More Than Meets the Eye (24 page)

Alison sighed. A long, dismissive sigh. She said determinedly, ‘I think we've talked enough about the police. Tell me about the rest of our lives.'

‘That's better. Let's plan our wedding. We haven't talked about it yet. No more talk about Dennis's death.'

After all, as he'd told Griffith a couple of hours earlier, you only killed people when it was absolutely necessary.

J
ulie Hartley chose to see them in her own house. She hadn't enjoyed venturing into the murder room, which she had always known as the curator's office, for her meeting on Tuesday. Perhaps the CID men wouldn't make her so nervous if she met them in her own familiar sitting room.

She quickly found that the room mattered hardly at all. It was their line of questioning which discomforted her.

It was true that Lambert and Hook both looked round the room she had carefully prepared for them with interest. She had made a few changes, setting things up to give the air of a quiet, unremarkable, family room. She'd brought out the wedding photograph which had been relegated to the spare room for the last few months and put it on top of the television. Jim looked even more awkward in his morning dress than she remembered, smiling shyly but proudly at the camera with his new wife on his arm, waiting patiently for the photographer to release them.

She'd put the pictures of the children and their grandparents on the mantelpiece above the brick fireplace, alongside the picture of Jim with the Rose Bowl he had won at their first flower show, long before they had come to Westbourne. She had been aiming at a happy jumble of domesticity, to support what she had told them about her life two days earlier. The three-piece lounge suite fitted well into the low-ceilinged cottage. It was of decent quality but moderately worn, as innocent, respectable family use determined it should be. The coloured photographs of Kew Gardens in spring, summer and autumn reinforced that impression. Jim had served his apprenticeship at Kew.

She had selected a dark-blue shirt and navy trousers, combed her long dark hair, and prepared herself to play the dutiful housewife and mother, the roles she had declared to the CID on Tuesday.

Lambert's first words shattered her preparations and her calm. ‘We know a lot more about you than we did, Mrs Hartley. It would have been much better for all of us if you had spoken frankly when we saw you on Tuesday.'

‘I – I told you everything you needed to know.'

‘You told us what you had decided to tell us. You concealed information. That was at best unwise, at worst sinister.'

She felt first fear, then an overwhelming relief that she was going to be able to speak about her new life; it was a strange sequence and it threatened to unbalance her judgement. She could not think what she should be telling them now. Eventually she managed to say, ‘You know about Sarah.'

Lambert watched her closely and said in a carefully neutral voice, ‘I think you had better give us your own version of this.'

‘It's a mess. And I am the person responsible for the mess. But I don't see how it could have been avoided. The whole of my sheltered upbringing, the whole of my schooling and the people I knew then, told me that the thing to do was to get married and get myself a family. Oh, I know you're allowed to have a career as well nowadays, but family life is the norm. Even politicians are now trying to tell us that.'

Lambert had heard enough of this. He didn't want her to develop this well-rehearsed apologia for her situation. He said tersely, ‘We're not here to take moral stances. We're interested in whatever bears upon the murder of Dennis Cooper. When you lied about your situation, it excited our attention.'

‘Then I apologize. I concealed my feelings for Sarah Goodwin from you; I didn't want her dragged into this because she has nothing to do with it.'

‘Dennis Cooper knew about the relationship and was trying to disrupt it. That makes it highly relevant.'

‘He wouldn't have succeeded.'

Julie was concentrating all her efforts on trying to convince Lambert, but it was the stolid DS Hook who unexpectedly said, ‘Where were you on Sunday night, Mrs Hartley?'

‘I told you that on Tuesday.'

‘You told us then that you were at home with your husband and the boys. Do you now wish to revise that?'

This was like a card game where you were trying to make the most of a poor hand. They knew far more than she did and would take the trick if she blundered. She couldn't look the man in his annoyingly placid face as she said dully, ‘I was at home with Jim and the boys for part of the evening, as I said. But I did go out. We had a row, you see, Jim and I. A row about Sarah Goodwin. And it was her I went to see.'

