In Vino Veritas lah-23

by J M Gregson

  She was brittle, unpredictable. But hardly likely to collapse into hysterics, Lambert judged. He watched her closely as he said, ‘He was shot through the head whilst sitting in the driver’s seat of his car.’

  Jane Beaumont seemed neither surprised nor shaken. Whether that was because she knew these facts already or not, he found it impossible to judge. She was silent for a moment, nodding slowly, as if lost in her own thoughts. Then she said, ‘You don’t know about us, do you?’

  Lambert smiled encouragingly at her, trying to get her to concentrate on him rather than the wall behind him. ‘We don’t know very much about anything concerned with your husband at present, Mrs Beaumont. We need to know much more, and we need the help of people like you.’

  ‘I see.’ She nodded slowly, as if she was having some difficulty in assimilating the simple idea he had put to her.

  She didn’t seem inclined to offer anything by way of response. It was Hook who eventually prompted gently, ‘Mrs Beaumont, you said just now, “You don’t know about us, do you?” That is very true, and we need to know. We’re asking you to help us, though we realize this is a difficult time for you.’

  ‘Difficult, yes.’ She took a deep breath and frowned, as if striving hard to give the matter her full attention. ‘We weren’t close, Martin and I.’ She nodded again, perhaps congratulating herself upon the precision of her grammar. ‘We hadn’t been close for years. Maybe some of that was my fault — he always said it was.’

  Hook said hastily, ‘There is no need for you to speculate about the reasons why you were no longer as close as you once were. What would be useful to us is the most precise summary you can give us of the state of your relationship at the time of Mr Beaumont’s death.’

  ‘Yes, I see. Well, I wanted a divorce. He wasn’t going to give me one. But we were going to fight him about that.’

  ‘We?’

  ‘Oh, a friend of mine. A female friend. No one can really resist divorce permanently nowadays, if you can prove the irretrievable breakdown of a marriage.’ She spoke carefully, as if she was repeating phrases which might be new to them. Then she suddenly brightened, looking at Hook for the first time as if conducting a genuine conversation. ‘I was going to fight him for my divorce. I won’t need to do that any more, will I?’

  ‘No, you won’t, Mrs Beaumont. Is it because you no longer felt close to your husband that you seem to know so little about his movements since Wednesday morning?’

  ‘Yes, that would be it, wouldn’t it? I haven’t known much about his movements on any particular day for quite a long time, now. For many years, I suppose.’ Her brow puckered again, and for a moment she was like an adolescent determined to be fair to an errant boyfriend. ‘I haven’t wanted to know. I suppose I could have found out more about what he was up to, but it’s a long time since I was interested.’

  ‘I see. Well, this is useful information for us. We shall probably be able to get a good idea of his movements on Wednesday from his staff at Abbey Vineyards. I appreciate that you have no certain knowledge of what he was planning to do on Wednesday night or Thursday, but have you any thoughts on where he might have been then?’

  Jane Beaumont gave the question that dutiful, rather touching, attention she had given to all of his queries. ‘No. I’m sorry. I wasn’t very interested. I was more concerned with my plans for divorce, so I was quite happy that Martin wasn’t around.’ She watched Hook make a brief note and added apologetically, ‘I’m sorry. I’m not being very helpful, am I?’

  Bert gave her an encouraging smile. ‘I think you’re being honest, Mrs Beaumont, and that is the most we can ask of anyone we talk to. It may be that something will occur to you over the next few hours, when you’ve had time to accustom yourself to the shock of this. Please get in touch with us immediately at this number with anything at all you think might be useful. Even the smallest things can turn out to be significant, sometimes.’

  She took the card and studied it for a moment, as if she had been handed some strange and technical artefact. Then she nodded. ‘I’ll ring you immediately, if I think of anything. I’m afraid all I can think of at the moment is things to ask you, which is the wrong way round, as Mr Lambert pointed out.’

  Lambert said hastily, ‘You’ve been very honest with us, Mrs Beaumont. If there are questions we are able to answer, we will certainly do that.’

