Dead on Course

by J M Gregson

  ‘And you weren’t selling it to others. As far as anyone could prove.’ There might have been a hint of irony in Lambert’s even tones, but it was impossible to be certain.

  She flashed him a basilisk glance of pure hate, then cast her eyes sharply down, as if she realised belatedly that they divulged too much. They were very beautiful eyes and she had used them countless times to manipulate men; it was disconcerting now to find them revealing so much she would have wished to conceal. She said, ‘I never traded. I was in the theatre, and everyone used pot then.’

  He knew enough for that to ring true. But there was no reason why he should concede it to her now: his task was to unmask a murderer. Or murderess; but probably that was an outdated term in these days of equality. No doubt Ms Peters would call herself an actor. ‘Perhaps your companions did use pot. But it was a criminal offence, and you were found guilty.’

  ‘I was only twenty-one. I haven’t been in court since.’

  Her phrasing suggested to an ear tuned to such protestations that she had been near to it on some occasions. But perhaps she was just unfortunate in her choice of words. The conviction was fourteen years behind her: that made her thirty-five. She looked it, but she was a woman whom the years enhanced rather than reduced, up to a certain point. Her figure had not thickened at the waist, her hair was still as dazzling as in her youth, her face not yet seriously lined. It was the kind of face that experience made more exciting as it built upon the blanker beauty of youth. Lambert said, ‘Did Harrington know about your drugs conviction?’

  The abrupt transfer from her own problems to the central issue of the interview stilled the last of her truculence. Her troubled face revealed too much: they saw her consider whether to lie, decide against it, and say reluctantly, ‘Yes.’

  ‘How?’

  She shrugged the shapely shoulders automatically. ‘He knew most things.’

  ‘And how did he come to know this one?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Now she was lying; her face set like a child’s, obstinate in denial yet not expecting to be believed.

  ‘Was it not from your own lips?’

  The green eyes, dark now with anger and apprehension, flashed to his for a moment, speculating on how much he knew. ‘It might have been. But I think he knew before—’

  Her voice dropped away hopelessly. It was almost a mercy when he said gently, ‘Before what, Miss Peters?’

  ‘I had an affair with Guy Harrington. I suppose you know that: you seem to know everything.’ She said it bitterly, and he made no attempt to deny it. An impression that the CID were omniscient was a most useful delusion to foster in the public.

  ‘How long ago was this?’

  ‘It ended four years ago last month.’

  Very precise: he wondered what should be deduced from that. ‘And it had lasted for how long?’

  ‘Seven months.’

  Again the detail. He decided she must have expected this to come out and thought about her answers. It made him wonder how important the affair was in the case. ‘Did Mrs Harrington know about this relationship?’

  He had expected her to bridle before now at his impertinence; she showed no sign of doing so. ‘I expect she did. She’s not stupid, and I wasn’t the first. Nor the last.’ Her smile was at her own expense, but it lit up the pale face for a moment. That face had no doubt caused anguish to many men in its time; now it seemed to be recognising the irony of its rejection.

  That thought prompted Lambert’s next question. ‘Who ended the affair, Miss Peters?’ She looked at him sharply at last, so that he added, ‘I’m sorry to probe so far, but you will appreciate that we need to know as much as we can about the victim’s past in a death of this sort.’

  There was a touch of the contempt with which she had begun as she said, ‘I suppose so. But you’ll find this has nothing to do with it. Anyway, it was Guy who ditched me, if you must know.’

  ‘I’m afraid I must. I appreciate your candour, Miss Peters, but I should have to ask other people about this if you refused to talk about it. It gives you, after all, a common motive for murder.’

  ‘“Nor hell a fury like a woman scorned,” you mean?’

  He bowed his head in unconscious acknowledgement. ‘You have the quotation accurately, unlike most people who use the thought.’

  ‘I appeared in Congreve when I was at drama school. I told you I was an actress, Mr Lambert.’

