Superfluous Women (33 page)

“It sounds as if you're quite comfortable moving back in.”

Isabel grinned. “None of us believes in ghosts! Vera isn't altogether happy about being in a house where someone was murdered, but I pointed out that we lived for a fortnight with the body actually present. Anyway, she has plenty to occupy her thoughts. I can't tell you how grateful we are for what Daisy's done for her.”

“She has a penchant for combining helping people with interfering in police investigations,” Alec said dryly, drawing up in front of Cherry Trees. “You don't mind if I come in for a minute?”

“Not at all.”

Willie and Vera were drinking coffee in the sitting room. Despite Alec's refusal, Isabel bustled off to fetch cups for him and herself.

“Miss Chandler—Willie—” It was difficult to decide how he ought to address the ladies. “I'd like you to confirm the date Miss Sutcliffe passed on to us, the last day's work Mrs. Hedger was paid for.”

“Or so she claimed. It was the seventeenth. Of last month, of course.”

“You're certain?”

“Absolutely. I never forget a number.”

“And will you confirm that today you completed an audit of the accounts of Langridge's, the estate agent?”

“Who told you? Neither I nor Isabel!”

“Just putting together hints from your boss—”

“Mr. Davis talked about it?”

“Indirectly. Isabel said you'd finished a big job today, so I assumed … What I really need to know is when you or Mr. Davis intend to give Langridge the results of the audit.”

Willie considered, her blond head tilted, eyes narrowed. “I suppose there's no harm, since you already know so much. Mr. Davis is going to ask Mr. Langridge to call at our offices tomorrow morning, whenever convenient to him.” Unexpectedly, she giggled. “If you ask me, it would be much easier for him to go to Langridge's. When Mr. Langridge came in to request the audit, it was touch and go whether he'd make it up the stairs to Mr. Davis's room.”

“I take it Mr. Langridge had his suspicions that something was amiss?”

“Sole proprietorships—one owner and one or more employees—rarely call for an audit until they're fairly sure something's wrong. They'd do better to get an outside audit regularly, like big companies.”

“Did you know what or whom Langridge suspected?”

“No. Mr. Langridge has four employees. He probably didn't tell Mr. Davis if he suspected one person in particular. It could bias the audit. I discovered pretty quickly whom he ought to have suspected. I won't confirm your guess, though.”

“Very proper,” said Alec, grinning.

Isabel came in with the coffee. As they were drinking from demitasses, Alec relented and accepted. He emptied the tiny cup rather quicker than was strictly polite, made his adieux, and went out to the car. On the way back to the police station, he reflected that he was indubitably biased in their favour. He could only hope it wouldn't come to arresting one or more of them. Given his ambiguous position in the case, though, he'd be able to leave that dismaying task to DI Underwood.

Who wouldn't be any happier about it than Alec.

Happily, another suspect had moved up the list. Alec had been interrupted before telling Underwood about the interesting second item in Tom Tring's note.

 

THIRTY

“
Miss Chandler
confirmed the seventeenth,” Alec announced.

“Seventeenth?” said Underwood, taking out a pocket diary. “A Monday. Mrs. Hedger went in three days a week—Monday, Wednesday, Friday, as she does now, I expect. If she was paid on the Monday, likely she was usually paid each day that she worked, rather than weekly. She wasn't paid on Wednesday. So the victim died Monday night or sometime Tuesday.”

“Not that it helps us much.”

“No, people don't remember what they were doing on a particular day a month ago, unless they had an appointment or an engagement, something worth noting down. What about Miss Chandler's audit?”

“Davis, her boss, is seeing Langridge tomorrow to give him the results. Miss Chandler naturally refused to confirm the name of the embezzler. I'm reluctant to tackle Vaughn about it, tonight. We might queer their pitch.”

“Yes, better avoid the subject. It doesn't seem to have any bearing on our business, anyway.”

“Agreed. If we do need the actual figures gone over at some point, it's a job for Piper.” Alec retrieved Tom's note from his inside breast pocket. “You didn't hear the last part of this. It should be more immediately useful than the rest.”

“Vaughn?”

“Mrs. Vaughn, according to report. She had a flaming row with Mrs. Gray, at Cherry Trees.”

