Die Happy

by J M Gregson

  ‘No. Well, yes, in a way, I suppose. But I didn’t kill him.’

  ‘Where were you on Tuesday night, Mr Hilton?’

  He hated that iteration of his name and title. It made all this sound as if it was merely a preliminary to charging him. ‘I was at home in my flat. In the bedsit where you saw me on Wednesday morning.’

  ‘Yes. You were rather disturbed then. Was that because you’d shot Mr Preston on the previous night?’

  ‘No! Of course it wasn’t!’ He tried to make the idea sound ridiculous, but all he could hear in his voice was fear. ‘I was at home on Tuesday night. I didn’t go out at all. I rang Bob Crompton and had a talk with him about his visit to the literary festival at Oldford.’ He and Bob had enjoyed a few laughs, said some pretty insulting things about the old fogies who were likely to attend the Manchester poet’s readings in Oldford. For no reason he could think of, it seemed to Sam Hilton that the game would be up if he revealed any of this to the men in front of him.

  It was DS Hook who now looked up from his notebook and said, ‘What time was this phone call made, Sam?’

  His first name, at last. Even a measure of sympathy in the tone from this man – or had he imagined that? He wanted to say he had spoken to Bob later in the evening, but they could trace the time on mobiles, couldn’t they? ‘About half past seven, I think.’

  Hook shook his head sadly. ‘Too early to help you, I’m afraid. Is there anyone who can confirm to us that you were at home throughout the evening?’

  Sam’s mind was racing as fast as the pulse in his temple. ‘My girlfriend was with me.’

  Hook studied him for a moment before he said, ‘Name?’

  ‘Amy Proctor.’ Sam watched Hook record that in his notebook. Time seemed to be suspended in that claustrophobic room; the squat hand clutching the ball-pen seemed to move with impossible deliberation. Next Hook wrote down Amy’s address with equal care. Sam said he couldn’t remember her phone number. He couldn’t think what had made him volunteer the name; panic, he supposed. Amy hadn’t agreed to his request to say she had been with him on Tuesday. Passion had prevented that and he’d not asked her a second time. But she hadn’t refused, had she? He wasn’t even sure that she’d agree to being described as his girlfriend.

  As if from a long way away, he heard Hook saying, ‘Was she with you overnight, Sam?’

  ‘No. She left at about midnight, I suppose. Maybe just before.’ He wondered why he hadn’t claimed she’d been with him all night, as she had last night. Perhaps because it made the lie seem a little less complete. He’d have to get back to Amy, to check that she was prepared to support him. He’d do it for her.

  But then he was sure now that he was in love with her.

  Just when it seemed that this more sympathetic man was going to handle things, it was Lambert who now took up the questioning again. ‘Do I take it that you’re denying any connection with the killing of Peter Preston?’

  ‘Yes. Denying it emphatically.’ But again the adverb emerged as ridiculous, when he had meant it to sound indignant.

  ‘I see. Then who did kill him, Mr Hilton?’

  ‘I don’t know, do I?’

  ‘Don’t you? You may well know things related to this death that we don’t. It is our duty to discover these things. It is your duty to reveal to us anything which might have the smallest connection with this killing. This is murder, Mr Hilton. Not shoplifting, not breaking and entering, not even dealing in drugs. This is the most serious crime of all. Concealing the smallest detail which might have a bearing on this death could make you an accessory to murder. I advise you very strongly to conceal nothing from us.’

  Sam licked his lips. ‘Ros Barker didn’t like him any more than I did. Perhaps he was more of a threat to her art than he was to mine, but you should ask her about that. Marjorie Dooks didn’t like him, because he wanted her job and was very rude about the way she was doing it. Even Sue Charles couldn’t have had much time for him, because he liked to pretend that her writing was trivial rubbish. I can’t see any of us killing him, though.’

  The now familiar dilemma, which they shared themselves, but couldn’t admit, especially to this talented, dangerous young man. Lambert said evenly, ‘Then who did kill him?’

  ‘Someone from outside the festival committee. Perhaps it was someone from his family, or from his past.’

