Suspicious Death Page 14

  ‘You can be frank with us. We won’t get you into trouble with him, I promise.’

  Another shrug. ‘So-so.’

  ‘No more than that?’

  ‘Like I said, it’s a job. You can’t be too choosy these days.’

  ‘No …’ Lineham leaned forward a little across the counter, glanced over his shoulder at the street as if to check that there was still no sign of Lomax, then lowered his voice as he said, ‘You’d have a pretty good idea of his comings and goings, I suppose.’

  ‘I suppose,’ said the boy, warily.

  ‘And of his visitors, too – people who come to see him here at the shop.’

  ‘Well …’

  ‘A certain young lady, now … About eighteen or nineteen, very pretty, long curly hair …’

  The boy had immediately recognised the description. But there was a spark of something else in his eyes, too. What was it?

  He nodded. ‘Can’t think what she sees in him. He’s old enough to be her grandfather.’

  Jealousy, then. And pique?

  ‘Until the day before yesterday it was all hush-hush. They meets each other most dinnertimes, see, but she never comes in here. Ten past twelve, regular as clockwork, she walks past the shop and a few minutes later off he goes.’ The boy snorted. ‘Thinks I’m stupid or something!’

  ‘Until the day before yesterday?’ said Lineham.

  The day Marcia Salden died.

  ‘Yeah. She rings up, see, middle of the morning. Never done that before. Wants to speak to him, urgent. Well, I tells her, he’s out, gone to pick up a TV. Half an hour later, she’s on the phone again and he walks in while I’m telling her he’s not back yet. When he hears who’s on the line he sends me off to the workroom, but I listens. Well, I wants to know what’s going on, don’t I? “I thought I told you never to ring me at work,” he says. Then he listens for a sec, and he says, “Oh, my Gawd, oh my Gawd,” over and over. Then he says, “Look, we can’t talk now. I’ll see you in your lunch hour as usual. And don’t worry, I’ll see you right.”’ The boy glanced into the street, then leaned forward and said confidentially, ‘D’you know what I reckon? I reckon he’s knocked her up.’

  ‘I’ll see you right.’ The most likely explanation, certainly. Maybe this was what Josie had been afraid of revealing when they had talked to her earlier on. And it opened up a number of interesting avenues of speculation. If Josie was pregnant, had she told Marcia? And if so, was the matter brought up at the ill-fated dinner party that night? And if it had been, and Marcia had tightened the screw on Lomax by hinting at publicity should he fail to swing the planning permission for her, how would Lomax have reacted? Difficult to tell, without ever having met the man. Would he have been upset? Angry? Desperate, even? Pretty agitated anyway, surely. Mrs Pantry said Lomax had left the Manor at around a quarter or twenty past ten that night. Thanet’s imagination conjured up Lomax’s car speeding down the drive, turning right towards the village … But not, that wouldn’t work. Lomax lived in Sturrenden. He would surely have turned left, towards the main road. And if so, he and Marcia wouldn’t have met at all. Unless he had deliberately gone looking for her …

  The door bell pinged. A customer wanting a 13-amp plug. Thanet and Lineham stood aside while she was served. Almost at once, and before they could resume their conversation, the bell pinged again. Thanet could tell by the way the boy stiffened that this must be Lomax.

  During the introductions he was interested to note that although Lomax tried to hide it beneath a mask of bonhomie, the man was definitely on the defensive.

  ‘Ah yes, I’ve been expecting you. What you call “routine enquiries”, I suppose.’ His laugh had a hollow ring. ‘Go and buy yourself a doughnut, Kevin, will you, while I talk to the police and do my duty as a good citizen.’

  A Kentish accent, Thanet noted, somewhat rough at the edges.

  Kevin duly departed and Lomax flipped the notice on the door to CLOSED. Then he turned, rubbing his hands and sporting a look of bright expectancy tempered with appropriate solemnity. Quite a feat, Thanet thought. He had disliked the man on sight, slotting him at once into the category which his own father, now dead, had classified as ‘the type I wouldn’t buy a second-hand car from’.

