An Academic Death (Lambert and Hook Mysteries Book 14)

by J M Gregson

  What Clare did find intimidating was the way the CID men studied her, without embarrassment or apology, and the way their questions seemed to be invested with overtones she could not pin down. It was as if they were working to an agenda of which she was not aware and never would be. It made her more afraid of making mistakes, less confident even in the areas where she had thought she had nothing to fear.

  Lambert for his part perceived an attractive woman who was tall and had moved well as she set them in the places she had obviously arranged for this meeting. She had very black and lustrous hair, which hung in a ponytail, and a pale, oval face, whose attraction was hardly diminished by the anxiety she plainly felt. He had a theory that men with fair-haired wives chose brunettes when they chose a mistress: here was another statistic to support his thesis.

  He began quietly enough. ‘We need to find out all we can about a murder victim, if we are eventually to discover who killed him. Murder is the only crime where the victim can never be questioned, can never give his account of what happened. It’s obvious enough, but people don’t always appreciate that we have to ask very personal questions when we are trying to fill in the picture of the life a victim led.’

  Clare said with nervous aggression, ‘You mean you have to decide who your suspects are.’

  He smiled, and she could see when the grey, intelligent eyes lit up with humour that he must have been an attractive man, when he was younger. ‘No. That approach would lead to corners being cut and wrong decisions. What we try to do is to build up the most complete picture possible of the dead man and his associates, with particular reference to the last weeks, the last days, and when possible the last hours of his life. As we do so, we are able to eliminate most people we talk to from suspicion of murder. By speaking frankly, you are much more likely to rule yourself out as a possible killer than to implicate yourself. Assuming, of course, that you are in fact innocent.’

  His smile broadened, removing the sting from his last statement, but his eyes never left her: her reaction to this as to everything else would be studied and analysed, she was sure. She laughed. ‘Innocent until proved guilty, is that it?’

  ‘Not quite. That’s a legal term, and we aren’t lawyers. Sergeant Hook and I are allowed to speculate about guilt and innocence, and sometimes we do so, with our colleagues, as the days pass and we exchange the information we acquire. But we do that in private, and the law prevents us from making any arrest without being able to justify ourselves.’

  ‘And are you near to an arrest in this case?’ She tried to be as cool as he was, but she knew that he held all the cards.

  ‘You wouldn’t expect me to answer that, Ms Booth.’

  ‘No, I suppose not. Incidentally, it’s Miss, as far as I’m concerned; I hate the sound of that clumsy Ms. But I don’t think I can help you much.’

  ‘You can help to fill out our picture of a man who was brutally murdered, or we wouldn’t be here. Tell us all you can about your relationship with Matthew Upson, please. This won’t go any further, unless it proves to be evidence in an eventual prosecution.’

  His tone was light and friendly through all of this, so that she had to remind herself how serious the matter in question was. She coiled one of her long legs beneath her on the chair before she spoke, trying to remain calm, forcing herself to take her time. ‘I first met Matt four years ago, when I came to the college. But for the first year, we were no more than working colleagues.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘We began an affair.’

  ‘A serious relationship?’

  She smiled. ‘Oh, it was serious, all right. As much time as we could grab together. Interminable discussions of when he was going to leave his wife.’ How tawdry a great passion seemed, when you reduced it to the basic facts, she thought. But everyone thought his or her own passions were larger than other people’s. ‘Neither of us intended it to be that serious at the start, I think. Perhaps neither of us wanted it to, but it built up over the months.’

  ‘And was it still going on at the time of Mr Upson’s death?’

  For a moment, she was tempted to say it was. It would have been the simplest line, and she found herself going through her colleagues, wondering which of them would be able to say with certainty that it was not so. But something about those cool grey eyes told her it would not be wise to deceive this man more than she had to. ‘No. It was over.’

  ‘And how long had it been over when he was killed?’

