by Frank Smith
‘Tea would be nice,’ Tregalles said with a questioning glance at Molly, who nodded. ‘But perhaps we could take the tour first, because I’m sure I’ll have more questions once we’re through.’
‘Of course. And I’ll get those pictures for you. Where would you like to start?’
‘Perhaps a quick tour of the house first . . .?’ Tregalles suggested.
The house was larger than it looked from the outside. Older, too, as evidenced by such things as parquet flooring and wainscoting in the hallway, but extensively remodelled by the look of the size of the rooms. Walls had been moved or taken out entirely, doorways had been widened and, as Lisa pointed out, windows had been enlarged and replaced with double glazing. The feeling was one of openness, with each room seeming to flow into the next.
With Lisa Corbett looking on, Tregalles felt a little foolish as they looked under beds, opened cupboards, and checked things like the freezer – in fact anything big enough to hold the body of a man, but it had to be done and recorded.
There were a lot of pictures in the house, almost all of them glossy photographs of Lisa and her dancing partner, Ramon, in various poses, taken at competitions by the look of them, but Lisa had to dig out a photo album in order to produce a picture of her husband.
‘I was mistaken,’ she said apologetically. ‘This has to be at least three years old, but he hasn’t changed much since then.’
Tregalles studied the picture. ‘How tall is Mr Corbett?’ he asked. ‘It’s hard to tell in this picture.’
‘He’s about an inch shorter than me,’ Lisa told him, ‘and I’m five foot six. Why do you want to know?’
‘Just general information,’ Tregalles said vaguely. ‘I’ll have copies made and let you have the original back,’ he told her as he pocketed the picture.
Downstairs once again, Lisa opened the French doors leading to the terrace. ‘We have a gardener who comes in twice a week to keep things tidy,’ she explained as she led the way down the steps and across the lawn. ‘He does everything except look after the koi pond. That’s Roger’s domain. He designed and built it; he even did all the stonework himself.’ Lisa’s tone softened. ‘He’s very proud of that, and he can spend hours fiddling about with the pump that keeps the water aerated, checking the temperature, dead-heading the water lilies, and experimenting with different underwater plants. Unfortunately, the blooms aren’t at their best right now because of the heat, but there are still a few of the hardier ones to be seen. But do come and see the koi.’
‘I understand that herons can be a nuisance,’ Molly said as they descended the steps to the lawn. ‘Have you had a problem with them?’
‘Thankfully, no. They don’t seem to come our way, which is fortunate, because some people have a lot of trouble with them raiding their ponds.’
The pond was larger than it had looked from the terrace. Irregular in shape, it was about thirty feet long by about twelve or thirteen feet wide. Lily pads and reeds covered almost half of the surface at the far end.
Tregalles caught the glint of white and gold and bent closer to peer into the depths. ‘Now, that’s a big fish!’ he declared, ‘but he’s hard to see down there. Are they all that big?’
‘Most of them are,’ Lisa told him, ‘and you’re right, they are hard to see on a day like today. They stay deep when it’s this hot, although they are shaded by the trees during the hottest part of the day. Roger treats them like pets, and he’s been quite concerned about them since this heatwave began, so I’m surprised he hasn’t . . .’ Lisa stopped suddenly in mid-sentence.
‘I should have realized,’ she said huskily. ‘I should have known he wouldn’t have gone off and left them during this heatwave. He even talked about building a sort of lattice-work arbour over the far end to give the fish a bit more protection. I do hope nothing has happened to him.’
‘There’s nothing to be gained by blaming yourself,’ Tregalles said soothingly as he stood up. ‘But perhaps we should go back to the house. I would like to take a closer look at Mr Corbett’s office.’
‘Of course. Sorry if I’ve wasted your time, bringing you out here,’ she said, ‘but you did say you wanted to have a good look round.’
