Dead on Course

by J M Gregson

  ‘I suppose so. We’d had plenty of wine with the meal. Tony likes a glass or two, and you say you know about Harrington. But we’d eaten quite a big meal with it. No one was drunk.’

  ‘What time did the party break up for the night?’ Munro must have expected they would come to this, but they both saw him stiffen uneasily. ‘I’m not absolutely sure. We sat out on the flat roof for quite a time chatting after we’d finished eating. It was a wonderful night.’ The phrase suddenly struck him as inappropriate, but he found the officers quite impassive when he glanced at them in nervous embarrassment. ‘I suppose it must have been after midnight when we broke up.’

  ‘And you went straight back to your room?’

  Munro’s hesitation made his reply more pregnant than it would have been without it. ‘No. I went for a walk. I felt I needed it before I could sleep.’

  ‘I see. Were you accompanied on this expedition?’

  ‘No. I didn’t go far. Just down to the gates of the estate.’

  Lambert did a swift calculation. About a mile and a half in all. Half an hour: more if he deviated from this route. Ample time to commit a murder and move a body. ‘Did you stick to the road?’

  ‘Mostly. I strolled out to the green nearest to the gates—the sixth, I think. It was a beautiful moonlit night.’

  Not a braw one: Lambert was glad to avoid the Caledonian cliché, which he fancied would now be confined to stage Scotsmen. ‘Can anyone vouch for your whereabouts at this time?’

  Munro swallowed. ‘No, I don’t think so.’

  ‘Your wife didn’t accompany you?’

  ‘No. She’d had a tiring day. It was late for her already. She likes to get to her bed early.’

  For the taciturn Scot, it was a positive welter of explanation. Lambert wondered if it had any significance, or whether the man was merely anticipating with relief the end of the interview, as witnesses often did. He had to remind himself that the innocent as well as the guilty could find these exchanges an ordeal. He said, ‘Was she asleep when you got back to your room?’

  Munro swallowed, contemplating the carpet again, as if his record of the previous night’s events was written there and he was checking it. ‘Nearly, I think. We didn’t speak again.’

  They paused; the only sound in the room for a moment was the tiny scratching of Hook’s ballpoint. Then Lambert said, ‘You’ve already told us you thought Mr Harrington fell to his death from the roof or a window. Did you hear anything after you got back that might support such a view of the death?’

  ‘No. I was asleep very quickly.’

  They let him go then, with the usual admonitions to come back to them immediately if anything occurred to him subsequently which might have a bearing upon the case. He nodded earnestly and was gone.

  Lambert was left wondering why such a transparently decent man should tell him so many lies.

  10

  The tension of a murder inquiry, which can be disguised but never eliminated by surface politeness, makes one forget one’s surroundings. When the two large men left the small room which was the temporary home of the Munros, they were surprised to find the day outside as serene and innocent as ever. And it was evening: Hook checked his watch with surprise and found that it was almost seven. ‘Call it a day?’ he said hopefully.

  ‘After we’ve seen Mrs Munro,’ said Lambert. ‘I’m anxious to get to her before her husband does, if we can.’ He strode determinedly down a passage towards the area they had established as a temporary centre of operations. Hook followed resignedly, but without any real resentment: he was not yet so inured to CID routine that his adrenalin level failed to rise with the development of the hunt.

  ‘I suppose you’re anxious to be away to your studies,’ Lambert called over his shoulder as he skipped nimbly down a staircase. It was the first indication Hook had had that the Superintendent was aware of his Open University venture, though he had known the discovery was inevitable. In truth, he had merely been hoping to get home before his boys disappeared to bed, but he said, ‘I find it easier to work at the other end of the day. Some of the television programmes are put out early in the morning, as well.’

  ‘What literature are you studying?’

  Typical of the chief to consider that any sensible man would be studying literature, thought Hook. Perhaps he would choose Sociology as a second-level course, just to annoy Lambert. ‘There isn’t very much on the Humanities Foundation Course. I’ve been reading Hamlet; that comes up soon.’ He panted along behind the taller man, who seemed determined to keep just in front of him even though the path now allowed room for them to walk alongside each other.

