Remains to be Seen (16 page)

Harry Barnard's watery grey eyes looked curiously at the man who had bought him beer and waylaid him before he could even remove his coat. He said, ‘Don't usually see you here on a Saturday night, Derek.'

Derek Simmons tried not to show his impatience. ‘The wife sent me out. Told me to come and enjoy myself.'

Harry gave him the roguish smile he had borrowed from a young David Niven and never returned. ‘There won't be many people in here who can say that.' He peered across the snooker tables at the noisy concourse beyond, wanting to light the cigarette he had lit for many years at this point, before enlightenment had changed the law and forbidden it.

‘I'm lucky with Brenda. She's a good woman.' Derek meant it. He wondered why in Lancashire you had to be ashamed of confessing that you loved your wife, that she had made a difference to your life. ‘She's devastated by the death of her son. But she sent me out to enjoy myself. I think she really wanted to have the house to herself.'

‘Rotten business, that. I can understand what she's going through.' He couldn't, of course, and he wasn't at all affected by this death himself, but it seemed the right thing to say. Harry Barnard was a conventional man, so he sought out the right things to say.

‘It's hit me hard, as well.' Derek wanted to assert that: it was important to him that as many people as possible should think it.

‘You weren't the lad's dad, though, were you? It wasn't as bad for you as for Brenda.'

‘No, it wasn't the same at all. Still, I don't mind admitting it to you, Neil's death's hit me quite hard.' Derek glanced up over the two pint tankards: Harry seemed to be taking that at face value.

‘They found out who did it yet?' Harry couldn't conceal his curiosity. A murder mystery excites most people, especially when it happens on your doorstep, and when you know people who were near to the victim it gives it an added piquancy.

‘Don't think so.' Derek decided to pretend that he had only a marginal interest in the investigation, lest his companion should think he had either any connection with it or any anxiety about it. ‘They didn't even let Brenda see the body. Said that they could identify it from a DNA match. She had to give them a saliva sample.'

Harry Barnard was silent for a moment, digesting the implications of this, savouring the details of police procedure. ‘There couldn't have been much of him left, then.'

‘I don't suppose there was, after a fire like that.'

‘Not a nice way to go.'

‘He didn't die in the fire.' Derek Simmons was wondering how he could get his man away from the grisly details of the death and on to what he wanted from him. ‘He was dead before the fire. Brenda reckons he could have got out, if he'd been alive.'

‘So how did he die?'

‘I don't know. Don't reckon anyone knows, yet. If they do, they're not saying.'

‘Police will know more than they're telling us.' Harry Barnard spoke from the safe citadel of invincible ignorance.

‘Yes, I expect so. Harry, you remember we played snooker last Sunday night?'

The thin man nodded. ‘Play most Sundays, don't we?'

They were about the same standard, and both of them useful players, who played in the league team for the club. Derek tried hard to sound casual as he said, ‘If anyone asks you, I was here for the whole of Sunday night. Say from seven to half-past ten.'

‘Course you were. Same as usual.'

‘That's the idea. Just in case anyone should come asking you. I don't suppose they will, but just in case.'

‘Right you are. I'll have another pint with you, then show my face at dominoes. We'll have a frame of snooker later, Derek, if you put our name down for a table.'

Harry Barnard wouldn't even have thought about the matter, if Derek hadn't come asking him. But while he was playing dominoes, he remembered that his old friend hadn't come into the club until about eight thirty last Sunday night.

J
ames Naylor would have preferred to be interviewed with his wife. He had said so, told them that it would save time for the CID people, as the two of them could only tell the same story. But the cool female voice on the phone had told him that that wasn't usual in murder cases, that CID officers liked to listen to what people had to say individually and then check to see whether there were any significant discrepancies.

She'd made it sound quite sinister on the phone, as if she was issuing a warning that there would be trouble in store for him unless he was completely honest. Lucy Blake hadn't been Percy Peach's detective sergeant for three years without learning to play even the meanest card in her hand to maximum effect.

