Killer Cases: A Lambert and Hook Detective Omnibus Read online

  Two constables were covering the floor meticulously with the fibre-optics scanner. In a clean dish, they had already assembled a needle, a safety-pin, a fivepenny piece, a toffee paper: probably no more than the normal detritus of a large room, but time would tell if any of these had been dropped last night, whether by victim or killer. Or of course by the Harbens: too often these things lost all significance after looking promising.

  His attention quickened when he saw quantities of golden hair in a second dish. ‘Almost certainly dog hairs I should think, sir, from the length and the quantity,’ the constable warned him gloomily.

  ‘Never mind, we’ll have them examined. A dog here last night could be quite significant.’ Both of them knew that the likelihood was that these hairs were the residue of some previous canine occupant, but the house had been regularly cleaned while it was empty.

  When Lambert had been a boy eating his meals, he had always saved his favourite thing upon the plate until the last. He was aware as he now moved to the chair where the body had rested that he had saved the most interesting object in the room until last, in exactly the same way. How those imaginative psychologists who seemed to be produced at will by defence lawyers would have loved the analogy.

  Bert Hook, who had arrived separately direct from the station, was looking at the back of the chair through a magnifying-glass. ‘Well?’ said his chief. He eschewed all references to Holmes and Watson; they would be tired levities to the scene-of-crime team, whose very business was observation and deduction.

  ‘Some threads here.’ Hook pointed to where a tiny snag in the two-hundred-year-old wood had caught a minute sliver of material; the naked eye would have noticed nothing. It was half way up the back of the chair. ‘Probably from Freeman’s jacket. I’ve no doubt he was found leaning back against the chair.’ Hook knew his chief well: undue optimism would always be doused. ‘There are some different ones on the leg. They might be a bit more promising.’ In due course, they would be removed with elaborate care, meticulously labelled, preserved for a while like some priceless vintage brandy. All on the off-chance that they might be evidence in court, with their history subject to the destructive attentions of an acute defence counsel.

  Lambert went out on to the wide flagged terrace whence the Harbens had entered. He was drawn to the sunken rose gardens, persuading himself that to explore these was not after all such an indulgence; might there not be clues to last night’s events here as easily as anywhere else? The roses were planted in twelves, with each variety allotted a separate bed; it was the way the books advised you to plant to secure maximum effect, but enthusiasts like him were never able to apply it in their modest and crowded plots. They were well tended, no doubt professionally, with no sign of black spot or mildew and much lush and healthy growth. He wandered along the crazy paving between the beds until he reached the neatly clipped yew hedge which enclosed the rose garden. Then he drew himself reluctantly from the waves of scent wafting across this sunken area and went round the far side of the house, the only one the Harbens had not viewed in their peregrinations of the previous night.

  There was a rather neglected Victorian conservatory here. A rampant vine dangled numerous bunches of untended adolescent grapes. There were few other plants upon the peeling white staging, and the massive pipes of the heating system looked as if they had not operated for years; no doubt the antiquated coke boiler was too expensive to use now, in terms of both fuel and labour. Beyond the conservatory, between its glass gable and the higher wall of the house itself, a car was parked. It was a dark blue Granada. It could not have been there long, for there was no covering of dust, no scattering of leaves or twigs upon the roof. It was presumably the car in which the dead man had arrived for his fatal rendezvous. So murderer and victim had arrived in separate cars, unless the killer had been cool enough to leave this lonely spot on foot.

  As he watched, sergeant and constable arrived from the scene-of-crime team with their box of fingerprint powder and began a systematic examination of the car. Lest he should be thought to be checking unnecessarily on routine procedures, Lambert hastened to retrieve Bert Hook from the drawing-room from which the investigation radiated. They strolled past rose garden and yew hedge, into the arboretum which covered the last acres of the property. Here they trod on springy pine cones and dry leaves, amid the sentinels which had overlooked Lydon Hall in the days when sixteen servants and five gardeners ministered to the needs of the owners. They climbed the gentle slope to where a Canadian redwood rose higher than all around it. Lambert prepared himself to muse upon the transience of man and the pettiness of his aspirations.

