The Marx Sisters bak-1

by Barry Maitland

  Terry and Caroline Winter lived in a house called Oakdene, which was separated from the road by a lawn, rose beds and a red-brick drive, much of which was obscured by expensive silver German cars. The house belonged to the Tudorbethan school of suburban domestic architecture, built in the thirties when Lutyens’ models were still fresh and were copied with some substance and conviction. Wall panels of herring-bone-patterned red brickwork were framed by dark, heavy timbers and sheltered by a wide gabled roof, whose clay tiles were now dark green with algae nurtured by the broad overhanging boughs of oak and ash. A light visible through the diamond-paned leadlight windows of the ground floor shone out against the gloom of the afternoon.

  Brock parked in the street and they walked to the front door, breathing in the damp, lonely smells of autumn woodland. Terry answered the door and led them across a dark panelled hall into the lounge. The central heating was up high, and he wore a black shirt and jeans, both with conspicuous designer labels. The sleeves of his shirt were loosely rolled back on his forearms, exposing a heavy gold chain on one wrist and an expensive-looking gold watch on the other. He looked younger than his early forties, with a lean, tanned face and thick, dark wavy hair. He indicated casually towards the new leather suite and flopped into a director’s chair on a swivel base.

  ‘Well,’ he said in a neutral voice, ‘what’s the story?’

  Kathy answered. ‘We still aren’t sure of the cause of your mother’s death, Mr Winter. We hope to have that established soon, but in the meantime there are procedures we work through which are designed to help us clarify the situation. We interview neighbours, close relatives…’

  ‘And solicitors, apparently,’ Winter interrupted smoothly. His eyes flicked quickly, appraisingly over Kathy, and he gave her a wolfish smile. ‘I’ve just had Mr Hepple on the phone. He seemed to feel that, since he’d told you the contents of my mother’s will, he might as well let me know too.’

  ‘Weren’t you familiar with the terms of your mother’s will before then?’ Kathy said quietly, holding his eyes.

  ‘In general terms. Mum had told me what she had in mind.’

  ‘And were you happy about the arrangements? I’m thinking about the term that allowed your aunts to stay at 22 Jerusalem Lane in perpetuity.’

  His face became expressionless, his eyes cold. He stared at Kathy rudely for a while, examining the dimple on her chin. Then he shrugged and, rocking slightly in his chair, which gave a little squeak, he turned to Brock.

  ‘Up to her. It was her house. She always felt kind of protective towards Eleanor and Peg. I think she felt the old ducks didn’t know how to look after themselves. Not really practical like, in business matters.’ He turned back to Kathy and grinned deliberately at her.

  At that moment his wife entered the room. She was an attractive strawberry-blonde, carefully groomed to a casual wind-ruffled look, and dressed in a silk shirt and loose linen trousers. She glanced at her husband, took in his leer at Kathy and walked over to the two officers to shake their hands.

  ‘We’re sorry to disturb you and your husband, Mrs Winter,’ Kathy said. ‘It must have been upsetting for you both.’

  ‘Oh, yeah.’ Like her husband, her accent was broad cockney, which she had made huskier over the years, especially with strangers. ‘It was unexpected. Even though she was over seventy, she was always very lively. She was a real character.’ The way she narrowed her eyes and pursed her lips might have been taken to mean that ‘character’ was the most charitable word she could find for her mother-in-law.

  ‘I felt so helpless, too, when Eleanor phoned, not being able to find Terry, and then having to tell him such a dreadful thing over the phone, when he did eventually ring in.’ She looked angelic as she laid this out so sweetly. Her husband’s chair squeaked more loudly, and a frown passed briefly across his face.

  ‘Your husband was out yesterday afternoon?’ Kathy said easily, girl to girl.

  ‘Yeah,’ Terry Winter broke in. ‘I often am on a Sunday afternoon. That’s when I go round the salons, checking stock for the next week. It’s the only chance I get.’

  ‘What salons are those, sir?’ Kathy asked.

  ‘Victor Haircare. I franchise five salons in the south-east.’

  ‘Oh yes, I know them.’ Kathy smiled. ‘That’s where I go, on the Finchley Road.’

  ‘No, that’s not one of mine. Mine are all south of the river. Lewisham, Forest Hill, Peckham, New Cross and Deptford.’

