In Vino Veritas lah-23

by J M Gregson

  ‘I hadn’t really thought of myself as a suspect.’

  ‘You should get used to the idea. They’ll be investigating everyone who was close to Martin. I’m sure they’ve given his wife the third degree. If and when they decide it isn’t a domestic, we’re all in the frame.’

  ‘You seem to know a lot about it.’ A week ago, the words would have been said jokingly; today they rang deadly serious.

  Jason Knight hastened to lighten things. He managed a rather brittle little laugh. ‘I watch too many cop series on the box, I suppose.’

  Gerry didn’t think Jason saw much television. As head chef, he was usually working six nights a week. He said as casually as he could, ‘Give you a good going over, did they, the CID men?’

  ‘They’re professionals, Gerry. The police use the best they have, on a murder case. Until they have a prime suspect — which isn’t yet, as far as I can see — we’re all in the frame. It will pay you to watch what you say this afternoon.’

  ‘If I tell them the truth, I’ve nothing to fear.’ Gerry knew that at fifty-seven he was sounding like a priggish schoolboy. ‘If I didn’t do it, I’ve surely nothing to fear.’

  Jason didn’t laugh at the absurdity of the notion that Gerry might have killed Martin. ‘Murder is big, for the media as well as the police. If they don’t make an arrest in the next few days, they’ll have the press on their backs. And the radio and television won’t be far behind the papers; they pick up ideas from the press and run with them, when they’re short of news. The CID will want to arrest someone as quickly as possible. I think we should make sure it isn’t either of us.’

  Gerry didn’t know what to say to that. ‘I believe they’ve got the famous John Lambert on the case.’

  ‘They have. He questioned me on Saturday morning. I didn’t tell them about us.’

  ‘About us?’ said Gerry stupidly. He knew what Jason meant; he couldn’t think why he was pretending that he didn’t. This was the sort of distrust a murder enquiry fostered, he supposed.

  Jason said with a trace of impatience, like an old sweat instructing a green recruit, ‘I meant our discussion about the future of the company, about how we were going to get ourselves more control of policy.’

  Gerry wanted to say that that idea and all the drive behind it had come from Jason; he wanted to dissociate himself from anything which might leave any sort of cloud over himself. ‘Didn’t you say anything about it when they spoke to you?’

  ‘No, of course I didn’t.’ Jason was suddenly impatient with this man who was a generation older than him and yet still so naive. ‘I didn’t lie. You don’t have to lie. You simply don’t mention it. You show them that you’re as mystified about this death as everyone else is pretending to be.’

  ‘I might have to lie to conceal it. In any case, isn’t not telling them like a lie?’

  Jason wondered for the first time whether this was all a front, whether Gerry Davies had long since realized the danger and was conducting this elaborate charade of guilelessness when he actually proposed to look after his own skin, at whatever cost to others. Like his companion, he felt murder driving a wedge between them; this distrust would have been impossible last week. ‘I didn’t say anything about it. You must realize how bad it would make me look if you now blab about it to them.’

  ‘All right. I’ll do my best to keep off the subject.’

  ‘You might have to be prepared to do a little more than that, Gerry. I should think they’re quite likely to ask you why you didn’t want more of a say in the way things were being run.’

  ‘So what do I say to that?’

  ‘I can’t put words into your mouth, Gerry. They’d spot them if I did. Your best policy would be to follow the line you took with me at first. Tell them you’re quite happy with the salary you’re being paid. You could give them all that modesty stuff, about how Martin gave you your chance in the first place and encouraged you to go on from there, but I wouldn’t make a meal of that.’

  Gerry Davies stared disconsolately at the table between them, where once he would have looked at his friend. ‘Be better if we hadn’t talked to Martin about it last Monday, wouldn’t it? Especially as he turned us down flat.’

