Remains to be Seen (14 page)

Peach asked the question she had almost invited. ‘Why do you say that most of you were glad of the work in the first place?'

‘We have what you might charitably call chequered pasts. Most of us would have had difficulty in being appointed to the sort of posts we have here, if we had sought them elsewhere.'

‘Thank you for being so frank about that.'

‘You're police officers. You could find out about these things, if you chose to.'

‘Most of them, yes. But where there are no convictions, they do not always show up on police computers.' He wouldn't volunteer to her how patchy some of the earlier computer files were, in a service that had been tardy and amateur in recognizing the value of electronics. ‘What is your own skeleton in the cupboard?'

Sally had known it would come out, eventually. But now, when she was invited to produce it herself for this polite, insistent man, she had to conquer a moment of diffidence. ‘Nothing too dramatic. I was dismissed from a secretarial post, for stealing office supplies. I had broken off an association with one of the partners, and he was looking for something to hit me with. The police were involved, but eventually the charges were dropped and it never came to court. As I say, the man was looking for something to hit me with, and the police recognized that. But I left without a reference, and it made it difficult to get work, for quite a long time. I had never done domestic work, until I came here. Now I like it, and enjoy the responsibilities I have.'

She told it as calmly as she had delivered everything else so far; only when she had mentioned the aborted affair had there been a touch of acid in her tone. Peach said, ‘All the other people who work here have something similar in their backgrounds, haven't they?'

She looked at him evenly, weighing him as an opponent, wondering exactly how much he knew. ‘I expect so. We don't enquire too much into each other's backgrounds. When you've been in trouble, you know when to leave things alone.'

Peach grinned. ‘Unlike policemen, who pry into anything which takes their fancy and claim they're only doing their duty.'

She gave him a wan smile. ‘And who have a very large machinery behind them to ensure we tell them the truth.'

DS Blake had so far been quite content to study the reactions of the newly bereaved woman under Peach's polite but insistent interrogation. Now she said quietly, ‘Have you any children, Mrs Cartwright?'

‘No. There are no children resident on site.'

Lucy had expected that from the tasteful, uncluttered decor of this room. ‘Another part of the employment policy, is that? Like employing people who will be grateful for the work and not ask too many questions about what their employer is up to?'

It was the first time they had stated these ideas openly to her. Sally Cartwright decided not to contest them. ‘I think now that it might be deliberate policy not to have young children around, yes. It was only when I found that no one else on the site had them that I considered the notion.'

‘And why would that be?'

‘I've no idea.' The answer came a little too quickly and curtly, signifying that she was shutting the door on any further speculations in the area.

Lucy Blake made a note, allowing the moment to stretch, before she looked round the elegant, established room and said, ‘You didn't need to be rehoused, after the fire?'

‘No. I was evacuated, along with everyone else, but this end cottage wasn't damaged at all. I've had the windows open for two days, trying to get rid of the smells of the smoke and the firemen's foam. But we were very lucky.'

It was the first time she had spoken in the plural, as if her husband was still alive, as newly bereaved people often did. Lucy Blake rose from her seat and walked across to the wedding photograph on top of the television. ‘I presume this is your husband.'

‘Yes. It was taken sixteen years ago. As you would no doubt have deduced, from the look of the woman standing beside him.'

Lucy had never met a woman who could make wry jokes against herself in such tragic circumstances. She found herself admiring Sally Cartwright's self-control, but feeling that they had so far peeled away only her surface layers. She examined the man in the photograph. He was a slim, erect figure of around six feet tall; dark-haired; holding himself straight but a little self-conscious for this formal picture; handsome, in a thin-faced, diffident way; sporting one of the droopy Edwardian-style moustaches which had been fashionable for a brief period around the time of this wedding. She found herself totally unable to relate this good-looking, uncertain-looking young man to the blackened remains they had looked at eighty yards from here two days earlier.

She tried to keep her voice steady as she said, ‘Do you have a more recent likeness?'

