by J M Gregson
‘Yes. Jamie Norris. It was a little unfair, because we could hardly have rejected him without embarrassment to ourselves and to Mr Norris. In the event, it brought us a welcome addition. Mr Norris seemed a pleasant young man, with a real interest in books and in the processes of writing. I think he would have been a valuable addition to our group. Enid Frott and I had already agreed that we wanted some young members to balance our aged selves. Jane Preston, whom I had introduced, and Mr Norris were going to be just that.’
‘What do you think was Mr Norbury’s relationship with Mr Norris?’
‘Shouldn’t you ask Jamie that?’ It was the first time she had used his forename.
‘We already have. I’m now asking you.’
‘Jamie was definitely Alfred’s protégé. How far it went beyond that, I couldn’t say, but he did drive him to Enid’s place in that Triumph Stag which he was so proud of.’ She glanced from one to the other of her questioners. ‘I gather Alfred has a history of liaisons with men. From his attitude on Monday, I suspect he had plans for a sexual relationship with Jamie Norris. I may of course be quite wrong, but you asked me to speculate.’
‘I did indeed. And your thoughts on this, as on other things we have discussed, will remain confidential. Who do you think killed Alfred Norbury?’
It was so abrupt, so transparently challenging, that she almost laughed. ‘I have no opinion on that. I have given the matter some thought, but come up with no useful possibilities. I am as baffled as you seem to be.’
Clyde Northcott looked up from his notes and said in his deep, sombre voice, ‘Where were you on Tuesday afternoon and evening, Mrs Burgess?’
She felt as if her stomach was dropping away inside her. ‘I suppose you have to ask that. You might record that I didn’t kill Alfred. I was in this house during the whole of that time. As a matter of fact, I began during the evening to read Harvest, the book which was to be our first book club choice.’
‘Can anyone confirm that you were here during those hours?’
‘I fear not. Mrs Waterson, the lady who let you in, has Tuesdays off. She lives in this house, but at the other end of it from me. I have no idea whether or not she was in her quarters during those hours. I made one rather lengthy phone call to our product manager at Burgess Electronics, but that was early in the afternoon. As far as I can remember, I took no calls after that other than nuisance calls – recorded advertising messages which I always ignore.’ She watched Northcott scribbling a note on his pad. ‘Was Alfred shot with the pistol he claimed to carry in his car?’
Peach nodded. ‘Almost certainly. I expect it to be confirmed within the next few hours.’
‘Is it possible that he shot himself?’
‘It is possible but extremely unlikely, in the opinion of the very experienced scene of crime officer who examined both the body and the weapon at the scene. I agree with his thoughts on the matter.’
He thought she would ask him about the technicalities of that view, but she merely nodded and said, ‘He wasn’t the suicidal type, Alfred. Whatever that type is.’
He gave her his card with the injunction that she should ring the station immediately if she had any more thoughts on the crime. She showed them to the door herself, then watched them turn the car and move down the drive and through the gates, as if she wished to confirm with her own eyes that they were clear of her home.
Clyde Northcott knew better than to initiate any discussion: that had to come from the chief. They had driven about a mile when Peach said, ‘She’ll repay further research, Mrs Burgess. She knows more than she’s told us this morning.’
His DS negotiated a pensioner who stepped suddenly into the road twenty yards from a zebra crossing. ‘I felt more had happened in the past with Alfred Norbury than she was admitting to.’
‘I’m sure you’re right. She knew not only that he had a classic car but the make and the model. Unusual in a woman, that. Especially in a woman of her years. But that’s probably ageist and sexist.’
‘You’ve got to play to your strengths, sir. You’re good at being ageist and sexist.’
‘And you’re a cheeky young sod. A black cheeky young sod. There you are: racist as well. That’s the hat-trick. I never had one of those when I played cricket. But I think you’re right, Clyde. Tommy Bloody Tucker won’t like it, because he hates annoying the local gentry. But we can’t be afford too much respect for the recently widowed Mrs Burgess. We need to investigate exactly what she was doing in the past with the late Mr Norbury.’
