But even as she ran through the details of deployment, Hepburn’s comment niggled at her. She’d suggested her going to the party without giving it enough thought; it had merely seemed a good inside track, a way of observing the interactions of their suspects. But if her theory that both murders had somehow sprung from poor, sad Julia Margrave’s death was right, the killer was likely to be present and unlikely to appreciate an ‘off-duty’ police officer among them.
It wasn’t likely she’d actually be threatened in the middle of a party. If there was some unpleasantness Hepburn was an experienced officer now, well able to look after herself. Even so …
She didn’t have time to sit here agonising. Not with the briefing in half an hour and only the barest of details sketched out.
In the Dumfries briefing room DC Weston listened with blank disbelief as DI Harris told them that the investigation was being stood down.
‘Our connection with Connell Kane’s murder seems to have been tangential at best. DSI Taylor and I have agreed that we will stand ready to offer any support that Galloway needs in their operation – though I expect DI Fleming’s feminine intuition will solve it all in the next couple of days.’
There was a sycophantic titter from a couple of Harris’s toadies but the general mood was sullen. They all knew that their time had been wasted and they all knew whose fault it was; that was unmistakable and Harris was uneasy, hurrying on to talk about a warehouse break-in that had happened the night before.
Weston put up her hand. He showed no sign of planning to call on her so she said loudly, ‘Can you tell us where this woman’s body was found, sir?’
He looked at her with a sarcastic sneer. ‘Speaking too quickly for you to follow, Weston? In – the – river. All – wet. Are you with us now? That’s everything.’ He named a couple of officers he wanted to see and left.
Weston looked for DC Jamieson. Since their foray into Galloway, Jamieson had taken to avoiding her – not deliberately cutting her or anything, just not coming to sit beside her in meetings or seeking her out at breaks. It hurt; they’d always formed a protective alliance against the automatic chauvinism of many of their colleagues and Weston had noticed she was sitting with the group that had obligingly sniggered at Harris’s gibe about DI Fleming.
Now as Weston came towards her Jamieson hung back, turning to make a remark to one of them, pretending not to have seen her one-time friend.
Weston was not to be discouraged. ‘Debbie!’ she called. ‘Have you got a minute?’
Jamieson said, ‘Sure,’ and came over to her, though from the laughter she left behind her Weston suspected she had rolled her eyes before she did.
‘It’s this thing about the car—’ Weston began.
‘I thought it might be. Lizzie, you’re obsessive about it. You heard what Harris said – it was a quad bike, going down to get seaweed. Now drop it, will you?’
‘He said there were tracks on the sand. There couldn’t have been – the tide comes right in there twice a day.’
‘Well, maybe someone had only just been down that morning.’
Weston shook her head stubbornly. ‘The broken branches were withered. It had happened long before that.’
Jamieson scowled at her. ‘You think what you like. I’m not having anything more to do with it, because I’m not stupid. If you try to take on Harris I won’t back you up.’ She walked off.
Weston opened her mouth to pursue the argument, then shut it again. She wasn’t going to take on Harris – she didn’t have a death wish. There was no point in going to the super; he had about as much backbone as your average jellyfish.
She was going to take it direct to DI Fleming. And given half a chance, she’d ask her if she’d back a transfer into her division.
She checked the number, then slipped outside to make the call. ‘I’d like to speak to DI Fleming, please,’ she said. ‘This is DC Weston.’
The operator brushed her off with professional ease. ‘I’m afraid she’s not available. I’ll put you through to the duty sergeant.’
‘No, I’m afraid it has to be DI Fleming. It’s personal.’
‘Sorry. She doesn’t take personal calls on this line. If it’s “personal” no doubt you have her private number.’ There was no mistaking the cynicism in the woman’s tone.
It wasn’t going to work this way. Weston thanked her politely – she might find herself working alongside the woman, after all. She’d just have to think of some other way to get this through.
Having prepared himself to be gentle and sympathetic to a poor, traumatised old dear who would need a lot of reassurance, MacNee was taken aback to find a tall, formidable woman instead. There was a stick by her chair, admittedly, but her back was ramrod straight and she had eyes so piercing that he almost winced as she turned them on him.