  So he was wrong about that: she had chosen the term he would have used himself. He must check any other assumptions he made about her. ‘About a fifth of murders in Britain involve what are loosely called “crimes of passion”. So we would be wrong not to investigate any possibility of that kind. Unfortunately for the perpetrators, it is a concept treated more sympathetically in French law than in English or Scottish courts. Why did Harrington end the affair?’

  He had hoped to surprise her into some revelation by the abruptness of the question, but he did not succeed. She gave a rueful smile; it was not a habitual expression for her, but it made her look very attractive. ‘There was nothing very complicated about it. He moved on to pastures new. I knew I wasn’t the first woman he’d had, by a long chalk. And I’d had enough experience to know better. But we all think we’ll be different from the rest. Or at least that we’ll be cool enough to end it in our own good time. Guy took up with a girl in his office and laughed in my face.’

  ‘Forgive me, but detectives can’t allow the dead to rest in peace. We have to build up a picture of a man who isn’t here to speak for himself. I must ask you what kind of man you think Harrington was.’

  Again she gave that curiously unguarded smile at herself and her foolishness. ‘You don’t have to apologise, Superintendent. Guy was a bastard. Attractive enough, ready with charm and money when he wanted something. Women don’t acknowledge to themselves how important money is, you know. At the time you think it’s incidental, but it greases the wheels of an affair, especially in the early stages. Sometimes I’m not very fond of my own sex and the way we deceive ourselves.’

  Lambert waited to see if she would enlarge upon this generality, but she merely looked at him wryly when he didn’t immediately press on. Perhaps she thought she had pushed herself up the list of suspects by her bitterness about the dead man. He said, ‘How much did Mrs Harrington know of her husband’s activities?’

  ‘As much as she cared to, I think. Marie is highly intelligent and pretty clear-sighted. I told you I think she knew all about our affair, though she chose not to mention it to me. Probably she knew it would run its course, like others before it.’

  ‘How much do you think she resented her husband’s activities?’

  Meg Peters shrugged her beautifully rounded shoulders. ‘Impossible to say. I’ve asked myself that before: I’m not entirely insensitive to the feelings of others. I don’t know what there was left in the marriage, if anything. She doesn’t give much away.’

  Lambert nodded. Just as much as she cares to, he thought, remembering the elegant grey-haired woman who had been so disconcertingly insistent on identifying the body at the scene of the crime. Both she and the woman in front of him would have had the will and the drive to push a man to a mortal fall if the spirit had moved them to it. He said, ‘I hope you will understand that I have to ask this. How serious is your present relationship with Mr Nash?’

  For a moment he thought she was about to erupt. Then she relaxed visibly; how much this came from a conscious effort he was unable to determine. ‘Very serious. We intend to get married in two months’ time.’

  ‘Will your wedding distress anyone?’

  It was curiously phrased, but she understood him readily enough. ‘No. Tony is already separated. I have no other serious commitments. No one will be anything but pleased, now that Harrington is dead.’ She brought the idea in almost as a challenge; her small chin jutted defiantly forward beneath the full lips.

  ‘He didn’t approve of the match?’

  ‘He approved of very littl
e that he hadn’t arranged himself. And Tony was an employee. Guy was like a mediaeval lord of the manor where they were concerned. Thought he should control everything, from their religion to whom they married. Not that he concerned himself much with religion!’ she added as an afterthought.

  ‘Why didn’t he want Tony Nash to marry you?’

  ‘I’ve thought about that a lot over the last few months. I think he couldn’t bear that a former mistress of his, even a discarded one, should bind herself to another man. Not under his nose with one of his senior employees.’

  She looked up at him anxiously, confirming his suspicion that there was more to this business than she had told him. ‘And what else had he against your marriage?’ he prompted gently.

