The Best of British Crime omnibus (54 page)

He was cheerfully unaware that with all his ignorance, he might just have put the finger on a double murderer.

‘London or Maidenhead, sir?' asked Henry Pink as he halted the car at the junction with the main road.

‘Sorry, Henry. Maidenhead.' Treasure had been uncertain before his talk with Bert Tanner. ‘I think I can direct you from there.'

‘We've been to the house before, sir.'

‘I'd forgotten.'

Earlier, Treasure had thought it likely that one or both of the Tanners had made a mistake. Now it was all clearer to him – if none the more palatable for that.

He had been sure from the start that Helga Greet had not been involved in Hackle's murder. The connection was too easily traced. Of course, that connection would never have come out in full if Hackle hadn't died. Since he had died, Greet and her collaborators simply didn't rate as prime suspects. They weren't even genuine kidnappers – only parties to an outrageous corporate scam that with a touch more luck might have worked. But they were industrial swindlers, not murderers. The police now seemed to have accepted that conclusion firmly enough. It was a pity they hadn't applied similar logic to eliminating Jane Larden from the suspect list.

Jane just might have killed Hackle – from jealousy, or slight. You could only guess at a reason. And you could never set limits on the behaviour of an oversexed, spectacularly beautiful, and very neurotic woman. The thing was possible, even allowing that Jane would have known that her professional connection with Mereworth Court would come out later, and that her affair with Hackle was known to some already. But Treasure was sure that she couldn't have killed Bodlin as well. The weapon used was witness to that, when compared with the subtle method he imagined she might have used to dispose of Hackle – taloned fingernails scoring the back of the victim's neck during a passionate embrace, disguising the prick of the skin with the Bovetormaz needle. But the same Jane Larden could never have felled Bodlin with a highly unsubtle barrelful of buckshot. It was out of the question.

Treasure was sure there had been only one murderer – someone connected with Closter who had planned Hackle's death, and who had most probably been panicked into killing Bodlin for a reason that ought to be more obvious than it was proving. And the identity of the killer needed disclosing fast. Apart from the harm being done to the unfairly implicated, the damage to the already beleaguered company was getting close to irreparable.

Because if the police let Jane Larden go, as Treasure was sure they would, there were plenty of others they could put in her place.

As a spurned lover, Mary Ricini had a reason to hurt Hackle – if she had known where to find him. She had left the Hackle house after learning from Tim that his father had been with a ginger-haired woman on Sunday afternoon. Had she gone to the Larden home assuming the redhead had been Jane? – and intending to discover if Jane knew something about Hackle's whereabouts? If so, had she run into Bodlin outside? And had he told her about what he had heard on the tape? And had she then waited to follow Jane when she left to meet their shared lover?

But this was another scenario that failed to account for Bodlin's murder. Death by Bovetormaz at the hands of a dextrous woman doctor seemed plausible enough, but Mary Ricini and a shotgun killing didn't go together – apart from the sheer unlikelihood of her doing harm to Bodlin in any circumstances. Her admiration for him as a scientist was clearly total.

Was it significant, Treasure wondered next, that Mary Ricini had just implied that Bob Larden had the opportunity at least to kill Bodlin?

Certainly Larden could have murdered Hackle, despite what he said to Treasure in the pub the night before. He could have played the tape without Jane knowing, before she left the house, perhaps when she was making the tea. He might have realised that something in the study had upset Bodlin. Then he could have followed Jane – spurred by a personal reason for wanting Hackle destroyed that transcended anybody else's.

But even in those circumstances, it made no sense for Larden to have gone on to kill Bodlin. He could only have done so
after
he knew that Bodlin had told Treasure about the tape, disclosing that Larden had also had the chance to hear it in time to do the killing. In other respects too, Larden could hardly have wanted to harm Bodlin who had been the key figure in Larden's own commercial future. All this was blindingly obvious – unless Larden had been desperate: unless murdering Bodlin threw suspicion for Hackle's death away from Larden and on to someone else.

While he was still debating whether it was right to dismiss Larden as a potential murderer, Treasure registered that the car was on the outskirts of Maidenhead – where the McFees lived.

