Murder at the Nineteenth (Lambert and Hook Detective series Book 1) Page 16

  Birch looked at the chalk outline on the floor as nervously as any one before him: Lambert caught the shudder of horror as he turned away from it. With a little spurt of surprise, he realized that Bill Birch, practical engineer, manager of men, and splendid striker of a golf ball, was perhaps the most imaginative of all his suspects.

  Birch sat in the chair indicated to him and gazed impatiently at Sergeant Hook, who busied himself with his notes, setting a deliberately laborious heading on a new page. Lambert let silence hang heavily between them for a moment. In truth, he was wondering how to begin again with Birch in this changed atmosphere. Hostility could be used in interrogation: often he found it more useful than empathy. But he was himself uneasy with a friend, as he had not expected to be. There would be no elaborate play with pipe and tobacco this time; he knew he would not be able to work that histrionic trick with Birch.

  ‘Bill, this is a murder investigation. I have to ask you if you know anything about any of your fellow Committee members which might be relevant. I’m grateful for what you’ve told me already about Mary Hartford and Michael Taylor.’ There was a gasp from Birch, a quick glance at Hook, who remained totally impassive over his pad. Birch’s eyes had a hunted look as they moved back to Lambert with a gleam of real hostility. ‘Judas!’ they seemed to say, and Lambert realized he would never have learned what he had on the golf course if he had tackled Birch head-on in here.

  ‘You may not feel it, but what you have revealed is very much in the interests of the people concerned — always providing that they are innocent. The existence of a motive and an opportunity does not make anyone guilty.’

  ‘We all had a motive!’ said Birch bitterly. It was almost a snarl, and so unlike his ordinary tones that all three men in the room were shocked. It was while Birch was still wide-eyed at his own reaction that Lambert moved in. ‘That’s interesting. As you think that, you won’t be surprised to hear that in the course of today I have unearthed motives for four of the five of you.’ The obvious question hung unasked for a moment, but Birch was far too much on edge to resist it.

  ‘So just one of us is in the clear?’ he said reluctantly.

  ‘Oh, by no means. The fifth person is yourself. And you are about to tell me about your motive.’

  The Vice-Captain looked at the huge oak table and bit fiercely at his lower lip. It was when he saw bright blood upon that lip that Lambert realized how tense Birch had become. This man had things in him that he had hoped to conceal. The detective in Lambert thrilled with excitement. And the excitement was stronger, much stronger, than the pang of guilt he felt in tricking a friend.

  ‘You said all of you had a motive,’ he reminded Birch.

  There was a long sigh from the Vice-Captain before he said, ‘I meant we all hated James Shepherd.’

  ‘Why?’ This was from Hook, and so promptly that Birch was shaken.

  ‘I thought you said you knew all about that,’ he said, disconcerted and angry at this question from a new quarter.

  ‘I said we had unearthed motives,’ said Lambert shortly. ‘Why did you hate him, Bill?’

  Birch shifted his tall frame uncomfortably on the heavy oak chair. He looked all round the room, with its thirties décor, its yellowing photographs of Bobby Jones and Henry Cotton on the first tee, its small wall-safe with the door still open and accusing in the corner above the evocative chalk outline.

  ‘He was not a likeable man,’ he said lamely.

  ‘So I have discovered. Not all unpopular men are murdered.’

  ‘Unpopular!’ Birch’s laugh, harsh and bitter, echoed in the still old room. ‘You show me anyone who isn’t glad he’s dead. Anyone.’ He wrung his hands together fiercely in a way Lambert had never seen him do before.

  ‘Do I gather he was not a good employer?’ The hate on the other side of the table gave the deliberately understated question the ring of irony. Perhaps the implication of disloyalty got through to Birch. Certainly his reaction had the unguarded ferocity Lambert had hoped to provoke.

  ‘Do you think I wouldn’t have been away years ago if it had been possible? Do you think I couldn’t have got another job? A better job, even?’ For a moment he blazed with the pride of the man who is good at his work and jealous of that excellence; then he looked down at the table and at the fingers of his hands upon the edge of it, aware that he had betrayed himself. He spread his fingers, strong but white with tension, as if undertaking a physical exercise to assert the calm he could not feel.