  ‘So you drive round all of those on a Sunday afternoon?’

  ‘Yeah. The managers leave out their stock books for me and I order up for the next week. I don’t let them do that.’

  ‘What time did you leave home yesterday?’

  ‘About 2.’

  ‘More like 1.30, wasn’t it, darling?’

  Caroline smiled sympathetically at her husband, then turned to Brock. ‘He works so hard.’

  ‘Maybe,’ said Terry, shrugging.

  ‘And Eleanor phoned when?’

  ‘Oh, about 5.30. There was a programme I’d been watching on holidays in the Pacific. It had just ended. Well, first I tried Terry’s car phone, and there was no reply, so then I started phoning round all the salons. But there was no reply at any of them, either. I was getting really worried.’ She turned to Kathy who noticed her startling violet eyes, and wondered whether she was wearing coloured contact lenses.

  ‘I thought, what if Terry’s had an accident, just at the time when his mother’s had one too. Wouldn’t that be just too awful?’

  ‘I was at Deptford, the last one.’ Terry’s words cut across the end of her sentence. ‘Before I went in I parked the car and went to the cafe next door for a cup of coffee. When I got through in the salon I got into the car and thought I’d better ring Caroline to let her know I was on my way.’

  ‘At what time?’

  Terry looked as if he was uncertain, but Caroline smoothly answered, ‘Oh, well after 6. I was going round the twist. Well, I’d phoned all the numbers twice by this time and I didn’t know what to do. I was on the point of calling the police, you know?’

  ‘Oh Christ, Caroline, you’re exaggerating. It wasn’t that long.’

  ‘So after you eventually spoke to your wife, sir, you turned directly back towards the City and went to your mother’s house?’

  ‘Yeah, sure.’

  ‘Arriving there’-Kathy consulted her notebook-‘at6.33.’

  There was a moment’s silence, and then Caroline got to her feet brightly. ‘I’ll make some tea,’ she said. ‘OK for everyone?’

  Kathy got up too and said, ‘I’ll give you a hand, if that’s all right. I’m always nosy to see other people’s kitchens, actually.’

  ‘Oh well, you’ve come to the wrong place then,’ Caroline said as they went through a panelled connecting door. ‘I’m about to have all this redone.’

  Kathy looked around at the gleaming appliances and crisp white ranges of cupboards and units. ‘Oh! It’s beautiful.’

  ‘No.’ Caroline curled her lip. ‘It’s all wrong. I’ve never liked it much. There’s much better equipment on the market now. And I’m going to have it all done in oak-to go with the house, you know?’

  The worktop on the island unit in the middle of the room was covered with open magazines of kitchen designs, but there was no sign of food or recipe books.

  Kathy looked round as the door from the hall clicked open and a young woman stood in the opening. She stared at Kathy in surprise.

  ‘Oh, this is one of our two girls, Sergeant. Alex, say hello to the Sergeant-I’m sorry, I’ve forgotten your name.’

  ‘Kolla. Kathy Kolla. Hello, Alex. How are you?’

  The girl muttered something indistinct and ducked her head. Kathy judged her to be hardly out of her teens. Beneath thick spectacle lenses her eyes looked red and blotchy, and her mother went over to her, crooning sympathetically.

  ‘All right, luv?’ She turned to Kathy as she put an arm round her daughter’s shoulder.
‘She was really cut up about her gran, weren’t you, luv?’

  Kathy saw the girl wince under her mother’s grip. She seemed the most unlikely of offspring for the Winters, physically awkward, socially uncomfortable and apparently uninterested in her appearance. She stood for a moment, ungainly and morose while Caroline dug her long painted nails into her arm, then pulled away and ran back across the hall and up the stairs.

  ‘She’s upset.’ Caroline screwed up her cute little nose. ‘You don’t need her, do you?’

  In the living room, Terry got to his feet. At first it didn’t look as if he knew why, then he pulled out a packet of cigarettes and offered one to Brock, who shook his head. Terry pulled out a small gold lighter and lit up, inhaling deeply on the first drag.

  ‘This ain’t easy,’ he said. ‘You can understand how someone feels when their mother’s just died. Especially if people are suggesting she might have been murdered.’

