Just Not Cricket

by Joyce Cato

  ‘No, sir. My witness is one of the Steeple Clinton lot. He knew Lorcan because they had played against each other before, but he didn’t know the lad.’

  ‘OK,’ Causon acknowledged heavily. But since they were already about to interview a local lad who was already very much of interest to them, he didn’t much like the coincidence surrounding this encounter between Greeves and yet another young lad. The chances had to be fair to good that they were talking about the same individual. ‘Make sure Greeves doesn’t leave before I’ve had a word with him, will you?’ he reiterated.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ the constable said, and after another slightly puzzled look at Jenny, promptly left.

  The cook glanced once at Causon and then quickly away again. Then, after a moment’s quiet reflection, she said tentatively, ‘Are you thinking that Mark Rawley is the one Lorcan was talking to?’

  ‘Perhaps. But it could be another lad altogether. Just because Rawley’s already become a person of interest, doesn’t necessarily mean that he was the one who had to be having a little chinwag with this Greeves character.’ Then Causon scratched his chin and grinned a crocodile smile. ‘But it’s certainly suggestive, isn’t it?’

  Jenny supposed, fairly, that it was.

  ‘So, any other insights you might have for me?’ the inspector carried on wryly, with, was that just another hint of a crocodile smile, on his lips? Although she wouldn’t have been rash enough to actually bet money on it, Jenny was beginning to suspect that the old duffer might actually be warming up to her.

  She shrugged fatalistically. ‘You’ve probably already guessed that Tris was a bit of a heartbreaker?’ She went on to describe all over again the other people that she’d met in the course of the day, most of whom having confirmed Tris’s Lothario credentials in one way or another. And she finished wearily with, ‘And you probably saw for yourself just how the land lay between Tris and Michelle Wilson?’

  ‘You think Tristan Jones was the reason the Wilson marriage was in so much trouble?’ he asked sharply. He had, in fact, come to pretty much the same conclusion himself, but it didn’t hurt to have confirmation.

  ‘One of them, probably,’ Jenny said cautiously. ‘Though if I was married to the unctuous Max, I’d probably be panting for a divorce anyway.’

  Causon smiled grimly. For try as he might, he could not, under any circumstances, imagine this redoubtable woman falling for the rather suspect charms of a man like Wilson. And certainly not going so far as to compound the mistake by actually marrying the man.

  ‘No doubt,’ he said, with a definite twinkle in his eye now. ‘Anything else?’

  ‘Yes. His stepmother,’ Jenny said.

  Causon stirred. He was aware that he’d taken an instant dislike to Lady Erica Jones, and as such, knew he had to be careful when dealing with her. Consequently, he wasn’t, perhaps, quite as quick on the uptake as he should have been, when he said abruptly, ‘Well? What about his stepmother?’

  Jenny just continued to look at him, until she saw the penny finally drop.

  ‘Ah,’ the inspector said, pursing his lips in a long, slow, silent, whistle. Well, well, he thought, with a certain amount of glee. ‘Like that, is it?’ Then he thought about it some more, and finally shrugged. ‘Well, there’s no reason why they shouldn’t have been having an affair, I suppose – they’re not related by blood or anything. And even if they were, there may not be anything in it for us. Nothing that relates to the matter in hand, that is. Was it recent, do you reckon?’

  ‘Recent enough, I’d have said,’ Jenny responded, and not at all sure that she agreed with the policeman about it not providing an adequate motive for murder. In her experience, a woman scorned might be one of the oldest clichés in the book, but that didn’t necessarily mean that she shouldn’t be taken seriously. And from what she’d observed of the fiery redhead, Erica Jones had a very healthy ego indeed, and wouldn’t have taken to being messed about with much equanimity.

  ‘Anyway, I’d be prepared to bet my last doughnut that she was jealous of Michelle,’ she insisted, ‘which suggests that the other woman had only just taken her place, so to speak. And I also think that they’d only very recently just argued about something – Tris and his stepmother, I mean.’

  At the inspector’s interested look, Jenny then went on to describe the cross words they’d had with each other, which had been mostly about Robert Jones. And which one of them the Lord of the Manor would believe if they started telling tales on each other. She also described the way that Tris had mockingly blown her a kiss on leaving the pavilion.