“From the housekeeper via the gardener?”

“From the housekeeper originally, I expect, but rather more roundabout.” Tom had been cautious in his note, in case it fell into the wrong hands, but Alec knew him well enough to guess he was hinting that the story had been overheard in a tea shop by Mrs. Tring.

“Fourth or fifth hand,” Underwood said gloomily. “Everyone in Beaconsfield is talking about the murder, exaggerating and adding to any little scrap they can possibly claim to know about the Grays. Though with the gardener's name and him being local, we shouldn't have any trouble finding him tomorrow. I'll send a man to Seer Green. When did this row happen?”

“Unknown. We might do worse than making that our first question. Something on the lines of: ‘On what date did your quarrel with Mrs. Gray take place?'”

“Leading the witness.”

“We won't have a judge watching us.”

They continued to discuss tactics, and then every conceivable permutation of the scanty evidence and the theoretical possibilities, with Pennicuik venturing a few words now and then. In spite of yet more coffee, by the time Ernie Piper's call came through at last, at a quarter to midnight, all three were somnolent.

Alec, more accustomed than the local men to working through the night, was first to reach for the ringing phone.

“Fletcher.”

“It's me, Chief. The car just turned into the drive.”

“Don't let the bloody woman go to bed.”

“I'll see what I can do.” Ernie sounded remarkably cheery. The Vaughns' servants must have been good hosts.

“We're on our way.”

Twenty minutes later, the Austin Twelve swung into the drive and stopped just short of the garage doors, next to the new wing behind the house. Light showed dimly through the heavy curtains of its ground-floor windows.

A curtain twitched. A man's face looked out, the electric light making a halo of the corn-gold hair Alec recalled from their encounter in the bar of the Saracen's Head. Donald Vaughn.

They walked back to the front door. It was already open and Ernie welcomed them with relief.

“I don't know how much longer I could have kept her downstairs.”

“Twitchy, is she?” Underwood asked.

“That's not quite the word I had in mind,” Ernie said primly. “Close, but not quite. No, he's the one that's twitching.”

He led the way along a narrow corridor, past a couple of closed doors and one standing open to the dark, silent kitchen. Stairs rose on their left. They came to a last door, probably once the back door of the old house, beyond which was the light, warmth, comfort, and colour of a modern sitting room. Alec noted radiators as well as a good fire. Decidedly there was money, whether or not its distribution was as they had been told.

Ernie ushered them in and announced them butler fashion: “Detective Chief Inspector Fletcher. Detective Inspector Underwood.”

Goggling at Alec, Vaughn started up from the depths of an easy chair, spilling the drink in his hand on his dress trousers. “You!” he yelped. “You're a policeman?”

“I am. I've got a few questions I'd like to put to you. Is there somewhere we can go?”

“Stay here,” commanded Mrs. Vaughn. She was a formidable figure of a woman, large, well-corseted in her plum-coloured velvet evening frock, well-coiffed and discreetly made-up, and wearing what appeared to be good jewellery. A few years older than her husband, Alec guessed. “Donald has nothing to say that cannot be said in my presence.” Her voice had no trace of the local accent.

“The front room,” Vaughn gabbled. “It'll be better, Myra. We won't disturb you. This way, Mr.… Inspector.” He scurried towards the four policemen, who parted to let him through the door.

Alec followed, with Pennicuik bringing up the rear, as arranged earlier. Ernie Piper stayed with Underwood and Mrs. Vaughn. Alec hoped they could cope with her.

The “front room” had probably been the sitting room of the old house. Now it was furnished as an office, rather feminine in style, with an inlaid escritoire, a couple of dusky-rose plush armchairs, and some near-Hepplewhite side chairs, including one at the desk. Alec glanced into the glass-fronted bookcase and saw fashionable novels where one might expect calfskin-bound editions of venerable classics—Michael Arlen, Charles Morgan, Woolf, Waugh, and Rosamond Lehmann's
succ
è
s de scandale, Dusty Answer
.

