by J M Gregson
‘It’s still a far better case than anything you can trump up against me!’ said Parsons. The attempt at bravado sat oddly upon this cold, precise man; the desperate clichés of denial seemed only to confirm his guilt.
Lambert’s only acknowledgement of this was to address himself directly to the Secretary. ‘But again you were too intricate. Damping the sheets in the cottage with perfume was an imaginative touch. Too imaginative, because you used the wrong perfume. You took it from the handbag you had stolen a week ago, and placed in Shepherd’s Rolls this morning. But the perfume you thought was Mary Hartford’s was in fact Debbie Hall’s. So the perfume and the photograph you placed in that cottage did not tally. Someone was trying to set up our Lady Captain as a murderer. Someone who had been assembling material in the last few days to support such a plan. A handbag, a golf club, could be useful circumstantial evidence when left in the right places. I have no doubt the murderer was weaving a more elaborate web, hoping to enmesh Mary much more deeply, until he heard that Shepherd was planning to tell George Williams about him early this morning. Then he had to improvise and move quickly: hence last night’s killing.
‘The murderer removed Shepherd’s “black box” of incriminating material from the wall-safe. The photograph of Mary Hartford with James Shepherd which he found in that box seemed too good an opportunity to miss. Once we see the intention to frame Mary in subsequent happenings, the murderer has to be someone with the keys to Shepherd’s Rolls and easy access to the greenkeeper’s cottage.’
‘Which could be your friend Bill Birch as easily as me,’ said Parsons. ‘He was Shepherd’s Works Manager and a former Chairman of our Greens Committee.’
For a moment, the boldness of this switch almost disconcerted Lambert. As he thought ahead, he saw the way Parsons’s mind had worked, but the swiftness of the switch in his adversary’s defences surprised him none the less.
‘True. I considered that,’ said Lambert harshly. ‘What Bill couldn’t have committed is your second murder.’ Suddenly, he wanted this over. He resented the brutal murder of vain, harmless Michael Taylor far more than that of the unregretted James Shepherd. Perhaps because he felt responsible; he had miscalculated the ruthlessness of Parsons and not thought Taylor in much danger until it was too late.
He had his man now, and had dropped the conjectural tones he had used to the group at large. He was as aggressive as he would have been had he been trying to break Parsons down in an unfurnished interview room at the station. ‘Michael Taylor was about to expose you and you guessed it. He had not the temperament for a murderer, or even an accessory. So you beat him to death with Debbie’s 5-iron. I presume you simply removed it from a golf bag outside the ladies’ locker-room. Probably you thought it was Mary’s: Debbie had been playing with her and the bags were together. You had to act quickly to prevent Michael Taylor talking to me, and anything which would throw suspicion on anyone else would have to do.’
‘I don’t have to listen to this!’ said Parsons, and made as if to rise. Perhaps his legs would not support him, for he did not leave his chair. No one moved to assist him.
Lambert went on without even acknowledging the protest. ‘You did what planning you could before you followed Taylor out on to the course, leaving fake messages for Debbie and Bill so as to leave them without alibis. Your own alibi with the chicken wire will be investigated and found wanting. You collected that wire yesterday, not this morning.’
‘Conjecture,’ said David Parsons flatly, but the panache he tried to summon would not come.
Lambert ignored him. ‘The murder weapon was found suspiciously near the crime. If I’d murdered someone on a deserted golf course, I certainly wouldn’t deposit the weapon with the blood of the victim upon it within ten yards of the corpse. There is plenty of deeper undergrowth a good half-mile away. We were meant to find that club.
‘And then your tendency to over-elaborate was helpful to us again. The clear print of Bill Birch’s golf shoe was found as you intended by the body.’ Lambert was interrupted by a sudden gasp and the scrape of Birch’s chair as the Vice-Captain moved involuntarily: it was the first he had known of this. The Superintendent stilled him with a slight movement of his hand, but did not take his eyes off Parsons.
