The Cold Hand of Malice (7 page)

‘No!’ Holbrook literally turned pale at the suggestion. ‘I–I can’t,’ he said. ‘Sorry, but I just can’t. Besides, there’s no point; there’s nothing worth stealing there.’

‘What about jewellery?’ Tregalles asked.

‘Well, yes, I suppose there’s that,’ he conceded, ‘but Laura didn’t care much for jewellery, and what she did have, apart from the rings I gave her, wasn’t worth very much. She keeps it . . .’ He passed a hand across his brow and corrected himself. ‘I should say
kept
it, in a rosewood box on the dressing table.’

Grace frowned. ‘The rings as well?’ she asked.

The question seemed to annoy Holbrook, who shook his head impatiently. ‘No, of course not,’ he said. ‘She wore them all the time.’

Tregalles and Grace exchanged glances. The sergeant didn’t remember seeing any rings on Laura Holbrook’s fingers. ‘Can you think of any reason why Mrs Holbrook might have taken her rings off that evening?’ Grace asked quietly.

Holbrook’s eyes narrowed as he threw a questioning look at Grace. ‘Why are you asking these questions?’ he said. ‘Am I missing something here?’

Grace spread her hands in a gesture of apology. ‘It’s just that everything has been inventoried, and I’m afraid there were no rings of any kind on your wife’s fingers. Nor were they in the jewellery box.’

‘Jesus Christ!’ Holbrook looked stunned as he breathed the words. ‘You mean they . . .?’ He stopped, seemingly at a loss for words. ‘You’re sure about that?’ he demanded.

‘Very sure,’ Grace told him, and Tregalles nodded in agreement. ‘Sorry, Mr Holbrook, but I was one of the first on the scene, and there were no rings on your wife’s fingers when I saw her. Were the rings very valuable?’

Holbrook grimaced. ‘Just short of twenty thousand for the two,’ he said. ‘But it’s not the money so much as the thought that they would . . .’ He shook his head and shrugged the thought away as he moved to the front door. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said in a firmer voice, ‘but I think I’ve done all I can here, so I hope that’s it for now, Sergeant?’

‘Except for taking your statement at Charter Lane, sir,’ Tregalles reminded him, ‘but that shouldn’t take long. I’ll have you back in no time.’

The look Holbrook shot at Tregalles bordered on the hostile. ‘Is it
really
necessary that we do this today?’ he asked irritably.

‘I’m afraid it is, sir,’ Tregalles told him. ‘Best to do it while things are still fresh in the memory and then it’s done with.’ He stepped outside before Holbrook could say more.

‘Oh, very well,’ Holbrook muttered. ‘After you, then, Ms Lovett,’ he said, stepping aside to allow Grace to precede him.

But Grace shook her head. ‘I still have work to do here,’ she told him. ‘And I do thank you very much for doing this, Mr Holbrook; I know how difficult it must have been for you, but you’ve been a great help and I do appreciate it.’

‘My pleas . . .’ he began, then stopped. ‘Sorry,’ he said awkwardly. ‘What I
meant
to say was, if there is anything I can do, anything at all that will help you find who did this, please don’t hesitate to call me, Ms Lovett.’ His eyes held hers as her handed her his card. ‘Any time,’ he said. ‘My mobile phone number is on there as well.’

Holbrook remained silent throughout the short drive to Charter Lane. He sat slumped in his seat, hands clasped loosely in front of him as he stared blankly out of the window, and Tregalles made no attempt to engage him in conversation. Instead, he went over everything in his mind that they’d talked about that morning, and wondered what it was about Holbrook that put him off – apart from the fact that the man was older than he was, yet looked about ten years younger.

He didn’t doubt that the death of his wife had hit Holbrook hard, and yet there had been something predatory about the way he’d kept eyeing Grace as they toured the house. Not that Grace wasn’t worth looking at – Tregalles had done his fair share of looking when their paths had first crossed – but it didn’t seem right that the man should show that much interest in another woman less than forty-eight hours after his wife had been bludgeoned to death.

On the other hand, he told himself as they arrived at Charter Lane, he wasn’t being very fair to the man. He’d only met him twice, both times under abnormal circumstances, so perhaps he should reserve judgement.