Alec sat down on the desk chair. It wasn't quite the position of power offered by a seat behind a good solid kneehole desk, but it would do. Vaughn looked round vaguely before sinking into an armchair. He remembered the drink still in his hand, what was left of it, and emptied the glass at one gulp. Pennicuik took his stance by the door, slightly to Vaughn's rear.

With a gesture at the bookcase, Alec asked, “Yours?”

“No, I'm not a reader. Besides, I don't have time. I often have to work in the evenings, and when I'm free, as often as not she drags me up to town to rotten highbrow plays, or concerts. And she doesn't like me going to the pub.” Once begun, his grievances poured out. “She has pots of money, but she's so stingy I have to work if I want any sort of life. I'm a good salesman. I'd do much better as a commercial traveller, but no, she wants me right here under her bloody thumb. I tell you, I'm sick of it!”

If the victim were Myra Vaughn, the chief suspect would not be far to seek. A motive for killing Judith Gray was less clear-cut.

“You hate your wife, so you had an affair with Mrs. Gray.”

“I don't
hate
her. I just want to get away from her. Judith was beautiful, gay, fun to be with, and she'd been in the same position as me, with a penny-pinching husband. We were in love.”

“You use the past tense, Mr. Vaughn.”

“She's dead.” He sounded defeated. Then the implication of Alec's words sank in. His eyes blazed with hope. “Isn't she?”

“Almost certainly. But not quite. We should know by tomorrow.”

“She might be alive? Somewhere in France? How can I find her?” His shoulders slumped. “No, she wouldn't have gone without me.”

He was very convincing. Could he be acting? Not inconceivable. All salesmen were essentially actors, putting on a persuasive show of enthusiasm for whatever they were touting.

“You intended to go to France with her?”

“She was going to buy a house. We were going to live together as man and wife. She was a modern woman. She didn't care about outdated conventions, and she didn't want ever to marry again. If Myra wanted a divorce, I wouldn't contest it. What am I going to do?”

Spend a good long stretch in clink for fraud, Alec suspected. “She was more willing to support you in idleness than Mrs. Vaughn is?”

“I wasn't going empty-handed.” Injured innocence played less well than the previous changeable emotions. “I've managed to save a bit.”

Alec didn't ask about the provenance of the “savings.” No hurry: This was a preliminary interview, and there would be more, whether Vaughn was still at liberty or not. They still had no firm evidence implicating him in the homicide.

“Either Mrs. Gray deserted you, or she's dead. Did your wife know about the affair?”

“No, of course not.”

“According to information received—”

“Well, she might have. All right, she did. I don't know how the deuce she found out. We were bloody careful not to be seen together, and you wouldn't think gossip would travel this far, anyway. Myra knows people in High Wycombe, not Beaconsfield, but she heard somehow. She drove over to Cherry Trees and had an almighty row with Judith.”

“You were present?”

“Good lord no! It wasn't that easy to get over there, actually. We don't do a lot of business in Beaconsfield. Judith goes—went—to London almost every weekend, unless prospective buyers had an appointment to view her house. Of course, if Myra hadn't made plans for an evening, I could always say I had to show a house and dash over for a couple of hours. The evening bus service is rotten but not impossible. Sometimes I could even talk Myra into letting me use the car to get to a country property.” He snickered, amused at having used his wife's car to deceive her.

“The presence of the Jowett was noted.”

“Nosy neighbours? I can't imagine why they should care. Judith certainly doesn't—didn't—care for them.” Suddenly, embarrassingly, he broke down in sobs, his face hidden in his hands. “Oh, God, leave me alone, can't you?”

“Just one more question. What was Mrs. Gray's reaction to your wife's incursion?”

“She was bloody furious! What do you think? After that she wouldn't … do anything. She said it would have to wait till we reached France. She didn't abandon me. Oh, God, she's dead!”

Alec slipped out of the room, on the way signalling to Pennicuik to stay. The behaviour of someone in that sort of semihysterical state could not be predicted.

The old exterior door between the house and the new wing was too solid to let him hear what was going on beyond. He pictured the position of the chair Mrs. Vaughn had been sitting in when he left. It was turned slightly away from the door. He was less certain whether the hinges had creaked when the door closed behind him. He had been concentrating on Vaughn, ahead of him.