Rules of Murder (8 page)

“He’d been at Farlinford almost three years,” Mason said. “I’d met him, but not too much more than that. Not much more than to say good morning and to ask how the work was coming. Research and development was always Lincoln’s father’s specialty, when he was still with us. But he and Rushford and I didn’t usually work with the men directly.”

“This Mr. Rushford, sir, he is your partner as well, I take it?”

Mason nodded. “He’s the head of our financial department. He sees to our investments and mortgages and that.”

The chief inspector jotted something in his notebook. “And what is your job, may I ask?”

“I suppose you’d say I’m rather over everything at Farlinford. I make sure we have money to operate our plants and refineries and ship our products to our distributors with enough to spare for research and some outside investments that, in turn, bring more money into the company so we’re able to start the process all over again.”

“What about young Mr. Lincoln?” Birdsong asked. “What was his position at Farlinford?”

Drew opened his mouth and then shut it again at the chastening look on his stepfather’s face.

“He didn’t really have a formal position in the company,” Mason told the inspector. “I mean, he had an office, the one his father always had, and he was, of course, a director, taking his father’s place, but he seemed fairly content to collect his share of the profits in the company and leave it at that. He really wasn’t in the office all that much, not on a regular basis.”

“Was he acquainted with Mr. McCutcheon?”

“I suppose it was quite possible that they had met,” Mason said. “Not that I know of, though.”

“Lincoln never did much at Farlinford besides eye the secretarial pool,” Drew put in.

Birdsong consulted his notes once more. “There was another death at your company, wasn’t there, Mr. Parker?”

“We’ve had some accidents now and again, as does any industrial concern, but the last one was well over five years ago. A pump exploded and—”

“I mean a murder, sir. At your offices in Canada.”

“Oh.” Mason nodded, his face grave. “That was a sordid business. A young Chinese girl was found dead in a storage closet.”

Birdsong’s businesslike expression remained unchanged. “Beaten and then strangled to death, I understand.”

Mason looked a bit white around the mouth. “Turned out her uncle worked for the company, sweeping up and such, and was displeased to find a white man had been keeping her as his mistress. Killed her to save face, they suspected.”

“I never heard about that,” Drew said.

“It was well before I came to Farthering to live, fifteen years ago or more now.”

“What happened to the murderer?”

“Sentenced to hang,” Mason said. “And then, because of some uncertainty in the evidence, the sentence was commuted to life in prison.”

Birdsong shuffled through his papers. “He was killed in a prison brawl a year ago.”

“Ah,” Mason said, and then he clasped his hands in his lap and said nothing more.

“What does any of this have to do with what happened last night?” Drew asked the chief inspector. “Do you think there’s a connection between this incident or McCutcheon’s death and Lincoln’s?”

“No,” Birdsong said. “I shouldn’t think there’s any connection, but it’s early days yet. Early days. Now, if you will kindly
start at the beginning, Mr. Farthering. When you came home and found Mr. Lincoln in your room . . .”

The chief inspector questioned Drew and Mason for some while longer, mostly repeating the same questions but slightly rephrased, noting, Drew was certain, any variations, any hesitations in the answers. Before Drew was absolutely determined to strangle the man, it was over.

“I’d like to see this gardener of yours,” Birdsong said. “This Peterson.”

Mason rang the bell. A moment later, there was a knock at the study door.

“Come in, Dennison.”

Dennison complied. “Something you wished, sir?”

“Send Peterson to me.”

“In here, sir?”

“Yes, please. At once.”

Raising his eyebrow a disapproving quarter of an inch, Dennison bowed. “Very good, sir.”

Before long, Peterson shuffled to the study door, peering inside like a wary old badger at the mouth of a trap. Eventually he bared his head, revealing lank, greasy curls shot with gray, and then took two steps inside.

“Afternoon, Mr. Parker. Mr. Drew.”

“Good afternoon, Peterson,” Mason said. “Chief Inspector Birdsong would like to ask you a few questions about last night.”

Peterson nodded his head, worrying his worn cap in his hands.

“Come on in, Mr. Peterson,” Drew urged. “It’s all right.”

The gardener nodded once more and, after taking a moment to buff the toes of his battered boots against the back of his trouser legs, ventured four steps closer.

“Your name, please,” Birdsong began.

Peterson pursed his lips. “Well, didn’t he just call me by it?”

“For the record, if you please.”

“Peterson. Arwel Peterson.”

