Dead Money (A Detective Inspector Paul Amos Lincolnshire Mystery) (8 page)

This was a good brew. Even Mrs Jones sipped it appreciatively. She and Amos sat in silence for a few moments but the officer, having had his brief respite, was now impatient to continue.

Sensing his shuffling, Mrs Jones looked him in the face and raised her eyebrows quizzically to signal that she was ready to resume.

"How did you feel about your husband? What sort of relationship did you have?"

Amos was flustered as he tried to ask the question he particularly wanted answered.  His Baptist upbringing still left him prudish after all these years.

Finally Mrs Jones took the hint.

 "Are you trying to ask me if I sex with my husband when I lived with him?" she inquired without embarrassment, indeed with a touch of humour in her voice.

"Well, yes," Amos said. "How did you feel towards him?” He blushed slightly.

"It's difficult to explain," the woman opposite him began. "I was very fond of him, certainly. Do you believe love is the basis for any marriage?" she asked suddenly.

Amos was certainly blushing now. 

"I thought that was the general idea," was the best he could manage.

"If you love your partner it's certainly a bonus," Mrs Jones went on unabashed, "but it's not the basis of marriage.  Marriage is a working relationship. Not quite a business arrangement - that's too cold. But certainly a working relationship.

"Yes, I did love him once, before we were married - and afterwards. But you have to get on together, make compromises, share interests."

 This Amos understood. He had much the same relationship with his own wife. His work had made a long-term passion unrealistic. The long irregular hours, bad enough when he was a constable on shifts, had got no better as he climbed the ladder, each higher rung bringing its own demands. However many people you have to give orders to, you are always at someone else's beck and call.

"I understand," he replied simply.

 "I don't think Ray ever had an affair," Mrs Jones picked up. "I'm sure he didn't. He was too tied up with his ever-increasing business empire.

"Empire!" she repeated with a dry laugh. "He was a giant carp in a little puddle. Well, it's all history now but, as I told you earlier, we rather started to lead separate lives. It was all pretty amicable, no bitterness, no hard feelings.

"I actually admired him for his achievements. Some of the business people we entertained were real snobs but Ray told them his mother had gone out cleaning when the family store went through a bad patch to give her three children a better chance in life. They all went to university. Ray was the middle one. He was at Leeds studying psychology. He realised it helped him in his business dealings.

"Anyway, Ray pursued his business career and I finally went off to Nottingham. We kept in touch. Infrequently, but in touch."

"Did you have children?"

“No. We never found out for certain why not. There was nothing physically wrong with me. Ray wouldn't go for tests. It was unspoken between us but I think we both assumed the problem was with him. That was one reason why he threw himself more into the business.

"He gradually lost interest in sex. By that stage I wasn't too bothered anyway because it was clear that our relationship was going no further."

Amos leaned forward. "The Sunday he was supposed to see you," he said. "How did that come about? Who got in touch with whom?"

"Ray rang me," Mrs Jones replied. “In fact, he got in touch the previous week. We hadn't spoken for quite a while when he rang up and said he wanted to see me."

"And he never turned up," Amos mused thoughtfully.

"Yes he did," the women opposite butted in quickly. "At least, he did on the first Sunday. He came to see me and we had a chat over tea and chocolate éclairs. It was all very civilised."

Mrs Jones inserted another of the pauses she made for effect. She knew she was putting a whole new light on the investigation and she was quite relishing her power.

She's not all that upset about her husband's death, Amos thought. Sad, but not grief stricken.

 Amos let the silence roll on, hoping for the psychological victory of making Mrs Jones continue her story unprompted.

More tea had arrived with a plate of digestive biscuits. Not quite up to chocolate éclairs standard, Amos thought, but after all this was only police canteen fare. They sipped the tea, still in silence. It was Amos who cracked.

"What did you talk about over ..." he looked ruefully at the biscuit in his hand "... over your dairy cream éclairs?"

"As I said earlier, Ray wanted me to come back to him. He said we made a great couple despite our differences. In fact, he said it was the differences that made life interesting. He couldn't promise to give up his business deals - at least he was honest about that - but he promised there would be no more embarrassments.

“No more Sunday nights at the ice cream van, no more quiet drinks in a dark corner of the pub with Jim Berry while I sat on my own at another table, no more public squabbles with the reporter from the local paper.

“He meant it. Whatever his faults, Ray kept his word whether it was a promise or a threat. He didn't use words lightly. It was one reason why he was so successful at business. People he dealt with knew they could trust him.

“He stood by his word even if it cost him. And he looked after those who were loyal to him. So I knew precisely what terms I would be coming back on.”

Amos was temporarily distracted by the re-emergence of Jim Berry, the man who featured so persistently in Jones’s business files. It was Swift who picked up on what Mrs Jones was saying.

“Terms?” she asked. “A working arrangement, I suppose?”

There was a hint of scorn in Swift’s voice but the matter-of-fact woman opposite either failed to detect it or chose to ignore it.

“Yes, a working arrangement,” she replied. “Ray didn't push me. He suggested I thought about it and we would meet again in a week's time.”

"Except that the next week he didn't turn up," Amos said. "Didn't you wonder why? Didn't you try to contact him? There was no message from you on his answering machine."

"No. I waited in but I just assumed that some business had kept him. Reverting to type, you might say. By 4 o'clock I just cleared away the cups and saucers. I ate my cream cake and put his back in the fridge."

"And what was your answer going to be ... if he had turned up?"

"I was sad in a way when he didn't show up. I certainly felt slighted. But I was also a bit relieved, to be honest, because it made my mind up for me. Our relationship went back into the fridge along with his cake."

