by Janet Neel
‘Dad was furious.’
‘What did your Mum say?’
‘How could I have been so careless?’
McLeish nodded. Dorothy Vernon was someone who took personal responsibility seriously, even when it came to her own beloved daughter.
‘Does Nigel Makin know?’
‘No.’ She stopped. ‘I didn’t tell him. Unless Mum or Dad told him – they’re both very fond of him. But I don’t think they did.’
McLeish nodded, knowing he could depend on Davidson to flag the point.
‘And your brother?’
‘I didn’t tell him. The parents may have, I suppose. He wouldn’t have been much bothered – I mean, he wouldn’t have felt it necessary to kill Alan for me.’
She started to cry again and McLeish waited patiently for her to stop. He took her through the sequence of events at the tea-table but it left him no better off. Plainly, anyone at that table could have dropped a fatal dose into Alan Fraser’s thermos, including Sally herself – which, he reminded himself, he must not forget. This strong-willed creature might well have been angry enough to try and damage a man who was turning her down.
He retired with Davidson to the study, having asked if they could have a few minutes before interviewing the senior Vernons.
‘Would she have topped him, Bruce?’
‘Just because he would’na marry her, having got her in the club? There’s a few would be dead men if women behaved like that. Anyway, why would she have dropped a rock on him in Scotland? She didn’t know she was pregnant, then.’
McLeish thought about it. ‘He was probably playing her up in Scotland too,’ he pointed out. ‘You saw the way he went off, very pointedly, with Fran’s brother to visit the Calendar girls. And made a hit there, Perry tells me. This was later, of course, but he probably always behaved like that.’
Bruce Davidson opined that he didn’t see many violent girls in his circles; perhaps rich girls were different; what did McLeish think?
‘I can’t honestly see Frannie murdering someone in those circumstances – no.’
Nothing to do with money, it was that her judgement was too cool, he thought regretfully. It was just possible, but only just, to see her killing in defence of a brother, but not because a man didn’t want to marry her. She would, no doubt, consider herself more than qualified to bring up any number of children on her own. He jerked himself smartly out of this line of thought and said to Davidson that they had to see the senior Vernons as a finish to a perfect day.
He put his head into the office and offered to interview the Vernons in whichever order they preferred, and found that Robert Vernon had volunteered. He took him patiently through his earlier acquaintance with Alan Fraser until the day of Alan’s fall.
‘Were you in the area that day?’
‘You want to know whether I had an alibi?’ Robert Vernon sounded grimly amused. ‘I know where I was that day. I was fishing a loch on the same hill and I was by myself from lunch-time on. I came down at about six-thirty and picked up the Range Rover – there’s a little car-park by the waterfall where the Carrbrae Road crosses the river. Then I drove back to the hotel – I was there about eight-thirty.’
McLeish nodded, remembering Duncan Mackintosh pulling over sharply to let the blue Range Rover through. The timing was about right, but it left Robert Vernon with no alibi; it had been five-thirty when Francesca had seen Alan fall, and Robert Vernon, by his own admission, had then not been far away.
McLeish took him equally carefully through the events of the day before, but he had apparently noticed nothing at tea, including the thermoses. If it was a sign of guilt to have noticed absolutely nothing, it was also a perfectly sound approach. McLeish considered his man carefully; the powerful compact body was tense in the leather chair and the bright brown eyes were very alert.
‘Miss Vernon has told us that she told you the day before yesterday that she was pregnant, and that the most likely candidate for its father was Alan Fraser. How did you feel about this news?’
‘Well, how would anyone? I was bloody furious, I can tell you.’
‘Did you talk to Fraser about it?’
The brown eyes flickered. ‘No, no, it was Sally’s business and she didn’t want anyone interfering. I think she was worried I’d clout him one.’
‘And would you have?’
The man looked faintly disoriented and McLeish sat still.
‘I might have.’ He recovered rapidly. ‘But I’d not have put poison in his tea, I’d have dealt with him straight.’