  Lomax, like his shop, had the air of going to seed. His clothes – navy blue blazer, linen trousers, striped tie, white shirt, were of good quality but slightly scruffy, his hair, although well cut, a little too long. A bright yellow silk scarf patterned with large red polka dots was draped around his neck. How did people like this get into such positions of power in local government? Thanet asked himself. Because those of the right calibre were too busy or too uninterested to stand? Thanet had met one or two truly admirable councillors, men and women dedicated to the ideal of public service, but they were all too few and far between.

  Lomax now affected the hollow tones of an inexperienced newsreader reporting a disaster. ‘It’s about Mrs Salden, I suppose. Such a sad business. She was so young … and such a brilliant businesswoman. Such a waste …’

  Such a treacly voice, Thanet parodied in his mind. Such a charming, man … He could hear Lineham saying, ‘Yuk!’ But he could understand why Josie had been taken in. Lomax would be so different from the boys with whom she normally came into contact. She would look no further than the surface, be dazzled by his status as a councillor, by the apparent gloss of sophistication. A few trips in that Jaguar parked outside, a few dinners at expensive restaurants …

  Lomax wilted under Thanet’s unwavering stare. He cleared his throat, moved uneasily from one foot to another and ran a hand over his hair. His soft brown eyes, which in a romantic novel would no doubt be described as ‘melting’, were like muddied pools with all kinds of unpleasant things stirring at the bottom.

  ‘You were a guest at Mrs Salden’s house that evening, I believe?’

  ‘Yes, that’s right.’

  ‘Your wife was not invited?’

  ‘No … She … It was more of a business arrangement than a social occasion.’

  ‘I see … May I ask the nature of this business?’

  He hesitated, his eyes flickering around the room as if searching for non-existent eavesdroppers. ‘Confidentially, Mrs Salden was negotiating to buy this business.’

  Thanet allowed his surprise to show. ‘She was branching out into electronics?’

  Lomax shook his head and sniggered as if Thanet had made a dirty joke. ‘Nooo. It was the premises she wanted. She was planning on opening a vegetarian restaurant. There isn’t one in the entire area. Said it was a natural progression from the health food shops and it was a good time to do it. There is so much interest in vegetarian food these days. I thought she was on to a winner, myself.’

  Thanet had to admit it sounded plausible. Could he have been wrong in suspecting Marcia of planning to blackmail Lomax? But even if she hadn’t, she could still have intended to suborn him. Buying his shop and paying well over the odds for it could have been a neat way of handing over a bribe without seeming to do so. ‘These negotiations … They were far advanced?’

  ‘Progressing satisfactorily, shall we say? Though whether they’ll go ahead now is another matter. Her husband may want to scrap the whole idea.’

  ‘May I ask how much Mrs Salden was prepared to offer you?’

  ‘You can ask, but you won’t get an answer. I can’t see it has anything to do with … with the matter in hand.’

  ‘That remains to be seen. You do realise, don’t you, that we are treating this as a suspicious death?’

  ‘Suspicious death?’ Lomax’s ruddy complexion was turning the colour of dough.

  ‘We have to be satisfied that it was an accident – if it was an accident, in fact.’

  ‘If?’

  ‘Naturally, we have to consider the alternatives. Suicide, for example …’ It would be interesting to see if Lomax took the bait.

  He didn’t.

  ‘But …’ Lomax shook his head.

  ‘Yes, Mr L
omax?’

  ‘I was only going to say that Mrs Salden would be the last person to commit suicide.’

  ‘Yes, that does seem to be the general consensus of opinion. Which leaves us with the third alternative.’

  Lomax was staring at Thanet like a rabbit at a stoat. ‘You can’t mean …’

  Thanet wondered why this particular snatch of conversation always sounded so clichéd. Simply because he had heard it so often? Yet there was no other way to put it. ‘Yes,’ he said quietly. ‘That’s precisely what I do mean. Murder. You must see that we have to take that possibility into account. Which is why we are looking very closely into the movements of everybody she saw on Tuesday.’

  ‘You can’t possibly be suggesting that I …’ There was a strange, dry, clicking noise from the back of Lomax’s throat.

  ‘We’re not suggesting anything at this stage, Mr Lomax. Just enquiring. So perhaps you’d be good enough to answer just a few more questions. Now, what time did you leave Telford Green Manor on Tuesday night?’

