All Quiet on Arrival (4 page)

For a few moments, James Barton stared impassively at the woman's face, and then turned away. ‘Yes, that's my wife, Chief Inspector,' he said softly.

‘I'm afraid we'll need to ask you some more questions, Mr Barton,' said Dave, as the three of us walked out into the sunshine of Horseferry Road. ‘Might I ask where you're staying?'

‘Staying?' Barton stopped and stared vacantly at Dave.

‘Yes, sir. Your house is obviously uninhabitable. Are you perhaps staying with friends? We'll need your current address, you see.'

‘Oh, I see. No, I'm staying at one of the company's hotels in Bayswater.' Barton took a business card from his pocket and scribbled the name of the hotel on the back of it. ‘Incidentally, I've arranged to have any calls made to my home to be transferred to my mobile.' He added the phone numbers to the card.

‘When would be a convenient time to see you again, sir?' I asked.

Barton glanced at his watch. ‘I suppose the sooner the better as far as you're concerned,' he said.

‘Yes, that would be helpful,' I said.

‘Well, it's five o'clock now. Give me a chance to unpack and have a shower. Shall we say half past seven?'

We found James Barton in the cocktail bar of his Bayswater hotel, a large whisky in front of him. He stood up as we approached.

‘May I offer you gentlemen a drink?' he asked.

‘No, thank you, Mr Barton.'

‘Ah, not when you're on duty, I suppose.'

I didn't bother to reply to that widely held fallacy. Detectives are not averse to drinking on duty; in fact, drinking on duty is often called for. I'd even heard of one detective, a teetotaller, who had taken to drink because informants, of whom he had many, wouldn't trust a detective who refused to take a drink with them. But this was not the case here. I made a habit of not drinking with anyone who might turn out to be a suspect, and I was not satisfied that Barton could yet be excluded from that category.

‘D'you know of anyone who might have wanted to harm your wife, sir?' I began. It sounded a stupid question to pose, but it had to be asked, and sometimes – just sometimes – it had given us the answer that had led to an arrest.

‘No, nobody. She was a bright, friendly sort of person.'

‘Is there anything at all you can tell me that might assist?' I asked, almost in desperation, but held out no great hope that he would know of anything useful. But in that I was surprised.

Barton's chin dropped to his chest, and he appeared to be deep in thought. Eventually, he looked up. ‘I'm sorry to have to tell you that my wife was not above having the occasional affair, Chief Inspector.' He went on, quickly. ‘She was much younger than me, you see, and I … Well, I …' He lapsed into silence, but it wasn't necessary for him to complete the sentence for me to understand the problem.

But before I was able to ask another question, Barton went on. ‘Diana was forty-five, and I'm seventy-two. It's a second marriage for each of us.'

‘You mentioned the occasional affair, sir. Does that mean there was more than one?'

Barton nodded sadly. ‘I'm afraid so, Mr Brock. The last occasion was on a cruise in January this year. We went from Southampton, and spent just over a month going around Spain, Italy, Greece, Israel and Egypt. I have preferential rates because my hotel company – I think I told you I'm a director – is associated with the cruise company.'

‘And it was on this cruise that the affair took place, was it?' I asked. I wouldn't have thought that Barton had to worry about cut-price cruises, but I've met several millionaires who are very careful with their money. I suppose that's how they became millionaires, and then couldn't get out of the habit.

‘Yes, on the last day before we docked at Southampton, although I got the impression that it had been going on for some time.'

‘What date was that, Mr Barton?' asked Dave.

‘Early February, I think. Yes, it was the sixth if memory serves me correctly. Anyway, I discovered that she'd been consorting with a steward, for God's sake.' Barton picked up his glass, stared into it, and put it down again. ‘It wouldn't have been so bad if it had been a first-class passenger.'

That struck me as an odd and rather snobbish comment to make. ‘How did you find out?'

