Making a Killing

by J M Gregson

  ‘I should begin by offering our sympathy, and apologizing for intruding at a time like this,’ said Lambert.

  The wide, still lips permitted themselves a small smile. ‘Thank you. And why do you?’ she said.

  ‘What do you know about your husband’s death?’

  ‘That his body was found at Lydon Hall on the night before last. That his suicide appeared to have been planned carefully.’ The word ‘suicide’ dropped from her lips naturally enough, with no hesitation, and rather less emotion than most widows would have shown.

  ‘What can you tell us about your husband’s movements on that night?’

  The dark eyes flashed to Lambert’s face, but he was ready for her; he had done this too often for his impassivity to be disturbed. She was looking at the table as she replied, ‘Almost nothing. He didn’t tell me about his appointments.’ It was curious: the bitterness with which she spoke was overlaid with regret by the end of the sentence. She brushed a fly angrily away as it threatened to land on her saucer, as if banishing with it any display of weakness.

  ‘When was the last time you saw him?’ He hesitated a little over the end of the question before omitting the last, brutal word.

  But she understood and added it for him. ‘Alive, you mean? I identified the body at nine o’clock yesterday morning.’ Again there was a strange combination, the harshness of the statement delivered with a tenderness that was a strange setting for it. It was the apparently contradictory emotions which interested Lambert. Someone dissimulating in these circumstances might well act out either grief or indifference, but they would hardly go for a combination of the two. In his experience, those wishing to deceive went hard for a single effect. He cast aside compassionate tact in favour of more directness.

  ‘Yes, Mrs Freeman. I need to know when you last saw your husband alive.’ As if noting the change of mood, Bert Hook flicked over the last page of his notebook and prepared to record the detail. She glanced sideways at him for a moment, and Lambert saw more clearly the dark patches beneath the eyes, the beginnings of crows’ feet at their sides. It might have been a moment of fear; but in the shock which follows bereavement, any small invasion of privacy can be a source of resentment and alarm. Innocence as well as guilt has its secrets, and strives to protect them.

  She turned her attention back to Lambert with a quick, impatient jerk of her head, so that the neat switch of jet-black hair swung briefly behind her neck. Before she spoke, he knew she had had enough of this preliminary fencing.

  ‘I am not used to the ways of the British police. But I don’t think it can be usual for the wife – the widow – to be visited and questioned by a Superintendent.’ She realized with a spurt of surprise that she was using Simon Hapgood’s view of things. But she gave nothing away; if the trace of a French accent touched her pronunciation of Lambert’s rank, she could not after all have been expected to have used the word much in the past. ‘What exactly is going on?’

  Lambert sighed a little, gathering his resources. He would watch her like a hawk, learning whatever he could from her reactions, but the revelation of murder to a wife was not a moment to savour. Always assuming, of course, that it would come as a surprise.

  ‘Mrs Freeman, did your husband give you any reason to suppose he might be planning to take his own life?’

  He had her attention now, her eyes widening slowly in a whitening face. She was ahead of him.

  ‘None at all.’

  ‘Suicide without previous threats to call attention to distress is unusual, though not unknown. Your husband had no serious disease? Or fear of any disease?’

  She shook her head, anxious now for him to get to the fact that she had already guessed at.

  ‘Business worries?’ He tried not to notice the affluence all around them as he spoke and she rejected the preposterous idea. He was not sure whether he was prolonging the moment through a desire to allow her the time to assimilate brutal fact, or from some baser desire to study her reactions, to assess in these long seconds of stress how genuine was her surprise.

  ‘You may or may not be familiar with an organization called EXIT. It exists to help people who wish to end their own lives. Usually in cases of incurable illness, where people wish to avoid long periods of what they see as hopeless medication.’

  She nodded, impatient to get to the end. Perhaps, he thought suddenly, she was imagining that he was about to reveal the identity of her husband’s murderer. If so, he would have given a good deal to know who she thought was guilty; for a moment, her face was sick with apprehension.

