Killer Cases: A Lambert and Hook Detective Omnibus

by J M Gregson

  Goodman, the man who had invited Lambert to join the party and thus set up this strange exercise, now presided over it with genial relish, keeping his own game running smoothly while quick to praise excellence in others. He seemed totally calm, totally in control, at peace with himself and the world around him. Lambert looked forward increasingly to interviewing him.

  It was Goodman, inevitably, who finished the match on the seventeenth, taking advantage of the final stroke he received to win it for Lambert and himself, despite Munro’s immaculate four. The Superintendent, excusing himself from the ritual of post-match drinks at the nineteenth on the grounds of pressure of work, found himself two pounds better off for his afternoon’s efforts.

  It was collected from the opposition by Goodman and delivered to his partner as if he were distributing Maundy Money. He was saved from pomposity only by the ineffable impression he created that he was in some way guying himself in all his actions. Perhaps, after all, his whole bearing was an elaborate act, a facade behind which the more ruthless George Goodman operated in watchful safety.

  The four of them stood awkwardly for a moment on the path behind the last green, wondering how to take leave of each other and return to the real and more terrible world of murder and retribution. It was Nash who looked back towards the hollow where the corpse had been found and said conventionally, ‘It seems incredible on an afternoon like this that someone we know could have lured Guy Harrington out there and battered him to death.’

  Lambert studied him carefully for a moment, assessing whether the dead man’s employee was testing the extent of police knowledge of the crime. Then he said quietly, ‘But he wasn’t, you know.’ Three faces turned towards him in surprise: whether it was simulated or real he strove to determine. Munro at least knew that the police were aware that the corpse had been moved: Lambert had indicated that to him in their interview. He was a taciturn man, but he would surely have discussed this with the others; unless he had some reason of his own to leave them in the dark.

  Lambert pointed out with the air of a man seeking confirmation, ‘You and George found him out there, Tony, so you may have deduced something from the lie of the body.’ He found himself still using the forenames of the golf course with his companions, perhaps for the last time. How strange were the intricacies of English etiquette! ‘In fact, Harrington was trundled out there on a wheelbarrow and dumped without ceremony.’

  ‘But why, Superintendent?’ It was George Goodman, with a characteristic sense of decorum, who returned them to the world of criminal investigation by his use of the title.

  Lambert chose to prolong the moments in which he could study their reactions by a detailed exposition. ‘Perhaps merely to delay the discovery of the crime: any delay tends to spread the network of suspicion more widely. Perhaps in an attempt—in this case largely unsuccessful—to divert suspicion away from the immediate group who had spent the evening with the dead man. Perhaps because whoever moved it thought the original position of the body pointed to a particular person as murderer.’

  He paused between each of the three possibilities, pretending to improvise as he spoke, seeking all the time to increase the tension and study the reactions of his companions.

  They were interesting. Nash stared at him wide-eyed, possibly overdoing his shock, but perhaps genuinely surprised by a development he had not anticipated. Goodman listened carefully and nodded slowly as he accepted the logic of the Superintendent’s arguments, as if he found the matter of absorbing but detached interest: for an instant, Lambert was reminded of the pathologist Cyril Burgess and his enthusiasm for the processes of detection.

  But there was no doubt of the most intriguing reaction among the three. Lambert had told Munro that the police knew where Harrington had fallen to his death, but he had not indicated until now that they knew just how the body had been transferred to the course. And he had still not revealed that he was privately certain that it was Munro who had performed that macabre transfer of the corpse at dead of night. But the reaction of the Scotsman to his revelation about the wheelbarrow was the most interesting of all.

  Perhaps Sandy Munro was not as practised in dissimulation as his companions. Or perhaps his emotions on hearing the extent of police knowledge were simply more powerful than theirs. Through the three hours of golf his sharp face had generally maintained a dour impenetrability.

  Now for a moment he lost control, and it was animated by fear and dread.

  Chapter 16

  Within twenty minutes of the end of their golfing partnership, Lambert was interviewing George Goodman. The golf might have been in another life, so quickly was it erased from their consideration.

