Dead on Course

by J M Gregson

Both of them gazed for a moment at the unremarkable contrivance that had suddenly been invested with a sickly glamour. It was all too easy to picture Harrington’s heavy torso bouncing over the hard ground at dead of night in its last cradle, his legs dangling grotesquely between the handles smooth with use, his eyes gazing unseeingly at the cold stars above.

  But they were policemen both. Their thoughts sprang quickly to speculation about the last hands to have gripped those shining, innocent handles.

  12

  Tony Nash was not at ease.

  When he came into the interview room, it was his attempt to seem relaxed which drew attention to his discomfort. He sat down quickly in the chair indicated to him and folded his arms; his fingers moved nervously over his sweater sleeves. Hook watched them playing their repetitive tune against the light blue lambswool, wondering whether their owner could still control them if he chose.

  Nash had the wide shoulders of a powerful, stocky man. Lambert, looking at the longish blond hair with its hint of disarray, was reminded of a cinema Tarzan he thought he had long forgotten. Nash was handsome enough to carry such a part: his features had the regular lines of a romantic novel’s cover. Except that there was something just slightly wrong about this fresh-faced beauty: the features were infinitesimally too small for the head and the shoulders beneath them. The prettiness of a woman’s face sat where something more rugged and durable might have been expected.

  The end of a pink tongue moistened the delicate lips and Nash said, ‘I am only too anxious to help, of course, Superintendent, but I very much doubt if I can add much to what you already know.’

  It was a conventional opening, but delivered flatly enough to reveal it as a prepared sentiment. Perhaps he expected Lambert to say, ‘Best let us be the judges of that, Mr Nash.’ If so, he was disappointed, for the Superintendent did no more than nod an acknowledgement, as if he had scarcely registered the thought. Then he said, ‘I take it that you came here this week for no other purpose than to play golf, Mr Nash?’

  Nash was immediately disconcerted. Probably it was merely by the directness of Lambert’s approach, but he might have suspected a reference to his nocturnal activities with the striking Miss Peters. He said, ‘That was the primary purpose for all the men. Meg doesn’t play. Alison Munro does, but she hasn’t been playing this week.’

  ‘Quite. I understand that you are sharing a double room with Miss Peters.’

  ‘Yes, but that is surely hardly—’

  ‘I ask only because we must be sure of the disposition of the party at the time of Mr Harrington’s death, Mr Nash. You must be aware that that is a point of crucial importance.’

  Nash relaxed, it seemed by a deliberate effort of will. ‘Yes, I see. You mean that we might be able to clear each other of any involvement in this business.’

  ‘Possibly. Unless of course you planned the business together.’ Lambert, though he knew it ignoble, enjoyed the suggestion and the concern it caused his hearer.

  ‘I didn’t kill Guy. And neither did Meg.’ Nash’s fingers had at last stopped moving; they were gripping tight on his upper arms, so that he looked like a child made to fold his arms against his will.

  ‘Perhaps not. You will appreciate that we shall probably only be certain about that when we arrest the person who did. If you are not involved, your best policy will be to conceal absolutely nothing. I’m already collecting lies like blackberries in this investigation.’ He did not care whether or not it was an exaggeration. He had no intention of indulging in preliminary fencing with this man.

  Nash looked agreeably startled. His blue eyes widened a little and he said as aggressively as he could, ‘I see. Well, you certainly haven’t collected any from me.’ Then he grinned weakly as the realisation struck him and said, ‘But then, we’ve hardly spoken yet.’

  ‘Scarcely at all. Tell me, Mr Nash, did you see anything in your first two days here that seems significant now, in the light of Mr Harrington’s violent death?’

  ‘No. Nothing at all.’ He seemed immediately aware that he had spoken too quickly to have given the matter proper thought, for his faced flushed in the silence the two experienced men opposite him allowed him to hang on his abrupt denial. But he had the sense not to fill the silence with any imprudent disclosure. He was intelligent, with the shrewdness that came from twenty years of successful work at a variety of levels: he was not going to be ruffled as easily as his initial demeanour had indicated.

