by J M Gregson
‘The maroon Rolls-Royce,’ said Debbie, needlessly and well-nigh silently.
‘Exactly. Someone — we don’t know who — broke into it this morning. Naturally, our team has examined the car in great detail since then. There are some fingerprints, which will probably be identified in due course. Under the front passenger seat was this handbag.’ Debbie Hall stared at it in astonishment and alarm, the blue eyes growing yet larger in her apprehension.
Let it not belong to someone quite outside the case, prayed Lambert. Let it be Mary Hartford’s, thought Hook more simply. Debbie Hall turned slowly to the Superintendent.
‘That bag is mine,’ she said.
Chapter 13
The two detectives had risen to go. After Debbie Hall’s admission, the three stood for a moment in a tableau of surprise. Away beyond the trees, a woman called to her children to be careful and a dog barked excitedly; in the silence of that room, they sounded unnaturally close.
For a moment, shock and alarm transfixed the trio. Then in each mind there followed speculation. It was Hook, standing awkwardly with the small grey handbag still in both his large hands, who voiced the first thought, and reanimated the frozen grouping.
‘Have you been in Mr Shepherd’s car recently?’ he asked.
‘No.’ The answer came almost before the question had been framed. Hook was too well-versed in his chief’s methods to help the shaken woman. The two men waited patiently while the silence seemed to menace her. She said nothing, perhaps more because she could not trust herself to speak than from any caution about her situation.
Hook glanced at Lambert, sensed his timing without any overt sign from the Superintendent, and said very quietly, ‘Can you tell us then how your bag came to be in his car?’
‘No!’ Again the monosyllable came quickly, but this time with a tremulous note of panic at the back of the throat. This extrovert mistress of social situations was not far from hysteria, and that would help no one.
Tension had not so far secured any revelations. Hook tried one more question. ‘When were you last in Mr Shepherd’s car?’
A little frisson of horror touched those perfectly formed shoulders, then became a tremor which ran through the entire voluptuous frame. ‘Ages ago. A year, maybe two years, maybe even more.’ Her hand flicked impatiently at the wave of golden hair that had fallen unbidden across her right eye. ‘Why should you believe me anyway?’ The petulant, exhausted tone was a warning: soon she would dissolve into tears or screaming and they would get no more out of her.
Lambert, reading the signs, tried a different, conciliatory tack. ‘Why shouldn’t we believe you? You were honest, even painfully honest, with us earlier. A handbag isn’t a murder weapon: we’ve already got that.’ He smiled at the pallid face a yard from his and was relieved to see gratitude appear briefly in those azure circles. ‘When did you last have this handbag?’
Debbie Hall thought hard, and Lambert felt a rush of sympathy for the shaken woman who was striving so hard for control where adolescent collapse might have seemed an easier option. ‘A few days, maybe a week ago. Wait a minute, I can tell you exactly.’ With the return of normal thought processes came a spurt of confidence, so that she reached for her desk diary with hands that, if they shook still, obeyed the commands of her brain more efficiently than they might have done a moment earlier.
‘May 5th. Eight days, then. We had a meeting of the Social and Wines Committee to plan the Captains’ Day evening. My bag disappeared after that meeting. At first I thought someone had taken it by mistake, or that I’d left it somewhere in the club and someone would hand it in for me. Eventually I had to accept it had been taken; we’ve had a lot of petty pilfering around the club recently, as you no doubt know.’
‘An unfortunate fact of modern life,’ nodded Lambert, still smoothing away tension. ‘Was James Shepherd at your meeting?’
‘He was.’ She had anticipated his question: her mind was ticking efficiently again. ‘As you know, John, the Chairman and Secretary have the right to attend meetings of all sub-committees. Shepherd often came to mine. He didn’t say much, but sat with a supercilious smile, as if he found my efforts at Chairmanship a perpetual source of amusement.’
‘I’m sure you’re a very efficient Chairperson.’ Lambert meant it, though the clumsy word fell awkwardly from his tongue even after much recent practice. ‘Presumably as the meeting was about the joint Captains’ Day Michael Taylor and Mary Hartford were also there?’ he prompted.
