by Eric Brown
‘Again, correct.’
‘Now, finally, before I let you go, can you tell me where you were between eight and midnight last night?’
‘Certainly. I was in my room. My niece, Nancy, will be able to confirm that, as she was with me all the time.’
‘Did you hear the gunshot?’
‘No, I didn’t.’
Montgomery jotted this down in his notebook, then asked, ‘I take it you employ servants?’
‘A woman from the village comes in to cook in the afternoon,’ Xandra said, ‘and we have someone to come in and clean three times a week in the mornings. My husband is … was … somewhat thrifty when it came to hired help.’
Montgomery nodded. ‘Thank you, Mrs Robertshaw. If you could send Nancy along – I think you might find her in the kitchen.’
Xandra Robertshaw rose without a word to either man and left the room.
‘Cool customer,’ Montgomery said.
‘She has a hell of a lot to put up with – what with her illness and an errant husband.’
The inspector grunted. ‘Seemed not at all put out at losing the latter, I must say. Maybe she hired an assassin.’
Langham smiled. ‘Ah, now I recall that your humour did tend towards the black.’
The door opened and Nancy briskly entered the room, her bright smile directed at Langham contrasting with her red and swollen eyes.
‘Hello, Donald, Inspector. I’ve never been interviewed by the police before. In fact, I don’t even think I’ve ever spoken to a policeman.’ She glanced from Montgomery to his deputy, smiling tremulously. ‘Can you believe that?’
‘Well, we’re not all ogres,’ Montgomery said. ‘I’m so sorry about your uncle; I can’t begin to imagine …’
‘I have good friends around me,’ Nancy said, beaming at Langham. ‘Maria’s been a brick.’
‘I won’t keep you long. I just want to ask a few routine questions, dotting the t’s and crossing the i’s kind of thing.’
‘Of course, Inspector,’ she said, smiling at his intentionally addled wordplay.
‘I’ll be brief. I understand you were with your aunt all night yesterday from …?’
‘From just after eight, when she called me,’ Nancy said, ‘all through the night until I was awoken by the noise at six. Xandra wasn’t feeling well, which is why I was with her.’
‘Did you leave the room at all between the hours you mentioned?’
She thought about it. ‘Once, around nine, to fetch some fresh tea from the kitchen, as we’d run out. Then at some point in the early hours, I went to the bathroom, which is en suite.’
‘And did your aunt leave the room at all between eight and midnight?’
‘Well, she might have gone to the bathroom, but if so, I didn’t hear her. I was fast asleep before ten.’
‘So from ten onwards, your aunt might have left the room?’
‘Well, yes, she might have, Inspector. But I’m certain she wouldn’t have gone outside. You see, she never goes out these days.’
Montgomery nodded. ‘Thank you, miss.’ He made a brief note, then asked, ‘I wonder if I might ask about how you and your uncle got on? Were you close?’
Nancy hesitated. ‘Unc was a funny old stick. He made it difficult for people to get close to him. I suppose it was his upbringing – that’s what they say it’s all down to these days, don’t they?’ She smiled. ‘He could be prickly, and then at times very kind. Occasionally,’ she finished bleakly, ‘he’d buy me chocolates.’
The inspector closed his notebook with a flourish and smiled at the girl. ‘There, over and done with, short and sweet. Nothing to fear, was there?’
Nancy smiled. ‘Can I go now?’
‘Off you pop,’ Montgomery said.
She stood, then hesitated. ‘I hope you don’t mind my asking, Inspector, but I was wondering … You see, it’s something that my aunt said, and she’s rarely wrong with her intuitions. But … that is … well, she seems to think that my uncle was murdered.’
Langham watched as Montgomery’s face creased with kindly paternalism. ‘I’m sorry, my dear, but I fear that your aunt is right.’
Nancy smiled bleakly, suddenly sober. ‘I thought so,’ she said, then thanked them and walked from the room.
‘Poor kid,’ Montgomery commented when the door closed behind her. ‘Right, I’ve just about done here. I think I’ll go and see what else the forensic boys have found.’
