Killer Cases: A Lambert and Hook Detective Omnibus

by J M Gregson

‘I know.’ Even Lambert was blowing now, forcing himself on like a Victorian trained in the dogma of cold baths and driving physical work-outs. He offered no more words, and Hook was experienced enough not to press.

  He watched Lambert’s lean figure ahead of him, climbing without pause until he stopped, silhouetted against the evening sky, waiting until Hook arrived heavily alongside him. ‘What are we up here for? Willy’s in the mortuary,’ said the long-suffering Sergeant, deciding that this time the pause was long enough for him to expend so much of his scanty resources of breath.

  ‘Evidence,’ said Lambert, briefly and abstractedly, as if impatient of one who needed to be informed of anything so obvious. He thrust out an arm across the chest of Hook, as if to prevent him plunging on enthusiastically down the small slope which dropped ahead of them before the next steady gradient: a most unlikely eventuality.

  Then the Sergeant saw the object of Lambert’s attention. Two hundred yards away, a golden labrador chased a carrion crow exuberantly across rough ground. When he was within five yards of it, the bird rose and flew heavily back over the dog’s head, cawing contemptuously as it went.

  The dog gave it a ritual, good-natured bark, the farewell of a hunter who had never expected to catch his prey. Then he loped unhurriedly away from them, until he passed out of sight over the next rise.

  The two observers looked at each other. ‘Fred,’ said Hook unnecessarily.

  ‘“The little dog laughed, to see such fun…” Willy quoted that to us when we came up here to see him,’ said Lambert. ‘And he told us, “Every dog has its day.” And his last words then were, “The more I see of men, the better I like dogs.” If I’d made the connection earlier, poor Willy might be alive now.’

  They moved forward more cautiously, each busy with his own thoughts and pondering the confrontation to come. Each was glad he was not alone; with the sun beginning to disappear away below them on their left, this seemed now a lonely place to be alone with a murderer.

  They saw Robson as they passed beyond the knoll where they had seen his dog. He was finishing an examination of the sheepfold where Wino Willy had kept his vigil with the birds and mammals which seemed to threaten him less than his own kind. Too engrossed in his search to notice them, he moved to the drystone wall which was one of the few impacts man had made on this terrain and began an examination of its crevices. While he worked his way methodically along some eighty yards of wall, they crept to within fifty yards of him without being discerned.

  It was Fred who finally gave them away. Spotting his friend Hook, he bounded across the moorland turf with a joyous bark, greeted both men with a tail which threatened to wag his rear end right off, and graciously accepted the fondling of his ears and vigorous patting which was his due.

  His master, who seemed to have found what he wanted at the wall, left his search and came across to them. His joviality was almost effusive; Hook would have sworn he was glad to see them.

  ‘And what brings two pillars of the law up here at this time of night? I at least have an excuse for fresh air and exercise.’ He indicated Fred, who gyrated his tail in acknowledgement. ‘But perhaps you’re merely up here to enjoy the sunset on an evening like this.’ He looked past them, to where a brilliant crimson segment was all that remained of the sun in the evening sky. Neither of them turned to follow his gaze.

  While Fred nuzzled his way insistently into Hook’s hand, Lambert walked past Robson to the wall which had been the object of such systematic scrutiny. At this point, the wall ran through a small hollow and was very broad at the base to support its height of some five feet. Lambert removed the large thin stone which Robson had hastily replaced a foot or so from the bottom. From the dry hollow within, he extracted a green anorak and trilby, almost identical with the ones Robson was wearing. Hook’s gasp of astonishment made Robson turn to him, so that he was not looking at Lambert when the Superintendent said, ‘The wellingtons are no doubt hidden a little further along the wall. Willy wasn’t wearing them when you ran him down.’

  If Robson thought there was no way out, he gave no sign of it yet. ‘You mean the drop-out I used to see up here? Has something happened to him?’

  ‘It was old Fred who let you down,’ said Lambert.

