Cold Coffin (25 page)

Emerging with her purchase she saw a red Porsche pull up and reverse into a vacant parking space at the kerb. The first thing that caught her attention was its driver, Paula Kimberley. Then she became aware that the music issuing from the car was the unmistakable voice of Tom Jones. Deep, grainily smooth, it carried a throb that was incredibly sexy.

So Paula Kimberley liked Tom Jones. But ten million other women did, too.

The music ended abruptly as Paula switched off the ignition. Kate paused on the pavement, watching. Then as Paula got out of the car she went forward to speak to her, registering in that instant that Paula wore lipstick of a brightish red. But ten million other women did, too. A waft of expensive perfume reached her. But ditto, ditto.

“Hallo, Mrs. Kimberley. I was just thinking that I owe you a thank-you for your help over the robbery at Milford Grange. The information you gave us about what was missing was of considerable assistance.”

In the first moment of seeing Kate, Paula had looked startled. Scared. Now her expression changed to relief and she gave a bright smile.

“That’s all right. I was only too glad to help.”

Not true, Kate.
She had seemed very reluctant, and had been cajoled into it by her husband.

“We arrested the thieves and recovered the stolen items,” Kate said. “But I expect you heard that.”

“Yes, er ... somebody mentioned it.”

Smiling, Kate held up the package in her hand. “I just laddered my last pair of tights, so I had to dash over to restock. I seem to get through a hell of a lot.”

“Oh, er ... yes. They never last long, do they?” Paula Kimberley was clearly distrait, her mind elsewhere.

On a sudden snap judgment, Kate did her best impression of being taken short on a sneeze, then hastily opened her shoulderbag and fished for a handkerchief. At the same time, stealthily, she undipped her wallet and loosened its contents. When she withdrew her hand with the handkerchief, the wallet came out with it, falling to the pavement and spilling driver’s licence, banknotes, and other bits and pieces. For a frozen instant Kate gazed at the mess helplessly. Paula, as she’d hoped, immediately crouched down to gather the things together. Kate crouched to join her.

“Oh, thanks a lot. How stupidly clumsy of me!”

Acting a bit bewildered, she left most of the picking up to Paula, taking each item from her with babbled expressions of gratitude and slipping it back in her bag. To her great satisfaction she watched Paula pick up her rarely handled Donor card, gripping the smooth plastic firmly between her thumb and two fingers.

Back at the police station a couple of minutes later, Kate handed the card over to the office manager of the Incident Room.

“Have this dusted right away, will you, Frank. There’ll be some prints on it that aren’t mine. Will you get them checked against the prints on that tape found at Trent’s cottage. The Tom Jones one his sister handed in. I’m off to Trent’s funeral now.”

The result of the fingerprint check was on her desk when she returned. Reading it, Kate felt a buzz of excitement. At long last, she knew, she was really getting somewhere.

* * * *

After the encounter with Chief Inspector Maddox in Aston Pringle, Paula Kimberley felt slightly less fraught than she’d felt for days. It had been a good omen, something positive to tell Aidan about when he came home. He was in London this afternoon, having shot off there after spending the morning at Croptech again keeping things ticking over; to do otherwise would have suggested a lack of feeling towards his dead uncle’s wife. But apparently his own business affairs had demanded his presence in Leadenhall Street.

Paula both longed for and dreaded her husband’s return. Aidan was so bitterly hostile to her these days, so ready to snarl recriminations. It was so different from before when they’d had a relaxed, easygoing relationship at home, enjoying each other’s company, and by tacit consent never asking awkward questions about what went on when they were apart. Now, she was almost afraid to open her mouth to Aidan. She was half terrified of him, yet she needed him. Without Aidan’s support she would go insane.

It was almost seven when she heard the familiar note of his car turning into the lane. She closed the portfolio of designs for a new boutique in Cheltenham that she seemed unable to make any progress on, went through to the bedroom and swallowed down a couple of tranquilizers, then quickly checked her appearance in the mirror. God, she looked awful! Hastily she chewed at her lips and slapped her cheeks to bring some colour to her face.

She was halfway down the stairs as Aidan let himself in. Paula did her best to put on a welcoming smile.

