To Kill a Wife (Inspector Peach Series Book 3) Page 19

  It was studiously deadpan; even on the dead woman’s name there had been no sign of a reaction. But she had not asked him how her husband came to be involved in the inquiry, nor why he had been asked to give an account of his whereabouts at the time of her death. This woman knew that Richard Johnson had had some sort of relationship with the dead woman: she had acknowledged that. He wondered how much they had talked about this, how much the consultant had told her about his infatuation with that other, very different woman.

  Peach knew suddenly that behind her mask of indifference she was amused by him, was watching his efforts to tread carefully with a bitter detachment.

  “Your husband says that he was here with you for most of Saturday night.”

  “I see.” The face was as placid as ever, but he detected a gleam in the eyes, which was new. Excitement? Amusement? He could not tell, and the rest of the smooth black face gave him no clue.

  Peach retreated into his notes and thought furiously. This kind of exchange was a waste of time, as a rule. The wife confirmed the husband’s account of things and, whatever reservations you had, there wasn’t a lot you could do about it. Carmen Johnson might at least be a more convincing supporter than most wives. “We know he was at the hospital, checking on a patient, by five to ten.”

  “The young man with a bone marrow transplant, yes.”

  Percy thought that he should know better by now than to be taken in by a placid exterior. This woman was as sharp, as concentrated upon what she was doing, as a cat watching a bird. “But Mr Johnson was with you throughout the rest of Saturday evening, as he says?”

  She paused a little, like an actress who instinctively makes the most of a scene’s key line. “No, Inspector Peach, he was not. He left here at half past eight.”

  For the first time in their meeting, the broad face relaxed into an unaffected smile. The game was over.

  *

  The day was full of surprising women. After Carmen Johnson, Barbara Harris. She rang the station. Asked for CID. Even demanded an appointment with Chief Inspector Peach.

  “We were coming to see you in any case, Mrs Harris,” said Percy, concealing his surprise, looking at the mouthpiece of the phone as if it had offended him in some way. He felt a little cheated, as if her phone call had taken the initiative away from him. He was with Lucy Blake, who had come back understandably excited with her news of old Horace Tattersall’s sightings of visitors to the Hume house on Saturday night.

  He put the phone down and looked at his detective sergeant appreciatively. With her coloring animated by the excitement of the hunt, Lucy made a most agreeable sight. The lock of her dark-red hair which stole over the edge of her forehead in moments of distraction was free now; it was an appealing variation. “So what do you make of that? The lady is coming to see us.”

  “She can’t know she was seen on Saturday night. I don’t see how she can even know that I’ve been to see old Tattersall. Maybe it’s about something else altogether.”

  It was logical, and it was right – or almost right. Barbara Harris was with them within a few minutes. And she was severely embarrassed. Not by the thing with which they had planned to confront her, but apparently by something else entirely.

  She sat down at Peach’s invitation, brushing her hand impatiently over her chestnut hair, though it was perfectly in place. Attractive hair, thought Peach, but nothing like as attractive as Lucy Blake’s more definite shade of red. He decided to reserve grilling her about last Saturday night until they had cleared up why she had volunteered to come here so urgently. “You asked to see us, Mrs Harris.”

  “Yes. I’m afraid I’ve been very foolish.”

  It didn’t sound like the beginning of a confession of homicide, but people under stress chose strange forms of words. Peach said gravely, “It is always foolish to lie to the police, Mrs Harris.”

  That was the line to take, he thought with satisfaction. Let her deny that she had lied, if she thought it wasn’t true. Whether she accepted it or not, the accusation would put her on the back foot. And on a tricky pitch, with a rearing ball. Percy had been a good batsman in the Lancashire League, but he had never fancied that.

  He said sententiously, “I trust you now plan to be completely open with us?”

  Barbara Harris’s sallow face flushed, an unusual reaction for one of her coloring; her discomfort gave Percy considerable satisfaction.