  By chance, he found the one weakness in his adversary’s rock-like calm. Robson whirled instinctively to look at the dog he loved, found no clue to support Lambert’s words, and turned back to him for explanation. ‘For a start, you were at pains to tell us he was a one-man dog, when he so plainly wasn’t. Look at him now.’ Fred was sitting with his chin against Hook’s knee; each time the Sergeant threatened to desist from fondling his ears, his foot pawed vaguely at the air. The labrador’s eyes were almost shut: had he been a cat, he would have been purring.

  The Sergeant’s thigh was already covered with the fine yellow hairs of the dog’s coat. ‘There were dog-hairs on the carpet at Lydon Hall,’ said Lambert. No doubt Fred’s, carried there on your clothing. We shall check.’ Hook produced an envelope from the inside pocket of his suit and transferred some of the hairs from his trousers into it. ‘Fred is almost the opposite of a one-man dog – a most accommodating animal, in fact. If he is happy with me or my sergeant, he would certainly be delighted to take his evening walk with poor, harmless Wino Willy, who had a way with far more timid beasts than Fred.’

  ‘So that makes me a murderer?’ said George Robson. It was the first time he had used the word, and it dropped from his lips almost like an admission.

  ‘It was one flaw in your alibi. It made me think of others. For instance, Jane Davidson left a note in Freeman’s office altering the time of the Harbens’ viewing of Lydon Hall to nine o’clock. He never received it, because he didn’t come back into the office, but it was never found. The only other person who could go into Freeman’s office without suspicion is you as his deputy.’

  Lambert would have had some sympathy with the murderer of Stanley Freeman, though it would have had no effect upon his actions as an instrument of the law. But Robson was now for him the brutal killer of Willy Harrison, and he had to control a surge of hatred. Violence had bred violence, as always. The vandals who slashed trees slashed faces in due course; the louts who began by hitting each other in pub car parks produced the psychopaths who battered old ladies for a few pounds. The murderer who killed because he was cheated by his employer had crushed his innocent accomplice beneath a car a week later, because that very innocence made him dangerous.

  ‘I was up here with Fred when Freeman was killed. You prove otherwise,’ said Robson. Now there was desperation in his defiance.

  ‘Oh, I shall. Because you killed Freeman while Wino Willy was up here with Fred. In the clothes you gave him. I expect he thought it was a privilege to walk Fred for you. When we first came across him, Willy had a new pair of boots, and he’d just emptied three bottles of wine. Was that all you paid him for his role as unwitting accessory?’ Robson’s swift, startled glance showed that he had struck home; Hook wondered if it was the public school training that made a suggestion of meanness strike home when he had brazened out more serious accusations.

  Lambert thrust away the image of the summerhouse behind Lydon Hall, with its pathetic trimmings of a ruined spirit, and pressed swiftly on, anxious only now to have this over. ‘There were other things, of course, as soon as we thought about it. Both your wife and other dog-walkers confirmed that you have established a pattern of dog-walking over the last two months, slavishly adhering to the same clothes in all weathers and the same hour, between eight and nine. You arranged our first meeting at that time, conveniently forgetting our appointment so that you could draw attention to your dog-walking habits. A strange omission in a man with a reputation for never forgetting appointments. Except of course that it was quite deliberate.’

  ‘Very elaborate!’ said George Robson; his short laugh rang loud and brittle in that remote place. ‘You have evidence for these flights of imagination, I presume?’

  For answer,
Lambert spoke no word, but turned and looked back at the wall. In that dry niche which Robson had so recently exposed lay the green anorak and trilby identical to his own, carefully stowed there by the dead hands of Wino Willy.

  Robson refused to follow his gaze and said, ‘Let me get the detail of this fantastic accusation quite clear for my lawyers.’ He was attempting a vein of heavy-handed sarcasm now, but his voice did not hold quite steady enough to reinforce it with the necessary confidence. ‘You’re saying that I sent Fred up on the common with Willy while I drove my car to Lydon Hall and killed my employer.’

