Scene of Crime

by Jill McGown

“I know,” said Tom. “What’s a spicule?”

  Lloyd grinned. “A small spike, I expect,” he said.

  “I think these guys can get too clever for their own good. I mean—you smash a hole in a window on a windy, rainy night—what’s going to happen? The curtains’ll billow out, won’t they? So they wouldn’t necessarily have contained the glass.”

  Lloyd nodded. “Good,” he said. “No puzzle, then.”

  “Do you think we should give Watson a pull, guv? Maybe he was taking photographs of her. Stalkers have got to live somewhere—and next door to your target would be very handy. That might be why he moved there. There is something a bit creepy about him—even I’ve noticed.”

  “Perhaps,” said Lloyd. “But I don’t think it’s that kind of murder. If it was, I don’t think he’d have faked a burglary.”

  “All the same,” said Tom. “We’ve got shoe prints and fingerprints we can’t account for, and he was there. She made a complaint to the council about him—and he’s holding out on us about Dexter. It wouldn’t hurt to talk to him again, would it? Maybe check his shoes?”

  Lloyd thought about that, then nodded. “You’re right,” he said. “It’s time we really did have open minds about this.”

  They had come and invited him to help them with their inquiries, and had asked for the shoes he was wearing yesterday; he had thought it better to cooperate with them, but had contacted his solicitor as soon as he’d been brought to the station. He knew all about police stations. You went voluntarily and never came out again. Dexter had been talking, after all, but it didn’t matter, he told himself. It would be his word against that of someone who was seen running away from the scene of a crime.

  “I wonder if you feel like telling me when you last saw Mrs. Bignall alive, Mr. Watson?”

  The question came from Detective Chief Inspector Lloyd, no less. Whatever they said, Eric could see they had graduated him from witness to suspect, from lone sergeant to two-handed interview team, and it was a DCI leading the questioning. He shook his head. “I can’t really remember.”

  The bitch had come to his door saying she knew what was happening and if he didn’t stop she would go to the police, whatever it took. Mad cow. What the hell did what he was doing have to do with her? But it didn’t matter what Dexter had told them about that—the woman was mad. She had accused him of everything under the sun, and he could prove that.

  “Perhaps you remember that Mrs. Bignall made a complaint about your taking photographs of her when she was sunbathing in her garden?”

  “Yeah,” said Eric. “That’s right. But I didn’t take photographs of her. I didn’t even notice her. The woman was barking mad. Saying I was spying on her and God knows what all. I don’t really see how I can help you with any of this, Chief Inspector. I told the constable who came originally and the sergeant here everything I know about this business.”

  “Did you spy on her?” asked Finch.

  “No, of course I didn’t! Why the hell would I want to spy on the woman?”

  “Maybe you fancied her.”

  That nutcase? Finch must be joking, so he laughed. It was only polite.

  “Perhaps you’d like to tell us again what you were doing at eight-fifteen last night,” said Lloyd. “We’ve had two versions already—might there be a third?”

  What had Dexter told them? Not much, or this wouldn’t be a voluntary visit to the station. But enough.

  “I heard the window break, went out, checked my greenhouse, and went back in. On my way back I saw that their French window was standing open, and one of the panes was broken.”

  “And did you do anything about that?” asked Finch.

  “No, as I’ve already told you, I didn’t. Why should I have done anything about it? It was their lookout if they’d had their window broken.”

  “And you still reckon you couldn’t tell the difference between a foot-square pane of glass being broken and the sort of noise that would be made by one of the panes of glass in your greenhouse smashing?”

  “I heard breaking glass, that’s all. It sounded pretty loud to me.”

  “Is my client a suspect in this inquiry, Chief Inspector?” asked Watson’s solicitor.

  “Let’s say we’re keeping an open mind about that,” said Lloyd.

  “Why did you ask for the shoes my client was wearing yesterday?”

  “We’ve taken photographs and casts of shoe prints at the scene, and we will compare your client’s shoes with those impressions. It will be of great assistance to us, if only for elimination purposes. We’re very grateful to your client for his cooperation.”

