More Deaths Than One (3 page)

“I suppose you'd better come through,” he said, “Susan's in the other room,” adding, in what Mayo thought a decidedly patronising manner, “I hope you realize what a terrible shock this has been to her ...”

“We'll do our best not to upset her, Mr. Salisbury.”

Prominent blue eyes stared back with patent hostility. “Let's hope you won't.”

He led them across the stone flags, past a Jacobean open carved staircase, and turned the door-knob of a warm, lamplit room, where a big log fire burned on the hearth. A Christmas card sort of room, old oak furniture gleaming with a patina of age and polish, brass and copper shining, apple logs and beeswax scenting the air. It was big and low-ceilinged, running almost the full width of the house, and though it was not noticeably tidy, with books and magazines scattered around, and children's toys forming an obstacle course to the chairs they were offered, it spoke of the care lavished upon it, and nothing was lacking in the way of modern comfort and amenities.

The young woman who sat up with a start as they entered and swung her legs to the ground from the broad, chintz-covered sofa seemed unlikely on the face of it to be the one directly responsible for the upkeep of the room. She looked like no farmer's wife Mayo had ever seen. Not by any stretch of the imagination could you see her getting down to it with polish and Brasso, not even in rubber gloves. Those white hands with their pearly-pink nails looked as though they'd never lifted a duster in her life. He was well aware that he might be doing her an injustice and stereotyping her in a way that would have infuriated his daughter Julie – but the conclusion was inescapable, looking at her.

She was a beauty – and there weren't many you could honestly say that about, the human race being on the whole a pretty undistinguished lot in Mayo's opinion. Mrs. Salisbury was the exception that proved the rule. Not simply good-looking, but beautiful in a delicate, ethereal way that owed much to her colouring. She had that dazzling fairness of complexion which, though the English are supposed to be a fair-skinned race, is rarely seen on these shores. A yellow sweater that might have made many women look sallow gave a radiance to her skin like a light shining through alabaster. Her hair was a pale silver-gold and fell in loose shining waves to her shoulders. He thought of Curly Locks in the nursery rhyme, who was invited to sit on a cushion and sew a fine seam, and feed upon strawberries, sugar and cream. Then he met a disconcertingly appraising gleam in the luminous blue eyes trained on his face and admitted wryly that Julie would have been right to criticise him for jumping to conclusions. There was intelligence there, astute enough to preclude any suggestion of vacuousness.

“This is Detective Chief Inspector Mayo, darling, and Sergeant Kite.” Tim Salisbury was looking at her as though he couldn't believe his luck in having married her. “If you think you can manage it ...”

“Oh. Oh yes, they said someone would be along. Sorry, I must have dropped off. That brandy you gave me, Tim ...”

She excused herself for not having changed from her riding clothes. She'd been too shattered. The boots had been removed but she still wore her jodhpurs and the high-necked yellow sweater. Lifting her hair with the back of her hand, a gesture that revealed the contours of her breasts under it and only just escaped being theatrical, she exclaimed, “Goodness, is that the time? The children ...”

“It's okay, they're in bed and asleep. Katie saw to them before she went.”

Susan Salisbury smiled wanly at her husband, subsided back onto the sofa and stared at Mayo. The huge eyes suddenly brimmed with tears that didn't, however, spill. The small straight nose quivered slightly but didn't even turn pink. Her husband sat beside her and put his arm protectively round her slim shoulders.

“This hasn't been a very pleasant experience for you, Mrs. Salisbury, but I'm afraid there are some necessary questions I must ask,” Mayo began.

She clasped her hands together with slightly conscious courageousness. “I shall have to face them sooner or later, I suppose. Is there, do you think, Tim lovey, a smidgin more brandy?”

Salisbury leaped to refill the glass she extended, which she accepted back as homage due to her. Kite shifted on his chair. He wouldn't have said no to a heartening smidgin himself, but none was on offer, either because Salisbury had heard and believed that police officers weren't supposed to drink on duty, or because he wasn't drinking himself and didn't see why they should. Kite consoled himself with the scarcely less-satisfying spectacle of Mrs. Salisbury disposed on the sofa instead.

