Murder in the Cotswolds Read online

  The other constable stepped up importantly. “PC Robbins, ma’am. The message from the Information Room was received at five forty-seven. PC Farrow and I arrived on the scene at five fifty-six,” He was as precise in appearance as in manner. A lanky, sharp-featured young man, eager to impress. He might never be liked a lot, but he’d go far.

  Kate considered. “It’s clear she’s been dead for some hours. I noticed that the glass of her watch is broken and it’s stopped at one minute past ten. But can she have lain here all night without being found sooner?”

  “Could easily be,” said Boulter. “Some of these little by-lanes around here hardly see a vehicle from one week to the next.”

  Kate turned to Farrow. “I’m told you’re not happy about this being an accident. Why’s that?”

  “If you’ll step this way, Chief Inspector, I’ll show you.”

  In careful single file, they walked along the lane. They were all treading warily, knowing that Scenes of Crime wouldn’t thank them for trampling the evidence. At the spot where the constable halted, the spongy grass verge was churned up into mud. Kate saw his point immediately. From the tyre tracks it was possible to reconstruct the sequence of events. A car had driven off the roadway here, and waited; then suddenly accelerated fiercely, its driving wheels spinning for a grip and cutting deep grooves. Half-dried tracks of mud from the tyres were visible on the tarmac. About to turn away, Kate paused and took a second look.

  “These tread patterns don’t match. See?”

  “You’re right, ma’am.” Boulter looked impressed. “That’ll be a big help in tracing the car involved.”

  “Presumably,” Kate said thoughtfully, “it was someone who expected Mrs. Latimer to be on the spot just then—always assuming that she was the intended victim. The sooner we can check on the husband’s movements, the better.”

  “They say Mr. Latimer went to London yesterday morning and won’t be back till this afternoon,” said Farrow.

  “They? The groom and his wife, you mean?”

  “That’s right, ma’am. Ted and Linda West. When I couldn’t get an answer at the Grange just now, nor at the estate manager’s house, I went to their cottage. I had to get Linda out of bed, and she sent me round to the stable yard to find her husband. He was giving the horses their first feed.”

  “I’ll talk to them myself. I might be able to jog their memory. You come with me, Constable. Sergeant, I’d like you to go and question the cowman who found the body.”

  A car was approaching along the lane, and Boulter said, “This’ll be the doc, ma’am.”

  “Good morning, Doctor,” she greeted the man who climbed out of the immaculate Rover. “We haven’t met before. I’m DCI Maddox.”

  He pretended not to notice her outstretched hand, and reached back into the car for his bag. Then he straightened slowly, all five foot four of him. Like so many short men, he seemed to imagine that an air of self-importance would compensate for a lack of stature.

  “Well well, what have we here? A member of the fair sex.”

  Kate stood tall to make her extra four inches appear even more while she unhurriedly looked him up and down. “I didn’t catch the name, Doctor.”

  Sergeant Boulter masked a grin with his hand. “Er ... this is Dr. Meddowes, Chief Inspector.”

  Bag in hand, the police surgeon walked to the body and crouched over it. Watching him, Kate had to approve of the way he avoided making any disturbance that wasn’t strictly necessary. He knew his job—but that didn’t excuse him for being bloody rude. When he rose to his feet again, she said, “Well, Dr. Meddowes? Do you have any comments that might be useful to me?”

  “The woman’s dead, if that needs saying. In my opinion she’d have been killed instantly. Not so the dog, I fear.”

  “That’s what I’d imagined. Would you have any views about the time of death?”

  “I’d have thought that was obvious.”

  “Obvious?”

  “Observe that her wristwatch stopped at just after ten o’clock. Don’t tell me your trained police eye failed to detect that clue.”

  Why don’t you pick up the little man and shake him, Kate?

  “To the trained police eye,” she said sweetly, “nothing is ever taken as obvious. It would assist me, though, if you could confirm that ten o’clock last night as an estimated time of death would not be inconsistent with the medical evidence.”

  “Not inconsistent, no, but that means very little.”

  “Thank you, Doctor. That’s all I can ask of you. Most helpful.”