Bridget James – Biddy to her friends – had been, apparently, a senior civil servant in the Ministry of Justice and MacNee, who had automatically straightened his own back when she declared a particular interest in how things were done under the different judicial system in Scotland, realised he had called her ‘madam’ five times in four sentences. Hepburn had settled quietly into the background, hoping to avoid notice, but Mrs James’s laser gaze swept over her too.
‘You’ve made your official statement already, madam, so this is informal,’ MacNee explained. ‘This morning we’d just like you to talk us through what happened, if you would.’
‘Of course. I’ll explain the background first, as succinctly as I can.’
Unlike most elderly ladies, she understood the meaning of the word and delivered a clear and concise account of her friendship with Eleanor Margrave and their sketching parties. When she had finished, she waited for questions.
MacNee’s mind went blank. The woman was mesmerising him; it felt as if he was being interviewed and failing to come up to scratch.
Hepburn came to the rescue. ‘Was there any reason why Mrs Margrave might have been in the back garden?’
Mrs James nodded approvingly. ‘Sound question. No. It wasn’t really a garden, just a strip of rough ground between the house and the river. There was a drying green, but I don’t think she used it at all now. The ground is very uneven and like me poor Eleanor wasn’t very steady on her feet. She told me years ago that she’d bought a tumble drier. Now, I’ll tell you exactly what happened, shall I?’
‘Thank you, madam,’ MacNee said humbly as another well-structured report was presented to them.
When she finished, she looked at them expectantly. ‘I’m sure you will have a lot of questions. Fire away.’
This time, both MacNee and Hepburn began to speak at once, then both stopped. Mrs James looked amused; the steely eyes, MacNee realised, had quite a twinkle once you got used to her.
‘I’m old-fashioned,’ she said. ‘Ladies first.’
Hepburn hesitated, glancing towards him; that wasn’t quite how it worked in the police force but MacNee gave her an encouraging nod.
‘Did you and Mrs Margrave keep in touch?’
‘Oh yes, every couple of weeks or so – mostly, these days, to compare our aches and pains, I’m sorry to say. That, and discuss the latest batch of old friends who have popped off.’
She seemed quite calm about this but Hepburn, a little thrown, murmured, ‘Oh dear, I am sorry. Er, well … did she mention any problems she had had, any disagreements with neighbours, say, over the past few weeks?’
‘She didn’t really have what you’d call neighbours. The nearest house was quite a distance away and Eleanor didn’t go about much; her mobility was even worse than mine is. She certainly didn’t mention any problems and that would be unlikely anyway. I doubt if she saw any of them, except in passing. To be honest, I don’t think she had friends at all locally. She led a very quiet life.’
‘Was that since her daughter’s death?’ MacNee asked.
Biddy’s face softened. ‘Oh dear, Julia! She was the loveliest little girl, you know – the dream d
aughter, pretty, clever, charming. Spoilt, of course; Eleanor married late and she had never expected to have a child at all, then her husband died when Julia was six.
‘What happened to her was such a tragedy, and even before that her poor mother had had to watch her destroying herself in slow motion, totally helpless. We talked about it a lot and I got her the best advice I could find, but it was no use. The girl would deny it flatly and Eleanor was afraid of losing her completely. Somehow she was still holding down her job and I always hoped that age would bring her to her senses, but she never got the chance.
‘Eleanor withdrew at that time – ashamed, I think, and feeling responsible, though I always told her that nowadays there’s nothing you can do at that stage. It’s a very wicked world.’
‘So there wasn’t anything she told you that might suggest a reason for what happened?’ MacNee said.
‘I wish there were. I haven’t been very helpful, I’m afraid.’
It looked as if there was nothing more to learn. MacNee reassured her and got up. ‘Thanks very much. And if there’s anything you remember, anything unusual, say, no matter how small, you’ll contact us?’
