by J M Gregson
‘What would you say if we told you that your husband was aware of this relationship? If we told you that he had recorded the dates of your overnight meetings and some of the venues involved?’
Edwina felt the shock running through her limbs like an electric charge. She told herself that she must deal with this, must offer them some sort of response. Her voice seemed to come from a long way away. ‘I didn’t know about that. It doesn’t surprise me. Peter was a very secretive man. He was very sensitive about that filing cabinet.’
‘He had Mr Whitfield’s name and address recorded. He seems to have been compiling some sort of dossier.’
‘That’s what he liked to do. He needed to feel he had control of people. I didn’t think he’d do it with his wife. I didn’t know he knew about Hugh. I should have known better. Finding people’s weaknesses was an obsession with him.’
‘Blackmail?’ It seemed an unlikely crime for one of Peter Preston’s background and pretensions.
‘No. He wasn’t interested in money.’ She said it not with admiration but contempt. ‘All he was interested in was having a hold over people. Power, if you like, but a particular sort of power. He didn’t always use his information, but he liked to feel it was there if he needed it.’ She repeated like one in a trance, ‘I didn’t think he’d do it to me.’
‘What car do you drive, Mrs Preston?’
‘A Fiat C3.’
‘Colour?’
‘Dark green. You think I did this, don’t you?’ She glanced automatically back from the conservatory towards the house behind them and the place where Peter had fallen.
Lambert did not attempt to reassure her. He stated the bald, inescapable facts. ‘We have to consider the possibility. You lied to us about your whereabouts at the time of your husband’s death. You were conducting an affair, which he was documenting for his own purposes. You had ample reason to want him out of your life.’
‘But I didn’t know he was spying on me until you told me just now.’
Hook looked up from his notes. ‘We only have your word for that, Mrs Preston. As far as money and property are concerned, I presume you are the main beneficiary of your husband’s death?’
‘Yes. Unless he revised his will, as well as spying on me.’
‘He wasn’t expecting to die. He’s unlikely to have done that.’
‘No. Are you going to say that I killed him to avoid it?’
Lambert put his crockery back on the low table between them and stood up. ‘We shan’t accuse you of anything, Mrs Preston, until we have more evidence. What do you know of the contents of your husband’s filing cabinet?’
‘Nothing. I told you, he was a very secretive man.’ This time the adjective hissed with contempt.
‘Please don’t leave the area without giving us your new address. We’ll need to speak to you again.’
They drove back to the station in Oldford without exchanging many words. Each was preoccupied with the paradox of this quiet, unremarkable-looking woman in her mid-forties, who had conducted an affair and might well have dispatched an unlovable and increasingly inconvenient husband.
Marjorie Dooks found that she was having to work hard. She was used to dealing with people, to taking account of their backgrounds and reading their feelings. Usually she was very good at achieving whatever she wanted.
It was more difficult with a husband. The domestic setting was very different from a committee one, for a start. And both of you carried the baggage of many years together. You could hardly know too much about anyone, she had decided a long time ago. But there were times when they could definitely know too much about you.
She wanted James to introduce the topic of this murder, which must surely be in his mind as it seemed to be in everyone else’s in Gloucestershire. She talked about plans for the festival and the way the programme was now complete and looking very promising. He complimented her politely on that, as a stranger might have done. But he did not take up the issue of how the sudden death of the most prominent member of that committee was going to affect the programme. Was he uninterested in her affairs, as was usual, or was he deliberately refusing to talk about the topic that dominated her thinking?
In the end, she had to introduce it herself, which she felt put her at a disadvantage. ‘The police were here yesterday, about Peter Preston’s death.’
‘You didn’t tell me.’ He made it sound like an accusation.
‘No. You were late home last night and I didn’t want to bother you with it. It was no big deal — just part of their routine, in cases like this.’
‘Have they got a prime suspect yet?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t suppose they’d tell me, even if they had.’
She wanted him to ask about what they’d said to her, to be at least a little anxious on her behalf, however bizarre the idea that she might be treated as a suspect. But he merely nodded deeply and went back to the Telegraph. She had to say, ‘They asked me if I knew anything about who might have killed him, which of course I didn’t.’
‘Of course not.’
‘They wrote down the details of where I was at the time he died. Just routine, they said.’
‘Yes. It would be.’ James turned over the page and began to read about the prospects for the weekend’s rugby internationals.
‘Tuesday night it was. I told them I was here with you.’
Now at last he looked up at her, his eyebrows raised elaborately in that movement she found so irritating. ‘Was that wise, old girl?’
She hated it when he called her that. She’d told him so; she wondered whether he was now using it as some kind of taunt. ‘I thought it was, at the time. I was anxious to complete their routine for them, to let them remove me from their thinking so that they could get on with arresting the real killer.’
‘Not like you, that. Lying to the police, I mean — well, not telling them the complete truth, anyway. I’ve always thought of you as a classic conformist. You’ve been quite short with me when I’ve tried to cut the odd corner, as is necessary in business.’