‘I'd been to a lecture given by some fellow who claimed to be an expert on wine. Between you and me, I don't think he knew much about it, but these chaps wangle themselves a free cruise on the basis that they can talk knowledgeably about something. However, that's neither here nor there. Anyway, I gave up halfway through his banal chat, and returned to our stateroom. As I was almost there, I saw the steward coming out. But stewards were always coming and going, and I didn't think anything of it. I assumed that Diana had ordered tea or something, but when I entered, she was getting dressed. I asked her if she'd ordered tea, and she said no. So I said I'd seen the steward emerging from our stateroom, but she denied that he'd been there. Said I must've made a mistake.'

‘And did you let it go at that, sir?' asked Dave, looking up from his pocketbook.

‘No, I didn't. For God's sake, she was in her underwear at three o'clock in the afternoon, and I knew damned well that the steward had come out of our stateroom. Diana had played away before, so to speak, so I put it to her straight.'

‘What did she say?' I asked.

‘She eventually admitted, somewhat shamefacedly, that she'd had sex with the steward. She burst into tears and said that she was terribly sorry, and that it wouldn't happen again. But I knew that it had happened before, and I'd forgiven her on those occasions, but this was the last straw. I told her that that was the end of the marriage, and that when we got home to Chelsea I'd be leaving her, and that I'd file for divorce.'

‘But you didn't, I take it?' queried Dave.

‘No.' Barton took a sip of his whisky. ‘There's no fool like an old fool, so they say, and I really did love her very dearly. So I relented. Although I left the marital home for a few weeks, I eventually returned. It was a tearful reunion. She said, yet again, that it wouldn't happen again. And I forgave her, yet again.' He sighed, finished his whisky, and beckoned to a waiter for another.

‘Have you any idea who this steward was, sir?' asked Dave.

‘Yes, he was our personal steward, and his name was Hendry.'

‘Did you do anything about it, Mr Barton?' I asked.

‘I most certainly did,' said Barton vehemently. ‘I complained to the captain about Hendry's conduct. I asked, rather sarcastically, if it was company policy that stewards were allowed to take advantage of vulnerable women on his ship.'

‘What did he say?'

‘He was extremely annoyed, and said that he would deal with the matter. As a matter of fact, he didn't seem at all surprised when I mentioned the name of Hendry, and I got the impression that it wasn't the steward's first lapse.'

‘And did the captain deal with it?'

‘Yes. He made a point of seeing me the next day and telling me that he'd dismissed the steward. To be honest, I felt rather sorry for the fellow because I knew how persuasive Diana could be.'

‘Do you recall the captain's name, sir?' asked Dave.

Barton paused in thought for a moment. ‘Yes, I think he was called Richards. Captain Richards.'

‘And the name of the cruise line?'

Barton ferreted about in his pockets, eventually producing a card. ‘There it is. You can keep that, Sergeant.'

It was not unknown for cruise-line stewards to take advantage of willing women on their ship. The most notorious case, one that was described to us on the junior CID training course by a senior detective from Hampshire, was that of James Camb, a steward on the RMS
Durban Castle
. In 1947, he'd murdered an actress called Gay Gibson, and pushed her body out of a porthole. Camb's thinking at the time was that he couldn't be convicted of murder without a body. He was wrong. Although escaping the scaffold – Parliament was debating the death penalty at the time – he served eleven years for his crime.

‘You mentioned that your wife had had other affairs,' I said. ‘Are you willing to give me details?'

‘I can, but is it necessary?'

‘One of them might have murdered her, Mr Barton.'

‘Oh, I see.' Barton leaned back in his chair, and thought. ‘About three years ago I was supposed to be attending a board meeting in Norwich at the company's head office there, but it was cancelled, and I went home. It was about two thirty in the afternoon. I let myself into the house—'

‘This was your house in Tavona Street, was it, sir?' asked Dave.

‘Yes. Diana and I had lived there for about seven years. Since our marriage, in fact. I'd lived there for longer, much longer, and I'd shared it with my first wife until she died. Now, where was I?' Barton looked vague, and sipped at his whisky. ‘Ah, yes. I got home, and found Diana in bed with this man.' He gave a humourless laugh. ‘He was the manager of this very hotel. Ironic, isn't it. Anyway, I threw him out, and sacked him the next day.'

‘What was his name, sir?' Dave's pen was poised over his pocketbook.

‘Gaston Potier. He was French.'

