Orchestrated Death

by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles

  ‘Yes, I know that. But it seems an odd choice.’

  ‘It produces deep anaesthesia very quickly. Of course, it also wears off very quickly – except that this poor child was given enough to fell a horse. Wasteful chaps, murderers.’

  ‘And you’re sure that’s what it was? No other drugs?’

  ‘Of course I’m sure. As I said, this stuff normally wears off very quickly, but if you administer enough of it, it paralyses the victim’s respiratory system. They stop breathing, and death follows without a struggle.’

  ‘Presumably only a doctor would have access to it?’

  ‘Yes, but even then, not every doctor. It would have to be an anaesthetist at a hospital, or someone with access to hospital theatre drugs. An ordinary GP who wrote out a prescription for it wouldn’t get it. Not what I’d call the murderer’s usual choice. It’s eminently detectable, and so difficult to come by that I should have thought the source would be easily traceable. Now if it were me, I’d have –’

  ‘I think they wanted it to be detected,’ Slider said abruptly.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Well, look – there was no attempt to hide the body, or to make it look like suicide. They must have known she’d be found before long. And then there were the cuts on her foot.’

  ‘Ah yes, the cuts. Inflicted after death, of course.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘With a very sharp blade. They were deep, but quite clean – no haggling. A strong hand and something like an old-fashioned cutthroat razor, but with a shorter blade.’

  ‘A scalpel, perhaps,’ Slider said quietly.

  ‘Yes, I’m afraid so. Exactly like that.’ There was a silence, filled only with the hollow, subaural thrumming of an open line. ‘Bill, I’m not liking this. Are you thinking what I’m thinking?’

  ‘It looks,’ Slider said slowly, ‘like an execution.’

  ‘Pour encourager les autres,’ Cameron said in his appalling Scottish French. ‘The letter T – Traitor? Or Talker perhaps? But put pentathol, scalpel and a strong, steady hand together, and it comes out Surgeon. That’s what I don’t like.’

  ‘I don’t like any part of it,’ Slider said. An execution? What could she have been into, that young girl with her unused body?

  ‘Well, you should have your copy of the report this afternoon, with any luck. When’s the inquest?’

  ‘As soon as possible. At least we don’t have any distraught parents clamouring for release of her body.’

  ‘You’ve not ID’d her then?’

  ‘Yes, but we’ve no next of kin yet, and no-one’s asked after her. No-one at all.’

  He must have sounded a little how he felt, for Cameron said kindly, ‘She wouldn’t have felt a thing, you know. It would have been very quick and easy, like a mercy killing. They just put her to sleep, like an old dog.’

  CHAPTER 4

  Digging for Buttered Rolls

  Anne-Marie Austen had lived in a shabby, three-storeyed Edwardian house off the Chiswick High Road. There were three bells on the front door, with paper labels: Gostyn, Barclay and Austen. A prolonged ringing at the lowest bell eventually produced Mrs Gostyn, the erstwhile owner of the house, who now lived as a protected tenant in the ground-floor accommodation with use of garden.

  She was very old, and had presumably once been fat, for her thick, white, ginger-freckled skin was now much too big for her and hung around her sadly like borrowed clothes. She gripped Atherton’s forearm with surprising strength to keep him still while she told him her tale of the glories from which she had fallen; passing on, when he showed signs of restlessness, to the iniquities of the Barclays on the first floor, who left their baby with a child minder so that they could both go out to work, and who hoovered at all hours of the evening which interfered with Mrs Gostyn’s television, and who made the whole ceiling shake with their washing machine, she gave him her word, so it was a wonder the house didn’t come down around her ears.

  Miss Austen? Yes, Miss Austen lived on the top floor. She played the violin in an orchestra, which was very nice in its way, but there was the coming and going at all hours, and then practising, practising, up and down scales until you thought you’d go mad. It wasn’t even as if it was a nice tune you could tap your feet to. You mightn’t think it to look at her, but Mrs Gostyn had been a great dancer in her time, when Mr Gostyn was alive.

  Atherton recoiled slightly from the arch look, and tried to withdraw his arm, but though the flesh of her hand slid about, the bones inside still gripped him fiercely. He murmured as little encouragingly as he could.

