In Vino Veritas

by J M Gregson

  ‘But other people weren’t happy to leave it at that?’

  Gerry Davies looked and felt uncomfortable as he was pressed. ‘I don’t really know. They may not have been happy with the system, but I’ve no evidence that they did anything about it. Only Martin would know that.’

  ‘I see. And we can’t ask him, can we?’

  Gerry found himself shifting on his seat, feeling those all-seeing grey eyes much too close to him across the table. ‘No. You’ll need to ask the individuals concerned about it.’

  ‘At the moment, I’m asking you, Mr Davies. Are you quite sure there’s nothing else you can recall on the matter?’

  ‘Yes. If you think it’s important, you’ll need to pursue it with the others.’

  Without taking his eyes off his quarry’s face, Lambert gave the slightest of nods to his detective sergeant. Hook made a play of consulting his notes. ‘A week ago today, only two days before he died, Mr Beaumont conducted a meeting with you and Jason Knight, his head chef. What was that meeting about?’

  Gerry Davies was shocked and he failed to conceal it. Perhaps he should have anticipated that they would know of the meeting, but he hadn’t done that. He stumbled into inadequate phrases. ‘I can’t remember much about it now. It was nothing very important. That’s why I didn’t mention it.’

  Hook smiled an understanding smile, a smile which said that he sympathized, but Gerry had been caught out, that he had much better cut his losses now and be honest. ‘This is barely a week ago, Mr Davies. Fiona Cooper, Mr Beaumont’s PA, took us through his diary of appointments in the weeks before his death. She remembers voices being raised behind the door of her boss’s office. Mrs Cooper thought the meeting was important. Mr Beaumont arranged it, she said, and he certainly thought it was important.’

  Hook had picked up Davies’s word ‘important’ and repeated it, until it seemed in Gerry’s ears to have now an ironic, mocking ring. He had a thoroughly miserable air as he said, ‘Martin seemed to think we had been stirring up trouble, trying to undermine him. He was wrong about that and we told him so.’

  ‘And did he accept what you said?’

  Gerry looked at the table. ‘Yes, I think so. It was all a misunderstanding, really.’

  Lambert, who had continued to watch him intently through this interlude with Hook, said sternly, ‘All arguments which take place days before a man is killed have to be of interest to us. You must see that, Mr Davies.’

  ‘Yes, I do. You’re blowing this out of proportion, though.’

  ‘Are we, indeed? Well, maybe Mr Knight will prove to have a clearer memory of the exchanges than you have managed to retain. I do hope so.’

  Hook said in his more informal, persuasive way, ‘One of the things we have learned about Mr Beaumont in the days since his death is that he had an eye for the ladies. More than an eye, in fact. When passions are aroused, violence is rarely far away, in our experience. No doubt having worked with him for thirteen years and got to know him very well, you will be able to tell us more about this.’

  Gerry was confused now. As a naturally honest man, he felt thoroughly ragged after the questioning about last Tuesday’s meeting. He could not think straight, could think only of Sarah Vaughan weeping on his chest in her distress over Beaumont’s attentions. They’d interviewed her in her office at the vineyard this morning. What had she told them about this? He couldn’t afford to be tripped up again, or they wouldn’t believe another word he said. ‘I don’t know any of the details of Martin’s love life. You’ll need to ask Sarah herself about this.’

  He shouldn’t have used that word ‘herself’. It was, in some way he couldn’t immediately grasp, a complete giveaway. Hook was studiously low-key as he said, ‘Beaumont was conducting a relationship with Miss Vaughan, was he?’

  ‘Not a relationship. You’ll need to ask her, won’t you? And Miss North, of course. Vanda used to be his mistress, you know.’

  ‘Yes, we do know, Mr Davies. And we shall be seeing both these ladies again. Is there anything you think we should ask them?’