‘Those shoes were worn by the murderer all right. And I remember how carefully you drew my attention to your shining city shoes when you returned to the scene of the crime with the ambulance. Size nine, I think; feet which would fit well enough into Bill Birch’s size ten golf shoes, left like those of a hundred other golfers in our locker-room.’
‘This is preposterous!’ shouted Parsons. This time his articulation of the word had lost its precision. ‘If you’ve indeed found a shoe-print beside the body of my friend Michael Taylor, then there’s your murderer and it’s time you arrested him!’ He turned with an attempt at outrage towards the appalled Birch, but there was little menace left in him now, though Bert Hook tensed his muscles for action.
‘Mr Birch couldn’t have murdered Michael Taylor,’ said Lambert with cold formality. Now he was moving securely upon a platform of fact, not conjecture, and the audience he had almost forgotten felt the authority of his words. ‘Would you stand up for a moment please, Bill? Sergeant Hook, let’s have that club for a moment.’
The Vice-Captain came gingerly forward as Hook retrieved Debbie Hall’s club from the corner of the room where it had lain decently covered with a cloth. The club had already been checked for fingerprints, but he put it into the large hands of the Vice-Captain with all the reluctance of an officer relinquishing a vital exhibit.
‘Now,’ said Lambert, ‘would you pretend to strike the stationary Sergeant Hook on the back of the neck, please?’ Birch raised the club, then mimed an awkward blow to the back of Bert Hook’s impassive head. There were gasps around the room as the purpose of the little pantomime became clear. There was no way in which the Vice-Captain could cut viciously into the back of anyone’s head with this club, for he was striking with the smooth back of the club, not the cutting front edge.
For Bill Birch was a left-hander.
‘It is as well after all that we played those few holes yesterday afternoon or I might not have remembered,’ said Lambert, as Birch resumed his seat and Hook moved quietly behind David Parsons. All eyes were now on the Secretary, who was gazing sullenly at his hands, as if they had independently led him into such deeds. It was Birch who said to him, ‘We were all glad to see Shepherd dead. But how could you kill Mike Taylor?’
There was silence for two, three long seconds. Then Parsons said in a weary monotone, ‘I had no choice. He knew I’d killed Shepherd and he was never going to hold out under pressure. He told me he’d arranged to meet you this morning. I followed him when he parked his car.’ Then he looked up and his eyes blazed. ‘He was the kind of man who panics under fire. A rat who would run from the enemy. I killed him like a fleeing rat!’ There was in his eye a psychotic gleam, in his voice an insane conviction, which made Lambert think that he might yet end his days not in Parkstone but in Broadmoor.
*
The confessed murderer was duly charged, and departed under discreet arrest in a police car. Cyril Garner positively revelled in the press conference he had arranged with such apprehension. John Lambert received a benevolent mention from his Chief Constable on television; his own tribute to his team got no further than the editing room.
By the evening of this eventful day, the extreme humidity had departed but the weather seemed set fair again. On the first tee, a strange four-ball assembled. It was Bill Birch’s idea, and as the unfortunate decease of his predecessor had now made him Captain of the club, convention decreed that his word should be law in all golfing matters. The only way for golfers to dismiss the nightmare which had ended, he said, was to play golf: it was their duty to show the shaken membership that things were returning to normal. Being golfers, they found his logic irrefutable.
Thus those members in the newly reopened bar were surpr
ised to see on the first tee Bill Birch, Mary Hartford, Debbie Hall and John Lambert. The Lady Captain, trim and unfussy, drove her ball down the middle of the fairway after the minimum of preparation. Debbie Hall settled over her ball and gave that preliminary swivel of the hips which made strong men weak with excitement; then she cracked the ball away, slightly pulled to the left but safe enough. The new Captain dispatched the majestic drive appropriate to his new status, long and high, with the controlled draw which took him as a left-hander well over the bunker on the right of the fairway.
