Preface to Murder

by M S Morris

  ‘Harry, can you walk across the broken glass for me.’

  He did as she asked, a puzzled look on his face.

  ‘Now show me the soles of your shoes.’

  He leaned against the wall and lifted up his right sole.

  ‘I see it,’ said Jake, ‘The broken glass gets trapped in the tread of the shoe.’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Bridget. ‘If the intruder had walked through the broken glass, they would have picked it up on their shoes and deposited some in the rest of the house. But the SOCO report didn’t mention any glass in the carpets. Vik’s always very thorough. He would have found it if there had been any.’

  Jake scratched his head. ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘It means,’ said Bridget, ‘that the glass wasn’t smashed by the intruder on their way into the house. It was broken by them as they left.’

  ‘To make it look like a break-in,’ said Harry.

  ‘Exactly. Whoever killed Diane almost certainly had a back-door key to the house, but they broke the pane to conceal that fact.’

  30

  Finally, like fragments of broken glass fitting back together, pieces of the mystery were beginning to slot into place. The killer had misdirected them by pretending to break into the house while Diane was asleep. In reality they had let themselves in silently through the back door with the key, crept upstairs and plunged the poisoned syringe into Diane’s chest, killing her before she had time to respond. They had smashed the glass in the back door on their way out to conceal the fact that they possessed a key.

  Now Bridget understood how they had gained entry to the garden. If the killer had a key to the back door, it was reasonable to assume they also possessed a key to the door in the back wall of the garden. They had entered the property that way, carried out the murder, and slipped away afterwards, locking the garden door after them and leaving no trace behind.

  ‘So we’re looking for someone who had a key to the property,’ Bridget told Jake and Harry. ‘In all likelihood, a family member. And the only relative with a clear motive to kill Diane is her son, Daniel Dunn. He inherits everything – the house, the royalties from her book sales, the lot.’

  Bridget wasted no time in sending a police car round to Ian Dunn’s house to pick up his son. She hoped he hadn’t already left Oxford. Luck was on her side for once and soon after she returned to Kidlington the officers arrived with Daniel in tow.

  He was clearly unhappy at having been brought into the police station under such ignominious circumstances. But Bridget didn’t care about wounded pride. The time for the softly, softly approach had run out some while back.

  Daniel insisted on his right to legal representation, arranging for a lawyer from the same firm that was handling Diane’s estate. Once the lawyer had arrived and had spent ten minutes alone with his client, Bridget entered the interview room with Jake.

  The lawyer was a sombre, self-effacing man in a dark grey suit who sat slightly back from Daniel as if to take a more objective view of proceedings. Bridget wondered if he’d already formed an unfavourable view of his client during Daniel’s dealings with the firm regarding his mother’s will.

  She waited while Jake handed out plastic cups of tea – the best hospitality that the station could muster – and took a moment to observe Daniel Dunn. The man looked tired, as if he hadn’t been sleeping properly. A muscle just below his left eye kept twitching, and when he reached forward to pick up his tea he knocked the plastic cup, spilling some brown liquid over the table.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said as Jake mopped up the spillage with a paper towel. ‘Clumsy of me. This place makes me jumpy.’

  ‘No need to worry,’ said Bridget. ‘You’re not under arrest.’ But Daniel did seem particularly nervous. Well, she could use that to her advantage.

  The lawyer cleared his throat. ‘Inspector, please could you explain why my client has been asked to come in today?’

  ‘We have some further questions relating to the death of his mother.’

  ‘Questions that couldn’t have been asked at home?’

  ‘Questions that may reveal new evidence or that might suggest new lines of enquiry.’

  ‘I see.’

  The lawyer appeared to have no objections, so Bridget turned to Daniel. ‘Mr Dunn, do you possess a set of keys to your mother’s house?’

  He looked at her in surprise. ‘I do.’

  ‘And does that include a key to the kitchen door?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And also the door in the garden wall at the back?’

  ‘Yes.’ He looked at her warily. ‘Why is this important?’

  ‘We have reason to believe that the person responsible for killing your mother used a key to enter the property through the garden door, and then through the kitchen door.’

  ‘I thought you said they broke in.’

  ‘New evidence suggests that the glass in the kitchen door was broken on the intruder’s way out, to make it appear as if they had forced an entry. That would explain why your mother didn’t wake up. As a light sleeper she would almost certainly have heard the sound of breaking glass if she’d been alive when the glass in the door was smashed.’

  Daniel’s brow wrinkled as he processed the new information. ‘That makes sense. But what does that have to do with me? You surely don’t think I had anything to do with my own mother’s death?’ He looked to his lawyer for support but the man gave nothing away.

  At a nod from Bridget, Jake took up the questioning. ‘Where were you on the night that your mother was killed?’

  ‘I was in London. That’s where I live.’ A surliness had entered his voice and Bridget sensed a growing reluctance to cooperate.

  ‘Can anyone confirm that?’

  He thought for a moment. ‘I don’t think so. No.’

  ‘What about your girlfriend?’