  ‘What was that?’ It was Hook’s sharp inquiry which startled his superior from his reverie. The Sergeant was looking towards the furthest point of the estate, where a small building could just be glimpsed through the foliage of the trees from this vantage-point.

  At first, Lambert saw nothing beyond the gentle movement of foliage and the flittings of blackbird and thrush. Then he caught through the leafy screen the movement of a form too large for any woodland animal.

  The shape, suggested rather than clearly revealed, was perhaps a hundred yards away, but their route to it, following the unofficial tracks marked out by the small mammals who frequented the area, was probably twice as long. By the time they arrived breathless at the point where they had seen it, their quarry was out of sight. When they ran to the straggling barbed wire fence which marked the boundary between the estate and the pasture land beside it, they glimpsed a tatterdemalion figure, moving swiftly across the rise of the hill a quarter of a mile beyond them. His trousers flapped in the breeze; the long coat he wore, even on a day like this, must have been of light material, for it streamed out behind him as he ran. He moved swiftly but unevenly, reeling slightly as he reached the crest of the hill. Once there, he turned, brandished his cloth cap for a moment in a wild Cossack defiance, and disappeared.

  Hook, puffing like an overtaxed steam-engine, recognized the futility of pursuit before his chief did. They went back into the grounds of the Hall to investigate the small building they had rushed past in pursuit of this strange quarry. It was not the eighteenth-century folly Lambert had half-envisaged. It was a wooden building, no more in fact than a pleasant and elaborate summerhouse, constructed on the spot in the days when labour was cheap and the estate probably had its own carpenter. Its sturdy construction suggested it had been designed for a secure and unchanging world, and Lambert judged it no later than Edwardian. It had sides of unplaned logs and a neatly thatched roof protected by wire netting from bird damage, which had probably neither received nor needed attention since the time it was built.

  For the place was dry enough inside. There was a wide seat by a dusty window at the far side, where ladies in long dresses had no doubt rested long ago in the midst of afternoon perambulations. Now the seat had upon it an old blanket with two or three ragged holes, and a faded and greasy cushion. There was also a small pile of newspapers. Lambert walked over and picked up the top one; it was scarcely a week old.

  In the middle of the room was a table with a mug, a spoon and a bottle of water. Lambert picked up the small tin beyond these. The label was vaguely familiar: it took him back many years to his childhood, which was the last time he could remember seeing condensed milk. The last few slices of a brown loaf were showing the first spots of mildew in their plastic bag; there was an unopened packet of soup beneath them.

  Lambert caught the glint of light on something beneath the edge of the blanket, where it overhung the side of the bench. He walked over and found three empty wine bottles. He sniffed each in turn. There was the sour smell of dead wine, but no suggestion of methylated spirits. It meant nothing: the meths drinker usually carried a flask or smaller bottle about his maltreated person. A pair of nearly new boots, too good for their surroundings, were almost hidden beneath a newspaper in the darkest corner of the room.

  Sergeant Hook looked round the dusty interior of the summerhouse and
said, ‘Not much, but mine own.’

  ‘Careful, Bert, you mustn’t get quotacious,’ said Lambert.

  Hook peered through the low door, towards the place where they had glimpsed the fleeing figure, then back at the pathetic trappings of his existence. Recklessly ignoring his Superintendent’s warning, he said, ‘There but for the grace of God go I.’

  Hook rarely referred to his upbringing as a Barnardo’s boy; perhaps he thought about it now. Each wrapped in his own conjectures, the two large men walked slowly back towards the terrace at the rear of the Hall. Their route took them through a small kitchen garden, between forest trees and the yew hedge which bounded the rose garden, no doubt drastically reduced in size since its Victorian heyday.