‘I expect so, yes. I'll unearth a later picture before you go, if you like.' Sally Cartwright enjoyed the feeling of being more in control of herself than the pretty young woman with the striking chestnut hair who was questioning her.

‘What exactly did your husband do at Marton Towers?'

‘He was in charge of the estate. I suppose in the old days he'd have been called the head gardener. He did more than that, though, he looked after the woodlands as well. He called in outsiders for major jobs: things like tree surgery and drainage work. Mr Holloway says it always pays to use specialists for things like that.'

‘Even so, Neil couldn't run the whole estate on his own.' It was the first time Lucy Blake had used the dead man's first name; she could discern no reaction in his widow.

‘No. Neil was the only resident outdoor worker on the site, but he had one man who worked full-time for him. Ben Freeman. He comes in on a bike from the village down the road, about three miles away, though I haven't seen him this week. There are two older men who come in part-time. Their hours vary; they work about twice as long in the summer as in the winter.'

‘Head gardener is quite a responsible job in a place like this, even if he didn't have the title.'

‘Yes, it is. Neil's job rather evolved over the years, the way mine has. He was a good carpenter, and he did a lot of work in the main house when we came here. But he had always been interested in gardening, and he went on a couple of courses to learn more. Mr Holloway is good at spotting potential and rewarding it. Sorry, that doesn't sound very modest, does it?' For the first time since they had come into her house, she looked a little embarrassed. But it was for herself, not because of anything concerning her husband.

Peach was by now a little nettled by her composure. He had been grateful for it, at first. But he had come here prepared to be full of consideration for a woman riven by grief, and now felt that there was a danger that she rather than he was controlling their exchanges. He said abruptly, ‘It seems probable that your husband never left Marton Towers before he was killed.'

‘He did.' Sally found that she felt curiously calm, now that the moment she had waited for had come.

‘You know that?'

‘Yes. He drove out of here last Sunday at about one o'clock. Almost exactly six days ago.' She looked at her watch as she spoke, as if the confirmation of this symmetry appealed to her.

‘You saw him go?'

‘Yes. I watched him put his case on to the back seat of the car, then waved him off as he drove away.'

‘So at some time after that, he came back here.'

‘Possibly. But his car never came back, as far as I'm aware. It's possible that he was killed somewhere else, and his body brought back to be dumped here and destroyed in the fire.'

Peach smiled grimly. ‘Perhaps you should have been a detective rather than a housekeeper, Mrs Cartwright. We have to be careful to take all possibilities into account.'

She allowed herself a faint smile. ‘I've had a lot of time to think about these possibilities, since we heard on Thursday about the discovery of the body.'

‘But you didn't know it was Neil then.'

She was not at all discomforted. ‘I suspected it. I rang his sister in Dundee. Neil had never arrived there, and she hadn't heard anything from him.'

For the first time, she seemed a little on edge, but that was understandable enough. Peach said, ‘You will understand that in the case of a suspicious death, we have to ask some embarrassing questions. How would you describe your own relationship with Neil?'

Despite his brief preamble, the question she had been waiting for hit her like a stone. ‘We had the normal ups and downs that most married couples have. But not serious ones. We'd have liked children, but we'd got used to being without them years ago. We hadn't any financial worries: we were both doing well here. I think both of us had doubled the monthly wage we had when we were first appointed. I'd say that on balance we got on at least as well as the average married couple – perhaps even rather better than that.'

He'd let her deliver all the phrases she'd rehearsed, when she'd expected him to punctuate them with his questions. She wondered if it now sounded too much like a statement she had prepared. She said impulsively, ‘The wife is always a suspect, in cases like this, isn't she? Well, I didn't kill Neil!' and then wished that she hadn't made that assertion.

Peach studied her for a moment, with his head tilted a little to one side, like an intelligent but not necessarily friendly dog. ‘And who else do you think might have killed him, Mrs Cartwright?'