‘Of course. I—’ Biddy stopped suddenly. ‘Wait a moment …’
‘You’ve thought of something.’ MacNee sat down again.
‘Eleanor’s mermaid.’
‘Mermaid?’
‘Oh, it was just a curiosity, really, but it was certainly unusual. She was quite intrigued – phoned to tell me all about it. There was a big storm one night, a few weeks ago—’
MacNee stiffened. ‘Not on the 14th of April, was it?’
‘Could have been, I suppose. In fact, that would be right! I was talking about the opera I’d been to the night before and I’m pretty sure that was the 14th. I can check my diary, of course, but I clearly remember telling Eleanor the tenor should be taken out and painlessly terminated.’
MacNee and Hepburn were both on the edge of their seats. Don’t go off about the opera, keep to the subject, MacNee begged silently, but he needn’t have worried.
‘There was a knock on the door late that evening – almost midnight, I think she said. Eleanor hadn’t gone to bed – she’s always been a night owl. There was this girl on the doorstep, soaked to the skin, with a very bad bruise on the side of her face. She took her in, tried to find out what had happened, but she wouldn’t speak, not a word, just cried. She was in shock, Eleanor reckoned, and she popped her up to bed with a hottie, meaning to quiz her in the morning once she’d recovered a bit. But when she got up the girl had vanished. She was a bit worried, she said, that some of her household goods might have vanished with her, but no – she’d just gone. Eleanor never found out who she was or what had happened.’
It was a fascinating story. ‘Why the mermaid bit?’ MacNee asked.
‘Oh, that was just Eleanor’s fancy. She was pretty, with long hair and sea-green eyes, she told me, and she was wet as if she’d come out of the sea, though she wasn’t muddy, apparently, so it could only have been the rain She reminded Eleanor of the Little Mermaid statue she bought in Copenhagen once.’
‘We’ll certainly keep that in mind,’ MacNee said. He asked a few more questions but nothing further emerged. He noticed that Biddy’s shoulders were starting to stoop and the strong old face was showing signs of fatigue. Time they left her.
As they went back to the car, Hepburn said, ‘Wow! Quite a lady!’
‘Scary, frankly. Wouldn’t like to get it wrong if she was in charge. But what’s this Little Mermaid thing anyway?’
‘It’s a statue on the seafront in Copenhagen. Hans Christian Andersen, you know? He wrote a story about a mermaid that fell in love with a prince and went to a witch to get legs but she’d to give up her voice in exchange and then pain like knives stabbed through her with every step she took.’
‘Doesn’t sound like a bargain to me.’
‘Especially since he then went off and married a suitable princess instead of the mermaid and something horrible happened to her – I can’t exactly remember what. It was all rather sick, really. It was in a Ladybird book I had and I hid it at the back of the bookcase because it made me so sad.’
‘Everybody – aww! Poor wee soul! All right, all right – you were only little. But now we have to work out what this particular mermaid could have been up to, late on the night of the storm, with a bruise on her face.’
CHAPTER TWELVE
The scene of crime officers were working in Eleanor Margrave’s house and a line of uniforms was doing a fingertip search on the back garden and the foreshore when DI Fleming arrived.
Inspector Wallace was there already directing operations and he briefed her as she struggled into paper coveralls. ‘There’s expensive stuff in the house but nothing appears to have been taken, or even touched. There’s absolutely no indication of forced entry. We found both doors were locked, but the front door locks when you shut it anyway. No sign of a weapon as yet and there certainly wasn’t a violent struggle of any kind. She was probably half-dragged, half-carried across to the shore; there are a couple of short parallel grooves that could have been made by her heels but no footprints as yet and they’re doubtful if they’ll find any. The ground wasn’t wet enough to hold an impression and of course the tide’s come in to wash away any marks on the sand.’
‘If the tide was full, as I’ve been guessing it was, she might have just been dropped in from the bank,’ Fleming said. ‘And I’ve seen the pathology report. The ligature was gone, and he doesn’t think from an initial inspection that they’ll find fibres. There was nothing at all to suggest she had resisted, nothing under the fingernails, so we’re not likely to get help from DNA.’
