by J M Gregson
‘It’s more difficult than I expected,’ was all he said. The terse understatements were a mark of their understanding.
Christine let Bert Hook in, even asked briefly about his wife and the boys. Hook had married late and happily, so that his children were many years younger than hers. When Mary Hartford’s car crunched over the gravel, she was forty yards away at the end of the garden, visible proof that their privacy within the house was assured. Through the big picture window which overlooked the back garden, Lambert and Mary Hartford as they sat opposite each other would catch sight of her at different points in their exchanges. For both of them, she was a reminder of a normal, saner world to set against the Grand Guignol wonderland into which they seemed to have strayed. Their talk of secrets, lies and killing was set against a world where ordinary people watered tomato plants, potted up cuttings and looked to the morrow with hope, not fear.
Mary Hartford looked white and drawn. Hook, who had not seen her before, treated her with exaggerated courtesy, and she was grateful rather than amused. She sank into the armchair opposite Lambert which he had made ready for her, but he noticed she did not relax. Her neck, slender and fragile above her dark green costume, looked longer than he remembered it. She did not put her handbag down beside her chair, but clasped it upon her lap with both hands. The spinsterish pose made him wonder automatically if the bag contained something she wished to conceal. Then he realized as he saw the thin wrists quivering that she was clasping it to still her trembling hands.
‘Drink?’ he said automatically. ‘We have whisky. Or gin.’ He was on his feet, moving awkwardly towards the sideboard.
‘No, thank you,’ she said, almost primly. From the corner of his eye, Lambert caught Hook’s silent sigh of relief: obviously he was thinking of a defence counsel ridiculing a confession extracted in a Superintendent’s home from a defendant plied with drink. As if to reassure him, Mary Hartford looked down at her hands and said, ‘That coffee you promised would be lovely,’ and Hook bustled to serve her.
Lambert had not worked out how to start. Clearly he was going to need to question her: she had not driven here bursting with the need to talk. She looked five years older than she had in the morning; the mouth was thinner, the age-lines around the eyes more visible, the dark patches beneath them more marked.
‘I’m sorry to drag you out. You must be very tired after your work in theatre,’ he said weakly.
‘You didn’t: it was I who suggested I came here. And I don’t usually look as bad as this, even after theatre, but thanks for the euphemism. What can I do for you?’ She took the coffee from Hook and for a moment she might have been composing herself for an interview with a relative of one of her patients. Then her cup rattled in her hand against the saucer and the illusion of calm was gone. She stared at her hands in astonishment, so that Lambert could not believe they had ever let her down like this before. Then she sipped the coffee with determination and forced herself to look straight at him as he spoke.
‘I’ll be direct with you, Mary. I think you would prefer it. In any case, it will be best.’
‘Intriguing,’ she said, and the tight lips tried a little smile which they could not hold. ‘And ominous.’
‘We have not been idle during the day, Mary. I told you of the break-in to Mr Shepherd’s car this morning. But you have probably not heard about the fire in the greenkeeper’s cottage in the woods by the seventeenth.’ In the white face the brown eyes widened, but he thought with surprise, not apprehension. He waited, but she said nothing. He felt in his pocket, found the piece of white card he sought, and tried to produce it as if it were not the Ace of Trumps. ‘The cottage is furnished,’ he said tersely. ‘The bedroom at the back was scarcely touched by the fire. On the mantelpiece we found this.’ He passed her the photograph of James Shepherd with his arm round her and those two conventional, innocent smiles at a camera a decade ago, which now seemed overlaid with sinister implications.
He watched her closely as she stared unblinking as a statue at the picture in her hand. At length, her other hand gathered itself into a fist and pushed against her mouth. When she spoke, the nausea at the back of her throat distorted her words.
‘I haven’t seen this for years.’
‘I think you should tell me all about it,’ said Lambert. ‘In your own time.’ The coffee cup, now fortunately empty, shook crazily upon its saucer as she took it up again, and Hook started forward to take it.