Molly, who had wandered to the far end of the pond to take a closer look at the few remaining blooms that hadn’t wilted beneath the afternoon sun, stayed where she was when Tregalles called to her. ‘I don’t know about herons,’ she called back, ‘but it looks to me as if something has been having a go at your fish, Mrs Corbett. Have you seen all these dead plants up here?’
Lisa groaned. ‘Oh, no,’ she said worriedly as she hurried to join Molly. ‘When did that happen, I wonder? Roger will be furious if he’s lost any of his fish.’
Tregalles joined them. ‘Well, it certainly wasn’t a heron that made this mess,’ he declared. Something went in from the side by the look of it. Do you have a dog, Mrs Corbett?’
Lisa shook her head vigorously. ‘No, we don’t,’ she said, ‘and we’re fenced in all the way round, so . . .’
‘Maybe we can get a better look if we get rid of this dead stuff,’ he said, plucking a long-handled skimming net from its rack at the end of the pond.
‘Oh, please, there’s no need to do that now,’ Lisa told him. ‘I can do it later.’
‘No trouble,’ the Sergeant told her as he scooped out leaves and long, trailing stems. He pushed the net deeper to get beneath more dead leaves. The net caught. He tugged gently, then harder . . .
Lisa stared. Her hand flew to her mouth. ‘Oh, my God!’ she whispered. ‘Oohhh, no!’
SEVENTEEN
‘About all I can tell you at this point is that the man has been in the water for something like a couple of days,’ said Starkie, the police pathologist. ‘Right now the temperature of the water at the surface is seventy-four degrees, but this end of the pool is six feet deep, and the further down you go, the cooler it gets, so I can’t come any closer than that until I’ve had him on the table.’
‘Two days,’ said Paget thoughtfully. ‘I saw him myself Tuesday afternoon, so if he has been in the water for two days, he must have died sometime late Tuesday afternoon or that same evening. Now what I need to know is how he died?’
‘I should think drowning would be one possibility,’ Starkie said, straight-faced, ‘but there are one or two bruises on him, so you will have to wait for the results of the autopsy – which won’t be until tomorrow afternoon at the earliest,’ he added before Paget had a chance to ask.
Paget had been alerted by Tregalles within minutes of the discovery of the body of Roger Corbett, and he’d driven out to the house to take charge of the investigation himself.
There was always the possibility that Corbett’s death had been an accident. If, as had been suggested, Corbett had been drinking heavily, he might have driven home, then gone down to feed or look at his fish and simply toppled in and drowned. But considering the timing, Paget preferred to treat it as a suspicious death.
Inspector Charlie Dobbs, the man in charge of the scenes of crime investigators, had been notified, and his team was just now arriving. The house and garden had been declared a crime scene, and cordoned off by uniformed Constables who had been called in to assist, and Molly Forsythe was in the house with Lisa.
‘It may not mean anything,’ Tregalles said as he and Paget walked back to the house, ‘but I don’t think Roger Corbett was the last person to drive his Volvo. According to his wife, Corbett is five foot five, yet when I checked the car in the driveway, I found the seat and rear-view mirror were set for someone taller.’
‘So someone else could have brought him home.’
‘That’s right. The next question is: how did they get back to town, assuming that’s where they came from in the first place? Miss Sinclair said she called the cab companies, but they had no record of being called to this address.’
‘Better check with them just the same,’ Paget told him, ‘because they may not have spent much time looking when a me
mber of the public called. And have Forensic go over the car. Then, tomorrow, I want you to start at Corbett’s office, find out when he left, and if he made any phone calls before he left, then find out where he went after that.
‘Now, what about Mrs Corbett? How did she react when you first pulled Corbett’s body to the surface?’
‘She was pretty shaken up,’ Tregalles said. ‘It wasn’t a pleasant sight, with his soggy clothes and him all covered in reeds and muck. Well, you saw him yourself, so you know what I mean. It was enough to put anybody off.’
‘Is it possible that her reaction could have been from the shock of having his body discovered when she thought it was safely at the bottom of the pond?’
