Lambert smiled encouragingly at her, trying to get her to concentrate on him rather than the wall behind him. ‘We don’t know very much about anything concerned with your husband at present, Mrs Beaumont. We need to know much more, and we need the help of people like you.’
‘I see.’ She nodded slowly, as if she was having some difficulty in assimilating the simple idea he had put to her.
She didn’t seem inclined to offer anything by way of response. It was Hook who eventually prompted gently, ‘Mrs Beaumont, you said just now, “You don’t know about us, do you?” That is very true, and we need to know. We’re asking you to help us, though we realize this is a difficult time for you.’
‘Difficult, yes.’ She took a deep breath and frowned, as if striving hard to give the matter her full attention. ‘We weren’t close, Martin and I.’ She nodded again, perhaps congratulating herself upon the precision of her grammar. ‘We hadn’t been close for years. Maybe some of that was my fault — he always said it was.’
Hook said hastily, ‘There is no need for you to speculate about the reasons why you were no longer as close as you once were. What would be useful to us is the most precise summary you can give us of the state of your relationship at the time of Mr Beaumont’s death.’
‘Yes, I see. Well, I wanted a divorce. He wasn’t going to give me one. But we were going to fight him about that.’
‘We?’
‘Oh, a friend of mine. A female friend. No one can really resist divorce permanently nowadays, if you can prove the irretrievable breakdown of a marriage.’ She spoke carefully, as if she was repeating phrases which might be new to them. Then she suddenly brightened, looking at Hook for the first time as if conducting a genuine conversation. ‘I was going to fight him for my divorce. I won’t need to do that any more, will I?’
‘No, you won’t, Mrs Beaumont. Is it because you no longer felt close to your husband that you seem to know so little about his movements since Wednesday morning?’
‘Yes, that would be it, wouldn’t it? I haven’t known much about his movements on any particular day for quite a long time, now. For many years, I suppose.’ Her brow puckered again, and for a moment she was like an adolescent determined to be fair to an errant boyfriend. ‘I haven’t wanted to know. I suppose I could have found out more about what he was up to, but it’s a long time since I was interested.’
‘I see. Well, this is useful information for us. We shall probably be able to get a good idea of his movements on Wednesday from his staff at Abbey Vineyards. I appreciate that you have no certain knowledge of what he was planning to do on Wednesday night or Thursday, but have you any thoughts on where he might have been then?’
Jane Beaumont gave the question that dutiful, rather touching, attention she had given to all of his queries. ‘No. I’m sorry. I wasn’t very interested. I was more concerned with my plans for divorce, so I was quite happy that Martin wasn’t around.’ She watched Hook make a brief note and added apologetically, ‘I’m sorry. I’m not being very helpful, am I?’
Bert gave her an encouraging smile. ‘I think you’re being honest, Mrs Beaumont, and that is the most we can ask of anyone we talk to. It may be that something will occur to you over the next few hours, when you’ve had time to accustom yourself to the shock of this. Please get in touch with us immediately at this number with anything at all you think might be useful. Even the smallest things can turn out to be significant, sometimes.’
She took the card and studied it for a moment, as if she had been handed some strange and technical artefact. Then she nodded. ‘I’ll ring you immediately, if I think of anything. I’m afraid all I can think of at the moment is things to ask you, which is the wrong way round, as Mr Lambert pointed out.’
Lambert said hastily, ‘You’ve been very honest with us, Mrs Beaumont. If there are questions we are able to answer, we will certainly do that.’
‘Yes, I see. You told me how he died, didn’t you, Mr Lambert?’
He looked at her, deciding that there was a strange and sturdy strength beneath her abstracted air. She seemed to have more rather than less control of herself and her emotions as she had accustomed herself to the idea of this death. Lambert watched her closely as he said quietly, ‘I told you that he was shot through the head in his car, Mrs Beaumont.’
She winced slightly, then nodded. She did not seem to be disturbed by the picture. ‘He didn’t shoot himself, did he?’
It sounded more a statement than a question, but he answered, ‘No, we’re already certain he didn’t do that. We’re sure in fact that he was killed by person or persons unknown, as the law has it.’
‘The law, yes. But you’re going to find out who that person or persons are, aren’t you?’
‘Yes, I hope so, Mrs Beaumont. That is our job.’
‘He didn’t use his own pistol, then.’ She nodded to herself again, as if that was a reassuring thought.
Lambert, who had been preparing to take his leave, sat down again quickly. ‘Your husband had a firearm?’
‘A pistol, yes. That’s what you have to call it, he said. Not a gun.’ She smiled a small, private smile at her satisfaction in recalling that.
‘Do you know the make?’
‘No. I don’t know anything about it, I’m afraid, except that it was a pistol. The thing frightened me. I didn’t like having it in the house, but he said he needed it to protect himself.’
‘And you think he might have had it with him when he was killed?’
She gave the query careful attention in that curiously touching, diligent way again. ‘I think he probably did. I think he carried it about with him in the car. I haven’t seen the pistol in the house for years. Didn’t you find it there?’
‘No, we didn’t, Mrs Beaumont. But this is useful information. This is the sort of thing Detective Sergeant Hook meant when he said that if you think of anything that might be useful you should let us know.’
She smiled. It seemed in simple delight that she had been able to help them, though her cheeks remained as white as ever. ‘I’ll certainly phone if I think of anything else. I hope you find who did this. I didn’t want him killed, did I, even though I wanted to be rid of him?’
It was a question which rang in their heads for a long time as they drove away from the big, neglected house.
FOURTEEN
Whilst Lambert and Hook were conducting their rather strange interview with the newly bereaved Mrs Beaumont, DI Rushton rang the dead man’s PA, as he had promised her that morning he would.
‘I can confirm for you that we are indeed treating Mr Beaumont’s death as murder. There are not many more details available as yet, but I can tell you that Mr Beaumont’s body was found in his own car, near a hamlet called Howler’s Heath.’
Fiona Cooper was making notes on the pad in front of her. ‘I don’t know where that is.’
‘No. Very few people would — it’s a tiny place, just a farm and one or two cottages, I believe. I had to look it up on a large-scale map myself. It’s in a valley at the southern end of the Malverns. The car wasn’t in the place itself, but some way beyond it, under a copse of trees. It was because it was so isolated that the crime wasn’t discovered for some time after it happened.’
‘When can I let people know about this? They’re all wondering exactly what’s happened. I had to cancel all Mr Beaumont’s appointments.’
‘You can release the news now. That is why I rang you. The bare facts of what I have just told you will be embodied in a press release, which will be carried by the evening papers and by radio and television.’
‘Thank you. I’ll let the senior staff know immediately.’
‘You can let everyone know, Mrs Cooper. You could also make it clear that Detective Chief Superintendent Lambert will be taking charge of the case, and that he and his staff would be delighted to hear from anyone who knows anything at all which they think might have a bearing on this death.’ Throw in the local hero now: John Lambert’s name was likely to elicit more contacts than that of some anonymous inspector.