by J M Gregson
Lambert nodded. ‘I remember the vineyard beginning as a very modest concern. Most people thought the notion of English wine rather ridiculous at the time, or at best as no more than a novelty. You must have had faith in the idea.’
‘I suppose I did. Or rather, faith in Martin Beaumont, if I’m honest. I knew nothing about English wine and very little about wine in general. But Martin was an enthusiast. He carried people along with him.’
‘Nevertheless, you showed a lot of faith, to throw in your lot with him when he was dependent on what was then a largely untried idea.’
Alistair hadn’t anticipated this. He had expected to be defensive, to have to devote all his resources to concealing the fact that he had been thinking for months of the means by which he might dispose of the employer he had come to hate. Yet this grey, lined, experienced face seemed to understand his situation, to appreciate what he had risked in those early days. He was tempted for a moment to disclose his real relationship with Beaumont, to say exactly what sort of man he had been and how treacherously he had reneged on those early promises of partnership. But that would surely be folly, with Beaumont on a slab with a bullet through his head and these men looking hard for a killer.
Alistair went back to the words he had prepared. ‘I was young. I had a wife working. I felt I could take a chance to pursue an exciting idea. We didn’t have any children – we still don’t have. I was a qualified chartered accountant. It wouldn’t have been the end of the world if Abbey Vineyards had failed. I’d have found other employment easily enough.’
It all made sense. But Morton was picking his words very carefully for a man with nothing to hide, thought Lambert. ‘You will appreciate that at present we know almost nothing about a man who has been a victim of violent homicide. We’ve already spoken to Mr Beaumont’s widow. Apart from her, you have probably known him longer than anyone else we shall talk to. Would you tell us what sort of man he was, please?’
Alistair wasn’t ready for so direct a challenge. Any frank appraisal of the man was plainly dangerous ground for him. He didn’t want to say what he really thought, but he couldn’t afford to come across to them as evasive. He played for time by rising and going across to the sideboard and sliding open one of its bottom drawers. After searching for a moment through a sheaf of documents, he produced a small leaflet and handed it to Lambert.
‘That is the first brochure we produced at Abbey Vineyards. That is a picture of Martin as he was then.’
It was a modest advertising venture, pushing the notion of English wines, reminding the reader that the Romans had grown vines here. It gave brief accounts of soil analysis and the writer’s views on why the gentle, south-facing Gloucestershire slopes where the first plantings had taken place were going to produce viable commercial yields. Its only printing extravagance was a full-length picture of the man behind the venture, probably taken a year or two before it was used here. Martin Beaumont was a handsome man, slim in his well-cut suit, with an open face and flowing, carefully cut, dark-gold hair. The features exuded confidence and enthusiasm, as was obviously their purpose in the brochure.
John Lambert studied the photograph for a few seconds, as Morton obviously intended him to do. The Martin Beaumont of those years looked a winning figure, who could easily imbue others with the enthusiasm and conviction he felt for his ideas. He wondered for a moment whether there might have been a sexual attraction between the two men, but immediately dismissed the notion. He was almost sure Morton was not gay, and he certainly didn’t present the shaken figure of a man who had lost a lover, whether current or former. More likely there had been an attraction of opposites, a bond between the handsome entrepreneur with his visions of commercial glory and this introverted and cautious figure, excited by an unexpectedly adventurous outlet for his accountancy skills.
Lambert said, ‘So you were in at the beginning. It must have been an intoxicating ride.’
Alistair weighed the word carefully. He would have used other, less complimentary words, but it would pay him to accept this view. ‘It was. There wasn’t much money around at all for a year or two, because Martin insisted on ploughing every penny that was made back into the firm.’
‘But no doubt you approved of that, in view of the progress you have seen since then.’
Was it a straightforward comment, or was he being led on to confess something he would rather conceal? These two were experienced at this interview game, whereas he was a novice, whatever he had decided in advance. Alistair said carefully, ‘I did, I suppose. It’s difficult to recall all the details now, but I remember that Martin could certainly inspire other people with his enthusiasm.’ And with promises he never intended to fulfil! But he mustn’t tell them that. ‘There wasn’t much money available for anyone in those early days, including me. But I supplemented what there was with a little freelance work in my spare time. And my wife was bringing in a secretarial salary.’
‘You didn’t think of going so far as to take a direct stake in the business, rather than just receiving what you admit was a very small salary in the early years?’
It was almost as though this man Lambert knew all about Beaumont’s failure to deliver on his promises of partnership. But he couldn’t possibly know, could he? He’d given nothing away himself and the only other man who could have told them anything about it was Martin himself, who certainly wouldn’t have left any details of that sort around in his papers. Alistair forced a little laugh at his own expense. ‘Put it down to an accountant’s natural caution, if you like. No one except Martin was certain we were going to be a success, at the outset. Once the early days were past and the business was even a modest success, I’d have liked to be a part-owner, of course, but Martin didn’t want that. He was always very much a one-man band, you know.’
‘No, we didn’t know that, Mr Morton. That’s the kind of information we’re here to gather, as I explained earlier.’