  Goodman seemed anxious to help the transition, as if he recognised as always the demands of decorum. He came to his appointment still in casual clothes, emphasising that for him questioning was nothing more than an interruption of his holiday activities, which was necessary, but should be accomplished with the minimum of disturbance.

  He had changed his sweater: the V-neck olive green woollen he now wore was complemented by a cream shirt and a dark green silk tie, as if he sought a middle road between the formality which would acknowledge the serious procedures of detection and the casual dress which would indicate how unstressed this business was for him. He had washed of course in the short interval since Lambert had left him; his countenance had been polished to a becoming light pink. He looked almost cherubic in the soft sunlight of the late afternoon.

  He settled himself comfortably into the armchair opposite Lambert and said, ‘Fascinating to be on the other side of the fence for once, Superintendent. I am watching the efforts of your team with interest. Not many magistrates get the chance to see a murder investigation at first hand. I suppose that’s just as well!’

  If it was meant as a reminder of his JP status, it was lightly done: his interest and enthusiasm seemed quite genuine. Despite the protective shell of middle-class courtesy he had grown around himself, Lambert rather liked the man. Or what he knew of the man: so far Goodman had preserved his privacy from the intrusions of the murder team better than any of the others in his group. Now he said, like a prosperous solicitor attending to a new client, ‘What can I do for you, Mr Lambert?’

  Bert Hook was less tolerant of Goodman’s easy-going panache than his chief. He flicked his notebook ostentatiously to a new page and said firmly, ‘You can start by telling us about the discovery of the body.’

  ‘Of course. Well, I rose earlier than is my wont and—’

  ‘Was there a particular reason for that?’

  Goodman smiled, resolutely refusing to be ruffled, treating Hook as if he were a young officer new to CID work and anxious to make an impression, rather than the grizzled veteran he strove to present. ‘Only that I hadn’t slept very well, Sergeant. No doubt you will wish to know the reason for that too. Well, I never sleep as soundly away from home as I do in my own bed these days. No doubt that is one of the less disturbing side-effects of advancing years. And perhaps we had all eaten not wisely but too well on the previous evening.’

  ‘And drunk quite a lot as well, we have gathered.’ Goodman’s determined calm seemed to be making Hook uncharacteristically aggressive: Lambert had time to wonder if that was the effect the man had intended, so that his own calm might be the more impressive.

  ‘Indeed, as you say, a good deal of wine and the best part of a bottle of brandy had been consumed.’ It was the most accurate summary they had been offered: for all his relaxed magnanimity, Goodman had been recording the events of the evening shrewdly. ‘I hadn’t drunk very much myself, but then I find even a modest amount of alcohol seems to keep me awake nowadays. So your inference may well be correct, Sergeant. Perhaps it was the dehydrating effects of the brandy that prevented me from sleeping very much. At any event, I was awake with the dawn chorus, and I don’t think I managed anything more than a few minutes’ doze after that.’

  ‘So what time did you get up?’ Hook was anxious to re
cord the first fact on his still unsullied page.

  ‘It must have been about six. When I finally accepted that I wasn’t going to get any more sleep.’

  ‘And you met Mr Nash at what time?’ Hook, happy to see the first figures appearing in his slow, round hand, prepared for a second entry.

  Goodman pressed his fingers together and pointed them towards the ceiling. He studied them, appeared to find their symmetry satisfactory, and said, ‘It must have been about twenty or twenty-five past six. I’d shaved and made a cup of tea in my room before I caught sight of Tony through the window and stepped forth. It was such a beautiful morning that it tempted me.’

  ‘Had you arranged to meet Mr Nash at that time?’

  ‘Oh no.’ For the first time, Goodman’s reply was hurried, as if he were anxious to remove any notion of collusion between himself and Tony Nash. His reaction set Lambert thinking. None of the party could have been in bed much before one; Harrington had probably been murdered sometime in the hour after that. To find two of them meeting just after six the next morning was a little curious, in the circumstances, especially as Goodman now seemed anxious to establish that the meeting was a chance one. Adapting Wilde, he thought that one person unable to sleep and thus abroad at such a time might be curious, but two suggested collusion.

