by J M Gregson
Robson’s voice remained low, but now even his polished delivery could not conceal the bitterness. ‘Stanley said he did not regard a verbal agreement as binding. He stuck to the original will. As a sop, he made a will leaving the business to me in the event of his decease, with Denise as a sleeping partner. It hardly seemed relevant, as he was three or four years younger than me and we were both in our thirties. We went on as before, with me on a slightly better salary.’
There was silence for several seconds in the comfortable, conventional room, which seemed a strange setting for this tale of old treacheries. When Fred rolled on to his side and gave the low, satisfied grunt which was the prelude to sleep, it rose unnaturally loud. They had heard only one side of the story: dead men can never defend themselves. But there was certainly enough resentment simmering in the room to motivate a killing.
Into the silence, Lambert dropped an apparently inconsequential question, bringing their thoughts back abruptly to the present. ‘What car do you drive, Mr Robson?’
If the man was surprised, he gave no sign of it. He said, ‘A red Ford Sierra Ghia. It’s in the garage now if you want to see it.’ Lambert wondered why he was so anxious to show them what he could not think was important in the inquiry. Unless for some reason he knew it was. Perhaps he was merely anxious to get away from the embarrassment of his personal situation at Freeman Estates.
Lambert said, ‘You realize this is now a murder inquiry. The initial suspects are those close to the victim, including yourself.’ He ignored Audrey Robson’s taut face as he watched her husband’s cool nod. ‘No one is accused. We proceed by elimination. If we clear Mr Freeman’s relations and working associates, we shall move on to a wider, secondary circle of people who had contact with the victim.’
‘I hope you have to do that in this case,’ said Robson. The smile he attempted was neither wide nor relaxed.
‘And I have to hope we find the killer in Mr Freeman’s immediate circle.’ Lambert spoke evenly, but with an answering smile: these two men understood each other now, whatever the facts he would eventually unearth. ‘It gets more difficult as we move outwards. As you probably appreciate, I am asking you if you know of anyone in the firm who could expect to profit from this death.’
‘Anyone else, you mean,’ said Robson grimly. ‘Well, Stanley didn’t have many friends, as I said. We carried him in the business most of the time. He was competent enough when he wanted to be, and more than that sometimes, especially when it came to new housing developments. He was quite good on big sales, where people liked to deal with the head of the firm; that’s why he was handling Lydon Hall completely on his own. But too often he wasn’t around when we needed him. In their different ways, Emily Godson, Simon Hapgood, even Jane Davidson all resented him. He never went out of his way to soothe ruffled feathers, and in small firms grievances sometimes accumulate into hatreds. That doesn’t mean I can see any of them killing him.’
Lambert noticed that Robson had excluded no one from suspicion, despite his final disclaimer. He stood up to indicate that the interview was at an end, watched the dog rise and stretch, stroked its head reflectively. Hook, who had watched the technique before, waited for the last key question, which would come when the subjects were off guard, in the belief that the serious business was over.
Lambert had taken a step towards the door before he said, ‘What about Denise Freeman?’
Robson glanced at his wife before answering. Was it possible lust lurked beneath this urbane exterior? The dark, lithe Denise Freeman, almost the physical antithesis of Audrey Robson, might arouse lubricious imaginings in many men. If George Robson entertained them, he would do well to conceal them from his unswervingly supportive wife.
‘She wasn’t close to her husband. That doesn’t mean she killed him.’
‘Not close?’ Lambert was proud of the obtuseness he simulated sometimes as a professional tool.
Robson must have been as conscious as the detectives of his wife’s appraisal of his words as he picked them out. ‘It didn’t seem to me a particularly good marriage over the last few years. They were cool with each other; occasionally they bickered in public. Lately I think they went their own ways.’
That phrase usually meant affairs: there was much to learn yet about the dead Stanley and his very much alive wife.
