by Clare Curzon
The post mortem on Audrey Stanford confirmed that a ligature had been applied with some force to her wrists. Examination of the plastic bag brought up only one set of fingerprints. These proved to be her husband’s, and a search of the Stanfords’ home produced a pair of corded curtain ties with tasselled ends. These had been purchased by him on the day before her death and paid for with his credit card.
‘How could he have been so stupid?’ Z asked.
‘Bought them before he knew how he was going to use them,’ Salmon overrode her. ‘It was a crime of sudden passion. He used whatever came easily to hand. There’s no doubt at all. Stanford killed her.’
Yeadings lingered over the specimen bag containing the cords. ‘One is cut through,’ he observed. ‘Presumably when it was removed from her wrists.’
‘Path lab found on it microscopic flakes of skin matching the dead woman’s,’ Salmon claimed promptly. ‘We’ve got it all sewn up.’
Yeadings returned to the computer terminal in CID office and read back the report on finding the cut cord. Both cords, together with the scissors used, had been found crammed at the back of a drawer near where Audrey’s body had lain.
Yeadings sat pondering a while. He hadn’t known the Stanfords as well as Nan, but he’d agreed that Keith as a killer was a hard one to swallow. ‘Audrey,’ Nan claimed, ‘was one very mixed up lady. There was a streak of malice there which her illness had done nothing to improve.’
Yeadings reminded himself of that earlier suicide attempt, genuine or not. Malice, he considered. Well, why not?
He rang through to the DI. ‘I haven’t seen the scissors listed among the exhibits for the Stanford murder case,’ he said. ‘Do we have them?’
‘They weren’t considered necessary as an exhibit for court,’ Salmon told him. ‘Beaumont will know what became of them.’
‘Yessir, they were bagged and then put aside,’ Beaumont confirmed when Yeadings went to the CID office to tackle him. ‘I could probably find them if it’s vital.’
They arrived on Yeadings’ desk still in the original forensics bag, with contents and provenance printed on the label. ‘Send them to fingerprints,’ he ordered. ‘This shouldn’t have been overlooked. I won’t accept sloppy practices.’
Dr Stanford, distraught and confused, had been held twenty-four hours for questioning and then allowed to return home on bail with his passport confiscated. He knew that by then his arrest would be common knowledge throughout town. His immediate concern was for his patients, and Emily among them. But above all he agonized over what Alyson must think of him. If she accepted the police view of Audrey’s death, then he was truly past all hope.
Alone in the house – become an alien place, no longer home – he considered, and abandoned, the idea of phoning. Alyson must not be dragged into his disgrace. Anyone learning of his interest in her could distort it into further scandal.
The police searches had left the place in disorder but he hadn’t the heart to start putting things straight. He supposed that Edna Evans would automatically have abandoned the household at the first scent of suspicion. Under steady rain the garden looked sodden and uninviting, and there was nothing to busy himself with in the garage because both cars had recently been serviced. He had no alternative to facing the situation he was in and trying to account for it. He went through to his study and surrendered himself to bitter recrimination.
The shrilling of the doorbell startled him. He was in no mood for company, but a glance from the window showed Nan Yeadings’s people-carrier in the driveway and he couldn’t turn her away.
‘I don’t want to bother you,’ she said, ‘but I guessed the fridge might need some restocking.’ He took the heavy carton she’d dumped on the doorstep and waved her ahead of him into the hall.
‘No, I’m not staying. I’ve got young Luke with me, and sorting this lot will give you something to do.’
Briefly he marvelled that she understood, but then suddenly he needed the sane ordinariness of her. ‘Please stay,’ he said. ‘Bring Luke in. If you can spare the time, that is.’
He made coffee for them both and unearthed some Jaffa cakes to go with the little boy’s orange juice. Between them they sorted the groceries and put them away, all normal activities that made him feel almost human again.
‘It’s a nightmare, isn’t it?’ Nan said, and again he was overwhelmed.
The phone rang and he had courage enough to answer it. ‘Alyson? How are you? I’ve been thinking so much about …’ Too late he knew he should have taken the call elsewhere. Nan would think the worst. A police superintendent’s wife! He really knew how to condemn himself.
He forced the animation from his voice. ‘It’s kind of you to ring,’ he said formally. ‘Good to know some people still have some faith left in me. How’s Emily?’
She had picked up the change in tone. ‘Of course we believe in your innocence. The whole thing’s crazy. Emily’s well, considering we’ve had quite a little showdown here with a member of her family. It’s too complicated to explain now. I just wanted you to know how sorry we are and we’re with you all the way.’
They said goodbye and she rang off. ‘One of my patients,’ he excused himself lamely.
