Dead on Course (5 page)

‘
In due course. Not now.’ He thought of the scene on the golf course, of the corpse being examined minutely for clues, treated as the thing it had become; of that thing being slid into a plastic bag and loaded without ceremony into the plain van. There was no place for a widow in that scene.

‘
I should prefer to identify Guy now, Superintendent. I promise you I shall not embarrass you.’

It was a moment to be firm but compassionate. He tried to muster the right expression.
‘I’m afraid that is out of the question, Mrs Harrington. You must understand that after a death of this kind there are certain procedures—’

‘
A death of which kind, Superintendent?’ He could have sworn she was gently mocking him, had that not been impossible in these circumstances.

‘
Mrs Harrington, I have to tell you that it does not seem at the moment that your husband died from natural causes—’

‘
Was he murdered?’ She introduced the word he had been carefully avoiding with a hint of impatience.

‘
That I cannot say. We are at the early stages of our investigation. But we cannot rule out foul play at the moment.’ He was glad that Burgess was not here to witness his discomfiture, which was driving him into the very clichés the pathologist would have loved to hear.

Marie Harrington looked at him coolly for a moment. Her face was drawn, but the lines as her eyes creased a little were of humour rather than strain.
‘So you think he was murdered.’

‘
I didn’t say that. The Coroner has been informed of the facts. There will be a post-mortem examination. After that we may be able to tell you a little more about the circumstances of your husband’s death.’ He wished he knew exactly how much of those circumstances had been revealed by that faceless policeman in Surrey who had been charged with delivering the news of the death to the widow. He could not see a young constable being able to withhold much from this woman. He added rather desperately, ‘That will he the time for you to identify your husband’s body.’

‘
When he’s been neatly sewn up and presented for viewing to the grieving relatives.’ She smiled openly at him now, and he responded with a weak grin of his own; it seemed safer than speaking when he could think of nothing useful to mitigate the starkness of the picture she was painting.

She clasped her hands on her lap. She wor
e no nail varnish, and but one ring; it had a single large emerald, and was not on her wedding finger. She said, ‘Mr Lambert, it might help things along a little if I tell you frankly that I shall not be grieving overmuch.’

It was delivered as dispassionately as if she had been announcing the time of a train. He had attended deaths before where he had suspected that spouses were not stricken with sorrow, but never one where a wife had so scorned to dissimulate.

‘That is not my concern. Unless of course it is connected with the death.’

‘
Which it is not.’

‘
No. We shall need to have an account of your movements in the last few days in due course.’ The human mind works so quickly that notions of a contract killing organised by this composed intruder flashed for a moment before him.

If he had intended his words to be any sort of threat to her, he would have been disappointed by her reaction. She said with scarcely a pause,
‘That you are welcome to have whenever you want it. In the meantime, I may as well get on with the identification of his body.’

‘
As I have said, I regret that that is not possible at the present moment.’

‘
Why? That is what I have driven here to do.’

‘
I’m sorry about that. But there are certain procedures which cannot be overridden—’

‘
Mr Lambert, is there anything in law which demands that I identify my husband in a mortuary?’

He felt that she knew the answer to that as well as he did.
‘No, but—’

‘
Is it not indeed in everyone’s interest that this first formality is completed as quickly as possible?’

‘
I suppose so, but—’

‘
Then let us go out there and get it over with.’

He made a last attempt to protect her from what they would find.
‘Please believe me, Mrs Harrington, when I say that I am not merely being awkward, or retreating behind police bureaucracy. Close relatives are invariably in shock after a sudden death, often more than they realise. It is for their sake, not ours, that we establish procedures to protect them.’

‘
In that case, let me go and identify my husband. I can assure you that it is for my own sake that I want to get this thing over. This is the end of one section of my life. I would prefer to see it terminated as soon as possible.’ She was as calm as if she were arranging a shopping expedition or a business appointment.

He looked at her for a moment, then stood up. He said,
‘As you say, there is no regulation which prevents you from identifying the body now. As long as you understand that I advised you against it.’ He moved towards the door, feeling even as he did so how churlish his surrender sounded. Behind him, she said, ‘I’ll even sign a statement to that effect if you feel you need to be indemnified,’ and he knew without looking that she was smiling at his awkwardness.

Lambert found an embarrassed WPC in the hall and sent her ahead to warn th
e people around the body of the widow’s approach. Then he strolled slowly towards the spot himself, covertly studying the woman at his side as they went. Her heels were too high for walking over grass, but she moved carefully, without any serious loss of elegance. Under the bright sun, the small enclosure seemed in the distance innocent enough, but apprehensive faces peered at them over the screens as they approached.

The body had been sheathed in plastic and eased on to a stretcher; the van was standing with back doors open ready to receive it. Lambert said with a final nervousness,
‘Are you sure you want to do this?’

The woman beside him did not even reply. She stood still to survey the scene for a moment, taking in the circle of anxious men, gathered around
the static central figure as if awaiting some religious rite. Then she went slowly forward, and the uniformed man at the head of the corpse drew back the plastic.

In the sudden, absolute silence, everyone heard the dry catch in Marie Harrington
’s throat and the uneven breathing which followed it; Lambert was curiously restored by this reassertion of the conventional. She recoiled involuntarily at what had been revealed, and he looked back to check on the presence of the WPC who had followed them discreetly from the old house.

