Just Desserts (6 page)

She nodded impatiently; the fingers twisting the engagement and wedding rings on her left hand were the only sign of agitation. ‘All right. Yes, I'm divorced. And unlike Patrick, who never wished to see his first wife again, I still see my first husband occasionally. My daughter wishes to keep in touch with her father, naturally.'

‘Thank you. Did your daughter resent your second marriage?'

She felt her pulses racing, told herself firmly that she had known this would come up. She forced herself to smile into the long face and the grey eyes, which seemed all the time to be seeing far beyond the words she was giving him. It was a bleak little smile, but that was surely appropriate for a widow. ‘There were a few problems, yes. Nothing too serious. I should imagine they were quite normal, for a teenage girl having to adjust to her mother discarding her father in favour of another man. But you will understand that this is my own and my daughter's only experience of such things.'

It was dismissive, and Lambert thought too well phrased to be thought up on the spot, but he let it go. You couldn't push a grieving spouse too far, and they would be talking to this daughter of hers in due course. He looked steadily at the woman in the dark-blue dress with her hands clasped together in her lap, studying her as closely as ever as he said, ‘But your own relationship with your husband was entirely a happy one?'

‘Yes. I'm glad you've given me the opportunity to emphasize that. Entirely a happy one.'

The repetition of his words sounded curiously formal, curiously controlled, for someone deep in grief. Yet it was spoken with such dignity that Lambert was inclined to believe her. He said, ‘Forgive me, but I have to ask. All marriages have disagreements. Most of them, indeed, have major rows, from time to time. Have you had any serious differences with your husband over the last few months?'

‘No. And you needn't apologize for asking. I know the wife is always the chief suspect in murder cases.'

He smiled, enjoying her frankness. ‘I prefer to state it as “the first person to be eliminated from the list of suspects”.'

She wondered if she could ask him if he proposed to eliminate her. Instead, she said, ‘And have you a lengthy list in this case?'

Lambert smiled at her again. This woman was shrewd enough and composed enough to have worked this one out for herself. ‘Our list appears to be confined to the people who were in Soutters Restaurant last night, Mrs Nayland. There was no outside access to the cloakroom where your husband died.'

She gave a little, involuntary shudder, as the image of the spot where Patrick had fallen flashed briefly before her again. They had tried to stop her going to him, but she had thrust through them, had cradled his head briefly in her arms for a moment before hysteria took over and they dragged her away. Chris Pearson, it had been, who had shaken her back into silence and the dull realization that this had really happened.

She nodded at those grey eyes, which seemed never to blink as they studied her. ‘One of us, then. I wonder who would want to do such an awful thing. Who would want to cut Patrick down like that, on an evening of celebration, which he had devised and paid for, which everyone seemed to be enjoying?' She let her bitterness come out as she lingered over the last phrases.

There was a pause before Bert Hook came in and said, ‘No doubt someone had a motive to do this. But motive isn't always the first thing we look for, Mrs Nayland. We always begin by considering who had the opportunity to commit a crime. In this case, we know everyone who had the opportunity. The motive may be less obvious. It may mean that we can't discount people who were not present in the restaurant last night.'

‘I don't follow that.'

‘I mean that anyone with a grievance might have employed someone who was at your table to commit murder for him.'

‘That doesn't seem very likely.'

‘I agree. It's unlikely. But it's by no means impossible. People get themselves into all kinds of financial trouble, for instance. Desperate men – and sometimes desperate women – can be persuaded to do astonishing things, if they are assured that it will get them out of a financial hole.'

She could see that, when she thought about it. Patrick was a methodical man, and that might have been the way he would have gone about it, if he had ever needed a murder. She pulled herself up short. How could she be thinking about him in this way, on the day after his death? It must be something connected with the shock everyone talked about. She said, ‘I'm learning things about crime, aren't I? Things I'm not sure I want to know!'