  ‘Oh yes, a great dancer. Max Jaffa, Victor Sylvester – we used to roll the carpet back, you know, whenever there was anything like that on the wireless. Of course,’ with a moist sigh, ‘we had the whole house then. Lodgers were not thought of. But you can’t get servants these days, dear, not even if you could afford them, and I can’t climb those stairs any more.’

  ‘Did Miss Austen have many visitors?’ Slider asked quickly, before she could tack off again.

  ‘Well, no, not so many. She was away a lot, of course, for her work – sometimes for days at a time, but even when she was home she didn’t seem to be much of a one for entertaining. There’s her friend – a young lady – the one she worked with, who came sometimes –’

  ‘Boyfriends?’ Atherton asked.

  Mrs Gostyn sniffed. ‘There have been men going up there, once or twice. It’s not my business to ask questions. But when a young woman lives alone in a flat like that, she’s bound to get into trouble sooner or later. Far be it from me to speak ill of the dead, but –’

  Atherton felt Slider’s surprise. There had been no official identification given out, no photograph in the press.

  ‘How did you know she was dead, Mrs Gostyn?’

  The old woman looked merely surprised. ‘The other policeman told me, of course. The one who came before.’

  ‘Before?’

  ‘Tuesday afternoon. Or was it Wednesday? Inspector Petrie he said his name was. A very nice man. I offered him a cup of tea, but he couldn’t stop.’

  ‘He came in a police car?’

  ‘Oh no, an ordinary car, like yours. Not a panda car or anything.’

  ‘Did he show you his identification?’ Slider tried.

  Of course he did,’ she said indignantly. ‘Otherwise I wouldn’t have given him the key.’

  Atherton made a sound like a moan, and she glanced at him disapprovingly. Slider went on, ‘Did he say why he wanted the key?’

  ‘To collect Miss Austen’s things. He took them away with him in a bag. I offered him a cup of tea but he said he hadn’t time. Thank you very much for asking, though, he said. A very nice, polite man, he was.’

  ‘Shit fire,’ Atherton muttered, and Slider quelled him with a glance.

  ‘I’m afraid I don’t know this Inspector Petrie,’ he said patiently. ‘Did he happen to mention to you, Mrs Gostyn, where he came from? Which police station? Or did you see it on his identity card?’

  ‘No, dear, I couldn’t see it properly because of not having my reading glasses on, but he very kindly read it out to me, his name, I mean – Inspector Petrie, CID, it said. Such a nice voice – what I’d call a cultured voice, like Alvar Liddell. Unusual these days. Are you telling me there’s something wrong with him?’

  Atherton intercepted a glance from Slider and headed back to the car radio.

  ‘I’m afraid there may have been some little confusion,’ Slider said gently. ‘I don’t think I know Inspector Petrie. Could you describe him to me?’

  ‘He was a tall man,’ she said after some thought. ‘Very nicely spoken.’

  ‘Clean-shaven?’

  She thought again. ‘I think he was wearing a hat. Yes, of course, because he lifted it to me – a trilby. I remember thinking you don’t see many men wearing hats these days. I always think a person looks unfinished without a hat on, out of doors.’

  Slider changed direction. ‘He arrived yesterday – at
what time?’

  ‘About two o’clock, I should think it was.’

  ‘And you gave him the key to Miss Austen’s flat? Did you go upstairs with him?’

  ‘I did not. It’s not my business to be doing that sort of thing, and so I’ve told Mrs Barclay many a time when she wanted delivery men letting in. I only keep the keys for the meter man and emergencies, that’s what I’ve told her, besides going up and down those stairs, which is too much for me now, with my leg. Not that I’d give anyone the key, dear, but I’ve known the meter man for fifteen years, and if you can’t trust the police, who can you trust?’

  ‘Who indeed,’ Slider agreed. ‘And did you see him come down again?’

  ‘I came out when I heard him on the stairs. He was very quick, only five or ten minutes. He had one of those black plastic sacks, which he said he’d got Miss Austen’s things in. “To give to her next of kin, Mrs Gostyn,” he said, and I asked him if he’d like a cup of tea, because it’s not a nice job to have to do, is it, even for strangers, but he said no, he had to go. He said he had everything he needed and touched his hat to me. Such a nice man.’

  ‘Has anyone else been up there since? Have you been up there?’

  ‘I have not,’ she said firmly. ‘And besides, Inspector Petrie has the key, so I couldn’t get in if I wanted to.’