Now that, McLeish thought, rang true. He could not see Robert Vernon murdering anyone by that route – a swift blow with a shovel, perhaps, but not by poison. But he was lying about something – and Davidson thought so too, since he was scraping his chair. McLeish nagged away carefully but got nowhere, leaving Robert Vernon still tense.
He decided to change tack. ‘Did you discuss the situation with Nigel Makin?’
‘Of course not.’ Robert Vernon sounded shocked, but relieved, as if he were on easier ground.
After a few more questions McLeish let him go. He swivelled his chair and looked enquiringly at Davidson.
‘I think he did see Fraser, guv,’ Davidson said quietly, an eye on the door.
‘So do I. What did he say to him, do you think?’
‘Never darken the doors of my building site again?’
‘Fraser was still there twenty-four hours later – he’d have been out that day if Robert Vernon had wanted that,’ McLeish sighed.
‘He mebbe made a deal with him that he would marry the wee girl after all?’
‘And left him working as a scaffolder while he thought about it? That’s possible. OK, let’s leave it for now and get Mrs Vernon in.’
McLeish rose as Davidson came back with Dorothy Vernon and thought again what a formidable creature she was. He looked at her carefully as she came quietly in and realized she was even more tense than her husband had been, and grimly determined to run the interview her way. He decided to calm her down by taking her very slowly through the preliminaries, so that after ten minutes she was glancing at the diamond watch which she wore, unusually, on her right hand, and was no longer tense but merely impatient. She confirmed the details of the tea party, and left McLeish clear that the antihistamine could not have been in the milk or the tea but could have been in the sugar. She was roused to real eloquence as she described the general state of the canteen and, seeing her relaxed, McLeish slid in his enquiry about whether she had talked to Alan Fraser after Sally’s disclosure of her pregnancy.
‘No, I didn’t, though I would have liked to. I did have a word with Nigel Makin, who has been badly treated.’
‘Sally told him, then?’ McLeish sounded as startled as he felt.
‘No, and she hasn’t yet. But she has broken off their engagement.’
‘Before Fraser was killed.’ McLeish kept his voice dead level but Dorothy Vernon looked at him sharply.
‘Yes.’ The confirmation was reluctant.
‘I will, of course, be interviewing Mr Makin again – it was only a preliminary chat last night. Did Mr Vernon – William Vernon, I mean – know about this as well?’
‘Yes, he did.’
‘How did he react?’
Dorothy Vernon considered the point carefully. ‘He was very distressed for her – I mean, she is his half-sister and they’ve been getting along quite well now they are on the same site. But they’re not really very close – they were brought up apart. He was very angry for her, but not as violently so as some brothers would have been.’
She thought again, just perceptibly, chewing her lower lip: ‘He behaved well and was nice to her, but I had the feeling he was not that unhappy that she was in trouble. He’s got no cause to be fond of her; Robert’s first wife brought him up to think of me and her as the enemy.’ She looked him in the eye. ‘He’s not a bad lad, Chief Inspector, but he’s no better than his rearing.’
McLeish observe
d neutrally that he had only had a brief preliminary interview with Bill but he intended to see him the next day.
Dorothy Vernon made to speak, then stopped, and McLeish enquired whether Nigel Makin was much distressed by recent events.
‘Yes, of course he is,’ she said, irritably. ‘What man would not be? He wanted to go straightaway; he could walk into another managing director’s job anywhere in the industry, but he said to me he’d not leave us with the Western Underpass contract barely started.’
She hesitated and McLeish sat silent, from long training. ‘Robert’s sixty-three, you see, and Nigel’s the only one of the divisional MDs who can succeed him. He’s not well known yet, but he is the only one who can take over from Robert.’
‘I see.’ McLeish saw the key fact, that Vernon Engineering might need Nigel Makin more than he needed the company. Rejected in quite such a public way by Sally Vernon, he might reasonably prefer to go elsewhere, leaving both Robert Vernon’s treasured creations vulnerable to predators.
‘Robert is fit to be tied,’ Dorothy Vernon looked surprised at herself. ‘He’s very fond of Nigel, too, apart from seeing him as the natural successor.’