  “But he has denied having been on the scene of the break-in.”

  “Yes, I’m aware of that,” said Lloyd. “But you see, we don’t think that Mr. Watson has told us the whole truth about last night. For instance, he has said several times that he saw no one.” He turned back to Eric then. “Do you have any comment to make on that, Mr. Watson?”

  “No. I didn’t see anyone at all.”

  “Come on, Mr. Watson,” Finch said. “Dexter Gibson has admitted being there, and he says you saw him and shouted at him to come back. You wanted to know what he’d been up to, didn’t you?”

  So that was it. Watson shrugged. “He’s a good kid,” he said. “And I didn’t see him breaking into anyone’s house.”

  “But you did see him running away?”

  Watson sighed. “Yes, all right,” he said. “I saw him. I didn’t want to get the kid into trouble, that’s all. He works for me—he’s never given me any trouble.”

  “Where was he when you saw him first?” Lloyd asked.

  “At the gate.”

  “But he was in your garden, rather than on the road?”

  Watson shook his head. “No, he was just outside the gate. For all I know, he was just going past.”

  Finch frowned. “But your security light was on when you went out,” he said. “And someone running past your gate wouldn’t activate it, would they?”

  “No. Someone was on my property, all right—but that someone doesn’t have to have been Dexter. Kids that age run if they think they might get into trouble, whether they had anything to do with whatever’s happened or not.”

  Lloyd terminated the interview then. Eric felt pleased with himself; Lloyd had swallowed whole the idea that he had been reluctant to give them Dexter’s name because he worked for him. Which, now that he thought about it, was precisely the case.

  “Oh—one more thing, Mr. Watson. Would you have any objection to giving us a blood sample for DNA testing?” asked Lloyd.

  Eric’s eyes widened. What the hell was going on? “What for?” he asked.

  “We believe that Mrs. Bignall may have been sexually assaulted,” said Lloyd. “Again, we would like, if possible, to eliminate you from the inquiry.”

  Eric looked at his solicitor.

  “It’s up to you,” he said.

  “Well, I think I’d like you to eliminate me, too,” said Eric. “Yes, you can have a blood sample.”

  Now he had to wait until the doctor could get here to take it.

  Ryan had been charged with theft, taking and driving away, driving without insurance, everything they could think of—but not, he was very relieved to discover, manslaughter—and he had been given police bail.

  “Come on,” said Stan, who had arrived when it was all over and his services were no longer required. “I’ll give you a lift home.”

  “What about Dex?”

  “They’ve released him pending further inquiries,” said Stan as he got into the car. He leaned over and opened the passenger door.

  Ryan got in and sat back, his eyes closed. “What the hell was he doing there, Stan? Who beat him up? How come he’s got himself involved in all this?”

  “How come you’ve got yourself involved?”

  Ryan opened his eyes, sat up and looked at Stan. “I swear to you,” he said, “I found that sack in the wood.”

  “Oh, yes?”


  “Well, if you don’t believe me, what chance do I stand with them? Am I off the hook for manslaughter?”

  “For the moment. I wouldn’t count on staying off it, though. So far, you seem to be their only tangible link with this burglary. And a woman died, so they’re under pressure from the press to make an arrest this time. Who do you think they’re going to fall back on if all else fails?”

  Judy, waiting in Lloyd’s office, rehearsing how she was going to tell him about the diary, jumped when he opened the door. She always had; he didn’t know how to open a door other than suddenly.

  “When’s the appointment?” he asked, looking at his watch. “It’s only ten past three—I thought you said it was this evening.”

  “Relax,” she said. “That’s not why I’m here.”

  He sat down. “To what do I owe the pleasure, then?”

  “I don’t think you’re going to like it very much,” she said, going into her bag. She took out the diary and placed it on the desk.

  Lloyd frowned. “What’s that?”

  Judy took a deep breath. “Estelle Bignall’s diary.”