THIRTEEN
The post-mortem report and the forensic findings from the scene of crime gave them little which was new or unexpected.
A bullet lodged in the top of the passenger door of the Triumph Stag confirmed that the instrument of Alfred Norbury’s death had been the Beretta semi-automatic 92 FS pistol which had been found beneath his right hand in the vehicle. There were no prints other than his on the pistol, but in the views of both the pathologist and the police forensics personnel, death had not been self-administered. Norbury had been shot through the left temple, which would have been awkward and highly unusual for a right-handed suicide. Norbury was right-handed. The angle of the attack also, with the bullet passing slightly from rear to front in the skull, would have been almost unique in anyone who had elected to shoot himself. Finally, the powder burns and ‘stippling’ around the entry wound indicated that Norbury had been shot at close quarters, but not with the muzzle pressed against the head, as would normally be the case with a suicide.
There was no record of Norbury having a licence for the firearm, and no paperwork had been found during the police examination of his home. But the Beretta was not a difficult weapon to obtain. It had been the primary side-arm of the US Army, US Marine Corps and US Air Force for well over thirty years. The initial contract had been for 500,000 pistols, but there were probably over a million of these weapons in existence by now. They were fairly common and easy to purchase in the undercover markets which existed now in most European countries. The state of the pistol and of the ammunition found in the car and in his desk indicated that Alfred Norbury had probably possessed both of them for several years.
The interior of the car had been tidy, but it had not been valeted in the recent past. This left a situation beloved of the forensic staff. The Triumph Stag had now been examined in detail. A variety of clothing fibre, human hair, and dirt from footwear had been bagged and labelled and subjected to laboratory examination. They were available as and when required for matching purposes at a later date. That was not as promising as it sounded. Proving that someone had been in Norbury’s car would not provide significant evidence for a court of law, unless it could be proved that the person concerned had been there at the time of the murder.
Percy Peach made a private note that for all save Jamie Norris, evidence that they had been in the Stag would argue much closer links with the murder victim than had been so far admitted. There might be possibilities for a little bluff in the days to come; he licked his lips at the prospect.
One of the tangible things the post-mortem examination provided was a more accurate indication of the time of death. Analysis of the stomach contents indicated that Norbury had eaten a substantial meal involving fish, mashed potatoes and vegetables about an hour before his death. This tallied with the ‘meal for one’ plastic container the police team had found in his disposal bin in the kitchen of his flat.
The team had also discovered through diligent routine enquiries that Norbury attended an art group which met in the adult education centre on most Tuesday evenings. Their sessions began at seven o’clock and Alfred Norbury was invariably punctual. Along with the analysis of the stomach contents, this gave a strong indication that the victim had probably died at around twenty to seven on the evening of Tuesday the twenty-first of January. No one had yet come forward to say that he or she had been in Wellington Street at that time, or had witnessed anything in any way suspicious.
‘So anyone fami
liar with Norbury’s habits would know that he would be coming out to his car at some time shortly after half past six on Tuesday evening,’ said Peach thoughtfully. ‘And I think that some of the people we’ve already spoken to knew his habits much more thoroughly than they’ve so far admitted.’
‘Twenty to seven on a bitterly cold January night in a quiet street which is not a thoroughfare,’ said Clyde Northcott. ‘It’s not surprising that we have no witnesses to the crime.’
Peach nodded grimly. ‘And not surprising that the body should have sat undetected, getting colder and colder through the long, dark night. I don’t think anyone would be aware that there was anything amiss before daylight on Wednesday. Apart from our killer, of course.’
Dick Fosdyke, like Alfred Norbury had, lived alone in a flat. But the two residences were very different.
Whereas Norbury’s spacious, book-lined sitting room had suggested much about the tastes and the habits of the dead man, Fosdyke’s living quarters were much more anonymous. He lived in a modern flat which was scarcely three years old and a mile from the centre of Brunton. You would have thought from the look of the place that the cartoonist was anxious to conceal rather than reveal himself. The first impression was of a place where a man slept and which he used as a base of operations, rather than making it the centre of his life.
