Death Scene

by Jane A. Adams

  ‘Good observation,’ Mickey Hitchens approved. He looked hard at his boss, reminding him that the compliment should also be given by the inspector.

  ‘Yes indeed.’ Chief Inspector Johnstone nodded again. ‘Very solid observation.’

  Constable Prentice preened.

  ‘There are marks on the face and neck that look like bruising.’ Mickey was staring hard at the young woman’s face. ‘See, they’ve likely developed post mortem, but it looks to me like someone’s had hold of her just close to the jaw.’ He glanced across at the water glass and folded paper lying on the bedside table. ‘Maybe she was less than eager to drink her sleeping draft.’

  ‘It’s possible,’ Henry conceded. ‘Best not to speculate yet, I think.’ He turned back to Constable Prentice and steered him gently towards the door. ‘You said she was found at ten this morning?’

  ‘Yes, by Mrs Owens. She lives down the beach. In Blue Horizons.’

  ‘Blue Horizons?’

  ‘Yes, sir. All the bungalows have names, not numbers. She’s in another one of the originals, like this one, built from the railway carriages.’

  Henry nodded. He’d noted the odd construction of the building. The bedroom was an old railway carriage and, from what he’d seen, the kitchen on the other side of the main room was similarly constructed. The middle room formed a square space in between.

  ‘I’d like you to go there now,’ he said. ‘Tell her that my sergeant and I will be along shortly to ask some questions.’

  ‘Prepare her, like.’ Mickey Hitchens nodded encouragingly at the younger officer. ‘I’m sure it’s all been a bit of a shock for her, so a familiar face will be reassurance, you know? And if you stay with her, make sure she doesn’t go gabbing to anyone else.’

  Constable Prentice nodded. ‘Might be a bit late for that, sir, but I’ll do what I can.’ He looked pleased with himself as he left and Henry closed the door behind him.

  ‘Show me these finger marks.’

  ‘Sorry, shouldn’t have said anything with the boy here, he’s bound to gossip. Too pleased with himself not to.’

  ‘He’s hardly a boy, Mickey. He’s a police officer and seemed sharp enough.’

  ‘And is probably fifteen years my junior, so he’s a boy to me.’

  Henry looked curiously at his sergeant and wondered, not for the first time, if Mickey felt that he’d been passed over for promotion. There were many who had entered the service at the same time as him and were now inspectors, but Mickey Hitchens had shown no sign of wanting to move onward and upward. Henry thought again about the conversation on the train and about Mrs Hitchens and of her … odd habits. Perhaps this did have something to do with Mickey’s lack of advancement.

  ‘Look, here, and here. Like someone’s grasped her face with his thumb on this side and his fingers on that. Maybe forced her mouth open, poured in the sleeping draft and forced her to swallow.’

  ‘And then sat back calmly and waited for her to go to sleep?’

  ‘And then taken this pillow and pressed it down upon her face.’ Mickey indicated the second pillow beneath the dead woman’s head. ‘The angle is all wrong. No one would lie like that.’

  Henry nodded. Mickey was an expert at reading a scene and Henry could see nothing here to invalidate his preliminary conclusions. ‘And so hope to stage it as suicide. No note, though, so far as we can see. Though not everyone leaves a note. And I would add one coda to your conclusions. At some point she was dragged, possibly across the beach, though not far or she would have lost the shoes completely. If she’d been conscious she would have screamed and struggled and the bungalows are not so far apart that her cries could have been ignored. My guess is that she was unconscious when he laid her out on the bed, barely conscious when he forced her to drink and able to put up very little resistance.’

  Outside, they heard a vehicle pull up on the gravel of the Old Fort Road and moments later there was a quiet knock on the door. Mickey crossed the room to greet the mortuary ambulance driver and told him to wait a moment more.

  Gently, he and Henry turned the body on to its side. On the back of the head were signs of bruising and a little blood.

  ‘So she arrives home, someone’s waiting for her, bashes her on the head.’ Mickey frowned pensively and Henry knew what he was thinking. ‘You’re wondering why he drags her in here, why he—’

  ‘Didn’t pick her up and carry her,’ Henry said. ‘She’s a tiny little thing and weighs nothing.’