  ‘It really wasn’t very nice to watch,’ Jenny said, in mild understatement, ‘since it seemed so petty and somehow spiteful. And I’m pretty sure he did it just to rile her,’ she finished. ‘Well, that, and to indulge his rather sardonic nature.’

  ‘Hmm. This victim of ours is beginning to come across as being definitely a bit of a lad, isn’t he?’ the policeman mused without humour. ‘Perhaps it’s no big surprise that someone walloped him over the head with a cricket bat.’ In point of fact, he was pretty sure, from all he’d heard and seen so far, that he’d probably have felt like doing it himself, if he’d ever actually met the man. Know-it-all chancers and lotharios were well up there on Laurence Causons’s list of people that he didn’t much like.

  Jenny flinched at the inspector’s rather harsh judgement. Tact, clearly, wasn’t one of the man’s strong suits. Still, it wasn’t her place to point it out.

  ‘And speaking of people who might have wanted to introduce our victim’s head to some seasoned willow…’ Causon mused quietly, startling her even more, until she realized that he was looking just beyond her right shoulder.

  Jenny looked around and saw that the door was opening, and that Graham Lane was entering. Only he was clearly alone. Causon’s sharp gaze looked pointedly behind his sergeant’s lean form, but when nobody else appeared in his wake, he transferred his gaze back to his junior officer.

  ‘I thought I told you—’ he began ominously, his bullish neck turning a shade of red.

  ‘To bring the boy here, sir. Yes, I know,’ the younger man rushed in, before his boss could work up a proper head of steam. ‘And I tried to, but I ran into a bit of a problem. Well, actually quite a large problem, in point of fact,’ Lane admitted, looking abashed now.

  ‘Oh? Gave you the slip, did he?’ Causon jibed. ‘Did a runner? What’s up, wasn’t your sprinting up to the challenge of a teenager, Sergeant? Tut tut, what would the chief super say about that? You know how he’s always going on about fitness.’

  Graham Lane sighed heavily. He hated it when superior officers got like this. And as if Causon was in any position to lecture anyone about physical fitness!

  ‘No, sir. That is, there was no running involved.’

  ‘Then perhaps you’d better tell me exactly what was involved then, seeing as you seem incapable of following a simple order. So, Sergeant Lane, what mammoth problem prevented you from doing your duty?’ Causon said, crossing his massive arms across his chest, stroking his chin with a couple of sausage-like fingers and watching the younger man with an expression of exaggerated interest.

  Graham Lane’s lips twitched briefly, showing that what-ever else he lacked, it certainly wasn’t a sense of humour.

  ‘The boy’s mother, sir,’ he said blandly. He paused, waiting to watch as Causon blew out his cheeks like a bullfrog. But before he could let out the breath again and indulge his obvious bad temper still further, he slipped in smoothly, ‘The boy’s mother, one Marie Rawley, answered the door, and when she saw my ID, refused me admittance. Which, as you know, sir, without a properly authorized warrant, she had every right to so do. And when I told her that I just wanted to speak to her son, she pointed out that the lad was only seventeen and couldn’t be questioned without an adult.’

  ‘That’s not …’ Causon began to roar, then caught the glimmer of amusement in the younger man’s eye, and suddenly subsided.

  Whilst he obvious
ly liked to vent his spleen from time to time, Jenny noted with interest, it was also clear that the inspector also knew when to be still, and to actually listen. And he recognized the fact that his sergeant seemed to be on to something, for after he’d thought about it for a moment, he said softly, and in a much more reconciliatory way, ‘Something about the situation tweak your radar, did it, Lane?’

  Graham smiled. He knew the old man would get it sooner rather than later.

  ‘Oh yes, sir. So many somethings, it’s hard to know where to start. To begin with, when Mrs Rawley first opened the door, she was clearly agitated and under some considerable stress. She was as pale as milk, and her hands were distinctly unsteady.’

  ‘Booze?’ Causon hazarded abruptly.

  Alcoholic mothers and bored housewives were hardly unheard of. But not in this case, it seemed, for his sergeant was already shaking his head.