  “That is why I asked to see you. I – I wasn’t altogether honest to you when I told you about my last meeting with Verna. At least – well, I think I deceived you about my movements on Saturday night.”

  “Tried to deceive us,” corrected Percy. He gave her his blandest, most alarming smile. He really could be quite insufferable, thought Lucy at his side. But it was very exciting. “You told us you were on your own at home on the evening of the murder. That was a lie. A foolish one.”

  Barbara Harris had found this enormously difficult from the start. As a successful businesswoman running her own company, she was used to controlling interviews, not being bounced around. Now, she felt panic taking over. They knew. Knew what she had come to tell them. Knew everything. She gripped the arms of her chair very hard, feeling it was her only physical hold on reality, trying to regain control of a reeling mind as she watched her fingers whiten with the pressure.

  “He’s told you, then. I’ve come too late.”

  Suddenly, she was furious, not with the people who were putting her through this ordeal here, but with the man who had taunted her at the inquest and now betrayed her.

  Peach’s mind was working fast as he watched her suffer. She could not mean Horace Tattersall. According to the old man’s account, he had not been seen as he watched her drive her car into the grounds of Wycherly Croft on that fatal night.

  “We know about your movements last Saturday night, yes, Mrs Harris. You were seen entering Verna Hume’s house. You were also seen leaving it. At around nine forty-five. You don’t deny that?”

  She shook her head, feeling the blood rush again into her face. “Hugh told me he wouldn’t tell you. Just wanted me to know I’d been seen, he said. The bastard.” The word spat like poison from her lips, retaining its force even for this pair who were used to much fouler words, because somehow they knew that she was a woman not given to such invective.

  The detectives, shaken for a moment by this new piece of information, but determined not to show it, did not even look at each other. They watched the woman opposite them as she glared at her shoes, trying hard to regain some sort of control of her senses, wondering now why she was here, since they seemed to know all that she had come to tell them.

  Lucy Blake said softly, “When did Hugh Pearson tell you that he knew this, Mrs Harris? After the inquest?”

  She nodded miserably. They seemed to know everything, these two. She should never have tried to deceive them. “He saw me driving into the cul-de-sac, he said. Waited until I drove out again and followed me home.”

  That explained why Horace Tattersall hadn’t seen his car. If Hugh Pearson was speaking the truth, he had seen her drive in off the main road and had waited at the end of the cul-de-sac until she returned. Peach said, “Why did you go to that house at that hour? We’ll have the truth this time, please.” Always hit a man when he was down, it was the only safe time. That was one of Percy’s maxims. Even if this time it was a woman: equality demanded it.

  She looked up at them, for the first time in minutes, realizing now that she could scarcely expect them to believe what she had to tell them. “I went to have one last go at her about the business. I thought if I got to her in her own home, I might get her to reconsider.”

  Peach looked at her as if she were a specimen under a microscope. “And why at that time?”

  She looked at him wide-eyed. Whether in anger or surprise, he was not sure. Perhaps neither, for when she replied she sounded unexpectedly embarrassed, when he had thought she was well beyond that. “I suppose I thought that after she’d seen Hugh,
she might be more approachable. Well, all right: I mean after she’d had sex. I knew it excited her. Especially with Hugh. I thought she might be more generous, if I got to her not long after he’d left, while she was still feeling satisfied. That’s why I went at that time. I knew Hugh should have been there at nine. If his car had still been there, I wouldn’t have gone into the house until he left.”

  “How did you get in?”

  “I had a key, from the days when Verna and I started the business. We used to plan things at her house, before we had proper premises of our own.” She paused for a moment, thinking of the time when the world was at their feet and it seemed a more exciting and less dangerous place. “When she didn’t answer the door I used my key.”

  She glared at them defiantly, waiting for them to challenge her, expecting them to say her story was as lame as it sounded now in her own ears. Instead, Peach merely said, “And was she more sympathetic?”