  He rolled her body a little further. The skirt of the dress was stained with dried urine, as was the counterpane. It was quite common for the body to void both faeces and urine after death but that wasn’t what Henry was thinking.

  ‘It is only a guess, but perhaps she was frightened enough to lose control of her bladder. Perhaps whoever killed her needed to stay clean. There would also be the risk of getting blood on his clothes though there is not a lot of it in her hair.’

  ‘No, but head wounds do bleed, often profusely. There might well have been more blood when he first hit her.’ Mickey paused, frowning. ‘If we follow that line of speculation then whoever it was fully expected to be seen by someone who would be close enough to notice any transfer on to his clothes.’

  ‘So perhaps someone who only had a short walk home.’

  Mickey nodded, and then told the ambulance driver that he could come in and collect the body.

  While Mickey supervised the mortuary collection Henry wandered out on to the veranda in front of the little bungalow. The beach was stony and dotted here and there with wild plants like marguerites and sea kale. It looked out upon the open ocean. Looking between the bungalows, Henry could see the stretch of water that separated this narrow peninsula from the main town of Shoreham-by-Sea and the South Downs beyond. The day was still calm and blue and even the gulls were silent now, replaced by a more melodic call which Henry thought might be skylarks.

  He took out his cigarette case, rubbing his thumb, as he habitually did, across the engraved letters cut into the brass, the letters A and G, somewhat crudely fashioned. The case was smooth with handling from the decade or more that Henry had owned it and carried it in his pocket.

  He wasn’t sure he wanted a cigarette but he removed one anyway and lit it with the Dunhill lighter that had been a gift from his sister on his last birthday. That too was engraved but it had Henry’s own initials on it.

  A clump of boots on wood and then on gravel alerted him to the removal of the body and Henry turned to watch as the two men struggled across the pebble beach and on to the little road where they had left the ambulance.

  Mickey Hitchens joined him on the veranda. ‘They’re transporting her back to London,’ he said. ‘I thought it best to hand her over to our experts. If the local pathologist is as inept as that Dr Arnold was I’d as soon not risk leaving her here.’

  ‘A little harsh, Mickey,’ Henry said.

  ‘The man saw what he was looking for, not what was there. He passed judgement before he had the information he needed to make it.’

  Henry nodded and offered Mickey a cigarette. Mickey lit it with Henry’s lighter. ‘It’s a pretty spot,’ Mickey said.

  ‘It is if you like the sea.’

  ‘I take it you’re not sleeping again.’

  Henry frowned. ‘And what leads you to that conclusion?’

  ‘You’re dreaming about the sea.’

  ‘I never said that.’

  ‘You didn’t need to. Shall we be getting on, then?’

  The two of them went back inside. The murder bag and other bits and pieces of paraphernalia had been left just inside the front door and Mickey retrieved them now. ‘I took her fingerprints,’ Mickey said, ‘but we need to do a better job back at the lab. What I’ve got will do for comparison for now, and I took some pictures before they moved the body.’

  ‘So where should we start, do you think? He must have handled the glass and probably touched things in the bedroom at the very least, but the likelihood
is he wore gloves. I suggest we start in the living room; that’s the most public of spaces so we’re most likely to get prints of friends and neighbours. Then we can start with the woman who found her, take comparison prints for elimination and fingerprint anyone who came to the cottage – sorry, bungalow – on a regular basis. That will give us our call for analysis.’

  ‘Right you are,’ Mickey said. ‘The camera’s there if you want to make a start. With the bedroom, perhaps, then we’ll not get in each other’s way. When I’m ready to photograph prints, I’ll give you a shout.’

  Henry picked up the camera and returned to the room where they’d first seen the body. It looked oddly empty now that Cissie Rowe had gone. He spent a little time looking at the photographs on the wall. There were, inevitably, quite a few of her professional life but there were others too of a child aged perhaps twelve or thirteen, obviously Cissie in her younger days, standing with an older woman. There were tall stone buildings in the background, and a Ferris wheel. Henry wondered where the photograph had been taken. He moved methodically around the room, working across the walls and then down towards the floor. It was a method that used a lot of film but since the camera and other equipment were Henry’s own he felt that he was answerable to no one in this regard and his method meant that they would have a very complete picture of both the scene and the background.

