Murder in the Cotswolds by Nancy Buckingham Page A

don’t ask.” Kate softened that with a wry smile. “Instead, tell me what people are saying.”
    “That it was Richard Gower’s car that killed Belle Latimer. And that the police suspect him and her husband of being in league to get rid of her for her money.”
    “Good God!”
    Her aunt sent Kate a drilling look over her whisky glass. “You don’t deny any of it, I notice.”
    “Listen, Felix, this conversation is strictly one-way traffic. From you to me. Get it?”
    Felix nodded, and a few more loose tendrils escaped from the pins. “I don’t believe a word of the gossip myself, of course. Matthew Latimer wouldn’t do a terrible thing like that.”
    “And Richard Gower?” Kate held her breath for the answer.
    “Search me. He seems a nice enough chap. Still, if the two of them weren’t in it together, it’s hard to imagine why Richard Gower should want to kill her for his own sake. Strange about his car, though.”
    Kate swallowed her drink and stood up. “Time I hit the hay. I’m zonked.”
    “Will it be in the papers tomorrow?” asked Felix.
    “Bound to be. The nationals have been sniffing around all day. But we’re trying to play it cool for the time being.”
    “Well, one thing’s for sure ... the Gazette won’t be splashing it on the front page this week. Not with the owner himself being a suspect.”
    Kate didn’t reply. Wearily, she made her way up the narrow stairs and got herself to bed. She’d had an exhausting day, but she didn’t feel in the least like sleeping.
     

Chapter Four
     
    Kate had not intended going to Marlingford herself for the taking of Gower’s statement. An experienced DC had been briefed for the job. However, out of the ocean of data already collected in the murder enquiry—every item painstakingly recorded and cross-referenced and filed—a significant scrap about Richard Gower had popped to the surface.
    Everyone who might conceivably have been in the vicinity when the killing occurred was being interviewed. Likewise, everybody connected with the Latimers in any way ... friends and known acquaintances, tenant farmers and their families, the grooms and stable girls and all the other estate workers and employees. It was from one of these last that the surprise scrap had come.
    Mrs. Betty Rudge, one of the two dailies employed at the Grange to help Linda West, had at first appeared to have nothing useful to contribute, even though she had a great deal to say. Then, in the midst of a long story, while the dazed DC was trying to pinpoint the exact date she’d broken a gravy boat and been lashed by Mrs. Latimer’s tongue, she’d recalled that it was the day when Mr. Gower the newspaper chap had come to lunch at the Grange. Just the two of them, no other guests. No, she didn’t remember if Mr. Gower had visited the Grange before.
    “I thought you’d better see this right away, Kate.” Inspector Massey, who was the Incident Room office manager, laid an extract from the DC’s report on her desk.
    “Thanks, Frank.” She knew Frank Massey of old, and it was good to have him working on her team. They’d been inspectors together in the Wye Division, and he was one of the rarities, a male colleague with whom Kate always felt entirely easy. Neither had he resented her rise in rank. About her own age, a thickset and mild-natured man, he was married and worriedly rearing a pigeon pair of teenagers. The job was a doddle compared with his problems at home, he’d once confided to Kate, so he wasn’t looking for any greater responsibility.
    Scanning the typed message rapidly, Kate felt a sick disappointment. If true, this turned Richard Gower into a liar. In his office yesterday, he’d been emphatic that he’d known Belle Latimer only very slightly. That didn’t jell with a cosy lunch for two at her home.
    Kate glanced at her watch. Five past ten. Gower would just about be beginning his statement. Time for her to get to Marlingford before he was through. She cleared