Murder at the Nineteenth (Lambert and Hook Detective series Book 1) Page 17

  ‘I said we should need to return to certain matters,’ said Lambert, still carefully affable. ‘I think we are now in a position to do so.’ Parsons nodded slowly; he must have been discomposed, for Lambert had encouraged his illusion that he was to talk about the evidence of the other members of the Committee, and Parsons knew that he had now seen all the other four. But the Secretary merely waited coolly for his next words. No matter: Lambert had plenty of material to shake him. Once again, he realized with a spurt of irritation that he was hoping the man would acquit himself well. David Parsons, with his meticulous military ways, was not his type, but he was sympathetic enough to wish him innocent. A hundred years ago, a great empire had been built on men such as this.

  ‘The murder weapon,’ he said by way of opening. If he hoped to provoke any revelation, or any further deceit, by its mere mention, he was disappointed. ‘Mr Shepherd’s knife, you said earlier, which we laid out for him at our Committee meetings.’

  Lambert quoted the pathologist’s report thoughtfully. ‘“A heavy knife, probably military in origin, with a seven-inch blade.”’ He looked interrogatively at Parsons, but the Secretary’s grey eyes looked back steadily at him; if the thin lips tightened a fraction, they made no attempt to frame words. Suddenly, Lambert was too impatient to fence any longer.

  ‘We have a witness who says that knife is yours, David. If you think that witness is lying, you had better say so now.’ There was a silence, but little sign of distress from the Secretary. Lambert thought he was working out who could be their informant; he would not of course reveal that it was Vic Edwards. When all this was over, Secretary and Steward would have to work closely together again. Always assuming that Parsons was not his man.

  ‘It was a Turkish army knife, issued at the outset of the First World War,’ said Parsons, his precision not at all impaired by his discomfort. ‘It was in the nature, I suppose, of a military souvenir. I used it in the office as a paper-knife, but it was rather heavy for letters. I laid it out ready for the Chairman for one of our meetings four years ago and I’ve done it ever since. It’s the only time the knife is used.’

  ‘Why did you say it was Shepherd’s property?’ Lambert’s eyes had not left Parsons’s face throughout his explanation.

  ‘In effect it was. I put it away with the ink-stand and pen after each meeting and got them out for the next one a month later. It was the only time the knife was used.’ Except for other and more violent purposes; perhaps the thought occurred to both men. Lambert tightened the screw a little.

  ‘David, you are a very well-organized man. I don’t think you would have told us the knife was the Chairman’s if you hadn’t intended to deceive us.’

  A pause. Then, ‘Dammit, John, I feel I’m being cross-examined already!’ In Parsons, the use of the Christian name was the first real sign of discomfort.

  Lambert said evenly, ‘We are talking about the instrument used in the brutal murder of a defenceless man.’ Now Parsons was visibly ruffled. His shrug of the shoulders was theatrical, an attempt at a gesture which did not come naturally to this stiff military figure. But he took his time, and when he spoke again he had almost recovered his calm.

  ‘Just so. I suppose it was because you said it was the murder weapon that I didn’t like to admit it was mine. It was foolish, of course. Instinctive, I suppose. But I’m not used to being involved in murder inquiries.’ His little nervous laugh was just right for an innocent man, supporting his suggestion of a lie that was natural and of minor importance. He had recovered his composure.

  ‘Not even in your Army days?’ Lambert’s counter was below the belt, but meant to be so; murder investigations had no Queensbury Rules. The thrust brought its rewards. Parsons swung his face back towards his adversary with the look of a startled animal. For a moment it might have been the face of a murderer, as fear and hate flashed across the unguarded features.

  ‘What do you mean?’ was all that Parsons said, but for an instant Lambert had been glad that that heavy Turkish knife was not to hand. He looked calmly at his notes; now he controlled the exchanges and could play them at his pace.

  ‘You were rather foolish not to be more forthcoming this morning, Colonel Parsons.’ The Secretary’s eyes flashed alarm again at the use of the title, then dropped back to the edge of the huge oak table. ‘Army Records are normally secret, but you should have known they would be open to those pursuing a murder inquiry.’

