Remains to be Seen

by J M Gregson

  ‘I am no friend of Henry Rawcliffe’s, Peach, and never have been. I don’t know where you could ever have gained that impression, and I’ll thank you not to—’

  ‘Golfing companions and all that.’

  Tommy Bloody Tucker spluttered in what Percy considered a rather appealing manner. ‘I’ve always had my suspicions about Rawcliffe, even though I was inveigled into giving the man a game of golf at my club. It’s not always easy to avoid these things, you know.’

  ‘Yes, sir, I do. But don’t I remember you saying on Monday that you’d been delighted to have a game with golf with Rawcliffe last Sunday? That it reflected how well you’d got on the previous Saturday night? That it showed what close buddies you were?’

  Tucker glowered at the man who continued to stare so innocently at his ceiling. Peach must have known about Rawcliffe’s fall from grace when they had last spoken, when he had encouraged his chief to emphasize how close he was to the Chairman of the Police Authority. The Chief Superintendent said desperately, ‘I always suspected there was something wrong about Henry Rawcliffe, as I’ve just told you. Of course, I couldn’t voice it at the time, but—’

  ‘Really, sir? I thought that when I issued the counsel that a man in your position had to be careful about your choice of friends, you said something like, “I could hardly make a better friend than the Chairman of the Police Authority, could I?” But of course, you may well believe that Mr Rawcliffe is innocent. I know from experience just how resolute you are in the defence of your friends and colleagues.’

  Tucker scowled at him suspiciously. ‘There’s no question of the man being innocent, as far as I’m concerned, Peach. Do you realize that the charges relate to child abuse years ago, during his time as a social worker in the nineteen eighties?’

  ‘So I understand, sir. A sorry business, but no doubt he’ll be glad to have a steadfast friend like you in this time of crisis.’

  Chief Superintendent Tucker spoke with what he hoped was dangerous clarity. ‘Let me make it plain that Henry Rawcliffe is no friend of mine, Peach. He has never been more than an acquaintance that I met in the course of my duties. Is that absolutely clear?’

  ‘Perfectly, sir. I’m sorry that I was misinformed.’ By you, you tosser. By the man who drops his friends and colleagues like shit off a hot shovel as soon as danger threatens. ‘You won’t wish to inform Mr Rawcliffe about our progress in the Neil Cartwright murder case, then, sir, as you were planning to do when we spoke on Saturday night and on Monday?’

  ‘Henry Rawcliffe is no longer Chairman of the Police Authority. All connections are severed. I hope he goes down for a long time.’

  Percy wondered about a little sally on the ‘innocent until proved guilty’ theme, and then reluctantly decided that he had squeezed the maximum amount of fun for himself and embarrassment for his chief out of the unfortunate Henry Rawcliffe.

  He said briskly, ‘It’s still possible the butler did it, sir,’ and watched Tucker’s jaw drop slackly open in bewilderment; it was predictable, but still enjoyable. ‘Neville Holloway, sir. Calls himself the General Manager up at Marton Towers, but he’s the nearest thing to an old-fashioned butler, to my mind. Knows everything that goes on in that place, including his master’s activities as a drug baron, and isn’t telling us more than he has to. Therefore a candidate for our murderer, to my mind.’

  ‘But you’ve unearthed nothing to connect him directly with this killing, so far. Disappointing that.’ Tucker strove hard to reassert himself.

  ‘Enquiries are proceeding, sir. Deceased’s wife’s odds have shortened.’

  ‘This is not a betting exercise, Peach. The wife of a murder victim is always a leading suspect, you know.’

  ‘Yes, I do, sir, as a matter of fact. But thank you for the reminder. Sally Cartwright wasn’t conducting an affair with the chef at the mansion, as you suggested.’

  Tucker couldn’t remember quite what he had suggested to this bewildering man, who sidestepped his lunges like an elusive rugby back. ‘Then that surely makes her a less likely candidate for this?’

