Deadly Stuff

by Joyce Cato

  ‘It’s been suggested that you might have felt some antipathy towards Mr Raines.’

  Seeing that Pippa didn’t understand the meaning of the word antipathy and obviously didn’t want to show it, Jenny coughed slightly, and said helpfully, ‘Someone thought that, although you flirted with Maurice, underneath, you didn’t really like him,’ she clarified quietly.

  ‘Oh,’ Pippa said. Then shrugged. ‘Well, that’s daft, isn’t it? I just told you, I didn’t really know him. He was just the sort you flirted with, you know? An old codger who thought he could still pull the birds. It seemed kinder to play along, that’s all. He used to call me “foxy lady” because of my surname, right, and thought it was really clever and nudge-nudge-wink-wink. As if I hadn’t heard that a thousand times before!’ Pippa rolled her eyes. ‘Besides,’ she said, her face flushing darkly with sudden anger, ‘I’ll bet I know who’s been saying all this rubbish. It was that woman who’s in charge of the money, wasn’t it? That Vicki cow.’

  ‘No need to get personal, Miss Foxton,’ Trevor said, whilst Jenny thought that it was very interesting indeed that Pippa had got it right first time. She might give the impression of being a bit of a dumb bimbo at times, but clearly she was very astute when it came to social interaction and reading people.

  ‘Well, she’s a one to throw stones,’ Pippa muttered rebelliously. ‘Especially since Maurice was on to her, all right.’

  Trevor felt his hackles rise. This was the first he was hearing of his murder victim being suspicious of one of his fellow conference-goers. ‘Sorry? On to her how?’

  Pippa sighed. ‘I’m not really sure, to be honest,’ she admitted, clearly annoyed to have to admit as much. ‘It’s just something Maurice said about her once, that’s all. I never listened to him half the time; he could talk the hind legs off a donkey, he liked to hear his own voice that much.’

  ‘Can you think what it was about, exactly?’ Trevor prompted patiently. ‘It could be important.’

  Pippa sighed. ‘Well, he said something about knowing what she’d been up to, and that she wasn’t the only one good with figures. ‘Course, then he had to go on and comment about mine.’ Pippa smiled, pulling the poncho down over her generous curves to show what she meant. ‘But he was talking about financial figures, I think. I got the impression that that Vicki woman might have been cooking the books or something, and he was on to her. She is the one in charge of the money, right? I daresay she just helped herself to some petty cash or something, and he found out about it. It couldn’t have been any big deal, anyway, could it, since she was still the treasurer?’

  Jenny caught Trevor’s eye and raised an eyebrow.

  Trevor nodded thoughtfully. ‘Interesting,’ he said quietly.

  Pippa smiled, clearly pleased to have sent the ball slamming back into her opponent’s side of the court.

  ‘And you’re sure you yourself had no serious issue with Mr Raines?’ Trevor said, catching her self-satisfied smirk.

  ‘No,’ Pippa said flatly.

  ‘And you never argued with him?’

  ‘No, I never.’

  Trevor nodded. ‘All right, Miss Foxton. Thank you for your time.’

  Pippa nodded, clearly not sure whether to be relieved that the interview was over, or indignant over the aspersions cast on her character, and in the end simply stalked off in a wave of expensive perfume.

  ‘Well, that might be an interesting little tidbit, if true,’ Trevor said, and reached for the telephone. Jenny listened, with only half an ear, as he ordered someone with financial savvy to check over the society’s books as a matter of urgency and get back to him straight away.

  ‘Don’t forget Vicki Voight has an alibi too,’ Jenny reminded him absently. She really was going to have to get the search for that mobile phone underway. She slipped down off her stool. ‘I’ll get going, if you don’t mind, Inspector,’ she began, and then shot around as Peter Trent all but ran into the room.

  He excitedly beckoned his chief over towards the door and Jenny, following on more slowly, was just in time to hear the sergeant’s words.

  ‘Guv, she’s shown up at last. Raines’s wife. She just walked into the police station in St Aldate’s, asking to speak to the officer in charge.’

  Jenny watched the two happy men rush away, and frowned thoughtfully.