They'd arranged to see Naylor in the main house, away from the familiar furnishings of his home as well as the wife who was better with words than he was. He told himself that he had nothing to fear, if he told his story boldly and answered their questions as briefly as he could. Perhaps, indeed, it was better to see them without Michelle at his side, if the subject was going to be Neil Cartwright.

James Naylor would have liked them to sit with him in his kitchen, where he could have had the utensils of his trade all round him and felt in control. But Neville Holloway said it wasn't really a suitable place for a formal interview with the police, and James couldn't argue with that. There were plenty of other rooms available in the mansion, on this quiet Sunday morning. So the two officers sat down with him in the little anteroom outside the boss's office, where James couldn't remember going since he had been interviewed for his job over four years ago.

The woman who had spoken to him on the phone turned out to be quite a stunner. The dark green sweater, which made a nonsense of the term ‘plain clothes', did nothing to disguise the curve of her breasts, as well as accentuating the colour of her striking dark-red hair and her unusual green-blue eyes. She said, ‘You know that we wish to speak to you about the murder of Neil Cartwright. I'd like to clear up a few personal details first.'

He told them in answer to her quietly spoken questions that he was now thirty-one; that he had come to Marton Towers four years and four months ago, initially as assistant chef and general domestic help; that he enjoyed working here; that, like the wife of the deceased man, he had been successful, and had been promoted to take more responsibility.

He was now officially Head Chef. He couldn't help giving the title capital letters as he delivered it to them. The post was occasionally very demanding, when the owner was in residence and brought guests to stay at the Towers, but there were also long periods when James Naylor cooked only for the residential staff of the estate. Mr Holloway had sent him on courses during the slack periods, and he now felt confident that he could handle the job.

‘Which you may not have for much longer,' said the man with the bald head and the piercing black eyes, who had been silent whilst DS Blake recorded the details of his background.

James detected a new note of aggression. ‘Why do you say that?'

‘Because the man who pays your wages is in clink, and likely to remain there for several years, unless the lawyers make an even bigger cock-up of things than usual,' said Percy Peach. He looked at that moment as if he would like to deposit Richard Crouch's chef behind bars as well.

‘Mr Crouch is innocent until proved guilty,' said James Naylor, more sturdily than he felt.

‘I see,' said Peach, nodding as though it gave him satisfaction to have this man confirmed as an enemy. He weighed up the stocky, powerful physique, looked hard into the brown eyes of the unlined face and found in them a pleasing apprehension. ‘And I suppose you knew nothing about what was going on here? Nothing about what these important visitors you cooked for were up to?'

‘It wasn't my business to ask about that.'

‘Not an answer to my question, that wasn't. Still, I suppose I shouldn't expect an honest answer from someone who'd been involved in causing an affray.'

‘I wasn't a leading light in that.' James searched his mind frantically for other phrases his lawyer had used in court. ‘I was young and easily led at the time of the offence. The judge said the sentence should reflect that. I was bound over to keep the peace for two years.'

‘Aye. As I said, the lawyers often come up with a load of crap.'

‘I've got a clean record since then. I was warned to go straight, and I've done that.'

‘And ended up working for a major criminal. Who's innocent until proved guilty, but who you know and I know is going down for years.' Peach decided that the softening-up process was now complete. ‘Mr Naylor, we're not here to discuss either Richard Crouch or your past misdemeanours. Which is no doubt a relief to you. Or would be, if we weren't here in connection with something much more serious. Murder, Mr Naylor. Murder most foul. By a person or persons unknown. For the moment, that is. Did you kill Neil Cartwright?'

The question came so bluntly on the end of the invective that it took James by surprise. ‘No. No, I didn't. Of course I didn't!' He struggled to make his denial as emphatic as he wished it to be. The trouble with having a light skin was that the blood always rushed into your face and made you look guilty; he'd had to struggle with that when he was a child.

Peach looked immensely disappointed. ‘Hmm. Who did kill him, then?'

‘I don't know.' James made an ill-advised attempt at defiance. ‘That's your job, not mine, isn't it?'

