In the caravan Anna Plumley wasted no time, equipping herself with a white wraparound overall, a heavy electric torch and a soft pair of house shoes.
âThey won't have had the electricity cut off,' Z assured her and received a tight little grin.
âDark corners. There are always dark corners. Let's go in by the front door, which I imagine was in general use.'
So it was to be a methodical examination. Z considered herself rebuked and went ahead. They began with a walk-through for the visitor to get the general layout, Anna following slowly with both hands clasped behind her, holding the unlit torch. Z felt sure it wasn't the first time that she'd inspected a disaster area. Neither spoke at first, apart from Z announcing the function of each room as they entered. To begin they turned left from the hall, unlocking the dining room.
It was much as Z had seen it, except for the grey powdering of chemicals left by the fingerprint experts. The two women halted at the chalk outline of the body with its brownish staining of the floorboards. This area looked smaller to Z than she'd thought it on first shocked sight. Frederick Hoad had lost less blood than an average alley-way stabbing. But then, as Littljohn said, he'd been shot first and the heart stopped instantly. Why then all the unnecessary wounding later? Must they start looking for a sadist?
The shoe mark was only partial. They'd be lucky ever to identify and match it. There was no more than the toecap of a smooth sole, and not the ridged sort that would more easily pick up foreign matter and scars.
Had the killer walked over to make sure Hoad was dead? Gloating, or appalled? Or simply to follow up with the knife to make sure? She could almost see him dropping the rifle to kneel beside the body, savagely stabbing at it. If the initial shooting had been defensive, this last act wasn't. There had been passion behind it. Either hate for the man or the excitement of killing.
Anna went across to stare into the gun cabinet. âTwo removed,' she murmured.
Z returned from speculation to hard facts. She nodded towards the narrower chalk marks. âThat's where they found the shotgun Mr Hoad fired as he was hit.'
âWhich accounts for the state of the china cabinet. It's put paid to the Royal Doulton.'
âThe second gun, which killed him, could have been a sports rifle. It's still missing. The single bullet was a .22. Hoad's shotgun has been bagged as an exhibit.'
âNext room?' Mrs Plumley waited as Z relocked the doors behind them and restored the police tape.
They examined the large study/office which had two executive desks, one at either end. As well as its computer screen, that by the front window held a vase of pink and mauve asters wilting in a cut glass vase, tainting the closed air with decay. Brown, crinkled leaves had dropped on the tooled leather surface. There was opened correspondence in a wire in-tray, addressed to Jennifer Hoad. All of it personal letters, invitations and greetings cards. The business stuff would have gone direct to her Knightsbridge office.
Apart from its computer, the surface of the other matching desk was bare. The unlocked drawers held the expected clutter of pens, paper clips, stapler, rubber bands and stationery. There was even a small leather case criss-crossed with numerous old scratches and a peeling label written in ink that read âF Hoad, IV B, New House'. It contained a geometry set: a unique memento of schooldays. There was nothing to show that he'd still used it.
The far wall between the desks held two steel filing cabinets, both locked, and more office machinery including a shredder and a fax machine. The rear wall was lined with shelves of books. For later examination, Z promised herself.
Back through the dining room, into kitchen and scullery, where Anna showed interest only in the contents of the dishwasher which she opened with a tea towel covering her hand. It was loaded with clean crockery and cutlery. A red light at the wall socket indicated it was still switched on from previous use.
âNewspaper accounts said that the housekeeper was away. That means the last meal would possibly have been prepared, and certainly cleared away, by the family. Which one of them, I wonder.'
âWe could call the fingerprints team back.'
âMaybe. We'll think about that.'
Out again into the hall. âGun Room,' Anna read off a rustic notice on the door overhung by the stairs' landing.
âIt would have been once,' Z offered, âbut following present rulings all firearms were properly locked away in the special steel cabinet.'
âDiscreetly hidden in the dining room,' Anna agreed. âI wonder how many people knew about the secret interior of the glass cabinet. This sometime gun room appears to be a glory hole, full of golf umbrellas, old slippers, gum boots and garden furniture for the summer. Judging by the scarred floor, I'd say it was the most usual rear entrance and exit. The outer door has a mortice lock as well as the Yale. I wonder how often they forgot to use it.'
âIt was found locked when the first patrol men arrived. The whole house was secure. CID had to break in.'
âAnd the key?' Anna pointed to a cup-hook up by the lintel. âWouldn't that be the best place to leave it?' It was empty now.
In the cloakroom and shower room they found the U-bends had been removed by the forensic examiners. âNo blood traces found,' Z said.
âSo the killer, or killers, went elsewhere to clean up.'
âThere was a tremendous storm that night. Lashings of rain. It would have destroyed a lot of clues, tyre tracks included.'
âAnd covered up all sounds of departure.'
âJust the banging door of the old fodder barn.'
âYes. I read about that. Too melodramatic for the press to miss out on.'
Â
They passed more rapidly through the unlocked morning room and the drawing-room with its glassed-in conservatory extension. In the TV/games room at the rear, with its table tennis
equipment and snooker table, Anna eyed the floor-to-ceiling cupboards. âPlenty of space here for an intruder to hide and bide his time after Freddie was alerted. Perhaps the killer waited here while he went for his gun.'
Upstairs they walked through the bedrooms. Only two were locked, in the south-east corridor. When Z opened the first they met the stale, sickly scent of blood still trapped in there, although all the girls' bedding had been removed.
âWas any semen found?' Anna asked stiffly.
âNo. It must all have been over in a flash. They were heavily asleep.'
