by H S Chandler
She could move on. It had been painfully slow, waiting for the prosecution to close its case so that she could be allowed in to the house to gather the clothing, but now it was done. The only photograph in which she and Edward had been captured together was ash.
18
Day Seven in Court
Her Honour Judge Downey, the barristers, police and court ushers met the jury outside the Bloxham’s house. The bundle of photographs had revealed tiny slices of the property – a view of the kitchen, a section of the driveway where the chair leg had been dropped – but nothing had prepared Lottie for how grand it was. The gates were huge twirls of blackened iron that opened only when a police officer stepped forward and clicked a key-fob. They moved silently, as if by magic, skimming the top of the gravel by millimetres without disturbing a single stone. The garden was stunning if overgrown, but someone had committed endless hours to weeding and pruning in the past. The house itself was straight out of a lifestyle magazine, picture perfect, with large windows and curtains tied back to millimetre-accurate specifications.
‘These people have too much money,’ Agnes Huang said loudly, getting a sympathetic nod from Garth Finuchin and his tattoos in reply. ‘How can only two people have lived here? It’s built for half a dozen.’
‘Just what I expected,’ Gregory muttered. ‘Exactly where I’d imagined Dr Bloxham living. And look at the garden. How lovely. What I wouldn’t give to live here.’
‘It’s beautiful,’ Lottie whispered to Cameron and Jack.
‘My mother would approve,’ Jack said. ‘Although she would also point out that it’s a relatively recent build, indicating new money, her words not mine. Very upper-middle class. I guess they don’t get many attempted murders around here.’
‘Probably not,’ Cameron replied. ‘This may be the most excitement the neighbourhood has ever seen. Come on, they’re letting us in.’ He pressed light fingertips into the small of Lottie’s back as he let her go first into the garden. She went slowly, buzzing from the brief contact but wishing he would keep his hands off her when they were in the group. There was a limit to how much risk she was comfortable with.
Yesterday had been an aberration in her marriage, her behaviour wanton and disloyal. Her return home had been almost physically painful, as she had crossed the threshold into what should have been a haven of family life. Worse than the guilt, though, more disturbing and visceral, was the arousal that had pulsed through her all evening and all night. She had irritated herself, unable to sit still, finally cleaning the kitchen cupboards at 11 p.m., ensuring that Zain was in bed and asleep before taking her place next to him. Lottie had stared at his profile in the lacklustre moonlight that made it past the curtains. He didn’t deserve what she’d done to him, there was no question about it. Zain had been sullen all evening, immersing himself in a set of sales accounts and hardly speaking. There was still the unresolved issue of trying for another baby, but Lottie wasn’t backing down on that one, throwing Zain’s carefully constructed life plan into disarray. She was almost jealous of how certain he was about the things he wanted. All she seemed to be doing was floating along on the tide.
Later today, she would tell Cameron things couldn’t go any further. Yesterday had been too much. Her jury buddy was gambling less than her. Sleep had eluded her again, and in the morning she’d choked on a mouthful of toast when Zain had appeared unexpectedly in the kitchen asking where his wallet was. Casual flirtation was one thing, but where they were headed was too dangerous.
‘Will Tabitha run a finger along the tops of the cabinets to check how good Maria Bloxham’s dusting was, do you think?’ Cameron whispered to her and Jack, at the back of the line.
Lottie giggled in spite of the tension she was feeling. ‘I’m more concerned that Agnes is so jealous, she’s going to drop prawns down the back of each radiator to make the place uninhabitable.’
‘And Pan will be going through totting up the value of all the artwork,’ Jack added. ‘He’ll probably leave his business card on the kitchen table.’
They sniggered together as they walked forward, lifting the grimness of the mood. In some ways it felt unreal, like walking onto a film set after watching a movie, Lottie thought.
‘God, the Tabithas are going to absolutely love this,’ she said quietly.
‘When you’re as close to death as that lot, you’ve got to get your kicks any way you can,’ Cameron smirked.