  ‘Would do, sir, except that our detailed enquiries have revealed that her husband was having it off with one of her domestic staff in the mansion. An affair between Neil Cartwright and Michelle Naylor had been going on for several months. Both Sally Cartwright and the woman enjoying the nooky concealed it from us when we first spoke to them. Intensive work by the team has now revealed it.’

  ‘It’s quite possible, you know, that this Mrs Cartwright was insanely jealous, that she did away with her husband after some blazing row about his adulterous relationship with another woman.’

  Percy wondered whether his chief spent his afternoons of leisure watching black-and-white movies from the fifties. He decided not to enlarge upon any similarities between Sally Cartwright and Barbara Stanwyck. ‘This Michelle Naylor is a cool one, sir. She made no mention of her passionate relationship with the dead man when we spoke to her. She’s now got to account both for that omission and for her own movements around the time of the murder.’

  ‘This Naylor woman might have killed him in fury if he said he was breaking up the affair, Peach. Lovers’ tiffs can escalate very quickly, in these circumstances; fornication often leads to violence.’

  ‘Yes, sir. I bow to your superior knowledge and experience in these things.’ Peach wondered if he should enlarge upon a certain resemblance between the small, neat, dark-haired Michelle Naylor and Audrey Hepburn, but decided he now needed to keep this exchange as short as possible. ‘Husband is James Naylor, sir. Chef at Marton Towers. Stocky and powerful man, sir. I wouldn’t like to get on the wrong side of him.’

  Tucker’s face brightened with inspiration. ‘Might well have seen his wife’s lover off in a fit of blind fury, you know, Peach, if he felt he wanted to be rid of this rival for her affections.’

  Peach reflected for a moment on his chief’s unrivalled predilection for the blindin’ bleedin’ obvious. Then he said heavily, ‘That had occurred to us, sir. Particularly as Naylor’s got no alibi for the hours between one and seven on the day of Cartwright’s death.’

  ‘Ah! It sounds to me as if we’re closing the net on our man!’

  Tucker always switched effortlessly from ‘you’ to ‘we’ when he scented success. Peach’s control deserted him for a moment and he gave the Head of Brunton CID the sourest of his range of smiles. Then he said, ‘There’s another candidate, sir. A young man who’s been in trouble with the police before. Who left Marton Towers hastily immediately after the murder. Who was very possibly involved in drug dealing, though in a fairly minor way.’

  Tucker nodded sagely and switched his ground as effortlessly as a politician hungry for office. ‘This sounds to me like the profile of a serious criminal. What’s his name?’

  ‘Ben Freeman, sir.’

  ‘Freeman, eh? But perhaps not a free man for very much longer, when our police machine ensures that justice takes its course!’

  Tucker could not restrain a half-smothered guffaw at the excellence of his wit. Percy Peach remained impassive. ‘There’s one other suspect, sir. This one has no connection with Marton Towers, as far as we know so far. It’s the dead man’s stepfather, sir.’

  ‘Often don’t get on with their stepchildren, you know, second husbands. Difficult relationships to sort out.’

  ‘Yes, sir. I had heard that. This man’s called Derek Simmons. Neil Cartwright refused to change his name to Simmons – that’s not at all surprising, since he was almost an adult at the time of his mother’s second marriage. But he remained very attached to his real father, apparently. Simmons went to some trouble to arrange an alibi for what he thought was the time of the murder, sir. He now admits that he was at Marton Towers at that time, trying to see Neil Cartwright. He claims he never found him.’

  ‘That might be significant, you know.’

  Peach’s sigh was audible. ‘We thought that, sir. Especially as we’ve now exposed this alibi Derek Simmons set up fo
r himself.’

  A frown furrowed the noble brow of Thomas Bulstrode Tucker. ‘You’ve brought me too many suspects, Peach. It’s your job to make arrests, not speculate like this.’

  ‘Just thought you’d like to be brought up to date with the case as it stands at this moment, sir. Especially as you told me at our last meeting how important it was for you to keep the Chairman of the Police Authority thoroughly briefed on our activities.’

  Peach went back down the stairs consoling himself that he had contrived to leave on a final mention of the egregious Henry Rawcliffe.

