“A right calculating bitch, that one,” said Boulter.
“That’s Alison. She’s proud of the fact that she plans things ahead. It’s part of the reason I homed in on her as our killer.”
It was a bad slip-up on your part, Kate, not considering her as a suspect long before this.
But she knew why she hadn’t. Because, in Alison, she seemed to have found a simpatico friend in the district. Someone who understood the problems faced by a career woman in a man’s world. But Alison’s hand of friendship to the senior investigating officer on the case had been just another product of her fertile, scheming mind.
“That was an inspired bit of deduction on your part, guv.” Boulter said it half reluctantly, half admiringly.
Kate laughed. “I hate to admit it, Tim, but I have that cocky young DC Aldwich to thank for the keys bit.”
“Him?” Tim sounded resentful.
“Quite unwittingly. He doesn’t get a commendation for it. Yesterday, when he drove me to Hambledon Grange to interview Stedham, he got out of the car and walked away, leaving the key in the ignition. I tore him off a strip, and Aldwich had the nerve to ask who’d pinch a car that far off the road.”
“Cheeky bastard. Still, he’s a meeker lad now. As per your instructions he’s been well and truly booted up the arse.”
“Good,” said Kate feelingly. “Now, Tim, I’m going to nip off home for a short while. Meantime, I have a couple of little jobs for you.” Taking the Troubadours’ programme from her bag, she showed Boulter the picture of Alison Knight. “Get someone to go and see that friend of Mrs. Carstairs’s I told you about, Mrs. Marjorie Sayers.” She flicked through her notes. “This is the address; it’s over near Cheltenham. I want her to confirm what Sylvia Carstairs told me, and to identify this woman as the one she saw in the pub with Latimer.”
“You’re that certain it’s her, guv?”
“I’d stake a year’s salary. I want whoever you send to get his skates on. If she’s not at home, he’s to find her. And he’s to phone in his report right away.”
“The second job?”
“Get Jack Farrow back here for a briefing. There’s something that needs delicate handling, and he’s exactly the right image for it.”
Tim raised his eyebrows. “Any good me asking you what you’re up to, guv?”
“Waste of breath, Tim. All in good time.”
* * * *
Felix was mowing the lawn. She spotted Kate and switched off the motor. “Hello, you didn’t say you’d be home for lunch.”
“Would it have made any difference? You’d have forgotten. Actually, it’s not lunch I’m after. I need a favour. Something you’re very good at, Felix.”
“As a child, you used to try and get round me with flattery. Still at it, I see.”
“Wait till you hear what I want you to do. It’s fakery I’m after. A small piece of photographic fakery.”
“And what makes you think I’d do a thing like that, girl?”
Kate grinned at her aunt. “Come on down, Felix. I caught you in the act, remember?”
“Oh well ...”
From her handbag Kate took out the photograph Felix had taken one very wet day of Belle Larimer arguing with the horse show organisers about cancelling the event. Pointing to one of the rain-soaked spectators, she asked, “Recognise her?”
Felix took the picture and squinted at it. “I seem to know the face.”
“It’s Alison Knight.”
“The woman in the Troubadours who’s getting you the tickets?”
“Correct. I want you to blow her up nice and big, say, an eight-by-five. Then I want her to be wearing a deerstalker hat. Most of her long hair is tucked up inside the sou’wester she’s wearing, but I want those curly bits around her cheeks deleted so it looks as if she’s got a man’s-style haircut. Can do?”
Felix pursed her lips. “No great problem. But you owe me a why.”
“Sorry, not poss.”
“I can be awkward, too, girl.”
Kate took the photograph back from her. “Okay, if that’s how you feel, I’ll have to give the job to a police photographer.”
“Who wouldn’t do it half as well as I can.” Felix snatched the picture from her niece’s hand. “I suppose you want it yesterday?”
“No rush. This evening will do.”
“Oh good.”
“Five o’clock this evening.”
“Don’t push your luck. Well, off you go, girl, I’ve got work to do.”
Boulter had pulled in PC Farrow by the time Kate got back to the Incident Room. She took the two men into her office.
“We’re interested in Mrs. Alison Knight, Jack. She was employed by George Prescott to keep the Hambledon estate books, and she’s still doing it pro tem on the solicitor’s instructions. She lives at Old Toll-House Cottage on the Marlingford Road. Know it?”
