‘My laptop’s gone from in here. It was in its case… and Gavin, my husband, his wallet’s been taken too, I think. It was always kept by his bed. Not that he ever used it, but he liked it to be there. It’s not there now. It was always kept beside the water glass… but that’s full of blood now. And it’s gone. They’ve taken all his bottles of medicine, pills, everythi…’ Her voice tailed off into a sob.
‘Mrs Brodie?’ Thomas Riddell said, ‘have you got anyone you could stay the night with, or even for the next few days − children, or your mother? You won’t want to spend any more time here than you need, I’m sure. And then we can get on with things… after that we’ll get the place cleaned up for you.’
‘Yes. A good idea. Leave the house,’ Elaine Bell said curtly, before the widow had time to reply. She added, in a softer tone, ‘We’ve a few more… er, things to attend to here. It’ll take maybe another half an hour. Then it would be helpful, if you wouldn’t mind, if you came with us to the station. We need a little more information from you. So I’ll get a WPC to collect some overnight things for you right now.’
‘Ma’am,’ PC Rowe stuck his head round the door. ‘That’s Professor McConnachie here the now. I showed him into the victim’s bedroom and he told me to come and get you.’
‘One other thing,’ Heather Brodie said, aware that the Inspector’s attention was shifting away from her, ‘I think my jewellery case’s gone too. I looked for it last night when I got back, but I couldn’t find it anywhere. I’d taken a bracelet out earlier that evening. None of it was good, but it was all of sentimental value. A photograph, one of my daughter, in an antique silver frame, it’s gone too. My husband kept it by his bed.’
Professor Daniel McConnachie was leaning over the gash in the dead man’s neck, examining it closely through his half-moon spectacles and humming Beethoven’s ‘Ode to Joy’ rapidly through his teeth. Alerted by the rustling of Elaine Bell’s paper suit he looked up as she bustled towards him, Alice following in her slipstream.
‘Ah, the two lovely ladies have arrived. And how are you both?’
‘Lets just get on with it, shall we?’ the DCI answered, feeling out of sorts, unwilling to engage in their usual raillery.
‘As you wish, Elaine,’ he began, gesturing expansively at the blood-spatters on the wall as if it at a sample of Chinese silk wallpaper. ‘It’s obvious that this isn’t an accidental death. The wound’s not self-inflicted either, by the look of things. There is a hesitation mark, a tiny one… but I don’t doubt that we should treat this as a homicide nonetheless. Have you found the weapon?’
‘Maybe,’ the Inspector said cagily. ‘A knife may be missing from the kitchen. Where’s the hesitation mark?’
A latex-encased finger was pointed at a single minute slit-mark directly above the gash.
‘What’s that mean?’ the policewoman asked.
‘Just what it says − hesitation, dithering. In suicides it’s usually a little experiment before the final cut, and much the same, really, in homicide. A moment of indecision before the deed’s done.’
‘So what d’you think we’re dealing with here?’
‘But that’s your job, Elaine, isn’t it?’ he replied tartly, still smarting from her initial show of impatience. He continued his inspection of the dead man’s fingernails, one of which was unnaturally long.
‘OK, OK, I’m sorry. Please… it might be helpful. A fair amount of stuff seems to have been taken from the house, and presumably the injuries are consistent with that − with a botched robbery, I mean, with Brodie being killed in the course of it?’
‘Possibly,’ the professor answered, but his shrugged shoulders suggested that he was not persuaded.
‘Well, if not that, why not that?’ Elaine Bell asked, exasperated by his guarded response.
‘Because of the knife − the throat-cutting,’ a voice from the door said. PC Rowe had slipped into the room and been unable to stop himself from answering, alerting all to his presence despite knowing the likely consequences of his speech.
‘What the hell are you doing in here?’ The DCI spun round, glaring at the young man.
‘But the boy’s right, of course,’ the professor said, magisterially. ‘Your average thieving ned, robber and so on, doesn’t cut throats, does he? If disturbed or whatever, he, or they, just grab the nearest weapon…’ He hesitated, looking round the room. ‘Something like that lamp over there or… or the carafe, even. They beat the person to a pulp, don’t they? Beat them about the head. They don’t come, like a surgeon, prepared with a knife.’
‘These ones didn’t come prepared either,’ Elaine Bell interjected. ‘They just used what they could find.’
‘Even so…’
‘And they took stuff, quite a lot of stuff.’
‘Could be mementoes of the killing or something like that − who knows?’
‘Mementoes! A wallet, a computer, a jewellery box? I don’t think so.’
‘All I’m saying,’ the professor answered, gazing at the corpse, ‘is that you’d best keep an open mind, Elaine, hadn’t you? Remember what happened last time? Of course, this might well be the handiwork of an opportunist thief or thieves. But it might, just might, be that of a cold-blooded murderer. I wouldn’t exclude that possibility quite yet.’
3
In the interview room at St Leonard’s Police Station shortly before noon, Heather Brodie closed her eyes and tried to gather her wayward thoughts, to concentrate, ensure that she did not speak nonsense or worse. Lying was not easy at the best of times, and this would need to be a good performance. So much depended on it. Below the table, unconsciously, she was rubbing her hands together, washing them in accordance with her nurse training, linking her fingers at the knuckles, locking them and moving them from side to side, engaging her thumbs and then releasing them before starting the endless cycle once more. It was a nervous habit, like the clicking noise her tongue made on the roof of her mouth when she was over-anxious but pretending to be carefree.
She picked up her cup and took a gulp of tepid tea, trying to focus on her surroundings and the people with her. The stuff was so watery, it could have been China or Indian, it was impossible to tell from the taste.
‘Mrs Brodie,’ DCI Bell repeated irritably, trying for a second time to gain her attention. The woman had not appeared to hear a word of the policewoman’s earlier set speech, the routine one apologising for ‘intruding at such a time’, her mind clearly elsewhere.
‘Yes?’
‘As I said before, you left your husband at 4.30 p.m.?’
‘No,’ the woman corrected her, forcing her mind to engage. ‘I didn’t leave him then. I last saw him then. I left our flat at more like 6.30 p.m., I think.’
The Inspector nodded and then looked enquiringly into Heather Brodie’s eyes as if to nudge her into divulging more information. In particular, where she had gone when she left the flat.
‘Well,’ Heather Brodie continued, ‘I had plans… had arranged, in fact, to meet up with my sister. We’d intended to go out for a meal, then on to the theatre, and I was going to spend the night with her, but I changed my mind and came home.’
‘So what did you do instead?’ the DCI asked, tapping her yellow biro on her cheekbone as she spoke.
‘No, that’s what I did do. We went shopping, had a meal and then went on to see the play. But, for some reason, I changed my mind about staying with her, and I came back here instead.’
‘Getting home at?’
‘At… about 11.30 p.m., I think.’
‘Then I expect you looked in on your husband, him being an invalid and all?’