  The green eyes gazed steadily at her high-heeled shoes as she said, ‘I don’t think Guy liked the idea of his sexual preferences being leaked to one of his employees. Actually, Tony and I never speak of him, least of all in our more intimate moments, but Guy wouldn’t have understood that. He was always anxious to dig the dirt on anyone himself.’

  ‘And there were things about himself that he wouldn’t have cared to reveal?’

  ‘There are things about most of us that we wouldn’t care to reveal, Mr Lambert.’ For a moment it was she who was in charge and he the gauche stumbler among things he did not comprehend. She did not exploit it. ‘Guy was like a lot of sexually aggressive men: secretly ashamed of what he asked in the stress of passion. He was into bondage; he was titillated by chains and leather underwear.’

  It was very quiet in a room that now seemed over-warm. Bert Hook, concentrating with all his will upon his slow round handwriting, found this did not blur the vividness of the visions of the opulent Meg Peters which thrust themselves upon his mind’s eye.

  Lambert said, ‘And you think he was afraid you would reveal his preferences to your fiancé?’

  She nodded; a red tress fell over her left eye, and she brushed it impatiently away. ‘I’m certain of it. And he thought Tony would have made use of the knowledge to get some kind of hold over him. He would certainly have done that himself in the same circumstances, and he couldn’t believe anyone else would behave differently.’

  Lambert watched her closely as he said, ‘Harrington is emerging from the various conversations I’ve had as a decidedly unattractive character. A dangerous enemy, perhaps. Had he any means of harming you, beyond what we have already discussed?’

  She looked at him in surprise; above the turquoise of her blouse, he was sure he caught fear in those wide green eyes. For a second she studied him, estimating what he might know. Then she dropped her eyes again and said softly, ‘No. Nothing.’

  He waited, stretching the moment, hoping the tension would draw her into something more revealing. He said with minatory severity, ‘It would be far better to tell us everything now, Miss Peters. You have already been very helpful.’

  ‘Too helpful, it seems.’ She was almost back to her opening hostility. ‘All my frankness has done is to make you press me for information I do not have.’

  There was enough actress in her for her angry disdain to carry some conviction, but she did not meet his eyes as she had done earlier. He was convinced there was something more, but equally certain that he would not extract it now, for her lips had set in a determined line. He wondered if any of the others in the group knew what it was that she was so anxious to conceal. It must be very personal, in view of what she had already revealed.

  He said abruptly, ‘Tell me about the quarrel between Harrington and your fiancé during his last meal.’

  Perhaps he was piqued by her refusal to tell him more, for the question was delivered like a sudden slap across the face. But she showed only relief at the return to an area she had expected to speak about. ‘Tony took exception on my behalf to one of Guy’s insults. He should have known better, but it was sweet of him.’

  ‘What exactly did Harrington say?’

  ‘I’m not sure of the precise words. I don’t think I caught them, even at the time. But in effect, Guy called me a tart.’

  ‘And you reacted angrily?’

  Her smile had a touch of disdain for a man who could think her so predictable. ‘On the contrary, I refused to be drawn. I had seen Guy play his games too often to react in the way he wanted. Unfortunately, Tony felt compelled to defend my honour.’ Her use of the conventional phrase implied derision, but her smile was full of fondness for a headstrong lover who could react with such adolescent outrage.

  ‘I understand he made Harrington apologise for his remarks.’

  ‘He did indeed. I was grateful, but it was unnecessary.’

  ‘Are you sure you can’t recall exactly what those remarks were?’

  She coloured a little as she said, ‘I’m afraid I can’t, Superintendent. Surely the exact words aren’t crucial?’

  He was sure she remembered them perfectly, and her reticence quickened his interest in their importance. No one else had been able to give him the exact words which had provoked Nash’s outburst, or even recall the nature of the insult. If it had been personal to Meg Peters, perhaps only she had understood the sharpness of this particular shaft. And she was keeping the information to herself.