There was a long silence before she spoke. Perhaps it was not more than ten seconds: to the two detectives, listening to the slow clicking of the grandfather clock in the hall, it seemed much longer.
‘I knew James still had photographs from that time. He reminded me of it when he thought it might embarrass me!’ It was exactly the same flash of resentment they had seen in other witnesses: Lambert would have sworn that Michael Taylor and Mary Hartford had nothing in common, but now in her brief, bitter shrug she echoed him. ‘I was his mistress for just over a year. Nine, ten years ago now. He could be charming when he wanted, you know. More so in those days. And you can be surprisingly naïve at thirty-nine. I hadn’t had many men.’ Her eyes stared out through the window at the banks of cloud over the chestnuts; Lambert wanted to tell her that they weren’t judging her, then realized that she was trying to explain to herself, not to them, how such a thing could have happened. ‘He had power, money, education, most of the usual aphrodisiacs. He could even make me laugh a little, then. My mother, who was still alive then, thought what a good match it would be. Of course, I saw through him soon enough. It took me months to end it, though. And when I did, how he made me suffer. If you think Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, you should have seen James Shepherd in action.’ She clenched her small fists at the memory, and ground them into her thighs.
It was Hook who broke the silence this time. ‘Miss Hartford, can you think of any reason why Mr Shepherd should have kept pictures of you in that old cottage?’ he said.
‘No. None. None at all.’ She seemed near breaking point.
‘You didn’t go there with him during your association?’ asked Lambert gently.
‘I didn’t even know the place existed then,’ she said.
‘Can you think of any reason why anyone else should put this photograph there?’ said Lambert, and caught Hook’s look of surprise behind her chair.
‘No. I knew James had photographs, and letters too. He reminded me often enough. I thought from what he said that they were in that wall-safe in the Committee Room in what he called his “black box”. But why should anyone else —’ She stopped and looked at him, her eyes wide with horror.
‘We are dealing with a murderer, Mary. If what you say is true, someone must have put that photograph there. Perhaps to draw our attention to your past relationship with the victim. You may think that “Hell hath no fury” etc. is overrated but we come across it as a motive for violence often enough.’
‘Perhaps James wanted to taunt another woman with my picture. It’s the kind of thing he would do,’ she said; her voice was hollow with shock as she tried to convince herself.
‘It’s possible, I suppose. If we don’t make an arrest within twenty-four hours, we shall have to investigate all kinds of possibilities. Tell me about this “black box” you think was kept in the wall-safe.’
‘It was the box in which James kept documents of a particular kind. Letters, photographs, anything which gave him some kind of a hold over people. He used to keep them at home, but after he became Chairman of the Golf Club he kept them in that wall-safe. He had the only key — that safe is no longer used by the Club: there’s a bigger and better one in the Secretary’s office. James used to smile and nod his head towards the Committee Room when he was threatening us — he liked the feeling that the instrument of torture was near at hand but beyond the reach of any of us.’
‘Us? You are aware of this kind of blackmail being used on others?’ The brown eyes were steady now, assessing Lambert, wondering how
much he already knew. She took a deep, weary breath.
‘I was his mistress, John, more’s the pity. I know his methods better than anyone. I know all about his hold over Michael Taylor. I can guess from the way in which he said “Colonel Parsons” that there is some query over our Secretary’s army rank. I can imagine exactly the way in which he would threaten Debbie Hall and Len Jackson. He has some hold over Bill Birch, though I don’t know what … Surely all this can’t be relevant to your investigation.’
‘It may be; you’ve just listed a nice selection of motives,’ said Lambert drily. He nodded to Bert Hook, triggering their pre-arranged direct approach to the next area of questioning. The Sergeant spoke with deliberate formality.
