by J M Gregson
Tucker’s jaw dropped, most appealingly for the man staring rigidly over his head. ‘Remind me again, Peach, about the weapon which killed Dr Carter.’
‘Smith and Wesson .357, sir.’ Percy had the greatest difficulty in preventing a smile, but succeeded.
‘And — and have you questioned the Reverend Matthews about this firearm?’
‘About to do so, sir, when you called me up here. News only in this morning.’
‘Well, complete your report to me and get about your business, then.’ Tucker did his best to make any delay seem his inspector’s fault.
‘Yessir. Checking up on the West Indian bint’s — sorry, lecturer’s — alibi. Carmen Campbell. Planning to give her a bit of the third degree, sir, as you suggested. No marks left on her, of course, just firm questioning and bright lights in the face.’ Peach kept his gaze upon the wall, but permitted himself the ghost of a conspiratorial smile.
‘I never authorized any such thing! I don’t want any accusations of institutional racialism cast at this force, Peach. Is that crystal clear?’
‘Yes, sir.’ Peach, who had never conducted a racist interview in his life, managed to imbue the two syllables with disappointment. ‘Might be able to frighten the Senior Tutor, sir, with your permission.’
‘Senior Tutor? At the UEL?’
‘Walter Culpepper, sir. One of his ancestors rogered Queen Catherine Howard, sir, if you —’
‘Yes, yes, I remember, Peach! What a squalid mind you have! What sort of man is this Culpepper?’
‘In his sixties, sir. Lively mind, but quite frail physically. No experience of police brutality. Even waving a truncheon at him might loosen his tongue, make him smile the other side of his clever little face.’
‘Peach! You will go very carefully. This man might become the first Vice-Chancellor of the University of East Lancashire.’ Tucker rolled out the titles sonorously, as if he hoped to milk some vicarious intellectual dignity himself from them.
‘Yes, sir. That might give him a motive for bumping off Claptrap Carter, you see. That and the fact that he’d hated him to the point of paranoia for many years. Your Mrs Carter told me that.’
‘Not my Mrs Carter, Peach!’ The horror of being dubbed the friend of a murderess suddenly reared itself before Tucker’s fearful imagination. ‘Do you think this Culpepper might have done it?’
‘Might have, sir. He’s a genuine intellectual, I think. Kept quoting Hamlet at me.’ Percy knew how Tucker feared intellectuals. ‘And he’s no alibi for late Saturday night and early Sunday morning.’
‘Well, then. Follow it up, get the evidence, and bring him in. Is that all?’
‘Almost, sir. Except for the man who seems to be statistically the strongest bet of all.’
‘Statistically?’ Tommy Bloody Tucker took on the look of a suspicious goldfish, an expression which Percy would have loved to catch and fix for posterity. But we live in an imperfect world.
‘Involved with drugs, sir. In a big way, it seems. Plenty of money and guns floating about in the drugs world, sir. And lots of murders.’
‘Yes. I don’t need you to tell me that, Peach. This seems much the likeliest area for an arrest.’
‘Yes, sir. And the man in question was seen on the campus on Saturday night, sir. Drugs Squad have come up with that.’
‘Pity you couldn’t be so efficient yourself, Peach. Anything else against the fellow?’
‘Yes, sir. Malcolm McLean, sir, that’s the chap. And my own research supports the view that he’s our man.’
Tucker peered darkly at the man still sitting so rigidly upright on the chair in front of him. ‘Your own research? You’re not referring to that ridiculous —’
‘Masonic Prominence in Crime in the Brunton Area, sir.’ Percy enunciated the words as if they were already a title for the monograph he had threatened. ‘That’s it. Four times more likely to be guilty of serious crime round here if you’re a Freemason. Malcolm McLean’s a Mason, sir!’
Peach produced his last sentence like a schoolboy triumphantly concluding a geometrical proof. For the first time, he relaxed his pose, and gave Tommy Bloody Tucker the most seraphic of his smiles.
