A Certain Justice (42 page)

“Not really, sir.” Kate paused and looked more closely, then she said: “It all looks ordinary enough, except that I’d probably have put the washing-up liquid to the left of the sink. And that large chopping-board and the knives are a bit oddly placed. Hardly convenient in relation to the cooker, not as she’s got them.” She paused again, then said: “You think she was left-handed, sir?”

Dalgliesh didn’t reply. He pulled out three of the drawers and looked inside, then shut them, dissatisfied. They returned to the sitting-room.

Dalgliesh said: “Take a look at her left hand, Kate. She did housework, remember.”

“Only three nights a week, sir, and she wore gloves.”

“There’s a slight thickening of the skin, almost a callus, on the inner side of the second finger. I think she wrote with that hand.”

Kate squatted and looked again carefully at the hand, but without touching it. After a second she said: “If she was left-handed, who would have known? She didn’t arrive for work until most people in Chambers had gone, and they wouldn’t have seen her writing.”

Dalgliesh said: “Probably Mrs. Watson, who worked with her. But Miss Elkington is the one to confirm it. Mrs. Carpenter must have signed for her money. Phone her from the car, will you, Kate, and if she confirms what we suspect, get Dr. Kynaston, photographers, SOCO, the lot — and, of course, Piers. And in view of the pattern of the bloodstains it would be helpful if the lab could send a forensic biologist. And stay down there until some reinforcements arrive. I want someone on the door to see that no one leaves. Keep it discreet. The story is that Mrs. Carpenter has been attacked, not that she’s dead. It will get out soon enough, but let’s keep out the vultures while we can.”

Kate went quietly without another word. Dalgliesh moved over to the window and stood looking out at the garden. He had disciplined his mind not to speculate; speculation in advance of the facts was always futile and could be dangerous.

These few minutes in the company of the undemanding dead seemed a bonus of time, stilled and inviolate, in which nothing was required of him but to wait. He could retire, less by an act of will than by an easy relaxation of mind and body, into that central privacy on which his life and his art depended. This was not the first time he had been alone with a dead body. The sensation, familiar but always forgotten until the next occasion, returned and took possession. He was experiencing a solitude, unique and absolute. A room empty except for himself could not have been more lonely. Janet Carpenter’s personality could not have been more powerful in life than was its absence in death.

Below him the house shared his quietude. In these self-contained cabins the small business of daily life was going on. Curtains were being drawn, tea brewed, plants watered, the late-risers were stumbling to bathrooms or showers. All were unaware of the horror above. When the news did break, the response would be as varied as it always was: fear, pity, fascinated interest, self-importance; a surge of heightened energy at being alive; the pleasure of sharing the news at work, among friends; the half-shameful excitement of blood spilt which was not one’s own. If this were murder the house would never escape its contamination, but it would be felt less here than in those desecrated Chambers of the Middle Temple. More had been lost there than a friend or colleague.

The ringing of his mobile telephone broke the silence and he heard Kate’s voice. “Janet Carpenter was left-handed. There’s no doubt about it.”

So this was murder. But with part of his mind he had known this from the start. He asked: “Did Miss Elkington ask why you wanted to know?”

“No sir, and I didn’t tell her. Doc Kynaston is expected in the hospital this morning but hasn’t arrived. I left a message. Piers and the rest of the team are on their way. The lab can’t send anyone until this afternoon. Sickness and two officers out on a case.”

Dalgliesh said: “The afternoon will have to do. I’d like them to have a look at the pattern of the bloodstains. Don’t let anyone leave the building without being interviewed. Probably most of them are at work, but we can get the names from the bells. I’d like you and Piers to get on with the interviews. Miss Kemp will probably be able to tell us most about her neighbour. And then there’s that young woman who let us in. What time precisely did she hear the TV and when was it switched off? And let me know when you’re coming up, Kate. There’s an experiment I want to make.”

It was five minutes before she rang again. “I’ve got Robbins and DC Meadows on the door now, sir. I’m coming up.”

Dalgliesh left the flat and stood on the landing, flattening himself against the wall at the side of the cupboard. He heard Kate’s quick footsteps. As she reached the landing and moved over to the door he came swiftly up behind her. She gave a gasp as she felt his hand on the back of her neck propelling her through the doorway.

Then she turned and said: “So that’s one way he could have got in.”

“It’s possible. It would mean, of course, that he knew when she was expected home. She could have let him in, but would she do that for a stranger?”

Kate said: “She was less worried about security than most old people. Two locks, one a Banham, but no chain.”