  ‘So you’re wishing some of that “too solid flesh would melt, thaw and resolve itself into a dew”!’ said Lambert with satisfaction, as he finally allowed the substantial figure of his sergeant to draw alongside him.

  Hook drew in his paunch with dignity. ‘You don’t think “sullied” might be a more correct reading?’ he asked calmly. He walked ahead of his chief towards the murder room, resisting the temptation to turn and check whether his jaw had really dropped in astonishment. There might be ancillary benefits to this study business which he had not even considered when he embarked upon it.

  In the group of lodges which had been cleared of visitors, the lounge was already looking like a murder room. The filing cabinets and telephones were installed, the fingerprint crew were recording their findings at a table on the far side of the room, a WPC was compiling lists on one of the now ubiquitous word-processors. The number of plastic bags containing materials which might eventually constitute evidence was growing at its usual surprising pace. Detective-Inspector Rushton, hearing their voices in the corridor, was on his feet by the time they entered the room, stepping forward like a Head Waiter welcoming patrons to his domain.

  ‘Ah, Mr Lambert, we couldn’t find you anywhere. I thought you must have gone.’ He managed to make their absence sound like a dereliction of duty, though in truth he was probably only emphasising his own industry and orthodoxy. Rushton, to be sure, would have made sure the rest of the team knew exactly what he was about and where he had gone if he had disappeared to interview Munro; Hook was glad to note that Lambert did not immediately tell him where they had been.

  ‘Where’s Mrs Munro?’ was all he said.

  ‘I think I saw her in the main hotel just now. She was talking to George Goodman.’ Rushton was a pain in various parts of the anatomy, according to taste, but he was undeniably efficient.

  ‘Would you tell her I should like to see her here right away, please?’ Lambert went without waiting for acknowledgement into the inner office they had already assigned as an interview room. It was normally a staff rest-room. They had found a desk and a swivel chair for him, but magazines had been stacked hastily on a coffee table in one corner. In another, a small washbasin received the water dripping from a leaky tap. Above it, the mirror-fronted door of a medicine cabinet hung slightly open, revealing the bottles of paracetamol and plasters which might be necessary for the day’s minor ailments. He had a sudden image of a doctor’s consulting-room. Perhaps it was not inappropriate, though his investigations would be mental rather than physical.

  Alison Munro was with him within two minutes. Rushton came briefly into the room with her, but the impression was that she dismissed him at the door rather than that he left tactfully when his role as usher was complete. This woman moved with a grace and poise which was the more telling for being effortless and unconscious. She composed herself elegantly into the armchair Bert Hook had positioned for her; the Sergeant was left wrestling with the word ‘breeding’, a concept which his Barnardo-boy background sternly resisted.

  Even Lambert was thrown into an opening which sounded almost apologetic. ‘Thank you for coming across here so promptly. All this must be rather distressing for you.’

  She weighed the cliché carefully, then underlined its feebleness by responding seriously, ‘No, I don’t think so. I think I might find the mecha
nics of a murder investigation quite interesting: it will certainly be a new experience. And I felt shock rather than distress when I heard of Guy’s death.’

  Her eyes, set so deeply that they looked almost black, looked steadily at Lambert, estimating his mettle, wondering whether he would take up the challenge. He merely nodded, looked thoughtfully at his nails, and said, ‘Why do you think your husband assumed that Mr Harrington had been killed by a fall, Mrs Munro?’

  If she thought the contest had been joined, she gave no sign other than a slight easing forward on her chair. She had been prepared for this, even if she had expected to be led to it more gently. ‘Sandy is an intelligent man, Superintendent. Probably he deduced it from what the others told him about the appearance of the body. And from what you told us earlier, it seems to have been a reasonable deduction.’

