Model Murder (23 page)

“I don’t know, but it’s a possibility.”

“I believe he did. I believe it must have been him. And now he too is dead.” The admiral let out a long sigh. “If only that could be the end of it all.”

“Are you in a position to tell us which items are missing from your attics, sir? Is there an inventory?”

He nodded. “It will be held by my solicitor. I had better ask him to send someone here to try and establish the things that have gone.” The lines of strain on his face cut deep as he went on, “This is an unfortunate business, Chief Inspector.”

“Unfortunate” was a mild adjective to describe two murders. Then it struck Kate that the admiral was merely referring to the loss of some of his family heirlooms.

“It may very well be,” she said, “that there is a connection between the thefts and Labrosse’s murder.”

He held up both his hands as if to ward off her persistence. “It was not Larkin who killed him, I shall never believe that. I am very disappointed, naturally, by what you have told me about the man’s dishonesty. Deeply distressed and disappointed. But that is quite a different matter from murder. Please, Chief Inspector, put aside your suspicions concerning Larkin.”

“I can’t do that, sir. I must follow wherever this investigation leads me.”

He gave her a beseeching look. “Suppose ... suppose I decide not to press charges against Larkin? I could just dismiss him, perhaps.”

The admiral, it seemed, still hadn’t grasped the full enormity of the situation. He was fretting because he’d been let down by a trusted servant.

“I shall be sending an officer very shortly, to make a search of Larkin’s room,” she told him.

He hardly seemed to take that in. “Yes, I suppose it’s necessary.”

If ever a man looked at the end of his tether, Admiral Fortescue did now. Kate felt concerned about him. He shouldn’t be left alone, distressed like this and in his poor state of health.

“Might it not be best for you to detail one of the hotel staff to attend to your needs for the time being? You should have someone near at hand, I think.”

“Yes, yes, perhaps.”

On her feet, Kate hesitated. All the admiral had to do was to pick up the telephone and issue instructions for whatever he wanted. She herself had far more pressing matters to attend to. And yet ... the poor man looked so forlorn she hardly liked to walk out on him. Tender loving care was what he needed.

“Is there anything I can get for you?” she asked.

“Eh? Oh, no, no ...”

“Have you had your lunch yet?”

“No, I ... I’m not hungry.”

“You should eat something, sir.”

But he only shook his head vaguely, lost in his unhappy thoughts. Kate felt sure he wasn’t even aware of her leaving the room. On her way out, she stopped at the reception desk and suggested to June Elsted that someone should go along to the admiral’s suite with a light lunch on a tray.

Boulter was eagerly awaiting Kate’s return. There had been a positive result from the house-to-house enquiry made in the vicinity of Yew Tree Cottage at Larkhill, where someone reported having seen Corinne Saxon and Adrian Berger together.

“The man is one of the gardeners at Streatfield Park, would you believe? An old chap name of Sidney Partridge. Which could hardly fit him better, considering he’s a poacher. Seems he actually saw them at it, Berger and Corinne Saxon, through the window.”

“How come this wasn’t picked up before, when the staff here were interrogated?” Kate asked sharply. “This man must have been included in that.”

“Sure, he was. But there’s a streak of touch-your-cap yokel in Sid Partridge. Nosey as hell about what his betters get up to, but loyal, too. Wouldn’t breathe a word against ’em to the likes of us. Told his missus all about the goings-on at Yew Tree Cottage, though, and his missus goes to church Sundays. Thought it were a proper disgrace, she told DC Farnham, especially with Berger being a married man.
And
his wife such a lady, from one of the best families round here.”

“Get on with it, Tim.”

“The first sighting was several weeks ago, just around dusk. A Thursday. Sid was setting his traps in the coppice at the back of Yew Tree Cottage. He saw two cars pull into the side driveway, and the lights were quickly dowsed. He could hear a male and a female voice, both subdued, and soft laughter. The instant the couple were through the front door, Sid creeps nearer to have a peek. They couldn’t wait to draw the curtains, could they, and he watched some heavy petting on the sofa. Then after a bit they gathered up their shoes and discarded apparel, and headed upstairs. I imagine,” Boulter continued, embroidering, “Sid must have looked around for a ladder then, but ...”

