Murder in the Cotswolds

by Nancy Buckingham

“Did you know Mrs. Larimer?” she shot at him.

  “It was my business to know her. She was a local V.I.P.”

  “How well did you know her?”

  “Not at all well. Just slightly.”

  “When was the last time you saw her?”

  “Oh, not for ...” He paused, then corrected himself. “Sunday lunchtime, actually, in the Wagon and Horses.”

  “That’s in Chipping Bassett, ma’am,” Boulter put in.

  “She and her husband were there, chatting with a couple of friends.”

  “Who were they?” Kate asked.

  “Er ... Carstairs, I think their name is. They live at Larksworth.”

  “Did you speak to Mrs. Larimer?”

  “Just nodded, that’s all.”

  “How about Mr. Latimer? Do you know him any better than you knew his wife?”

  “What are you getting at now?”

  “Just answer the question if you please, sir,” said Boulter.

  “How well do I know Matthew Latimer compared to how well did I know his wife?” Gower’s tone was ponderously ironic. “Let me see now ... a few percentage points better, I’d say. We’ve stood each other drinks a couple of times. His firm puts an ad in the Gazette once in a while. I’ve also seen him on the golf course now and then. Never played him, though. Is that detailed enough for you, Detective Chief Inspector Maddox?”

  Time to get rough, Kate. “Mr. Gower, I put it to you that yesterday evening you drove your car to Reedbank Farm Lane, and there you waited for Mrs. Latimer to cross the lane on her habitual walk. That when she appeared you drove your car straight at her, running her down and killing her.”

  Silence. At the same instant the distant thumping of the printing machine downstairs ceased, as if that, too, was holding its breath. Then Richard Gower exploded.

  “My God, you’re trying to make out it was murder. And you’re trying to pin it on me.” He leaned towards her aggressively. “Get this straight, I didn’t go out all evening and my car was parked at home. Whatever happened to Mrs. Latimer, it was someone else in some other car.”

  “It was your car, Mr. Gower, no question. Forensic examination will establish that beyond any possible doubt.”

  He slumped back in his seat, running a hand through his thick hair. “You’re serious about this, aren’t you? But how the hell could it have been my car?”

  “That’s what we’re here to find out.” Kate deliberately made herself comfortable in her chair to convey that she was prepared to spend a long time with him if necessary. She glanced at Boulter to take over, and approved the smooth way he did it.

  “Mr. Gower, you’re asking us to believe that you spent the entire evening at home. What can you offer us by way of corroboration? Did you have any visitors? Any phone calls either incoming or outgoing?”

  “Nobody came round, I can tell you that. Phone calls ... yes, there was one. Jim Connor, my advertisement manager, rang to tell me he’d just clinched an order for a full-page ad in next week’s edition. We were a bit underbooked, and he knew I’d be pleased.”

  “What time was this, sir?”

  “God knows. No, wait a bit, it was just after I got home. I was fixing myself a drink, and—”

  “Before nine o’clock, would that be right?”

  “I suppose so. Yes.”

  The sergeant noted the caller’s name and the time, to be checked on later. But it wasn’t going to help clear Gower of murder to verify that he’d been at home that early in the evening. “Anything else, sir?”

  “Well, yes. I tried to ring a friend of mine. I knew he’d be expecting me to drop in at the local later on, and I wanted to tell him it didn’t look as if I’d be able to make it. That would have been about nine-thirty.”

  “Tried to, you said.”

  “He didn’t answer, so he must have been out. Why should I have to account for my movements like this, when I’ve done nothing?”

  “The sergeant has already explained your rights to you, Mr. Gower. You’re under no obligation to tell us anything.”

  “And if I don’t, you’ll be all the more suspicious.”

  Kate didn’t reply. She’d come here this morning as certain as she could be that they had tracked down their murderer. Nothing had transpired to change her opinion; indeed, it was only strengthened by the feeble alibi Richard Gower had given them. She felt a flash of anger against him that he couldn’t put up a more plausible defence than this.

  “I’d like you to provide us with a written statement, Mr. Gower.” Her voice came out harsh and uncompromising. “At a police station would be best. Can you come with us now?”

