Murder in the Cotswolds (17 page)

“What time was this?”

“About ... seven-thirty, I’d say. Earlier in the evening, anyway.”

“Earlier than what?”

“Earlier than Prescott was killed. It had to be. He wasn’t even there then.”

“I see. You forced an entrance to the premises, is that what you’re saying?”

Gower shook his head impatiently. “I didn’t need to use force. I called round just after lunch on a pretext of wanting a word with Prescott. I knew he wouldn’t be there, because I’d just seen him going into the Wagon and Horses. I told the secretary I’d call back another time, and I asked if I could use the toilet. I slipped the latch of the window, so I could get in later.”

“The toilet window latch was closed when we examined the offices this morning,” Boulter intervened. He was damn nearly grinning, and Kate glanced away quickly.

“I closed it myself after I climbed in,” Gower said. “I left by the door.”

“What time did you leave?” queried Kate sharply.

He shrugged. “I wasn’t there much over half an hour. So ... soon after eight, I suppose.”

“You appear to have searched Mr. Prescott’s office. Why?”

A trace of belligerence reappeared. “I was trying to get things moving, that’s why. I’d told you about Belle Latimer’s suspicions concerning Prescott, yet you seemed unable—or unwilling—to take any action. I figured if I could find some definite evidence that he’d been helping himself to the Leisure Centre funds, you’d be forced to do something.”

“I
was
doing something,” Kate insisted, her vehemence causing Boulter to glance up from his notebook in surprise.

“That’s not how it looked,” Gower retorted. “You seemed too bloody intent on nailing
me
for Belle Latimer’s death.”

Kate wanted to rage at him for his stupidity, his naiveté, but she held her anger in check. “And what did your illegal entry produce? Did you find what you were searching for?”

Gower surprised her with a triumphant sneer. “As a matter of fact, I did. Are you disappointed, Detective Chief Inspector Maddox? Does it spoil all your fatuous theories about me being the villain of the piece?”

Kate kept her voice level. “What did you find?”

“This.” From a side pocket of his jacket he took a small red notebook. He handed it over, and Kate flicked through the pages. It was more than half filled with a mass of figures, dates, and initials.

“What is it?” she asked.

“That’s what I spent hours last night trying to decipher. It’s a record of Prescott’s creative accountancy.”

“Money he creamed off from the various Leisure Centre collections?”

“That must have been just small change to him. My guess is that Prescott was gambling in a big way, so to try and cover his losses he was doing a juggling act with his clients’ money. It’s difficult to get a complete picture, but it looks to me as if he was managing to stay one jump ahead of being rumbled. And all the time getting in deeper and deeper. I suppose, like so many gamblers,
he
thought that one day he’d strike lucky with a huge win that would put everything right all in one go.”

Was it really a guess on Gower’s part that Prescott had been gambling in a big way? Or had he known it all along? The picture he painted certainly fitted the details of Prescott’s dealings with the bookmaker.

“Where did you find this notebook?”

“In Prescott’s desk.”

“The desk drawers were locked,” Kate said curtly. “No sign of any damage was reported to me.”

Gower’s face twisted in a tight smile. “There wasn’t meant to be any sign of damage. I had a quick look round the office first, but I guessed the desk was the obvious place. So ... I opened the drawers.”

“It sounds to me as if you’ve done that sort of thing before.”

“No comment.” He grinned wryly. “It would be nice if, instead of treating me as a dangerous criminal, you could manage a few words of thanks for finding this evidence.”

“You expect thanks? Don’t you realise that if you hadn’t taken this notebook we’d have found it ourselves when we made a search this morning?”

“How was I to know that you’d be searching the office? How was I to know that Prescott would be found dead?”

Kate’s mind was darting along a new train of thought. Had Prescott, returning to his office late yesterday evening for some as yet unknown reason, discovered the loss of his secret notebook and realised that the game was up? Maybe her gut feeling was wrong. Maybe it
had
been suicide after all. Maybe he’d been keeping a dose of cyanide at hand in case of emergency.

Or was that the way Gower was hoping her mind would work? It was still perfectly feasible that Gower had killed Prescott. But what was his motive? She was back to that same problem, and in this instance the love affair turned sour could hardly be the answer.

