by J M Gregson
Lambert said blandly, ‘No sir, I did not. For the simple reason that I was then not sure of the cause of death myself. But it seems you are right. The pathologist confirms that the nature of the injuries, internal and external, indicates a fall from some height. Possibly from the roof or an upper window of the hotel, as you mentioned. I should be interested to know how you divined that so efficiently.’
‘I—I suppose I guessed it from the state of the body.’ Munro looked as miserable as a schoolboy before the master who has caught him out in a lie.
‘You saw the body then? I understood the corpse was discovered by Mr Nash and Mr Goodman.’ Lambert looked interrogatively at Hook, who confirmed the fact like a man responding to a cue, without needing to consult his notes.
‘They must have told me.’ Under stress, Munro’s Fifeshire accent was strong enough for his low words to be almost undistinguishable. ‘That’s right, I remember. Tony Nash told me at breakfast.’
Now his wife’s impeccable English accent rang out in stark contrast, beautifully enunciated, falsely bright in the quiet room. ‘We were discussing it before you arrived this morning, Superintendent—we had plenty of time together in the lounge. I think George Goodman thought that that is what had happened as well.’ She managed to make her supportive words sound light and confident, but the smile with which she tried to support them was a mistake. She was no more of a coquette than her husband was a blusterer.
The first lies of the case. Or were they merely the first ones Lambert had detected? His mind flashed for a moment to the enigmatic figure of the dead man’s widow. He thought of the way the corpse had been lying in that curious hollow of the golf course when he had first seen it, with its stomach thrust awkwardly at the heavens. The only visible damage had been that great smear of blackening blood on the side of the head. His own first thought had been that death might have come from a bludgeoning: it had taken the expert examination of Cyril Burgess to correct his impression that this might have been a mortal wound.
It was unlikely that Nash and Goodman, coming upon the body unexpectedly in the early morning, would have made more accurate assumptions about the cause of death than he had. Unless, of course, one or both of them had an earlier involvement in this death than its mere discovery.
He thrust aside that unwelcome thought and said, ‘I should like to interview you separately, if you have no objection.’
‘Here?’ Munro’s head did not move, but his eyes flashed quickly to his wife with what looked like desperation. She did not respond.
‘It doesn’t have to be: anywhere private would do. But here would be as good as anywhere.’ Aware that both the Munros were thrown of balance, he was anxious to continue questioning one of them at least before they could recover equilibrium.
‘Right. I’ll make myself scarce and leave you to it.’ Alison Munro spoke up decisively. She did not look at her husband, who flashed at her a swift look of apprehension before he cast his gaze upon the carpet. He did not look up again until she had gone; for her part, she left without once glancing at her husband, even from the door.
There was a second small pink armchair and the stool in front of the dressing-table that Alison had lately occupied. The detectives disposed themselves as comfortably as possible on these inappropriate supports, moving them so as to sit facing the patently unhappy man who sat beside the bed.
At a nod from his chief, Hook said, ‘The procedure, Mr Munro, is that we take statements from all the people who were in the vicinity when the crime was committed. We compare them, checking where the accounts agree and dis-agree with each other. There may be nothing sinister about a discrepancy: sometimes people just recall things differently. It all builds up a picture of what happened for us.’
‘Shouldn’t you warn me that it may be used in evidence?’ Munro managed an anaemic smile.
‘If and when someone is charged, we shall warn them that what they say may constitute evidence. Other people may of course be called as witnesses, if we, or for that matter the defence, considers their testimony would be useful. That, unfortunately, is probably still a long way ahead. What I like to do initially is talk fairly informally to the people who seem most likely to throw some light upon a crime. Sergeant Hook will take some notes, which may later be amplified into a written statement, which you would sign if you thought it a proper record of what you had said.’ Usually he outlined these things to put people at their ease; this time, without any change in his wording or intentions, he seemed to be increasing the pressure on the wiry figure with the thinning red hair who sat before him.
‘What do you want to know?’
‘Let’s start with the obvious. Can you think of anyone with good reason to wish Mr Harrington dead?’
Munro looked at the floor for so long that Lambert thought he was not going to answer. Then he said, ‘He wasna’ popular.’ The voice was low, the accent as thick as that of an ancient Scottish caddie. Only the intensity of the sentiment prevented the bathos it threatened.
Lambert said gently, ‘You’ll need to elaborate for us, I’m afraid. Don’t forget we don’t yet know any of the people involved.’
As he hoped, Munro assumed that the people involved meant the party who had dined with Harrington on the previous night. ‘All of us had had our differences with him over the years.’
‘Yet you were all here with him on a golfing holiday.’
Munro looked as if it was the first time that had struck him as odd. He seemed for a moment to be trying to solve that puzzle for himself. ‘We’re members of the same golf club in Surrey. Two or three of us arranged the holiday; Harrington joined in late. I think George Goodman invited him, but I’m not sure.’ Lambert, as a golfer himself, could see the picture: it was often difficult to refuse someone who wanted to join an outing of this sort without offence or embarrassment. As if in response to his thought, Munro now added, ‘I said most of us had some reason to dislike him. That doesn’t mean I can see any of us killing him.’