  ‘No. I wasn’t interested in Martin’s love life.’ He looked desperately around the room with its array of rugby photographs, then at the door which concealed Bronwen and the rest of his orderly house, as if he hoped that the happy rectitude of his own life could convince them of his ignorance about the restless lechery of Beaumont. ‘He was a good employer to me and I shall remember that.’

  Lambert said tersely, ‘And if we find that you have concealed things from us, we shall be forced to remember that, and investigate the reasons why. Where were you last Wednesday night, Mr Davies?’

  ‘I was here. I came home from work at about six twenty and I didn’t go out again until Thursday morning.’

  ‘And is there someone who can confirm that for us?’

  Gerry glanced again like a caged animal at the firmly closed door of the room. Bronwen was out there somewhere, minding her own business as usual, confident as she had been from the first of his innocence of this awful thing. He hadn’t asked her to lie for him; he would never ask Bronwen to lie – indeed, he was proud of the fact that she wouldn’t be any good at lying. ‘No, I don’t think there is. Bronwen was in the Rhondda, in the house where she grew up. Her mother’s still alive but she’s ill. She phoned me to tell me that she was worried about her ma and I said she should stay the night.’

  Bert Hook said quietly, ‘Do you recall the time of that call?’

  ‘It was some time between seven and seven thirty. I was just enjoying the cottage pie she’d left ready for me to heat. That’s too early to clear me, isn’t it?’

  Hook’s weather-beaten, outdoor face relaxed again into the smile which said that all might yet be well. ‘If you mean that Mr Beaumont was killed much later in the evening, yes it is. Did you have any other calls on that night?’

  ‘No. I’m in the frame for this, aren’t I?’

  Lambert said with a hint of impatience, ‘If you’ve told us the truth, you’ve nothing to fear. We don’t fit people up, Mr Davies, whatever the more lurid television series suggest. If you wish to revise or add to what you’ve told us, you should get in touch with us immediately at this number.’

  He did not speak again as Gerry Davies showed them out, keeping them away from his invisible wife as if the contact would somehow soil her. At all costs, he wanted to keep Bronwen out of this.

  TWENTY

  ‘My gran still doesn’t approve of me staying here overnight,’ said Anne Jackson. It was one of those inconsequential lines you delivered when you were still not fully conscious and attuned to the demands of the day.

  DI Chris Rushton eyed her contours thoughtfully from the breakfast table as she stood beside the toaster. He still found it mystifying that she could curve so attractively beneath a dressing gown, a garment he had always regarded as a necessary evil rather than a fashion item. ‘Even though you’re now an engaged person?’ he asked dreamily.

  ‘I don’t think that makes any difference to her generation. She doesn’t make a big thing of it. I can just tell that she doesn’t really approve.’

  ‘Remind me to steer clear of her at the wedding. A divorced bridegroom who is ten years older than you isn’t going to get her stamp of approval.’

  ‘It won’t if you keep thrusting those facts into her face as you do with me.’ The toast clicked up and she transferred it swiftly to her plate and came over to the table. She didn’t sit down but came and stood behind Chris, resting her hands lightly for a moment on his chest, then raising them to softly massage his neck. ‘Why do you make such a big thing of the age gap? I never even think of it except when you remind me of it – which is far too frequently.’

  ‘I suppose I still can’t quite believe that you’ve taken on an old wreck like me.’ He lifted his own hands from the beaker and rested them for a moment on hers.

  ‘You’re not an old wreck. You’re a mature man of thirty-four who has put childish things behind him and used his hard-won exp
erience to make an intelligent choice of bride.’ She looked down with love at the head she now pressed lightly against her stomach. ‘A man without a grey hair to be seen among the black, a man who even from this angle hasn’t yet got a bald spot. A man whom I might even describe as handsome, if I didn’t think it would be bad for his soul.’

  Chris stared dreamily across the warm little kitchen of his flat, reviewing fondly but silently the night that was gone. Then, characteristically, he recalled himself firmly to the real world. ‘Kirstie will be coming over on Saturday. You won’t be able to escape my past then. Just when you’ll be feeling like a break from children.’