*
It was but a short journey to the vicarage of St Catherine’s parish church. The church itself rose high in smoke-blackened stone. The forty chimneys King Cotton and its associated industries had brought to Brunton had gone now, and there was a fund raising money for the cleaning of the stone, but the declining number of parishioners made it doubtful if the tall spire would ever rise in pristine glory above the houses which surrounded it.
The Victorian vicarage had been pulled down and six modern detached houses built in its grounds. The Church Commissioners had used some of the profits to build a practical, boxy, modern vicarage, a hundred yards from the church itself. ‘Designed for a small family, really. Plenty big enough for a single man and his housekeeper,’ Tom Matthews explained, as he led DI Peach and DS Blake into the square, rather clinical drawing room where he received church visitors.
He was dressed in a black clerical suit with a dog collar. He said to Lucy Blake, who had seen him in a green sweater and jeans on the UEL campus, ‘I always wear formal clothes here. It’s what most of my parishioners seem to expect.’ He was patently nervous, and Peach saw it and delayed his first question accordingly. Not many people got less nervous if you kept them guessing about the purpose of your visit.
He waited until they were all sitting rather awkwardly in the heavy, worn leather armchairs which had come from the former vicarage before he said, ‘We need to ask you a few important questions, Reverend Matthews.’
‘Please call me Tom. Everybody does. I told DS Blake that when we met yesterday.’ He grinned affably, looking younger than his forty-three years.
Lucy Blake countered with, ‘There was quite a lot that you didn’t tell me, though, wasn’t there?’
Peach was ready to attack now. ‘Quite a lot of vital information that you chose to conceal, in fact,’ he said. ‘Facts, or your version of facts, which you knew were quite vital to police officers investigating a brutal murder. I’d say to withhold information quite deliberately in these circumstances amounts to lying, wouldn’t you, DS Blake?’
‘Yes, sir, I think I would.’
Tom found the two pairs of eyes which studied his face and his every reaction, steadily and without embarrassment, more disconcerting than he could ever have imagined they would be. He said, ‘I could hardly be expected to know what was going to be —’
‘Definitely amounts to lying, I should say. Not very nice, in a clergyman. Not the sort of thing to inspire confidence in a congregation, young or old.’ Peach shook his head sadly.
‘Look, perhaps I should tell you that I’ve spoken to Ruth Carter this morning and I now feel that I can —’
‘Thought you would have. Need to put your heads together, when you’re compiling a new alibi for a murder.’
‘Not compiling, Inspector Peach. The facts Ruth gave you earlier today were entirely accurate. We were at Mrs Jackson’s guest house in Kettlewell for the whole of Saturday night.’
‘That remains to be seen, Tom. When someone lies to us as Mrs Carter did, we regard everything she subsequently tells us with a healthy scepticism. When a clergyman chooses to withhold information he knows to be central to a murder investigation, we do the same with him. Not that I can remember that happening before.’
Tom Matthews was rattled and discomfited, but he did not make the mistake of losing his temper. ‘I can see what it looks like, from the police standpoint. Ruth wanted to protect me from exposure to the media: she knew what they’d make of her relationship with a clergyman. People may have stopped going to church, may even have ceased believing in God, but they’re more prurient than ever when a clergyman is caught out, whatever his Church.’ There was a flash of genuine resentment in the last sentence.
Peach said evenly, ‘I can see all that. But let us be quite clear about what
has happened. This isn’t a matter of the News of the World catching a vicar with his trousers down. It’s a murder inquiry, in which the wife of the victim chose to lie to the police about her whereabouts at the time of the killing, and her lover chose to collude in that deception.’
Tom Matthews listened carefully to each phrase, as if trying to find a flaw in the logic and failing to do so. He could see no room for bluster here, and bluster was in any case not his style. He said, ‘All right. I’m sorry. Ruth was trying to protect me, and I didn’t feel I could let her down, once she’d told you her original story about being at her mother’s. For what it’s worth, I can confirm that the facts she gave you earlier this morning about our two nights in the Yorkshire Dales are accurate.’
