In Vino Veritas (28 page)

Entirely understandable, but neither of them really thought it was just the passage of time. Jane gave him a tight smile to show that they were at one in this. She said, ‘I'm glad that I seem healthier to you. I suppose I am, but I doubt whether I shall be able to add much to what I told you on Friday. I expect I shall have to make funeral arrangements for Martin quite soon, won't I?'

It was always a moment of embarrassment, this. But this woman didn't look as if it would add anything to whatever grief she was feeling. ‘I am afraid it will not be possible to release the body for burial or cremation at the moment, Mrs Beaumont. The law does not allow us to do that.'

‘No. My friend told me that and I should have remembered it. It's because it's murder, isn't it? When you eventually charge someone, the defence has a right to a second post mortem. Is that right?'

‘That is exactly right, Mrs Beaumont.' She seemed so little distressed that he felt he should really give her a little formal bow to acknowledge her knowledge.

As if she read his thoughts, she said abruptly, ‘I identified him, you know.'

‘I did know, yes. It must have been quite an ordeal for you.' She gave him no reaction to this, but sat composed as a Renaissance madonna, with the trace of a smile upon her lips. ‘You are no doubt aware that the coroner's inquest returned a verdict of Murder by Person or Persons Unknown.'

‘Yes. They said there was no need for me to attend the coroner's court unless I wished to. I didn't see any point.' She looked at him with her first sign of real interest. ‘Are you any nearer to turning this Person Unknown into a person known?'

Her evident enjoyment of this little play on words reinforced Lambert's view that there was no need for him to treat Jane Beaumont with the kid gloves he normally donned for a grieving widow. ‘Neither DS Hook nor I was aware that you had a long-term illness when we spoke to you last week. I apologize if we were insensitive because of our ignorance.'

‘No. I don't think you were insensitive. I do not recall all the details of our conversation, but I'm sure both you and your sergeant behaved impeccably.' She nodded an acknowledgement towards Hook, much as Queen Victoria might have acknowledged a competent manservant. ‘As a matter of fact, I rather think my condition has been much exaggerated in the past.'

‘That is good to hear. As I say, there is no way in which we could have been aware of this on Friday.'

Jane afforded him a more generous and genuine smile. ‘There is no reason why you should pussyfoot your way around this, Mr Lambert. I have what is usually called a bipolar disorder. Martin was always anxious that I should take all the latest drugs, and occasionally incarcerate myself in medical institutions, when the condition was at its worst. I went along with his wishes. I resisted him less over the years, as my energy declined. I now feel that I might have been wrong to do so.'

Lambert wanted to arrest this flow of medical speculation, to tell her that he was grateful for her frankness but didn't need to know anything more. He said stiffly, ‘It's good to hear that you're feeling better.'

‘I am indeed. I told you last week that I was planning to divorce Martin, so I feel that I do not need to pretend to any great grief for his death. Frankly, I feel better already. I now believe that he added to rather than alleviated the degree of mental suffering I have endured over the last few years.'

‘Thank you for your honesty. But whatever your feelings about your husband, you no doubt wish us to arrest and charge the person responsible for his death.'

Jane Beaumont seemed to weigh the proposal for a moment before she answered. ‘I cannot deny that his death has given me a feeling of release, because that has become more pronounced with each passing day. But the good citizen within me says that the law must be upheld and his killer brought to book.'

Her colour had risen. She seemed to be positively enjoying herself now. It appeared that the shaping of her replies and the declaration of her new-found health were giving her pleasure. Perhaps it was a feature of her condition, but she seemed to be almost surfing the wave of her own excitement now, to be waiting eagerly to discover what they might raise next for her in this novel situation.

Lambert was ill at ease with this unnatural reaction in a newly bereaved widow. He said rather desperately, ‘You mentioned a friend earlier, who advised you that you would need to delay the funeral. It is good that you have someone to help you in this situation.'

