Families, thought Markby, were nice to have but the relationships involved had pitfalls of their own.Yesterday he and Meredith had been discussing the Jenners. Now, look at Fuller over there. The pathologist was well known to be a family man. He had three highly talented musical daughters, all of whom Markby found terrifying. Markby himself was tone deaf, or as near tone deaf as made little difference, and conversation with any of the Fuller girls was agony. Knowing of his musical incompetence, they treated him politely but with a kindly tolerance, as one who suffered an irredeemable handicap.
‘Have you been up to the house?’ Markby asked Jess.
‘Not yet, sir. Mr Jenner was still here when I got here. He’d got the local doctor with him. Jenner identified the body and the local doctor confirmed she was dead before he dashed back to the house. Mrs Jenner’s apparently broken down and a guest here, a Mr Smythe, had escorted her back to the house, so I didn’t see either of them. It was Mr Smythe, I gather, who called a doctor to Mrs Jenner.’
Markby was silent for a moment. Then he said, ‘As I sat at their table on Friday, I’d better go up and make my condolences. I’ll leave it to you to organize their statements.’
At the house a red-eyed housekeeper showed him into a study where he found Jeremy Jenner and Toby. Jenner looked grey and every one of his sixty-eight years. Markby had seen the effect of a great shock and sudden bereavement before. It was always pitiable but in this man, whom he formerly seen so confident and in control, it was devastating. Jenner appeared as a figure from Greek tragedy. The man even seemed to have lost height, as he rose to greet Markby. There was no sign of Alison.
Now that an outsider had arrived, Jenner managed to summon up at least an appearance of his normal manner. It must have taken almost superhuman effort. He shook the visitor’s hand and received his condolences with a composure which must have cost him a great deal to maintain.
‘How is your wife?’ Markby asked him.
‘My wife?’ For a moment Jenner looked fierce as if the question were impertinent. Then he shook his head and went on, ‘She’s upset, of course. Very upset. We had to call our family doctor and he’s given her a sedative.’
That meant Jess Campbell wouldn’t be able to take a statement from her today – or possibly even tomorrow. Markby was beginning to feel this whole investigation was going to be jinxed. Unfairly, he knew, he was tempted to attribute this to the presence ofToby Smythe on the scene. WhereverToby went, disaster seemed to follow. But he mustn’t think this way, let personal prejudice colour his view.
‘You’ve met Inspector Campbell, I understand,’ he said.
‘The young woman?Yes. This isn’t going to be left to her, is it? It’s not an accident. It can’t be. It’s the lunatic who’s been writing those damn letters! He’s responsible.’
Toby was sitting on a window seat, leaning forward, hands loosely clasped. From that vantage point he would be able to see the gardens and although not the lake itself, he would have been able to observe some of the movement of police vehicles. He looked up and said in a low voice, ‘Fiona wouldn’t have gone down to the lake alone. She was scared of Spike, the goose.’
‘Even to meet someone?’ Markby asked.
‘No! Why should she want to meet anyone at that unholy hour of the morning, anyway?’
‘Toby saw my daughter leave the house just after eight,’ Jenner said. ‘He assumed she was going for an early-morning run. She might have met an intruder in the grounds, of course. It could have been the letter-writer. He might have been hanging round the place, spying on us. He’s clearly demented.’
‘Insanity is quite often claimed as a defence but seldom found to be genuine,’ Markby observed.
‘Nevertheless,’ Jenner replied obstinately, ‘it must occur to you that possibly my wife has been stalked for some time and the letters are an integral part of a vicious and obsessive campaign by this – this person.’ Jenner fell silent, unable to add further words. He merely gestured hopelessly.
‘You understand a post-mortem examination will be carried out on your daughter?’ Markby asked him gently.
Jenner winced. ‘I hate the idea. But it has to be. I know that.’ He and Toby exchanged glances. ‘Fiona had also been struck on the head. That’s what has upset my wife more than anything. It – it’s as though her death is a carbon copy of Freda Kemp’s. Can that be a coincidence?’ Jenner gave a short, mirthless bark of laughter. ‘I don’t think so. I tell you, Markby. There’s a maniac out there and he’s hell bent on persecuting us.’
