In Vino Veritas lah-23

by J M Gregson

  ‘Not a relationship. You’ll need to ask her, won’t you? And Miss North, of course. Vanda used to be his mistress, you know.’

  ‘Yes, we do know, Mr Davies. And we shall be seeing both these ladies again. Is there anything you think we should ask them?’

  ‘No. I wasn’t interested in Martin’s love life.’ He looked desperately around the room with its array of rugby photographs, then at the door which concealed Bronwen and the rest of his orderly house, as if he hoped that the happy rectitude of his own life could convince them of his ignorance about the restless lechery of Beaumont. ‘He was a good employer to me and I shall remember that.’

  Lambert said tersely, ‘And if we find that you have concealed things from us, we shall be forced to remember that, and investigate the reasons why. Where were you last Wednesday night, Mr Davies?’

  ‘I was here. I came home from work at about six twenty and I didn’t go out again until Thursday morning.’

  ‘And is there someone who can confirm that for us?’

  Gerry glanced again like a caged animal at the firmly closed door of the room. Bronwen was out there somewhere, minding her own business as usual, confident as she had been from the first of his innocence of this awful thing. He hadn’t asked her to lie for him; he would never ask Bronwen to lie — indeed, he was proud of the fact that she wouldn’t be any good at lying. ‘No, I don’t think there is. Bronwen was in the Rhondda, in the house where she grew up. Her mother’s still alive but she’s ill. She phoned me to tell me that she was worried about her ma and I said she should stay the night.’

  Bert Hook said quietly, ‘Do you recall the time of that call?’

  ‘It was some time between seven and seven thirty. I was just enjoying the cottage pie she’d left ready for me to heat. That’s too early to clear me, isn’t it?’

  Hook’s weather-beaten, outdoor face relaxed again into the smile which said that all might yet be well. ‘If you mean that Mr Beaumont was killed much later in the evening, yes it is. Did you have any other calls on that night?’

  ‘No. I’m in the frame for this, aren’t I?’

  Lambert said with a hint of impatience, ‘If you’ve told us the truth, you’ve nothing to fear. We don’t fit people up, Mr Davies, whatever the more lurid television series suggest. If you wish to revise or add to what you’ve told us, you should get in touch with us immediately at this number.’

  He did not speak again as Gerry Davies showed them out, keeping them away from his invisible wife as if the contact would somehow soil her. At all costs, he wanted to keep Bronwen out of this.

  TWENTY

  ‘My gran still doesn’t approve of me staying here overnight,’ said Anne Jackson. It was one of those inconsequential lines you delivered when you were still not fully conscious and attuned to the demands of the day.

  DI Chris Rushton eyed her contours thoughtfully from the breakfast table as she stood beside the toaster. He still found it mystifying that she could curve so attractively beneath a dressing gown, a garment he had always regarded as a necessary evil rather than a fashion item. ‘Even though you’re now an engaged person?’ he asked dreamily.

  ‘I don’t think that makes any difference to her generation. She doesn’t make a big thing of it. I can just tell that she doesn’t really approve.’

  ‘Remind me to steer clear of her at the wedding. A divorced bridegroom who is ten years older than you isn’t going to get her stamp of approval.’

  ‘It won’t if you keep thrusting those facts into her face as you do with me.’ The toast clicked up and she transferred it swiftly to her plate and came over to the table. She didn’t sit down but came and stood behind Chris, resting her hands lightly for a moment on his chest, then raising them to softly massage his neck. ‘Why do you make such a big thing of the age gap? I never even think of it except when you remind me of it — which is far too frequently.’

  ‘I suppose I still can’t quite believe that you’ve taken on an old wreck like me.’ He lifted his own hands from the beaker and rested them for a moment on hers.

  ‘You’re not an old wreck. You’re a mature man of thirty-four who has put childish things behind him and used his hard-won experience to make an intelligent choice of bride.’ She looked down with love at the head she now pressed lightly against her stomach. ‘A man without a grey hair to be seen among the black, a man who even from this angle hasn’t yet got a bald spot. A man whom I might even describe as handsome, if I didn’t think it would be bad for his soul.’

