Cold Coffin

by Nancy Buckingham

  Special Branch wasted no time. In less than ten minutes they called her back.

  “Chief Inspector Maddox? We’ve nabbed your man Kimberley, alias Kay, and we’re holding him for you. And I’ve never seen anyone so taken by surprise.”

  “That’s great,” she said, with a rush of relief. “That’s a pint all round I owe you.”

  “You may be interested to know that his hand luggage is a canvas holdall packed with an enormous sum in currency. What was it, a bank raid?”

  “It’s his own money, would you believe?” she said with a laugh. “Legitimately come by.”

  * * * *

  The doctor gave it as his opinion that Paula Kimberley was certainly not fit to be interviewed at present, and was best left where she was for another two or three hours. Kate accepted this resignedly, though she was impatient for answers. She told Boulter to have a couple of WPCs come to guard her until she could be taken to divisional headquarters at Marlingford. Meanwhile, an escort was despatched to Heathrow to bring Aidan Kimberley back.

  This meant that Kate had a brief respite, and she might as well make the most of it. She decided to go back to Stonebank Cottage to have a meal and freshen up before setting out for Marlingford and the heavy night that would await her there.

  She headed her car homewards, taking a short cut through the darkening country lanes. It had started to rain and was getting heavier by the minute. After the long dry spell the air smelt fresh and cool as it drifted in through the ventilators. Kate wasn’t feeling the least bit tired; the flow of adrenalin saw to that. She didn’t know all the answers yet, didn’t know what charges would have to be brought. But she was confident that by morning she’d have the case all wrapped up.

  The rain was teeming down by now. Her headlights picked out the blurred figure of a man, running. He half turned and jerked his thumb, asking for a lift.

  What me? A woman alone on a deserted road after dark. Think again, chum. Then she was close enough to see the man’s face. It was Don Trotton.

  She braked hard, and he ran up to the car as Kate reached over and wound down the window.

  “Oh!” he said, taken aback and clearly not pleased to see who it was. “It’s you.”

  He looked thoroughly wet and bedraggled. His hair was plastered to his head, and his sodden sweater and trousers clung to his body. And, Kate noted, there was a cut on his forehead, from which blood was oozing.

  “What on earth’s happened to you, Don?” she asked.

  “Forget it,” he snarled. “I’m okay.”

  “You don’t look okay to me. If you’re heading for home, you’ve still got quite a way to go. Get in and I’ll drive you.”

  “But—”

  “That’s an order, Inspector.” Kate wasn’t about to have a member of the public come across an officer of the South Midlands force in such unfavourable circumstances. Absurd circumstances, she thought with an inward giggle. Already, she was mentally writing scenarios about what could have brought the swaggering, conceited Don Trotton to this indignity. Knowing him, a woman had to be involved, and it looked as if he’d been in a fight. With her? Had she been throwing things at him? Or was it an angry husband who’d beaten him up? Whatever, he’d somehow been rendered car-less and forced to get home as best he could. Then, to cap it all, he’d been caught in a downpour.

  Trotton obeyed her mutinously, getting in the car and slumping back into the seat in sullen silence.

  “Are you going to give me an explanation?” Kate demanded, as she started off.

  “It’s personal,” he muttered. “None of your business.”

  “It is my business if you’ve been assaulted,” she reminded him, enjoying herself hugely.

  “Oh, for God’s sake, can’t you leave it alone?”

  “The way it looks to me, Don, this is the evening when you’ve met your Waterloo. And not before time!”

  He didn’t answer that. But when, a few minutes later, she turned into the driveway of the big Victorian house where he had a flat, he said suddenly, “Look, Kate, there’s no need to make a meal of this, is there? Let’s just forget it ever happened, eh?”

  “Hush it up, you mean? I’m surprised at you, Inspector Trotton, asking such a thing of a senior officer. Out you get.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Aidan Kimberley and his wife arrived separately at divisional headquarters but at about the same time. It was Paula Kimberley that Kate interviewed first, with Sergeant Boulter in attendance. When she later had Aidan Kimberley brought to the interview room, he was a changed man from the one she had met at his uncle’s home. The suave self-confidence was gone, and so was his knife-crease grooming. He looked weary, dishevelled—and very nervous. This latter he was trying hard to conceal by adopting an attitude of impatience and outrage.

