A Little Learning

by J M Gregson

  But Lucy Blake felt sure as she drove away that this would not be the last she would see of the Reverend Thomas Matthews.

  Fifteen

  The elderly lady had plainly never been inside a police station before; she looked quite distraught. The station sergeant prepared himself for a lost dog or cat: that combination of anxiety and determination usually stemmed from a missing animal.

  He prepared himself to be avuncular and consoling, to offer the usual assurances about pets turning up safe and well in the most unlikely places. Station sergeants are programmed to deal with the mundane daily round of trivia. When the lady said her name was Mrs Gwendolyn Crowthorne it did not immediately ring any bells. She wanted to see Detective Inspector Peach, she said, and the sergeant prepared to deliver his spiel about how busy senior CID officers are and to deal with her himself. It was only when she said that she was the mother-in-law of the murdered Dr George Andrew Carter that she got his full attention. Two minutes later, Mrs Crowthorne was ushered into the office of DI Peach.

  It was plain to Percy that she was very upset, that she had needed to screw up all her courage to come here. But that courage gave this determined old lady a surprising dignity. He made her as comfortable as he could on the upright chair before his desk, tried to order tea for her, and found it refused by the lady herself. ‘I’d much rather gets this over as quickly as possible, Mr Peach,’ she said in a high, quavery voice. ‘This isn’t easy for me, and if I take too long over it, my nerve may fail.’

  Peach recognized her now, despite her distress and the best clothes she had put on to come here. ‘I saw you briefly, in your own house, in Kendal, didn’t I, Mrs Crowthorne?’ She nodded vigorously. ‘There was no need for you to come all the way down here, you know.’

  She managed a smile at last, reassured by his kindly reception. ‘I couldn’t have done it on the phone, Mr Peach. Didn’t have one until I was past forty, and I’ve never really felt comfortable with them — not when there’s something delicate to say. Besides, I thought if I came down here I’d go and see my daughter first. Explain what I had to do.’

  ‘And did you do that?’

  ‘No. Ruth doesn’t know I’m here. I should have told her, but I was afraid she’d talk me out of it. I’m not as strong as I used to be.’

  Not physically you aren’t, thought Percy. But I’d still back you to carry something through, if you set your mind to it. Gwendolyn Crowthorne reminded him of his own mother as she sat there: she was distressed, confused, lonely, and not very far from tears, but also absolutely conscious of what was the right course of action and determined to carry it through. Perhaps it was something which would die with this generation, that moral certainty about the right thing to do. No one — and least of all the errant modern youth with whom Percy dealt for so much of his time — seemed now to have this clear, unfaltering idea of what was right and what was wrong.

  People of Mrs Crowthorne’s generation sinned from time to time, as people always have, but they knew sin when they saw it. Percy Peach had been brought up on sin, in a school run by the Catholic clergy; he could have taken a degree in guilt. But sin was an old-fashioned concept, nowadays.

  All this flashed through Percy’s mind before he said quietly, ‘This is about your daughter, isn’t it, Mrs Crowthorne? And your dead son-in-law?’

  She nodded, tight-lipped with emotion, appreciative that he had introduced the subject for her. Then she blurted out, ‘Ruth told you she was with me last weekend, didn’t she? Well, she wasn’t. Not for the whole of it.’

  Peach nodded quietly, indicating that she was only confirming what he had already known, making it easier for her, though this was in fact the first he had heard of this. He said, ‘She was there when I came to the house on Monday. How long had she been there, Mrs Crowthorne?’

  Mrs Crowthorne’s small, taut face had relaxed a little, with the relief of confession. He could imagine how she had agonized for three days before coming here to reveal the truth and be a traitor to her daughter. ‘She came on Sunday evening. She hadn’t been there for the whole of the weekend at all.’

  That left a full two days unaccounted for: Ruth Carter had told him that she had gone to her mother’s house when she left the UEL site on Friday morning, and spent the whole of the weekend there. Where had she been during that missing time? Most pertinently of all, where had she been on the Saturday night when her husband had been shot?

