relationships with the people around him through the statements of those who are left. You have told us that you had known this victim for many years. We are asking you to help us to construct the picture we need to have.’

  ‘I understand that. But I am as shocked by this death as anyone. I can’t think straight at the moment. It seems inconceivable that anyone who was in that hall last night could have been planning to kill Terry.’

  ‘It didn’t seem so unlikely to Mr Logan. We think he knew that his life was in danger.’ She stared straight at him, her brown eyes widening in horrified speculation. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘He was carrying a loaded pistol in his jacket pocket. Unless someone convinces us that he was planning aggression towards someone else, we must presume that he felt that he might need to defend himself.’

  She stared at him for so long that he thought she was not going to react. Then she said, ‘How did he die?’

  It was a question which the innocent should have asked much earlier in the interview. He watched her closely as he said, ‘His throat was cut. It appears that he was probably taken by surprise from behind. The pathologist tells us that his assailant could have been a man or a woman.’

  She looked as if she had been struck in the face. Lambert remembered how Hook had told him on the way here that she had surprised him by her competence as an actress. He had no means of knowing whether she was exercising that talent now. She dropped her eyes to the table again, said only, ‘Poor Terry!’ in a voice that they could scarcely hear.

  Hook, who had his notebook at the ready, said apologetically, ‘We need an account of your own movements last night, Maggie.’

  An outraged Andrew Dalrymple was about to intervene, but she stilled him again by that oddly effective minimal raising of the back of her hand. ‘We rehearsed the opening court scene in Hamlet, in which all of the people there were involved. Then Terry gave us some notes and dismissed all of his cast except Polonius, Laertes and Ophelia. That is to say, yourself and Becky Clegg and Jack Dawes. I went out and drove away. I was home before ten o’clock.’

  It was delivered in a flat monotone. Almost as if it had been carefully prepared before they arrived, thought Hook. But this was plainly a woman in shock - though he supposed you might well be suffering from the aftershock if you had committed a premeditated murder ten hours or so earlier.

  Andrew Dalrymple spoke a little too hastily. ‘I can confirm that. It means, of course, that my wife was nowhere near the scene of this crime at the time when it happened.’

  Lambert said dryly, ‘We do not have a precise time for this death as yet. But I take your point. We shall probably need to speak to both of you again at a later stage of our investigation. In the meantime, I remind you that if you should recall anything which might have a bearing upon this killing, it is your duty to inform us of it immediately.’ Maggie Dalrymple allowed her husband to leave her at the table as he saw them out of the house. He shut the door of the dining room carefully behind him and led them to the front door. ‘Logan was a man with a lot of enemies,’ he insisted again. ‘You’re going to have a wide field for this crime.’

  He watched the CID men as they got into their car, then remained standing on the doorstep for a full minute until he saw it disappearing round a bend in the lane four hundred yards away and was assured that they had gone. Then he went slowly back into the dining room and found that his wife had not moved. She was staring fixedly at the table and looking quite exhausted.

  He spoke awkwardly, for he was not used to being the dominant one in this home. ‘I could use a drink, but I suppose it’s a bit early in the day for that. If you go into the sitting room, I’ll make us a coffee and bring it through.’

  Still she did not move. Eventually he went over and stood behind her, putting his hands on her shoulders. She remained motionless, not even reacting to his touch.

  He was wondering what to do next when she said, ‘You don’t know what time I came in from the rehearsal last night. You weren’t here when I got home.’

  Eleven

  ‘The identity of the man found dead in rural Gloucestershire last night has now been released. He was Terry Logan, a schoolteacher and a leading figure in local amateur dramatics. We understand that he was directing rehearsals for a production by the Mettlesham Players at the time of his death. Police are treating the death as suspicious.’

