Just Desserts

by J M Gregson

  ‘Thanks. It’s a busy time for us, coming up to Christmas.’

  ‘You’ll probably find it helps your bookings in the long term. Murder has a certain grisly glamour, especially for those innocents who’ve never been in contact with it.’

  ‘I suppose so. The press boys are already clamouring for pictures of our cloakrooms.’ Fred Soutter smiled ruefully.

  ‘I wanted to check a couple of things with you. First, are any of your knives missing from the kitchen?’

  ‘No. I’ve checked again this morning. And all the cutlery used in the restaurant is still here.’

  ‘Right. And could anyone who wasn’t a customer have got into the cloakrooms from outside during the evening?’

  ‘No. The outside doors and the entrance to our own accommodation are locked throughout the evening, when the restaurant is open.’

  ‘So that the only way someone from outside the dining party could have been in there is to have secreted himself beforehand, locked himself in a cubicle, and waited three hours or so for his chance to kill.’

  ‘That’s impossible.’

  ‘I know it’s unlikely, but—’

  ‘Not unlikely. Impossible. One of the things I try to do while Paula is serving the aperitifs and taking the orders at the beginning of the evening is to do a quick inspection tour of the cloakrooms to ensure that things there are exactly as they should be at the beginning of the evening.’

  ‘And you did this last night?’

  ‘I did. After I’d locked all the outer doors. There was no one in any of the cubicles.’

  Lambert nodded, pausing for a moment to let the implications sink in to these people who were not used to murder. Then he turned to the white-faced Paula Soutter. ‘You were in and out of your restaurant and close to the diners throughout the evening. I realize it’s an almost impossible question, but I have to ask it. Did you notice anyone behaving unusually?’

  She made herself stop to think before she answered. ‘It’s almost impossible, as you say, because apart from Patrick Nayland and his wife, I hadn’t met any of them before, so I don’t know what their normal behaviour would be. But everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves. There was a lot of laughter, even a bit of shouting. The level of noise rose sharply as the evening went on. But that’s what we’d expect, what we’re used to.’

  ‘This is important. Did you see any sign of an argument between people at the table? In particular, did Patrick Nayland seem to annoy anyone, or to be upset by anyone?’

  ‘No. I’ve thought about that a lot during the night, in view of what happened. But I can’t recall any disagreements at all, serious or trivial. Everything I heard said to Patrick was complimentary, congratulating him on the success of his evening and so on.’ Her pallor was mitigated by the beginnings of a blush; obviously the compliments had included the host’s choice of venue and the excellence of the fare his guests were enjoying.

  Lambert nodded. ‘Keep thinking about it, please, both of you. Ring Oldford CID and ask for me personally if anything occurs to you, however tiny it may seem. Because we’ve just agreed that it was one of the people enjoying themselves so boisterously at the table last night who went down into your basement and perpetrated this brutal killing.’

  At Camellia Park on the morning of December the fourteenth, an air of shock hung over the course. Determined golfers, muffled against the cold, tramped over the frozen fairways, searching for white balls which became more than usually elusive against the white of the frost. Most of them had not known the owner of the course personally, but the news of his sensational death ran swiftly round the place.

  When they were finally released from Soutters by the police on the night before, Chris Pearson had told the staff that they could take the morning off, but most of them came in to work, albeit a little later than usual. They all said that they felt at a loss at home, that the rhythms of familiar tasks would take their mind off the tragedy which had befallen them. This was at least partially true. But they were driven also by a natural human curiosity, by a fear that if they stayed at home they might miss further developments in the sensational story which had begun so dramatically for them amidst the splendid glass and china of the restaurant.

  Alan Fitch was the first one to arrive. He entered the greenkeeper’s shed which was his own small fortress five minutes before his normal time of eight o’clock. He had not slept much overnight. There was not much useful work that he could do on the course on a frosty morning, but he knew what he had to do before anything else.