  ‘I didn’t kill Shepherd.’ The Secretary’s tone was dull and hopeless.

  ‘Maybe not. You don’t help us to believe that when you try to deceive us elsewhere. It will save time if I tell you that I know you were court-martialled for killing a civilian when you were in the Army.’

  In the long pause which followed this, the first breeze to enter this room on this stifling day slid through the high window, ruffling Hook’s papers a little on the periphery of the central confrontation. Lambert, knowing Parsons had to speak eventually, was willing to prompt him now. ‘In Aden, I believe. I should like you to tell us the circumstances.’

  ‘Oh, I killed him all right! That wasn’t in dispute at the court martial.’ The blunt words were surprising enough, but it was the tone which was really startling. There was a bitter pride in the Secretary’s voice: it was not difficult to see him in another place, in his Colonel’s uniform, standing erect and disdainful in a military court as he asserted his guilt defiantly.

  ‘It was a long time ago now, though sometimes in the middle of the night it seems like yesterday. It was at the height of the Aden emergency, when terrorists were assassinating our men and getting away with it. All leave had been stopped and we were only allowed out of camp on duty. One night, on the edge of darkness, we were coming back from a major patrol. We travelled in an armoured truck, with one man to keep watch with a sten gun in the top turret. That man had been my Platoon Sergeant for four years when I was a major. As we passed through a village two miles from camp, he was shot in the back. He fell back into the truck, then died in seconds as I held him.’

  He paused. At a nod from Lambert, Bert Hook slid a cup and saucer silently before the Secretary. He sipped the tea, unconscious of what he did. He was staring at the wall behind Lambert, but his terse, low-key account, as sparse and precise as his language about everyday trivia, was a perfect vehicle for the understated melodrama it related. He finished the tea, then looked down into the empty cup as if wondering where it had come from. Then he picked up his account as if he had never paused.

  ‘What the sniper didn’t know is that we were only the first of three vehicles returning from the patrol. The lads behind were out of their trucks in a flash and into the house the shots had come from. They were red berets — paratroopers — and they didn’t mess about. Three terrorists got away into the fields behind the house: it was dark remember. But we caught five men. Including the one who shot my Sergeant; he had the rifle in his hands.’

  ‘Was that fully established at the inquiry?’ This bluntness was from Hook, doing his chief’s dirty work for him; the Superintendent might have to live with this man as his golf club Secretary for years after this case was solved.

  ‘Of course it was him!’ Parsons’s sudden blaze of animation was the more shocking against the low-key control which had so far characterized his account of these events. ‘Oh, I know those wogs said afterwards that the man who fired the shot had got away, but they would, wouldn’t they? The man who fired those shots was the man I found with the rifle in his hands. Would you have believed his story about picking up the rifle after the sniper fled?’ His eyes flashed with challenge, his thin lips curled back with the contempt of the question. Lambert ignored it: he had no intention of getting involved in the passions of terrorism in another place and a previous generation.

  When Parsons spoke again, he resumed the simple, understated style of his earlier account though his tones now were tinged with a resentment nursed over the years. ‘They dragged this ruffian before me as I got out of my truc
k. My shirt was wet with the warm blood of my Sergeant. The man the paras were holding looked past me at the body and laughed in my face. I took out my service revolver and shot him on the spot. I find it difficult to think that was wrong, even today.’

  ‘But a court martial followed?’ Lambert prompted.

  ‘Of course.’ Lambert’s pride in military justice, even when he might be the victim of it, flashed out. ‘It was inevitable. I knew that as soon as I’d shot the vermin. I didn’t deny it. The real soldiers were for me: they understood the situation and my reaction. But the civilian pen-pushers felt we were near a political solution in Aden. As usual, they wanted to placate the locals. I was severely reprimanded, reduced to the rank of Major, and sent back home.’ He smiled bitterly. ‘It was regarded as a light sentence.’

  All three of them waited through a heavy silence for the next question. Lambert felt as he asked it as if he were following a well-learned script.

