by J M Gregson
Hapgood shot him a quick, wary glance. It was the look of a cornered animal, but there was no defiance left in him. He said, ‘She didn’t kill Freeman either.’ He presumed his tormentors knew who the ‘she’ was; he took a long, nervous draw on his cigarette.
And suddenly Lambert did know. Once he had accepted the idea, it seemed so obvious he felt a fool for not considering it much earlier. Hook’s quick glance of surprise was small consolation as he said, ‘You might care to know that Mrs Freeman’s account of her movements on that Wednesday night has already been discredited. We now know that she was at the cinema in Tewkesbury not on that night, as she claimed, but on the previous Monday.’
Hapgood nodded: it was only what he had expected to hear. ‘We were together on that Wednesday night.’ Then, as if to avoid further questions, he said, ‘Between seven o’clock and ten to nine.’ This precision could only mean that he had thought about the times and their significance on many occasions in the preceding days. Probably he realized this, for his face relaxed into a grisly smile as he studied the grey smoke rising slowly from the end of his cigarette.
‘During which time you executed the murder of Stanley Freeman,’ said Lambert. He made it sound as matter-of-fact as an item of shopping. Perhaps his tone misled Simon Hapgood, for it took him two long seconds to react.
Then he shouted, ‘No! No, we didn’t!’ at a level which must have carried throughout the building. Lambert, watching his victim intently, still had time to wonder what the reactions of Emily Godson and Jane Davidson must be beyond the heavy door; George Robson was still out. ‘You can’t think that,’ said Hapgood; his voice was lower this time, but the edge of panic belied his words. Hook, a man not given to fanciful conceits, thought he could smell fear on the man.
Lambert turned the screw. ‘This is a murder inquiry, Mr Hapgood. Both you and Mrs Freeman have impeded it by premeditated deceit over several days. It is not unreasonable for us to assume that you are guilty of conspiring to murder Mrs Freeman’s husband. The onus at this moment is on you to convince us otherwise.’
It was not true, of course. Morally he might be right, but the law would not support him. As if to rebuke him, Hapgood now said dully, ‘I want to speak to my solicitor before this goes any further.’ It was the dull note of despair: he had taken the Superintendent’s words at their face value. But his face showed that he might yet be led where they wanted.
Lambert said, ‘That is your right of course at any time. But we have made no charges yet. You are merely helping the police with their inquiries.’ It attempted to get the best of both worlds, raising a brief hope in Hapgood, then reminding him with the familiar official jargon of the seriousness of his position.
And it worked. Hapgood looked from one to the other and said wearily, ‘What do you want to know?’
At a nod from his chief, Hook moved in to play the hard man. He opened his notebook portentously and said, ‘You should give us a detailed account of what you now say you did between seven and nine on the night of the murder.’ The phrasing was not lost on the discomforted Senior Negotiator. For a revealing moment, he looked at the sergeant with hatred, but Hook, with pen poised, stared down at his blank page with impassive distaste.
‘I was with Denise, that’s all,’ said Hapgood sullenly.
‘Where?’ said Hook.
‘At her place. In bed, for God’s sake!’ Hapgood glanced at Lambert, found no relief in the Superintendent’s steady examination of his face, and looked down at his feet. He plucked an imaginary hair from where no hair lay on the knee of his trousers. His face looked thinner for his ordeal; the immaculate blue suit seemed now a fraction too large for the body which carried it.
‘Were you there throughout this period on that Wednesday evening?’ Hook somehow managed to incorporate scepticism into his delivery of the cumbrous phrasing.
‘Yes.’
‘Have you witnesses?’
‘Oh, for goodness’ sake!’ Hapgood could not bring of the attempt at indignation. He declined into a resentful monotone. ‘We were in bed together for most of the time. Do you expect witnesses to that?’
Hook, who chose to treat the question as rhetorical, wrote carefully and controlled his imagination.