They were on the front doorstep, preparing to descend the four broad stone steps to the path down the front garden, when Lambert asked, ‘This will Stanley Freeman made years ago. Has it ever been replaced?’
Robson made no attempt to dissimulate. He had spoken that afternoon to the firm’s solicitors whom he had known for thirty years, and found all he needed to know from a series of embarrassed denials. He looked past them, while scents drifted up from flowers invisible in the late summer darkness, and said, ‘Denise will be a sleeping partner, taking a small percentage of profits. Otherwise, Freeman Estates passes to me now.’
His nervous little laugh echoed in their ears all the way down the unlit path.
Chapter 13
The weather held for the funeral. The dappled shade of the trees round the old churchyard scarcely moved on the bright, still morning. The slow ritual of interment gave Stanley Freeman a dignity he had rarely been afforded in life.
It was Denise Freeman who had decided upon a burial rather than a cremation. They had been married long ago in a Catholic church, and Stanley had been made to promise that the children they had never had would be brought up in that faith. She no longer attended regularly herself, but the influence of those unsmiling French nuns of her childhood, with their faces of ancient parchment, was with her still, long after she had thought it dead. Mumbo-jumbo she might assert it all to be, in the spacious and brilliant drawing-rooms of her friends, but some superstitions were better respected than ignored.
It was cool in the small stone church. She wished the funeral men would not shuffle their feet as they brought the coffin down the aisle. With its polished brass fittings, its inscribed plate, its single large wreath, the coffin brought its usual moment of breathless silence, as the thought of its contents forced itself upon even the most sluggish of imaginations.
Denise Freeman’s imagination was scarcely sluggish. The occasion crystallized the strange, unexpected mixture of emotions she had felt since they had brought to her the news of Stanley’s death. There was regret for what might have been, deeper than she had ever thought to feel. There was guilt for attempts left unmade and deceits carefully organized. There was uncertainty about her immediate plans, disconcerting to one used to making decisions and projecting her certainties to those around her. There was elation at her freedom from a marriage which had long ceased to work. But over all, most disturbing because least expected, there was a numbing loneliness about the future which stretched before her, a feeling of solitariness which threatened to descend into panic.
‘Out of the depths I have cried to thee, O Lord. Lord, hear my prayer.’ The priest intoned the ancient words, happy to retreat from the uneasy platitude of consolation in an age which did not believe. His tiny congregation struggled raggedly to make the half-forgotten responses; only the three elderly women at the back who attended all the services were confident of their words. Denise was glad Stanley’s old mother had gone before him: she would have been the only one in the church who felt crippling, undiluted grief.
When they moved outside to the graveyard, there was one other such, but Denise neither saw nor knew her.
The undertaker’s men shouldered the coffin with practised ease, moving without a stumble over the uneven paths between the green mounds. Behind them, the widow headed the pathetically diminished procession of mourners. She was the only relative to witness the end of the Freeman line, for Stanley’s cousins had declined the long journey from the North. Now George Robson even detached his wife from the group; after their whispered colloquy, Audrey remained in the porch of the church.
So Freeman was followed to his last resting place only by his wif
e and his employees. The sombre formal garb which was their concession to mourning did not sit easily on all of them, and their modernity was an odd contrast to the priest who accompanied them, in his white alb and purple stole. He swung his stoup of holy water on its chain as the five gathered with him by the grave. And Stanley Freeman’s murderer looked with the others into the pit which had been dug to receive his remains.
They stood on the strips of plastic grass which fringed the grave. Denise resented this ersatz turf. It seemed so unnecessary on this dry, bright morning; no doubt it was standard practice. Across the grave she watched the shining black shoes of Simon Hapgood; she had not once looked into his face.