  He grunted acknowledgement and stalked off to his Rover. Kate walked with PC Farrow to the patrol car. It was only a few moments before they turned in at the gates of Hambledon Grange. A hundred yards up the drive a track led off to the stable yard, which was set well apart from the house. Their arrival was watched by half a dozen interested horses, their heads protruding above the half doors of the loose boxes.

  Farrow stopped the car outside a small stone cottage that was a short distance from the stable block. He and Kate got out and Farrow rapped loudly on the door. The man who opened up to them looked unkempt, unshaven, his dark hair uncombed. He wore dirty jeans and a checked woollen shirt.

  “Can’t you let a man have a cuppa tea in peace?” he grumbled. “What is it now?”

  “This is Detective Chief Inspector Maddox,” said Farrow. “She wants a word with you and your wife, Mr. West.”

  He shot Kate a startled glance. “Chief Inspector? Her?”

  “That’s right, Mr. West.” She displayed her warrant card.

  He still addressed Jack Farrow, saying sourly, “It’s no good you bringing top brass round. We don’t know anything.”

  Kate laced her voice with listen-to-me authority. “A fatal accident is a very serious matter, Mr. West. I need to talk to you and your wife.”

  “Suppose you’d better come in, then.” Grudgingly, he stood aside and shouted back over his shoulder, “It’s the coppers again, Linda.”

  In the kitchen-cum-living-room at the back, his wife was tying the sash of a frilly pink negligee. Her lustrous dark hair appeared bed-rumpled, and her curvaceous figure radiated a kind of lazy, animal sensuality. Just at the moment, though, she looked scared. To her, “police” would be an alternative word for “trouble.” On the table stood a large brown teapot, with two mugs, a bottle of milk, and a bag of sugar.

  “I’m sorry to bother you this early, Mrs. West,” Kate began pleasantly, “but it’s very important that we should get in touch with Mr. Latimer immediately. You told the constable that he’s in London and won’t be back until this afternoon.”

  “So he is. Went there yesterday morning.”

  “Has neither of you any idea where we can contact him?”

  The man shrugged a no. The woman said sulkily, “Why should we? He doesn’t tell us his business.”

  “But you might have heard something mentioned—the name of a hotel, perhaps. While you were working at the house, I mean.”

  “Well, she didn’t,” said her husband. If either of them cared a tuppenny damn about their employer’s death, they weren’t letting it show.

  Kate tried another angle. “Does Mr. Latimer often go to London?”

  “You could say that. ‘Bout once a fortnight, eh, Ted?”

  “Aye. Every other Tuesday.”

  “Why’re you asking about him?” Linda West demanded.

  “Mr. Latimer has to be contacted and told of his wife’s death.” Kate set her shoulder bag down on the table to indicate that she wasn’t through with them yet. “Do you know what Mrs. Latimer would have been doing in Reedbank Farm Lane last night? Going to visit someone, or on her way back? Or just taking the dog for a walk?”

  “Aye, that. Always did take Prince out, every blinking evening.” With a touch of venom in his voice, Ted West went on, “You could’ve set the clock by her. Nine-thirty on the dot she’d come over to the stables to check I was doing my last round. If I was even two minute
s late she’d fly off the handle. Then away she’d go for her walk.”

  “Did you see her last night?”

  “Course I did. I got to be there, haven’t I?”

  “Did Mrs. Latimer say anything to you? Anything out of the ordinary?”

  He shook his head. “Only her usual moans. A real nit-picker, that one.”

  “It doesn’t sound as if you liked her very much.”

  West lifted his shoulders. “I wasn’t paid to like her, was I?”

  “Tell me, did Mrs. Latimer go in different directions on her evening walks with the dog? Or did she tend to keep to the same route?”

  “Well, I suppose she did go the same way, mostly. Up around the top paddock, then along the footpath through the birch copse.”

  “And across Reedbank Farm Lane by the stile near that big old oak tree?” put in Jack Farrow.

  “‘Bout there, aye.”

