The phone rang. “Sergeant Boulter,” said Kate dryly, “you seem to have developed a nasty habit of interrupting my breakfast.”
“Sorry about that, but my car’s playing up. I was just off to the nick before coming to collect you, and for some unknown reason the damned thing wouldn’t start.” He was aggrieved, naturally. Not being master of a piece of mechanical apparatus was putting his very manhood on the line.
“Not to worry, Tim.” Kate injected her voice with saccharine sweetness. “Car trouble is something that happens to us all at one time or another.”
Sod you, zinged over the wire. What Boulter actually said was, “I’m off to collect another motor now. I’ll be a few minutes late, but we should have plenty of time to get to Marlingford by ten.”
“Don’t bother about another car, we’ll use mine. I’ll come by and pick you up. Just tell me the address.”
“Well, I suppose that makes sense. It’s Lamberts Lane ... the fourth house on the right.”
“Okay. In twenty minutes.”
Boulter’s home, a neat end-of-terrace house, circa 1950s, looked well cared for, though the small front garden was a bit unkempt. As Kate walked to the front door she heard raised voices. Boulter answered the bell, still shrugging into his jacket.
“Sorry, I didn’t realise the time.”
“It’s all right, I am a couple of minutes early.”
A small girl with fair hair tied in two bunches came running along the hall. She halted and regarded Kate solemnly.
“Hello. What’s your name?” Kate crouched down to the child’s height.
“That’s Mandy,” said Tim awkwardly. “Say hello to the chief inspector, Mandy.”
“Hello.”
A woman appeared in the kitchen doorway, with a smaller child holding her hand.
“Good morning, Mrs. Boulter,” Kate called to her.
“Morning.” Her hostility was scarcely veiled.
Julie Boulter had all the makings of an attractive woman, but she’d adopted, almost deliberately, Kate thought, an overlay of drabness. A sort of defiance, perhaps; an outward expression of the dull life she was expected to lead.
“What lovely children you have,” Kate said sincerely.
“Thank you.” But the smile was very grudging.
Boulter’s awkwardness increased. “Well, I expect you’d like to be going, ma’am.” He gave his wife a perfunctory peck on the cheek and bent to kiss the children. “Bye for now.”
Julie Boulter was resentful, Kate mused as she drove off. Resentful of her husband’s job that held so much interest and excitement for him. The fact that his senior officer was a woman wasn’t helping, either.
“Nice family you have, Tim. You’re very lucky.”
“I suppose I am. Mandy is the bright one. Sharon ... well, she’s shy. But I expect she’ll grow out of it.”
“Sure she will. What did your wife do before the children came along? Not in the Force, was she?”
“No, Julie was a lab assistant at Croptech, that big agricultural chemicals firm at Little Bedham. I met her when we were called in there after a break-in. I was a DC then, stationed at Marlingford.”
“Is she hoping to go back to her job when the children are older?”
A sidelong glance. “She’ll still have plenty to do, looking after me and the kids.”
“Lots of married women manage a job as well as their home.”
Boulter was silent, and Kate knew that she’d annoyed him. She’d been treading where she had no right to tread, yet she couldn’t help feeling sorry for Julie Boulter. She’d instantly read the signs of a woman who was too hemmed in by domestic routine to develop her full potential as a person. In Julie’s case, she couldn’t even count on her husband’s company in the evenings. The CID could be a real bastard to detectives’ wives, Kate reflected despondently. And to detectives’ husbands! She wondered if contented married life would ever be possible for a woman DCI. Probably not. The thought gave her pain. She punched the padded fascia with the heel of her hand, causing Boulter to glance round at her in surprise.
“It’s okay, someone just walked over my grave,” she said lightly, and began to tell the sergeant about her visit the previous evening to Major and Mrs. Carstairs, especially about Matthew Latimer having been spotted in a country pub with another woman.
“We must get this Marjorie Sayers seen,” Kate said. “Maybe she can give us a better description of the woman.”