It was Lambert who said, ‘Sergeant Hook is inviting you to help yourself. You have until this evening lied steadily to us about your actions on the night of the murder. You are now asking us to believe that you were in bed throughout the vital hour with the wife of the victim.’
‘It’s true! Ask Denise.’
‘Oh, we shall, Mr Hapgood. But you’re now saying that the only witness to your new story is the wife of the deceased. A woman who has lied comprehensively about her actions on that evening. Who on her own admission was at odds with her husband, who was killed at the time when the two of you claim to have been alone together.’
‘Why do you think we killed him?’ There was horror in the young eyes, but whether the horror of a murderer discovered or an innocent accused it was impossible to say. Hapgood was thirty, but he looked as if he was completing the business of growing up only with the present crisis.
Lambert did not trouble himself with any cautious disclaimer. ‘Look at it from our point of view, Mr Hapgood. A man is carrying on an affair with a woman who is ready to be rid of her husband. That husband is murdered, by a preconceived and meticulously executed method. Both the wife and her lover lie about their actions on the evening of the death. When those lies are exposed, they admit they were together for that evening. Unobserved by anyone. It’s a classic scenario for murder, with a classic motive. Young man persuaded to the deed by infatuation with an older woman. You might even be able to persuade a jury you were an inexperienced lad who was led out of his depth, but I wouldn’t count on it.’
‘It wasn’t like that.’ Hapgood had a hopeless air about him now, as if he were already in a cell.
Lambert let him dwell upon his situation for a moment, without ever ceasing to study him. Then he said, ‘If it wasn’t you, you will need someone other than Denise Freeman to support your story. You went to her bungalow in your own car, presumably?’
‘Yes.’ Hapgood nodded to support the scarcely audible word.
‘And you parked it in the drive there?’
‘No. I left it at the end of the lane. I always did. It seemed more discreet.’ In the face of murder, the small deceits of adultery seemed insignificant now, and he smiled bleakly, apologetically.
‘How long had your affair with Mrs Freeman been going on?’
‘Six months.’ He had no need to hesitate here: it was a computation he had made for his own purposes on the morning after the death of Freeman.
‘How many people know about it?’
‘None, that I know of. I told you. We were discreet; neither of us wanted it broadcast.’
It was the usual way. Lovers were always sanguine about their security. The husband might be the last to know, but other people usually discovered relationships fairly quickly: lovers always underestimate the curiosity of the uninvolved. On the other hand, Denise Freeman was a cool and competent planner, who had no doubt undertaken this sort of thing before. She would organize secrecy better than most.
‘What about the people who worked with you?’
‘They didn’t know.’
‘You can’t assume that because they didn’t mention it to you. They’re in a position to know more than anyone else about your movements, because of the appointments you have with clients.’
He shrugged. ‘If they’d known about it, they’d have let me know they knew. They didn’t.’ It was a shrewd enough assessment: no doubt he had considered it long before the murder. If either Emily Godson or Jane Davidson had known about it, wouldn’t they have used it to taunt or threaten him? Neither of them was fond of Hapgood, to say the least. Unless, of course, they planned to use the information to incriminate him in a murder inquiry. Lambert remembered Jane Davidson saying dismissively of Hapgood, ‘He’s not conc
erned with me,’ then denying too quickly any knowledge of his commitments elsewhere.
‘Someone may have seen your car on that Wednesday night.’
Hapgood said dully, ‘It’s a blue Ford Sierra. Registration number – ’
‘We have the number. Where exactly was it parked?’
‘Near the end of Orchard Lane, where Denise lives. There’s a five-barred gate leading into a field, where it’s possible to park a car off the road. I usually leave it there.’
Scarcely invisible. Only lovers, with hormones beating an urgent tattoo, would consider this discreet. Now imprudence might work in their favour: someone might have seen the vehicle in the vital hour. If it had really been there. More tedious leg-work for DCs and the local uniformed man. Meanwhile, he would see Denise Freeman and shatter that air of Gallic superiority. No doubt her new account of her movements would be close to Hapgood’s, but he would probe it hard, turn it over and over to discover some discrepancy with her lover’s version. A disparity that might send her for a long term in Holloway.
