Model Murder

by Nancy Buckingham

  “I did once see them together away from here. It was one evening about six weeks ago, a few days before the hotel was opened. My boyfriend was driving me to visit his married sister who lives at Larkhill. Just before we reached the village, we werepassing an old cottage and I saw Miss Saxon and Mr. Berger coming out of the front door. Both their cars were parked in the driveway round at the side.”

  “Did they realise you’d seen them?”

  “Oh, yes. You see, I gave them a wave ... automatically, without really thinking. Next morning Miss Saxon explained to me that Mr. Berger was having the cottage modernised for a relative of his, and he’d asked her to give him some advice on the decor.”

  One of those little nuggets of gold, Kate. Why the heck hadn’t this emerged earlier? Still, she had it now. After getting June to establish the date and time of this encounter as accurately as possible, Kate let her go. Sergeant Boulter was fully occupied with the French connection, so she called in Inspector Massey and explained the latest development to him.

  “I want to organise a house-to-house in the area around Yew Tree Cottage in Larkhill. Will you set it up for me, Frank? I’m looking for corroborative evidence that Berger and Corinne Saxon used that cottage for their rendezvous. As things stand, Berger could still insist that Corinne was telling June Elsted nothing but the truth about going there with him to give advice about the decor. But if those two went to the cottage on a number of occasions, someone in the local community must surely have seen them.”

  * * * *

  Yves Labrosse’s secretary, Deidre Lancing, seemed even more upset about his death than the receptionist was. It was clear she’d applied fresh make-up before coming over to the Incident Room to see Kate, but she hadn’t been able to conceal the fact that she’d been weeping. Her eyes were reddened and puffy, and the droopy-lensed glasses gave her a ludicrous appearance.

  “I want you to tell me about this morning, Mrs. Lancing.” Kate began. “Everything you can remember. Were you already in the office when Mr. Labrosse made his first appearance of the day?”

  “Yes,” she whispered. “I start at nine, and he came in just before nine-thirty.”

  “What did he say?”

  “Just ... just good morning, as usual. He glanced through the mail, and took a few letters that would need his attention into his own office. I heard him on the phone once or twice—I don’t know who to—then after a while he brought out a tape for me to type up for him. Answers to the letters and so on.”

  “Just routine correspondence, was it?”

  “Yes.”

  “All the same, I’d like to read those letters in case they contain anything I ought to know about. Now, the phone calls he made ... you said you didn’t know who they were to. But wouldn’t he have asked you to get them for him?”

  She shook her head. “Mr. Labrosse always preferred to dial himself. And internal calls you dial and receive direct.”

  “So he might have been talking to someone in the hotel?”

  “Yes, he could have.”

  “When he came out of the office the final time, did he say anything to you?”

  Deidre Lancing lifted her spectacles delicately. “Just that he wouldn’t be away long, if anyone wanted him.”

  “But he didn’t say where he was going?”

  “No, he didn’t.”

  “Was that unusual? Did he normally keep you informed where he’d be?”

  “Well, yes. Normally. In case he was wanted.”

  “What was his demeanour?”

  “How do you mean, his demeanour?”

  “His mood, then. Did he seem pleased, or angry, or regretful ... what?”

  “Quite pleased, I suppose. He was sort of smiling to himself.”

  “And that was the last you saw of Mr. Labrosse?”

  Her eyes pooled with tears, and she bowed her head. “Yes.”

  Kate asked the same question she’d already put to June Elsted. “Was Mr. Labrosse popular among the staff here?”

  She raised her head again, surprised and to a degree hostile. “He was the manager. Most of them don’t understand that someone in his position has to insist on proper discipline. Make what might seem like harsh decisions sometimes.”

  “So a number of the staff resented his authority?”

  “I suppose you could put it like that.”

  “Did he make any real enemies among them?”

  “No.” she protested. “Just ... well, you always get grumblers, don’t you?”

  “Anyone in particular?”

  The woman shook her head quickly.

  “Was there any special incident that caused an upset among the staff?”