  ‘Yes, I see. You told me how he died, didn’t you, Mr Lambert?’

  He looked at her, deciding that there was a strange and sturdy strength beneath her abstracted air. She seemed to have more rather than less control of herself and her emotions as she had accustomed herself to the idea of this death. Lambert watched her closely as he said quietly, ‘I told you that he was shot through the head in his car, Mrs Beaumont.’

  She winced slightly, then nodded. She did not seem to be disturbed by the picture. ‘He didn’t shoot himself, did he?’

  It sounded more a statement than a question, but he answered, ‘No, we’re already certain he didn’t do that. We’re sure in fact that he was killed by person or persons unknown, as the law has it.’

  ‘The law, yes. But you’re going to find out who that person or persons are, aren’t you?’

  ‘Yes, I hope so, Mrs Beaumont. That is our job.’

  ‘He didn’t use his own pistol, then.’ She nodded to herself again, as if that was a reassuring thought.

  Lambert, who had been preparing to take his leave, sat down again quickly. ‘Your husband had a firearm?’

  ‘A pistol, yes. That’s what you have to call it, he said. Not a gun.’ She smiled a small, private smile at her satisfaction in recalling that.

  ‘Do you know the make?’

  ‘No. I don’t know anything about it, I’m afraid, except that it was a pistol. The thing frightened me. I didn’t like having it in the house, but he said he needed it to protect himself.’

  ‘And you think he might have had it with him when he was killed?’

  She gave the query careful attention in that curiously touching, diligent way again. ‘I think he probably did. I think he carried it about with him in the car. I haven’t seen the pistol in the house for years. Didn’t you find it there?’

  ‘No, we didn’t, Mrs Beaumont. But this is useful information. This is the sort of thing Detective Sergeant Hook meant when he said that if you think of anything that might be useful you should let us know.’

  She smiled. It seemed in simple delight that she had been able to help them, though her cheeks remained as white as ever. ‘I’ll certainly phone if I think of anything else. I hope you find who did this. I didn’t want him killed, did I, even though I wanted to be rid of him?’

  It was a question which rang in their heads for a long time as they drove away from the big, neglected house.

  FOURTEEN

  Whilst Lambert and Hook were conducting their rather strange interview with the newly bereaved Mrs Beaumont, DI Rushton rang the dead man’s PA, as he had promised her that morning he would.

  ‘I can confirm for you that we are indeed treating Mr Beaumont’s death as murder. There are not many more details available as yet, but I can tell you that Mr Beaumont’s body was found in his own car, near a hamlet called Howler’s Heath.’

  Fiona Cooper was making notes on the pad in front of her. ‘I don’t know where that is.’

  ‘No. Very few people would — it’s a tiny place, just a farm and one or two cottages, I believe. I had to look it up on a large-scale map myself. It’s in a valley at the southern end of the Malverns. The car wasn’t in the place itself, but some way beyond it, under a copse of trees. It was because it was so isolated that the crime wasn’t discovered for some time after it happened.’

  ‘When can I let people know about this? They’re all wondering exactly what’s happened. I had to cancel all Mr Beaumont’s appointments.’

  ‘You can release the news now. That is why I rang you. The bare facts of what I have just told you will be embodied in a press rele
ase, which will be carried by the evening papers and by radio and television.’

  ‘Thank you. I’ll let the senior staff know immediately.’

  ‘You can let everyone know, Mrs Cooper. You could also make it clear that Detective Chief Superintendent Lambert will be taking charge of the case, and that he and his staff would be delighted to hear from anyone who knows anything at all which they think might have a bearing on this death.’ Throw in the local hero now: John Lambert’s name was likely to elicit more contacts than that of some anonymous inspector.

  ‘I’ll do that. It won’t take long for the news to spread.’

  ‘No. Bad news always spreads quickly. And sensational bad news such as violent murder spreads quickest of all.’

