If she had expected amazement, she was disappointed. Hook’s expression changed not a muscle as he made a careful note of the fact in his round, surprisingly swift hand. Lambert’s eyebrows lifted the merest fraction before he said, ‘I take it, then, that the two of you are now friends.’
She weighed the word with a small smile, her face softening a little with the thought. ‘We are. If you think that an unlikely situation, I can only say that a month ago the notion would have surprised me too.’
‘This is a recent development, then?’
‘Very recent. Jane came to see me two and a half weeks ago.’ She stopped for an instant, wondering why it mattered to her that she should be so precise about this. ‘She wanted to warn me that she was proposing to sue Martin for divorce and that I might find myself cited as a co-respondent.’
‘That must have given you a shock.’
‘It did. But it was fair enough. I’d hardly thought about his wife during the years I was with Martin. It seems quite odd now, but I was besotted with him at the time.’ She shook her head, as if the recollection of that time still amazed her. ‘Jane and I had scarcely seen each other, and I suspect scarcely thought about each other, until she came to see me here. We got on well, which must have been a surprise to her as well as to me. I said she could cite me if she needed to — I could scarcely have denied it — but that I could probably provide her with evidence of more recent women, if she wanted it. I’ve seen her a few times since then. Last Wednesday night, she was a little upset and I agreed to stay the night with her.’
‘A fortunate decision for both of you, as it turned out,’ said Lambert dryly.
He didn’t pull any punches, this man. But Vanda didn’t resent his comment. She felt again the thrill of the contest, the excitement of pitting her wits against this seasoned campaigner. That elation was a warning to her to be careful, however. ‘I suppose in the light of what happened to Martin, it was indeed a fortunate decision. Neither of us could have seen it as that at the time.’
‘You say Mrs Beaumont was upset. In what way was that?’
It sounded impertinent, but she knew it wasn’t. He had to ask about the time when Martin was killed, and it was important to Jane and to her that she got this right. ‘Jane has a bipolar disorder. I don’t know whether your police machine has yet discovered that. It is one of the reasons why even those who have seen the firm develop over the years have never seen much of the boss’s wife.’
‘And it was affecting her on Wednesday?’
‘I’m no medical expert, Chief Superintendent Lambert. I wouldn’t pretend to understand the condition, though I’ve read up a little about it in the last few days. All I know is that Jane was jumpy and unpredictable on Wednesday. I offered to stay the night with her and she seemed very grateful. She accepted immediately.’
Lambert nodded. It seemed to Vanda that his eyes never blinked as he studied her. ‘And you didn’t think that she was simulating this distress?’
‘No, I’m sure she wasn’t. Jane was jumpy and unable to concentrate — unpredictable in what she would say next, as though her mind was flitting from subject to subject. Why on earth should she be pretending that?’
‘This is a murder investigation, or I wouldn’t be questioning you in this detail, Miss North. If Mrs Beaumont knew that her husband was going to die — if, for instance, she had employed the services of a professional killer to dispose of him — she might well have been anxious to establish an alibi for herself. You are the only one who can confirm for us that she was many miles from him at the moment of his death.’
‘But if she’d used a hit man, she wouldn’t need to establish that, surely?’
‘Without your presence in the house overnight, we could not be certain that either one of you wasn’t in the car with Beaumont when he died.’
He seemed to her to have put just a little emphasis on that ‘either one of you’. Perhaps she was becoming too sensitive to his changes of tone. She took care not to react to the phrase. ‘I know enough of Jane Beaumont to be quite certain that she wasn’t involved in his death. But I understand that you have to make your own mind up in these things, that you have to assume that we’re all liars until you know for certain that we’re not.’
Lambert was not at all put out. He smiled grimly. ‘Not everyone involved will be lying, Miss North. But one person will be quite determined to deceive us. Have you any idea who that person might be?’
She was used to his directness now. ‘I’ve thought about that a lot in the last couple of days. I’m happy to say that others have motives as well as me. But I can’t imagine that any of us would have killed Martin. It would be wrong if he came across to you as a monster. He had an obsession with his company and his direction of it, but apart from that he had a lot of good qualities. He could be a good friend, and he was a fair and generous employer. And I have got to know the people I work with pretty well over the last few years. We all have our strengths and our weaknesses, but I can’t imagine that any of them is capable of murder.’
Just when she had got used to fencing with Lambert, to parrying his thrusts and preserving her position with him, it was Hook who now took up the attack. He said quietly, ‘You said earlier that you might have been able to provide evidence of further and more recent sexual adventures to assist Mrs Beaumont in her divorce petition. You will appreciate that such information has to be of interest to us.’
She smiled at his open, rubicund face. ‘Sex and money. They’re the great motivators to murder, aren’t they? And hatred, I suppose — but I’ve just told you that there wasn’t much of that around. Well, both Jane and I are sure Martin was still putting it about, if you’ll excuse the crudity. He isn’t the man he was, of course, in looks at least. You might not believe it now, but there was a touch of the Greek god about him when I first knew him.’ She paused for a moment, her mind abstracted for an instant to that time long ago. ‘I’m sorry, I’m trying to explain away my conduct from all those years ago, when it has no relevance whatever to this death. What was it you wanted from me again?’
Lambert wondered if she had really forgotten the question. Perhaps she had; she had seemed embarrassed from the outset by her conduct as an intelligent woman in becoming so helplessly infatuated with the younger Beaumont. He reminded her tersely, ‘DS Hook was asking you if you could give us the details of any recent liaisons of Mr Beaumont’s.’
‘Of course he was. But I have to disappoint you. As I said, I am quite sure that Martin has other women, and probably frequently. But I cannot give you details. All I said to Jane was that I would ask around and try to find out more. I confess that I had a selfish motive in offering that. I would have preferred to keep myself out of any divorce proceedings by providing more recent and thus more relevant evidence. As I think I pointed out to Jane, Martin’s lawyers would have been certain to query why she had known all about my affair at the time and done nothing about it until many years later.’
‘So there are no names you can give us?’
‘No. I suspect that his alliances recently had been much more casual and short term. I had no interest in whom he was currently bedding, but I think I should have known if there’d been any serious long-term affair.’ She paused, weighing a last idea on the subject, wondering whether to offer it to them and what the consequences might be for her. She didn’t see it could do her any harm; it could only divert their thoughts further away from her. ‘You could try Sarah Vaughan, I suppose. She’s the most recent and the youngest of our senior staff. She strikes me as a capable young woman, with far too much sense to get involved with Martin, but she might know a little more than I do about his current preferences.’