Markby studied him for a moment. ‘No other member of the household left the house before breakfast? Only your daughter?’
‘No! For goodness’ sake, do we need alibis? I didn’t leave the house. I’m sure my wife didn’t.’
‘I didn’t,’ said Toby. ‘I saw Fiona from the bathroom window. I opened it to let out the steam. If I’d known she was going running I’d have got up earlier and gone with her. I wish I had.’ His face twisted in misery. ‘She might be alive now. She would be alive now!’
‘I shall, of course, be overseeing any investigation,’ Markby told them. ‘But Inspector Campbell will be in charge of things on the ground. She’ll be along to talk to you shortly. Tell her everything you’ve told me and any other detail you may remember.You can have every confidence in her. She has shown herself very able officer in her previous division. She is new here but I’m sure she’ll handle it well.’
As he spoke these words, Markby felt a twinge of an emotion he couldn’t at once identify. He told himself it wasn’t doubt. Campbell had come to them with an excellent reputation in her job. But perhaps the momentary twinge had been one of envy? Campbell was young. She was at the beginning of her career. He was nearing the end of his. His past successes had resulted in promotion to a rank putting him behind a desk for most of his time. He’d much rather be out there where the action was. Yes, dammit, he did envy Campbell!
‘I don’t like it!’ Jenner snapped. ‘She’s too young. I want someone with experience. And a newcomer, you say?’
Markby smiled. ‘That could be a good thing. Newcomers are usually keen. Don’t worry. I’ll keep an eye on things.’
‘I should damn well hope so!’ Jenner’s face had flushed an angry red. He recollected himself and said stiffly, ‘I apologize. I’m not myself. Of course you’ll see everything necessary is done.’
Markby left them and drove slowly back to Bamford. Thus he wasn’t at the lakeside when one of the constables called out to Jess Campbell that there was a tyre mark some distance from the water’s edge.
‘Here, ma’am.’ The man pointed. ’ It’s not too good.’
It was almost obliterated. Either Darren or his father, careering round the lake in pursuit of Spike, must have lumbered straight across it.
‘Accidentally or on purpose,’ Jess said aloud.
‘Inspector?’ The constable looked puzzled.
‘I’ll send the photographer over here and get forensics to make a cast of it,’ Jess said. ‘Well spotted.’
Markby pressed his finger on the doorbell and heard it buzz inside the house. It was an electronic gadget. You pressed the button; it sent a signal to the buzzer inside and a tiny spot glowed on the button to show you it had done it. The trouble was that half the time it hadn’t done it. It meant he strained his ear every time to make sure he caught the buzz.
This time he heard it and the quick approach of Meredith’s footstep. She pulled the door open, relief on her face.
‘I was beginning to wonder where you were. It’s almost two. Laura’s been on the phone to me. Paul is getting jittery and wanting to know when he can put in the souffle. She thought you might be here or I might know where you were but I couldn’t help her. She said she’d rung your place but there was no reply and you hadn’t left the answerphone on. That was an hour ago. I thought about trying your mobile but I had this horrible feeling you might have been called in on something and that lunch was scrapped.’
&nb
sp; ‘I’m sorry I’m late, he told her as he followed her inside. ‘I’ll phone Laura and apologize to her and to Paul but I don’t think I fancy lunch.’ His voice and manner had registered with her now.
She asked quietly, ‘What’s happened?’
He smiled at her ruefully. ‘I always seem to be the harbinger of bad news. In this case, it involves the Jenners. I’m afraid your prime suspect for the role of poison pen wielder is dead.’
‘Fiona?’
He saw her hazel eyes widen in shock and the colour drain from her face. Instinctively he put out his hand to grasp her.
‘It’s all right,’ she said at once. But she gripped his hand, even so, for reassurance. ‘That’s terrible. Poor kid. PoorToby … Jeremy, Alison, everyone … What happened? Was it an accident?’
