Killer Cases: A Lambert and Hook Detective Omnibus

by J M Gregson

  ‘Did you go back to the Hall after you’d dialled 999?’

  They looked at each other. ‘No. We sat in the car at the gates until your policemen arrived. Is it important?’ Harben’s impatient tone implied that it was not.

  ‘It could be. Someone could have been in the house, anywhere beyond that drawing-room door, when you discovered the body.’

  ‘The murderer could still have been there.’ Margaret Harben’s face etched the sickly excitement of the thought.

  ‘It’s possible. The uniformed men searched the house when they arrived, as part of the normal routine, and found no one.’

  ‘But we were at the gates until they came. We would have seen anyone leave.’ This was Harben. He was anxious to dismiss the material for nightmares from his wife’s mind, though Lambert judged that now she was enjoying the frisson of a danger that was past.

  ‘By orthodox means, yes. But of course anyone could have left the house from the rear and disappeared through the arboretum.’

  He was right: Margaret Harben was hugging to herself her involvement in what she now saw as a melodrama rather than a sad suicide. She was at this moment more determined than ever to buy Lydon Hall, suddenly impatient to be alone with her husband to sound his feelings in the matter, yet reluctant to relinquish her involvement in the inquiry. ‘What else do you want to know?’ she said.

  ‘You’ll have realized by now that I’m trying to assemble every known fact surrounding the death of Stanley Freeman, from yourself and others. The hope is that one or more of those facts will eventually emerge as significant. We’ve covered your arrival at the house, your discovery of the body, and the period between that moment and the arrival of the police. All that remains is the period immediately before that. In driving to visit the Hall, did you see or hear anything significant in the area?’

  He did not need to issue the usual injunctions to take time and think carefully; these witnesses were anxious to be of help. There was quite a pause before Margaret Harben said reluctantly, ‘I don’t think so.’

  Lambert waited, letting the dubious recall of the subconscious have its final chance. Unexpectedly, it was Henry T. Harben who spoke, his transatlantic tones suddenly sharpened with the thrill of his recall.

  ‘We passed a car. Going far too fast. On a bend.’

  ‘How near to the house?’ Lambert was professionally matter-of-fact.

  ‘Half a mile, perhaps.’

  ‘Make and model?’

  ‘I couldn’t be certain of either. It came out of the sun. I was glad enough to miss it.’

  ‘Colour?’

  ‘Blue?’ He looked at his wife, who nodded her agreement.

  ‘Did you see the driver?’

  The Harbens looked at each other, intense with concentration, then shook their heads in simultaneous frustration. Henry said, ‘The windscreen was right against the sun. In any case, I was fighting to avoid a collision.’

  The four people in the room looked at each other, revolving the single thought. Perhaps only the murderer’s desperate speed in departure had preserved his anonymity. Or hers.

  Chapter 7

  Denise Freeman rolled on to her back and stretched a slim brown arm to pick up her watch from the bedside table. ‘One o’clock. Time you were going,’ she said to her lover.

  He stretched his feet to the end of the bed in heavy, post-coital lassitude, and tried to pretend everything was as it had always been. ‘Five minutes,’ he said with a satisfied smile. In truth, it had not been as satisfactory as they had expected: Simon Hapgood knew that as well as Denise.

  She looked down at the small aureole of yellow hair around his head as he sank it back into the silken pillow. His eyes were closed, his face smooth-skinned and relaxed, the small, attractive smile fixed upon the quiet lips. His lovemaking had been as urgent, as fierce, as uncomplicated as ever. And she had responded as always, fitting her passion to his violence, surging to a climax without needing any refinement of technique from him. That brief moment of concerted frenzy had been as successful as ever.

  Yet this time it had been only a moment. They had been as awkward before it as they had been that first time many months ago. The words which normally came so easily to her had had to be framed by deliberate thought, and that had made the speaking of them a self-conscious exercise. They had kissed briefly, peremptorily even, with none of the slow, exploratory excitement of lovers secure in their attraction. And today she had found within her mouth the sour taste of death.