The inspector stood and crossed to the door, accompanied by his bulky deputy. He turned to Langham and said, ‘Do me a favour, would you, and keep your nose to the ground? I’d appreciate it if you slipped me the word if you came across anything interesting.’
‘Will do,’ Langham said.
He followed Montgomery and the detective sergeant from the library, then made his way to the kitchen. He found Maria sitting alone by the range, hugging a mug of tea.
‘No sign of Nancy and Roy?’ he asked.
‘They’ve just disappeared upstairs.’ She finished her tea. ‘I think,’ she went on as they left the kitchen and made their way across the hall, ‘that Nancy hasn’t told us the whole story about her and Roy.’
He turned his collar up against the east wind as they stepped from the manor and gave Maria a look. ‘Meaning?’
‘Oh, come on,’ she said, tugging on his arm. ‘They’re far more intimate than they’re letting on, Donald. My guess is that they’ve been lovers for weeks, even months.’
‘My word. Well I never! What I’d give to have a bit of women’s intuition!’
They crossed the bridge and turned along Crooked Lane.
‘What are you doing this afternoon?’ Maria asked.
‘After a thick cheese sandwich before the blazing fire,’ he said, ‘I’m motoring up to Bury. I want to trace this Deirdre woman, then have a word with the professor’s brother – he’s the doctor who’s treating Xandra. Apparently, Randall was with him all last night. I want to check the young man’s alibi.’
‘I’ll have something nice ready for dinner when you get back,’ Maria promised.
FOURTEEN
Langham drove up to Bury St Edmunds and parked beside the Midland Hotel.
He was working on the possibility – little more than a slight hope, he admitted – that the table at the hotel on Monday had been booked in the name of Professor Robertshaw’s ex-wife. He was going on a suspicion that the professor would have been reluctant to provide his own details for fear of his deception coming to light. Of course, the couple might have used assumed names, in which case he would be forced to resort to other means in order to locate the professor’s ex-wife.
A young woman with horn-rimmed glasses and an elaborate beehive hairstyle was at reception, poring over a ledger. He quickly flashed his accreditation, gave a winning smile and said that he would like to ask one or two questions regarding an ongoing police investigation.
She returned his smile and asked how she might be of assistance.
‘I’m looking into the movements of one Professor Robertshaw and a woman by the name of Deirdre. I understand they dined here at lunchtime on Monday. Do you happen to know whether the table was booked by the professor or his lady friend?’
‘One moment, sir.’ She moved to an adjoining room and returned carrying a ledger. She ran a coral-pink fingernail down a long list of names. ‘Here we are. The table was booked for twelve thirty. The professor and Mrs Creighton are regulars.’
‘Mrs Creighton? I don’t suppose you have her address or telephone number?’
‘Mrs Creighton has an account with us.’ She hesitated. ‘You are with the police?’
‘That’s correct, the Bury St Edmunds constabulary.’
She turned to the wall where the key-rack hung; next to it was a shelf of thick morocco-bound ledgers. She withdrew one, flipped through its pages, then tapped an entry with her lacquered fingernail. ‘Here we are. Mrs Deirdre Creighton, The Old Manse, Elm Lane, Renton.’
Langham copied the add
ress into his notebook, thanked the young woman for her assistance and left the hotel.
Renton was a small village three miles north of Bury St Edmunds consisting of a Norman church, a post office and a row of shops clustered around a small village green with a duck pond and a pair of ancient stocks.
Langham stopped to ask a dog-walker for directions to Elm Lane and was directed back along the main street to the first turning on the left.
The Old Manse was a solitary Victorian pile set in grounds surrounded by elm trees. He pulled into the drive and approached the front door, not exactly relishing having to impart the news of the professor’s death to his lover.
His knock was answered by a middle-aged woman he took to be a housemaid; she held a brush and pan in one hand and looked flustered. ‘We don’t buy from door-to-door—’ she began.
‘Donald Langham,’ he said. ‘I’m working with the Bury St Edmunds constabulary. Is Mrs Creighton at home?’