John Lambert signalled the return to normality more clearly than any of them. There was a pleasing rhythm about his swing, a reassuring solidity about the contact of his driver with the ball. He looked up to see the ball arching high and proud against an azure English sky. Then it sliced gently away to the right, bounced once, and came to rest unerringly in the centre of the bunker which Bill Birch’s ball had just cleared so easily.
Burnham Cross Golf Club might never be quite the same again. But some things did not change.
Making a Killing
Chapter 1
‘Bastard!’ said Simon Hapgood. He moved the mouthpiece of the telephone a foot from his face, to give it the full benefit of his glare of resentment. ‘Bastard! Bastard! Bastard!’ He banged the phone back into its cradle.
Emily Godson looked at him with disapproval. She had a face framed for disapproval, and she used it frequently. Now the corners of her mouth turned downwards a little further than usual; her grey eyes gazed over the frames of her large tinted glasses, across the clear expanse of her desk and the more cluttered surface of Hapgood’s desk, to the furious features of the man beyond.
‘That’s very young executive!’ she said with satisfaction. ‘And who is getting the benefit of your slanderous tongue this time?’ She knew perfectly well, of course. Secretly, she applauded the sentiment. Had Hapgood been braver, she might even have sympathized openly, but she was aware that the line had been dead before these final expletives.
‘Who do you think?’ said Hapgood sourly. ‘Lord High and Mighty Freeman, of course. He’s made an appointment for a viewing of Milton Farm at six-thirty this evening. An appointment which I have to keep, naturally. Bastard!’ The word was becoming tedious, even to him.
‘He who plays the piper…’ said Emily Godson primly.
‘Calls the bleeding tune. I know, I know. Freeman makes me more aware of it all the time. I’ll swing for the bastard before I’ve done.’
‘You can’t, nowadays.’ This was Jane Davidson, the young receptionist; she sounded disappointed at the thought. ‘The most you’d get is life. You’d probably be out in about eight years with good conduct. Almost worth it to be rid of that old bugger.’ She invested the last word with a proper vehemence, then resumed the painting of her nails, well aware that both actions would infuriate Miss Godson, who regarded the girl over her glasses with the disapproval of an old-fashioned schoolmarm. When the phone shrilled in front of her, Jane let it ring twice before she reached lazily towards it. When she finally spoke, her tones were full of honeyed courtesy.
‘Freeman Estates. Can I help you?’ Bright, professional, the way the secretarial school had taught her in their brief contact with each other. She retained the formula, and her inflections never varied. Even Emily Godson could find no fault here. ‘No, Mr Freeman is not available, I’m afraid. May I ask who was dealing with the property? Ah. Well, Mr Robson is out doing a valuation at the moment. I think Mr Hapgood might be available. Would you like to speak to – ? No, I see. No. Well, thank you for ringing. I’ll tell Mr Robson as soon as he comes in. Yes, indeed.’
She put down the phone and poked out a small pink tongue at it. ‘Silly cow!’ she said reflectively, and gave her complete concentration to the tiny brush and her nail varnish. Ignoring the attention of her colleagues in the quiet office, she maintained a contented silence about her exchange on the phone.
Eventually Emily Godson said with pointed asperity, ‘Might the Senior Negotiator know who was calling?’ The title had been conceded to her with reluctance in deference to her twenty years of service to the firm. She knew the winding lanes and varied property of this rural area better than anyone, but her employers deferred to the notion in the trade that ‘Purchasers prefer to deal with a man.’ And Emily, with her resolute lack of humour, her relegation of imagination to off-duty hours, her reluctance to smile in victory or defeat, seemed to do her best to reinforce this popular prejudice. Still, with marriages splitting up at a record rate even in Gloucestershire, there were many women now looking for small properties, and in these often bitter circumstances it did no harm to the firm to have a woman available to handle such transactions sympathetically. Stanley Freeman had accepted this idea, once his enthusiastic deputy George Robson had given it his support.