  On the second day after his death, Stanley Freeman had inhibited them as he never had in life. She had been conscious as she never had before of making love in Stanley’s house with another man. A younger man. A lover not so very different from what Stanley had been once: she had never had that thought before. Perhaps her conscience, if her feelings could be dignified as anything so worthy, should have been more active when her husband was alive. The thought did not help her now.

  ‘I’ve got to move,’ she said. She rolled her legs over the side of the bed and reached for her towel robe: with a lover twelve years your junior, it was important he should not have a detailed view of sagging curves as they disappeared towards the shower. For the first time she could remember, she was not reluctant to leave him.

  Simon Hapgood listened to the soothing hiss of the shower and wondered why he too felt so deflated today. He was too self-centred to allow that Stanley Freeman, a man he had both disliked and despised, could have troubled him so much more in death than in life. Of course, the fact of his death had changed the situation; that was indisputable. The lines were bound to be re-drawn, and as yet he was not sure how. Would Denise expect him now to marry her? What had been a passionate, breathtaking affair of stolen hours and uncertain future had now no barriers to prevent it becoming permanent.

  Would he, indeed, want to marry Denise? He had never thought about it until now. He could certainly use all this: he looked round the bedroom, with its quality built-in furniture, its cut-glass chandelier and wall lights with their suggestion of fin-de-siècle sensualities, its brass-handled mahogany door to the en suite bathroom where his mistress was showering. He stretched his limbs indulgently against the silk sheets. Opulently fitted, he would call it if he were describing the house for the market: and that’s what his life would be if he married Denise. He had already discarded any notion that she might not be delighted to marry him.

  He tried to analyse his feelings for Denise Freeman, without much success. He was not given to self-analysis, the result being too often depressing, and he found it difficult to be objective. He felt a strong but nevertheless shallow affection for Denise; it was probably as much as he had felt for anyone in an unsatisfactory life. Was it more than sexual desire and gratification? She had been kind, understanding, experienced, and his own bedroom performance had blossomed as a result. Under her patient hand, he had almost said. He looked at the long mirrors of the wardrobe doors and smiled at his tousled hair and flushed face.

  In the bathroom, Denise Freeman towelled herself vigorously, rubbing away the introspective depression that had preceded and followed their lovemaking. As she brushed the long black hair which now hung straight and free over her shoulders, Simon would not have been flattered by her thoughts. He would indeed have been disturbed. For Denise was pondering upon just when and how she should dispense with him.

  It had been a satisfactory affair. When Stanley was alive, it had combined excitement, danger, and a sexual gratification she had long since ceased to find in her marriage. Simon Hapgood was rather splendidly handsome in an effete sort of way. That he was a fairly junior employee of her husband’s added an extra frisson to the relationship; it also made the affair easier to conduct for one of her organizational skills, for she could be aware of the appointments and working arrangements of both parties. Stolen hours of lust (she was still not sure how much more than that was involved) were much more successful when the threat of discovery and embarrassing confrontations remained small. U
nder her competent supervision, the boundaries had been clear and the affair manageable. Now that the lines had been obliterated, she would have to draw new ones. That was only to be expected. What she had not taken into account was this belated and wholly unexpected feeling of guilt, this soft-centred regret for her dead husband, this self-recrimination about the golden early years of her marriage and the missed opportunities of later times.

  She emerged half-dressed from the bathroom, brusquely dismissing her uncertainties. ‘Time you were moving, lover-boy,’ she said. Perhaps she knew the strange attractiveness her slight French accent gave to the glib phrases of Hollywood. She took a dress that was scarcely worn from the wardrobe. Trousers suited her long legs and slim hips, emphasized the measurements she had retained since she was twenty-one, but policemen should be received conventionally. She would make no gesture towards mourning: curiously, her unexpectedly tender recall of her husband made her more sensitive to the effects she might create. Black might be construed as hypocritical by anyone who knew of the recent state of her marriage. She had not enjoyed her visit in black to the offices of Freeman Estates, and Simon had scarcely helped things by going over the top when he should have kept quiet. She chose a dark pink summer dress, demure, but light enough to sketch in her trim bust and waist with every movement she made.

