Murder at the Nineteenth (Lambert and Hook Detective series Book 1) Page 12

  There was another of those lengthy pauses which they knew better than to interrupt. Somewhere in the far recesses of the building the rattle of a typewriter could be faintly heard. Debbie’s hands clenched and unclenched slowly. Lambert, able to study her face at leisure because of her downcast eyes, saw her older than her years, for the first time in his experience. The beginnings of crow’s feet around the eyes were noticeable, the full lips now thinner and paler, the hair merely untidy rather than attractively casual, the golden tan on the peaches-and-cream complexion was all at once a less effective disguise for the first signs of wrinkling around the chin and neck. He realized the effort of self-control that had gone into this quiet, straightforward account. When she suddenly grasped the wooden arms of the chair, her knuckles glowed white and that self-control seemed in danger of failing. But when the voice resumed eventually, its tone was as measured as ever, belying the lurid nature of the material.

  ‘When I broke off our affair, he was furious, with a cold anger I had never met before. For a month, he left me alone. Then I found he was beginning to attack two of the men I had told him about. I had slept with both of them and they both worked for the firm. Shepherd set about destroying them both in their careers and in their private lives. And he made it clear to them that it was happening as a result of my revelations to him. I had had no serious attachment to either of the men, and by this time I scarcely saw them. But they were about to suffer because of my careless tongue. Oh, I’ve no doubt that there was more dirt to dig and that Shepherd dug it; he was an expert at that sort of thing and he had all the machinery to do it. But he let me think their coming downfall was all due to me and I believed him.’ Another, shorter pause, then a deep, shuddering breath before she spoke on, in the passionless monotone of one under hypnosis.

  ‘I went to bed with him to protect them. It was useless. You policemen say it’s no use trying to buy off a blackmailer, and you’re right of course. Anyone standing outside sees the game much more clearly. This game was soon played out. Shepherd knew what I felt for him even as he took me. Curiously enough, he didn’t seem to mind much. I suspect sex never gave him much satisfaction anyway. He seemed more pleased to have debased me in this way than to have me genuinely responding to him. He threw me out, sacked the two men, and made sure they had to crawl into lower-level jobs elsewhere. It was no more and no less than he did to people all the time.’

  The pause this time had an exhausted relief. This was perhaps the part of her story that had troubled her most in prospect. This time, Lambert seized the opportunity to prompt her.

  ‘People like David Parsons?’ he said. Debbie looked at him sharply, then smiled slowly.

  ‘Like Colonel/Major David Parsons,’ she agreed. ‘David and I poured out our troubles to each other over the gin one night after Shepherd had played cat-and-mouse with us at a meeting of my House and Catering Committee at the Club. And like poor, pathetic, randy Mike Taylor. And of course like Len.’

  She was not looking at them: Lambert prayed that Hook’s sharp, involuntary intake of breath would pass unnoticed, and was rewarded. Debbie was again sufficiently immersed in her own trauma to be unaware of their reactions.

  ‘I told you that Len and I have been meeting for three years and that we are going to marry after his divorce. We tried to keep our affair away from Shepherd, but of course it was hopeless as it became serious. Len left the firm and got a parallel position elsewhere before Shepherd knew anything. He’s too good an engineer not to be in demand.’ For a moment, her pride flashed through and she was an adolescent, blushing in the quality of her man. ‘Perhaps that alerted Shepherd’s suspicions. At any rate, he was on to us immediately afterwards. Len’s wife had anonymous notes about us. His old mother got a letter over the faked signature of a family friend asking her to intervene with Len to save his marriage. Even Len’s children were approached on the way home from school with tales of their father’s sins … If his marriage hadn’t been already finished Shepherd would have seen it off. I think if he’d been content merely to prise Len and me apart he’d have succeeded; one can only take so much of that sort of thing. But he didn’t stop there. When I left Len and took up my new post in Leicester, I found a dossier of smut had arrived on the manager’s desk the morning before I walked in.

