Authors: J M Gregson
‘You’re quite right. I shouldn’t be wasting your time and mine with futile fleshly imaginings! It’s about the death of old Claptrap Carter.’
‘I see. I don’t mean to be rude, but wasn’t Dr Carter younger than you, Mr Culpepper?’
‘Touché, Reverend Matthews!’ A theatrical giggle. ‘Indeed he was, considerably younger than I am — but not in spirit! I intend to maintain a Falstaffian zest for the good things of life for another twenty years, if I’m spared. Whereas old Claptrap had been fifty-eight from the day he reached eighteen, I should think!’
Tom Matthews smiled in spite of himself. There was something infectious about the older man’s mischief, about learning which carried itself so lightly. He knew Culpepper was a considerable scholar, had himself read and enjoyed the Senior Tutor’s excellent little book on the poets of the First World War. He said, ‘I know what you mean. But perhaps we shouldn’t speak ill of the dead.’
‘A very pious sentiment. Appropriate in a man of the cloth! But it’s that death I want to talk about. It’s causing some of us a bit of embarrassment, isn’t it?’
Tom wasn’t going to comment on that. He said rather stiffly, ‘What was it you wanted to see me about, Dr Culpepper?’
‘Walter, please, my dear fellow! We can surely dispense with the formalities, between friends. Well, look here. The CID people are still ferreting about. And it could be quite awkward for some of us if they start prying too deeply into our private lives. It’s no secret that I had no time at all for old Claptrap —’
‘Hated him enough to kill him, I heard!’ Tom grinned: the old boy’s waspish humour must be infectious.
Culpepper looked at him with his head on one side like a startled bird, then cackled heartily. ‘Indeed I did, I don’t deny it! When he got the directorship of the place and I didn’t, I could have cheerfully shot him!’ He straightened his face with an effort. ‘I didn’t, of course.’
‘Of course not.’
Culpepper looked at him quizzically again. For a sky pilot, this man seemed to have a highly developed sense of irony. ‘No. But it seems Claptrap was killed last Saturday night. Either late Saturday night or early Sunday morning, from what I can gather from the questions being asked about the site. So we all need an alibi for those hours.’
‘Some of us might. Those who feel they are under police suspicion.’ Tom gave him a small, not unfriendly smile.
Enigmatic as well as ironic, now. You couldn’t even rely on the established church of the realm for respectable dullness now. Walter gave up the pretence of lightness and ploughed on resolutely, ‘I thought I was in the clear. I told this miniature Oliver Hardy who’s strutting, about the place — DI Peach, I think he called himself — that I was up at Lancaster at my son’s place on Saturday. They made us a bit of a party for the wife’s birthday. I gave the details of all that to this Peach fellow. But we were back about eleven thirty. And it now seems we need to be able to account for ourselves for several hours after that.’
‘But your wife can alibi you for those hours, surely?’
Culpepper looked uncharacteristically embarrassed. ‘Well no, actually. She went to bed, you see, as soon as we got home. And I — well, I went for a bit of a wander round the campus, to clear my head. Perhaps I’d drunk rather too much — I’m rather fond of the port, but it doesn’t seem to agree with me any more.’ He stopped, perhaps aware that he was talking too much, to cover his discomfiture.
Tom Matthews looked at him hard. ‘This is all very interesting, Walter. But I don’t see how I can be of any help.’
‘Well, I thought that if we said I’d come round for a chat with you at the vicarage, it might help both of us.’
Tom felt himself flushing as he said, ‘I can see how it might help you. I don’t see how my telling such a lie could possibly help me.’
The red, old-young face was suffused with a crafty smile. ‘Don’t you? It would surely help you to be able to provide an account of where you were in those hours, with a witness to it. In view of your relationship with Ruth Carter, I mean. The lover in the eternal triangle is always a suspect. Even someone as unworldly as me knows that.’ He grinned his gnomic grin, looking as happy as an awful child in his attempt at blackmail.
The Reverend Tom Matthews was outraged. He didn’t often stand on the dignity of his cloth, but it seemed an insult to his Church, to all clergymen, that he should be asked to take part in a sordid pact of dishonesty like this. Yet he found it difficult not to smile, to giggle with his sprightly tempter, as he said, ‘I can’t lie for you, Walter. But it would in any case be impossible. I was away at the weekend. I came back early on Sunday morning, in time for the ten o’clock service at St Catherine’s. My housekeeper knows that. So I couldn’t possibly tell anyone that you came to the vicarage late on that Saturday night, even if I was willing to do it.’
