by J M Gregson
Lambert wondered if she had really forgotten the question. Perhaps she had; she had seemed embarrassed from the outset by her conduct as an intelligent woman in becoming so helplessly infatuated with the younger Beaumont. He reminded her tersely, ‘DS Hook was asking you if you could give us the details of any recent liaisons of Mr Beaumont’s.’
‘Of course he was. But I have to disappoint you. As I said, I am quite sure that Martin has other women, and probably frequently. But I cannot give you details. All I said to Jane was that I would ask around and try to find out more. I confess that I had a selfish motive in offering that. I would have preferred to keep myself out of any divorce proceedings by providing more recent and thus more relevant evidence. As I think I pointed out to Jane, Martin’s lawyers would have been certain to query why she had known all about my affair at the time and done nothing about it until many years later.’
‘So there are no names you can give us?’
‘No. I suspect that his alliances recently had been much more casual and short term. I had no interest in whom he was currently bedding, but I think I should have known if there’d been any serious long-term affair.’ She paused, weighing a last idea on the subject, wondering whether to offer it to them and what the consequences might be for her. She didn’t see it could do her any harm; it could only divert their thoughts further away from her. ‘You could try Sarah Vaughan, I suppose. She’s the most recent and the youngest of our senior staff. She strikes me as a capable young woman, with far too much sense to get involved with Martin, but she might know a little more than I do about his current preferences.’
Lambert stood up. He had enjoyed pitting his wits against this alert and intelligent woman, but he suspected she had told them exactly what she had planned to do before they set foot in this comfortable old cottage. Quite possibly that was all she knew and she was being as helpful as she could, but he would like to have thrown her off balance a little more, to have seen how she behaved when she was disconcerted.
‘If you think of any other detail which might be helpful to us, however small, please get in touch immediately, Miss North. We may well need to speak to you again to clarify certain issues, when we are further into this enquiry.’
It was standard stuff. At the moment, he couldn’t think what those issues might be. Vanda North seemed to know that and be perfectly confident about the future. She conducted them quietly to the low door of the cottage, warning him that he might need to stoop a little. But she had the composed air of a woman who had fulfilled her duty and did not expect to see them again.
EIGHTEEN
Gerry Davies went across to Jason Knight’s den early on Monday morning. He went as soon as he received the phone call, while the shop was still quiet and before any of the catering staff were due on duty. A week ago, he wouldn’t have considered such discretion necessary. He threaded his way through the deserted kitchen area to the little private room and watched his friend shut the door carefully behind him.
‘Did anyone see you coming in here?’ Jason asked.
‘I don’t think so. My own staff will notice I’m missing if I’m away for any length of time. Does it matter?’
‘Probably not. I just felt that the fewer people who saw us getting together the better. They might think we’re plotting.’
‘As we are.’
Jason looked at him sharply. ‘I wouldn’t call it that. I’d say we were thinking about the new situation and how it might affect us.’
Both of them were silent for a moment, assessing the accuracy of this. Gerry wondered if Jason was thinking, as he was, that last week neither of them would have worried about people noting their movements. Murder brought suspicion with it. It made people watch the actions of others and question what they were up to. It made them watch what they said, sometimes even with people they regarded as friends.
Jason brought him abruptly out of his reverie. ‘Have they interviewed you yet?’
‘No. They’re seeing me this afternoon.’
‘Good.’ Jason wondered why he said that; it had been automatic, probably relief that others as well as him were being questioned. ‘It’s good that they’ve left you until now, I suppose. It probably means they don’t have you high on their list of suspects. They saw me on Saturday morning.’
‘I hadn’t really thought of myself as a suspect.’
‘You should get used to the idea. They’ll be investigating everyone who was close to Martin. I’m sure they’ve given his wife the third degree. If and when they decide it isn’t a domestic, we’re all in the frame.’
‘You seem to know a lot about it.’ A week ago, the words would have been said jokingly; today they rang deadly serious.
Jason Knight hastened to lighten things. He managed a rather brittle little laugh. ‘I watch too many cop series on the box, I suppose.’
Gerry didn’t think Jason saw much television. As head chef, he was usually working six nights a week. He said as casually as he could, ‘Give you a good going over, did they, the CID men?’
‘They’re professionals, Gerry. The police use the best they have, on a murder case. Until they have a prime suspect – which isn’t yet, as far as I can see – we’re all in the frame. It will pay you to watch what you say this afternoon.’
‘If I tell them the truth, I’ve nothing to fear.’ Gerry knew that at fifty-seven he was sounding like a priggish schoolboy. ‘If I didn’t do it, I’ve surely nothing to fear.’
Jason didn’t laugh at the absurdity of the notion that Gerry might have killed Martin. ‘Murder is big, for the media as well as the police. If they don’t make an arrest in the next few days, they’ll have the press on their backs. And the radio and television won’t be far behind the papers; they pick up ideas from the press and run with them, when they’re short of news. The CID will want to arrest someone as quickly as possible. I think we should make sure it isn’t either of us.’
Gerry didn’t know what to say to that. ‘I believe they’ve got the famous John Lambert on the case.’