“Sergeant,” Kate warned. “The facts.”

Boulter sighed. “Sid kept his eyes and ears open, after that first evening. His bungalow is across the fields from Yew Tree Cottage—a mile away by road, but scarcely three hundred yards by crow-fly. He caught them at it several more times. But there was no more action since a Friday night three weeks ago.”

“Hmm. This old chap would have known Corinne by sight, of course. But could he give a positive identification of Berger?”

“Oh, yes. Sid has seen Berger around lots of times at Streatfield Park. As often as not discussing plans with Corinne. There’s no doubt about the identification, guv.”

“Will he be a good witness? He won’t back down on us?”

Boulter laughed. “Roy Farnham gave him the spiel about the penalties for wasting police time by not giving this info in the first place. If it didn’t scare Sid overmuch, it certainly scared the shit out of his missus. She’ll make damn sure he stands up and says his piece when we need him to.”

Kate tapped her desktop thoughtfully with a fingertip. “We’re getting closer, Tim. But Berger can still insist he didn’t kill Corinne, and we have no proof to pin it on him. Unless we can get him to break.”

An enquiring tap at the door. Kate called to come in, and the excited face of a young DC appeared.

“Got something for you, ma’am.”

“Let’s have it then, Ben.”

DC Ellery handed her a blue, cloth-covered booklet. “Larkin’s building society account, ma’am. It makes interesting reading.”

Kate flicked it open at one of the fully completed pages. It took only the briefest glance to see that each month a regular amount had been paid in by cheque. Obviously Larkin’s wages. Cash withdrawals were small—living at Streatfield Park as he did, he’d only need money for incidentals. So the balance was steadily growing. She swiftly turned to the page with the last entries. Of the most recent items on the credit side, two were sizeable deposits in cash. One for £551 and the other for £497.

She glanced up at Boulter, who was reading over her shoulder. “Larkin’s pay-offs from Labrosse?”

The sergeant whistled through his teeth. “A helluva lot less than half of what Labrosse got from Paul Kenway. Larkin had a grievance there, all right, if he found out he was being swindled.”

“That’s not all I’ve got for you, ma’am.” DC Ellery smirked triumphantly as he plucked from his jacket pocket a clear plastic bag containing some bloodstained fabric. “I found this in the little kitchenette in Admiral Fortescue’s suite, which Larkin used for making hot drinks and so on. It struck me that I might possibly find something there.”

“Good thinking. Where exactly did you find it?”

“Stuffed down at the bottom of the wastebin liner, ma’am.”

Kate examined the handkerchief without removing it from the plastic bag. It was of fine quality linen, hemstitched, with the initials YL embroidered in one corner. Suddenly she realised what had struck her as different about the dead Labrosse’s attire. It was the absence of the customary white handkerchief at his breast pocket ... that little affectation which had given an old-fashioned touch to his well-dressed image.

Labrosse’s assailant, then, had pulled the handkerchief from his breast pocket, presumably to wipe off the fingerprints from the candlestick he’d used as a weapon. And had then disposed of it in what he thought would be a safe place. Larkin wouldn’t have anticipated a search being made of the admiral’s quarters.

“Nice work, Ben. This could be the clincher. Get it to the lab right away, to confirm that the blood matches the victim’s. Not that I have any doubt about that. I take it you’ve sealed off Larkin’s room and the kitchenette?”

“Oh, yes, ma’am.”

When the DC had departed, Boulter said in a voice like the gleeful rubbing of hands, “So, Berger for the one, and Larkin for t’other. Amen!”

“We’ve got a long way to go yet, Tim. And I still can’t see the connection between the two murders. There
has
to be a connection.”

Boulter chuckled. “You want it with bloody knobs on, guv.”

There was no cockiness about Sid Larkin now. His transfer to the starkly severe atmosphere of an interview room at DHQ plus the formality of the official caution conspired to put the fear of God into him. As Kate had intended.

She kicked off without preamble.

“We’ve found the handkerchief, Larkin.”

His expression was a fair approximation of total bafflement. “What handkerchief, miss? I don’t know what you’re on about.”

“Labrosse’s handkerchief. The one you used to wipe the candlestick with.”

His belligerence surfaced. “You’re crazy.”