“Would you like to tell me in your own words what happened?” Mayo was asking.

“Well, I was on my way home –”

“At what time?”

“The time when – when I saw the car, you mean? It was half past four, within a few minutes either way. Katie, the girl who looks after the children for me, usually leaves at ten to five to get the bus home, so I was keeping an eye on the time. As I passed the clearing, Magister dug his heels in, in fact he nearly threw me ... he was trembling and refused to go any further. So I turned him round to take the other way home and then I noticed the car was still there.”

“Still? So you'd seen it before?”

“I thought it had to be the same one I'd seen from the top of Merrett's Hill. There's strictly no driving through the forest but people do, you know, on the bridle-paths ... Well, anyway, I was curious to know why it was there and I was prepared to tell them off ...”

He could believe it. The attractive, husky voice was quick and educated, she had an imperious manner not all that far underneath her present distress. “Then” – she took a gulp of brandy – “well, that was when I realized whose car it was.”

“You recognised it?”

“Oh yes, didn't I say? Yes, I knew it was Rupert Fleming's Porsche as soon as I reached the clearing. And when I looked in, I – oh God, it was only a second, but I recognised him straightaway.”

Mayo said sharply, “How did you know it was Rupert Fleming?” She stared at him and then as she slowly comprehended the meaning of his question she became ashy pale, whiter even than the natural pallor with which Nature had endowed her. She began to tremble. Mayo knew this was how it took witnesses sometimes, when they actually began to realize the import of what they'd seen. Delayed shock, but genuine, he could have sworn. There was no playacting this time. And he had just been thinking – God forgive him – that she had almost begun to enjoy the drama of her part in the tragedy.

Tim Salisbury threw an angry glance at the two policemen. “Sue darling, you don't have to go on with this.”

“Better get it over with, Tim.” She swallowed, blinking back tears, determined to be brave and show herself as cooperative. She
was
being a much better witness than Mayo had at first feared. Pretty sharp, really. “Well, look,” she said now, “you don't recognise people simply from their faces only, do you?”

Mayo conceded the point to a certain degree. But how well had she known Rupert Fleming – if she'd been able to know instantly who he was from such a quick appraisal of general build, hair colour, even from that fairly distinctive suede jacket of his? On the other hand, she'd known the car. She would have expected, if anyone had been inside it, for it to have been him.

He said, the blunt Yorkshire copper he chose to be on certain occasions, “I'm a bit behind you, ma'am. Who is – was – Rupert Fleming, apart from being a friend of yours?”

“Oh, I wouldn't say a friend.” A little colour had come back into her cheeks. “It's his wife Georgina that we know, isn't it, my love? And she's not exactly a
friend
either, just someone my sister went to school with. Someone I've known for ages. She was Georgina Culver.”

She spoke as if the name was too familiar, or well-known, to need explanation and Mayo searched his mind, wondering where he'd come across it before. Kite helped him out, speaking for the first time from the unobtrusive position he'd assumed to take his notes, and with the advantage of his local upbringing. “Culver's Haulage, ma'am?”

It was Salisbury who answered. “That's right, only John Culver's sold out now. Pity, it wasn't a bad sort of business, I suppose,” he added, looking down his high-bridged nose, “but I heard Culver did well enough on the deal and, after all, there are no sons to carry it on, only Georgina ...”

Husband and wife didn't look at one another, or speak, but something was being said between them. Salisbury finished, rather quickly, “I don't think he stirs much out of that old barn of a place where he lives now that he's retired.”

“And where's that?”

“Next door to us.” Mayo wryly acknowledged this was not meant in the suburban sense, since there was not, to his knowledge, any other dwelling within half a mile either side of Fiveoaks Farm. “His property marches with ours. He used to let out a few acres to my father but then he suddenly decided he was going to start farming himself when he retired. As far as I know he's never even begun.” Salisbury's tone had become more truculent as he spoke, his already ruddy outdoor complexion intensified, his collar appearing suddenly tight. He had the short, thick neck and the high colour that indicated he'd have to watch his weight and his blood pressure as he got older, a stiff, guarded young man with that sort of bluster and uptightness that often conceals a basic uncertainty. “I've offered to buy the land,” he went on, “but he's absolutely not interested, not at any price, stubborn old fool.”