  ‘Perhaps. What car do you drive, Mr Hilton?’

  ‘A black Ford Focus. It used to be my uncle’s car. It’s fourteen years old now, but it runs well enough. It’s taxed and insured and MOT’d.’

  Hook noted the details and the registration number, with a small smile at these unnecessary additions. He thought the nervousness was a good sign; he didn’t really want this raw, gifted young man to receive a life sentence, though he wouldn’t voice that unprofessional thought to Lambert. He said, ‘We’ve charged you with the serious crime of dealing in illegal drugs, Sam. That doesn’t mean you will be treated with any more suspicion than anyone else who is involved in this murder investigation. But you should heed the Chief Superintendent Lambert’s advice. If you think of anything at all which might be relevant in the next few days, you must demonstrate your innocence by bringing it to us immediately.’

  Sam Hilton emerged blinking into the sunlight outside the station and breathed deeply of the warm spring air. He felt as though he had received a physical battering. But with a young man’s resilience, he decided within half an hour that it had gone reasonably well. They didn’t seem to be aware of the serious motive he’d had to be rid of Preston.

  Long let it remain so.

  The contents of Peter Preston’s filing cabinet were interesting indeed. They were voluminous and detailed. They were the collections of a natural gossip. But this was a gossip with a malevolent streak, material assembled by a man who had sought to turn the weaknesses of humanity to maximum account for himself.

  Peter Preston might have been old-fashioned in his storage methods for information, but within his own terms he had been methodical. There was an almost priggish rectitude in his organization of the material he had gathered. Each dark green file carried the name of an individual. The thickest files were the oldest ones, presumably devoted to the people who had been acquaintances of his, or more probably rivals, in his more active and successful days. Most of the names Lambert did not know, though he recognized one or two BBC and ITV luminaries from a previous generation. He flicked open a couple of these files; much of the material was bitchy gossip picked up from others, but occasionally there was the date of some action that Preston had obviously thought might be of use to him. The last entries in all of these were several years old.

  Lambert turned with quickening interest to the more recent compilations, which included files on every member of the Oldford Literary festival committee. He couldn’t resist turning first to the one on his wife, headed grandiloquently, ‘Christine Evelyn Lambert.’ Disappointingly, it was confined to a single sheet in Preston’s small, neat hand. It included, ‘Husband is Detective Chief Inspector John Lambert, who has been lionized by the media as a modern Sherlock Holmes. No doubt much less bright than he thinks he is. Difficult to get beyond the police mafia to discover the skeletons in his cupboard. Might contact Alexander Bryden to see what dirt he can offer on this Lambert fellow.’

  Bryden was a Cheltenham-based con man who had taken a succession of rich widows and divorcées for the bulk of their savings. He had eventually been trapped and sent down by Lambert, who was intrigued to know what connection he had enjoyed with Peter Preston. Perhaps the dead man had not known that Bryden was currently in prison, though the case had been well covered in the press at the time.

  The only entry on Christine herself was, ‘Likely to support the Dooks woman in the chair, unless I can find some means of putting pressure upon her. But she seems a moderately intelligent woman, who could be convinced in time of the excellence I have to offer.’ Lambert decided from the other material in the cabinet that ‘moderate
ly intelligent’ was in Preston’s terms a high compliment. He thought it might be difficult to convince Christine of that.

  He had seen enough to realize that the material in these files needed to be thoroughly checked. He told Chris Rushton that and gave instructions that he was not to be disturbed for the next few hours. Then he carried the files on the literature festival committee away to his office and shut the door firmly.

  Amy Proctor was finding hormones a troublesome thing. Her own seemed to be raging out of control and now there was a young man standing on the doorstep who looked as if he was having trouble with his.

  She said, ‘I suppose you’d better come in.’

  It was hardly the most welcoming of greetings for a man who had lately decided that he was in love. Sam Hilton said as much.

  She gave him a smile which sent the aforementioned hormones into vigorous action. ‘Sorry. I was preoccupied with other things. I’ve got application forms for jobs, which I have to complete today.’

