Making a Killing

by J M Gregson

  Sergeant Hook looked round the dusty interior of the summerhouse and said, ‘Not much, but mine own.’

  ‘Careful, Bert, you mustn’t get quotacious,’ said Lambert.

  Hook peered through the low door, towards the place where they had glimpsed the fleeing figure, then back at the pathetic trappings of his existence. Recklessly ignoring his Superintendent’s warning, he said, ‘There but for the grace of God go I.’

  Hook rarely referred to his upbringing as a Barnardo’s boy; perhaps he thought about it now. Each wrapped in his own conjectures, the two large men walked slowly back towards the terrace at the rear of the Hall. Their route took them through a small kitchen garden, between forest trees and the yew hedge which bounded the rose garden, no doubt drastically reduced in size since its Victorian heyday.

  Here a man diligently weeded the line of runner beans which climbed in impressive orange flower over the traditional row of crossed poles. Lambert coughed discreetly at the large tweed backside of the generous trousers and the figure slowly straightened. The weatherbeaten face which turned to them was that of a vigorous and active man in his sixties. He assessed them for a moment and said, with the slightest gesture of his head towards the big house behind him, ‘You’ll be CID.’

  Lambert was not surprised to be thus identified, for most people nowadays fancied they recognized policemen out of uniform. Many large citizens in other occupations could testify to the notion and its rather random application. He was surprised at the precision of the CID label: perhaps the remnants of the Reithian ideal still encouraged television crime series to inform as well as entertain.

  ‘Right first time,’ said Bert Hook. And you are…?’

  ‘Bert Reynolds,’ said the horticulturist, and looked at them challengingly. He was waiting for some ritual joke about his film star name: even Lambert, whose visits to the cinema had now become biennial, recognized it. Probably Hook did too, but he was at his most resolutely deadpan.

  ‘You work here regularly?’ he said.

  ‘For the last twenty-two years,’ said Reynolds. ‘Full-time until last year, when I got the pension. Just mornings now. The Craigs asked me to stay on while the place is empty. The lawns are mown by a contractor, but I keep up with the rest. They said to take the vegetables for myself,’ he said, anxious it seemed to forestall any criticism.

  ‘Place is a credit to you,’ said Hook sincerely, surveying a row of cauliflowers with the eye of a man who knew about vegetables.

  ‘I seen this place alive with people in my time,’ Reynolds said. He leant upon his hoe, gazed back over the gardens at the rear of the house, and was plainly prepared to give himself up to reminiscence. Lambert resisted the prospect with some difficulty; he would have liked to hear about the house and its history, but time was precious in a murder investigation which had scarcely got under way yet.

  ‘You weren’t around the house last night?’ he said.

  ‘No. Only mornings.’ Reynolds looked disappointed; he had hoped to trade some information for lurid details of the death he had heard about.

  ‘Did you know Mr Freeman, of Freeman Estates?’ said Hook.

  Reynolds registered the past tense. So that’s who was dead. ‘Not really. He came here a week or two ago and measured the place up. Spent a good two hours looking round with Mr Craig.’

  ‘Doing a valuation of the place,’ said Hook.

  ‘He didn’t even look at my vegetables,’ said Reynolds resentfully, as if reminding the Recording Angel of a dark footnote in the affairs of the deceased.

  ‘Do you know of anyone who was around the Hall last night?’ asked Lambert.

  Reynolds thought hard; he was reluctant to pass so fleetingly across what he sensed was the centre of the investigation. His two interrogators, trying not to lead their witness, failed lamentably, for he caught them looking back through the trees. He brightened a little as he said, ‘Wino Willy might have been.’ Then his spirits fell again. ‘But he wouldn’t kill anyone.’

  ‘We weren’t thinking he would,’ said Hook hastily; already he had visions of the lame dog being hounded by a society anxious for a culprit. ‘But he might have seen something.’

  Reynolds shrugged. ‘Shouldn’t think so. He keeps himself to himself. He’d be no use if he did see anything, anyway. Mad as a hatter, he is.’ He began hoeing along the line of a row of calabrese; if the temporary occupant of the summerhouse was not a murderer, he held no further interest for Bert Reynolds.

