‘No.’ His negative was so prompt that he thought it needed explanation. ‘I’ve thought about it, you see, since Mum told me it was murder.’
Hook nodded, looked at Lambert for instructions, received a slight shake of the head. He said, ‘Well, keep on thinking, there’s a good lad. And if you think of anything at all—any unusual food or drink brought into the house, for instance—let us know right away, it won’t get anyone into trouble if it was innocent. Remember that this was a very nasty crime indeed.’
Again, Hook looked at Lambert interrogatively, and found him now as uncommunicative as a sphinx: he was able to divine his chief’s secret amusement only because he had worked with him now for many years. He turned back to their suspect. ‘Why did you try to evade questioning today?’
Lewis gave them a perfunctory account of the young constable’s approach to him as he finished servicing the Lotus. It was enough for experienced men to deduce the full picture. He concluded dolefully, ‘Once I was in the car, I panicked. When the traffic patrol gave chase, I just put my foot down. I—I nearly had a bad crash in the end.’ Beneath the dirt, his soiled, too-young features were ashen with the recollection.
‘So I believe,’ said Hook drily. ‘I heard that if you hadn’t been a proper little Stirling Moss, there would have been a right pile-up.’
Andrew Lewis looked puzzled: Stirling Moss was a legend from an age before he was born; he was not sure whether he was being complimented or admonished.
Lambert spoke now, as Hook had been willing him to do. ‘It isn’t on our patch, and I’ve no jurisdiction over traffic police. But we’ll see what we can do to make sure no charges are preferred. I understand there was no damage to either the police vehicle or the Lotus you road-tested so thoroughly. Next time, try to assist us with our inquiries without so dramatic a prelude, please.’
Lambert disappeared to make the first lenient police arrangements which Andrew Lewis had ever experienced. It was Hook who took the call which came through from the murder room in Oldford. DI Rushton was urgent with news, but he was not going to waste it on a mere sergeant. ‘Is the Superintendent coming in to CID today?’ he asked brusquely.
‘I understand he intends to come straight to the murder room from here for a report. We’re just about to leave,’ Hook said stiffly.
‘Good. I’ll save it until you get here, then. Just tell the Super that the scene of crime team has come up with something extremely interesting at Tall Timbers.’
14
‘You didn’t tell them?’
‘No. Perhaps I should have done.’ Walter Miller gave a smile that was meant to relieve his anxious wife. It was so fleeting that she felt even more uncertain.
She said, ‘But it had nothing to do with Ed’s death.’
‘No. But they might not see it like that.’
‘I don’t see how they can find out.’ What she had meant as a statement emerged almost as a question: she was looking for reassurance.
‘They’re trying to piece together Ed’s habits and movements over his last year. They’re talking to everyone who was close to him. God knows what they’ll tell him about me.’
‘But they can’t know what happened all those years ago.’
He smiled. It was a grim, mirthless recognition of her naïvety. ‘You can’t be certain of that. I think Ed’s children do know, from their attitude, though obviously I’ve never discussed it with them.’
‘Obviously.’ Even after forty years, Dorothy Miller could not reconcile the contrast of his relaxed, transatlantic drawl with the terse import of the statements he was making. She felt that they were heading for the row she had never intended.
‘It may be that Margaret Lewis knows too,’ he said.
She felt a cold, hopeless annoyance that she could not be rid of this thing after all these years. ‘Are you sure you’re not imagining this? Giving a deliberate importance to something that will never be raised?’
He looked down into her white, angry face. ‘In their eyes, it gives me a motive, Dorothy. That’s all.’
He walked abruptly away from her into his study and shut the door. She heard him speaking on the phone to someone, and wondered whether it was one of those other suspects he had mentioned. A little while later he went out, without another word to her. She cursed the way the death of Ed Craven had come between them like this, reviving bitterness she had thought safely buried. Then, staring bleak and unseeing through the window, she began to contemplate the nightmare she had refused to countenance: the possibility that the husband whose bed she shared was a murderer.