“And your profession?”

Peterson displayed his grimy hands, dark with the sun and his work in the earth. “I didn’t get these of keepin’ the accounts, now, did I?”

Mason cleared his throat. “If you please, Peterson.”

“No disrespect, sir,” Peterson muttered, still worrying his cap. “I’m head gardener here at Farthering, Inspector. I never had me any truck with the p’lice. You’ll pardon me if it sets me a bit on edge.”

Birdsong peered at him. “You have anything that ought to be worrying you?”

“No. What do you mean?”

“Something you’d rather not speak with us about?” Birdsong looked into his ever-present notebook. “No?”

Peterson shook his head and swiped a hand across his stubbly upper lip.

“Tell me what you did last Friday.”

“The whole day?” Peterson asked.

“The whole day.”

The gardener scratched the side of his head with one grimy fingernail. “I gets up round five, as I reckon it, and gets dressed. My old woman, she give me beans on toast fer breakfast and a bit of black pudding and tea. Then I goes down to the shed fer my spade and such.”

“Is that the shed where you kept the shotgun?”

“It is.”

“Go on.”

“About then I sets Mack and Bobby, my men, you see, I sets them on to weedin’ and that whilst I tends to the roses. Mrs. Parker, God rest her, sir, Mrs. Parker was that fond of her roses,
and I liked to keep ’em nice fer her. So I were mixing some top-class muckings from the stables into the soil round them, just to perk ’em up like. Took me nigh unto noon to do ’em all.”

“All right,” Birdsong said. “And did you see anything during that time?”

“I seen some of them has aphids.”

“I mean anything unusual,” Birdsong pressed.

“That
is
unusual for my roses.”

Drew bit his lip.

“Anything else?” the chief inspector asked.

“There’s moles or somethin’ digging round in the bed nearest the forest.”

Birdsong’s voice was most terribly patient. “Anything
not
to do with your roses.”

Peterson shook his head.

“And after you finished with the roses?”

“I stopped round home to have my dinner. My old woman, she give me—”

“And after you ate?”

Peterson sniffed, his grubby face the picture of disdainful offense. “Well, I touched up the paint on a few of the tables in the greenhouse, and then I went round to do the fireworks, didn’t I?”

“Touched up the paint?”

“I painted the whole lot last week, but there’s always some bits needing a touch here and there.”

“All right,” Birdsong said. “Was anyone with you when you set up the fireworks?”

“I had Mack helping me put up the little stand we use to fire ’em from. Mostly it were me.”

“Mr. Peterson,” Drew asked, “when you arrange the different ones, do you have any particular order you do them in?”

“Order, sir?”

“I mean certain types together or anything like that?”

“Not really an order as I would say, Mr. Drew. I know your mum, God rest her, sir, she didn’t like them the same color together, if you know what I’m saying. She said it weren’t artistic-like.”

“So you arranged them ahead of time.”

“That’s right, sir. I laid them out the way they should be. Then, when the time came to fire ’em off, I didn’t have to try seeing which were which there in the dark.”

“Capital,” Drew said, and the little gardener gave Birdsong a smug little nod.

“Did anyone tamper with them?” the inspector asked.

“Tamper with them?” Peterson scratched behind one ear. “I can’t say as they was tampered with, though I suppose I got some out of their proper order. Right there at the last were three or four reds together, bold as brass, I may say, and me trying to be so careful for Mrs. Parker.”

Drew shook his head, commiserating. “And when you had them in order, what did you do with them?”

“Like I always do. I put ’em in a trunk and put it up by the side of the house. That way they’d be ready for the party and still be out of the weather, if we was to have any.”

“Did you stay there with the trunk afterward?” Birdsong asked.

“Stay with it? Well, it weren’t going to wander off, were it? Stay with it? I can see you’re gulling me now, sir.”

“No, that’s all right, Mr. Peterson,” Drew soothed. “What did you do after you put them in the trunk?”

“I goes back down to see how Bobby and Mack are getting along with the weeding and such. Then I brought round some peonies from the greenhouse to put in that bed under the library
window. The ones that were there were looking a mite peaked, so I thought—”

“Yes, that’s all very well,” the inspector said. “So you did your gardening until . . . ?”

“About teatime it was. My old woman . . .” Peterson looked at Birdsong. “Then after I’d had tea, I went to ask Mrs. Parker, poor lady, when she wanted the fireworks let off. She told me about an hour after they’d had their supper. Now, being an early riser as I am, I knowed straightaway I’d be worth nothing the next day if I didn’t have some rest beforehand, so that’s exactly what I done.”

