Killer Cases: A Lambert and Hook Detective Omnibus

by J M Gregson

  There were not many people about to disturb his spiritual deliberations. The tourist season was not yet at its height, and the first great publicity impact of the 1989 controversy over the proposed sale of the cathedral’s Mappa Mundi was over. He looked at the vaulted roof, so impossibly high above him; a line about singing masons building roofs of gold came back to him he knew not whence.

  He was gratified: this place was conducive to the recovery of such long-forgotten, disregarded things. There was after all much more to life than being a policeman, even a successful one. He sat very still. And eventually from the recesses of Christopher Rushton’s mind there crept the remembrance that the Lady Chapel was one of the oldest parts of this ancient building.

  He was ludicrously pleased by the rediscovery of this simple and unremarkable fact. His brain cells were still present in plenty and doing their job. He looked automatically towards the entrance to the Lady Chapel.

  And became in an instant a policeman again.

  There was a woman there whom he had seen before. A tall woman; fiftyish; about a hundred and thirty pounds; with plentiful, well coiffured grey hair. Despite her height, her navy leather shoes had quite high heels; her dark blue dress was soberly but expensively cut, its elegance complemented by the small handbag she carried on her left forearm.

  He thought he had seen her only once before: probably in a professional rather than a social context. His mind ran through the cases he was currently concerned with. There were no more than three: this was the advantage of being ‘concerned only with serious crime’. That was the way his wife’s mother always introduced him, explaining away the presence of a policeman in the family. He smiled wryly, hearing her apologetic tones in his head.

  In the same instant, he knew the woman. He had glimpsed her only briefly and never spoken to her. But he felt he should instantly have placed her: for years, he had driven himself to promotion by being unforgiving with himself, until it had now become a habit. He had seen her with that supercilious sod Lambert, walking round the golf course at the Wye Castle. It was typical of the Super, who sometimes seemed to break the rules just for the sake of doing so, that he should have allowed her to identify the body on site.

  For this woman was, or had been, Mrs Guy Harrington. Marie Harrington, he had better say, if his image as enlightened man was to be preserved. He remembered making a mental note to emphasise the second syllable of that ‘Marie’. The sober colours of her dress might pass for mourning, he supposed: he was no expert in these things. But she carried no badge of bereavement, and her bearing was not that of a heartbroken widow. She moved a few paces across the front of the Lady Chapel, then back again to her first position, staring at the stained glass with unseeing eyes.

  She was looking at her watch when the man arrived to meet her. They exchanged brief, tight smiles and moved away into the deserted Lady Chapel. As Rushton moved softly over cool stone to observe them, they sat together in a pew towards the front of this ancient place of devotion. They had not touched each other throughout these movements.

  If it had taken the Inspector’s trained mind a moment to place the woman, his recognition of the man who had come here to meet her was instantaneous. As indeed it should have been, for he had taken a first, brief statement from him as the discoverer of a body scarcely more than twenty-four hours earlier.

  George Goodman seemed to fit naturally into this place, in his clerical grey suit and shining black shoes. His white hair encircled his tanned bald head in a way that seemed reassuringly traditional, even when viewed from the rear. Thus might a Victorian burgher have sat a hundred years earlier. Thus, with suit exchanged for a habit, might a medieval monk have meditated and prayed when peasants peered in at this place and marvelled at a new architectural wonder of the world.

  Except that Goodman was not praying. Of that Rushton was sure, though he could detect no syllable of what passed between the pair. Their exchanges were sporadic, terse and urgent, between prolonged silences. For a long time, Marie Harrington did not look at the man beside her. Then she turned quite suddenly to look at him, staring hard at his face from a distance of no more than two feet. After a moment, she placed a small white hand gently on top of the back of his larger one.