  ‘I enjoy Kirstie – she’s a good kid. And entertaining one child is very different from teaching thirty, you know.’

  ‘I don’t, but I’ll take your word for it. All I know is that she’s got far more energy than should ever be contained in one small body and that you’re very good with her.’ His face clouded for a moment. ‘I hope we’ve cracked this case by then. I don’t want to leave you to entertain Kirstie on your own all day.’

  ‘The Abbey Vineyards owner? How’s it going? Or am I not allowed to know?’

  ‘No sign of a solution. We’re still gathering information. We know a lot more about the people close to him than we did four days ago, but so far, it’s tended to obscure rather than illuminate.’ He was surprised to find himself coming out with that phrase; it was the one John Lambert had used. ‘The widow’s still pretty mysterious, and too many people who worked with the victim have motives and no alibis.’

  ‘Including Tom Ogden, I believe.’ She was studiously low-key, not sure yet how far Chris wanted her to enquire into his work, or indeed how much she herself wanted to know.

  ‘You know Ogden?’ He was suddenly alert, the CID inspector ready to gather information from any and every source.

  She grinned at his intensity, as she often did, half in surprise and half in admiration. ‘My dad’s known him for years. Tom might be a year or two older, but I think they went to school together. He didn’t like Martin Beaumont, did he?’ She watched Chris with amusement as he struggled for the right reply. ‘Don’t worry, he’s never made a secret of it. Beaumont had been trying for years to swallow up his farm, and Tom didn’t like it. Tom Ogden’s not one to disguise his feelings, Dad says.’

  ‘That’s more or less what John Lambert and Bert Hook reported. They interviewed him on Saturday. I haven’t actually spoken to him.’

  ‘We saw him at the cinema on Thursday night, actually, with his wife. They were the couple I waved to in the interval when I went for the ice creams.’

  ‘You waved to so many and spoke to so many that I was bewildered.’ He was still surprised how many people in this rural area had lived all their lives there, how those lives interwove and touched each other, even now, when people followed very different career paths. Now that Anne had come back from university to teach in the district where she had been born and bred, there would be another network, spreading over parents and eventually grandparents, if she stayed in the area. Sometimes he thought it narrowed people’s horizons, but he found that more often he liked the support and security it seemed to offer.

  He mentioned the senior people Beaumont had employed to see if Anne knew anything about them. It seemed they had all moved into the area in the last twenty years or so, for she knew little of them, though she had eaten in the Abbey Vineyards restaurant and enjoyed it. ‘Possible place for our reception after the nuptials,’ she said lightly, before she left the house to start her day and disappeared towards her school and he towards the station at Oldford. Chris wasn’t sure whether that was a bright idea or a threat.

  Nine thirty on Tuesday morning. They’d suggested the time and she hadn’t objected. Now she wished that she had.

  Jane Beaumont wasn’t at her best in the mornings. It was not until today that she had registered that nine thirty was still early for her. She had been up before eight, but it took her much longer to do things, nowadays. After she had showered and dressed, she’d barely had time for a bowl of cereal and a cup of coffee before the appointed time was at hand.

  She had remembered to spend some time in front of her dressing-table mirror, as Vanda had told her that she must. She hadn’t bothered with much make-up – she felt out of practice and afraid of overdoing things. She didn’t want the CID to put her down as a tart who didn’t give a damn about her husband’s death. But she brushed her hair carefully and applied a pale rose shade of lipstick. When these men had gone, she’d perhaps telephone to arrange to have her hair cut later in the week, as her new friend had suggested she should.