  From the other room he could hear Mickey moving about, the slow shuffle of steps and the occasional shifting of furniture or equipment. They worked well together, were well used to one another and needed little discussion. After a while, Henry returned to the living room and, knowing Mickey’s methods, began to photograph those areas that his sergeant had finished with. A light dusting of fingerprint powder identified where pictures additional to the contextual shots would be required. Mickey would already have photographed what he could with the fixed lens fingerprint camera that was part of their kit when working away from their base. The fixed lens camera was an improvement on the half size plate camera, heavier and more cumbersome, that they had previously used.

  Mickey glanced up. ‘I’ve photographed what I can. There are a few items I’ll be packing up and sending back to London and a few more prints I’ll have to try lifting. I’d rather not ship a complete door up to the bureau if it can be helped. Our Mr Cherrill and his people wouldn’t thank me for that.’

  ‘And they can’t be photographed?’

  ‘They can, but the angle’s awkward and I’d as soon have a contingency plan. There are also partials I’ll use the dactyloscopic foil to pick up, then I’ll photograph them here before I ship them off.’

  Henry nodded. The lifting of prints was a little hit and miss. The dactyloscopic tape worked with the black powder that Mickey was using on the lighter coloured objects he had fingerprinting. The darker furniture and the door would have to be printed with the paler grey ‘light’ powder which did not respond well to lifting.

  ‘When I’m done with this, I’ll go down and talk to the Owens woman,’ Henry said. ‘If you can head back up the beach towards the road, knock on a few doors. I’ll send Prentice back to look after the scene and the equipment so you can leave it here.’

  ‘You’re assuming he’ll have followed instructions and still be at the Owens bungalow, then?’ Mickey grinned.

  ‘I’m assuming this is the most exciting thing ever to have happened to that young man,’ Henry said. ‘He and the Owenses will be picking over the bones for every scrap. Which may or may not be a good thing.’

  ‘It’ll be a case of who wants to tell you the story first,’ Mickey said. ‘Young Prentice or the woman who was actually in here.’

  ‘So I listen to both, and see what tallies.’ Henry flashed a rare smile at his sergeant. ‘I think we should work on the basis that the murderer is local, at least for the time being. That he knew Cissie Rowe’s habits and knew that she’d been out that night and when she was likely to be back. I also think he waited outside, just in case Mrs Owens came in with her. He didn’t want to be surprised by two women, perhaps with a husband in tow. I think he wanted to be sure that Miss Rowe was alone.’

  ‘It seems likely that he also enticed her outside after she’d arrived home. She’d had time to come in, drop her coat on the back of the chair and then perhaps go back outside to meet her death.’

  Henry glanced over at the coat and nodded; that seemed logical. ‘Whatever happened, it took her by surprise. Someone was able to get close enough to her without her suspecting anything – so we start with friends and neighbours and we move on to her work.’

  Mickey nodded and turned back to his fingerprints. ‘I’m going to have to mix up some more of the grey powder,’ he said. ‘The humidity is getting to it and it’s clumping badly. I keep having to regrind before I brush.’ The grey powder was a mix of two parts prepared chalk to one part (by weight) organic mercury. Mickey mixed it, in small quantities, as it was required. It had a grave tendency to absorb moisture.

  Henry took a last look around before setting off to interview the finder of the body. So far he was satisfied with the day’s work. He and Mickey both knew the drill and needed no instruction and at least, this time, the body had been left undisturbed thanks to the vigilance of a very young constable. There was nothing more frustrating than arriving at a scene to find that the body had already been moved and the scene tidied up.