  “Why the devil have I been brought here, Chief Inspector? The whole thing is ridiculous. A ridiculous mistake. I explained to the people at Heathrow that the money I was carrying is all my own. I can prove it.”

  “I’ve no doubt you can, Mr. Kimberley. You were arrested, as you were informed at the time, on suspicion of murder. My concern is with the deaths of Sir Noah Kimberley and Dr. Gavin Trent.”

  “You can’t seriously imagine that I had anything to do with any of that,” he protested. “If you’re determined to go ahead with this charade, then perhaps I’d better have my solicitor present.”

  “That is your right, of course, as was explained to you when you were cautioned. Do you wish to have him sent for now, before we proceed any further?”

  Kimberley gestured irritably. “What’s the point? I have nothing to answer to, nothing to hide. So just get on with this and let me go.”

  “You haven’t enquired about your wife, Mr. Kimberley.”

  On Kate’s instructions he’d been told nothing about the police visit to his cottage and the discovery of Paula Kimberley in a drugged state. Watching his face, she guessed that he didn’t know how to react to her remark without giving something away.

  “She’s at home, I presume,” he said, with an exaggerated shrug of the shoulders. “What about her?”

  “No, Mrs. Kimberley is not at home. In fact, she is here in this building. The reason you were kept waiting for me to see you was because I was interviewing your wife.”

  Kimberley’s eyes flickered, and seconds of silence ticked away. Finally he asked in a taut voice, “What has Paula been saying?”

  “She has given us a great deal of information,” Kate said. “All of which confirms what we already suspected.”

  “What . . . what information?”

  “She has admitted that she was an accessory in the concealment of Sir Noah Kimberley’s body, following his accidental death at Dr. Gavin Trent’s cottage.”

  Paula, in her fury at the way her husband had left her to face the music alone, had held nothing back. The whole story had come gushing out of her in a half-hysterical stream, with only slight prompting from Kate. Fidelity had never been part of the Kimberleys’ marriage, it seemed, and each was free to go their own way. The unspoken deal was that they should be discreet and keep up the appearance that theirs was a successful match between two talented, beautiful people.

  A surly loner like Gavin Trent had seemed an amusing challenge to Paula, and for a few weeks they’d carried on a clandestine affair. This hadn’t been difficult, because in the summer months she often remained at Inchmere St. Mary during the week, when her husband returned to London. Her interior design work was just as easily carried on in the country, with many of her clients living in the locality.

  Trent, almost totally inexperienced with women, had at once lost his head over her when she set out to charm him. The scene of his first seduction had been at his cottage, when Paula had called on him late one night bearing a bottle of champagne. But after a couple more visits there, she’d preferred their sex-sessions to happen in the luxury of her own home. This fact explained to Kate the lack of her fingerprints at Trent’s place, except
on the Tom Jones cassette.

  Totally infatuated with Paula, Trent was soon trying to persuade her to get a divorce and marry him. When he started spouting wildly about how he had the chance to earn a very high salary so she could leave her husband and go off with him to Vienna, Paula knew that the time had come to end the affair. Anyway, the novelty had worn off and she no longer found him diverting. That was how matters stood when she received a panic phone call from Trent one evening, begging her to go to his cottage at once as he desperately needed her help. Arriving there, she had been horrified to find her husband’s uncle lying dead on the floor. Trent had gabbled that it had been a terrible accident—the result, he insisted, of what he’d been trying to do for her sake, to make a new life for the two of them. Sir Noah had called round accusing him of disloyalty in wanting to leave Croptech and take a far better paying job abroad, and in his justifiable anger he had lashed out at Sir Noah, who had fallen and hit his head on the hearthstone.