  Chris stared dreamily across the warm little kitchen of his flat, reviewing fondly but silently the night that was gone. Then, characteristically, he recalled himself firmly to the real world. ‘Kirstie will be coming over on Saturday. You won’t be able to escape my past then. Just when you’ll be feeling like a break from children.’

  ‘I enjoy Kirstie — she’s a good kid. And entertaining one child is very different from teaching thirty, you know.’

  ‘I don’t, but I’ll take your word for it. All I know is that she’s got far more energy than should ever be contained in one small body and that you’re very good with her.’ His face clouded for a moment. ‘I hope we’ve cracked this case by then. I don’t want to leave you to entertain Kirstie on your own all day.’

  ‘The Abbey Vineyards owner? How’s it going? Or am I not allowed to know?’

  ‘No sign of a solution. We’re still gathering information. We know a lot more about the people close to him than we did four days ago, but so far, it’s tended to obscure rather than illuminate.’ He was surprised to find himself coming out with that phrase; it was the one John Lambert had used. ‘The widow’s still pretty mysterious, and too many people who worked with the victim have motives and no alibis.’

  ‘Including Tom Ogden, I believe.’ She was studiously low-key, not sure yet how far Chris wanted her to enquire into his work, or indeed how much she herself wanted to know.

  ‘You know Ogden?’ He was suddenly alert, the CID inspector ready to gather information from any and every source.

  She grinned at his intensity, as she often did, half in surprise and half in admiration. ‘My dad’s known him for years. Tom might be a year or two older, but I think they went to school together. He didn’t like Martin Beaumont, did he?’ She watched Chris with amusement as he struggled for the right reply. ‘Don’t worry, he’s never made a secret of it. Beaumont had been trying for years to swallow up his farm, and Tom didn’t like it. Tom Ogden’s not one to disguise his feelings, Dad says.’

  ‘That’s more or less what John Lambert and Bert Hook reported. They interviewed him on Saturday. I haven’t actually spoken to him.’

  ‘We saw him at the cinema on Thursday night, actually, with his wife. They were the couple I waved to in the interval when I went for the ice creams.’

  ‘You waved to so many and spoke to so many that I was bewildered.’ He was still surprised how many people in this rural area had lived all their lives there, how those lives interwove and touched each other, even now, when people followed very different career paths. Now that Anne had come back from university to teach in the district where she had been born and bred, there would be another network, spreading over parents and eventually grandparents, if she stayed in the area. Sometimes he thought it narrowed people’s horizons, but he found that more often he liked the support and security it seemed to offer.

  He mentioned the senior people Beaumont had employed to see if Anne knew anything about them. It seemed they had all moved into the area in the last twenty years or so, for she knew little of them, though she had eaten in the Abbey Vineyards restaurant and enjoyed it. ‘Possible place for our reception after the nuptials,’ she said lightly, before she left the house to start her day and disappeared towards her school and he towards the station at Oldford. Chris wasn’t sure whether that was a bright idea or a threat.

  Nine thirty on Tuesday morning. They’d suggested the time and she hadn’t objected. Now she wished that she had. />
  Jane Beaumont wasn’t at her best in the mornings. It was not until today that she had registered that nine thirty was still early for her. She had been up before eight, but it took her much longer to do things, nowadays. After she had showered and dressed, she’d barely had time for a bowl of cereal and a cup of coffee before the appointed time was at hand.

  She had remembered to spend some time in front of her dressing-table mirror, as Vanda had told her that she must. She hadn’t bothered with much make-up — she felt out of practice and afraid of overdoing things. She didn’t want the CID to put her down as a tart who didn’t give a damn about her husband’s death. But she brushed her hair carefully and applied a pale rose shade of lipstick. When these men had gone, she’d perhaps telephone to arrange to have her hair cut later in the week, as her new friend had suggested she should.

