Not ‘one of us’, Lambert noticed: there was nothing odd about the reaction in a daughter, but she had carefully picked out the words which excluded herself from suspicion. He said, ‘I presume you know how?’
She nodded. ‘I can’t think who would have been cruel enough to poison Dad systematically over the weeks like that.’ So she knew the details and wasn’t going to shirk them now. She had talked to someone he had already seen, plainly. Not Walter Miller, unless by telephone: he had come almost straight from there, after he had set in motion the machinery to trace Andrew Lewis. In that case, either Margaret Lewis or David Craven had been in contact with her; he had no idea at this moment which was the more likely. It was inevitable during murder investigations that people should exchange notes about the direction of his inquiries; he had long accepted the fact. But it was often interesting to know who had been talking to whom. He dismissed the alternative speculation that Angela Craven had conferred with no one, but given herself away by her knowledge: murderers who planned as carefully as this one did not make such elementary errors. She added with sudden vehemence, ‘I hope you get the person who did it.’
‘We shall, Mrs Harrison. I can promise you that.’ The Chief Constable would have been proud of him. It was one of that luminary’s dictums that his officers should always exude confidence to the public. ‘May I ask who gave you the detail of your father’s murder, Mrs Harrison?’
She looked down at the old dog, poking him affectionately with her foot as he threatened to investigate areas polite dogs leave untouched in public. Then she said, ‘It was David who told me that Father had been killed by means of arsenic given in several doses to secure a cumulative effect.’ It was a clinical enough description for him to be reminded for an instant of Burgess in his pathology lab. It was strange to hear a daughter speaking thus about the death of a father; but murder and the shock it brought affected the innocent as well as the guilty in a multitude of different ways, which were rarely easy to forecast. Even more than with all the others, he wished he had seen this cool, enigmatic woman immediately after the death rather than thirteen months later. She said, ‘Beyond that, I know nothing of what you call the detail of the murder. Perhaps you can enlighten me.’
Lambert wondered if the smile with which he tried to ease the atmosphere was in bad taste; probably. ‘Touché, Mrs Harrison. As yet, we have no more knowledge of the murder than the method you have outlined, and you are right to underline the fact that that gives us depressingly little detail. We do not know yet whether the arsenic was administered through your father’s food or by other means. We do not know exactly when the fatal dosages were given. I have to tell you that until someone tells us such things, we are not likely to discover them for ourselves at this distance in time.’
‘And do you think someone will conveniently volunteer this information to you?’ She was mocking him now; whether humorously or bitterly, he could not be sure. Irony twinkled in the grey-green eyes, bringing a new attractiveness to the long face, with its lines of dignified suffering.
‘“Volunteer” would not be the right word, Mrs Harrison. But I expect us to assemble most of these facts in due course. Sometimes we only get the full picture after we have made an arrest, of course.’ It sounded like a threat, and he knew he was a little nettled. But a threat could be the right tactic, even to a grieving daughter. He must bear in mind always that she was a murder suspect: no sin for a man to labour in his vocation.
‘You will understand that I have to be interested in the relationship of all the people in any sort of contact with your father, both with him and with each other.’
‘With each other?’ Her surprise was so sharp that he wondered what she had to conceal here.
‘There is a strong incidence of collusion in cases like this. That opens up not only the possibility of a killing by one of the five in immediate contact with the deceased, but of a murder planned by someone outside that group, who used one of them to gain access to his victim.’
‘I see.’ Her eyes caught the daylight and were green for a moment as she looked past, gazing through the window to the rectangle of grey winter sky and the world of speculation. Her fingers drummed silently on the broad arm of her low chair while she weighed the idea and found she had to accept it. ‘I loved my father very much, Superintendent Lambert. I think anyone you question will confirm that.’
‘Indeed, they already have. I have been told, for instance, of your solicitude for him in the last months of his decline.’
She looked at him sharply, searching for any trace of irony or menace in the words. Although he was sure she was aware of the notion, she had scorned to arrange things so that they faced the light while she sat with her back to it. Lambert, remaining impassive, could see each move of those strong features; he recognised an opponent worthy of respect in this macabre game they had begun. Or an ally: only time would tell him that. She said, ‘I went regularly to Tall Timbers during the weeks of Dad’s decline, yes. I was concerned about him. With good reason, it now seems.’
He nodded. ‘You may in the process have seen things which could be helpful to us now. Things which assume importance only now that we know a murder was committed.’
‘I’ve been thinking about that already. But it’s a long time ago.’
‘And the memory plays tricks, for all of us. It will be difficult, for instance, for you to place events in their correct time sequence.’
She smiled grimly. ‘In books, someone often keeps a diary, which turns out to be very convenient for people like you.’
‘We’ve got a scene of crime team going carefully through Tall Timbers. I’m afraid they won’t come up with anything as useful as that.’
‘Or anything else at this distance in time, surely?’ She had voiced his own thoughts; but the due processes had to be observed. He was pleased that she was behaving as though they were on the same side in this.
‘You know that arsenic was used?’