  ‘Well, you’d know more about that than I would, Detective Inspector Rushton,’ Fiona said primly. She felt a sudden need to distance herself from this awful thing. The vision of the blue Jaguar with its driver dead at the wheel was for the first time appallingly vivid to her. She had worked closely and happily with this man for the last five years. And someone she knew here, one of these people she greeted each day as a friend, might be involved in this, might even have committed murder.

  She gave Rushton the extension and home telephone numbers of the five senior people she had named to him earlier in the day, so that he might set up meetings with them.

  Fiona sat for a few minutes to compose herself after she had put down the phone, deciding exactly how she would phrase this sensational disclosure for the rest of the staff on the site. It was whilst she was deciding upon the correct form of words that Vanda North tapped briefly on her door and came into the office.

  The director of residential accommodation looked very animated. A few strands of her shortish fair hair, usually so tightly disciplined, flew free on the right of her head, creating an effect which was quite attractive. Her blue eyes glittered with life and her cheeks had more colour than Fiona could remember them ever having before. Miss North looked perhaps five years younger than her forty-six as she asked, ‘Is there any news yet on how this happened?’

  Fiona took her through the sparse facts which Rushton had just released to her. She could not understand why she felt so disturbed, why she was delivering her information as though on automatic pilot. By the time she concluded her brief bulletin, she realized what it was that was so alarming. Vanda North should have known nothing about this death, yet her opening enquiry had shown quite plainly that she did. And her reaction to the facts Fiona had just given her was unsurprised, even a little impatient.

  Had she unearthed her employer’s killer at the outset, simply through this woman’s disclosure of knowledge she should not have had? Fiona Cooper said, through a throat which now felt very tight, ‘You knew about this, didn’t you? But I’ve only just found out some of these facts myself, only just been given police permission to release them.’

  Vanda North looked at her for a moment as if she could not understand the accusation behind the words. Then she laughed abruptly, the unexpected sound shrill and loud in the quiet room. She realized the reason for the apprehension she had seen for a moment in the woman behind the desk. ‘Of course, you wouldn’t know, would you? I spoke to Jane Beaumont this morning. She told me about it — two policewomen had been round quite early to break the news of Martin’s death to her.’

  Fiona hoped that the horror she had felt for a moment had not shown on her face. She dropped into her PA’s efficient, non-committal voice. ‘I knew it must be something like that.’

  The house of the finance director of Abbey Vineyards was altogether less grand than that of the company’s late owner.

  It was a pleasant, rather boxy, detached house in a cul-de-sac of identical buildings on the outskirts of Tewkesbury. It would have been more impressive if allowed more space, but the developer had followed the modern trend in building the maximum number of residences the local authority planning committee would allow him to erect on the site. The land had once been the gardens of the two late-Victorian houses he had demolished to allow this project. There were now fourteen residences here, so that the houses were nothing like as elegant as the artist’s impression on the front of the brochure. They had built-in garages and were set in pocket-handkerchief gardens.

  Alistair Morton himself opened the door to Lambert and Hook. The room into which he led them was square and well lit by its single broad window in the front wall of the house. The dining-room set of table and six chairs and matching long sideboard made it seem quite small. The three oil-paintings of what seemed to be Scottish Highland scenes combined with a few ornaments to make the decor seem almost fussy.

  Perhaps Morton noticed them taking note of the room, in the calm, unhurried way which is common in CID officers anxious to pick up every informative detail from the living spaces of those they interview. He said nervously, ‘This is a dining room, but we don’t use it much for that. I needed it for a study and a place to do freelance work, until I was fully established and provided with my own facilities at Abbey Vineyards.’

  Lambert turned his attention with a polite smile to the human being at the centre of this room. Morton was slightly built, his thinness making him seem a little taller than he was. He had straight black hair, neatly parted in the style of a previous generation and closely cut at the back and sides of his head. ‘Have you been with Abbey Vineyards for a long time, Mr Morton?’

