In Vino Veritas (24 page)

‘This is a recent development, then?'

‘Very recent. Jane came to see me two and a half weeks ago.' She stopped for an instant, wondering why it mattered to her that she should be so precise about this. ‘She wanted to warn me that she was proposing to sue Martin for divorce and that I might find myself cited as a co-respondent.'

‘That must have given you a shock.'

‘It did. But it was fair enough. I'd hardly thought about his wife during the years I was with Martin. It seems quite odd now, but I was besotted with him at the time.' She shook her head, as if the recollection of that time still amazed her. ‘Jane and I had scarcely seen each other, and I suspect scarcely thought about each other, until she came to see me here. We got on well, which must have been a surprise to her as well as to me. I said she could cite me if she needed to – I could scarcely have denied it – but that I could probably provide her with evidence of more recent women, if she wanted it. I've seen her a few times since then. Last Wednesday night, she was a little upset and I agreed to stay the night with her.'

‘A fortunate decision for both of you, as it turned out,' said Lambert dryly.

He didn't pull any punches, this man. But Vanda didn't resent his comment. She felt again the thrill of the contest, the excitement of pitting her wits against this seasoned campaigner. That elation was a warning to her to be careful, however. ‘I suppose in the light of what happened to Martin, it was indeed a fortunate decision. Neither of us could have seen it as that at the time.'

‘You say Mrs Beaumont was upset. In what way was that?'

It sounded impertinent, but she knew it wasn't. He had to ask about the time when Martin was killed, and it was important to Jane and to her that she got this right. ‘Jane has a bipolar disorder. I don't know whether your police machine has yet discovered that. It is one of the reasons why even those who have seen the firm develop over the years have never seen much of the boss's wife.'

‘And it was affecting her on Wednesday?'

‘I'm no medical expert, Chief Superintendent Lambert. I wouldn't pretend to understand the condition, though I've read up a little about it in the last few days. All I know is that Jane was jumpy and unpredictable on Wednesday. I offered to stay the night with her and she seemed very grateful. She accepted immediately.'

Lambert nodded. It seemed to Vanda that his eyes never blinked as he studied her. ‘And you didn't think that she was simulating this distress?'

‘No, I'm sure she wasn't. Jane was jumpy and unable to concentrate – unpredictable in what she would say next, as though her mind was flitting from subject to subject. Why on earth should she be pretending that?'

‘This is a murder investigation, or I wouldn't be questioning you in this detail, Miss North. If Mrs Beaumont knew that her husband was going to die – if, for instance, she had employed the services of a professional killer to dispose of him – she might well have been anxious to establish an alibi for herself. You are the only one who can confirm for us that she was many miles from him at the moment of his death.'

‘But if she'd used a hit man, she wouldn't need to establish that, surely?'

‘Without your presence in the house overnight, we could not be certain that either one of you wasn't in the car with Beaumont when he died.'

He seemed to her to have put just a little emphasis on that ‘either one of you'. Perhaps she was becoming too sensitive to his changes of tone. She took care not to react to the phrase. ‘I know enough of Jane Beaumont to be quite certain that she wasn't involved in his death. But I understand that you have to make your own mind up in these things, that you have to assume that we're all liars until you know for certain that we're not.'

Lambert was not at all put out. He smiled grimly. ‘Not everyone involved will be lying, Miss North. But one person will be quite determined to deceive us. Have you any idea who that person might be?'

She was used to his directness now. ‘I've thought about that a lot in the last couple of days. I'm happy to say that others have motives as well as me. But I can't imagine that any of us would have killed Martin. It would be wrong if he came across to you as a monster. He had an obsession with his company and his direction of it, but apart from that he had a lot of good qualities. He could be a good friend, and he was a fair and generous employer. And I have got to know the people I work with pretty well over the last few years. We all have our strengths and our weaknesses, but I can't imagine that any of them is capable of murder.'

Just when she had got used to fencing with Lambert, to parrying his thrusts and preserving her position with him, it was Hook who now took up the attack. He said quietly, ‘You said earlier that you might have been able to provide evidence of further and more recent sexual adventures to assist Mrs Beaumont in her divorce petition. You will appreciate that such information has to be of interest to us.'

She smiled at his open, rubicund face. ‘Sex and money. They're the great motivators to murder, aren't they? And hatred, I suppose – but I've just told you that there wasn't much of that around. Well, both Jane and I are sure Martin was still putting it about, if you'll excuse the crudity. He isn't the man he was, of course, in looks at least. You might not believe it now, but there was a touch of the Greek god about him when I first knew him.' She paused for a moment, her mind abstracted for an instant to that time long ago. ‘I'm sorry, I'm trying to explain away my conduct from all those years ago, when it has no relevance whatever to this death. What was it you wanted from me again?'

Lambert wondered if she had really forgotten the question. Perhaps she had; she had seemed embarrassed from the outset by her conduct as an intelligent woman in becoming so helplessly infatuated with the younger Beaumont. He reminded her tersely, ‘DS Hook was asking you if you could give us the details of any recent liaisons of Mr Beaumont's.'

‘Of course he was. But I have to disappoint you. As I said, I am quite sure that Martin has other women, and probably frequently. But I cannot give you details. All I said to Jane was that I would ask around and try to find out more. I confess that I had a selfish motive in offering that. I would have preferred to keep myself out of any divorce proceedings by providing more recent and thus more relevant evidence. As I think I pointed out to Jane, Martin's lawyers would have been certain to query why she had known all about my affair at the time and done nothing about it until many years later.'

‘So there are no names you can give us?'