Any father might not unreasonably feel that Alan Fraser was a rotten bet as a son-in-law. Add to that the fact that Fraser was, by his very presence, threatening to weaken the managerial defences of Vernon Engineering, and you had a strong motive for Robert Vernon to get rid of Alan Fraser. The same, of course, might apply to Dorothy Vernon; he contemplated thoughtfully the firmly pressed lips and the strong, ugly, beringed hands. For his money, twinset and pearls notwithstanding, Dorothy Vernon was well capable of ruthless action to remove an obstacle. And poison was always said to be a woman’s weapon. McLeish decided that he was not going to get a great more light on the subject from this interview, thanked her, and waited while her statement was typed.
13
John McLeish dropped Bruce Davidson off at New Scotland Yard and decided he would call it a day himself. Francesca’s telephone being engaged he took a chance on her being at home and drove over to her small house in Notting Hill. He paused at the gate-post and looked up towards the first floor; the big windows were open and he could hear singing. He listened for a moment, recognizing Peregrine’s high tenor, and hoped fervently that it was a recording, not the man himself. The singer was embarked on ‘Bridge over Troubled Waters’, and, even longing as he was to have Francesca to himself, he stood still to listen to the matchless voice lift easily to the top notes. Presumably Perry would never need to murder anyone; like Alan Fraser, he had a secure talent and if he couldn’t use it by one route, he would find another.
The singer stopped, was succeeded by a murmur of voices, and McLeish sighed, but pushed his way through the gate. He rang the bell twice; although he had a key to Francesca’s house he didn’t use it if he knew other people were there. His heart sank as the door swung open to reveal Tristram, one of the twenty-three- year-old twins, a taller version of Perry.
‘John, come in. We’re all here.’ In common with the whole Wilson family, McLeish thought resignedly, that boy was confident that it could give nothing but pleasure to have all five of them together. They all had separate flats or small houses, but all treated each other’s establishments as extensions of their own. Indeed, all their houses looked very much the same; all Victorian, all featuring a large living-room with a piano at one end and bookshelves all round. All five also owned enviable amounts of expensive electronic equipment, supplied by the phenomenally successful Peregrine.
He looked round resignedly at the familiar sight of the Wilson children gathered in one room. Three out of four of the boys had the same dark Norman looks as Francesca, dark-brown hair, long straight noses in long faces, with blue eyes and high, arched eyebrows. Charlie, the eldest boy and second child, by contrast was dark blond with brown eyes, but the same long nose. They were, as usual, all engaged in different and noisy activities simultaneously; his eye rested on Perry, immaculate as ever, who was fiddling with the video tape recorder at the same time as demonstrating vocally some point in an aria to Jeremy, Tristram’s twin, who was reading a book. Charlie was sitting at the piano picking away at a piece of music, bending forward to squint at the notes and simultaneously telling his sister some history. She was listening while marking up a hefty-looking report. McLeish sighed inwardly; Francesca looked up and saw him and came to kiss him.
‘I can tell them to go away,’ she said in his ear, sounding amused. ‘They’re only messing about. I didn’t know you were coming.’
‘I didn’t either,’ he said, mollified. ‘Seems a bit hard to throw them out.’
‘John, telephone for you.’ Peregrine had interrupted his activities long enough to deal with the phone and appeared at his side, trailing the lead.
‘Sorry to get after you, John,’ Bruce Davidson said wearily. ‘I tried to fix to see Mr William Vernon first thing tomorrow but he’s away to Edinburgh for a couple of days and wonders if we could see him tonight. We could get him to stop back from Edinburgh, of course?’
‘No, no. Better not to mess people around unless we have to. Fix him for eight-thirty tonight at the Yard. Francesca’s got her family here, anyway.’
He scowled round the assembled Wilsons and Peregrine grinned at him, unoffended and amused. ‘It’s just as well she’s got us, John. Think what she’d otherwise get up to, with you working so hard.’
