Murder in the Cotswolds (2 page)

“Not live-in staff. There’s an estate manager who has his own place nearby, but he can’t be found. The only people contacted so far are the senior groom and his wife. She works as a daily help at the Grange. They both say they’ve no idea where Mr. Latimer might be staying in London.”

“Well, we’ve got to find him. And fast.”

Kate used the car radio to contact the Information Room at Marlingford. “About this Chipping Bassett Fail to Stop fatal RTA. The husband is said to be in London on business, but we can’t establish where he can be contacted. See if you can raise one of his employees at Precision Plastics who might know. The keyholder, perhaps. And another thing ... I want whoever breaks the news to Mr. Latimer to take careful note of his reactions. There’s his car, too—that must be looked at. We may need to have it held for forensic examination.” She clipped back the handset. “Why are you looking so amazed, Sergeant?”

“How did you know that Mr. Latimer has a factory in Marlingford?”

Score yourself a point, Kate.
“We all have our sources, don’t we?” she said lightly.

Unimpeded by traffic, they slid quickly through the wide main street of the small town. On either side stood an unbroken line of shops and houses, no two alike, but all built of the tawny-grey limestone of the Cotswolds, glowing golden now in the early-morning sunlight. Reaching the outskirts, they took a left turn into a country lane that plunged through new-leafing beech trees as it snaked down into a lush green valley. Another left turn into an even narrower lane brought them within sight of Hambledon Grange, which Kate remembered. Seen across a stretch of parkland studded with graceful trees, it looked magnificent, a happy hotchpotch of architectural styles that spanned the centuries.

Round the next bend, a police patrol car was parked on the grass verge. Sergeant Boulter pulled in behind it. Twenty yards along the lane, two uniformed PCs stood guard over a dark huddle on the roadway. One of them came hurrying up as Kate and the sergeant got out of the car.

“PC Farrow, ma’am,” Boulter introduced. “Jack, this is Detective Chief Inspector Maddox.”

He greeted her gravely, touching his cap. A copper of the old breed. What was a woman doing at an incident like this? All wrong.

“Nasty business, Chief Inspector.”

“Hit-and-runs always are, Constable.”

Hang on to yourself, Kate.
It was forever the same, this sense of swelling panic, which had never grown any easier to cope with even as she’d risen in rank. Each and every hit-and-run incident she’d had to attend came as a brutal reminder of that summer afternoon fourteen years ago when a recklessly driven car had mounted a pavement and shattered Kate’s life, robbing her of the husband she loved dearly and their three-year-old daughter. That the car’s occupants had been three men escaping from a bank hold-up had added bitter anger to her grief. The bitterness remained; hit-and-run was a disgusting crime in any circumstances.

Kate took deep, calming breaths as she walked towards the body. Accompanying her, PC Farrow raised an arm as if to shield her from the gruesome sight.

“It’s a horrible mess, ma’am.”

His intentions were good; but her male colleagues on the division would have to learn that Chief Inspector Maddox was ready to face up to whatever came her way.

“It won’t be the first horrible mess I’ve seen,” she said crisply. “Nor will it be the last.”

Mess was an understatement. Kate felt the inevitable upsurge of nausea. And compassion. And a fury that almost choked her. The body was hardly recognisable as human, just a mangled heap of flesh and bone lying in a pool of congealed blood. Poignantly, the body of a golden cocker spaniel lay with its muzzle resting on the woman’s grotesquely twisted arm. As if, before dying, it had been trying to lick the hand of its mistress.

“Jesus bloody Christ!” muttered Sergeant Boulter, then shot Kate a sideways glance. “Oh ... sorry, ma’am.”

“Is the doctor on his way?” She needed all her self-control to keep her voice steady.

“He should be here any minute, ma’am,” PC Farrow told her.

Kate nodded. “A cowman reported this, I gather?”

“Terry Haynes, on his way to Reedbank Farm for the early milking,” said Farrow.

She glanced around. “Where is he now?”

“We let him go, ma’am. The cows couldn’t be left waiting, you see. He’ll be there now, or at his cottage later. Hope I did right?”

“Yes, of course. What time was the message received?”

The other constable stepped up importantly. “PC Robbins, ma’am. The message from the Information Room was received at five forty-seven. PC Farrow and I arrived on the scene at five fifty-six,” He was as precise in appearance as in manner. A lanky, sharp-featured young man, eager to impress. He might never be liked a lot, but he’d go far.