One by one the jurors stepped inside the house, moving slowly through the hallway. The rules had been explained to them already. They could look but not touch. No photos were to be taken. Any questions had to be written down and directed through the judge at court the next day. The whole visit was to be on the record. At no time was any conversation to take place between any of the jurors and the court officials or police officers.
The hallway resembled an illustrated coffee menu, with shades of cream, beige and darker browns across walls and woodwork. Not one fingerprint, Lottie thought, no scratches either. No children had ever run through that hallway, dragging toys and lurching from wall to wall with sticky hands. Her jealousy at the simplicity of it all evaporated in the silence. Maria Bloxham had spent every day there alone. Her husband had his work. The jury had learned nothing about the defendant yet except that she had committed a single, brutal crime. Perhaps the boredom and quiet had finally driven her mad, Lottie thought. She could sympathise with that. Wasn’t that exactly why she was playing such a dangerous game with Cameron now? She watched him whispering into Jack’s ear as they approached the kitchen. Perhaps Lottie was making excuses. Maybe, as the prosecution had suggested, Maria Bloxham had been driven by selfishness or anger, like when she’d sworn at the psychiatrist and stormed out. It wasn’t impossible that the unfortunate couple had simply argued once too often about the correct way to stack the dishwasher.
The jury convened in the kitchen, staring at the spot on the floor where Edward Bloxham had landed as if there was the possibility he could still be there. The brown stains in the tile grouting told a grisly story, and the heavy wooden kitchen table stood unused, with one chair missing from what was clearly intended to be a set of six. Lottie wondered what had happened to the other chair. Had it been broken in temper or by accident, and how long ago? Edward Bloxham couldn’t tell them and perhaps it wasn’t in the defendant’s interests to be honest about it now.
‘You may walk around the remainder of the house,’ the judge told them, ‘as it might later be relevant when the defendant gives evidence. You have thirty minutes, then I’ll ask you to return to the minibus.’
The judge and barristers retired into the back garden, avoiding any possibility of being asked questions or overhearing the jurors’ comments. For a few moments the twelve of them stood glancing around the kitchen, embarrassed to be the first to take advantage of the chance to poke around the empty house. Tabitha recovered quickest, opening the pantry door and having a good look inside.
‘Look at that,’ she breathed. ‘So much cupboard space for just two people.’
‘My kitchen would fit into this one four times over,’ Samuel Lowry added with a nervous laugh. ‘Whatever the Bloxhams argued about, it certainly can’t have been money.’
‘What I want to know is why she didn’t use a knife instead of that great big chair leg,’ Garth Finuchin joined in, opening up the cutlery drawer and whistling as he looked at the weaponry options available. ‘She could have made damned sure she finished the job.’
‘I’m going to check out the rest of the house,’ Pan said. ‘I’m not sure it really requires a full thirty minutes.’ He returned to the hallway, from where he could be heard opening and closing doors as he went.
Lottie glanced around the kitchen. Sure enough, the pile of post DI Anton had mentioned in his evidence was still sitting on the kitchen table. She wondered just how far they were allowed to go in checking out the property, not that there was anyone in the kitchen she could ask. Making sure the other jurors were busy looki
ng elsewhere, Lottie slipped the top letter off the stack and faced the wall as she slid it out of the envelope.
‘Dear Dr Bloxham,’ she read, ‘I watched your latest video last night on encouraging slow worms back into our gardens. I hope you don’t mind me writing to you, but I wanted to say how much I love your passion. I adore wildlife and never miss reading your blog. I live in the Bristol area, as I know you do, so perhaps you could let me know if you have any live events planned. Meeting you in person would make me so happy. I’m single, in my thirties, and I love to bake. I wonder if you could send me a photo? I’ve enclosed a return envelope if it’s not too much trouble …’
Lottie folded the letter and pushed it back into the envelope, noting that it was addressed to an office suite in the city, presumably Dr Bloxham’s place of work, before replacing it on the pile. It was a bit sickly, she thought, writing to ask for a photo. What the hell were they going to do with it? Pin it up in their greenhouse?