  Before she was really ready for them, she saw the police car turn into the drive. She watched Detective Chief Superintendent Lambert climb rather stiffly from the passenger seat and look up at the front of her house. They came most carefully upon their hour. That was a quotation, she thought. The opening of Hamlet, if she remembered it right. That recognition gave her a tiny thrill of pleasure; perhaps Vanda was right and she could afford to cut down on the tablets. Martin had been so insistent, and she realized now that she had got out of the habit of resistance to him. It would be good if she could manage with less medication, perhaps eventually with none at all. Things were going to be different now. Different and better. She still had a lot of her life left to live, hadn’t she?

  Both Lambert and Hook were surprised by the change in Jane Beaumont’s appearance. She seemed to have got younger by several years in four days. A nice trick if you could manage it, and one which would make you a swift and certain fortune if you could market it.

  Lambert was emboldened to say, ‘You seem much better today, Mrs Beaumont. Perhaps you were still in shock from your husband’s death when we saw you on Friday. That would be entirely understandable.’

  Entirely understandable, but neither of them really thought it was just the passage of time. Jane gave him a tight smile to show that they were at one in this. She said, ‘I’m glad that I seem healthier to you. I suppose I am, but I doubt whether I shall be able to add much to what I told you on Friday. I expect I shall have to make funeral arrangements for Martin quite soon, won’t I?’

  It was always a moment of embarrassment, this. But this woman didn’t look as if it would add anything to whatever grief she was feeling. ‘I am afraid it will not be possible to release the body for burial or cremation at the moment, Mrs Beaumont. The law does not allow us to do that.’

  ‘No. My friend told me that and I should have remembered it. It’s because it’s murder, isn’t it? When you eventually charge someone, the defence has a right to a second post mortem. Is that right?’

  ‘That is exactly right, Mrs Beaumont.’ She seemed so little distressed that he felt he should really give her a little formal bow to acknowledge her knowledge.

  As if she read his thoughts, she said abruptly, ‘I identified him, you know.’

  ‘I did know, yes. It must have been quite an ordeal for you.’ She gave him no reaction to this, but sat composed as a Renaissance madonna, with the trace of a smile upon her lips. ‘You are no doubt aware that the coroner’s inquest returned a verdict of Murder by Person or Persons Unknown.’

  ‘Yes. They said there was no need for me to attend the coroner’s court unless I wished to. I didn’t see any point.’ She looked at him with her first sign of real interest. ‘Are you any nearer to turning this Person Unknown into a person known?’

  Her evident enjoyment of this little play on words reinforced Lambert’s view that there was no need for him to treat Jane Beaumont with the kid gloves he normally donned for a grieving widow. ‘Neither DS Hook nor I was aware that you had a long-term illness when we spoke to you last week. I apologize if we were insensitive because of our ignorance.’

  ‘No. I don’t think you were insensitive. I do not recall all the details of our conversation, but I’m sure both you and your sergeant behaved impeccably.’ She nodded an acknowledgement towards Hook, much as Queen Victoria might have acknowledged a competent manservant. ‘As a matter of fact, I rather think my condition has been much exaggerated in the past.’

  ‘That is good to hear. As I say, there is no way in which we could have been aware of this on Friday.’

  Jane afforded him a more generous and genuine smile. ‘There is no reason why you should pussyfoot your way around this, Mr Lambert. I have what is usually called a bipolar disorder. Martin was always anxious that I should take all the latest drugs, and occasionally incarcerate myself in medical institutions, when the condition was at its worst. I went along with his wishes. I resisted him less over the years, as my energy declined. I now feel that I might have been wrong to do so.’

  Lambert wanted to arrest this flow of medical speculation, to tell her that he was grateful for her frankness but didn’t need to know anything more. He said stiffly, ‘It’s good to hear that you’re feeling better.’

  ‘I am indeed. I told you last week that I was planning to divorce Martin, so I feel that I do not need to pretend to any great grief for his death. Frankly, I feel better already. I now believe that he added to rather than alleviated the degree of mental suffering I have endured over the last few years.’

