A Thrust to the Vitals (6 page)

Chapter Four

Nigel Blythe, Rafferty’s sharp-suited estate agent cousin, strolled nonchalantly into the ballroom, gazed around at the party litter with a disinterested air that didn’t fool Rafferty for a second, and after making them wait a good ten seconds, finally condescended to saunter across the floor to the table where they had set up operations.

Nigel had yet to open his mouth, but, never mind hoping to make his cousin’s dander unwisely rise, Rafferty could feel his own equilibrium wobble. He was also discomfited by the calm presence of Llewellyn at his side. Ready to take notes, his sergeant was studying Nigel as if he were some rare anthropological specimen that he had not previously known existed. Rafferty envied him his scientific detachment.

When eventually he deigned to take a seat and be questioned about his presence at such a lavish, VIP function, Nigel languidly explained that he had met Sir Rufus at a house-warming party to which, as the selling agent, he had been invited by Sir Rufus’s house-purchasing friends.

Nigel being Nigel, he would have made the most of the opportunity. Rafferty didn’t doubt that his cousin had milked this potentially lucrative house-warming for all it was worth and then some. Almost as a reflex action, he would have left piles of his arty, oh-so-tastefully-produced literature, describing his determinedly up-market estate agent business, in the various rooms to which, as a guest, he had access, as well as a few that he most definitely didn’t.

But Nigel had never believed in waiting for business to come to him. As Rafferty had learned when his cousin was placing his first, exploratory, foot in the shark-infested waters of the estate agents’ profession and had used him as both sounding board and potential sucker, Nigel’s life-philosophy was entirely pro-active — it had had to be. ‘Dear’ Nigel would certainly have used his oily charm on the wives and partners of those present – women responded to Nigel, whereas men tended to regard his sharp suit and even sharper, calculating brain and over-active libido as a threat to them, their wallets and their wives.

However he’d managed it, ‘dear’ Nigel had wangled the invitation to Sir Rufus Seward’s swish reception in order to mingle with rich, potential house-buyers.

Rafferty stared across the table at his cousin. Untroubled on the surface at least, his cousin gazed back with his usual annoying confidence. Rafferty even thought he could trace the hint of a sneer in the angle of his cousin’s lips. He immediately felt the familiar desire to remove it with his fist.

Instead, he acerbically enquired, ‘And Sir Rufus was so charmed by your business methods that he felt his civic reception wouldn’t be complete without your presence, is that it?’

‘Exactly so, my dear cousin.’ Nigel smirked and directed his sharp gaze around the vast, echoing ballroom and its assorted party detritus, as if concerned that eavesdroppers might be concealed in the wainscoting and be taking notes about his business methods.

His eye must, just then, have alighted on one of the celebratory banners at the end of the ballroom, for he froze, shuddered, and went quite pale. For a few revealing seconds, his accustomed confidence vanished to be replaced by an expression of dread.

Rafferty barely managed to suppress the grin this response drew in return. Finally divorced after an unhappy first marriage, Nigel had resolved to play the field and never again allow himself to be tied down. It was as if, in discovering that some married pair had manacled themselves to each other for half a century, Nigel had at last found something about this interview that did intimidate him. But he covered it well once he regained his poise.

‘Oops,’ he said, as he put a languid, well-manicured hand to his lips and hastily averted his gaze from the life-sentence banner. ‘I suppose, in the circumstances, that should be dear “Inspector” — shouldn’t it?’ Nigel crossed one expensively tailored leg over the other, admired the sheen from his Italian loafers, and remarked, ‘How very astute of you to realize that Sir Rufus valued me and my professional skills.’

Rafferty’s lips tightened to prevent the escape of an unwise response. He glanced briefly at Llewellyn, but his sergeant was wearing his poker face, so he couldn’t hazard a guess as to his colleague’s thoughts.

‘Sir Rufus was interested in backing me in some property deals I had previously spoken to him about,’ Nigel elaborated as he removed his hand from his mouth and studied his beautifully manicured fingernails. ‘Very smart businessman, Sir Rufus. He’s a sad loss. A sad loss.’ Nigel’s smoothly handsome face, beneath its equally smooth and sleekly-styled hair, fell into suitably mournful lines at this.