‘To know that exactly we’ll have to await the post-mortem results.’ He explained about the blow Fiona appeared to have received to the head and that she’d been found in the lake. ‘Very like Freda Kemp.’
He watched this register with her. She turned her face away so that her expression was partly concealed from him. He felt her hand, still in his, twitch.
‘I feel awful,’ she said quietly. ‘I’m so sorry for all the things I said about her, for accusing her of being the letter-writer. You’d say I was theorizing without facts, wouldn’t you? Of course I was. It was stupid.’
‘Don’t feel badly about it,’ he told her gently. ‘No one expected this. We none of us had enough facts. We still don’t.’ Markby released her hand and stared thoughtfully past her towards the window, but it was doubtful he took in the limited view of the back yard. ‘Poison pen campaigns don’t usually end in …’
Meredith was watching his face and rubbing her forearms as if she were cold. ‘In what? You think this is murder, don’t you?’ she said soberly.
‘Yes,’ Markby replied, turning his gaze from the window towards her. ‘I think it very probably is.’
Chapter Five
Jess got to the morgue at four o’clock, having been informed that the coroner’s office had given Dr Fuller the go-ahead to carry out the autopsy. This was a police matter but the corpse was still technically the coroner’s body. The idea of being shut up in the cavernous dissection room with its background noises of running water, its air smelling of antiseptic, was never to be welcomed. But the morning’s clouds had vanished, the sun returned to sparkle teasingly outside the dusty windows, and this just wasn’t the place to be, and at Easter to boot. Still, it couldn’t be helped. She was accompanied by Sergeant Steve Prescott, an amiable giant whose features bore the honourable scars of collisions on the rugby field. He stood by the stainless steel dissection table with its sinister central drainage channel; his hands folded one over the other as if he were at a church service or, alternatively, a Mafia bodyguard awaiting orders. There was also a long-faced photographer fiddling with his camera but as a conversationalist he rated zero. After a brief exchange of greetings on their arrival, that had been that.
The body was covered by a sheet. The silence seemed less respectful than unnatural and Jess felt impelled to break it.
‘Pity it’s happened over Easter.’ A daft remark, she thought. Death doesn’t look at the calendar before it picks its victim and police work wasn’t held up because the rest of the country took a holiday.
Prescott seemed to consider the remark from all angles before replying, a little unexpectedly, ‘Always seems wrong when it’s a young person. Makes you think.’
So even the impassive Prescott had been filled with intimations of mortality.
Perhaps Prescott felt he needed to explain his remark. ‘I mean, there she is.’ He nodded towards the sheeted corpse. ‘She’d be fit and healthy if she wasn’t dead, bags of money in the family – and as cold as a cod on a fishmonger’s slab.’
There was no arguing with that diagnosis.
There was a slam of a distant door and Dr Fuller bounced in, his pink face still wreathed in smiles, which, Jess thought crossly, hardly suited the occasion. Still, the pathologist was one of those fortunate beings who genuinely enjoyed their work. His green plastic apron reached from his neck to his ankles. Add in his bushy grey eyebrows and he appeared not so much a child’s toy now as a jolly green-clad garden gnome.
‘Here we are again!’ Dr Fuller hailed them. He didn’t actually rub his hands, but Jess had the feeling he would have liked to. ‘To work, then! With luck this shouldn’t take long. Just a moment, let me switch on the machine.’ Fuller set his little tape recorder whirring and, as he worked, he would make a running commentary. ‘Before I begin, I’ve got a little surprise for you, I think,’ he said happily like the kindly paterfamilias he no doubt was.
Beside her, Jess was aware that Prescott’s battered features had taken on a suspicious slant. His acquaintance with Dr Fuller was of long standing.
Deftly Dr Fuller turned back the sheet and the body lay revealed. ‘Now then, what do you make of that?’
They leaned forward and studied the area indicated by the pathologist. The photographer moved in for a close-up. Fuller was right. It was a surprise.
