by J M Gregson
‘Ninety-two covers to be precise.’
Percy Peach sighed deeply at the prospect of whittling this number of suspects down to something manageable. ‘Five or six thousand quid then.’
The manager bridled at this mention of actual sums of money, which he thought vulgar and un-British. He said stiffly, ‘That would be a fairly accurate figure, yes.’
Percy whistled softly. ‘And you think the day went off well?’
The manager frowned. ‘I am concerned on these occasions with other things than the interchanges at the tables, such as the serving of food and the comfort and well-being of our guests. But yes. I’d say the day went well. Very well, as far as I could see. Everyone seemed very happy at the end of it.’
‘And yet one of these ninety-two delighted punters bumped off the poor sod who had paid for it all.’
‘That seems likely, yes.’ The manager sought desperately for something which would avoid unwelcome publicity for Marton Towers. ‘I suppose it could have been someone who came in from outside, someone who hadn’t been involved in the day at all.’
‘You should have been a detective, sir. Now tell me what happened at the end of this happy occasion.’
‘Well, there were speeches. I was in the kitchen with our catering staff, so I didn’t hear much of what was said. But I think they were fine. There was a lot of laughter. And then at the end of Mr Aspin’s speech, there was a lot of applause as well. After that, things broke up pretty quickly. It was a beautiful afternoon - well, early evening, by then - and I expect people were delighted to get out into the fresh air.’ His face clouded over for no more than a second. But a second was enough for Peach, who was used to studying people’s faces without embarrassment. ‘There’s something else, isn’t there, sir?’
‘It’s probably nothing.’
‘Indeed it is, sir. But it wouldn’t be wise to hold anything back, in what seems sure to be a murder investigation.’
‘No. Well, I heard some shouting, that’s all. Some sort of argument. After most people had left the dining room and gone out on to the terrace.’
‘A row, you mean. A fierce disagreement.’
‘Yes, I suppose it was. I didn’t see it.’
‘And who was involved in this row?’
‘I don’t know. It was behind closed doors, somewhere in the cloakroom area, I think. I was still in the kitchens.’
‘It must have been pretty loud, then, for you to hear it at all.’
‘It was.’ He was suddenly anxious to be involved, to maintain his contact with the gruesome glamour of a murder investigation, as innocent people with nothing to fear often are. ‘I think one of the people involved might have been Mr Aspin.’
Peach tried not to show his excitement. ‘And who was the other person?’
‘I don’t know. I’m afraid.’
‘Couldn’t you even make a guess about that? Even speculation might be useful to us, at this stage.’
‘No, I’m afraid I couldn’t.’ He frowned, not wanting to let it go at that, and then said rather desperately, ‘Except that I’m sure it was female.’
‘There you are, sir! You’ve eliminated approximately half the people there at once. Any idea which female?’
‘No. I couldn’t even speculate about that. I hadn’t heard any of the women in that room speak, so I couldn’t identify the voice.’
‘But there were only the two people involved, you think? Mr Aspin and some unknown woman?’
‘Yes. At least I’m certain that I only heard two people. It was a private argument and nothing to do with me or my staff.’ A sense of propriety belatedly reasserted itself.
‘And did you see or hear anything else suspicious?’
‘I’m afraid not. I was busy with other things. The time when our guests depart is a frenetically busy time for us. Especially when we have another function the next day, as in this case.’ He looked anxiously at his watch.
Peach stood up. The manager stood with him in anticipation of a return to his tasks.
‘The body wasn’t found until this morning,’ Peach said.
‘By one of our domestic staff, yes. She was on her way in to—’
‘Why do you think that was? We already know that he was killed last night, you see. Wouldn’t you think that one of his family would have realized that he hadn’t left the Towers along with everyone else last night?’
‘Yes, I suppose I would. I’m afraid I haven’t given the matter much thought.’
‘No reason why you should, sir, is there? But I shall have to give that question quite a lot of thought, in the hours to come. Good morning to you.’
Peach went out and stood for a moment on the forecourt, which was at present deserted. He looked down the long, straight drive between the serene rectangular ponds, where the first vivid white and pink flowers of the water lilies gave promise of high summer to come. He believed what he had just heard, that most of the people at yesterday’s function had thoroughly enjoyed their day here.
Yet at the end of that day, one of them had almost certainly brutally murdered the man who had set up that enjoyment for them.
* * *
There was nothing on either the television or radio morning news about the death.
That was good. It almost certainly meant that the body had not been discovered last night. The longer the interval between a killing and its discovery, the greater the chance that the killer would go undiscovered. The murderer was sure that idea was borne out by the statistics the papers loved to print when they had no hard news. It was surely common sense anyway.
As the Sunday morning dragged along and grew steadily hotter, the murderer tuned to Radio Lancashire and listened nervously to successive news bulletins. There was nothing. The news of rising temperatures in north-east Lancashire and of the aspirations of local cricket teams for the afternoon matches began to seem like a deliberate avoidance of the greater issue.
Then, on the one o’clock news bulletin, it came. The newsreader’s tone seemed to rise a little with the excitement of it, as if she recognized that all the trivia of the news summaries during a dull morning had been but a preparation for this.
