Who Saw Him Die? (18 page)

‘I suppose he may not be prepared to talk to us at all,' said Hilary.

‘Or he may insist on doing so only in the presence of his solicitor.' Quantrill looked at his watch. ‘That could keep us hanging about for hours, especially as it's Sunday. What time's the last train back to Breckham Market, Hilary?'

‘Eight-thirty. But I'd hate to travel on it – it's a stopping train, and doesn't get in until just before eleven.'

‘Hmm.' Quantrill frowned, wondering what Molly would say if he didn't turn up until that time of night, having left the house at seven this morning. Perhaps he'd better ring as soon as they reached Liverpool Street to let her know where he was.

And then a happier thought occurred to him. He looked boldly at Hilary. ‘We may end up having to stay in London overnight,' he said, with meaning.

‘Really?' There was no doubt that she sounded pleased. An unexpectedly wholehearted smile lit her face, and Quantrill's hopes soared.

‘Oh, that
would
be nice,' she said. ‘I could go and stay with my friend Elizabeth, in Putney.'

They went from Liverpool Street Station to Highgate by taxi. Hilary, sitting gracefully composed in her corner, took a lively interest in their journey through Islington and Holloway. Quantrill, completely out of his element, ignored the wet grey streets and stared with gloomy fascination at the meter as it clocked up its astronomical fare. The Super would never wear this …

Austin Napier QC lived in a house in a tall, late eighteenth-century terrace built of yellow brick that had weathered to a dignified dark grey. The uniformly cream-painted sash windows were handsomely proportioned, the doors surmounted by semi-circular fanlights with delicately varied tracery. Each door had a brass knocker, and having looked in vain for a bell Quantrill rapped the dolphin knocker on Napier's black door.

They waited, in a drizzle of rain. The street was narrow and lined with parked cars, and the combination of this with low cloud and November's early dusk made him feel hemmed in. He missed the open skies of Suffolk, and when Hilary tried to draw his attention to the finer points of the architecture he said – with truth, though he'd never bothered to take more than passing notice of them – that there were terraces just as good in Saintsbury.

He knocked again. As he did so, a taxi drew up. The man who got out, carrying a small suitcase, was unmistakably the one in the newspaper photographs.

Austin Napier paid off his taxi and advanced, frowning, on the detectives. He was high-browed, bespectacled, distinguished-looking, with silvery wings of hair brushed back above his ears and deep lines running from nose to mouth, pulling down the corners of his lips.

‘Yes?' he said haughtily.

Quantrill introduced himself and his sergeant. ‘We're making enquiries concerning your former wife's husband,' he added.

‘I have no “former” wife.' The barrister's nostrils flared to emphasise the inverted commas. ‘Marriage is indissoluble.'

‘The lady is known to us as Felicity Goodrum,' said Hilary diplomatically. ‘May we come in and talk to you?'

The barrister unlocked his front door and walked through, leaving them to follow. ‘I can give you five minutes,' he said, setting down his suitcase in the narrow hall. ‘You were fortunate to find me. I spent the weekend with my sister in Hampshire, and came back early only because I have a heavy day in court tomorrow.'

He led them into the dining room, which looked out on to the street. It was a fashionably dark room, with bottle-green velvet curtains, beef-red walls and a mahogany table. The table was laid at one end with silver for one person, but there were two additional table mats, one on either side of the place setting, as though for temporarily absent members of the family.

Austin Napier did not switch on the lights, nor ask his visitors to sit down, nor take off his dark, slim-fitting city overcoat, though he did undo the buttons. ‘You have something to tell me that concerns my wife?' he said in his coldly elegant voice.

‘Yes.' Quantrill pushed his hands into the pockets of his old mackintosh, reflecting that he looked no more out of place in London than Austin Napier must have done in Hampshire. ‘It does concern Mrs Goodrum – but more particularly her husband, Jack. He's dead.'

The barrister's face showed no trace of emotion; there was no surprise in his voice, but there was, unmistakably, a note of satisfaction. ‘Is he?' he said. ‘Is he indeed …?'

‘Murdered,' said Quantrill. ‘At his home in Breckham Market, by a 12-bore shotgun fired from a distance of not more than eight yards.'