“Mr. Gower,” she said tiredly, standing up to leave, “I’d like you to give us a full written statement of what you’ve just told me. Sergeant Boulter will organise it.”

“And what then?” he demanded.

“I’ll let you know.”

“I’m still not under arrest?”

“No,” she said coldly. “Not at present.”

Back in her office, Kate seethed in fury and frustration. This was an important new development and she ought to be putting Superintendent Joliffe in the picture immediately. But she held off, hoping that something might turn up to make things a little less black for Richard Gower. She couldn’t hold off for long, though.

Restless, unable to focus her mind, she walked the short distance to Prescott’s office. Scenes of Crime had packed up, and there was just a single uniformed man on duty. The body had been removed.

Kate prowled around. She inspected the drawers of Prescott’s desk. They were unlocked now, and there was no visible sign that they had been tampered with. The room had nothing to tell her. Disappointed, she gave up and returned to the police station, where she encountered Tim Boulter in the corridor.

“I’ve got Gower’s statement,” he said.

“Anything new emerge?” Anything that would clear him, Kate meant.

“Nothing. It looks as if we’ll have to let him go for the time being,” Boulter added regretfully.

“He’s still here?”

“I thought it wouldn’t do any harm to let him stew for a bit. I’ve sent him in a cup of tea.”

On a sudden decision, knowing it was ill-judged, Kate said, “I’ll go and talk to him again.”

“I wish you luck, ma’am.” He meant, you won’t have any luck, and ha-bloody-ha.

Gower was sitting hunched at the small table, cradling a mug of tea. He glared at her with hostile eyes.

“Can I go now? I have a newspaper to run.” But beneath his truculence was a discernible thread of anxiety. With good reason. He knew he was in trouble, one way or another. Big “murder” trouble, or not quite so big “illegal entry” trouble.

Kate closed the door. “What possessed you to do such a crazy thing?” she blazed.

“It didn’t seem so crazy at the time. As I said before, how was I to know that Prescott was going to get killed shortly after I was there?”

“You were breaking the law. There’s no getting away from that.”

“Oh God, spare me the sermon. One thing I learned as a foreign correspondent was that you have to take a few short cuts if you want results. Getting into Prescott’s office and searching it was petty stuff compared with some of the things I’ve had to do in my time.”

Kate’s fury with him rose to a new height. “What you’ve done abroad is not my concern. But you’re an arrogant bastard if you think you can take the law into your own hands here. You won’t get away with it, not in this country.”

Gower jumped to his feet and said furiously, “Okay, charge me with whatever offence you think I’ve committed. See where that gets you.”

“It may well come to that.”

“Can I go now?”

“You may. I’ll have someone drive you to Marlingford. But I’ll be wanting to talk to you again, so don’t leave the district.”

“Make a run for it? Why the hell should I? All I want is to get on with my life and my work, finished with all this bloody stupidity. So you’d better ...” But whatever he’d been about to say, he decided not to. Instead, throwing Kate a challenging look, he silently turned to the door.

“Hold it,” she said quickly. “I’m warning you, Mr. Gower, don’t pull any more damn fool tricks. You may, just possibly, get away with this one, though I’m promising nothing. But if you try something like that again, I’ll slap a charge on you within seconds.”

After he’d left, Kate called in Harry Silverdale. She felt she had to compliment him on an astute piece of work in identifying Gower’s fingerprints. It went against the grain, but she didn’t let that show.

“Brilliant, Harry. Really brilliant.”

Forty-five years of age if a day, a grizzled old hand, he could still flush up at a compliment. “Stroke of luck, really, ma’am.”

“Stroke of genius, I’d say. Where exactly were Gower’s prints found?”

“All over the place. I’ve got a list of locations here.”

Kate glanced through his scribbled notes and felt a sudden thrill of excitement. “None on the typewriter?”

“No, ma’am. Not Gower’s. Not Prescott’s. Only the typist’s. Whoever typed that suicide note was wearing rubber gloves.”

“What?”

“There are clear pattern traces on the keys of the letters that were used. Marigold gloves.”

“But that means ...” Her mind was spinning. “Were any rubber gloves found in the office?”