  ‘This shouldn’t take long. It can’t, really – I’ve to be at Morrisons in two hours myself to take up my gainful employment. Stacking shelves leaves my brain free to work on other things.’ He didn’t choose to confess to many people that he couldn’t exist on his poetry earnings alone. That he should do so to this bright, animated, enchanting creature was really a declaration of trust and love, but he didn’t suppose she recognized it as that.

  Amy said with a touch of affectionate mockery, ‘I like the idea of the poetic muse being at work amidst the machinery of life in the supermarket. Collecting trolleys from the car park and contemplating the eternal verities of life at the same time.’

  ‘The muses don’t seem to pay much attention to me. If I wait for inspiration, I produce nothing. I have to batter my brain into activity and bully my mind into looking beyond the bread and the eggs and the baked beans.’ Writing, whether in prose or in verse, was a serious activity to Sam; he was prepared to outline the mechanics of it to anyone who offered him the opportunity.

  ‘Student stand-by, the tin of baked beans. I expect I shall have to move on to more adult sustenance, once I get a full-time job. Do you want a cup of coffee?’

  ‘Yes, if you’ve time.’ He should have been in and out in a couple of minutes, as he’d promised, but he couldn’t resist spending time with this delectable girl with the glossy black hair and the lissom, mobile figure. He followed her into the kitchen and watched the rear of her jeans dreamily as she boiled the kettle and spooned instant coffee into two beakers. He was filled with a spiritual attraction that went far beyond the coarsely physical; but you couldn’t simply ignore the flesh, if love was to be complete.

  She sat him down opposite her at the round white melamine-topped kitchen table and glanced at the wall-clock behind him. ‘What can I do for you, my wondrous wordsmith, before you depart to worship the glory of honest physical toil?’

  That’s what he was, a wordsmith, Sam Hilton thought. It was an honourable term, not a derogatory one. Especially when this fascinating faun prefaced it with ‘wondrous’. But he was suddenly bereft of the words needed to introduce a delicate and urgent subject. He stirred sugar into his coffee, watching the whirling surface of it as if he were noticing it for the first time. ‘It’s about this death. Peter Preston’s death.’

  ‘This aficionado of the arts, who was fostering the flame of creativity in the young poet. About his murder, you mean.’

  ‘Yes.’ Sam wished she hadn’t immediately switched to that brutal, inescapable word. And he wished she would vary the affectionate, half-mocking tone which she was adopting towards him and his poetry. ‘He was murdered. That’s why the police are talking to everyone who was in touch with him at the time of his death.’

  ‘Including my poet-lover.’

  ‘Yes. And Preston wasn’t fostering the flame of creativity. He was as rude as he could be about my poetry and my membership of the literature festival committee. So the pigs have me down as an enemy of his.’

  ‘Not surprisingly. And as a man with a criminal record, you must be centre-frame.’

  He wondered now whether he was right to have told her about his arrest for drug-dealing. It was the kind of honesty that came upon you between the sheets, when the body was deliciously exhausted with love-making and the mind was easily swayed. You surely shouldn’t have any secrets from your loved one, that mind had said. Now the same mind was telling him that perhaps it hadn’t been such a splendid idea. ‘I’m hoping I’m not their prime suspect. But it would help if I could prove that I wasn’t around at the time Preston was killed.’

  Her bantering tone fell away and she was suddenly serious. ‘What is it you want, Sam?’

  What had seemed a simple request was abruptly very difficult. He was silent for a moment and then said quickly, ‘I asked you last night, actually. I want you to say that you were with me on Tuesday night.’

  There was a pause before Amy said quietly, ‘Where were you, Sam?’

  ‘I was in my flat. All night. But I need a witness.’ He made himself look up from the coffee beaker and into those large, dark, wonderful eyes. ‘The police had me in this morning and grilled me about it. I told them you were there with me until midnight.’

  There was a long pause, which was agony to him. He wanted to break it, but he sensed there was nothing he could say to improve things. Eventually Amy Proctor said slowly. ‘I’ll say I was with you, Sam. But don’t ever do anything like this again without asking me first.’

