Die Happy (24 page)

Bryden was a Cheltenham-based con man who had taken a succession of rich widows and divorcées for the bulk of their savings. He had eventually been trapped and sent down by Lambert, who was intrigued to know what connection he had enjoyed with Peter Preston. Perhaps the dead man had not known that Bryden was currently in prison, though the case had been well covered in the press at the time.

The only entry on Christine herself was, ‘Likely to support the Dooks woman in the chair, unless I can find some means of putting pressure upon her. But she seems a moderately intelligent woman, who could be convinced in time of the excellence I have to offer.' Lambert decided from the other material in the cabinet that ‘moderately intelligent' was in Preston's terms a high compliment. He thought it might be difficult to convince Christine of that.

He had seen enough to realize that the material in these files needed to be thoroughly checked. He told Chris Rushton that and gave instructions that he was not to be disturbed for the next few hours. Then he carried the files on the literature festival committee away to his office and shut the door firmly.

Amy Proctor was finding hormones a troublesome thing. Her own seemed to be raging out of control and now there was a young man standing on the doorstep who looked as if he was having trouble with his.

She said, ‘I suppose you'd better come in.'

It was hardly the most welcoming of greetings for a man who had lately decided that he was in love. Sam Hilton said as much.

She gave him a smile which sent the aforementioned hormones into vigorous action. ‘Sorry. I was preoccupied with other things. I've got application forms for jobs, which I have to complete today.'

‘This shouldn't take long. It can't, really – I've to be at Morrisons in two hours myself to take up my gainful employment. Stacking shelves leaves my brain free to work on other things.' He didn't choose to confess to many people that he couldn't exist on his poetry earnings alone. That he should do so to this bright, animated, enchanting creature was really a declaration of trust and love, but he didn't suppose she recognized it as that.

Amy said with a touch of affectionate mockery, ‘I like the idea of the poetic muse being at work amidst the machinery of life in the supermarket. Collecting trolleys from the car park and contemplating the eternal verities of life at the same time.'

‘The muses don't seem to pay much attention to me. If I wait for inspiration, I produce nothing. I have to batter my brain into activity and bully my mind into looking beyond the bread and the eggs and the baked beans.' Writing, whether in prose or in verse, was a serious activity to Sam; he was prepared to outline the mechanics of it to anyone who offered him the opportunity.

‘Student stand-by, the tin of baked beans. I expect I shall have to move on to more adult sustenance, once I get a full-time job. Do you want a cup of coffee?'

‘Yes, if you've time.' He should have been in and out in a couple of minutes, as he'd promised, but he couldn't resist spending time with this delectable girl with the glossy black hair and the lissom, mobile figure. He followed her into the kitchen and watched the rear of her jeans dreamily as she boiled the kettle and spooned instant coffee into two beakers. He was filled with a spiritual attraction that went far beyond the coarsely physical; but you couldn't simply ignore the flesh, if love was to be complete.

She sat him down opposite her at the round white melamine-topped kitchen table and glanced at the wall-clock behind him. ‘What can I do for you, my wondrous wordsmith, before you depart to worship the glory of honest physical toil?'

That's what he was, a wordsmith, Sam Hilton thought. It was an honourable term, not a derogatory one. Especially when this fascinating faun prefaced it with ‘wondrous'. But he was suddenly bereft of the words needed to introduce a delicate and urgent subject. He stirred sugar into his coffee, watching the whirling surface of it as if he were noticing it for the first time. ‘It's about this death. Peter Preston's death.'

‘This aficionado of the arts, who was fostering the flame of creativity in the young poet. About his murder, you mean.'

‘Yes.' Sam wished she hadn't immediately switched to that brutal, inescapable word. And he wished she would vary the affectionate, half-mocking tone which she was adopting towards him and his poetry. ‘He was murdered. That's why the police are talking to everyone who was in touch with him at the time of his death.'

‘Including my poet-lover.'