‘Yes. And Bill Birch, as Vice-Captain, informing himself for next year.’
‘If we assume for a moment that Shepherd took your bag, can you think of any possible reason for him to do so?’
The full lips pursed, the fair forehead frowned in concentration. If this woman was a murderer, the pantomime of being anxious to help was being beautifully played. ‘No. But it was the kind of thing he might do. He was always picking up things which might incriminate people. Usually documents or letters, which he would photo-copy and replace.’ Perhaps she saw his surprise. ‘Don’t forget I’m both witness and victim of his methods. I saw him operate at close quarters when I was forced to become his mistress.’ She spat the word as distastefully as if it had been sour wine. Then she reached out and took the bag from Hook. She opened it, looked surprised to find it empty, then looked back at the Sergeant with a flash of annoyance.
‘We haven’t emptied it,’ said Lambert hastily. ‘But of course we have looked inside. Privacy is one of the first casualties of a murder investigation, as I’m afraid you’ve already found out, Debbie. The bag was empty when retrieved. The point is really whether anything of interest or value has been removed.’
‘I think there was only make-up and perhaps a little perfume in there. And probably a handkerchief. It wasn’t a bag I used very much. Too small for the practical businesswoman,’ she smiled, and this time the little joke nearly came off.
‘Would the perfume be the same as that you’re wearing today?’ asked Lambert.
‘I suppose it would, if perfume there was. I haven’t used any other for the last few months. Len bought me quite a supply.’ Despite her best efforts, she was blushing; Bert Hook thought it a wholly admirable effect.
‘Of course, the disappearance of your bag may be totally unconnected with the murder,’ said Lambert. ‘All the same, if you think of any reason why James Shepherd or anyone else should have taken your bag, I’d be grateful if you would contact me immediately.’
Debbie Hall saw the two large men courteously off the premises, even managed a little pleasantry about it with the girl on the reception desk. Bert Hook watched her go back into the building as he put on his safety belt, and wondered whether her reaction would be one of triumph or alarm. Perhaps simple exhaustion would predominate: he felt pretty drained himself, and he had taken a small part in the exchanges.
He was glad that his Superintendent was silent on the journey back to the golf club. The countryside flew past, but Lambert gazed at it with unseeing eyes. They were within a mile of the club and its murder room before he spoke. Then he said tersely, ‘That bag. There are three possibilities.’ Hook had more sense than to offer suggestions: Lambert was crystallizing his own thoughts.
‘One: Debbie Hall was lying and was in Shepherd’s car in the last few days. Two: Shepherd took it for reasons yet unknown. Three: someone else took it; in which case, how did it get into Shepherd’s Rolls? And why?’
‘I don’t think Debbie Hall is lying,’ said Hook stoutly.
‘Good,’ said Lambert with a small smile. ‘Would that be on account of her big blue eyes, or certain other outstanding attributes?’
‘On account of her obvious honesty in the rest of the interview,’ said his Sergeant, unruffled. ‘She didn’t know we were going to throw that bombshell in at the end, but she was very open with us about her affairs.’
‘She’s quite a bombshell herself. Are you sure you’d be giving a bald, ugly man the same benefit of the doubt as the pneuma
tic Miss Hall?’
‘She hasn’t offered to buy me off with her favours,’ Bert Hook reminded him with dignity. ‘More’s the pity. I’m at least as objective about Miss Hall as you are about your angel of mercy, Miss Hartford.’
‘In that case, you are a pillar of investigational rectitude, Sergeant Hook, and I congratulate you. We must, as you indicate, strive for objectivity. Which in human terms means we must treat David Parsons, Michael Taylor and Bill Birch in exactly the same way as the women. Oh, maybe it’s nothing to do with sex. I’m pretty confident, for instance, that you’ll like Bill Birch much more than Michael Taylor, whom you disliked immediately on your own admission. I just think that, whoever our murderer is, he or she has learned the first rule, that you tell the truth whenever possible. If you analyse it, Debbie Hall told us a whole lot of stuff about her private life which we’d have dug out eventually, if we’d have had to.’
‘Maybe. I still can’t see her as a murderer. Look how she defended her relationship with Len Jackson — how open she was. Look how quickly she admitted that handbag. She’s too honest.’