He was fishing, and she knew it immediately. But she was not at all put out. ‘There is no reason why you should not know the identity of my new friend. It will probably surprise you almost as much as it does me, Mr Lambert. It is the woman whom, until a fortnight ago, I was proposing to cite as Martin's co-respondent in my divorce proceedings. It is Vanda North.' She paused for a moment and seemed delighted by their reactions. ‘It isn't a likely combination, is it? But Vanda and I hit it off from the first. I should perhaps add that it is many years since she had anything other than a business relationship with Martin. I fear we both felt the same about him by the time of his death. He could be charming and attractive in the early stages of a relationship, particularly when he was younger. But both of us had long since had our eyes opened to his vices.'

Jane wondered whether she was talking too much, whether she should be speaking so openly about her friendship with Vanda. But she was so cheered by it that she wanted to tell others about it, wanted to be open and cheerful about this startling new presence in her life. It wasn't startling any more, not to her. She was amazed by how quickly she had come to accept it and she felt that Vanda was too.

Lambert was certainly surprised by the depth of her feelings, though training and long experience had taught him to show no more than he wished to reveal. There was something a little febrile in her happiness. He would also have been less than human and a poorer detective if he hadn't wanted to shake this new-found confidence in someone who was still a suspect. He said calmly, ‘Are there any revisions you would like to make to what you told us on Friday, Mrs Beaumont? It would be understandable if you were confused by the shock of this sudden death.'

Jane tried to be cool, literally as well as figuratively. She could feel the heat on her skin which excitement had brought to her face. ‘To be honest, I can't recall in any detail what I told you on Friday. I wasn't trying to be obstructive, but if I said anything which wasn't correct I apologize for it.'

‘All we wanted then and all we want now is the truth, Mrs Beaumont. We didn't ask you directly where you were when Mr Beaumont was killed. That was partly because we knew you'd be upset in the hours after you'd heard of Mr Beaumont's death, and partly because we already had the information. I believe you told the officer who came on that morning to break the news of your husband's death that you were alone in this house throughout last Wednesday evening and the night which followed.'

‘Did I? Well if the young lady says I told her that, I've no doubt that I did. I wasn't long out of bed and I think I was still affected by the drugs I'd taken the night before. I was still trying to take in the news of Martin's death when she was asking me questions. It's quite possible I made mistakes, don't you think?'

‘I do, and I am giving you the opportunity to put things right. I'm not asking you whether you intended to deceive us or not. I'm trying to get the facts of the matter right. They could be very important.'

Jane felt him watching her intently, but she wasn't unduly worried by that. She must get this right, but she was confident she could do it. ‘If I did tell that young policewoman I was alone, I got it wrong. Vanda was here with me overnight. She stayed because she thought I needed her help.'

Hook looked up from his notes and said kindly, ‘We'd better have the full facts of this, Mrs Beaumont. Better get it right once and for all, so that our records aren't confused. That could be important to others as well as yourself.'

‘Yes, I can see that.' She frowned in concentration, anxious to show them that she was now giving the matter the attention its significance deserved. ‘I'm afraid I can't give you the exact time when Vanda arrived. Early evening, I think, because she didn't want anything to eat. It was still daylight, because I showed her some of the rhododendrons in the garden. The sun was still well up then. It must have been about seven o'clock, I should think.'

‘Thank you. That is helpful.'

She watched him making a note of the time in his round, clear hand. ‘Vanda hadn't intended to stay the night. I had to lend her a nightdress and a toothbrush.' She looked very pleased with her recall of these details. ‘She only stayed because she could see I wasn't very well. Martin and I had argued about the divorce the night before and I'd taken a lot of my pills before he left in the morning – he always wanted me to do that, when we'd quarrelled. I must have taken more than I should have, because Vanda could see that I was falling asleep as we talked to each other in the sitting room. I said that it didn't look as though Martin was going to be back and she said she didn't want to leave me on my own. So I put her in a spare room. We've plenty of those available, but Martin said we couldn't entertain people, because of my illness.'

