Cold Wrath, page 5
‘Well dressed.’ Dr D’Acre turned her attention to the corpse. ‘Casually dressed,’ she commented, ‘but those clothes, that footwear, they don’t look cheap to me. He kept himself clean shaven, the stubble on the chin which you can see is post-mortem. Facial hair will continue to grow for a day or two after death has occurred as I am sure you will know, but that will further assist me to determine the approximate time of death which, as I said, I know that you will be asking for, and which I cannot give. Not officially anyway. The cause yes … if I can … but the when of it … no … although I will try my best to accommodate you, even if it is off the record.’
‘I appreciate that, ma’am.’ Hennessey kept a distance from the corpse, permitting Dr D’Acre room to manoeuvre as she made her initial examination of the corpse. ‘I really would appreciate that,’ he repeated.
‘Do we know his identity?’ Dr D’Acre turned to Hennessey. ‘It’s early days yet I know, but do you know who he is?’
‘He is believed to be one Anthony Garrett, ma’am,’ Hennessey replied, ‘of which we believe something is known, but I know not what as yet.’
‘Known to the police, you mean?’ Dr D’Acre stood up.
‘So we believe, ma’am,’ Hennessey replied. ‘Yes, known to the police.’
‘A very neatly kept house …’ Dr D’Acre surveyed the room. ‘Nothing seems to be out of place in this room. Nothing at all. It is fastidiously neat.’
‘Yes, ma’am.’ Hennessey waved his hat and created a draft which disturbed the swarm of flies which promptly re-settled over the corpse. ‘We also made that observation. We believe he lived alone.’
‘That I can well understand.’ Dr D’Acre glanced once again around the room. ‘Magnificent house that it may be, I would think that only another totally obsessively neat person could live with this man and they would both have to agree exactly about what went where. Can you imagine that collusion of minds? Horrible. I mean, that would really be a meeting of two minds, and not a meeting I would want to be part of. I certainly could not live with a man such as this.’ Dr D’Acre once again looked down on the fly-covered corpse of Anthony Garrett.
‘I too made the same observation,’ Hennessey stated. ‘That is to say that I made it to myself and only myself, not yet to my team. He seems to have somehow managed to sanitize all the humanity out of this house. The rooms upstairs are all in the same manner, with such a precise ordering about them.’
‘No humanity in the house.’ Dr D’Acre repeated the observation. ‘You know, Chief Inspector, that is quite a succinct way of putting it. It really is a lifeless house. I do not find such obsessive neatness to be particularly endearing.’ She paused. ‘Well, back to work. Can you help me to turn him and to remove his lower clothing, please? I have to take a rectal temperature and also a reading of the room temperature and, once that is done, then all I need to do here has been achieved. So once all the photographs you need to take have been taken, then the corpse can be removed to York District Hospital. We are, in fact, enjoying a very rare quiet period at the moment and so I will be able to conduct the post-mortem this afternoon. Will you be observing for the police, Mr Hennessey?’
‘Yes … yes, I think I’d like to be there for this one. I’d like very much to observe this one for the police,’ George Hennessey replied in a soft but determined voice. ‘I confess that I think that this murder has an intrigue about it. I feel that there is a story here. A man living alone in a huge house, packed with valuables, a single gunshot wound to the head and yet there is no sign of forced entry, so he must have known his killer … or killers, and he let him, or her, or them, into the house. Yet, despite that the execution seems to have been carried out in a calm manner. Totally without emotion, almost like a professional execution by the criminal underworld. It seems to have been cold, and ruthless and efficient.’
‘Yes … I do see what you mean, but that is more your department than mine, although I do fully see what you mean.’ Dr D’Acre leaned forward and withdrew the rectal thermometer from her bag. ‘To wholly misuse the word, but I do fully see what you mean about this murder being “professional”. He seems to have invited his murderer into his house and then calmly sat down in this chair whereupon he, or she, or they, shot him. Just once … right in the middle of his forehead, a small-calibre bullet by the look of it … a real assassin’s weapon. You know it is an observation that I have heard, that the closer the murderer gets to his victim, the more ruthless they are. A high-powered rifle with a telescopic sight, or a small-calibre gun fired from a few inches away … of those two the ruthlessness is with the latter. So let’s get him turned and clothes off. Shall we say two p.m. for the post-mortem?’