  It would be difficult to imagine a greater contrast, Lucy Blake thought, as Michelle Naylor came into the murder room.

  The dead man’s lover was petite, attractive, very pale, with small, pretty features which were so perfect as to be almost doll-like. DC Clyde Northcott, who sat beside her and studied this woman he had not seen before, was six feet three and very black. The woman opposite her was pretending to be calm, whatever she was really feeling; the man beside her made no attempt to disguise his intensity.

  DS Blake dispensed quickly with the formalities of introduction and then said, ‘Mrs Naylor, why did you choose to conceal from us your relationship with a murder victim?’

  ‘Because it seemed the best thing for his memory and for all of us who remained alive.’

  ‘But you were warned that there could be no secrets when you were involved in a murder investigation.’

  ‘Yes, I was made aware of that. But I didn’t want to cause problems for either Sally Cartwright or myself, and I didn’t want Neil to be remembered as an adulterer. So I concealed our affair from you. It seems to me now that I may have been wrong to do so.’ Michelle glanced from the young female face, with its light skin, its hint of freckles and its frame of chestnut hair, to the implacable black features and piercing dark brown eyes to the right of it, and found comfort in neither of them.

  Just when she thought the black officer was going to remain silent and watchful throughout, he said, ‘How would you describe your present relationship with your husband?’

  She had been prepared for more questioning about Neil rather than this sudden switch. She made herself take her time, wondering how James would expect her to answer, how her husband might have responded to the same question about her. ‘Not as bad as you might think. It may not be an ideal marriage, but we’re not about to tear each other’s throats out.’

  ‘How long has James known about your relationship with Neil Cartwright?’

  She was perfectly cool now, remembering what she and James had agreed, what it was in both their interests to say. ‘About a month. Maybe a little more.’ Even if that bitch Sally Cartwright said something different, it wouldn’t undermine them. Sally might have rumbled what was going on at a different time from James.

  ‘And how did your husband react?’

  ‘He wasn’t pleased. No man would be. But this is the twenty-first century, Detective Constable Northcott, and these things aren’t uncommon. We are working things out in a civilized way: I use the present tense because we were still trying to resolve things at the time of Neil’s death. We’ll be all right, James and I, in the long run.’ She gave him a confident, insolent smile, implying that whatever things were like where he had grown up as a piccaninny, they were different in her more sophisticated world.

  Clyde Northcott, who had been born and raised in Lancashire and only rarely moved beyond its boundaries, understood much more of her contempt than she realized, but he did not react to it. He said coldly, ‘In our experience, men react violently to discoveries like this. And in your case, the men knew each other well and were living close to each other on the site at Marton Towers, which must have made reactions much more intense. Don’t you think it possible that your husband might have killed your lover?’

  ‘No. I know James and he isn’t like that.’ She tried hard to be firm and dismissive.

  ‘So how do you think Neil Cartwright died?’

  ‘I’ve no idea.’ She resisted the temptation to tell them that this was their job, not hers. ‘I told you, I saw him drive away from here on Sunday. En route to a Scotland which he never reached. It seems likely that his death took place away from here, that he was killed by someone with no connection with Marton Towers.’

  A scenario which would of course be very convenient for this sharp-eyed woman and everyone else who lived here. Lucy Blake said quietly, ‘That would require someone with no knowledge of the place to have killed him elsewhere and brought the body back here. To have known of a place where the body might be left undiscovered until a fire could destroy it, or at least burn so much of it away that forensic evidence was removed.’

  She watched the woman closely as she spoke, expecting some reaction from her to this brutal description of her lover’s end, but Michelle Naylor remained outwardly calm. ‘I see the logic of that, when you point it out to me. But I can’t think that anyone I know here could possibly have killed Neil. None of us was an angel in our previous lives, as you’ve been at pains to point out to us, but none of us has the profile of a murderer.’