  Atherton came back, and spoke to Slider aside through wooden lips. ‘Petrie my arse.’

  ‘I’ll go up,’ Slider said quietly. ‘See if you can get a description out of her. Don’t bully her, or she’ll clam up. And a description of the car.’

  ‘You wouldn’t like the registration number, I suppose?’ Atherton enquired ironically, and turned without relish to his task while Slider went upstairs to lock the stable door.

  Mrs Gostyn proved extremely helpful. From her Atherton learnt that the bogus inspector was a tall, short, fat, thin man; a fair, dark-haired red-headed bald man in a hat, clean-shaven with a beard and moustache, wore glasses, didn’t wear glasses, and had a nice speaking voice – she was quite sure about that much. The car he drove was a car, had four wheels, and was painted a colour, but she didn’t know which one.

  Atherton sighed and turned a page. On the day of the murder, he learnt, Miss Austen had driven off in her little car at about nine-thirty in the morning and hadn’t returned, unless it was while Mrs Gostyn was at the chiropodist between two and four in the afternoon. But her car wasn’t there when Mrs Gostyn returned, and she hadn’t heard her come in that night.

  Atherton put his notebook away again. ‘Thank you very much for your help. If you remember anything else, anything at all, you’ll let us know, won’t you?’

  ‘Anything about what?’ Mrs Gostyn asked with apparently genuine puzzlement.

  ‘About Miss Austen or Inspector Petrie – anything that happened on that day. I’ll give you this card, look – it has a telephone number where you can reach us, all right?’

  He disentangled himself with diminishing patience and went upstairs after Slider, to find that his superior had already opened the flat door and gone in.

  ‘Who needs keys,’ he said aloud. ‘What was it this time – Barclaycard or Our Flexible Friend?’ He examined the lock. It was a very old Yale, and the door had shrunk in its frame, leaving it loose, so that the tongue of the lock was barely retained by the keeper. He shook his head. Morceau de gateau, opening that.

  The door opened directly into a large attic room furnished both as living-room and bedroom. It was indecently tidy, the bed neatly made. Slider was sitting on it playing back the answering machine, which stood with the telephone on a bedside table.

  He looked up as Atherton came in. ‘Three clicks, and a female called Only Me saying she’d call back. Get anything from the old lady?’

  ‘Nothing, again nothing. The girl went out in the morning and didn’t come back. The rest is silence.’

  Slider shook his head. ‘She must have come back at some point – there’s her violin in the corner.’

  Atherton looked. ‘Unless she had a spare.’

  ‘Oh. Yes.’

  The violin case was propped on its end in the corner of the room nearest the window. In front of it there was a music stand adjusted to standing height, on which stood open a book of practice studies. From a distance the music looked like an army of caterpillars crawling over the page. On the floor was other music scattered as if it had been dropped, and on a low table under the window was yet more, together with a metronome, a box containing a block of resin, two yellow dusters and a large silk handkerchief patterned in shades of brown and purple, three pencils of varying length, a glass ashtray containing an India rubber, six paper clips and a pencil-sharpener, and an octavo-sized manuscript book with nothing written in it at all It was the only untidy, living, lived-in corner of the flat.

  Apart from the bedsitting room there was a kitchen and a bathroom. Together they went over every inch and found nothing. There were clothes in the wardrobe and in drawers, including three black, full-length evening dresses – her working clothes, Atherton explained. There were a few books and a lot of records, and even more audio-tapes, some commercial, some home-made. There were odds and ends and ornaments, a cheap quartz carriage clock, a plaster model of the leaning tower of Pisa, some interesting sea-shells, a nightdress case in the shape of a rabbit, a sugar bowl full of potpourri – but there were no papers. Diary, address book, letters, bills, personal documents, old cheque books – anything that might have given any clue to Anne-Marie’s life had been taken.

  ‘He got the lot,’ Atherton said, slamming an empty drawer shut. ‘Bastard.’

  ‘He was very thorough,’ Slider said, ‘and yet Mrs Gostyn said he was only here five or ten minutes. I wonder if he knew his way around?’