‘I've no idea.' She wondered again if her denial had come a little too quickly, right on the heels of his question, as if she had given it no thought. She said, ‘I've considered the matter over the last forty-eight hours, and I can't think of anyone. Certainly no one on the site.'

‘Had Neil no enemies?'

‘No. None who would want to kill him, anyway. He was a popular man. Everyone seemed to like him. It's inconceivable to me that anyone would want to kill him.' She looked down into the empty coffee cup beside her, and seemed for the first time to be near tears.

‘Nevertheless, someone did kill him, Mrs Cartwright. Maybe in cold blood, maybe in a sudden fit of anger. You say you can't think of anyone who would have wished him dead. Can you tell us of anyone who stood to gain by his death?'

‘No. No one. Except me, I suppose, and I've already told you that I didn't kill him.'

‘Indeed you have. Well, please do go on thinking about it, and contact me immediately at this number if anything occurs to you. I'll remind you once again that no one should try to keep secrets during the course of a murder enquiry.'

They took down the details and registration number of his car, then waited a moment whilst she found the more recent photograph she had promised them. It had been taken a year earlier, on the estate, Sally Cartwright said. It showed a smiling man leaning upon a small tractor. He looked if anything more handsome than in the wedding photograph, with the confidence which maturity had brought to his face. The years were often kinder to men than to women, Lucy Blake reflected, as she put the picture carefully into her document case.

Sally Cartwright stood in the doorway of the cottage to watch them climb into the police car. Lucy Blake looked back as Peach turned the car carefully over the gravel at the corner of the big house, a hundred and fifty yards from the far end of the stable block. The widow was still standing motionless in the open doorway of her cottage.

‘T
hey say they can't release the body for burial yet. We'll have to wait for the funeral. Doesn't seem natural, somehow. They tried to explain the reasons to me, but I wasn't really listening.' Brenda Simmons stared steadily ahead of her as she sat at the table, but she saw nothing.

‘It's because of the suspicious circumstances, love. When they eventually arrest someone for killing Neil, the solicitors for the defence may ask for a second, independent, post-mortem examination, in case they want to contest the findings of the original one.'

Derek Simmons wondered whether he should have volunteered this detail to her. He'd been glad to find anything to say, but perhaps it was insensitive. It couldn't be easy, when your son had been burnt beyond all recognition. At least he'd managed to avoid mention of the word murder.

Nothing had been easy over the last few days. Brenda had been devastated by grief for the son who had been so cruelly and unnaturally snatched away from her. Derek had offered her what comfort he could. But all the time a still, steady voice within him had been telling him that he was a hypocrite, that a man whose heart was shouting with relief over the death of Neil Cartwright should not be uttering the platitudes of consolation to a suffering woman.

Perhaps in time Brenda would understand a little of his relief, but it was far too early for that. He must be sure to conceal it for a long time yet, but it wasn't going to be easy. He had grown used to sharing confidences with this woman who was his second and much more suitable wife. They hadn't had secrets from each other over the last few years. They hadn't had many differences at all, in fact.

Apart, that is, from Neil. The son who had held resolutely to his departed father's name, who had never tried either to modify or to conceal his contempt for his stepfather.

He was sorry for Brenda: he understood her grief, was even pained a little on her behalf, when he saw her suffering. But he couldn't disguise from himself the fact that he was delighted to be rid of that sullen, hostile presence, that steady irritant in the peaceful world that he had set up for himself in his second marriage. Despite all Brenda's efforts, he and Neil had never got on with each other, never would have got on. He was delighted that his difficult stepson was gone, whatever the circumstances of that going: his only difficulty was concealing that delight from his wife.

He went into the kitchen and checked on the progress of the new potatoes he had bought to try to tempt Brenda into eating a proper meal. Almost ready. He put on the sprouts and gave the sausages a final turn as they spat quietly under the grill. He wasn't a great cook, and he hadn't done much in the kitchen in the years with Brenda, but he could get by. You didn't reach the age of sixty-six and live the varied kind of life Derek Simmons had lived without being able to get by.