Kate considered. “It’s clear she’s been dead for some hours. I noticed that the glass of her watch is broken and it’s stopped at one minute past ten. But can she have lain here all night without being found sooner?”

“Could easily be,” said Boulter. “Some of these little by-lanes around here hardly see a vehicle from one week to the next.”

Kate turned to Farrow. “I’m told you’re not happy about this being an accident. Why’s that?”

“If you’ll step this way, Chief Inspector, I’ll show you.”

In careful single file, they walked along the lane. They were all treading warily, knowing that Scenes of Crime wouldn’t thank them for trampling the evidence. At the spot where the constable halted, the spongy grass verge was churned up into mud. Kate saw his point immediately. From the tyre tracks it was possible to reconstruct the sequence of events. A car had driven off the roadway here, and waited; then suddenly accelerated fiercely, its driving wheels spinning for a grip and cutting deep grooves. Half-dried tracks of mud from the tyres were visible on the tarmac. About to turn away, Kate paused and took a second look.

“These tread patterns don’t match. See?”

“You’re right, ma’am.” Boulter looked impressed. “That’ll be a big help in tracing the car involved.”

“Presumably,” Kate said thoughtfully, “it was someone who expected Mrs. Latimer to be on the spot just then—always assuming that she was the intended victim. The sooner we can check on the husband’s movements, the better.”

“They say Mr. Latimer went to London yesterday morning and won’t be back till this afternoon,” said Farrow.

“They? The groom and his wife, you mean?”

“That’s right, ma’am. Ted and Linda West. When I couldn’t get an answer at the Grange just now, nor at the estate manager’s house, I went to their cottage. I had to get Linda out of bed, and she sent me round to the stable yard to find her husband. He was giving the horses their first feed.”

“I’ll talk to them myself. I might be able to jog their memory. You come with me, Constable. Sergeant, I’d like you to go and question the cowman who found the body.”

A car was approaching along the lane, and Boulter said, “This’ll be the doc, ma’am.”

“Good morning, Doctor,” she greeted the man who climbed out of the immaculate Rover. “We haven’t met before. I’m DCI Maddox.”

He pretended not to notice her outstretched hand, and reached back into the car for his bag. Then he straightened slowly, all five foot four of him. Like so many short men, he seemed to imagine that an air of self-importance would compensate for a lack of stature.

“Well well, what have we here? A member of the fair sex.”

Kate stood tall to make her extra four inches appear even more while she unhurriedly looked him up and down. “I didn’t catch the name, Doctor.”

Sergeant Boulter masked a grin with his hand. “Er ... this is Dr. Meddowes, Chief Inspector.”

Bag in hand, the police surgeon walked to the body and crouched over it. Watching him, Kate had to approve of the way he avoided making any disturbance that wasn’t strictly necessary. He knew his job—but that didn’t excuse him for being bloody rude. When he rose to his feet again, she said, “Well, Dr. Meddowes? Do you have any comments that might be useful to me?”

“The woman’s dead, if that needs saying. In my opinion she’d have been killed instantly. Not so the dog, I fear.”

“That’s what I’d imagined. Would you have any views about the time of death?”

“I’d have thought that was obvious.”

“Obvious?”

“Observe that her wristwatch stopped at just after ten o’clock. Don’t tell me your trained police eye failed to detect that clue.”

Why don’t you pick up the little man and shake him, Kate?

“To the trained police eye,” she said sweetly, “nothing is ever taken as obvious. It would assist me, though, if you could confirm that ten o’clock last night as an estimated time of death would not be inconsistent with the medical evidence.”

“Not inconsistent, no, but that means very little.”

“Thank you, Doctor. That’s all I can ask of you. Most helpful.”

He grunted acknowledgement and stalked off to his Rover. Kate walked with PC Farrow to the patrol car. It was only a few moments before they turned in at the gates of Hambledon Grange. A hundred yards up the drive a track led off to the stable yard, which was set well apart from the house. Their arrival was watched by half a dozen interested horses, their heads protruding above the half doors of the loose boxes.

Farrow stopped the car outside a small stone cottage that was a short distance from the stable block. He and Kate got out and Farrow rapped loudly on the door. The man who opened up to them looked unkempt, unshaven, his dark hair uncombed. He wore dirty jeans and a checked woollen shirt.