*
Walter Miller drove out towards the Malvern hills. There, on a path where Elgar had walked and composed his most English of music while Miller was an infant, the elderly American began to climb away from the road and civilisation. In his tweed plus-twos and jacket, he looked more English than most of the natives who came here now.
There was a well-worn track at first, for he trod upon an ancient way where men had gone before him for over a thousand years. When he turned through a five-barred gate marked ‘Private’ and passed almost immediately by a smaller notice which allowed ‘No shooting without permit’, he was on a quieter, less distinct path, which ran through sporadic woodland. It was well into the afternoon of the short winter day, and one would not have expected his walk to be disturbed by any other human presence in that place, at that hour.
Yet one would have been wrong in that. Not more than five minutes after Miller, another man walked the same well-marked public path. At the point where the elderly American had moved from the public track on to private land, he turned to survey the ground behind him and the hill above, as if checking to see that he was not observed. If that was his purpose, he must have been satisfied, for there was no evidence of any other being over an area of several square miles.
David Craven looked at his watch. It was already almost four: there could be scarcely half an hour of twilight left. He turned on to the faint track that Miller had followed, lengthening his stride as he moved through the intermittent patches of scrub to the thicker wood beyond.
Craven was not dressed like an English country gentleman, as his predecessor had been, for he had come here with minimal notice. He had merely thrown a short car coat over his city suit, and he took care in his light shoes to avoid the dark patches where surface moisture turned into mud.
He carried, however, one accoutrement which might have been expected in someone moving here. Whether it was adopted merely so that his journey here might not excite comment, or whether he proposed any actual use of it, would be clear only with the passage of time.
Casually draped across his left arm, he carried a double-barrelled shotgun.
15
Like an old dog going back to its bed, Lambert was glad to re-enter the familiar environment of the CID headquarters at Oldford. No doubt the modern station where they had interviewed Andrew Lewis was more efficient in many respects, but he felt a cosy comfort now in the nineteenth-century stone building, which had been a school until its falling rolls made it available in the ‘eighties for the growth industry of crime prevention.
He felt so amiably disposed that he handed over the initial section of the conference in the murder room to Detective-Inspector Rushton. The course on ‘Resource Management’ which Lambert had recently attended at the police training school advised such moves where possible, and Rushton certainly appeared gratified by the role it accorded him.
‘Perhaps if I give us a quick overview of what is ongoing, we can then get down to the nitty-gritty,’ he said briskly.
Lambert winced inwardly, then smiled a sickly smile as he caught Hook’s delighted glance. It was the kind of thing the Sergeant might have concocted to bait him deliberately: he feared that Rushton’s Americanisms were quite unconscious. He braced himself not to groan if ‘parameters’ should rear their Cerberus-like heads in the ensuing development. Of the rest, only Dr Burgess, drawn here from his pathology lab by what he
sensed was an invitation from Rushton, to involve himself in the machinery of a police murder investigation, seemed to notice anything unusual in Rushton’s language. The three detective-constables merely bent forward in dutiful attention, the very embodiment, they hoped, of the razor-sharp awareness Rushton encouraged as the appropriate attitude in his team.
Rushton went on, ‘There have been one or two interesting things turned up by the scene of crime team. Perhaps we could come to those in a few minutes.’ Lambert already half-regretted his decision to hand over the conduct of the meeting. Rushton was stage managing it to make the maximum impact with his own news, but he could hardly be deprived of control at this stage. The Inspector said, ‘Perhaps we could pick Dr Burgess’s brains first, because I’m not sure how long he can stay.’
‘Wild horses would remove me only with difficulty,’ said Burgess graciously. ‘How can I be of assistance?’
‘Only, I think, in confirming and perhaps filling out the details of the poisoning. We know it was arsenic; can you give us any more details of how it was administered?’