‘No. I suspect that his alliances recently had been much more casual and short term. I had no interest in whom he was currently bedding, but I think I should have known if there'd been any serious long-term affair.' She paused, weighing a last idea on the subject, wondering whether to offer it to them and what the consequences might be for her. She didn't see it could do her any harm; it could only divert their thoughts further away from her. ‘You could try Sarah Vaughan, I suppose. She's the most recent and the youngest of our senior staff. She strikes me as a capable young woman, with far too much sense to get involved with Martin, but she might know a little more than I do about his current preferences.'

Lambert stood up. He had enjoyed pitting his wits against this alert and intelligent woman, but he suspected she had told them exactly what she had planned to do before they set foot in this comfortable old cottage. Quite possibly that was all she knew and she was being as helpful as she could, but he would like to have thrown her off balance a little more, to have seen how she behaved when she was disconcerted.

‘If you think of any other detail which might be helpful to us, however small, please get in touch immediately, Miss North. We may well need to speak to you again to clarify certain issues, when we are further into this enquiry.'

It was standard stuff. At the moment, he couldn't think what those issues might be. Vanda North seemed to know that and be perfectly confident about the future. She conducted them quietly to the low door of the cottage, warning him that he might need to stoop a little. But she had the composed air of a woman who had fulfilled her duty and did not expect to see them again.

G
erry Davies went across to Jason Knight's den early on Monday morning. He went as soon as he received the phone call, while the shop was still quiet and before any of the catering staff were due on duty. A week ago, he wouldn't have considered such discretion necessary. He threaded his way through the deserted kitchen area to the little private room and watched his friend shut the door carefully behind him.

‘Did anyone see you coming in here?' Jason asked.

‘I don't think so. My own staff will notice I'm missing if I'm away for any length of time. Does it matter?'

‘Probably not. I just felt that the fewer people who saw us getting together the better. They might think we're plotting.'

‘As we are.'

Jason looked at him sharply. ‘I wouldn't call it that. I'd say we were thinking about the new situation and how it might affect us.'

Both of them were silent for a moment, assessing the accuracy of this. Gerry wondered if Jason was thinking, as he was, that last week neither of them would have worried about people noting their movements. Murder brought suspicion with it. It made people watch the actions of others and question what they were up to. It made them watch what they said, sometimes even with people they regarded as friends.

Jason brought him abruptly out of his reverie. ‘Have they interviewed you yet?'

‘No. They're seeing me this afternoon.'

‘Good.' Jason wondered why he said that; it had been automatic, probably relief that others as well as him were being questioned. ‘It's good that they've left you until now, I suppose. It probably means they don't have you high on their list of suspects. They saw me on Saturday morning.'

‘I hadn't really thought of myself as a suspect.'

‘You should get used to the idea. They'll be investigating everyone who was close to Martin. I'm sure they've given his wife the third degree. If and when they decide it isn't a domestic, we're all in the frame.'

‘You seem to know a lot about it.' A week ago, the words would have been said jokingly; today they rang deadly serious.

Jason Knight hastened to lighten things. He managed a rather brittle little laugh. ‘I watch too many cop series on the box, I suppose.'

Gerry didn't think Jason saw much television. As head chef, he was usually working six nights a week. He said as casually as he could, ‘Give you a good going over, did they, the CID men?'

‘They're professionals, Gerry. The police use the best they have, on a murder case. Until they have a prime suspect – which isn't yet, as far as I can see – we're all in the frame. It will pay you to watch what you say this afternoon.'

‘If I tell them the truth, I've nothing to fear.' Gerry knew that at fifty-seven he was sounding like a priggish schoolboy. ‘If I didn't do it, I've surely nothing to fear.'

Jason didn't laugh at the absurdity of the notion that Gerry might have killed Martin. ‘Murder is big, for the media as well as the police. If they don't make an arrest in the next few days, they'll have the press on their backs. And the radio and television won't be far behind the papers; they pick up ideas from the press and run with them, when they're short of news. The CID will want to arrest someone as quickly as possible. I think we should make sure it isn't either of us.'

Gerry didn't know what to say to that. ‘I believe they've got the famous John Lambert on the case.'

‘They have. He questioned me on Saturday morning. I didn't tell them about us.'

‘About us?' said Gerry stupidly. He knew what Jason meant; he couldn't think why he was pretending that he didn't. This was the sort of distrust a murder enquiry fostered, he supposed.

Jason said with a trace of impatience, like an old sweat instructing a green recruit, ‘I meant our discussion about the future of the company, about how we were going to get ourselves more control of policy.'

Gerry wanted to say that that idea and all the drive behind it had come from Jason; he wanted to dissociate himself from anything which might leave any sort of cloud over himself. ‘Didn't you say anything about it when they spoke to you?'

‘No, of course I didn't.' Jason was suddenly impatient with this man who was a generation older than him and yet still so naive. ‘I didn't lie. You don't have to lie. You simply don't mention it. You show them that you're as mystified about this death as everyone else is pretending to be.'

‘I might have to lie to conceal it. In any case, isn't not telling them like a lie?'

Jason wondered for the first time whether this was all a front, whether Gerry Davies had long since realized the danger and was conducting this elaborate charade of guilelessness when he actually proposed to look after his own skin, at whatever cost to others. Like his companion, he felt murder driving a wedge between them; this distrust would have been impossible last week. ‘I didn't say anything about it. You must realize how bad it would make me look if you now blab about it to them.'

‘All right. I'll do my best to keep off the subject.'

‘You might have to be prepared to do a little more than that, Gerry. I should think they're quite likely to ask you why you didn't want more of a say in the way things were being run.'

‘So what do I say to that?'

‘I can't put words into your mouth, Gerry. They'd spot them if I did. Your best policy would be to follow the line you took with me at first. Tell them you're quite happy with the salary you're being paid. You could give them all that modesty stuff, about how Martin gave you your chance in the first place and encouraged you to go on from there, but I wouldn't make a meal of that.'