‘Could have been, I suppose,’ Tregalles said, but he sounded doubtful. ‘Although, to tell you the truth, I was concentrating on the body, so I wasn’t paying that much attention to Mrs Corbett. Molly may be able to tell you more about that. She helped Mrs Corbett to the bench in the corner, and sat with her for a few minutes.’
‘You said it was Mrs Corbett who suggested you look at the pond in the first place?’
‘That’s right. So why would she do that if she knew Corbett’s body was in the pond? Mind you,’ he continued slowly, ‘now I think about it, she did keep us talking at the shallow end, and we would never have known there was anything wrong if Molly hadn’t gone to the deep end to take a closer look at the flowers.’
‘So it’s possible that Mrs Corbett steered you down here deliberately so you would feel that she was being cooperative in letting you have a good look round, but kept you away from the deep end of the pool?’
Tregalles screwed up his face. ‘Possible,’ he conceded grudgingly, ‘but I don’t think so. She certainly didn’t show any signs of nervousness while we were there, and she didn’t try to stop Molly from going down the other end.’
‘Perhaps she didn’t think Forsythe would notice anything was amiss,’ Paget countered. ‘In fact, it probably took those leaves a day or so to turn that colour, so Mrs Corbett may not have been aware that there was any need to be concerned.’
Paget looked at his watch as they reached the steps to the terrace. ‘I’m going inside to talk to Mrs Corbett,’ he said, ‘but I’d like you to stay out here and work with Charlie’s people. They won’t be finished here tonight, so get hold of Ormside and tell him we’ll need someone out here on night watch.’
Inside the house, Paget found Molly and Lisa Corbett in the kitchen. Lisa was sitting at the table, head lowered, eyes closed, while Molly stood at the counter pouring boiling water into an oversized teapot.
‘Tea’s gone cold, sir, so I’m making a fresh pot,’ she told Paget. ‘Would you like a cup?’
‘Yes, I would,’ he said. ‘Thank you, Constable.’
Lisa opened her eyes and acknowledged his presence with a brief glance before fixing her gaze on her clasped hands resting on the table in front of her.
‘I know this is the worst possible time, Mrs Corbett,’ Paget said apologetically as he drew up a chair, ‘but I would like to ask you a few questions, if you feel up to it?’
Lisa didn’t look as if she’d been crying, but her face was pale and drawn, and she no longer looked as youthful as she had earlier in the day.
‘Of course,’ she said in a low voice. ‘What would you like to know?’
‘You told us earlier today that it was close to midnight when you got home after driving back from Scarborough,’ he said. ‘Was Mr Corbett’s car in the driveway when you arrived?’
‘Yes, it was, which is why I assumed he was in the house.’
‘Has the car been moved since then?’
‘No. But why are you asking questions about the car?’
‘Because the seat and rear-view mirror appear to be set to accommodate a taller driver,’ Paget told her. ‘Did you have any reason to move the seat back or adjust the position of the mirror?’
‘No, of course not. Why would I?’
‘No reason that I can think of,’ Paget said, ‘which makes me wonder if someone else drove your husband home.’
Molly brought a tray to the table and slid a steaming cup of tea in front of each of them before sitting down at the end of the table and taking out her notebook.
Lisa’s frown deepened as she picked up her cup. ‘I suppose that’s possible,’ she said, ‘but I don’t know who would do that other than Irene, and she says she didn’t. Even if she did, she’s no bigger than I am, as you know.’
‘You came in by the front door, I take it. Was it locked?’
‘No, it wasn’t locked, but that wasn’t unusual. Roger was inclined to be a bit careless about such things.’
‘Mrs Corbett told us that she found a bottle of whisky, a glass, and an empty bag of crisps on the coffee table,’ said Molly.
‘They were on the coffee table just where Roger had left them,’ Lisa explained, ‘and I do so hate that, so I cleared up, washed the glass and poured the rest of the whisky down the sink.’ Lisa’s eyes were moist as she looked at Paget. ‘Roger must have gone out to look at his fish before going to bed, and fallen in,’ she said huskily.