  He took some of the oily rags which he had used in his maintenance of the course machinery and carried them out behind the shed, to a spot at the edge of the course which they used for the occasional bonfire. He built a swift pyramid of dry twigs over the rags, as he had done scores of times before. As if acknowledging his expertise, they burst into a swift, cheerful, blaze.

  He looked round to make sure that he was unobserved before he added the stuff he had brought from home in his plastic bag. No one was in sight, not even any of the scattering of hardy golfers he had noted on the first three holes. He watched for a few seconds, saw the flames lap eagerly around what he had fed to them. Then, sure that the fire was established, he piled on the broken fencing panels they had replaced by the Gloucester road and the browning brambles they had cleared from beneath the trees on the ninth.

  The flames disappeared for a time beneath an impressive column of smoke, which rose straight and high in the still, cold air. It was like the funeral pyres he had seen in India long ago, which had so impressed him as a young merchant seaman. That image seemed now to belong to another age, to another life which he had long forsaken. For the first time in years, he found himself wishing he was back on a ship, on the other side of the world.

  Alan Fitch was not an imaginative man, so it did not strike him as of any great significance that the image which had come to him so powerfully was one of death.

  Presently, the flames got a hold on the brambles and his fire raged so fiercely that he had to stand back from it. He watched the flames appreciatively, curling like angry tongues around the material he piled steadily around the centre of his blaze, dangerous, destructive, cleansing.

  ‘I thought we were leaving those brambles until the new year. Letting them dry out for a while.’

  Fitch felt himself twitch violently at the words, as if he had for a moment lost control of his movements. He thought he had been keeping a wary eye behind him for any intrusion, but his concentration upon feeding the bonfire had betrayed him. Now even the familiar tones of Barry Hooper had made him start like a guilty thing. He said roughly, ‘You shouldn’t creep up on a man like that! Nearly made me jump out of my skin, you did!’

  ‘Sorry, boss. You made an early start. I thought we weren’t coming in until this afternoon.’

  ‘Why’re you here, then?’ Fitch heard the harshness in his voice; he was still shaken by the younger man’s intrusion upon his private world.

  ‘Couldn’t sleep, could I?’ Barry Hooper began to drag more of the dead brambles towards the fire. He had apparently noticed nothing that was odd in his mentor’s bearing. ‘I thought we were going to leave this stuff for another two or three weeks.’

  He treated Fitch’s pronouncements as if they were some sacred gospel. At that moment, Alan wished his helper didn’t remember things so precisely.

  He said carefully, ‘There isn’t much else we could do in this weather. And it’s nice to have a bit of warmth on a bitter day like this.’ He pushed his fork into the dead foliage at the edge of the fire, and it responded like a living thing, bursting into a seven-foot-high cone of orange flame, causing the pair to step back hastily away from the heat.

  They worked in silence for a few minutes, feeding the blaze, gathering in stray scraps of the dead brambles which were now disappearing so quickly. Then Fitch gestured towards the distant clubhouse, invisible behind his greenkeeper’s shed. ‘Any news?’

  ‘No. Not that I picked u
p, anyway. Mr Pearson says the police will want to speak to us all individually.’

  ‘Aye. They said that last night.’ The words came impatiently, like a rebuke to the younger man’s forgetfulness.

  Their exchanges were edgy and spasmodic throughout the morning. Barry Hooper noticed it, but he put it down to the shock from last night. That must be affecting all of them; he could certainly feel it still in himself. He was glad when it was lunchtime and they could boil their little kettle in the shed and settle down with their sandwiches.

  But even here, they did not become the relaxed pair he was accustomed to. Fitch said suddenly, ‘Why do you keep looking towards the door?’

  ‘Was I doing that? I hadn’t realized it. I suppose I was wondering when the police will come. Makes you nervous, doesn’t it, something like this? I’ve never been involved in anything like it before.’

  ‘And you think I have?’ Fitch’s voice was abrasive, accusatory.