  ‘She was away for a couple of days on a training course.’ He thought for a moment. ‘But I was at work until late on Thursday. The end of the tax year is always a hectic time and I didn’t leave the office until gone eight o’clock. I was back at my desk by seven the next morning. You can ask my boss.’

  ‘We will,’ said Bridget. ‘But if you don’t mind me saying, that doesn’t account for your whereabouts at the time that your mother was killed.’

  ‘And what time was that?’ asked the lawyer.

  ‘Between eleven in the evening and one in the morning.’

  ‘Well, I went to bed at about eleven,’ said Daniel. ‘Who can possibly provide an alibi for the time when they were asleep?’

  ‘Someone whose girlfriend wasn’t conveniently away for the night,’ suggested Jake.

  Daniel shook his head angrily. He jerked out his hand and this time the rest of his tea sloshed over the desk.

  Bridget waited patiently while Jake went to fetch more paper towels. When the mess had been cleared up, she asked, ‘How long would it take for you to drive from your home in London to your mother’s house in Oxford?’

  ‘It depends on the traffic,’ said Daniel, his arms now folded against his chest.

  ‘In the middle of the night, with light traffic.’

  ‘I’m not in the habit of driving to my mother’s house in the middle of the night.’

  ‘An hour and a half?’ suggested Bridget.

  ‘About that.’

  ‘So a round trip of three hours.’

  The lawyer leaned forward. ‘Are you suggesting that my client drove to Oxford in the middle of the night in order to murder his own mother?’

  ‘I’m simply trying to establish whether your client can provide any evidence to exclude that possibility. And it would seem that he can’t.’

  ‘My client is not obliged to prove his innocence, as you well know, Inspector.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘So if you have no further questions, I am going to ask that you allow him to leave.’

  Bridget glanced at Jake. ‘No further questions for the moment.’

 
; Daniel stood up, scraping his chair noisily against the floor. ‘I have to say that this was a complete waste of time. Did you really learn anything useful from this interview, Inspector?’

  Bridget regarded him calmly. ‘I learned that you are in possession of a full set of keys to your mother’s house, and that you are unable to provide an alibi for the time of her murder.’

  He glared at her, fury etched on his face. ‘You’ve had it in for me from the start, haven’t you?’

  ‘Not at all,’ said Bridget. ‘I’m simply following the facts.’

  The lawyer took Daniel by the arm to try to lead him from the room, but he shook him off. ‘You want the facts? Well, try this. My father’s a fool when it comes to my mother. While she was alive, he was blind to her faults and always made excuses for her. Even now she’s dead, he still refuses to believe what everyone else knows.’

  ‘And what’s that, Daniel?’

  ‘That she was a selfish, self-centred woman who thought the whole world revolved around her, and was really only interested in other people if they could be useful to her or if they made her feel good about herself. All those causes she went after – her politics and her campaigns – they were just a way for her to bolster her ego and make her feel superior to everyone else. Well, in my opinion, she got what she deserved. She finally came up against someone who didn’t think that her life mattered very much at all.’

  He stopped, breathless. His lawyer once again tried to draw him from the room, but Daniel wasn’t done yet.

  ‘Louise was never fooled by my mother. Oh, I know she always did her best to be civil to her, for Dad’s sake. But she saw right through her. She saw what a callous manipulative bitch my mother was.’

  ‘How can you know that?’

  ‘Because she told me! And do you know what else? Poor Louise has been trying to compete against my mother the whole time she’s been married to my father. He talks about her all the time, you know. Diane this, Diane that. Do you know the real reason my parents got divorced?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Dad always wanted more children, but after I was born my mother refused to have any more. That’s why he eventually left her and married a woman young enough to start another family.’

  Daniel’s claim wasn’t too much of a surprise. It tallied with what Ian had told Bridget himself.

  ‘Louise claims that being childless is a blessing,’ Daniel continued, ‘but that’s just another lie! Why do you think she chose to become a paediatrician? She adores children, and she and Dad were desperate to have a family of their own. They even had fertility treatment. But it never came to anything. So there you have it. More lies. And yet another reason for Louise to feel resentful and inadequate.’ He paused a moment to gather his breath. When he spoke again, his tone was more measured. ‘I know you don’t like me, Inspector. You think I’m nothing more than a spoilt brat and a money grabber. But let me tell you something. I would never do what my father has done to Louise. He may not have intended her any harm, but at times he treated her as if all that mattered was her ability – or her inability – to conceive. I would never put my own girlfriend under that kind of pressure.’

  His words finally out, Daniel allowed his lawyer to lead him from the room.

  31

  Bridget rose early on Friday, unable to sleep once the first light peeped around the curtains and the birds began their morning songs. So many things were bothering her about the case, and not just the fact that she had still been unable to solve it. There was something she was missing regarding Diane’s family. Daniel’s passionate declaration about his father’s desire for more children, and the inability for him and Louise to start a family had set her thinking. She mulled her idea over in the shower, and decided to drive to Diane’s house before going into Kidlington. There was something she wanted to check.