‘Yes. And Preston wasn't fostering the flame of creativity. He was as rude as he could be about my poetry and my membership of the literature festival committee. So the pigs have me down as an enemy of his.'

‘Not surprisingly. And as a man with a criminal record, you must be centre-frame.'

He wondered now whether he was right to have told her about his arrest for drug-dealing. It was the kind of honesty that came upon you between the sheets, when the body was deliciously exhausted with love-making and the mind was easily swayed. You surely shouldn't have any secrets from your loved one, that mind had said. Now the same mind was telling him that perhaps it hadn't been such a splendid idea. ‘I'm hoping I'm not their prime suspect. But it would help if I could prove that I wasn't around at the time Preston was killed.'

Her bantering tone fell away and she was suddenly serious. ‘What is it you want, Sam?'

What had seemed a simple request was abruptly very difficult. He was silent for a moment and then said quickly, ‘I asked you last night, actually. I want you to say that you were with me on Tuesday night.'

There was a pause before Amy said quietly, ‘Where were you, Sam?'

‘I was in my flat. All night. But I need a witness.' He made himself look up from the coffee beaker and into those large, dark, wonderful eyes. ‘The police had me in this morning and grilled me about it. I told them you were there with me until midnight.'

There was a long pause, which was agony to him. He wanted to break it, but he sensed there was nothing he could say to improve things. Eventually Amy Proctor said slowly. ‘I'll say I was with you, Sam. But don't ever do anything like this again without asking me first.'

SIXTEEN

W
ithin two days of her husband's death, Edwina Preston was back in the big house with the mock-Tudor frontage where Peter had died. Her daughter had made her welcome enough in the small flat in Oxford. But Dell had been grieving for her father, whereas her mother had found it difficult to conceal her elation.

Edwina walked slowly round every room of The Willows when she returned on Thursday afternoon, as if it were a new residence waiting to be explored. She lingered for a moment in the room at the front of the house where Peter had fallen, but there was nothing now to remind her of the death. The drawing room seemed to her quite impersonal, despite that elegant but uncomfortable chaise longue, which Peter had insisted upon keeping. Even the room upstairs which he had used as his study looked quite anonymous now. The police had removed both his computer and the filing cabinet about which he had been so protective, and with them had departed the things which had once made this room distinctively his.

Life without Peter was going to be very different, she thought with satisfaction.

She was not as nervous during the night as she had feared. She remembered how she had welcomed Peter's overnight absences, even in his younger and more successful days. She couldn't understand now why she had endured her loveless marriage for so long. She should have ended it years ago.

In the morning, Denis the gardener arrived. He offered his condolences, which she accepted with a solemn face. Then she doubled his weekly hours. They discussed their aims for the summer, which was now at hand. Outside the kitchen, these were the first domestic decisions she had taken for herself in years. To Denis's surprise and satisfaction, the mistress of the house controlled her grief and worked with him in the garden for the last hour of the morning. When he had gone, Edwina ate a solitary lunch in great content.

She was to have a CID visit during the afternoon. The police had rung Dell's number in Oxford, found that her mother had returned home, and arranged to call at four o'clock. She was pleased about that. Once she had cleared the final hurdle of their visit, she could get on with the rest of her life. She decided that she would make some scones for her professional visitors. And she would entertain them in the conservatory – that's the sort of thing Sue Charles would do, and you surely couldn't have a better role model for this situation. She must assume a suitably sombre face for them, as she had for Denis. She wasn't going to pretend to any great grief at her husband's passing, but a sober attitude was suitable for a new widow. At quarter to four, she donned the expensive dark blue woollen dress which was the nearest garb she had to formal mourning wear.