  ‘No, I know you haven’t.’ Barry wanted to say that it was just that Fitch had so much more experience of life in general than he had himself, that he looked to him to be able to cope with anything. But the right words wouldn’t come and he said nothing. It was consoling, in a way, that even the man he had come to regard as unshakeable could be affected by something like this.

  Barry Hooper had the sense to say very little during the rest of their break. He was glad he had brought the Sun in with him, and he pretended now to immerse himself in its contents. When Fitch eventually stood up, he rose with him, obediently and automatically.

  ‘Stay where you are, lad.’ Brian Fitch realized how rasping his tone sounded, and made an effort to be friendly. ‘You’re entitled to another ten minutes yet. Stay here and make us another cup of tea, and I’ll go and check on our fire. Just to make sure it’s safe, you see.’

  He wished he hadn’t added the last phrase. It hung unnecessary and artificial in the cold, still air.

  He went outside and over to the fire, which had almost burnt itself out. A thin line of white smoke rose straight and unruffled above the grey-white ashes. He raked in a few stray strands of unburned material from around the edges, checked that Barry had not followed him out, and examined carefully the patch which had been at the centre of his fierce blaze.

  It was satisfactory. There was no sign of the trousers or the shirt he had put there as the fire developed.

  Five

  Lambert took Detective Sergeant Bert Hook with him to visit the widow of the dead man.

  It was always difficult, the interview with the spouse of the deceased. You had to be respectful of their grief and try not to intrude more than was strictly necessary into the domestic trauma which follows a violent death. Yet the spouse was always the first suspect to be considered in a suspicious death: the statistics dictated that it should be so.

  Bert Hook with his stolid, village-bobby exterior, his immediate response to what people were feeling, his anxiety to prevent unnecessary suffering, was a reassuring companion in circumstances like this. The fact that his calm exterior concealed a keen intelligence, a profound experience of human folly, a sharp observation of behaviour, was a bonus of quite another kind. Hook often caught people off their guard.

  Lambert had learned long ago not to trust appearances in the aftermath of death. Some people controlled grief better than others. Those who appeared controlled, sometimes even uncaring, could dissolve into paroxysms of anguish when they were afforded the privacy they needed for their mourning.

  Mrs Liza Nayland seemed to be in control of whatever emotions she felt. She wore no make-up and her fair colouring should have readily revealed any extremes of grief. She was forty-four years old, dark blonde, blue eyed, and no doubt in happier circumstances an attractive woman. Now her face was pale and drawn, showing the lines of middle age which cosmetics might have concealed. The skin around her eyes was puffy with the tears she had shed through the night.

  She took them into the lounge of a comfortable detached house, offered them refreshment as if they had been respectable middle-class visitors, not detectives. I’m almost like the vicar, thought Bert Hook, wondering what his boisterous thirteen-year-old twin sons would make of that image. Bert Hook was a Barnardo’s boy; he knew a lot about vicars and well-meaning middle-class ladies: they had seemed in his adolescence to be deciding the path of his life for him.

  ‘How long had you been married to Mr Nayland?’ said Lambert, when he had got the preliminary apologies for intruding at a time like this out of the way.

  ‘Ten years. It was a second marriage, for both of us.’ She said it as though it was an unpleasant fact that had best be got out of the way at the outset.

  ‘Was he in touch with his first wife?’

  ‘No. Not for years. There were no children from the marriage and the settlement was agreed at the time of the divorce, so there was no need for them to meet.’

  ‘Someone from our team will be contacting the first Mrs Nayland, nevertheless. She needs to be eliminated from the inquiry. I understand that you also have a first husband who is still around.’

  ‘Yes. I can’t see how this is relevant to your investigation.’

  Lambert gave her his most apologetic smile. ‘Neither can I, at this point, Mrs Nayland. But even at this early stage, we know that this is murder. And murder is unique among crimes, in that the victim cannot speak for himself. We have to build up a picture of him, of his virtues and his faults, which he is not able to provide himself. We shall ask all sorts of intimate questions, of other people as well as you. The information which is relevant to this murder will emerge eventually. None of us can decide what is relevant today.’