Austin Napier walked to the Adam fireplace and took up a barrister's courtroom stance with his hands slipped beneath his overcoat, as though it were a gown, and held behind his back. ‘I'm obliged to you for bringing me the news, Chief Inspector. I'm very glad to hear that my wife no longer has an extra-marital attachment. When did the murder take place?'

‘On Saturday. Yesterday.'

‘Ah. And do you know the identity of the murderer?'

‘Not yet. But we're going through the usual process of elimination, and it would help if you will give us the address of your sister in Hampshire, please.'

Napier shrugged, and dictated the address to Sergeant Lloyd. ‘I have no objection to being eliminated from your enquiries, of course. I fail to see, though, why you should consider it necessary.'

‘You made it necessary yourself, Mr Napier, by expressing your views on marriage,' said Quantrill sternly. ‘I don't mean just now, on the doorstep, but in open court at the time of your divorce. You chose to make your views public, and they were reported in the national newspapers. We can't overlook the fact that you still consider yourself married to the lady who is now Mrs Goodrum – and that makes you a natural opponent of her second husband.'

One hand emerged from behind the barrister's back and took hold of the lapel of the overcoat that was substituting for a gown. ‘Do I understand that you've been grubbing about in the files of the gutter press?'

‘Just making routine enquiries, sir. Tell me, have you ever been to Breckham Market?'

‘I believe I've visited the town, briefly.'

‘As recently as ten days ago?'

‘On Wednesday afternoon, November 12th?' added Sergeant Lloyd.

Austin Napier looked from one detective to another. His pale eyes, behind his spectacle lenses, conveyed no expression, but the lines on either side of his mouth deepened in scorn. ‘More of your routine enquiries …? The twelfth – yes, I believe that was the date of my visit. I happened to be appearing at Ipswich Crown Court that week. I was prosecuting in a case of attempted murder, and the defendant chose to change his plea to guilty. As I was unexpectedly free on the Wednesday, I went to Saxted to see my son. I wanted to take him out to lunch from his school, and to buy him a motor scooter. Then, in the afternoon, I decided to go on to Breckham Market.'

‘Why?' said Quantrill bluntly.

‘Because my wife had recently moved to the town, and I wanted to see where she lived.'

‘And did you see her?'

‘No. That was not the object of my visit. I wanted to know what her circumstances were – to satisfy myself that she was living somewhere near the standard to which I had accustomed her.'

‘Did you see Jack Goodrum?'

‘No. That was not the object of my visit either. I had no interest in the man. I simply found the house, formed my opnion of it, and returned to Ipswich.'

‘If you had no interest in Jack Goodrum, Mr Napier,' said Sergeant Lloyd, ‘why did you ask the newsagent where he lived?'

He looked at her with barely concealed disdain. ‘I should have thought that was obvious, Sergeant. What I really wanted to know was where
my wife
lived. But I had to ask for the address of the man she co-habited with, because the newsagent might not know her as Mrs Austin Napier.'

‘Quite probably not,' agreed Hilary.

‘Then your question is answered.' He turned to Quantrill. ‘I've chosen to give you a full explanation of my movements because I have nothing to hide. But I will add, in the hope of persuading you to waste no more of my time as well as your own, that quite apart from my being in Hampshire yesterday, I have never in my life handled a shotgun.'

‘Thank you for the information,' said Quantrill. ‘But we didn't come here with the idea that you were in Breckham Market last night, or that you yourself shot Jack Goodrum.'

‘No?'

‘No – we're working on the possibility that the actual gunman was merely the murderer's accomplice, hired for the job.' He gestured Hilary towards the door. ‘Thank you for giving us your time, Mr Napier. We may be in touch with you again.'

The barrister hurried after them, brushing past Hilary to reach the front door first. Holding it shut, he turned to them with his mouth twisted upwards into a semblance of a smile. His pale eyes glistened in the gloom.

‘Then let me save you a pointless journey, Chief Inspector, by making myself absolutely clear. I am
not
of a homicidal nature.'

‘I'm glad to hear it.'