Peach’s eyes had never left his face, observing his distress as well as his sturdy support for Ruth Carter. He said, ‘That would be worth considerably more if there was an independent witness to support it, Mr Matthews.’
‘I’m sorry. Both Ruth and I have thought hard about that, as you might imagine, but we have no suggestions. We went to the Dales not just because it was near enough for me to get back here early on a Sunday morning, but because there are vast open areas where you can walk and get away from people. We chose Mrs Jackson’s guest house because it was small and very quiet, reducing the chances of anyone seeing us together. That very quietness seems now to be a factor against us.’
Peach nodded. If the man was telling the truth, he was right. If he was lying, the absence of witnesses was in his favour. ‘How long has your affair with Mrs Carter been going on?’
Matthews gave them a wan smile. ‘If you mean how long have we been lovers, five months. We’ve known each other for just over a year. Ruth came across to help me set up the University Chaplaincy, once I’d been allotted that wooden terrapin building. She was kind and helpful with furnishings and so on, and I suppose we were both lonely. In my case, I was free of any encumbrances, but both of us knew that Ruth’s position as wife of the Director could land us in a public scandal. As Ruth said, a lot of people in the UEL would have delighted in seeing Claptrap Carter cuckolded, and we’ve already spoken of the tabloid reaction.’
‘But nevertheless you chose to become involved with each other.’
‘Yes. We agonized for a few awful weeks, but it was obvious that Ruth’s marriage was over. She was very clear that she was going to institute proceedings for a divorce, whether I was around or not.’
‘Did Dr Carter know what was going on?’
‘No. Ruth was sure he didn’t, and she’d have known. George was more concerned with what he could get for himself than with watching his wife.’ He allowed himself an acerbic and uncharitable smile.
‘Do you know any names? I should emphasize that we should regard it very seriously if you again chose to withhold information from us.’
‘No. Ruth had given up bothering, and I didn’t want to know. As a matter of fact, his philanderings were useful to us. It was when he announced that he was going to be away usually at some non-existent higher educational conference that we had our weekends together. I didn’t need much notice, you see: unless I have a wedding on, my Saturdays are normally fairly quiet. But of course, I had to make sure I was back here early on Sunday morning for the services.’
‘And you’ve no idea who George Carter was with on any of these occasions?’
He looked troubled. ‘There is one woman. But it’s hearsay rather than any definite knowledge. West Indian girl I think, with an American accent. Tutor in the Psychology Department, I think. Very striking, very confident.’
‘Carmen Campbell.’
‘That’s her! She came over to the chaplaincy a couple of times in the early days, with students. We had a lively discussion on one occasion, but she said eventually that formal religion wasn’t for her, and I haven’t seen her for months.’
‘So how did you know about her meetings with Dr Carter?’
‘I didn’t, at the time. She discussed George Carter with me once, when there were just the two of us in the chaplaincy, after the students had gone. But only as a Director. What we made of him from the little we’d seen, that sort of thing. It must have been Ruth who mentioned that George was spending the night with her, much later on.’ He grinned, a male grin which overrode the clerical garb. ‘I remember thinking he was doing rather well for himself with Carmen Campbell!’
Peach grinned back; that had been his very sentiment, when he had first heard of the liaison. Power was definitely a better aphrodisiac than a dog collar. Tom Matthews had had to settle for Ruth Carter, an attractive enough woman, but one who brought with her dangerous baggage for a clergyman, as events were now demonstrating.
Peach said, ‘We’ve interviewed Miss Campbell. It seems that she was forty miles away from the UEL at the time of Carter’s death.’
‘I’m pleased about that.’
He looked as though he genuinely was pleased, but perhaps that was the professional clergyman coming out, thought Percy. He said, ‘Mr Matthews, you withheld information from us at the beginning of our investigation. I hardly need to say that you must now keep absolutely nothing back from us if you wish to be treated with any sympathy. Have you any information which you think might be significant in relation to the murder of George Andrew Carter?’