  ‘David, why Colonel Parsons here? You must have left the Army as Major.’

  ‘I applied for the job as Major. Shepherd read my application form, saw that I had been a Colonel, and called me that throughout the interview. I wanted to point out I was now Major, but of course I couldn’t do so without revealing to the entire interviewing panel what I’ve just told you. Which would have meant no job; I’d already lost four other jobs once that tale had come out. When I came here I found that Shepherd had already had our club notepaper and diaries printed with my name on them as Colonel Parsons. So I was stuck with it. It seemed fairly harmless — I thought at first that he was just trying to flatter me.’ His drawn face was broken for a moment by a caustic smile at the ludicrous inaccuracy of such a judgement.

  ‘Then I found he knew all about events in Aden and had done it all quite deliberately. At first, I didn’t know why. Then I found he had a hold over me … He liked having holds over people: as time went on, I found that.’

  ‘Did he threaten you with disclosure?’

  ‘More than that. He threatened to expose me and then dismiss me in disgrace, on account of what he called my “deliberate deception”. I like it here. My wife likes it here. We’re settled and we have a circle of friends — mostly through the Golf Club. My life would collapse without this job. We’ve picked the pieces up once. I don’t think we could do it again.’

  Outside the long leaded window to Lambert’s right, the sky had turned to a leaden grey. The air was hot and still as ever, but no bird sang now. David Parsons removed his hands from the table he had gripped during the last minutes of his story. He raised his cool grey eyes to look back into Lambert’s and smiled a slow, unexpected smile.

  ‘This morning was the happiest of my life. Whoever killed Shepherd deserves a medal. He was vermin!’

  To Lambert, it was becoming a recurrent chorus. And Parsons had used the same term he had employed for that other defenceless man, shot in sudden hatred all those years ago.

  Chapter 18

  Lambert suddenly felt very tired. He stared dully at the table and tried to bully his brain into some degree of agility. When he looked up at the clock, he was surprised to find it was 6.30. He stood up; a minor decision would be a substitute for deep thought.

  ‘Come on, Bert. Let’s get home and salvage a few Brownie points whilst we have the chance.’ He shuffled his few papers together: he had taken not a single note during their second interview with David Parsons, preferring to leave that to Hook while he watched the Secretary. ‘Get home and eat, and see your boys before they go to bed. But I may need you later; don’t move far from the phone.’

  DI Rushton was delighted to assume sole charge of the murder room again. Probably he hoped the Chief Constable would ring again whilst the Superintendent was away, thought Lambert sourly. Whereas his own thought as he prepared to leave was that at least Garner wouldn’t get through to him here; tired and stale, he did not trust his tongue at this stage of the day.

  He drove deliberately slowly, letting the three miles of hawthorn-edged lanes work their own therapy. The scent with the windows down was overpowering, for the air was still and heavy beneath the grey cloud which now filled the whole sky. His small detached house was modest enough, but the garden which was its chief glory was lush with late spring growth. As he turned through the five-barred gate into the gravelled drive, the beech hedge with its bright new leaves seemed as usual to wall in his haven.

  Christine was closing the French windows. By the time he got inside, she had the television on and turned at right angles to his armchair. ‘They need eighty off the last thirteen overs. Gower’s out,’ she said. ‘But I expect you’ve been listening to it on your way home.’ It was the last of the one-day internationals. He had forgotten it completely: he must be even more tired and disturbed than he was aware of. Christine took one look at him, said, ‘Something quick and tasty, I suppose,’ and disappeared into the kitchen. She knew better than to ask him for choices about food when he looked like this.

  He was glad to watch the flanelled figures flitting busily before the vast, shirt-sleeved crowd on the screen before him, glad to see all this utter seriousness and intense physical endeavour poured into a game. The batsman’s flailing smear across a good-length ball connected, the fielder’s desperate dive was unavailing, the crowd cheered his failure to prevent the boundary with good-natured excitement. These proper happenings in a sporting context were a reminder of the sensationally inappropriate setting of the crime he was investigating. He settled to watch the cricket and establish a saner background to his world.