  ‘Very nearly since the outset. I came to Mr Beaumont as a newly qualified chartered accountant, doing his books in my spare time in the early days. Even when I decided to throw in my lot with him, I still did other work on a freelance basis, because he couldn’t afford to pay me much at the beginning.’

  Lambert nodded. ‘I remember the vineyard beginning as a very modest concern. Most people thought the notion of English wine rather ridiculous at the time, or at best as no more than a novelty. You must have had faith in the idea.’

  ‘I suppose I did. Or rather, faith in Martin Beaumont, if I’m honest. I knew nothing about English wine and very little about wine in general. But Martin was an enthusiast. He carried people along with him.’

  ‘Nevertheless, you showed a lot of faith, to throw in your lot with him when he was dependent on what was then a largely untried idea.’

  Alistair hadn’t anticipated this. He had expected to be defensive, to have to devote all his resources to concealing the fact that he had been thinking for months of the means by which he might dispose of the employer he had come to hate. Yet this grey, lined, experienced face seemed to understand his situation, to appreciate what he had risked in those early days. He was tempted for a moment to disclose his real relationship with Beaumont, to say exactly what sort of man he had been and how treacherously he had reneged on those early promises of partnership. But that would surely be folly, with Beaumont on a slab with a bullet through his head and these men looking hard for a killer.

  Alistair went back to the words he had prepared. ‘I was young. I had a wife working. I felt I could take a chance to pursue an exciting idea. We didn’t have any children — we still don’t have. I was a qualified chartered accountant. It wouldn’t have been the end of the world if Abbey Vineyards had failed. I’d have found other employment easily enough.’

  It all made sense. But Morton was picking his words very carefully for a man with nothing to hide, thought Lambert. ‘You will appreciate that at present we know almost nothing about a man who has been a victim of violent homicide. We’ve already spoken to Mr Beaumont’s widow. Apart from her, you have probably known him longer than anyone else we shall talk to. Would you tell us what sort of man he was, please?’

  Alistair wasn’t ready for so direct a challenge. Any frank appraisal of the man was plainly dangerous ground for him. He didn’t want to say what he really thought, but he couldn’t afford to come across to them as evasive. He played for time by rising and going across to the sideboard and sliding open one of its bottom drawers. After searching for a moment through a sheaf of d
ocuments, he produced a small leaflet and handed it to Lambert.

  ‘That is the first brochure we produced at Abbey Vineyards. That is a picture of Martin as he was then.’

  It was a modest advertising venture, pushing the notion of English wines, reminding the reader that the Romans had grown vines here. It gave brief accounts of soil analysis and the writer’s views on why the gentle, south-facing Gloucestershire slopes where the first plantings had taken place were going to produce viable commercial yields. Its only printing extravagance was a full-length picture of the man behind the venture, probably taken a year or two before it was used here. Martin Beaumont was a handsome man, slim in his well-cut suit, with an open face and flowing, carefully cut, dark-gold hair. The features exuded confidence and enthusiasm, as was obviously their purpose in the brochure.

  John Lambert studied the photograph for a few seconds, as Morton obviously intended him to do. The Martin Beaumont of those years looked a winning figure, who could easily imbue others with the enthusiasm and conviction he felt for his ideas. He wondered for a moment whether there might have been a sexual attraction between the two men, but immediately dismissed the notion. He was almost sure Morton was not gay, and he certainly didn’t present the shaken figure of a man who had lost a lover, whether current or former. More likely there had been an attraction of opposites, a bond between the handsome entrepreneur with his visions of commercial glory and this introverted and cautious figure, excited by an unexpectedly adventurous outlet for his accountancy skills.

  Lambert said, ‘So you were in at the beginning. It must have been an intoxicating ride.’

  Alistair weighed the word carefully. He would have used other, less complimentary words, but it would pay him to accept this view. ‘It was. There wasn’t much money around at all for a year or two, because Martin insisted on ploughing every penny that was made back into the firm.’

  ‘But no doubt you approved of that, in view of the progress you have seen since then.’