Unlucky For Some (33 page)

“No—I meant about meeting you at the car park.”

“Oh, of course. This morning, I think.”

Sims came back in, and handed him the keys. “Do you know when Stephen last used his rifle?”

“He went out shooting with Jack Shaw last night.”

“You didn’t happen to see him put the guns away, did you?”

“No—Grace and I had gone to bed before he came home.” Tony looked over at Lloyd, who was perusing the bookshelf, taking out his glasses. “I shouldn’t bother,” he said. “Grace isn’t what you’d call a great reader. It’s all travel guides.”

“Did you all leave for the Grange together this morning?” asked Sims.

“No—we were going to, but I got held up with business. Jack came, and he and Stephen and Grace all went up in Grace’s car. I followed about half an hour later.”

“So you were on your own for that half hour?”

Lloyd seemed excessively interested in the travel guides, for some reason. Tony was finding it difficult to concentrate on what Sims was saying. “Yes,” he said, then remembered that he wasn’t. “Except for when Mike Waterman was here,” he said.

That got Lloyd’s attention. He snapped shut the book he’d been looking at. “What time did Mr. Waterman come here?” he asked.

Oh, dear. He was going to have to admit to his lack of security-consciousness. “I can’t tell you, exactly,” he said. “Some time between ten and twenty past nine. I was upstairs, and came down to find him standing in the corridor—it seemed I had inadvertently left the back door open.”

“So anyone could have come in?” Lloyd put the book back on the shelf.

Tony hadn’t thought about that. “Well . . . yes,” he said. “I suppose they could. But if you’re thinking that someone could have taken Stephen’s rifle—I had the keys in my trouser pocket. They’d have had to force the drawer. And they didn’t, as you saw.”

But even so, Lloyd was looking just as grimly disapproving as Mike Waterman had, Tony thought, as he showed his visitors out, and locked and bolted the door once again. For God’s sake, it was a simple moment of forgetfulness—not the crime of the century.

Keith was on his way back to Stoke Weston, wishing he’d left the summerhouse the way he had gone to it. His only thought at the time had been to get back to civilization as quickly as possible, and that meant using the shortcut through the woods to the other path. If he hadn’t done that, they would never have known he’d been anywhere near the summerhouse. But they’d been there, and he had been given a considerable fright, so he had broken the habit of a lifetime and volunteered information to the police.

They had wanted him to give them a formal statement about it, and he’d had to wait forever before someone could see him, all so that he could tell them exactly what he had already told them.

Keith had thought that his last moment had come when he saw Halliday with that gun. He’d never liked guns himself. They were too complicated for him. He’d read a gun magazine once, and hadn’t understood a word. It was all calibers and cartridges and weird names. People in Stoke Weston loved them—some of them had got up some sort of pressure group when the laws were being tightened up. But as far as Keith was concerned, they could ban them altogether.

Give him a good old blunt instrument any day.

Tom looked at the young man who sat opposite him and Judy, and tried to see him as a psychotic killer who would take his resentment of Tony Baker’s arrival in his life to the lengths of attempting to murder his own mother, and he couldn’t. He had waived his right to legal representation, as he had on each occasion that he had been questioned, something Tom felt was a bad mistake, but he could always change his mind.

He had wanted his mother informed of his arrest, and she had charged over from the hospital, creating enough of a scene at the desk that Judy had decided that it was best all round if she acceded to her repeated and very loud requests to see Stephen, in the interests of moving the inquiry along. Now she was back at Jack Shaw’s bedside, thank goodness.

Tom had spoken to her when Lloyd and Judy had gone looking for Shaw. She had told him that she had given Jack Shaw a lift up to the Grange, and had left him watching the Morris dancing when she went to meet Baker at the lake. She had seen no one on her way down to the lake, and had had no idea that Jack was there. The first she knew of his presence was when he pushed her to the ground. She saw nothing of who was shooting at her, because she was too busy staying alive to care who was trying to kill her. It was enough to know that someone was. When she’d been told of Stephen’s arrest, she had dismissed out of hand the possibility of it being him, of course, but she had told Judy that Stephen was having what she had called “a bit of trouble” adjusting to the idea of her and Baker. And that, of course, brought Dr. Castle’s snapshot into perfect focus.

