by J M Gregson
‘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 it
s 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.
‘We always talk to the people who discover the body in cases of sudden death. I know you spoke to Detective-Inspector Rushton briefly last night. We may need to duplicate some of that conversation. It shouldn’t take long. I’m sorry if your holiday plans have been disrupted.’
‘It isn’t just a vacation,’ Harben corrected him automatically. ‘We’re hoping to live in this area. That’s why we were looking at Lydon Hall last night.’
Lambert nodded. ‘You had an appointment to do so?’
‘Yes. For nine o’clock.’
‘You’re sure of the time?’
‘Yes. I changed it. Originally it was eight-thirty, but we had another property to look at near Hereford, and I knew we couldn’t make the Hall much before nine.’
‘How did you change the time of the appointment, Mr Harben?’
Harben looked at his wife. ‘Margaret did it.’
Margaret Harben came in quickly. ‘That’s right. I used the car phone.’
‘Can you recall what time that would be?’ Lambert was calm and impassive, watching the faces before him as carefully as if they had been suspects; it was Hook who was noting down the detail of the replies.
‘Oh, I should think about two-thirty yesterday afternoon. It was after lunch and before we got to Worcester. Is it important?’ She was just a little tetchy, resenting this level of questioning about a routine death. The whole business had upset her rather more than she cared to admit, even to herself. As one who had not come face to face with this sort of death before, she was shaken by the thought of the chasm of despair which must open up before a suicide. Yet she also resented Stanley Freeman’s decision to end his days with such an unwarranted intrusion into her life. She had fallen in love with Lydon Hall, and felt it had made a favourable impression on her hard-headed husband. Freeman’s death had spoiled that. She might never live there now, and she blamed the man she had never met for his untimely and ill-chosen death. It might be unworthy and petty in her, but that thought only increased her irritation.
‘Probably not,’ said Lambert, with a smile which disconcerted her even further by its suggestion that he knew all about her resentment against the dead man. ‘But it could be. We shall need to check all the facts around the case, set each person’s recollections against those of others, see if there are significant differences. We have to start somewhere, so we begin with you and your husband as the discoverers of the body.’
Henry T. Harben was fascinated by this initiation into British police procedure, but felt he had been silent long enough.
‘I’m impressed by this attention to detail, Superintendent, but isn’t it just a little over the top? I guess your English thoroughness is just great, but I can’t see the New York police spending this kind of time and resources on a routine suicide.’ His smile emphasized that on this occasion at least common sense was on the side of the New World.
‘Oh, I think they might – once they realized that someone had been trying to dress up murder as suicide!’ said Lambert with an answering smile. He tried to be sorry for structuring his revelation into a small drama, but in truth such little pleasures were small compensation for the many hours of dull fact-finding which were the normal lot of the CID. He was gratified by the widening eyes of the Harbens. Into Margaret’s face there gradually seeped distress, as she struggled to come to terms with the fact that the scene still printed upon her memory from last night embodied not just the self-destruction of an unhappy man but some other, more evil presence as well. She tried the easiest option first.
‘Maybe the law says it’s murder. But most of us wouldn’t think of someone who assisted an EXIT suicide as a murderer. More as a compassionate and courageous final friend in need, I’d say.’
Harben looked sharply sideways at his wife. Perhaps it was a side of her he had not seen before; perhaps he had merely not heard of an organization designed to facilitate this kind of death. His grey hair was dishevelled a little now, where he had run a hand through it; he looked older, as if prosperity had suddenly lost its proficiency to keep time at bay.
Lambert glanced at the inscrutable Hook, as he usually did when he was about to reveal more than he should. He said quietly, ‘I’m afraid all the indications are of a different sort of killing, Mrs Harben.’ He reached into his inside pocket for the single sheet of paper which would make it official in her mind, picked out and read to her the phrases he already knew by heart. ‘This is the preliminary post-mortem report. “Death was by asphyxiation. It is unlikely that this could have been voluntary asphyxiation. The plastic bag which was the instrument of death appears to have been held around the neck. Abrasions on the wrists and bruising on the upper left arm are commensurate with the restraining of the arms from the rear at the time of death… A meal of chicken, chips and peas had been eaten some two hours before death. A quantity of whisky approximating to five single measures had been consumed in the period immediately before death.”’