  Kate had noted the stile a few yards along the lane from where the body had been found, with a five-barred gate directly opposite it. Mrs. Latimer had been a woman of fixed habits taking a habitual route. A car, waiting in the dusk, wouldn’t have had long to wait.

  “Would Mr. Latimer have driven to London? Or taken the train?”

  “Him, he always drives everywhere. He likes driving. Who wouldn’t, with a flash car like he’s got?”

  “I seem to recall seeing Mr. Latimer in a dark blue Jaguar,” offered PC Farrow.

  West nodded. “He gets himself a brand-new Jag every blinking year.” There was envious admiration in his voice.

  “What other vehicles are kept on the estate?” Kate enquired.

  “Well, there’s Mrs. Latimer’s Renault. And the Metro they keep as a runabout. Then there’s a Range Rover and a couple of Landrovers, and tractors. And a horsebox for the stables.”

  “Do you own a car yourself?”

  He glared at her furiously. “You can’t pin nothing on me. Anyway, my old crate’s laid up with a burnt-out clutch.”

  “Calm down,” said Kate. “These are just routine enquiries. Constable, I’d like you to get Mr. West to show you the various vehicles he’s mentioned. Come back and collect me here when you’re through.”

  “Right you are, ma’am.”

  “Hey, I’ve got to get back to the stables,” West protested. “There’s work to be got on with.”

  “Sorry, but we need your help,” Kate said. “The work will have to wait for a few minutes.”

  It suited her to be left alone with Linda West. A cosy woman-to-woman chat might provide some useful background info on the Larimers.

  “I’m afraid we interrupted your early-morning cuppa,” she said, with a glance at the teapot. “Don’t let me stop you having it.”

  The younger woman took the hint. “Want one?”

  “Thanks, I wouldn’t say no.”

  They both sat down at the table. The tea was black and stewed, tasting vile. You ought to get danger money, Kate.

  “How long have you been working for Mrs. Latimer at the Grange?” she asked.

  “About four years, ever since Ted got his job here.”

  “Just you? It’s a big place.”

  “You can say that again. There’s a couple of women come to clean in the mornings. Betty Rudge and Marlene Harper. Sometimes I have to do evenings, too, when they have guests for dinner. She always does the cooking—did, I mean. Reckoned she was a cordon bleu. But all the dishes she messed up she left for me to see to. And of course I had to wait table for them when they had people there.”

  “What was Mrs. Latimer like to work for?”

  “A right nit-picker, like Ted said. Just a speck of dust, a glass not polished ... you know. I earn every penny of what I get paid.”

  Kate nodded sympathetically. “What about Mr. Latimer?”

  A pause for thought. “Oh, he’s all right. Good sort, really. Likes a joke—when his wife’s not looking.”

  “Made a pass at you sometimes, did he?”

  Kate watched Linda’s mind working. In the end, she couldn’t help boasting. “He’s a man like all the rest, isn’t he? Quite a looker, really. Younger than her.”

  Kate smiled the right sort of encouraging smile. “How did the Latimers get on together?”

  “Well, he had to toe the line with her, didn’t he? She had all the money.”

  Linda had been nervously twisting a ring on the third finger of her right hand. It was an elaborate diamond and amethyst cluster.

  “That’s a lovely ring you’re wearing,” Kate commented.

  “It’s mine. You can ask Ted if you don’t believe me. My aunt Daisy left it to me when she died. She specially wanted me to have it.”

  A curiously over-defensive reaction, Kate mused. She decided there was no more to be got out of Linda at the moment, and stood up to leave.

  “By the way, I don’t think you’d better go over to the house until after Mr. Latimer gets back from London.” She didn’t want anything touched until it had been checked over. “You have a door key, I suppose?”

  “Course I do.”

  “And do the other two women also have keys?”

  “No, only me.”

  “Well, let them know that they won’t be needed this morning, will you?”

  The two men returned just as Kate was leaving, and Ted West slouched past her into the house with merely a grunt.

  “No damage, and no unmatched tyres on any of the vehicles I’ve been able to see so far, ma’am,” PC Farrow reported as they walked back to the patrol car.

  “Oh well, we couldn’t have expected to get that lucky.”