  Lambert and Hook walked to the wide stone terrace at the back of the house. Then they looked back over rose garden, kitchen garden, and woods, to where the small wooden building stood at the extreme limit of the grounds. From here, it was invisible, though it could not be more than four hundred yards away. Neither man spoke; each knew what the other was thinking.

  There had been violent death in this quiet place last night. In the elegant drawing-room behind them, a murderer had worked, quiet and undisturbed. Unknown to the killer, there had perhaps been a human presence, however eccentric, in those woods.

  A presence that might even have witnessed murder.

  Chapter 5

  In the office of Freeman Estates, the staff worked quietly. Even in the world of estate agency, life goes on: relentlessly.

  Sentiment would have it that the business should now be like a ship without a rudder. In fact, the office functioned with no discernible lack of efficiency following the loss of its principal. His suicide was a shock – no one had yet told his employees that his death might not have been by his own hand. They worked on, shaken a little by death and stilled to a concentration upon the mechanics of life, as drivers who have passed the scene of an accident go more carefully upon their way.

  The quietest of them all was George Robson. After a little hesitation, he had moved to his late chief’s leather chair and begun to sift cautiously through the drawers of the dead man’s desk. He was taking Freeman’s phone calls, repeating in subdued tones the formula he had now perfected, which gave the news of the death to those who needed to know. In between calls, he began the inexorable process of removing from the room the remaining presence of his late Managing Director. The small, silver-framed photograph of Stanley and Denise, taken a good fifteen years earlier and recalling a relationship long since soured, had already been placed in the cardboard box at his side, the first of the small collection of memorabilia and documents that would eventually be returned to the widow. In the privacy of this inner office, George Robson was trying on his new role, and finding it fitted.

  It was a sound from the furthest extreme of the building, where Jane Davidson sat at her reception desk near the entry door from the High Street, that made him start like a guilty thing.

  ‘Good morning, Mrs Freeman.’ Jane’s words rang clear and bell-like through the premises, announcing a warning to all the staff of the necessity for decorum in the presence of the proprietor’s widow. And indeed, within seconds all four of those employees found themselves together in the outer office, standing in an embarrassed line before Denise Freeman, like aged retainers greeting the mistress of the manor.

  Perhaps Mrs Freeman was herself conscious of the effect, for as they stumbled into embarrassed, overlapping condolences, she cut them short with, ‘Please carry on. I haven’t come to interfere.’ Perhaps she herself was more agitated than her composed appearance suggested, for the slight French accent she rarely exhibited nowadays came through on her final word. The four stood awkwardly before her, not sure how literally to take her words, not wishing to be the first to be insensitive enough to break ranks.

  Simon Hapgood recognized a moment for public school charm. He stepped forward and tried to take the widow’s black-gloved hand in both of his. ‘We were all devastated to hear the news, Mrs Freeman,’ he said. The effect was spoiled when she did not volunteer her hand; she withdrew it with a quick, nervous gesture, so that he was left grasping fruitlessly at the air before he dropped his palms to his sides. In his ears rang the echoes
of his rantings against the dead man’s injustices, his gibes against ‘Joe Stalin Freeman’. He wondered if the others were recalling such moments; the thought atrophied his tongue in a dry mouth.

  It was Emily Godson who saved the situation. She had seen more of suffering and death than anyone there, and she reacted instinctively where the rest were awkward. ‘Come through to the rest-room and I’ll make some tea,’ she said. It was as natural and warm as Hapgood’s gesture had been stilted, and Denise Freeman allowed herself to be led away. The two women moved past the long display panels with their colour photographs of houses, past filing cabinets and computer, into the small room which served as a refuge from the public for coffee- and lunch-breaks. It was scarcely more than a small converted kitchen, but it had a microwave oven, a kettle, a sink and two small armchairs. Most precious of all, it offered privacy when business was hectic, once the door to the main office was shut.