  She said, ‘I don’t think my husband was a member of EXIT. He never mentioned it.’

  ‘And you can think of no one who might have helped him to kill himself in this way?’

  ‘Superintendent, this is ridiculous.’ This time there was no trace of accent on the word; perhaps her impatience carried her forward, like a stammerer who loses his impediment with increased animation. ‘Stanley wasn’t that sort of man. The one thing that amazed me about his death is that he should have taken his own life.’

  Lambert finished drinking his tea, set the delicate china carefully back on the garden table, and braced himself for his disclosure. She had given no sign of being devastated by her husband’s death, so that he could not think his revelation would cause her too much anguish. Unless, of course, she had killed him herself, in which case the sudden knowledge that the police were aware of the crime would be most unwelcome.

  ‘Mrs Freeman, I have to tell you that we are now inclined to the view that your husband’s death was murder.’

  ‘Inclined to the view?’ In this moment of stress, she picked up half-ironically the very periphrasis he had despised in himself. He caught Hook looking at her curiously, trying to assess whether this was the illogicality of shock or a deliberate evasion of that darkest of crimes which had followed the phrase.

  ‘Let us say that we are convinced that Mr Freeman was murdered by person or persons as yet unknown, and will produce evidence to that effect at the inquest. We are now in the first stages of a murder inquiry. That is why we have come to see you now, as next of kin to the deceased.’

  ‘And chief suspect!’ she said, very quietly. She put the empty teacups tidily upon the tray, as if testing for herself how steadily she could move. There was no vibration, from crockery or teaspoons. Lambert’s close scrutiny gave him no clue as to whether the news of murder came as a surprise or not to her. Hook had already marked her down as ‘Very cool under fire’.

  ‘We don’t have suspects,’ said Lambert, with a smile to offer the reassurance she did not seem to need. ‘We assemble whatever facts we can from those nearest the crime.’ It was a summary of his advice to young CID men.

  ‘Or we suspect everyone,’ said Denise Freeman with a dry smile.

  ‘That is sometimes how the public sees it,’ acknowledged Lambert with an answering smile. He knew he must beware of the respect that always became a temptation when he met intellects wishing to cross swords with his own. ‘The simplest procedure for us is usually to eliminate as suspects all those people who could not have committed the crime. Often they can show that they were in a different place at the time of the murder.’

  ‘Those who have an alibi,’ she said.

  ‘If you like,’ he smiled. ‘It’s not a legal concept, but it will serve.’

  ‘What time was Stanley killed?’ It was the first time she had voiced the thought, and he caught a moment of abhorrence and regret, genuine unless she was the subtlest of actresses.

  ‘That I cannot tell you at present. We know when the body was found. The post-mortem will give us further information.’

  ‘Stomach contents,’ she said with a shudder. She was looking, grey-faced and unseeing, at a sparrow on the edge of the pool. For a moment, he thought she was going to be sick with the nausea of her husband’s mutilation.

  He said unhelpfully, because he could think of nothing else, ‘You know about post-mortems?’

  �
��A little. A long time ago, I used to be a biochemist.’

  ‘When we have questioned everyone, I think we shall be able to pinpoint the time of the crime quite exactly.’ He was glad she was too upset for the moment to press him on that ‘everyone’: he had no intention of revealing the present paucity of witnesses. ‘What I need to know now is where you were for the whole of Wednesday evening.’

  Bert Hook, who had made a covert note about her knowledge of chemistry, now flicked over a page of his notebook ostentatiously. Whether or not she was a grieving widow, she was now a murder suspect. If the thought made her a little nervous, that could be to the advantage of her interrogators.

  She said calmly, ‘Starting when?’

  ‘When did you last see Mr Freeman?’

  ‘About three in the afternoon.’ The reply came so promptly that she must have given it prior thought; but it would be strange if she had not.

  ‘Do you know where he ate his evening meal?’

  Her dark eyes flashed back a quick, hostile look. Perhaps she knew his information must come from the post-mortem and the ignominious investigation of her husband’s stomach; or perhaps she felt some implication about their domestic arrangements.

