The Cold Hand of Malice (27 page)

Susan glanced up and down the street. There wasn’t a soul in sight. She closed the door and went around the other side and got in. ‘Bloody yobs!’ she breathed disgustedly as she took out her mobile phone, preparing to phone the police, then paused. They were bound to ask questions about why she had left the car there overnight. Name and address, then:
Why were you parked so far away from home? Visiting? Visiting whom? May we have the address? What time was it when you left the car? What time did you return?

Susan put the phone back in her handbag and started the car. The last thing she needed was to draw attention to herself and Simon, so best forget it and simply have the window repaired. She started the engine, glanced in the side-view mirror and pulled away from the kerb.

Good! She was clear. Let one of the other poor devils report the damage. Let them talk to the police.

‘Are you quite sure that Mr Holbrook didn’t leave a message, Janice?’ Peggy Goodwin asked the receptionist for the second time that morning. ‘You know what he’s like. Stick a note up somewhere with Sellotape and expect someone to find it. I’ve looked but I can’t find one, and no one down at the lab has heard from him, although they did say he didn’t seem himself yesterday.’

Lips compressed, Peggy looked at her watch again. ‘He
promised
he’d be in early this morning,’ she said, ‘and just look at the time! Quarter past nine and not a sign of him, and he knows we have a lot to do before the meeting at the bank this afternoon. I’ve called his house, I’ve left a message, I’ve tried his mobile phone, which, as usual, he hasn’t switched on, and I’ve even emailed him, and still no reply.’

Janice West shook her head. ‘I’ve looked around, but I can’t see any note, and there’s nothing in the overnight log. I have tried to call Mr Holbrook several times myself, but there’s no answer.’ She lowered her voice, although there was no one else in the room. ‘Perhaps he was up late last night and slept in this morning,’ she suggested. ‘He has been under a lot of stress lately, what with one thing and another. He was quite short with me yesterday, and that’s not like him. It could be happening again.’

Peggy eyed Janice thoughtfully. ‘You mean depression,’ she said. It wasn’t a question. ‘I had hoped we were past that,’ she said, ‘but you could be right, and if you are . . .’

‘He could be hung-over if he’s started drinking again,’ Janice finished for her.

Peggy drew in her breath as she looked at the time again. ‘Well, hung-over or not,’ she said, ‘I need him here, so someone had better go to the house to see if he’s there, and I’m afraid that has to be you, Janice. If he has been drinking, I don’t want anyone else to see him in that state, so I’ll have Miranda look after the desk while you’re gone. If he is there and still in bed, he probably won’t want to come down to open the door, but don’t give up. Keep pounding on it until he answers. Then get him down here as fast as you can.’

Simon Holbrook’s car was in the driveway, but Janice found a vacant space a couple of doors down. She parked the car and walked back. She’d been to the house only once since Simon and Laura were married. A Christmas party arranged by Laura for their friends and a few carefully chosen members of the staff. Finger food and wine, catered, of course, but Janice hadn’t felt comfortable there. She’d made her excuses and left as soon as she could without causing offence.

She mounted the shallow steps and rang the bell. No answer. She leaned on the bell and kept the pressure on for a good half minute. Still no sign of life. She grasped the doorknob and turned it. She hadn’t expected it to yield, but it did and the door opened to her touch.

She gave it a push and looked down the empty hall.

‘Mr Holbrook?’

No answer. Janice stepped inside, calling out as she moved down the hall, poking her head inside each room as she went. No sign of Holbrook, but then she hardly expected him to be pottering about downstairs, because he would have answered her calls by now.

Janice didn’t like the thought of going upstairs, but she couldn’t put it off any longer. She called out loudly as she mounted the stairs; paused on the landing to call again.

Nothing. The door to the front bedroom was open. She peeked inside and found it empty and smelling of fresh paint. Of course! This would be the bedroom where Laura . . .

Janice turned away and knocked on the door of the second bedroom before pushing it open. The bedclothes had been thrown back and lay in a heap in the middle of the bed, partly obscuring the pyjama-clad form of Simon Holbrook, who lay facing away from her on the far side of the bed.

‘Mr Holbrook?’

