Jane tried to be cool, literally as well as figuratively. She could feel the heat on her skin which excitement had brought to her face. ‘To be honest, I can’t recall in any detail what I told you on Friday. I wasn’t trying to be obstructive, but if I said anything which wasn’t correct I apologize for it.’
‘All we wanted then and all we want now is the truth, Mrs Beaumont. We didn’t ask you directly where you were when Mr Beaumont was killed. That was partly because we knew you’d be upset in the hours after you’d heard of Mr Beaumont’s death, and partly because we already had the information. I believe you told the officer who came on that morning to break the news of your husband’s death that you were alone in this house throughout last Wednesday evening and the night which followed.’
‘Did I? Well if the young lady says I told her that, I’ve no doubt that I did. I wasn’t long out of bed and I think I was still affected by the drugs I’d taken the night before. I was still trying to take in the news of Martin’s death when she was asking me questions. It’s quite possible I made mistakes, don’t you think?’
‘I do, and I am giving you the opportunity to put things right. I’m not asking you whether you intended to deceive us or not. I’m trying to get the facts of the matter right. They could be very important.’
Jane felt him watching her intently, but she wasn’t unduly worried by that. She must get this right, but she was confident she could do it. ‘If I did tell that young policewoman I was alone, I got it wrong. Vanda was here with me overnight. She stayed because she thought I needed her help.’
Hook looked up from his notes and said kindly, ‘We’d better have the full facts of this, Mrs Beaumont. Better get it right once and for all, so that our records aren’t confused. That could be important to others as well as yourself.’
‘Yes, I can see that.’ She frowned in concentration, anxious to show them that she was now giving the matter the attention its significance deserved. ‘I’m afraid I can’t give you the exact time when Vanda arrived. Early evening, I think, because she didn’t want anything to eat. It was still daylight, because I showed her some of the rhododendrons in the garden. The sun was still well up then. It must have been about seven o’clock, I should think.’
‘Thank you. That is helpful.’
She watched him making a note of the time in his round, clear hand. ‘Vanda hadn’t intended to stay the night. I had to lend her a nightdress and a toothbrush.’ She looked very pleased with her recall of these details. ‘She only stayed because she could see I wasn’t very well. Martin and I had argued about the divorce the night before and I’d taken a lot of my pills before he left in the morning — he always wanted me to do that, when we’d quarrelled. I must have taken more than I should have, because Vanda could see that I was falling asleep as we talked to each other in the sitting room. I said that it didn’t look as though Martin was going to be back and she said she didn’t want to leave me on my own. So I put her in a spare room. We’ve plenty of those available, but Martin said we couldn’t entertain people, because of my illness.’
‘So Miss North was here overnight.’
‘Yes.’ It seemed strange to hear this stolid, friendly fellow calling her Miss North, when she’d got so used to Vanda.
‘And what time did she leave on Thursday morning?’
‘Oh, I couldn’t be sure of that. You’d need to ask her.’ Realization dawned. ‘But perhaps you already have. That’s why Mr Lambert said I might want to amend things I’d said on Friday, isn’t it?’
Hook smiled but did not answer her question. ‘After breakfast, was it, when Miss North left?’
‘Oh, yes. She brought me a tray in bed. It was probably about nine o’clock when she left, because she made sure I was up and feeling better. But she’d gone before Mrs Forshaw arrived — she’s my cleaner, who comes on Tuesdays and Thursdays. She arrives here at half past nine.’
Hook made another note and said ‘Thank you, Mrs Beaumont. That is much clearer. We previously had the impression that you’d been alone overnight, and of course that is what you’d led our officers to believe.’
‘I’m sorry about that. I wasn’t quite myself last week, as Mr Lambert was kind enough to say earlier. Martin would have had a harsher expression for it, but there’s no need to go into that any more, is there?’
‘Indeed there isn’t. And of course we’re happy that you’re feeling so much better than you were. So do you have any idea who killed Martin?’
He dropped this hand grenade on the tail of his politeness with an inviting smile. That made it even more shocking. She again felt as if her cheeks were colouring, a sensation she had not endured for years. ‘No. I’ve thought a lot about it, as you’d expect. I think I’m going to be a lot better off without Martin. But I’d tell you if I knew anything about how he’d died.’
TWENTY-ONE
Lambert had briefed the full team of twenty-two officers involved in the murder case first thing on Tuesday morning, emphasizing the need to find local witnesses to events at Howler’s Heath on the night of Wednesday, the thirteenth of May. ‘Above all, we need to find someone who has seen a vehicle other than Beaumont’s Jaguar near the scene in the late evening — any time between ten and midnight. There is definitely no record of anyone using a taxi in that area, so there must surely have been a private vehicle around, whether it belonged to the murderer or an accomplice taking him or her away from the scene.’
Later in the morning, when he and Hook returned from their second interview with Jane Beaumont, he called DI Rushton into his office so that the three of them could review all the information gathered thus far. Hook, snatching a quick coffee in the canteen, found himself still the butt of colleagues who envied him his degree and the unexpected academic distinction it had brought to him. A young female DC who should have known better said, ‘Meeting the chief superintendent and Chris Rushton, are you, prof? I suppose they’ll be expecting you to conduct this morning’s seminar for them!’
‘Just you get out on the house-to-house and find us a witness. Find us someone who spotted that car the chief was on about and justify your overtime!’ growled Hook in reply. No respect for their elders, today’s young officers.
In Lambert’s office, Chris Rushton was putting the revisions to Jane Beaumont’s account into his laptop and awaiting the moment when he could announce the solution to this mystery. Lambert always stressed the need for facts rather than speculation, and Chris had a fact which would make the old dinosaur sit up and take notice. Chris would listen to what the others had to say, as the rules of the game demanded, but Detective Inspector Rushton was pretty certain that he could provide them with a piece of evidence more telling than anything they would be able to offer him.
Lambert said, ‘Let’s begin with the grieving widow, who from the start has made little secret of the fact that she isn’t grieving very hard. Jane Beaumont has a history of illness. She has a bipolar disorder which was first diagnosed around the time when she married Beaumont. The doctors and medical records confirm that this is genuine and that it has become more pronounced in recent years.’
‘I get the impression that Beaumont, whilst pretending to be very concerned about her illness, actually aggravated her troubles,’ said Bert Hook. ‘Whether that was wittingly or unwittingly, we can hardly investigate now. But she seems to me to be better off without him, from a health point of view, as well as being rid of a loveless marriage. She was much more in touch with reality when we saw her this morning than she was last Friday, but I doubt that she’d have been capable of planning and executing a murder such as this one.’