  ‘It was horrible: all his undoubted talents for organization and a small part of an efficient industrial machine turned against us. I know all about persecution complexes; this was genuine persecution. I had glimpsed it being applied to others when I was close to Shepherd, but I had no idea of its range and its crushing persistence.’

  ‘What about the police?’ asked Lambert as she paused again. This elicited a rueful, weary smile and a flash of those azure eyes.

  ‘We tried that. They obviously didn’t see neurotic adulterers as a priority for their resources. They made a token investigation, but Shepherd had covered his traces too well. The fact that he’s a local bigwig and I’m no doubt a woman with a certain reputation can’t have helped. Most of the people he used were well-meaning busybodies who thought they were trying to hold together a family. There was nowhere anything which could be traced back to Shepherd himself.

  ‘Perhaps it warned him off, or perhaps he’d done his damnedest and turned his attentions to someone else. For a long time he confined himself to social insults, to embarrassing us at the golf club and so on. Most people we care about know all about us and our plans, and that in itself has become a sort of insulation.

  ‘A month ago, after a meeting of the Committee, he waved a bundle of my letters in front of my nose and said he was so happy for Len and me. The letters were to Shepherd and others at around the time of our association. He said it was good to know Len and I had no secrets from each other: he proposed to send Len the letters shortly as his wedding present.’

  Lambert did not realize how much he had warmed to Debbie Hall during her long and difficult recital. Obliquely to his left, he could see the wide eyes of Bert Hook belying the detachment of his pose and showing that he was aghast. Lambert wondered if they would be extending the same sympathy to a male witness, and hastily dismissed this professional query as egocentric nonsense.

  ‘Wouldn’t the simplest solution have been simply to tell Len what to expect and disarm Shepherd that way? You seem to have weathered too much together not to be able to get through this. Not that it’s my business of course.’ This lame disclaimer sprang from his suspicion that he was beginning to act more like a welfare counsellor than a dispassionate recorder of evidence. He told himself firmly that there was a murder motive here, which he was merely investigating fully and quite properly. His suggestion provoked in Debbie the first quick, animated movement since the interview began. It was a fleeting gesture of impatience: her hand flicked suddenly and her head shook sharply and dismissively.

  There followed another long silence; she sat still as a blonde sphinx as she weighed her words once more. ‘Len Jackson is a very conventional, very ordinary man in lots of ways. I happen to love him very much and I know I can make him happy, so he’s not ordinary to me. I’ve told him of my previous affairs, of the difficult period after my divorce when I tumbled in and out of bed in search of myself, of my time with Shepherd. At least, I’ve told him as far as he would let me; he always waves it aside and, while he knows about my past, I know the thought of it disturbs him. The squalid detail would upset him far more than he realizes.

  ‘I don’t know what exactly is in those letters. They were written a long time ago when I was mentally and physically disturbed. No doubt they are very frank, very foolish, and viewed in the right light very desperate. They say things about my desires, about my own and other people’s bodies, which should be whispered under the sheets, not put on paper. They are the pleadings of a neurotic woman whom I left behind a long time ago, a woman Len does not know. I was going to tell Len what to expect, to prepare him for the bombshell. Probably we should have weathered it as we have other things. But it would have
hurt my poor Len almost more than I could bear.’

  For the first time the voice cracked, the tears pressed against the back of the throat. In five seconds, she had control of herself and looked Lambert defiantly in the eyes. ‘If I had thought I could protect Len from those letters by killing Shepherd, I might well have done it,’ she said.

  The melodramatic challenge of the statement was wrapped in the cool, steady, carefully weighed delivery she had employed throughout the interview. Only the slight trembling of her fingers as they now relaxed on the arm of the chair betrayed the weight of emotion. Only the perceptible relaxation of her shoulders suggested that her statement was now complete. This time the silence was one that she was not going to break.

  Lambert tapped his pen for a few moments on his pad: it was an excuse not to confront those disturbing eyes until he was sure where to go next. ‘You realize that from the facts as we know them at the moment, you could have done just that? Killed him last night and removed these letters?’ He uttered the last two words with a dismissive, belittling scepticism which implied that they might not even exist, though he felt it unworthy of him even as he did so.