A sad loss, certainly, to Nigel’s ambitious aspirations, Rafferty guessed — if such they were, rather than the usual pack of ready lies that his cousin was so adept at pouring forth when cornered in an awkward spot.

‘You’re an observant fellow,’ Rafferty remarked tonelessly. ‘I imagine. it must go with the profession.’ He put such a lip-curling spin on the last word that he made it sound like he was talking about the oldest profession rather than merely one of the slickest and most treacherous for the innocent to negotiate.

Nigel’s top lip did some curling of its own at this, but he volunteered no rancorous observations in response and Rafferty was forced to prompt him.

‘So, tell me, Mr Blythe — Nigel — did you see anyone enter Seward’s bedroom late on the evening of the party?’ Rafferty found himself praying that Nigel hadn’t spotted Mickey and was gratified at Nigel’s reply.

‘Me? No, certainly not. I didn’t see anyone — me included, before you ask — enter Sir Rufus’s bedroom, Inspector.’

Briefly pausing to wonder whether Nigel might actually be lying in order to gain some future financial advantage from keeping quiet about Mickey’s presence, Rafferty was put on the back foot by this correction. Nigel, always looking for an edge over an adversary, hadn’t failed to put him in the wrong by drawing attention to his failure to use Seward’s recently-acquired title. Of course his cousin adored such outmoded and mostly undeserved trappings of rank. Doubtless, he aspired to a similar or even superior prefix to his own name one day. Such things were important to Nigel. He felt a title added a certain – what was the word Nigel invariably used? — cachet, that was it.

Tonight, or rather this morning, Rafferty found himself even more irritated than usual by his cousin’s cringe-worthy and snobbish airs and graces.

‘You said you didn’t go into his bedroom yourself? Not even to talk about your proposed property deal with him?’

‘Certainly not.’ Nigel put on an air of affront at this suggestion and for once in his life he was remarkably frank. ‘I was busy networking for all I was worth, dear boy. Such occasions don’t come along so often, even for me, that I wasn’t going to make the most of it.

‘As I said, Sir Rufus disappeared into his bedroom during the latter part of the evening, I presume to make a private phone call. If he had wanted a discreet word or two, he would have let me know. I can only assume he was still considering my business proposition. But good manners required that I wait until I was invited into such an intimate domain.’ Effortlessly, for the second time in the course of a few seconds, Nigel managed to make Rafferty feel at a disadvantage, as he added, ‘One doesn’t simply barge into a fellow’s private bedchamber, my dear Inspector.’

Oh doesn’t one? Rafferty felt like saying. He restrained himself. Besides, beyond being made to feel as if he, rather than Nigel, was the investigatory prey, this baiting of Nigel was getting him nowhere. It wasn’t as if his wretched cousin was likely to fall to his knees and confess even if he had murdered Seward. So, after, posing a few more searching questions that brought similarly unsatisfying responses, and with a reminder that he knew where Nigel lived, Rafferty let him go.

And as he watched his cousin saunter out of the ballroom with an even more aggravating nonchalance than he had entered it, Rafferty reflected that it wasn’t as if he didn’t have other pressing things to do with the rest of the morning. Like sorting out somewhere to stash Mickey.

The early part of the investigation was grinding along at the usual slow pace. By now, of course, if it hadn’t been for the fact it was midwinter, it would have been approaching dawn. Everyone was tired and frustrated. The team hadn’t been able to contact many of the big-wig party attendees, most of whom were far-flung and had hours since flung themselves and their partners back from whence they had come. And even when they were big-wigs of more local flavour, their business interests were often wide-spread, global and twenty-four-hour. Not for men such as they the luxury of falling into bed in a drunken stupor after a party. As Rafferty and his team had discovered during the hours after their arrival at the hotel, on telephoning the guests’ homes, a large number of these guests had quickly inserted their weary bodies into chauffeured limos and been whisked off to the airport for flights abroad, so they could attend yet more business meetings and drunken receptions.

So, for whatever reason, Rafferty and his team had, thus far, been unable to interview the vast majority of Seward’s party guests.