  Emily sat the widow in the more comfortable armchair and set about the deliberate ritual of making tea. She was not an acute woman, but some instinct told her that the everyday preparation of this small comfort would restore control to this very different woman as it did to her. Denise was a year or two younger than she was, but she treated her as if she were an old woman or a child, who in the trauma following death could be soothed by having small decisions made for her. And Denise Freeman, shocked and lonely at this moment of entry into her husband’s former domain, allowed herself to be mothered. She scarcely ever drank tea, and then with lemon only, but now she accepted Emily’s prescription of strong, hot tea with milk and sugar, and eventually sipped it without demur.

  ‘I can’t believe it!’ she said conventionally. In truth she was calm enough, though she had been thrown off balance for a moment by the confrontation with her late husband’s colleagues, and one of them in particular.

  ‘That’s only natural. It will take time to come to terms with it,’ said Emily Godson. Fortunately, clichés did not ring false in her ears, and she was even able to say with conviction, ‘You mustn’t blame yourself, you know.’

  ‘I shan’t,’ said Denise, with a touch of her normal acerbity and the faintest of smiles. Emily went over to the kettle to replenish the teapot, and took advantage of the move to examine Stanley Freeman’s widow carefully in profile.

  She looked composed enough. The long black hair, tied back in the French style Emily had always found rather severe, was as neat and lustrous as ever. She was a little pale, but that was only to be expected, and she was always sallow anyway. She wore a simple black dress and gloves, but the patent leather shoes, carefully pinned white scarf and small diamond brooch showed careful attention to detail: this woman had examined herself carefully in a full-length mirror before she left home. Emily, who had grown used to comfortable shoes and cardigans, was shocked at the mannequin-sharp appearance of the widow. Grief, she thought vaguely, should be less organized than this.

  Denise Freeman, though, seemed genuinely grateful as she thanked the Senior Negotiator for her ministrations. She moved quietly back into the outer office, where she had a word with each of the other workers in turn and tried not to act like visiting royalty. She was shocked how white and drawn Jane Davidson looked at the reception desk. Perhaps it was only the wrong time of the month for her, but she seemed rather abrupt and abstracted even as she dealt with telephone inquiries, where she was normally at her best. There was little colour even in her lips; the vivid red of her nails and the blue veins of her forearms, the small red scratch on the back of her hand, stood out unnaturally, as if she were made up for a horror film.

  ‘Nothing we can’t cope with, Mrs Freeman,’ she said in answer to Denise’s inquiry, but the little laugh which followed rang brittle as crystal in the unusually quiet office. Denise thought of how she had grudged this girl her company car, and felt a pang of guilt, for Jane seemed more upset by Stanley’s death than anyone.

  Simon Hapgood had composed himself in the interval since his false start with the widow. He ventured no physical contact this time, but managed to make the necessary platitudes sound sincere enough. ‘If there’s anything at all we can do to help, don’t hesitate to ask,’ he said. He stood erect and without apparent embarrassment, but now kept his desk between himself and their visitor. ‘It can’t be an easy time.’

  Before Denise Freeman could reply, he spied a customer in the doorway and hastened to prove his indispensability to the firm. ‘Ah, Mr Rostron, do come and sit down. The cottage at Windrush, wasn’t it?’ As Denise moved on, she heard him talking in low, confidential tones to the newcomer, no doubt explaining the unusual and tragic circumstances which beset them all this morning. As she went with George Robson into the office that had been her husband’s, her last image was of the anxious white oval of Jane Davidson’s face, watching her as if bewitched over Hopgood’s subdued exchange with his client.

  Robson had had time to regain his self-possession. ‘Sorry to move into Stanley’s desk so quickly,’ he said, avoiding just in time a reference to dead men’s shoes, ‘but the demands of the business made it unavoidable. I’m having to rearrange all Stanley’s calls.’ He charitably refrained from telling the grieving widow that there were precious few of them. They had carried their late chief for long enough: people would soon see how the policy and drive in this place came from George Robson. He felt something very like exhilaration, already.

  ‘I’m taking most of them myself, of course. Mrs Godson insisted on taking one file. An elderly maiden lady, she said. Well, she’s better with them than I am!’ He was talking too much, sidetracked for a moment by the concerns of the agency when he should have been finding a more personal note. ‘Is there anything I can do for you, Denise?’ He ventured the Christian name; it came out naturally enough.