‘So Miss North was here overnight.'

‘Yes.' It seemed strange to hear this stolid, friendly fellow calling her Miss North, when she'd got so used to Vanda.

‘And what time did she leave on Thursday morning?'

‘Oh, I couldn't be sure of that. You'd need to ask her.' Realization dawned. ‘But perhaps you already have. That's why Mr Lambert said I might want to amend things I'd said on Friday, isn't it?'

Hook smiled but did not answer her question. ‘After breakfast, was it, when Miss North left?'

‘Oh, yes. She brought me a tray in bed. It was probably about nine o'clock when she left, because she made sure I was up and feeling better. But she'd gone before Mrs Forshaw arrived – she's my cleaner, who comes on Tuesdays and Thursdays. She arrives here at half past nine.'

Hook made another note and said ‘Thank you, Mrs Beaumont. That is much clearer. We previously had the impression that you'd been alone overnight, and of course that is what you'd led our officers to believe.'

‘I'm sorry about that. I wasn't quite myself last week, as Mr Lambert was kind enough to say earlier. Martin would have had a harsher expression for it, but there's no need to go into that any more, is there?'

‘Indeed there isn't. And of course we're happy that you're feeling so much better than you were. So do you have any idea who killed Martin?'

He dropped this hand grenade on the tail of his politeness with an inviting smile. That made it even more shocking. She again felt as if her cheeks were colouring, a sensation she had not endured for years. ‘No. I've thought a lot about it, as you'd expect. I think I'm going to be a lot better off without Martin. But I'd tell you if I knew anything about how he'd died.'

L
ambert had briefed the full team of twenty-two officers involved in the murder case first thing on Tuesday morning, emphasizing the need to find local witnesses to events at Howler's Heath on the night of Wednesday, the thirteenth of May. ‘Above all, we need to find someone who has seen a vehicle other than Beaumont's Jaguar near the scene in the late evening – any time between ten and midnight. There is definitely no record of anyone using a taxi in that area, so there must surely have been a private vehicle around, whether it belonged to the murderer or an accomplice taking him or her away from the scene.'

Later in the morning, when he and Hook returned from their second interview with Jane Beaumont, he called DI Rushton into his office so that the three of them could review all the information gathered thus far. Hook, snatching a quick coffee in the canteen, found himself still the butt of colleagues who envied him his degree and the unexpected academic distinction it had brought to him. A young female DC who should have known better said, ‘Meeting the chief superintendent and Chris Rushton, are you, prof? I suppose they'll be expecting you to conduct this morning's seminar for them!'

‘Just you get out on the house-to-house and find us a witness. Find us someone who spotted that car the chief was on about and justify your overtime!' growled Hook in reply. No respect for their elders, today's young officers.

In Lambert's office, Chris Rushton was putting the revisions to Jane Beaumont's account into his laptop and awaiting the moment when he could announce the solution to this mystery. Lambert always stressed the need for facts rather than speculation, and Chris had a fact which would make the old dinosaur sit up and take notice. Chris would listen to what the others had to say, as the rules of the game demanded, but Detective Inspector Rushton was pretty certain that he could provide them with a piece of evidence more telling than anything they would be able to offer him.

Lambert said, ‘Let's begin with the grieving widow, who from the start has made little secret of the fact that she isn't grieving very hard. Jane Beaumont has a history of illness. She has a bipolar disorder which was first diagnosed around the time when she married Beaumont. The doctors and medical records confirm that this is genuine and that it has become more pronounced in recent years.'

‘I get the impression that Beaumont, whilst pretending to be very concerned about her illness, actually aggravated her troubles,' said Bert Hook. ‘Whether that was wittingly or unwittingly, we can hardly investigate now. But she seems to me to be better off without him, from a health point of view, as well as being rid of a loveless marriage. She was much more in touch with reality when we saw her this morning than she was last Friday, but I doubt that she'd have been capable of planning and executing a murder such as this one.'