‘Stabbed?’ Markby exclaimed. He stared at the inspector. She looked a bit pale, but they usually did on returning from morgue duty. Even so, her excitement could be heard in her voice.
‘Yes, sir. A single thrust which went right through her clothing, between her ribs and straight into her heart. We didn’t realize it at first because she’d been floating in water and the blood had washed away. Also she was wearing a red sweatshirt and it’s a very small puncture mark. Dr Fuller thinks it probably didn’t bleed much. They found the wound at the morgue when they stripped the body.’
‘What you’re saying,’ Markby said tersely, ‘doesn’t sound like a wound made by a knife.’
‘Dr Fuller thinks not. He thinks some possibly home-made, thin weapon with the end sharpened. In diameter it would be rounded. Rather like a thick needle, he guesses.’
Markby drummed his fingers on his desk. ‘Is that diver still down at the lake?’
‘I’ve got a message to the underwater team, sir. They’ve failed to find any underwater rocks on which she might have struck her head as she went in and they were about to pack up. Now they’re looking for anything which might have been a weapon, but that means going further out in the lake. It will take time.’
Markby still looked discontented. It wasn’t, Jess thought, either at the slowness of the underwater search or at her handling of the case. It might be because of the added cost involved in keeping the diving team on. Increasingly they worked with the word ‘budget’ hanging invisibly over their heads, but she didn’t think it was that, either. It was something else.
‘Does he think death would have been instantaneous?’ The superintendent’s voice was abrupt and his bright blue eyes bored into hers.
‘Dr Fuller thinks she probably lived for up to a minute but no longer. There’s no lake water in the lungs, so she was dead by the time she went in there. As for the head wound, he thinks that was inflicted after death, almost certainly deliberately.’
‘And then her killer put her in lake, knowing full well we’d find the real cause of death. He wasn’t trying to cover that up. He was just making a point. He wanted to recall the death of Freda Kemp. Pah!’ He slapped his hands on the desk top and scowled ferociously but not, she was pleased to see, at her.
‘Freda Kemp?’ Jess asked cautiously, lest the scowl be turned in her direction, after all.
His expression faded to one of mild surprise and then became apologetic. ‘You haven’t had an opportunity to examine the details of the poison pen campaign Mrs Jenner’s been subjected to. But it may turn out to be very much part and parcel of this business. Let’s hope that tyre tread turns up something:
‘It’s a very poor impression, sir, forensics are doing their best.’ She paused. ‘I haven’t told the family yet. There’s a bit of a problem interviewing Mrs Jenner. Her doctor gave her a sedative and she’s out
for the count. She probably won’t be too clear-headed tomorrow. I won’t be able to see her until Monday morning.’
Markby nodded. ‘It will give you a chance to read up the file on her trial.’
‘Her trial, sir?’ Had she heard that correctly?
‘Yes, yes, her trial for murder. Twenty-five years ago. She was acquitted.’
‘Merry hell!’ said Jess, hastily amending this to, ‘I’ll do that, sir.’
‘No, you were right the first time,’ he corrected her gloomily. ‘Merry hell describes matters pretty exactly.’
Dorcas Stebbings was seated at her kitchen table. It was late and had grown dark. She could barely see across the room. Lost in her thoughts she had been unaware how gloomy it had got and it wasn’t until the rattle of the old 4x4 roused her that she stood up and went to switch on the light.
The action seemed to set off another train of thought and she remained by the wall with her hand still upraised to the light switch, staring at the room. All these objects were things she touched every day, the scrubbed pine table laid now for their evening meal, the chairs, the kitchen stove, the Welsh dresser with its array of old decorative plates, most of which had been her mother’s. Each piece of furniture had its place, so unchanging that if by some disaster she’d been struck blind at this very moment, she’d still have been able to navigate her way round without collision. Yet this very familiarity now seemed a fragile thing. It was almost as if she looked at a mirage, about to disappear and be lost for ever.
Ann Granger Page 8