Peach gazed around unhurriedly and without embarrassment when he was invited to sit on the sofa in the warm, comfortable but characterless living room. Fosdyke watched him for a moment, then glanced at Clyde Northcott. He received no support from that unyielding source. He eventually spoke first, as Peach knew he would do, when the social pressure upon him increased with the silence. ‘You won’t discover much about me from looking round here.’ He spoke almost apologetically.
Peach turned to him with an affable smile, as if he had not realized until then that the owner was present. ‘More than you realize, perhaps, Mr Fosdyke. I would think that this place is not particularly significant for you, in that you could move somewhere else tomorrow without any great regrets. Modern flats do not generally inspire nostalgia, unless the occupant brings something to them which makes them individual and quite different from other flats around them. I judge that you have made no particular effort to do that. This flat looks as if you have no great interest in putting your stamp upon this or perhaps any other home.’
Fosdyke looked hard at him, but chose not to respond directly to his remarks. ‘I haven’t been here long enough to put down roots. Almost three years, I suppose, though it seems like much less than that. My marriage broke up and I had to find somewhere as a base. You aren’t particularly interested in where or even how you live, when you’ve been through the emotional trauma of a divorce. This is what I could afford and it suits me pretty well, I suppose.’
Peach nodded. ‘I’ve been through the same process, but it was many years ago and I was glad to be rid of my marriage. The partnership was a mistake and it didn’t last long. There were no children. But like you I didn’t pay any attention to where I was living next. It was somewhere I slept and whence I ventured forth to work. I’ve moved on now and got a new wife. She tells me how much I’ve neglected the place and points out how much needs doing. I’m sure she’d say it’s sexist, but it’s my view that men aren’t natural nest-makers.’
Dick Fosdyke grinned. This sort of discussion was the last thing he had expected. He’d been preparing himself to stonewall resolutely through the routine police questioning, but this strange DCI who had bounced into his flat in an unexpectedly smart grey suit was a surprise. A pleasant one, he told himself hopefully. ‘As you say, work dominates your thoughts and your lifestyle. Necessarily, in my case. I have to work to live, and also to give the support the court decreed appropriate to my wife and two children. Hobbies seem like an indulgence.’
‘And yet you chose to join a book club.’
‘Yes. I felt it was time for me to dip my toe again into the dangerous waters of society. I surprised myself when I accepted the invitation. I suppose when you’ve set yourself up as a loner, it’s flattering to be asked to join anything.’
‘Who did the asking, Mr Fosdyke?’
The questions were coming now. And he wasn’t stonewalling as effectively as he’d intended to do. Perhaps this strange little man with the large and threatening black sidekick was more cunning that he’d thought. ‘It was Sharon Burgess. I met her a few months ago in the library, where she works as a volunteer. We got into the habit of having coffee together. It’s an unlikely alliance, I suppose – she’s from a very different and much more affluent background than mine, and she’s twenty-seven years older. Perhaps it was the fact that there was nothing sexual in the friendship that helped it to develop. Sharon was recently widowed and I was still shell-shocked from divorce, so we probably both wanted something unthreatening.’
Peach looked at him with a sparkle in his very dark pupils. ‘Sex is not unknown between people who are a generation apart.’
Dick felt quite at ease. He wasn’t going to take offence at such a comment, especially as he thought the man might welcome that. ‘I can assure you that there is no sexual liaison here. So you can abandon the image of a steamy partnership plotting together to secure the death of Alfred Norbury.’
‘You both had reason to wish him dead then, did you?’ Peach’s eyebrows arched high beneath the shining whiteness of his bald head.
For the first time, Dick was ruffled. They had somehow moved much nearer to his feelings about Norbury than he had intended. ‘I didn’t say that. You’ve no right to assume it from anything I said.’