She was sure now that he was enjoying himself. His puzzled, slightly pained tone told her that. ‘Anyway, you’ll need to confirm it, if they ask you.’
‘Need to confirm it.’ He pursed his lips, as if weighing it as a proposition. ‘I see, old girl. You’re trying to cut a few corners. Whatever you say, then.’ James Dooks returned to the sports pages with a small, enigmatic smile.
Saturday the fourteenth of May. A bright morning, with the sun high in the sky by nine o’clock and a gentle breeze moving the few high white clouds very slowly across a very clear blue sky.
Lambert picked Hook up in his big old Vauxhall. The lanes were quiet and they enjoyed the journey through the burgeoning Gloucestershire countryside. The hawthorn hedges were full of new pale green leaves and the rich red soil was disappearing beneath neat rows of spreading corn and barley. The large eyes of Herefordshire cattle gazed curiously at them as the car breasted the slope beside their pasture. Then the Vauxhall ran into the valley and into the deep shade between long, straight rows of newly foliaged beeches, arching over them like the nave of a great natural cathedral. Bert thought of the boys he had left at home, dearly loved but full of energy and increasingly fractious, as they moved towards adolescence. There were compensations for having to work at weekends.
They were surprised to see Sue Charles in gardening trousers and gloves when they arrived at her bungalow. She stood up and put her trowel down on the barrow beside her, which was full of discarded wallflowers after their short and glorious blaze of colour and scent. Lambert said, ‘I’m sorry. Were you not expecting us?’
‘Yes, of course I was. But I was up early and it was such a lovely morning that I thought I’d do a little weeding before you came. But I don’t wear my watch in the garden and I lose track of the time. Come in and I’ll put the kettle on. It will only be instant, I’m afraid, but it won’t take long. That’s what the name implies, I suppose.’
Every action and reaction made it seem more ridiculous that this friendly, competent woman should be involved in a murder enquiry. They were served with coffee and home-made biscuits before Lambert could say, ‘We know a lot more about Mr Preston than when we spoke to you on Thursday. He seemed to us then a rather petty man with annoying pretensions. He has now proved to be much more vicious that that.’
Sue sat down carefully with her own cup of coffee. ‘I’m sorry to hear that. He was no friend of mine, but one doesn’t like to hear such things about the dead. One would rather they could be left in peace, but I quite understand that in the case of a murder victim you need to unearth every fact you can.’
‘You write about murder, Mrs Charles. You must study people, as I’m told all writers do. Did Mr Preston strike you as a man who would excite the hate that seems to have motivated this killing?’
‘Goodness me, Mr Lambert! I’m an amateur in these things. One has perforce to acquire a little knowledge about police procedures, and I suppose you’re right about studying people, but you must have far more experience of murderers than I have!’
‘Nevertheless, we should like to have your views, since you had much more contact with this victim than most people we have spoken to.’
‘I suppose that’s true, though I hadn’t thought about it before. To put it crudely, Peter had been discourteous to me for a number of years. I think I told you yesterday that he took care to let me know how little he thought of my writing. He was also dismissive of crime writers in general. “Practitioners of trivial ephemera,” he called us. I rather enjoyed asking him if that wasn’t a tautology.’ She chuckled at the reminiscence and took a large and unladylike bite of ginger biscuit. ‘I’m sorry. I realize this is a very serious business. Did I see Peter as a candidate for murder victim? I never really thought of him as that. I couldn’t take him very seriously, but I suppose if I had done I’d have seen him as malicious, perhaps even dangerous. I certainly shouldn’t have liked to live with him! Poor Edwina had to do that, of course. She must have seen something attractive in Peter, at one time. I suppose he was handsome, as a younger man.’
She spoke as if she was considering that idea for the first time. Lambert said quietly, ‘How close was Preston to his wife at the time of his death?’
Sue furrowed her brow as she gave due consideration to that. ‘I didn’t mix with them socially as a couple, but I’ve met Edwina in other settings. I’d say they were growing steadily further apart, that she had devised methods of coping with his tiresome pretensions. I think she’d developed a life of her own which did not involve Peter.’
There was a shrewd writer’s brain behind the ageing, wordy woman whom he sensed she was enjoying playing. Lambert acknowledged that by asking simply, ‘You saw Preston many times with Marjorie Dooks. Would you tell us about that, please?’
‘I only saw them in committee, though just occasionally he tried to pursue his ideas more informally after the meetings were over. I confess I rather enjoyed their confrontations — probably because Marjorie had the measure of Peter. She was fair but firm, in a way which I could never have been. Of course, she held most of the cards, in that she was chair of the committee, but she was as tactful as it was possible to be.’
‘Thank you. What about the younger members of that committee?’
‘Ros Barker and Sam Hilton? I’ve thought about them as candidates for homicide, of course, since this happened — that’s inevitable, I suppose, when you’re involved in a real murder and have a background of writing about it. Peter was very insulting and dismissive about Ros’s paintings and Sam’s poetry, and when your work is attacked you’re more deeply hurt than you like to admit. And in so far as one can generalize, young people seem to react more violently to insults than my generation. George, my husband, used to say that if young men still had National Service to endure, they’d have a better sense of discipline, but I’ve never been sure about that.’