‘When did you first realize that your husband wasn’t in the house?’
‘When I went to call him just before I left the house to go shopping yesterday morning.’
‘Didn’t that surprise you?’
‘No, not really. I assumed he was with Irene. The fact that the car was there and Roger wasn’t didn’t have any significance until Irene phoned to ask if he was here, then rang again this morning to say no one had seen him since Tuesday afternoon.’
‘Tell me,’ he said, ‘who feeds the fish when you and your husband are away?’
‘The fish?’ The question seemed to take Lisa by surprise, but she answered it. ‘We’re rarely both away at the same time,’ she said. ‘Even when Roger’s staying with Irene, he always comes back up here each day to see to the fish.’
‘How often do they have to be fed?’
‘In this heat, Roger’s been feeding them twice a day.’
‘And, since he wasn’t here, did you feed them yourself yesterday?’
‘Yes, I did,’ she said in a low voice.
‘And again, today, I presume?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Did you notice any dead leaves on the water at that time?’
Lisa looked uncomfortable as she shook her head. ‘They’re always fed from the shallow end,’ she said, ‘so I didn’t go to the other end.’ She looked troubled as she sat forward to lend emphasis to what she was about to say. ‘You must understand, Chief Inspector, I had no idea at that point that anything like . . .’ She broke off to take a deep breath. ‘That anything had happened to Roger. I know how this must sound now, but at the time I was so annoyed with him for going off without a word to anyone, that I went down and fed the fish and came straight back to the house. I should have gone down the other end of the pond to check the temperature of the water and the filtration system – Roger keeps a running log on everything to do with the fish – but I didn’t. That was probably what Roger was doing when he fell in and couldn’t get out,’ she ended huskily.
‘If that is what happened,’ said Paget neutrally.
Lisa looked at him. ‘Just what are you suggesting, Chief Inspector?’ she asked.
‘I’m not sure myself,’ he said slowly, ‘but when I questioned your husband the other day, I had the distinct impression that he knew more than he was telling me, and that makes me suspicious when he is found dead within hours of my talking to him. I’m not a strong believer in coincidence, Mrs Corbett, so if there is anything you know; anything you can tell me that might shed light on the way your husband died, now is the time to tell me.’
The expression on Lisa Corbett’s face hardened, and her voice was brittle when she said, ‘If you’re referring to what you told me this afternoon about this Grant boy and what happened to Kevin Taylor’s father all those years ago, all I can tell you is that I
know nothing about those things because I didn’t live here then, and I’m quite sure that Roger would never have been involved in any way. So, if you are suggesting that his drowning in the pond wasn’t an accident, and he came back here and killed himself, I think the whole idea is ludicrous. Believe me, Chief Inspector, if Roger intended to commit suicide, which I don’t think for a single second is true, the koi pond is the last place he would choose.’
‘The last place most people would choose, I should think,’ Paget told her as he stood up and pushed his chair back. ‘And I agree with you, because, like you, I don’t think your husband committed suicide. I can’t prove it yet, but I believe he was murdered.’
EIGHTEEN
Friday, July 17th
Paget came in early the following morning, and went straight upstairs to Alcott’s office, where he settled down to tackle the paperwork that had been slowly but steadily mounting in the in tray. Fiona had been a great help, and he was grateful for it, but there were some things he had to deal with himself before he could let them leave the office.
By the time Fiona arrived at her usual time of ten minutes to eight, he’d managed to reduce the pile by roughly a third simply by tackling the easy ones first. ‘I have to go down for the morning briefing,’ he told her, ‘but I should be back within the hour.’ He handed her a sheaf of papers. ‘I’ve stuck notes on this lot to say what I’d like done with them, but if you have any questions, just hold them until I return. All right?’
Fiona riffled through the papers, then looked at him over the top of her glasses. She reminded him of a schoolteacher assessing his homework while he waited apprehensively for the verdict.
