Kith and Kill (2 page)

“Well, the church was certainly full,” Mrs Wilson conceded. “He had a lot of friends at the chapel and he was well liked there. I wish Matthew had gone to see him more often but he thought his Dad was sanctimonious.

“The cemetery was family only. Then we went to a pub near the cemetery that Matthew knew – heaven knows how because we never went down that way. They laid on sandwiches. I don’t think anyone else wanted to have the wake there but Matthew was quite insistent and no-one wanted to contradict him after they outvoted him over the chapel service.”

“Wasn’t it a bit inconvenient getting home?” Amos asked curiously. “Did the drivers wait for you?”

Mrs Wilson shook her head.

“We didn’t have limousines. Matthew said we should all drive our own cars to save unnecessary expense. He asked me to drive so he could have a drink and I agreed because I thought he would be shaken up seeing his Dad buried.”

“Did you have a private room at the pub?” Amos asked innocently.

Jane Wilson looked puzzled. Not knowing that the inspector suspected that her husband had been poisoned, the question seemed irrelevant, almost impertinent.

“Was Matthew all right at the pub?” Amos continued, anxious not to leave hanging any question that put Mrs Wilson on guard.

“Well, he did get a bit tipsy,” Mrs Wilson admitted. “I was a bit surprised because he can take his drink – not that he ever has too much,” she added hastily. “I put it down to the strain of the funeral and drinking at lunchtime on an empty stomach. Matthew never drank at lunchtime.”

“An empty stomach? Didn’t Matthew eat anything?”

“No. I tried to get him to but he just didn’t seem his self.”

“What did he have to drink?”

“Beer. He never drank anything else, even at Christmas. He thought wine was for foreigners.”

Talking seemed to be doing Mrs Wilson good, taking her mind off the shock of her husband’s sudden death.

“Do you know how much he had?”

“I think just a pint … no it must have been two because later on his glass was more full than it had been earlier.”

“How did he seem?”

“Well, all right, really. He was very quiet, which is unusual for Matthew, but it was his Dad’s funeral after all. He did seem a bit unsteady towards the end but he didn’t have anything to eat and he hadn’t had much breakfast so he was drinking pretty much on an empty stomach.”

“Did he get to the car all right?”

“Sort of. He forgot where we had parked although he’d actually driven from the cemetery. Do you think he was already feeling ill?”

“Quite possibly,” Amos replied truthfully, “though I’m not a doctor. Was your husband on any medication? Was he suffering from any illness?”

Jane Wilson shook her head.

“No, he was pretty fit. He did a lot of jogging in the evening.

“If only we’d done something then,” she blurted out. “I nearly asked Esther to have a look at him. She went through medical training. Do you think that would have saved him? I would have asked her but I didn’t realise how ill he was. I thought he’d had too much to drink and I didn’t want his sister to see him like that. If only…”

“I honestly don’t believe for a moment that it would have made the slightest scrap of difference,” Amos told her reassuringly. “Was he able to get into the car?”

“It threw him a bit having to get into the passenger side but we shoehorned him in, James and I – James is our son.

“Who else was there at the wake?” Amos asked.

“Just the family – though that added up to quite a few, what with there being six children and all. Matthew and me, and our son James; Mark and Agnes and their two daughters; Ruth, the eldest girl, with her husband Ken and their two daughters; Esther came with her husband George Luke, the youngest boy, and his wife and three children; and Mary – she’s the only one who never married.”

Mrs Wilson, who had been addressing the list to Smith, suddenly noticed that Amos was writing down all the names.

“I assume you will want us to let all the others know what has happened,” Amos assured her.

“It’s all right, James is doing that,” Mrs Wilson said.

Amos was forced to come clean.

“It’s a matter of routine,” he admitted. “We shall have to talk to all of them. We have to treat this as a sudden and unexplained death for the time being.”

Horrified at the thought of Matthew’s family being dragged into her personal grief, Mrs Wilson accepted the inevitable reluctantly.

“You won’t have to involve them, will you?” she pleaded. “I don’t want to cause trouble in the family.”