  Goodman did not respond: he remained staring fixedly at the altar ahead. Through the tawdry nineteenth-century stained glass which had been mistakenly added to the chapel, a shaft of sunlight threw a sudden iridescence upon the pair. For a moment they were frozen like a detail from an old master on a religious theme. Then the clouds returned, and their moment of transient, unconscious glory passed like a vision in a storm.

  The only witness of it glided softly behind one of the vast pillars of the nave as the little tableau began to disintegrate. George Goodman and Marie Harrington moved swiftly out through the north door. Their watcher followed, discreetly distant, through the narrow streets around the Cathedral and into the more modern and populous part of the town. In the car park, they were swallowed into Goodman’s dark blue Rover. Then the vehicle moved swiftly and almost silently from his sight and out of the town.

  Detective-Inspector Rushton, on his day off, had had his attention pulled back to the investigation he had left behind him. Policemen, as he was fond of reminding his junior staff, are never off duty. He told himself that the rendezvous he had seen might have nothing to do with the death at the Wye Castle.

  But he did not really believe himself.

  Chapter 14

  While Rushton was watching the meeting in Hereford Cathedral, his chief was pursuing the investigation more officially three miles outside the city at the Wye Castle.

  Meg Peters had a considerable presence. Bert Hook, pen poised over a pristine page of his notebook, reckoned himself something of an expert in these things, and was prepared to concede that to her immediately. She came into the room without that instant of diffidence which was natural for most people in this situation. When the two CID men rose politely, it was for a moment as if they were the subordinates, awaiting an audience which had been graciously granted to them.

  She was poised and unhurried, yet business-like. She looked round the room and took the only chair which was obvious for her without its being indicated, as though she had made a choice among alternatives. She tossed her brilliant red hair as she sank gracefully down, and her musky perfume seemed to sweep in waves across the room to challenge their masculinity. Hook thought he had never known an innocent monosyllable invested with so much challenge as her opening ‘Well?’

  Lambert was unhurried, knowing that in any contest of wills he had all the key cards in his hand. He shuffled the papers in front of him on the desk, reflecting that he had beneath his fingers the power to humiliate this woman, if it should prove necessary. He said, ‘You are human enough to have talked to the others, I’m sure, Miss Peters. So you will have a good idea what we are about and how we proceed.’

  ‘I didn’t kill Guy Harrington.’ She crossed her legs as though the gesture were the formal opening move in some physical contest. Black nylon knees glinted appealingly.

  ‘That’s good.’

  ‘And I don’t know who did.’

  ‘Indeed. Well, I suppose you may have saved us quite a lot of time by driving straight at questions we might have approached less directly.’

  Her demeanour implied that she thought that she had done just that. Her green eyes were wary: she had come into the room expecting to use anger as a weapon, but found no obvious target for it yet.

  ‘Well what’s the point of all this if you believe what I say?’

  Lambert pursed his lips, a mannerism he did not often indulge in, then leaned back in his chair, letting the silence stretch as he affected to collect his thoughts. He was aware of how irritated she was by the pause, as he would have been himself in the same circumstances. He had every intention of getting her rattled, having decided in advance that she was far more likely to be useful and revelatory in such a state.

  When he spoke, hi
s tone was deliberately off-hand. ‘For one thing, I haven’t said that I do believe what you say yet. A moment’s thought will tell you that we can’t simply go around accepting every simple statement of innocence people make to us. Otherwise, the proportion of serious criminals we bring to justice would be much smaller and our salaries rightly much reduced.’

  His smile was bland, friendly, almost apologetic. She thought him quite insufferable; her brows contracted and the two lines between them became furrows of resentment. The fingers of her right hand twisted for a moment through the slim gold bracelet on her wrist. ‘Don’t play games with me, Superintendent, please. Why should you disbelieve me, more than anyone else?’

  ‘Oh, I haven’t said I do, Miss Peters. But since you ask, there is a reason why most criminal investigators would treat your statements with more suspicion than those of the other people I have so far seen.’