‘Yet for what it’s worth, my view is that one of you probably did.’ Lambert let him dwell for a moment on that thought. Hook, with time to study these preliminaries at leisure, thought once again that, beneath his highly civilised manner, his chief in pursuit of results was as ruthless as the roughest hard-swearing city copper. Lambert leaned back a little, openly studying his man as he said, ‘What cause had you in particular to dislike him?’
Munro’s bright blue eyes looked fiercely at the two impassive CID men for a moment. Then he said, ‘I worked for him. I didn’t approve of his methods.’
‘In what way?’
Munro stared hard at the carpet, as though he might find there the words he was struggling to form. ‘I didn’t approve of the way he treated people.’
‘And?’ It was like trying to get information from a captured prisoner.
‘I’m an engineer. In my own field, I know what I’m doing. He took my ideas and claimed the credit for himself. Two patents registered in his name are really mine, but he never even acknowledged it.’
‘Anything else?’
Munro looked quickly into Lambert’s face, then down again at the complex pattern of the carpet. He shook his head. ‘That’s all.’ The sharp Scottish features set like marble. Whether or not that was indeed all, it was all they were going to get.
Lambert gave a scarcely perceptible nod to Hook, who flicked ostentatiously to a new page in his notebook and said, ‘Will you tell us all you can remember about the events of last night, please, Mr Munro?’
‘Beginning when?’ Munro, licking dry lips, was plainly not looking forward to this. Lambert would have given a lot to know whether he was normally of a nervous disposition, as he now appeared to be.
‘I understand all your party ate together. Let’s begin with that meal, unless you think there is anything earlier in the day that might be significant.’
Munro shook his head and appeared to relax a little. ‘It was a normal enough meal. It was spread over quite
a long time. There were four courses and coffee, and we didn’t hurry over them.’
‘And quite a lot was drunk, I imagine.’
Munro looked at him sharply, trying to work out whether any criticism was implied in the remark. ‘Aye. Some had more than others.’
‘Yes. Mr Harrington for one, according to the post-mortem.’
Munro looked shocked; whether by the extent of their knowledge or by Lambert’s unabashed revelation of it, it was impossible to tell. ‘He could take it. He was well used to it.’ For the merest instant, the disapproval bred by those formative years he thought he had left for ever in the shadow of the manse was evident in his contempt.
‘You would not have said he was drunk, then?’ Munro began a small, uncooperative shrug, but before he had completed it Lambert had rapped at him, ‘This looks like a murder inquiry: I should prefer it if you were as accurate as possible.’
‘Guy could take his drink. Sometimes he used the fact that other people couldn’t.’
‘Times like last night?’
‘No.’ The negative came almost too quickly, as though he already regretted his indiscretion. ‘Guy drank quite a lot, but he was in good form for most of the evening.’
Lambert wondered whether the Scotsman was just uneasy with words, or whether he was deliberately leading them into an area of revelation. Perhaps it was a little of each; he seemed almost unconsciously to be accepting that he had something of interest to tell them.
‘Just for most of it?’
‘There was the row—a disagreement anyway—during the meal.’
‘Between whom?’
‘Between Guy and Tony Nash.’
‘About what?’ It was like drawing teeth, but Lambert was well used to that by now. He had heard about this dispute when they first met the group earlier in the day, but it was interesting that Munro seemed drawn back to it now.
‘I’m not quite sure. I don’t think many of us were at the time. Tony just flared up at Guy. I’m not sure what Guy had said, but when Tony shouted at him he insisted that he had only been joking.’
‘And do you think he was?’
For the first time since the detectives had entered the room, Munro smiled. It was a wry mirth, but a hint that he could laugh at himself. ‘From what I said earlier, you could hardly consider me an unbiased witness. But no, from what I know of the two of them, I would have thought that what Guy said was quite malicious, though he shrugged it off as though Tony was being absurd.’
‘What exactly did he say?’
‘I don’t know. I suspect no one did, except the two of them. We were all busy with our own conversations when we heard Tony shouting.’
Hook looked up from his notebook. ‘Are you telling us you’ve no idea what the dispute was about?’ His tone was quite neutral, yet he managed to imply that the suggestion was absurd.
It had the desired effect. Munro speculated where he had not intended to. ‘I think it might have had something to do with Meg Peters. I couldn’t be sure.’
Lambert pictured the youngest of the group: with her green eyes and red hair, she was not easily forgotten. Sex and money, in that order, were the primary elements in murder cases. It was statistics, not chauvinism, which made him consider the striking Ms Peters might be at the heart of this one. It was certainly something to be investigated in the interviews to come. He said, ‘At what point in the meal did this incident take place?’
‘I think we’d just got our dessert.’
‘So a good deal had already been drunk. By those who were drinking, that is.’ If he was teasing Munro, his face, grave beneath the plentiful iron-grey hair, gave no acknowledgement of it.
‘I suppose so. We’d had plenty of wine with the meal. Tony likes a glass or two, and you say you know about Harrington. But we’d eaten quite a big meal with it. No one was drunk.’
