by J M Gregson
Peach was not a man easily impressed. ‘Be careful about the company you keep, sir. Do you want me to help you with that tie?’
‘No, I don’t! Just tell me why you’ve come disturbing my weekend and then get on your way.’
‘Your orders, sir.’
‘My orders?’ Tucker hoped fervently that Barbara was not listening outside the heavy dining-room door.
‘You said that I was to keep you fully briefed on the situation, sir. That this was a high-profile case and you wanted the latest information to be relayed to you at all times.’
‘I didn’t mean at seven twenty on a Saturday night.’
‘Yes, sir. I’ll make a note of that for future reference. Put it in writing for myself, later in the evening.’
‘Well, what is it?’ Chief Superintendent Tucker had discerned a silver lining. He might be able to impress the Chairman of the Police Authority and other luminaries with the latest news on the case; he would make it clear to them that he had been working on this crime until the very moment he had to come to dinner with them.
‘There’s still a chance that the butler did it,’ said Peach portentously.
‘The butler?’
Peach thought that Tucker in a white shirt with a string of bow tie in his hand could still look appealingly like a distressed fish. ‘Doesn’t call himself that, sir. But he’s something similar. Thought you might like to stretch a point for your friends when you’re holding them rapt with your account of the mysterious affair at Marton Towers. I’m told that in Agatha Christie the butler was often a leading suspect.’
‘Look! Get on with it and get out!’
‘Yes, sir. Admirably succinct, as is your wont. Well, Mr Neville Holloway is still in the frame. That’s the butler, sir, though he calls himself something different. So is the victim’s wife, sir. Rather a voluptuous lady, I think you’d find her.’ He glanced thoughtfully towards the door and the Brünnhilde beyond it, beside whom Sally Cartwright was certainly sylph-like. ‘She didn’t seem unduly distressed by having her husband burnt to a rather large cinder. Interesting, we thought.’
‘This could have waited until Monday.’
‘Your orders, though, sir. Too conscientious for your own good. Never really away from the job. And there is one thing that I needed to warn you about.’
‘And what would that be?’ Tucker’s voice was ominously steady now.
‘All the employees up there seem to have been in trouble with us boys in blue, sir. Several of them have done time, and all of them seem to have been questioned in connection with previous offences.’
‘And why do I need to know this, at the moment when I am preparing to attend an important function on a Saturday evening?’
‘Didn’t want you embarrassing yourself, sir. Didn’t want you unwittingly suggesting that any of these people might make sturdy members of your Lodge.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous. The only man who might even be considered for the brotherhood is the man in overall charge at Marton Towers, the man you so witlessly refer to as the butler, and even he—’
‘Neville Holloway, sir.’
‘Well, it’s just possible that a man like him might be—’
‘Fraudster, sir.’
‘He is?’
You’d know that, if you’d kept in touch with the case. If you weren’t such an old fraud yourself. ‘Done years inside for it, sir. Came out seventeen years ago. Been going straight since then. So he says.’
‘If this is all you’ve come to say, then you can be on your way. We’re just about to—’
‘About to go out junketing with the Chairman of the Police Authority, yes, sir. Well, I shan’t detain you any longer. Just thought you’d like to let the big man know that we’re ceaselessly in pursuit of criminals, even on Saturday nights.’
Tucker said, ‘I shall certainly let Henry Rawcliffe know that. I’ll tell him all about your efforts in this high-profile case.’
Percy knew that he wouldn’t do anything of the sort. The only person mentioned favourably to Henry Rawcliffe would be Chief Superintendent Tommy Bloody Tucker himself. But if the rumour he had heard that morning about the Chairman of the Police Authority had anything in it, that suited Percy down to the ground.
Barbara Tucker was checking the string of pearls on her ample neck when he emerged into the hall with his chief. Someone should surely tell her that orange wasn’t the right colour for an evening dress on one of her splendid proportions. It would take a much bigger man than Tommy Bloody Tucker to do that; a latter-day Siegfried would be required.
‘Enjoy your evening!’ Percy Peach called from the darkness, as Brünnhilde shut the front door firmly upon him.
There was no one in at the house when Derek Simmons got there. He waited outside the shabby front door in the car for twenty minutes, in the faint hope that the man he wanted to see would come back. Then he saw the woman who lived next door peering out at him suspiciously for the second time, and knew it was time to go. The last thing he wanted was to have her ringing the police. He would have to hope he could buttonhole his friend in the more public setting of the snooker club, after all.
The club was crowded on Saturday night, but he got a game within twenty minutes. ‘Don’t usually see you on a Saturday,’ said his opponent, as he potted the first black of the frame.
Derek said a little too loudly, ‘No. Sunday’s my night. I’m here every Sunday. Quieter than Saturdays. I’m invariably here for most of the evening, on a Sunday.’ The more people around here who were made aware of that, the better.
It was a scrappy game. Derek was quite a skilled player, and his opponent, knowing he wasn’t up to the same standard, played a cagey safety game and waited for his chances. As he left the cue ball near the bottom cushion for the third time in a row, he said, ‘You fully retired now, Derek?’