  ‘Not your car,’ said Lambert, quietly preparing to remove the last plank from Robson’s crumbling story. ‘But driven by you. Oh, don’t bother arguing!’ He found himself shouting in his overwhelming urge to be done with this, to take the callous killer of Willy Harrison away from that innocent’s sometime home and put him behind bars. The sound of his own voice surprised him, but it cut Robson’s protests dead. The deep-set blue eyes were filled with a horror of the future, the smooth-fleshed face looked suddenly gaunt and old.

  ‘How long had you known about Denise Freeman’s affair with Simon Hapgood?’ asked Lambert.

  There was no fight left in Robson now. He looked at the thin moorland turf by his feet as he said, ‘Three months or so. They knew Stanley played away on Wednesdays, so they were safe.’

  ‘And Hapgood always parked in the same place, near the end of the lane to the Freeman’s house. If you removed his car and returned it within the hour, you’d be safe enough.’

  ‘How?’ said Robson, as if merely curious to test the extent of their knowledge: he had given up denials now.

  ‘You told me yourself the company cars were pool cars, owned by the firm and theoretically available to anyone to drive in an emergency. You keep the keys to all of them in the office.’ Robson’s shoulders slumped forward; he said nothing.

  Lambert said, ‘Why try to implicate Hapgood and Denise Freeman?’

  ‘To protect myself.’ They noticed the first formal admission, fought down the little spurt of professional satisfaction. ‘And they deserved it! Hapgood’s an insolent little puppy who thinks he’s God’s gift to women, and Denise deserves everything she gets if she’s going to leap about in bed with a toyboy ten years and more younger than she is!’ It was his last flash of animation and bitterness. Lambert remembered the way he had looked at Denise Freeman at the funeral. Lust could upset judgement faster than any other emotion.

  ‘No doubt you took Hapgood’s car again today to kill poor Willy.’ Lambert had to work hard to keep his voice quiet now.

  Robson shrugged the bent shoulders hopelessly. ‘Willy knew what had happened. Realized it wasn’t just the joke I’d suggested when I got him to walk Fred. He wasn’t as crazy as I’d thought.’

  I could have told you that, thought Lambert, remembering the wild game of quotations he had played with Willy on this very spot. So now a man had to die for being sane: he clenched his fingers quietly within his pockets. In the inverted morality which surrounded the darkest of all crimes, it had its own logic. He nodded now to Bert Hook; he wouldn’t trust himself not to let his hatred cloud the formalities.

  The Sergeant left the dog and stepped forward with his notebook. ‘George Arthur Robson,’ he intoned. ‘You are charged with the murder of Stanley Freeman. You are not obliged to say anything, but anything you do say will be taken down and may be used in evidence.’

  In the twilight at this lonely spot, the familiar formula rang out like the words of a religious ceremony. Lambert thought again of that funeral service, where the suspects had faced each other over the grave through the final rites, and the one genuine mourner had stood unnoticed in the background.

  They did not handcuff him, but walked together behind him down the track they had recently climbed so quickly. It took a long time to get back to the car, and Fred’s cheerful excursions in search of rabbits and birds made an innocent and inappropriate accompaniment to the journey.

  Lambert thought of the woman who waited in vain for Robson at the house to which he would never return. He would tell her himself. He did not know yet that Willy had been down to her that morning with his deadly tale. Perhaps she would go back to the Dales of her childhood. However affluent her circumstances, she would return to that unforgiving land as a failure after the court case.

  By the time they crossed the common in the half-light, the last dog-walkers had departed. Robson sat heavily in the back of the Vauxhall, with Hook beside him and Fred at his feet. Lambert inched the car cautiously forward.

  In the last instant before he put on his headlights, he glanced at the dark outline of common and moor above them, where Willy had dwelt for a while with the wild creatures and now would tread no more. The land up there would absorb these deaths as it had thousands of others over the centuries, grinding small the affairs of men, until all was forgotten.

  Dead on Course

  Chapter 1

  MONDAY

  ‘Sod and damnation!’ said Guy Harrington.

  It is a truth universally acknowledged among golfers that water attracts golf balls. The immortal Miss Austen would certainly have noted that, had she lived a century later, for the acuteness of her observation would undoubtedly have drawn her to this most revealing of games.