  Lambert reminded himself wearily that the innocent as well as the guilty were made nervous by police inquiries. He said, ‘And yet you must have been with Guy Harrington for most of the time.’

  ‘I suppose so. We played golf most of the day, and ate together in the evenings.’

  ‘In all probability you conducted one or both of these activities with the person who killed your friend. So you can see the importance of my question.’

  ‘It needn’t have been one of us.’

  ‘Indeed not. There are other possibilities, and they are being investigated. That is why I said “in all probability”.’

  ‘And he wasn’t my friend.’ This was an unexpected assertion; even if they had suspected it, it was unusual for someone close to a murdered man to confess so much so boldly. ‘I worked for him, that was all. He was all right to play golf with, most of the time.’

  ‘Was he a good employer?’ This was Bert Hook, coming in when their subject had almost forgotten him, and as usual disconcerting him by the unexpectedness of the intervention. Bert, who had moved straight from his Barnardo’s home into the world of men at the age of sixteen, knew a good deal about the habits of employers, good and bad.

  ‘No. The best thing was to keep well out of his way and get on with your job.’ Hook reflected that many men had made themselves rich by encouraging that philosophy among the men they paid. ‘He was a bastard. Took all he could get from you, then let you down.’

  ‘How?’ said Lambert sharply.

  Nash looked like a man who had gone further than he meant to, but realised that he could scarcely draw back now. ‘I’m his Sales Manager in the plastics division. I worked it up from nothing. The products were good enough, but they needed selling, like anything else. When I’d done all the hard work, he pegged my salary. That didn’t worry me that much—I thought it was time to move on anyway. But when I tried, I got nowhere. Not even interviews. Eventually I found he was writing references which ensured no one would even look at me.’

  ‘Did you tackle him about it?’

  Nash gave a mirthless laugh and a brief, hopeless gesture at the ceiling with his hands; it was the first time he had unclasped his arms since he had struck the pose when he sat down. ‘I did. All he was interested in was how I’d got the information. Fortunately, it was from a secretary who had already left, so there was no way he could get at her. He said my job with him was safe for life—just so long as sales targets were achieved and I didn’t step out of line. But I could forget about moving elsewhere: he didn’t train up staff in order to pass them on when they were becoming useful.’

  Lambert reflected that it was scarcely the kind of man management calculated to increase profits in the long term. But such attitudes were not so unusual in small firms, even in the ‘nineties. And of course, he was hearing only one side of the story. The dead were never able to defend their actions. Even taken at face value, this grievance seemed scarcely the kind to drive a man to murder.

  As if reading his thoughts, the man opposite him said, ‘I didn’t kill him for that. I didn’t even stop playing golf with him, as you can see.’ He ran a hand impulsively through his mane of hair, a gesture of release from the physical tension that had built steadily in him as he talked of his dead employer. His face was full of bitterness, part of it seemingly against himself for his sycophancy.

  ‘Were you the only one who felt like this about him?’

  Nash had the confidence for the first time to pause and weigh his reply. ‘No. Sandy Munro doesn’t say much, but I
think he felt as resentful as I did about Harrington as an employer. I couldn’t tell you exactly why.’ Lambert, who had been told some of the reasons by Munro himself on the previous evening, merely nodded.

  Nash, apparently welcoming the chance to transfer the discussion from himself to others, said, ‘I’m quite sure Alison Munro didn’t like him, perhaps just because of the way he treated Sandy. George Goodman seemed easy enough with Harrington, but I don’t know him all that well. He didn’t seem particularly upset when we found the body yesterday morning, but it’s not easy to tell with George.’

  Lambert himself had wondered what lay behind Goodman’s carefully presented serenity. It was interesting to find that men who had known him much longer still found him difficult to estimate. But the most significant point about Nash’s assessment of his party was the omission. ‘You must be aware that you have left out one person,’ Lambert said, playing his fish gently now.