  ‘What time are they coming?’ Simon made no attempt to move as he watched her pull the dress over her tanned shoulders. She must be ten years, maybe even a little more, older than his thirty, he thought. But she had worn well, there was no disputing that. And certainly in bed –

  ‘In half an hour. Come on, darling. Out!’ She slapped his thigh and pulled away the clothes. He rolled reluctantly out and reached for his shirt: he was still not secure enough to parade himself naked before her experienced eyes. He washed and dressed quickly; he had no wish to meet senior policemen, in however routine a context. When he emerged from the bathroom, Denise had left the bedroom.

  When he was a vigorous forty-eight, she would be almost sixty, he mused. When he was fifty-eight, she would be an old lady. They said older women were grateful, the raffish, inadequate young men with whom he exchanged notes. Most of them aspired to a rakishness they would never achieve. Simon was obscurely aware of this, so he did not rate their opinions very highly. But he was not good at leaps of imagination, so that picturing this long-term future, weighing the pros and cons of marriage to a rich and sexually voracious widow, was beyond him. He did not yet know it was a pointless exercise.

  ‘I have an appointment at two myself anyway,’ he said. He vaguely resented the way she seemed always to manage the length and termination of their meetings, and was trying to assert his own measure of control. ‘What does this policeman want?’

  ‘Superintendent Lambert,’ she said, unconsciously adopting the precision she found necessary. ‘Is Superintendent a high rank in the British police?’

  ‘Very,’ said Hapgood. ‘Too high to be wasting his time on this!’

  As she turned away from him, Denise’s face twitched as if she had been slapped: the notion that Stanley’s death should be unworthy of the attention of anyone significant seemed insensitive from one who had invaded his bed. She told herself she was being unfair: this very directness in Simon had once been an attraction to her.

  ‘Do they know about us?’ Simon was defensive; he had seen quite enough of policemen in the past.

  ‘There’s no way they can do.’

  ‘It’s better to keep it that way.’ There was something very near alarm in his voice. He slipped on his shoes and made for the door with his car keys in his hand. He seemed suddenly very young to her: she tried to cherish his vulnerability, but could see him only as callow, rather tiresome in his sudden anxiety to be gone. He looked different in his dark grey professional suit and maroon tie, like an actor playing a role for which he was ill equipped. She could not believe the public would take him seriously in the part, yet she knew he was quite successful. Perhaps this was the reality, and her image of him as lover the deception.

  He turned reluctantly, then kissed her on the forehead. The physical contact brought them closer emotionally, but only for the moment it lasted. ‘Why is he coming, anyway?’ he said. A small worry gnawed in the recesses of his mind.

  She shrugged. ‘How should I know? It was his sergeant who arranged the time. He’s coming too; he sounded like one of your English yeomen. Very sturdy. Very reassuring. Except to a Frenchwoman: Agincourt hasn’t the same context for us.’

  ‘Didn’t he say what this Lambert fellow wanted to talk about?’

  ‘No. He said it was usual to talk to the next of kin after a death.’

  ‘Not for a Superintendent.’

  ‘We didn’t discuss the rank.’ She gave him a sharp little smile and he was gone, his blue Sierra roaring swiftly out of earshot, as if he wanted to be well away from the place before the police came. She smiled a little indulgently after him, no longer irritated, merely amused by his childish unease at the approach of the law.

  The death had now been officially noted as murder. Neither of them knew that yet.

  Chapter 8

  For senior CID men, there are few better sources of preliminary information than the Desk-Sergeant at the local nick. Lambert was making use of this facility.

  ‘So he lives rough the whole time?’

  ‘Winter and summer. I think occasionally he gets help from someone at the vicarage or the RC presbytery, but clergymen can be quite reticent about those they help. The best clergymen.’ Sergeant Johnson made the qualification in sturdy defence of his agnosticism.

  ‘His real name can’t be Wino Willy.’