Simon, though, was watching her and wondering what she felt behind her tearless exterior. He was white with the drama of the occasion, filled as he watched the coffin descend with emotions he could not analyse about the man he had cuckolded so cheerfully in life. His light colouring accentuated his paleness; with his smartly cut dark blue suit, his gold-pinned black tie and white cuffs, he could not dismiss the feeling that he must make a wholly appropriate effect at this moment. He wished Denise Freeman would look at him. But he supposed they were playing a scene for watching eyes.
Beside him, Emily Godson, veteran of many funerals, tried not to become preoccupied with the speck of damp clay that had tumbled from the diggings and attached itself obstinately to the black patent leather of her left shoe. She was quiet, controlled, her mien as correct as the charcoal grey of her costume as she watched the ropes lowering the coffin into its last deep cavity. Only a close observer would have seen the strain about her mouth and neck, or the gleam of guilty triumph in her downcast eyes. And none was close enough for that.
The only one watching her was Jane Davidson. Uneasy in the high-heeled shoes she had bought specially for the occasion, standing stiff and straight in the high-necked black dress which might have sat upon her more easily at a cocktail party, she watched the other women for clues as to how she should behave. For at the age of twenty-four it was her first funeral: she had managed to find excuses to miss the two family occasions of her adolescence and now regretted it. She had been anxious lest she should be expected to view the mortal remains of her employer in his coffin, ridiculously grateful that Denise Freeman had afforded such opportunity to no one. She clasped her fingers beneath her folded arms, and when the priest passed the little stoup of holy water around the tiny group, she stepped forward and cast her few drops quickly into the pit, fearful lest the red of her painted nails upon the vessel should be considered an outrageous breach of decorum.
‘Ashes to ashes, dust to dust…’ The priest concluded the valediction with secret relief, and the five cast their earth upon the gleaming plate of the coffin in turn, as if trying already to obliterate the name of Stanley Freeman. George Robson tried to join in with the last prayer, ‘Eternal rest grant unto him, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon him…’ but only Denise Freeman’s voice rang out clear and knowledgeable with the words to support the priest. George looked across at her, erect, dignified, dark hair sleek and elegant as ever beneath the unaccustomed pillbox hat with its fringe of black net. With her feet placed carefully together on the unnaturally bright green plastic, the slim suppleness of her body seemed only accentuated by the formal garb of mourning. Her voice did not waver, her first tear of the day did not fall until she threw her handful of earth on to the coffin in her last gesture to the spouse that was gone. He tried not to find her sexually attractive at this least appropriate of moments; and failed.
Sergeant Hook, who had married late and had young sons, was disturbed by a different image. He stood with Lambert by the side of the church, sixty yards from the ritual at the graveside. They were in suits of almost identical grey, and they reminded Hook irresistibly of the comic brokers’ men in the pantomime he had seen last winter. As the little group moved away from the grave, shaking hands and offering low condolence to the widow, he felt that he and his chief should now move forward and fill the stage with the light relief of knockabout comedy.
They did nothing of the sort, of course. Instead, they continued to observe as losely as possible the behaviour of the funeral’s central group. But they learned very little. The murderer might be expected to be reserved, even withdrawn, at the interment of the victim. But here no one was at ease; each participant was careful in behaviour, almost silent. Of this group, only Denise Freeman and George Robson had been at the inquest, where Lambert had had a more active role.
The widow had been as contained there as she was now, giving her evidence of identification with no sign of physical distress, receiving the Coroner’s sympathy with no more than a nod and the slightest of smiles, whether of gratitude or irony it was impossible to tell. She had remained calm even through the pathologist’s evidence. His account of the marks of physical restraint upon the corpse’s wrists, his seeming regret at the absence of any alien skin tissue beneath the nails, had brought no shudders of distress from Mrs Freeman. She had heard the finding of ‘Murder by person or persons unknown’ without any sign of emotion, had left the court without the assistance of George Robson’s proffered arm.
The two large men stood well to one side amid the old gravestones as Audrey Robson rejoined her husband and clasped his hand. The party moved off to their various cars. Lambert wished he could observe the inevitable unbending at the small reception which would follow at the Freemans’ bungalow, but there were some doors closed even to senior policemen investigating murder.