  Abruptly, Barbara was exhausted. Either this man knew what she was going to tell him and was merely teasing her cruelly, like a cat with a mouse, or he was never going to believe her. It was hopeless, and her limbs felt a sudden, overwhelming lassitude. “Verna was dead. She was lying on her bed with her eyes open. I didn’t touch anything.” She spoke in a hopeless monotone.

  “Not even the body?”

  “No. I could see that she was dead. I left immediately. I ran out of the house. It suddenly hit me that whoever had killed Verna might still be in the place.”

  There was a long pause, while they weighed this and waited to see if she would give them any more. Then Lucy Blake said, “And this is what you came here to tell us?”

  “Yes. I don’t suppose you’ll believe me, but I didn’t know you knew already that I’d been there that night.”

  Peach said, “You made a mistake when we interviewed you, Mrs Harris. You revealed then that you knew Verna Hume had died on Saturday night, though you tried to shrug it off.” Then, because he didn’t want a spat between two of his suspects in this case, Percy reluctantly broke one of his rules and volunteered a morsel of information. “For what it’s worth, Mr Pearson didn’t tell us about your visit to the Hume house. Though it was of course his duty to do so. Our information came from another source entirely.”

  She stared at them wildly for a moment, trying to digest the implications of what Peach had said. Then she shook her head and dropped it forward listlessly, so that the gray roots at the base of that long crown of chestnut hair were for the first time visible. Lucy Blake found it one of those searing moments of pathos, which strike us when we are least ready for them. She said, “We shall ask you to sign an amended statement in due course, Mrs Harris.”

  Barbara Harris looked at her in surprise; she had almost forgotten her presence in her contest with Peach. She said wearily, “Can I go now?”

  *

  Later, much later, DS Blake sipped her half of bitter, while Percy contemplated his pint with a steady satisfaction before he touched it. The Bull’s Head was almost empty in the early evening.

  Lucy said, “She thought she was coming to make a great confession, when we knew already that she’d been to that house on Saturday.”

  “Deflated her a bit, that!” said Percy with satisfaction. He took an investigative pull at his pint.

  “Do you believe that she found Verna Hume already dead when she got there?”

  “Worthy of further investigation, that is. But it’s the one new fact that we learned from her visit that is of most interest to me. If Hugh Pearson saw her coming out of the avenue as he says, he was in the vicinity himself that night. But he didn’t tell us that, did he?” Percy seemed to find his fellow golfer’s omission extremely satisfying.

  He allowed himself another long, leisurely swallow, set the glass down and looked at it appreciatively as he wiped his moustache with the back of his hand. “Naughty lad, our Mr Pearson!”

  Twenty-Five

  The police force is a large organization, with more personnel than even the largest of British companies. Yet its organization is often unwieldy and improvised, owing more to historical development than to any plan based on existing situations and resources. Management structures and practices should reflect the best industrial models.

  Where other forces pigeonholed Whitehall guidelines, Brunton led the way. Imitate industry, they said: right. Everything stopped for golf. Well, almost everything. Not every officer played the game, even in these egalitarian days. So on the police society golf day, well-meaning non-golfers like DI Bancroft and DS Blake could surely be left to keep the villains in check and the public in order for a day.

  The only snag for Percy Peach was that he had been drawn with Tommy Bloody Tucker. He didn’t believe the groups had come out of the hat that way, but he couldn’t prove otherwise, and long experience of the Crown Prosecution Service had taught him that there was no use in argument without evidence.

  He consoled himself that there were two other blokes in their team of four who seemed sound men, suitably hostile to incompetent superintendents. And he was out of Brunton, enjoying a bright morning by the sea on a beautiful links course; Southport and Ainsdale was certainly that. The course was rather too good for Chief Superintendent Thomas Bulstrode Tucker, but that also had its consolations.

  The first hole at S and A, as all good golfers affectionately call the course, is a long par three, nestling agreeably among the dunes and surrounded by bunkers. Superintendent Tucker regarded it with awe while the team waited to tee off and gave it as his opinion that the hole looked bloody impossible.

  It was one of his better judgments of the year, as far as his own play went.