“Hi!” she greeted him. “You must need a drink.”

He nodded, tossed his briefcase onto a chair and headed for the living room. “Whisky. A large one. Anything happened?”

“As a matter of fact, yes. I popped into Aston Pringle for a few things I needed, and I bumped into that woman Chief Inspector.”

He took the glass she handed him but didn’t drink. “How did that come about?” he asked tersely.

“Sheer chance. I spotted a parking space outside the newsagent’s and grabbed it. As I got out of the car, she came over to speak to me. She wanted to thank me for the help I gave the police when you and I went to the Tillingtons’ place to tell them what was missing. I’m glad now that you made me do that, Aidan. It got us into her good books. She couldn’t have been friendlier this afternoon.”

Aidan tipped a long swallow of whisky, then frowned. “What’s her game, I wonder?”

“No game. She just took the opportunity to say thank you.”

He very decidedly shook his head. “I don’t like it, Paula. You were officially thanked by Inspector Trotton at the time, and in the police’s eyes that would be quite sufficient. The Maddox woman had an ulterior motive, I’m certain. You and I are still high on the suspect list, don’t forget. That’s inevitable in view of my close connection with Uncle Noah and Croptech. Thank God that whatever checks the police might have done into the firm’s financial position are bound to convince them that Croptech was worth a damn sight more with Uncle Noah alive than it is now that he’s dead.”

“From the way she spoke to me today, Aidan, I feel sure we’ve got nothing to worry about.”

“If you really think that,” he said, with savage contempt in his eyes, “you’re an even bigger fool than I took you for. You’d better tell me exactly what happened this afternoon, step by step, right from the moment she came over to you. What precisely did she say?”

“Just that she owed me a thank-you, because it was such a big help that I’d been able to identify things that were missing from Milford Grange. She mentioned that they’d caught the thieves. That was all.”

He looked at her suspiciously. “And then you parted?”

“Well, we chatted for a couple of minutes.”

“What about?”

“Nothing important. She explained that she’d just been to buy some tights, and we agreed that they never seem to last long. And then she spilled some stuff from her handbag.”

His glance sharpened. “What the hell do you mean, she spilled some stuff from her handbag?”

“Well, she suddenly sneezed, and when she fished for a hankie she accidentally pulled her wallet out of her bag, too, and everything was strewn all over the pavement. I helped her pick things up.”

“Go on,” he said grimly. “What exactly did you pick up?”

“Does it matter?”

“Just tell me.”

“Well, there were several banknotes ... fivers and tenners. There was her driver’s licence, a library ticket, and ... and a National Trust membership card, I think.”

“What about her police warrant card?”

“I don’t remember seeing that.”

“Credit cards?”

“No, they were attached to the wallet. She picked that up. Oh, and I remember, there was a Donor card.”

“Which you handled?”

“Well, yes, I did.”

Aidan took out his own wallet from the inside pocket of his jacket, and extracted one of the plastic credit cards from the concertina. This he tossed to the carpet.

“Show me exactly what you did. Exactly, mind!”

Paula stared at him, bewildered. “I don’t understand. I don’t know what you mean.”

“For Christ’s sake, it’s simple enough. Pretend that I’m Chief Inspector Maddox and that on the floor is her Donor card. You said you picked it up for her. Give me a reconstruction.”

About to demur again, Paula was stopped by the look on his face. She crouched down, considered for a second or two, then slowly picked up the card. Straightening, she held it out to Aidan. But he didn’t take it at once.

“Is that how you held it, between two fingers and your thumb?”

“Yes, I think so. Yes, that’s right.”

“Then she took it from you?” He reached out and accepted the credit card, staring at it thoughtfully. “What then? Did she stuff it back into her wallet?”

Again Paula tried to recall the scene in her mind’s eye. “Not actually. She’d already put the other things away, but she just stood holding the card as she thanked me again and apologized for being such a clumsy idiot. Then we said goodbye, and I went towards the newsagent’s and she crossed the road on her way back to the police station.” She added nervously, “For heaven’s sake, Aidan, what’s this all about?”

