James’s widow remembered not only Clyde Northcott’s name, but his detective sergeant rank, which was unusual.
The CID men looked round the big comfortable room with its luxurious furnishings and fittings. As if she read their thoughts, she said quickly, ‘This place is far too big for me. Clare’s off at university and I’m rattling around in this mansion. I shan’t stay here, once Jim is buried and I can feel closure.’
Peach nodded. ‘We should be able to release his body quite soon now. You will have heard that we’ve made an arrest for his murder.’
‘Yes. A man called Peter Coleman, they said on the radio this morning. Not a name I know. But I kept well clear of Jim’s business deals.’ She sounded as if she was deliberately distancing herself from both her husband and his death.
‘You’ve missed nothing by not knowing Coleman. He’s a violent man who’s committed other crimes. We shall get him for this one. He’s going to go down for a long time.’
‘That’s good. You’re used to hearing threats of violence, when you’re married to a prominent Irishman, but you somehow don’t think it will ever happen to anyone close to you.’
‘And now your brother-in-law has been killed as well. Only a day after you’d met him in the Grouse Inn on the side of Pendle Hill. That must have been another terrible shock for you.’
‘It was. A woman officer called Peach interviewed me on Saturday about Dominic. Would she be any relation to you, DCI Peach?’
He smiled. ‘Detective Sergeant Peach is my wife, Mrs O’Connor. We used to work together, but police procedure dictates that partners cannot work together as a pairing. Lucy was excellent at distracting susceptible males, among other things. DS Northcott doesn’t do that; he is able to offer a more physical presence, whenever it is needed.’
Sarah smiled at the big black man, who inclined his head an inch forward in acknowledgement. Then she said, ‘Your wife is quite a looker, DCI Peach.’ She waited unsuccessfully for a reaction. ‘Still, you might be better with your new partner in a crisis.’
‘Yes. It seemed rather a strange time for you to be meeting alone with your brother-in-law.’
She thought of saying that she’d already told his wife her reasons for that. But she decided that it was better for her to be as cooperative as she could be. ‘There were some nasty people around Jim, at times. Dominic thought he knew who had killed him. That’s why we met.’
‘I see.’
‘He wanted to check a few things out with me. Whether certain people who were at Claughton Towers last Monday night were there at Jim’s invitation or mine, for instance. He thought he’d glimpsed the man you mentioned, Peter Coleman, just before Jim was killed. He knew the people Coleman worked for and he wanted to check on one or two of the invitees for that reason.’ She had been so composed that it was a surprise when her voice broke suddenly on her next words. ‘He. . he knew far more about the people Jim worked with and the people who were his business rivals than I did. Dominic steered clear, but he knew a lot of things about Jim.’
‘Do you think that is what cost Dominic his life?’
She was shaken by the question. ‘I don’t know, do I? I don’t see why — Dominic didn’t fish in the same murky pools as Jim.’
‘But two brothers killed in the same week. It would be amazing if there wasn’t a connection between the two deaths, don’t you think?’
‘I suppose it would. I hadn’t really considered the matter before.’
Peach doubted that, but he didn’t pursue the notion. ‘Policemen have to keep open minds. We’re doing just that.’
Sarah stared down at the elegant navy leather shoes beneath the dark blue trousers which clothed her long legs. ‘You know your own business best. I hope you find who killed Dominic as quickly as you did Jim’s killer.’
‘We shall need to know much more than we do at present about the months before his death. I think you can help us with that.’
If he had expected to startle her, he was disappointed. She continued looking down at her feet and allowed herself no more than a small, controlled sigh. ‘And why would you think that, Mr Peach?’
‘We’re still investigating the victim’s possessions. We found personal letters in a locked drawer in his desk. One of them was from you.’
Now at last she looked at him, with a mixture of fear and resentment on her white face. ‘I had nothing to do with Dominic’s death.’
‘You had been conducting an affair with Dominic. You’ve chosen not to disclose that to us. Secrecy is never a wise policy after a murder. It excites suspicion.’
‘It was all over.’
‘It doesn’t seem so, from what you said in your letter.’
Her eyes had tears in them, but she brushed the moisture away angrily before it could run down her cheeks. ‘This is humiliating.’
‘I appreciate that. But we need the details of this. We need to know when this close relationship with your brother-in-law began, how intense it was, when it finished, if indeed it did end as you claim. It is one strand of our enquiry. There will be many others. If your relationship has nothing to do with this death, what you tell us will go no further.’
Being the wife of a powerful industrialist had brought privileges to Sarah O’Connor over the last decade. It was years since she had been called upon to account for herself, years since anyone had treated her other than deferentially. She folded her arms deliberately and made herself look at this aggressive and insistent man. Then she forced herself to speak slowly and evenly. ‘I slept with Dominic for the first time last summer. That would make it about ten months ago. I expect it seems shocking to you because he was as you say my brother-in-law. That was a mere accident: I don’t think either of us considered it at the time. We were both deserted by our spouses and both lonely. You ask about intensity. The relationship became close and very intense by the beginning of this year — more so than either of us had intended it to be. It ended just over a month ago.’
They looked at each other for a few seconds, with Peach’s inquisitive eyes glittering even darker than hers. He said quietly, ‘Thank you. Who decided to end the affair?’
She resented his second use of that word, but she wasn’t going to react to it. She said between tight lips, ‘He did. Now you’ll want to know why. I can’t tell you that. Perhaps Dominic had found someone else. Perhaps he just tired of me. I expect if he were still alive he’d tell you that he’d never intended the relationship to last indefinitely. He didn’t tell me that and I didn’t feel like that.’
She felt as if she was stripping away her clothes and exposing herself. That was what she was doing with her emotions, she supposed. Peach, watching her closely, felt he only needed to prompt to learn more. ‘You resented the break. The letter from you which we found was quite threatening.’
‘Dominic was a heartless bastard when it suited him. I knew that, but I never thought I’d see that part of him turned against me.’
The age-old complaint of the lover whose judgement had been blinded by love. I knew he was like this but I never thought it would be applied to me. Along with the idea that you could eliminate vice and change character by the power of your passion, it was the oldest of all love’s illusions. Peach said, ‘It is plain that you were and still are very resentful about the way he treated you.’
‘Yes. I should have just shrugged my shoulders and gone away, shouldn’t I? Perhaps I’ll be able to do that, now that he’s dead.’
‘Who else knew about this liaison?’
She said with a bitter smile, ‘I think I prefer “liaison” to “affair”. No one else knew, as far as I was concerned. Jim was far too busy with his own concerns to notice what I was doing and Dominic’s wife Ros is far too self-centred to follow what he was doing. I know lovers are often too sanguine about what people know, but I’m certain none of the people close to us knew about Dominic and me. We were discreet and we didn’t meet that often; we probably averaged about once a week.’