‘They have. He questioned me on Saturday morning. I didn’t tell them about us.’
‘About us?’ said Gerry stupidly. He knew what Jason meant; he couldn’t think why he was pretending that he didn’t. This was the sort of distrust a murder enquiry fostered, he supposed.
Jason said with a trace of impatience, like an old sweat instructing a green recruit, ‘I meant our discussion about the future of the company, about how we were going to get ourselves more control of policy.’
Gerry wanted to say that that idea and all the drive behind it had come from Jason; he wanted to dissociate himself from anything which might leave any sort of cloud over himself. ‘Didn’t you say anything about it when they spoke to you?’
‘No, of course I didn’t.’ Jason was suddenly impatient with this man who was a generation older than him and yet still so naive. ‘I didn’t lie. You don’t have to lie. You simply don’t mention it. You show them that you’re as mystified about this death as everyone else is pretending to be.’
‘I might have to lie to conceal it. In any case, isn’t not telling them like a lie?’
Jason wondered for the first time whether this was all a front, whether Gerry Davies had long since realized the danger and was conducting this elaborate charade of guilelessness when he actually proposed to look after his own skin, at whatever cost to others. Like his companion, he felt murder driving a wedge between them; this distrust would have been impossible last week. ‘I didn’t say anything about it. You must realize how bad it would make me look if you now blab about it to them.’
‘All right. I’ll do my best to keep off the subject.’
‘You might have to be prepared to do a little more than that, Gerry. I should think they’re quite likely to ask you why you didn’t want more of a say in the way things were being run.’
‘So what do I say to that?’
‘I can’t put words into your mouth, Gerry. They’d spot them if I did. Your
best policy would be to follow the line you took with me at first. Tell them you’re quite happy with the salary you’re being paid. You could give them all that modesty stuff, about how Martin gave you your chance in the first place and encouraged you to go on from there, but I wouldn’t make a meal of that.’
Gerry Davies stared disconsolately at the table between them, where once he would have looked at his friend. ‘Be better if we hadn’t talked to Martin about it last Monday, wouldn’t it? Especially as he turned us down flat.’
Jason sighed. ‘It would indeed. It seems much more than a week ago now, doesn’t it? But there’s no reason why they should know anything about that meeting. What took place there was just between us and Martin. There won’t be any record of it. If neither of us mentions it, there’s no way they can know that it took place.’ He’d only just prevented himself from saying that dead men tell no tales.
‘I suppose not.’ Gerry looked thoroughly miserable.
‘Cheer up, Gerry! It won’t be as bad as you seem to think. Try not to be nervous. After all, neither of us killed the bugger!’
But neither of them laughed, as Jason Knight had intended them to.
The two big men made the room seem even smaller, Sarah Vaughan thought. She said, ‘I have the smallest office here, as the last of the executive staff to be appointed. It’s quite big enough for my needs, though.’
They looked round unhurriedly at the small desk with its PC, at the swivel chair behind it in which she sat, at the two upright chairs which barely fitted into the space in front of it. They took in the single filing cabinet, the pictures of Provence and the portrait of an eminent nineteenth-century French vineyard-owner on the walls.
Lambert folded his long legs carefully into the limited space between him and the front of her desk. With Hook accommodating himself equally carefully, shifting his chair three inches sideways so that he was not actually touching that of the chief superintendent, Sarah felt hemmed in. Their faces were too close to hers for comfort, and the grey, all-seeing eyes of Lambert seemed to be boring into her mind and soul as their exchange developed.
He began conventionally enough. ‘Could you tell us a little about your role here please, Miss Vaughan?’
‘I’m responsible for Research and Development.’ She spoke it with the capital letters which she hoped would give her a little more standing, then immediately threw a little of that away. ‘Mr Beaumont does – sorry, did – a lot of the research himself. He went to the French vineyards almost every year and the German and Italian ones every two or three years to find how the newer grapes are doing there and check on the production of the long-established brands. Of course, wine production for export is a much more worldwide industry now than it was fifty, even thirty, years ago, but we research other areas from here. Not even Martin could go everywhere.’ She gave a little laugh to show that was a joke, wondering how much of what she used in her talks to the public she could feed in here. It was safe ground for her, this stuff.
‘I see. You have quite a few competitors in the English wine industry nowadays. Does your research work take any account of that?’
‘Indeed it does. You have to keep your eye on your competitors, as Martin always reminded us. I keep a record of the volumes sold and prices charged, as comprehensive as I can achieve. It’s usually about a year out of date, as you would expect. Martin used to get out and about and do a little incognito investigation into how well the bigger English producers were doing, in relation to us.’
‘A little industrial espionage.’
She wondered whether to take this as a tease and respond in that spirit, but decided she had better not do that. ‘There’s nothing to prevent you going incognito into retail shops and even wholesale outlets. It’s surprising what some people will tell you about the way their year is going, if you can fasten on the right person to talk to.’
She wondered quite what truncated version of this the detective sergeant was making in his notes. As if he divined that her attention was on him, Hook now looked up and said, ‘So much for research. What about the development side of your work?’