  ‘Three months.’ The promptness and the precision were a mistake, she realised, after her earlier hesitation. She watched the stubby fingers of DS Hook penning the information as Henry nuzzled insistently at his hands, threatening to dig the claws of his front paws into the sergeant’s sturdy thighs if he did not get his due share of attention.

  ‘And who ended it?’

  For an instant, she was back in her teens, wanting to deny the humiliation of being ditched by some acned boyfriend. Then she sighed. ‘Matt did. He said he couldn’t risk losing his kids.’

  ‘But you didn’t think that was the real reason.’

  He must have caught the bitterness she had striven to keep out of her voice, she thought. It was like being with a psychiatrist. Except that this man was not here to help you. There was no guarantee here that your answers wouldn’t land you in trouble. ‘No. His kids were an excuse. He wanted rid of me, in the end.’

  What a world of suffering, of anguished nights and agonised emotions, lay behind that terse sentence, thought Lambert. Yet he was grateful to this tall woman with the striking black hair and the eyes that were almost as dark as that hair for being so terse. The last thing he needed was a welter of tearful recriminations. He said, ‘I realise that this is painful, but while I think it may have any bearing on a murder case I have to pursue it. Can you tell me more specifically why Matthew Upson ended the relationship?’

  She couldn’t stand the unrelenting scrutiny of those grey eyes. She stared fixedly at Henry, stretching himself luxuriantly on Bert Hook’s knee and purring steadily. ‘Matt had other fish to fry. Other things going on in college. Before you ask me, I don’t know what they were. But he was preoccupied, this last year, even when we were together.’

  Lambert wanted to press her harder on this. But she had already said she didn’t know any details, and her wide mouth had set into a determined line with that assertion. She was still a person voluntarily helping the police with their enquiries, not a person under arrest, who could be questioned intensively. He said. ‘And did these other interests help to break up your relationship?’

  She looked as if she wished it had been so. Instead, she said bitterly, ‘No. He had other women. Younger women. I was an episode in his life, not a permanent fixture, as I had imagined.’

  ‘Can you give me names?’

  She shrugged her shoulders, as if she could dismiss with the gesture the foolishness of her time with Upson. ‘I’m not able to give you names. Perhaps there wasn’t anyone specific.’

  Lambert studied the set, blank face, knew the pain that was behind it. He said quietly, ‘Students?’

  She nodded, suddenly near to tears with the humiliation of it all. ‘Yes. I’m sure there were students.’ She glanced up into the impassive, attentive face, then down again at the cat. ‘They’re adults at eighteen nowadays, you know. Capable of making their own emotional decisions. It may be professionally irresponsible for tutors to exploit a relationship, but there’s nothing illegal about it.’

  The words had the ring of a quotation. Whose words were these originally, he wondered. Matthew Upson’s, perhaps? They were uttered with the bitter irony of resentment, so that was quite possible. Lambert said gently, ‘Nevertheless, I need the names of anyone you know who had any close dealings with Mr Upson in the last weeks of his life. You must —’

  ‘So that you can drag some stupid girl who was daft enough to drop her knickers into a murder hunt? I don’t think so, Superintendent!’ All the weary, pointless rage of an af
fair gone wrong was suddenly turned upon him and his questions. She heard herself rising towards hysteria. ‘I don’t know names. I wasn’t interested in who was the latest little tart to attract his attention!’

  Henry stopped purring. His head lifted Hook’s notebook and his wide blue cat’s eyes focused upon his excited mistress in fearful enquiry. Lambert listened to her breathing as she tried to recover control. ‘When did you last see Matthew Upson alive, Miss Booth?’

  ‘On the Wednesday before he disappeared. We were in a meeting together. About changes to next year’s courses. We didn’t speak afterwards.’ The words tumbled out in quick succession, as though they were ones she had prepared and rehearsed and were anxious to get right. But then, even an innocent person might well have anticipated this as a standard question — especially if she was intelligent and interested as this woman.

  Lambert’s eyes had never left her face. His final question came as calmly as all his other words as he said, ‘Did you kill Matthew Upson, Miss Booth?’