  Jason sighed. ‘It would indeed. It seems much more than a week ago now, doesn’t it? But there’s no reason why they should know anything about that meeting. What took place there was just between us and Martin. There won’t be any record of it. If neither of us mentions it, there’s no way they can know that it took place.’ He’d only just prevented himself from saying that dead men tell no tales.

  ‘I suppose not.’ Gerry looked thoroughly miserable.

  ‘Cheer up, Gerry! It won’t be as bad as you seem to think. Try not to be nervous. After all, neither of us killed the bugger!’

  But neither of them laughed, as Jason Knight had intended them to.

  The two big men made the room seem even smaller, Sarah Vaughan thought. She said, ‘I have the smallest office here, as the last of the executive staff to be appointed. It’s quite big enough for my needs, though.’

  They looked round unhurriedly at the small desk with its PC, at the swivel chair behind it in which she sat, at the two upright chairs which barely fitted into the space in front of it. They took in the single filing cabinet, the pictures of Provence and the portrait of an eminent nineteenth-century French vineyard-owner on the walls.

  Lambert folded his long legs carefully into the limited space between him and the front of her desk. With Hook accommodating himself equally carefully, shifting his chair three inches sideways so that he was not actually touching that of the chief superintendent, Sarah felt hemmed in. Their faces were too close to hers for comfort, and the grey, all-seeing eyes of Lambert seemed to be boring into her mind and soul as their exchange developed.

  He began conventionally enough. ‘Could you tell us a little about your role here please, Miss Vaughan?’

  ‘I’m responsible for Research and Development.’ She spoke it with the capital letters which she hoped would give her a little more standing, then immediately threw a little of that away. ‘Mr Beaumont does — sorry, did — a lot of the research himself. He went to the French vineyards almost every year and the German and Italian ones every two or three years to find how the newer grapes are doing there and check on the production of the long-established brands. Of course, wine production for export is a much more worldwide industry now than it was fifty, even thirty, years ago, but we research other areas from here. Not even Martin could go everywhere.’ She gave a little laugh to show that was a joke, wondering how much of what she used in her talks to the public she could feed in here. It was safe ground for her, this stuff.

  ‘I see. You have quite a few competitors in the English wine industry nowadays. Does your research work take any account of that?’

  ‘Indeed it does. You have to keep your eye on your competitors, as Martin always reminded us. I keep a record of the volumes sold and prices charged, as comprehensive as I can achieve. It’s usually about a year out of date, as you would expect. Martin used to get out and about and do a little incognito investigation into how well the bigger English producers were doing, in relation to us.’

  ‘A little industrial espionage.’

  She wondered whether to take this as a tease and respond in that spirit, but decided she had better not do that. ‘There’s nothing to prevent you going incognito into retail shops and even wholesale outlets. It’s surprising what some people will tell you about the way their year is going, if you can fasten on the right person to talk to.’

  She wondered quite what truncated version of this the detective sergeant was making in his notes. As if he divined that her attention was on him, Hook now looked up and said, ‘So much for research. What about the development side of your work?’

  ‘Well, I’m rather proud of my work in pushing some of our new lines. I suggested that we should supply beer and cider in our shop here, when other people thought it would militat
e against wine sales. It didn’t, and Martin got us an excellent deal with the brewery. We now make a very good profit on our beer sales in particular. And whilst it’s impossible to be definite about this, I’m sure that our wine sales have benefited too, because of the extra customers we have attracted into the shop. Mr Davies, the shop manager, certainly supports that view. And whilst we’re very much a team here, I’d say that I was mainly responsible for the development of our sparkling wines. We do a surprisingly good English champagne here — we can’t call it that of course — which I think we shall be able to retail at?7.99 a bottle this year. I recommend it to you: I think you’ll find it surprisingly good.’

  She smiled nervously into the encouraging face of Bert Hook, wondering if she was lapsing too much into the commercial chat with which she concluded her talks to the public. But he said, ‘Thank you. We have a clearer picture of your role here now. Is there anything else you do?’