  ‘Of course,’ Brock said. ‘I remember when my mother died. She was in hospital. When I left I got on a bus to go home, and it reached the depot before I realized I’d gone in the opposite direction.’

  Terry nodded.

  ‘The Sergeant wasn’t trying to be intrusive about her will,’ Brock said, his brows knitted with concern. ‘But it was a natural thing to wonder, when we heard the conditions. I suppose I might have been a bit annoyed with my old mum if she’d left me something, but then said in effect I couldn’t have it for, well, who knows? Twenty, thirty years?’

  Terry looked at him suspiciously. ‘My aunts are entitled to feel some security at their time of life. I don’t begrudge them that.’

  ‘They’re quite a formidable pair, your aunts, aren’t they?’ Brock said.

  ‘Mad as hatters,’ Caroline replied, bringing in the tea, and then, seeing the expression on her husband’s face, corrected herself. ‘No, they’re sweeties really. I get on well with them, especially Peg. I think Eleanor disapproves of me sometimes.’

  She giggled and poured out the tea.

  6

  As they were driving back into London against the evening tide of traffic, Dr Mehta came on the phone. ‘I thought you might like a preliminary report, Brock.’ The disembodied voice of the pathologist filled the car interior.

  ‘How does it look?’

  ‘Well, lots of nothing, frankly. First the heart. No significant narrowing of the coronary arteries, heart muscle healthy and no inflammation, no lesions of the heart valves, aortic valve in good shape.

  ‘Then the brain. No arterial blockage, no intracerebral haemorrhage, no brain artery aneurysm, no subarachnoid haemorrhage, and no tumours, abscesses or other brain lesions.

  ‘I’m still waiting for the chemical analyses, so some form of poisoning can’t be ruled out at this stage, but I don’t think it’s likely.

  ‘Of course there are other natural causes of sudden death. Anaphylaxis for instance. She could have had an acute reaction to some antigen she was sensitive to. There was no marked swelling of the lining of the larynx, however, or oedema of the lungs. I’ve spoken to her doctor again, and there’s no history to suggest anaphylaxis, or for that matter epilepsy, asthma or insulin medication.

  ‘Then there’s smothering, say with the plastic bag your Sergeant found, if the tests match the swabs. All right, there were petechial haemorrhages on the lungs and the pericardial sac-Tardieu’s spots-which certainly suggests terminal lack of oxygen, but not necessarily asphyxia-heart failure produces the same result. Again, the fluidity of the blood and some blue discoloration of the skin were also consistent with asphyxia, but blood fluidity and cyanosis aren’t certain tests, either.

  ‘So, as things stand, I couldn’t say that she died of asphyxia, only that the evidence is consistent with it. As you know, Brock, in about ten per cent of cases we see we simply cannot establish a cause of death from the forensic evidence. I think this may be one of those.’

  ‘Ten per cent!’ Kathy exclaimed.

  There was a momentary pause while Mehta identified her voice, and then he crackled back, ‘Yes, Sergeant. Any experienced pathologist will tell you the same: no cause of death can be demonstrated either anatomically or by toxicological analysis in approaching one in ten cases. If they tell you otherwise, then they’re making guesses not justified by the evidence.’

  ‘Sundeep,’ Brock said, ‘if she was smothered by the plastic bag, how long would she take to die, and wouldn’t she have shown signs of a struggle?’

  ‘Not necessarily. Do you have Jaffe’s Guide to Pathological Evidence for Lawyers and Police Officers in your office?’

  ‘Yes, I’m sure we do.’

  ‘Well, there’s a photograph in there of a young woman who died by accident, while she was on the phone, when a plastic bag accidentally slipped over her face. A simple lack of oxygen isn’t distressful. If it’s sudden, unconsciousness comes very quickly. What is distressing in choking, say, or smothering, is when the exhalation of carbon dioxide is prevented. That’s what causes the panic we imagine with that kind of death. I’ll get back to you when the test results are available, but I think the coroner will have to reach a decision on this one without me.’

  ‘Thanks, Sundeep.’

  When he’d rung off, Brock added, ‘Cagey as always. Still, it looks as if you were right, Kathy.’

  ‘Yes.’ She sat in silence for a moment and then said quietly, ‘I’d like to phone DC Mollineaux, sir. Get him to check that Terry Winter had a cup of coffee in the cafe next to his salon in Deptford, as he said. Then he can start interviewing the managers of each of the salons to see whether they can produce any of the paperwork Winter’s supposed to have done over the weekend.’