  Nash’s fresh face hardened with caution. ‘Meg Peters had nothing to do with this.’ His mouth set obstinately, like that of a child who hopes that if he repeats something often enough it will become fact.

  ‘That is something we shall have to establish to our own satisfaction, I’m afraid,’ said Lambert. He sounded friendly, almost regretful, and indeed he had sympathy enough for one he suspected was experiencing the illogicalities of extreme sexual passion: Nash was watching him with an anxiety he could not conceal. Routine police inquiries were already turning up interesting facts about Miss Peters: he wondered how much Tony Nash knew about her past. As much, he fancied, as she had chosen to tell him, but he had no idea how much that was. ‘Can you tell us something about Miss Peters’s previous relationship with Harrington?’

  People of Tony Nash’s colouring are at a disadvantage when they wish to conceal their emotions, for the movement of blood beneath the surface of pale skin is more apparent than in others. That blood drained away now, leaving Tony Nash’s cheeks suddenly sallow, as he said, ‘She knew him socially for several years.’ Even to himself, it sounded feeble, but he did not trust himself to say more.

  ‘Was she ever employed by him?’

  ‘I believe she was, briefly, some years ago.’

  ‘Do you know in what circumstances that employment was terminated?’

  ‘No.’ Nash clearly resented the question, but again could not rely on his voice. Had the room not been quiet, his monosyllable would have been inaudible.

  ‘You are not aware of any closer relationship between the deceased and Miss Peters?’

  ‘No!’ This time Nash shouted the word, almost before the question was out. In the quiet room, it became almost a scream. In his English embarrassment, Bert Hook watched the drip on the tap in the corner of the room grow large, detach itself, and fall soundlessly into the small basin. Lambert reflected on the perversity of human passions. This man had come into the room as a shallow figure, brittle beneath his surface beauty. Now, with that shell easily broken, he was paradoxically raised by his passion to something more distinctly human: he was suddenly Othello on the rack, contemplating in public something he had shied away from previously even in private. When Nash realised that neither of his tormentors was going to speak, he said hopelessly, ‘You’ll have to ask her about all that yourself.’

  ‘Indeed, I’m afraid we shall,’ said Lambert. ‘Murder inquiries simply do not allow secrets, you see. Though of course many of them prove irrelevant in the end. Now, please tell us about your own relationship with Miss Peters.’

  Perhaps Nash was surprised by Lambert’s briskly matter-of-fact tone; perhaps he was merely relieved to pass on from the painful area of Harrington’s dealings with Meg Peters. He said unhesitatingly, ‘We’re lovers.’

  It was a word dropped too lightly as the end of the century approached, thought Lambert. It covered anything from long-term partnerships to breathy couplings in the backs of cars that were no more than the sating of an instinct. The CID needed something more precise. As if in response to his thoughts, Tony Nash looked at the carpet between them and said, ‘Serious lovers. We shall be getting married in due course.’

  Lambert wondered what that ‘in due course’ disguised. How many other lives would be lacerated to achieve this marriage? That was not and could not be his concern. He said, ‘So Miss Peters feels as seriously about this as you do?’

  ‘Ask her!’ For a moment, Nash was an adolescent, confident and proud in the strength of his first grand passion. It was enviable in a man in his forties, however dangerous it might be. But it lasted only a moment: then he felt the need to explain himself in an older man’s terms. ‘Neither of us expected it to get serious. But it is, and it will last.’

  Lambert had heard such protestations too often to react positively. He looked at Nash like a postman estimating an unreliable dog: he wanted to get at the truth of his next query without provoking an outburst of passionate protestation. He said, ‘Let’s move closer to the time of Harrington’s death. I understand that there was a dispute between you and him during your final meal together.’

  ‘I knew you’d have to rake this over.’ Nash muttered the complaint to himself rather than to his questioner; he had known they must come to this. Indeed, Sandy Munro had told him only an hour before that he had had to speak of it to the Superintendent.

  ‘I shall rake this and any other conflict over as thoroughly as I can. Don’t forget the man you clashed with was dead within three or four hours. I’ll need to be convinced that this incident had nothing to do with his death. By you or by someone else.’

