J. Gregson - Die Happy

Lambert smiled. ‘Clive Bond. Not a man with a prepossessing appearance, but I’d say a highly competent operator in a difficult trade. Not one I’d ever contemplate myself. I couldn’t envisage operating without the police machine supporting me at every turn. And Bond knew when to come to us with information, which not everyone in his trade does. Perhaps he feels a certain loyalty to Preston, who must have paid him a lot of money over the last year or two.’

‘I believe Bond had new material for us on Preston’s wife.’

‘Indeed he did, Chris. With times, places and personnel efficiently detailed. Edwina Preston has a lover, Hugh Whitfield, whom she met on the night of Preston’s death. We already knew that. What we didn’t know and what Bond was able to tell us was that neither she nor Whitfield took dinner in the hotel, as we’d previously thought. Edwina Preston drove out of the hotel at ten past eight and returned at ten twenty-seven. She turned towards home but Bond lost her quite quickly. She says she parked for a long time near Sudeley Castle and considered her future — principally how she was going to divest herself of her husband so that she could marry Whitfield when his mortally ill wife dies in the near future.’

Rushton made a note of the times to add to his computer file on the widow. ‘That leaves her ample time to have driven to her home, dispatched Preston, and returned to the hotel.’

‘Yes. She looked duly shaken when we pointed that out. She agreed that his death was very convenient for her.’

‘Would she have had access to a pistol such as the one that killed Preston?’

‘That is a problem with most of the candidates for this crime. It’s possible of course that Peter Preston kept a weapon like that in his study. It would accord with his taste for secrecy and intrigue. In which case, Edwina Preston would almost certainly have known about it.’

Hook said, ‘We can’t discount the possibility of a contract killer, can we? Marjorie Dooks or Edwina Preston certainly had the money to employ one.’

Lambert grinned at him. The empathy they had built over the years was such that Bert knew immediately that the chief had divined what was behind this reminder: Hook didn’t want Sam Hilton or Ros Barker to be guilty of this. But Lambert didn’t reject the suggestion. He said, ‘We should bear that in mind, and possibly add Sue Charles to that list as well, though I would query whether any of these ladies had the underworld connections to know how to contact a hitman.’

Bert said stubbornly, ‘Marjorie Dooks would soon discover that information, if she put her mind to it. She’s a capable and resourceful woman.’

‘Fair point. And we’ve now got more details of her work record in the Civil Service. As a senior bureaucrat, one of her responsibilities in her last working years was to direct the people involved in the collection and disposal of illegal arms after the Irish agreements at the beginning of the century. It’s quite possible that she acquired an ex-army pistol at that time without there being any record of it.’

‘And Preston was threatening her in a way she’d never had to endure before — threatening the future life of the man she plans to marry in due course. She’s a proud woman, used to controlling her own destiny. She wouldn’t take kindly to being threatened. And her alibi is suspect. She’s admitted that although they were at home together, she and her husband often spend the evenings apart in a big house. She could easily have left the place for an hour or more without his knowledge, as he took some pleasure in revealing to us. Marjorie says that he’s a philanderer and their marriage is over. And over the last nine months, she’s been conducting an affair with an old flame from her Civil Service days who plans to become an MP. Preston had it documented and was trying to blackmail her. Not for money; he simply wanted to take over the literature festival and direct it along his own lines. I’m sure Marjorie didn’t take kindly to his attempts to pressurize her, any more than she welcomed the threatening letter he’d sent to her a few days before he died.’

Rushton said, ‘Marjorie Dooks certainly seems to be the one with the capacity to plan this and the nerve to carry it out. What about Sue Charles? I suppose most people would think that as a crime author she’s made a study of murder and its methods.’

It was Bert Hook’s turn to smile. ‘She’s sixty-eight and widowed. She makes no secret of the fact that her novels are escapist whodunits rather than sordid crime-face stuff. She hasn’t an alibi for the time of the killing, but as she lives alone you wouldn’t expect one. Apart from her writing, her main interests are her cat and her garden. As a murder suspect, she’s hardly convincing.’

Rushton nodded. ‘Sam Hilton?’ He could hardly conceal his eagerness. The DI was a great man for statistics, and the statistics proved that a man caught out in one crime was likely to be guilty of others, once he had embarked on the primrose path to the everlasting bonfire. Chris couldn’t have said where that phrase came from, but it had surfaced from his subconscious and rather appealed to him. Even DIs who spent most of their days in front of a computer were allowed poetic flashes. Bert Hook might now be an Open University BA, but that didn’t allow him a monopoly of these things.

Lambert nodded soberly. ‘Hilton lied to try to give himself an alibi for that night. Fortunately, the girl he tried to use is highly intelligent but basically honest. She did her best to lie for him, but it soon became obvious that she was doing just that. He now admits he was on his own in his bedsit on the evening of the murder. His old Fiesta could have been the car an independent witness saw outside Preston’s house at the time of his death.’

‘The independent witness is a felon who was carrying out a burglary in a neighbouring house, one Wayne Johnson,’ Hook reminded them sturdily.

‘Nevertheless, a man we consider a reliable witness in this matter,’ said Lambert.

‘But Johnson was preoccupied with his own crime at the time. He was never close to the car and he can’t identify it, beyond the fact that it was small and a dark colour. There are a number of other vehicles owned by suspects which would fit the bill equally well. Sam Hilton is a minor drug dealer and has admitted it. He doesn’t have a history of serious violence.’

‘He does not. But then, we may have to accept the fact that this crime was committed by someone without a previous record of violence. The only suspect who has previous as far as we are aware is our painter, Ros Barker. Not with a firearm, but with a knife. Without a good lawyer, she might well have had a conviction for assault with a dangerous weapon.’

Rushton remembered all the details of the artist which he had fed into his computer file. ‘She was also alone on the night of the murder. Her partner was away visiting her family. Whether that was at Ms Barker’s instigation or not, we don’t know. What we do know is that she had a lot at stake if Preston had chosen to mount a campaign against her and her art. She’s just got her first exhibition at Barnard’s Gallery in Cheltenham. She might even have lost that if Preston had chosen to be really malicious. Both she with her paintings and Hilton with his poems seem to be flavour of the month at the moment, but we all know how transient a reputation in the arts can be. And apart from the material considerations, people can be very sensitive when their creative work is attacked. Young versifiers and artists aren’t as thick-skinned as we simple coppers quickly learn to be.’

John Lambert grinned at Chris Rushton’s mention of thick-skinned coppers. Hook and he had enjoyed some fun in the past from taunting an over-serious Rushton, who was never quite sure when the older men were extracting the urine. Chris was more balanced since the entry into his life of Anne Jackson, the lively primary school teacher who was ten years his junior and had been briefly a suspect in a murder investigation. Lambert said patiently, ‘Does that complete your list of major suspects, Chris?’