  ‘And what is that reason?’ She scarcely cared to conceal her anger now. Most men consider a quick temper an attraction in redheads, perhaps as an indication of other passions swift to kindle. The human brain being the perplexing instrument that it is, Lambert found himself wondering disconcertingly how fired he might be by this woman in those other contexts. Fortunately she could not see his thoughts and reduce his eroticism to ashes with her swift contempt.

  He picked up a sheet of paper and affected to study the details he already knew by heart. Then he looked steadily across his desk at the woman whose green eyes smouldered with scarcely contained hostility. ‘Perhaps you are not aware that whenever we are investigating a serious crime we check the previous criminal history of those close to it. To put it bluntly, we see if any of those concerned have what you will have heard policemen call “form”, Miss Peters.’

  He looked at her interrogatively to see if she wished to comment; he was carefully, offensively polite as he prepared the stiletto. She was pallid now beneath the Titian waves, for she must have known what was coming. As carefully as a man pronouncing a legal formula, Lambert said, ‘I have to tell you that you are the only one of your group who has a previous criminal conviction.’

  Hook had needed to record nothing yet. Watching from his position two yards away from his chief, he thought Lambert sounded like the old recording of Prime Minister Chamberlain breaking the news of war in 1939. Meg Peters looked as shocked as the listeners who had needed to digest that momentous news. She licked lips that seemed suddenly garish against her pallor. ‘It doesn’t mean anything, in relation to Harrington.’ She managed to invest the three syllables of the name with venomous contempt.

  Lambert said, ‘It may not do. I’m speaking generally rather than specifically, of course, but any statistician would tell you there is quite a high correlation between previous convictions and later, more serious offences. Criminal records are one of the best starting points we have in many investigations.’

  ‘Even when the crime is quite different and much more serious?’

  ‘Even when the crime is murder, Miss Peters.’ She gasped at the word, realising he had enunciated the very noun she had been reluctant to acknowledge herself. Without her recognising quite how it had happened, their positions were now reversed: Lambert was direct and aggressive after his earlier circumlocutions, and she seemed evasive by comparison.

  As if to emphasise her position, he said coolly, ‘As a matter of fact, there is a fairly high correlation between convictions for drug offences and subsequent serious crime.’

  It was the first mention of the nature of her offence. She glanced for the first time at Hook, wondering how much this silent recorder had known. He might previously have been a statue, for all the attention she had given him, and he took care now to present his best sculptured impassivity. She looked suddenly tired as she said sullenly, ‘It was only for cannabis. And it was a long time ago.’

  ‘And you weren’t selling it to others. As far as anyone could prove.’ There might have been a hint of irony in Lambert’s even tones, but it was impossible to be certain.

  She flashed him a basilisk glance of pure hate, then cast her eyes sharply down, as if she realised belatedly that they divulged too much. They were very beautiful eyes and she had used them countless times to manipulate men; it was disconcerting now to find them revealing so much she would have wished to conceal. She said, ‘I never traded. I was in the theatre, and everyone used pot then.’

  He knew enough for that to ring true. But there was no reason why he should concede it to her now: his task was to unmask a murderer. Or murderess; but probably that was an outdated term in these days of equality. No doubt Ms Peters would call herself an actor. ‘Perhaps your companions did use pot. But it was a criminal offence, and you were found guilty.’

  ‘I was only twenty-one. I haven’t been in court since.’

  Her phrasing suggested to an ear tuned to such protestations that she had been near to it on some occasions. But perhaps she was just unfortunate in her choice of words. The conviction was fourteen years behind her: that made her thirty-five. She looked it, but she was a woman whom the years enhanced rather than reduced, up to a certain point. Her figure had not thickened at the waist, her hair was still as dazzling as in her youth, her face not yet seriously lined. It was the kind of face that experience made more exciting as it built upon the blanker beauty of youth. Lambert said, ‘Did Harrington know about your drugs conviction?’