  Lambert said crisply, ‘You will understand on reflection that I must be interested in the last conflict of a man who was murdered four hours later. If you or Mr Nash suddenly recall the words which caused that dispute, no doubt you will convey them to us immediately. Now, would you please give me an account of your movements when the party broke up at the end of the evening?’

  ‘Most of us had drunk quite a lot.’ She was the first one to have admitted that. ‘I went for a pee as soon as we broke up.’ She spoiled whatever effect she intended by glancing up to see if he was shocked. For years he had operated in city slums, where such phrasing might be considered a euphemism; now he did not even acknowledge it. ‘Then I went back to our room. Tony was already there.’

  That was volunteered too readily: she had been determined to say it, as if it offered him a kind of alibi. And it did not tally with his account: he had said that he had met her at the door. He said, ‘You’re sure of that?’

  ‘Quite sure.’ It came a little too pat, with no pause for thought. Perhaps she had not been a very good actress: with the advantage of her striking looks, she should perhaps have made more of an impact than she had.

  ‘How long was this after the party broke up for the night?’

  This time she did think, or affect to do so. ‘Perhaps twenty minutes. I couldn’t be exact.’

  ‘Of course not. And how was the rest of the time occupied, after you had emptied your bladder?’

  He was more successful in surprising her than she had been with him. She looked at him quickly, then grinned ruefully, as if accepting that she had been outsmarted in a small, irrelevant game. Then she said, resolutely unembarrassed, ‘We unmarried women are a little more careful than wives when we present ourselves to our lovers at night. It was probably no more than vanity, but I spent a little time with my comb and my make-up case in the cloakroom, making myself as presentable as I could to meet Tony in our bedroom.’

  It afforded her no alibi; it was also lame and touching enough for him to consider it might well be true. He nodded and said, ‘Think very carefully, please. Did you see or hear anything after you had left the roof garden which might have any bearing on the death which followed?’

  She hesitated. ‘It’s probably nothing to do with the death.’

  ‘Quite possibly. If so, it will harm no one.’

  She nodded. ‘All right. The cloakroom is only one floor below the roof garden. When I came out, I heard raised voices from the roof where we had all been sitting. It sounded like an argument. To be accurate, it sounded like a hell of a row. I couldn’t hear any words, and I didn’t hang around to try. But I could hear the voices. One of them was Harrington’s.’

  She stopped, needing the prompt to lead her on to the revelation. He could not tell
whether her reluctance was natural or simulated. He said, fulfilling his role, ‘And whose was the other voice?’

  ‘Alison Munro’s.’

  15

  Superintendents are not supposed to feel guilt. A thick skin is supposed to develop around conscience and other sensibilities as they move up through the ranks.

  Lambert found that he had not developed it to the appropriate pachyderm thickness. Assembling with three murder suspects for an afternoon’s golf, he found himself snatching glances at the wide window of the murder room behind him, wondering what curious eyes and trenchant comments lurked behind it. A Super capable of such eccentric departures must surely invite censure, but the glass stared blankly back at him, like the eye of a monster robot observing and recording his dubious conduct.

  He was not afraid that his seniors might see and reprimand him. If the Chief Constable chose to question his methods, he would be answered dismissively by a man who had decided that he had risen quite high enough in the hierarchy for his tastes. What Lambert found disconcerting was the realisation that he could still be so sensitive about what his subordinates thought of his actions. He was irritatingly relieved to remember that this was the strait-laced Rushton’s day off. The punctilious Inspector would never have approved of this proceeding, he was sure. And of course Lambert would never have stooped to explanations.

  ‘You’ve drawn the short straw I’m afraid, John. You’re playing with me!’ The mellow tones of George Goodman drew him back to matters in hand and told him that for a few hours at least his first name, not his title, would be resolutely used by his companions.

  ‘If you believe that, you’re too credulous for a policeman!’ said Tony Nash, retrieving the balls which had been thrown into the air to determine partners in the four-ball and handing Lambert’s back to him. ‘Thank God I’ve got Sandy with me to provide the steadiness.’