The Reverend Matthews looked very troubled: like a man struggling with his conscience, thought Peach as he waited. Very appropriate, for a clergyman — so long as conscience won the struggle. It did. Tom Matthews said, ‘Walter Culpepper came round to the University Chaplaincy to see me last night. He’s the Senior Tutor, lives on the —’
‘We know Dr Culpepper.’
‘Yes. Well, he came to ask me to help him.’
‘To lie for him, no doubt.’
Tom Matthews looked thoroughly uncomfortable. ‘Yes, I suppose so. He wanted me to say that we’d been together late last Saturday night, that he’d come to the vicarage here to talk to me about something.’
‘But, being a pillar of rectitude, you told him you couldn’t do it.’
‘I wasn’t here at that time, as I’ve told you. So I couldn’t help him.’
Peach frowned. ‘What time did he want to cover?’
‘He said he’d been up to his son’s house at Settle for the day. But he was back on the campus by about eleven thirty. He wanted me to say we were together for the hours after that. I never found out for precisely how long, because I wasn’t able to help Walter, and I told him so.’
‘Do you know precisely what he was doing at the time when he tried to arrange an alibi with you?’
Matthews hesitated, seemingly having to persuade himself again to let down the older man. ‘He said that his wife went straight to bed when they got back to their house on the campus. He went out for a walk round the site. He didn’t say how long he was out for, but it was that time that he wanted to cover.’
So that highly strung little intellectual gnome might yet be their man. Culpepper, who was not a churchgoer, must be frightened or desperate, to see the Reverend Thomas Matthews as a possible salvation. Peach looked forward to hearing what that entertaining and unpredictable man would have to say for himself.
But there was still work to be done here first. It was time to play his ace of trumps. He said, in the same calm tones he had used for the last few minutes, ‘I believe you have a Smith and Wesson .357 revolver.’
Tom Matthews’s open, fresh face paled visibly. ‘How on earth do you know about my —’
‘But no licence for that devastating instrument.’ Peach carried on as if the clergyman had never spoken.
‘I — I always meant to get a licence for it. No one has ever asked me about it. I kept it when I left the army, because it was my own weapon. Most of the army officers were rather tickled by the idea that a padre could be an expert shot. I only owned it because I was interested in firearms, and I had a certain expertise. The Smith and Wesson is a wonderful revolver, as you say, and —’
&nb
sp; ‘Why no licence, Mr Matthews?’
‘I always meant to get one. But then I found the licensing laws had changed and all the firearms I was interested in had to be kept at gun clubs. I belong to a gun club, but I’ve scarcely been there: it’s not quite the image expected of a clergyman, in a conservative parish.’
‘So where do you keep the Smith and Wesson?’
‘In the chaplaincy at the university. I’ve nowhere here where I could keep it hidden, nowhere I could lock it away.’ He glanced at the wall to their right, and they knew immediately that he was thinking of his resident housekeeper. ‘At least I could lock it away in my desk in the chaplaincy.’
Peach nodded. ‘You’ll have to hand it over, Mr Matthews. And we shall have to check it against the bullet which killed George Carter.’
Tom Matthews’s eyes widened with alarm. ‘I can’t. It went missing. A month and more ago. I can’t be precise, because there was no sign of a break-in. The desk drawer had been opened with a key, as far as I could see. I don’t suppose those locks are very individual.’
Peach regarded him steadily. ‘Let’s be clear about this. You’ve admitted that a weapon of exactly the type which killed George Carter was held illegally by you. You’re now claiming that the revolver was stolen from your desk in the University Chaplaincy, at least a month ago, and that the theft was not reported.’
‘I know. It doesn’t sound convincing. But it’s the truth.’ Peach stared at him for a moment. ‘It might sound more convincing if you’d reported the theft at the time.’
‘I couldn’t. I hadn’t got a licence for the Smith and Wesson, had I?’
‘So you let a dangerous weapon disappear without any report of it.’
‘I know. But I didn’t want to confess I’d even held a revolver without a licence. It doesn’t look good, for the vicar of a church like this. I thought it was probably a harmless student theft, that someone wanted it as a sort of trophy. And there are a hell of a lot of unlicensed firearms in the country. You know that.’