‘Well, I must be off. Thanks for the coffee, Keith. Luke, what do you say?’
The little boy grinned. ‘Thank you for my orange juice and the bikkit.’
‘I’ve made you a beef casserole and set the right temperature. All you have to do is switch on and put it in when the red light goes out. Give it forty minutes. It should last you two days.’
‘Nan, I don’t know how to thank you.’
‘Just be certain it’ll all sort itself,’ she said briskly, gathered up Luke and departed.
Will it? he wondered. Was that an oblique message from Yeadings himself? There’d need to be plenty of sorting. Audrey had been so clever in tying him into her death.
Ramón had made lunch, sliced chicken breasts and mixed vegetables tossed in a wok. Facing him across the kitchen table, Alyson was still uneasy about his part in the Rachel business. So preoccupied with the awful situation Keith was in, she hadn’t at the time properly considered the explanation Ramón had given to the police. It alarmed her that he had kept silent about the unguarded apartment, the disarray in Emily’s room and Sheena’s absence when he arrived to take over.
He hadn’t exactly lied, though. When she’d asked if the insurance appraiser was still there, he’d said, ‘Nobody was there.’ The strict truth, but a little short of what he should have said. And once she had started to doubt, she remembered something else: that when she was considering employing him he’d told her he attended an English for Foreigners course at the college. He’d started some weeks back, so surely he’d be familiar with the building’s layout? Even know how to reach the roof?
No, she told herself; it was too fantastic to imagine that because he’d closed the panel in the window, he’d gone further in tidying up, and removed the body. It was the inscrutable face that gave her such ideas of secret planning going on behind.
‘I’m home!’ Yeadings called, letting himself in, dripping rain. Nan and the children came from the back of the house where they’d finished watching a video.
‘Good day?’ Nan asked as he bent to kiss her cheek.
‘Quite productive. How was yours?’
She gave an account of various encounters at the school gate and in the supermarket while he fixed them drinks. ‘All very small fry,’ she excused it. ‘And I dropped in on Keith Stanford who’s feeling pretty down.’
‘Wouldn’t you, in his circumstances? Actually he’ll soon have cause to perk up. There’s good news on its way.’
‘You can’t leave it at that, Mike. What’s come up?’
He teased her, shaking his head knowingly. Then, ‘Audrey’s fingerprints on the scissors used to cut the cords off her wrists. Hers and no others.’
‘But only his on the plastic bag, Mike.’
‘Quite easil
y done if she handled it through some kind of fabric. And as for the business of cutting herself out while tied up, I had some practice this afternoon with Z.’
‘Bondage with junior officers? I hope you didn’t have your wicked way with her.’
‘I’ll show you. Sally, love, pop up and get the cord belt off Daddy’s dressing-gown, will you?’
When she brought it he folded it double and wound it round Nan’s joined wrists. ‘Now do it yourself. Thread the loose ends through the loop and pull tight. Right. Now imagine you’ve tied the ends to something above your head, and slumped long enough to cause the cord to bite into the wrists and later leave marks on the flesh. Now when you take the pressure off, the cord will shake loose because there’s no knot. Finally you cut through the cord at some point and hide both cord and scissors. Who’s to know you weren’t tied up and released by a second person?’
‘Can you prove she did it herself? Suppose those weren’t the scissors used. She could even have used a knife.’
‘But she didn’t. There was a silky thread from the curtain ties caught in the join of the scissors. This was a clever attempt to pass suicide off as murder.’
‘Clever, yes, but wicked too. How bitter she must have felt to do this to her own husband. Even if he was looking sideways at someone else.’
Yeadings grimaced. ‘I never heard that, Nan. I only hope there’s a chance of happiness left for the poor beggar. He deserves it after all this. And if, as you imply, there’s someone he’s fond of, I just hope they make it together as well as we do.’
THE GLASS WALL. Copyright © 2005 by Clare Curzon. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
THOMAS DUNNE BOOKS.
An imprint of St. Martin’s Press.
www.thomasdunnebooks.com
www.minotaurbooks.com
First published in Great Britain by Allison & Busby Limited
eISBN 9781466822023
First eBook Edition : May 2012
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Curzon, Clare.
The glass wall: a Superintendent Mike Yeadings mystery / Clare
Curzon.—1st U.S. ed. p. cm.
ISBN-13: 978-0-312-34963-9
ISBN-10: 0-312-34963-7
1. Yeadings, Mike (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 2. Police—England—Thames Valley—Fiction. 3. Thames Valley (England)—Fiction. I. Title.
PR6053.U79 G55 2006
823’.914—dc22
2006050122
First U.S. Edition: December 2006