Suddenly, Janice was angry. This was the man who was supposed to be in charge; a man she’d looked up to before Laura Southern had virtually taken over the company, yet here he was, drunk as a lord and oblivious to the world.

She raised her voice, unable to disguise her anger as she shouted, ‘Mr Holbrook! It’s Janice from work. You have to get up. Please, Mr Holbrook . . .’

She didn’t really want to go any further into the room; it didn’t seem right to go marching round the large bed to shake the man in his pyjamas, even if he was in a drunken stupor. But she’d come this far and she had to do something. Gingerly, she leaned over the bed and touched his shoulder. ‘Mr Holbrook!’ she called loudly. ‘Please wake up.’

No response. Angrily, she put one knee on the edge of the bed and reached for the man’s shoulder. ‘Mr Holbrook!’ she called sharply, and shook him hard. ‘Please wake . . . Oh, my God!’ she breathed as Holbrook rolled onto his back. His eyes were wide open and he was covered in blood.

And the black-handled knife buried to the hilt in his stomach like a crude exclamation mark only served to confirm what Janice already knew.

Paget counted five stab wounds on the body, although there could be more concealed by the pools of crusted blood. Whoever had done this must have hated the man as much as they had hated Laura – different weapons but the same result – assuming, of course, that both had been killed by the same person. The possibility that there could be
two
killers out there was something he didn’t even want to think about.

‘Looks pretty straightforward to me,’ said Starkie as he stripped off his gloves. ‘Don’t quote me until I have the results of the autopsy, but I think it would be safe to say he’s been dead for at least four hours and no more than six.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Let’s say somewhere between four and six this morning. Depends to some degree on what sort of activity he was engaged in immediately prior to his death. The blood on the floor suggests that he was standing beside the bed when he was first attacked, and he probably put up some resistance before falling back on the bed as his assailant continued to stab him. As you can see by the way the blood is spread all over the sheets, he must have struggled, but he would be dying by that time.

‘If he was standing beside the bed when the first blow was struck,’ he continued, ‘then was struck again and again before being manhandled into his present position, the killer would probably have some of that blood on himself. It would certainly be on his shoes; you can see where blood was tracked across the carpet.’ He indicated a number of dark patches that had been marked off by the quick-thinking constable who was first on the scene. ‘Interesting that they stop there at the foot of the bed; there doesn’t seem to be anything beyond that point.’

Paget stepped gingerly around the stains on the carpet to the end of the bed. ‘I think that he – or she – sat down on the end of the bed in order to change before leaving the room,’ he said, pointing to a smear of blood on the bottom of the duvet. ‘Very deliberate, I’d say.’

‘Probably a “she”,’ said Starkie. Paget looked at him. The doctor rarely ventured into the realm of speculation on something as specific as the sex of a killer. But he might well be right this time. Someone had been in bed with Holbrook; someone who had left a few tell-tale strands of dark hair on the pillow.

Starkie pulled back the bedclothes. ‘Semen stains,’ he pointed out. ‘We’ll need these sheets. However, I’ve got better things to do than stand here solving your case for you. I think it would be safe to assume that he died from his wounds, but I’ll let you know if I find anything to the contrary.’

Tregalles entered the room. ‘No sign of a forced entry,’ he told Paget. ‘The back door is locked and the key is on a ledge beside the door, but the spring-loaded lock on the front door was set on the latch, so it didn’t lock when the killer went out.’

He moved closer to the bed. ‘Nasty,’ he said with a grimace. He put his face close to one of the pillows and wrinkled his nose. ‘Don’t know if that’s perfume or hair spray,’ he said, ‘but it looks like he was sleeping with someone with dark hair. Susan Chase, maybe? You think she killed him?’

‘Certainly looks that way. We’ll need to talk to her.’

Tregalles nodded slowly. ‘Not just a crime of passion, though, is it?’ he said. ‘I mean that knife isn’t exactly the sort you’d normally take to bed with you. But if she did, why wait till morning to kill him? Unless she wanted a sort of farewell ride-to-hounds before she did it. Unless, of course, it was the other way round, and it was her way of telling him she didn’t think much of his performance in bed. So she nips downstairs, gets the knife, then comes back up and stabs him. Either way it doesn’t sound quite right.’