  She wondered what Mrs Maurice Raines would have to say for herself.

  And then she wondered just how long it would take the inspector to arrest her for the murder of her husband.

  Laura Raines looked up as the door to the interview room opened and two men walked in. Her eyes went between them, lingered for a while on the older of the two, but then went back to the weighty man with brown hair and curious brown eyes.

  ‘Are you the one in charge of my husband’s case?’ she asked calmly, and Trevor, taking a seat, nodded. He introduced himself and his sergeant, for both the recording device and the widow’s benefit, stated the time and then folded his hands comfortably in front of him on the table. He looked at her mildly.

  ‘First of all, Mrs Raines, let me say that I’m sorry for your loss. Perhaps we can just go over the preliminaries and get things in order before we start. You are the wife of Mr Maurice Raines, I take it.’ He cited the victim’s address, and Laura nodded. Then she cleared her throat.

  ‘Yes.’

  Trevor nodded, trying to get the measure of this witness and potential suspect. She was still a very attractive woman, with fair hair and big grey eyes and a slender figure. Her make up was discreet, and she was wearing a skirt and jacket of moss green, with a cream blouse. She wore little jewellery – just a plain gold watch, and pearl stud earrings, but both looked to be of high quality. She was, in his opinion, typical of the kind of woman who’d always known money, and was sure of her status in life.

  ‘Can I ask, Mrs Raines, where you have been for the last few days?’ he enquired quietly.

  Laura took a deep breath. She’d discussed what they must do with Simon earlier this morning, and they’d both agreed that they needed to get back to Oxford and see what was happening. And, as the victim’s wife, it would look very suspicious indeed if she didn’t come forward. Not that it hadn’t taken all her nerve to walk into the police building in this unknown city, not knowing what might be waiting for her on the other side. It had been awful waiting for this moment to arrive, and now it came as something of a relief to her to be getting it over with.

  But she’d never lacked nerve, and now she needed to be both calm and clearheaded.

  ‘Yes, certainly,’ she began, taking a slow, long breath. ‘When my husband goes away on these interminable conferences of his, I take the opportunity to have a little holiday of my own. This time, I decided to spend some time on the south coast. Hayling Island in fact.’

  She didn’t volunteer the name of the inn, but she knew she’d have to, eventually. And, of course, the staff would confirm the presence of that hoary old chestnut, ‘the other man’. But she was in no hurry to start volunteering information just yet.

  Well, none that would be of any use to the police, anyway. She needed to find out as much as she could about what had been going on first.

  ‘This morning, I rang my children, just to check in, and they told me about … about what had happened to Maurice. Naturally, I came here straight away.’ She stared down at her hands in her lap, noticed her wedding ring and quickly looked back up at the inspector.

  ‘Yes, we notified your children as soon as we could,’ Trevor agreed. ‘But we had trouble locating you. Your children tried your mobile number but couldn’t get an answer.’ His tone made it more of a question than a statement, and she gave a slight grimace.

  ‘Oh, no they wouldn’t,’ Laura said vaguely. ‘I’m afraid I’d just lost the damn thing. Only a matter of a day or so, but it meant I had to buy a new one, and I hadn’t given them the new number yet. I daresay the old one will turn up at home down the back of the sofa or something; they usually do, don’t they?
’ She shrugged. ‘I suppose I should have phoned them to tell them I’d arrived safely, but I just didn’t think of it at the time.’

  She cleared her throat and then looked Trevor squarely in the eye. ‘They told me he’d been found dead in the college where the conference was being held. At first, I thought it must have been a heart attack, or stroke or maybe some kind of an accident. But they seemed to believe, that is, they had been led to believe by one of your people, that that wasn’t the case.’ Unconsciously she leaned forward a little against the table. ‘But is that really true, Inspector? Isn’t it possible there has been some kind of bad accident? Maybe something freakish, and unusual, but accidental nonetheless?’ Her voice, although still even and calm, had a hint of wild hope in it.

  ‘I’m afraid not, Mrs Raines. It’s a clear case of unlawful killing,’ Trevor contradicted gently but firmly.