  Here a man diligently weeded the line of runner beans which climbed in impressive orange flower over the traditional row of crossed poles. Lambert coughed discreetly at the large tweed backside of the generous trousers and the figure slowly straightened. The weatherbeaten face which turned to them was that of a vigorous and active man in his sixties. He assessed them for a moment and said, with the slightest gesture of his head towards the big house behind him, ‘You’ll be CID.’

  Lambert was not surprised to be thus identified, for most people nowadays fancied they recognized policemen out of uniform. Many large citizens in other occupations could testify to the notion and its rather random application. He was surprised at the precision of the CID label: perhaps the remnants of the Reithian ideal still encouraged television crime series to inform as well as entertain.

  ‘Right first time,’ said Bert Hook. And you are…?’

  ‘Bert Reynolds,’ said the horticulturist, and looked at them challengingly. He was waiting for some ritual joke about his film star name: even Lambert, whose visits to the cinema had now become biennial, recognized it. Probably Hook did too, but he was at his most resolutely deadpan.

  ‘You work here regularly?’ he said.

  ‘For the last twenty-two years,’ said Reynolds. ‘Full-time until last year, when I got the pension. Just mornings now. The Craigs asked me to stay on while the place is empty. The lawns are mown by a contractor, but I keep up with the rest. They said to take the vegetables for myself,’ he said, anxious it seemed to forestall any criticism.

  ‘Place is a credit to you,’ said Hook sincerely, surveying a row of cauliflowers with the eye of a man who knew about vegetables.

  ‘I seen this place alive with people in my time,’ Reynolds said. He leant upon his hoe, gazed back over the gardens at the rear of the house, and was plainly prepared to give himself up to reminiscence. Lambert resisted the prospect with some difficulty; he would have liked to hear about the house and its history, but time was precious in a murder investigation which had scarcely got under way yet.

  ‘You weren’t around the house last night?’ he said.

  ‘No. Only mornings.’ Reynolds looked disappointed; he had hoped to trade some information for lurid details of the death he had heard about.

  ‘Did you know Mr Freeman, of Freeman Estates?’ said Hook.

  Reynolds registered the past tense. So that’s who was dead. ‘Not really. He came here a week or two ago and measured the place up. Spent a good two hours looking round with Mr Craig.’

  ‘Doing a valuation of the place,’ said Hook.

  ‘He didn’t even look at my vegetables,’ said Reynolds resentfully, as if reminding the Recording Angel of a dark footnote in the affairs of the deceased.

  ‘Do you know of anyone who was around the Hall last night?’ asked Lambert.

  Reynolds thought hard; he was reluctant to pass so fleetingly across what he sensed was the centre of the investigation. His two interrogators, trying not to lead their witness, failed lamentably, for he caught them looking back through the trees. He brightened a little as he said, ‘Wino Willy might have been.’ Then his spirits fell again. ‘But he wouldn’t kill anyone.’

  ‘We weren’t thinking he would,’ said Hook hastily; already he had visions of the lame dog being hounded by a society anxious for a culprit. ‘But he might have seen something.’

  Reynolds shrugged. ‘Shouldn’t think so. He keeps himself to himself. He’d be no use if he did see anything, anyway. Mad as a hatter, he is.’ He began hoeing along the line of a row of calabrese; if the temporary occupant of the summerhouse was not a murderer, he held no further interest for Bert Reynolds.

  Lambert and Hook walked to the wide stone terrace at the back of the house. Then they looked back over rose garden, kitchen garden, and woods, to where the small wooden building stood at the extreme limit of the grounds. From here, it was invisible, though it could not be more than four hundred yards away. Neither man spoke; each knew what the other was thinking.

  There had been violent death in this quiet place last night. In the elegant drawing-room behind them, a murderer had worked, quiet and undisturbed. Unknown to the killer, there had perhaps been a human presence, however eccentric, in those woods.

  A presence that might even have witnessed murder.