‘Suits admirably.’ George Hennessey advanced on the corpse of Anthony Garrett, scattering the swarm of flies as he did so. ‘Two p.m. it is. I’ll be there.’
It was Wednesday, 11.30 hours.
TWO
Wednesday 21 June, 11.10 hours – 23.00 hours
In which Detective Sergeant Somerled Yellich hears of the three women who recently called on Mr Garrett at The Grange, hears also of Mr Garrett’s use of a pathway at the rear of his house, and is later at home to the always too kind and most gracious reader.
‘They arrived, or visited perhaps I should say … they visited on Saturday last. One really could not miss them: they made quite a striking impression. It really was just the sort of thing that one would not forget in a hurry and indeed, could not forget. Identical … identical … identical, all three of them, clothing and hair colour and style, weight and figure. Identical. Totally identical. There was just nothing to set one of them apart from the other two. Not one small detail. Perhaps if you were close enough to shake their hand, or hands, then you’d notice some small detail of difference but at this distance they were identical in appearance. You see their clothing was like a civilian uniform, if you understand what I mean, the way air hostesses dress in the same uniform, or receptionists in large hotels?’
‘Yes … yes, I know what you mean, ma’am. I know exactly what you mean.’ As he had been requested, Somerled Yellich had walked from The Grange, across the road and knocked reverentially on the door of the bungalow which stood directly opposite Anthony Garrett’s house. As he approached the bungalow, the drive, which was similarly lain with gravel, caused his feet to ‘crunch’ it as he walked. As he drew closer to the building he noticed the pale-grey brickwork of the bungalow which contrasted strongly with the red tiles of the roof. He further noticed the two-car garage beside the building. Although he knew little about house construction, the bungalow did seem to him to be particularly solidly constructed, and it also seemed to him to have been particularly carefully built. The bungalow was clearly new, but it was not a ‘thrown together’ quick-build. It was certainly no ‘Friday afternoon job’, as so many modern houses seemed to him to be. Yellich stood at the door which he found to be set in the side of the building rather than the front aspect and waited until his knock was answered. As he waited for the door to be opened he looked about him with a police officer’s eye, searching for detail. He noted a very carefully tended garden but one which was, at that point, in need, he thought, of a little attention as though the contract gardener was due his regular visit, or as though the homeowner had been too busy with other projects to cut the lawn and trim the privet.
The door of the bungalow was opened soon upon his knocking, silently so, but widely, by a frail, elderly-looking lady in a lavender-coloured dress who Yellich estimated to be in her seventies. She had carefully kept silver hair which was cut neatly and short. Her feet were encased in black patent-leather shoes with a modest heel.
‘You’ll be the police, I would think?’ The woman spoke in a strong, clear tone of voice which Yellich found to be both warm and welcoming. She looked up at him with a generous smile and alert brown eyes.
Yellich returned the smile. ‘Yes, madam, I am the police.’ He took out his ID card and began to show it to the elderly woman.
‘Oh … it’s all right.’ She held up her hand. ‘I don’t need to look at your identity card. You look like a police officer and I have been keenly observing the police activity at The Grange all morning. Something of note has happened at that house methinks … and I saw you walk from amongst the police officers there and I watched as you walked up my drive. I don’t open my door so widely and so readily to strangers. I have a security chain and I usually keep it across the door.’
‘I am pleased to hear that,’ Yellich replied with a nod and a smile. ‘I am Detective Sergeant Yellich of Micklegate Bar Police Station in York.’
‘Linda Holyman,’ the woman responded. ‘Mrs Linda Holyman, and you’ll be wanting to know if I saw anything of note occurring at The Grange recently and in fact I think that I may very well have done. Do come in and I’ll tell you about the three little maids from school.’
‘Three little maids from school?’ Yellich repeated and grinned as he did so. ‘What on earth do you mean, madam?’