There was something brittle about her, thought Lambert, as if once they broke the thin china of her composure she would spill into hysterics. He said, ‘Have you any idea who killed your husband last night?'

‘No.'

‘It might help us if you speculate. It needn't go any further than these four walls, if it proves unfounded.'

‘No. I've thought about it a lot since it happened. I haven't come up with a killer for you yet.'

‘I see. Please continue to think about it, then. We shall be interested to hear about your thoughts, in confidence.'

‘I will, Superintendent. I'm as anxious to see the man who killed Patrick like that put behind bars as you are.'

‘Or the woman.'

‘Or the woman, as you say. But I shall be surprised if it was a woman who did this to Patrick.'

She looked for a reaction in the long face, but Lambert seemed totally impassive. He said, ‘I understand last night's occasion was designed to celebrate ten years of development at Camellia Park. As the owner of the course and the director of policy, your husband must have made tough and unpopular decisions at times. Such decisions tend to make enemies. Do you know of anyone who had a serious grievance against your husband?'

‘No. The place has been a success. It's been expanding ever since Patrick took the chance and put his money into it. He said there aren't too many staffing problems whilst that is happening. The real problems come when you have to cut back on something.'

That was true enough. When someone built an empire, other people went up with him, and most people were happy. Lambert had seen it happen, even in the police force. There was one area, however, which often caused resentment. ‘Was anyone passed over for a promotion he felt he should have had?'

‘No. Not as far as I know. And the kind of post available in a small organization like that is hardly worthy of multiple stab wounds.'

‘I agree. But we have to explore every possibility at present. This killing has all the signs of an unbalanced mind. You might be surprised how much some people brood on small injustices, until in their minds they develop into something much larger.'

‘I've seen some of that. I worked in an office with five other women.'

Lambert couldn't suppress a small smile. He'd never have dared to say anything as politically incorrect as that. Then he said seriously, ‘I agree with you that other passions can be more powerful than ambition. So I now have to ask you if you know of any relationships which might have had a bearing on this death.'

She found herself wanting to fly at this calm inquisitor, to scratch the flesh on the gaunt face. She must be much more on edge than she thought. Forcing a calmness into her tongue, she tried to be dismissive, but found herself sounding unexpectedly prim as she said, ‘You mean, was Patrick conducting an affair with someone, was there a jealous husband involved? No, of course there wasn't.'

Lambert, listening to the manner as well as the substance of the denial, thought that maybe the lady did protest too much. He said, ‘How did you meet your husband, Mrs Nayland?'

She wondered if she could refuse to answer, reject the question as the irrelevance she knew it to be. But that would only heighten the man's interest, and he would pursue it elsewhere. He had already indicated that someone would be in touch with the first wife. She said icily, ‘I've already told you I worked in an office. Patrick was an executive there. In due course, I became his personal assistant: I believe that he asked to have me assigned to him. Then it was the old story of the boss having an affair with his secretary, if you like. Except that Patrick was already separated. I was the one who was playing away.'

‘So there was resentment from the man who was then your husband?'

She forced a smile when she felt like attacking him. ‘You'd be barking up the wrong tree there. Malcolm – that's my first husband – certainly wasn't happy at the time. He's now happily remarried, with two small children. He wouldn't want me back if I came wrapped in diamonds.'

Lambert said quietly, ‘Thank you. I apologize again for the personal nature of some of our questions, but, as I said, we have to build up a picture of the victim; it usually helps to indicate who might have killed him.'

It was Bert Hook, sitting quiet and watchful, making the occasional note in his notebook, who now looked up and said, ‘How would you describe your daughter's relationship with the victim at the time of his death, Mrs Nayland?'

She had thought the question would come if it came at all from the tall man whose grey eyes stayed so disconcertingly upon her face through everything she said. Instead, it was this stolid, slightly overweight Sergeant with the curiously innocent features, like those of a small boy imposed on a middle-aged man, who had asked it.