By the time they reached Marlingford, she and Boulter were back to normal, discussing various angles of the case.
The assistant chief constable, when Kate was shown into his office, looked grim. At his side Superintendent Joliffe looked even more cheerless than usual. No time was wasted on pleasantries.
“What does all this amount to?” the ACC demanded, indicating with distaste her updated summary on his desk. “Nothing. Nothing concrete.”
“No solid facts,” added Jolly Joliffe mournfully.
“Two murders in the same small town, Mrs. Maddox, and no real sign of progress on either. It’s a very bad image for the police.”
“I’m only too aware of that, sir.”
“Being aware is no substitute for finding answers. There is a great deal of public disquiet, and we’re getting shot at from all directions. I’m being forced to consider whether you’re up to the job, Chief Inspector.”
“With respect, sir, I know I am.”
“Then you’d better do something about convincing me of that. A little more speed is indicated. I can’t give you much longer.”
You want equality, Kate, so don’t whinge when you get it. Just crack on and come up with something fast. But damn them!
* * * *
Kate, anticipating a long session with Assistant God at DHQ, had told Boulter to use her car for a tidying-up job he had on hand in Marlingford. He drove to a new housing estate on the outskirts and stopped outside number fourteen Willow Crescent. His ring went unanswered, which didn’t surprise or displease him. After waiting a few moments, he went next door. A young woman, holding a baby and looking harassed, answered his knock.
Boulter displayed his warrant card. “Sorry to trouble you, love, but I wanted a word with the Seatons, and they don’t seem to be in.”
“Well, they wouldn’t be, would they? They’re both at work.” She hadn’t even the time to spare, he observed, to be inquisitive about why a policeman should be calling on the neighbours. He also noticed, out of the corner of his eye, a curtain twitch in number sixteen. Promising! Apologising, Boulter withdrew and made his way to curtain-twitcher’s house.
He summed her up in a glance. Middle-aged, hair permed just so, smartly dressed at mid-morning. A woman with children who were grown up and off her hands, husband at work, not enough to occupy her. Boulter adopted a worried look.
“I’m sorry to be a nuisance, madam, but the Seatons are out and I’ve got to get some information from them, and there’re twenty other people for me to see today. So I wondered if you could possibly help me. Then I can cross them off my list. My chief inspector will raise the roof if I go back short of just one single report. How I’m expected to get through so much, heaven knows.”
Tim Boulter, when he tried, could look a very appealing young man. She gave him a motherly look.
“Why don’t you come in and take the weight off your feet for five minutes while you tell me what it is you want to know?”
“Well ... if you really don’t mind.”
Inside, the house was squeaky clean, obsessively over-polished. Boulter’s bottom desecrated a plumped-up cushion on the settee.
“It’s this murder enquiry we’re on,” he said with a sigh. “Half the people in the area have to be interviewed and checked up on for one reason or another, and most of it’s a sheer waste of time in the end. You can’t imagine the mountain of paperwork.”
She was all sympathy. “I’ve just made some coffee, Sergeant. Would you like a cup?”
“You’r
e an angel, madam.” His grateful smile could have won him an Oscar. “A real life-saver.”
Two minutes later they were cosily chatting over coffee and a plate of assorted chocolate biscuits, Boulter having absently selected the largest one. He filled the lady in with as much as it was good for her to know.
“The Seatons come into it because they had certain connections with the Hambledon estate. Very slight connections, that’s all. But I still have to go through the full palaver with them.”
“A week last Tuesday,” she ruminated, and suddenly there was a glint in her eye. She paced herself nicely. “Let me see ... that must have been the evening Fiona Seaton went to stay the night with her friend who was expecting any moment. Her brother came round for the evening, I happened to notice.”
Boulter referred to his notebook. “Is he Mr. Bruce McLeod?”
“Yes, I believe that’s his name.”
Tim nodded. “This confirms what we already know.” Jotting a note in his book, he added casually, “The two men stayed home the whole evening, did they?”