The woman blinked. ‘The police?’ She appeared even more flustered. ‘Yes, madam is at home. If you’d care to follow me.’
He wiped his feet and followed the woman to a drawing room; she left him, and he moved to the window and looked out along a length of snow-covered lawn.
He turned a little later when he heard the door open.
Deirdre Creighton was a tall, elegant woman in her mid-fifties, impeccably dressed in a cream two-piece set off with a necklace of lustrous pearls. He thought her handsome rather than good looking; she wore her blonde hair swept back from a high forehead and had the poise and deportment of good breeding.
She advanced the length of the room and shook his hand. ‘Mr …?’
He gave his name, and she directed him to a settee while she seated herself in a Queen Anne armchair. ‘Milly said you were from the police?’ She posed the statement as a question and smiled with genteel puzzlement.
‘That’s correct. I’m here regarding Professor Robertshaw. I understand you were recently … ah … reacquainted?’
‘That’s correct, Mr Langham.’ She opened her eyes a little wider. ‘Is something—?’
‘I’m afraid I must inform you that Professor Robertshaw died at some point late yesterday.’
She took a quick indrawn breath, more a sip than a gasp. Her grey eyes were wide, staring at him, her expression frozen.
‘I’m very sorry,’ he murmured.
She shook her head. ‘But how …?’ She withdrew a crumpled handkerchief from a pocket and pressed it to her left eye, then to her right.
‘He succumbed to a single gunshot wound,’ he said, aware that he’d employed the euphemism that seemed appropriate to the circumstances.
‘But Edwin would never …’ she began.
‘He didn’t take his own life,’ he said.
She shook her head. ‘He was … murdered? But who would …?’ She dabbed at her eyes again and sat back in her chair.
‘That’s what my colleagues and I are attempting to ascertain. I hope you don’t mind if I ask you a few questions?’
‘No. No, of course not.’
At the far end of the room, the door was nudged open a fraction and a grey Persian cat strode across the thick pile carpet with the same regal bearing as its owner. It pressed itself back and forth across his shins and he reached down and knuckled its head.
‘Hermione,’ Mrs Creighton called. ‘Here!’
The cat obediently crossed the carpet and jumped on to the woman’s lap; she stroked it absently while gazing out through the window.
‘I understand that you were married to Professor Robertshaw a number of years ago?’
‘For a little over ten years, yes. We married in 1925 and separated in ’36.’
‘Amicably?’
She gave a brittle smile. In the ensuing silence, he heard the throb of the cat’s contented purring.
‘Far from it, Mr Langham. Edwin was unfaithful.’
Langham opened his notebook and made a note. According to what the professor had told him the other day, it was Deirdre who had left him for another man.
‘Unfaithful,’ he repeated. ‘Is that singly or …?’
‘Is this really germane to the issue, Mr Langham?’
‘In my experience, that might only become obvious when I’ve had time to assess every fact in hindsight.’
She sighed. ‘I had been aware for a year or two that Edwin indulged himself in … flings, shall we say? On one occasion, I confronted him about one of them, and he was quite contrite. He insisted that it meant nothing and promised to mend his ways.’ She shook her head, smiling in reflection. ‘I loved him at the time, Mr Langham, so I believed him. Perhaps that was a mistake on my part. Perhaps I should have left him then, but it’s so easy for one to be wise after the event, isn’t it?’
‘But the next time, you did leave him?’
‘Six months later, he was at it again, and this time I had had enough. This time, his unfaithfulness devastated me.’
‘Because he’d promised that it wouldn’t happen again? Or,’ he ventured, ‘because of whom he had met? Was it serious, this time?’
‘Oh, he was never serious, Mr Langham. That is, he had no intention of leaving me for these women. They were mere dalliances. He tried to make light of this one, too, but as far as I was concerned, enough was enough.’
‘You left him?’
‘I threw him out.’
Langham made a note of this. ‘What kind of man was your ex-husband, Mrs Creighton?’