Jane Davidson studied her nails for one, two, three seconds, holding her hand at arm’s length to estimate the effects of her labours. When Emily Godson was at school it would have been called impudence: no doubt in these progressive days such concepts had been abandoned, thought the Senior Negotiator as she seethed silently. ‘Mrs Jackson from Walnut Cottage again,’ said Jane when she judged she could hold the moment no longer. ‘You’re well out of it, Emily. I was protecting you when I offered her Simon. She wants to know why we haven’t screwed an offer out of anyone for her nineteen-fifties grot yet.’
Emily winced, despite her determination to preserve a sphinxlike dignity: Walnut Cottage was a charming, chintzy arbour which she would have loved to be able to afford for herself. The receptionist registered the reaction, marking up another tiny triumph for herself in the bitchery stakes; she was becoming quite adept at this game. ‘Mrs Jackson wouldn’t deal with anyone except George.’
‘Mr Robson,’ corrected Emily, before her brain could stop her tongue.
‘He said I was to call him George when the public aren’t around,’ said Jane with wide-eyed innocence. ‘Last night it was, or the night before.’ She gazed into the middle distance, as if pinpointing the moment was the key problem in her day.
So they’d been in the pub again after work. Really, you’d think that at fifty-six George Robson would have more sense. Male menopause, of course. Very tiresome for the rest of the firm, though. And bad for morale all round if a painted floozy like Jane Davidson could get her own way merely by massaging an ageing male ego. If that was all she massaged. Emily bent her head over her letters and tried to banish images of such unwelcome bawdry. Fortunately, the telephone rang again at that moment and Jane was away, fluting mellifluous answers to an inquiry, taking the name and address of the caller as if they were the most important things in her life. Reluctantly, Emily admitted to herself that the infuriating Miss Davidson was very good at this aspect of her job.
Simon Hopgood had watched and enjoyed the spat between the two women. Though the senior boys had boasted of non-existent holiday conquests, they had seen little of women in action at his minor public school. Nor in the stockbroking firm and the financial services group he had failed in before he brought his talents into estate agency. In the twelve years since he had left school, he had learned a fair amount about the minds and bodies of women, but that was outside work. To see two of them with claws out was an interesting and illuminating experience, even an exciting one when he was not their target. Now he felt it was time to assert himself, with all the confidence of his two years’ standing in the firm.
‘Lunch for me,’ he said decisively, with the briefest of nods at the electric clock above the filing cabinets. He slipped on his jacket and made for the door. ‘If anyone wants me in the next hour, I shall be in the George and Dragon, sampling the dragon’s cottage pie and selecting my winners.’
‘You have an appointment at one forty-five, don’t forget,’ said Emily Godson, patting the iron-grey hair at the nape of her neck and not even deigning to look up. From her, a friendly reminder sounded like a rebuke.
Simon checked his tie and the lift of his
dark-gold hair in the plate glass of the window. ‘I shan’t,’ he said with dignity, ‘though with Joe Stalin Freeman organizing my evenings I’ll soon be working a fifteen-hour day!’ There was no harm in a little martyrdom; nor in directing attention away from what he proposed for the later part of that evening.
Then he was through the door and moving erect and nonchalant down the High Street, his bright blue eyes studiously avoiding looking back at the office. Jane Davidson watched him pass with a calculating eye. He was becoming less of a wimp as he found his feet in the world: perhaps he might even be worthy of her renewed attention, in due course.
*
In his home, Stanley Freeman was no Joseph Stalin.
To his wife’s elaborate fugue of abuse, he produced a counterpoint of sullen resentment, but there was little doubt who controlled the exchanges. Stanley marvelled at the detail of invective available to a woman not operating in her first language.
Denise Freeman’s dark eyes looked across the broad expanse of Regency dining table and disliked what they saw. Indeed, she wondered what she could ever have seen in this short-legged, pot-bellied man, whose high-domed eminence had been transformed so quickly into baldness over the last few years. The too-light green trousers, the multi-coloured leisure shirt, even the gold-rimmed glasses, seemed vulgar, where once she might have found them dashing. If, as she suspected, they were chosen for another woman, then she had very low taste.
