by J M Gregson
‘I don’t know.’ James looked desperately for relief at the radiant female face to his tormentor’s left, but she was busy recording his replies. ‘If I did, I’d tell you, wouldn’t I?’
‘I sincerely hope you would, yes. To conceal any of your thoughts from us would be most unwise. That includes even those thoughts you regard as most secret. Murder leaves no room for secrets. Did you lose your home in the fire?’
Another question tacked on like an afterthought at the end of the dire warnings James found so unsettling. ‘Yes, I did. That is, we did. My wife Michelle and I, I mean. We had time to get our personal possessions out. We spent Wednesday and Thursday night in a hotel, but we’ve been given rooms in the main house, for the time being. It’s a suite on the first floor.’ He allowed them an inappropriate glimpse of his pride in the higher status which he felt this conferred upon him.
‘But the Cartwrights didn’t lose their home.’
‘No. Sally lives at the end of the stable block. Her cottage wasn’t affected by the fire.’
‘Get on well with Neil Cartwright, did you?’
He should have been used to the technique now, which involved the key questions coming at him like missiles rather than enquiries. James told himself that he had known all along that this one would come. ‘Well enough.’
‘You’ll need to enlarge on that.’ Peach had stopped smiling some time ago.
‘We weren’t bosom pals, but we got on well enough.’
‘You lived very close to each other on the site. You must have seen a lot of each other.’
‘Not that much. I worked in the mansion. I spent almost all of my time in the kitchen. Neil was out on the estate. When there weren’t visitors to cater for, he came in with the rest of the staff for a midday meal. Otherwise we scarcely saw him in the main house. Our paths didn’t cross very much.’
‘You don’t spend all your time working. You said yourself that there were slack periods, when the mansion didn’t have visitors to demand your attention.’
‘Neil worked in the gardens and around the estate. The slack periods didn’t make much difference to him.’
There was something here, but Peach had as yet no idea what. He thought of Sally Cartwright’s apparent detachment about her husband’s death. Had the buxom Mrs Cartwright been having a fling – or something more – with this fresh-faced, vigorous younger man? Peach had never had a residential post himself, but he imagined there could be a hothouse atmosphere when people were living as well as working very close to each other. ‘You may not have seen much of him during your working day, but you lived very close to each other.’
James looked at the patch of blue sky outside the window, and fervently wished he was out of this small room and in the fresh air. ‘We weren’t bosom pals. We didn’t go out drinking together. We got on well enough. I don’t know what more I can say.’
‘Did you meet much socially? Did you go in and out of each other’s houses?’
‘A little, in the early days. Not much, in the last year or two.’ He wished he hadn’t said even as much as that. But they’d already spoken to Sally Cartwright, and they’d be talking to his wife in due course. Looking for discrepancies and following them up, as they’d already warned him. He wondered what Michelle would say when they got on to this. ‘We had different interests. Sometimes, when you’re living close to each other, you find you don’t want to live in each other’s pockets.’ He had thought of that on the spur of the moment, and he was cautiously pleased with it.
‘I see.’ Peach pursed his lips and nodded slowly. ‘What were you doing last Sunday, Mr Naylor?’
James wondered if everyone looked and felt guilty when the man flung questions like this at them so abruptly. He hoped they did. Thank goodness he had his answer ready for this one. ‘I went into Tesco’s to get a few things in the morning. With my wife, that was. I think I was on the site for the rest of the day. I went across to the main house at about midday, to find out from Mr Holloway just when Mr Crouch and his guests were arriving, and to discuss menus with him.’
‘And you were in your stables cottage for the rest of the day?’
‘I think so, yes.’
‘So your wife could confirm that.’
‘I expect so. We might not have been together for the whole of the day. I really can’t remember every detail.’
‘No, I don’t expect you can. Even though it’s only seven days ago.’ Peach contrived to make that sound like an accusation. ‘Who do you think killed Neil Cartwright?’
‘I don’t know. I’d have told you at the beginning if I did.’