  Harrington’s well-struck three-iron looped in a beguiling parabola, seeming to stay in the air for an inordinately long time as it sliced inexorably to the right of his target. Then it landed in the river with a silent splash, visible to all four members of the match but too distant for the sound to carry to them. Harrington gave vent to his feelings with a renewed and more lurid verbal outburst.

  His companions tried to control the smiles which are always provoked by other people’s sufferings in this game. Even Harrington’s partner in the four-ball, Tony Nash, felt quite cheerful about his man’s discomfort, for it allowed him to feel less guilty about his own incompetence earlier in the round, which Harrington had received with ill-concealed irritation. Being a tycoon seemed to make a man less tolerant of the weaknesses of his underlings, even when they were officially at play together. Nash called an unconvincing ‘Hard luck, Guy,’ to the man stamping heavily towards the bank of the Wye and went forward to his own ball.

  Nash, concentrating fiercely beneath his luxuriant fair hair, managed to get to the green in three, but then three-putted; Harrington watched him with massive, unbelieving disapproval. Sandy Munro, as slight and pale as Harrington was bulky and florid, chipped up deftly from the edge of the green and holed without fuss for a four to win the hole.

  The Scotsman was forty-six, but had the same waist and weight he had had at eighteen; his red hair and blue eyes were almost as bright as in the days of his youth. His slender build concealed surprising strength; where the other three pulled trolleys, he carried a full bag of clubs without effort. He had been a golfer for almost four decades of those forty-six years. Before he was twenty, there had been talk of his turning pro, but he was too good an engineer and his parents too imbued with Scottish caution to allow that. He had been among the Sassenachs in the south of England now for twenty years losing neither his soft Fifeshire accent nor his golfing skills: he maintained his handicap of two with no hint of concession yet to the advancing years.

  The result was that in a game notoriously unpredictable, Sandy Munro’s four had an air of routine, the execution that of well-oiled, repeating skills. His partner, George Goodman, said, ‘Well done, Sandy, two up with three to play!’ It had the sound of a recurrent, unthinking chorus, though it made no sweeter hearing for his opponents for that.

  Goodman, as unconscious of their irritation as the unworldly bishop he resembled physically, teed his ball carefully and dispatched it down the exact centre of the fairway, with a precision wholly inappropriate to his generous handicap. He held his position at the top of his follow-through in the manner beloved of amateurs the world over after a good shot, while his opponents muttered again about
his eighteen handicap and the unfairness of it all.

  But in truth, it was only mock war and synthetic indignation. Among friends in such a setting, anything else would have been quite stupid—and none of these men was stupid. Oak and beech stood around them in the full emerald glory of their early leaf. As the course turned back towards the clubhouse, the Wye wound serenely away to their left, still as a painted river as afternoon moved into evening. Some men are foolish enough to quarrel in places like this, but not all men. These four had come away for a week’s golf and fun, and the golf must increase rather than diminish the fun.

  They had known each other for many years now, on and off the golf course; they had learned to make the small adjustments necessary to each other’s idiosyncrasies. They were not intimate friends perhaps; in one case in particular there was little affection extended from any of them. But they knew how to rub along together happily enough, in that bluff, undefined male way that understood just how far they should intrude into each other’s lives.

  Their relationships would not have stood the test of greater intimacy; at the end of this week they would go back to their normal lives of work and home with a certain secret relief that they did not have to exist permanently in the close proximity of these golfing days. But any strain they felt this week was submerged in the pleasure of their activities. Save, that is, for one of them, who never ceased his endeavours to gather information which might be of use to him.

  As the end of the round approached, all was good fellowship and breezy banter. When Guy Harrington, lurching into the ball with characteristic vehemence on the sixteenth, won the hole with the four which was always a possibility of his eccentric game, even his opponents were glad for him, and pleased at the prospect of the game going all the way to the last green. George Goodman, silver hair setting off a becoming bald dome, retrieved his opponent’s ball carefully from the hole and held it between finger and thumb as delicately as a Eucharist wafer. He handed it to Harrington with a congratulatory smile. ‘Whose handicap’s too high now, then?’ he said.