“They most certainly did. Disgraceful, I call it.”
Tim accepted another biscuit. “How d’you mean, madam, disgraceful?”
“They weren’t alone, Sergeant, that’s what I mean.” She sat back with pursed lips as if to say, There now, you’ve forced it out of me. “I’m no Mrs. Whitehouse, I wouldn’t like you to think that. But I mean to say, having women round when his wife was away! Naturally, I wouldn’t say a word to her, poor thing.”
“You’re sure about this?” asked Tim.
She nodded firmly. “I thought something funny was going on when Cliff Seaton backed his car out and left it parked in the road, leaving the garage doors open. Then round about half past seven I happened to be at the window and saw another car drive straight into the garage. That brother-in-law of his and two women! I only caught a glimpse of them. There’s a back way into the house, you see, so they didn’t need to come round to the front door.”
“You couldn’t possibly be mistaken?”
She scoffed at that idea. “Why did they draw the curtains long before it was dark, tell me that? Upstairs and downstairs. And then, well after midnight I heard the car backing out and driving away. Then Cliff Seaton put his back in the garage.”
Boulter shook his head slowly. “Some men really are the limit.”
She nodded, stiff-backed, judgemental. “Do have another coffee, Sergeant. And help yourself to the biscuits.”
“Well, perhaps just one more.”
Two more, in point of fact. When he left three minutes later, Boulter felt pleased with himself and angry with McLeod. Why the hell couldn’t the stupid git have admitted straight out that he and his brother-in-law were having a mini-orgy on the evening Belle Larimer was killed? It would have saved all this hassle. There was still the rigmarole to be gone through of re-interviewing the two men, getting the names of the women concerned and interviewing them. We ought to bloody do you for wasting police time, McLeod.
After her short, sharp knuckle rapping from the ACC, Kate needed a chance to simmer down. Leaving a message for Boulter with the desk sergeant that she wouldn’t be long, she walked the couple of hundred yards to the Market Square and let the warmth of the sun melt away some of her fury as she strolled around window-shopping. “Hi, there!”
Recognising the voice instantly, Kate swung round and smiled.
“You look to me,” said Richard Gower, “like a lady who could do with a drink.”
“You’re not wrong.”
He gestured invitingly to the Market Inn, its eighteenth-century façade gloriously festooned with wisteria in full bloom. But Kate shook her head. Having a drink with Richard in public view was something best avoided at the moment.
“I only meant I could do with one,” she said regretfully.
“Then come and give me another grilling in my office. That’ll make it official business. I keep a bottle in the filing cabinet.”
Kate laughed. “Under what heading?”
“Letter S, for Shot in the Arm. Come on.”
They turned in at the alley entrance and went clumping up the dark staircase. Richard’s office was just as chaotic as before. He had to sweep a chair clear of debris for Kate to sit down.
“What’s your fancy? Scotch or scotch?”
“Whichever.”
“How’re things going on the case?” he asked, as he poured drinks into non-matching tumblers.
“Progressing.” She took the whisky he handed her and saluted him. “Look, I’m sorry I had to be rough with you. But as far as Prescott was concerned, you brought it on yourself.”
“The story of my life. But I was bloody angry with you at the time.”
“Ditto me, with you. I still am, a bit.” Kate had spotted a theatre programme among the mess of papers on his desk. To deflect the conversation, she picked it up.
“King’s Rhapsody. I’ve promised to go to that, if I can, and take my aunt along, too.”
“Hope you enjoy it. Myself, I can survive missing Ivor Novello. I’ll be sending my dog’s-body to cover the show for the Gazette.”
“You do the printing for the Troubadours, do you?”
“A bit of commercial printing helps to pay the bills. That’s a proof you have there, ready to go to the honourable secretary for checking.”
Opening the programme, Kate ran her eye down the cast list.
“That’s odd,” she said. “Alison Knight’s playing Countess Vera Lemainken, and she’s down here as Alison Axfield. Got it wrong, have you?”