‘True though, isn’t it? You didn’t much like the man. I’m sorry, but we have to be pretty direct, when we’re investigating murder. Bluntness is allowed, you see – even encouraged. We wouldn’t get anywhere quickly without a certain directness, Mr Fosdyke. And speed is of the essence. You may know that the chances of a successful conclusion to a murder investigation decrease sharply with each passing week.’
‘I think I have heard that, yes. In which case, you should probably be using your time more usefully somewhere else at this very moment. Because I know nothing about this death.’
Peach looked at him and nodded slowly. It was impossible to be sure whether he was digesting the information or the reaction it showed in his subject. ‘Was Mr Norbury a friend of yours, sir?’
‘Not a friend, no. We didn’t know each other well enough to be friends or enemies.’
‘I see. You didn’t know him before you met him at the inaugural meeting of your book club, then?’
That was exactly the impression Dick had intended to give them. But now this suddenly aggressive little man was asking the question directly and he needed to be careful. ‘I knew of him. He’s quite a well-known local character and I’ve lived in Brunton for years. It would be strange if I hadn’t known a little about him.’
‘Indeed it would, sir. How well did you know him?’
Fosdyke looked down at the low table with the art magazine on top of it. ‘Not well at all. I suppose I’ve probably met him before, but I feel as though my first real meeting with him was on Monday night. That’s an odd feeling, because the next thing that I heard about him was that he was dead.’
‘And what impression had you formed of him on Monday night?’
Dick took his time. This was the crux of these exchanges and he must get it right. ‘I was trying to reserve judgement. Or at least to remember his good points.’
‘Which were?’
He frowned. ‘Is what I felt about Norbury really relevant? Shouldn’t you be asking about times and places? Or better still, questioning people who might have had some reason to kill the man?’
Peach gave him the blandest of his smiles. ‘We’re still building up a picture of a man neither DS Northcott or I ever met. We’re finding out all sorts of interesting things about Alfred Norbury and the people who knew him. The views and reactions of an intelligent person like you are sure to add colour an
d definition to the portrait. As an artist, I’m sure you can appreciate that.’
‘A sometime artist, I suppose. I make my living by using a few swiftly drawn lines to make political or sporting comment.’
‘And I’m sure you consider yourself an artist, Mr Fosdyke. Your views on Mr Cameron’s treatment of his coalition partners in the cartoon published yesterday would be much less trenchant without the sharpness and selectiveness of the drawing.’
It was flattering but also disturbing. He had thought this man knew nothing about him. Now he found that he knew not only what he did but something of the way he thought. You revealed a lot about yourself in your drawings and your comments. How much more research had Peach done before he came here? How much more did he know about the past and what had happened between him and Alfred Norbury? Dick said carefully, ‘I suppose we’re artists in our own minds. The public scarcely consider us that. With the great names – the Italian old masters, for instance – mere preliminary sketches for paintings can now be worth many thousands of pounds. Original newspaper cartoons rarely sell for more than a few hundred, even when they are by acknowledged masters of the craft.’
He was riding a hobby horse, but a safe one. Whilst he was indulging himself here, he was safe from further probing on Norbury. Peach flicked a glance at Northcott, who said calmly and menacingly, ‘Where were you on Tuesday evening, Mr Fosdyke?’
He had the story ready, of course. He’d rehearsed it long before they came here. He tried nevertheless to make it sound spontaneous. ‘Tuesday evening. That’s when he was killed, isn’t it? You’re asking me to account for my movements at the time, treating me as a murder suspect. Just routine, I suppose.’
Northcott ignored his nervous smile. ‘So where were you, Mr Fosdyke?’
‘Tuesday, let’s see.’ Dick put his hands together, steepled his fingers, allowed them to play against each other for a moment. ‘I went down to the library as usual in the morning. I read the newspapers, surveyed the market for cartoons, thought up a couple of possible themes for drawings which would make political comments. I checked a few facts in the reference section – very much a routine day, really. I didn’t see my friend Sharon Burgess, who obviously wasn’t on the library duty rota for that day. Bit of a disappointment, really: I’d been looking forward to comparing notes with her about our book club meeting on the previous night.’