“And you slept till when?” Birdsong asked.

“Near ten it were. I come up to the house, let off the fireworks, and hurries on back to my bed. I didn’t know nothin’ of what happened up to the house till they rousted me out to come watch over the greenhouse so no one made any mischief with the evidence.”

“You said you got some of your tools from the shed that morning, is that right?” Mason asked.

“Yes, sir.”

“Did you have the shotgun locked up then?”

Peterson shook his head. “I can’t say as I did, sir. But I can’t for certain say as I didn’t.”

“Did you see anyone around the shed who oughtn’t to have been there?” the chief inspector asked. “Anyone at all?”

“No, sir.”

Again, Birdsong scanned his notes. “I see you told Constable Applegate that you kept the gun locked in the shed. Was that in a cupboard of some kind? Or was it the shed that was kept locked?”

“No, sir, I didn’t as a rule lock the shed. Bobby and Mack would need to get tools and such from it in the usual doin’ of
their work. But I were always careful with the gun. I didn’t want none of the village children as might be poking about to light on it and think it a toy.”

“So you kept it locked in what?”

“An old crack-bottom steamer trunk.” Peterson frowned and stroked his unshaven chin in thought. “As I remember, it were once used by Mr. Elliot Farthering, Mr. Drew’s grandfather, when he traveled across to Canady. The split in the bottom don’t hurt it none. It’s as safe as a bank vault, that trunk.”

The chief inspector nodded. “And you keep the key to it?”

“I do, sir. I believe Mr. Dennison has one as well, along of all the household keys. And Mr. Parker.”

“Anyone else?”

“Not as I know, sir. No one.”

“And you’re certain it was locked?” Mason asked.

“Oh yes, sir, Mr. Parker. I’m not a man to be reckless with firearms. You ask anyone, sir.”

“I know he fairly tanned my hide when I got hold of one when I was a boy,” Drew said, smiling.

“And well I should, sir, beggin’ your pardon,” the gardener replied, “and your father, God rest him, said as much at the time.”

“Back to the matter at hand,” Birdsong said. “Did you know the murdered man, Peterson?”

“Know him, sir?” Peterson shook his shaggy head. “Knew of him, I s’pose. His father and Mr. Drew’s father being partners and all, young Mr. Lincoln were about the place from time to time over the past many years. But he weren’t much the sort to pass time o’ day with them that was beneath him as it were.”

“Do you remember seeing him about when you were doing the fireworks? Or before that?”

“No, sir. I can’t say as I seen him at all during the weekend.”

Birdsong made a few notes. “And what about Mrs. Parker? When did you last see her?”

“The last time was when I asked about when she wanted the fireworks, sir. Directly after tea as I remember.”

“All right then,” Birdsong said, looking rather more peeved than when he had begun the interview. “Can you think of anything more that might be of use to us in this matter? Anything at all?”

“No, sir. That day were just the same as any other to me. Apart from the unfortunate happenings, begging your pardon, Mr. Parker. Mr. Drew.”

“What about your men?” the inspector pressed. “Jackson and Haywood, are those their names?”

Peterson nodded. “That’s them, and if they seen anything, they said nothing of it to me.”

“Very well,” Birdsong said. “If you remember anything more, you get word to me. Understand?”

“I’ll do that, sir. Sure certain, I will.”

“Anything else, Mr. Farthering?” the chief inspector asked once Peterson was dismissed. “Anything you think might help us solve the murder?”

Drew sighed. “I just don’t know, Chief Inspector. I can hardly believe it’s happened. I wouldn’t have believed it, but there it is.”

“All right then.” Birdsong stood, and Drew and Mason followed suit.

“I’m sorry we couldn’t be of more help,” Mason said, shaking the other man’s hand.

“You never know, Mr. Parker. Sometimes, when they’ve had a bit to think, people start remembering things.” The chief inspector gave Drew and Mason each one of his cards. “Now, if either of you should think of something, you ring me up. Even if you’re not sure that it means anything, you ring me up. And,
Detective Farthering”—he shook his index finger at Drew—“you and that young Dennison scamp mind you don’t interfere with police business. Do all the clever thinking you want, and when you get an idea, I’ll be happy to hear it. But you let the police do the investigating. Do I make myself clear?”