Doctor Who_ The Banquo Legacy - Andy Lane [70]
‘Perhaps now you will allow me to see the letter you removed from Mr Seavers’s house, Mr Hopkinson,’ I said as I entered. He glanced up with a flippant, supercilious expression on his face, but perhaps I was getting better at reading his demeanour because I could see something else behind the mask. Just as he used his glasses as a shield, the sarcastic exterior covered the true feeling he would – he could – never show. I could see why the glasses were necessary. His eyes gave too much away. For once the light hindered him, passing through the lenses and highlighting his eyes rather than glancing off and hiding them. His eyes were bruised with hurt, and they shone with the moisture of unshed tears for the life of a friend.
‘I would, Inspector, but I’ve burnt it, I’m afraid. Sorry about that.’
‘Never mind. It’s you I want to see now.’
‘I see. Where’s Catherine?’
‘She’s in the study with the sergeant.’
Kreiner startled us both by saying, ‘She’ll deny everything of course.’
‘Oh yes,’ Hopkinson said. ‘Vehemently.’
So he had guessed about Catherine Harries as well. I wasn’t surprised: she was the only person without an alibi when Beryl was killed. Clumsy, but then if Beryl had discovered Richard Harries’s notebook she had to be killed quickly. Catherine Harries may not have been involved with her brother’s nefarious trade but she obviously loved him enough to protect his memory, just as she had to kill him to protect his honour. Hopkinson and I tried to explain this to Susan Seymour.
‘She will have to have done it, I’m afraid,’ I said eventually. ‘Unless of course your fiancé’s death really was an accident, which might be another plausible explanation. Whatever happened, it certainly unbalanced her.’
Now it was time. Everything else had come out, and I had to stop Susan from getting any closer to John Hopkinson. ‘You see,’ I continued, ‘I cannot in any way prove that Professor Richard Harries was killed by Mr Hopkinson.’
Silence.
John Hopkinson: staring at his feet.
Susan Seymour: eyes fixed unblinkingly on me.
Fitz Kreiner: still about five sentences behind everyone else and struggling to keep up.
And myself? Complete, satisfied – job well done, Inspector, thank you and goodnight. Hopkinson’s reaction told me everything I wanted to know. The suspicions I had begun to feel when he was the only person to say he actively hated Richard Harries, added to my knowledge of the blackmail and the suicide of Gordon Seavers, seemed to indicate only one answer. He had crept out before dinner, sabotaged the equipment and thus killed Richard Harries in revenge for the death of his friend.
Catherine Harries was just a complication, albeit a deadly one. That was why I had been going round in circles. There were two cases, not just the one I thought I was investigating.
(‘So who stole the body of Richard Harries?’ a still, small voice inside me asked. ‘And why was it stolen? Who killed Dr Friedlander?’ ‘Details, details,’ answered the bulk of my mind. ‘Catherine Harries was unbalanced. Who can say what her motives were?’)
‘Besides,’ I said out loud, breaking the heavy silence, ‘knowing what sort of a man Harries was, I’m not positive that in Mr Hopkinson’s position I wouldn’t have done the same.’ It was a peace offering of a sort; an apology for taking Susan Seymour away from him. She wouldn’t stay with a murderer, even an unproven one.
‘You’re very clever, Inspector,’ he said quietly, ‘and you’re also very generous. Thank you.’
‘Now I’d better go and confront Miss Harries,’ I said, and left the room. I could get the full story from Hopkinson later.
Out in the hallway I became aware that Herr Kreiner was following me, like a lost puppy. ‘And