  Sally Dawes left the radio on, but there wasn’t any other reference to the death. She stared at the battered black set as if it were a live thing, deliberately choosing to hold information from her. Jack had been out at Mettlesham last night. And she didn’t know when he had come home. It must have been after she’d gone to bed and gone to sleep. When was that? She ran a hand through her peroxided hair, feeling it stiff against her fingers, pressing her knuckles into the scalp beneath. She couldn’t be sure of times: she’d had a few drinks last night - surprise, surprise!

  She heard the front door slamming hard and went back to her magazine. Jack came in, looked hard at the radio, then at his mother. ‘You don’t usually listen to Radio Four. Trying to educate yourself, are you?’

  She didn’t want his cruel mood. Not the sneering and the insults about the life she led. Not today: she hadn’t the strength to fight with him today. She said to him as though it were an accusation, ‘It’s made the national news now, Logan’s death. Foul play is suspected.’

  Sally didn’t know why she used that official, legal, old-fashioned phrase. It was probably because of the nightmare of speculation in which she had lived her morning. Her son had gone out as soon as they’d heard it on the local radio, without even finishing his toast. Early for Jack, it had been: he was usually still in bed at that time. He hadn’t wanted to be with her, to talk with her about the news. Now, three hours later, he was back, and he was in one of those excited, reckless moods which she feared most.

  ‘You must be glad Logan’s dead,’ he said. ‘You’d have killed him yourself, at one time, if you’d thought you could have got away with it.’

  She didn’t want to talk about that. There was something vicious in his tone. She wanted only to be assured that the odd, dangerous young man whom she loved was not involved in this death. After the welter of different emotions which had beset her during the morning, she now felt bewilderment descending upon her. Sometimes she felt she didn’t even want to love Jack, really, yet she knew that she did.

  Not for the first time, Sally Dawes found the mysteries of motherhood beyond her. Feeling the words dragged from her against her inclination, she said, ‘You were out there yourself last night. In Mettlesham.’

  ‘Yes. Joining the cast in a Shakespeare play. Making the kinds of contacts my dear mother thought were appropriate for me.’ He made it into an accusation, enjoyed watching the hurt it brought to that pretty, vacuous
face which was running so fast into middle age.

  ‘They obviously think Logan was murdered.’

  ‘They? Oh, the police, I expect you mean. Well, they often do, when a man’s found with his throat cut from ear to ear and no knife in his hand. Even the pigs begin to suspect things, when they come upon something like that.’

  Her blue eyes widened in horror. She wanted to turn them upon her son, to see innocence proclaiming itself in his thin, astute, handsome face. But she could not do it. She stared at the worn patch in the carpet for two, three, four long seconds. Her voice was scarcely more than a whisper as she said, ‘There’s been nothing on the radio about the way he died. I’ve been listening all morning.’

  ‘Yes, I expect you have. That’s what I’d have expected. You’re very predictable.’

  ‘Is that how he died?’

  ‘Ask no questions and you’ll be told no lies.’ He swept across the room to where she sat at the table and brushed his thumb playfully across her nose. ‘Cor, it’s hot in here, Mum. You should open a window and let in some fresh air!’ He busied himself with freeing the rickety catch on the dusty wooden window frame.

  She looked at his muscular back and the black hair at the nape of his neck and forced out the words she did not want to voice. ‘Jack, how do you know the way he died, when there’s been nothing to tell you about it on the radio or the television?’

  He whirled on her, and she flinched at the suddenness of his movement. Then he controlled himself, smiled, looked at her with the affection which was another part of his complex make-up. It was important to him that he should convince her of this. He tapped the side of his nose, preparing the cliches he needed, and said, ‘Wheels within wheels, Mum. I have my contacts. You get to know things on the grapevine, when you move in the circles I do.’

  She looked at him, wanting to be convinced, responding automatically to the cheeky, boyish grin he had fixed upon his face. It was a little while before she said weakly, ‘You’d tell me, wouldn’t you, if there was anything wrong? I’ve not been a good mother to you, but it’s not always been easy, with being on my own, and—’