  “Gavin was just like a jelly and hadn’t a clue what to do,” she’d told Kate. “I could see that if I didn’t come up with an answer there was going to be the most awful sordid scandal, with my name splashed all over the headlines.” Her voice had dropped to a whisper, and Boulter nudged the tape recorder closer.

  Kate said, “Tell us exactly what you did, Mrs. Kimberley.”

  “Well, first, I made Gavin help me wrap Uncle Noah’s body in some polythene sheeting he had, and between us we carried it out to my car. I remembered about Milford Grange being empty while the Tillingtons were away in New Zealand and I thought that would make a good hiding place for the moment until we could work out a proper plan that was really safe.”

  “How did you intend to get into the house?” Kate asked. “You must have known there was a burglar alarm.”

  “Yes, I knew that, but several times when I’d been going back with Marjorie after we’d been shopping together, I’d seen how she shut it off. It gives you about half a minute after you open the front door before the alarm begins to ring. And once, Marjorie had forgotten her latchkey so I knew where they kept a spare one under a loose paving stone. Luckily, Gavin and I didn’t pass a soul on the drive there and getting into the house was quite easy. Marjorie had talked about emptying her big chest freezer before she left, so it seemed a good idea to use that, to ... to give us a bit more time to make our plans.” Her beautiful face took on a hard-done-by expression. “If it hadn’t been for those wretched thieves breaking in, we’d have got away with it.”

  “And afterwards,” said Kate, “you drove Sir Noah’s car to Cardiff Airport, and left it there? And Gavin Trent followed in his car to bring you back. Is that right?”

  Paula gave a shudder of remembrance. “It was a simply terrible night. I knew we had to hide the car somewhere, get it well away from the neighbourhood. Gavin was just shot to pieces, so it was all up to me. I decided that leaving it at the airport would be a clever idea, to make it look as if Uncle Noah had gone abroad somewhere. With luck it wouldn’t be found at once, so no one would be quite sure when. It was an awful journey, though, because I couldn’t manage the gears properly, and I had a narrow escape on the Severn Bridge when I knocked into something.”

  “And Trent’s death?” Kate asked. “Were you involved in that?”

  “No!” Her eyes dropped and for several moments she didn’t speak, while a perfectly manicured hand pushed back a streak of her blond hair that had fallen across her face. “Afterwards—after that night, I mean, I was terrified at what I’d helped Gavin do. When Aidan arrived back from Hong Kong, I told him what had happened. Everything. I didn’t mean to, but I couldn’t help myself. I was so scared, you see, and I felt desperate. Aidan was very shocked, of course, because he’d always been quite fond of his uncle, and he was absolutely furious with me. He called me all kinds of names for getting involved with a weak bastard like Trent and ending up in such a hellish mess. Then after a bit he cooled down, and said he’d decided to help us cover things up. It was an enormous relief, I can tell you, because I still hadn’t been able to think what to do about Uncle Noah’s body, and I knew that Aidan would be able to come up with some sort of plan. It was a bad mistake of mine, he said, to have returned to London. It would have looked much more natural if I’d stayed down here so as to be with Vanessa while she was so upset about Uncle Noah being missing. Right away, he phoned Vanessa and offered to help in any way we could. For the next couple of days I kept up the pretence of having flu, so I didn’t have to go anywhere ... I just couldn’t face anyone. Gavin kept on phoning me to ask what on earth we were going to do and it was obvious that he was cracking up completely. Then on the Wednesday, Aidan told me he’d decided to drive down and see Gavin that evening, to make him understand that he’d got to pull himself together. And also to make plans with him about how to dispose of Uncle Noah’s body. As a precaution, he said, it was best that nobody should know where he’d gone, so we agreed to say that we’d spent the evening alone together, if anyone should ever ask.”

  Kate cut in, “Your husband telephoned Lady Kimberley that evening, didn’t he? Just after ten o’clock, I believe. Where was that call made from?”

