Sometimes not having seen a suspect can be an advantage, in making you more objective, thought Rushton. He looked at his computer and said, ‘Mrs Beaumont’s changed her story since Friday. She now claims she wasn’t at home alone but that Vanda North was there, thus providing herself neatly with an alibi.’
‘And the capable Miss North with one also, as she confirms it,’ said Lambert thoughtfully. ‘For what it’s worth, I did believe Jane Beaumont when she spoke to us today. For a start, someone who’d driven out and killed Beaumont would probably have had her alibi ready from the start, rather than producing it at a second meeting. And secondly, her tale of being drugged up to the eyeballs on the night of Wednesday and Thursday tallies both with Vanda North’s assessment of her and with our first impressions of her when we saw her on Friday. She was certainly much sharper and more in touch with life today. And her changed account tallies with what Miss North had already told us, both about her presence there on Wednesday night and Jane Beaumont’s condition at the time.’
‘There is still the possibility of a pact between the two to see off Beaumont whilst providing each other with alibis,’ Rushton pointed out. ‘Though I must say that this alliance of wife and former mistress seems a most unlikely one.’
‘Unlikely but genuine, as far as we could see,’ said the usually sceptical Lambert. ‘Miss North’s affection for Beaumont is long gone, and Jane Beaumont has for many years been a lonely and isolated woman — largely as a result of her husband’s efforts, it seems. It’s quite a recent association, and both women say they were surprised by it. They appear to have been bonded by a mutual hatred of Beaumont’s actions towards them over the last few years. We’ll interview Vanda North again, though, and see whether that impression is confirmed.’
Rushton flicked the North file on his monitor. ‘What about Miss North as a suspect?’
‘She appears to be in the clear with Jane Beaumont, if we accept that they were in the Beaumont house together overnight at the time of the murder. She’s cool and intelligent, and the fact that she’s a former mistress of the victim gives an obvious motive. But if this was a crime of passion, would she wait for all these years to commit it? She appears to have dealt with the break-up of her relationship with Beaumont and moved on — even to the extent of forming a friendship with her lover’s wife. How genuine did that friendship seem to you, Bert?’
‘Both of them seemed surprised and even slightly embarrassed by the way a bond had formed between them and then strengthened so quickly. If they are acting this, then they are both very accomplished. And if I were a wife looking for some sort of alibi, I’d look for a more likely companion at the crucial time.’
Rushton nodded and moved on methodically. ‘What about Alistair Morton? He’s been with Beaumont since the start of Abbey Vineyards.’
Lambert nodded. ‘And he’s resolutely low-profile. That may be merely his personality, but I want to speak to him again, now that we know more about the case and the other people in it. I get the feeling that there was general discontent with the way Beaumont was running things as the firm got bigger and bigger. With his grasp of financial affairs, Morton would be the natural focus for any organized revolt.’
‘I might have a little ammunition for you against the low-profile Mr Morton. The Inland Revenue conducted quite a prolonged investigation into the affairs of Abbey Vineyards in the early days. There was even a possibility of the Serious Fraud Squad being brought in at one point, but in the end the whole thing collapsed for lack of reliable evidence. As far as I could gather, the directorate of Abbey Vineyards consisted of Beaumont and Alistair Morton in those days. There were lots of employees on the land, but those two were the only ones who knew what was going on financially and they were the subjects of the investigation.’
‘Interesting. Mr Morton presented himself as a pillar of financial respectability. We might be able to shake him up and find out a little more about both him and others, if we can use this when we see him again.’ Lambert looked as if he relished that prospect. He enjoyed pinning down evasive witnesses almost as much as the lawyers all policemen affect to despise.
Hook grinned at John Lambert’s intensity. ‘We also have grounds to pursue Jason Knight. He’s no doubt an excellent head chef, but he appears to have ideas which were above his station as far as Beaumont was concerned.’
When Rushton looked a question at his chief, Lambert said, ‘Golf club tittle-tattle, Chris, expertly unearthed by one DS Hook. I told you the game would bring you unexpected rewards, Bert.’
Hook grinned at Rushton. ‘John and I played with a young industrial lawyer on Sunday morning. He happened to tell us afterwards that Knight had been sounding him out about the possibilities of getting more say in policy and perhaps shares in the business only a week or two before Beaumont was killed.’
Rushton frowned. ‘It’s a long step from that to murder.’
‘Agreed,’ said Lambert. ‘But our informant said he told Knight that Beaumont had things so well tied up legally that Knight had very little chance of breaking his monopoly of power and decision-making. I agree it’s still a long way from there to shooting a man in cold blood, but it’s got to interest us that Knight concealed these aspirations from us when we saw him.’
‘Gerald Davies,’ said Rushton rather abruptly. He was anxious to get through these lesser suspects and on to the one damning piece of evidence he had unearthed.
‘Salt of the earth,’ said Bert Hook, equally abruptly and decisively.
Lambert grinned. ‘Bert likes him because he’s a sportsman from a working-class background. We have to make allowances for the built-in prejudices of our Barnardo’s boy. Of course, we now also have to take into account the intelligent insights of the new graduate.’
‘I came in here to get away from all that bullshit,’ protested Hook. ‘All that I’m saying is that Davies seemed a genuine and decent man to me.’
‘And all three of us in this room have seen enough violent crime to realize that decent men can quite easily become murderers in the right circumstances,’ Lambert pointed out gently.
‘Which are usually domestic,’ responded Hook. ‘Anyone can be driven beyond his or her limits of control in some domestic set-ups. This isn’t one of those, unless the widow killed him, which we seem to have agreed is most unlikely.’
Lambert nodded. ‘Davies was trying to conceal things. Ineffectively, in the case of Sarah Vaughan: he let out that Beaumont had made some sort of sexual advance to her. I agree that he isn’t a natural deceiver, but that’s all the better for us.’
‘He has no alibi.’ Rushton was looking at his screen. ‘Highly inconvenient for him that his wife was away at her mother’s on the night in question. Or highly convenient, if he wanted to drive twenty-five miles to kill his employer. His residence is further from the scene of crime than those of all the other suspects.’
‘That might appeal to a man like Davies,’ said Lambert thoughtfully. ‘He’s the kind of man who’d want any act of violence on his part to be as far from his own patch as possible. And whilst that meeting must have been arranged beforehand, we shouldn’t assume the murder itself was necessarily pre-planned. Jane Beaumont was pretty certain that Beaumont had his pistol in the car that night. The killing might have been on impulse. It might even have been in self-defence, if Beaumont had produced the weapon and threatened whoever met him that night.’
‘We’re unlikely to find the weapon. And we still don’t know whether it was Beaumont or his killer who arranged the time and place of their meeting,’ Rushton pointed out. ‘Do you think what Davies told you about Sarah Vaughan is significant?’
Lambert pursed his lips. ‘She concealed some sort of sexual advance by Beaumont when she spoke to us. I’m not sure how serious it was, but I’d be interested in why she thought it necessary to hide it. Davies clearly thought it had shaken her.’