“I do, ma’am.”
“Mrs. Knight won’t be there this time of day, she’ll be at work. Which suits what I want you to do.”
PC Farrow listened gravely, aware that he was being entrusted with a specially sensitive mission. Boulter stood back, trying to look as if he already knew all about it.
“I’m considering her as a possible suspect in the Latimer killing. Now, it was a cleverly planned crime, and if Alison Knight did it she’ll have cleverly covered herself for that evening. She claimed she was at home and offered no corroboration, so there was nothing for us to check. But my guess is that it’s a bit more complex than that. She only has one neighbouring house, and I want you to call on whoever lives there and see what you can find out. This is how I want you to tackle it, Jack....”
* * * *
PC Farrow parked his car in the lay-by opposite Old Toll-House Cottage, checking with an idle glance that Alison Knight’s car didn’t happen to be parked on the patch of gravel just inside the gate. Thirty yards along the road was the entrance to a bungalow which lay well back, almost lost among the trees. Farrow headed in that direction, his uniformed figure presenting a solid, reassuring image. He carried a clipboard on which was a mock-up of names and addresses, with handwritten notes beside the first few.
The door was opened after an interval by an elderly, rather stooped man wearing rimless glasses. From his grubby clothes, it looked as if he’d been gardening.
“Sorry to interrupt you, Mr. ...” Farrow consulted the clipboard. “Mr. Bertram, but this won’t take long. It’s in connection with the death of Mrs. Belle Latimer ten days ago. Nothing to alarm you, it’s just that we’re conducting a house-to-house enquiry to see whether any little bits of information anyone can give us will be helpful. What it amounts to really is a process of elimination.”
“I see.” The man took off his glasses and began to polish them. “How can I help?”
“Well, sir, for a start, perhaps you and your wife could tell me your movements on the evening in question, just to get that cleared out of the way.”
“You’d better come in, then.” He led the way to a small sitting room with French windows open to a patio. A woman in a wheelchair was seated out there. “This is my wife. This, dear, is er ... ?”
“PC Farrow, madam.”
Invited to sit down, Farrow ledged his peaked cap on his knee and explained his mission all over again. Mrs. Bertram, a white-haired, rather aristocratic-looking woman, whose joints were sadly malformed by arthritis, smiled at him ruefully.
“What we were doing on any evening is a very easy question to answer, Officer. Henry and I were at home. He can take me around a bit in the car during the day, but by teatime I’ve had enough. I’m always in bed by nine-thirty, and thankful to be there.”
“It must be a very painful condition, madam,” Farrow said sympathetically. He warmed to her, reminded of his grandmother whom he’d once caught weeping from the pain of her arthritic hands. Ashamed of such weakness, the old lady had sworn the ten-year-old boy to secrecy, and it was a solemn pledge Jack Farrow had never broken.
“These things are sent to try us.” Mrs. Bertram smiled again, a very charming smile. “I sometimes think poor Henry is more tried by it than I am, the way he has to dance attendance on me.”
“Nonsense, my dear,” her husband protested.
Farrow said, “So I suppose it’s not a lot of use asking if you might have noticed anything unusual that night. You can’t see the road from here, can you?”
“No,” Henry Bertram said, “we’re nicely tucked away from the noise. It’s very peaceful. The only sign of life we get is from our neighbour.” He waved a hand at Old Toll-House Cottage, just visible through the trees.
“Ah yes.” Farrow glanced at his clipboard again. “Mrs. Alison Knight. I was hoping to see her, too, but apparently she’s out.”
“She’d be at work, this time of day,” said Mrs. Bertram.
“I’ll have to call back, then.” Farrow tut-tutted. “To save time, I suppose you couldn’t by any chance confirm whether or not Mrs. Knight was at home that evening?”
The husband and wife glanced at one another, figuring it out.
“Let’s see,” she said slowly, “it was the Tuesday, wasn’t it?”
“Black Tuesday,” said her husband, pulling a face.
“Oh, Henry, you are naughty.” She smiled apologetically at Farrow. “It wasn’t anything we could really grumble about, but it did seem a bit thoughtless at the time.”
“What was that, madam?”
“Well, Mrs. Knight was practising her singing at home that evening. She’s a member of the Troubadours, you know, and they’re rehearsing for
King’s Rhapsody just
now. It was a warm evening, such a relief after the spell of rain we’d had, and it was lovely to have the windows wide open. But after a while I had to ask Henry to shut the one in my bedroom, her voice was so loud.”