  Percy saw that the old eyes opposite him were brimming with tears. One of these stole softly down Mrs Crowthorne’s wrinkled cheek, cutting a path through the powder she had put on to come here, making her suddenly raddled and old. He said gently, ‘You must have been very fond of your son-in-law, Mrs Crowthorne.’

  She nodded, and the tear dropped from her chin on to the lapel of her dark blue coat. As if this had made her conscious of her weeping for the first time, she pulled a handkerchief from her pocket and rubbed vigorously at her face. It smudged the powder further, made this woman who had been well groomed when she set out from her house sixty miles away more than ever like one of the ageing, pathetic, drunken females who ended their nights in the Brunton nick. Her voice seemed to come from a long way off when she said, ‘He was always very kind to me, was George. Very considerate.’

  Peach said conventionally, ‘That’s good to hear.’ Where there were no considerations of career or prestige, Claptrap Carter had obviously had a much better side: it was another facet of the personality they could only study after the man’s death, and a surprising one. ‘But your daughter didn’t feel the same about him, did she?’

  ‘No. That upset me, but there was nothing I could do about it. Ruth was planning to get rid of him.’ She realized what she had said and looked up at Peach in alarm, but he gave her nothing more than a reassuring smile. ‘I mean that Ruth was planning to get a divorce. She said that now that the children had virtually left home and George was in the job he’d never dreamed he’d get, she could go without doing him any damage.’

  That phrasing didn’t sound like a woman with murder in mind. But this was a mother speaking, no doubt anxious to put the best gloss she could on the relationship, especially in view of the fact that she was now feeling like a traitor to Ruth. Peach said quietly, ‘Mrs Crowthorne, do you know where your daughter was on Friday and Saturday, when she claimed she was with you?’

  ‘No. She didn’t say.’ The bedraggled, desperately unhappy lady looked unseeingly at the papers on Peach’s desk.

  He wanted to leave it at that, to tell himself that this elderly woman had been through enough anguish and he should be happy with what she had brought him. But he could see that she knew more than this. He did not even have to harden his heart: he was so much the detective after his years in the job that he knew he must have every scrap of information which the old lady could give him. He said, ‘But Ruth asked you to conceal the truth for her, didn’t she? She asked you to say that she had been with you for the whole of the weekend.’

  ‘Yes. But I told her I couldn’t guarantee that I’d lie for her.’ A sad little smile of pride flitted across her smudged face. ‘That’s why she didn’t want you to see me at all, when you came to my house on Monday.’

  ‘And you’ve a good idea where she was on Friday and Saturday, haven’t you, Mrs Crowthorne?’

  She nodded wearily, her eyes cast down. She moved one small foot against the other, watching the blue leather shoe as if it was a vitally important movement. She was still watching those feet when she said, ‘She didn’t tell me where she was, and I didn’t ask her. But I suspect she was with a man. I don’t know his name; I was too upset about the break-up with George even to ask her about it.’

  Peach stood up, came round his desk, broke one of the unwritten rules of police practice as he laid a hand upon a female interviewee. He dropped his fingers lightly on the bowed shoulder of the small woman who sat so precisely on the upright chair and said, ‘You’ve done the right thing, Mrs Crowthorne. I know it wasn’t easy,
but it was right. We’d have found out eventually, you know, but it would have taken us a little longer and probably been a lot messier. Now, before you leave here, you’re going to have that tea.’

  He went down to the canteen himself and came back with a pot of tea and two cups and saucers, a refinement he did not normally practise. She had pulled a mirror and comb from her handbag and repaired her face while he was away. They sat companionably for ten minutes together, munching ginger biscuits, talking of her house in Kendal, of her dead husband, of the nice girl with the chestnut hair who had gone with him to that house, of anything rather than the thing which had brought her here.

  Mrs Crowthorne spoke of how unhappy she was with the very idea of divorce, and Percy Peach told her that it had happened to him, that it wasn’t the end of the world. She reminded him irresistibly of his dead mother as she said, ‘You should try walking out with that pretty girl who works with you, if she’s not spoken for. A man like you needs a good woman.’

  She was so much like his mother that he wanted to say that he would call in and see her, when all this was over. But he couldn’t say that. Not when it was much more possible than it had been an hour earlier that he would be arresting Mrs Crowthorne’s daughter as a murderer.