  SIXTEEN

  Within two days of her husband’s death, Edwina Preston was back in the big house with the mock-Tudor frontage where Peter had died. Her daughter had made her welcome enough in the small flat in Oxford. But Dell had been grieving for her father, whereas her mother had found it difficult to conceal her elation.

  Edwina walked slowly round every room of The Willows when she returned on Thursday afternoon, as if it were a new residence waiting to be explored. She lingered for a moment in the room at the front of the house where Peter had fallen, but there was nothing now to remind her of the death. The drawing room seemed to her quite impersonal, despite that elegant but uncomfortable chaise longue, which Peter had insisted upon keeping. Even the room upstairs which he had used as his study looked quite anonymous now. The police had removed both his computer and the filing cabinet about which he had been so protective, and with them had departed the things which had once made this room distinctively his.

  Life without Peter was going to be very different, she thought with satisfaction.

  She was not as nervous during the night as she had feared. She remembered how she had welcomed Peter’s overnight absences, even in his younger and more successful days. She couldn’t understand now why she had endured her loveless marriage for so long. She should have ended it years ago.

  In the morning, Denis the gardener arrived. He offered his condolences, which she accepted with a solemn face. Then she doubled his weekly hours. They discussed their aims for the summer, which was now at hand. Outside the kitchen, these were the first domestic decisions she had taken for herself in years. To Denis’s surprise and satisfaction, the mistress of the house controlled her grief and worked with him in the garden for the last hour of the morning. When he had gone, Edwina ate a solitary lunch in great content.

  She was to have a CID visit during the afternoon. The police had rung Dell’s number in Oxford, found that her mother had returned home, and arranged to call at four o’clock. She was pleased about that. Once she had cleared the final hurdle of their visit, she could get on with the rest of her life. She decided that she would make some scones for her professional visitors. And she would entertain them in the conservatory – that’s the sort of thing Sue Charles would do, and you surely couldn’t have a better role model for this situation. She must assume a suitably sombre face for them, as she had for Denis. She wasn’t going to pretend to any great grief at her husband’s passing, but a sober attitude was suitable for a new widow. At quarter to fou
r, she donned the expensive dark blue woollen dress which was the nearest garb she had to formal mourning wear.

  She was surprised how difficult it was to maintain a solemn mien when her visitors arrived. She felt that she was playing a part, particularly when the older man, Lambert, seemed to study her with unceasing intensity. She was glad she had made the scones, for the serving of tea gave her plenty to do with her hands; she was sure she would have been self-conscious about her movements without it. DS Hook carried the big tray with the scones and the plates into the conservatory, whilst she went before him with the silver teapot and the cups and saucers. She poured the tea carefully and handed round the scones, noting with pleasure how steady her hands were. Chief Superintendent Lambert seemed anxious to begin, but she made him wait through the ceremony of the tea and the scones.

  Hook had barely time to compliment their hostess on the excellence of her baking before his chief said, ‘We now have a fuller picture of your husband and the people around him at his death. We are following up certain discrepancies in what people have told us over the last couple of days.’

  ‘That’s good. I’m impressed by how quick and thorough you’ve been. I trust the things your colleagues removed from Peter’s study proved interesting?’

  ‘They did, yes. We are still digesting and reacting to that information. But no doubt you will be more interested in accounting for the deficiencies in your own statements.’

  Edwina kept her clasped hands scrupulously steady. It was gratifying to hear how steady her voice was as she said, ‘I can’t think what they would be. But I’m glad to have the opportunity to clear up any misunderstanding immediately.’

  ‘This is a matter of fact rather than a misunderstanding, Mrs Preston. You told us you stayed with your daughter Cordelia on Tuesday night. She was not able to confirm that.’

  Bloody Dell! Sue told herself she should have known her daughter hadn’t the nerve for this. Perhaps she hadn’t had the will either, the wretched girl. Dell had never been able to understand the full extent of her father’s cruelty to her mother.