by J M Gregson
Recognition dawned in Burgess, a non-golfer. ‘That’s it, almost certainly! There are grooves upon the skin at the edges of the wounds. An iron club. If you find the right one, we can confirm it in the lab.’
‘So Taylor was beaten to death with a golf club. Presumably by a man, in view of the strength involved?’
‘Not quite, and not necessarily are the answers to those two speculations,’ said Burgess drily, deftly correcting a layman with his scientist’s precision. ‘As far as I can see at present, the first blow was struck from directly behind and broke the neck. The rest were rained upon a man lying unconscious on the ground and probably already dead. The mortal blow which severed the spinal cord was a sharply descending blow. Anyone hitting the right spot would have killed a defenceless man. No huge strength is needed with the leverage added by a golf club.’
‘And all our suspects are golfers,’ said Lambert bitterly. ‘But why batter a dead man in that savage way?’
‘John, you can’t really expect help from me there. Blind anger? Panic? Your territory, not mine, thank God. At least it’s made your murder weapon easy to identify.’
‘Like Banquo,’ said the Superintendent absently. Burgess looked hard at him. He had a busy enough morning, without coping with the references of a literary policeman. Lambert said hurriedly, ‘Banquo was struck down with twenty trenched gashes on his head. He came back to haunt his murderer in public. Detection was easier in those days!’ He thought he knew who would be haunted in the hours of darkness by the nightmare memory of Taylor’s shattered skull, but proof was distressingly elusive.
When he returned to his car in the upper car park, Bert Hook was a picture of frustration. Not only had he been kept from the scene of the murder, but his phone calls had been irritatingly inconclusive. ‘Not a worthwhile alibi among them,’ he said gloomily. He looked at his notes. ‘Debbie Hall has gone out to meet a client; her secretary doesn’t know who. Bill Birch has been called out to inspect one of their machines at the warehouse in Wycombe. Even David Parsons was out of his office at the time of Taylor’s murder. Just in the village collecting some chicken wire for use on the course, according to his Girl Friday. Probably true: he’s dropped the wire into the office for the Green-keeper to pick up later in the morning. The only one of the four I’ve actually spoken to is Miss Hartford. And it took her a hell of a long time to come to the phone.’ He brightened a little as a thought struck him. ‘I wonder if she was just coming back into the house. She said she’d taken sleeping pills after our interview last night and was still in bed. I suppose it’s possible; she’s not due in the hospital until this afternoon. Anyway, she’s no alibi.’ Hook said this with some satisfaction on his rubicund features: she had been his original choice as murderer, and he was reluctant to abandon her yet.
By the time he had completed his report, they were back at the clubhouse. In the murder room, Lambert tried to contact Cyril Garner to tell him of the second murder, but the Chief Constable was addressing a conference for local magistrates. As he put the phone down, there was a discreet knock at the door and DC Spencer entered, ushering in a white-faced but determined Mary Hartford.
‘You asked me to come in this morning to sign a statement,’ she began. In the excitement of events upon the course, both he and Hook had forgotten. ‘Your Sergeant loyally withheld all information when he asked me about my movements, John, but I gather there have been further developments.’ Picturing Hook’s elephantine evasions in their phone conversation, Lambert could not suppress the ghost of a smile.
‘Please sit down, Mary,’ he said grimly. ‘I’m afraid Michael Taylor’s been killed. On the course. And not by accident.’ He saw Bert Hook’s pained expression behind her, but she would have found out soon enough, anyway. ‘Bert, if you see Vic Edwards, the steward, he’ll rustle up some coffee for us.’ Mary Hartford looked in urgent need of it. She sat bolt upright, staring wide-eyed into the space behind Lambert. For a moment, he thought she was mesmerized by the chalk outline delineating the spot where she had lately crouched over the body of James Shepherd. Then he realized she had not even registered this grim remembrance of her former suitor. She was merely suffering from shock. On her lips and about her wrists there was a tiny, continuous trembling; her neck looked unnaturally thin, like a schoolgirl’s half-developed column, an impression reinforced by the blue veins standing out starkly against the white skin.