Walter Culpepper looked like a disconsolate Mr Punch. He said sadly, ‘I was counting on you, Tom. I can’t think of anyone else who might do it.’
There was a pause, whilst Tom Matthews wondered just why it should be so important for the Senior Tutor to have his alibi. Eventually he said, ‘Did you see anything significant? When you were wandering about the campus on Saturday night, I mean.’
‘No, it was pretty quiet, really. It usually is on a Saturday night. There were the usual student drivers and motorcyclists, coming in late. I had to dodge about a bit. But there’s nothing unusual in that.’ He intoned:
‘“Every one-horsepower mind has bought
Its ninety-horsepower juggernaut;
And rideth handsome, high and wide,
In registered, licensed homicide.”’
He cackled delightedly. ‘Not a great poet, perhaps, Ogden Nash, but he has wit and perspective, both qualities increasingly rare in the modern America.’
The Reverend Matthews smiled, stood up, looked down on his roguish visitor as affectionately as on a mischievous small boy. ‘I really must be going, Walter. I’m sorry I wasn’t able to help you.’
He saw the Senior Tutor off the premises, then went and turned off the big oil heater, which gave out such consistent fumes. As he switched off the lights and made the chaplaincy as secure as an ageing wooden building could be, he wondered what on earth Walter Culpepper had been up to on Saturday night, that he should ask a man he scarcely knew to lie for him.
Outside, the wind was colder and keener than ever, gusting around the tall new buildings which had been erected for the expanding university. Walter Culpepper, thrusting his frozen hands deep into the pockets of his coat, was already regretting his trip to the chaplaincy. For his part, he wondered just what the Reverend Thomas Matthews had been up to on that fatal Saturday night, when he had admitted being away from the vicarage at St Catherine’s.
On the next morning, the Friday after her husband’s death, Ruth Carter looked out nervously through the big modern window of the Director’s house onto a scene which held not a single human figure.
It had always been one of the advantages of the house that it was secluded and relatively private, even on a campus which accommodated two thousand students by day and a residential community of six hundred overnight. She had been happy that the tall trees from the more gracious age of the mansion and the three-hundred-acre private estate had been preserved when this new house was built. They had provided a welcome curtain from the curious attention of the academic world around them, had secured the family against the goldfish-bowl effect which a starker position for the house would have afforded.
Now what had usually felt pleasantly secluded felt isolated from the rest of the campus; the trees which had stood like friendly sentinels against a curious world seemed ominous, even brooding. She was almost glad when the dark blue Mondeo eased into view round the tall cedars, exactly at the time arranged, the note of its engine totally inaudible behind the double glazing. At least the tension of waiting was over.
She was wary of Peach: she did not take her eyes off him as he came strutting aggressively into the drawing room where she had the coffee and biscuits waiting on the long, low table. He still managed to surprise her, simply by letting his sergeant fire the opening salvo. Lucy Blake opened her notebook and said unhurriedly, ‘You said you spent the whole of last weekend at your mother’s house, Mrs Carter. We now know that isn’t true.’
Ruth Carter tried hard to take her time. She had known it would be this, but she had expected questions and the opportunity to revise her position with some dignity. When it was boldly and calmly stated to her like this, it seemed more difficult to argue. Yet she knew she must: she couldn’t just collapse into abject apologies and beg for mercy, if she was to convince them of other things. She said, ‘May I ask what grounds you have for calling me a liar?’
Her resistance brought in Peach, in full battle order. ‘No, you may not, Mrs Carter. Do you wish to stand by your original account of where you were on Saturday night and Sunday morning? I should warn you that we shall have it presented to you for signature as an official statement, if you do so.’
Ruth Carter was not prepared for this bristling aggression. For the last eight years, she had been the wife of first a college Principal and latterly a university Director, and people had accorded her the status and respect due to those roles. Few people outside the family had even ventured to argue with her, in the last few years, and Peach’s confrontational stance shook her far more than she would have expected. She said quietly, ‘No. What I told you on Monday about my whereabouts at the weekend isn’t true. I’m sorry, but I had good reason for the deception.’
‘No! Let’s be clear about this, Mrs Carter. There are no good reasons for lying. Not when a man has been murdered and we are trying to conduct a proper investigation into that death. Especially when that man is your husband.’