“I don’t see how.” Richard took the programme and studied it, frowning. Then he turned a page. “No, look, here’s a picture of her, captioned with the same name, Axfield.”
Kate looked at the montage of photos of leading members of the cast. The one of Alison, a half profile, showed her long, high-cheekboned face to dramatic effect.
“I guess it must be the name she uses for the stage. I know she used to be a professional. But Axfield ... it rings a bell. Something to do with this locality?”
“Means nothing to me. But then I’m still a bit of a new boy in this neck of the woods.”
Kate nodded absently, still musing. Then the name clicked, and suddenly it was as if all the whirling bananas and pineapples and oranges in the fruit machine of her brain were locked in a jackpot combination.
She finished her drink in one swallow and stood up. “I can’t sit here chin-wagging all day.”
“You haven’t even warmed the chair yet.”
“Things to do.” Kate flapped the programme at him. “Can I take this with me?”
“Be my guest, there’re more.” His expression sharpened. “Do I scent news?”
“Not so much as a whiff. What I said just now was off the record. Got that? You breathe one word, and I’ll—”
“Favours earn favours.” He came to the door with her. “Kate, I’m still asking for that dinner date.”
“I’m far too busy, Richard.”
“But soon?”
“We’ll see.”
“Not good enough.”
“Then tough luck, chum, because it’s the best you’re going to get.”
Chapter Twelve
Kate was in her office at DHQ, talking on the telephone, when Boulter arrived back. From a few sugar grains on his upper lip she guessed he’d dropped in at the baker’s along the street for a doughnut or three.
“Dead waste of a morning,” he grumbled as she put down the phone, “but at least we know now what McLeod and his brother-in-law were trying to cover up about that night. They were at Seaton’s home, true enough, but they had a couple of skirts there with them.” He began to tell Kate all about it, but she cut him off.
“Save the sordid details for your report, Tim, there’s no time now.”
Boulter was instantly alert. “Something new?”
“Think so. Does the name Axfield ring a bell?”
Boulter started to shake his head.
Then, “Hang about, wasn’t that the name of the widow who sold her farm to Belle Latimer’s father way back?”
“On the nail! Now add to that the fact that Alison Knight’s stage name is Alison Axfield.”
“You mean they’re related?”
“Mother and daughter, is my guess. I checked the phone book and there’s nothing under Axfield listed for this area, so it’s an uncommon name. I was just phoning Inspector Massey, and he’ll have the answer by the time we get back to the Incident Room. I told him that, failing anyone else, old Sam Wilkes would know the answer.” Kate stood up. “Let’s move, Tim.”
In her car a minute later, Boulter asked, “What put you on to this, guv?”
“I spotted the name Alison Axfield in the cast list of the Troubadours’ next production.” Kate skipped saying where she’d seen it. “The way I logicked it, Alison Knight is sticking to the stage name she used when she was a professional. And since she started her career before she was married, that name is likely to have been her real name at the time. Her maiden name.”
“I’ll buy that. But where does it get us?”
This is the moment you start praying, Kate, praying you’re not about to make an all-time wally of yourself! But if her hunch was right, she’d be trailing clouds of glory. She had the space of the car journey to Chipping Bassett in which to put each step of her theory to the test.
“Tim, why have we been assuming all along that our killer is a man and not a woman?”
“Why? Well, it was a man that Fred Winter and his brother-in-law saw phoning from the call-box opposite his cottage.”
“A vague identification in semi-darkness. A figure dressed in a mac and a deerstalker. A short figure!”
“But it was a man who phoned Gower. That mysterious caller who kept him waiting at home on the evening of the murder.”
“What about a woman with a deep voice? A woman skilled in voice control, as a professional singer would be? I doubt if Alison Knight would have much difficulty in making herself sound like a man over the phone.”
“It’s guesswork,” he said doubtfully.
Murder in the Cotswolds Page 17