Burgess leaned back and pressed the tips of his fingers together; they looked for a moment as though his immaculate dark blue worsted suit had been devised specifically as a background for their manicured perfection. ‘You will have read the official PM report by now. It does not do a lot more than make official what I told Superintendent Lambert in the early stages. Death was from arsenic poisoning, in what looks like three stages, from analysis of hair samples taken from the corpse.’
‘Can you tell us any more about the method of administration?’
Burgess might well have thought he had given them quite a lot from a corpse thirteen months old, but he was as enthusiastic as a schoolboy to be brought into that police preserve, the murder room. ‘No doubt arsenic was ingested in food or drink. One of its advantages for a poisoner is that the unfortunate recipient cannot detect the sorts of quantities which were probable here if they are placed in the right foodstuffs. Arsenic is soluble: one of the favourite methods back in the ‘thirties and ‘forties was to put it in chocolate or sweetmeats, but any strong-flavoured food or drink would do. If you mix it with sugar, you could cheerfully sprinkle it upon your corn flakes or muesli without detecting it.’ He beamed round the company of detectives, happy that he need not here disguise his normal robust curiosity in the face of violent death.
‘How easy is it to obtain?’ said Rushton, like a counsel carefully avoiding leading his witness.
‘Nowadays, quite difficult. It used to be in a lot of cosmetics; it’s still in quite a few, but generally in quite minute quantities. It also used to be used in quite lethal dosages in some garden insecticides. They have been withdrawn from sale to the public, but of course it’s quite possible that there would have been bottles in the garden shed at Tall Timbers which have been around for years. In the good old days of value for money, the quantities used in spraying were so small that, except in the largest gardens, bottles of insecticides normally lasted for years. I suppose in the hands of some more abstemious members of the fair sex, the same could be said for cosmetics. The snag for a poisoner with both cosmetics and insecticides is that arsenic is used with chemicals which are often nauseous: it might be more difficult to disguise its use from the victim. But there are ways: it would depend upon the skill of the murderer,’ he ended gnomically.
‘How long does arsenic keep?’ said Rushton.
Burgess settled back again, obviously delighted to be quizzed. ‘Virtually indefinitely. Arsenic has been found in bodies which have lain in the grave for as long as twenty-two years.’
‘If, therefore, someone had somehow obtained arsenic, it could have been kept, at Tall Timbers or elsewhere, for a number of years before this crime was committed?’ Rushton gave the impression of being very pleased with himself.
‘It could indeed. I have no doubt that there are lethal quantities of this highly useful substance lying in the dressing-table drawers of innocent-seeming ladies all over the country.’ He grinned around the guardians of the law at this happy thought.
‘Dr Burgess has an imagination bred on the more sensational branches of detective fiction,’ said Lambert, as his constables wondered what to make of this. ‘Most members of the public are, in his book, “mad, bad and dangerous to know”.’
Burgess’s smile was that of a man who sees he is winning the game. ‘You make my point for me, Superintendent. Poor, gentle Caroline Lamb would obviously have been tempted to poison the philandering Byron, if she had had the means available and he had remained in one place for long enough.’
Lambert was aware of the five assembled heads turning back towards him in unison, like those of tennis spectators. But it was Rushton who said severely, ‘Would you think, Dr Burgess, that someone administered pure arsenic in this way, rather than using some apparently innocent compound which contained arsenic?’
Burgess looked at him distastefully for a moment, unwilling to be recalled from the beguiling track of his exchanges with Lambert. Then a new thought enchanted him, so thoroughly that his relish for it became in the end positively beatific. ‘That would be my guess, Inspector. But only that: it couldn’t even be dignified as an opinion. I should have to say it was a guess in court. It’s no more, in fact, than a hunch.’ He rubbed his hands together enthusiastically. ‘I’ve always wanted to play a hunch.’ He ignored the blank faces of the constable to beam seraphically at Lambert.