  A Range Rover appeared at the entrance to the stable yard. The driver, spotting the police car, changed direction and pulled up beside them.

  “What’s going on here?” he demanded, not getting out.

  Kate introduced herself and PC Farrow. “Who would you be, sir?”

  “I’m the Hambledon estate manager, Bruce McLeod.” The name matched the faint Scots burr in his voice. “Is something wrong?”

  “You haven’t heard about Mrs. Latimer then, Mr. McLeod?”

  “Heard what?”

  “That she’s been involved in an accident.” Kate doled out the information sparingly, observing his reactions.

  “Accident? What kind of accident?” McLeod opened the door and climbed down. He was of medium height, spare-framed, his features a little too large for his face. He carried an air of brisk authority, as if, perhaps, he’d had an army career.

  “Sometime last evening Mrs. Latimer was knocked down by a vehicle which didn’t stop. She must have been killed outright.”

  “Killed? Good God!”

  “This officer tried to contact you earlier this morning, Mr. McLeod, when the body was discovered. But there was nobody at home.”

  “I live alone, and I’m always out and about early.” He was fingering his bristly moustache, seeming uncertain.

  “We’re hoping that you can tell us the whereabouts of Mr. Latimer.” Kate observed that Jack Farrow had moved unobtrusively to where he could scrutinise the front of the Range Rover for any sign of damage.

  “He’s in London. I saw him setting off yesterday morning.”

  “Where is he staying in London? Do you happen to know?“

  “Afraid not.”

  “A hotel, would you think? Or with friends?”

  “I’ve really no idea. Sorry I can’t help.”

  “When did you last see Mrs. Latimer, Mr. McLeod?”

  “Yesterday morning. She dropped in at the estate office round about eleven.”

  “And did you notice anything unusual about her manner? Anything out of the ordinary?”

  He shrugged. “No, she was her usual self.”

  “I see. Well, that’s all for the present, thank you.”

  McLeod stood watching as they moved off in the patrol car.

  “I noticed that he didn’t bother to enquire where the accident had occurred,” Kate remarked.

  “No more
he did, ma’am. Is he our man, you reckon?”

  “That’s the big question, Jack.”

  As they were about to turn onto the driveway, Kate swung the rear-view mirror so she could look back. With interest, she saw Bruce McLeod heading purposefully for the Wests’ cottage.

  * * * *

  “What’ve you been saying to her?” Ted West had demanded, the moment he was alone with his wife.

  “Nothing special.”

  Tension pricked between them. “That bloody woman copper is too damned nosy for my liking,” he muttered. “Coming charging round here like that. You didn’t tell her anything?”

  “What d’you take me for?”

  “Are you sure? Them and their trick questions.”

  “She didn’t want to know anything about us, Ted. Leastways, except for asking how I got on with Mrs. Latimer.”

  “What did you say?”

  “Same as you did, that she was a real nit-picker to work for.”

  Ted scowled. “Maybe I shouldn’t have said that. Me and my big mouth.”

  “Everyone knows what that cow was like, Ted. What good would it do for us to make out we got on with her fine?”

  “What I always say is, the less the coppers know, the better.” He picked up the teapot and started to pour, then looked with disgust at the varnish that came out. “Make some more, can’t you?”

  They fell silent, both thinking their own thoughts. A sharp rap on the front door nearly made Linda spill boiling water from the kettle. Uninvited, the caller came walking in.

  “I saw the police leaving,” said Bruce McLeod. “What did they want with you?”

  Ted turned a no-love-lost look on him. “They were asking if we knew where Mr. Latimer was. You’ve heard what’s happened, I suppose?”

  “Yes, I heard.” McLeod paused, considering. “I hope you didn’t go blabbing your mouth off about all and sundry in your usual style, West.”

  “Huh! If you mean about her ladyship giving you the push, how long d’you think you can keep that quiet?”

  “She didn’t dismiss me. I resigned.”

  “That’s a bloody lie, McLeod. She only gave you three months’ notice because that was in your contract.”

  The other man’s face flamed with rage, and Linda said peaceably, “Now then, Ted, don’t start on that. It’s none of our business.”