  She strove to recover control. And knew as soon as she spoke that she had failed. ‘No. No, I didn’t. And I don’t know who did. But I hope whoever pulled that trigger gets away with it!’

  Two women close to Matthew John Upson. Two women who were happy to admit that they were glad he was dead. Lambert reflected as they drove away that he could not recall such a thing before.

  It was Bert Hook who said, ‘I felt she was holding something back. She knew more about his activities in that university that she was telling us.’

  *

  When they reached the Murder Room at Oldford CID, they found proof that these mysterious other activities of Matthew Upson’s might have been lucrative ones.

  DI Rushton, coordinating the activities of the twenty-three officers now engaged in the investigation, had turned up an interesting piece of evidence about the dead man. The initial search into his financial affairs had revealed nothing unusual. His salary was paid into a branch of NatWest within three miles of his home, and the joint account with Elizabeth Upson had the usual direct debits and standing orders to ease the conduct of their domestic affairs. The figures were totally unremarkable, with nothing in them to suggest a marriage that was heading for the rocks.

  Now Rushton had turned up something else. It was an account in the name of John Matthew Upson at the Halifax plc office in Ross-on-Wye. The reversal of forenames was a common ploy in people seeking to conceal the existence of such accounts, and the fact that Ross-on-Wye was twenty miles from both Upson’s residence and his place of work reinforced the view that he had wanted to keep the existence of this particular account secret.

  So did the details of the account itself. It did not reflect the economic life of a university lecturer. It had begun with a deposit of five thousand pounds, twenty-nine months before Upson’s sudden death. By the time of that death, the credit balance in the account was just over two hundred thousand pounds.

  Eight

  Liz Upson claimed she knew nothing of her late husband’s bank account in Ross-on-Wye.

  They met that strange mixture of well-bred surprise and earthy contempt for her dead husband which they had noted in her before. ‘Of course I didn’t know about Matt’s private nest egg. That was the point of him hiding it away in Ross, wasn’t it?’

  That was logical enough. Lambert, studying her closely, still felt that this was not completely a surprise to her. ‘You didn’t have any hint from his conduct that he was salting away considerable sums of money?’

  ‘I told you, he was an arsehole!’ She glanced at Bert Hook’s round, experienced yet strangely innocent face and said with a coquettish smile, ‘At least, I told Detective Sergeant Hook here, didn’t I? I think he was quite shocked by the fundamental nature of my language at the time. But I expect your investigation is proving me right, isn’t it?’

  Lambert said stiffly, ‘Your views on the character of your husband are not relevant to this issue, Mrs Upson. His salary was going into your joint NatWest account. Have you any idea how he might have been acquiring large sums of money from other sources?’

  ‘No. Matt was an Arsehole with a capital A. and I had long since ceased to take any interest in his activities.’

  ‘So you’ve no idea where this money was coming from?’

  ‘I’m happy to say I haven’t a clue. He came and went as he pleased. So long as there was enough money to pay the bills and look after the children, I didn’t give a damn about him.’

  ‘I see. Well, in view of your feelings about him, it may not upset you to hear this: unless there was some legacy of which none of us is aware, it seems doubtful whether your husband could have acquired such sums by legal means.’

  Liz Upson brushed her fair hair away from her left eye, a gesture that was more one of exultation than alarm. ‘So he might have been not just an arsehole, but a crooked arsehole. Wait till old Mother Tindrawers hears about that. I’d love to be a fly on the wall when you tell Mrs Hoity-Toity Upson about the activities of her beloved son.’ A note of craft stole suddenly into the light-skinned, attractive face. ‘You said large sums of money. How large?’

  Lambert thought quickly. This flinty woman was still the next of kin. It was her legal right to know about her husband’s assets, whatever their relationship had been at the time of his death. ‘There was over two hundred thousand pounds in the Halifax account. I believe there is half-yearly interest due to be added to that.’

  Liz Upson’s face lit up, seemingly with amusement rather than greed. ‘Which, in the absence of other claimants, would come to his wife, I suppose?’

