Which statement—quite unintentionally, Kate felt sure—provided her with a new line of thought. She made her approach cautiously.
“He must surely have had some friends,” she said in a casual tone. “Was he friendly with any of the men on the staff? Or any man who wasn’t on the staff, come to that?”
“Not exactly friendly.” Sullen, but quite unsuspecting.
“What do you mean by ‘not exactly’?”
Deidre Lancing shrugged. “It wasn’t what you could call
friendly,
but it always annoyed me the way that man Larkin used to barge in to see Mr. Labrosse whenever he pleased, and never got put in his place. I suppose it was because he’s the admiral’s personal steward and wasn’t under Mr. Labrosse’s supervision.”
Labrosse and Larkin?
Smooth and rough. Well, it happened, and propinquity accounted for a lot. This certainly explained a few things. Kate had no wish to alert the secretary to the direction of her thinking. She thanked Mrs. Lancing pleasantly for her help, and the woman departed.
Alone, Kate pondered her next move. She recalled that Admiral Fortescue hadn’t given a prompt reply when she’d asked if he could vouch for Larkin’s presence in his private quarters during the period in which Labrosse was killed. He and his surly manservant probably didn’t spend much of their time together in the same room, so had the admiral merely been assuming Larkin’s presence elsewhere in the suite? It was scarcely conceivable that he would knowingly cover up for the man.
Straightaway, she went across to the hotel to talk to the admiral again. As before, Larkin admitted her and stood hovering, making no move to leave the room. But this time Kate dismissed him.
“I wish to speak to Admiral Fortescue alone.”
He departed sullenly. Kate waited until the door had closed behind him, then said, “When I asked you earlier, sir, you confirmed that Larkin had been here in your private quarters during the period in which Mr. Labrosse had been killed.”
“I did, Chief Inspector.”
“Presumably he wasn’t in this room the whole time, so how can you be sure that he didn’t leave the suite for a while?”
The admiral regarded her with dismay. “Surely you don’t suspect Larkin of ... of ...”
“I’m just trying to clarify a point, sir. Kindly give me your answer to the question.”
He shook his head in sorrowful resignation. “Larkin was in and out of this room. Part of the time I was taking my morning bath, and he knows I always require him to be within call then, in case ... well, in case I should get into difficulty. And for the rest, I could hear him moving about next door, vacuuming and so forth. Larkin was here, Chief Inspector. He was definitely here. So please put out of your mind completely any suspicion you may be harbouring about him.”
“I see. Would you ring for Larkin, please sir?”
The manservant answered the bell at once, and Kate said, “I want to see you in my office over at the squash courts, Mr. Larkin. In ten minutes.”
“What for, miss?” he demanded truculently.
“I’ll explain when you get there.”
The admiral looked at her unhappily. “Chief Inspector, please. I really must protest.”
“I have a few more questions to put to Mr. Larkin,” she told him, “and the Incident Room is the best place. I won’t keep him any longer than necessary.”
Ten minutes later, when Larkin was shown into her office, he looked badly shaken. He sat awkwardly in the chair facing her across the desk, while his stubby fingers nervously smoothed down the few wispy hairs across his balding head. Kate guessed that he’d topped up from the whisky bottle for courage.
She began, “Did you know Mr. Labrosse before he came to work at Streatfield Park?”
“No, I didn’t. Why should I have done?”
“Yet in the short time he was here, you two became very close. How did that arise?”
He glared at her. “Don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Kate let out an audible sigh. “Please don’t let’s waste time fencing with each other. You and Labrosse had a sexual relationship, right?”
Larkin looked as if he were about to deny it, and for an instant Kate feared she might have read the signs all wrong. But then with a shrug of his hefty shoulders, he said gruffly, “That’s not a crime, is it?”
“No, it isn’t a crime. And I’m not trying to make any kind of moral judgment. It’s facts I’m interested in. Just facts.”
“Can’t see it matters to you, one way or t’other.”
“Of course it matters. Yves Labrosse has been murdered, and I’m looking for someone with a motive. Did you two quarrel?”
Kate sat back in her chair, giving him time to consider his position. It took a full minute. His voice, when it came, was harsh and cracked.