  ‘No. Stanley ate out. He often did.’ One could derive a world of speculation from the manner of the curt understatement; Lambert did not have to, for she chose to go on unprompted. ‘Superintendent, if you are going to question Stanley’s employees, you will no doubt find this out anyway. Ours was not a perfect marriage. Stanley and I have not been close for years.’ Lambert had met the phrase so often: it covered arrangements which ranged from an active but joyless marital bed, through separate rooms, to a malevolent mutual hostility which surprised only in that it could be contained within four walls. If the Freernans’ marriage proved relevant to the case, much sordid detail might tumble out in due course; for the moment, he was content to record the beginnings of a motive.

  As if she followed his thoughts, Denise Freeman said calmly, ‘That does not mean I killed him, or wanted him dead. It seems incredible that Stanley could be murdered. But as I said when you came, it seemed incredible to me that he should have killed himself. I don’t know which is worse.’ For a moment her voice broke and she seemed near tears, but she recovered so fast that he was left wondering if it was a contrived effect. ‘I hope you get whoever did this. And quickly. Stanley didn’t deserve this.’ There was bitterness now, probably against the killer, but possibly just the normal emptiness of the bereaved for the missed opportunities of the last, barren years. In all, she was remarkably composed in the circumstances. Calm enough for a murderer? Lambert saw Hook making the same cool assessment over his notebook: they had worked together too long for his thought processes not to be transparent to his chief.

  Lambert said, ‘Thank you for being so open with us at this difficult time. You will find you did the wise thing. Now, can you tell us if Mr Freeman had a relationship with any member of his staff that might be thought abnormal?’

  In his search for tact, his phrasing had become clumsy and he knew it. She glanced at him with what he could have sworn was amusement, then gave thought to her reply. ‘George Robson had his own reasons for resentment, which he’ll no doubt tell you about himself. I suspect Emily Godson had, too, but I wouldn’t know what they were’.

  She paused, as if to estimate the effects she had made by these intriguing suggestions about the operations of Freeman Estates. Then she said, ‘I’m sure there was something between Stanley and Jane Davidson, but I couldn’t tell you what. I doubt whether he was bedding her, though it never pays to underestimate the naïvety of the young. But she seemed to have some hold over him.’

  Even among widows who seemed to have much less regret for their husbands’ passing than Denise Freeman, Lambert had never met this degree of composure. He said, ‘What about your own movements after your husband had left?’

  ‘I was here until about a quarter to seven. I was in the garden for an hour or so, then I made myself a meal.’

  ‘You were alone throughout this time?’ It was not by any means a key period, but perhaps she did not know that.

  ‘Yes. There was a phone call from the office inquiring after Stanley. You could check on that.’

  ‘What time would that be?’

  ‘I couldn’t be certain. I should think about five.’

  ‘And who made the call?’

  For a moment, she looked disconcerted. Perhaps she had not expected this level of detail in the questioning. A murderess of course would know how irrelevant this time was.

  ‘Simon Hapgood, I think.’ Strange, that: a woman as precise as she had been in her earlier replies would hardly be uncertain about the identity of a caller. Lambert waited for Hook to record the name laboriously before he went on. ‘And where did you go at a quarter to seven?’

  ‘Out for the evening. To the cinema in Tewkesbury.’ She looked at him boldly, almost as if she knew she was trying to establish an alibi. This was a classic one when someone was trying to cover a longish period of time: perhaps she knew that.

  To disconcert her a little, he switched the questioner, so that he could concentrate on her reactions. ‘Sergeant Hook will need to record the detail of this.’ He gestured towards his subordinate, and Bert Hook took up the questioning without hesitation. He seemed deliberately ponderous; Lambert himself was never sure on these occasions whether it was his natural manner or the role of sedate country bobby he chose to play. Certainly it was an effective disguise for the shrewd brain within that stolid exterior.

  ‘Who accompanied you to the cinema, Mrs Freeman?’

  ‘No one.’

