Dead on Course

by J M Gregson

  Or so he had always imagined: some devil now planted that thought in his mind. Even as he thrust it angrily away, he knew it would return.

  When he spoke, it was as if the words burst out against his will, surprising him as well as her by their abruptness. ‘We don’t have secrets.’ Four words only, yet still the unevenness of delivery was noticeable.

  ‘Not normally, no.’ The tension had built between them over their silence; she spoke quietly, trying to give the impression of control, but she did not trust herself with more than the single phrase.

  ‘Then why now?’ The words came harsh and quick, the monosyllables hammering at the roof of his mouth, the blood rushing to the roots of the hair she remembered as bright red in his youth, but which was now dulled with the first saltings of grey. She saw it and was moved, but the emotion caught at her tongue and made it even more difficult for her to speak.

  Her lingerie was almost white, with the faintest green tinge which became apparent only as she moved into the darker part of the room; the delicate lace edging seemed designed to invite the caress he could not give as he sat nailed to his chair. She slid into the white linen dress with its squares and circles of dark green, shutting herself of from the vulnerability that had held him rigid, declaring herself inaccessible.

  As she sat on the stool at the dressing-table, both hands went again to the back of her neck in that unconsciously sensuous gesture, checking that the hair fell loose and clear of her dress. Nowadays her hair was shorter and it was scarcely necessary, but he found its evocation of times past only the more moving for that. He felt a sense of hopelessness: normally when he felt uncertainty in any relationship, he turned to her for guidance. This time the darkness lay between the two of them, and she could not diffuse it for him.

  He looked at her face in the mirror. To a stranger, it would have had its normal quiet, unaggressive beauty. The dark eyes above the high cheekbones were as wide and limpid as ever; the firm chin was set at its usual confident angle. Only the lips, thin and pale with strain, showed her consciousness of the question that lay between them. As he watched, their eyes met in the mirror. Her look in that instant had a mute, almost desperate appeal, a look so rare in her that it almost made him gasp. But he could not respond to what he recognised so clearly, and in an instant her eyes dropped and she picked up her hairbrush.

  He watched the vigorous buffeting she gave to the lustrous cascade of hair at the neck, feeling with her the release that came with physical action, unable to find any such outlet for his own tension. He had not moved since she came into the room. Now he said as though the words were wrung from his lips by torture, ‘I have to know.’

  She did not look at him again in the mirror. She finished brushing her hair, put down the brush, and looked at it miserably for a moment. Then, almost imperceptibly, she shook her head, as if she were determining her own dilemma rather than answering the husband who sat so taut behind her.

  The knock at the door made both of them start with shock, so immersed were they in their own contest of will and spirit. Then she whirled upon the stool and their eyes caught and held each other at last, wide with alarm at the interruption. In this at least he could take command. The external noise freed him at last from his rigidity; he felt the physical deliverance as he rose and went to the door.

  ‘I’m afraid we need to ask you a few questions about last night. I trust it’s convenient?’ Lambert was at his most urbane, but he had the air of a man who would proceed with his business whether it was convenient or not to his hearers. His head was barely clear of the lintel of the door, so that he seemed to tower over Munro, who now stepped back a pace as he glanced automatically at his wife.

  The Superintendent was slim enough, despite his height, so that they could both see the rubicund presence of Detective-Sergeant Hook standing four square behind him. He should have been a reassuring figure as he followed his leader with cat-like Gilbertian tread into the room and shut the door carefully behind them. But with the unresolved tension lying between them, the Munros found the pair brought only menace into the room.

  If Lambert sensed that he had interrupted something, he gave no sign as he went breezily into his standard patter. ‘You are not legally obliged to say anything, of course, but the good citizen is normally only too anxious to assist in upholding the law.’ He paused, wondering why Munro should be quite so put out by his presence: he must have expected to be questioned. Had these two been in the middle of a row? ‘Perhaps I should tell you that it seems certain now that a serious crime has been committed.’

  Munro licked his lips and hesitated. It was his wife who said, ‘You’re quite sure, then, that Guy was murdered?’ This was ground they had already covered when he had met the golfing party together earlier in the day. She might have been just breaking the conversational ice, but he sensed she was temporising, playing for a little time while she organised her thoughts.

  ‘That will be a decision for the Coroner’s Court in due course, Mrs Munro. But yes, our pathologist seems reasonably sure from his examination that Mr Harrington did not die from natural causes. Whether the death was a result of suicide, manslaughter or murder remains to be seen.’

  ‘Or accident.’ Sandy Munro found his voice at last—and discovered himself almost shouting. He said apologetically, ‘Presumably Guy could simply have fallen to his death?’

  He must have heard his wife’s sharp intake of breath, for his head jerked towards her with a look of fear. In the long moment that Lambert allowed to stretch among them, the Scotsman still did not seem to grasp the mistake he had made. It was Hook who said eventually, ‘You think that’s how he died then, Mr Munro? A fall?’

  ‘But surely you told us earlier in the day that he had fallen from the roof garden of the hotel during the night. I’m sure you did.’ Bluster was not the right response, and Munro was in any case not a natural blusterer.

