Watermarked (Lambert and Hook Detective series Book 7)

by Gregson, J M

  Lambert gave nothing away in his lean features. ‘You’d better tell us about her.’

  ‘She was a National Youth Orchestra player at the same time as Peter. She went to the Northern College of Music when Peter was at the Royal College, but they kept in touch. Peter came home and said they were getting engaged and Mother went up the wall. I don’t know what she had against Mandy, who was a nice, rather serious girl. Perhaps she was just too pretty. But it’s not as though Peter had ever been particularly a mother’s boy — he was always much closer to Dad, and Mum had been quite happy to have it that way, as far as I could see.’

  Lambert would normally have let her run on, anxious to find as much as possible of the relationship between a murder victim and a leading suspect. But the second killing had given an extra edge of urgency and he said testily, ‘What happened to the girl?’

  ‘Mum was awful to her. When she’d gone, she said she wouldn’t have her in the house again. It was ridiculous, because she was pleasant and friendly to my parents — you couldn’t imagine anyone more inoffensive. Peter was still very taken with her, but Mum wrote to her a few months later. We never found out quite what she said, but Mandy and Peter broke up shortly afterwards.’

  ‘And that was the end of the matter?’

  ‘No. Peter and Mandy were still very young, and it’s my belief that they would have got together again once they had finished their courses and found their feet in the world: I think they even felt that themselves. But Dad died and Peter chucked up his course. Mandy qualified well, but she didn’t get job offers immediately: it isn’t always easy for viola players. She went off to India on a nursing project for a year — apparently that was something she’d always wanted to do.’

  ‘And did she take up things with your brother again when she came back?’

  Again there was a glance between husband and wife. This time it was Mark Warner who said in a low voice, ‘She didn’t come back, Superintendent. She died from cholera when she was out there.’

  ‘Leaving Peter Brooke with another reason to hate his mother?’

  Joyce opened her mouth to deny it, but Mark reached across and put his hand upon her forearm. He said gently, ‘You’ve done everything you can for him, dear. If he did kill her, he needs help.’ Turning his face back to Lambert, he nodded. ‘Peter was devastated. In my view, it’s one reason why he dropped out completely and has been living as he has. He certainly blamed Laura for what happened to Mandy — with some reason, I must say. That doesn’t mean he killed his mother, though.’

  ‘Indeed it doesn’t. But it gives him an even stronger motive. And that in turn makes it even more important that we have details of his movements, both at the time of his mother’s death and last night. Tell me about this meeting you had with him two days ago.’

  ‘He rang me up because he was scared. He sounded very strange. You — you must understand that he has a very odd lifestyle in London, and that we really know very little about it. I’m closer to him than anyone: I used to be very close; when he was small, I was more a substitute mother than an elder sister. Then he deliberately isolated himself from my life here, after Dad and Mandy had died. It’s only over these last two years that we’ve been getting closer again.’ She looked across at her husband, who gave her a small, encouraging smile and withdrew his hand from her arm. ‘We’ve been hoping he’d get back on the rails, that he’d finish his course and get a job with an orchestra. He could, you know, even with the competition as fierce as it is now: he’s a brilliant violinist.’ Her pride in her brother flashed out: for a moment it was more important that she convinced them of his virtuosity than his innocence.

  ‘What happened when you met him in Gloucester?’

  ‘We went to the cathedral. We met by the tomb of Edward II. Then we sat in the Lady Chapel and talked for quite a long time. I was trying to convince him that he should contact the Royal College of Music, as he’d agreed to do before this happened. He wouldn’t be eligible for a grant any more, but Mum had more or less agreed that she would support him. The only condition was that he should see her and make his peace. As far as I know, he didn’t manage to do that.’

  ‘Not even when he saw her on the Monday before she died?’ Lambert threw in Everton Smith’s statement as a fact; whether it was true or not, the boy was never going to have the opportunity to change it now.

  Joyce Warner’s eyes widened in something near horror. ‘If Peter was there then, he never told me about it.’