‘I see. Well, give some thought to the matter, will you? We’ll no doubt be back to speak to you again during the next few days.’
The pretty woman who had taken the notes gave him a quick smile as they left. But Peach’s final words rang in his ears like an accusation, long after they had gone.
Thomas Bulstrode Tucker was not a good golfer.
In view of his modest skills, he would have been better advised to wear more muted and less individual colours, but he had an unfortunate taste for garish golfing attire. His plus-twos were in a combination of canary yellow and bright red which reflected no known Scottish tartan. The turquoise socks below them sat uneasily above the scarred white shoes, which bore the evidence of his many visits to brambles and blackthorn. His lemon cap bore the badge of the La Manga club in Spain, where he had once taken a hundred and thirteen shots to complete a round on the South Course. That was one of many personal golfing statistics which Superintendent Tucker kept entirely to himself.
After the dismal prelude of Percy Peach’s visit, last night’s dinner had really gone rather well. The Chief Superintendent had been able to enlarge at length upon his successes to Henry Rawcliffe, the Chairman of the local Police Authority. Admittedly, the grey-haired, adipose sexagenarian had listened to him with a rather distracted air, with only the most minimal conversational responses.
But that had allowed Thomas Tucker to enlarge upon his key role of direction of the Brunton CID section, and to show how he was right on top of the investigation of the sensational events at Marton Towers. He had managed to get Henry on his own for ten minutes at the end of the dinner. The man had not said much in response, but Rawcliffe must surely have been impressed, for he had accepted Tucker’s invitation to be his guest and play a round with him at Brunton Golf Club.
When he arrived to play, Henry Rawcliffe was not attired in Tucker’s peacock splendour. He apparently preferred the low-key anonymity of greys and the darker blues. But Tucker was delighted to find that the Chairman of Brunton Police Authority was almost as bad a golfer as the man who had invited him to play. Rawcliffe took rather less time to play a bad shot, because he did not go through Tucker’s elaborate preparations for disaster. He also seemed to find his failures less of a surprise. But Henry Rawcliffe topped the ball just as savagely along the ground, or hit the ground two inches behind that small and elusive white sphere, almost as regularly as did Chief Superintendent T. B. Tucker.
Rawcliffe’s language in reaction to these trials was less virulent and colourful than Tucker’s, so that his demeanour and indeed his whole presence on the course were less eye-catching than that of his opponent. But Sunday was a busy day, and on an afternoon of gentle winds and high-flying white clouds the members of Brunton Golf Club were out in force. They followed the erratic progress of this muted stranger and the familiar garish figure of Thomas Bulstrode Tucker round the course with increasing impatience.
Another, non-golfing spectator watched with interest from the edge of the course. The man who three days ago had climbed the wall at the back of Marton Towers, then fled when the constable in charge of the crime scene came out of the stable block, stood motionless beside a bunker, with a rake in his hand.
He studied the actions of the luridly clad Tucker and his companion without a smile. If this was the man in charge of the investigation up at the Towers, then there surely couldn
’t be too much danger for him.
Sunday tea in the old cottage at the base of Longridge Fell was a nostalgic ritual for Lucy Blake.
She was always reminded of teas twenty years ago, when she was a wide-eyed girl at primary school who believed that her father could do absolutely anything. This time of year had always seemed the best to her, when the days were growing longer and the sun was rising higher over Pendle Hill and her dad was showing her the first buds on the daffodils in the front garden, and teasing her about Easter eggs.
Her father had been dead for ten years now, though his memory was still bright in this house. His picture stood in pride of place on the mantelpiece, its silver frame bright with diligent cleaning, the neat writing in Agnes Blake’s hand beneath it giving the information that this was Bill Blake after taking six for thirty-four. In the black and white picture, a smiling, exhausted man in cricket whites, with a sweater over his arm, looked at once pleased and embarrassed by the attention, as his team-mates applauded him up the steps of the pavilion.