‘Well, I’m rather proud of my work in pushing some of our new lines. I suggested that we should supply beer and cider in our shop here, when other people thought it would militate against wine sales. It didn’t, and Martin got us an excellent deal with the brewery. We now make a very good profit on our beer sales in particular. And whilst it’s impossible to be definite about this, I’m sure that our wine sales have benefited too, because of the extra customers we have attracted into the shop. Mr Davies, the shop manager, certainly supports that view. And whilst we’re very much a team here, I’d say that I was mainly responsible for the development of our sparkling wines. We do a surprisingly good English champagne here – we can’t call it that of course – which I think we shall be able to retail at £7.99 a bottle this year. I recommend it to you: I think you’ll find it surprisingly good.’
She smiled nervously into the encouraging face of Bert Hook, wondering if she was lapsing too much into the commercial chat with which she concluded her talks to the public. But he said, ‘Thank you. We have a clearer picture of your role here now. Is there anything else you do?’
‘You’re right to ask that. We’re still quite a small organization, though our turnover increases each year. I help in the shop when they’re busy. And I do little tours of the vineyard, in which I talk on the history of winemaking and of Abbey Vineyards. The abbey part’s a bit of a con, actually. We don’t think there was ever an abbey here, though there may at one time have been a Saxon church. I think Martin thought it would give the right ring to the name when he started. It suggests an ancient lineage for the place, I suppose, which is a bit more glamorous than farmland to most people. I don’t disillusion them unless anyone asks. I think my talks have been going well this year – I’ve got bigger audiences, even though I’m doing them more frequently.’
‘They’re very interesting, from what I’ve heard,’ said Hook.
‘I hope so. It’s like anything else, one improves with practice. And I don’t try to disguise the fact that like everything else we do the tours are directed towards bringing in a profit, even if that’s indirect and long term.’
‘And you think they do that?’
‘I do. They’re getting more orders in the shop at the conclusion of my little talks, quite often for full cases. Of course, I can’t prove that these people weren’t planning to buy in any case, but Gerry Davies, our shop manager, says a lot of the sales come directly from what I’ve been saying. I speak quite honestly about our best wines and our best years for them. And Martin wouldn’t have increased the frequency of the tours if he hadn’t thought that. He was a very shrewd commercial operator.’
‘So everyone tells us,’ agreed Lambert. ‘And the evidence is all around us in the growth of this place. How did you get on with him?’
She was rather thrown off her guard by the abruptness of this, after she had been encouraged to talk so much about herself. ‘I’d say very well. He was very successful, which always helps. A successful ship is usually a happy ship.’ The phrase came back to her from a course during her Business Studies degree. She hoped it wasn’t the cliché to them that it was to her.
‘You found him a good employer?’
She made herself take her time, knowing now that they were coming to the heart of the interview, where she was most at risk. ‘He was a good boss, as long as you did things his way. And I was earning more than I’d ever earned before, with the prospect of it rising year by year.’
‘But how would you describe your relationship with Mr Beaumont?’
‘Good. He paid well and he was fair. You had to toe the line, as he made clear when he interviewed me, but as long as you did that you earned good money.’
‘You didn’t feel once you were well established here that you wanted a say in future policy? Research and development are all about the future, after all.’
‘No.
I’m still only thirty-three and making my way. Martin was a generation older and had much more experience.’ She paused, then was unable to resist the opportunity to divert their attention to others and thus take some of the heat off herself. ‘I think some of the executives who’ve been here longer than me were chafing a little about Martin’s dominance, but you’d have to ask them about that.’
Lambert afforded her a smile which made her uncomfortable, as if he knew very well what she was about. She wondered if her face was colouring; she knew that her fair skin and delicate features often revealed more than they should. She was very conscious of how close those gimlet grey eyes were to hers as he said, ‘Everything you’ve said has been related to your working relationship with Mr Beaumont. We’re grateful for that information. But what about your personal relationship with your employer? You’re a small team here, as you’ve told us yourself, and no one works all the time. How did you get on with Mr Beaumont outside your working relationship?’
‘Perfectly well. Martin was wrapped up in the business: it was his whole life. He has a wife, I believe, but I’ve never seen her. I was perfectly content with my social life. I think I’ve indicated that our working relationship was a good one.’
‘Miss Vaughan, we have had indications from several sources that whilst Mr Beaumont ran his business as an autocrat and built his life around it, it was not as you claim “his whole life”. We have it on good authority, indeed, that he had involved himself over the years with quite a stream of women.’
She wanted to tell him to go back to that good authority and get his information there. But that source, whoever it was, might tell them about her. She was suddenly not sure how much the people who worked here knew about her, how much they might try to incriminate her in a situation like this. She said dully, ‘I’ve heard that, too. About the other women, I mean. He said his wife was an invalid, but some people say he exaggerates that to get sympathy. I can’t help you. I don’t know any details about these other women. Maybe they were all in the past, for all I know. He was late fifties, wasn’t he? Perhaps he’d given up that sort of thing.’