But then the widow moved calmly forward, stood in straight-backed silence and studied the face below her. Lambert was glad to see that the head was laid so that the dark wound which blackened one side of it was downwards and almost concealed. Small residual patches of powder from the fingerprint officer dotted the blue wool on the corpse
’s shoulders.

She looked for a long moment, bidding farewell to the man who had been her husband: Lambert wondered in what terms that silent adieu was couched. Then she turned away from the corpse and looked the Superintendent full in the face.
‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘That is my husband, Guy Harrington.’

Her face beneath the neatly coiffured grey hair had gone very white. Her hands at her sides trembled a little. She took a deep breath and set off towards the clubhouse. She was as erect as she had been throughout, but her shoulders now were stiffly held. Each of the circle around the body knew that she would not look back. In her unsuitable shoes, she shortened her steps, but moved quite steadily, as though she was unwilling to concede to the onlookers any sign that she was disturbed.

On the other side of the river, scarcely sixty yards away from them, a Jersey cow lifted its head and regarded them with huge brown eyes. It bellowed a long mournful moo, which echoed down the valley and emphasised the stillness of the place. As Lambert and the widow moved away, it stopped its chewing and stood motionless, staring with those timeless eyes, as if it comprehended this death, and its insignificance amid the cosmic scheme.

When they were about a hundred yards removed from the enclosure and the littl
e tableau they had left was cautiously resuming movement, she said, ‘Why the Sellotape on his clothing?’

‘
To pick up any hairs or clothing fibres from his killer,’ said Lambert. It was the first time he had acknowledged openly to her in his own speech that he thought this a murder. ‘The strips will be examined under a microscope in the lab and any suspicious material will be picked off for further investigation.’

‘
Do you know how he was killed?’

‘
Not yet. Perhaps by the end of the day we shall.’ He did not tell her about the body being moved: to his relief she did not ask him about the blue-black blotching of the facial skin which had suggested the idea to them. He wondered anew whether she could be in some way involved in this death.

As if she read his thoughts, she said,
‘Have you any idea yet who might have killed him?’

‘
If I had, I shouldn’t be able to tell you.’ They looked each other full in the face for the first time since they had left the ivy-clad hotel, and smiled. Perhaps they were both glad that the identification had been completed.

She looked at the ground, panting a little as they climbed the steep slope and skirted the eighteenth green. If she saw faces she knew peering at her covertly from the lounge in the residential block, she gave no sign of it. She said calmly,
‘You may have deduced by now that I had no great love for my husband, Mr Lambert. You may as well know that I hated him. I don’t feel as shocked by his death as you expected I should—perhaps I feel now that I’ve been half-expecting it for years.’

Lambert walked several yards on before he said,
‘As I’m going to be in charge of what looks likely to be a murder inquiry, I should turn your question round upon you. Have
you
any
idea who might have killed your husband?’

She picked a small wisp of dry grass from her severe navy skirt, studying it as though it affected her reply. They had reached the car park now. She stopped and turned to face him.
‘I’m afraid I have no idea. But you have a wide field. Guy had not many friends and a lot of enemies. I can think of many people who hated him enough to kill him.’

7

When Lambert made his first contact with the group of people with whom Harrington had spent his final evening, the widow’s parting thought rang still in his brain.

The members of what had once been a relaxed holiday party were gathered in the lounge that had now become the centre of police operations. The death was still not officially confirmed as a homicide; in all essential respects it was being treated as one. The group which had assembled so happily for dinner some seventeen hours earlier carried signs of the tension now inevitable for them.

Once Lambert had introduced himself and Hook, an awkward silence fell upon them, as if each member looked to the others to make a move. It was Tony Nash who eventually said rather lamely, ‘We were here on a golfing holiday, but none of us feels like playing now.’

‘
I can understand that,’ said Lambert. ‘Nevertheless, it would help our inquiries if you could remain here for a while.’

Nash looked sullen but uncertain. He glanced round the others, and Lambert divined that they had not concerted their thoughts and their opposition during the morning. He found that interesting. Now it was Meg Peters who said indignantly,
‘That is out of the question!’

Sergeant Hook said in his best NCO manner,
‘You are probably aware that we cannot require your presence here. Nevertheless, it would assist our work enormously. Obviously you had earmarked this time: the Manager tells us that you are booked in here for another two nights at least.’

‘
But surely you can see that circumstances have changed. There is nothing to keep us here now.’ Miss Peters tossed her dark red hair imperiously and turned her green eyes full upon Bert Hook’s. She did not like policemen, perhaps because they were rarely in a position to respond to her charms.

It was Lambert who said drily,
‘Nothing except the good citizen’s normal desire to see justice efficiently executed.’

If the woman was piqued to find the reply coming from a different quarter, she di
d not show it. She turned unhurriedly to the Superintendent, weighing the argument before she said, ‘Now you’re applying a little blackmail. If we wish to get on with our own concerns, we’re accused of obstructing your inquiries. The next stage is to regard our exits as bringing suspicion on ourselves.’

Lambert assessed her. She sat with her head turned slightly upwards, so that the strong nose jutted aggressively at him beneath a white br
ow that was furrowed with indignation. He said with a small smile, ‘You assume, then, that this death was not accidental.’