‘Don’t upset your father,’ she admonished her sons; Luke had appeared mysteriously and silently at his elder brother’s side, in response to Jack’s discovery of the article in the free local weekly.
It was Luke who sought out the gems in the accompanying copy and delivered himself of an unseemly guffaw. ‘They call Dad Jim, Mum. It says here: “The well-known Herefordshire detective Jim Hook is now the proud holder of a distinguished honours degree.” Then it goes back to that stuff it always prints about cricket and how he got Geoff Boycott out in the days of prehistory.’
His father, who had entered the room in time to hear this last sentence, said a little wearily, ‘Anything before you were born is “prehistory”, is it, Luke? It was a mere fourteen years ago, you know.’
‘When you were in your pomp and King Boycott was well past his, then,’ said his elder son, with a crushingly accurate knowledge of the game he now loved with the same passion as his father.
‘Indeed it was,’ Bert admitted with his habitual modesty. It was not without a tinge of regret that he added, ‘It was in a benefit match, when the great Geoffrey had retired. He’d already compiled over fifty runs.’
Eleanor Hook said loftily, ‘If you know as much about the game as you claim, Jack, you will be aware that Mr Boycott was renowned for never giving his wicket away. At any time and in any circumstances.’
‘Well done, Mum,’ said Luke. ‘I bet it was one of Dad’s good ’uns, like you say. You know, Jack, he was a great bowler, our dad, long before he was a professor.’
‘Can we eat as soon as possible, please, love? I have to go out again tonight,’ was all that modest luminary said in response to this unwonted filial admiration.
Luke was not going to let him off so easily. After perusing the print beneath the picture carefully, he read with his finger fastened triumphantly on the passage, stressing the forename whenever it occurred. ‘It says here, “Whilst his colleagues were anxious to assure us that Jim Hook was not allowing his academic distinction to go to his head, the great man himself was not available for comment. It seems that conscientious detective Jim was too busy with his work to speak to us. We understand that he is currently engaged on the case of the sensational and as yet unsolved murder of Martin Beaumont, the well-loved local businessman who owned and ran Abbey Vineyards. At the time we went to print, a source described the police as baffled by the crime.”’ Luke looked up with delighted innocence. ‘I don’t think they should call Dad “baffled”, now that he’s a graduate. Do you, Mum?’
‘Dinner’s ready. Get the cutlery out and set the table,’ ordered his mother sternly. Bert forbade all discussion of both degrees and detection for the duration of the meal.
Jack Hook had a parting shot for his father as he left the house and hurried to his car. ‘Best of luck with the detecting, Jim!’
Tom Ogden lived with his wife in a long, low, two-hundred-year-old farmhouse, built in the attractive amber-coloured local stone. The barn alongside it was in good repair but now disused. It had already elicited several enquiries from local property developers, who had been told firmly that it was not for sale in Tom’s lifetime. The other, smaller outbuildings housed the compact modern machinery used in the cultivation of the strawberry fields.
Hook, who was used to the convenience and confinements of modern suburbia, said with genuine appreciation what an attractive place this was to live. Ogden led them across a wide, stone-flagged hall and into a room which comfortably accommodated several easy chairs alongside the old, oak dining-room furniture which denoted its main use.
Tom Ogden looked genuinely pleased with Hook’s compliment. ‘We rattle around a little, now that the children have gone. Enid says we should go for a modern bungalow, but my family’s been here for centuries — I can’t see myself living anywhere else. Besides, there are advantages in living on site, even now, when there are no beasts to milk and we operate like a vast smallholding.’ He delivered the last phrase with a practised contempt, so that they caught a little of the nostalgia for a vanished way of life they often saw in countrymen of his age.
Hook, who was seeking to get a flavour of the man before they began formal questioning, saw the odd but attractive mixture of openness and shrewdness he often found in people who owned and worked the land. He had played cricket with men like this, who had been veterans of the game when he had arrived as a raw but promising teenager, a police cadet newly released from the Barnardo’s home where he had spent his boyhood. He had been a green lad in those days, knowing little of life outside the home and anxious to pick up whatever he could from every experience. He had learned much from men like this.
Ogden had the weather-beaten skin, the tanned face and hands of a man who had spent the bulk of his life in the open air, who had worked outside in all weathers and come through the worst of the heat and the cold, labouring as hard and as long as the men he had eventually employed. At sixty-three, he was a picture of healthy vigour, bulky yet sinewy, an excellent representative of the yeoman stock which had bred him. He was also an intelligent man, who had reacted to the changing demands of farming in the new century.
As if he read those thoughts, Tom looked round the low-ceilinged room and said, ‘I can remember having over thirty people in here for the Sunday tea my mother made, when I was a nipper in the fifties and we had everyone out for the haymaking.’
‘You’ve seen the world of farming change a lot in your working lifetime,’ agreed Bert Hook.
‘Ay. But at the moment I’m wondering what you’re doing here.’ He said it with a smile, but with the air of a man who was used to directness in himself and in others. You wouldn’t get away with much, if you worked for this man, but he would treat you fairly, if you were honest with him.
Lambert said, ‘It’s routine in a murder case. Anyone who was close to the victim is interviewed in case he can provide useful information.’
‘Not on Saturday night, they’re not. And not by the man in charge, the celebrated John Lambert.’ The smile was still there, but this time there was an edge to the words. ‘If this was no more than routine, you’d have sent a copper round, maybe a DC. I wouldn’t have been honoured with a chief superintendent and a detective sergeant.’
Lambert answered the smile, but did not hurry his reply. There was nothing wrong with letting a man who was used to being in control see that you were assessing him. ‘I see you have some knowledge of police procedure, Mr Ogden.’ He waited until he saw the man’s face cloud with anger, then went on briskly, ‘I think you have enough common sense to have expected this visit. Physically, your land is close to Abbey Vineyards. Very nearly surrounded by their vines, in fact. And I don’t think you would expect the fact that you have had what one might call “ongoing discussions” with Mr Beaumont over the years to have escaped us.’
‘All right. So we didn’t see eye to eye and never would have. Doesn’t mean I killed the man, does it?’
‘Indeed it doesn’t, Mr Ogden. But could you now tell us about the source of your disagreements, please?’
‘You already know it. You only have to look at a map. Beaumont wanted my land, but he wasn’t going to have it.’
‘I can certainly see that he would want it. It would have consolidated his holding, made a natural completion of the land he held.’