  ‘You went alone?’ Bert’s modest surprise made it sound like a moral outrage.

  ‘Yes. I often do. It’s years since I went with Stanley.’ And now you never will again. Three very different minds shared the same thought as Hook wrote.

  ‘You drove to Tewkesbury?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And which street did you park in?’

  ‘In the public car park near the cinema. It’s free in the evenings.’ And much more difficult to check on than a street, where householders will often remember the colour and make of a car parked for a whole evening, especially in summer. Lambert thought that Denise Freeman appreciated this as fully as Bert Hook.

  ‘What car do you drive, Mrs Freeman?’

  ‘It’s a green Volvo.’ Green could easily be mistaken for blue against a low evening sun; Lambert toyed with the idea while she gave Hook the details of year and registration number. Many women would not have known these without checking: Denise Freeman was as effortlessly accurate as a well-prepared witness. He wondered if that was exactly what she was.

  ‘Did you see anyone who could confirm that you were in the cinema during the evening?’

  Perhaps her negative came a little too quickly. But she was an intelligent woman, and might well by this time be anticipating the line of Hook’s methodical interrogation.

  ‘And the film you saw?’

  ‘The Last Emperor.’

  She gave Hook in turn the starting time, the duration, the stars and a detailed résumé of the plot of the film. Lambert, listening and watching carefully, found it impossible to say whether or not this was a prepared performance. He was certain by the end of it that she had indeed seen the film. There was nothing as yet to prove that she had seen it on Wednesday night. But then the innocent were never looking at the time for people to substantiate their accounts.

  Lambert, seeking to ruffle a calm that now seemed quite unnatural, said, ‘Your husband had taken valium in the hours before his death. Perhaps immediately before. There is no evidence in his medical records of it being prescribed for him.’ He left it there, hoping she would respond without more questions, and in a moment she did.

  ‘They were probably mine,’ she said. ‘I haven’t used them for months.’ Not since before Simon, she thought. ‘Stanley took one or two of them, occasionally. I think he thought I
didn’t know.’ She was genuinely distressed with the bleakness of it all, but she showed nothing beyond a small tightening of the muscles around her mouth.

  Lambert watched Hook recording the detail, wondering if she would show any more obvious emotion when all this came out at the inquest. Then he switched his ground again. ‘What do you know of a man called Wino Willy?’

  This time he had certainly surprised her. He found himself wishing the coal-black eyes were just a little lighter, for he had the idea he might then have distinguished between bewilderment and alarm in them, as he could not do now. He had expected a blank ignorance of Willy’s existence, perhaps because her tight self-possession seemed so much the antithesis of his disintegration, but she said, ‘Yes, I know him. Or used to. When I came here and was struggling with the language, he was one of the few people who spoke fluent French. It is quite a long time ago.’ She stared out at the end of the garden, recalling a different world. ‘He even knew and liked Racine,’ she said inconsequentially. ‘Not many English do.’

  ‘“Je l’ai trop aimé pour ne le point haïr,”’ said Lambert before he could stop himself. It was pure vanity, and he regretted it immediately.

  She looked at him and said, ‘Yes. “I have loved him too much not to hate him a little.” Andromaque. Not what I would have expected from a British policeman. Even a Superintendent.’

  Lambert caught Hook enjoying his discomfiture and hastened to end an interview that had almost run its course. ‘Have you seen Willy recently?’

  She hesitated a moment before she said, ‘Only in the distance on the common sometimes. He still knows me, I think.’ Perhaps for her, too, there was a small, illogical vanity, in the thought that that ravaged personality should still register her presence when it had obliterated others.

  Lambert said, ‘We appreciate that this must be a great strain for you, Mrs Freeman, at a time like this. Thank you for being so helpful.’ She seemed calm enough again, too calm perhaps for a grieving widow. She was looking at him keenly now, trying to detect any irony in his last words. ‘Perhaps you can appreciate that we are now investigating the most serious of all crimes, so that your information is vital to us. I have to ask you now if you can think of anyone who might have reason to harm your husband.’