  ‘There will be photo-copies of them in a file somewhere, probably in an envelope addressed to “Mr L. Jackson”. You forget I know Shepherd’s methods well.’ It came too quickly for comfort, and neither of the men could conceal his surprise at her shrewd assessment. ‘Oh yes, I’d weighed all that. The thought of killing Shepherd has been a delicious piece of escapism for me for three years. But I didn’t do it. The thought of him dead by someone else’s hand is a marvellous bonus which I would never have dared to hope for.’

  ‘Even though that hand might have been Mary Hartford’s?’ It was Hook. Speaking for the first time since the interview began. And by God, you old sod, that’s below the belt, thought Lambert. But it worked; it shocked Debbie Hall out of the control she had fought so hard to retain.

  ‘That’s rubbish!’ she snapped. ‘Mary isn’t a killer. Besides, she was with me after the meeting —’

  ‘That isn’t true, Debbie, as you said at the beginning of this interview,’ Lambert said quietly. He realized that Hook thought Mary Hartford was their killer and was anxious to complete the evidence, but he was selfishly grateful to his Sergeant for returning the initiative to him. ‘You and Mary went your separate ways for a vital couple of minutes before entering the bar. Mary says she was in the ladies’ lounge throughout those minutes. So far we have only her word for that. Now, you say you rang Len during those two or three minutes. Presumably he can confirm that.’

  ‘No. I didn’t get through.’ There was a flat exhaustion in her voice now, showing how much the earlier, measured revelations about her past had cost her. There was a pause, the knowledge seeping into both their minds that now she too had no alibi for those vital minutes.

  ‘Damn!’ thought Lambert. ‘Damn! Damn! Damn!’ It was quite selfish. He was interviewing his fourth suspect and none of them so far could be eliminated as a killer. The thought of Debbie Hall’s perfume in that secret love-nest at the old cottage came confusingly back.

  ‘I tried the code twice,’ said Debbie, ‘but got the same reply: “All lines to Nottingham are engaged. Please try later.”’ She tried to mimic the operator’s irritatingly cheerful tones, but in her emotional fatigue she could not bring it off.

  ‘Where were you ringing Len?’

  ‘At his mother’s house. He’d gone there to tell her we’re going to get married. He was dreading it: she’s a conventional woman, fond of her grandchildren. I wanted to let him know I was thinking of him.’ A little smile flitted across her pallid features: she recognized the adolescent anxiety of the last sentence and its incongruity in a woman approaching middle age.

  ‘So you gave up the phone in disgust. What then?’

  She shrugged, happy in the thought that this was nearly over. ‘I went straight to the bar.’

  ‘Past the door of the ladies’ lounge?’

  ‘Yes.’ A sudden gasp, which she was not quite quick enough to suppress; she had seen where his questioning was leading her.

  ‘Which was open?’

  ‘Yes.’ Scarcely audible.

  ‘So you saw Mary Hartford in there?’

  She looked at the floor in silence for so long that he thought he was going to have to repeat the question. ‘No. But I didn’t go in to check. She could have been behind the door.’

  ‘But she wasn’t where you would have expected her in the main body of the room. You don’t believe she was in there at all, do you?’

  She shook her head wretchedly, still looking at her feet. When eventually she raised the wide blue eyes to look at him, they were full of misery. ‘I called her name but she didn’t reply. So I presumed she was already in the bar.’

  ‘But she wasn’t.’

  She sighed unhappily. ‘No. Bill Birch and Michael Taylor were there, and David Parsons arrived just in front of me. Mary Hartford came in just afterwards.’

  ‘Can you do any better than “just afterwards”, Debbie?’

  A pause for thought, an exhausted shake of the head. ‘Not really. Perhaps two minutes, but I wouldn’t be able to swear to that in court.’