  ‘You didn’t like him?’

  ‘No, I didn’t. I thought he was full of himself. But worse than that, I thought he was the sort of man who expected to get his own way with women, and wouldn’t think twice about lying, or if necessary using violence, to make sure he did.’

  She spoke quietly, but with an intensity which made Brock glance across at her.

  ‘Can you tell?’

  ‘His wife had what looked to me like bruising around her left eye.’

  ‘Really? I didn’t notice.’

  ‘She’d pretty well covered it up with her make-up, and the swelling had mostly gone down, but when I was near her in the kitchen I spotted it.’

  ‘Hmm. You may be right. Anyway, you can relax tonight and feel reasonably satisfied.

  ‘I hope he’s taking you somewhere nice,’ he added.

  She looked sidelong at him and said nothing at first. Then, as she picked up the phone and started to press in the numbers she replied, ‘I’m taking him somewhere nice, actually. It’s his birthday.’

  ‘Ah, lucky chap,’ Brock murmured, switching on the windscreen wipers and apparently concentrating on weaving through the traffic on the approaches to Waterloo Bridge.

  He dropped her off outside Charing Cross Station and continued on down Whitehall towards the Yard. Kathy went into the entrance to the station and took the stairs down to the tube. They had got back into town earlier than she had expected, and the corridors were crowded with home-going commuters. She took the Northern Line northbound, but instead of continuing all the way to her home stop at Finchley Central, suddenly changed her mind after Tottenham Court Road and got off the train at the next stop. It was dark when she reached the street, the shop lights reflecting from wet pavements. By the entrance to the Underground a news vendor was pulling a clear plastic sheet down over one end of his stall to protect it from the cold drizzle which was beginning to blow in earnest from the east.

  Jerusalem Lane was deserted. The two lamps which served as street lighting for its length had just switched on, giving an ineffectual dim white light as they struggled to warm up. The shop fronts at this north end of the Lane were all in darkness, and any lights in occupied upstairs rooms were heavily curtained against the night. Kathy thought of the Dore etching in Hepple’s office, with its teeming mass of human
ity seething down this street. All ghosts now.

  She walked towards the door of Hepple’s office, and was rewarded by the reflected glow of the windows of the Balaton Cafe, facing into the little square ahead, and the smell of cooking. There were two front doors beside the brass plate, one for the solicitor’s office, and the other for Sylvia Pemberton’s flat. Kathy pressed the buzzer beside the second. After a moment an unrecognizable squawk came from a small speaker on the wall.

  ‘It’s Kathy Kolla, Miss Pemberton, from the police. We met this morning. Could I trouble you again for a minute?’

  Another squawk came from the box and the front door gave a click. Kathy pushed and went in. The stairs rose in front of her in two straight flights to the second floor, where Sylvia Pemberton stood waiting for her.

  She left her wet coat in the hall and they went into a snug sitting room, filled with furniture as ample as their owner.

  ‘I’d just settled down with my usual G and T, wondering whether to chance the Balaton’s goulash or put up with frozen chicken in front of the TV, so I’m very pleased to be intruded upon. I’ll call you Kathy, shall I? Sergeant seems rather formal in front of your own gas fire, don’t you think? And I’m Sylvia. Let me pour you one. It doesn’t taste the same if you’re with someone who isn’t drinking, and you’re not going to arrest me, are you? Not yet, anyway.’ She roared with laughter. Relaxed, her cheeks rosy with the heat of the fire and the gin, she seemed larger than life.

  ‘It was something you started to say this morning, Sylvia,’ Kathy began, easing back into the plump cushions carefully so as not to spill anything from the generously filled glass. ‘Just as Mr Hepple arrived. Something about the way the neighbourhood was going downhill or something. I just wondered what you meant.’

  ‘Ah, yes. It’s been in the back of my mind for months, and poor Meredith Winterbottom going like that just seemed to bring it all into focus. The place is changing, and the weird thing is that nobody seems to have noticed it. I mean normally the slightest thing happening in the Lane would go round like wildfire. But over the past year things have been going on that seemed… well, reasonable enough on their own, but taken together…’