  Before she was really ready for them, she saw the police car turn into the drive. She watched Detective Chief Superintendent Lambert climb rather stiffly from the passenger seat and look up at the front of her house. They came most carefully upon their hour. That was a quotation, she thought. The opening of Hamlet, if she remembered it right. That recognition gave her a tiny thrill of pleasure; perhaps Vanda was right and she could afford to cut down on the tablets. Martin had been so insistent, and she realized now that she had got out of the habit of resistance to him. It would be good if she could manage with less medication, perhaps eventually with none at all. Things were going to be different now. Different and better. She still had a lot of her life left to live, hadn’t she?

  Both Lambert and Hook were surprised by the change in Jane Beaumont’s appearance. She seemed to have got younger by several years in four days. A nice trick if you could manage it, and one which would make you a swift and certain fortune if you could market it.

  Lambert was emboldened to say, ‘You seem much better today, Mrs Beaumont. Perhaps you were still in shock from your husband’s death when we saw you on Friday. That would be entirely understandable.’

  Entirely understandable, but neither of them really thought it was just the passage of time. Jane gave him a tight smile to show that they were at one in this. She said, ‘I’m glad that I seem healthier to you. I suppose I am, but I doubt whether I shall be able to add much to what I told you on Friday. I expect I shall have to make funeral arrangements for Martin quite soon, won’t I?’

  It was always a moment of embarrassment, this. But this woman didn’t look as if it would add anything to whatever grief she was feeling. ‘I am afraid it will not be possible to release the body for burial or cremation at the moment, Mrs Beaumont. The law does not allow us to do that.’

  ‘No. My friend told me that and I should have remembered it. It’s because it’s murder, isn’t it? When you eventually charge someone, the defence has a right to a second post mortem. Is that right?’

  ‘That is exactly right, Mrs Beaumont.’ She seemed so little distressed that he felt he should really give her a little formal bow to acknowledge her knowledge.

  As if she read his thoughts, she said abruptly, ‘I identified him, you know.’

  ‘I did know, yes. It must have been quite an ordeal for you.’ She gave him no reaction to this, but sat composed as a Renaissance madonna, with the trace of a smile upon her lips. ‘You are no doubt aware that the coroner’s inquest returned a verdict of Murder by Person or Persons Unknown.’

  ‘Yes. They said there was no need for me to attend the coroner’s court unless I wished to. I didn’t see any point.’ She looked at him with her first sign of real interest. ‘Are you any nearer to turning this Person Unknown into a person known?’

  Her evident enjoyment of this little play on words reinforced Lambert’s view that there was no need for him to treat Jane Beaumont with the kid gloves he normally donned for a grieving widow. ‘Neither DS Hook nor I was aware that you had a long-term illness when we spoke to you last week. I apologize if we were insensitive because of our ignorance.’

  ‘No. I don’t think you were insensitive. I do not recall all the details of our conversation, but I’m sure both you and your sergeant behaved impeccably.’ She nodded an acknowledgement towards Hook, much as Queen Victoria might
have acknowledged a competent manservant. ‘As a matter of fact, I rather think my condition has been much exaggerated in the past.’

  ‘That is good to hear. As I say, there is no way in which we could have been aware of this on Friday.’

  Jane afforded him a more generous and genuine smile. ‘There is no reason why you should pussyfoot your way around this, Mr Lambert. I have what is usually called a bipolar disorder. Martin was always anxious that I should take all the latest drugs, and occasionally incarcerate myself in medical institutions, when the condition was at its worst. I went along with his wishes. I resisted him less over the years, as my energy declined. I now feel that I might have been wrong to do so.’

  Lambert wanted to arrest this flow of medical speculation, to tell her that he was grateful for her frankness but didn’t need to know anything more. He said stiffly, ‘It’s good to hear that you’re feeling better.’

  ‘I am indeed. I told you last week that I was planning to divorce Martin, so I feel that I do not need to pretend to any great grief for his death. Frankly, I feel better already. I now believe that he added to rather than alleviated the degree of mental suffering I have endured over the last few years.’

  ‘Thank you for your honesty. But whatever your feelings about your husband, you no doubt wish us to arrest and charge the person responsible for his death.’