  ‘Not even when you talked to him in Gloucester?’

  ‘No.’ Her face was bleak and pinched; perhaps she was contemplating for the first time the fact that the younger brother she had protected was a murderer. Or perhaps, Hook reminded himself as he returned his eyes assiduously to his notebook, she was now protecting her husband or herself.

  ‘How long was he with you?’

  ‘Two hours; perhaps two and a half; no more. I had to get back to collect Katie from nursery school. I wanted him to come back here with me but he wouldn’t: he said he must get back to London. We had some tea in a little café before we went our separate ways.’

  ‘And did you see him on to his train?’ When she hesitated, he said sharply, ‘Lies will be no use to him and could easily land you in a lot of trouble, Mrs Warner.’

  For a moment she glared at him so resentfully that he thought she was going to shout. Then she accepted the logic of his warning and said with an air of hopelessness, ‘No. He didn’t go towards the station when we left the café, he turned in the other direction. I thought he was making for the ring road, planning to hitch back to London: he’s done that quite often before.’

  Lambert pressed remorselessly: he had no sympathy for a woman who had deceived him once. ‘So in fact we have no real assurance at this moment that he left the area at all. I suggest that in your own interests you now take the greatest care to answer my next question as honestly and fully as you can. To your knowledge, when was the last occasion when Peter Brooke contacted his mother?’

  The small, neat face tightened with concentration in its frame of blue-black hair. Her forehead wrinkled in that characteristic symbol of the mental activity behind it. For a moment she looked like an earnest schoolgirl, doing her best to remember the lines of a poem or a detail of history. When she spoke, it was as if she was delivering just such a careful recapitulation. ‘I did deceive you when I saw you earlier in the week, Mr Lambert. It was in an attempt to protect Peter. Not because I think him capable of killing anyone, but because I thought his recovery to a normal life was at risk. I recognize now that the attempt was mistaken. Peter last went to see my mother on the Friday afternoon before she died. If he saw her three days later than that as you say, I am not aware of it; he did not mention any such meeting when I saw him in Gloucester on Monday.’

  In another room, Tim was waking from his daytime nap; the burblings of the two-year-old came to them clearly in the still house — an innocent reminder that Joyce Warner had responsibilities to others as well as her brother. Mark Warner, reinforcing this impression, said, ‘Who was it who told you that Peter was at The Beeches on that Monday two weeks earlier, Superintendent?’

  Lambert watched both their faces as he said, ‘It was Everton Smith, who did gardening work for Laura Pritchard.’

  There was a pause. Then Joyce, tight-lipped and strained, said, ‘I know him: the black boy. I think he’s lying.’

  Lambert said, ‘Well, we shall find out when we talk to Peter, won’t we? You can see why it’s in his interests to clear himself, if he’s as innocent as you say.’

  Mark said, ‘What Joyce said is that she doesn’t think he was there on that Monday two weeks ago, that’s all.’ He seemed to be trying to distance them from Peter Brooke, as if he had decided now from his more objective standpoint that he might be a killer. Then he said, as if the possibility was occurring as a pleasant surprise to him, ‘Isn’t it quite likely that Smith is not only lying but also the killer of my mother-in-law? Have
you grilled him about that Monday in the way you propose to grill Peter?’

  Joyce looked at him, a little flush of gratitude colouring her white face for the first time in these exchanges. If they knew about this second death, neither of them had put a foot wrong in projecting their ignorance of it. Lambert said quietly, ‘We should very much like to question Everton Smith, Mr Warner. Unfortunately, we cannot interrogate a dead man.’

  Whatever they knew about the facts of this death, their reaction to the news of it was perfect, from the quick gasps of surprise to the fear which followed upon their faces. It was Joyce Warner, speaking as if the question was wrung from an unwilling throat, who said in a voice not much above a whisper, ‘How did he die?’

  ‘He was found hanging from a beam in a remote barn. Not more than fifty yards from the spot where Laura Pritchard’s weighted body was put into the Severn. He died last night.’ There was a long silence, punctuated bizarrely by the increasingly insistent infant burblings from beyond the wall. Lambert and Hook were old hands at this game, prepared to exploit the tenseness that hung like a tangible thing in the room.