“I wanted to phone and ask her to pipe down,” said Mr. Bertram.
“But we couldn’t very well, could we, after having said only a few days before that we didn’t mind in the least. Only somehow it seemed extra loud that evening. I suppose the sound carried on the still air. And you know how it is when people practise, constantly stopping and going back a few bars. With the best will in the world it does get on your nerves a bit.” She looked anxious suddenly. “You won’t mention this to Mrs. Knight, will you, Officer? I’d hate her to think we’d been complaining about her to a policeman.”
“Rely on me, madam.” Farrow consulted his clipboard again. “Mrs. Knight lives alone, doesn’t she?”
“Yes. She’s divorced, you know.”
“Far too many people get divorced far too easily these days, if you ask me,” Farrow declaimed. He and his first wife had divorced, but the Bertrams didn’t need to know that. “It must be a lonely life for a woman, living in an isolated place like this, all on her own.”
The couple looked across at one another. Tempted, as even the nicest people are, to enjoy a spicy lit of gossip.
“She does have friends, of course,” said the wife. She was willing to be drawn, Farrow surmised.
“Other members of the Troubadours, I expect?”
“Well yes, she does have them round sometimes, I believe. That wasn’t quite what I meant.”
Farrow tucked the clipboard under his cap, to indicate that official business was over. This was just a cosy little chat.
“One particular friend?” he suggested.
“Well ... Henry and I think he must be a married man, from the way they’ve been so careful. We’ve just caught a glimpse of movement now and then that didn’t look like her, and we’ve heard a car drive off quite late. You can’t really condemn it these days, can you? I just hope his poor wife never finds out.”
“Local chap, would you think?”
“Oh, I really couldn’t say. I mean, we haven’t gone out of our way to spy on her.”
Farrow could sense her pulling back from him. She felt guilty, of course, for gossiping about her neighbour.
“Naturally not,” he said reassuringly. “It isn’t our business what other people do, is it? Takes all sorts, after all. Live and let live, I say.”
With which string of platitudes, Farrow took his leave.
* * * *
“A very nice piece of work, Jack,” said Kate when he reported to her fifteen minutes later. “That’s just the sort of back-up alibi I expected Alison Knight to have fixed for herself, all ready and waiting for us if ever we got in the least suspicious about her and started to probe. She treated me to a sample of practising her singing role when I called on her, by appointment, on Sunday afternoon. So the alibi would have seemed plausible to me.”
“How did she set it up?” asked Boulter. “Tape-recorder?”
“Right, Tim. She’s got one of those twin-deck jobs that enable you to make your own edited recording. Packs a punch, too, I’d say ... plenty of volume to carry on ‘the still air.’”
“She took a chance on the Bertrams ringing her to complain about the noise, and getting no answer.”
“She could have left the phone off the hook. But in any case there was small risk they’d even try to get her. This woman’s a meticulous planner, Tim. Mrs. Bertram told Jack, remember, that they didn’t want to complain because they’d assured her only a few days before that they didn’t mind a bit about her practising. What would have prompted them to say that? Obviously an apology from Alison Knight. I reckon this is what we’re going to find each step of the way. Every last detail meticulously worked out.”
Farrow had just left when the phone rang. It was the DC who’d been detailed to go and see Marjorie Sayers.
“No question, ma’am, she recognised the photograph at once. It was the same woman.”
“That’s great. Terrific. What was the name of the pub they were in?”
“The Trout Inn at Steeple Haslop, ma’am. It was six weeks ago yesterday. April the ninth.”
“Well done, Alan. Thanks.”
The office manager looked round the door as she hung up. “Your aunt just phoned in, Kate, to say to tell you she’s got what you wanted all ready. Very mysterious, she was, but said you’d understand.”
“I do. Thanks, Frank.”
As the door closed, Kate turned to Boulter. “I’m nipping out again for a bit. I think the next move is to pull Latimer in for questioning. Will you go and fetch him? He’s to have no opportunity to get in touch with Alison Knight.”
“Will do, guv.”
Driving home to Stonebank Cottage, Kate pulled up outside Pearce’s Wine Store and purchased a bottle of the best malt whisky they stocked. She waved this in front of her aunt as she walked in.