‘Miss Hartford, the Superintendent has told you we have been active during the day. As part of the routine, we take the fingerprints of all people known to have been in the vicinity of a serious crime. I understand your prints were taken late this morning, along with those of the other Committee members. We now have the reports of the print and photographic officers who covered the scene of the crime, together with the pathologist’s report on the cause and time of death. Now, can you add anything to what you told Superintendent Lambert this morning about your movements after the end of the Committee Meeting last night?’
She did not even turn to look at Hook, though she had listened carefully enough to his words. ‘No,’ she said. The slender hands were back clasping her handbag; she looked down at the almost girlish fingers as though they belonged to somebody else. Did she suspect already that those fingers had betrayed her?
Lambert’s voice when it came was as quiet as hers, but it smashed the surface of the scene beyond repair.
‘Did you go back to see Shepherd before or after you had your drink in the bar?’ he said. He knew the answer, but he wanted it from her.
The wide brown eyes had only one emotion now as they stared wildly at him: they were small pools of terror. They dominated the face before him until he could see no other feature. He was drawn on inexorably, unwilling to let her flounder into further lies.
‘The murder knife has been formally confirmed as the heavy knife you have seen so often in meetings. There was only one print identifiable upon it. It is a thumbprint of yours, Mary.’
They should have been prepared for her reaction. But her previous composure under extreme stress had been such that it caught them by surprise. Mary Hartford, Lady Captain of Burnham Cross Golf Club, Chief Nursing Officer responsible for fifty-two staff, burst into uncontrollable tears.
The sobbing racked the whole of the slender body, so that for a moment it was as if she were subject to some sort of fit. Over the twitching woman, Lambert saw in his Sergeant’s face a strange conflict of compassion and triumph. Bert Hook thought they had arrived at their murderer. He was waiting for his Superintendent to charge and caution Mary Hartford about anything she now might wish to say.
Gradually, the sobbing subsided. Neither man offered any physical contact: they had been in similar situations too often to venture that. Lambert waited patiently, watching his wife moving in silhouette against a twilight sky at the bottom of the garden. Eventually, he transferred a man’s handkerchief from his pocket to the clutch of those starfish fingers spread across the handbag. When the tears ceased to flow, the small body which now seemed so vulnerable in the big armchair stopped trembling. With a long, shuddering sigh, the moment passed and the brown eyes in the face full of pain looked up again at Lambert.
‘What now?’ she said hopelessly.
‘That’s rather up to you, Mary. If you want a lawyer present, you can have one, and of course you don’t have to say anything at all if you don’t wish to. I should be interested in your account of what happened when you went back to that Committee Room. The true account this time, of course.’
Despite this last thrust, there was a gleam of hope in the now very revealing face opposite him. ‘You mean you’re still not convinced I did it?’ she said wonderingly.
‘Whether you did or you didn’t, I should obviously be very interested in your story,’ said Lambert; his small, sardonic smile was the first one to surface in that quiet lounge for a long time. It seemed to encourage Mary Hartford, who began to speak in measured, low-key tones, as if outlining a nightmare that had happened to someone else.
‘I went back to the Committee Room to plead with James about Bill Birch. He’d been particularly cutting to Bill at the end of the meeting. Bill’s wife is very ill, probably more ill than even Bill knows. I thought James should know that; surely it would make a difference, even with him. It was — would have been — the first time I’d been alone with him for months. I had to screw myself up to confront him.’
With the recollection, she paused. Lambert tried not to be hypnotized by the sight of his sodden handkerchief twisting into a grey-white rope between those slender, unconscious fingers. The brittle control held. ‘When I entered the Committee Room, I thought it was empty at first. Then I saw James’s body lying on the other side of the table. My first impulse was to run as far away as possible and pretend I’d never been there. I should be ashamed of that and perhaps I am. I have been a nurse for thirty years now, trained to preserve life. But in this case what should have been instinctive had to be worked out, as a second thought.