  Eventually Lambert said, ‘Where were you last night, Mr Warner?’

  Warner ran his hands swiftly through his fair hair; his blue eyes were wide with an entreaty that he should be believed. He said without looking at his wife beside him, ‘We were here, both of us. You tend to be, when you have young children.’

  Hook, looking up calmly from his recording of their replies said, ‘Is there anyone outside the family who could confirm that for us?’

  Joyce Warner said, ‘I had a phone call from a friend, but it was quite late; after ten, I suppose. The only other thing is a kind of negative evidence: we can’t go out without a babysitter, and you won’t find anyone who sat for us last night.’

  She sounded very calm, as if she had been expecting this: perhaps their earlier questions about the whereabouts of her brother had alerted her to the possibility. They were vouching for each other, of course, as husband and wife often did. But they were not stupid; they must know that either one of them could have been out for most of the evening.

  At length, Mark Warner said in a dry voice, ‘Surely the probable explanation is that this gardener boy — Everton Smith, is it? — killed Laura and hanged himself in remorse, realizing that it was only a matter of time before you came to arrest him.’

  Lambert allowed himself a small, mirthless smile. ‘I said Mr Smith was found hanging. I didn’t say he hanged himself. I’m now quite certain, in fact, that he didn’t. He was killed quite deliberately, by the same person who murdered Mrs Pritchard.’

  It was the first time Lambert had put it into words. Bert Hook felt that he had known it from the moment when he had heard of Smith’s death.

  Chapter Eighteen

  It was the barman at the golf club who told Jim Pritchard about this new death.

  ‘Remember that black lad we had working on the course last year? Nice lad: always cheerful, he was. Good-looking, I suppose, in his own way.’ After this startling exhibition of enlightened liberalism, he carried on polishing a glass, his hands working automatically, his eyes on the face of the Chairman of the Greens Committee.

  ‘Remember him? I employ him, George! He does gardening at my house. Poor Laura had become quite attached to him.’

  A CID man would have noted his use of the present tense about the dead man; the distinction was rather wasted on George, who was full of his news. He said, with that mixture of awe and relish which the man in the street brings to melodrama, ‘Well, you won’t be employing him any more, I’m afraid. He’s dead, you see. Topped himself, last night.’

  ‘Good heavens! I was talking to him at the house only a couple of days ago. He should have been coming again on Friday.’

  George had had half an hour on his own before the bar opened to assimilate the death and ruminate about its implications. He said, ‘Do you think it means that young Everton —’ and then stopped. He must not put his conjectures to Mr Pritchard, who was too immediately involved in this with the death of his wife. Bad taste, that would be.

  Jim Pritchard did not seem to be upset by the barman’s gaffe. He said, ‘Where was this? At that place where he lived?’ He made it sound as though suicide was only to be expected in such a setting, the kind of thing which happened daily in Jackson Terrace.

  ‘No, it was miles from there; somewhere near the Severn, I think. He topped himself in an empty cottage, I believe.’ The truth had not yet been much distorted: as it passed through different mouths, it would become ever less accurate and more lurid.

  Jim Pritchard had not been playing golf, so that there had been no need to shower or change before he went into the bar. He was the first person in there when it opened; he was glad of that, for it meant that he had no need to listen to other reactions to the barman’s sensational revelations. He drank the single pint he had permitted himself on this warm morning, replying conventionally to George’s more careful speculations, leaving as soon as other members began to filter into the bar after their morning rounds.

  He drove out past the eighth hole, where an hour previously he had been inspecting the clearance of the tangle of scrub and saplings from behind the green. He waved to the course staff, now walking towards the green-keepers’ shed for their lunch break. Then he pressed the button and lowered the front windows of the Jaguar fully, savouring the smell of the warm, damp earth. He had enjoyed determining the positions of the pot-grown rhododendrons they were going to put in here. He could not admit it, of course, even to himself, but he sometimes relished walking round the course with his proprietorial air, making small decisions at the tactful prompting of the head green-keeper, more than he enjoyed his golf. Well, everyone knew what a frustrating game it could be when the ball refused to go into the hole.

