Remains to be Seen (24 page)

That reflected exactly what Peach thought himself, but it did not improve his mood to find it voiced by this unflappable adversary. He made it sound as ominous as he could as he said, ‘You're telling me that you think your late husband was himself involved in the sale of illegal drugs, that this is where this forty thousand pounds came from.'

‘I suppose I am, yes. But if you're asking me to supply you with concrete evidence to support that view, I can't provide it. It's merely my opinion – honestly delivered, as you requested.'

‘So who else around here was involved in the trafficking of drugs?'

‘I can't tell you that. No one, as far as I know, but I decided long ago that ignorance was the best policy.'

‘How would you describe your relationship with Michelle Naylor, Mrs Cartwright?'

She took her time, well aware that this was the area where she might give herself away. ‘With my husband's mistress? I think “strained” might be the best word for it. You would hardly expect it to be better than that, would you?'

It was typical of this imperturbable woman to respond to his most embarrassing question with one of her own. He said, ‘It can't be easy, living on the site together and working together, in these circumstances.'

‘But it's in our mutual interest to do so. We both have jobs that we don't wish to jeopardize by behaving like fighting cats. You'll find that Mrs Naylor is well aware of which side her bread is buttered on.' There was something waspish in this aside; it was the nearest she had come to revealing her hatred of the younger woman. As if she felt that she had shown a little too much of herself, she quickly asserted her habitual control. ‘I expect that the tension between us will slacken a little, now that someone has removed Neil from the scene. How long we shall both continue to work at Marton Towers remains to be seen.'

‘As do a lot of other things. It's almost a recurring theme, in this case. Who do you think killed your husband, Mrs Cartwright?'

‘I don't know. James Naylor would have the same motive that you imputed to me, having been cuckolded by Neil.' She paused for a moment, as if to relish the old-fashioned word. ‘I'd say he was a man who might resort to instinctive violence more readily than I would, but I can hardly be seen as unbiased in the matter, can I? And of course Michelle Naylor herself might well have fallen out with her lover. I know my husband well enough to think that he wouldn't consider his coupling with Michelle as a long-term thing; perhaps she did. I should think that under that kittenish exterior there is probably a little tiger when she's annoyed, wouldn't you?'

‘What do you know about Neil's assistant, Ben Freeman?'

‘The lad who left last week? Practically nothing. I know that Neil was satisfied with his work on the estate and in the gardens. As my work was wholly in the mansion itself, I saw very little of the outside staff. And Ben wasn't resident on the site.'

Peach nodded, his eyes never leaving her face. He said abruptly, ‘And what can you tell us about Mr Holloway?'

She smiled at him openly, relaxing as the attention turned away from her. ‘He's my boss, Mr Peach. I'm hardly likely to be indiscreet about him, with my job at stake. But as a matter of fact, there's nothing I can tell you. He's an efficient manager of the mansion and the estate, and he's been good to me, in that he's given me more and more responsibility and several pay rises. But I have nothing beyond a professional relationship with him.'

‘You say you're not surprised to find that your husband was making large sums from an involvement in the illegal drugs trade. Who else among the staff at Marton Towers do you think was involved in drug dealing?'

‘I've no idea. I told you, we tend not to ask many questions, partly because most of us have things in our own backgrounds that we should like to conceal, partly because we know that the unwritten law here is that we don't pry into things beyond our work.'

She saw them off the premises, watched the pretty, red-haired girl whom she had found so irritating drive the police Mondeo until it passed out of sight. Then she went back into the cottage to digest the implications of this second meeting with the CID.

She wasn't a woman given to complacency, but she thought it had gone well. She had decided before they came that she wouldn't play the grieving widow, and she congratulated herself that it had been the right decision.

More importantly, she thought she'd managed to conceal quite how delighted she was that the bastard who had slept beside her for sixteen years had burned to a black cinder in last week's fire.

P
ercy Peach climbed the stairs towards Chief Superintendent Tucker's penthouse office without the usual deadening of his spirits. He felt unwontedly cheered by the knowledge that he had something tangible with which to taunt the Head of Brunton CID.