The Superintendent said sternly, ‘But even if you are right, any one of the people who frequented the house in the last three months of Craven’s life could have made use of the stuff.’
‘Oh, indubitably,’ said Burgess happily. ‘It must be considerations like that that make your job of detection so absorbing and entertaining.’
Rushton felt he was in danger of losing control of this. He said hastily, ‘Perhaps we could consider what we know for certain, and our views on what I suppose might be called the inner ring of suspects.’ He looked uncertainly at Lambert. ‘I suppose we should ask Dr Burgess to withdraw for this part of our meeting.’
Lambert looked at the pathologist’s eyes, which were pleading with a childish intensity not to be excluded from the adults’ conversation; he was aware that Burgess was doing what Rushton would no doubt call ‘sending himself up’. He said drily, ‘I’m sure it would be useful for Dr Burgess to stay—if he can manage the time, of course. He might be able to offer us useful guidance on the possibilities of various speculations we might make. I’m anxious to encourage speculation, behind our own doors, in the absence of more tangible evidence.’
DI Rushton, who thought he had some tangible evidence, held his peace with difficulty. If his chief chose not to play things by the book and allow non-police personnel into an exchange of views of this kind, it had better be on his own head, even if it meant that control of this particular crime seminar was returned to him.
Lambert watched the DI for a moment, assessing his silence, before he said, ‘There appear to be five people in what Inspector Rushton calls our “inner ring” of suspects. Or can anyone add to or reduce that number?’ Heads shook glumly around him; the constables looked at Rushton, but he said nothing. Lambert said with a sigh, ‘Perhaps in due course some will appear more suspect than others. Can we begin with Edmund Craven’s two children? As we all know, a domestic murder by a near relative is statistically the strongest possibility.’
The only one who seemed prepared to speak was Bert Hook, who said at a nod from his chief, ‘If we’re asked to speculate, David Craven has got to be the favourite. He’s a pretty shady operator; we know now that five years ago he was trying to bribe local councillors who were members of the Planning Committee, though of course it never came to court. We know from his sister and Margaret Lewis that he had had a serious quarrel with his father about the future of Tall Timbers; indeed, he admitted as much himself when we saw him. He doesn’t like Margaret Lewis—’
‘Which could yet be in his favour,�
�� said Rushton unexpectedly. He was cutting down the Sergeant in the midst of his rather ponderous stride. With a spurt of irritation, Lambert realised that these two did not like each other at all; if this was going to get in the way of their work, he would need to sort it out. Everyone looked to Rushton to enlarge upon his enigmatic interruption, but he said tersely, ‘Carry on, please.’ Only his antipathy to Hook had drawn him into words he now regretted.
Bert said magisterially, ‘He doesn’t like Margaret Lewis, and she plainly has no great love for him. Indeed, no one except his sister appears concerned to defend him. We haven’t so far pinned down the exact details of the new will which his father planned, but every indication is that David Craven would have been the loser. He seems to think so himself. He already had planning permission confirmed for the site of Tall Timbers and he stood to make a packet when he inherited. Two further points: his property company was in a pretty desperate state, so that he couldn’t afford to wait too long to get his hands on the site; and he came regularly to the house in those last weeks of his father’s life, as he had not been doing earlier.’
Lambert said, ‘Plenty of motive, I agree. And quite a bit of circumstantial support for your choice, Bert. Nothing that would get us a conviction yet—unless anyone else can add to the picture?’
As he looked round hopefully, DC Green, the youngest of the men on the case, said diffidently, ‘He always looks so guilty when he’s around the site. We saw him there several times when we were gathering the scene of crime material. We felt he might be looking for something in the house, but we never caught him searching. Of course, he’s every right to be in what is his own house, even if he isn’t living there.’
Rushton was prepared to discourage such rambling thought, but Lambert said cheerfully, ‘Keep your eye on him, though, as far as you can. Do you think he’s found what he’s been looking for?’
Bring Forth Your Dead Page 13