Remains to be Seen (12 page)

‘Seeing you shiver is one of the great pleasures of my life, Lucy,' he assured her earnestly. ‘Your splendid curves are in a class of their own, but when one sees them trembling, one is transported to a Shangri-la of sophisticated sexual pleasure!' Percy Peach was on his feet and making for the stairs.

‘There's nothing sophisticated about it, you wozzock. I'm just freezing to death!' she yelled at him from the bottom of the stairs, as he disappeared into the bathroom.

His voice, muffled but persistent, came to her through the sounds of running water. ‘Wozzock? Is that a Lancashire term of sexual endearment? I suppose it must be, because you seem to use it more as your randiness increases. But I'll be a match for you, Lascivious Lucy, just you see if I'm not!'

Despite her resolution, he was in bed before her, as she had somehow known all along that he would be. She could never understand how his clothes were neatly folded on the chair beside his bed rather than flung in abandon round the room, when she considered the enthusiasm with which he discarded them. ‘Signs of spring, now we're well into March,' he offered from between the smooth cotton sheets. ‘Hope this room's not too warm for a hot-blooded woman like you.'

Lucy Blake was determined to undress and get into bed quickly, to avoid the childish peep-show which seemed to give her fiancé such pleasure. But ‘More haste, less speed' is one of the more accurate of proverbial admonitions. She had more sense than to sit on the bed as she normally did, for that would have put her within range of Percy's all-too-predictable clutches. But as she tried to divest herself of her tights while standing, she caught her toe in them and was left hopping drunkenly around the room, to an accompaniment of increasingly excited exhortations.

‘Oh, you're so good to me!' he assured her breathlessly when he could muster sensible words. ‘I only have to confess how your quivering flesh excites me for you to put on a show like that. Oh, you're so good to me, Lubricious Lucy Blake!'

‘WOZZOCK!' she shouted at him, as she finally divested herself of the offending tights and flung them at the sparkling eyes above the white sheet.

‘A trophy! Excalibur!' yelled Percy triumphantly. His head disappeared beneath the sheets and a white arm was held aloft, clutching the innocent nylon, mystic and wonderful.

Lucy took advantage of this performance to divest herself quickly of bra and pants, a process which usually produced some high notes in Percy Peach's accompaniment to the performance, and arrived precipitately in the bed beside him, shivering despite herself in reaction to the crisp coolness of the cotton sheets.

‘There's no need to go on exciting me. Can lead to premature ejaculation, in a man of my advanced years, that. It was very nearly touch and go then, you know.'

‘Why you can't join the rest of us in this century and get yourself a duvet, I don't know!' grumbled Lucy, as she gave up the unequal struggle and succumbed to the tentacles.

‘Because I can have the pleasure of warming you up. And stilling the tremulous beating of your flesh and your heart. I may very well let you have your way with me, when you're warm enough.'

It was twenty minutes before Lucy Blake, warm and exquisitely contented, murmured sleepily, ‘I don't know why you go on about your advanced years, Percy Peach. You've the sexual energy of a man of eighteen, not thirty-eight.'

‘It's no use trying to talk me into a repeat performance, you insatiable siren of a sergeant! And please don't think of me as younger than my years. I have the invention that only comes with the years. I'll demonstrate it, if you only give me a little recovery time.'

But she was happily asleep in his arms, breathing deeply and silently, her breasts soft under his protective arm, her bottom snuggling into the hollow of his crotch.

Percy Peach wished as he fell asleep that the moment could last for ever.

N
eville Holloway was back in post at Marton Towers. With his employer in prison and awaiting trial, the future was uncertain for all of the house and estate staff, but no one would have guessed that from the man's manner.

As he emerged from his office and moved across the wide reception hall of the mansion, the General Manager of Marton Towers seemed to CDI Peach more like a butler than ever. Peach managed not to refer to that office as the butler's pantry, but this silver-haired, elegant man of fifty-seven, in his dark suit, stiff-collared white shirt and grey tie, looked as if he would at any minute summon a parlour maid and send her to work in the silver room. With his immaculate cuffs and grave, bloodless face he seemed a man framed for the indoor life, a man who was completely at his ease here, but who might be acutely uncomfortable if he had to operate outdoors under the wide skies of east Lancashire.