‘Anything interesting?’ Cameron asked her.
‘Fan mail. Bit weird to be honest.’
‘Let’s do the tour,’ he suggested.
‘Good idea,’ Lottie muttered. ‘The sooner I’m out of here the better.’
Jack followed her out and Cameron brought up the rear, leaving the Tabithas to continue their hypothesising in the kitchen.
The first door past the kitchen was a separate dining room with a glass topped table and more comfortable looking chairs than the practical farmhouse style ones in the kitchen. After that was a spacious lounge featuring a fireplace at its centre, swept free of ash. Landscape paintings sat in frames on two walls, with a mirror on the third and patio doors onto the garden in the fourth.
‘No photos,’ Lottie said.
‘Maybe it’s a generation thing,’ Jack replied. ‘My parents only have photos of me and my brother, and his kids. None of themselves.’
‘It’s immaculate,’ Cameron said. ‘I mean really, strangely tidy.’
‘You mean your house doesn’t look like this? But I can just see you wearing an apron and holding a feather duster,’ Jack laughed.
Cameron responded by good-naturedly punching Jack’s shoulder. ‘Hey, I have talents you can’t even imagine. You should taste my toad-in-the-hole.’
‘Not taking that bait,’ Jack laughed as Lottie shook her head at the two of them.
They left the lounge and headed for the room opposite, which was smaller and evidently more lived in. Books lined the walls, and a mahogany desk took pride of place, covered in papers and notes. Silk curtains framed the window with a view into the front garden and a leather armchair faced the property’s second fireplace, this one more showing signs of recent use, with partially burned logs waiting to be relit. A large television screen had been hung carefully on a bracket on one wall, and an impressive computer set up had been fixed to hide the cables and blend in with the sumptuous look of the room.
‘Nice,’ Jack said. ‘That’s quite a rig.’
‘Must be expensive for them to have bothered putting a lock on an internal door,’ Cameron said. ‘You think they’d have been more worried about a burglar breaking the window to get in, given that it’s on the ground floor.’
‘There’s only one chair,’ Lottie said. Both men stared at her. ‘I’m just saying, they couldn’t have watched TV together here, not unless one of them sat at the desk while the other sat by the fire, and then they wouldn’t have been facing the same direction.’
‘There was a TV in the lounge though, right?’ Jack asked.
‘I don’t think so,’ Cameron said. ‘No, actually I’m sure there wasn’t.’
Lottie turned around, reading some of the books titles. ‘These are all his books.’ She picked up some of the notes from the desk. ‘And notes about seabirds with some graphs. Do you think Mrs Bloxham came in here to watch television when her husband was working, so they could be together?’
‘I guess that would’ve disturbed him,’ Cameron said. ‘I wonder where the key was left. No point keeping it on a hook in the hallway. If a burglar got in he could have opened up straight away.’
‘It just seems odd. There’s no sign of her existence here. Not a single book that might have been hers,’ Lottie commented. It felt like a man’s space, and more particularly that it was designed to suit Edward Bloxham’s needs alone. She wondered if Maria Bloxham had found it a relief when her husband shut himself away, or if it was a barrier between them that exacerbated frustrations.
‘Let’s look upstairs,’ Jack said. ‘I bet there’s another TV up there. Probably another lounge too, given that it was just the two of them.’
They took the stairs in single file, with Jack at the front and Cameron at the back. He brushed the back of Lottie’s left calf as she climbed the steps before him, making her jerk her head back to make sure no one was around to have witnessed it. Cameron winked and grinned
‘Don’t!’ she mouthed at him, wide eyed. It wasn’t the time, and it certainly wasn’t the place. If he kept on touching her like that, sooner or later someone would notice.
They met Pan coming down the stairs as they rounded a ninety degree bend.
‘I’d say it’s worth substantially more than the eight hundred thousand the police estimated, what do you think?’ he asked them.