For the second time that day, his thoughts were disturbed by the shrill interruption of the telephone on the big desk. He felt Hapgood’s wide, hypnotized eyes upon him as he picked it up, as if he had some premonition of calamity.
As he listened, Lambert’s eyes turned directly back to the man opposite him. He put the phone down, gathered his thoughts, and said quietly, ‘Have you ever been to Lydon Hall in your car? Be careful: it’s important.’
‘Never.’
‘Not even to photograph the place for your publicity material about it?’
Ironically, Hapgood thought it must be important to convince them. He said anxiously, ‘No. Freeman did all that for Lydon Hall. What is this about?’
Lambert said heavily, ‘I asked one of our detective-sergeants to take samples from the tyre-treads of all the firm’s cars, with particular attention to yours, since a similar blue car was seen leaving the area of Lydon Hall immediately after the murder. These samples have now been tested against samples of gravel from the drive of Lydon Hall at our forensic laboratories.’
‘With what results?’ said Hapgood. He looked pale but composed until Lambert answered him.
‘I have to tell you that there were traces of gravel in your tyres identical with that of the Lydon Hall drive. Perhaps you had better ring that lawyer, Mr Hapgood.’
Chapter 25
The old road along the edge of the common was very little used. It was single track with passing places, and the ford where it left the town varied in depth with the seasons. Anyone in a hurry preferred the newer road along the bottom of the valley. The remains of Wino Willy lay undiscovered for some time.
When the cyclist dismounted reluctantly to examine the body, the sun was already low enough for the road to be in shadow here, where it ran between grassy banks and high stone walls. He saw the crushed head, retched his sensibilities into the ditch a few yards further on, and rode unsteadily down to the police station in Oldford with his news.
Half an hour later, the crew of the police control car examined the road, measured, looked for clues to give the detail of the accident. Decently anonymous in plastic and blanket, Willy’s mortal remains were loaded into the ambulance. It moved away almost noislessly down the hill, its blue light flashing eerily while its siren remained silent. There was no hurry now for Willy.
The police found little in their brief examination of the spot. The victim was a tramp and a ‘wino’, so no doubt it had been his own fault. There would be an end to female reportings of the wild man on the moor: one more minor irritant in their world had been removed. Nevertheless, people should report accidents, even when they were in no way to blame. A hit-and-run death would be an unwelcome statistic in their weekly records.
For a little while, no one in the uniformed branch at the station connected the death of Arthur James Harrison with the murder inquiry being conducted by CID in the terrapin behind the building. At six o’clock Sergeant Johnson came on to desk duty, noted the death of Wino Willy, and remembered the Superintendent’s interest in the background of the dead man. At 6.14 he informed DI Rushton in the murder room of the death, and Willy was restored to his last, posthumous role in the investigation into the death of Stanley Freeman.
At that moment, Lambert was interviewing Denise Freeman. She admitted she had lied about her cinema visit, without being anything like as shaken as her lover had been. Yes, she had spent the evening with Hapgood, most of it in bed. He had left her at about 8.50, which tallied with his now admitted arrival at the Stonemasons’ Arms at about nine. The precision of the detail convinced the Superintendent that she had already conferred with Hapgood about the new story. Whether it was the truth, or a new fabrication to conceal their dual guilt, it was impossible to tell from her bearing.
When Lambert asked why she had given them the false story about her movements on the night of the murder, she gave a Gallic shrug of those slim, attractive shoulders and said, ‘I was not proud to be in bed with a man twelve years my junior on the night my husband was killed. I don’t suppose Simon was proud either; anyway, his instinct is to conceal things.’ There was just enough contempt in her voice for him to be convinced that the affair with Hapgood would not be continued. Then she went on, ‘Perhaps in France there would be less embarrassment about such things, though we can be much more provincial than you in other ways. It was wrong of course to try to hide things: I should have known the efficiency of the English police would find me out.’ The black eyes sparkled like newly split coal, the perfectly formed lips turned neither up nor down at the edges: it was impossible to tell whether even in the discovery of her falsehoods she was not mocking them a little.