Ruth Carter sat very erect. She wore a rich blue sweater above a pale grey skirt, lighter than the one she had worn when they had interviewed her at her mother’s house four days earlier. She was a woman who had run many committees in her time; a person who was used to controlling the pattern of events rather than being at their mercy. Being confronted, questioned, accused, like this, was a situation she had not had to meet in her forty-five years. It gave her an unfamiliar feeling of vulnerability. But she still had certain advantages. The biggest one was that she found her shrewd brain was still working clearly, even in this situation of extreme stress.
She said calmly, ‘I’m sorry. I hadn’t appreciated that private feelings and relationships cannot be protected, in a situation like this. My mind was still trying to absorb the shock of George’s death, when you spoke to me on Monday. I concealed things I realize now that I should have revealed.’
Lucy Blake spoke equally calmly, equally quietly. ‘I spoke to you when you returned to this house on Wednesday morning, Mrs Carter. You could have told me the truth about your whereabouts at the time of your husband’s death then, but you chose to go on concealing it.’
Good girl, Lucy! thought Percy Peach. Once you’ve got a batsman on the back foot, keep him there and dodging about — even when it’s an elegant woman who may never have touched a cricket bat. It was time for the fast yorker. He said, ‘So the only conclusion we can draw is that you would have gone on deceiving us indefinitely, if I had not been able to confront you with your lies this morning.’
He saw the hostility in the blue eyes beneath the ash-blonde hair. But Ruth Carter sounded calm enough as she said, ‘That is entirely possible. I am not used to parading my private life before strangers.’
She made it sound as if she were defending her integrity, instead of a series of lies, thought Peach. He said, ‘You had better tell us now exactly where you were last Saturday night and the early hours of Sunday. Preferably with the name and address of someone who can confirm the details. I’m afraid you can no longer expect us to accept your word at face value, Mrs Carter. You have forfeited that by your earlier deceptions.’
‘Very well. I was with a man, Inspector Peach. As you may or may not have suspected.’ A slight, acerbic smile edged the lips in the oval face.
DS Blake had her small gold ball-pen at the ready. ‘We need to know exactly when, Mrs Carter.’
‘For Friday night and Saturday night. Until about eight a.m. on Sunday, in fact.’
A strange time to leave a lover; or for the lover to leave you. If she appreciated that, she gave no sign of it. She sat very still and erect on the edge of her armchair, awaiting the obvious and inevitable question. It came not from Peach, as she had expected, but from DS Blake, who did not even look up from what she was writing as she said, ‘And what is this man’s name, Mrs Carter?’
For the first time, she hesitated. Then she said. ‘I do not wish to tell you that. I realize that when you are investigating a murder, ordinary decencies and confidentiality go by the board. But the circumstances are unusual. I know he had nothing to do with the murder, and I must respect his privacy against the intrusions of the tabloid press.’
Peach said, ‘I’m afraid you do not have a choice about that, Mrs Carter. You still do not seem to recognize either the reality of the situation or the seriousness of what you have already done. You could be facing a charge of obstructing the police in the performance of their duties unless you now cooperate with us as fully as you possibly can.’
He was coldly polite rather than vehement, watchful as he spoke, considering this cool woman for the first time seriously as a major suspect in this strange killing. She didn’t give much away, behaving as if she knew that he was observing her, was weighing her qualities as a murderer. There was anger in her dark blue eyes, and a hint of strain as she brushed away a non-existent strand of hair from her forehead. But her voice was level enough as she said, ‘Do I have your assurance that whatever I tell you will be confidential?’
‘No! I cannot give any such assurance, and nor could any investigating officer. All I can say is that if, at the conclusion of the investigation, whatever you tell us has no part in any subsequent court case, we shall not release it. That is something I say to everyone involved in questioning, but there can be no guarantees. Now, it is high time you told us exactly where you were last Saturday night.’
‘I was in a guest house in the Yorkshire Dales. In Kettlewell.’
Lucy Blake noted the landlady’s name and the phone number, whilst Ruth Carter poured coffee with a steady hand and the tension built in the quiet, elegantly furnished room. Peach and the Director’s widow eyed each other, not without a certain respect on both sides. Then Peach asked the inevitable question. ‘And who was the man who was with you on those nights?’
She looked him full in the face. Her resentment was contained in the cold, measured way in which she articulated the information she had known all along she would have to give him. ‘The Reverend Thomas Matthews. Vicar of St Catherine’s Church in Brunton, Chaplain to the University of East Lancashire.’ She intoned the titles carefully, syllable by syllable, and her eyes blazed with challenge as she concluded them.