‘Yes. Margaret Lewis told me.’
‘Can you recall anyone trying to obtain arsenic, or any behaviour which would now strike you as suspicious in that respect?’
‘No. Whoever used it might have had it for years, of course. It doesn’t deteriorate much. And it is present in some relatively innocent things; several garden insecticides contained it, before we all went green.’ She must have caught the look of speculation on Bert Hook’s face, for she said, ‘I used to work in a pharmacy many years ago, before I was married. I never qualified formally—Dad didn’t approve of education for women.’ This time her smile was bitter.
Lambert said gently, ‘And you didn’t defy him?’
She took his surprise as a compliment, as he had hoped: ‘I was a dutiful daughter, and my mum was already ill with cancer. Dad wouldn’t make up any grant that I got, and his income was such that it was financially impossible for me to do the course without his cooperation. I promised myself I’d do it later, and of course never got round to it. I’ve regretted it these last few years when money has been so tight. I do the odd locum for a dispensing chemist, but as I’m not formally qualified I’m paid accordingly.’
They were on the very ground Lambert wanted to explore, and she had led them there herself. He thought it was by accident rather than deliberately, but she was so direct in her responses to his questions that he could not be sure who was controlling the direction the discourse took. He thought that she was probably the rare sort of woman who had no small talk; and with the thought, he warmed to her as a kindred spirit. He said, ‘Your husband is a shadowy figure for us at this point—’
‘That is because he had no connection with my father.’
For the first time, she was defensive. ‘That in itself has to be of interest to us, Mrs Harrison. You must see that.’
Perhaps because he had credited her with the intelligence not to need longer explanations, she relaxed a little and did not argue. ‘My father loved me, Superintendent, despite what I have just told you of my
education. And I loved him.’ It was her second use that morning of a declaration he felt she did not use very often to strangers; she bit her lip gently before she continued. ‘That does not mean that he did not have his faults. They included a blind prejudice where religion was concerned. Bigotry seems to have gone out of fashion nowadays, except in Northern Ireland. Dad’s was very un-English. Sometimes I thought he was using it merely as a stick to beat a man he would never have taken to anyway.’
‘The man being your husband, Michael?’
She seemed surprised that he knew the name: that was the effect he had intended. The impression that the police were omniscient often made people reveal what they would have kept back from others. ‘Yes. He couldn’t win from the start so far as Dad was concerned. Michael was three years younger than me, and that wasn’t going to be right for someone as conventional as Dad. I was twenty-four at the time and Mum had just died: I think Dad had presumed without thinking about it that I would stay at home with him. That made him more bitter when someone carried me off. Especially when that someone was an unsuccessful artist, not a knight in shining armour.’
‘And you say your husband’s religion became a bone of contention?’
‘It was from the beginning. Michael is a Roman Catholic. A shifty papist, as Father called it. My dad was what he described as “an Anglican of the old school”. I’ve never been sure what he meant by that—sometimes I felt he wasn’t sure himself. Anyway, it gave him the grounds he was looking for to hate Michael.’
Lambert was surprised to hear that the shadowy Michael Harrison was anything as mundane as a Catholic: he had half-expected one of the minority religions that milked its flock of large sums for dubious purposes. He had himself been brought up as a Catholic, but apart from a few schoolboy skirmishes and a sardonic inspector twenty years ago, he had met little in the way of prejudice. Perhaps his doubt showed as he said, ‘And this was the major cause of the estrangement between your father and your husband?’
‘It became so. I married in a Catholic church and pledged myself to bring up any children as Catholics. I don’t think Dad thought that would actually happen until they came along. He blamed Michael for all of it. It was difficult to have a rational argument with him. He already had his heart trouble by then: perhaps it affected his judgements as well.’
‘I wanted to ask you about your father’s relationship with his grandchildren.’
She looked at him for a moment as if she were speculating about who had spoken to him about her offspring. He sensed that this woman, coolly elegant even in poverty, could become a dragon in defence of her children. Again he found himself applauding the quality: policemen saw too many examples of the dire results of parental neglect. ‘Dad was delighted at first, with both of them. He called James the heir of all the Cravens.’ She stopped for a moment, her face clouded by some unhappy recollection. ‘When Paula was born, he swore she was the image of me. In fact, she’s just like Michael, but my father couldn’t see that.’ Her face softened, lit by the pure pleasure of her mental image of her husband and her daughter together.
‘But your father’s affection for his grandchildren didn’t last?’
She shook her shoulders a little, bringing herself back to present realities. ‘No. At least, I don’t think he ever ceased to care for them, but he deliberately cut himself off. I think he was punishing me for marrying Michael and bringing them up as Catholics. It was his own loss, of course.’ She looked affectionately at the happy, posed photograph of a boy of about six with his arm protectively about the shoulders of his young sister. Seeing that their eyes had followed hers, she said, ‘That was Paula’s first day at school.’
‘That would be about the time when your father began to see them less?’
‘Yes. When it came home to him that they were to be brought up as Catholics. The climax came a little later when they made their first communions.’ She gestured at another of the photographs. They looked together at the open, happy faces of the children and mused upon the foolishness of their elders.