  Lloyd looked at it much as she had; like her, he neither picked it up nor touched it. “Why is it on my desk?” he asked. “Or don’t I want to know?”

  “You don’t want to know, but you’re going to. Marianne Mackintosh gave it to me.” She told Lloyd how Marianne had gotten it.

  “Oh, great,” he said. “And am I right in assuming that you wouldn’t have left your lair to come here if you hadn’t thought it important to my investigation?”

  Judy nodded. “I suggest you read the entry I’ve marked.”

  “How the hell did Warren miss her diary?”

  “Warren?”

  “PC Warren took Bignall round the house to check if anything was missing—he must have been in the bedroom. And you’re telling me this was just lying there for Marianne Mackintosh to pick up?”

  Judy was glad that someone other than she was getting the blame for this unorthodox acquisition of evidence, but she did feel that Warren was being judged harshly. “Presumably he had no reason to suppose he was dealing with anything other than a burglary gone wrong at the time,” she said. “And there’s nothing to suggest it’s a diary, is there?”

  “There’s nothing to suggest it isn’t! Young Sims would have had a look, that’s for certain—he takes the job seriously, which is more than Warren seems to do.” He shook his head, picking the diary up, and sighed. “Oh, it’s me I’m angry with, really. I should have thought about looking for a diary—I was the one who suspected there was more to it than met the eye.” He put on his glasses and began to read, his eyebrows rising. “Does she give him a name anywhere?” he asked.

  “According to later entries, she calls him ‘Papa,’ and he calls her ‘Nicole,’ so that’s not much help. He’s married, and older than her, and that’s about it in the way of clues.”

  The diary started in October, which was when Estelle had joined the writing group, and at first she had written in it every day. Then one Monday in November she had announced that she had a lover, and after that wrote in the diary only on Mondays. She seemed to have been reluctant to embark on an affair, but whoever it was had told her it was just what she needed.

  “She had a novel way of dealing with the guilt,” Judy said.

  Lloyd read a few entries and looked up. “Do you suppose Papa knew that he was a Carl substitute?” he asked.

  Judy shook her head. “I doubt it,” she said. “I imagine if he’d had the slightest idea of her state of mind he would have been off like a shot. She picked the wrong men, all right.”

  “Unlike you,” said Lloyd, with a smile. “If you were paranoid about the man next door taking photographs of you sunbathing, I hope I’d build you a higher wall before December.”

  Judy laughed. “You wouldn’t know how to go about building a wall at all,” she said.

  “True.” Lloyd read a few more entries, and closed the diary with a sigh. “I take it she was entertaining Papa when she was supposed to be at her writer’s group?”

  “Yes. I spoke to the group leader—she says Estelle came for three weeks and then didn’t come back.” She anticipated Lloyd’s next question. “And no, they didn’t lose any other member at around the same time. Besides, they’re all women.”

  Lloyd turned the pages. “Damn,” he said. “There’s no entry at all for yesterday.”

  “No,” said Judy grimly. “I don’t suppose she got the chance to write it up.”

  Lloyd nodded, and closed the diary. “How long do these evening rehearsals usually last?”

  “I’ve only been to a couple,” said Judy. “One lasted about two hours, and the other about three, I think. Last night’s broke up, of course. I think it depended on what they were doing, and on Marianne, of course. I believe she made them all stay until about midnight once, whereas sometimes she decided she was too fatigued to carry on after an hour. Once she sent them all home as soon as they got there.”

  “So Papa had no way of knowing how long he had before Carl came home,” said Lloyd, tipping his chair back. “It’s reasonable to assume he would arrive very shortly after Carl left and that he wouldn’t stay too long, just in case. He doesn’t sound overly considerate of Estelle, from what I’ve read. Half an hour would be about my guess.”

  Judy agreed, but she could feel one of his theories coming on, so what it was reasonable to assume would have very little to do with it.

  “I think she entertained Papa last night,” he said. “And Carl Bignall knew that she would be doing just that.”