‘Have you any idea where he lived, Mr Barton?'

‘In this hotel, of course.' Barton stared at Dave, as though he'd asked a question to which the answer was obvious.

‘Yes, I understand that, but do you know if he had a private address, or where he went after you sacked him?'

‘Oh, I see. No, I'm afraid not.' Barton passed a hand over his forehead. ‘I am really rather tired, Mr Brock,' he said, turning to face me. ‘I wonder if we could continue this another day.'

‘If we need to,' I said. ‘Just one other thing: were there other affairs, apart from Potier and the steward?'

‘I'm sure of it, but I never found out who the men were.'

‘Well, thank you for your assistance, Mr Barton,' I said, as Dave and I rose from our seats. ‘As I said, I don't suppose we'll have any more questions for you, but I'll keep you informed of any progress. Incidentally, you said you'd been abroad on business, and arrived back here to find your house had burnt out.'

‘That's correct.'

‘Where had you been?'

Barton frowned, and for a moment I thought he was going to refuse to reply. But he relented. ‘Cyprus. To Paphos. We only have the one hotel there at the moment, but we're hoping to expand. I was looking at one or two so-called promising prospects.' He shrugged. ‘But I'm not sure any of them will do. We'll probably finish up building our own.'

‘He's not having a lot of luck, is he, guv?' said Dave as we walked out of the hotel's main entrance.

‘Neither are we, Dave,' I said, glancing at my watch: it was nearly nine o'clock. It had been a long day. ‘Incidentally, I don't intend telling the press that the death of Diana Barton is now a murder enquiry. Not until we've dug a bit deeper.'

‘Good idea, sir,' said Dave.

I
arrived at Curtis Green at nine o'clock the following morning. Dave was already at work.

‘I've tracked down Captain Richards, guv,' he said, as he followed me into my office. ‘He's on leave at the moment, and I've made an appointment for us to see him at three this afternoon.'

‘On leave where? And don't tell me the French Riviera.'

‘He's at home,
sir
,' said Dave, in response to what he regarded as a fatuous question. The implication was that if Richards was in France, he couldn't have made the appointment. ‘He lives at Grace Darling Street, Southampton.'

‘Good. That gives us time to see those two people at Tavona Street.'

‘Porter's at number twenty-five, guv. He's the bloke who complained about the disturbance. And Baxter, opposite at twenty-four, is the guy who called the fire brigade.'

‘I'm retired now, otherwise you wouldn't have found me at home,' said Frank Porter, as he ushered us into his living room. ‘I don't know how I ever found the time to go to work,' he added with a laugh. ‘Do sit down. I expect you'd like a cup of tea. I'll just give my wife a shout.' Before we had time to refuse, he disappeared.

‘What did you retire from, Mr Porter?' asked Dave, when Porter returned. Far from being an unnecessary question, such information helps to establish the status of a potential witness. Status is all-important when it comes to his being cross-examined by defence counsel. A man of professional standing is more likely to be believed by a jury when compared to a yobbo with a string of previous convictions, an earring and tattoos all over him. One has to think ahead in matters concerning a trial. If ever there was one. That said, it was unlikely that Porter had witnessed anything of evidential value.

‘I was a chartered accountant,' said Porter. ‘Now, gentlemen, how can I help you?'

‘Last Saturday night you called the police to a disturbance next door at number twenty-seven,' I began.

‘That's correct,' said Porter. ‘The noise was quite deafening. I was surprised because the Bartons are normally such quiet people. And apart from anything else, these old houses have very thick walls. One doesn't usually hear one's neighbours.'

‘Do you know the Bartons well?'

‘Not what you'd call intimately, but enough to pass the time of day, and visit each other for a drink at Christmas.'

‘What sort of noise was it?' asked Dave.

‘There was a lot of loud music, and shouts and screams from time to time. I really thought someone was being murdered, and from what I read in the papers, Mrs Barton was found dead.'

‘That's correct,' I said. ‘Mrs Barton was the victim of a murder, but I'd be obliged if you kept that to yourself. Otherwise there'll be a constant stream of journalists hammering at your door and plaguing the life out of you for anything you can tell them. They can be very persuasive.'