  Laura swallowed once, then nodded. Yes. She expected as much. Simon had been very clear on that. Even so, she’d been hoping against hope, all the way on that hellish drive over here, that he’d got it wrong - that there must be some other explanation, no matter how bizarre.

  ‘I see,’ she said flatly.

  Trevor saw her shoulders sag infinitesimally, and sighed. He never knew how people were going to react to the loss of a family member, and he’d been prepared for floods of tears, anger, disbelief, shock or a combination of all three. But he’d seen at once that Laura Raines was a member of the old-fashioned breed who still believed in maintaining a stiff upper lip.

  Whilst that could be useful in some ways, in getting a coherent and logical statement, for example, a bit of honest, spontaneous emotion often told you a lot more, but he was well aware that he’d be getting no such helping hand from the lady in front of him now.

  ‘When did it happen?’ Laura asked.

  It was a reasonable question, but Trevor hesitated before answering it. Would it give her a chance to concoct an alibi? If she were his number one suspect, he’d be inclined to give out as little information as possible, but at the moment, he had no real reason to suspect her any more or less than anyone else. On the other hand, he would have to find out where she was at the time anyway, so there was little point in keeping it from her.

  ‘Yesterday between eleven-thirty and twelve noon, Mrs Raines.’

  Laura nodded, without any sign of emotion. No relief, no anger, and no fear, which surprised Trevor Golder quite a bit. Of course, she could just be numb, or going into shock, he surmised. In which case, he needed to push the interview on.

  ‘May I ask where you were at that time?’ Trevor asked, as delicately as he could.

  Laura nodded slowly. ‘Yes, of course. I think I was arriving at the hotel about then. It must have been, as I remembered thinking it was still a little too early for lunch, and that I should have time to unpack before….’ Her voice trailed off. ‘So it was then that he … went. Funny, to think that I was blithely unpacking. You’re supposed to have premonitions, or something, aren’t you, when something bad’s happening to an important member of your life? But I hadn’t a clue.’

  Her voice had become softer as she spoke and, as if suddenly realising that she was in danger of sounding maudlin, she seemed to give a mental shake, and her voice rose back to its normal, no-nonsense volume again. ‘You’ll be wanting to know the name of the hotel, I expect. To confirm what I’m telling you?’

  She said it without resentment, but it was clear that she was not particularly happy about it either.

  ‘I’m afraid so.’

  Laura nodded once, and recited the name and address of the hotel. She wondered how long it would take them to question the staff and learn about Simon. Not long, she was sure. An hour or so? She’d signed them both in under her name, and using her credit cards, so they wouldn’t have Simon’s details. But she’d have to tell them, when asked.

  But Laura was in no hurry.

  ‘Do you have any leads, Inspector?’ she demanded briskly. ‘I find it impossible to think that anyone would want to kill Maurice. Oh, I know that he could be a bit of an autocrat at times, and many people in that awful little society of his probably wanted to throttle him from time to time, but not literally.’

  She paused and sighed. ‘Was it someone at the college itself? Or a random thing? How, exactly … I mean, can you tell me what happened?’ Her tone was somewhere between a demand and a plea.

  Again, Trevor hesitated. He was certain that Laura would be too intelligent to supply him with a false alibi that could so easily be checked, which meant that she was certainly not the killer of her husband. On the other hand, she was not altogether in the clear yet, and he needed to know much more about her movements and the state of her marriage before he started giving away details.

  He was also aware that the woman’s husband was dead, and that she was entitled to certain human dignities.

  ‘I’m afraid your husband was killed with a weapon in the hall of the college where he was staying,’ Trevor said carefully. ‘As of yet, we’ve found no witnesses to the crime, and have uncovered no reason why anyone would want him dead.’

  Trevor watched her carefully, but the pale, composed face, remained pale and composed.

  ‘I see,’ Laura said. Then she took a long, slow breath. ‘I suppose, in questioning the other people in that silly little society, that they must have told you something of Maurice’s reputation. With women, I mean,’ she said with total aplomb, and again, looking him squarely in the eye.