‘As you say, it is odd,’ said Paget thoughtfully, ‘although I’m not sure I would have expressed it in
quite
the same way, but in either case it suggests premeditation.’

Tregalles sighed. ‘Want me to bring her in for questioning?’ he asked. He didn’t sound as if he was looking forward to the task.

‘Lets talk to the people downstairs, first.’ Paget nodded to the man from SOCO who had been waiting patiently by the door for them to leave the room so he could get on with his job.

In the kitchen, Janice West sat at one side of the table, nursing the remains of a mug of tea, while Peggy Goodwin sat across from her, elbows on the table, her tea apparently untouched as she stared into space. At the far end of the table, Molly stood up as Paget and Tregalles entered.

Paget said, ‘Are you all right, Mrs West? Would you like to see a doctor?’

Janice shook her head. ‘I’ll admit it was quite a shock,’ she said, ‘but I’m all right now if you want to ask me some questions.’

Paget turned his attention to Peggy Goodwin, explaining that he needed to talk to each of them separately, and he would be talking to Janice West first. ‘So, if you don’t mind,’ he concluded, ‘I’d like you to go with DC Forsythe until we’re finished here. It’s a matter of procedure, and I shan’t be long.’

Peggy looked at him blankly for a moment, then rose without a word and allowed herself to be led from the room by Molly. Paget pulled up a chair facing Janice West, while Tregalles took up his position at the end of the table and took out his notebook.

‘Let’s begin with what prompted you to come to the house in the first place,’ said Paget. ‘I believe you said something earlier about Mr Holbrook being late for a meeting?’

Janice shook her head. ‘He had promised to come in early so that he and Peggy could prepare for a meeting with the bank this afternoon,’ she said. ‘But when he hadn’t come in by nine, and we couldn’t reach him by phone, we wondered if he might be ill, so Peggy sent me to see if he was all right.’

‘Now, I believe you told the first man on the scene after you called the police that the front door was open when you arrived. Is that correct?’

‘No, not open, but it was unlocked. I rang several times, and when no one answered I gave the doorknob a twist, like you do, you know, never expecting it to open, but it did. It surprised me at the time, and it worried me a bit, because it seemed to me that he must be home if the door was unlocked, and yet he hadn’t answered the bell or my call.’

Paget said, ‘I know you told us this before, but please bear with me, because I want to be absolutely sure I have it right. You said that Mr Holbrook was lying on his side, partly covered with his back to you, and he looked as if he were asleep when you first saw him. Is that right?’

‘Yes.’

‘But the constable who was first on the scene said Mr Holbrook was lying on his back and
wasn’t
covered when he first saw him. Did you move him?’

Janice grimaced guiltily. ‘I didn’t mean to,’ she said. ‘But when he didn’t answer, I leaned across the bed to shake him by the shoulder. That’s when he sort of flopped over on his back and the bedclothes fell away and I could see . . .’

She stopped and took several deep breaths. ‘I could see that he was dead,’ she ended.

‘Did you see any sign of anyone else having been in the room?’

Janice looked down at her hands. ‘I think there might have been,’ she said softly. ‘It’s a big bed and the other pillow looked as if someone’s head had been on it. I don’t
know,
mind you, but since you ask, that’s the way it looked to me.’

‘I see. Anything else?’

‘No.’

‘Did you touch anything in the room?’

‘No. At least I don’t think I did.’

‘What about in the rest of the house?’

Janice thought. ‘The front door, some of the door handles downstairs, and the banister, but I think that’s all.’

‘You called us on your mobile phone?’

‘That’s right. When I saw the way things were, I didn’t want to touch anything, not even the phone, so I used my own.’

Apparently television did have some educational value after all, thought Paget. ‘You didn’t call an ambulance?’

‘Not much point, was there? It wasn’t just the wounds and the blood. His eyes were open and he was stone cold to the touch.’ Janice shivered at the memory.

‘And you waited outside on the step until the first car arrived?’

‘That’s right.’

Paget got to his feet. ‘Thank you very much, Mrs West,’ he said. ‘I must say you kept a very cool head under the circumstances, and I appreciate it. We will arrange for you to make a formal statement in the next day or two, but in the meantime I can arrange to have someone take you home.’