Hook looked hard at her. ‘Times, please.'

‘I can't be certain. I think I stormed out at about nine. I didn't get back until after midnight. I wanted to be sure Jim was in bed.' She paused, watching him record the times with irritating slowness. ‘That takes away my alibi, I suppose.'

‘And your husband's.'

‘Jim didn't kill Cooper. I'm sure of that.' She felt a surge of loyalty for the man she had hurt so much.

Lambert said crisply, ‘How can you be sure? Do you know who did this?' She shook her head dumbly. ‘Did you kill him yourself??'

‘No.' She roused herself for a show of aggression. ‘Why on earth would I do that?'

‘Because he knew all about your feelings for Sarah Goodwin. Because he was putting pressure on you to abandon the affair.'

It was the word Jim had used, the word which had set them yelling at each other more fiercely than they had ever done before. She hadn't taken it from Jim, and she wasn't going to take it from this cold-eyed dissector of human passions. ‘It isn't an affair! It's much more serious and permanent than an affair!'

‘All right. So when it was threatened by Cooper, you were even more inflamed than you are now.'

She didn't know how they had discovered that Cooper knew about her and Sarah, but she was past rational, analytical thought, past deciding on what she could and could not conceal from these men who seemed to know so much about her. What she had thought of as her secrets were now on the table. ‘Dennis said my “association” with Sarah wasn't on, that he wouldn't stand by and see Jim made a laughing stock. When I said it wasn't his business, he said that he'd make it so. He said the Trust wouldn't continue to employ Jim as its head gardener here if I left him and set up house with Sarah.'

‘Could he have arranged that? Would he have even tried, if you had called his bluff??'

‘I don't know. Perhaps you're right and I should have defied him. But he said it would destroy not only Jim's life but the boys' lives as well if I continued with what he called my “madcap enterprise”. I certainly believed him at the time.' She looked round the quiet, low-ceilinged, cottage room. ‘I came here and sobbed my heart out after I'd spoken to him. I felt quite desperate.'

‘Desperate enough to kill Cooper, when the opportunity presented itself on Sunday night.'

Lambert made it sound more like a statement rather than a question. Julie's senses raced as she sought a way out. ‘No. I went to Sarah's house on Sunday night. She'll confirm that for you.'

‘I expect she will. Perhaps she will also confirm that you arrived in a very excited state, having dispatched the man who was threatening you.'

Julie wondered what exactly Sarah would tell them. She could picture her distress, see the too-revealing blue eyes opening wide beneath the short fair hair. Sarah wouldn't want to let her down, but there was no knowing what she might say under this sort of examination. Julie said slowly, carefully, as if trying to convince herself, ‘I didn't even see Dennis Cooper on Sunday night. I ran to the garage area and got out my car. I did arrive at Sarah's in an agitated state, but that was because I'd told Jim I was leaving him, not because I'd killed Dennis Cooper.'

Lambert looked at her intently for a moment, as if waiting for her to add to this. When she said nothing, he glanced for a moment at Hook, who was recording her words, then said, ‘You have now radically changed both what you said about your family relationships and about your dealings with Dennis Cooper. You have also revised your account of your movements on Sunday night. Is there anything further you wish to add to your new version of things?'

She ignored the contempt which edged his words. In a low voice she said, ‘No. I didn't kill Cooper and I don't know who did.'

The sun was climbing and even the few patches of high white cloud seemed concerned to get out of its way. The temperature crept steadily upwards: twenty-six, twenty-seven, twenty-eight. It would be thirty during the afternoon; eighty-six, in Fahrenheit – most of the visitors to Westbourne Park still preferred their temperatures in what they called ‘old money'.

Alex Fraser wore only underpants, shorts, socks and his digging boots. The sweat glistened on his back as he worked steadily and methodically. He was forking over a bed they had cleared for replanting. It was good to have nothing in his way; working around established plants was often necessary, but it complicated things, destroyed the healthy rhythm he liked best of all.