  There was definitely a flash of fear in Lomax’s eyes before they slid away. ‘Somewhere around twenty past ten, I should think. Soon after I’d finished my coffee. I didn’t think it was on to hang about any longer.’

  ‘Not “on”?’ What, specifically, was Lomax afraid of? Thanet wondered.

  Lomax’s shoulders twitched impatiently. ‘Not polite. With Mrs Salden’s mother being ill …’

  ‘I see … When Mrs Salden left to go down to the village to see her mother, did she tell you she was going on foot?’

  Lomax’s reaction looked genuine enough. ‘She walked?’

  Thanet nodded. ‘Along the footpath.’

  ‘But why? We assumed she’d drive down.’

  ‘Her car wouldn’t start.’

  ‘Then why didn’t she come and ask me if I’d run her down? It’d only have taken a few minutes.’

  That was a point which, oddly enough, had not occurred to Thanet. Why, indeed? He shrugged. ‘No idea. What, exactly, did she say, when she left?’

  ‘Just that she was popping down to see her mother and she wouldn’t be long – ten or fifteen minutes at most. I said in that case we’d best be getting off home but she said, no, she didn’t want to break up the party and that she especially wanted a word with Josie when she got back. That’s why Josie stayed on when I left, or I’d have given her a lift home.’

  ‘Did you think it odd, that Mrs Salden neither came back nor rang to explain why?’

  ‘A bit, yes. But then we thought, well, it would be understandable if she forgot about us, if her mother was desperately ill.’

  ‘And when you yourself left, did you go straight home?’

  ‘More or less.’ Lomax’s voice had thickened.

  ‘More?’ said Thanet pleasantly. ‘Or less?’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  Thanet sighed. ‘If you didn’t go straight home, where did you go first?’

  ‘For a drink.’ It was as though the words were squeezed out of him against his will.

  Thanet suddenly understood Lomax’s apprehension and he knew the answer to the next question before he asked it. ‘Where?’

  ‘At the Crooked Door.’

  ‘I see …’ Thanet allowed the silence to stretch out. Then, eventually, ‘So you drove through the village.’

  ‘Yes, of course.’ Lomax was sullen now. He resented being forced to yield up information he had hoped to keep hidden.

  ‘Pass anyone?’

  ‘I don’t know. I can’t remember. I hadn’t thought about it.’

  ‘Well, think now.’

  Silence. Lomax screwed up his face and gazed into the middle distance.

  Thanet and Lineham hid their eagerness. If Marcia had left her mother’s cottage at around twenty past ten, even if Lomax had not committed the crime himself he could have been on the bridge at around the crucial time, seen something which could give them a vital lead.

  ‘Yes …’ said Lomax slowly. ‘There was … Yes, I remember now. There were two men, outside one of the cottages, before you get to the bridge. I had the impression they were drunk.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I’m not sure. One seemed to be holding the other up.’

  If so, they had probably come from the pub. More potential witnesses?

  ‘Can you tell us anything about them?’

  ‘It was just a glimpse. And I wasn’t paying much attention because I’d just spotted the first of the DANGER notices and I was wondering what was up. That bridge is difficult enough to negotiate at the best of times.’

  ‘Did you see anyone else? On or near the bridge, for example?’

  Lomax was already shaking his head.

  ‘You’re sure?’ But already Thanet was adjusting to the disappointment.

  ‘No. Though … Wait a minute …’

  ‘What?’ Thanet and Lineham spoke together.

  ‘I’ve just remembered. That secretary of Mrs Salden’s. I passed her just as she was turning into the gates of the Manor, near the lodge.’

  ‘You’re sure it was her?’ said Lineham.

  ‘Certain, yes.’

  ‘She was on foot?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Coming from which direction?’

  ‘From the village.’

  And Edith Phipps claimed she hadn’t been out that night. Interesting.

  ‘Did you see Mrs Salden further on, in the village?’ A pointless question, really, and Thanet wondered why he had bothered to ask it. Even if Lomax had seen her, he would deny it.

  ‘No!’

  ‘How well do you know Miss Trimble, Mr Lomax?’

  Lomax blinked at the abrupt change of topic. He was beginning to sweat, Thanet noticed. ‘I … er … I’ve met her a few times. Chiefly when she’s been with Mrs Salden.’

  ‘Chiefly?’