  ‘He’s universally known as that now.’ Johnson was the opposite of Sergeant Hook: thin-faced, eager, so mobile he seemed to find it difficult to keep still. He shot from his chair as though forcibly ejected, extracted a file from the furthest of three cabinets in ten seconds. He knew the information already, but one needed to be sure and official for a Superintendent.

  ‘Arthur James Harrison,’ he said.

  ‘So he’s not even Willy really,’ said Lambert inconsequentially. The removal of a man’s name in the interests of alliteration seemed one more small cruelty visited by an uncaring world upon its flotsam.

  ‘He had a short period in hospital two years ago. Appendix. They cleaned him up. Cut his hair and shaved him. All over, presumably.’

  ‘How long was he in hospital?’

  Johnson turned over a page of the file and raised his too-mobile eyebrows. ‘Five days.’

  ‘Five days! And discharged back to that! What time of year?’ He knew he was being outraged where he should have been non-committal. The swift turnround of patients was one way in which the National Health Service could show itself as efficient in these days of cuts and threatened cuts. He had enough political problems with the Law and Order lobby without looking for more.

  ‘End of August. He discharged himself.’ Sergeant Johnson hoped the issue of this information did not sound like a rebuke. Well, it was not after all so irrelevant. Lambert was building up a picture of the man who might just have seen a murder. Or might just have committed it: but he did not believe that. This killing was too carefully arranged to look like suicide by one who must have more motive than poor Arthur James Harrison seemed to have.

  ‘Never mind the file, Jack. Tell me what you know about him beyond that.’ So the Superintendent had remembered even his nickname, though he had not spoken to him for two years. Sergeant Johnson was gratified despite himself. Setting aside his twin disadvantages of high rank and CID designation, Lambert did not seem a bad bloke.

  ‘He was divorced eleven years ago. His wife kept the house. He lived in a flat with his son for a while. The son was killed in a car accident six years ago. Front seat passenger. I was there when the firemen cut him out.’ Johnson stared at the row of pigeonholes on the wall, his face stilled for a moment with the recollected horror.

  ‘Has he been living rough sinc
e then?’

  ‘More or less. That was when he gave up his job. He saw the boy buried, then disappeared for two or three months.’

  ‘What was his job?’

  ‘Teacher at the local grammar school; comprehensive, now. Good in his day. Very good, I believe. Inspector Steele reckons he got his son into Cambridge.’

  ‘Subject?’

  ‘History.’ Johnson turned back to the beginning of the file. Lambert saw a sharp black and white photograph of an eager, intelligent face. A vanished man. ‘An MA. I seem to remember he was writing a book. Never got finished, I suppose. He used to lecture for the WEA at one time. My wife went. Said he was fascinating on Oliver Cromwell.’ Like most policemen in the humbler ranks, he was half proud of his wife’s erudition and initiative, half threatened by her venture into the exotic world of adult education.

  Lambert was grateful for the picture he was building up. He would have to question this half-crazed man whom life had so reduced. He might even have to bring him forward as an important witness: he shuddered at the thought. ‘How bad is he? Mentally, I mean.’

  Sergeant Johnson pursed his lips. ‘The trick-cyclists would no doubt be able to pin some sort of label on him. If they could get at him. I suppose in the old days he might have been committed at some stage. Nowadays, he’s left alone, as long as he keeps quiet.’

  ‘Has he had any treatment?’

  ‘Nothing worth the name. Three days’ observation a year or so after his wife died. “Severe depression” is all the file says – covers a multitude of sins. Discharged himself after one session of electric shock therapy. Can’t say I blame him.’

  Any history of violence?’ Lambert asked the question very quietly, but both knew the implications.

  ‘None whatsoever. I haven’t seen Willy for three or four years now, but PC Robertson, whose patch it is, says he wouldn’t hurt a fly. Rather the reverse, in fact: he has a great reputation for being able to charm the local wildlife. Small animals and birds seem to find him no threat at all and come to sit at his feet. If he holds on another year or two now that even the Tories have gone “green”, he’ll be transformed from vagrant to conservationist.’