“I never killed Yves. Why the Christ should I want to kill him? Okay, him and me got together, I’m not saying different. Right from when he first arrived ... we sort of clicked. But to try and make out I had a motive for killing Yves, that’s crazy.”
“Are you saying that you and he never quarrelled?”
“Not what you could call
quarrelled.
We had the odd ... well, difference of opinion. Who doesn’t?”
“What sort of things were these differences of opinion about?”
Hesitation. “Yves was a cut above me, and he bloody didn’t let me forget it. He’d proper bawl me out sometimes for what he called not remembering my place.”
“You can’t have liked that much.”
Sid Larkin said with a flash of spirit, “When you’re just a bloody nobody, you have to get used to it.”
This wasn’t getting anywhere. Kate switched tactics. From preliminary reports she knew that a mass of fingerprints had been found in Labrosse’s room ... a number of them the victim’s own, the remainder as yet unidentified. But the murder weapon itself, the silver-gilt candlestick, had been very carefully wiped clean of all prints, just as she’d suspected.
“I shall require you to give us your fingerprints,” she said, “for comparison with prints found in Labrosse’s room.”
For a moment or two Larkin looked startled. Then he gave an offhand shrug.
“Well, my prints would be there, wouldn’t they? I’m not denying that I’ve often been in his room.”
She tried a bluff. “Suppose we find they match with prints on the murder weapon?”
Larkin snorted. “I don’t even know what the murder weapon was.”
“Don’t you? Very well, I’ll tell you. It was a candlestick. One of a pair from the mantelpiece.”
“Well, then, it couldn’t have my prints on it, because I’ve never touched those things.”
Damn, it hadn’t worked! There was nothing solid enough to hold him on. She needed above all to break the alibi that he’d been with the admiral when Labrosse was killed.
“Very well, Mr. Larkin, that’ll be all for now. I’ll be wanting to see you again, though.”
He rose to his feet, his face and balding skull flushed red with anger.
“I never killed Yves,” he spat. “And you’ve no cause to treat me like this. It’d be nice and easy for you to nail me, wouldn’t it? Oh, yes, all wrapped up nice and quick, case solved, and never mind the poor sod you get sent down for something he didn’t do.”
* * * *
Kate managed to get to the hospital that evening for a quick visit. Thankfully, she found her aunt was continuing to make good progress. She was away from the Incident Room less than an hour all told, but when she arrived back Frank Massey warned her that Superintendent Joliffe had turned up and was waiting in her office.
Had taken possession of her office, more like. She found Jolly’s large frame overflowing the chair behind her desk with his long legs, crossed at the ankles, projecting through the knee-hole. On his face was an expression of held-in impatience. Kate guessed that he’d hurriedly adopted this pose on hearing her voice outside the door.
“So here you are at last, Mrs. Maddox.”
“I just popped out to visit my aunt in hospital, sir.” Why the hell did she let him put her on the defensive? “Surely you were informed, when you arrived?”
“Yes, yes. I trust the good lady is making satisfactory progress?”
“Thank you, sir. She is.”
“The same cannot be said for you, alas. Rather than solve one murder, Chief Inspector, you have landed us with a second one. The ACC is most put out.”
“I’m sorry about that, sir. I didn’t do it on purpose.”
But humour of any kind was wasted on Jolly Joliffe. She proceeded to outline the facts about Labrosse’s death, his relationship with Larkin, and the information she had gathered from Richard Gower.
“Hmm. This friend of yours, Gower, is quite a mine of information, isn’t he?”
For the simple reason that he had once been Corinne Saxon’s lover.
Skate over it, Kate.
“I certainly have reason to be grateful to him in this case.”
“No doubt. I trust, Mrs. Maddox, that you don’t allow your gratitude to lead you into making him some sort of
quid pro quo.”
“Perhaps you’d explain that remark, sir.”
The superintendent seemed unaware of the dangerous note in her voice. Or just ignored it. “The man is a journalist, after all, albeit only the editor of the local rag. It behooves all of us in the Force to be constantly on the alert to avoid revealing more than we properly should to the media.”
“I very much resent the implication that I might do that,” Kate said heatedly. “If a male officer of my rank had a friend who was a journalist, would you consider it necessary to issue such an elementary warning to him?”