Peach wasn’t going to rise to that challenge: any moral condemnation was both beyond his remit and outside his personal code. He said quietly, ‘Thank you. We shall confirm these facts with the gentleman concerned, of course. If they prove to have nothing to do with the murder of your husband, they will not be released by us. I have no control over the actions of non-police personnel.’
‘Journalists, you mean, don’t you? Oh, they’ll have a fine time, won’t they, with this situation? You can see the headlines now. “Brunton Vicar Forms an Adulterous Relationship with the Wife of the Director of the New University of East Lancashire!” “Randy Wife of Dead Director was Dropping her Drawers with Local Vicar!” “University Chaplain Gets his End Away on Dirty Weekends with the Wife of the Boss who Appointed Him!” The gutter press will have a field day. And Tom Matthews will be destroyed overnight.’
Peach sipped his coffee, nibbled his shortbread, took his time over the opportunity with which she had presented him. ‘Not necessarily. Not unless you are involved in murder. I said we would only release the information if it was strictly necessary to do so, that is, if it proved that either or both of you were in some way involved in the murder of George Andrew Carter.’
Her breasts rose and fell under the fine wool of the dark blue jumper as she glared at him, realizing the implications of what he said, furious with herself for affording him the opportunity to say it. She did not answer him directly. Instead, she said, ‘Tom Matthews is a fine man, Inspector Peach. A lonely man, perhaps. But he has no wife and no close attachments. If anyone is at fault, it is I.’ She kept the grammar correct, he noticed, selecting her words as carefully as the head girl she had once been, even when she spoke of adultery. ‘I was the bored housewife, if you like. I was the woman whose marriage was at an end, who was waiting until the children should have left home and the husband should have made his final career move before she finished with her husband. My marriage was at an end, Inspector Peach! I was at fault only in not waiting until the formal ties had been severed.’
She was speaking with real passion, for the first time in either of the interviews he had conducted with her. Peach said quietly, ‘Mrs Carter, I have neither the right to make moral judgements nor any interest in doing so. Your conduct is of interest to me only in so far as it has any bearing on the death of your husband.’
She looked at him, breathing hard, as if she suspected he was lying. Then she nodded her head curtly. ‘Thank you. I suppose what I’m saying is simply that it’s important to me that people don’t see my relationship with Tom as some sordid tale of a bored, pampered woman seeking a bit of casual sex on the side. I shall marry Tom Matthews, in due course. I should have done that even if nothing had happened to my husband.’
Peach nodded politely: such questions, as he had indicated, were not his concern. ‘So you were at this guest house in Kettlewell on Friday night and Saturday night.’
‘Yes. We spent the daylight hours of Saturday walking in the Grassington area. We returned to the guest house for the evening meal, and we didn’t go out again that night.’
So they were alibis for each other in the important hours when Carter had been shot through the head. Peach said gently, ‘Is there any independent witness who can confirm this?’
She looked outraged for a second that her word should be doubted. It was probably a long time since either she or the Reverend Matthews had had their probity questioned. But she saw the logic of his question, even underlined for him the grounds for his persistence. For she said with a wry smile, ‘I suppose I should have expected whatever I said to be questioned, once I had lied to you on Sunday about where I was at the weekend. And no, I don’t think I can provide you with an independent witness. You can ask Mrs Jackson, who keeps the guest house, when you are confirming that we spent the two nights there. But she has her own quarters, at the back of the house, and I doubt whether she would have been aware of whether we went out or not that night, after about eight thirty.’
‘Were there any other people staying there?’
‘No. She only has two double rooms for visitors, which is one of the advantages for Tom and me. We were the only people there last Friday and Saturday. By the way, you’ll find that she knows Tom and me as Mr and Mrs Clark.’ She smiled bitterly at the admission, and they caught a glimpse of how abhorrent this hole-in-the-corner conduct was to her. And probably also to the Reverend Tom Matthews, thought
Lucy Blake, recalling her exchanges with him in the morning. He had seemed an attractive, open personality, but with some of the stiffness of army rectitude about him, which recalled his days as a service padre.
It was Lucy Blake who asked, ‘And what time did the Reverend Matthews leave in the morning? You say he left before you.’
She nodded. ‘Tom was up at seven and away by half past. He had to be back at St Catherine’s in Brunton for his morning service. I had a leisurely breakfast and set off to drive across country to Kendal at about ten thirty.’
‘And Mrs Jackson didn’t see anything unusual in this?’