DI Rushton arrived behind the ample frame of Bert Hook, who carried a coffee tray. In his excitement, he probably did not even see Mary Hartford; had he done so, he would hardly have brandished the evidence he had intended only for the eyes of his Superintendent. By the time he glimpsed the Lady Captain, it was too late. Holding the golf club halfway down its shaft in his handkerchief, he was saying, ‘The murder weapon, sir, surely! It was flung into the undergrowth about ten yards from where Taylor fell.’
He had the good grace to look embarrassed and confused when he saw the woman sitting stiff and formal by the table. Curiously, the sight of the club brought a stillness and strength to Mary Hartford. Perhaps the instrument of death summoned to the surface her professional resources. She rose, and looked a query at Lambert. When he nodded, she took the club carefully from Rushton, handling it gingerly at the point of balance as he had.
Lambert watched her carefully as she looked at the club-head. She did not flinch at the russet staining about its sole, although she must have recognized it as dried blood as readily as the three men in the room. She turned the club over and looked at the maker’s name on the back of the head. This time she could not keep her voice steady: it rose and fell like a child’s when tears threaten.
‘This is a lady’s club. A “Patti Berg” 5-iron. I think it belongs to Debbie Hall.’
Chapter 21
Most policemen are still shocked at the thought of murderous violence from a woman. It would take an ardent feminist to account it sexist in them. DI Rushton and Sergeant Hook looked at each other aghast across the table. It was Lambert who stepped forward and took the club quietly from Mary Hartford, nodding as if he had expected no less. ‘I’ll ask Miss Hall about it later in the morning,’ was all he said, as if he were adding an unimportant footnote to the case.
He ushered Mary Hartford away to the less stressful environment of the ladies’ lounge to finish her coffee. On his instructions, she meekly rang her deputy at the hospital and explained that she would be in an hour or so later than the midday she had planned.
The fingerprint experts had already established that the handle of the club had been wiped clean before it was hidden in the brambles. Lambert laid it carefully across the wooden arms of the tall chair which had been the Chairman’s place at the Committee table; as he and Hook set about evaluating the situation, it lay like a grim talisman between them. Whilst out on the course the detailed search for evidence continued, the two men sat in the old, quiet room and considered their suspects, now reduced by the Captain’s violent departure to four.
‘David Parsons, Secretary,’ Hook began, following his neat notes. ‘Access to James Shepherd. Could have killed him before the company met for drinks in the bar. If we accept Miss Hartford’s story, Shepherd was dead by then. Apparently Parsons left, if not first, then before most of the others. Both Mary Hartford and Mr Birch confirm that his car had gone before they left … Is the order of departure significant?’
‘It seems to be. Those who remember anything say the Committee Room door was ajar when they last saw it. When I toured the building and found the body it was locked. I think, though I may never be able to test the thought, that the murderer locked the door before he left, probably after he’d watched the other Committee members leave the car park.’
‘Why bother?’ said Hook. He enjoyed being used as a sounding-board for his chief’s ideas, and would have been surprised to know how useful an attribute Lambert found this in his amanuensis.
‘Because the murder would not then have been discovered until next day. Vic Edwards
checks security each night, but if the door was locked he wouldn’t go into the Committee Room. It was only because I searched the premises, knowing Shepherd’s car was still outside, that we found the body so quickly. Had we not known of the death until the next day, the range of suspects would have been much wider, even if we had begun with the Committee.’
‘So you think our murderer was the last to leave the clubhouse car park that night?’
Lambert shook his head in irritation. ‘It’s not conclusive, and even as I voice the theory I hear far too many “I thinks” to be convinced. Let’s move on to more tangible matters. Parsons killed a man in Aden; brutally and suddenly, in a fit of understandable hatred. He succeeded in concealing the fact from everyone around here except Shepherd, apparently. That gentleman put his lost rank on the club note-paper deliberately to get a hold over him, if we are to believe David Parsons.’