  “I’ve told you, I’m tied up all day. I have to put the paper to bed.”

  “Very well. Shall we make it tomorrow morning? Ten o’clock? Either here or at Chipping Bassett.”

  He shrugged. “This is really ridiculous. You insist it was my car, but I happen to know that it’s just not possible.”

  “Could you have left the car unlocked, sir?” asked Boulter.

  “You mean ... ?” Gower checked himself and shook his head. “No, I definitely locked it. I remember I had to go out to the car for my briefcase, which I’d forgotten to take in with me. The car was locked, and I relocked it.”

  The sergeant had offered Gower a chance to ease himself off the hook, but he hadn’t taken it. Was that innocence, or cleverness? It was just conceivable, Kate reflected, that someone else had borrowed his car for the killing. Had seen it parked outside his home ... had risked it not being missed for long enough ... had happened to have a key that fitted (the lock had not been tampered with). It stretched credibility too far.

  But you want it to be true, Kate, don’t kid yourself.

  “I’m afraid we’ll have to hold your car for the time being,” she said in an even tone.

  “You mean I can’t use it? For how long?”

  “We need to give it an exhaustive examination, and that takes time. I’d advise you to borrow or hire a car.”

  “It’s me who pays, I suppose?”

  Kate stood up to leave. “You have more serious things to worry about than the cost of hiring a car, Mr. Gower. Don’t forget, ten o’clock tomorrow morning. Where do you prefer?”

  “Oh, it had better be here in Marlingford.”

  “Very well, I’ll make arrangements. While you’re there, we can take your fingerprints.”

  “And if you find my fingerprints on my own car, your brilliant police mind will grab that as certain proof that I committed murder.”

  “No. But if you want us to believe that someone else must have driven your car for the killing, you’d better hope we find some fingerprints that don’t belong to you.”

  In the Market Square, when the two police officers reached it, the Volvo had been taken away. A red Maestro had snatched the vacant space.

  * * * *

  The scent of honeysuckle hung on the warm night air as Tim Boulter dropped Kate off at the garden gate of her aunt’s cottage. It was well past eleven o’clock.

  “My supper will be dried to cinders and the wife’ll be as mad as hell,” he forecast morosely. “Nothing new in that, though.”

  “Blame it on me,” Kate suggested as she stepped out of the car.

  He chuckled without amusement. “You reckon that would help? Night, ma’am.”

  “Night, Tim.”

  “What time d’you call this, girl?” scolded Felix from the living room as Kate let herself in.

  “Give me a drink and don’t nag.” Kate flopped into an armchair.

  “It’s all over town that it was murder,” said Felix, pouring whisky for them both. “I know I shouldn’t ask, but ...”

  “Then don’t ask.” Kate softened that with a wry smile. “Instead, tell me what people are saying.”

  “That it was Richard Gower’s car that killed Belle Latimer. And that the police suspect him and her husband of being in league to get rid of her for her money.”

  “Good God!”
>
  Her aunt sent Kate a drilling look over her whisky glass. “You don’t deny any of it, I notice.”

  “Listen, Felix, this conversation is strictly one-way traffic. From you to me. Get it?”

  Felix nodded, and a few more loose tendrils escaped from the pins. “I don’t believe a word of the gossip myself, of course. Matthew Latimer wouldn’t do a terrible thing like that.”

  “And Richard Gower?” Kate held her breath for the answer.

  “Search me. He seems a nice enough chap. Still, if the two of them weren’t in it together, it’s hard to imagine why Richard Gower should want to kill her for his own sake. Strange about his car, though.”

  Kate swallowed her drink and stood up. “Time I hit the hay. I’m zonked.”

  “Will it be in the papers tomorrow?” asked Felix.

  “Bound to be. The nationals have been sniffing around all day. But we’re trying to play it cool for the time being.”

  “Well, one thing’s for sure ... the Gazette won’t be splashing it on the front page this week. Not with the owner himself being a suspect.”

  Kate didn’t reply. Wearily, she made her way up the narrow stairs and got herself to bed. She’d had an exhausting day, but she didn’t feel in the least like sleeping.

