Lambert stood up. He had enjoyed pitting his wits against this alert and intelligent woman, but he suspected she had told them exactly what she had planned to do before they set foot in this comfortable old cottage. Quite possibly that was all she knew and she was being as helpful as she could, but he would like to have thrown her off balance a little more, to have seen how she behaved when she was disconcerted.
‘If you think of any other detail which might be helpful to us, however small, please get in touch immediately, Miss North. We may well need to speak to you again to clarify certain issues, when we are further into this enquiry.’
It was standard stuff. At the moment, he couldn’t think what those issues might be. Vanda North seemed to know that and be perfectly confident about the future. She conducted them quietly to the low door of the cottage, warning him that he might need to stoop a little. But she had the composed air of a woman who had fulfilled her duty and did not expect to see them again.
EIGHTEEN
Gerry Davies went across to Jason Knight’s den early on Monday morning. He went as soon as he received the phone call, while the shop was still quiet and before any of the catering staff were due on duty. A week ago, he wouldn’t have considered such discretion necessary. He threaded his way through the deserted kitchen area to the little private room and watched his friend shut the door carefully behind him.
‘Did anyone see you coming in here?’ Jason asked.
‘I don’t think so. My own staff will notice I’m missing if I’m away for any length of time. Does it matter?’
‘Probably not. I just felt that the fewer people who saw us getting together the better. They might think we’re plotting.’
‘As we are.’
Jason looked at him sharply. ‘I wouldn’t call it that. I’d say we were thinking about the new situation and how it might affect us.’
Both of them were silent for a moment, assessing the accuracy of this. Gerry wondered if Jason was thinking, as he was, that last week neither of them would have worried about people noting their movements. Murder brought suspicion with it. It made people watch the actions of others and question what they were up to. It made them watch what they said, sometimes even with people they regarded as friends.
Jason brought him abruptly out of his reverie. ‘Have they interviewed you yet?’
‘No. They’re seeing me this afternoon.’
‘Good.’ Jason wondered why he said that; it had been automatic, probably relief that others as well as him were being questioned. ‘It’s good that they’ve left you until now, I suppose. It probably means they don’t have you high on their list of suspects. They saw me on Saturday morning.’
‘I hadn’t really thought of myself as a suspect.’
‘You should get used to the idea. They’ll be investigating everyone who was close to Martin. I’m sure they’ve given his wife the third degree. If and when they decide it isn’t a domestic, we’re all in the frame.’
‘You seem to know a lot about it.’ A week ago, the words would have been said jokingly; today they rang deadly serious.
Jason Knight hastened to lighten things. He managed a rather brittle little laugh. ‘I watch too many cop series on the box, I suppose.’
Gerry didn’t think Jason saw much television. As head chef, he was usually working six nights a week. He said as casually as he could, ‘Give you a good going over, did they, the CID men?’
‘They’re professionals, Gerry. The police use the best they have, on a murder case. Until they have a prime suspect — which isn’t yet, as far as I can see — we’re all in the frame. It will pay you to watch what you say this afternoon.’
‘If I tell them the truth, I’ve nothing to fear.’ Gerry knew that at fifty-seven he was sounding like a priggish schoolboy. ‘If I didn’t do it, I’ve surely nothing to fear.’
Jason didn’t laugh at the absurdity of the notion that Gerry might have killed Martin. ‘Murder is big, for the media as well as the police. If they don’t make an arrest in the next few days, they’ll have the press on their backs. And the radio and television won’t be far behind the papers; they pick up ideas from the press and run with them, when they’re short of news. The CID will want to arrest someone as quickly as possible. I think we should make sure it isn’t either of us.’
Gerry didn’t know what to say to that. ‘I believe they’ve got the famous John Lambert on the case.’
‘They have. He questioned me on Saturday morning. I didn’t tell them about us.’
‘About us?’ said Gerry stupidly. He knew what Jason meant; he couldn’t think why he was pretending that he didn’t. This was the sort of distrust a murder enquiry fostered, he supposed.
Jason said with a trace of impatience, like an old sweat instructing a green recruit, ‘I meant our discussion about the future of the company, about how we were going to get ourselves more control of policy.’
Gerry wanted to say that that idea and all the drive behind it had come from Jason; he wanted to dissociate himself from anything which might leave any sort of cloud over himself. ‘Didn’t you say anything about it when they spoke to you?’
‘No, of course I didn’t.’ Jason was suddenly impatient with this man who was a generation older than him and yet still so naive. ‘I didn’t lie. You don’t have to lie. You simply don’t mention it. You show them that you’re as mystified about this death as everyone else is pretending to be.’
‘I might have to lie to conceal it. In any case, isn’t not telling them like a lie?’
Jason wondered for the first time whether this was all a front, whether Gerry Davies had long since realized the danger and was conducting this elaborate charade of guilelessness when he actually proposed to look after his own skin, at whatever cost to others. Like his companion, he felt murder driving a wedge between them; this distrust would have been impossible last week. ‘I didn’t say anything about it. You must realize how bad it would make me look if you now blab about it to them.’
‘All right. I’ll do my best to keep off the subject.’
‘You might have to be prepared to do a little more than that, Gerry. I should think they’re quite likely to ask you why you didn’t want more of a say in the way things were being run.’
‘So what do I say to that?’
‘I can’t put words into your mouth, Gerry. They’d spot them if I did. Your best policy would be to follow the line you took with me at first. Tell them you’re quite happy with the salary you’re being paid. You could give them all that modesty stuff, about how Martin gave you your chance in the first place and encouraged you to go on from there, but I wouldn’t make a meal of that.’
Gerry Davies stared disconsolately at the table between them, where once he would have looked at his friend. ‘Be better if we hadn’t talked to Martin about it last Monday, wouldn’t it? Especially as he turned us down flat.’
Jason sighed. ‘It would indeed. It seems much more than a week ago now, doesn’t it? But there’s no reason why they should know anything about that meeting. What took place there was just between us and Martin. There won’t be any record of it. If neither of us mentions it, there’s no way they can know that it took place.’ He’d only just prevented himself from saying that dead men tell no tales.
‘I suppose not.’ Gerry looked thoroughly miserable.
‘Cheer up, Gerry! It won’t be as bad as you seem to think. Try not to be nervous. After all, neither of us killed the bugger!’
But neither of them laughed, as Jason Knight had intended them to.