  Lucy wondered just how much the strange collection of personalities at Marton Towers had exchanged notes on their previous police interviews. Neville Holloway and the two women in particular seemed very composed, even when their deceptions were exposed. Perhaps it was the fact that all of them had been in trouble with the police years earlier in their lives which made them seem so calm under questioning. She said irritably, ‘Where was your relationship with Neil Cartwright going at the time of his death?’

  All the questions she had anticipated were coming at her, but not in the order she had expected them. Michelle allowed herself a small smile: it was a good thing that she and James had agreed what they would say beforehand on this. ‘We weren’t going to break up our marriages, or anything drastic like that. Neither of us wanted that. It’s a pity Neil isn’t here to speak for himself about it. I say that because it’s my opinion that the affair had pretty well run its course by the time of Neil’s death.’

  ‘By the time your respective spouses had found out about it, you mean?’

  She smiled again, trying to show them that she understood what they were doing and was proof against it. ‘I didn’t mean that, no. But I don’t deny that the fact that we’d been rumbled had something to do with the way I felt. It’s not easy to come home to the marital bed when your husband knows you’re coming from someone else’s. And people say that secrecy is one of the things which gives an affair its excitement. They may well be right.’

  Clyde Northcott said suddenly, ‘We haven’t been able to pin down the time of death. When exactly do you think Neil Cartwright died, Mrs Naylor?’

  This was something she hadn’t expected. She went back quickly in her mind over her previous account of how she had spent that fateful Sunday, but she couldn’t see anything there to excite their suspicions. ‘No. If I knew that, I might be able to tell you who killed him, mightn’t I?’

  ‘You might even have killed him yourself, Mrs Naylor.’ Clyde Northcott did not smile as he said the words. ‘Had you fallen out with Neil Cartwright in the period immediately before his death?’

  ‘No.’ Michelle could feel her pulses racing, but she kept her body and her hands very still.

  ‘You appear strangely unaffected by his death.’

  She had thought there might be something like this from them, but she had not expected anything so blunt and unapologetic, so openly challenging. ‘You have no idea what I feel. If I keep my emotions under control when I speak to you, that is surely to everyone’s advantage.’

  Lucy Blake had contented herself for several minutes with watching the reactions of this woman who, although not much older than her, was physically so different from herself. She now said slowly, ‘Everyone we have spoken to at Marton Towers has been holding things back. Can you think of a reason for that?’

  Michelle Naylor looked hard into the eyes beneath the broad forehead;
they were a distinctive aquamarine colour, but they seemed to change from green to blue with the intensity of the light. She allowed herself a little smile of contempt at this woman whom she found she so disliked. ‘Perhaps it’s because we’ve all had experiences of police interrogation before. Perhaps those experiences have made us cautious. Perhaps we have learned not to trust the police.’

  ‘And perhaps one of you is concealing murder.’

  Michelle shrugged her small, neat shoulders. ‘You wouldn’t expect me to comment on that, Detective Sergeant Blake. I’ve already assured you that I didn’t kill Neil.’

  ‘And perhaps someone who didn’t commit this murder is protecting the person who did. Becoming an accessory after the fact can lead to very serious charges.’

  Michelle wondered what had happened to the ‘hard cop and soft cop’ routine. These two seemed only concerned to press her hard. She said carefully, with just a touch of insolence, ‘It’s as well that I’m not doing that, then, isn’t it? I can’t speak for anyone else, of course.’

  She wondered when they had gone whether she should have played the distressed lover deprived of her man. They had picked her up on her lack of any obvious grief over Neil. But fortunately he wasn’t here any more to clarify the temperature of the affair for them.

  Twenty

  Ben Freeman was pleasantly tired at the end of his work at Brunton Golf Club.

  With the lengthening days, the grass was beginning to grow and it was time to get the last of the winter tasks out of the way before the hectic burgeoning of spring increased its demands on all of the green staff. He had spent the morning planting rhododendrons, which would make a brave show behind the greens on two of the par-three holes during the coming May and in many Mays to come. In the afternoon, Ben had watched in wonder as a lorry delivered two twenty-foot-tall oaks and planted them with the special digger which enabled trees of this maturity to be set with little disturbance to their roots.