  ‘There was one thing I noticed,’ Mickey said as Henry stood in the doorway. ‘Might be nothing. But a photograph or something’s been moved from that table over there.’ He pointed to a small, round table set in the corner of the room. The top was carved and Henry recognized it as Anglo-Indian. It was placed on a stand that could be folded down and put away and on it two photographs had been set in wooden frames side by side. The bungalow was kept very clean but even so, if you looked closely it was possible to see a faint line in the very fine coating of dust that had settled on the table top. The carved surface made it even more difficult to discern but Henry could see that Mickey was right. Something had been moved and from the length of the line in the dust it looked as though it had probably been a photograph frame, probably of the same size and shape as the other two.

  ‘I’ll ask the Owens woman,’ Henry said. ‘It seems she’s familiar enough with the place to be popping in and out uninvited so the likelihood is she would remember what was there.’

  He picked up his hat and, with a final nod to Mickey, stepped out on to the veranda.

  It was almost noon and the day was getting hotter by the minute. Henry stripped off his jacket and wandered along the beach in just his shirt and waistcoat. The strand was shingle with a lot of flint, softly saturated by slow-moving water at the edge of the inlet. Further along the beach he could see girls with baskets picking up stones and he recollected vaguely that flint was still gathered here for building work. It was probably something his sister, Cynthia, had told him; she and her husband had a house just along the coast that they used during the summer season. In amongst the shingle wild plants proliferated; he could identify marguerites and sea kale and here and there pink pom-poms of thrift. The line of bungalows stretched along the beachfront and, he could see, also along the road that ran at the rear of Cissie Rowe’s little home. What he took to be the older buildings had small gardens fenced off around them; the newer ones were crowded a little closer together. Many had verandas, most painted and well cared for. Blue Horizons, home of Mrs Owens who had found the body, was five bungalows down. Constable Prentice had obviously been looking out for him because the door opened immediately and he was ushered inside with barely time to put his jacket back on and make himself decent.

  Prentice proudly made the introductions. Mrs Owens rose to greet him. She was a small woman dressed in dark blue and with tightly waved grey hair. Spectacles hung on a chain around her neck and she wore a longer chain that ended in a blue bauble just below her waist. When she shook Henry’s hand her grip was so slight that he was barely aware she had even touched him. She introduc
ed her husband, a taller man who stepped forward and shook hands with a much firmer grip. Henry considered that he was probably trying to make a point.

  ‘Will you sit down, Inspector?’ Mr Owens indicated a chair. It was red leather, armless and very upright, the sort that might be brought out for visitors that were not particularly welcome.

  ‘That’s … um … Chief Inspector,’ Constable Prentice corrected.

  Henry waved the objection aside. ‘I understand you must be very upset,’ he said. ‘I will try and make this as easy as possible.’

  ‘How can it possibly be easy?’ Mrs Owens said. She dabbed at her eyes with a little lace handkerchief and Henry found himself hoping that she would not need to use it in earnest since there were only about two square inches of fabric at the centre of the lace.

  ‘Please,’ he said, ‘sit down and tell me what happened this morning. Take your time.’

  Mrs Owens sat on the blue loveseat and her husband took his place beside her. He reached out and grasped one nervous hand, leaving the other free to dab at the eyes with the little handkerchief. Henry could see that the woman had been crying and that her grief was genuine. He could also see that she was a little overwhelmed by the sense of occasion; having a policeman, a senior policeman, in your house was not something that happened every day and although you could be thankful for that, when it did happen you wanted to be prepared.

  ‘Tea,’ she said suddenly, and started to rise. ‘I must get you some tea.’

  ‘Please.’ Henry waved her back into her seat. ‘It really isn’t necessary.’

  Constable Prentice was hovering, watching Inspector Johnstone intently, and Henry noticed a slight flush brightening the younger man’s cheeks.

  ‘Constable, if you could go back and assist my sergeant? When he’s finished up at the bungalow he needs to go and interview the neighbours and would be grateful if you would guard our belongings and equipment while he does that.’

  For a second or two disappointment clouded the constable’s face as it became clear he was going to be excluded from this conversation, but then he nodded enthusiastically and replaced his helmet. ‘Yes, sir, of course, Inspector,’ and he disappeared out of the front door.