  ‘I can’t pronounce on that. You would need to take legal advice. And if there was any crime involved in the acquiring of this money, it might well have to be returned to the parties who have been wronged.’ But even as he spoke, he did not think this sum had come from theft or fraud.

  She smiled. ‘So there is a strong possibility that the late and grieving wife of Matt Upson might come in for a nice little windfall. Sorry, a nice big windfall! There is every chance that that useless arsehole will be worth far more to me and the kids dead than he ever was alive.’

  The laugh which followed this was still ringing in their ears as they drove disconsolately away.

  *

  The solution to the enigma of Matthew Upson’s mysterious riches must surely be found at the place where he had worked.

  The new part of the campus of the University of Gloucestershire seemed a pleasant place as Hook drove the car up the long drive. The Georgian stately home which was the administrative centre of the complex stood four-square and handsome at the end of the half-mile ribbon of tarmac between the avenue of two-hundred-year-old limes. The newish halls of residence, none of them more than four storeys high, blended surprisingly well into the parkland landscape, helped by the majestic chestnuts and oaks which had been left wherever possible among them.

  A cynic might have said that the site’s gracious attractions were enhanced by the scarcity of students. On this sunny day of high white clouds and bright blue sky, the majority of those who had not already finished their studies for the year and departed to summer employment were either in the examination halls or studying feverishly for the morrow’s trials. Even the Head of Matthew Upson’s Department, Elwyn George Davies, seemed less harassed without the hum of student activity about him. ‘Another year almost over, another year nearer to pension!’ he said as he sat down with Lambert and Hook in his office. They suspected it summarised his attitude more than his jesting tone allowed.

  Lambert decided to shake this complacency. ‘We’ve unearthed a large sum of money in a secret account of Mr Upson’s,’ he said briskly. ‘It seems almost certain that it came from some illegal activity. An activity which was probably based here, at his place of work. We’d like your views on what that source might have been, Dr Davies.’

  Contrary to the view of popular novelists, very few people who are taken aback actually splutter. George Davies, Ph.D. and Dean of t
he Faculty of Humanities, did. A series of inarticulate noises were accompanied by irregular discharges of saliva. For Bert Hook, it was a moment of relief in a trying day. As a man who had spent his boyhood in a Barnardo’s home, he still liked to see figures of authority discomfited. Davies eventually dabbed at his chin with an off-white handkerchief and produced, ‘You cannot be serious!’

  John McEnroe, 1984, thought Lambert. Perhaps this man, like the tennis player, should have been checked at an earlier stage of his career. Aloud, he said, ‘I’m afraid I’m perfectly serious. I’m not suggesting that you yourself have been involved in any criminal activity, Dr Davies, but I’ve a shrewd suspicion that your late colleague Matthew Upson was.’

  Davies clutched at the straw of his personal innocence; it seemed to restore to him the power of rational speech. ‘I certainly am not aware of any such thing. I shall be surprised if any of my staff have been involved. But I suppose it is your duty to explore all avenues, however grubby they may be. You will appreciate that my role in the Faculty is confined to academic administration. I am not as close to my staff as I should like to be, owing to the burdens now placed upon me, and I have certainly no jurisdiction in anything beyond academic matters.’

  Lambert would like to have had some fun with the old windbag, but he decided that duty must prevail over light relief. ‘I understand that. Perhaps you could put me in touch with someone who knew Mr Upson as a teaching colleague. Someone who saw him on a day-to-day basis, and who might be more aware of his activities outside the lecture and tutorial rooms?’

  Davies looked at him suspiciously through narrowed eyes. He said abruptly, ‘Charles Taggart.’

  Lambert, who had left the choice open to see if Davies would come up with another name, was a little disappointed. He noticed he hadn’t suggested Clare Booth; perhaps Davies wasn’t even aware of the relationship which had lasted for two years and more between two members of his staff. He said, ‘Is Mr Taggart in the university today? There don’t seem to be many people around.’