McLeish considered him thoughtfully. He was always caught out by the speed of reaction in the Wilson family; it was of course a direct result of having five siblings close in age who had to compete for very limited parental time and energy. Not for the first time he realized that his own background, as the eldest child of two schoolteachers, with his nearest brother a comfortable three years younger, might actually be less than an asset in a highly competitive world.
‘I always think of that, Perry,’ he assured him gravely. ‘It is a comfort to me.’
‘Come away to the kitchen, John, and I’ll find you some supper – I can feed this lot later.’ Francesca tugged at his sleeve.
‘I’ll come and get a drink,’ Perry said, firmly. ‘I know you don’t want me, Frannie, but I’ve got some gossip for John which might be useful, and it won’t take long.’
Perry got them all drinks, moving round his sister’s kitchen as if it were his own, complaining about the quality of the tonic water and freeing the clogged ice trays with a running commentary on women who never defrosted their fridges.
‘So, John.’ He stopped to listen as a tenor voice from the room above started up. McLeish watched impatiently as both Wilsons listened, all their attention focused on the music, drinks unregarded in their hands.
‘He’s good, isn’t he?’ Francesca said.
‘Oh, he always was. He’s got a better range at the bottom than me. That’s Tristram singing, John.’
Peregrine sounded totally untroubled, and McLeish remembered Alan Fraser telling Francesca, with just that same untroubled air, that Mickey Hamilton had more experience in Himalayan ice and snow conditions than he had. If your talent was secure in an area where it mattered, you could afford to be generous about other people who might be better than you at some things.
‘Is it something else on Mickey Hamilton?’ he asked, declining a second drink and looking hungrily at the steak Francesca was putting under the grill.
‘Sort of. I’ll tell you where it came from.’
‘Always useful.’
‘No need to be sardonic, John, I know you’ve had a long day. It’s the steel-fixers on the new house who told me.’
‘The place in Bertrand Terrace you were looking at?’
‘I know you’ve been away, John, but you’re well out of date. I bought it six weeks ago and the lads went straight on site – we’re gutting it and putting RSJs in everywhere.’
‘But you’ve only just finished the house you’re in,’ McLeish, side-tracked, objected.
‘It’s too small,’ Perry said firmly
. ‘Much too small.’
McLeish was relieved to see that Francesca was also unconvinced by the idea that a single man with an intermittently live-in girlfriend was inadequately housed in the terraced house with three double bedrooms and three large reception rooms in which he presently lived.
‘Mind you,’ Francesca said, turning the steak, ‘we’re all quite relieved that Perry is spending some of his ill-gotten gains on property, rather than on wine and women.’
Perry grinned at this sisterly observation. ‘However,’ he said firmly, wresting the conversation back, ‘there are armies of steel-fixers working on Bertrand Terrace, and some of those guys are absentees from the Western Underpass site which isn’t all that far away.’
‘Perry! You are naughty. Do you mean they are still clocked on with Vernon?’ Francesca sounded appalled.
‘I haven’t asked, Frannie, I really don’t want to know. What she’s saying, John, is that these chaps take jobs on the big sites and then go and moonlight for cash on little conversion jobs.’
‘Does that matter?’
‘Yes it does,’ Francesca said, peering under the grill. ‘The lads don’t usually even try and do two jobs. At best they go sick for short periods from the big sites in order to work for private employers for cash. We were always losing gangs for the odd week when I was on a site. That means that an employer like Vernon is carrying all the National Insurance costs while the bloke is pocketing cash on a private job. I assume you’re paying cash, Perry?’
Perry confirmed equably that, in common with every other homeowner in London, he was indeed paying cash to get anyone to do anything.
‘At worst, these chaps clock on a big site in the morning then slide off when the site supervisor is not looking and do a day’s work somewhere else, then get back on site just in time to punch a clock on their way out. That way they’re drawing basic pay on the big site and earning a second wage in cash somewhere else.’
McLeish indicated that all this was dead interesting but he didn’t see where it was going, and Perry said irritably that Frannie had introduced an irrelevancy.