  ‘You’re right to ask that. We’re still quite a small organization, though our turnover increases each year. I help in the shop when they’re busy. And I do little tours of the vineyard, in which I talk on the history of winemaking and of Abbey Vineyards. The abbey part’s a bit of a con, actually. We don’t think there was ever an abbey here, though there may at one time have been a Saxon church. I think Martin thought it would give the right ring to the name when he started. It suggests an ancient lineage for the place, I suppose, which is a bit more glamorous than farmland to most people. I don’t disillusion them unless anyone asks. I think my talks have been going well this year — I’ve got bigger audiences, even though I’m doing them more frequently.’

  ‘They’re very interesting, from what I’ve heard,’ said Hook.

  ‘I hope so. It’s like anything else, one improves with practice. And I don’t try to disguise the fact that like everything else we do the tours are directed towards bringing in a profit, even if that’s indirect and long term.’

  ‘And you think they do that?’

  ‘I do. They’re getting more orders in the shop at the conclusion of my little talks, quite often for full cases. Of course, I can’t prove that these people weren’t planning to buy in any case, but Gerry Davies, our shop manager, says a lot of the sales come directly from what I’ve been saying. I speak quite honestly about our best wines and our best years for them. And Martin wouldn’t have increased the frequency of the tours if he hadn’t thought that. He was a very shrewd commercial operator.’

  ‘So everyone tells us,’ agreed Lambert. ‘And the evidence is all around us in the growth of this place. How did you get on with him?’

  She was rather thrown off her guard by the abruptness of this, after she had been encouraged to talk so much about herself. ‘I’d say very well. He was very successful, which always helps. A successful ship is usually a happy ship.’ The phrase came back to her from a course during her Business Studies degree. She hoped it wasn’t the cliche to them that it was to her.

  ‘You found him a good employer?’

  She made herself take her time, knowing now that they were coming to the heart of the interview, where she was most at risk. ‘He was a good boss, as long as you did things his way. And I was earning more than I’d ever earned before, with the prospect of it rising year by year.’

  ‘But how would you describe your relationship with Mr Beaumont?’

  ‘Good. He paid well and he was fair. You had to toe the line, as he made clear when he interviewed me, but as long as you did that you earned good money.’

  ‘You didn’t feel once you were well established here that you wanted a say in future policy? Research and development are all about the future, after all.’

  ‘No. I’m still only thirty-three and making my way. Martin was a generation older and had much more experience.’ She paused, then was unable to resist the opportunity to divert their attention to others and thus take some of the heat off herself. ‘I think some of the executives who’ve been here longer than me were chafing a little about Martin’s dominance, but you’d have to ask them about that.’

  Lambert afforded her a smile which made her uncomfortable, as if he knew very well what she was about. She wondered if her face was colouring; she knew that her fair skin and delicate features often revealed more than they should. She was very conscious of how close those gimlet grey eyes were to hers as he said, ‘Everything you’ve said has been related to your working relationship with Mr Beaumont. We’re grateful for that information. But what about your personal relationship with your employer? You’re a small team here, as you’ve told us yourself, and no one works all the time. How did you get on with Mr Beaumont outside your working relationship?’

  ‘Perfectly well. Martin was wrapped up in the business: it was his whole life. He has a wife, I believe, but I’ve never seen her. I was perfectly content with my social life. I think I’ve indicated that our working relationship was a good one.’

  ‘Miss Vaughan, we have had indications from several sources that whilst Mr Beaumont ran his business as an autocrat and built his life around it, it was not as you claim “his whole life”. We have it on good authority, indeed, that he had involved himself over the years with quite a stream of women.’

  She wanted to tell him to go back to that good authority and get his information there. But that source, whoever it was, might tell them about her. She was suddenly not sure how much the people who worked here knew about her, how much they might try to incriminate her in a situation like this. She said dully, ‘I’ve heard that, too. About the other women, I mean. He said his wife was an invalid, but some people say he exaggerates that to get sympathy. I can’t help you. I don’t know any details about these other women. Maybe they were all in the past, for all I know. He was late fifties, wasn’t he? Perhaps he’d given up that sort of thing.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ said Lambert. His tone on the single word seemed to convey how easily deceived she was, how little she knew of life compared with the two men opposite her, whose work had left them with few illusions. ‘He didn’t make any suggestions to you that you might like to see him away from work, then?’