“I’ll tell you what it’s all about. That Maddox woman found a neat way of extracting your fingerprints from you without your being aware of it.”

“Oh, but surely—”

“A clumsy idiot she definitely is not. You can’t seriously imagine that she’d spill all that stuff
accidentally.
You bloody fool, Paula, you should have realized what she was up to. The problem now is, why was she so keen to get your prints? You must have left some at Milford Grange that night. Or in Uncle Noah’s car.”

Paula blanched at the thought. “But I couldn’t have done. I was wearing my driving gloves all the time.”

“You must have taken them off for some reason. It has to be that. And now that Maddox woman is able to make a comparison, she won’t waste any time. So neither must we.”

Paula looked at her husband in fear. “What are we going to do, Aidan?”

He didn’t answer her at once, and she couldn’t read the expression in his eyes. At length he turned away from her and went to pour himself another drink.

“You’ll have to give me time to think. Meanwhile, what about getting me something to eat?”

Aidan Kimberley was dead right in saying that the Chief Inspector would waste no time following up the fingerprint lead. Even before he’d made that remark, just as soon as Kate had received a positive match on the prints on the Tom Jones tape, she had summoned Sergeant Boulter and discussed with him the implications of this new development.

“Let’s see how Paula Kimberley fits with what we already know about the woman we’re looking for,” she said. “To start with, she has no alibi we can check on for the night Sir Noah died. Another thing, it looks as if she was more friendly with the Tillingtons—or at least with Mrs. Tillington— than she made out, so it’s not beyond belief that she knew of a way to get into Milford Grange without setting off the alarm system. In which case, that was probably what gave birth to the idea of using their empty house to conceal the body. As for driving Noah Kimberley’s car to Cardiff Airport—which was presumably done to explain his absence by suggesting that he must have left the country—there’d have been no problem about that. Trent could have driven to Cardiff too, in his own car, and brought her back.”

Boulter granted all that, but he still had reservations.

“I can’t understand how she ever came to be involved with Trent. If she was in the market for something on the side, you’d think she’d go for one of the rich beautiful people like herself—not a miserable loner like him.”

“Maybe that was his appeal. Maybe it amused her to use her technique on a man like Trent and get him crazy about her. A bit like our reasoning when we cast Cheryl Miller in the role of his lady friend. I’m not suggesting that Paula Kimberley would have had anything more than a short fling in mind, of course.”

“Possible, I suppose. But why go so far as to get mixed up in Kimberley’s death? Or at least in covering up after his death.”

“Maybe she had no choice,” said Kate.

“And what about Trent’s murder? Are you suggesting that
she
killed him? Could she have been ruthless enough?”

“If she felt sufficiently threatened, I think she could. Or perhaps it was her husband, if he found out about the affair when he came back from Hong Kong. But let’s not go too fast, Tim. The more I think about it, the more convinced I am that Paula Kimberley is involved up to the neck in this business. But we can’t build a case against her purely on the strength of her fingerprints on that Tom Jones tape. Aside from that, we’ve got damn all that would stand up in court.”

“No solid facts,” Boulter agreed lugubriously, in a fair take-off of Superintendent Joliffe.

Kate only half stifled a grin. “I think our best bet is to talk to Lady Kimberley and see if she can come up with any new thoughts. She knows Paula Kimberley better than anyone else around here.”

“Right, guv, I’ll fetch the car.”

“No, I’d rather go alone. She’ll talk more freely woman to woman. Though I shan’t mind if Lord Balmayne is there. It might even be helpful to have him around. He’s a very shrewd man. But Tim, make sure you stay at the end of a phone in case I need you for some fast action.”

* * * *

With the coming of evening the sky had clouded over and the air was sultry, a rainstorm threatening. At the Kimberley residence the housekeeper showed Kate out to the terrace, where Lady Kimberley and Lord Balmayne were catching what coolness they could.

“Mrs. Maddox, do sit down. I was intending to telephone you about a letter I received by the second delivery. Dotty, fetch it for me, will you, there’s a dear.”

The tiny woman trotted indoors and was back in an instant with a white envelope. She handed it to Kate, who glanced at Lady Kimberley.

“Am I to read it?”