  ‘Perhaps for someone who had all the facts. Your husband had apparently not even seen the body himself.’ He was sure she stiffened a little at his use of the word ‘apparently; whether the reaction stemmed from fear or merely from annoyance at the implied slur on her husband’s probity he could not be sure. ‘I inspected the body in the place where it was found. I have seen many deaths, Mrs Munro, but I did not think at first that this one had been the result of a fall. It took the specialist knowledge of a pathologist to tell me that.’

  She looked full into his face, as she had done throughout the exchange. ‘I am sure Sandy would not claim more expertise in these things than a man of your experience, Mr Lambert.’ She allowed herself a small, ironic smile, which stopped well short of contempt. Lambert, who had considerable experience of the breed, was reminded of the defence barrister who, presented with an item which damages his case, maintains an outward calm at all costs whilst his brain furiously reorganises strategy.

  As if she was aware of his comparison, she stroked the hair she had washed just before he appeared, like a counsel checking her wig. But her impeccably fitting helmet of black hair was no archaic prop of authority. She said coolly, ‘I would remind you again that my husband has spoken to the people who actually found the body. You can imagine that the matter was almost the sole topic of conversation among our group this morning. He may well have picked up information or impressions from the people who had seen more than he.’

  It was a fair point, and one precisely made: again he could see her in a courtroom context. He had already considered her argument. Almost certainly one person at least among this group knew exactly how Harrington had died. That person could have communicated the knowledge to others, whether unwittingly or for some other, as yet undefined, purpose. He said, ‘Of course you are right. That is certainly one possibility.’

  The small, firm chin jutted forward half an inch towards him. ‘If you think there are others, you should take it up with Sandy, Superintendent.’ It was the first time she had used his rank, and she contrived to make it sound an insult. This calm woman with her well-organised defences was not going to be easily caught out; for the present, he was ready to accept her dismissal of the matter.

  ‘I have already talked to him about it, Mrs Munro. And we may return to the matter in due course.’ This time he was sure she was disconcerted: perhaps she recognised his tactic of interviewing her before she could confer with her husband about what he had said to them. ‘What we need from you at this point is an account of what you remember of last night.’

  He had deliberately left his terminology vague, in the hope that she might feel threatened. She acknowledged the ploy only by correcting it. ‘Last evening, you mean, presumably. I was asleep for most of the night.’

  It was Lambert’s turn to smile and score a point. ‘Presumably most people I see are going to tell me that. Including one or more who spent a portion of the night murdering Mr Harrington.’ She conceded the point with an answering smile: had he been expecting to chill her with the argument, he would have been disappointed. ‘Would you give me your account of events, please, from the moment when your party got together?’

  She paused, organising her thoughts, deciding, he was sure, what to tell him and how to phrase it. ‘We had a drink before we went into the meal. Everyone was pretty light-hearted. The men were twitting each other about the afternoon’s golf. I think Meg—Miss Peters—found it irritating. I can understand that: there’s nothing more irritating than other people’s golf, especially if you don’t play yourself, as she doesn’t. And we’d had a tiring day.’

  ‘You had been out with Miss Peters during the day?’

  ‘Yes; sightseeing and shopping: I don’t know which was more tiring. Anyway, we were certainly ready for the meal.’

  ‘And did anything untoward happen during that?’

  Again she gave him that slightly scornful smile, as if disappointed in an adversary who could be so transparent. ‘You have heard of the little spat between Tony Nash and Guy. I’m not sure I can add anything to enlighten you.’

  ‘Try, please. If it has nothing to do with this death, no one will suffer.’

  She did not comment on whether it might or might not have a connection. ‘Tony took exception to something Guy said, that was all. I didn’t catch what it was, but I’ve no doubt it was a remark about Meg’s affections.’

  ‘Miss Peters is here with Mr Nash. I am right in assuming they are having an affair?’

  She frowned a little, looking for once away from him. Her dark eyelashes blinked with concentration; he had not realised until then how long they were. ‘I suppose so. That word covers such a multitude of relationships nowadays. I think they intend something more long-term than I would understand by the word. But I suppose you will ask them about that in due course.’

  ‘If it seems likely to have any bearing on this case, I probably shall, yes.’