‘Well, he was. And what he really needed in the early days was capital, which I hadn’t got. I contributed only my financial expertise. Eventually, when the firm was fully established, I was appointed formally as its financial director. I have no quarrel with the salary I have been paid in that post.’
‘I see. And other senior staff are salaried employees in a similar way, are they? None of them has any say in the policies of the company?’
‘I understand that Miss North, our director of residential accommodation, is a junior partner in the company. You should ask her if you wish to know the details of exactly how junior. She put in some money ten years or so ago.’
But as the financial director and compiler of the annual accounts, you must know all the details of exactly how far she and anyone else is involved, thought Lambert. Are you just being professionally cagey about financial matters, in a typically British way, or are you really trying to conceal something significant here? ‘Abbey Vineyards is now a large and apparently prosperous industrial concern. Is it not unusual that, apart from what you say is a minor involvement by Miss North, it should still at this stage of its development be so much a one-man band?’
‘It is probably unusual, but by no means unique. It is – was – part of Martin’s temperament to control what he had set up and developed. That is a common trait of many successful entrepreneurs. He didn’t operate as a complete autocrat. We had regular meetings, where the five senior staff were allowed their say. Some of us expressed our views on policy pretty forcefully at times.’
‘And no doubt the chairman listened to them, and then went ahead with exactly what he had planned from the outset.’
Alistair allowed himself a smile. ‘It was a little like that at times, I confess. But that is one of the things you have to accept with a strong-willed leader like Martin. You get rapid progress and success, but less power than in a more democratic set-up. If you don’t like it, you go somewhere more congenial.’
Lambert gave him an answering smile, showing his understanding, inviting revelations. ‘As Mr B
eaumont no doubt didn’t hesitate to inform any dissenters.’
‘It happened, from time to time, I’m sure,’ said Morton stiffly.
‘But you were perfectly happy with this set-up yourself.’
It was almost as if he was trying to trip him up, thought Alistair. But he mustn’t become paranoid: the man couldn’t possibly know anything. He must pick his words carefully if he was to avoid showing his resentment. ‘On balance, I was happy, yes. There were times when I felt I’d like to have a little more direct involvement, and been able to influence policy more, but as I say I am well paid for my services, so I accept the rewards of the set-up alongside its small limitations.’
Lambert regarded him steadily for so long that Alistair thought he was going to pursue the matter. But eventually he said, ‘A man like Mr Beaumont must inevitably have made many enemies. Do you know of anyone who might have wished him serious ill? I need hardly say that any thoughts you have on the matter will remain entirely confidential.’
It was an opportunity to divert suspicion away from himself. But he mustn’t be too eager to accept the invitation, or it would become obvious what he was about. Alistair said with an air of reluctance, ‘I think Miss North would have liked to withdraw her money, to realize the benefits of her stake in the company. But you would need to ask her about that. And I’m certainly not suggesting that she felt strongly enough about it to undertake murder. That would be ridiculous.’
‘Murder appears ridiculous to most of us, Mr Morton. But there is one person to whom, at the time at least, it seemed a logical action, even an inevitable action. We shall isolate that person or persons, in due course. In the meantime, who else do you know who was a declared enemy of Mr Beaumont’s?’
‘There’s a strawberry farmer just down the road from us. Martin has bought up various properties over the years as we’ve expanded. This man’s farm is now a tongue of land which cuts right into the vineyards.’
‘Name?’ said Bert Hook. It was the first time he had spoken, though Alistair had been conscious of him making notes.
‘Tom Ogden. He’s around sixty, I should think, and he says his family have farmed that land for hundreds of years. I know Martin offered him a good price for it ten years and more ago. He’s upped the offer several times as the years have passed and he’s acquired the other land around that farm, but Ogden has always refused to sell. Tom’s a determined old sod, but so was Martin. He was also used to getting his own way, so he didn’t take very kindly to Ogden’s refusals. I’m not saying Tom would have killed him, mind. But you asked me about Martin’s enemies, and Tom Ogden would certainly admit to being one of those. He’d probably claim it rather proudly, as a matter of fact.’
Alistair thought he’d managed that rather well. He hadn’t offered the name until it was prised out of him. He watched Hook completing his entry on Ogden before he said, ‘Anyone else?’
‘I’m sure there are lots of people. As Superintendent Lambert suggested, it’s almost impossible to grow a business the way Martin has grown this one without upsetting a lot of people on the way. And even those of us who worked happily for him found him an abrasive character at times. That doesn’t mean that we killed him, does it?’
Hook left that rhetorical question hanging in the air. ‘Where were you on Wednesday night, Mr Morton?’
‘I was here at home. I did an hour or so in the garden after our evening meal. During the latter part of the evening I was watching television, I expect, like most of the rest of the populace.’
‘And overnight?’
‘Here. I didn’t go out on Wednesday after I came home from work.’
‘Is there anyone who can confirm this for us?’
‘Just my wife. As I think I said earlier, we do not have any children.’ He’d read or heard that they didn’t like spouse alibis. But if they couldn’t disprove them, they had to accept them. He wondered if they’d go straight to Amy now and ask her to confirm it, but Hook merely made a note. Lambert said he was to get in touch if he thought of anything else which might help them, and then they were gone.