Lambert wanted to shake her, to establish or to dismiss once and for all the notion of a lovers’ pact to kill her husband. But he needed to get up on to the moor before dark, to find Wino Willy Harrison and discover what it was he had to tell. For the tadpole of an idea which had flicked its disturbing tail in his mind had become stronger, was swimming through murky, uncertain waters. Willy’s evidence would kill it, or let it wax strong.
As he tried to hurry his questioning of the poised and puzzling Denise Freeman, the bleep of his car phone came faint but insistent from the drive outside her front door. Hook went out to answer it; he came back grim-faced, as his chief watched the widow’s face intently during her answers. Superintendent and Sergeant went to the corner of the long lounge, still full of evening sun from its picture windows, and Hook recounted in low, sombre tones the incomplete details of the death of Wino Willy.
Denise Freeman watched them with Mona Lisa smile, as if she still found it impossible to take seriously the earnestness of these large men. When Lambert returned to her, she was shaken visibly for the first time in their exchanges: his voice was like a whiplash.
‘Where were you this afternoon?’
‘Here, most of the time. I went into Oldford to do a little shopping at about three-thirty.’ She took her time over the reply, but her calm now required an effort they could observe.
‘Witnesses?’
‘None, here. My gardener left as usual at about one. In the town, the shopkeepers might remember me.’ She mentioned the names of the greengrocery and bakery in Oldford; for the first time, she seemed anxious to establish her innocence. ‘Oh, and I did see George Robson briefly, in the public car park.’
‘Time?’ As Hook noted her replies, Lambert rapped out his questions with an impatience that was nearly brutal.
‘I – I couldn’t be certain. It was when I arrived there. I should think about three forty-five. He was going back into the office. He could at least confirm that I was there at that time. Is it important?’ For her, it was a note of weakness: it was the first time she had expressed any anxiety about her situation.
Lambert scarcely noticed. ‘We’ll need a statement from you, Mrs Freeman,’ he said. Then he was away, leaving her disturbed and frustrated behind him, the engine of the big Vauxhal
l revving fiercely even as Hook scrambled hastily into the front passenger seat.
Usually, Lambert used his periods in the car to think, driving slowly, even at times lethargically, as his brain clicked forward. His subordinates even called him ‘Super-gran’ when he was driving, though they took care to keep it well out of his hearing. Tonight, he drove very fast; not dangerously, but with extreme concentration and not a word to his passenger. Hook was glad of his safety-belt, for the first time he could remember in this car.
Bert Hook, despite his comfortable contours, could move quickly when he had to. In his fast-bowling days, many an unwary batsman had been run out by underestimating his sprightly fielding. Tonight, he had great difficulty in keeping up with his superintendent without breaking into a run. As he strode across the common, Lambert’s legs kept pace with his racing brain, the movement a physical release for his frustration.
For the tadpole of an idea had become a frog. An ugly frog, which leapt on swiftly from fact to fact in this case, finding a sure foothold each time, until it stared him unwinkingly in the face.
There were several people walking their dogs at this hour, but they quickly deferred to the urgency of the strange pair in suits and city shoes. It was fine again now, but the slight breeze was having a last fling before the inevitable calm of sundown. Fern and gorse danced in turn around them as they strode onwards and upwards, until they climbed the low stile that led from common to moor. Now they left the path, following steep rises beside the tiny tumbling stream that led like a white ribbon up towards the hidden sheepfold where Willy had made his sometime home.
‘Couldn’t Willy’s death have been a straightforward road accident?’ panted Hook, trailing in the wake of his chief and hoping to slow him by conversation.
‘It was murder,’ said Lambert bitterly. Murder which might have been prevented, had I only been available when Willy guessed the truth, he thought.
‘You know who did it?’