“We've been given to understand that Mr. Maiden arranged for Nicola to work for you this summer,” Hanken said.
Upman confirmed this. He added, “It was no secret that Andy hoped Nicola would practise in Derbyshire when she'd completed her articles.” He'd been leaning against his desk as they spoke, having not offered either detective a chair. He seemed to realise this all at once, however, because he hurried on to say, “I'm completely forgetting my manners. Forgive me. Please. Sit. Can I offer you coffee? Or tea? Miss Snodgrass?”
This last he called in the direction of the open door. There, the secretary reappeared. She'd donned a pair of large-framed spectacles that gave her the appearance of a timid insect. “Mr. Upman?” She waited to do his bidding.
“Gentlemen?” he asked Lynley and Hanken.
They declined his offer of refreshment, and Miss Snodgrass was dismissed. Upman beamed upon the detectives as they took seats. Then he remained standing. Lynley noted this, raising his guard. In the delicate game of power and confrontation, the solicitor had just scored. And the manoeuvre had been so smoothly handled.
“How did you feel about Nicola becoming employed somewhere in Derbyshire?” he asked Upman.
The solicitor regarded him affably. “I don't think I felt anything at all.”
“Are you married?”
“Never have been. My line of work tends to give one cold feet when it comes to matrimony. I specialise in divorce law. That generally disabuses one of one's romantic ideals in rather short order.”
“Could that be why Nicola turned down Julian Britton's marriage proposal?” Lynley asked.
Upman looked surprised. “I'd no idea he'd made one.”
“She didn't tell you?”
“She worked for me, Inspector. I wasn't her confessor.”
“Were you her anything else?” Hanken put in, clearly annoyed at the tenor of Upman's last remark. “Aside from her employer, naturally.”
From his desk, Upman picked up a palm-size violin that apparently served as a paperweight. He ran his fingers along its strings and plucked at them as if testing their tuning. He said, “You must be asking if she and I had a personal relationship.”
“When a man and a woman work at close quarters on a regular basis,” Hanken said, “these things do happen.”
“They don't happen to me.”
“By which we can take it that you weren't involved with the Maiden girl?”
“That's what I'm saying.” Upman replaced the violin and took up a pencil holder. He began removing those pencils whose lead was too worn, laying them neatly next to his thigh, which continued to rest against the desk. He said, “Andy Maiden would have liked it had Nicola and I become involved. He'd hinted as much on more than one occasion, and whenever I was at the Hall for dinner and Nicola was home from college, he made a point of throwing us together. So I saw what he was hoping for, but I couldn't accommodate him.”
“Why not?” Hanken asked. “Something wrong with the girl?”
“She wasn't my type.”
“What type was she?” Lynley asked.
“I don't know. Look, what does it matter? I'm… Well, I'm rather involved with someone else.”
“‘Rather involved?’” This from Hanken.
“We have an understanding. I mean, we date. I handled her divorce two years ago, and… What does it matter anyway?” He looked flustered. Lynley wondered why.
Hanken appeared to notice this as well. He began to home in. “You found the Maiden girl attractive though.”
“Of course. I'm not blind. She was attractive.”
“And did your divorcee know about her?”
“She's not my divorcee. She's not my anything. We're seeing each other. That's all there is. And there was nothing for Joyce to know-”
“Joyce?” Lynley asked.
“His divorcee,” Hanken said blandly.
“And,” Upman repeated, “there was nothing for Joyce to know because there was nothing between us, between Nicola and me. Finding a woman attractive and becoming caught up in something that can't go anywhere are two different things.”
“Why couldn't it go anywhere?” Lynley asked.
“Because we were both involved elsewhere. I am, and she was. So even if I'd thought about trying my luck-which I hadn't, by the way-I'd have been signing up for a course in frustration.”
“But she'd turned down Julian,” Hanken interposed. “That suggests she wasn't as involved as you supposed, that perhaps she'd set her sights on someone else.”
“If so, they weren't set on me. And as for poor Britton, I'd wager that she turned him down because his income didn't suit her. My guess is that she'd got her eye on someone in London with a hefty bank balance.”
“What gave you that impression?” Lynley asked.
Upman considered the question, but he appeared relieved to be himself let off the hook of a possible involvement with Nicola Maiden. “She had a pager that went off occasionally,” he finally said, “and once when it did, she asked me would I mind if she phoned London to give someone the number here to ring her back. And he did as much after that. Time and again.”
“Why would you conclude this was someone with money?” Lynley asked. “A few long distance phone calls aren't out of the question even for someone strapped for cash.”
“I know that. But Nicola had expensive tastes. Believe me, she couldn't have bought what she wore to work every day on what I was paying her. I'll lay twenty quid on it that if you trace her wardrobe, you'll find it came from Knightsbridge, where some poor sod's paying piles on an account that she was free to use. And that sod's not me.”
Very neat, Lynley thought. Upman had tied all the pieces together with an adroitness that was a credit to his profession. But there was something calculated in his presentation of the facts that made Lynley wary. It was as if he'd known what they would ask him and had already planned his answers, like any good lawyer. From Hanken's expression of mild dislike, it was clear that he'd reached the same conclusion about the solicitor.
“Are we talking about an affair?” Hanken asked. “Is this a married chap doing what he can to keep the mistress content?”
“I have no idea. I can only say that she was involved with someone, and I expect that someone's in London.”
“When was the last time you saw her alive?”
“Friday evening. We had dinner.”
“But you yourself had no personal relationship with her,” Hanken noted.
“I took her to dinner as a farewell, which is fairly common practice between employers and employees in our society, if I'm not mistaken. Why? Does this put me under suspicion? Because if I'd wanted to kill her-for whatever reason you might have in mind-why would I wait from Friday until Tuesday night to do it?”
Hanken pounced. “Ah. You seem to know when she died.”
Upman wasn't rattled. “I did speak to someone at the Hall, Inspector.”
“So you said.” Hanken got to his feet. “You've been most helpful to our enquiries. If you can just give us the name of Friday night's restaurant, we'll be on our way.”
“The Chequers Inn,” Upman said. “In Calver. But look here, why do you need that? Am I under suspicion? Because if I am, I insist on-”
“There's no need for posturing at this point in the investigation,” Hanken said.
There was also no need, Lynley thought, to put the solicitor any more on the defensive. He intervened with, “Everyone who knew the murder victim is a suspect at first, Mr. Upman. DI Hanken and I are in the process of eliminating possibilities. Even as a solicitor, I expect you'd encourage a client to cooperate if he wanted to be crossed off the list.”