“He would have known exactly what was taken,” Diamond said.
“I’m sure you’re right.” She leaned back in her chair. “And now if we’ve covered everything, I do have patients to see.”
He hadn’t finished yet. “Were you also the doctor to Mrs. Filiput?”
She glanced down at her watch. “I was.”
“She died in November, 2013, six months before his death?”
“Indeed.”
“Of natural causes?”
“Not directly.”
He waited, intrigued, for her to explain.
“She had a fall,” Dr. Mukherjee said. “Balance becomes a problem as one gets older, so in a sense it was a natural cause, but a fall is a violent event, so I can’t describe it as natural. She was frail and she was taken to hospital, and she died there the same day. In her case, I didn’t sign the certificate.”
“Who called the ambulance?”
“Mr. Filiput, I believe. I only heard what had happened afterwards, so I’m not the best person to ask.”
“When you say ‘she had a fall,’ was it at home?”
“I believe so. I was told she fell downstairs and sustained a fractured skull.”
“How sad and what a shock for Mr. Filiput.”
“Yes, he came to me for tranquillisers. For a man over ninety there was a lot to cope with.”
“No family to help?”
“No children. And the old couple outlived any siblings they had. I believe after Mr. Filiput died his entire estate went to a railway museum.”
“So I heard. Do you notify social services in a case like this?”
“He didn’t want them. Most old people like to be as independent as they can. He had Mrs. Stratford to clean and do shopping and there were friends who kept an eye on him and brought in cooked meals.”
“He had it sorted, by the sound of things. I’m obliged to you, doctor,” he said, rising and preparing to leave.
“Incidentally…” Dr. Mukherjee said, and then paused as if she was having second thoughts.
“Yes?”
His hopes soared. He’d always envied the TV detective who got as far as the door on the point of leaving an interview and then thought of one more thing that brought the breakthrough revelation. In this case it wasn’t the detective who had thought of one more thing.
Dr. Mukherjee said, “Have you had a blood-pressure check lately?”
“Why?”
“I don’t wish to be personal but your skin colour isn’t too healthy and you’re carrying rather more weight than you should.”
He thought of his chips and beer lunch. “You’re perfectly right, doctor. I’ve been told before. Not enough rabbit food.”
10
Massimo Filiput had died in his sleep, according to Dr. Mukherjee, and his wife had fallen downstairs and died. Not the story Diamond had expected to hear. He grappled with the new information while taking a brisk, healthy, cholesterol-reducing walk round Queen Square. Neither death had been suspicious in the doctor’s eyes, but then the doctor wasn’t a detective.
Could Ivor Pellegrini, having researched ingenious methods of murder, have found a way to kill them both? He’d have needed access to the house in Cavendish Crescent. As a friend and fellow railway enthusiast, it wasn’t impossible that he was a regular visitor there. Pushing an old lady downstairs didn’t seem all that clever, let alone perfect, but-if it was murder-it had worked. Olga Filiput’s collection of jewellery and antiques, including the Fortuny gowns, had been inherited by her distracted husband, a soft touch who had stopped breathing six months later, and the gowns had ended up in Pellegrini’s workshop.
Filiput’s death in his sleep had been less dramatic than a fall, but if there had been any wrongdoing, this one might well be styled the perfect murder.
Or was it natural?
One killing? Two? Or no crime at all?
Murder only made sense if Pellegrini had a compelling motive. The most obvious was personal gain. He’d acquired the gowns and hidden them away. He may well have stacked away other valuable items that had once belonged to Olga Filiput. But did he need to steal? Was it worth the risk? Probably not. He appeared to be comfortably off, no doubt on a good pension.
Think of a better motive, Diamond told himself, already on the lookout for a place to sit. The brisk walk round the square hadn’t been such a good idea. His calves were giving him hell. He found an empty bench near a group playing boules.
For some minutes he watched the players, evidently friends who did this regularly. Much noise and joking masked a strong competitive element. The dominant personalities were soon apparent: the deadly serious win-at-all-costs man with the tattoos and earrings, and the joker with the beanie hat who laughed off every throw but was secretly trying harder than anyone.
Could the killings-if killings they were-be down to a driven personality? Extraordinary things are done in the name of self-assertion. The dominant ego is capable of distorting and discarding personal feeling and basic human values. Pellegrini was a man in retirement who had spent his whole career solving problems and no doubt getting satisfaction and self-esteem from the achievement. Now cut off from all that, yet still capable, he needed a challenge. Then why not apply his skills and experience to devising a perfect theft, followed by a perfect murder?
Only in theory, of course.
Until an opportunity arrived to put theory to the test.
Once.
Or twice?
Or about five times?
Taken as problem-solving, plotting a murder could be treated like any other engineering project, constructing a turbine or a tunnel. He’d deal with it in the same detached way, assess the objective, do the research, devise a plan and derive personal satisfaction from pulling it off.
Not bad.
On a bookshelf at home Diamond had a small library of famous crimes and among them was the case of two young Americans from privileged backgrounds who in the 1920s murdered another youth for no more reason than self-aggrandisement. They made mistakes and were caught, but the idea of intelligent students killing just for kicks had shocked the nation. One had claimed they had done it just for the excitement of committing a perfect murder and getting away with it.
How many murders had been carried out by smarter operators who didn’t get caught?
In the case of Ivor Pellegrini, killing as self-expression made more sense than killing for profit. He’d know what he was doing was morally wrong and dangerous, but the compelling assignment would transcend morality. He’d immerse himself in the challenge. It was about achievement and a job well done. Those cremation pots lined up like trophies fitted the scenario.
Diamond gave himself five minutes more and then strolled back to the car.
The first person he saw in the CID room was Keith Halliwell.
“I’ve been trawling the newspapers, guv,” Keith told him. “Those three-the ones in the urns-all died within two years of each other.”
“Yes, but what of?”
Halliwell didn’t give an immediate answer and Diamond knew why. He wanted some credit for his research. “Two of them had short death notices in the Chronicle and the other, Jeremy Marshall-Tomkin, was given quite a write-up. He’d been a county councillor at one time and also played some rugby in his younger days. The interesting bit is that at one stage he edited the Great Western Railway Journal. It’s a quarterly magazine-still selling seventy-odd years after the company closed.”
“Who buys it then? They must have an elderly readership.”
“It’s nostalgia for the great days of steam.”
“Right,” he said, without really understanding the appeal.
“The point is that Marshall-Tomkin would definitely have been one of the GWR group,” Halliwell said.