He completed forking the long, narrow bed surprisingly quickly. Forking an established patch was much easier than double digging a new one. He should be glad of that, in heat like this. But Alex didn't think like that. Instead, he exulted in the steady patterns of hard physical work. The outlet of regular, almost mindless labour was especially welcome after the trials he had put himself through in the last week. It seemed a long time now since he had ridden the sturdy little Honda through the night to Glasgow and back again, though it was only thirty-two hours since his return. He made that calculation wonderingly, as he paused for a moment to look down at the bed he had worked.

Then he wheeled four wheelbarrows of well-rotted horse shit and dumped them on his plot – he was feeling proprietorial about it by now. You had to remember to call it manure for the visitors, but the lads pretended to think you were gay if you called it anything but shit. He worked it swiftly into the top surface of the bed. They were planting peonies here, which would be undisturbed for years; they had spectacular flowers, but they didn't like to have their roots buggered about. You set things up right, gave them a rich foundation to get them going, and then left them to it.

He went and told Jim Hartley that the bed was ready for planting and was quietly pleased when the head gardener was surprised at the swift progress he had made. Hartley didn't question the thoroughness of his work. He knew from experience that Alex was a young man who didn't skimp things. He glanced approvingly over the turned soil, then said, ‘You can collect the peonies and plant them up after your break. Keep as much soil on the rootballs as you can.' He knew that Fraser would take that as a kind of reward. Planting things in the ground you had prepared for them always gave you satisfaction. Jim wondered why things in his working life should be so much easier to arrange than those in his private life.

Alex Fraser took his mug of tea into the deepest shade he could find. He turned the foolscap envelope which had just been handed to him over and over between his fingers. He didn't get much post, but he didn't want to open this. The official address on the rear of the envelope told him whence it had come and made him abruptly afraid, as if it was a letter bomb which might go off in his hands.

It was nothing of the sort, of course. When his trembling fingers eventually extracted the smooth manila of the single sheet, it told him in officially measured terms that no further action would be taken on this occasion in relation to the incident which had occurred in Cheltenham on the night of June 24th.

Alex read it several times, fearful that there might be some sub-clause which reversed the decision and punctured his relief. This was wonderful, he told himself repeatedly. There was every chance now that the episode would be forgotten and he would be taken on permanently here. It made the whole sorry nightmare of the last week irrelevant. He must ring Ken Jackson tonight and tell him the news.

He tried but failed to wipe the smile from his face as he collected the peonies and lifted them carefully into his wheelbarrow.

Jim Hartley sat carefully on the edge of the chair allotted to him in the murder room. Unlike his wife, he had chosen to come here rather than confront the CID in his own home. He didn't want to meet anyone there at the moment. In his emotional chaos, he felt as if his own pain and shame might seep out of the furnishings and compromise him if he was interviewed in his own living room.

Lambert had no wish to put him at his ease. People who were nervous invariably revealed more of themselves and of others than people who were calm. Nevertheless, he chose to make Hartley aware of the present situation; he didn't want the preliminary session of evasions and half-truths they had endured from Julie Hartley. ‘Your wife has told us what really happened in your house on Sunday night, Mr Hartley. We should now like to have your version and your comments.'

Just when as a loving couple they should have been in close touch, conferring about what they were saying to these people, they weren't speaking. Jim wondered just what Julie had said to them, whether she would have tried to harm him. Surely not? But she had been so bitter, so unlike the Julie he had known for years, that he had no confidence left. Would it be like this for the rest of his life? Would he be sure of nothing, as he felt now? His voice was barely audible as he said, ‘It will be as Julie said. I can't add anything to it.'

Lambert felt very sorry for him. He was either a better actor than a head gardener should be or he was genuinely broken by the state of his marriage. But he might be the man who had killed Dennis Cooper. Lambert reminded himself as he had reminded other people that this was the single issue which concerned him and his murder team. He nodded at Hook, who said quietly, ‘We need your version, Jim. Sometimes people see the same events quite differently. Sometimes they remember different details.'