He looked through the rest of the notes, deliberately low-key. ‘There are other details, principally about the time of death, but I think that thanks to your evidence we can already be more precise than the pathologist in this respect. The post-mortem report will all be dressed in more cautious medical language for the inquest, but the gist of it is what I’ve told you.’
He paused and watched a process he had seen many times before; the reality of villainy seeping into the minds of the innocent. The thoughts of Henry and Margaret Harben were back in Lydon Hall at sunset, its loveliness clouded now with the presence of evil. While they had strolled in elation around the gracious house which might have become their home, a murderer’s victim had lain within and the murderer himself had been nearby, had possibly even watched their movements. Lambert, familiar with this moment, could almost follow the thought processes. It was time to resume routine.
‘Do you know what time you arrived at the Hall? As exactly as possible, please.’
‘It must have been just a minute or so before nine. We parked at the gates. A church clock struck as we walked round the side of the house.’ This was Henry Harben, pouring out facts as if they were an assertion of innocence.
‘Did either of you see anyone anywhere around the house?’
Margaret Harben gave a little shudder of repugnance before she replied, for the implication of the question was clear enough.
‘No one.’
‘You realize the importance of this. When you went to the rear of the house, how far into the grounds did you go?’
They looked at each other. Henry Harben’s baritone drawl was strangely reassuring as he said, ‘We strolled along the terrace and looked at the rose gardens.’
‘You didn’t go any further back, towards the woods behind?’
‘No. We were waiting for Stanley Freeman to arrive. We didn’t go into the arboretum.’ Lambert was surprised at his use of the technical word, then realized it would have been on the particulars of the Hall put out in the agent’s brochure.
‘You caught no sign of any human movement as you looked at the woods?’
‘No. Did the killer go that way?’
‘I’ve no idea. We have reason to think, though, that someone may have been in the arboretum at the time of the murder.’ Inwardly, Lambert cringed as he always di
d at the jargon of his trade, but he could not deny the usefulness of these circumlocutions at times.
‘You mean that while we were finding the body, the murderer might have been watching our every move from out there?’ Margaret Harben was white with the notion. Sometimes witnesses enjoyed the vicarious horror of such melodrama, from a safe retrospect; she seemed merely shaken at the thought of how near evil had been to them while they walked in innocent survey.
‘It’s possible. It’s also possible that someone as guiltless as you was around rather earlier, and saw more. If so, we’d obviously like to locate that person.’
Harben put his hand over his wife’s, where it gripped the arm of the chair. ‘We didn’t see anyone, Superintendent.’
‘Let’s concentrate on the house, then. How did you enter the house?’
‘The French window wasn’t locked.’ Margaret Harben was defensive with an English respect for private property. ‘It wasn’t even latched. It opened when I touched it.’
‘You went straight into the drawing-room?’
‘We thought Freeman must be in the house,’ said Harben.
‘And he was. In a manner of speaking,’ said Lambert. ‘Did you find him immediately?’
‘As soon as I put the light on. Until then, we thought the room was empty.’ Margaret Harben was tight-lipped with the memory of the moment.
‘Did you go any further into the house?’
‘No.’
‘You’re sure of that? You didn’t go beyond the door of the drawing-room?’
‘No. Is it important?’
Lambert ignored the question for a moment. ‘Where did you phone from?’
‘From the car. I have a phone in the Rolls. We went back there,’ said Harben.
‘And you rang the police?’
‘There was no hurry about an ambulance. I used to be a nurse, remember,’ said Margaret Harben. Lambert, who could scarcely be expected to remember what he had never been told, was familiar with this assumption of omniscience among those he questioned.