  *

  Superintendent Thomas Bulstrode Tucker was wondering whether he should set up one of his media conferences. He had already popped out during the morning and had his hair trimmed, just in case he should be parading it before the television cameras in the next couple of days.

  He was good at public relations, good at smoothing ruffled feathers, at delivering the clichés which had to be used with ringing sincerity — this came easily to him, because he rarely recognized them as clichés. With his trim figure in his tailored uniform, his strong profile, his still plentiful head of groomed, greying hair, he was an excellent police front man, well practised in reassuring the public that no stone was being left unturned, that the Brunton Police Service never slept.

  The Chief Constable and the Deputy Chief Constable knew well enough who did the work, who achieved the results. But because it is not easy to get rid of the inefficient, particularly once they have attained a certain rank, they tolerated Tucker, even encouraged him, in those fields where he was moderately effective. The CID unit he headed solved a surprising percentage of the crimes which came its way, so why rock the boat? Tucker might be a balloon of hot air, but he could be a useful one, if he was not pricked in public.

  DI Percy Peach pricked him very often, in private. And now, when he was irritated by Tommy Bloody Tucker’s pompous fumblings, after the sincerity of the old lady he had just escorted to her car, Peach thought alarming Tucker would give him an agreeable few minutes of light relief.

  ‘I need you to brief me on the latest state of play in the Carter inquiry,’ said Tucker. He puffed out his chest. ‘I may have to conduct a media conference, before you disappear for the weekend.’

  Before you do, you mean, you idle old sod. Thought Percy. He volunteered the most inane of his vast range of grins. ‘Nowhere near an arrest yet. Plenty of suspects,’ he summarized cheerfully.

  Tucker sighed wearily, produced a pencil from the top drawer of his desk, and prepared to make notes as he said, ‘I hope you’re not causing mayhem among important citizens of the area. You’d better brief me.’

  ‘Yes, sir. Well, the victim’s wife, to start with. You said most murders were domestic, and directed me to check whether she might have been lying about her whereabouts at the time of death. With your usual perception, sir, it now emerges, because it seems —’

  ‘I’ve remembered the lady since I saw you yesterday, Peach. I’ve met her myself, as a matter of fact, at Masonic Ladies’ nights. And a more charming lady you couldn’t wish to encounter. So I can save you a bit of time there. I should put her way down on your list of suspects, and devote your energies to some more worthy possibility.’

  ‘Really, sir. An interesting thought, that. Because I’ve just been told that Ruth Carter wasn’t where she says she was at all, at the time when Claptrap Carter bought it.’

  ‘I hate these Americanisms, Peach, as I’m sure I’ve told you before. And Mrs Carter — Ruth, as you say — struck me as a woman who would certainly never commit homicide. I’m sure whoever has denounced her is quite unsound. Who is it?’

  ‘Her mother, sir. Most respectable elderly lady, she seemed to me, sir. But I haven’t your eye for these things, I know. I’d better let the team know Ruth Carter’s not to be investigated. But I think I’d better say it’s on your orders — the fact that she seems a charming lady may not be enough to convince them, in itself.’ He was staring at the wall behind Tucker, on a line two inches above his head, which his chief should have seen as a danger signal.

  ‘Of course you must investigate her, Peach! Why on earth must you take things I say so literally? Who else have you got in the frame?’

  ‘Senior Tutor at the UEL, sir. Walter Culpepper. Told you about him before, sir. His ancestor rogered Queen Catherine Howard, sir, if you remember, and was executed for it. So, you could say he comes from a criminal family, in a way.’

  ‘Isn’t he the man you thought was desperate to become the Director of the UEL himself?’

  ‘That’s the cove, sir. Right clever bugger, he is.’ Percy knew brains always made his chief wary, if not suspicious.

  ‘You’ll need to handle him carefully, you know. Treat him with kid gloves.’