He watched the Robsons, now in animated conversation in their car. He was so occupied with conjecture that he scarcely registered the footsteps on the gravel behind him.
‘You’re in charge of this case, aren’t you, sir?’ The last word, a diffident addition, told him before he turned that this was one not at ease with the police. She must in her youth have been buxom; now age and callous accuracy might more readily suggest blowsy. The yellow hair did not look natural, though the blue straw hat perched ridiculously upon it concealed the roots. She had done her best to dress for a funeral, but the tights that had looked navy in the dimness of her room were almost royal blue in the sun’s strong light, the trimmings of the grey dress insistently yellow, the heels of the black shoes worn low beneath their inappropriate straps. The features must have been pretty in youth; their present coarseness had been accentuated by crying, so that the wrinkles round the puffy eyes were stressed rather than disguised by powder. Lambert felt a sudden, overwhelming tenderness as he divined why she was here. But it was Bert Hook who said, ‘Come into the church, love, and sit down. It’s quiet there now.’
She walked meekly between them. Lambert knew where he had seen her before. She had sat in the public gallery at the inquest, looking strained and shocked at the evidence. While those around her had been filled with excitement, she had rolled and unrolled a man’s damp handkerchief between her too-active fingers. Now, as if to activate Lambert’s memory, she delved into a grey plastic handbag and produced another, smaller handkerchief to dab at her eyes.
They sat at the back of the dim, deserted church and Hook said quietly, ‘What did you want to tell us?’ He could be perceptive as well as direct: most sergeants would have taken her name and other details first.
‘It may be nothing.’ Her determination was draining now that she was actually with the police.
‘Never mind, tell us.’
‘It’s just that Stanley – Mr Freeman – was with me on the night he died. I didn’t tell the police in Gloucester properly. I was – confused.’ The word conjured up for all of them an uncomfortable picture of her interview.
‘What time did he meet you?’ asked Lambert.
‘He came to my flat at about seven as usual.’
‘This was a regular arrangement?’ said Bert Hook gently. Lambert, recognizing his expertise, let him ask the rest of the questions.
‘Yes. For two years now.’ She could not keep a little pride out of her voice. Then, as the wrongness o
f the ‘now’ struck her, the first sob shook the curves that were just too ample.
‘When did he leave you?’
‘It must have been about eight. He had an appointment at eight-thirty, an important one that he couldn’t break. But he was coming back afterwards.’ Even on this summer morning the back of the church seemed cool and damp, as they pictured this pitiable creature waiting alone into the night for a lover who would never return.
They took the routine details from her then: the length of the affair, the frequency of their meetings, the people who knew about it. She had thought there were none: yet someone had told the uniform branch at Gloucester about Stanley’s visits. She had not thought how a new Granada would excite attention and jealousy in the streets where she lived. She was glad they did not ask her about Stanley’s regular monthly payments to her. Eventually, she even ventured a little about their plans for the future, and they were careful to show no scepticism about the dead man’s intentions.
Margot Jomes had made the awkward journey by bus, and Hook on a nod from his chief offered her a lift home, but she refused. She came out of the church with them, seeming hardly to notice the transition to a brightness which made them blink. They left her standing alone in the deserted churchyard, a silhouette who might have stepped straight from Hardy.
She was the only unequivocal weeper in this last chapter of Stanley Freeman’s existence.
Chapter 14
It was less than three miles from the churchyard to Lydon Hall, but Lambert drove the big Vauxhall slowly, reflecting upon the images of the funeral.
‘What news on the suicide note?’ he asked Hook eventually.
‘Nothing very useful. It was typed on one of the machines at Freeman Estates: electronic, but our people are certain enough to swear to it in court. It’s actually the one Emily Godson uses most frequently, but any of them had easy access to it. Including Freeman himself, of course.’