  She parked in her usual spot just outside the house, exactly where Sam and Scott had been stationed on the night of the murder. Looking at the house and grounds, she could now read the sequence of events that had taken place that night. The door at the rear of the property opening silently at the turn of a key; the intruder walking up the garden path leaving no marks behind; unlocking the kitchen door and creeping upstairs; and then injecting the sleeping victim with the poisoned syringe. Diane’s eyes might have opened briefly, taking in her killer’s identity. But she was dead within seconds, leaving the murderer to retrace their steps, stopping just long enough to break the glass in the back door. It had been a meticulously planned murder – audacious, even – to commit the crime knowing that two uniformed police officers were on watch at the front of the house.

  Bridget was confident that she had worked out the exact sequence of events. But she still didn’t know whether this was a politically-motivated assassination or a personal matter. If the latter, had it been driven by hate, a desire for revenge, or greed? If she could unlock that mystery, the identity of the killer would surely be revealed at last.

  In Diane’s living room she went to the shelves and located the red photograph album that documented the road trip around Italy that Diane had taken with Annabel and their respective partners in April of 1983. It was clear from Diane’s laptop password – Neapolitan – that the occasion held deep personal significance to her. What had happened during that three-week vacation that had been so important?

  Bridget flicked quickly through the pages until she found the photograph of the two couples seated around the outdoor table in Naples, the great peak of Vesuvius glowering ominously behind them.

  When she had first looked at this picture she had been charmed by the palazzo-style villa and the allure of pasta and wine spread out beneath a fiery sun. Now she ignored the setting and concentrated on the four people in the photograph.

  Two couples. Diane and Ian. Annabel and John. They would have been in their early twenties at the time, not long out of university, or in Ian’s case, still only halfway through his long medical training to become a doctor. Diane and Ian had got married just two months after this picture was taken, Annabel and John the year after. Two of the four were now dead; one was widowed; one divorced and remarried. All had been touched by tragedy in some way.

  The four people in the photograph were seated around a perfectly square table, the two sisters opposite each other and the two future husbands to either side. The photographer must have been standing diagonally to the table to fit everyone in the shot. Four young people eating, drinking and smiling in each other’s company. A perfectly innocent moment captured in time.

  And yet there was something odd about the picture. The more Bridget studied it, the more she sensed that she was right. She closed the album and took it with her to Kidlington. Before jumping to any conclusion, she wanted to get a second opinion.

  It was no surprise to find Ffion already at her desk, a freshly brewed mug of herbal tea steaming beside her.

  ‘I’d like you to take a look at this photograph,’ said Bridget, opening the album. She pointed to Annabel’s late husband, John Caldecott. ‘Does he remind you of anyone?’

  Ffion studied the photograph intently. She slowly nodded. ‘You can see the similarity in the shape of the brow. The eyes are the same too.’

  ‘I’m not just imagining it, am I?’ said Bridget.

  ‘No, I don’t think so.’

  The implications were already racing through Bridget’s mind but she waited for Ffion to say the name out loud.

  ‘Daniel Dunn,’ she said at last. ‘Daniel looks just like John Caldecott.’

  *

  Before long, the rest of the team had drifted in and the incident room was thick with the mingled scents of freshly brewed coffee, sweet and tangy bacon rolls and greasy jam doughnuts. Bridget took her place in front of the whiteboard, ignoring the smell of food, and quickly outlined her theory that Daniel Dunn might not be Ian’s son.

  She passed the Italian photograph around for everyone to see for themselves, hoping that it wouldn’t come back to her
covered in sticky fingerprints. ‘The physical similarities between Daniel Dunn and John Caldecott,’ she explained, ‘suggest that John is actually Daniel’s father.’

  ‘It makes sense now you say it,’ said Jake. ‘Have you noticed how clumsy Daniel can be? When we interviewed him he spilled his tea not once, but twice. Could he have inherited Huntington’s disease from his father?’

  Bridget recalled the occasion when she had visited Ian Dunn’s house in Headington and Daniel had dropped his leather document folder. Clumsiness didn’t prove anything, but it was consistent with what Annabel had told her about the early stage of the degenerative disease. ‘That’s a very real possibility. Now, Diane and Annabel travelled to Italy with Ian and John during April of 1983. Daniel was born in January of 1984, nine months later. So, how does this change our view of the situation?’

  ‘Temptation beneath the hot Italian sun?’ said Ryan. ‘Well, it gives Ian Dunn a strong motive. If Diane cheated on him during this Italian holiday, and Daniel is really John’s son, then what might he do if he found out the truth?’

  ‘Even though he and Diane had been divorced for ten years?’

  ‘That wouldn’t necessarily soften the blow of discovery. A lie is a lie. And it’s not just about Diane’s infidelity. The son he thought was his, turns out to be another man’s. It would rock his entire world.’

  ‘How might he have guessed the truth, though?’ asked Bridget.

  ‘The same way you did, ma’am’ said Andy. ‘You only have to look at the faces of the two men to spot the similarities.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Bridget. ‘If that was the case, surely Ian would have worked it out years ago.’

  ‘Perhaps he had his suspicions,’ said Ffion, ‘but the first symptoms of Huntington’s disease typically don’t become apparent until your early thirties. So if Daniel’s clumsiness is only just beginning to show itself, Ian might only recently have become certain of the facts.’