  Again a negative response, and Kate knew there was no point in pressing this line of questioning at the moment. She said smoothly, “I’d like you to think about it, Mrs. Lancing, and maybe you’ll remember something that could be significant. Meanwhile, what was your personal opinion of Mr. Labrosse?”

  “Well ...” She was instantly on her guard, like a woman who knew it would be only too easy to betray her feelings. She fancied Labrosse, Kate. That explained the depth of her distress.

  “He was wonderful at his job. I ... I admired him for that, of course. He could easily have run the hotel single-handed, without Miss Saxon, but I doubt if she could have done half as well without him.”

  Kate decided to rub in salt to see what it produced. You couldn’t always be nice in this job!

  “Was there a woman in his life, Mrs. Lancing?”

  “No.” She was wounded. “Nothing like that.”

  “Come now, Mr. Labrosse was a good-looking man, in the prime of life. It’s only natural to suppose that he must have been having a sexual relationship.”

  “Well, you’re wrong.” Acid resentment now. “He wasn’t the sort of man who spent his time chasing after women.”

  Which statement—quite unintentionally, Kate felt sure—provided her with a new line of thought. She made her approach cautiously.

  “He must surely have had some friends,” she said in a casual tone. “Was he friendly with any of the men on the staff? Or any man who wasn’t on the staff, come to that?”

  “Not exactly friendly.” Sullen, but quite unsuspecting.

  “What do you mean by ‘not exactly’?”

  Deidre Lancing shrugged. “It wasn’t what you could call friendly, but it always annoyed me the way that man Larkin used to barge in to see Mr. Labrosse whenever he pleased, and never got put in his place. I suppose it was because he’s the admiral’s personal steward and wasn’t under Mr. Labrosse’s supervision.”

  Labrosse and Larkin? Smooth and rough. Well, it happened, and propinquity accounted for a lot. This certainly explained a few things. Kate had no wish to alert the secretary to the direction of her thinking. She thanked Mrs. Lancing pleasantly for her help, and the woman departed.

  Alone, Kate pondered her next move. She recalled that Admiral Fortescue hadn’t given a prompt reply when she’d asked if he could vouch for Larkin’s presence in his private quarters during the period in which Labrosse was killed. He and his surly manservant probably didn’t spend much of their time together in the same room, so had the admiral merely been assuming Larkin’s presence elsewhere in the suite? It was scarcely conceivable that he would knowingly cover up for the man.

  Straightaway, she went across to the hotel to talk to the admiral again. As before, Larkin admitted her and stood hovering, making no move to leave the room. But this time Kate dismissed him.

  “I wish to speak to Admiral Fortescue alone.”

  He departed sullenly. Kate waited until the door had closed behind him, then said, “When I asked you earlier, sir, you confirmed that Larkin had been here in your private quarters during the period in which Mr. Labrosse had been killed.”

  “I did, Chief Inspector.”

  “Presumably he wasn’t in this room the whole time, so how can you be sure that he didn’t leave the suite for a while?”

&nb
sp; The admiral regarded her with dismay. “Surely you don’t suspect Larkin of ... of ...”

  “I’m just trying to clarify a point, sir. Kindly give me your answer to the question.”

  He shook his head in sorrowful resignation. “Larkin was in and out of this room. Part of the time I was taking my morning bath, and he knows I always require him to be within call then, in case ... well, in case I should get into difficulty. And for the rest, I could hear him moving about next door, vacuuming and so forth. Larkin was here, Chief Inspector. He was definitely here. So please put out of your mind completely any suspicion you may be harbouring about him.”

  “I see. Would you ring for Larkin, please sir?”

  The manservant answered the bell at once, and Kate said, “I want to see you in my office over at the squash courts, Mr. Larkin. In ten minutes.”

  “What for, miss?” he demanded truculently.

  “I’ll explain when you get there.”

  The admiral looked at her unhappily. “Chief Inspector, please. I really must protest.”

  “I have a few more questions to put to Mr. Larkin,” she told him, “and the Incident Room is the best place. I won’t keep him any longer than necessary.”