  “From the cottage. Aidan said he was going to drop in there first and phone Vanessa, pretending he was phoning from the Sloane Street flat, which would help support our story. And if anyone phoned while he was out asking for him, I was to say he’d gone to bed early with a headache and would return their call next day. Aidan thought of everything.” Paula gave a deep sigh, then rushed on, “Anyway, when he got back home, which was very late, Aidan was evasive and I felt certain he wasn’t telling me everything that had happened. I was sick with worry, but I didn’t dare press him. Then the next day, after Gavin’s body had been found and we heard from you that the police were treating it as murder, I guessed that Aidan had killed him. I knew it, really, but I was too scared to ask him outright. Aidan kept saying that everything would be all right now, as long as we stuck to the story we’d agreed on. He’d got everything under control, he insisted. Then yesterday evening when I told him about bumping into you in Aston Pringle and how you’d dropped your wallet, he said it was obvious that you’d used that as a trick to get my fingerprints.” She broke off and looked at Kate. “Is that true?”

  Kate nodded. “When I heard Tom Jones’ voice on your car stereo it clicked in my mind that you must be the woman we were looking for—the woman with whom Gavin Trent had been having an affair. I needed to check your fingerprints against prints found on a Tom Jones tape we discovered at Trent’s cottage.”

  Paula stared at her, baffled, seeming at a loss.

  Kate explained. “Any other fingerprints you left at the cottage must have been wiped away during house cleaning, but the music tapes were all in a cabinet and the cleaners wouldn’t have had reason to touch them.”

  “Oh God, if only I hadn’t given Gavin that damn tape. It was a stupid idea. I knew he just hated any modern music like that, but I’m crazy about Tom Jones and I couldn’t resist making him pretend to like it to please me.”

  “Let’s get back to yesterday evening. Did your husband finally admit to you that he’d killed Trent?”

  Paula nodded, avoiding her eyes. “He said that he’d had to, for our safety, because Gavin was in such a state he couldn’t be trusted not to break under questioning and tell the police all about Uncle Noah’s death and how I’d helped him. Aidan swore that he hadn’t intended to kill Gavin when he set out to talk to him, but when he saw what a state he was in he knew it was the only way.” She blinked rapidly. “I ... I’m not sure if that’s true. I think that Aidan meant to kill him all along.”

  “I think so, too,” Kate told her. “We have definite evidence that Trent’s death was premeditated. A tree branch which we found beside the pond had been prepared in readiness to hold the victim under water, and I take it your husband knew that Trent couldn’t swim?”

  “He must have known. I mean, most people did because Gavin never used
the pool at Uncle Noah’s.”

  “And your husband was brought up in this area, wasn’t he? So I presume he would have known that the pond in the woods was a particularly deep one.”

  “He must have done. He told me once that as a boy he spent a lot of time playing in those woods. Oh, God, I never realized before how ruthless Aidan could be.”

  “To return to yesterday evening, Mrs. Kimberley. When your husband worked out that I’d got your fingerprints, what did he say to you then?”

  “He said that we’d have to get right away, out of the country, before the police came for us. He told me he’d made plans, just in case, and that he’d got plenty of money to take with us. But he said we needn’t leave quite at once, and it would be a good idea for me to get a few hours’ sleep first.”

  “He gave you some sleeping pills?”

  “That’s right. And some gin. Aidan said it would make the pills work faster. And then ... oh, I can’t remember properly. I think he gave me two more pills, saying I hadn’t taken the others, though I was sure I had. I ... I was confused....”

  * * * *

  It was armed with all this information that Kate had begun her interview with Aidan Kimberley. But she wasn’t prepared to reveal everything his wife had told her, not yet.

  “What was it you were escaping from, Mr. Kimberley?”

  “I wasn’t escaping from anything. I had some business to attend to. Urgent business.”

  “Where was that?”

  “In Malta, of course.”

  “And what was the large sum in currency required for?”

  “I don’t have to account to you for what I do with my own money.”

  “It was the proceeds of the sale of your half share of Croptech, was it not? You told Lord Balmayne you needed it to meet commitments in the City, resulting from some unwise financial transactions. Will an investigation of your business affairs bear out that statement?”

  Kimberley was clearly startled that she knew so much. “There is nothing you can prove against me.”