  The abrupt transfer from her own problems to the central issue of the interview stilled the last of her truculence. Her troubled face revealed too much: they saw her consider whether to lie, decide against it, and say reluctantly, ‘Yes.’

  ‘How?’

  She shrugged the shapely shoulders automatically. ‘He knew most things.’

  ‘And how did he come to know this one?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Now she was lying; her face set like a child’s, obstinate in denial yet not expecting to be believed.

  ‘Was it not from your own lips?’

  The green eyes, dark now with anger and apprehension, flashed to his for a moment, speculating on how much he knew. ‘It might have been. But I think he knew before—’

  Her voice dropped away hopelessly. It was almost a mercy when he said gently, ‘Before what, Miss Peters?’

  ‘I had an affair with Guy Harrington. I suppose you know that: you seem to know everything.’ She said it bitterly, and he made no attempt to deny it. An impression that the CID were omniscient was a most useful delusion to foster in the public.

  ‘How long ago was this?’

  ‘It ended four years ago last month.’

  Very precise: he wondered what should be deduced from that. ‘And it had lasted for how long?’

  ‘Seven months.’

  Again the detail. He decided she must have expected this to come out and thought about her answers. It made him wonder how important the affair was in the case. ‘Did Mrs Harrington know about this relationship?’

  He had expected her to bridle before now at his impertinence; she showed no sign of doing so. ‘I expect she did. She’s not stupid, and I wasn’t the first. Nor the last.’ Her smile was at her own expense, but it lit up the pale face for a moment. That face had no doubt caused anguish to many men in its time; now it seemed to be recognising the irony of its rejection.

  That thought prompted Lambert’s next question. ‘Who ended the affair, Miss Peters?’ She looked at him sharply at last, so that he added, ‘I’m sorry to probe so far, but you will appreciate that we need to know as much as we can about the victim’s past in a death of this sort.’

  There was a touch of the contempt with which she had begun as she said, ‘I suppose so. But you’ll find this has nothing to do with it. Anyway, it was Guy who ditched me, if you must know.’

  ‘I’m afraid I must. I appreciate your candour, Miss Peters, but I should have to ask other people about this if you refused to talk about it. It gives you, after all, a common motive for murder.’

  ‘“Nor hell a fury like a woman scorne
d,” you mean?’

  He bowed his head in unconscious acknowledgement. ‘You have the quotation accurately, unlike most people who use the thought.’

  ‘I appeared in Congreve when I was at drama school. I told you I was an actress, Mr Lambert.’

  So he was wrong about that: she had chosen the term he would have used himself. He must check any other assumptions he made about her. ‘About a fifth of murders in Britain involve what are loosely called “crimes of passion”. So we would be wrong not to investigate any possibility of that kind. Unfortunately for the perpetrators, it is a concept treated more sympathetically in French law than in English or Scottish courts. Why did Harrington end the affair?’

  He had hoped to surprise her into some revelation by the abruptness of the question, but he did not succeed. She gave a rueful smile; it was not a habitual expression for her, but it made her look very attractive. ‘There was nothing very complicated about it. He moved on to pastures new. I knew I wasn’t the first woman he’d had, by a long chalk. And I’d had enough experience to know better. But we all think we’ll be different from the rest. Or at least that we’ll be cool enough to end it in our own good time. Guy took up with a girl in his office and laughed in my face.’

  ‘Forgive me, but detectives can’t allow the dead to rest in peace. We have to build up a picture of a man who isn’t here to speak for himself. I must ask you what kind of man you think Harrington was.’

  Again she gave that curiously unguarded smile at herself and her foolishness. ‘You don’t have to apologise, Superintendent. Guy was a bastard. Attractive enough, ready with charm and money when he wanted something. Women don’t acknowledge to themselves how important money is, you know. At the time you think it’s incidental, but it greases the wheels of an affair, especially in the early stages. Sometimes I’m not very fond of my own sex and the way we deceive ourselves.’