Liza Nayland delivered the words she had prepared during the morning. ‘Michelle had a few problems in the early stages of our relationship. It would have been surprising if she hadn't.'

‘Yes, you mentioned that earlier. And in our experience, it would be surprising if those problems didn't persist in the years which followed. How would you say Michelle felt about your husband at the time of his death?'

‘They were perfectly happy with each other. Michelle had realized that my happiness was bound up with Patrick, and had accepted the situation. We had a happy Sunday evening meal together, only a few days ago. I'm sorry to disappoint you, Sergeant.'

Hook was too experienced to rise to that. He made a note in his notebook, face as inscrutable as a boyish Buddha. It struck him that if you had to note a meal in a household as being happy, there were problems.

The two veteran CID men drove away from the house in the Herefordshire village in the companionable silence which came from working for many years together. They had travelled a good two miles before Hook said, ‘She was holding something back, wasn't she? I'm not quite sure what it was yet, but she wasn't being totally honest.'

There wasn't much work for Joanne Moss on the day after the murder. She knew there wouldn't be much demand for her food on a morning like this, when only the hardiest of golfers tackled the frostbound acres of Camellia Park.

But these intrepid souls were rewarded eventually by a thin white sun, and by midday the whiteness had melted from the surface of the course. The men – women were far too sensible to venture out in such Arctic conditions – were jovial when they came into the little clubhouse, as if they had earned the thanks of the world for their bravery in the face of the elements. And they were hungry, eager for the toasted sandwiches, bacon butties and other simple but tasty fare which Joanne could supply from her spotless kitchen.

This little period of brisk activity lasted scarcely more than an hour. Joanne would have wished for it to be longer, for activity meant that she had to concentrate hard on the simple manual tasks of food preparation. That took her mind off the things she did not want to think about, the things which set her mind racing along channels she did not wish it to explore.

But very soon, this brisk activity died away to nothing. Joanne tried to string out the work, taking longer than usual over small tasks, like a machine which runs briefly after it has been switched off. Yet suddenly, she knew that she must move quickly. The urgency of what she must do burst like a wall of water into her brain, flooding away her lethargy, filling her with a sudden urgency which was the very opposite of what she had felt only moments before.

It showed how febrile her brain was, how racing were her emotions, she told herself, as she hurried to her car and drove away from Camellia Park without a backward glance, without even hearing the cheerful farewell called to her by the last of the golfers in the car park.

When she opened the door of her flat, she saw it as she had not seen it for many months, perhaps not since the moment when she had first viewed it and decided to buy it. She saw it not as a home, but as a place which might tell other people things about her, which might reveal more of herself than she wanted to show to these strangers coming into her life. A place which might – the word had sprung into her mind before she could reject it – incriminate her.

Joanne even looked round the place to assure herself that no one had been here, that no one had carried knowledge about her away from the place before she could prevent it. She knew that the idea was stupid, that the people she feared needed search warrants and the paraphernalia of the law behind them. Nevertheless, she checked the beaker on the side of the sink, checked the familiar ornaments and photographs on sideboard and mantelpiece, even went through into her bedroom and checked that the nightdress lay across the pillow exactly as she had left it when she had left the room with her mind racing so madly a few hours previously.

Only a few hours! The time seemed to stretch itself into days; it seemed already weeks since that sudden scream and the shocked faces coming to terms with the unthinkable last night. And yet she could have given no clear and detailed account of what she had done in the time since then. Her movements, her reactions, even her thoughts, seemed today to have a dream-like quality about them, as if she was watching another person doing the things she did.

She shook herself back to reality. Quite literally shook herself, in front of the mirror in the small hall, wanting to feel the vigour of the movement in her shoulders and hips. There was nothing unreal about what she had to do now. She must be at her coolest and most methodical. The minds she was pitting herself against would be like that; they wouldn't be battered by emotions, as she was, but clinical, logical, ruthlessly assessing whatever they saw.