Stephen had explained why he was in the summerhouse, and had explained, convincingly, Tom thought, what his thoughts had been on finding the rifle there, and why he hadn’t complied immediately with the disembodied orders.

“You hold the license in order to shoot pest animals on a neighboring farm,” Judy said. “What sort of animals?”

“Foxes, rabbits. Gray squirrels. That sort of thing.”

“Do you like shooting animals?”

“Not particularly. Jack taught me to shoot, and he did it, so I did it. But they cause a lot of damage, and shooting’s better than poison or traps or gas. And much better than foxhunting. So it doesn’t bother me.”

“And your rifle is usually kept in the gun cabinet in the storeroom of the Tulliver Inn?”

“It’s always kept there.”

“Who else has access to the gun cabinet?”

“Jack. He keeps his rifle in it.” Stephen looked anxious. “What happened to him? Is he all right?”

“He wasn’t shot, but he was seriously injured. He’s had an emergency operation to relieve the pressure on his brain, but he’s still in a coma.”

Stephen’s concern seemed genuine enough, thought Tom. “Why does he keep his rifle in your gun cabinet?” he asked.

“Because a couple of years ago they tightened up on security, and Jack’s cottage wasn’t burglar-proof enough for them. It would have cost a lot of money to make the changes they wanted, so they agreed that he could keep his rifle at the pub. That’s when Mr. Waterman gave me the gun cabinet—it complied with the new regulations, and mine didn’t.”

“Does Jack Shaw have a key to the cabinet?”

“Yes.”

“When did he use it last?”

“Last night—we were out shooting, and he put the guns away while I made us some coffee.”

But Shaw couldn’t confirm that, not at the moment, thought Tom. “Was anyone else there?”

“No—they’d gone to bed.”

“So you could be lying, couldn’t you?”

Stephen frowned. “What about?”

“Putting your rifle away. Maybe you left it in the summerhouse at the Grange, ready to use this morning.”

“Of course I didn’t!”

“So how did it get there? Does anyone else have access to it?”

“Not officially, but well—my mum, I suppose. And Tony, now. I mean—they live there, so they know where the keys are kept.”

“Does Tony Baker shoot?” asked Judy.

“Yes. I think he goes deerstalking.”

“You said earlier that you heard a shot when you were on your way to the summerhouse. Were you worried, when you heard it?”

“No. You hear shots all the time at this time of year. People shoot birds with air rifles. It’s all properly organized and legal.”

“What time was it?”

“I was about halfway along the path to the summerhouse, so I suppose it was about five to eleven or so.”

“Which path did you use?”

Stephen looked puzzled. “I didn’t know there was more than one,” he said. “Ben just said to take the path nearest to the public car park, and it would bring me out at the summerhouse.”

“But if you had run,” said Tom, deliberately making his voice hard, “you could have gone to the summerhouse, picked up the rifle, taken the shortcut through the woods to the other path, and you’d be there well before five to eleven, wouldn’t you? You would have had plenty of time to get into position and wait for your mother to come along. Is that what you did, Stephen?”

“No! Why in the world would I want to do that? I love my mum!”

Tom was finding this difficult. It was his usual style of interviewing: accusatory, disbelieving. He did it simply to see if he could shake the interviewee or not. And he hadn’t shaken Stephen; his reaction had been simply that he had no desire to shoot his mother, rather than saying again that he didn’t know of the existence of the other path. That suggested, in Tom’s experience, that both statements were true. As an interview style, it had worked for him in the past, and it was working for him now, but his heart wasn’t in it.

Stephen still reminded him of Bobby. It was something about the care he took with his hair and clothes, and his skin, and his teeth. Everything had to be in perfect condition. Bobby might only be eleven, but he was a follower of fashion too, and spent hours grooming himself. Tom just kept seeing Bobby in Stephen, and he simply didn’t believe he had killed anyone, never mind tried to kill his own mother. But to conduct the interview in his usual style, he had to behave as though he did, and he didn’t like doing that.

“Well—that’s the problem, isn’t it? You love your mother. Your father left her, and you had to become the man of the house when you were thirteen years old. For seven years, it was only you and your mother. And then along comes a man who your mother falls in love with—you didn’t like that, did you, Stephen?”