One of the more surprising changes in a room which changed little had been the appearance a year or so earlier of another photograph alongside that of the dead man whose presence was still strong in this room. A colour photograph of a smiling Percy Peach, looking much younger because his bald pate was covered by a blue cap at a rakish angle. The same neat hand beneath the picture proclaimed that this was Denis Charles Scott Peach, coming back to the pavilion after ‘yet another fifty’ for East Lancs.
Agnes Blake caught Percy looking at the pictures as she came into the room. ‘You gave up the game much too early, Percy. With your dancing footwork, you’d a lot of runs left in you,’ she said with authority.
‘I think I did, sometimes,’ agreed Percy. ‘Then I look at people ducking and diving with the ball flying round their heads and think perhaps thirty-six was old enough. You don’t get that sort of thing at golf.’
‘GOLF!’
Percy was still surprised by the depth of the contempt a seventy-year-old lady could compress into a single syllable, though he had experienced the phenomenon many times now. He said impishly, ‘I think your daughter’s thinking of taking up golf, Mrs B.’
The snort of derision might have come from the most mettlesome of stallions. Percy and his future mother-in-law not only understood each other perfectly but took an undisguised pleasure in each other’s company. It was the only time when Lucy felt the stirring of a little jealousy. She had indeed toyed with the idea of golf. She’d never tried it, but it surely couldn’t be so difficult, when you approached a dead ball in your own time and didn’t hit it until you were quite ready to do so.
She’d said as much to Percy Peach, and he’d told her that her naivety was one of her most touching qualities.
One of the things which hadn’t changed over the years was the excellence of Agnes Blake’s baking. And with the advent of Percy Peach, she had a man to feed again, a man to pay her compliments about her scones and her trifles and her sponge cakes. Agnes had been born at the end of the nineteen-thirties depression, which had hit the cotton mills of Brunton and the Ribble Valley hardest of all. The men had been the breadwinners then, and young Agnes had been brought up on the precept that it was good to see a man eat.
Percy Peach did not disappoint her. He polished off the delicious roast-ham salad which constituted the traditional high tea in these parts, and moved on with zest to Agnes Blake’s baking. And the woman who lived there alone was delighted. ‘Good to have a sensible man to feed at last, instead of a vain young woman watching her figure,’ she said, with an accusing glance at her daughter.
‘I’d be like a house side, Mum, if I ate everything you set before me,’ protested Lucy.
Percy graciously accepted a slice of fruit cake. ‘I like to see a little flesh upon a lass, as you do, Mrs B,’ he said magisterially, studying the flesh on his fiancée appreciatively as she stooped at his side to replenish his cup, ignoring the baleful glare which Lucy visited upon him in response to this sentiment. ‘I expect she wants to look slim on the wedding photographs, but for my money, she’s— Ouch! What did you do that for?’ He gazed up in wide-eyed innocence into the angry blue-green eyes of Lucy, who had pinched his arm viciously with the mention of the wedding.
Agnes beamed delightedly. ‘I’m glad you brought that up, Percy. I can’t get our Lucy to talk about it. It’s time we were fixing a date.’
‘You could well be right, Mrs B. I’m always ready to bow to your superior experience of life, in this as in so many other things.’ He intoned the words sententiously, then directed his widest and most innocent smile first at Agnes and then at her daughter.
‘I’ve told her, I’ve a career to think of,’ said Lucy furiously.
‘Oh, the modern police service is very enlightened in these things,’ said Percy airily. ‘Marriage is no hindrance to a woman nowadays – perhaps, indeed, rather the reverse, sometimes. And I’m sure your mother wouldn’t be averse to the idea of grandchildren.’
He knew of course that nothing would give the lady greater pleasure. Lucy had not been born until her mother was forty-one, and Agnes was anxious to have grandchildren while she still had the energy to enjoy them. But he and the vigorous septuagenarian were as usual on exactly the same wavelength, one which Lucy found it difficult to tune herself in to. Her mother now came in with her usual spiel about wanting to romp with toddlers before the old man with the sickle came to carry her off, whilst Percy nodded sage agreement and interjected the odd well-chosen phrase of encouragement.