She stroked the cat’s long, shining coat, her gaze absent. She said at last, ‘He had a sharp mind and an overweening ego, which is always a fatal combination. He had an overwhelming self-regard and a complete lack of interest in other people. Because he was quick, he could argue that black was white and leave you feeling that it was you who were always in the wrong.’
He wrote all this down, aware that it corroborated much that Xandra had said about the professor earlier that day.
‘I understand you remarried?’
‘I met someone just before the war, an army captain, and we were very happy for the next sixteen years. He passed away in ’54 – he was stationed in Gibraltar at the time – and I decided to come back to England – here, to Suffolk.’
Langham looked up from his notebook. ‘Then, a few months ago, you decided to contact Professor Robertshaw?’
She smiled at him, quite without warmth. ‘I did nothing of the kind, Mr Langham. We met quite by chance three months ago. I was dining alone in the Midland and Edwin entered the room. He saw me and offered to buy me a drink, for old times’ sake.’
‘To meet him again like that, after so many years, must have been’ – he shrugged – ‘strange, to say the least?’
‘Strange does not describe it in the slightest,’ she said. ‘I was quite taken aback.’
‘But you accepted the drink?’
‘I was curious. I wanted to see how the years had treated my ex-husband. I wanted to ascertain if he had any regrets about how he behaved towards me all those years ago.’
‘And do you think he had?’ Langham asked, sure that he knew the answer.
‘I should have known that a leopard of Edwin’s ilk does not change its spots. Egotists do not regret their actions, merely rationalize them and condemn others. Although he didn’t say so in so many words, I really think he blamed me for throwing him out.’
‘Did the professor tell you that he’d remarried? Did he mention anything at all about the state of that relationship?’
‘He did tell me that he had married again, yes, and that he was terribly unhappy. He told me – and I took this with a pinch of salt – that he had married his wife twenty years ago on the rebound from me. He painted a vivid picture of his present wife: she was a vain hypochondriac who cared nothing for him and had a penchant for expensive clothes and perfumes. This, too, I took with a pinch of salt.’
Langham watched the cat as it rolled on to its back on the woman’s lap and stretched luxuriously.
He said, ‘And yet, knowing the professor as you did, knowing that he was a vain egotist with a cavalier disregard of others, you elected to embark on an affair with him?’
She smiled, again without warmth. ‘If you want to know the truth, Mr Langham, I was lonely. My husband had been dead for three years, and it had come to the point where I detested my own company. Edwin provided a welcome distraction from the same old routine. And,’ she went on, waving an elegant hand, ‘for all that I have painted a far from complimentary picture of the man, he did have his attributes. He was intelligent and humorous, and when he was with one, he gave one his undivided attention … and he was generous. As well as being very well remunerated at Oxford, he inherited a small fortune when his father passed away.’
‘And you had no qualms about beginning an affair?’
‘Qualms?’
He considered his words carefully. ‘I would have thought, having at one time been on the receiving end of his unfaithfulness, you might have had some consideration for the feelings of his current wife.’
Did he see the slightest trace of pink high on her cheeks as she took this in?
She said, ‘As a matter of fact, yes, Mr Langham, I must admit that I did feel … qualms. But I suppose those were allayed by the stories Edwin told of his wife.’
‘Even though,’ he said, trying not to smile, ‘you took these stories with a pinch of salt?’
‘I suppose I rationalized my actions with the thought that there is no smoke without fire, Mr Langham.’
‘So the affair began three months ago,’ he said. ‘How often did you meet?’
‘Every week, sometimes more often.’
‘Always at the Midland?’
This time she flushed more obviously. ‘Sometimes Edwin came back here, when he could get away,’ she murmured.
‘Over this period,’ he asked, ‘did he ever mention that he had made enemies, people who might have wished him ill?’
She shook her head decisively. ‘No, never. Nothing like that.’
‘And’ – he hesitated – ‘did he mention, when you met him last Monday, that he was being blackmailed?’
She leaned forward, staring at him. ‘Blackmailed?’