“I—I just don’t like him very much.”

“But it was your mother who let you down, wasn’t it?” Tom insisted. “By falling for this man you don’t like very much. You were angry, weren’t you? Angry with her?”

Stephen’s face grew red. “No! I—I just . . . I wouldn’t—” He shook his head, and stared down at the table. “I just hoped she wouldn’t get involved with him, that’s all. I wasn’t
angry
with her. I was just a bit fed up.”

Every time Tom had spoken to Stephen, he had been pleasant and polite, and open about everything except where he’d been the night Mrs. Fenton died. But Judy believed that Keith Scopes had been telling the truth when she saw him that morning, and that he had been badly frightened when he encountered Stephen at the summerhouse, because Stephen had threatened him with the rifle. Why would he do that? Tom thought about that one area in which Stephen was less than forthcoming. Had he been with Ben on the night of Mrs. Fenton’s murder? And if so, why didn’t he tell them? Because Ben was a secret lover? Scopes could be going in for a spot of blackmail—that wouldn’t surprise Tom at all. Keith Scopes would do anything that he thought might make him a few quid. Blackmail would be par for the course. So perhaps Stephen was keeping his sexual orientation a secret from his mother.

“Does your mother know you’re gay?”

“Yes.”

So much for that. Well, maybe he was keeping Ben a secret from her, for some reason. “Does she know about Ben?”

“Yes.”

He wasn’t really winning here.

“Did she know you were going to meet him in the summerhouse today?” asked Judy.

“No—no one knew.”

In that case, thought Tom, why did Keith Scopes go there? And what had made Stephen threaten him?

“Does Michael Waterman know about you and Ben?”

Stephen flushed.

At last, thought Tom. “Was Keith Scopes blackmailing you and Ben?” he asked.

Stephen shook his head. “No,” he said. “Nothing like that.”

“Why did you point the rifle at him?”

“I didn’t.”

“He says you did. He says you had it at your shoulder, ready to fire.”

“I just forgot I had it. I turned away from the window toward the door when it opened. I was just holding it like that.”

Just holding it like that? Tom visualized what Stephen was telling him. He had been holding the rifle, in the firing position, while looking out of the window. Seconds before Scopes got there. And that was when Tony Baker was in the car park, waiting for Mrs. Halliday. He didn’t like the way this was shaping up, but he had to carry on.

“Is that the way you usually hold a gun that you aren’t actively firing?”

“No.”

“Then
why
were you holding it like that?”

“No reason.”

“No reason,” Tom repeated. “Never point a gun at anyone unless you intend to shoot them—isn’t that what you’re told? You pointed your rifle at Keith Scopes. Did you intend to shoot him?”

“No. It was jammed. It wouldn’t fire.”

“Then why did you point it at him?”

“I didn’t mean to point it at him! And I wouldn’t have been pointing it at anyone if it hadn’t been jammed.”

He had slipped up, as Tom had hoped he would, when he started the rapid questioning. “So who
were
you pointing it at?”

“No one.”

“Someone you could see through the window?”

“No.” Stephen looked uncomfortable.

“Someone waiting in the car park, maybe?”

He didn’t answer.

“Waiting for your mother?”

Stephen went red.

“You were pointing it at Tony Baker, weren’t you, Stephen?”

Stephen looked resigned. “Yes,” he muttered. “But it isn’t how it sounds. It was—it was just . . .” He sighed. “Like when someone’s annoying you, and you pretend to shoot them—point your fingers at them, pretending you’ve got a gun.”

“But you did have a gun.”

“It was jammed! It might just as well have been my fingers! It was stupid—I just wasn’t thinking what I was doing.”

“What
were
you thinking about?” asked Judy.

Stephen turned to her, his face relieved, now that she had interrupted Tom’s constant flow of questions. With another interviewee, that might have irritated Tom, but he felt almost as relieved as Stephen, because he didn’t like doing this to him.

“I was looking forward to seeing Ben. I was worried because I didn’t understand why my rifle was there, and who’d been shooting with it. I was annoyed by Baker pacing up and down because he didn’t think my mother should be keeping him waiting. I was wondering if two people could actually live in the summerhouse—I was thinking about a dozen different things.”