‘Yes. I do a bit of part-time, though, when people want plans drawn for extensions and the like.’
‘Consultancy.’
Derek grinned. ‘That’s what you’d call it, if you’d retired from a high-powered job in industry. It means I do the odd small job, to bring in a bit of beer money and keep me out of mischief.’
He tried to focus on the game, but he couldn’t concentrate when he wanted to. He was watching the door all the time to see if the man he wanted to see would come into the club; it was so crowded that he was afraid of missing him. The decibel level was rising with each passing minute. The Rovers had won that afternoon, and there was much lively discussion of the merits of various players.
Derek eventually missed a crucial brown, which he would normally have potted without difficulty, and his opponent gleefully finished off the frame on the pink. He was happy enough to go back to his friends and relate the details of his triumph over the formidable Derek Simmons.
And Derek was happy enough to be rid of him, for he had spotted the man he had come here to speak with. Harry Barnard was a lean man, with an even leaner head and a pencil-thin moustache of the sort sported by Hollywood stars in the nineteen fifties and sixties. He was one of those men who had never moved on from the fashions of their youth. At this moment, Derek Simmons found such permanence quite appealing. A man who did not change his appearance might be solid and reliable, once he had given his word.
He bought two pints of bitter and shepherded Harry away from the group beseeching him to play dominoes and into the far corner of the huge room. They sat down together on the bench which overlooked the snooker tables. They would not be disturbed here. Those who were playing snooker were immersed in their game, and all those who were not playing snooker were busy drinking and exchanging insults and cheerful laughter at the other end of the club.
Harry Barnard’s watery grey eyes looked curiously at the man who had bought him beer and waylaid him before he could even remove his coat. He said, ‘Don’t usually see you here on a Saturday night, Derek.’
Derek Simmons tried not to show his impatience. ‘The wife sent me out. Told me
to come and enjoy myself.’
Harry gave him the roguish smile he had borrowed from a young David Niven and never returned. ‘There won’t be many people in here who can say that.’ He peered across the snooker tables at the noisy concourse beyond, wanting to light the cigarette he had lit for many years at this point, before enlightenment had changed the law and forbidden it.
‘I’m lucky with Brenda. She’s a good woman.’ Derek meant it. He wondered why in Lancashire you had to be ashamed of confessing that you loved your wife, that she had made a difference to your life. ‘She’s devastated by the death of her son. But she sent me out to enjoy myself. I think she really wanted to have the house to herself.’
‘Rotten business, that. I can understand what she’s going through.’ He couldn’t, of course, and he wasn’t at all affected by this death himself, but it seemed the right thing to say. Harry Barnard was a conventional man, so he sought out the right things to say.
‘It’s hit me hard, as well.’ Derek wanted to assert that: it was important to him that as many people as possible should think it.
‘You weren’t the lad’s dad, though, were you? It wasn’t as bad for you as for Brenda.’
‘No, it wasn’t the same at all. Still, I don’t mind admitting it to you, Neil’s death’s hit me quite hard.’ Derek glanced up over the two pint tankards: Harry seemed to be taking that at face value.
‘They found out who did it yet?’ Harry couldn’t conceal his curiosity. A murder mystery excites most people, especially when it happens on your doorstep, and when you know people who were near to the victim it gives it an added piquancy.
‘Don’t think so.’ Derek decided to pretend that he had only a marginal interest in the investigation, lest his companion should think he had either any connection with it or any anxiety about it. ‘They didn’t even let Brenda see the body. Said that they could identify it from a DNA match. She had to give them a saliva sample.’
Harry Barnard was silent for a moment, digesting the implications of this, savouring the details of police procedure. ‘There couldn’t have been much of him left, then.’
‘I don’t suppose there was, after a fire like that.’
‘Not a nice way to go.’
‘He didn’t die in the fire.’ Derek Simmons was wondering how he could get his man away from the grisly details of the death and on to what he wanted from him. ‘He was dead before the fire. Brenda reckons he could have got out, if he’d been alive.’
‘So how did he die?’
‘I don’t know. Don’t reckon anyone knows, yet. If they do, they’re not saying.’
‘Police will know more than they’re telling us.’ Harry Barnard spoke from the safe citadel of invincible ignorance.
‘Yes, I expect so. Harry, you remember we played snooker last Sunday night?’
The thin man nodded. ‘Play most Sundays, don’t we?’
They were about the same standard, and both of them useful players, who played in the league team for the club. Derek tried hard to sound casual as he said, ‘If anyone asks you, I was here for the whole of Sunday night. Say from seven to half-past ten.’
‘Course you were. Same as usual.’
‘That’s the idea. Just in case anyone should come asking you. I don’t suppose they will, but just in case.’
‘Right you are. I’ll have another pint with you, then show my face at dominoes. We’ll have a frame of snooker later, Derek, if you put our name down for a table.’
Harry Barnard wouldn’t even have thought about the matter, if Derek hadn’t come asking him. But while he was playing dominoes, he remembered that his old friend hadn’t come into the club until about eight thirty last Sunday night.