Peach gave him the grin of a tiger which has discovered a helpless goat. ‘My job is to find a murderer and put him behind bars, yes. In our grandfather's day, I'd have been able to say “string him up”.' He shook his head sadly over this decline in rigour. ‘Must have been a lot more satisfying, to be able to say that to a villain. But then, you tell me that you're not a villain any more. In which case, despite your record, you are a responsible citizen. And it is the duty of a responsible citizen to offer the police every assistance in the detection of crime. So who do you think killed Neil Cartwright, if you didn't, Mr Naylor?'

‘I don't know.' James looked desperately for relief at the radiant female face to his tormentor's left, but she was busy recording his replies. ‘If I did, I'd tell you, wouldn't I?'

‘I sincerely hope you would, yes. To conceal any of your thoughts from us would be most unwise. That includes even those thoughts you regard as most secret. Murder leaves no room for secrets. Did you lose your home in the fire?'

Another question tacked on like an afterthought at the end of the dire warnings James found so unsettling. ‘Yes, I did. That is, we did. My wife Michelle and I, I mean. We had time to get our personal possessions out. We spent Wednesday and Thursday night in a hotel, but we've been given rooms in the main house, for the time being. It's a suite on the first floor.' He allowed them an inappropriate glimpse of his pride in the higher status which he felt this conferred upon him.

‘But the Cartwrights didn't lose their home.'

‘No. Sally lives at the end of the stable block. Her cottage wasn't affected by the fire.'

‘Get on well with Neil Cartwright, did you?'

He should have been used to the technique now, which involved the key questions coming at him like missiles rather than enquiries. James told himself that he had known all along that this one would come. ‘Well enough.'

‘You'll need to enlarge on that.' Peach had stopped smiling some time ago.

‘We weren't bosom pals, but we got on well enough.'

‘You lived very close to each other on the site. You must have seen a lot of each other.'

‘Not that much. I worked in the mansion. I spent almost all of my time in the kitchen. Neil was out on the estate. When there weren't visitors to cater for, he came in with the rest of the staff for a midday meal. Otherwise we scarcely saw him in the main house. Our paths didn't cross very much.'

‘You don't spend all your time working. You said yourself that there were slack periods, when the mansion didn't have visitors to demand your attention.'

‘Neil worked in the gardens and around the estate. The slack periods didn't make much difference to him.'

There was something here, but Peach had as yet no idea what. He thought of Sally Cartwright's apparent detachment about her husband's death. Had the buxom Mrs Cartwright been having a fling – or something more – with this fresh-faced, vigorous younger man? Peach had never had a residential post himself, but he imagined there could be a hothouse atmosphere when people were living as well as working very close to each other. ‘You may not have seen much of him during your working day, but you lived very close to each other.'

James looked at the patch of blue sky outside the window, and fervently wished he was out of this small room and in the fresh air. ‘We weren't bosom pals. We didn't go out drinking together. We got on well enough. I don't know what more I can say.'

‘Did you meet much socially? Did you go in and out of each other's houses?'

‘A little, in the early days. Not much, in the last year or two.' He wished he hadn't said even as much as that. But they'd already spoken to Sally Cartwright, and they'd be talking to his wife in due course. Looking for discrepancies and following them up, as they'd already warned him. He wondered what Michelle would say when they got on to this. ‘We had different interests. Sometimes, when you're living close to each other, you find you don't want to live in each other's pockets.' He had thought of that on the spur of the moment, and he was cautiously pleased with it.

‘I see.' Peach pursed his lips and nodded slowly. ‘What were you doing last Sunday, Mr Naylor?'

James wondered if everyone looked and felt guilty when the man flung questions like this at them so abruptly. He hoped they did. Thank goodness he had his answer ready for this one. ‘I went into Tesco's to get a few things in the morning. With my wife, that was. I think I was on the site for the rest of the day. I went across to the main house at about midday, to find out from Mr Holloway just when Mr Crouch and his guests were arriving, and to discuss menus with him.'