  Ten minutes later, when Larkin was shown into her office, he looked badly shaken. He sat awkwardly in the chair facing her across the desk, while his stubby fingers nervously smoothed down the few wispy hairs across his balding head. Kate guessed that he’d topped up from the whisky bottle for courage.

  She began, “Did you know Mr. Labrosse before he came to work at Streatfield Park?”

  “No, I didn’t. Why should I have done?”

  “Yet in the short time he was here, you two became very close. How did that arise?”

  He glared at her. “Don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Kate let out an audible sigh. “Please don’t let’s waste time fencing with each other. You and Labrosse had a sexual relationship, right?”

  Larkin looked as if he were about to deny it, and for an instant Kate feared she might have read the signs all wrong. But then with a shrug of his hefty shoulders, he said gruffly, “That’s not a crime, is it?”

  “No, it isn’t a crime. And I’m not trying to make any kind of moral judgment. It’s facts I’m interested in. Just facts.”

  “Can’t see it matters to you, one way or t’other.”

  “Of course it matters. Yves Labrosse has been murdered, and I’m looking for someone with a motive. Did you two quarrel?”

  Kate sat back in her chair, giving him time to consider his position. It took a full minute. His voice, when it came, was harsh and cracked.

  “I never killed Yves. Why the Christ should I want to kill him? Okay, him and me got together, I’m not saying different. Right from when he first arrived ... we sort of clicked. But to try and make out I had a motive for killing Yves, that’s crazy.”

  “Are you saying that you and he never quarrelled?”

  “Not what you could call quarrelled. We had the odd ... well, difference of opinion. Who doesn’t?”

  “What sort of things were these differences of opinion about?”

  Hesitation. “Yves was a cut above me, and he bloody didn’t let me forget it. He’d proper bawl me out sometimes for what he called not remembering my place.”

  “You can’t have liked that much.”

  Sid Larkin said with a flash of spirit, “When you’re just a bloody nobody, you have to get used to it.”

  This wasn’t getting anywhere. Kate switched tactics. From preliminary reports she knew that a mass of fingerprints had been found in Labrosse’s room ... a number of them the victim’s own, the remainder as yet unidentified. But the murder weapon itself, the silver-gilt candlestick, had been very carefully wiped clean of all prints, just as she’d suspected.

  “I shall require you to give us your fingerprints,” she said, “for comparison with prints found in Labrosse’s room.”

  For a moment or two Larkin looked startled. Then he gave an offhand shrug.

  “Well, my prints would be there, wouldn’t they? I’m not denying that I’ve often been in his room.”

  She tried a bluff. “Suppose we find they match with prints on the murder weapon?”

  Larkin snorted. “I don’t even know what the murder weapon was.”

  “Don’t you? Very well, I’ll tell you. It was a candlestick. One of a pair from the mantelpiece.”

  “Well, then, it couldn’t have my prints on it, because I’ve never touched those things.”

  Damn, it hadn’t worked! There was nothing solid enough to hold him on. She needed above all to break the alibi that he’d been with the admiral when Labrosse was killed.

  “Very well, Mr. Larkin, that’ll be all for now. I’ll be wanting to see you again, though.”

  He rose to his feet, his face and balding skull flushed red with anger.

  “I never killed Yves,” he spat. “And you’ve no cause to treat me like this. It’d be nice and easy for you to nail me, wouldn’t it? Oh, yes, all wrapped up nice and quick, case solved, and never mind the poor sod you get sent down for something he didn’t do.”

  * * * *

  Kate managed to get to the hospital that evening for a quick visit. Thankfully, she found her aunt was continuing to make good progress. She was away from the Incident Room less than an hour all told, but when she arrived back Frank Massey warned her that Superintendent Joliffe had turned up and was waiting in her office.

  Had taken possession of her office, more like. She found Jolly’s large frame overflowing the chair behind her desk with his long legs, crossed at the ankles, projecting through the knee-hole. On his face was an expression of held-in impatience. Kate guessed that he’d hurriedly adopted this pose on hearing her voice outside the door.