Before taking Holbrook’s statement, he took another look at the photographs of the scene. Virtually every inch of the bedroom had been photographed, but there was no sign of Laura Holbrook’s rings, either on her finger or on the dressing table. The rest of the jewellery appeared to be there, so why not the rings? The obvious answer was their value, but would vandals, who had ignored things like credit cards and items of value in other houses, know the value of Laura Holbrook’s rings? And if, as Holbrook had said, his wife was not in the habit of removing the rings, that meant they had been pulled from her finger. Tregalles made a mental note to ask Starkie if there were any abrasions on the ring finger.

Like Trevor Ballantyne, Holbrook’s statement varied little from what he had told them on the night of the murder – not that he’d actually told them much himself before asking his friend to speak for him. He said he and his wife had planned on going to see a film with their friends, the Ballantynes, but about an hour before they were due to leave the house, his wife had said she could feel a migraine coming on, and she had gone to bed. Holbrook had offered to stay with her, but she had insisted that he go out as planned.

‘Laura preferred to be left alone when she had a migraine,’ he explained when Tregalles asked him about it.

‘This sort of thing has happened before, then, has it, sir?’

‘Oh, yes. Laura has always been troubled with migraines, and she insisted on being left completely alone until they were over. She would take a couple of paracetamol and a herbal sleeping pill, then make the room as dark as possible and go to bed.’

‘And that is what she did that evening? Did you see her take the tablets?’

Holbrook shook his head impatiently. ‘No, but since that is what she usually did, I’m assuming she did the same that evening. When I went up to check on her before going out, she was in bed, the curtains were drawn and the light was out. I told her again that I didn’t mind staying home if she would like me to, but she told me to stop fussing and go out as planned.’

Tregalles returned to the statement. ‘You say here that when Mrs Ballantyne phoned to say they would be leaving the house in a few minutes, and you told her that your wife wouldn’t be going, she decided not to go herself. Did she say why?’

‘No, not really. She said something about letting Trevor and me have a night out on our own for a change, but to tell you the truth, I don’t think either Laura or Moira were all that keen to see the film in the first place. Neither of them care for science fiction films, and I can’t say I blame them. I mean the plots are often rubbish, but Trevor and I are more interested in the computer-generated special effects.’

Holbrook hunched forward in his seat, and for the first time since they’d met that morning, his eyes became alive. ‘Most people don’t realize how much work goes into a film like that,’ he said earnestly. ‘Some of the special effects take years of work by some very talented people. Youngsters, a good many of them, and they are good. Trev and I both have to be creative in our own lines of work – they’re not the same, you understand, but the process is much the same, so we enjoy trying to work out how they achieved certain effects. And we do pick up the odd idea for our own work every now and then. You see . . .’

Holbrook stopped himself in mid-sentence. ‘Sorry,’ he said guiltily as he drew back. ‘I didn’t mean to run on like that. I was just trying to explain . . . Well, anyway, what it comes down to is, with Laura staying home, it gave Moira the opportunity to beg off.’

‘I see. So you left the house at about ten minutes to seven, and went for a drink first at the Fox and Hounds.’

‘That’s right. We usually go there. We know the landlord, Bill Chivers, and the pub is just across the road from the cinema.’

‘And you left the Fox and Hounds when? Approximately?’

Holbrook shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Quarter to eight or so, I suppose. Trev said we’d better be going, so we left. Anyway, I don’t see the point of all these questions about where I was, unless –’ his eyes narrowed as they met those of Tregalles – ‘unless,’ he said softly, ‘you think that
I
had something to do with Laura’s death. Is that what all these questions are about? Well, let me tell you,
Sergeant,
I loved my wife, and I had
nothing
to do with her death, so you can get that idea out of your mind right now. Apart from anything else, I was miles away at the time, sitting in a cinema with a witness by my side, so the sooner you stop wasting my time and start looking for the real killers, the better!’

‘Three quarters of a mile, actually,’ Tregalles said equably, ‘and while this may seem like a waste of time to you now, it is important that we establish where everyone was when the crime was being committed. Important,’ he continued quickly as Holbrook opened his mouth to speak, ‘because if or when this case comes to trial, the defence will be doing everything in their power to convince a jury that the murder could have been committed by someone else, usually someone very close to the victim. So, if you will just bear with me for just a few more minutes . . .? Now,’ he continued without waiting for a reply, ‘according to our information, the film ended at approximately ten past ten that night. Did you come straight home?’