  Chapter 5

  In the office of Freeman Estates, the staff worked quietly. Even in the world of estate agency, life goes on: relentlessly.

  Sentiment would have it that the business should now be like a ship without a rudder. In fact, the office functioned with no discernible lack of efficiency following the loss of its principal. His suicide was a shock – no one had yet told his employees that his death might not have been by his own hand. They worked on, shaken a little by death and stilled to a concentration upon the mechanics of life, as drivers who have passed the scene of an accident go more carefully upon their way.

  The quietest of them all was George Robson. After a little hesitation, he had moved to his late chief’s leather chair and begun to sift cautiously through the drawers of the dead man’s desk. He was taking Freeman’s phone calls, repeating in subdued tones the formula he had now perfected, which gave the news of the death to those who needed to know. In between calls, he began the inexorable process of removing from the room the remaining presence of his late Managing Director. The small, silver-framed photograph of Stanley and Denise, taken a good fifteen years earlier and recalling a relationship long since soured, had already been placed in the cardboard box at his side, the first of the small collection of memorabilia and documents that would eventually be returned to the widow. In the privacy of this inner office, George Robson was trying on his new role, and finding it fitted.

  It was a sound from the furthest extreme of the building, where Jane Davidson sat at her reception desk near the entry door from the High Street, that made him start like a guilty thing.

  ‘Good morning, Mrs Freeman.’ Jane’s words rang clear and bell-like through the premises, announcing a warning to all the staff of the necessity for decorum in the presence of the proprietor’s widow. And indeed, within seconds all four of those employees found themselves together in the outer office, standing in an embarrassed line before Denise Freeman, like aged retainers greeting the mistress of the manor.

  Perhaps Mrs Freeman was herself conscious of the effect, for as they stumbled into embarrassed, overlapping condolences, she cut them short with, ‘Please carry on. I haven’t come to interfere.’ Perhaps she herself was more agitated than her composed appearance suggested, for the slight French accent she rarely exhibited nowadays came through on her final word. The four stood awkwardly before her, not sure how literally to take her words, not wishing to be the first to be insensitive enough to break ranks.

  Simon Hapgood recognized a moment for public school charm. He stepped forward and tried to take the widow’s black-gloved hand in both of his. ‘We were all devastated to hear the news, Mrs Freeman,’ he said. The effect was spoiled when she did not volunteer her hand; she withdrew it with a quick, nervous gesture, so that he was left grasping fruitlessly at the air before he dropped his palms to his sides. In his ears rang the echoes of his rantings against the dead man’s injustices, his gibes against ‘Joe Stalin Fr
eeman’. He wondered if the others were recalling such moments; the thought atrophied his tongue in a dry mouth.

  It was Emily Godson who saved the situation. She had seen more of suffering and death than anyone there, and she reacted instinctively where the rest were awkward. ‘Come through to the rest-room and I’ll make some tea,’ she said. It was as natural and warm as Hapgood’s gesture had been stilted, and Denise Freeman allowed herself to be led away. The two women moved past the long display panels with their colour photographs of houses, past filing cabinets and computer, into the small room which served as a refuge from the public for coffee- and lunch-breaks. It was scarcely more than a small converted kitchen, but it had a microwave oven, a kettle, a sink and two small armchairs. Most precious of all, it offered privacy when business was hectic, once the door to the main office was shut.

  Emily sat the widow in the more comfortable armchair and set about the deliberate ritual of making tea. She was not an acute woman, but some instinct told her that the everyday preparation of this small comfort would restore control to this very different woman as it did to her. Denise was a year or two younger than she was, but she treated her as if she were an old woman or a child, who in the trauma following death could be soothed by having small decisions made for her. And Denise Freeman, shocked and lonely at this moment of entry into her husband’s former domain, allowed herself to be mothered. She scarcely ever drank tea, and then with lemon only, but now she accepted Emily’s prescription of strong, hot tea with milk and sugar, and eventually sipped it without demur.