‘But if I were,' the barrister went on, ignoring the interruption, ‘it would not have been Goodrum who had to die. Oh no – the man's irrelevant. It would have been my wife who had to take the consequences of breaking her marriage vow. And I wouldn't have done it by proxy. No, no – if I'd had to kill her, it would have been with my own hands.'

The two detectives went back to Liverpool Street Station by bus, and were still in plenty of time to catch the four-thirty to Breckham Market. There was a buffet car on the train, but not even Quantrill could fancy eating a sandwich.

‘Austin Napier's a nutter!' he declared, as they drank cardboard-tasting tea.

‘We knew that before we came,' said Hilary. ‘It was
why
we came, remember?'

‘Can we believe him, d'you think?' Quantrill asked in a respectful tone. Knowing that his sergeant was a qualified nurse, he regarded her as his psychiatric expert. She had often pointed out, at first patiently and then crossly, that she wasn't a doctor, still less a psychiatrist; but he knew she'd read textbooks, and that certainly made her more knowledgeable than he was. ‘I mean, do you think that if Napier had been a killer he'd have gone for his ex-wife rather than her new husband?'

‘I wouldn't take his word that he has no homicidal tendencies, for a start,' said Hilary. ‘From what we've read about their marriage Felicity would seem to be his natural victim – but that doesn't have to mean he'd
kill
her. A man like Austin Napier might prefer a much more subtle way of punishing her. Let's suppose that when he went to Breckham Market ten days ago, he saw the Goodrums together and realised how happy they were. If he
is
homicidal, it might have given him the idea of killing Jack simply as a means of inflicting prolonged suffering on Felicity.'

‘Hmm – I can see that Austin Napier would go for something clever,' agreed Quantrill. ‘He told us that Goodrum was irrelevant, so he might well have thought nothing of wiping the man out. Or of having him wiped out. I've no doubt Napier's alibi will stand up, so we can't pursue this one until we find the feller who fired the gun. Meanwhile, it's not a matter of wondering whether anyone else was hostile to Lucky Jack, but of deciding what order to put 'em in. Who's your choice, after Napier?'

Hilary took out her notebook, and looked back at the interview with Felicity Goodrum. ‘Taking family first, it could be significant that Jack's ex-wife didn't want to be divorced.'

‘That's true,' said Quantrill. ‘It could be a case of jealousy on her part. The first Mrs Goodrum would know that Jack was a man who kept shotguns in his house, and sending someone to steal a gun from him and later shoot him with it might have given her some extra satisfaction. We'd better go and see her first thing tomorrow. If that's a non-runner – if it wasn't a domestic murder – then we'll have to start making lists of Goodrum's other enemies.'

‘Business associates who'd fallen out with him, for whatever reason? And employees who'd been sacked?' The sergeant made a note, and then pulled a wry face. ‘Jack Goodrum had been in business for over twenty years. And it was a big business, apparently, employing up to a hundred people at any one time. How far back do we go?'

‘Oh, come on, Hilary!' Quantrill chided her gently, liking her all the more for her occasional lapses from efficiency. ‘You know the answer to that as well as I do.'

‘Yes, all right, stupid question. We go back as far as we have to. But look – I know I'm only trying to avoid making these horrendously long lists, but Jack Goodrum sold his business something like a couple of years ago. Don't you think that anyone who had a score to settle with him would have done so before now?'

‘Not if Goodrum couldn't be found. And if he had reason to think anyone was after him, he'd have kept his head well down.'

‘Then why should the murder have happened now? Are you suggesting that Jack would have relaxed his guard, after he was married again? Because I can't believe that. Remember how protective he was towards Felicity –?'

Quantrill scratched his jaw in thought. ‘Either the marriage itself or the move to Breckham Market could have been the deciding factor,' he suggested. ‘And I tell you what, Hilary – if Goodrum
was
trying to keep his head down, he spoiled his own game by running over Clanger Bell and getting his name and address in the newspapers.'

‘I'd almost forgotten Clanger,' said Hilary. ‘His sister's someone who'll have to go on the list – she might have felt so aggrieved over our failure to pin murder on Jack Goodrum that she decided to take the law into her own hands.'