  As if he had caught the thought, Bert Hook said, ‘Mr Nash was merely unable to sleep, like you?’ He managed to imply in his tone that he didn’t believe a word of this.

  Goodman was discomposed for the first time. He said, ‘There was no rendezvous arranged between us, if that’s what you mean. Has anyone suggested there was?’

  Hook was too old a campaigner to answer that. When a subject as imperturbable as George Goodman was on the run, you kept him moving. Bert said, ‘And after this random meeting, you decided to play golf at that time in the morning?’ This time Bert’s scepticism was genuine enough: he still could not comprehend why anyone would waste his time on such a ridiculous game when there was serious stuff like cricket to be undertaken. And golf before breakfast at that; it was all highly suspicious.

  Goodman, understanding none of the Sergeant’s sturdy prejudices, looked suitably puzzled for a moment. ‘Yes. I think I suggested it, as a matter of fact. It was a beautiful morning, and the course was completely deserted at that hour.’

  He looked automatically to Lambert, no doubt believing that a fellow-golfer would immediately understand. The Superintendent’s smile was as much at Hook’s sporting bigotry as in acknowledgement of Goodman’s mute appeal, but he said, ‘An empty course on such a morning would have been an irresistible invitation to me too, George.’ With the return to golf, he had dropped automatically back to a first-name address; he caught Hook’s stern disapproval. ‘Was Tony Nash as keen as you on the idea? He doesn’t really strike me as an enthusiast for early morning exercise.’

  Goodman smiled: ‘No, I agree. But on this occasion he seemed only too anxious for activity.’ He thought back: what he had scarcely remarked at the time might now seem significant. ‘He looked as if he’d had even less sleep than I had. There were bags under his eyes and his hair was all over the place. And his clothing was all dishevelled, as if it had been thrown on in a hurry. I remember that I got him to tuck his shirt in before we started.’ He stopped, as if aware that what had seemed amusing at the time might now be more sinister in the eyes of others.

  ‘Would you say that Tony Nash is normally careless about his dress?’

  If Goodman was dissimulating, he did it well. It was with an air of reluctance that he said, ‘No. Rather the reverse, I think. I’m no expert on modern fashions, but I’d say he fancied himself as rather a dapper dresser.’

  ‘Did he appear preoccupied when you were on the course?’

  Goodman thought carefully, with the air of balancing his loyalty to a friend against his public duty to be as informative as possible to the representatives of the law. ‘No. As far as I can remember, we both played reasonably well. Tony smoked more cigarettes than I’ve ever seen him use before, but he seemed to find the physical activity a release.’

  ‘And you played quite a few holes before you came across the body.’

  ‘Yes. Eleven, to be precise. We’d agreed to play to the twelfth, which you may remember is conveniently near the clubhouse. In fact, we were just completing the eleventh when one of the green staff shouted to us from that hollow where Guy was lying. I suppose, strictly speaking, it was he who found the body, though of course he had no idea who it was.’

  Lambert watched Hook’s busy ballpoint for a moment, as if waiting for him to catch up with developments. Then he said quietly, ‘What was Tony Nash’s reaction to the body? Was he as totally surprised as you would expect an innocent man to be?’

  Goodman considered the matter carefully. These men would be asking others about his own reactions, no doubt. It was an uneasy thought, which he had not directly considered earlier. He shrugged his episcopal shoulders, inclined the tonsorial head like one unwilling to be uncharitable to anyone, least of all his friend. ‘Tony was shocked, as one would expect. As, indeed, I was myself. I was too upset to take much note of whether Tony was behaving naturally. I wouldn’t know what naturally is, anyway. I haven’t an extensive experience of finding dead bodies.’ It was a perfectly valid point, and he knew it. He permitted himself a small, acerbic smile.