‘I went round the table to check if James was really dead. He lay on his back with his eyes fully open. No pulse, no heartbeat, no breath. I have seen death many times, John, and I was certain of it here. Perhaps I would have tried the kiss of life, if those eyes I knew so well had not been open. But I knew it was no use.’
The three of them were silent now, weighing that moment of horror when the lips that once had fastened upon Shepherd’s in sexual passion had rejected that last, hopeless gesture of mercy. Then Bert Hook said quietly, ‘Miss Hartford, why didn’t you report the murder at once, as an ordinary innocent citizen should?’ He was clutching after the normal procedures he felt being moved away from him; against his better judgement, he felt sympathy suffusing him for this woman he had expected his chief to charge by now.
She looked at him, ravaged, but defiant in her misery. ‘I was glad to see him dead!’ It would have been shocking if they hadn’t heard it so often before. ‘I didn’t want to see his murderer, male or female, caught. This is what I think now. It wasn’t as clear as that then. I checked the body, put my hand on the hilt of the knife, then left it where it was. I thought clearly enough to wipe the handle with my handkerchief, but I must have missed the end if you found a thumbprint. There was nothing in the safe. I went to the lounge. As you say, I was probably fairly quiet over my drink.’
‘Others said it, not me, Mary.’
‘So why did you ask me whether I went back to the Committee Room before or after the drinks?’
‘Mainly to see whether you would tell the truth,’ he said shamelessly. ‘It wasn’t just that you were quiet, you see. That could have been for any number of innocent reasons. But one of your Committee colleagues spotted blood upon your cuff.’
‘Bill Birch.’ She nodded mirthlessly, whilst Lambert recalled his thought of the morning that this woman should have been a detective. ‘Ironic that I should have been trying to protect him when I went back to see James.’
‘Probably I shouldn’t tell you this, but the information was prised from his reluctant lips. It quite upset him to tell me what a good citizen should,’ said Lambert gently. He dared not look at Bert Hook, but if Birch and Hartford were both innocent, they would have to resume a friendship which had been deeper than he had known before this case arose.
Mary Hartford refused more coffee but accepted a very small whisky. She drank it with a wry face, as though it were medicine, then drove shakily but carefully through the five-barred gate and away into the last of the twilight. She had been particularly anxious to avoid Christine. It was the realization of how important the cool, professional front of the hospital matron was to her which brought both men back to that real world th
ey seemed for a time to have forsaken.
They stood by Bert Hook’s battered Ford and looked west, to where a vivid purple veined the sky between black clouds. ‘Do you believe her?’ It was Hook who voiced the banal question which occupied them both.
Lambert continued to look at nature’s spectacular chromatic display rather than at his Sergeant as he replied. ‘Maybe. Let’s set it against what the others say. By this time tomorrow, I think we’ll know our murderer.’ Hook climbed heavily into his car and started the engine. Still looking at the changed sky, Lambert mused, ‘So fair and foul a day I have not seen,’ but Hook mercifully did not hear enough to respond.
As Lambert turned back to the house, the first livid fork of lightning rent the sky above the greenhouse and the thunder rumbled ominously up the valley. By the time he reached the door, heavy drops of rain were exploding on the gravel.
Chapter 19
The storm raged through most of the night. Christine Lambert slept little, but her exhausted husband was less disturbed.
He woke once to a Wagnerian clamour, with lightning illuminating the room with flashes recurrent enough for an old movie. Later in the night, he cried out with a child’s fear, and she knew he was back in the blitz amidst the crash of falling walls and the death of his grandparents. She clasped his arm, soothing the trembling middle-aged man as softly as she would one of the children she taught by day. Soon the trembling ceased; he never woke.
In the early-morning sunlight, the world seemed washed by the storm. The humidity was gone, and the air at the kitchen door was fresh and stimulating; the birds had postponed their dawn chorus until the thunder had rumbled away, so that now the garden was alive with their song. ‘No bacon and eggs, I suppose,’ Lambert said glumly as he came to the table, but he tackled his muesli and bran with considerable relish.