It was Alison McFee who had discovered where Hackle was, allegedly by chance, and later disclosed the fact to her husband. But what if she had come upon more than Hackle's car parked in the Mereworth Court basement?

What if Alison had seen Jane's car in the basement too, or watched Jane driving in? Could she even have seen Jane and Hackle together? And would she have avoided disclosing this to anyone to protect Jane. Or could she have murdered Hackle herself, leaving Jane to be implicated for the crime? In fact, would it have taken more than a knowledge of Hackle's fresh infamy to rekindle the loathing Alison must have previously harboured for her daughter's seducer?

And if it was still too fanciful to imagine that Alison had been touring West London with a phial of poison ready to extinguish enemies on impulse, would her husband have done so in a premeditated way, once she had told him what she knew?

McFee had a triple motive for killing Hackle – outrage over the kidnap scam, retribution for the seduction of the McFee daughter, and finally the prospect of his eventually becoming Managing Director of Closter Drug if Hackle was removed. There was only his word for it, too, that the Scotsman had been with his wife at the time of Hackle's death – something no doubt Alison could have been warned to confirm.

And Treasure was almost sure that McFee had figured Hackle to have been the Irish voice on the telephone long before anyone else. He was nearly certain that McFee had begun to say so when he returned to the meeting in Larden's office, after testing the tape, on Tuesday evening. That the Scotsman hadn't finished what he had started to say then was capable of several interpretations – the most charitable being that he had been interrupted.

But it was again the death of Bodlin that saved McFee from being an evident suspect now. As with Larden, he hadn't lacked the opportunity to kill the scientist, but it seemed illogical that he should want to harm him at all, unless Treasure had overlooked something important.

Closter-Bennet's position was different.

The Finance Director had seemed to dislike Hackle almost as keenly as Bodlin had done. And if keenness was not his usual forte, he was still as outraged as both Bodlin and McFee at Hackle's duplicity over the kidnap – and more than anyone else over the way Hackle had leaked the confidential reports on Seromig: he had called that the essence of perfidy – strong words for Closter-Bennet. He also had a larger personal expectancy about becoming a future Closter managing director than either of his two colleagues, if with less justification. For that reason, he might have been readier than McFee not to baulk at wasting Bodlin with a shotgun if it was essential. He might also have had time to drive to Bodlin's place and back this morning while his wife was out riding.

Added to all of which, Closter-Bennet had just been the one to insist that Hackle must have been murdered by his fellow kidnap conspirators, and that Bodlin had been shot by a boyfriend.

Except: Closter-Bennet had a witness to his being at the factory at the time Hackle was killed. Mrs Edwards, Bodlin's secretary, had told Doris Tanner that she was sure she saw him at ten to seven on Wednesday evening, just as she was leaving. Doris had dutifully reported this to Treasure after the meeting this morning, although both she and the banker had been puzzled by the information. It had even gone through Treasure's mind, after leaving Doris Tanner, to question if Closter-Bennet and Mrs Edwards might be special intimates, or even lovers, which was a choice bit of misdirected lateral thinking: Mrs Edwards, whom Treasure had never met, was a grandmotherly sixty-two, and the worthy Convenor of her local Methodist Sisterhood.

Bert Tanner had proved to know the lady well.

Which left only one person.

‘We're here, sir. Mr Closter-Bennet's house.' Henry Pink was holding the rear door open for Treasure to get out.

‘Thanks. I shouldn't be long.' He had hardly been aware of their covering the three miles between Maidenhead and Later Burnlow. The weathered brick house was on the edge of the village, its substantial grounds bordering open farmland.

‘Mark, what a delightful surprise.'

But Barbara Closter-Bennet's welcome had a note of question in it too. She had appeared not at the front door but from the far side of the gravelled drive, advancing with lively steps from the direction of the stables. A tired-looking spaniel was plodding at her heels. Barbara's almost boyish figure was clothed in a brown shirt, fawn trousers and green gumboots. She had a shotgun tucked in to the crook of one arm, with a large canvas game bag slung over the opposite shoulder. The head of a dead rabbit stared balefully from under the flap of the bag.