Then, once seated in Linda Holyman’s lounge, she then said, ‘Identical … identical … identical.’
Mrs Holyman then proceeded to relate what she had witnessed the previous Saturday morning, being that of the three women who seemed to her to be identical in dress, hair colour and style, build, figure, age … in fact, so identical that she could not distinguish one from the other two, especially when they started to weave.
‘Really … weave?’ Yellich reached into his jacket pocket and extracted his notepad and ballpoint pen. ‘What do you mean?’ he asked for a second time.
‘I mean that they weaved in and out of each other. I mean that their paths weaved in and out of each other.’ Linda Holyman then went on to relate how she had watched as the three women had walked in paths which interweaved with each other as they progressed from the car to the house, and how she saw just one of the women enter the building while the other two remained outside, standing either side of the front steps which led up to the door, ‘like sentinels,’ she added, and how then just a few moments later the woman who had entered the house re-emerged, and how the three women then took another similarly interweaving path back to where the car in which they had arrived waited for them. ‘I really could not tell one from the other,’ she explained. ‘I very rapidly could not tell which one sat in the front and which two got in the rear seat, and I could certainly not tell you which one of the three women was the one who entered the house.’
‘I see …’ Yellich wrote on his notepad. ‘So can you describe them, please? Clothing first, that’s always a good place to start. You said they seemed to be in uniform?’
‘No … no …’ Linda Holyman held up a long admonishing finger. ‘No, I didn’t say that.’ She inclined her head. ‘No, I said that their clothing looked like it might have been a civilian organization’s uniform, in that you might say that they were uniformly dressed, but probably not a uniform as such. Each wore a grey skirt … with hems about knee length, a red blouse, open-necked, a black handbag which they each had slung over their right shoulders, and black shoes with a small, sensible heel. Their height? Well, what can I say? Average … say over five feet six but less than five ten … so I can’t really help you there very much. Their hair seemed long and blonde, so really very ordinary.’
‘Did your husband also see them?’ Yellich asked. ‘You did, I think, mention that you were a married lady?’
‘I doubt it.’ Linda Holyman smiled gently. ‘Malcolm, my husband, passed away peacefully in his sleep about ten years ago, and so I do really doubt that he saw anything.’
‘I am so sorry.’ Yellich felt awkward.
‘No reason to be sorry, young man, no reason at all.’ Linda Holyman continued to smile warmly. ‘You were not to know. But then that is the way of it, so it seems to me. Men live a short life and we women just go on and on which is why there are always more women than men in the UK, and probably the world over. That statistic doesn’t mean rich pickings for men, it means that all the excess women are frail and elderly and who are very patiently waiting for the end so that they can join their husbands. Anyway, I can see an awful lot from this chair, which was Malcolm’s chair when he was still with us, and as you can see, I have a very good view of The Grange, the gardeners who call seemingly when they feel like it, and the house-cleaning service, in their yellow van. I use “Mrs Mop” in a white van, but Mr Garrett uses “The Maids” in their yellow van.’
‘So,’ Yellich asked, ‘to confirm … you saw the three women last Saturday morning, so four days ago? It is important that you’re sure of the day that they came.’
‘Yes.’ Linda Holyman held eye contact with Yellich. ‘It was last Saturday in the forenoon. I am seventy-eight years of age but my eyesight is still good and my memory is still good. The old instrument …’
‘Instrument?’ Yellich queried.
‘Instrument,’ Linda Holyman repeated. ‘I used to be an actress, and thespians, let me tell you, do not have bodies, they … we … have “instruments”. At drama school you are taught how to move in a three-dimensional way for example and to stand a little at an angle to the audience in a theatre so as to help develop said three-dimensional look. It’s a practice called “projecting your instrument”.’
‘How interesting.’ Yellich inclined his head. ‘That really is very interesting.’
‘Yes. So the instrument is failing,’ Linda Holyman continued. ‘I have rheumatics and lately have developed an arthritic knee. I feel unsteady on my feet from time to time and sometimes I feel unbalanced. It’s age, you see, and it happens to all of us if we live long enough and I always say it’s a damn sight more preferable than dying young. But anyway, the top bit of me … the head, still works a treat and the eyesight is still first class.’