‘A body was discovered this morning in a car at the former stately home, Marton Towers, seven miles outside Brunton in the Ribble Valley. Police are treating the death as suspicious. The identity of the corpse has not been revealed, but it is understood to be that of a male in late middle age. This follows the murder of the estate gardener at Marton Towers, Mr Neil Cartwright, last year. Mr Cartwright’s body was discovered after a fire in the stables: his killer was convicted in January and is now serving a life sentence. We understand that at this moment the police see no connection between the two crimes.’
* * *
No connection indeed! They were padding it out, trying to make the old news supplement the new because they did not have enough details. That was good. It didn’t necessarily mean that the police knew nothing because they hadn’t given the radio people anything, but they hadn’t even said that they were anxious to talk to anyone. They usually said that as soon as they could, just to let the public know that they weren’t completely stupid and baffled.
It certainly looked as if they hadn’t found anything useful yet. They’d have started from scratch this Sunday morning, pulling out all the stops to get a team together, to pursue a scent which had already gone cold. They had no witnesses to what had happened last night and they wouldn’t find any. There’d been no one around. The police would have plenty of suspects, in due course - too many for their comfort. There was safety in numbers.
It was almost a relief to have the first report of the murder on local radio. It had seemed like a long wait through the morning. The killer left the room for the first time in hours and went outside. It was a cloudless day, with the sun at its highest and just enough light breeze from the west to ensure it was not excessively hot. The sound of children’s voices, high, innocent, anonymous, drifted over the hedges.
<
br /> The murderer felt first relieved and then exhilarated.
Nine
Pam Williams was trying hard to compose herself. Each time she thought she had done with them, the tears kept starting anew.
Her son tried not to look at the clock. Justin Williams had been called over from Leeds this morning: the policewoman had been insistent on the phone that Mrs Williams needed someone from the family close to her.
It was really most inconvenient. His own family needed him on a Sunday. He knew what to do with them, whereas he did not know what to do with this weeping woman who felt like a stranger. They hadn’t been close over the last few years. He knew that she needed physical contact, an arm round her shoulders, a bear hug to assure her that the world would go on, that there were other people in it who cared for her. But Justin could not hug his mother naturally when he most needed to do so, could not offer that simple, instinctive contact which he should not even have had to think about.
He should have been able to deal with this easily enough. He was a doctor, used to dealing with death and those left behind to cope with it. But the usual emollient phrases, meaningless but consoling, wouldn’t work with a mother who had become estranged from him. He felt a self-loathing which withered his every move, which made any words he uttered sound artificial, trite, useless. And all because of this man he had never seen. The Geoffrey Aspin whom he had in fact refused to meet, because that would have acknowledged that he was important to his mother. The man he had never wanted in his mother’s life. The man who even in death was the disaster he had foreseen he would be in life.
‘Are you sure you won’t have anything to eat, Mum?’ Justin asked. ‘You should have something, you know.’ The words sounded like a parody in his ears, as if he was throwing back at his mother the things she had said to him during his childhood upsets.
She shook her head, not looking at him. ‘I want to go away. To get out of this house and away from this town.’
He almost asked her where she wanted to go. Just in time, he stopped himself and said, ‘You’re welcome to come and stay with us, of course. For a few days, if you like.’ It was lukewarm: he didn’t want her, but if it had to be, why could he not sound enthusiastic about it? ‘For as long as you like. You know that.’
She shook her head minimally, staring down at the carpet in front of her from the chair where she had sat for hours now. ‘I still can’t believe it’s happened.’ She wrung the wet handkerchief unconsciously between her fingers, the only parts of her which were mobile.
He said, trying to sound as if he regretted it, ‘But you shouldn’t really leave here at the moment, you know. Not in the immediate future, anyway.’ He cursed himself for that last artificial phrase. Why, when words came so naturally to him in his work, would they not fly from his lips now, when they should have been easy?
She looked up at him, for the first time in at least an hour. ‘Why’s that?’ The wide grey eyes in the tear-stained face had a childish wonderment, which he should have welcomed as a return to this world from the dark one which had atrophied her for the last few hours.
‘I don’t really know.’ He knew very well, but he couldn’t put it into words which would be acceptable. ‘I - I just feel that perhaps you need to be somewhere around here, for the next few days. Haven’t you a female friend in the area that you could stay with for a night or two?’
He saw horror dawning in her face as her brain came back to life and worked upon what he had said. ‘You mean they’ll want to talk to me about Geoff and how he died. You mean that they’ll be thinking that I killed him, don’t you?’
‘No. No, I don’t mean that, Mum.’ For the first time, the diminutive sprang naturally to his lips. ‘I just think they’ll want to talk to you, that’s all.’ He said with increasing desperation, ‘I don’t know what happens in these things, do I? But I expect the police will want to talk to anyone who was close to Mr Aspin. And you were, I know.’
