“About ten-thirty.”
“She was already dressed in pajamas-or changed into them while the killer was with her. You mentioned boyfriends. What did we get on her love life?”
“Those two men you mentioned were interviewed. Neither was dating her at the time of the murder.”
“They’d say that, wouldn’t they?”
“Her diary said it. She last saw the horsey type on October the eighth, at his riding-school-but I gather it was purely the riding she went for.”
“The horse riding?”
She didn’t dignify his attempt at bawdiness with a smile.
He picked up the thread again. “And the murder was…?”
“October the eighteenth.”
“What about the rock musician?”
“Jake Pinkerton? He isn’t mentioned at all. You’d need her 1988 diary for him.”
“It wasn’t a personal diary, if I remember, just a record of engagements.”
“Yes. Do you want to see it?” Julie delved into the box file and handed across a laminated book with a Matisse reproduction on the cover.
He said as he opened it, “The point I was making is that she would make a note of dates with boyfriends in here.”
“She did.”
“And it’s tempting to assume that those were the only times she saw them. Do you see what I’m getting at? If she met someone at a party or in the street, she wouldn’t write their names in here.” He turned to October. He remembered seeing the entry for the day of the murder, John Mountjoy’s name and the time 7:30 inscribed in confident rounded letters in blue-green ink. Not the last entry in the diary, for there were engagements noted into December, but it was still salutary to see the name written there, on the fatal day. At the trial the sheer volume of paper evidence-including this diary entry- had made an impact-all those photocopied documents from the college files, each in its transparent folder.
He flicked back a few pages and found the name Marcus occurring regularly in August. Marcus Martin, the horse rider. “I interviewed this thoroughbred myself. Well connected, lives in style in a manor house the other side of Frome.”
“Your notes are here on file. He said they drifted apart.”
“When I saw him he didn’t strike me as a crime-of-passion man. He wasn’t suffering pangs of jealousy. There was another young woman in the house cooking him pancakes.”
“Crepes, I expect.”
Diamond shot her a surprised look. Her pronunciation had thrown him. “Don’t know. Wasn’t offered any.” He couldn’t fathom why Julie was so quick to condemn another woman’s cooking. “The point is that Marcus was well-adjusted.”
“And with an alibi for the night of the murder.”
“For what it was worth.”
“Didn’t you believe it?”
“Your comment just now summed it up. The alibi was supplied by the pancake maker. He spent the night at her flat, she claimed.”
As if that were settled, he started turning the pages of the diary again.
Julie anticipated him. “The other boyfriend was the rock musician, Jake Pinkerton.”
“I didn’t meet him. One of the others had that privilege. I don’t think I rated him much.”
“As a musician?” she said, and her eyes popped wide like a teenager’s. “He was something special. His first solo album went straight to number one in the British chart.”
“As a suspect.”
“Don’t you like his music?”
“I’d rather listen to madrigals,” he said truthfully, though he knew precious little about madrigals. “The music revolution passed me by. Let’s confine this to his other activities.”
“He seems to have been on close terms with Britt a couple of years before. The relationship cooled during 1989, according to his statement.”
“I remember now, there was a daft theory about drugs that was given an airing at one of our meetings. Pinkerton had a couple of convictions for possessing pot and the idea was that Britt had some dirt on him she was threatening to publish. I wouldn’t think it could hurt his reputation much.”
“Are you eliminating him?”
“Just the motive at this stage. He’s still in the frame as an ex-boyfriend, just. Where was he on the night of the murder?”
“At home in Monkton Coombe.”
“Monkton Coombe? He must be past it, Julie, burned out. Does he have anyone to back the alibi?”
“He was seen in the local pub that evening. He left about ten-thirty.”
“Plenty of time to get to Larkhall. Is that the extent of it? No more suspects? You’d better go through this diary minutely. Make a file on everyone she mentions.”
“On computer?”
“You’re joking. When I say files I mean things you can handle, pieces of card, not dancing dots that make your eyes go squiffy.”
She knew his prejudice well enough not to question it.
“But before you start,” he went on, “you were going to look for gaps in the evidence that convicted Mountjoy. Did you find any?”
She assessed him with her large blue eyes. Whatever she said was going to sound awfully like criticism of his handling of the case. “I’m sure you were only too aware of it at the time,” she prefaced it, “but I was surprised that no blood was found on Mount joy’s clothes.”
“It wasn’t for want of trying. We sent every damned shirt he possessed to the lab. Your criminal these days watches television. Practically every night he can learn about DNA analysis and ultraviolet tests. If it isn’t there in a documentary it comes up in the news or Crimewatch or some fictional thing. We can’t blind them with science anymore.”
She let him ride his favorite hobbyhorse, then added, “The murder weapon was never found.”
“Must have got rid of it like the bloodstained clothes, mustn’t he?”
“I suppose he must.”
“Is that it?”
She admitted that it was. She could think of nothing else in Mountjoy’s favor.
“Better see what there is in the diary, then.”
Chapter Eight
Ten days before she was murdered, Britt Strand wrote the name of a Bath city street in her diary. No house number, inconveniently, but if Peter Diamond’s memory could be trusted, Trim Street was short. There couldn’t be more than twenty addresses, several of them shops or businesses. It was one of those tucked-away cobbled streets east of Queen Square. If nothing else, Diamond told himself as he made his way there, he would refresh his memory of the place, a quiet visit in the fading light of an October evening. Bath, like most provincial cities, shuts early and empties fast.
He approached from Upper Borough Walls, the section of the old city defense that the Victorians decorated with battlements to make it look more medieval. In the shadow of the wall, below pavement level-just outside the ancient boundary-was one of Bath’s secret places, a tiny courtyard where, a stone plaque informed the public, 238 patients from the Bath General Hospital were buried. In the year 1849 the graveyard was closed “from regard to the health of the living”- a veiled reference to the cholera epidemic of that year. He gave it a glance and moved on. No disrespect, but the health of the living didn’t interest him much.
A few steps farther on was Trim Street, named not for its appearance, but, prosaically, because the land had once been owned by George Trim. In fact, the narrow street was an architectural ragbag of eighteenth-century neoclassical and 1960s so-called reconstruction. The disharmony was compounded by the way the facades of the original buildings had been treated, or neglected. One was painted pink, another, next door, cleaned to reveal the creamy Bath stone, while the next was left with two hundred years of soot and grime.
Diamond hesitated at the bottom of Trim Street. This was the end that had been reprieved from the 1960s’ rebuilding; on one side, a couple of shops, an art supplier and a boutique, that had second entrances in the little graveyard under the city wall. Opposite them, looking in want of restoration, was the one house with a classical facade, and also a plaque that explained why it had escaped being turned into a coffee shop or a wine mart; General Wolfe, the hero of Quebec, had once resided there when his poor health required daily visits to the spa waters. There were also two businesses that suggested that the modern Trim Street was a source of vitality: a Studio of Fitness and Dance and a building intriguingly labeled The Idea Works. A neat play on words, he thought. Maybe the nick in Manvers Street should be called The Investigation Works. Maybe he would try it on John Wigfull and see what reaction he got. Maybe.