  ‘Oh no, sir. Not a whiff of it. And her speech was fine, and not slurred. No, I’d say that she was far more likely to be suffering from shock or something of that nature,’ the younger man said. ‘She had her hands under her armpits, too, like her hands were very cold and needed warming up.’

  Causon’s eyes narrowed thoughtfully. ‘Did she now?’ he asked softly.

  Now that was interesting. And he didn’t doubt his sergeant’s assessment. Like many coppers, Lane had cut his teeth on the streets, and he’d attended his fair share of RTAs and violent domestics. And if anyone quickly learned how to read the signs of shock or stress in a witness or suspect, it was a copper like Lane.

  ‘And another thing that struck me as distinctly odd, sir,’ Lane said, ‘was the fact that she didn’t look all that surprised to see me.’

  Causon grunted but took the hint. Most respectable, middle-aged ladies, living a respectable lower middle-class life usually found the police, turning up on their doorstep, to be a little out of the ordinary at least.

  ‘Does she have form?’ he asked, getting to the crux of the matter with just four simple words.

  ‘No, sir. I asked HQ for a background check on her as soon as I left,’ Lane confirmed. ‘She doesn’t have so much as an outstanding parking ticket or traffic fine to her name.’

  ‘Hmm.’ Causon rubbed his chin thoughtfully – and this time he did so without any of his earlier sarcastic dramatics. ‘We’ll have to ask the uniforms, when we finally get some more bloody men here, to make it a priority when questioning that lot outside,’ he vaguely waved a hand towards the cricket pitch, ‘if there’s any history between our victim and Mrs Rawley. I was just telling Miss Starling here, that I’m getting the picture that he was a bit of a ladies’ man, our Mr Jones. Perhaps this is a simple enough case of him messing about with the wrong woman. Nice-looking is, she, this Mrs Rawley?’

  Graham Lane shrugged noncommittally. ‘She’s tall, dark-haired, dark eyes. Slim. Has a nice enough face, but I’d hardly class her as a femme fatale, sir.’

  ‘Still, it needs to be checked,’ Causon insisted.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Lane said diplomatically.

  As if he wouldn’t have, anyway! He could, at that point, have mentioned something about grandmothers and egg-sucking, but decided discretion was probably the way to go.

  ‘Well, don’t just stand there imitating a statue, man.’ The inspector, who clearly knew his sergeant very well indeed, glowered at him. ‘What else happened to bring you back here with your tail between your legs?’

  ‘Like I said, sir, when I told her that I needed to question her son, she point-blank refused. She told me that he’d been in the house all day, as had she, and that there was no way I was going to come in and question him without a warrant.’

  ‘Did she just?’ Causon said. Now that smacked of someone who’d had dealings with the law before. It sounded as if she was making a point of giving both herself and her nearest and dearest an alibi, whilst at the same time giving the sergeant his marching orders. Most members of the public didn’t have the nerve to do that, without having some prior experience of having to deal with law and order people. So if she had no form herself, perhaps he should be looking at other members of her family? He made a mental note to check that out later. ‘And?’ he went on impatiently.

  ‘And it’s my opinion, sir, that she was lying through her teeth,’ Lane said succinctly.

  ‘About the boy being inside all day? Or about herself being inside all day?’ Causon shot back briskly.

  Lane opened his mouth to respond instantly, then quite visibly paused to think about it more carefully for a moment. And then opined cautiously, ‘If I was a betting man, sir, I’d say both.’

  ‘Right. Well, no doubt if we had more men here, we’d probably already know by now whether or not Mrs Rawley had also been seen hanging around. There are certainly enough witnesses to have spotted her, if she has been telling porkies. But since, as it is, we’ve barely begun to gather in the preliminary statements, we’ll just have to wait a bit. But we know for sure that Mark Rawley was here, at least on one occasion. We have a reliable witness for that.’ He sighed. ‘Well then, if the mountain won’t come to whoever it was, then we’ll just have to go to him. It. Whatever. But first, I want to have another word with the chap who found the body. Fetch him in, will you, Sergeant?’

  ‘Sir.’

  Jenny turned away carefully, making herself as inconspicuous as possible, so that when the groundsman joined them a few minutes later, he hardly seemed to register her presence. Perhaps that was not so surprising, since the old man had eyes only for the police officers. And his eyes, both Jenny and Causon could quite clearly see, were very frightened eyes indeed.