Tucker waved a wide arm at the chair in front of his huge empty desk. ‘Sit down and let's get down to business. I was wondering quite how long it was going to be before you deigned to come up and brief me on the latest developments.'

‘Yes, sir. The team has been very busy this week. As I expect you have been yourself.' He let his gaze travel slowly from end to end of the large empty working surface in front of his chief.

Tucker said tetchily, ‘If I am to give you my overview, I need to be fully acquainted with your findings.'

You've been fully briefed each day, if only you would trouble to read the documentation and my memos, Percy thought, without any relaxation of his inscrutable features. ‘No doubt you will be wishing to keep the Chairman of the Police Authority fully in touch with developments in the Neil Cartwright murder case, sir. In the interests of good public relations, which are so important in the modern police service.' It pleased him to quote Tommy Bloody Tucker's phrases back at him; it was always a reliable method of maximizing the man's embarrassment.

‘No, Peach, I shall not.' Tucker's glare was lost on a man who seemed suddenly lost in contemplation of the ceiling.

‘Charged with eleven counts of indecent assault, sir.' Peach spoke like one in a pleasant dream, his voice rising in wonder.

‘I'm well aware of what has happened to Henry Rawcliffe, thank you, Peach.' Tucker strove hard to terminate the subject by the sternness he injected into his tone.

‘Blow for you, sir, it must have been. You being a close mate of his and all that.'

‘I am no friend of Henry Rawcliffe's, Peach, and never have been. I don't know where you could ever have gained that impression, and I'll thank you not to—'

‘Golfing companions and all that.'

Tommy Bloody Tucker spluttered in what Percy considered a rather appealing manner. ‘I've always had my suspicions about Rawcliffe, even though I was inveigled into giving the man a game of golf at my club. It's not always easy to avoid these things, you know.'

‘Yes, sir, I do. But don't I remember you saying on Monday that you'd been delighted to have a game with golf with Rawcliffe last Sunday? That it reflected how well you'd got on the previous Saturday night? That it showed what close buddies you were?'

Tucker glowered at the man who continued to stare so innocently at his ceiling. Peach must have known about Rawcliffe's fall from grace when they had last spoken, when he had encouraged his chief to emphasize how close he was to the Chairman of the Police Authority. The Chief Superintendent said desperately, ‘I always suspected there was something wrong about Henry Rawcliffe, as I've just told you. Of course, I couldn't voice it at the time, but—'

‘Really, sir? I thought that when I issued the counsel that a man in your position had to be careful about your choice of friends, you said something like, “I could hardly make a better friend than the Chairman of the Police Authority, could I?” But of course, you may well believe that Mr Rawcliffe is innocent. I know from experience just how resolute you are in the defence of your friends and colleagues.'

Tucker scowled at him suspiciously. ‘There's no question of the man being innocent, as far as I'm concerned, Peach. Do you realize that the charges relate to child abuse years ago, during his time as a social worker in the nineteen eighties?'

‘So I understand, sir. A sorry business, but no doubt he'll be glad to have a steadfast friend like you in this time of crisis.'

Chief Superintendent Tucker spoke with what he hoped was dangerous clarity. ‘Let me make it plain that Henry Rawcliffe is no friend of mine, Peach. He has never been more than an acquaintance that I met in the course of my duties. Is that absolutely clear?'

‘Perfectly, sir. I'm sorry that I was misinformed.' By you, you tosser. By the man who drops his friends and colleagues like shit off a hot shovel as soon as danger threatens. ‘You won't wish to inform Mr Rawcliffe about our progress in the Neil Cartwright murder case, then, sir, as you were planning to do when we spoke on Saturday night and on Monday?'

‘Henry Rawcliffe is no longer Chairman of the Police Authority. All connections are severed. I hope he goes down for a long time.'

Percy wondered about a little sally on the ‘innocent until proved guilty' theme, and then reluctantly decided that he had squeezed the maximum amount of fun for himself and embarrassment for his chief out of the unfortunate Henry Rawcliffe.