‘I came on the off chance,' the banker explained. ‘I rang from the car earlier, but there was no reply.'

‘I've been out keeping down the vermin, as you can see. Did you expect to see Giles? I'm afraid he isn't here.'

‘I know. I've come from the factory. He was just leaving for a meeting at the bank. It's you I've come to see.'

‘I'm flattered. Sorry I'm not dressed for the occasion. D'you want to go inside? It's such a pretty morning the garden might be nicer.'

‘Much nicer. Your roses are well advanced.' They moved along the wide paved pathway around the house to the terrace.

‘Everything in the garden's early this year. After that mild winter.' She touched a rosebud in passing. ‘How's Molly? Back at work?'

‘No, still resting.'

‘I remember now she told me. Do her good. Give her my love, won't you? Want some coffee? It won't take a minute.' They were moving towards chairs set near the lawn. There was a massive copper beech close to the eastern flank of the house here. It was throwing morning shadows over the York flagstones. Barbara dropped the bag at her feet and leaned the double-barrelled gun against the table at her side.

‘No coffee, thanks.' He frowned. ‘I don't know whether you've heard. Stuart Bodlin's been killed. Murdered.'

‘Good Lord. No I hadn't. We only heard late last night about how Hackle really died. But how ghastly. When did this happen?' She moved a chair so that when she sat it was with her back to the sun. The dog settled beside her.

‘This morning, around six. He was shot in the head.'

‘Do they know who did it?' She was sitting very upright, her back and arms not touching the chair.

‘The police think they do. They're on the point of arresting Jane Larden.'

‘Oh no. I can't believe Jane could do such a thing. I mean, she's sunk to the bottom of everyone's estimation, but a murderess? No.'

‘I'm glad you think so too.'

She crossed her legs. ‘Is Bodlin's death linked to the other?'

‘To Dermot's? It seems inevitable, yes.'

‘And they're accusing Jane of both?'

‘They're about to.' He raised a hand, then stroked the back of his head with it. ‘Do you see much of her?'

‘Not that much, no. And it'll be considerably less in the future, I can tell you. Even if Bob takes her back. More fool him if he does. Cigarette?' She offered the packet she had taken from her shirt pocket.

‘No thanks. I gather Jane's doing some work for you here?'

‘She was,' came out bluntly, as the speaker lit her cigarette. ‘Making estimates to do over two of the rooms.'

‘Bob told me you had a meeting arranged at their house on Wednesday morning.'

‘To look at some fabrics, yes. I had to cancel it.'

‘Because of trouble with a horse?'

‘That's right. I had Parkes, the local vet, here.'

‘What was the problem?'

‘My grey stallion Fernando. He had a twisted gut, poor old boy. Needed a nasty little operation.'

‘Is he all right now?'

‘Yes, thanks. He's a tough old thing.'

‘Did the operation involve a full anaesthetic?'

‘Yes.' She blinked quickly several times after replying.

‘Did the vet use Bovetormaz?'

Her forehead creased. ‘He may have done. D'you know I'm not sure?' She blew smoke from her nostrils, while holding the cigarette between the very straight fingers of a hand held at eye level, to one side, and well away from her body. ‘There are several anaesthetics of that type. All much of a muchness, I imagine.'

‘And all equally dangerous?'

‘To humans? Probably. One is so used to handling these things though.'

‘Did you assist in the operation?'

‘Assist? I mucked in, yes. Owners do, you know. It was fairly straightforward.'

‘Was there anyone else present? Did the vet bring an assistant?'

She smiled. ‘He doesn't have one. There was only me. Why?'

‘Were you in charge of the antidote? In case the vet got any anaesthetic on his skin?'

‘Yes, but Reggie Parkes is very careful. Old, but very careful.'

‘But he had the antidote handy, and showed you what to do in an emergency?'

‘It was there, yes. One knows what to do. I've been around horses a long time. I don't understand— '

‘What happened to the syringe afterwards? The disposable syringe with the anaesthetic in it?'