Twelve
James Naylor would have preferred to be interviewed with his wife. He had said so, told them that it would save time for the CID people, as the two of them could only tell the same story. But the cool female voice on the phone had told him that that wasn’t usual in murder cases, that CID officers liked to listen to what people had to say individually and then check to see whether there were any significant discrepancies.
She’d made it sound quite sinister on the phone, as if she was issuing a warning that there would be trouble in store for him unless he was completely honest. Lucy Blake hadn’t been Percy Peach’s detective sergeant for three years without learning to play even the meanest card in her hand to maximum effect.
They’d arranged to see Naylor in the main house, away from the familiar furnishings of his home as well as the wife who was better with words than he was. He told himself that he had nothing to fear, if he told his story boldly and answered their questions as briefly as he could. Perhaps, indeed, it was better to see them without Michelle at his side, if the subject was going to be Neil Cartwright.
James Naylor would have liked them to sit with him in his kitchen, where he could have had the utensils of his trade all round him and felt in control. But Neville Holloway said it wasn’t really a suitable place for a formal interview with the police, and James couldn’t argue with that. There were plenty of other rooms available in the mansion, on this quiet Sunday morning. So the two officers sat down with him in the little anteroom outside the boss’s office, where James couldn’t remember going since he had been interviewed for his job over four years ago.
The woman who had spoken to him on the phone turned out to be quite a stunner. The dark green sweater, which made a nonsense of the term ‘plain clothes’, did nothing to disguise the curve of her breasts, as well as accentuating the colour of her striking dark-red hair and her unusual green-blue eyes. She said, ‘You know that we wish to speak to you about the murder of Neil Cartwright. I’d like to clear up a few personal details first.’
He told them in answer to her quietly spoken questions that he was now thirty-one; that he had come to Marton Towers four years and four months ago, initially as assistant chef and general domestic help; that he enjoyed working here; that, like the wife of the deceased man, he had been successful, and had been promoted to take more responsibility.
He was now officially Head Chef. He couldn’t help giving the title capital letters as he delivered it to them. The post was occasionally very demanding, when the owner was in residence and brought guests to stay at the Towers, but there were also long periods when James Naylor cooked only for the residential staff of the estate. Mr Holloway had sent him on courses during the slack periods, and he now felt confident that he could handle the job.
‘Which you may not have for much longer,’ said the man with the bald head and the piercing black eyes, who had been silent whilst DS Blake recorded the details of his background.
James detected a new note of aggression. ‘Why do you say that?’
‘Because the man who pays your wages is in clink, and likely to remain there for several years, unless the lawyers make an even bigger cock-up of things than usual,’ said Percy Peach. He looked at that moment as if he would like to deposit Richard Crouch’s chef behind bars as well.
‘Mr Crouch is innocent until proved guilty,’ said James Naylor, more sturdily than he felt.
‘I see,’ said Peach, nodding as though it gave him satisfaction to have this man confirmed as an enemy. He weighed up the stocky, powerful physique, looked hard into the brown eyes of the unlined face and found in them a pleasing apprehension. ‘And I suppose you knew nothing about what was going on here? Nothing about what these important visitors you cooked for were up to?’
‘It wasn’t my business to ask about that.’
‘Not an answer to my question, that wasn’t. Still, I suppose I shouldn’t expect an honest answer from someone who’d been involved in causing an affray.’
‘I wasn’t a leading light in that.’ James searched his mind frantically for other phrases his lawyer had used in court. ‘I was young and easily led at the time of the offence. The judge said the sentence should reflect that. I was bound over to keep the peace for two years.’
‘Aye. As
I said, the lawyers often come up with a load of crap.’
‘I’ve got a clean record since then. I was warned to go straight, and I’ve done that.’
‘And ended up working for a major criminal. Who’s innocent until proved guilty, but who you know and I know is going down for years.’ Peach decided that the softening-up process was now complete. ‘Mr Naylor, we’re not here to discuss either Richard Crouch or your past misdemeanours. Which is no doubt a relief to you. Or would be, if we weren’t here in connection with something much more serious. Murder, Mr Naylor. Murder most foul. By a person or persons unknown. For the moment, that is. Did you kill Neil Cartwright?’
The question came so bluntly on the end of the invective that it took James by surprise. ‘No. No, I didn’t. Of course I didn’t!’ He struggled to make his denial as emphatic as he wished it to be. The trouble with having a light skin was that the blood always rushed into your face and made you look guilty; he’d had to struggle with that when he was a child.
Peach looked immensely disappointed. ‘Hmm. Who did kill him, then?’
‘I don’t know.’ James made an ill-advised attempt at defiance. ‘That’s your job, not mine, isn’t it?’
Peach gave him the grin of a tiger which has discovered a helpless goat. ‘My job is to find a murderer and put him behind bars, yes. In our grandfather’s day, I’d have been able to say “string him up”.’ He shook his head sadly over this decline in rigour. ‘Must have been a lot more satisfying, to be able to say that to a villain. But then, you tell me that you’re not a villain any more. In which case, despite your record, you are a responsible citizen. And it is the duty of a responsible citizen to offer the police every assistance in the detection of crime. So who do you think killed Neil Cartwright, if you didn’t, Mr Naylor?’