‘What time did the party break up for the night?’ Munro must have expected they would come to this, but they both saw him stiffen uneasily. ‘I’m not absolutely sure. We sat out on the flat roof for quite a time chatting after we’d finished eating. It was a wonderful night.’ The phrase suddenly struck him as inappropriate, but he found the officers quite impassive when he glanced at them in nervous embarrassment. ‘I suppose it must have been after midnight when we broke up.’
‘And you went straight back to your room?’
Munro’s hesitation made his reply more pregnant than it would have been without it. ‘No. I went for a walk. I felt I needed it before I could sleep.’
‘I see. Were you accompanied on this expedition?’
‘No. I didn’t go far. Just down to the gates of the estate.’
Lambert did a swift calculation. About a mile and a half in all. Half an hour: more if he deviated from this route. Ample time to commit a murder and move a body. ‘Did you stick to the road?’
‘Mostly. I strolled out to the green nearest to the gates—the sixth, I think. It was a beautiful moonlit night.’
Not a braw one: Lambert was glad to avoid the Caledonian cliché, which he fancied would now be confined to stage Scotsmen. ‘Can anyone vouch for your whereabouts at this time?’
Munro swallowed. ‘No, I don’t think so.’
‘Your wife didn’t accompany you?’
‘No. She’d had a tiring day. It was late for her already. She likes to get to her bed early.’
For the taciturn Scot, it was a positive welter of explanation. Lambert wondered if it had any significance, or whether the man was merely anticipating with relief the end of the interview, as witnesses often did. He had to remind himself that the innocent as well as the guilty could find these exchanges an ordeal. He said, ‘Was she asleep when you got back to your room?’
Munro swallowed, contemplating the carpet again, as if his record of the previous night’s events was written there and he was checking it. ‘Nearly, I think. We didn’t speak again.’
They paused; the only sound in the room for a moment was the tiny scratching of Hook’s ballpoint. Then Lambert said, ‘You’ve already told us you thought Mr Harrington fell to his death from the roof or a window. Did you hear anything after you got back that might support such a view of the death?’
‘No. I was asleep very quickly.’
They let him go then, with the usual admonitions to come back to them immediately if anything occurred to him subsequently which might have a bearing upon the case. He nodded earnestly and was gone.
Lambert was left wondering why such a transparently decent man should tell him so many lies.
Chapter 10
The tension of a murder inquiry, which can be disguised but never eliminated by surface politeness, makes one forget one’s surroundings. When the two large men left the small room which was the temporary home of the Munros, they were surprised to find the day outside as serene and innocent as ever. And it was evening: Hook checked his watch with surprise and found that it was almost seven. ‘Call it a day?’ he said hopefully.
‘After we’ve seen Mrs Munro,’ said Lambert. ‘I’m anxious to get to her before her husband does, if we can.’ He strode determinedly down a passage towards the area they had established as a temporary centre of operations. Hook followed resignedly, but without any real resentment: he was not yet so inured to CID routine that his adrenalin level failed to rise with the development of the hunt.
‘I suppose you’re anxious to be away to your studies,’ Lambert called over his shoulder as he skipped nimbly down a staircase. It was the first indication Hook had had that the Superintendent was aware of his Open University venture, though he had known the discovery was inevitable. In truth, he had merely been hoping to get home before his boys disappeared to bed, but he said, ‘I find it easier to work at the other end of the day. Some of the television programmes are put out early in the morning, as well.’
‘What literature are you studying?’
Typical of the chief to consider that any sensible man would be studying literature, thought Hook. Pe
rhaps he would choose Sociology as a second-level course, just to annoy Lambert. ‘There isn’t very much on the Humanities Foundation Course. I’ve been reading Hamlet; that comes up soon.’ He panted along behind the taller man, who seemed determined to keep just in front of him even though the path now allowed room for them to walk alongside each other.
‘So you’re wishing some of that “too solid flesh would melt, thaw and resolve itself into a dew”!’ said Lambert with satisfaction, as he finally allowed the substantial figure of his sergeant to draw alongside him.
Hook drew in his paunch with dignity. ‘You don’t think “sullied” might be a more correct reading?’ he asked calmly. He walked ahead of his chief towards the murder room, resisting the temptation to turn and check whether his jaw had really dropped in astonishment. There might be ancillary benefits to this study business which he had not even considered when he embarked upon it.
In the group of lodges which had been cleared of visitors, the lounge was already looking like a murder room. The filing cabinets and telephones were installed, the fingerprint crew were recording their findings at a table on the far side of the room, a WPC was compiling lists on one of the now ubiquitous word-processors. The number of plastic bags containing materials which might eventually constitute evidence was growing at its usual surprising pace. Detective-Inspector Rushton, hearing their voices in the corridor, was on his feet by the time they entered the room, stepping forward like a Head Waiter welcoming patrons to his domain.
‘Ah, Mr Lambert, we couldn’t find you anywhere. I thought you must have gone.’ He managed to make their absence sound like a dereliction of duty, though in truth he was probably only emphasising his own industry and orthodoxy. Rushton, to be sure, would have made sure the rest of the team knew exactly what he was about and where he had gone if he had disappeared to interview Munro; Hook was glad to note that Lambert did not immediately tell him where they had been.