‘“If she be false, then Heaven mocks itself,”’ said Lambert, amused at his Sergeant’s uncharacteristic chivalry, possibly because it voiced what he secretly felt himself. He wondered if Hook had identified Debbie Hall’s perfume and made the connection with the heavy scent in the fire-damaged cottage; presumably not. ‘Who then is favourite in your book for the homicidal role? Michael Taylor, I suppose.’
‘I said I hoped it was him, rather than believed it was him,’ said the Sergeant with dignity. ‘Taylor had opportunity, motive and the kind of desperation that could lead to violent murder. Whether he has the bottle to plan and execute a killing like this I wouldn’t know. The facts I exhorted DC Spencer to gather only this morning point to Mary Hartford. But I haven’t even seen her so far.’
If he was hoping for a reaction from his leader, he was disappointed. Lambert did not respond directly. ‘Of course, we’re assuming it was pre-planned and executed with cool nerve. If Taylor, or anyone else for that matter, was suddenly presented with some crisis by Shepherd, he might have stabbed him impetuously with the nearest implement to hand. The meeting Shepherd had arranged with George Williams might well have been just such a crisis. The fact that there are four other people around without alibis may be no more than good luck. Just as my arrival to meet Shepherd through an arrangement which presumably none of them knew about was a slice of bad luck. The body wouldn’t have been found until this morning without that, and we could have been nothing like so precise about the time of death and the elimination of other suspects.’
‘We haven’t cleared the Captain, the Lady Captain or even the Secretary of your golf club yet,’ said Bert Hook, listing these august offices with the satisfaction of a nonmember of this privileged circle. ‘Colonel Parsons had as good an opportunity as anyone else. Perhaps better, since he stayed behind in the Committee Room with Shepherd for a moment or two after the others left. And he owned the murder weapon — if that’s important.’
‘The fact that he denied his ownership could be. It’s certainly curious. And there’s his army record to be investigated; Debbie Hall seemed to confirm there was something strange there when she was talking about them pouring out their troubles to each other over a drink.’
‘I still don’t see him as this sort of murderer,’ said Hook. ‘It was both risky — someone could have heard Shepherd call out — and messy. Parsons is too precise.’
‘Hmm. There’s considerable precision in planning and execution, if we assume it was a planned rather than a spontaneous crime. And David Parsons would certainly have the bottle you so eloquently deny to Michael Taylor, our noble Captain. Anyway, who does strike you as a murderer among our suspects?’
Hook shrugged his shoulders in recognition of the hopelessness of the proposition. He turned the big Vauxhall carefully into the narrow lane leading to the golf club, then said, ‘Of course, I haven’t even seen this Bill Birch. Why do you think I’ll like him?’
‘Because he seems an open, winning chap like yourself, Sergeant Hook. Non-smoker, drinks his couple of pints without causing trouble, not a conspicuous womanizer. The backbone of our island nation, like yourself, Bert.’
‘But as toffee-nosed as the rest of your golf club hierarchy no doubt!’
‘You really must avoid these preconceptions, Bert. Do you really consider Debbie Hall toffee-nosed?’
‘Male hierarchy,’ amended Hook instantly and firmly as he parked the car.
‘I doubt whether you’ll find Bill Birch toffee-nosed. Any more than I am myself!’ Lambert went on hastily before comment could intervene, ‘He was a better opening bat than most, I think, and a useful left-arm seamer, if not quite in the Bert Hook class. He’s certainly a better golfer than I shall ever be. Anyway, you’ll see him shortly; he must be due to arrive at any minute.’
‘Vice-Captain,’ said Hook. He stood and regarded the reserved car space, wondering whether such an office could really house a reasonable chap like himself. Inconceivable that a good cricketer could be a cold-blooded murderer, but he supposed one should keep an open mind even in the face of such ludicrous suggestions. And even if their man should be only the Vice-Captain of the Golf Club, it would still be a juicy local sensation; on that more satisfying thought, he followed his Superintendent through the heavy wooden doors and into the club.