  The bathroom revealed soap, face cloth, towels, spare toilet rolls, bath essence – she seemed to have had a preference for The Body Shop – and no secrets. The medicine cabinet at first appeared cheeringly full, but it turned out to contain only aspirin, insect repellent, Diocalm, a very large bottle of kaolin and morphia, travel-sickness pills, half a packet of Coldrex, a packet of ten Tampax with one missing, a bottle of Optrex, four different sorts of suntan lotion, and three opened packets of Elastoplast. On the top of the cupboard stood a bottle of TCP, another of Listerine, a spare tube of Mentadent toothpaste, unopened, and right at the back and rather dusty, another packet of Elastoplast.

  ‘No mysterious packages of white powder,’ Slider said sadly. ‘No syringe. Not even a tell-tale packet of cigarette papers.’

  ‘But at least we have established some facts,’ Atherton said, dusting off his hands. ‘We know now that she was female, below menopausal age, travelled abroad, and cut herself a lot.’

  ‘Don’t be misled by appearances,’ Slider said darkly.

  The kitchen was long and narrow, with the usual sort of built-in units along one wall, sink under the window, fridge and gas stove. ‘No washing machine,’ Atherton said. ‘I suppose she used the launderette.’

  ‘Look in the cupboards.’

  ‘I’m looking. Sometimes I dig for buttered rolls. Does it occur to you that we’ve nothing to go on in this case, nothing at all?’

  ‘It occurs to me.’

  There was a good stock of dry goods, herbs and spices, tea and coffee, rice and sugar, but little in the way of fresh food. A bottle of milk in the fridge was open and part-used but still fresh. There were five eggs, two packs of unsalted butter, a wrapped sliced loaf, and a piece of hard cheese wrapped in tin foil.

  ‘She wasn’t intending to eat at home that night, at any rate,’ said Slider.

  As he straightened up the word VIRGIN caught his eye, and he turned towards it. Behind the bread bin in the far corner of the work surface were two tins of olive oil, like diminutive petrol cans. They were brightly, not to say gaudily, decorated in primary colours depicting a rustic scene: goitrous peasants with manic grins were gathering improbable olives the size of avocados, from trees which, if trees could smi
le, would have been positively hilarious with good health and good will towards the gatherers.

  Atherton, following his gaze, read the words on the face of the front tin. ‘VIRGIN GREEN – Premium Olive Oil – First Pressing – Produce of Italy.’ He pushed the bread bin out of the way. ‘Two tins? She must have been fond of Italian food.’

  The words set up echoes in Slider’s mind of his lunchtime fantasy about her. Coincidence.

  ‘She was,’ he said. ‘Packets of dried pasta and tubes of tomato purée in the cupboard.’

  Atherton gave an admiring look. ‘What a detective you’d have made, sir.’

  Slider smiled kindly. ‘And a lump of Parmesan cheese in the fridge.’

  Atherton lifted the second tin and hefted it; unscrewed the lid and peered in, tilting it this way and that, and then applied a nostril to the opening and sniffed. ‘Empty. Looks as though it’s been washed out, too, or never used. I wonder why she kept it?’

  ‘Perhaps she thought it was pretty.’

  ‘You jest, of course.’ He turned it round. ‘Virgin Green, indeed. It sounds like a film title. Science fiction, maybe. Or pornography – but we know she wasn’t interested in pornography.’

  ‘Do we?’ Slider said incautiously.

  ‘Of course. She didn’t have a pornograph.’

  Slider wandered back into the living-room and stared about him, his usual anxious frown deepening between his brows. Atherton stood in the doorway and watched him. ‘I don’t think we’re going to find anything. It all looks very professional’

  ‘Somebody went to a lot of trouble,’ Slider said. ‘There must have been something very important they didn’t want us to know about. But what?’

  ‘Drugs,’ said Atherton, and when Slider looked at him, he shrugged. ‘Well, it always is these days, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes. But I don’t think so. This doesn’t smell that way to me.’

  Atherton waited for enlightenment and didn’t get it. ‘Have you got a hunch, guv?’ he asked. No answer. ‘Or is it just the way you stand?’

  But Slider merely grunted. He walked across to the music corner, the only place with any trace of Anne-Marie’s personality about it, and picked up the violin case, sat down on the bed with it across his knees, opened it. The violin glowed darkly against the electric-blue plush of the lining with the unmistakable patina of age. It looked warm and somehow alive, inviting to the touch, like the rump of a well-groomed bay horse. In the rests of the lid were slung two violin bows, and behind them was tucked a snapshot. Slider pulled it out and turned it to the light to examine it.