  ‘Of course not. No one knew minutes would be so important at the time. If it consoles you, that tallies with other people’s evidence.’ Again she tried to smile, perhaps in acknowledgement of this gentle treatment as she strove to conceal her distress. Lambert wondered afterwards whether his gentleness had been a deliberate tactic or whether instinct deriving from long experience had led him to set her up in this way for his next question.

  ‘Did you notice anything about Mary’s demeanour?’ he asked quietly. Now those remarkable blue eyes stared into his again, and misery was replaced by another, more active emotion. Fear. Whether for herself or for her friend he could not tell. He saw alarm turning as it will to hostility and tried to stop her clamming up.

  ‘We need to ask. This is a murder inquiry, Debbie.’

  ‘Why just about Mary?’

  ‘Not just about Mary. We shall come to the others. We’ve been told already that Mary didn’t seem her usual self.’

  ‘By Mike Taylor, I suppose!’ For a moment her dislike blazed clearly. By now it didn’t surprise Lambert, but he realized that before he began the investigation he had expected Michael Taylor and Debbie Hall, who had obvious physical similarities, to exhibit similar traits of character. At least he had learned something about the personalities involved in this business, he thought wryly. He did not confirm or deny her supposition about the Captain. After a pause, Debbie Hall told him what he wanted.

  ‘Mary was quiet. Preoccupied, I suppose. She obviously didn’t want to talk and eventually we left her to herself. We weren’t there more than another five minutes,’ she concluded defensively.

  Lambert made a note and did not comment. ‘Now, the question you yourself almost asked just now. Were there any departures from the norm in the behaviour of any of the three men with you in the bar?’

  Debbie considered. She looked again at Lambert and a little flash of amusement passed between them as he read her mind. Having singled out Mary Hartford, she would like to have found at least a touch of suspicion in the behaviour of one of the others. She could not.

  ‘No. Bill Birch tried to tease me a bit but neither of us was in the mood. David Parsons was courteous and correct as usual. Mike Taylor was tiresome but harmless.’ It was almost a thumbnail sketch of the three; perhaps it seemed so to her, for she gave a tiny giggle that revealed her tension, then took a hasty sip of her cold tea.

  She needed all her concentration to keep the cup steady, to avoid a tell-tale rattle of china as she replaced cup on saucer. Lambert nodded to Hook while she was thus preoccupied, and the Sergeant took the cue for which he had waited so patiently. The case against Mary Hartford was building nicely, he thought. This might be a key moment. With the solemnity due to the importance of this thought, he produced the grey handbag from his bri
efcase. Debbie Hall stared at it in horror, like a rabbit cornered by a stoat.

  ‘Mr Shepherd’s car was in the car park overnight,’ said Lambert.

  ‘The maroon Rolls-Royce,’ said Debbie, needlessly and well-nigh silently.

  ‘Exactly. Someone — we don’t know who — broke into it this morning. Naturally, our team has examined the car in great detail since then. There are some fingerprints, which will probably be identified in due course. Under the front passenger seat was this handbag.’ Debbie Hall stared at it in astonishment and alarm, the blue eyes growing yet larger in her apprehension.

  Let it not belong to someone quite outside the case, prayed Lambert. Let it be Mary Hartford’s, thought Hook more simply. Debbie Hall turned slowly to the Superintendent.

  ‘That bag is mine,’ she said.

  Chapter 13

  The two detectives had risen to go. After Debbie Hall’s admission, the three stood for a moment in a tableau of surprise. Away beyond the trees, a woman called to her children to be careful and a dog barked excitedly; in the silence of that room, they sounded unnaturally close.

  For a moment, shock and alarm transfixed the trio. Then in each mind there followed speculation. It was Hook, standing awkwardly with the small grey handbag still in both his large hands, who voiced the first thought, and reanimated the frozen grouping.

  ‘Have you been in Mr Shepherd’s car recently?’ he asked.

  ‘No.’ The answer came almost before the question had been framed. Hook was too well-versed in his chief’s methods to help the shaken woman. The two men waited patiently while the silence seemed to menace her. She said nothing, perhaps more because she could not trust herself to speak than from any caution about her situation.