“I guess he wouldn't have kept up that feud with Georgina so long if he hadn't been ... stubborn, I mean,” his wife said.

“Susan, what's that got to do with it?” The question was flat and uninflected, but something in it – a warning, perhaps? – alerted Mayo.

“Why nothing, I suppose, darling,” she admitted with a smile, “but they're going to hear sooner or later, I imagine.”

“What feud is this?” Mayo knew he was expected to ask and he did because the answer interested him very much.

“Oh, it was all too Gothic for words,” she explained lightly. “ ‘You marry my daughter and neither of you will set foot over my ancestral threshold again!' Or words to that effect.”

“Some ancestral home!” Salisbury put in. He became all at once informative, seeming just a little over-anxious to keep the conversation going his way. “Bought it lock, stock and barrel from the Paulings, who'd lived there since the year dot, when the old girl died. Culver's a self-made man – made his pile buying up army surplus and scrap metal after the war and went on from there.” He didn't bother to hide his fourth-generation contempt for someone so ungentlemanly as to have actually made his own way up in the world, rather than have had a privileged lifestyle handed out on a plate, plus the wherewithal to continue it.

“What did he have against Fleming?”

After the slightest suggestion of a pause, Salisbury's wife shrugged and said obliquely, “We hardly knew Rupert, as I said, and Georgina's not one to exchange confidences.”

“Especially since you're not exactly friends,” Mayo reminded her. “No,” she agreed, eyeing him rather sharply. “Not since she married.”

“What did Rupert Fleming do for a living?”

“He was some sort of journalist, I think.”

“Local paper?”

“No, I believe he was a freelance.”

“Not very well known,” Salisbury commented, then, showing a rather belated sympathy, he asked, “When was he murdered, poor devil?”

“Murdered? Who said anything about murder, Mr. Salisbury?” An unreadable expression crossed his face. “Well, wasn't he? God, you mean it was suicide?” he asked Mayo, who thought it better to leave the question unanswered.

Mrs. Salisbury had given a soft cry of distress. “Oh Tim, what did you think? He
must
have shot himself ... if you'd seen ... but
why?
You'd have thought he'd everything to live for. He was young and good-looking and – oh, it's too horrible to think of!”

So she'd noticed. However horrified she'd been by her discovery, she'd looked long enough to see the gun on the floor, the suicide note stuck on the dash, to draw the inferences.

At that moment a little mewling cry started up from somewhere near the fireplace, like a kitten or the bleat of a lamb, making Mayo realize that he'd been aware for some time of strange little snuffling noises coming from the same corner. He saw now that a baby alarm was installed there, and the noise issuing from it was the relentless demand of a small baby.

Susan Salisbury had jumped up, not, Mayo thought, without relief. “You must forgive me, that'll be Clarissa. I'll see you when I come down.”

“Just one question before you go, Mrs. Salisbury. What were you doing last night?”

“Me? I was in bed. I had a very bad headache, and I went to bed about nine o'clock.”

“And you, Mr. Salisbury?”

“I had an N.F.U. meeting.”

“What time did it finish?”

“I don't really remember, it was very late, I suppose it was after midnight when I got home, but what the hell's that got to do with anything? What does it matter what
we
were doing? We've got nothing to do with all this.”

“Just checking, sir,” Mayo said blandly, “just checking.” The baby's cry was working up to panic proportions and Susan Salisbury was growing fidgety, as any mother would. “I don't think we need any more from you at the moment, Mrs. Salisbury. We'll have your statement typed out and perhaps you can come in and sign it sometime tomorrow. Good night to you, ma'am.”

Before she went out she paused, framed becomingly in the doorway. “If there's any way we can be of further help ...”

“Thank you, Mrs. Salisbury, I appreciate that offer.”