  Chapter Four

  Kate had not intended going to Marlingford herself for the taking of Gower’s statement. An experienced DC had been briefed for the job. However, out of the ocean of data already collected in the murder enquiry—every item painstakingly recorded and cross-referenced and filed—a significant scrap about Richard Gower had popped to the surface.

  Everyone who might conceivably have been in the vicinity when the killing occurred was being interviewed. Likewise, everybody connected with the Latimers in any way ... friends and known acquaintances, tenant farmers and their families, the grooms and stable girls and all the other estate workers and employees. It was from one of these last that the surprise scrap had come.

  Mrs. Betty Rudge, one of the two dailies employed at the Grange to help Linda West, had at first appeared to have nothing useful to contribute, even though she had a great deal to say. Then, in the midst of a long story, while the dazed DC was trying to pinpoint the exact date she’d broken a gravy boat and been lashed by Mrs. Latimer’s tongue, she’d recalled that it was the day when Mr. Gower the newspaper chap had come to lunch at the Grange. Just the two of them, no other guests. No, she didn’t remember if Mr. Gower had visited the Grange before.

  “I thought you’d better see this right away, Kate.” Inspector Massey, who was the Incident Room office manager, laid an extract from the DC’s report on her desk.

  “Thanks, Frank.” She knew Frank Massey of old, and it was good to have him working on her team. They’d been inspectors together in the Wye Division, and he was one of the rarities, a male colleague with whom Kate always felt entirely easy. Neither had he resented her rise in rank. About her own age, a thickset and mild-natured man, he was married and worriedly rearing a pigeon pair of teenagers. The job was a doddle compared with his problems at home, he’d once confided to Kate, so he wasn’t looking for any greater responsibility.

  Scanning the typed message rapidly, Kate felt a sick disappointment. If true, this turned Richard Gower into a liar. In his office yesterday, he’d been emphatic that he’d known Belle Latimer only very slightly. That didn’t jell with a cosy lunch for two at her home.

  Kate glanced at her watch. Five past ten. Gower would just about be beginning his statement. Time for her to get to Marlingford before he was through. She cleared her desk briskly, and summoned Tim Boulter.

  “We’re off to DHQ,” she said, as she handed him the memo. “Here’s why.”

  He read the message. “Naughty! This should be good for a laugh.”

  She spun round with a flash of anger that took Boulter by surprise. “We’re not out to relish a man’s downfall, Sergeant, simply to establish facts.” Facts, not feelings. Shades of Jolly Joliffe.

  “Sorry, ma’am.”

  “Well, try to look sorry. Go and get the car. I’ll be out in a moment.”

  The sun was warm again, the sky was just as blue. But today the road to Marlingford had lost its charm for Kate.

  “Mind you,” said Boulter ruminatively, “Gower knowing Mrs. Latimer better than he admitted yesterday only muddies things up, doesn’t it? It might be more significant if he’d had a lunch date with the husband. Hatching the plot together, I mean.”

  “Mmmm,” said Kate abstractedly.

  “I wonder if they were having it off ... Gower and Mrs. Latimer.”

  “Oh for God’s sake,” she snapped. “Why speculate when we’ll soon find out.”

  Christ, Tim thought, she’s in a mood. As Julie had been last night, because he was so late getting home. Though his wife did have a point. Just the one evening when her mother had the kids staying over, he’d arrived home dog-tired after working seventeen hours on the trot. Bugger the bloody job, she’d yelled at him. Bugger the monthly pay-cheque too? he’d flung back. Tim stifled the guilty thought that he’d been on a high of excitement about his first murder enquiry all the time that Julie had been sitting waiting for him to come home.

  * * * *

  When they arrived, Kate went directly to the interview room and interrupted the proceedings. This was a calculated move, and it paid off. Richard Gower was obviously startled by her sudden appearance. She asked the DC to leave and took his place, facing Gower across the small table. Boulter stood just inside the door.

  “Mr. Gower, a point has arisen which may require a change in your statement. You told us yesterday that you knew Mrs. Belle Latimer only very slightly.”