  ‘Yet you chose not to.’ Having made the breach, Lambert fed him the lines like a straight man in a macabre double act. There was a hopeless, caged silence.

  ‘We like it here. Wendy has her friends. It isn’t easy for a cripple to move house.’ It was not the lameness of this that made him end it with a savage shake of the head: Lambert guessed that self-disgust flooded into Birch with the knowledge that he had tried to use his wife’s disability to talk his way free from the net he had closed upon himself. He gave Birch the next platitude, helping him along the path to the revelations they both now recognized as inescapable.

  ‘Bill, my advice as a friend is here exactly the same as my advice as a Superintendent. We shall find the truth eventually. It will come better from you than elsewhere.’

  ‘And what if it has nothing to do with this case?’ said Birch hopelessly, aware now that he was merely delaying the inescapable.

  ‘This is a murder case. You must let me be the judge of what is relevant. We shall find out what we have to.’

  Birch looked at the safe, at the point where Shepherd had fallen, at Bert Hook’s impassive bulk, and finally, with desperate eyes, at the Superintendent. Lambert, stone-faced and inexorable, gave no sign of the inner turmoil he felt. The clash between his suppressed desire to reach out to a friend in torment and the excitement induced by the imminence of some major disclosure led to a sick agitation he could not remember feeling before. He was using the silence in that stifling room like a physical instrument, a rack which would stretch Birch to the breaking-point of emotional revelation. He at once enjoyed his proficiency and despised himself for it. When now he felt his own palms damp, he was not sure whether the sweat came from the stimulation of success or his sympathy with the man opposite him.

  ‘Can you treat what I have to say in confidence?’ Birch’s tone was leaden and hopeless. Lambert worked to put the compassion he felt into his reply, for both men recognized now that Birch was going to speak out.

  ‘You must know, Bill, that I can’t make vague promises of that sort. If it has no bearing on the case, we’ll do our very best to make sure that it goes no further than our files: you will know that at some stage I shall need you to sign a statement. If it bears even upon the fringes of the case, some clever counsel, whether retained for defence or prosecution, may well pursue you in court; at that point we have very little control. I’m sorry, but it really is best if you tell us everything now. We shall find out from others if we have to, and other viewpoints may be less sympathetic as well as less well-informed than your own.’

  There was a long, despairing sigh but no word from Birch. Lambert’s next words were a prompting towards what all three men in the room now recognized as inevitable.

  ‘You said you all had a motive for killing James Shepherd. What was yours?’

  ‘I hated him. I’m not the only one, I know. But he had more on me than the rest.’

  ‘Not necessarily,’ said Lambert drily. ‘I seem to have spent most of the day learning about the unsavoury side of our Chairman’s dealings with people. And I fancy I have more to hear elsewhere once we have finished our talk.’ He looked briskly at his watch, a gesture apparently of brusque insensitivity, but one in fact designed to put whatever Birch was about to say into a more matter-of-fact context. Birch’s look of startled gratitude showed he had recognized the gesture.

  ‘I killed a man,’ he said quietly. It was the pause which followed which gave the simple, appalling statement the weight it warranted.
‘Shepherd was the only man alive who knew. He enjoyed that.’ Only the last phrase gave an understated hint of passion. Now that Birch had brought himself to the point of revelation, he spoke as calmly as if outlining a schedule for a day’s work.

  ‘When was this?’ said Bert Hook quietly. Lambert as usual was glad of his intervention; what was needed after all this tension was a simple recital of facts, more likely to be secured by the impersonal questions of a stranger than a friend. Perhaps Hook hoped they were at the beginning of a confession. Lambert could not be so optimistic — or pessimistic: once again he found himself hoping a suspect in this case was not guilty. It was confession of a sort that came from Birch, but not to the murder of Shepherd.

