Lambert said tersely, ‘And if we find that you have concealed things from us, we shall be forced to remember that, and investigate the reasons why. Where were you last Wednesday night, Mr Davies?’
‘I was here. I came home from work at about six twenty and I didn’t go out again until Thursday morning.’
‘And is there someone who can confirm that for us?’
Gerry glanced again like a caged animal at the firmly closed door of the room. Bronwen was out there somewhere, minding her own business as usual, confident as she had been from the first of his innocence of this awful thing. He hadn’t asked her to lie for him; he would never ask Bronwen to lie — indeed, he was proud of the fact that she wouldn’t be any good at lying. ‘No, I don’t think there is. Bronwen was in the Rhondda, in the house where she grew up. Her mother’s still alive but she’s ill. She phoned me to tell me that she was worried about her ma and I said she should stay the night.’
Bert Hook said quietly, ‘Do you recall the time of that call?’
‘It was some time between seven and seven thirty. I was just enjoying the cottage pie she’d left ready for me to heat. That’s too early to clear me, isn’t it?’
Hook’s weather-beaten, outdoor face relaxed again into the smile which said that all might yet be well. ‘If you mean that Mr Beaumont was killed much later in the evening, yes it is. Did you have any other calls on that night?’
‘No. I’m in the frame for this, aren’t I?’
Lambert said with a hint of impatience, ‘If you’ve told us the truth, you’ve nothing to fear. We don’t fit people up, Mr Davies, whatever the more lurid television series suggest. If you wish to revise or add to what you’ve told us, you should get in touch with us immediately at this number.’
He did not speak again as Gerry Davies showed them out, keeping them away from his invisible wife as if the contact would somehow soil her. At all costs, he wanted to keep Bronwen out of this.
TWENTY
‘My gran still doesn’t approve of me staying here overnight,’ said Anne Jackson. It was one of those inconsequential lines you delivered when you were still not fully conscious and attuned to the demands of the day.
DI Chris Rushton eyed her contours thoughtfully from the breakfast table as she stood beside the toaster. He still found it mystifying that she could curve so attractively beneath a dressing gown, a garment he had always regarded as a necessary evil rather than a fashion item. ‘Even though you’re now an engaged person?’ he asked dreamily.
‘I don’t think that makes any difference to her generation. She doesn’t make a big thing of it. I can just tell that she doesn’t really approve.’
‘Remind me to steer clear of her at the wedding. A divorced bridegroom who is ten years older than you isn’t going to get her stamp of approval.’
‘It won’t if you keep thrusting those facts into her face as you do with me.’ The toast clicked up and she transferred it swiftly to her plate and came over to the table. She didn’t sit down but came and stood behind Chris, resting her hands lightly for a moment on his chest, then raising them to softly massage his neck. ‘Why do you make such a big thing of the age gap? I never even think of it except when you remind me of it — which is far too frequently.’
‘I suppose I still can’t quite believe that you’ve taken on an old wreck like me.’ He lifted his own hands from the beaker and rested them for a moment on hers.
‘You’re not an old wreck. You’re a mature man of thirty-four who has put childish things behind him and used his hard-won experience to make an intelligent choice of bride.’ She looked down with love at the head she now pressed lightly against her stomach. ‘A man without a grey hair to be seen among the black, a man who even from this angle hasn’t yet got a bald spot. A man whom I might even describe as handsome, if I didn’t think it would be bad for his soul.’
Chris stared dreamily across the warm little kitchen of his flat, reviewing fondly but silently the night that was gone. Then, characteristically, he recalled himself firmly to the real world. ‘Kirstie will be coming over on Saturday. You won’t be able to escape my past then. Just when you’ll be feeling like a break from children.’
‘I enjoy Kirstie — she’s a good kid. And entertaining one child is very different from teaching thirty, you know.’
‘I don’t, but I’ll take your word for it. All I know is that she’s got far more energy than should ever be contained in one small body and that you’re very good with her.’ His face clouded for a moment. ‘I hope we’ve cracked this case by then. I don’t want to leave you to entertain Kirstie on your own all day.’
‘The Abbey Vineyards owner? How’s it going? Or am I not allowed to know?’
‘No sign of a solution. We’re still gathering information. We know a lot more about the people close to him than we did four days ago, but so far, it’s tended to obscure rather than illuminate.’ He was surprised to find himself coming out with that phrase; it was the one John Lambert had used. ‘The widow’s still pretty mysterious, and too many people who worked with the victim have motives and no alibis.’
‘Including Tom Ogden, I believe.’ She was studiously low-key, not sure yet how far Chris wanted her to enquire into his work, or indeed how much she herself wanted to know.
‘You know Ogden?’ He was suddenly alert, the CID inspector ready to gather information from any and every source.
She grinned at his intensity, as she often did, half in surprise and half in admiration. ‘My dad’s known him for years. Tom might be a year or two older, but I think they went to school together. He didn’t like Martin Beaumont, did he?’ She watched Chris with amusement as he struggled for the right reply. ‘Don’t worry, he’s never made a secret of it. Beaumont had been trying for years to swallow up his farm, and Tom didn’t like it. Tom Ogden’s not one to disguise his feelings, Dad says.’
‘That’s more or less what John Lambert and Bert Hook reported. They interviewed him on Saturday. I haven’t actually spoken to him.’
‘We saw him at the cinema on Thursday night, actually, with his wife. They were the couple I waved to in the interval when I went for the ice creams.’
‘You waved to so many and spoke to so many that I was bewildered.’ He was still surprised how many people in this rural area had lived all their lives there, how those lives interwove and touched each other, even now, when people followed very different career paths. Now that Anne had come back from university to teach in the district where she had been born and bred, there would be another network, spreading over parents and eventually grandparents, if she stayed in the area. Sometimes he thought it narrowed people’s horizons, but he found that more often he liked the support and security it seemed to offer.
He mentioned the senior people Beaumont had employed to see if Anne knew anything about them. It seemed they had all moved into the area in the last twenty years or so, for she knew little of them, though she had eaten in the Abbey Vineyards restaurant and enjoyed it. ‘Possible place for our reception after the nuptials,’ she said lightly, before she left the house to start her day and disappeared towards her school and he towards the station at Oldford. Chris wasn’t sure whether that was a bright idea or a threat.
Nine thirty on Tuesday morning. They’d suggested the time and she hadn’t objected. Now she wished that she had.
Jane Beaumont wasn’t at her best in the mornings. It was not until today that she had registered that nine thirty was still early for her. She had been up before eight, but it took her much longer to do things, nowadays. After she had showered and dressed, she’d barely had time for a bowl of cereal and a cup of coffee before the appointed time was at hand.