  She nodded, looking for the first time at Bert Hook, studiously recording her replies in his notebook. ‘Guy had dallied a little himself with Meg. I’ve no doubt that gave an edge to his comment. And to Tony’s reaction, for that matter.’ She had an air of ennui at the tiresomeness of men in these matters, but he had little doubt that her analysis of the incident was a shrewd one.

  ‘Mr Nash’s reaction was not what you would have expected?’

  Again she paused, weighing her reply like an expert witness. ‘Tony had worked for Guy for years. Harrington did not expect his workers to speak out of turn. I had never heard Tony do so before.’ There was a little contempt here, which she didn’t trouble to disguise, but it was not clear whether it was for the employer’s exploitation of his position of power or the employee’s craven acceptance of it.

  ‘Did you hear what was said?’

  ‘Not the bit that gave offence. The first most of us heard was Tony Nash shouting, “Either you take that back immediately or you’ll be sorry!” I remember the exact words because they seemed to come straight out of a B movie. But Tony was serious enough about it.’

  ‘And how did Harrington react?’

  ‘Oh, he laughed it off. But he was shaken.’ She said it with relish, then looked annoyed that she had revealed so much of herself. ‘Things were smoothed over and the meal went on without any further disagreement. No doubt the wine helped.’ This time she was carefully and successfully neutral: he could not tell whether she applauded the emollient effects of the grape or deplored its capacity to blunt reality. Probably neither.

  She was a woman whose insights and judgements would be worth sharing—always assuming that she was not involved in the crime. He said, ‘Did you see anything during the evening which would indicate in the light of what happened later that one of your party wished to kill Mr Harrington?’

  He half-expected her to dismiss the notion with the view that that was his business rather than hers, but she did not. The pale brow beneath the dark hair wrinkled a little, the strong, small hands clasped for a moment in front of her. Then she said, ‘No. Apart from the incident we’ve just discussed, no one seemed particularly overwrought.’ She seemed as though she would genuinely have liked to of
fer them something they might use. It made Lambert wonder how good an actress she was.

  ‘I must ask you whether you know of anyone with a reason to kill Mr Harrington. Needless to say, your reply will be treated in the strictest confidence.’

  She looked at him with a cool smile; she seemed to be genuinely enjoying the question and the suggestion that she might have such knowledge. Lambert remembered the intensity of her husband’s reaction to the same inquiry. They could scarcely be a more different pair, in temperament and background. Yet his guess was that they would be fiercely supportive of each other: perhaps the old idea of the attraction of opposites had something in it, or perhaps the differences one saw clearest were the superficial ones, disguising the more important similarities of philosophy and outlook that lay beneath.

  She said, ‘Guy Harrington excited strong passions in people, Mr Lambert. With your extensive experience, I’m sure you have found they often prompt people to violence.’

  She was taunting him a little, throwing back his earlier suggestion about the benefits of experience. Trying not to be nettled, he said evenly, ‘As a generalisation, that would be correct. Can you be rather more specific about the people involved here?’

  She crossed her legs; Bert Hook persuaded himself that he was admiring only the rich maroon leather of the high-heeled shoes below the nylon. ‘I doubt whether I can help you much there: I don’t know any of them particularly well. Meg Peters had certainly known Harrington well in the past. I don’t know exactly how well, but no doubt the efficient machine that is the CID will soon discover that. Tony Nash was certainly more upset than I have ever seen him last night. George Goodman had known Harrington for a very long time: whether there is anything of great moment in their pasts I have no idea. George seems far too avuncular to perpetrate homicide, but I suppose under stress the unlikeliest people are capable of foolish actions.’

  It was the very admonition Lambert found himself giving frequently to people drawn into investigations; he found it curiously disconcerting to have it thrown back at him. He noticed how the golfing party had suddenly become ‘them’ rather than ‘us’. Perhaps it was natural that she should regard herself and her husband as being above suspicion. He said gruffly, ‘I should like you to give us now an account of your own movements after the party broke up at the end of the evening.’