“Why not admit the truth and save us all a lot of trouble? While the admiral was having his morning bath, you phoned Labrosse to meet you in his room. You’d found out somehow that he wasn’t paying you your agreed share of the proceeds of the thefts, so you went to have it out with him. In the argument, you lost your temper and grabbed the nearest thing to hand—the candlestick—and hit Labrosse with it. Perhaps,” Kate added, “you didn’t intend to kill him.”

The slight hint that if he co-operated he might get away with a lesser charge than murder didn’t work. Larkin was shaking his head violently. “That’s a load of crap. I didn’t hit him. I didn’t kill him. I didn’t go to his room, not yesterday.”

“The first two sums received by Labrosse from Kenway,” she continued smoothly, “each amounted to about two thousand pounds, and you ...”

“No, that’s not right,” he protested. “Just over
one
thousand, you mean, not two thousand. Yves and I both pocketed about five hundred quid each time.”

“If that’s what you received,” Kate said, “and it tallies with the amounts you paid into your building society, then your friend was cheating you. According to Kenway, he paid Labrosse double what you claim. So Labrosse kept
three-quarters
of it for himself.”

“The bastard.” Larkin really did seem surprised, but his swift flare of anger quickly subsided into a sort of resigned acceptance. If it was just an act, it was a cleverer act than Kate would have thought the man capable of. A tiny seed of doubt about his guilt dropped into her mind. Although ...

“If you’ve only just this minute found out that Labrosse was cheating you, why are you taking it so calmly?”

He lifted his hefty shoulders. “I thought I could trust Yves. But it don’t come as no big shock that he was ready to do me down same as everyone else. You learn to expect it when you’re one of the lower orders. They reckon you’re just dirt to be trampled on.”

“He’ll have me crying my eyes out,” Boulter broke in caustically.

“I suggest,” Kate persisted, “that you didn’t just find out from me that you’d been cheated. You learned of it earlier—how I don’t yet know—and the resulting quarrel with Labrosse ended in his death. Why go on denying it?”

“Because it’s not true. Not a bloody word of it.”

“So how do you account for the handkerchief?”

“I told you, I don’t know nothing about any bleeding handkerchief.”

“It was the one Labrosse would have been wearing in his breast pocket when he was killed. We discovered it in the kitchen wastebin in Admiral Fortescue’s suite. Stained with blood.”

Again his reaction really did look like genuine astonishment. The seed of doubt in Kate’s mind began to sprout. She signalled to Boulter to take over the questioning.

“Listen to me, Larkin,” he said weightily. “You can deny knowing anything about that handkerchief till you’re blue in the face. You don’t imagine we’ll let it stop there? You were in Labrosse’s room yesterday morning, and no way can you hide the fact. Right at this moment our forensic experts are busy analysing lots of samples that were taken at the scene of the crime. I’ll tell you something ... these days nobody can go anywhere without leaving a trace of his presence. I’m not just talking about fingerprints. You’ll have left behind you hairs from your head, flakes from your skin and fibres from your clothes. You didn’t realise that, I bet?”

Larkin was white-faced, but he stuck to his guns. “I’ve been in Yves’s room plenty of times, but not yesterday. I don’t care what you try to make out, I wasn’t there and I didn’t kill him. It wasn’t me.”

“So who the hell else d’you reckon put that handkerchief into the wastebin?” Boulter demanded scornfully.

Kate felt her skin pricking with a sudden new insight. A dozen recollections were coalescing in her mind, all springing from Boulter’s question.

Who the hell else d’you reckon put that handkerchief into the wastebin?

There was only one other person who could have done so without considerable difficulty. Only one other person to whom it might seem a convenient and safe place to dispose of what could prove to be a damning piece of evidence. Admiral Fortescue. He no more than Larkin would have expected the police to search in any part of his personal suite.

They had alibied for each other, those two. A conspiracy? Kate believed not. But just as she had pointed out to the admiral that he was in no position to swear Larkin hadn’t left the suite for a brief time that morning, then no more had Larkin been able to swear the same thing about him. The admiral was supposed to be having his regular, leisurely morning bath. Where had Larkin been? In his own room tippling, most likely, and perhaps reading a newspaper. He wouldn’t be likely to have noticed that the usual faint noises of swirling water were missing.