  “So here you are at last, Mrs. Maddox.”

  “I just popped out to visit my aunt in hospital, sir.” Why the hell did she let him put her on the defensive? “Surely you were informed, when you arrived?”

  “Yes, yes. I trust the good lady is making satisfactory progress?”

  “Thank you, sir. She is.”

  “The same cannot be said for you, alas. Rather than solve one murder, Chief Inspector, you have landed us with a second one. The ACC is most put out.”

  “I’m sorry about that, sir. I didn’t do it on purpose.”

  But humour of any kind was wasted on Jolly Joliffe. She proceeded to outline the facts about Labrosse’s death, his relationship with Larkin, and the information she had gathered from Richard Gower.

  “Hmm. This friend of yours, Gower, is quite a mine of information, isn’t he?”

  For the simple reason that he had once been Corinne Saxon’s lover. Skate over it, Kate. “I certainly have reason to be grateful to him in this case.”

  “No doubt. I trust, Mrs. Maddox, that you don’t allow your gratitude to lead you into making him some sort of quid pro quo.”

  “Perhaps you’d explain that remark, sir.”

  The superintendent seemed unaware of the dangerous note in her voice. Or just ignored it. “The man is a journalist, after all, albeit only the editor of the local rag. It behooves all of us in the Force to be constantly on the alert to avoid revealing more than we properly should to the media.”

  “I very much resent the implication that I might do that,” Kate said heatedly. “If a male officer of my rank had a friend who was a journalist, would you consider it necessary to issue such an elementary warning to him?”

  Jolly stared at her in amazement, and his thoughts were transparent to Kate. You just never know where the devil you are with a woman. They’re liable to fly off the handle at the most trivial things.

  He reduced the tension with a diplomatic little laugh. “Good heavens, you mustn’t take everything so personally, you know. Now, how about that Berger fellow? From your earlier reports it seemed you had him earmarked as the Saxon woman’s killer.”

  “It may still turn out that he is,
sir, but the Labrosse murder has thrown everything back into the melting pot.”

  “Yes, yes, yes,” he said impatiently, then lumbered to his feet. “You’re tying up a high proportion of our manpower resources on this investigation, Chief Inspector. So for God’s sake bring me some answers soon. Very soon.”

  Kate remained at her desk until nearly eleven that night. But she had to wait until next morning for a breakthrough that promised to carry her forward.

  Chapter Twelve

  Frank Massey followed Kate into her office when she arrived at the Incident Room on Wednesday morning. He was carrying a bulky envelope, holding it by one corner between his finger and thumb. He put it down on the desk for her to see, address side up.

  “This was in the mail delivered to the hotel this morning. We’ve been monitoring all their incoming post, of course.”

  Kate looked without touching, though by now the envelope would have passed through too many hands to yield much under forensic examination. The name and address was typed. Mr. Yves Labrosse, Streatfield Park Hotel. Above it, in capitals and underlined, was PERSONAL AND PRIVATE.

  “Posted locally at twelve noon,” she commented.

  With great care she slit the envelope open with a paperknife and slid out a wad of used banknotes in an elastic band. Fifty-pound notes. Watched by Frank Massey, she counted them. Forty-seven. Making two thousand three hundred and fifty pounds. Kate held one up to the light from the window, checking for forgery. It seemed okay.

  “What the hell was Labrosse up to, Kate?”

  “Some kind of crooked dealing, for sure. Blackmail? But you’d expect that to be a round sum, wouldn’t you? Payment for services rendered? A percentage of a nice fat contract pushed someone’s way, perhaps?”

  “I’d go for that one,” said Massey.

  But Kate shook her head. “I don’t really see it, Frank. With Corinne Saxon in the picture, I doubt if Labrosse was allowed much influence in the placing of major contracts, and it would need to be a very fat contract to merit this level of payola.” She ruminated. “I suppose it’s just possible that Labrosse acted fast and fixed this after Corinne’s death, but ... no, I don’t think that’s the answer.”