  And he was quite ready to find the police car at his door. George’s news had prepared him for that. But he had rather expected Lambert and that burly sergeant who seemed to act as his amanuensis. He had not met the dark-haired, earnest young man who walked ramrod-straight over the gravel to meet him. ‘Detective Inspector Christopher Rushton,’ the man said, his delivery as stiff as his walk, offering the owner of this impressive house his full name, as if he was determined to assert his right to be here as formally as possible.

  They went inside to the privacy of the study. Jim realized that the young man — anyone around thirty was definitely young nowadays — was studying his behaviour closely. No doubt he had learned to treat grieving widowers with kid gloves, but it was a little disconcerting. Rushton appeared to be in no hurry: he waited until they were both seated before he said, ‘There have been further developments, Mr Pritchard.’

  Jim said, ‘I know. I heard at the golf club. I’m told that my gardener, Everton Smith, has hanged himself.’

  Irritation came and went as swiftly as a nervous tic from Rushton’s face. Such things should not get abroad until they were officially released, but he was getting used to living in an imperfect world. He ran his fingers lightly over the cuff of his immaculate dark suit and searched the tanned face opposite him for any information it might unwittingly offer. ‘When did you last see Mr Smith?’

  It was the first time Jim had ever heard the title afforded to the lithe young man who had tended the lawns outside his window. Perhaps death warranted a little dignity, however superficial. ‘Everton was last here on Monday. Your Superintendent Lambert and his sergeant came here to see him then.’

  ‘And you have not seen him since that day?’

  ‘No. I’ve just said that.’

  ‘To be precise, you told me when he was last here, sir. Have you any knowledge of his movements in the last two days?’

  Jim Pritchard told himself that he must not allow himself to lose patience with this jumped-up young man. Even that phrase was a warning as it came leaping into his mind; he must be more neutral, more careful of his attitudes. He did not wish to lose control of this exchange, whatever the temp
tations he was offered to do so. ‘Of course I don’t know where Smith has been in the last two days. He was a jobbing gardener here, no more.’

  ‘Mr Lambert saw him at the beginning of his work period here, I believe. No doubt you spoke to him later in the day?’

  ‘I talked to him briefly when I paid him, yes. He didn’t tell me he was planning to top himself, if that’s what you’re thinking.’ Jim’s white teeth flashed into a sneer beneath the two inches of black moustache. It was not very effective contempt, because scorn needs some sort of reaction if it is not to fall flat. He was sorry immediately that he had been drawn into the barman’s phrase: it made him sound uncaring. He sought out the obvious excuse. ‘Look, you can hardly expect me to be heartbroken to find that the young lout who killed my wife has decided to end his problems. If you ask me, we’re all well rid of him. Saves the expense of a trial, for a start.’

  ‘Oh, I think there’ll be a trial, Mr Pritchard. But not of Everton Smith, naturally. Did he give you any impression that he might be frightened? Any sense that he felt that his life might be in danger?’

  ‘No… No, he didn’t. Look, are you saying that young Smith —’

  ‘Do you know of anyone who might have wished to harm Mr Smith?’

  ‘No.’ Jim made a determined effort to reform his tone to one of concern. He could hear the gears changing himself as he said, ‘I didn’t know anything about his life away from here, Inspector. I don’t suppose I spoke to him more than two or three times throughout his time here. Laura could no doubt have told you a lot more than I can.’

  ‘So you will have no idea how he acquired a large sum of money at around the time of your wife’s death?’ Rushton made ignorance sound like a major sin of omission.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Where were you last night, Mr Pritchard?’

  Pritchard stroked his moustache, his mind working furiously. ‘I live alone here now. You wouldn’t expect me to have witnesses to my every movement. Fortunately, I was at the golf club for most of the evening.’