He sat in the empty dining room and reviewed the meeting. It had certainly gone as well as could be expected, he decided, and perhaps even a little better than that. He went through into the kitchen, where Amy was stirring the beans into the chilli con carne.
He went over and stood behind her, sliding his arms round her waist. ‘That was fine, I think. Just routine stuff about the work I do at the firm and so on. The police may not speak to you at all. If they do, just remember that I was here for the whole of Wednesday evening.’
FIFTEEN
The CID section in the police station at Oldford was unusually busy for a Saturday morning. Murder investigations have that effect. Even overtime budgets are treated flexibly, when chief constables are haunted by the fear of tabloid headlines about unsolved mysteries and police incompetence.
Lambert, Rushton and Hook were gathered around the computer on which the DI recorded the mass of information generated by a murder case. He was about to enter the limited information offered by the post mortem report, much of which they already knew or expected. Powder burns around the temple indicated that Martin Beaumont had been shot at a range of no more than an inch or two by a .38 calibre pistol. The cartridge had now been retrieved, but the weapon had not been found at the site.
The body had in all probability not been touched after the single fatal shot was fired. Beaumont had certainly died in the car where he was discovered and the car had not been driven after his death. He had been in good health for a man of his years at the time of his death. He had died not less than twenty-four and not more than forty-eight hours before the body was found, and probably but not certainly between thirty and forty-two hours before that time.
Stomach contents indicated that a substantial meal had been consumed several hours before death. ‘Several’ in this case probably meant three to five, but it would be impossible to swear to anything so precise in a court of law. A little alcohol was evident, probably imbibed at the same time as the food, but the blood milligram level was well below the legal limit for driving.
The detection team wanted as always a time of death, which would give them a starting point and pinpoint the enquiries of the large team of officers who were doing the dull but necessary work of house-to-house and local motorist enquiries. Rushton had been computerizing such information as it came in: there were already surprisingly substantial files on his computer. He said, ‘The last sighting of Beaumont to date is at half past five in his office at Abbey Vineyards, by his PA Fiona Cooper. She thought he was almost ready to leave. If we assume he ate an evening meal shortly after that, he probably drove out to the spot where he was killed late that evening.’
‘Probably towards midnight.’ Lambert nodded glumly. ‘He died in a very quiet place at almost the quietest time of day.’
‘He may have driven his killer with him to Howler’s Heath,’ said Rushton. ‘It’s early days, but there are so far no other sightings reported of another vehicle parked near the scene. But we have as yet no report of a taxi having been summoned to anywhere in that area in the late hours of Wednesday or early hours of Thursday. We’ve covered the major firms in Gloucester and Tewkesbury, but not all the smaller and individual operators as yet.’ He consulted a note he had made. ‘The only one of his executive workers who lives near enough to have made his way home on foot from the site of the death is Alistair Morton, who I compute lives some six or seven miles from there.’
‘Morton assured us yesterday that he was tucked up at home throughout the evening and overnight,’ said Lambert dryly. ‘We shouldn’t dismiss the possibility that Beaumont might have driven his killer out there with him; it’s possible, if we assume an accomplice, who could have picked up the killer at or near the scene after the murder. But the probability is that Beaumont was fulfilling an assignation with the person who killed him. Whether the place and time were selected by Beaumont or by his killer, we c
annot know at this stage.’
Hook said, ‘It would have been quite possible for the killer to park on the lane, somewhere near where we parked when we went out there, and walk the hundred yards or so to the Jaguar under the trees.’
‘It’s also possible that in that place and at that time no one noticed a parked vehicle, especially if it wasn’t there for very long,’ said Rushton grimly. ‘I’ll tell our officers they should now concentrate on a time an hour before or after midnight.’
‘Have forensic come up with anything?’
‘They’re still working on the car, but I don’t expect it to produce anything significant. They’ve got various fibres from the front seat, but whether any of them were left on the night of the killing is another matter. In any case, they’d only be any use much later, probably not until we can match them with the clothing of someone we’ve arrested for this.’ Rushton paused, looking at what he had already entered from Hook’s reports on the interviews already conducted. ‘Has the widow got her own car?’
Lambert smiled. ‘She has. And she made no great pretence of being devastated by her husband’s death. She’d dressed herself in black to meet us, but grief didn’t seem to go any deeper than that. The first thought is that it’s a pretty obscure place to meet a husband whom you could confront at home at any time. But of course, it would divert suspicion away from her to kill him out there, at what looks like a secret meeting. Jane Beaumont admitted that she knew he had a pistol. According to her, she knew nothing definite about where he kept it and wasn’t interested. But for all we know at this stage, she might have had easy access to it.’
Rushton nodded. Then, as if reluctant to raise the possibility, he said, ‘Presumably Mrs Beaumont has the resources to pay a contract killer to do this for her, if she’d wanted to do that.’
Lambert nodded. ‘That had crossed my mind. It would apply to others too, presumably. By definition, all of the people we are considering as likely suspects are well paid, or in Ogden’s case prosperous in his own right. Any one of them might have paid someone else to do their dirty work.’
