‘I’ll do that. It won’t take long for the news to spread.’
‘No. Bad news always spreads quickly. And sensational bad news such as violent murder spreads quickest of all.’
‘Well, you’d know more about that than I would, Detective Inspector Rushton,’ Fiona said primly. She felt a sudden need to distance herself from this awful thing. The vision of the blue Jaguar with its driver dead at the wheel was for the first time appallingly vivid to her. She had worked closely and happily with this man for the last five years. And someone she knew here, one of these people she greeted each day as a friend, might be involved in this, might even have committed murder.
She gave Rushton the extension and home telephone numbers of the five senior people she had named to him earlier in the day, so that he might set up meetings with them.
Fiona sat for a few minutes to compose herself after she had put down the phone, deciding exactly how she would phrase this sensational disclosure for the rest of the staff on the site. It was whilst she was deciding upon the correct form of words that Vanda North tapped briefly on her door and came into the office.
The director of residential accommodation looked very animated. A few strands of her shortish fair hair, usually so tightly disciplined, flew free on the right of her head, creating an effect which was quite attractive. Her blue eyes glittered with life and her cheeks had more colour than Fiona could remember them ever having before. Miss North looked perhaps five years younger than her forty-six as she asked, ‘Is there any news yet on how this happened?’
Fiona took her through the sparse facts which Rushton had just released to her. She could not understand why she felt so disturbed, why she was delivering her information as though on automatic pilot. By the time she concluded her brief bulletin, she realized what it was that was so alarming. Vanda North should have known nothing about this death, yet her opening enquiry had shown quite plainly that she did. And her reaction to the facts Fiona had just given her was unsurprised, even a little impatient.
Had she unearthed her employer’s killer at the outset, simply through this woman’s disclosure of knowledge she should not have had? Fiona Cooper said, through a throat which now felt very tight, ‘You knew about this, didn’t you? But I’ve only just found out some of these facts myself, only just been given police permission to release them.’
Vanda North looked at her for a moment as if she could not understand the accusation behind the words. Then she laughed abruptly, the unexpected sound shrill and loud in the quiet room. She realized the reason for the apprehension she had seen for a moment in the woman behind the desk. ‘Of course, you wouldn’t know, would you? I spoke to Jane Beaumont this morning. She told me about it — two policewomen had been round quite early to break the news of Martin’s death to her.’
Fiona hoped that the horror she had felt for a moment had not shown on her face. She dropped into her PA’s efficient, non-committal voice. ‘I knew it must be something like that.’
The house of the finance director of Abbey Vineyards was altogether less grand than that of the company’s late owner.
It was a pleasant, rather boxy, detached house in a cul-de-sac of identical buildings on the outskirts of Tewkesbury. It would have been more impressive if allowed more space, but the developer had followed the modern trend in building the maximum number of residences the local authority planning committee would allow him to erect on the site. The land had once been the gardens of the two late-Victorian houses he had demolished to allow this project. There were now fourteen residences here, so that the houses were nothing like as elegant as the artist’s impression on the front of the brochure. They had built-in garages and were set in pocket-handkerchief gardens.
Alistair Morton himself opened the door to Lambert and Hook. The room into which he led them was square and well lit by its single broad window in the front wall of the house. The dining-room set of table and six chairs and matching long sideboard made it seem quite small. The three oil-paintings of what seemed to be Scottish Highland scenes combined with a few ornaments to make the decor seem almost fussy.
Perhaps Morton noticed them taking note of the room, in the calm, unhurried way which is common in CID officers anxious to pick up every informative detail from the living spaces of those they interview. He said nervously, ‘This is a dining room, but we don’t use it much for that. I needed it for a study and a place to do freelance work, until I was fully established and provided with my own facilities at Abbey Vineyards.’
Lambert turned his attention with a polite smile to the human being at the centre of this room. Morton was slightly built, his thinness making him seem a little taller than he was. He had straight black hair, neatly parted in the style of a previous generation and closely cut at the back and sides of his head. ‘Have you been with Abbey Vineyards for a long time, Mr Morton?’
‘Very nearly since the outset. I came to Mr Beaumont as a newly qualified chartered accountant, doing his books in my spare time in the early days. Even when I decided to throw in my lot with him, I still did other work on a freelance basis, because he couldn’t afford to pay me much at the beginning.’
Lambert nodded. ‘I remember the vineyard beginning as a very modest concern. Most people thought the notion of English wine rather ridiculous at the time, or at best as no more than a novelty. You must have had faith in the idea.’
‘I suppose I did. Or rather, faith in Martin Beaumont, if I’m honest. I knew nothing about English wine and very little about wine in general. But Martin was an enthusiast. He carried people along with him.’
‘Nevertheless, you showed a lot of faith, to throw in your lot with him when he was dependent on what was then a largely untried idea.’
Alistair hadn’t anticipated this. He had expected to be defensive, to have to devote all his resources to concealing the fact that he had been thinking for months of the means by which he might dispose of the employer he had come to hate. Yet this grey, lined, experienced face seemed to understand his situation, to appreciate what he had risked in those early days. He was tempted for a moment to disclose his real relationship with Beaumont, to say exactly what sort of man he had been and how treacherously he had reneged on those early promises of partnership. But that would surely be folly, with Beaumont on a slab with a bullet through his head and these men looking hard for a killer.
Alistair went back to the words he had prepared. ‘I was young. I had a wife working. I felt I could take a chance to pursue an exciting idea. We didn’t have any children — we still don’t have. I was a qualified chartered accountant. It wouldn’t have been the end of the world if Abbey Vineyards had failed. I’d have found other employment easily enough.’
It all made sense. But Morton was picking his words very carefully for a man with nothing to hide, thought Lambert. ‘You will appreciate that at present we know almost nothing about a man who has been a victim of violent homicide. We’ve already spoken to Mr Beaumont’s widow. Apart from her, you have probably known him longer than anyone else we shall talk to. Would you tell us what sort of man he was, please?’
Alistair wasn’t ready for so direct a challenge. Any frank appraisal of the man was plainly dangerous ground for him. He didn’t want to say what he really thought, but he couldn’t afford to come across to them as evasive. He played for time by rising and going across to the sideboard and sliding open one of its bottom drawers. After searching for a moment through a sheaf of documents, he produced a small leaflet and handed it to Lambert.
‘That is the first brochure we produced at Abbey Vineyards. That is a picture of Martin as he was then.’