Detective-Inspector Rushton was in the murder room when they arrived. He could scarcely contain his excitement within the formalities of police address. ‘Good news, sir,’ he said to Lambert, growing a little taller with the importance it gave him. ‘The print boys have been on. There’s a good thumbprint on the end of the murder knife. They’ve got the prints of all our suspects now. It’s more than we could have dared to hope for.’
He was prolonging the moment of his news as long as he could, but Lambert was too elated by the windfall to be annoyed. All he said was ‘Whose?’
‘Miss Hartford’s.’
Bert Hook, standing in the dark doorway of the panelled room, just managed to avoid saying, ‘I told you so,’ to a Superintendent.
Chapter 14
Lambert slumped heavily into his chair and glared at the vast expanse of oak table in front of him. When added to the other bits of evidence he had, the print on the handle seemed conclusive. Why then was he uneasy rather than elated?
He tried to analyse his own feelings. It was the first time he had ever had a case where in various degrees he knew all the possible culprits. Was this what was upsetting him? Would he have felt as unwilling to accept the guilt of any of the five suspects? He had found himself defending even the wretched Michael Taylor, a man with whom he felt he had absolutely nothing in common, when Hook had voiced his dislike. He had a gut feeling that something was wrong with the solution which this thumbprint offered them on a plate. But was the feeling based realistically on two decades of experience, or on no more than a liking for Mary Hartford — perhaps even on a respect for the work she did rather than the woman herself? He shook his head angrily, as if he might thus clear it of these confusions.
As if triggered by this movement, the phone rang.
‘Have you arrested the Hartford woman yet?’ It was Cyril Garner. Even as he put the phone to his ear, Lambert saw Rushton’s note on his pad: ‘Chief Constable rang at 2.40.’
‘Not yet, sir,’ he said wearily.
‘Surely this thumbprint is conclusive!’ said Garner impatiently. ‘I was hoping to tell the local radio people we had made an arrest this afternoon.’
‘That might be a little premature, sir,’ said Lambert. He was clipped and tight-lipped. Hook immersed himself in his notes of the interview with Debbie Hall; Rushton read the signs, but was too full of the importance of the moment and his own part in it to sit down or move away. Lambert looked up at him with distaste: he could imagine Rushton’s eager transmission of the news of the thumbprint to the Chief Constable, as if the arrival of the n
ews in the Superintendent’s absence underlined the alertness and efficiency of DI Rushton.
‘Chief Nursing Officer Hartford is in theatre at the hospital at the moment, sir,’ said Lambert.
‘Chief Nursing Officer?’
‘Matron to you and me, sir. They don’t use that title any more, I understand.’
‘I see.’ Lambert, who in his mind’s eye could see Garner weighing the rank in his complex PR weightings, allowed himself a sour smile. But there was enough policeman still in the Chief Constable for him to come back to the evidence and find it damning enough to outweigh other considerations. ‘But you will need to confront her with our findings.’ Strange how they become ‘our’ findings as soon as there is progress, thought Lambert; this morning, with no solution in sight, everything was ‘your’ work. Cyril Garner had the makings of a good golf caddie, but it was not the moment to toy with this delicious image.
‘I’ve left a message for her at the hospital, sir. She will contact me when the theatre schedule is complete and I’ll confront her with our findings then.’
Perhaps he should not have picked up and echoed the Chief Constable’s ponderous phrase. He could hear the annoyance in Garner’s peremptory, ‘Do that. We need a confession. And quickly. You’ve got the picture of her with Shepherd, the handbag, now the thumbprint.’ Don’t teach granny to suck eggs, you pompous twit, thought Lambert. Then, as he bit back any reply, he suddenly recalled Garner years ago as a Chief Inspector, a hard, efficient team leader who had won loyalty from all his juniors. Unimaginative in some respects, but fair, thorough and industrious. A good example to aspiring CID men. And, at a time when there had been whiffs of corruption in many places, as straight as they came. There were worse men to make ChiefConstables. He saw Cyril Garner floundering but honest in a job for which his experience had not prepared him. No wonder he was looking forward to his pension, no wonder a smooth passage with the various media seemed the limit of his ambition. The Peter Principle had promoted him beyond the work he had done efficiently at different levels for twenty years.