  Lambert said blandly, ‘No sir, I did not. For the simple reason that I was then not sure of the cause of death myself. But it seems you are right. The pathologist confirms that the nature of the injuries, internal and external, indicates a fall from some height. Possibly from the roof or an upper window of the hotel, as you mentioned. I should be interested to know how you divined that so efficiently.’

  ‘I—I suppose I guessed it from the state of the body.’ Munro looked as miserable as a schoolboy before the master who has caught him out in a lie.

  ‘You saw the body then? I understood the corpse was discovered by Mr Nash and Mr Goodman.’ Lambert looked interrogatively at Hook, who confirmed the fact like a man responding to a cue, without needing to consult his notes.

  ‘They must have told me.’ Under stress, Munro’s Fifeshire accent was strong enough for his low words to be almost undistinguishable. ‘That’s right, I remember. Tony Nash told me at breakfast.’

  Now his wife’s impeccable English accent rang out in stark contrast, beautifully enunciated, falsely bright in the quiet room. ‘We were discussing it before you arrived this morning, Superintendent—we had plenty of time together in the lounge. I think George Goodman thought that that is what had happened as well.’ She managed to make her supportive words sound light and confident, but the smile with which she tried to support them was a mistake. She was no more of a coquette than her husband was a blusterer.

  The first lies of the case. Or were they merely the first ones Lambert had detected? His mind flashed for a moment to the enigmatic figure of the dead man’s widow. He thought of the way the corpse had been lying in that curious hollow of the golf course when he had first seen it, with its stomach thrust awkwardly at the heavens. The only visible damage had been that great smear of blackening blood on the side of the head. His own first thought had been that death might have come from a bludgeoning: it had taken the expert examination of Cyril Burgess to correct his impression that this might have been a mortal wound.

  It was unlikely that Nash and Goodman, coming upon the body unexpectedly in the ea
rly morning, would have made more accurate assumptions about the cause of death than he had. Unless, of course, one or both of them had an earlier involvement in this death than its mere discovery.

  He thrust aside that unwelcome thought and said, ‘I should like to interview you separately, if you have no objection.’

  ‘Here?’ Munro’s head did not move, but his eyes flashed quickly to his wife with what looked like desperation. She did not respond.

  ‘It doesn’t have to be: anywhere private would do. But here would be as good as anywhere.’ Aware that both the Munros were thrown of balance, he was anxious to continue questioning one of them at least before they could recover equilibrium.

  ‘Right. I’ll make myself scarce and leave you to it.’ Alison Munro spoke up decisively. She did not look at her husband, who flashed at her a swift look of apprehension before he cast his gaze upon the carpet. He did not look up again until she had gone; for her part, she left without once glancing at her husband, even from the door.

  There was a second small pink armchair and the stool in front of the dressing-table that Alison had lately occupied. The detectives disposed themselves as comfortably as possible on these inappropriate supports, moving them so as to sit facing the patently unhappy man who sat beside the bed.

  At a nod from his chief, Hook said, ‘The procedure, Mr Munro, is that we take statements from all the people who were in the vicinity when the crime was committed. We compare them, checking where the accounts agree and dis-agree with each other. There may be nothing sinister about a discrepancy: sometimes people just recall things differently. It all builds up a picture of what happened for us.’

  ‘Shouldn’t you warn me that it may be used in evidence?’ Munro managed an anaemic smile.

  ‘If and when someone is charged, we shall warn them that what they say may constitute evidence. Other people may of course be called as witnesses, if we, or for that matter the defence, considers their testimony would be useful. That, unfortunately, is probably still a long way ahead. What I like to do initially is talk fairly informally to the people who seem most likely to throw some light upon a crime. Sergeant Hook will take some notes, which may later be amplified into a written statement, which you would sign if you thought it a proper record of what you had said.’ Usually he outlined these things to put people at their ease; this time, without any change in his wording or intentions, he seemed to be increasing the pressure on the wiry figure with the thinning red hair who sat before him.

  ‘What do you want to know?’

  ‘Let’s start with the obvious. Can you think of anyone with good reason to wish Mr Harrington dead?’

  Munro looked at the floor for so long that Lambert thought he was not going to answer. Then he said, ‘He wasna’ popular.’ The voice was low, the accent as thick as that of an ancient Scottish caddie. Only the intensity of the sentiment prevented the bathos it threatened.

  Lambert said gently, ‘You’ll need to elaborate for us, I’m afraid. Don’t forget we don’t yet know any of the people involved.’

  As he hoped, Munro assumed that the people involved meant the party who had dined with Harrington on the previous night. ‘All of us had had our differences with him over the years.’

  ‘Yet you were all here with him on a golfing holiday.’

  Munro looked as if it was the first time that had struck him as odd. He seemed for a moment to be trying to solve that puzzle for himself. ‘We’re members of the same golf club in Surrey. Two or three of us arranged the holiday; Harrington joined in late. I think George Goodman invited him, but I’m not sure.’ Lambert, as a golfer himself, could see the picture: it was often difficult to refuse someone who wanted to join an outing of this sort without offence or embarrassment. As if in response to his thought, Munro now added, ‘I said most of us had some reason to dislike him. That doesn’t mean I can see any of us killing him.’