Percy, who had once objected to the idea of a woman DS at his side with every weapon at his disposal, now came through as the most enlightened of men. ‘And should you wish to return to police work at a later stage, such as when your children reached school age, your rank would be safeguarded and your re-entry into the service warmly welcomed, I’m sure. We appreciate the value of family experience in a modern police officer.’
Lucy Blake thought she had never seen her man so sanctimonious; Agnes thought Percy a pillar of common sense.
Lucy resisted all attempts to pin her down to a date for the wedding. But by the time they left the cosy old cottage that night, the conspirators, their heads bent together over a calendar at the other side of the cheerful fire, had agreed on a series of possible dates in the summer and autumn.
‘Sensible woman, your mum,’ said Percy, as he drove down the lane after waving an extravagant farewell to his devotee.
‘Judas!’ his partner hissed at him through the darkness.
Thirteen
It was an impressive room. The tall stone-framed neo-Gothic window looked out over the gravelled forecourt of Marton Towers and the twin lakes which fringed the driveway as it ran down to the gatehouse.
Percy Peach was enjoying building up the tension in the woman to whom he had just introduced Blake and himself. He walked over to the window and took an unhurried look at this scene, which had changed so little since the grounds of the house were laid out over a hundred and fifty years ago. ‘Did themselves well, the toffs, didn’t they?’ he said without rancour.
Michelle Naylor said, ‘We’re only here as a temporary measure. One of the disused cottages in the stable block is being cleaned up and heated for us. I expect we’ll be in there by the end of this week.’ She wondered why she was apologizing to this man for occupying this splendid suite in the mansion. She had planned many things to say during the intervals of a restless night, but this hadn’t been one of them.
‘Near Sally Cartwright, are they, your new quarters?’
‘No. This cottage is at the other end of the stable block, actually. But only about a hundred yards away from Sally, I suppose.’
‘Pity you’re not going to be next door. I expect Mrs Cartwright could do with a little company and support, after what’s happened.’
‘Yes. Well, she’ll get that from the residents generally. You become quite a tightly knit group when you live on the site as well as working together.
’
‘That’s what I thought. Get on well with both of the Cartwrights, did you?’
‘Well enough.’
‘I’m particularly interested in the months immediately before Neil’s death, for obvious reasons.’
‘They’re a little older than us. I suppose I should say they were a little older, in view of what’s happened to poor Neil. But we got on well enough, as I said. There’s always a danger of getting too close, when you are together all the time. We didn’t want to live in each other’s pockets.’
Michelle produced the phrase which James had told her he’d used to them on the previous day, and glanced up at Peach to see if he noticed the echo. She learned nothing from his impassive, watchful face.
‘What was it that made you fall out with the Cartwrights?’
He spoke as if it were an established fact, as if he now expected her to account for herself. James had said that he hadn’t given anything away when they’d spoken to him on the previous day, but perhaps he’d underestimated them. Or overestimated his own powers of deception. Or perhaps someone else had been talking.
Michelle fought for calmness. ‘We didn’t fall out. Relations between us and the Cartwrights might have cooled a little, that’s all.’
‘And why was that?’
Michelle was surprised at the tension in her shoulders as she forced a shrug. ‘Who knows? Perhaps you should ask Sally Cartwright.’
‘Oh, we shall, Mrs Naylor. But at the moment, I’m asking you.’
‘In that case, I should have to say that I don’t really know. Sally’s my boss, now. She’s been promoted, if you like, though we’re all expected to muck in together as required here and people don’t have official job descriptions. But Sally’s really the housekeeper here now, with responsibility for all the other domestic staff in the main house. Not in the kitchen, or outside the mansion, but in all the reception rooms and the bedrooms. It’s a responsible job, when there are visitors. The whole place has to look attractive and run smoothly.’