He said briskly, ‘It's still possible the butler did it, sir,' and watched Tucker's jaw drop slackly open in bewilderment; it was predictable, but still enjoyable. ‘Neville Holloway, sir. Calls himself the General Manager up at Marton Towers, but he's the nearest thing to an old-fashioned butler, to my mind. Knows everything that goes on in that place, including his master's activities as a drug baron, and isn't telling us more than he has to. Therefore a candidate for our murderer, to my mind.'

‘But you've unearthed nothing to connect him directly with this killing, so far. Disappointing that.' Tucker strove hard to reassert himself.

‘Enquiries are proceeding, sir. Deceased's wife's odds have shortened.'

‘This is not a betting exercise, Peach. The wife of a murder victim is always a leading suspect, you know.'

‘Yes, I do, sir, as a matter of fact. But thank you for the reminder. Sally Cartwright wasn't conducting an affair with the chef at the mansion, as you suggested.'

Tucker couldn't remember quite what he had suggested to this bewildering man, who sidestepped his lunges like an elusive rugby back. ‘Then that surely makes her a less likely candidate for this?'

‘Would do, sir, except that our detailed enquiries have revealed that her husband was having it off with one of her domestic staff in the mansion. An affair between Neil Cartwright and Michelle Naylor had been going on for several months. Both Sally Cartwright and the woman enjoying the nooky concealed it from us when we first spoke to them. Intensive work by the team has now revealed it.'

‘It's quite possible, you know, that this Mrs Cartwright was insanely jealous, that she did away with her husband after some blazing row about his adulterous relationship with another woman.'

Percy wondered whether his chief spent his afternoons of leisure watching black-and-white movies from the fifties. He decided not to enlarge upon any similarities between Sally Cartwright and Barbara Stanwyck. ‘This Michelle Naylor is a cool one, sir. She made no mention of her passionate relationship with the dead man when we spoke to her. She's now got to account both for that omission and for her own movements around the time of the murder.'

‘This Naylor woman might have killed him in fury if he said he was breaking up the affair, Peach. Lovers' tiffs can escalate very quickly, in these circumstances; fornication often leads to violence.'

‘Yes, sir. I bow to your superior knowledge and experience in these things.' Peach wondered if he should enlarge upon a certain resemblance between the small, neat, dark-haired Michelle Naylor and Audrey Hepburn, but decided he now needed to keep this exchange as short as possible. ‘Husband is James Naylor, sir. Chef at Marton Towers. Stocky and powerful man, sir. I wouldn't like to get on the wrong side of him.'

Tucker's face brightened with inspiration. ‘Might well have seen his wife's lover off in a fit of blind fury, you know, Peach, if he felt he wanted to be rid of this rival for her affections.'

Peach reflected for a moment on his chief's unrivalled predilection for the blindin' bleedin' obvious. Then he said heavily, ‘That had occurred to us, sir. Particularly as Naylor's got no alibi for the hours between one and seven on the day of Cartwright's death.'

‘Ah! It sounds to me as if we're closing the net on our man!'

Tucker always switched effortlessly from ‘you' to ‘we' when he scented success. Peach's control deserted him for a moment and he gave the Head of Brunton CID the sourest of his range of smiles. Then he said, ‘There's another candidate, sir. A young man who's been in trouble with the police before. Who left Marton Towers hastily immediately after the murder. Who was very possibly involved in drug dealing, though in a fairly minor way.'

Tucker nodded sagely and switched his ground as effortlessly as a politician hungry for office. ‘This sounds to me like the profile of a serious criminal. What's his name?'

‘Ben Freeman, sir.'

‘Freeman, eh? But perhaps not a free man for very much longer, when our police machine ensures that justice takes its course!'

Tucker could not restrain a half-smothered guffaw at the excellence of his wit. Percy Peach remained impassive. ‘There's one other suspect, sir. This one has no connection with Marton Towers, as far as we know so far. It's the dead man's stepfather, sir.'

‘Often don't get on with their stepchildren, you know, second husbands. Difficult relationships to sort out.'