She was surprised how difficult it was to maintain a solemn mien when her visitors arrived. She felt that she was playing a part, particularly when the older man, Lambert, seemed to study her with unceasing intensity. She was glad she had made the scones, for the serving of tea gave her plenty to do with her hands; she was sure she would have been self-conscious about her movements without it. DS Hook carried the big tray with the scones and the plates into the conservatory, whilst she went before him with the silver teapot and the cups and saucers. She poured the tea carefully and handed round the scones, noting with pleasure how steady her hands were. Chief Superintendent Lambert seemed anxious to begin, but she made him wait through the ceremony of the tea and the scones.

Hook had barely time to compliment their hostess on the excellence of her baking before his chief said, ‘We now have a fuller picture of your husband and the people around him at his death. We are following up certain discrepancies in what people have told us over the last couple of days.'

‘That's good. I'm impressed by how quick and thorough you've been. I trust the things your colleagues removed from Peter's study proved interesting?'

‘They did, yes. We are still digesting and reacting to that information. But no doubt you will be more interested in accounting for the deficiencies in your own statements.'

Edwina kept her clasped hands scrupulously steady. It was gratifying to hear how steady her voice was as she said, ‘I can't think what they would be. But I'm glad to have the opportunity to clear up any misunderstanding immediately.'

‘This is a matter of fact rather than a misunderstanding, Mrs Preston. You told us you stayed with your daughter Cordelia on Tuesday night. She was not able to confirm that.'

Bloody Dell! Sue told herself she should have known her daughter hadn't the nerve for this. Perhaps she hadn't had the will either, the wretched girl. Dell had never been able to understand the full extent of her father's cruelty to her mother.

As if he read these thoughts in her face, DS Hook said suddenly, ‘She tried to support you. She said at first that you'd been with her, but the officer taking her statement sensed that she was lying, I'm afraid.'

Before she could react to this apparent sympathy from his junior, Lambert said, ‘So where were you when you claimed to be in Oxford, Mrs Preston?'

It was all going to come out. Edwina told herself that she had been prepared for this, that she had half-expected that this would happen, sooner or later. She took a sip of tea before she said in a low voice, ‘I was with a man.'

‘We shall need details. The man's identity, and exactly where you were on Tuesday night.'

‘Of course you will. I can see that. But it's important to me that you understand why I asked Dell to say I was with her. I wanted to keep Hugh out of this. And I also wanted to preserve my own privacy.' Then she added with a touch of self-contempt, ‘I suppose I also wanted to avoid my own embarrassment.'

‘Privacy is always a casualty in murder investigations. We cannot even consider issues as trivial as embarrassment. The raw facts are that your husband was murdered on Tuesday night and you chose to lie about where you were at the time.'

She said dully, ‘The man's name is Hugh Whitfield. We were at a hotel in Broadway, near Stratford-on-Avon. He is married but separated. I would appreciate it if his connection with this could be kept confidential.'

‘We shall need to check this out with Mr Whitfield and the hotel. We shall not reveal it unless it becomes part of a case in court, but there can be no guarantees of confidentiality. You will probably appreciate that you forfeited our goodwill when you chose to lie to the officer in charge of a murder investigation.'

‘Yes. I suppose I can see that now. My first instinct was to protect Hugh. I didn't want him involved in this business.'

‘Which he now is.'

‘Yes. I can see things more clearly now.'

‘What was your husband's attitude to this liaison?'

‘Peter didn't know about it. He was far too occupied with his own concerns to give any thought to me and what I might be doing.'

‘What did he think you were doing when you were away from home overnight?'

‘I told him I was visiting Dell – that's my daughter – or old friends. There weren't so many occasions. More often than not, Hugh and I met during the day.'

‘What would you say if we told you that your husband was aware of this relationship? If we told you that he had recorded the dates of your overnight meetings and some of the venues involved?'

Edwina felt the shock running through her limbs like an electric charge. She told herself that she must deal with this, must offer them some sort of response. Her voice seemed to come from a long way away. ‘I didn't know about that. It doesn't surprise me. Peter was a very secretive man. He was very sensitive about that filing cabinet.'