  Tucker pulled his tee shot low and left into wild country. He was prepared to abandon it, but Percy found it among brambles and brushwood, in a lie which put his superior in severe danger of a hernia as he played his second. And his third. And his fourth.

  “Bad luck, sir!” said Percy as a red-faced Tucker gingerly extracted his ball from the brambles with a bleeding hand.

  Peach’s own ball, helped by an appealing bounce from the hump on the right of the target, was on the front of the green. He holed out in three, to congratulations from the other two members of their team. Tucker mumbled a ritual approval, while glaring a real and massive resentment.

  The hole set the pattern for the rest of the round. Peach, favored by a few helpful bounces which seemed wholly appropriate on such a beautiful morning, played well. Tucker having begun abysmally, got worse. Percy enjoyed his day more and more.

  And, incredibly, the team prospered, even carrying such a passenger as Tommy Bloody Tucker – the superintendent spent enough time in willows and heather, far away from his three companions, for the sergeant and the young constable who were the other members of the team to be made well aware of Percy’s opinion of his chief. The competition involved taking the best scores from any two of the four on each hole. Though they were invariably discarding Tucker’s score, the others combined well enough to produce two good scores at each hole, and the team prospered.

  Because of his high handicap, Tucker had shots allotted to him at every hole, which enabled Percy to keep him playing from some impossible situations: Tucker almost broke his wrist against a tree on the right of the sixth; on the short thirteenth, he had to play his ball from the water hazard behind the green.

  “It’s only just under the surface – worth a try, sir, with your extra shot. Just make sure you don’t ground the club!” said Percy cheerfully.

  Tucker stepped gingerly into the edge of the dark pond and stared at his battered ball with a hopeless malevolence through the water. Moments later, he emerged with his bright red trousers irretrievably besmirched to the knees with thick and evil-smelling black mud.

  “Bad luck, sir,” said Percy sympathetically. “A valiant try. I think your third effort skidded across into the bunker.”

  The two other members of the team turned studiously towards the distant sea and the empty sky before they smi
led.

  It was at the celebrated sixteenth hole, a taxing par five known as the Gumbleys, that Tucker’s humiliation was completed. With a good drive here along the valley fairway, the second shot can be played over an eighty-foot-high hill of dunes to a fairway and green that are completely invisible. The superintendent hit one of his two decent drives of the day; his malodorous two-tone trousers moved down the fairway with something approaching a swagger.

  Percy knocked his second over the top of the hill with a five-wood, then insisted on climbing to the top of the bank to assist his chief.

  “I can’t see my ball,” he bawled back to the distant figure below him. “This is where the team needs you, sir!” Tucker had twice asked Percy to call him Tom on the golf course, but Peach seemed unable to rid himself of his working habits. It helped to brand Tucker as a pompous twit who stood, even here, upon the trappings of rank, as people looked down at his sweating figure from adjoining tees.

  Percy held a club imperiously aloft to give Tucker a line on the blind shot. The unfortunate man addressed his ball with a vein throbbing ominously in his forehead, took his club back with studied slowness, then lurched into a dramatic heave, which sent his ball low and irretrievably left. Percy, watching from the ridge with massive resignation, shouted, “Lost in the hawthorns, I’m afraid, sir. Better play another.”

  Tucker slashed his second ball on to the railway line and out of bounds. “Never mind, sir. Difficult game at times!” yelled Percy from his vantage point. From the second tee above the fairway, one of Tucker’s contemporaries, now a chief constable and thus entitled to do such things, afforded the superintendent’s efforts a round of applause and a raucous ironic cheer, so that Tommy had to grimace a smile as he trudged after the rest of his team.

  Peach’s ball was mysteriously safe after all, on the edge of the fairway. He made a par without difficulty. The young constable made a birdie four. He had proved as skilled as Percy had suspected he would be; to escape from work with a rank as low as that, you had to be pretty good. Well, they were imitating the practices of British industry, weren’t they?