  If only it had been as polite and civilized as that, Sarah thought bitterly. She was tempted for a moment to tell them about those terrifying minutes in the big blue Jaguar. But her resolution held. She mustn’t even hint that she’d had any sort of motive for disposing of him. The quickest way to send the CID away was to distance yourself as far as possible from the victim. ‘No. I didn’t see any evidence of the womanizing I heard people gossip about. For all I know, that was all it was — gossip.’

  She sounded like a prim twenty-year-old rather than a woman of thirty-three who had seen much of the world and was making her way steadily in it. But at least she would have the sense not to try to change that with more words. If they thought of her as unworldly and inexperienced, they would be less likely to think of her as a murderer.

  Hook, his wide brown eyes seeming now as searching as those intense grey ones of Lambert, said calmly, ‘Where were you last Wednesday night, Miss Vaughan?’

  ‘I was here until about six. Then I was at home. I cooked myself a lasagne I’d picked up from Waitrose and curled up on the sofa to watch the telly.’

  ‘Is there anyone who can confirm this for us?’

  ‘No. No one spent the night with me and I didn’t go out again, once I’d got home and garaged the car. A couple of friends rang me during the evening.’

  It had all come very promptly, but that was fair enough; the time of the death was public now, and you would expect an intelligent woman to have thought about how she was going to account for herself. ‘Can you recall the time when you received these calls?’

  ‘I can’t pinpoint the times exactly. But I think both of them were between eight and nine.’ She’d been tempted to say they were much later than that, but they would check them out with the callers. And if they found her lying about one thing, they’d suspect everything else she’d said.

  Lambert stud
ied her face for a moment. It was anxious, pale, taut, looking a little older and more worn than when they had begun the interview. He said, ‘You’ve had some time to think about this death now. Have you any views on who might have killed Martin Beaumont?’

  ‘No.’ It had come too promptly, almost before he had finished the question. Sarah had thought about many things before they came, but had not realized that even the timing of her replies might seem significant. ‘As you suggest, I’ve thought about it a lot over the weekend. I don’t even know Mrs Beaumont. And I can think of motives for most of the people here. But I can’t imagine that any one of them would have killed Martin. None of them seems like a murderer.’

  ‘That is a sentiment we hear often, Miss Vaughan. Our experience tells us that even the unlikeliest person can commit murder, given the right set of circumstances. You say you can think of motives. Let us into that thinking, please.’

  An invitation to divert the attention away from herself, to suggest more rewarding targets for their efforts. But she mustn’t seem too eager or go too far. She forced a smile. ‘You mention the unlikeliest person to commit murder. In my opinion, that would be Gerry Davies, our shop and sales manager. He’s liked by everyone here, including Martin when he was alive. He’s been a good friend to me, as I’ve found my feet here, and I’m sure to lots of other people as well. As for the others, well, I sense that most of them would have liked more say in the future of the company, as it becomes more and more successful. That’s natural: there’s a general feeling that two or more heads are better than one, that a growing firm needs to take account of all the ideas available if it is to grow successfully.’

  For a moment, she was back again in one of her essays for the Business Studies degree, throwing out the phrases she had used successfully there. She hoped these grave-faced men did not recognize them as the glib cliches they now seemed to her. Apparently they didn’t, for Lambert said as he stood up, ‘We shall be seeing Mr Davies later today. We shall bear in mind your glowing opinion of him, though of course we shall not retail it to him. Like other things you and other people have volunteered to us, it will remain confidential. If you have any further thoughts, please get in touch with the Oldford CID section immediately — ask for Detective Inspector Rushton.’ He set a card carefully upon her desk.