  ‘Really, sir?’ Peach looked immensely disappointed. ‘I’d rather thought we might give him a bit of third degree, if you gave the word for it. Shine a light in his eyes, shout at him a bit, maybe make sure he fell off his chair once or twice in the course of an interview. He’s sixty-one and a bit frail-looking, and I think he might blurt out everything he knows if you just give us —’

  ‘Peach! You will do nothing of the sort. That is an order. Is that quite clear?’ Tucker couldn’t believe this awful man was serious, but he was never really certain of him, even after more than seven years.

  Percy looked suitably disappointed. ‘Very well, sir. I’ll remember. Superintendent Tucker says that there is to be no third degree with a pensioner, on this occasion.’

  Tucker had been hoping for a quick arrest, preferably of some known low-life criminal, with minimum disturbance to the new university, which he saw as raising the tone of the area. ‘Who else have you got to offer? No more university dons, I trust.’

  Peach pretended to think for a moment, then beamed delightedly. ‘All of ‘em, sir. All the main ones that we’ve come up with so far, that is.’ He didn’t know if a chaplain was a don, but he was prepared to stretch a point, to appal Tommy Bloody Tucker.

  Tucker was duly appalled. ‘Are you sure of that? All members of the university staff?’

  ‘You and I know that it’s usually someone who knows a man pretty well who kills him, sir. And a man who lives on a university campus is bound to have lots of people around him who know him pretty well, I suppose.’ Peach beamed complacently at his supposition.

  Tucker’s gloom was at the other end of the facial continuum. ‘Well. You’ll have to go very carefully. I don’t want any complaints about police insensitivity.’

  ‘Right, sir. Not easy for us coppers at the crime-face to be as sensitive as you, sir, but we’ll do our best.’

  Tucker peered at him suspiciously, but found the DI’s glance on that point above his head again. ‘Well, as you’ve come up here, you’d better give me everything you’ve got on these other people.’ He seemed to have forgotten that it was he who had summoned Peach to his office.

  ‘Yes, sir. Well there’s another woman, sir. Youngish. Lecturer in social psychology.’

  ‘Ah! Sounds a possibility.’ By which, Peach knew, he meant that she was female, young, and a psychologist; three of Tommy Bloody Tucker’s greatest bigotries. Tucker leaned forward a little, spoke confidentially. ‘You could lean on her a little, I should think.’ He gave Peach his version of a confi
dential smile, which appeared in Percy’s vision like a paedophile’s leer.

  Percy brightened. ‘Third degree, sir?’ he said innocently.

  Tucker recoiled. ‘No! Nothing like that. I just thought you might be a little more harsh in your questioning techniques than with more — well, more respectable people. Of course, I won’t interfere, but —’

  ‘Say no more, sir! Understood. Just as well you said, because I was planning to treat Carmen Campbell with kid gloves, sir. Her being black, and a citizen of Barbados, and —’

  ‘Black, Peach?’ Consternation flooded into the Tucker visage.

  ‘More coffee-coloured, I’d say, to be strictly accurate. Very attractive, actually. And she’s a bright woman. Feisty, I think they call it nowadays. She’ll give us a good run for our money, but I’m glad you think we can rough things up a bit. Don’t think I’d have had the guts to do it myself, without the authority from above, but —’

  ‘And a foreign citizen?’ Tucker was aghast.

  Peach beamed. ‘From Barbados, sir. May have dual nationality, but I didn’t ask her. It will probably come out, once she begins to fight back, so —’

  ‘You will handle this with great care, Peach! With diplomacy, if you know the meaning of the word.’

  ‘“Skill in negotiation”, sir, I believe. You wouldn’t like to go to see Carmen Campbell yourself, sir? Feisty lady, as I say. You’d probably enjoy the challenge, with your diplomatic skills.’

  ‘Handle the situation with care, Peach. If in doubt, back off. With all these guidelines about racialism, we can’t be too careful.’

  ‘Yes, sir. We need to be careful about whom we allot to delicate tasks. That’s why I sent DS Blake out to see the clergyman.’

  ‘The clergyman.’ It hardly seemed possible, but Tucker’s apprehension actually increased.

  ‘Chaplain at the UEL, sir. Quite a learned chap, apparently. Doctor of Divinity. Doubles the job with being the vicar at St Catherine’s.’