  Trevor, who hadn’t been looking forward to bringing up just this subject, felt a small spurt of gratitude to her for easing the way.

  ‘It had been mentioned that he was something of a man with the ladies, yes,’ Trevor said cautiously. ‘Although no one was able to say with any authority that it amounted to anything more than his manner and some flirting.’

  Laura smiled slightly. ‘I see. Nice of them to be so discreet.’ Again, she and Simon had discussed how much and what she should tell the police, and they’d agreed that keeping Maurice’s affairs a secret would be counter productive. Indeed, when it came time to admit to their own love affair, it could only help them to have laid the ground in their favour.

  ‘I have to tell you, Inspector, that the rumours were true. Maurice and I … our marriage, that is, was, well, to all intents and purposes, more or less over.’

  Trevor nodded. He showed no signs of excitement or suspicion and Laura was to some extent reassured.

  ‘Yes. Once the children were well into their teens, things between us just seemed to peter out,’ she explained simply. ‘Oh, it was nothing dramatic. There were no big scenes, or recriminations, or anything like that.’ She smiled briefly. ‘It was just a question of a gradual widening of the gulf between us, I suppose. Maurice had always had his outlandish work, which seemed to make him happy, and I had my hobbies and interests too. My family has always had money, you see,’ Laura said matter-of-factly. ‘It was my money that started up Maurice’s firm, and I’ve kept up my own social circle of friends and activities. Art, mainly. I’m on the board of several galleries. Anyway, you don’t want to know all about that,’ Laura said practically. ‘You want to know about the other women.’

  She leaned back in the seat and sighed. ‘Maurice’s women,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘I was inclined, looking back, to think that he started with them when the children were almost fully grown, but I think it more likely now that they’d always been there, more or less right from the start; I was just too busy to notice. When I finally did … well, they just didn’t seem to matter much.’

  Laura paused and looked at the two policemen thoughtfully. ‘Of course, I have no way of proving that’s true. For all you know, I might be one of those pathologically jealous women who are desperate to keep their men, and react violently to any woman who tries to steal them.’ She stopped, thought about it for a while, and then shrugged. ‘I imagine you can ask our mutual friends and neighbours and what-have-yous. If they’re honest with you, they’ll pr
obably paint the same picture that I am. I mean,’ – and here she gave a sudden bark of laughter that was not exactly lacking in irony – ‘I suppose Maurice and I were a common enough, trite little story. A marriage slowly dying on its feet out of boredom and indifference. It would have ended in divorce, sooner or later,’ she said sadly, then added vaguely, ‘They always do, don’t they? It was just that neither one of us had got around to making the effort yet.’

  She reached for the jug of water on the table and poured herself a glass. It was dry in the little interview room and she suddenly felt thirsty. She felt drained and tired, and longed to go to Simon and have him hold her and tell her that it would be all right, even if he was lying.

  This feeling of constantly walking a tightrope was taking it out of her, and she hoped the interview wouldn’t go on much longer.

  ‘Thank you for your candour, Mrs Raines, we appreciate it. Now, just a few more facts, if you don’t mind,’ Trevor said.

  ‘Of course. Whatever you like,’ she forced herself to say with a grim smile.

  ‘Do you have much contact with your mother-in-law?’

  Laura stared at the policeman for a second, looked totally nonplussed and then smiled uncertainly. ‘Not really, no. She’s not very well, and I think Maurice was thinking of arranging for her to go into a home soon. But we got on all right, as mother-in-law and daughter-in-law I mean. I’m sorry, but I don’t quite see how that’s relevant?’

  Trevor nodded. ‘Just bear with me a bit, Mrs Raines. When was the last time you visited her at her home?’

  ‘Yonks ago. Maurice called on her regularly, and sometimes we’d have her over to our home for Sunday lunch. But not so much recently, as I said, since she’s getting rather frail.’

  Clearly, Laura Raines seemed to be struggling to see where this line of questioning was going, and Trevor didn’t want to push it. If the lady had had access to her mother-in-law’s heart medication, she wasn’t going to give the game away easily. If she was somehow responsible for that poisoned coffee cup, he didn’t want to alert her to her danger unduly.