Jolly stared at her in amazement, and his thoughts were transparent to Kate. You just never know where the devil you are with a woman. They’re liable to fly off the handle at the most trivial things.
He reduced the tension with a diplomatic little laugh. “Good heavens, you mustn’t take everything so personally, you know. Now, how about that Berger fellow? From your earlier reports it seemed you had him earmarked as the Saxon woman’s killer.”
“It may still turn out that he is, sir, but the Labrosse murder has thrown everything back into the melting pot.”
“Yes, yes, yes,” he said impatiently, then lumbered to his feet. “You’re tying up a high proportion of our manpower resources on this investigation, Chief Inspector. So for God’s sake bring me some answers soon. Very soon.”
Kate remained at her desk until nearly eleven that night. But she had to wait until next morning for a breakthrough that promised to carry her forward.
Frank Massey followed Kate into her office when she arrived at the Incident Room on Wednesday morning. He was carrying a bulky envelope, holding it by one corner between his finger and thumb. He put it down on the desk for her to see, address side up.
“This was in the mail delivered to the hotel this morning. We’ve been monitoring all their incoming post, of course.”
Kate looked without touching, though by now the envelope would have passed through too many hands to yield much under forensic examination. The name and address was typed. Mr. Yves Labrosse, Streatfield Park Hotel. Above it, in capitals and underlined, was PERSONAL AND PRIVATE.
“Posted locally at twelve noon,” she commented.
With great care she slit the envelope open with a paperknife and slid out a wad of used banknotes in an elastic band. Fifty-pound notes. Watched by Frank Massey, she counted them. Forty-seven. Making two thousand three hundred and fifty pounds. Kate held one up to the light from the window, checking for forgery. It seemed okay.
“What the hell was Labrosse up to, Kate?”
“Some kind of crooked dealing, for sure. Blackmail? But you’d expect that to be a round sum, wouldn’t you? Payment for services rendered? A percentage of a nice fat contract pushed someone’s way, perhaps?”
“I’d go for that one,” said Massey.
But Kate shook her head. “I don’t really see it, Frank. With Corinne Saxon in the picture, I doubt if Labrosse was allowed much influence in the placing of major contracts, and it would need to be a very fat contract to merit this level of payola.” She ruminated. “I suppose it’s just possible that Labrosse acted fast and fixed this after Corinne’s death, but ... no, I don’t think that’s the answer.”
“Someone was taking a chance sending it through the mail,” Massey remarked.
“They probably thought it was safer than to risk being seen handing over the cash in person.”
“We could check with the local banks to see what large withdrawals of fifties have been made just recently.”
Kate shot him a grim smile. “You reckon the banks would play along? If so, we’d likely uncover a long list that Inland Revenue would be happy to see. But I somehow doubt that it would lead us to our chummy. How about fingerprints on these notes, though? If we find any, we’ll have to take prints from all our suspects, to see if we can get a match. We might just get lucky, you never know.”
“Right, I’ll give it a go, Kate.”
“And have someone get onto the post office and see if they can tell us in which particular box it was mailed. I don’t suppose they can, but it’s worth a try.”
“Will do.”
As Massey exited, Boulter came in. Wearing a big smile and carrying a manilla folder stuffed with papers.
“Got something for me, Tim?”
“Have I just. I’ve spent hours on the phone to France and Switzerland. I’ll say this for the lads over there ... they can really move when they pull their fingers out.”
“Tell me what you’ve got.”
Boulter smacked down the file in front of her. “It’s all in there, guv. A fascinating story.”
“I’m sure it is, and I’ll read it all later. Meantime, suppose you give me a run-down in your inimitable style?”
Handed a licence to dramatize, Boulter made full use of it. He plonked himself down on the chair across the desk from Kate, crossed his legs and loosed the button of his jacket.
“To start with, Corinne Saxon did give birth to a live child. A bonny bouncing boy. He’d have been seventeen now.”
“Would have been?”
“About eighteen months ago he took a header off his motor scooter and went under the wheels of a farm tractor. Curtains for the poor little bastard.”
“This was in France?”
“Yep, he lived there all through. In a village in the Haute Savoie. That,” he explained helpfully, “is by Lake Geneva, on the Swiss border.”