  ‘Yet for what it’s worth, my view is that one of you probably did.’ Lambert let him dwell for a moment on that thought. Hook, with time to study these preliminaries at leisure, thought once again that, beneath his highly civilised manner, his chief in pursuit of results was as ruthless as the roughest hard-swearing city copper. Lambert leaned back a little, openly studying his man as he said, ‘What cause had you in particular to dislike him?’

  Munro’s bright blue eyes looked fiercely at the two impassive CID men for a moment. Then he said, ‘I worked for him. I didn’t approve of his methods.’

  ‘In what way?’

  Munro stared hard at the carpet, as though he might find there the words he was struggling to form. ‘I didn’t approve of the way he treated people.’

  ‘And?’ It was like trying to get information from a captured prisoner.

  ‘I’m an engineer. In my own field, I know what I’m doing. He took my ideas and claimed the credit for himself. Two patents registered in his name are really mine, but he never even acknowledged it.’

  ‘Anything else?’

  Munro looked quickly into Lambert’s face, then down again at the complex pattern of the carpet. He shook his head. ‘That’s all.’ The sharp Scottish features set like marble. Whether or not that was indeed all, it was all they were going to get.

  Lambert gave a scarcely perceptible nod to Hook, who flicked ostentatiously to a new page in his notebook and said, ‘Will you tell us all you can remember about the events of last night, please, Mr Munro?’

  ‘Beginning when?’ Munro, licking dry lips, was plainly not looking forward to this. Lambert would have given a lot to know whether he was normally of a nervous disposition, as he now appeared to be.

  ‘I understand all your party ate together. Let’s begin with that meal, unless you think there is anything earlier in the day that might be significant.’

  Munro shook his head and appeared to relax a little. ‘It was a normal enough meal. It was spread over quite a long time. There were four courses and coffee, and we didn’t hurry over them.’

  ‘And quite a lot was drunk, I imagine.’

  Munro looked at him sharply, trying to work out whether any criticism was implied in the remark. ‘Aye. Some had more than others.’

  ‘Yes. Mr Harrington for one, according to the post-mortem.’

  Munro looked shocked; whether by the extent of their knowledge or by Lambert’s unabashed revelation of it, it was impossible to tell. ‘He could take it. He was well used to it.’ For the merest instant, the disapproval bred by those formative years he thought he had left for ever in the shadow of the manse was evident in his contempt.

  ‘You would not have said he was drunk, then?’ Munro began a small, uncooperative shrug, but before he had completed it Lambert had rapped at him, ‘This looks like a murder inquiry: I should prefer it if you were as accurate as possible.’

  ‘Guy could take his drink. Sometimes he used the fact that other people couldn’t.’

  ‘Times like last night?’

  ‘No.’ The negative came almost too quickly, as though he already regretted his indiscretion. ‘Guy drank quite a lot, but he was in good form for most of the evening.’

  Lambert wondered whether the Scotsman was just uneasy with words, or whether he was deliberately leading them into an area of revelation. Perhaps it was a little of each; he seemed almost unconsciously to be accepting that he had something of interest to tell them.

  ‘Just for most of it?’

  ‘There was the row—a disagreement anyway—during the meal.’

  ‘Between whom?’

  ‘Between Guy and Tony Nash.’

  ‘About what?’ It was like drawing teeth, but Lambert was well used to that by now. He had heard about this dispute when they first met the group earlier in the day, but it was interesting that Munro seemed drawn back to it now.

  ‘I’m not quite sure. I don’t think many of us were at the time. Tony just flared up at Guy. I’m not sure what Guy had said, but when Tony shouted at him he insisted that he had only been joking.’

&nb
sp; ‘And do you think he was?’

  For the first time since the detectives had entered the room, Munro smiled. It was a wry mirth, but a hint that he could laugh at himself. ‘From what I said earlier, you could hardly consider me an unbiased witness. But no, from what I know of the two of them, I would have thought that what Guy said was quite malicious, though he shrugged it off as though Tony was being absurd.’

  ‘What exactly did he say?’

  ‘I don’t know. I suspect no one did, except the two of them. We were all busy with our own conversations when we heard Tony shouting.’

  Hook looked up from his notebook. ‘Are you telling us you’ve no idea what the dispute was about?’ His tone was quite neutral, yet he managed to imply that the suggestion was absurd.

  It had the desired effect. Munro speculated where he had not intended to. ‘I think it might have had something to do with Meg Peters. I couldn’t be sure.’

  Lambert pictured the youngest of the group: with her green eyes and red hair, she was not easily forgotten. Sex and money, in that order, were the primary elements in murder cases. It was statistics, not chauvinism, which made him consider the striking Ms Peters might be at the heart of this one. It was certainly something to be investigated in the interviews to come. He said, ‘At what point in the meal did this incident take place?’

  ‘I think we’d just got our dessert.’

  ‘So a good deal had already been drunk. By those who were drinking, that is.’ If he was teasing Munro, his face, grave beneath the plentiful iron-grey hair, gave no acknowledgement of it.