"Did you not feel tempted to ring Mr Jones to find out why he failed to turn up?" Amos persisted. "Surely you were surprised. After all, he had gone to the trouble of contacting you and had travelled all the way to Nottingham to ask you back. You must have wondered what had happened to him."

"Of course I did," Mrs Jones replied almost petulantly, "but I wasn't giving him the satisfaction of having me chase after him. Like I said, I wasn't sure I wanted to come back anyway and when he left me sitting twiddling my thumbs I certainly wasn't going to the bother of ringing him.

"It was up to him to get in touch and make his apologies. Not that Ray ever did apologise. I assumed he had put some business deal before me. In that case I knew my place - and it was not back with him. I told myself he'd done me a favour."

Amos shifted in his chair. He had a bad habit of leaning back and sliding imperceptibly down and under the table as he listened, especially when the person being interviewed was willing to talk at length.

The inspector pulled himself up and leaned over the desk.

"When did you find out what had happened to your husband? Who told you?"

Mrs Jones smiled. "I still have a great affection for this town. It was painfully quiet, yes, but at least you could walk around at night and feel safe."

She shuddered slightly, realising what she had said. They were discussing a man who had not been able to sleep safely in his own bed, never mind walk the streets.

"Well, that's how I think of the place, anyway. And I know a lot of people in this town. Most I met through Ray's business deals but I had plenty of personal friends as well. I didn't sit at home being a cabbage. I joined the local bridge club and the history society. I had time on my hands when Ray was out wheeling and dealing. I told you at the start, by the time Ray and I split up we were leading pretty well separate lives."

"So a friend got in touch?" Amos ventured. "I'm surprised no-one contacted you right away. Or perhaps they did."

"Not a friend, exactly. I lost direct contact with a lot of people here when I left. Remember, the intention was to make a fresh start in a new place.

"No, the friend, if you like, was the local weekly paper. I pay an annual subscription and they post it to me. As you can imagine, the latest edition was a bit of a stunner."

"The paper is published on Thursday," Amos protested. You should have received it on Friday, Saturday at the latest. Why have you waited until the middle of the next week to come forward?"

"I nearly didn't come forward at all," Mrs Jones replied quite sharply. "Why should I? Ray's death was nothing to do with me."

"But you decided to do your civic duty," Amos said coldly. "Or did you decide to claim your inheritance? It must be a tidy sum."

Mrs Jones was quite put out. "I have come here voluntarily," she said curtly.

"Nonetheless," Amos pressed, "You presumably expect to gain something, possibly everything. Surely you are entitled to half anyway as his wife."

"How do I know what's in the will? He could have changed it a dozen times and I wouldn't know. I should imagine he has left me something but I can manage one way or another."

Mrs Jones made one of her pauses for effect. Amos was caught out again. He had slid down the chair into that slouching position. Quickly he pulled himself back up.

"Perhaps he's left it all to that Sarah Miles woman," Mrs Jones went on in an amused tone of voice and with a twinkle in her eye. "She certainly pestered him enough."

Amos attempted to contain his excitement. "Are you implying that your husband was having an affair with Miss Miles?"

Mrs Jones's amusement turned into a laugh.

"I don't think Ray could have stood it. She nearly drove him batty as it was. No, I don't think they were having an affair. They knew each other at church. I knew her as well, of course. She's been the organist for donkey's years.

"Oh, she's a harmless enough soul, I suppose, and most of the time she's quite tolerable. But she can be very intense. She can't let go, like a terrier with a rag doll. I'm sure she saw her chance with Ray when I left him. He told me she was always fussing round him. Then she would have the sulks when she found she was getting nowhere. It all went round in circles.

"If Ray had a fling with anyone over the past four years - and he as good as admitted it to me on the Sunday he did turn up - it certainly wasn't with Sarah Miles."

At this stage Amos was reluctant to point out the inconsistencies in Mrs Jones's story. While she was willing to keep talking, it was better to let her. There would be time to go through it all in closer detail another time.

"Did he indicate any names?" Amos asked without much hope.

The answer was negative, as he expected.

 "I preferred not to know," Mrs Jones added. "We were talking about us, not other relationships that didn't mean very much anyway. Supposing I had gone back to him. I didn't want to bump into some acquaintance in the street and think she had gone to bed with my husband while I was away. I preferred not to know."

"But he did talk about Sarah Miles," Amos interposed. "Did he indicate what terms they were on when he saw you?"

"It was sulk time," came the instant reply. "In fact, it had been rather unpleasant at church on the previous Sunday. I know Ray was very apprehensive about what her attitude would be at the service that evening. I never found out what happened. Ray was going to tell me at our next meeting but, as you know, he didn't turn up."

"Did he say if Miles had threatened him?" Amos asked.

"Well, sort of," Mrs Jones replied. "Apparently she told him on several occasions in no uncertain terms that if she couldn't have Ray no-one else would. But he didn't take it seriously. She would never have killed him. She would probably have settled for a scene in public. That's why Ray was apprehensive about going to church on the weeks when all was not sweetness and light."

"He mentioned this on the previous Sunday?"

“He mentioned it any time we spoke over the past four years, which was probably about a dozen times in all. He put a particularly caustic comment on the last Christmas card. You can see it if you want. I always keep them until the next year so I can remember who to send to. I haven't got it with me but I can post it to you."

"Yes, please," said Amos. "It might be useful even if, as you say, she didn't really mean any physical harm."

They sat in silence for a few moments once more but this time the interview had run its course.

 Finally Amos said: "Thank you, Mrs Jones, for coming forward voluntarily. We do have your address, I take it? I shall almost certainly need to talk to you again. And the Christmas card. I should like that, please."