  Denise shook her head with a quick, abstracted smile. She looked well in black; very well, he thought. Grief, if grief there was, sat well upon her. She had kept her figure and her looks while her husband had run to seed. He found himself wondering whether beneath the demure black dress there was skimpy black underwear. Hastily banishing the thought and raising his eyes to her face, he found Denise’s dark eyes looking into his. With amusement, he could have sworn; certainly not outrage, anyway. She was as tall as Robson, and their eyes were not far apart: it was his which dropped first, as he strove to concentrate upon matters more appropriate to the moment. Had she caught his instant of lust, and not been outraged? That Freeman had been a sluggish, neglectful oaf. She had been wasted on him for far too long. It wasn’t surprising she had looked for consolation elsewhere, even while he was alive. Perhaps in time…

  ‘Not short of money, are you?’ he said. ‘People in these circumstances often find they have a temporary – ’

  ‘Not short of anything, thank you, George,’ said Denise. She put her hand briefly upon the back of his and smiled at him. ‘Just you get into Stanley’s seat and pick the business up. That’s the best thing you can do for me at the moment. Any large decisions, I shall be around. All the day-to-day stuff, carry on regardless.’

  Having thus asserted her pre-eminent position, Denise Freeman pulled on her black fabric gloves and prepared to depart. Robson wondered if she knew the full details of the disposal of the business contained in the will, or whether it would be a surprise to her. Time would tell: he saw himself expansive and magnanimous, his arm around the slim shoulders of a submissive Denise.

  He escorted her to the door, assuming already the panache of the principal of the firm seeing an important visitor off the premises. The role, he felt, sat naturally upon him.

  And the outer office duly played its supporting role. Simon Hapgood was taking the details of an offer on the cottage at Windrush; Jane Davidson was arranging a viewing on the phone; Emily Godson was appending a ‘Sold, Subject to Contract’ strip to one of the houses on the display panel.

  It suited Denise Freeman to play the fragile widow. She allowed herself to be guided through familiar territory by the expansive George
Robson. And the curious Emily Godson, the careful Simon Hapgood and the pallid Jane Davidson observed the performance of the pair with interest.

  In the coming days, each would feel the impact of last night’s death. As yet, the revelation that the police were treating the case as murder had been made to none of them.

  Yet one of them at least knew exactly how Stanley Freeman had died.

  Chapter 6

  Hook got out at the entrance to the Crown Hotel. By the time Lambert had parked the big Vauxhall, his sergeant was genuflecting reverently before the gleaming beige Rolls-Royce.

  ‘Oh, thou worshipper of Mammon,’ said the Superintendent, ‘will I never succeed in wooing you from the trappings of materialism?’

  ‘I was examining the motif,’ said Hook, enunciating the exotic word with relish, ‘and thinking how inferior it is to the old Winged Victory.’

  ‘A lady who exacted a savage toll in road accidents, as you should know,’ said Lambert severely.

  ‘Thus removing drunken pedestrians from this sordid world to a better place,’ said Hook, with a triumphant logic that was apparent to him, if not to his chief and the drayman bystander.

  Lambert looked at the HTH on the number plate and said, ‘If you wish to maintain these links with affluence, I fancy we are about to interview the owner of this splendid vehicle.’

  The Crown did not offer suites, but Mr and Mrs Harben had been afforded the privacy of the manager’s flat to meet the detectives. They sat there a little self-consciously, having placed themselves carefully in armchairs and moved the sofa a fraction to accommodate their visitors. The big room with its flowered carpet felt rather like a stage set as they waited for Lambert and Hook to make their entrance and set the scene in motion.

  This impression was heightened by the simultaneous arrival of a maid in black and white uniform, sent in by the manager with coffee and cream in an elegant silver service. Lambert exchanged meaningless opening pleasantries with the Harbens while the maid unloaded cups, saucers, spoons, coffee-pot, jug and sugar bowl in seeming slow motion, with every sound echoing in the large, low-ceilinged room; all four of the principals waited for the maid to depart so that the real dialogue could commence. Lambert found himself caught up in the effect, trying not to clear his throat before his opening speech. This should be no more than routine stuff.