‘I can’t talk to them. Not now. Not until I’ve got my head together.’ There was panic in her face. She looked twenty years older, vulnerable as he had never seen her before, like a frail pensioner threatened with violence. Justin felt a sudden, searing tenderness for her. He took both her hands in his, pulled her from the chair, and at last held her clumsily but naturally in his arms. ‘All right. I won’t let them speak to you. Not now. Not immediately. I’ll stay with you here for the rest of the day. We’ll work something out.’
He held her for a good ten seconds, feeling even more relief in this belated contact than she did. Then the doorbell rang, as if responding to a cue. Justin detached himself gently from his mother and went and opened the front door of the semidetached house. This house and its furnishings were similar to many of the ones he entered as a doctor. It felt so normal, so conventional, in this most abnormal of situations.
A short, powerful man with a bald head and a very black moustache, immaculately dressed in a dark suit and tie even on this warm first day of July. And beside him, a young woman with striking dark red hair and a bright, intelligent, face, lightly freckled towards her temples. Quite a looker, his libido told Justin irrelevantly, when he least wanted it to speak to him.
The man flashed a warrant card with a stem, unsmiling photograph of himself, which told the reader that he was a Detective Chief Inspector Peach. ‘And this is DS Blake,’ he said. ‘Is Mrs Williams here? I’m sorry to intrude at a time like this, but I’m afraid we need to speak with her.’
‘She’s here, but she isn’t fit to speak to anyone at the moment. I’m her son. I’m also a doctor. She wouldn’t be much use to you at the moment. She isn’t coherent, because she’s still in shock.’
He thought for a moment the man would argue. Then he said, ‘When would it be convenient. Dr Williams? I’m afraid that from my point of view it’s rather urgent, you see.’
‘I do see, yes. If you’d like to call back late afternoon or early evening, I’ll try to ensure that she’s a little more composed. I won’t give her a sedative until after she’s spoken with you.’
The man with the moustache nodded. ‘Thank you for your cooperation, sir. We’ll come back later, as you suggest.’ Justin shut the door and went back down the hall. He was hoping that he had said they could come back today rather than tomorrow for his mother’s sake rather than for more selfish reasons of his own. He had done that much for her at least, had kept the police at bay for a little while until she was better able to deal with their questions. It would be better for her to have the police business out of the way sooner rather than later, since it was surely inconceivable that his mother could have anything to do with this death.
He took a deep breath and went back into the sitting room wondering just what she had got herself into with this man Aspin.
* * *
‘Of course I’ll see you. It shouldn’t take long, because there’s nothing I can tell you.’
Jemal Bilic spoke dismissively: in his experience, the brisker you were with the police the better.
‘Remains to be seen, that, sir. You’d be surprised what useful stuff people are able to give to us. It often happens when they think they’re telling us nothing at all.’ DCI Percy Peach was like a dog pricking up its ears at the sight of a juicy bone. The prospect of a contest always animated him. ‘My experience is that the sons-in-law of deceased men are often sources of much valuable information, when there has been a violent death.’
Bilic was shocked by what sounded to him like a frontal attack. It seemed to him likely that Peach was bluffing, but the man looked very confident. Jemal had a very low opinion of police brainpower, but presumably you didn’t become a detective chief inspector without a certain amount of ability.
He said sullenly, ‘I didn’t have a lot of dealings with Geoffrey Aspin. You’ll get better information from my wife.’
‘Which in due course we shall do, Mr Bilic.’
‘I’ll get her in now, if you wish. You can talk to the two of us together.’
‘No thank you. We prefer to collect individual statements and impressions of what happened.’
‘So that you can trick us into contradicting each other.’
Jemal thought the man would deny that, but Peach merely smiled tolerantly.
‘We don’t trick anyone. Sometimes people trick themselves, but they’re usually people with something to hide. I don’t suppose you’ve anything to hide, have you, Mr Bilic?’
‘Of course I haven’t.’ The denial came a little too promptly; just for a moment, Jemal had thought that they’d been watching his movements over the last few weeks. But they couldn’t have been doing that. This watchful man and the softer female presence at his side must surely only be concerned with last night’s death. He must concentrate on that. ‘I wasn’t close to Mr Aspin. I’ve no idea who decided that he should be killed.’
‘That’s an odd choice of words, sir. Most people would say, “I’ve no idea who killed him”. Are you suggesting that someone employed an agent to kill Mr Aspin? A contract killer, perhaps?’
‘No. Nothing of the sort.’ Jemal heard his accent becoming stronger with rage. He must control that. He forced a smile. ‘English is not my native tongue. You must make allowances for me.’
‘Your English is very good. I believe you are originally from Turkey?’
He felt a pang of fear that they should know so much. Was he under investigation? Or had they just done their homework on him before coming here today? ‘Yes. How do you know that?’
Peach gave him one of his broadest smiles. ‘I believe the official line is that we don’t reveal our sources, sir. But you will understand that in a murder inquiry we talk to a lot of people.’
‘I run a successful business. I provide employment.’ He was being defensive, even though he knew he had intended to dismiss them with a swift arrogance from his house.
‘I’m sure you do both of those things, sir. But that is not our concern today. What was your relationship with Mr Aspin?’