Holloway did not seem to walk like a normal man as he came across the polished oak blocks to meet them, but rather to glide, as if he had been schooled in his youth to eliminate any suggestion of the rolling gait of the outdoor worker. It seemed inconceivable that this immaculate figure had once served years in prison for a serious crime. He spoke as if their interview thirty-six hours earlier had never occurred. ‘Detective Chief Inspector Peach? I believe you wish to speak to me about my staff. I am at your service. We can speak in private, if you will follow me.'

Peach tried not to mime the smoothness of the older man's gait as he and Lucy Blake followed the upright figure into his office. When they were seated in comfortable, rather old-fashioned round-backed leather chairs, Peach said, ‘You have probably already heard that we are now officially involved in a murder investigation. In such circumstances, there can be no information that is confidential. We need you to be completely frank with us.'

Holloway inclined his head with the slightest of smiles. ‘I understand that. I shall tell you whatever I can.'

‘There is one person in particular whom I should like to hear about. A forty-three-year-old man named Neil Cartwright.'

‘He isn't here at the moment, I'm afraid. He's on a week's leave. He's due back at work on Monday.'

‘And where would you expect him to be now?'

A slight frown, as if the holiday preferences of junior staff were beneath his concern. But maybe the frown was just an aid to thought, for Holloway said, ‘I believe he intended to spend at least part of the time visiting his sister in Scotland.'

‘He told you that himself?'

A deeper frown, this time definitely of concentration. ‘I think he did. But I can't be sure of that. I may simply have picked it up in passing from one of the other staff. There is quite a lot of gossip among the resident staff as we go about our business.'

‘Do you know the address of this sister?'

‘No. But I'm sure his wife would be able to give it to you. As you would expect, Mrs Cartwright also lives on the site. She was one of the ones made homeless by Wednesday's fire. Fortunately, we have been able to provide all the residents who were affected with alternative accommodation, though some of the furnishings are a little rudimentary.'

Peach nodded. ‘I'm glad about that, because we shall need to speak to all of them, in due course. Thank you for your assistance in providing us with a murder room, next to the scene of the fire.'

Holloway nodded gravely. ‘It was office accommodation which was not much used. In Mr Crouch's continuing absence, I cannot see that it will be required in the foreseeable future.' He spoke in the formal manner of an actor playing a part; clearly he had immersed himself in the new career he had made for himself after his release from prison. This was the first acknowledgement the General Manager had made to anyone that his employer was unlikely to return to the Towers.

As if accepting his own part in this formal verbal minuet, Peach now volunteered to him a piece of information. ‘Mr Cartwright will not be returning to work on Monday. It is probable that he never left the site during his leave period. Neil Cartwright is our murder victim, Mr Holloway.'

If Neville Holloway was trying to look surprised, he did not succeed. But he had probably concentrated for years now on not looking surprised, since the persona he had adopted demanded that he should be permanently unruffled. He eventually nodded slowly and said, ‘I feared the body you found would be that of a resident. This is a bad business for us, coming on top of the arrest of our employer.'

Peach made no secret of watching him closely, but it was DS Blake who now said, ‘You must have some thoughts on who killed Neil Cartwright. You should share them with us now.'

Neville Holloway had ignored the younger woman beside Peach completely until now. He said immediately, perhaps a little too quickly, ‘I have no idea who might have done this. The news of this death is as much a surprise to me as it no doubt was to you.'

He was distancing himself from the death, making as clear as possible his own non-involvement in it. But that was as natural a reaction for the innocent as the guilty, and could certainly be taken as normal behaviour in anyone with a prison sentence behind him. Lucy Blake said, ‘In that case, we shall need a list of the resident staff, as well as the names of those who come in daily.'