‘Maybe, given the size of the garden,’ Jack replied.
‘Is the money really relevant?’ Cameron asked.
‘Just getting a feel for their lifestyle,’ Pan responded, continuing down towards the ground floor.
‘Told you so,’ Jack grinned. ‘Pan will have written a price on every item before we’re finished.’
Just-Jen and Garth-the-tattoo were whispering in the first guest bedroom they came to, but stopped as they entered. That was it then, Lottie realised. There was now an us and them. She moved on. The unused bedrooms were all the same. Decorated in bland pastels, with floral bedding and little on the walls. No trinkets enlivened the furniture, no stray items of clothing lay discarded on top of beds or drawers. No hobbies or collections were evident. It reminded her more of a hotel than a home. Maria Bloxham had only just turned forty, yet the house could have belonged to someone a generation older. Perhaps Edward Bloxham had taken responsibility for the decorating – he was much older than her, after all – which raised the issue of why his wife hadn’t contributed. Maybe it wasn’t her thing. Maybe she just didn’t care. But it felt odd for anyone to have lived so many years in a house that lifeless and old-fashioned, and to have done nothing about it.
One of the guest bedrooms had an en suite bathroom. Lottie wandered in there while Jack and Cameron went on a search for another television. Men and their priorities, she thought. Her attention was drawn to a slightly open drawer. Not something that would normally have seemed odd, but every other cupboard door and drawer had been fully shut, just as every curtain was perfectly restrained by its tie-back.
Feeling like an intruder, she opened the drawer a few inches and peered in. A pair of nail scissors, a packet of tissues and a hairbrush with a few strands of dark hair were all that it contained. The bin below had been emptied and a clean liner put in. The shower door was free of streaks and the taps were gleaming. Whoever had used the bathroom had been careful to clean up after themselves, and yet the room had been used recently enough that the obsessive cleaner had missed the slightly open drawer on their last visit.
After closing it, then thinking better of changing the state of the place and going back to reopen it a fraction, she followed Jack and Cameron’s path into the main bedroom suite.
‘Find what you were looking for?’ she asked them.
‘We’ve been avoiding the rest of the snoopers for the last few minutes,’ Jack said. ‘Thankfully they got bored up here, and have gone back down to stare at the bloodstains a while longer. Find anything exciting?’
‘There was no note explaining why she did it written in blood on the mirror, if that’s what you were after,’ Lottie told him. ‘Are you two done?�
�
‘I am,’ Jack said. ‘I’m heading for the front garden for some sunshine. Coming?’
‘In a minute,’ Cameron said. ‘I’m just going to wait for Lottie to have a look in this bathroom, then we’ll be down.’
Jack disappeared down the stairs as Lottie wandered in to inspect the master en suite. ‘It’s a bathroom,’ she said to Cameron as he followed her in, shutting the door.
‘It is,’ he said. ‘Jack and I were surprised at how free of clutter it is. Usually you can’t escape signs of life in a bathroom. Toothbrushes, perfume, razors – who puts absolutely everything away?’
‘The whole house is like that, though,’ Lottie said. ‘Except for the study.’
‘And what about that mirror?’ Cameron asked.
‘What about it?’ she replied, turning to face the full-length mirror on the back of the door that Cameron was pointing to.
He walked behind her, reaching around to engage the door lock, and looking Lottie’s reflection in the eyes. ‘Do you see how beautiful you are?’ He leaned his head down to run his lips from behind her ear to the place where her neck became her shoulder, tightening his arms around her waist.
She pushed him away, rubbing her hand across the skin he’d kissed. ‘We can’t do this,’ she said. ‘Not here. They’re just downstairs and if we get caught …’
‘I’m feeling ill, you came in to look after me and I asked you to lock the door,’ he said, bringing one hand up to undo the tiny white buttons that fastened her dress down the front. She took hold of his wrist and held it away. ‘We have a ten minute window. They’re all busy discussing how palatial … I think that was Tabitha’s word … this place is. Just relax.’