It was Bert Hook, speaking as if he wished to remind her that he was taking notes upon her private sorrows, who said rather clumsily over his notebook, ‘We heard from Mr Arkwright that your father made no reference to them in his will.’
‘No. He left money to me, though, so they were not forgotten.’ Her face had set suddenly into a proud mask. Perhaps it was remembered suffering that caused the effect; perhaps an eagerness to conceal the shame she felt in this area for a father she had loved; perhaps even a triumph that the children he had neglected would enjoy his riches in the end. It was impossible to tell, for the face was as unmoving as a stone Pharaoh’s.
Lambert said, ‘Your husband never managed to repair his relationship with your father?’
‘No. That was not his fault.’
‘You say he’s an artist?’
‘He was. That is to say, for a number of years he tried to make his living from his work. He got a certain number of commissions for portraits, and sold quite a lot of his landscapes, which are his real love. But it isn’t easy to make a living. Especially when the time comes for you to support a family.’ He could see her anxious face pleading the cause to an unsympathetic parent. ‘Michael eventually accepted the inevitable and took up teaching.’
The old Shavian cliché came automatically into Lambert’s mind. Those who can, do; those who can’t, teach. But perhaps it was only those who couldn’t meet the current fashions in art who had to teach nowadays. The oil over the mantelpiece that he took to be an example of Michael Harrison’s work had an air of menace that played curiously against its conventional Cotswold content of river and trees. Probably she had followed his thoughts, for she said defiantly, ‘He’s pretty good at teaching, actually. The local further education college wants him to go full-time.’ She had that strange glow which comes to a woman who would never think of boasting, except when she speaks with pride of her own family.
Lambert said, ‘I understand your husband commented adversely on your father’s paintings.’
Her face registered surprise, speculation and anger in quick succession. ‘Who told you that?’
‘I’m sure you will understand that I cannot disclose that.’
‘No.’ He could see her conjecturing about his informant before she sighed and said, ‘Well, it’s true enough. Dad used the old coach-house at the back of the garden as a studio: he used to be quite a keen amateur, though in my view never as talented as Mum.’ For a moment, there was another, older love in those unusual eyes. ‘Dad asked my husband for an opinion when relationships between them were already strained, and Michael was foolish enough to be honest. As a matter of fact, he doesn’t really know how to be anything else.’ Pride in the notion shone clearly on the strong features, and they saw something of what had attracted this dominant, desirable woman to the younger man.
Lambert wondered how many relationships had been ruined by honesty as uncompromising as Michael Harrison’s. It would not have cost even a dedicated artist so much to be ambivalent with the old man, surely. Perhaps Walter Miller’s conjecture that the impoverished professional had been jealous of the studio facilities enjoyed by the ungifted amateur was a shrewd one. The intelligent Mr Miller knew this family well and must not he underrated as a suspect.
Lambert looked at the picture of Michael Harrison with his wife, and saw a pleasant, slightly-built man with shrewd brown eyes. He was tidily dressed in casual clothes, with none of the bohemian extravagance of dress the public expects of its artists. He did not even have the almost obligatory beard. Two of the pictures caught him looking at his wife with something near adulation.
Lambert watched Bert Hook until he finished writing. Then he said, ‘You know that your father was planning a new will?’ She nodded, as though she did not trust herself to speak; for the first time, she was clearly anxious. Perhaps she thought he knew more about this than he did. To conceal his ignorance, he kept his question as general as possible.
‘Have you any idea of what the contents of the new will would have been?’
‘No.’ She looked at the carpet between them; he was sure now that she was worried about the extent of his knowledge. ‘Dad didn’t talk to me about it.’
Her expression made him think that he probably had. ‘But no doubt you have some idea of what he intended.’
She searched his face, found it uninformative, and switched her attention to Bert Hook; the Sergeant adopted what he hoped was an oriental inscrutability. Accepting eventually that she would have to speak, she said reluctantly, ‘I presume Dad meant to cut David out. He wasn’t pleased when he found David was going to sell the house.’
Lambert nodded slowly. ‘I know this can’t be easy for you, Mrs Harrison. But of course you must not withhold information in a case like this: I’m sure you appreciate that. I must ask you now whether you know, rather than merely suspect, that your brother would have been the chief sufferer in any re-writing of your father’s will.’
‘No. I should have told you if I had.’
‘And you had no reason to think your father might intend to cut out you or your children from his provisions?’
‘No.’ She must have been aware that they were on to her own motive now, but she gave them no more than the monosyllable. For a moment, he wondered quite how sane this calm, quiet woman was where her family was involved. Her face had set again, with the intense, unbalanced concentration of a child. Or an old person: Lambert saw for a moment in the strong face the woman she might become in old age, obstinately shutting out the world, pretending that for her it did not exist. He was sure she knew more about this: it was extremely unlikely that Edmund Craven would have made changes without consulting or informing this daughter who had been so concerned for him in his last weeks. But he was equally convinced that he would get no more from her at this stage.
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