  ‘Five years ago. We were on our way back from a Company meeting in London. It had gone well and we’d had a couple of drinks before we set off back. No more!’ Birch looked at both of them with eyes that beseeched them to believe. ‘We were in Shepherd’s Rolls — the one outside now. It was almost new then. He used to change them every three years but he kept this one. Sometimes I thought it was to taunt me: he used to watch me with that little smile of his whenever I was near it …’

  ‘What happened?’ said Hook sharply. Birch looked at him in surprise, as if annoyed they did not immediately know all once he had nerved himself to talk about the incident. Then he went on as quietly as before.

  ‘I was driving. Shepherd was in the back. In the front passenger seat was Joe Halliday, our Personnel Manager in those days. He was dying of cancer. We all knew, but none of us spoke of it.’ He wiped his face with a handkerchief, but it was a gesture of release rather than strain; there was a kind of relief in confession after all this time. ‘On the A40 near Beaconsfield, a soldier suddenly reeled out of the darkness. I swerved across the road, but I couldn’t avoid him. Shepherd told me to drive on, but I went back to look.’ He gave a little shudder of horror at the recollection, a movement that evoked the terror of that moment in the darkness more vividly than his spare account of it. ‘I was pretty sure the man was dead. I rang the hospital on the new car phone. It was the first time I ever used it,’ he ended inconsequentially.

  Hook, who vaguely recalled the case, looked puzzled. ‘But I thought the sick man you mentioned — Halliday — was driving,’ he said.

  ‘That’s what they cooked up between them. We had just five minutes before the police car and the ambulance arrived together. Joe Halliday thought he was helping me. Shepherd pretended he was. I was still shocked. I don’t think I’d ever seen anyone killed before, let alone killed anyone myself. I went along with it.’

  ‘Why, Bill?’ said Lambert quietly. It was the first time he had spoken since the Vice-Captain had begun his account of this odd melodrama.

  ‘Wendy.’ It was almost a whisper. Hook, to whom the name meant nothing, looked at Lambert and held his peace. ‘She’s always worried when I’m out in the car. Particularly if there’s any drink about. Her father drank himself to death, you see. And since her illness, she’s totally dependent on the car and me to get her anywhere. Shepherd said how upset she’d be if I lost my licence, and perhaps my job. Oh, he laid it on thick, did Mr Shepherd.’ Birch’s bitterness had burst forth anew with the mention of his stricken wife and his self-disgust that he should be invoking her as an explanation of his conduct. The detectives, familiar from past usage with road accidents, could picture the scene clearly enough: the rain sluicing down in the winter darkness; the body lying by the roadside behind the Rolls; the driver, his brain atrophied by shock, a puppet at the disposal of his sinister employer and his well-meaning colleague as they awaited the arrival of the police.

  ‘Joe Halliday said he was the driver. Why I let him, I still don’t know. The soldier was blind drunk; that came out at the inquest. I wasn’t. I’d had a pint and a half; I’d have been perfectly safe on the breathalyser.’

  ‘What was the inquest verdict?’ Hook, who knew, was moving the story along.

  ‘Misadventure. I’d have been perfectly safe, but once I’d told the lie there was no turning back. Once Joe Halliday was dead, Shepherd was the only one who knew. I’ve never told Wendy. I’ve often been near to it, but as I’d let the whole thing happen to shield her, it seemed especially pointless to make her suffer with me.’

  Birch was the kind of instinctively honest man to whom deception is abhorrent: the very process of concealment must have cost him much over five years, quite apart from Shepherd’s exploitation of it. Lambert was quite certain he had told them the absolute truth.

  ‘Anything else?’ he said gently.

  Birch shook his head, but not quite hopelessly: the very process of confession had been a relief to him after the years of deceit. Lambert, back for a moment in the high dark church of his Catholic childhood, feeling his soul uplifted as he knelt before the altar after the divulgence of his sins to the priest, fancied he could see the lightening of Birch’s burden of guilt.

  ‘Think hard for just a little longer, Bill. Is there anything you can tell us about anyone else in the case?’

  Birch’s face clouded. He was emotionally exhausted, so that it was an effort even to think and frame an answer. ‘No. I’ve told you about Mary Hartford and Mike Taylor. I don’t think either of them killed Shepherd.’