‘Good for you,’ Yellich replied. ‘Good for you. I hope I’ll be able to say the same thing if I reach your age.’
‘Yes, nobody’s future is guaranteed but I do consider myself very lucky … very fortunate. So I can confirm that it was Saturday last, in the morning, that I saw the three identically dressed women call on Mr Garrett.’ Linda Holyman paused. ‘So what else can I tell you about those women? Well … they arrived in a silver car, I can tell you that, but it wasn’t a taxi, of that I am sure. It didn’t have that white plastic box thing on the roof which all taxis have and which glows all the time to signify that it is available for hire. It was just an ordinary car.’
Yellich wrote on his notepad.
‘They arrived in the late forenoon, at eleven a.m.,’ Linda Holyman continued. ‘The Week in Westminster had just started on the radio and that is broadcast each Saturday from eleven a.m. to eleven-thirty a.m.’
‘That is a very useful observation,’ Yellich commented, ‘very useful indeed. This is all very good.’
‘And they departed before the programme had finished,’ Mrs Holyman added.
‘Again, so very useful. A date and a very exact time. This is excellent. Excellent.’
Yellich sat adjacent to Linda Holyman in her sitting room, so that he had to turn his head to the left to look out of her window at The Grange opposite. Mrs Holyman sat in a chair facing the window. Yellich found the room to be neatly kept, with a pale blue carpet and pale blue painted walls decorated with prints of paintings by Vermeer and Van Gogh. There was a modest-sized bookcase in an alcove beside the right-hand side of the hearth. The room smelled gently of furniture polish. A fly buzzed angrily against the windowpane. Yellich glanced at it with annoyance.
‘I’ll let it out later,’ Mrs Holyman offered in an apologetic tone. ‘My husband, Malcolm, was a builder. He built this house and he was very concerned about the environment. Malcolm always ensured his houses were on a generous plot of land and not crowded together on top of each other. So it was the case that if another small-scale builder might squeeze three or even four houses on a plot of land, Malcolm would build only two, sometimes even just one on the same-sized plot. “People need houses,” he would say, “but they also need grass and trees and space for their children to run about in.” It reduced his profit margin but not by a great deal and people valued “Holyman Homes”. They still do. A “Holyman Home” retains its value. If you buy one you’ll be able to sell it again.
‘And …’ again Linda Holyman held up a long finger, ‘and he would never swat a fly. That was the sort of man he was, and I have very fond memories of him. He would always be reminding people about nature’s food chain. He would say that if you remove a layer from the food chain, everything above it will die of starvation, and insects are at the bottom of the food chain. So don’t ever swat a fly, open a window and let it fly out, he would say, a bird will find it and eat it.’
‘I have never thought of it like that,’ Yellich replied. ‘I confess that that has never occurred to me. From now on I’ll think twice before swatting a fly.’
‘That was just Malcolm,’ Linda Holyman continued. ‘You know, each time he completed a house, he’d find a length of wood and bury it just below the surface at the bottom of the garden, so it would rot and insects would find it and by that means he’d start a food chain. He was just a very caring man, very caring indeed … a lovely man … a very lovely man.’
‘It certainly does seem so,’ Yellich replied. ‘But can we get back to the matter in hand, please … the three women who called on Mr Garrett last Saturday?’
‘Yes, of course. What else can I tell you …?’ Linda Holyman glanced down and to her right. ‘Oh, yes … all three wore a pair of white gloves. I’m sorry, I should have told you that when I was describing them,’ Linda Holyman apologized. ‘That small but important detail slipped my mind.’
‘No matter,’ Yellich replied, gently so. He wanted to keep the interview at a slow, conversational pace. ‘Would you say that the three women were in a hurry … or that they seemed anxious?’
‘No, just the opposite in point of fact, just the opposite.’ Mrs Holyman looked up at the ceiling of her sitting room. ‘It was as if they had all the time in the world. It was like that. They strolled, or you could say that they sauntered, up the drive to the house and then they returned to the car in the same relaxed, oh-so-casual manner.’