“I’m very sorry to be the bearer of bad news, Mrs Wilson,” Amos replied, “but I can’t avoid involving everyone who was at the wake. There is a very real possibility that Matthew was poisoned.”

Mrs Wilson gasped. “You mean accidentally? Or on purpose?”

“That,” Amos said, “is what we shall have to find out.”

Chapter 3

Jane Wilson’s son James appeared at this point.

“I managed to get hold of Uncle Luke from the payphone,” he said in flat tones. “He’s promised to ring the rest of the family.”

James slumped into a plastic chair next to his mother, who put her arm round his shoulders. The two sat in silence.

“As you have your son with you, Mrs Wilson, we’ll leave you in peace,” Amos said. “We will have to talk to you again in the morning though, I’m afraid. Susan will liaise with you and you can contact her at any time.”

Mrs Wilson nodded to show she understood. She and James just sat there in shock. Susan proudly offered them her business card. This was the first chance she had had to hand one out.

“Mrs Wilson,” Amos said, “I suggest that you go home. There’s nothing more you can do here and I’m afraid there will have to be a post mortem. We’ll let you know of any developments.”

Amos signalled to DC Smith to follow as he extracted himself from the unhappy mother and son. When they were back in the main foyer, he told his fellow officer: “This will be a long evening and it will be all hands on deck from tomorrow. If you want to go home you can do.”

“Oh no, Sir,” Smith said a little too eagerly. “I want to come with you and learn. They say you’re the best.”

“Do they also say I’m highly susceptible to flattery?” Amos asked drily, but with a half-smile. Smith blushed. Amos walked towards the exit to spare her embarrassment.

They stopped at the payphone to let Mrs Amos and Smith’s parents know they would not be home for supper. Amos hated the new-fangled, heavy and cumbersome mobile phone he had been issued with and Smith was not senior enough to have one.

Domestic obligations completed, Amos said as they made for their car: “Before we talk to the other family members, I’d like to visit the pub where they held the wake. We can catch them before they open for the evening so we’ll have the place to ourselves.

“It’s also about the furthest point south of the addresses we need to visit so we can work our way back.”

Amos cut through to the A15 to avoid the delays caused by the level crossing on the southern half of the High Street and the two detectives had no difficulty in finding the pub where Matthew Wilson had presumably consumed a quantity of poison. They parked in the car park at the rear but Amos wanted to walk round the front to see who the landlord was. A glance above the door elucidated that Andrew Wingate was licensed to sell alcoholic liquor on or off the premises.

The landlord was in fact just closing the front door as they arrived. A couple of late drinkers were driving out of the car park, having narrowly missed the police officers, so Wingate was slightly alarmed when Amos introduced himself and Smith. The Chief Constable’s last hobby horse, after hours drinking, had long since run its course but pubs were still wary of being targeted.

Relief at Amos’s assurance that he and his constable had called on an entirely unrelated matter soon dissipated at the possibility that a customer had been poisoned on his premises.

“Did the Wilsons have a separate room or were they with the general public?” Amos asked.

“They had the function room at the back,” the landlord replied. “I’ll show you.”

He led them through to a fairly large room that had been added onto the original building. The door was closed though it was not locked. There were no staff in the room but it looked as if it had been cleaned since the event earlier that day. The landlord confirmed that this assumption was correct.

“Where was the food laid out?” the inspector asked.

“On the table along the wall over there,” Wingate indicated with a sweep of his hand. “The table hasn’t been moved.”

“What did you provide?”

“Just sandwiches and pork pies, as requested. And some bowls of crisps.”

“Was any of the food left?”

“Not much. We handed out the leftovers free to a few regulars in the bar after the funeral party left. Oh my God,” the landlord gasped as the realisation hit him. “Could any of them have been poisoned as well?”

“Let’s just take one step at a time,” Amos said smoothly. “I see you have a bar in this room. Was that used or did they get their drinks from the main bar.”

“This bar was open,” Wingate said nodding towards the one at the end of the room where a metal grill now prevented access. “I served the drinks myself.”

“Was it a pay bar or on a tab?”