  Lambert had expected nothing more. But this seemed suddenly an area worth probing; he sensed an unease beneath the comfortable shell of courtesy. ‘As I told you earlier, the body had been moved to that spot from the point of the actual murder. I want you to review the moment of discovery now with that knowledge in mind. To put it bluntly, either Tony Nash was as shocked as any innocent person would be to discover the corpse, or he was a murderer pretending a surprise and horror which he did not feel. I can’t expect you to distinguish between the two, as you have already indicated. But a murderer might have been surprised to find the corpse in that particular place. Unless he had himself moved the body: at this stage we have an open mind about that possibility. With the benefit of hindsight, can you recall anything in the bearing of Tony Nash which might suggest he was surprised to find the remains of Guy Harrington in that hollow on the course?’

  Lambert, even as he put the question, fancied he had set an impossible task: it would surely be impossible to distinguish between two sorts of shock in such circumstances. But if Goodman tried to implicate Nash, that would open up fascinating possibilities, for it might indicate a killer accepting the bait to incriminate someone else. Lambert tried to appear unexcited during a long, almost theatrical pause, while Goodman stared over his head at the wall behind him, apparently in deep and dutiful concentration.

  Eventually Goodman sighed and said, ‘It’s impossible to say, Superintendent. We were both under stress, obviously. Perhaps I didn’t even notice Tony’s reaction very much—one is overcome by one’s own emotions at moments like that. I must say I wasn’t too surprised when you told us earlier that Guy’s body had been moved from the place where he met his death. I wonder if Tony would say the same thing.’

  ‘We shall find out in due course,’ said Lambert with a small, grim smile. ‘Are you able to go any further?’

  Goodman hesitated; for a moment, Lambert wondered if he was actually enjoying this. ‘I think it must have been something about the way the body was lying. With the stomach up in the air and the feet and head sloping down on either side of the mound, I mean. I didn’t put the thought into words until you spoke to us about it earlier, but I suppose I thought it was an odd position for anyone to fall into. When you said he had been dumped there, it suddenly seemed to make a lot more sense.’

  He had led them elaborately down a cul-de-sac. But it might be perfectly innocent. Goodman had the air of a man clarifying his own thoughts while trying earnestly to help them. Lambert concealed his disappointment with a curt nod to Hook to take up a different, more routine line of questioning. The Sergeant said briskly, ‘We need an
account of your movements after the party broke up on the night of the murder.’

  ‘Of course. Though I’m afraid it’s quite dull. The six of us talked for quite a long time on the roof, as I’m sure the others have told you. That’s when I probably had a little too much brandy for my very limited capacity. When we broke up, I went straight back to my room. And so, almost immediately, to bed.’

  ‘Were there any witnesses to this?’

  ‘Regrettably no, Sergeant. Harrington and I had single rooms. The other two couples are no doubt able to speak for each other, but I saw no one after I left the roof until I met Tony Nash next morning.’

  Lambert saw no reason to tell him that the two couples involved seemed to be getting themselves into incriminating tangles rather than helping each other. Instead he said abruptly, ‘What were your own feelings towards Harrington, Mr Goodman?’

  The avuncular features showed no sign of tension; Goodman must have expected that they would come to this. His answer had the ring of a prepared statement. ‘We were golfing friends. That is all. You can play golf with a man without approving of him, you know.’

  ‘Indeed I do. Though the association is usually a little closer when one chooses to go away on a golfing holiday with someone.’

  ‘I suppose so. Oh, Guy could be agreeable enough company when he chose to be so. Which I suppose was for most of the time.’

  Lambert studied him closely, then said, ‘I don’t think it will be news to you that Harrington has emerged from our investigation as a thoroughly unlikeable man. You are far too intelligent to have expected anything else. I must ask you to be more specific about your own relationship with him.’

  ‘I didn’t like him.’ For the first time, Goodman was tight-lipped. The contrast with his previous expansiveness made it quite apparent, to him as to them. He said after a moment, ‘I didn’t kill him.’