Anna turned away, briefly looked into the parents' room, then walked the half circle of the gallery above the hall and went to inspect the two unused guest rooms off the opposite corridor.
âDaniel's room is across the way. It's just as he left it,' Z told her. âHe seems to have packed a kitbag or something similar. See the marks on the bed?'
They looked into his bathroom where Anna inspected the contents of the waste bin. Returning to the passage, Anna rattled the handle of a solid-panelled door at its end. âWhat's through here?'
âStairs to the housekeeper's quarters.'
âHave they been examined?'
âYes, but I haven't been up there myself.'
âSo let's look before she returns. If, indeed, she ever cares to do so.'
As they mounted the narrow stairs to the next floor Z explained how she had interviewed Alma Pavitt who had not questioned taking up her job again. âShe's staying at the local pub until she's given permission to move back in.'
âNot an oversensitive person then? Or perhaps lacking imagination?'
âMaybe both. She appeared barely affected by the time I got her back, but different people have different ways of reacting in shock.'
Z found herself on the point of confiding her impression of the woman, but stopped herself in time. Anna had fitted so well
into her familiarity with senior women CID officers that she'd almost been accepting her as a colleague. Now she reminded herself that the ex-Squadron Leader was an outsider, a member of the victims' family, grandmother to young Angela whose blood still hung sourly on the air.
The top-floor rooms hadn't the lofty ceilings of those on the lower floors, but they were of reasonable size. In their early days several servants would have shared sleeping quarters, men at one side of the house and women at the other. The floorboards were bare and the old furniture had been removed except in one of these distempered rooms which held a collection of domestic junk and travel cases.
Two rooms only were decorated to modern standards, the housekeeper's bedroom with en suite bath, and her sitting room dominated by a wide-screen television and video player. There was audio equipment but no DVDs, and only a few cassettes, mostly of smooch music.
The long laundry room was a Victorian museum. A black-painted iron stove at one end supported a robust wire cage in which several heavy pressing-irons hung ready for application to a heated griddle. A broad table some eight feet long was still thickly padded and covered by a yellowed cotton sheet drawn tight and tied at the corners with white tapes. For almost the whole length of the room, which ran from front to back of the house, wooden racks were suspended from pulleys on the ceiling, for the drying and airing of damp linen.
âEither in days past the weather was more often inclement, or the gentry were easily offended by the public sight of bloomers and stays blowing in the wind,' Anna surmised, gazing up. Her voice was lighter, as though the break from sterner matters had come as welcome relief.
At the rear extremity was a closed door. Z opened it to disclose a well-equipped darkroom. The developing trays were empty, as was the drying line with its row of clothes pegs. Labels on the bottles of chemicals in the cupboard bore recent dates; so one of the family had been keen on photography.
âHave you seen enough?' Z asked. Anna was no youngster and
apparently she'd been hard at it from the early hours. Time now, surely, to take a rest.
âEnough for the moment,' Anna allowed. She had opened a door in the outer side wall to view the iron staircase of a fire escape. âI think we've earned some lunch. Come and join me in my galley. You'll find I'm not the worst of cooks.'
Â
DCI Salmon had summoned Bertie Fallon up from Bristol where, in addition to being Hoad's sole other director, he performed the duty of General Production Manager at the glass furnace foundry. News of the carnage at Fordham Manor had been broken to him by the scanty national television news available at weekends. Relaxing on Sunday with a few fingers of single malt following an abortive visit to his golf club where the fairways were still unfit for play after Friday night's country-wide storm, he'd been shocked out of his recliner. Incredulous and almost distraught, he had immediately contacted Thames Valley police and had the story confirmed.
âLook, what can I do?' he demanded. âFreddie was the business head, the money man. Our functions were quite separate. Do I try to carry on, or what? Sorry to harp on about the works, but they won't run themselves. Poor old Freddie. My God, I still can't believe it. Who'd do a thing like that to him? And the whole family wiped out, you say? Must have been a madman.
âEh, what? No, Chief Inspector, I can't just drop everything and come running. There's a consignment of steel due in at the docks tomorrow. God knows what kind of cock-up they'd make of it if I wasn't there to oversee.
âNo, the delivery can't be put off. There'd be storage charges and Finance'd go mad at the extra expense. We're a small operation and run a tight ship, as Freddie always said â¦
âFreddie â¦poor old sod; I just can't believe he's gone.'
Voices on the other end of the line had been switched. âMr Fallon, this is Superintendent Yeadings. I do understand what a terrible shock this has been for you, a colleague and friend to Mr Hoad. But we desperately need all information we can turn up on his background, both personal and professional. Who is in a
better position to help us than you? The first few days of any murder investigation are of vital importance, so please sleep on our urgent request overnight. If you still find yourself unable to come here tomorrow I will send a CID officer to interview you at your home.'
Fallon complied. It didn't suit him to have police disturbing his domestic arrangements. He rang half an hour later to announce he'd made alternative arrangements for tomorrow's delivery and was already on his way.
Â
Z, returning from her caravan lunch (garlic button mushrooms followed by a shared cheese and chives omelette; coffee, but no dessert), found the visitor in conference with Salmon and the Boss. Yeadings broke off to introduce her.
âMiss Zyczynski is one of my CID sergeants concentrating on this case. How did you get on at the Manor, Z?'
âMrs Hoad's mother is taking it well, sir. She asks permission to employ professional cleaners, if SOCO have finished. I told her about the specialist team we sometimes use. She appeared unfazed by what she saw, but we didn't get as far as the stables. I felt the house was enough for the present. She intends catching up on lost sleep this afternoon.'