“Pay bar. Mr Wilson – that is, Matthew Wilson who made the booking – insisted on it.”

“How much did Matthew Wilson drink?”

“I definitely served him with only one pint, and that was at the start. He didn’t visit the bar again although one of the others could have bought him a drink.”

“Where are the plates and the glasses?” Amos asked.

“They’ve all been washed up. We have to get straight before we open for the evening otherwise we never catch up. ”

“I want this bar to remain sealed off until we’ve taken swabs,” Amos said perfunctorily.

“Can you do it before Saturday,” the landlord pleaded. “I’ve got a wedding on.”

“I’ll get it done tomorrow,” Amos promised. “Could anyone other than the Wilson family or your staff have come into this room during the wake?”

“I don’t think so. I suppose it’s just possible but I didn’t see anybody try to sneak in. Of course, I didn’t know the Wilson family, only Matthew, but I didn’t see anyone on their own and surely the family would have noticed an intruder.”

“We’ll be asking them all, naturally. But you say you knew Matthew. Was he a regular? This seems a long way from his home or work.”

“When I say knew him,” the landlord said a little too hastily, “I meant he was the one who made the booking. He said they wanted somewhere near the cemetery and they didn’t want a lot – they wanted to keep costs down.”

“So he wasn’t a regular?”

Wingate looked distinctly uncomfortable as he replied: “I think he’d been in once or twice before but I wouldn’t call him a regular.”

Amos interviewed the landlord’s wife and received much the same story but with less detail, as she had been serving in the main bar while the wake was in progress.

A young woman who looked about 16 to Amos but who was probably in her early 20s confirmed that she had helped to prepare and lay out the plates of food and had covered them with plastic wrapping to protect them in the short time that they were left waiting on the table in the function room.

She had then helped in the main bar for the rest of the lunchtime and had not seen anything untoward, although she did not know any of the guests at the wake and would therefore not have known if there was an intruder. However, the few people in the main bar were all people she had seen in the pub before.

“The only thing is,” she said doubtfully, “There was a woman sitting in the corner on her own and I noticed a couple of times she had a peep into the function room but she didn’t go right in so I don’t think she could have done anything.”

“Yes, yes,” the landlord said hurriedly. “It’s not unusual for guests to have a nosey when there’s some event or other on. She probably didn’t realise it was a funeral party. I think I know who you mean. I saw her at the door but she stayed well outside. She couldn’t have tampered with anything.

“That’s fine Kate. I think you can pop off home now. You’ve got your money.”

“Yes, thanks, Mr Wingate,” the young women replied. “See you Thursday. Bye.”

She picked up her handbag, put her hand through the shoulder strap and sauntered out through the front door. The landlord locked it behind her.

“Is that everything?” Wingate asked, looking relieved that Kate had departed. “Only we’ve got a quick turnaround before we open tonight at 5-30 and we’d like to have half an hour with our feet up and a cup of tea.”

Amos nodded.

“We’ve got plenty to get through ourselves before today is out,” he remarked drily.

He and DC Smith exited through the rear entrance to the car park and heard the bolts on the back door slam across behind them.

“We’ll have a quiet word with that Kate on her own. I think it’s unlikely there is anything significant in the lone woman drinker – it does happen in this day and age – but we’d better check. In the meantime I’d like to talk to as many family members as possible before they’ve time to coordinate their stories.”

Chapter 4

Luke’s house was the most convenient to call at on the way back towards Lincoln, as he lived on the south side of the city. There was no particular reason to take the siblings in order of seniority and James had said that he had contacted this uncle so they would not have to break the news.

His was a fairly modest terrace house among rows of similar red-brick, solid but unpretentious homes.

Beth, Luke’s wife, opened the door. She accepted the arrival of the two detectives with weary resignation and invited them in.

“This is Enid, our daughter,” she said introducing a young woman in the house. “She came back from uni for the funeral. You were very fond of your granddad, weren’t you love?”

Enid grunted assent without enthusiasm.

“He was very proud of her,” Beth Wilson added. “But I suppose you want to talk to Luke. He’s just nipped down to the bookies. I hope he won’t be long.”