  Nash nodded, tight-lipped. ‘It had nothing to do with his death. He said something about Meg and I took exception to it, that’s all.’

  ‘What kind of thing?’

  ‘He called her a tart.’

  ‘In so many words?’

  ‘Oh no, he was far too clever for that!’ Nash’s bitterness started out again as he reviewed the incident and the picture it presented of him as a naïve hot-head. ‘He tried to pass it off as a joke, but I wasn’t having that. I made him apologise.’ He was a strange mixture of embarrassed recollection and pride in what he had done.

  Lambert decided not to press him further on the detail of the incident; there were others who could give him that. Not least of them Meg Peters herself. He filed away the thought that the man before him would certainly have been capable of the sudden, violent action that had produced the death of Guy Harrington. ‘I should like you to recall the end of that evening for us now.’

  He had judged it right. Nash moved almost eagerly from the confrontation at the dinner-table to events in the last hour or two of Harrington’s life. ‘We sat out on the flat roof drinking a bottle of brandy. It was warm enough to do that, even towards midnight.’

  ‘And no doubt the brandy helped to keep the chill at bay.’

  ‘We were none of us drunk.’

  Lambert smiled grimly. ‘I’m glad to hear there is no chance of a plea of diminished responsibility on that score. But the bottle must have circulated fairly freely: there wasn’t much of it left when we examined it yesterday. And quite a lot of wine had been consumed with the meal.’

  Nash considered the matter carefully, as if the idea that someone might have been drunk, might have killed Harrington accidentally, was an attractive possibility that he had not previously entertained. ‘We’d eaten a heavy meal. I don’t think anyone had had a real skinful. We were happy rather than drunk.’

  ‘You didn’t see anyone becoming aggressive?’

  ‘Rather the reverse. Most people became quite mellow.’

  Or appeared so to you, thought Bert Hook. His resistance to the bourgeoisie was surfacing despite his attempts at objectivity. These privileged people, playing this decadent game of golf all week and indulging in la dolce vita off the course, had fostered a rottenness at the heart of their gathering. He looked up from his notebook and said, ‘What happened to you when the group finally broke up, Mr Nash?’

  Nash thought carefully; once they ha
d moved off the area of his emotional involvement, he was almost the ideal court witness, weighing his thoughts carefully before he spoke, trying to keep to the subject of the question but give the fullest possible reply. Or else, of course, he was presenting that persona very carefully, as a murderer might do. ‘It was George Goodman, I think, who made the first move; he said it was long past his normal bedtime and he would suffer on the course in the morning if he didn’t make a move. Sandy Munro went off almost at the same time—I thought to his room, but he tells me this morning he went for a walk down the drive. The two ladies went off together: I thought at the time to the cloakroom, but of course they may not have done.’ He paused.

  ‘And you?’

  ‘I stayed on the roof with Harrington for a few minutes.’

  ‘Why was that?’

  ‘I’m not sure. Perhaps it was no more than lethargy at the end of a long day. I think I had some idea that Guy might want to smooth things over after our spat earlier in the evening.’

  ‘And did he?’

  ‘No. Perhaps I was a bit drunk after all, to think he would. We never exchanged a word. We sat looking over the edge of the roof for a few minutes. I remember seeing the bend of the river by the sixteenth fairway quite clearly. Guy didn’t say anything, but he gave me a superior sort of grin, as if he was challenging me to take up where we left off. I just got up and left, without even saying good night.’

  A very sensible course of action. If it happened. Lambert said quietly, ‘You were therefore the last person to see Harrington alive.’

  ‘Apart from his murderer.’ Nash managed a small, apologetic grin. Lambert liked him the better for it.

  ‘As you say. Did you see anyone else after you left the roof?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Did you go straight back to your room?’

  ‘Not quite. I went out to the car park. I wanted to check that I’d put my clubs away properly in the back of the car.’

  ‘And had you?’ If the man was fabricating a story, he was most likely to trip up over detail he might not have rehearsed.