Still Waters (Charlie Resnick #9)(79)
When Grabianski had told him, Sloane ambled to the window and gazed out. “Why,” he said, moving to the record deck, “should I want to get so far up Eddie Snow’s nose?”
Grabianski shrugged. “The fun of it? The challenge?”
Sloane looked at him. “The money?”
“That, too.”
Sloane lowered the pickup arm and the cacophonous sound of the Art Ensemble of Chicago refilled the room.
Forty-four
“You won’t have any objection, sir, to our taking a quick photograph?”
Resnick had informed Colin Presley, the senior local CID officer, of his impending visit, and now a second call to Cambridge HQ secured an interview room with tape facilities, car parking, use of the canteen. Lynn’s brief stroll around the premises on Front Street had yielded nothing aside from the fact that the Spurgeons’ life would be easier—and tidier—with the services of a good housekeeper or au pair. Even kids who picked up after themselves would help. Now Khan had been sent off to the Dray Horse with a Polaroid of Peter Spurgeon, seeking confirmation that this was the man who consistently called there and from time to time made use of their telephone.
Resnick and Lynn sat in the interview room, high at the rear of the building, watching Spurgeon wipe the lenses of his spectacles over and over with a yellow cloth. After all the backtracking and deception, Resnick believed a change of scene to somewhere more institutional might more quickly loosen Peter Spurgeon’s tongue.
“Your earlier denials,” Resnick said, “of having any continuing relationship with Jane Peterson …”
“We didn’t have a relationship …”
“Or of knowing about her death …”
Spurgeon wrapped his head in his hands.
Oh, God, Lynn thought, he’s going to lose it totally.
“I’m willing to accept,” Resnick said, “all that was due to the immediate stress of the situation. But now I want us to be clear. This is a murder investigation. Any further attempts to throw us off the track, impede that investigation in any way, will be treated very seriously indeed.”
No response other than a vague fluttering of hands.
“Mr. Spurgeon, is that clear?”
“Yes.” Weakly. “Yes, yes, of course.”
“Then tell us in your own time everything you can about yourself and Jane.”
Spurgeon fidgeted his glasses back onto his face, half-removed them again, pushed them back into place; Resnick reached across the desk and lifted them away, the last prop Spurgeon had left.
“It … it was true,” Spurgeon finally began, “what I told you about the card. Coming the way it did, out of the blue.”
Resnick nodded encouragingly, even smiled. “When Jane and I first met, it was the first day of college, the first evening. We just started talking. The next thing we were going out together, going steady. It just seemed, I don’t know, natural, the natural thing to do.”
“And this carried on all the time you were here,” Resnick asked, “at the university?”
Spurgeon nodded. “Yes.”
“No little mishaps,” Lynn said. “No falling-out?”
“Not really, no.”
“The perfect couple.”
“That was what everyone said.”
“So what happened?” Resnick asked.
Spurgeon coughed, fidgeted, cleared his throat. “At the end of the … after graduation, Jane went down to Exeter to do her PGCE year, her teaching certificate, and I stayed on here and started working on some research. At first we saw one another every other weekend, until the Christmas vac. That was when Jane said wouldn’t it be a good idea if we stepped back a little, that was the expression she used, gave ourselves room to think about what was going on.”
“What was going on?” Resnick asked.
“I don’t know. As far as I was concerned, nothing, I still felt the same.”
“She’d met somebody else,” Lynn said.
“No. I mean, yes, maybe. I don’t know.”
“She didn’t say?”
Spurgeon didn’t answer straight away. “She said we should be mature enough to respect one another’s privacy.”
“She’d met somebody else,” Lynn said again.
“Do you think,” Spurgeon said, “I could have a drink? My mouth feels really dry.”
Resnick nodded at Lynn, who slid out of her chair and left the room.
Without his glasses, Spurgeon’s eyes were restless and pale. “After Easter, she stopped writing. Didn’t phone. I went down to Exeter on the train and she refused to see me. I couldn’t understand it, she just wouldn’t listen to reason. As soon as I got back 1 wrote, letter after letter. If I phoned, she wouldn’t take my calls.”
“And she didn’t give you any explanation?”
Spurgeon shook his head again. “She refused. Point blank. I didn’t know what to do.”
“What did you do?”
“I packed in my research, moved away, found a job in publishing. I was lucky. I did well, got on. Fine, I thought, I’ll forget her, I’ll do this.”
“And did you? Forget her?”
“Of course not.”