‘Peter Preston’s sense of grievance went much deeper than most people realized, Mrs Charles. Were you aware of that yourself?’
‘No.’ She paused for a moment, her face filling with the interest of a new idea, then nodded. ‘It doesn’t surprise me, though. What evidence do you have for saying that?’
‘The contents of the filing cabinet in his study. He kept detailed files on everyone he regarded as an enemy.’
‘How very interesting. Peter never struck me as a blackmailer.’
‘We have no evidence that he ever tried to extract money from anyone. His wife thinks that he used what he gathered to manipulate people rather than to exert financial pressure.’
‘How intriguing!’ The head with its neat grey hair was a little on one side; the clear blue eyes alight with mischief. ‘Did he have a file on me, Mr Lambert?’
Lambert was as serious as she was amused. ‘He did indeed.’
‘And are you able to tell me about it?’
He paused to glance at Hook. He was struck as strongly as he had ever been in his life by the incongruity of people like Sue Charles being involved in the grim business of murder. ‘There were several rather trivial and petty entries about yourself. There were also some rather more serious allegations about your husband.’
Her face clouded as quickly as it had grown amused. ‘About George? What sort of allegations?’
‘About his business dealings. About some of the people he had employed and some of the things he had done during his working life. About the methods he had used to achieve his success. Bribery was mentioned, or “bungs”, to use Preston’s word.’
The lines around her mouth were suddenly deeper as it set into a determined line. ‘I wish I’d known about this. Peter Preston would have had me to contend with. It doesn’t happen often, but I can be very direct, when I am upset.’
Lambert was as grave as she was. ‘Are you saying that you had no knowledge of this material Preston had gathered?’
Her detached, slightly amused air had gone completely. ‘I am. If I had known anything about this, I should certainly have confronted Mr Proud Peter Preston.’
Sue Charles still looked shaken as she showed them out. They had little doubt that this elderly, gracious woman would make a formidable opponent if anyone gave her reason.
Sue came slowly back into the room and stared unseeingly for many minutes at the empty coffee cups on the low table. The cat, which was her sole domestic companion, eventually sprang from his chair, came across the room and rubbed himself against his mistress’s calves, breaking the spell of her meditation.
Sue smiled as she bent to fondle his ears. ‘You didn’t like those nice men, did you, Roland? Well, you can relax now. I don’t think they’ll be coming here again.’
SEVENTEEN
Like many doting fathers, Walter Merrick still chose to think of his daughter as a vulnerable child. He ruffled her short fair hair as she came into his house and kissed him, just as he had done her much longer blonde locks when she had been four years old.
He was seventy now; he had been ten years older than his wife and forty-eight years old when Kate was born. She sometimes wondered whether living alone had made him more conservative. He seemed to her older than his years, not so much in body as in mind. Her mother and he had always argued; their angry raised voices had been the recurrent chorus of her childhood. Kate hadn’t really been surprised when her mother had gone off to live in Durham with a younger man six years ago; Dad and Mum had been chalk and cheese. With all the accumulated wisdom of her twenty-two years, Kate had pronounced it a good thing. N
ow she was not quite so sure. Dad seemed to be ageing more rapidly than he should be.
He gave her coffee in a cup and saucer, then vigorously stirred his own in the beaker he had used for as long as she could remember. They talked a little about her infancy and the small, precocious things she had done. Kate smiled and answered a little absently, but he was too occupied with his delighted reminiscences to notice that. She was wondering how she could broach the subject she had come here to introduce. She couldn’t leave him in the dark for ever, whatever his reaction. That would be behaving as if she was somehow ashamed of herself.
She talked at some length about the exhibition in Cheltenham, about how good it was for Ros Barker, and how it proved that she was a serious artist, who was going to make a good living out of her painting.
Walter said, ‘She’s a talented girl, your friend. I’ve heard that from other people as well as you. I don’t understand much about art myself. I like a good Constable or Turner, but I don’t pretend to know much. I’ll go to that exhibition, though. Be good if you were able to come with me and guide me around it.’
‘Of course I will. I’ll be in there a lot of the time. I said I’d be in the gallery as much as I could.’
She hoped he’d take that up, or at least raise an eyebrow, but he merely smiled at his coffee. She was compelled to say as lightly as she could, ‘You might be a little shocked by some of the paintings, Dad. Well, by one of them in particular. One of them with me in it.’
He looked up eagerly. ‘Ros has done a painting of you? That’s a nice thing, isn’t it? Quite a compliment, I’d have thought.’
‘Several of them have me in. One might shock you, though, Dad.’
‘Take a bit to do that, girl.’
‘It’s a nude, Dad.’ She looked out of the window at the familiar small, neat garden, watching him out of the corner of her eye.