But at least, the single virtue shared by all those who had left the party early when it was known the victim had still been alive, was that they could be removed from the originally large and unwieldy list of suspects, though they still needed to be traced and questioned of course. It was possible one or more had seen something that might yet provide a lead in the case.

As Rafferty had already discovered, Seward had made use of the security team supplied by the Elmhurst Hotel. These two men, Jake Arthur and Andy Watling, had both confirmed that, apart from the mayor, Idris Khan, and his wife, Mandy, whom they already knew about, none of the guests who had left the party while Seward’s back was minus its chisel - had returned to the suite.

The guest list had contained one hundred names; quite a small number, fortunately, by what Rafferty judged were the usual extravagant standards of such affairs. But the local council who had funded the event with their usual wanton extravagance with other people’s money, and who had been more than willing to push the boat out in terms of quality and quantity in the food and alcohol departments, had, according to Marcus Canthorpe, been more wary in terms of numbers. The local elections were coming up, of course, and they wouldn’t have been keen for the electorate, who paid for their largesse, to have reason to express their anger at the ballot box by putting their voter’s cross in the opposition’s square — especially as they would be aware that the details of this reception would be written up in the Elmhurst Echo for all to read and splutter about over their cornflakes.

In the end, as Rafferty had learned from Canthorpe and Ivor Bignall, to both of whom Seward had grumbled about this restriction, he had been forced to accept the limited numbers — not least because a fair proportion of the invitees had, according to Canthorpe, apparently taken the trouble to write RSVP replies in vehement and purple-penned prose, in which they made all too plain the reasons for their refusal.

Which just went to show how many people had cause to dislike Seward intensely, and which, Rafferty realised with a droop, meant that his job was likely to be even more difficult than was usually the case — especially given the lack of security over the more than plentiful blank invitations, which Marcus Canthorpe had reluctantly told him about.

Sir Rufus had, he had discovered, insisted that the invitations were printed in a quantity sufficient to meet his original guest number specifications, confident that the council committee charged with liaising with Canthorpe would give way to his demands. Rafferty was surprised at the revelation that this confidence had been misplaced, as it seemed likely that Seward was a man used to getting his own way.

As was Superintendent Bradley, of course, he reminded himself — not that he needed such a reminder. After Mary Carmody’s discovery of Bradley’s late attendance at the event, Rafferty had realised he would have the unalloyed pleasure of questioning the super himself. And while he was aware that such questioning wouldn’t be well received, he was hopeful that he might be able to wring some much-needed amusement from this, though he doubted it would make Bradley love him any better.

Clearly, the prominent write-up that the local newspaper had produced to proclaim the prodigal’s return, in his pomp, to his home town, hadn’t gone down too well in a number of quarters. But then, Sir Rufus Seward had been one of the Essex town’s more celebrated and successful prodigal sons. And prodigals such as Seward invariably earned resentment, envy and spite, particularly as the local boy had made it good — more than good.

The local paper hadn’t stinted on the newsprint. Seward’s return to Elmhurst had made a tremendous splash. It made good copy for the Echo and sold a lot of papers. But then, yet another recent discovery for Rafferty, Seward had owned Elmhurst’s local rag, along with countless others, up and down the country, and would be certain to ensure it gave him plentiful laudatory coverage.

But even this early in the inquiry, it was clear that not all of those newspaper purchasers had bought the paper and read the story with unalloyed pleasure at the thought that one of their own had done well and was now gaining his hard-earned glory.

If, along with the purple-penned RSVP party refuseniks, the ensuing letters sent to the paper’s editor — spiked after orders from on high — and retrieved by one of the team after an anonymous tip-off — were anything to go by, a number of these readers had learned of Seward’s return with emotions stronger than mere resentment and envy.

Given Seward’s violent death, it would seem that at least one of the paper’s readers had harboured painful memories and had brooded over the pages with a party invitation in hand and murder in mind.

The reception must have struck one invitee, official or otherwise, as an opportunity not to be missed. Seward hadn’t shown his face in Elmhurst once during the years after his involuntary and hurried departure from it. The civic reception in his honour might have been their murderer’s only chance. He hadn’t wasted it.