It was hard to tell by the way he continued to look at Tregalles, whether Holbrook was convinced or not by the sergeant’s explanation, but he answered the question. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘we came straight home.’

Tregalles nodded encouragingly. ‘And when you first entered the house, there was no indication that anything was amiss. Is that right, sir?’

‘Yes – at least at first.’

‘So, while Mr Ballantyne went into the front room you went straight upstairs to check on your wife?’

Holbrook took a deep breath. ‘Yes,’ he said tightly.

‘And, according to what we were told the other night, when Mr Ballantyne realized that something was wrong, he came out of the front room, saw you on the stairs, went up himself, then came back down again to call the police. A matter of three or four minutes, perhaps? Would that be about right, sir?’

‘This may come as a surprise to you, Sergeant,’ Holbrook said, his words laced with sarcasm, ‘but I wasn’t paying a lot of attention to what time it was. I had a little more on my mind.’

‘I do appreciate that,’ Tregalles told him, ‘but you see, I do want to make sure that I haven’t missed something here, because the times don’t seem to add up. I’m sure there’s a perfectly logical explanation, but I can’t see it here. Perhaps you can explain it, sir?’

‘Explain what, exactly?’ Holbrook snapped.

Tregalles frowned and scratched his head. ‘It’s just that the film ended about ten past ten, and . . . where was the car parked, by the way?’

‘Where we usually leave it,’ Holbrook said irritably, ‘in the car park beside the Fox and Hounds, but I fail to see—’

‘Any problems getting out?’ Tregalles interrupted. ‘Any delays?’

Holbrook closed his eyes. His body language said plainly that he was having difficulty keeping his temper. ‘We came out,’ he said through gritted teeth, ‘we walked across the road, got in the car and drove home. Is that specific enough for you, Sergeant?’

‘Which means you would have been home about, oh, let’s say no later than twenty-five past ten, assuming you didn’t stop anywhere along the way. You didn’t, did you, sir?’

‘No, we did not stop along the way,’ Holbrook said, enunciating each word carefully as if speaking to a backward child. ‘And,’ he added with emphasis, ‘I’ve had more than enough of these questions. I assume I am free to leave?’ He began to rise, but Tregalles waved him back.

‘In a moment,
if
you don’t mind, sir,’ he said. ‘Just want to clear up one small point. You see, according to what you’ve told me, you got home about twenty-five past ten and went straight upstairs. Both you and Mr Ballantyne agree that you weren’t in the house more than a few minutes before Mr Ballantyne called us. But our records show that his call came in at 10.58, which leaves a gap of some twenty-five to thirty minutes unaccounted for between the time you got home and the time Mr Ballantyne called us. Is there something I’m missing here, Mr Holbrook?’

‘Oh, for God’s sake, man!’ Holbrook flared. ‘My wife was
killed
that night. Not just killed, but beaten to death by some madman, and you sit there asking me about what time it was when I did this or that? I have tried to be cooperative, but this is ridiculous! So we didn’t get the times exactly right. So what? Do you think you’d be checking your watch to make sure you got the times right if it was
your
wife who’d been killed?’

Holbrook stood up. ‘I think it’s about time you got your priorities right,’ he said scathingly, ‘and you can do what you like with your damned statement, because I’m finished here.’

Seven

It was late in the afternoon before Dr Starkie telephoned Paget to give him a summary of the results of the autopsy on Mrs Holbrook.

‘It’s pretty straightforward,’ Starkie told him. ‘The woman died of repeated blows to the head. Six in all, as near as I can tell, and there is nothing to indicate that she put up a fight. In fact, I doubt if she was even awake. If, as we are told, she took sleeping pills along with paracetamol, some of which we found on the floor, if you remember, chances are she was asleep when the first blow was struck.

‘The weapon was some sort of flat metal bar approximately three to three-and-a-half centimetres wide, and roughly half a centimetre thick, and I found traces of rust embedded in the wounds. Could be almost any old piece of scrap metal, but whatever it was, it was used with considerable force. The entire front of the skull was crushed, but then, I don’t have to tell you, do I? You saw what it had done to her face.’