Wallace raised his eyebrows. ‘Someone she knew, then?’
‘Certainly someone she knew well enough to open the front door to and then turn her back on, unless she wasn’t in the habit of locking her back door. Perhaps your lads could check on that to see if anyone knew that she was in the habit of being casual about security – though I think most old ladies these days are so scared by Crimewatch that they lock everything and go back twice to see that they’ve done it.’
‘Of course.’
Fleming went on past him, giving her name to the officer with a clipboard beside the front door as she went in.
Sea House was like Eleanor Margrave herself, she thought. A handsome house, with good bone structure: high-ceilinged rooms with the period features that made house hunters drool, and it had been treated with respect. The walls were all washed with classic Georgian colours – pearly grey in the stone-flagged hall, dark red in the small dining room and pale celadon green in the drawing room, which was hung with what looked like rather good watercolours in gold frames as well as a couple of family portraits. The antique furniture was elegant rather than comfortable and there was a collection of china in a Georgian corner cupboard; though Fleming wasn’t expert enough to know what it was she was sure it was precious.
There were more modern pieces, too, on shelves and occasional tables that Fleming guessed were things Eleanor had chosen herself, rather than inherited. She had a good eye; there was some lovely chunky glass and a charming sculpture of a seal in polished granite, sleek and sinuous.
Heart-rendingly, there was also a small table covered with photographs, all of the same person – a pretty blonde girl who featured as a mop-headed toddler and a small child grinning to show the gap where her baby teeth had been, right through the teen years to a studio portrait of a beautiful young woman in an academic gown. A shrine to her dead daughter, Fleming thought with a pang.
But it was the wide bay window that drew you whenever you entered the room. Avoiding the SOCOs dusting for prints, Fleming went to look out.
It was a truly stunning view, all blue and gold on this bright spring day with the sun glinting on the Solway and the banks of whin across on the other side.
And Eleanor Margrave had liked it too. Beside the chair in the window there was a small sta
nd with a sketch pad displaying an unfinished watercolour, not as expert as the framed ones on the walls but pleasing enough. There was a tray of paints and a brush beside it; she had been planning to come back and complete it.
Fleming felt the catch in the throat that she often felt when there was evidence like this of a life suddenly cut short. Eleanor might have been an old lady but there were still things she wanted to do. No doubt she’d been looking forward to her friend’s visit as well.
She went through to the kitchen. Here there was more evidence of Eleanor’s age than in the other rooms: she had probably retreated in here during the winter. There was a powerful reading lamp behind the chair drawn up close to the Aga, a magnifying glass beside it with a pile of books on the sort of table you could pull across your knees, a small TV just opposite.
And here, just beside the sink, a SOCO was kneeling on the floor taking samples. He looked up, offering to move aside but Fleming shook her head. ‘I can see enough from here, thanks.’
Indeed she could. It was eloquent; the large Aga kettle was sitting in the sink, half-full, with its lid on the draining board. Eleanor had been making a drink for her visitor when she had been attacked. An unexpected visitor, then; having an Aga herself, Fleming knew that if someone was coming you had the kettle hot, sitting on the range to be brought forward to boil. But it had been someone she knew, or someone she felt must be given hospitality, at the very least.
‘Was the water running when you all came in?’ she asked the SOCO. He said it wasn’t.
‘It may have been the killer who turned it off,’ she said. ‘Can you see that the area is meticulously fingerprinted, please.’
Fleming went back out into the hall that ran down the centre of the house. There was another small room on the ground floor that seemed to be a sort of study and the SOCO there was sitting at a neat roll-top desk going through papers. On the other side of the room there was a long cupboard; above it were several framed sketches, signed neatly with ‘EM’ in the right-hand corner – the ones Eleanor had been pleased with, presumably. When Fleming opened the cupboard with her gloved hands she saw that this was where Eleanor had kept her artist’s equipment, the brushes, the paints, the sketch pads, beside a wire tray holding other, presumably less-favoured paintings. She closed the door again.
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