  ‘Ah, Mr Cluley. Come on in, and have a seat. I just have a few questions for you. About Tristan Jones, obviously,’ Causon began casually enough. ‘Your grandson was heard to argue with him earlier on today. Behind this building in fact. Do you know what that was all about?’

  James Cluley paled a little bit, but managed to shrug one bony shoulder. ‘Sorry, but this is the first I heard about it,’ the old man said, slumping down wearily onto a folding chair. ‘Who was this witness then?’

  Causon ignored the question.

  ‘What can you tell me about your daughter, Mr Cluley?’ he said instead, the abrupt change in subject clearly unsettling the older man. As it was probably meant to. Over in her corner, Jenny shifted a little restlessly. She never had liked to see people bullied, and especially not the elderly or the young.

  But she could hardly leap to James’s defence, even though she felt as if she should. Besides, Causon had a job to do, and if she didn’t let him do it, he might eject her from the proceedings. And, in spite of herself, she was becoming rather interested in finding out who had killed Tris Jones. She might not have liked him, exactly, but he’d been young and so very vital and full of life. And people just couldn’t go around killing people.

  ‘My Marie? What’s she got to do with any of this?’ James Cluley asked, sounding genuinely puzzled – as well as a little aggressive. But this was something Causon was inclined to take for granted. Parents tended to feel protective of their children no matter whether they were three years old, or forty-three.

  ‘Was your daughter having a relationship with Mr Jones? I hear the young man was a good-looking one, and had something of a reputation with the ladies,’ Causon carried on smoothly.

  ‘What? Are you mad?’ James Cluley yelped. And again, his outrage seemed genuine enough. ‘My Marie wouldn’t look twice at a chancer like that … like Tris.’

  He’d obviously been about to use much stronger language, but had realized, just in time, that showing his true colours about how he really felt about a newly discovered murder victim probably wouldn’t be very smart.

  ‘They were not on good terms then?’ Causon immediately pounced. ‘Had an argument recently, had they?’

  ‘No! Here, what are you implying?’ James said angrily. ‘Why are you picking on my Marie all of a sudden?’

  ‘Because, Mr Cluley, she’s re
fusing to co-operate with us. Now why do you suppose that is?’ the inspector all but purred. ‘Most law-abiding citizens, especially in a serious case such as murder or violent attack, tend to want to help the police. Not obstruct them.’

  James looked clearly baffled. He sat there, shuffling his feet a little in front of him, but when Graham Lane offered him a cup of tea, he merely shook his head and continued to shuffle.

  ‘I dunno, do I? What’s this all about?’ he demanded sullenly.

  ‘When my sergeant went to your daughter’s address to speak to her son, Mark, she refused to let him in. Any idea why she should be feeling so obstructive, Mr Cluley?’ he asked, watching the old man closely.

  And right on cue, James Cluley went red, then abruptly white.

  He swallowed hard. ‘No,’ he said. But his eyes wouldn’t quite meet those of the inspector.

  In her corner, Jenny’s heart went out to him. He was clearly a bad liar. And even more clearly torn between his desire to protect his family, and wanting to do the right thing. Unless, of course, Jenny thought unhappily, he was the killer. In which case, his dilemma was even more urgent. Did he sacrifice his family – his daughter and grandson – to save his own neck?

  ‘Don’t lie to me,’ Causon said warningly. ‘Lying to the police is a criminal offence in its own right, and carries severe penalties, especially when in a case as serious as a murder investigation. Clearly your daughter is trying to hide something. It’ll be easier for everyone concerned if you simply told us what it is.’

  But James Cluley clearly wasn’t about to volunteer information. He merely shrugged and waited passively for the next verbal assault.

  And in this, the inspector was willing to oblige him. ‘All right, Mr Cluley,’ he carried on grimly. ‘If you’re unwilling to talk to us about that, perhaps we can turn our attention back to Tristan Jones. And why it was you, out of all the people present here today, to actually find his body. Something of a coincidence that, don’t you think? And you know what they say about coincidences. So, is there something that you have to tell me about that?’ he asked portentously.