  “That’s right. So?”

  “Sergeant,” she said.

  Boulter referred to his notebook, though he certainly wouldn’t have needed to. “Information has reached us, sir, that soon after twelve noon on Friday, the first of May, you arrived at Hambledon Grange to have lunch with Mrs. Latimer.”

  Gower stared at the sergeant. He stared at Kate. “Oh,” he said finally, “that.”

  “Yes, Mr. Gower, that.” Kate’s tone was chilly.

  “A single lunch doesn’t add up to an intimate relationship, if that’s what you’re suggesting.”

  “Maybe not. But in the circumstances it does require explaining.”

  “There’s a perfectly simple explanation.”

  “Then perhaps we may have it.”

  Gower picked up a ball-point from the table and started running it through his fingers, back and forth. “I didn’t mention this yesterday because it didn’t seem relevant. Mrs. Latimer invited me to lunch that day because she wanted a private word about how the Gazette might help her in a certain matter.”

  “Keep going.”

  “It concerned a charitable fund we were both involved with. For an extension to the Chipping Bassett Leisure Centre. She was on the organizing committee, and the Gazette was backing the project with publicity. Mrs. Latimer had reason to suspect that some of the money collected was being creamed off. Naturally she wanted that stopped. But she was afraid that if anything about it leaked out, people’s feelings would be so outraged that the flow of contributions would dry up and put paid to the entire scheme. She suggested a private meeting with me so that we could discuss ways and means of catching the culprit out without creating a public scandal.”

  It was a far-fetched story that couldn’t be either proved or disproved, just like his alibi for the time of the killing.

  “If this is true,” said Kate, “I don’t see why you couldn’t have told us yesterday.”

  “You weren’t at the sharp end of a third degree. When you’re as near as damn it accused of murder, it seems best to keep quiet about an association that might be misconstrued.” He snorted. “But I don’t expect you to understand that.”

  “Okay, we’ve had the excuses,” she said. “Now we’ll have the details. Who was the person, or persons, whom Mrs. Latimer suspected of misap
propriation of funds?”

  He pulled a reluctant face. “She had no definite proof, you must realise that.”

  “Were you yourself suspicious?”

  “After what Belle told me, I had to be.”

  “Belle? You knew her well enough to be on first-name terms?”

  Gower flushed. “She invited me to call her Belle—half-way through lunch, by which time we’d downed a couple of dry martinis and most of a bottle of Nuits St. Georges. It was done condescendingly, if you must know. I guess she thought she was granting me a favour.”

  “Perhaps,” said Kate, holding eye contact, “by the time you’d finished the bottle of wine and maybe a liqueur or two as well, she was in a mood to grant something more in the way of favours.”

  “Damn you, no.”

  “So let’s get back to where we were. What was it Mrs. Latimer said to convince you that she was right about someone creaming off the Leisure Centre funds?”

  For a few moments Gower said nothing, regarding her with a look of hatred. Then he began in a flat, uncaring voice, “We’ve had all kinds of fund-raising activities going on ever since last summer ... fetes, garden parties, sponsored swims, an old-time music hall at Christmas—you name it. Last month, at a meeting of the Ladies’ Circle, a collecting box was passed round for the Leisure Centre extension. To test her suspicions, Belle Larimer went armed with twenty-five pound coins and slipped these in. Yet the total recorded as collected that afternoon was only just over twenty-seven pounds. It was quite unbelievable that the rest of the women had put in only a couple of pounds altogether.”

  “Who was responsible for counting the money?”

  “The sealed box went straight to the honourable accountant.”

  “And that is?”

  Gower hesitated, still reluctant, then said, “George Prescott.”

  “He’s a local chartered accountant, ma’am,” put in Sergeant Boulter.

  “Did you speak to Mr. Prescott about it?” Kate asked Gower. “Challenge him?”

  He shook his head. “We were still debating exactly how to tackle the matter, bearing in mind the need to avoid a public showdown that might affect future donations. I suppose it’s possible that Belle Latimer threw it at him in a fit of anger. She didn’t like being cheated, and she could be impetuous at times.”