  ‘Thank you for your honesty. But whatever your feelings about your husband, you no doubt wish us to arrest and charge the person responsible for his death.’

  Jane Beaumont seemed to weigh the proposal for a moment before she answered. ‘I cannot deny that his death has given me a feeling of release, because that has become more pronounced with each passing day. But the good citizen within me says that the law must be upheld and his killer brought to book.’

  Her colour had risen. She seemed to be positively enjoying herself now. It appeared that the shaping of her replies and the declaration of her new-found health were giving her pleasure. Perhaps it was a feature of her condition, but she seemed to be almost surfing the wave of her own excitement now, to be waiting eagerly to discover what they might raise next for her in this novel situation.

  Lambert was ill at ease with this unnatural reaction in a newly bereaved widow. He said rather desperately, ‘You mentioned a friend earlier, who advised you that you would need to delay the funeral. It is good that you have someone to help you in this situation.’

  He was fishing, and she knew it immediately. But she was not at all put out. ‘There is no reason why you should not know the identity of my new friend. It will probably surprise you almost as much as it does me, Mr Lambert. It is the woman whom, until a fortnight ago, I was proposing to cite as Martin’s co-respondent in my divorce proceedings. It is Vanda North.’ She paused for a moment and seemed delighted by their reactions. ‘It isn’t a likely combination, is it? But Vanda and I hit it off from the first. I should perhaps add that it is many years since she had anything other than a business relationship with Martin. I fear we both felt the same about him by the time of his death. He could be charming and attractive in the early stages of a relationship, particularly when he was younger. But both of us had long since had our eyes opened to his vices.’

  Jane wondered whether she was talking too much, whether she should be speaking so openly about her friendship with Vanda. But she was so cheered by it that she wanted to tell others about it, wanted to be open and cheerful about this startling new presence in her life. It wasn’t startling any more, not to her. She was amazed by how quickly she had come to accept it and she felt that Vanda was too.

  Lambert was certainly surprised by the depth of her feelings, though training and long experience had taught him to show no more than he wished to reveal. There was something a little febrile in her happiness. He would also have been less than human and a poorer detective if he hadn’t wanted to shake this new-found confidence in someone who was still a suspect. He said calmly,
‘Are there any revisions you would like to make to what you told us on Friday, Mrs Beaumont? It would be understandable if you were confused by the shock of this sudden death.’

  Jane tried to be cool, literally as well as figuratively. She could feel the heat on her skin which excitement had brought to her face. ‘To be honest, I can’t recall in any detail what I told you on Friday. I wasn’t trying to be obstructive, but if I said anything which wasn’t correct I apologize for it.’

  ‘All we wanted then and all we want now is the truth, Mrs Beaumont. We didn’t ask you directly where you were when Mr Beaumont was killed. That was partly because we knew you’d be upset in the hours after you’d heard of Mr Beaumont’s death, and partly because we already had the information. I believe you told the officer who came on that morning to break the news of your husband’s death that you were alone in this house throughout last Wednesday evening and the night which followed.’

  ‘Did I? Well if the young lady says I told her that, I’ve no doubt that I did. I wasn’t long out of bed and I think I was still affected by the drugs I’d taken the night before. I was still trying to take in the news of Martin’s death when she was asking me questions. It’s quite possible I made mistakes, don’t you think?’

  ‘I do, and I am giving you the opportunity to put things right. I’m not asking you whether you intended to deceive us or not. I’m trying to get the facts of the matter right. They could be very important.’

  Jane felt him watching her intently, but she wasn’t unduly worried by that. She must get this right, but she was confident she could do it. ‘If I did tell that young policewoman I was alone, I got it wrong. Vanda was here with me overnight. She stayed because she thought I needed her help.’

  Hook looked up from his notes and said kindly, ‘We’d better have the full facts of this, Mrs Beaumont. Better get it right once and for all, so that our records aren’t confused. That could be important to others as well as yourself.’