  ‘Does that mean that you think David Parsons or Debbie Hall is our murderer?’ said Lambert. It was cruel, perhaps unfair at this stage, but he too was tired, physically and emotionally. Birch shook his head helplessly.

  ‘Of course not. I’ll tell you one thing, but it won’t help you at all. Whoever killed Shepherd has my eternal gratitude!’

  ‘As you say, Bill, that doesn’t help. Thank you for being frank. We’ll be as discreet as we can. That’s genuine, but I can’t promise anything more tangible.’ Both detectives rose as the Vice-Captain went wearily from the room.

  DI Rushton could scarcely wait for Birch to move down the corridor before he knocked and entered, a sheet of paper in his hand and importance gleaming in his every feature.

  ‘Well?’ said Lambert sharply. He was too tired to use tact with his subordinates. And Rushton was too full of his news to be offended by his Superintendent’s brusqueness. The words tumbled out.

  ‘Sir, we have the report from Army Records about your Secretary, Colonel Parsons. He killed a man in Aden. He was court-martialled for it.’

  Chapter 17

  Lambert took the sheet of paper from Rushton. It had been hastily typed from the tape of the telephone conversation with Army Records. In undramatic prose, it told a short dramatic tale. It was soon digested, even by a brain as saturated as his now felt. The low-key style seemed only to underline the startling nature of the facts on the small sheet before him.

  He passed it without a word to Hook and went immediately in search of the Secretary. He found him talking to Bill Birch in the car park. Perhaps Parsons had spotted the Vice-Captain’s shaken state: it would not have been difficult. Parsons was talking to him in a low voice of consolation and reassurance. Lambert called, ‘David, could you organize a pot of tea for three? And then come and share it with Sergeant Hook and me?’

  Parsons showed no sign of discomfort at the summons. Perhaps he thought it was to discuss Bill Birch’s evidence, for he must have known how long the Vice-Captain had been with the Superintendent, on the course and in the murder room. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow then, Bill,’ Parsons said. He did not quite put an arm round Birch’s shoulder, but he saw him into his car with an avuncular air before turning back to the clubhouse. Lambert, conscious of the creased piece of paper he had left with Hook, found the Secretary’s calm surprising, even a little irritating. He was reminded of Birch’s view that each of the Committee had good cause to wish Shepherd dead. Even if there was no collusion in this murder, his suspects were all in a sense conspirators, sympathetic towards whichever of their number had removed a powerful enemy.

  With the tea came rich fruit cake. He bit into it appreciatively in the two minutes which separated its arriva
l from that of the Secretary. He closed his eyes and breathed deeply for a moment, restoring energy and concentration with his own highly unorthodox modification of his wife’s yoga techniques. Opening one eye, he caught Bert Hook looking at him with the solicitude of an anxious mother; he enjoyed the Sergeant’s rosy discomfort. ‘We’re getting old, Bert: they’ll have us out to pasture before long,’ he said. But he felt better already; it was the emotional rather than the physical strain of his exchanges with Birch that had upset him. Hook was surprised to see how alert, even eager, he looked, when the Secretary’s discreet tap at the door announced his arrival.

  ‘Come and sit down, David,’ Lambert said. ‘Sorry to have you knocking at doors in your own domain, but the circumstances are hardly usual. Perhaps we shall be back to normal in a day or two.’

  ‘I do hope so. But of course you must use the club premises as you see fit. I shall try to be of assistance.’ The Secretary, as precise in gesture as in words, sat carefully and meticulously folded his arms. He seemed very much at ease: in this man, the formal manner was a sign of relaxation rather than nervousness. At the end of his working day, he looked as cool as ever in his lightweight grey jacket, his starched shirt, his red-flecked grey tie with its small, tight knot. If he disapproved of the detectives’ shirt sleeves and slackened ties, he gave no sign of it. Lambert, feeling a trickle of sweat beneath his left arm, tried not to resent this lizard-like composure in the airless heat. In the panelled room, scarcely altered since the ’thirties, it was Parsons who looked at home. But his aplomb could scarcely survive this interview.