‘It tallies with what the others say about Shepherd.’
‘Indeed it does. Mary Hartford knew him better than anyone, sensed that Shepherd was taunting Parsons about his rank. And Parsons’s violent reaction in Aden has the kind of passionate desperation that lies about our second murder.’
‘Facts, sir, not psychology!’ Hook was daring enough to remind Lambert of one of the principles he regularly enunciated to his juniors. ‘Had Parsons the opportunity to commit this morning’s murder? His secretary says he was out in Burnham Cross collecting a roll of wire netting from the suppliers. The wire is in his office now: I’ve checked.’
‘We’ll need to check in the village. The wire could have been in the boot of his car for days. There’ll be a lot of leg-work for our team if we don’t get a confession today.’ Hook glanced sharply at his Superintendent: it was the second hint he had given that he was pressing towards a solution. Lambert merely looked down at his own notes and said, ‘Debbie Hall.’
‘There’s evidence against her,’ said Bert Hook, stating the obvious with some reluctance, ‘but she seemed far too open and honest with us to plot murder.’
Lambert smiled fondly at him — and watched his Sergeant flush right up to his greying temples. ‘“Beauty is truth; truth beauty”, eh?’
‘Sir?’ Hook recognized the moment to play straight man and used it to cover his embarrassment. He had never quite understood the poem when he had been made to learn it by heart forty years earlier.
But Lambert merely said, ‘She wouldn’t be the first pneumatic lady with dazzling blue eyes to commit homicide, and you know it, Bert Hook. And her fair locks may beguile you, but you’ve seen enough of her to know she’s no dumb blonde.’
Hook nodded reluctantly and strove to show his objectivity. ‘We do know she slept with Shepherd at one time and that he was threatening her marriage to Len Jackson. Her handbag was in the Rolls yesterday morning. And of course Miss Hartford says it’s her club which was used to kill Michael Taylor.’ Hook became progressively more doleful through this catalogue, producing the last admission like a reluctant witness who sees a fact that cannot be ignored. ‘But surely a woman couldn’t have …’
‘Burgess says it is certainly possible. He’s sure the first blow with Debbie’s 5-iron broke Taylor’s neck. The rest was mere embellishment. Perhaps a determination to ensure he really was dead. Perhaps a blind hatred for an accessory who was about to desert. Perhaps even an attempt to convince old-fashioned policemen that it was too vicious a crime for a woman to perpetrate. Who knows? Debbie has no alibi yet.’ Lambert realized that he was indulging himself with Bert Hook’s discomfort, but he could not leave the subject without reminding his non-golfing Sergeant that, ‘The fair Miss Hall swings a powerful 10-handicap iron: you’ve seen her on the practice area with the pro.’
In happier circumstances, Bert Hook’s manly chauvinist eyes would have glowed with lively recollection, but now he looked at his pad and said stubbornly, ‘What about your Miss Hartford?’
‘My Miss Hartford?’ said the Superintendent with pretended irritation. ‘As far as our Lady Captain goes, much depends on whether you believe her story about how her thumbprint came to be on the knife that killed Shepherd. It’s perfectly feasible that someone with her medical background would check the death-wound in the way she described, and look for her letters in the empty safe.’
‘But even more feasible that she should have gone back after the Committee Meeting and stabbed Shepherd. She’s confessed to a former long-standing relationship with the Chairman, though only when there was no alternative because we’d discovered that photograph in what might once have been a love-nest.’
‘That love-nest idea worries me,’ said Lambert. ‘It’s ten years since Shepherd and Mary Hartford were lovers and that photograph could never have been lying in that hut undisturbed for that time. And the perfume used so liberally in there was Debbie Hall’s, not Mary Hartford’s. Apart from the fact that Mary Hartford denies that they ever even went to that building. Why should they? They weren’t particularly secretive about their relationship, according to Mary.’
Hook was startled; he hadn’t connected the perfume in the burnt-out cottage with Debbie Hall. ‘“Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned,”’ he said darkly, glad to be able to throw in a quotation of his own for once, and blissfully unaware that it was inaccurate.