“Can’t you let a man have a cuppa tea in peace?” he grumbled. “What is it now?”

“This is Detective Chief Inspector Maddox,” said Farrow. “She wants a word with you and your wife, Mr. West.”

He shot Kate a startled glance. “Chief Inspector?
Her?”

“That’s right, Mr. West.” She displayed her warrant card.

He still addressed Jack Farrow, saying sourly, “It’s no good you bringing top brass round. We don’t know anything.”

Kate laced her voice with listen-to-me authority. “A fatal accident is a very serious matter, Mr. West. I need to talk to you and your wife.”

“Suppose you’d better come in, then.” Grudgingly, he stood aside and shouted back over his shoulder, “It’s the coppers again, Linda.”

In the kitchen-cum-living-room at the back, his wife was tying the sash of a frilly pink negligee. Her lustrous dark hair appeared bed-rumpled, and her curvaceous figure radiated a kind of lazy, animal sensuality. Just at the moment, though, she looked scared. To her, “police” would be an alternative word for “trouble.” On the table stood a large brown teapot, with two mugs, a bottle of milk, and a bag of sugar.

“I’m sorry to bother you this early, Mrs. West,” Kate began pleasantly, “but it’s very important that we should get in touch with Mr. Latimer immediately. You told the constable that he’s in London and won’t be back until this afternoon.”

“So he is. Went there yesterday morning.”

“Has neither of you any idea where we can contact him?”

The man shrugged a no. The woman said sulkily, “Why should we? He doesn’t tell us his business.”

“But you might have heard something mentioned—the name of a hotel, perhaps. While you were working at the house, I mean.”

“Well, she didn’t,” said her husband. If either of them cared a tuppenny damn about their employer’s death, they weren’t letting it show.

Kate tried another angle. “Does Mr. Latimer often go to London?”

“You could say that. ‘Bout once a fortnight, eh, Ted?”

“Aye. Every other Tuesday.”

“Why’re you asking about him?” Linda West demanded.

“Mr. Latimer has to be contacted and told of his wife’s death.” Kate set her shoulder bag down on the table to indicate that she wasn’t through with them yet. “Do you know what Mrs. Latimer would have been doing in Reedbank Farm Lane last night? Going to visit someone, or on her way back? Or just taking the dog for a walk?”

“Aye, that. Always did take Prince out, every blinking evening.” With a touch of venom in his voice, Ted West went on, “You could’ve set the clock by her. Nine-thirty on the dot she’d come over to the stables to check I was doing my last round. If I was even two minutes late she’d fly off the handle. Then away she’d go for her walk.”

“Did you see her last night?”

“Course I did. I got to be there, haven’t I?”

“Did Mrs. Latimer say anything to you? Anything out of the ordinary?”

He shook his head. “Only her usual moans. A real nit-picker, that one.”

“It doesn’t sound as if you liked her very much.”

West lifted his shoulders. “I wasn’t paid to like her, was I?”

“Tell me, did Mrs. Latimer go in different directions on her evening walks with the dog? Or did she tend to keep to the same route?”

“Well, I suppose she did go the same way, mostly. Up around the top paddock, then along the footpath through the birch copse.”

“And across Reedbank Farm Lane by the stile near that big old oak tree?” put in Jack Farrow.

“‘Bout there, aye.”

Kate had noted the stile a few yards along the lane from where the body had been found, with a five-barred gate directly opposite it. Mrs. Latimer had been a woman of fixed habits taking a habitual route. A car, waiting in the dusk, wouldn’t have had long to wait.

“Would Mr. Latimer have driven to London? Or taken the train?”

“Him, he always drives everywhere. He likes driving. Who wouldn’t, with a flash car like he’s got?”

“I seem to recall seeing Mr. Latimer in a dark blue Jaguar,” offered PC Farrow.

West nodded. “He gets himself a brand-new Jag every blinking year.” There was envious admiration in his voice.

“What other vehicles are kept on the estate?” Kate enquired.

“Well, there’s Mrs. Latimer’s Renault. And the Metro they keep as a runabout. Then there’s a Range Rover and a couple of Landrovers, and tractors. And a horsebox for the stables.”

“Do you own a car yourself?”

He glared at her furiously. “You can’t pin nothing on me. Anyway, my old crate’s laid up with a burnt-out clutch.”