  She nodded impatiently; the fingers twisting the engagement and wedding rings on her left hand were the only sign of agitation. ‘All right. Yes, I’m divorced. And unlike Patrick, who never wished to see his first wife again, I still see my first husband occasionally. My daughter wishes to keep in touch with her father, naturally.’

  ‘Thank you. Did your daughter resent your second marriage?’

  She felt her pulses racing, told herself firmly that she had known this would come up. She forced herself to smile into the long face and the grey eyes, which seemed all the time to be seeing far beyond the words she was giving him. It was a bleak little smile, but that was surely appropriate for a widow. ‘There were a few problems, yes. Nothing too serious. I should imagine they were quite normal, for a teenage girl having to adjust to her mother discarding her father in favour of another man. But you will understand that this is my own and my daughter’s only experience of such things.’

  It was dismissive, and Lambert thought too well phrased to be thought up on the spot, but he let it go. You couldn’t push a grieving spouse too far, and they would be talking to this daughter of hers in due course. He looked steadily at the woman in the dark-blue dress with her hands clasped together in her lap, studying her as closely as ever as he said, ‘But your own relationship with your husband was entirely a happy one?’

  ‘Yes. I’m glad you’ve given me the opportunity to emphasize that. Entirely a happy one.’

  The repetition of his words sounded curiously formal, curiously controlled, for someone deep in grief. Yet it was spoken with such dignity that Lambert was inclined to believe her. He said, ‘Forgive me, but I have to ask. All marriages have disagreements. Most of them, indeed, have major rows, from time to time. Have you had any serious differences with your husband over the last few months?’

  ‘No. And you needn’t apologize for asking. I know the wife is always the chief suspect in murder cases.’

  He smiled, enjoying her frankness. ‘I prefer to state it as “the first person to be eliminated from the list of suspects”.’

  She wondered if she could ask him if he proposed to eliminate her. Instead, she said, ‘And have you a lengthy list in this case?’

  Lambert smiled at her again. This woman was shrewd enough and composed enough to have worked this one out for herself. ‘Ou
r list appears to be confined to the people who were in Soutters Restaurant last night, Mrs Nayland. There was no outside access to the cloakroom where your husband died.’

  She gave a little, involuntary shudder, as the image of the spot where Patrick had fallen flashed briefly before her again. They had tried to stop her going to him, but she had thrust through them, had cradled his head briefly in her arms for a moment before hysteria took over and they dragged her away. Chris Pearson, it had been, who had shaken her back into silence and the dull realization that this had really happened.

  She nodded at those grey eyes, which seemed never to blink as they studied her. ‘One of us, then. I wonder who would want to do such an awful thing. Who would want to cut Patrick down like that, on an evening of celebration, which he had devised and paid for, which everyone seemed to be enjoying?’ She let her bitterness come out as she lingered over the last phrases.

  There was a pause before Bert Hook came in and said, ‘No doubt someone had a motive to do this. But motive isn’t always the first thing we look for, Mrs Nayland. We always begin by considering who had the opportunity to commit a crime. In this case, we know everyone who had the opportunity. The motive may be less obvious. It may mean that we can’t discount people who were not present in the restaurant last night.’

  ‘I don’t follow that.’

  ‘I mean that anyone with a grievance might have employed someone who was at your table to commit murder for him.’

  ‘That doesn’t seem very likely.’

  ‘I agree. It’s unlikely. But it’s by no means impossible. People get themselves into all kinds of financial trouble, for instance. Desperate men – and sometimes desperate women – can be persuaded to do astonishing things, if they are assured that it will get them out of a financial hole.’

  She could see that, when she thought about it. Patrick was a methodical man, and that might have been the way he would have gone about it, if he had ever needed a murder. She pulled herself up short. How could she be thinking about him in this way, on the day after his death? It must be something connected with the shock everyone talked about. She said, ‘I’m learning things about crime, aren’t I? Things I’m not sure I want to know!’