  Judy listened as he told her of Freddie’s findings, about Ryan’s insistence that he saw Carl Bignall’s car there. Even she had to concede that Lloyd had every reason to theorize this time.

  “Let’s say Carl found her diary last night,” said Lloyd. “He leaves the house as usual, but he doesn’t go to rehearsal—instead, he drives round thinking about what’s been going on, then comes back, goes in and finds her in the altogether except for a bathrobe, having just entertained Papa. They have a row, they struggle—she cries out, and he pushes her face in a cushion or whatever to keep her quiet. If he had a hand on the back of her neck, that would produce the bruises at either side of her jaw-line, according to Freddie. He’s angry, and he doesn’t let her up for air until it’s too late.”

  It seemed a lot to assume, but Judy didn’t interrupt. It was always best to give Lloyd his head when he was theorizing. Forensics would or wouldn’t back up the cushion theory.

  “So now she’s dead, and he has to do something. So he leaves her trussed up and gagged, shoves some presents into a bin bag, and breaks the window.” His face lit up, as it always did when a little puzzle had been accounted for. “It opens inward, so he can stand inside the house but break the glass from the outside, and he used the curtain to try and deaden the noise—that’s why there was glass in the curtain. And when he let go of the curtain, the glass would fall straight down. Once the window was closed again, it would be about two feet away. It was the window that was open when the glass was broken, not the curtain.”

  Judy hadn’t the faintest idea what he was talking about, but he seemed to, so that was all right.

  “He goes out, and runs down the driveway, locking the gates behind him so no one can get in, which will buy him a little time.” Lloyd brought his chair forward with a thud. “Dexter runs, too, triggering the security light, and the rest of it happens just as Ryan said it did. Then Carl turns up at rehearsal and tells us that Estelle has a cold, to lend credence to what will appear to have happened.” He sat back. “Well? Objections?”

  Her first objection was why did Carl Bignall leave the diary lying around for Marianne or anyone else to find? Surely he would have disposed of it if he’d killed Estelle as a result of what he read in it.

  “He didn’t mean to kill her,” Lloyd said. “Perhaps he forgot that the diary was evidence. Perhaps he believes in hiding things in plain sight�
��if it was just lying there, no one would think anything of it. And he was right, wasn’t he?”

  “Could be.” Judy moved on to her next objection. “Wouldn’t a doctor know that the gag would give him away?”

  “Perhaps,” said Lloyd. “Perhaps not. I don’t really know. But all this would have been done in a panic, and in a very few minutes. Given that the times aren’t exact, I would estimate seven or eight at the most. So I don’t suppose he gave a lot of thought to that.”

  “Which brings me to my third objection,” she said. “He would have to be able to think like lightning. And he didn’t look like a man who had just committed a crime of passion when he did turn up last night. He must have arrived at the theater within twenty minutes of doing all that, thinking, presumably—what with the security light going on and people coming out of their houses—that the police would practically be following him there. And he was perfectly calm.”

  Lloyd assumed the slightly mutinous expression he always had when she argued with his theories. “He’s an actor,” he said. “He pulled it off, and hoped for the best.”

  “And I thought Mr. Jones said the noises he heard were outside.”

  “He left the French window open—they were close to it.”

  “And why was Dexter there?” She smiled. “He doesn’t exactly fit the bill as the boyfriend.”

  “No,” Lloyd agreed. “But he did have a crush on her. Maybe he knew about the boyfriend. Maybe he was there because of the boyfriend. Envious, jealous—worried about her, even. With good reason, since he seems to have been taking advantage of her.”

  “Could be,” said Judy, nodding. She could imagine Dexter worrying about Estelle’s unsuitable liaison.

  “I might have another word with Dexter—see if throwing Carl Bignall’s name into the conversation produces a reaction.” He smiled. “You’ve got more holes to pick in it, I know you have.”

  “Who walked the mud through the house? Not Carl, presumably, because why would he step in the mud at the bottom of his garden? He wouldn’t need to get in from Watson’s garden.”

  “Pass.”

  “Why did he leave her in the kitchen?”