“Yes, but not Marigold. I asked the lads to look specially, and they found some in the cleaner’s broom cupboard. But they were a different make.”

“So that totally eliminates the possibility of its having been suicide?”

“Sure does. And that’s not the only thing. You’d expect to find traces of the suicide’s prints on the paper the note was typed on. But that was carefully handled by the edges, I’d say.”

“Right, then, back to Gower as the possible killer. I can’t see it, Harry. Having left his dabs all over the office for us to find, why should he suddenly become cautious and put on rubber gloves to type the fake suicide note? On the other hand, if Gower’s story about searching the office for evidence of Prescott’s fraudulent activities is true, he wouldn’t need to have touched the typewriter.”

“That makes sense to me, ma’am.”

Kate smiled at him. She was in a mood to smile. “Okay, Harry, thanks for your help. We must have a drink together when the heat’s off a bit.”

He left, but her smile lingered. She had two unsolved murders on her plate that were still wide open, yet she felt happy.

Kate’s elation was short-lived. Depression set in as she realised the complexities of the job ahead of her. All the investigations carried out so far would have to be reassessed, and the enquiry net widened to encompass Prescott’s death. The accountant’s friends, his clients and other contacts, all had to be checked on.

She spent the afternoon on a recapitulation with Sergeant Boulter.

“Question one, Tim. Could the two killings possibly be coincidental? Very doubtful, I’d say. The victims were connected when they were alive, so I think we should work on the assumption that their deaths are linked in some way.”

“Agreed.”

“So ... two murders with a common thread. But is it the same killer in each case?”

Boulter raised his eyebrows. “What else?”

“It doesn’t have to be the same killer. I’ll give you a possible scenario. Suppose that Latimer had persuaded Prescott to kill his wife, in return for a big pay-off when he got his hands on her money. Only Latimer didn’t inherit as expected, because of his wife’s  new Will, so he couldn’t— or wouldn’t—pay out as promised. Prescott got difficult, and Latimer killed him to shut his mouth. Don’t forget Prescott’s false alibi for the time of Belle Latimer’s death. For him to pressure his sister into lying for him, he must have been desperate to conceal his actual movements that evening.”

“But why should Prescott have posed a threat to Latimer? If he’d blown the gaff, he’d have landed himself in the shi—in the mire, too.”

Kate granted his point. “All the same, Latimer had better have a watertight alibi for the time of Prescott’s death.”

“There’s a much simpler explanation. Gower did both jobs.”

Kate frowned. Why did Boulter have to be so damned stubborn? “Apart from anything else, where’s his motive, Sergeant? There’s no sign of a motive, is there?”

“I’d have thought there was.”

“Let’s have it, then.” She threw it out as a challenge.

“Well ... money or sex or a combination of both. “Boulter’s voice was edged with relish. “I see it this way. He and the Latimer woman were having it off, and Gower reckoned that with her being so filthy rich he was on to a good thing. Only she rumbled him, and gave him the old heave-ho. From all accounts, she had a really vicious tongue in her head. But she went too far for once, and Gower paid her back by running her down with his car.”

“And Prescott? How do you explain Gower murdering him?”

“Prescott somehow found out about the first killing, and Gower had to silence him.”

“That doesn’t make sense. Prescott’s murder, like Mrs. Latimer’s, was carefully premeditated. So why, if Gower did it, should he have been so careless as to leave his fingerprints all over the office?”

Boulter scowled. “Perhaps he didn’t think of dabs if he was setting it up as a suicide.”

“Explain this, then. Having left fingerprints all over the office, why did he suddenly become careful? None of his prints were found on or near the typewriter, remember, and rubber gloves were used to type the fake suicide note.”

Tim scratched his cheek with one finger. “Yeah, that is a puzzler.”

Gotcha!

But Kate’s sense of triumph was only a small blip on the downward slope of her depression. By evening it was clear that she had the media on her tail to add to her problems. Press, radio, and television. Two killings in a small town was hot news. Even hotter news was the fact that the senior investigating officer was female. DHQ was breathing down her neck for something to feed to the vultures. Kate felt, curse it, that this was a whole lot worse than just a personal failure. It was as if she were failing the entire movement for women’s advancement.