  Lomax folded his arms, as if to put up a barrier against this new line of attack. If Josie was pregnant, Thanet could understand the man’s difficulty. If he told the truth, he would lay himself open to a lot of unpleasant questions. Also, his wife might find out. But if he lied, and the police learnt the truth later, it might lead to even worse trouble. On the other hand, they might never find out …

  Lomax shrugged. ‘Mostly, yes. She went about with Mrs Salden quite a lot.’

  ‘But you have met her alone, too.’

  ‘I …’ He couldn’t bring himself to utter the direct lie, for fear of future consequences. ‘I may have done.’

  Thanet didn’t want to make things awkward for young Kevin by betraying the source of his information, so this was a little tricky. ‘Oh come, Mr Lomax. Miss Trimble is a very attractive young woman. Surely you can remember whether you’ve been out alone with her or not.’

  ‘Well, perhaps on the odd occasion, yes.’

  ‘Mr Lomax, I don’t think you’re being completely frank with us …’

  Thanet waited, but Lomax said nothing, just stared at Thanet with a fearful fascination. The moment was right, Thanet judged. ‘I have to tell you it’s common knowledge that you and Miss Trimble have been seeing a lot of each other.’

  Lomax took refuge in anger. ‘Common knowledge, my foot. I knew it! You’ve been listening to that madwoman, haven’t you?’

  Madwoman? What was Lomax talking about? Thanet knew when best to keep his mouth shut.

  ‘I knew she wouldn’t be able to resist putting her spoke in! Pretending to be so self-righteous. As if she doesn’t know what her precious daughter gets up to!’

  Light dawned. Lomax was talking about Josie’s mother. But how did Mrs Trimble fit in to all this?

  Best to allow Lomax to go on thinking they knew all about it. Thanet looked amused. ‘I gather Mrs Trimble’s been having a go at you.’

  ‘Josie’s nearly nineteen, you know. Nearly nineteen! And that old bat expects to be able to keep her under lock and key!’

  And it looked as though Mrs Trimble’s anxiety had been justified. With a stab of fierce protectiveness towar
ds Bridget, Thanet wondered how Lomax would have felt if it had been his daughter who was being wined and dined by an ageing Casanova old enough to be her grandfather. But, of course, he and Mrs Lomax had had only sons.

  And if Josie were pregnant, did her mother know about it?

  Lomax was still being indignant. ‘She practically demanded Josie put her coat on and come home then and there! Of course, Josie refused. She’d promised Marcia to wait until she got back.’

  Thanet did a double-take. ‘Just a moment. When was this, Mr Lomax?’

  ‘When was what?’

  ‘When did Mrs Trimble try and get Josie to go home with her?’

  ‘On Tuesday night, of course.’

  ‘Let me make sure I’ve got this straight. Mrs Trimble actually went up to the Manor on Tuesday evening during the dinner party and made a scene?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Objecting to the fact that her daughter was going out with you?’

  ‘That’s what I’ve been saying, haven’t I?’ Lomax was, perhaps understandably, becoming exasperated.

  ‘All right, calm down. I just wanted to make sure I hadn’t misunderstood …’

  ‘Here, just a minute. Didn’t Mrs Trimble tell you about this herself?’

  No, you told me yourself, just now. ‘Does it really matter who told us, Mr Lomax? We know, that’s the point … Can we get back to Tuesday evening, please? What time was this, when Mrs Trimble arrived?’

  Lomax shrugged. ‘Must have been about ten or five to ten … The housekeeper tried to stop her, but she just came barging in …’

  ‘How long did she stay?’

  ‘Five minutes or so. Josie refused to listen to her, sent her off with a flea in her ear.’

  ‘How had she got there?’

  Lomax gave a laugh that was also a sneer. ‘Well, she didn’t drive up, that’s for sure.’

  Thanet closed his eyes, trying to work it out. At ten o’clock Grace Trimble leaves the Manor. At twenty past Marcia Salden leaves her mother’s cottage to return home via the footpath. Yes, providing Mrs Trimble hadn’t walked too quickly, it was possible that they could have met on the bridge. If Mrs Trimble was still overwrought, humiliated at being shown the door by Josie and angry with Marcia for having encouraged the affair with Lomax …