  When Christine returned with his food, his chin had fallen forward and the grey hairs on the back of his head seemed more numerous than ever. She remembered her father sleeping like this years ago; when her quiet voice evoked no response, she had to force herself to shake her husband’s shoulder. ‘Come on, John, grub’s up,’ she said gently. For no more than a half a second, he looked at her vacantly and didn’t know where he was; normally he slept lightly and was instantly awake at any disturbance. It was a moment that brought home to him quite how emotionally draining he had found the day. Although he had twenty-six years’ experience of all kinds of police work, this was new ground for him: he had never before had to question acquaintances and friends in a murder inquiry.

  He had not thought he was so hungry. The omelette, salad and crisp brown bread had this best of all sauces, so that even the ‘No chips then?’ with which he acknowledged his wife’s switch to a healthier diet for them was no more than a worn-out fragment of comic ritual. He was finishing his first strawberries of the year and Christine was setting the coffee pot upon the table when the phone rang. Her look carried accusation as well as inquiry. ‘Probably for me,’ he acknowledged. ‘It is a murder investigation. Christine: I told them to put calls through here.’ It would be one of two people. He guessed Cyril Garner, and was wrong.

  ‘John, it’s Mary Harford. You want to see me?’

  ‘I need to see you, Mary,’ he corrected firmly. ‘Certain facts have emerged which make it imperative that I see you quickly.’

  ‘This evening? I’ve only just finished in theatre.’

  ‘This evening, I’m afraid. Shall we say at the Golf Club in an hour’s time? Or would you prefer me to come to the hospital?’ He could feel the tension at the other end of the line. He wondered if he should have said ‘Murder Room’ to reinforce the gravity of the meeting: he was dealing with a woman who had apparently concealed an association with the deceased, whose prints had been found on the murder weapon, who had appeared moments after the murder with blood upon the cuff of her blouse, according to Bill Birch. His Chief Constable would probably feel he should have been waiting at the hospital to arrest her as she emerged from the theatre. Just when he was wondering if she would speak at all, her voice came, low but quite steady.

  ‘No, John, not here. Too many tongues to wag when police question the Chief Nursing Officer. And not at the Golf Club, please. I’d rather not face that room again.’ How did she kno
w they were using the Committee Room as their murder room, he wondered. Then he realized she must have rung there as requested before her call to him here. ‘May I come to your house?’ she said. ‘It may be irregular, but I assure you that what I have to say may be said as freely there as anywhere.’

  Her words sounded as though they might herald a confession. His spirits should have lifted, but his mouth was dry with despondency. He was being very unprofessional.

  ‘Very well. I’ll get Christine to get the coffee going. You remember where we are? See you in quarter of an hour or so, then.’

  He put down the phone, thought for a moment, and rang Bert Hook. ‘Hope you’ve managed to eat. Our chief suspect is coming here. Can you be here in ten minutes?’ There were limits to his unprofessional procedures; if Mary Hartford was going to confess, or even to deny guilt under his questioning, he wanted a witness and a record.

  Christine had poured the coffee. He stirred his thoughtfully, forgetting she had knocked him off sugar. ‘Mary Hartford is coming round in a few minutes,’ he said.

  ‘Good,’ said his wife. ‘I like Mary. She’s a sparky lady. If more people like her ran the world, it would be a better place.’ Lambert looked up startled, searching her face for signs of irony, and finding none. As usual, he had told Christine not the tiniest detail of his working day. How could she know that this modern-day Florence Nightingale seemed the likeliest perpetrator of last night’s brutal and calculated murder?

  ‘It’s business, Chris. Bert Hook will be arriving as well.’

  ‘Business? Here?’ It was an accusation.

  ‘She asked to come here,’ he said defensively. ‘Anywhere she’ll talk will do me,’ he added peevishly.

  Christine began to clear the table, stacking crockery on a large tray in her quick, efficient way. When the domestic front was tidy, she came and stood behind her husband and began gently massaging his neck. ‘This can’t be easy for you, John,’ she said at length.