‘Bill Birch,’ said Lambert abruptly, glancing at his watch.
‘Plenty of motive, like the others,’ said Hook after a pause. ‘On his own admission, he hated Shepherd.’
Lambert, to whom Birch’s suffering in this room yesterday remained vivid, said, ‘Like David Parsons, he has killed a man before. In his case by pure accident and without negligence on his part, if we believe his story — and it tallies with what you remember of the case. But he was guilty of criminal deceit in concealing his part in a fatal accident. Which put him more completely in Shepherd’s power than anyone else. He’s desperately fond of his crippled wife, and I think he’d do anything to protect her.’ Lambert paused. He was thinking of how upset Birch had seemed on the course yesterday when he had thought he was incriminating Mary Hartford. If his emotion had been feigned, he was a consummate actor. But then, as Bert Hook would tiresomely remind him if he passed on his thoughts, all the evidence was that their murderer was just that.
As Hook looked expectantly at his chief, there was an urgent knock at the door, which opened before Lambert could issue the invitation to enter. Rushton, of course. Full of himself. Bursting with his news like an eager child.
‘You were right, sir. There were footprints by Taylor’s body. Golf shoe prints. One very clear one where our killer had stood over our victim and beaten him with that club. We’ve photographed it and taken an impression.’
Lambert concealed his excitement and spoke calmly. ‘Quite a lot of people keep their golf shoes in the locker-room. It’s worth checking.’
‘So the Secretary told us, sir. We’ve inspected them. We found one pair stuffed away behind the lockers, perhaps so that they could be removed later. They’re covered with fresh mud which I’m sure match the print we’ve got. We’ll have to check of course, but —’
‘Show me!’ Lambert’s voice was harsh now. He had expected this, but its arrival gave him a sick excitement he could not remember feeling before; more than ever as the climax approached, he wished he did not know the participants in this tight little drama.
Rushton, revelling in the moment, led a little procession of Superintendent, Sergeant Hook and the two detective constables who had followed at his heels. It was no more than twenty yards to the long row of shoes in the locker-room. They could have picked out the ones that mattered without Rushton’s eager direction: they were the only ones with thick, fresh mud adhering to their pimpled soles, the only ones laid upside down for their detailed inspection.
‘It’s the left shoe we’re matching,’ said Rushton. Lambert nodded and gingerly turned over the right shoe. Under the morning’s mud and water, the whiteness had almost disappeared. But the scuffing on the toe of the worn shoe was
sickeningly familiar to Lambert. He had seen it only the previous afternoon when he had sat on the seat by the tenth green.
Gazing down at these shoes, and listening to the voice of Bill Birch.
Chapter 22
Lambert looked up from the golf shoes to find four policemen staring expectantly at him. Once again, this investigation in which he knew the principals was working its peculiar alchemy. He felt his pulses racing and his irritation rising: it was a difficult enough case without this unique overlay. Perhaps he should have refused it; but even with that thought came the realization that he would never willingly have done so.
‘Where was Birch this morning?’ he said gruffly; he tried to invest the surname with the same dispassionate neutrality he would have used in any other case.
‘Out of his office. No alibi as yet.’ It was Hook, almost apologetically.
‘Like the others,’ said Lambert moodily.
He went back to the murder room, and this time managed to contact the Chief Constable with the news of the second murder. Cyril Garner was not pleased as Lambert gave him the terse details. He did not interrupt, except with a few disapproving grunts. At the end of the account, he said, ‘The press conference will have to go ahead as arranged. You can take the questioning about Taylor’s murder.’ It sounded like a fretful parent’s punishment of a defaulting child. Lambert acquiesced readily enough; he knew the newshounds would be too busy recording the sensational details of the Golf Captain’s gory demise for there to be many questions about police action at this stage. And there was still at the back of his mind the wild hope that he might have the solution to offer triumphantly to the media by the time of the conference at one. It was a notion he scarcely dared to entertain himself, still less to communicate to Cyril Garner.