Holloway rose unhurriedly and strode across to a filing cabinet in the corner of the room. He flicked through the files in the top drawer of the cabinet, methodically extracting the ones he wanted. It was systematic but unhurried. Lucy wondered whether such a well-organized man really needed the files to assist him, or whether he was giving himself thinking time for what he was going to say, deciding just how much information he wished to give them.

He gave them two lists of names, which looked as if they might have been typed out in anticipation of exactly this request. Then he resumed his seat, allowed himself a small, grave smile and said, ‘As it's Saturday, most people are not on duty and will not necessarily be around for you to interview immediately.' He seemed as though he was trying not to look too happy about that. ‘The employment files will jog my memory about the detail, if I should need that.' Without looking at any paperwork, he said, ‘I suppose we should start with the wife. Sally Cartwright is forty-one. A little younger than her husband. There are no children. She is also employed here. She's never been given the formal title, but I suppose you'd call her the housekeeper.'

‘Why not formally?' Peach regarded it as his mission to investigate anything which was a deviation from the norm at this stage.

Neville Holloway allowed himself the slightly patronizing smile of the only man who understood exactly how these things worked. ‘The original lady with that title left. Mrs Cartwright was originally quite a junior employee, but she had gradually taken on more responsibilities. However, at the Towers we have periods of intense activity, when the owner is in residence, and other times when the requirements of the house are rather different. We have a relatively small staff, for such a large house, and I have rather resisted formal titles of late; I have found that if you give some people too detailed a job description, you can have job-delineation disputes. We like our staff here to be both willing and adaptable.'

It was a long, even verbose, account, and, judging by the smoothness of its delivery, one he had no doubt given before. It made Peach wonder anew whether this man was more concerned with obfuscation than information. ‘It sounds as if Mrs Cartwright is a competent woman. You're telling me that she has, in effect, been promoted.'

‘She is very competent in what she had been asked to do.' If he thought he was damning her with faint praise, he gave no sign of it. ‘As indeed was her husband.'

Peach was striving not to let his irritation with this bland practitioner show. They needed his cooperation to cut a few corners at the outset of a murder investigation which was beginning some five days after the death. ‘According to his mother, whose DNA match has confirmed the identity of the victim, Neil Cartwright was a skilled carpenter.'

Holloway again allowed himself that slightly patronizing smile. ‘Neil did not have formal qualifications to support his expertise. And latterly, we have chosen to employ him on other concerns: without having a formal title, he has for the last two or three years been in charge of the estate. But I would not argue with the description of him as a skilled carpenter; I was certainly satisfied with the work he occasionally did in the mansion and elsewhere for us. He knew what he was doing, but he had acquired his skills in what I suppose we could call an unconventional manner.'

Peach looked at him impatiently, then divined what he was hinting at. ‘You mean he learnt to be a carpenter in prison, don't you?'

Holloway was for the first time discomforted. He hadn't expected this sharp-eyed policeman to guess what he meant without further questioning. ‘That is so, yes. I don't know what degree of skill Mr Cartwright possessed before he—'

‘So have all your colleagues on the staff been in trouble with the law before they were appointed here? You preside over a gang of jailbirds, do you?' Peach was enjoying disturbing the waters through which this stately ship of state had been sailing so serenely.

Holloway said with distaste, ‘Not all of them are “jailbirds”, Chief Inspector Peach. You have been kind enough to point out that I endured a spell of incarceration myself, many years ago. And it is true that the majority of our staff here have either undergone prison sentences or suffered fines or cautions, at some time in their pasts.'

‘All of 'em, I should think.' Peach nodded his satisfaction in the discovery.

Holloway looked at him with distaste and said unctuously, ‘Mr Crouch was of a philanthropic disposition.'

‘I'll bet he was.'

‘He liked to give people who had gone wrong in their lives a second chance.'

‘Come off it, Mr Holloway! Tell it like it is. Crouch employed people like that so that he could have a hold over them. So that they wouldn't ask any awkward questions about what he was up to and what went on here. So that they wouldn't talk to inquisitive policemen if they came enquiring.'