Miles Kynaston was first on the scene, with Piers and the photographers close behind him. He must have arrived at his hospital laboratory soon after Kate’s call and come on immediately. He stood in the doorway, the calm eyes surveying the room, then coming to rest on the victim. His gaze was always the same, the momentary gleam of compassion, so fleeting that it would be missed by anyone who did not know him, and then the intense considering scrutiny of a man facing once again the fascinating evidence of human depravity.

Dalgliesh said: “Janet Carpenter. One of the suspects for the Venetia Aldridge murder. Discovered by Kate and myself forty minutes ago, when we came to interview her.”

Kynaston nodded without speaking, then stood well clear of the body while the photographers, equally taciturn, moved past him, briefly acknowledging Dalgliesh, and got on with their work. In this charnel-house the position of the body and the pattern of the blood splatters were important evidence. The camera’s eye came first, fixing the stark reality, before Dalgliesh and Kynaston risked even a small disturbance of the body. For Dalgliesh these preliminaries to the investigation, the careful manoeuvring of the photographers round the body, the lens focused impersonally on glazed, unreproachful eyes and the crude butchery of gaping flesh, was the first step in the violation of the defenceless dead. But was it really any worse than the dehumanizing routines which followed even a natural death? The almost superstitious tradition that the dead should be treated with reverence always failed at some point along that carefully documented final journey to the crematorium or the grave.

Ferris and his fellow SOCO arrived, their feet so silent on the stairs that the tap on the door was the first indication of their presence. Ferris watched avid-eyed at the door, frowning with anxiety as the photographers circled the body, anxious to get on with his search before the scene was contaminated. But he would have to wait. After the photographers had packed up with the same economic efficiency with which they had worked, Miles Kynaston took off his jacket and squatted to his task.

Dalgliesh said: “She was left-handed, but it always looked an unlikely suicide. There are those spatters on the ceiling and the top half of the wall. She must have been standing when her throat was cut.”

Kynaston’s gloved hands were busy with the body, gently, as if the dead nerves could still feel. He said: “A single cut, left to right, slicing the jugular. Superficial cut on the left wrist. He probably took her from behind, pulled the head back, one swift cut, then let the body gently down. Look at that ungainly twist to the leg. She was dead when she hit the floor.”

“He’d be shielded by her body from the main spurt of blood. What about the right arm?”

“Difficult to say. It was quick and sure. Even so, I think the right arm would be fairly heavily stained. He’ll have needed to wash before leaving. And if he was wearing a jacket the cuff and the lower part of the sleeve would be bloody. She’d hardly wait patiently while he stripped.”

Dalgliesh said: “We may find blood traces in the U-bend of the sink or the bathroom, but it’s unlikely. I think this killer knew his business. He’d have let the water run. The knife is from the kitchen block, but I don’t think it’s the one he used. This was a premeditated killing. I think he brought his own knife.”

Kynaston said: “If he didn’t use this knife it was one like it. So he killed her, washed the knife and himself, took a knife from the kitchen block, smeared it with her blood and pressed her hand round the handle. Is that how you see it?”

“It’s a working hypothesis. Would it need much strength? Could a woman have done it?”

“With determination and a sharp enough knife. But it doesn’t strike me as a woman’s crime.”

“Nor me.”

“How did he get in?”

“The door was locked when we arrived. I think he probably stood concealed in the shadows by the landing cupboard and waited for her. When she opened the door he pushed in after her. It would have been easy enough to gain access to the building. You just push all the bells and wait for someone to respond. Someone always does.”

“And then he waited. A patient man.”

“Patient when he needed to be. But he may have known her routine, where she’d been, when she was likely to come home.”

Kynaston said: “If he knew that much, it’s odd he didn’t know she was left-handed. The letters written in blood — I suppose they mean something?”

Dalgliesh told him. He added: “She was a prime suspect for the Aldridge murder. She had the means and the opportunity. That 1992, case, when Aldridge successfully defended Beale, gave her the motive. This was meant to look like suicide and if she’d been right-handed I don’t think we could have proved otherwise. But it looked suspicious from the first, the throat cut standing when it would have been more usual to find her slumped over the bath or sink. She was a fastidious woman, she would have bothered about the mess. Odd how suicides often do. And why leave a message written in your own blood when you’ve got paper and pen? And she wouldn’t have slit her throat. There are kinder, less brutal ways.” But, however odd the circumstances, suspicion wasn’t legal proof. Juries were apt to believe that suicides, having brought themselves to that one incredible act, were capable of any eccentricity.

Kynaston said: “The one fatal mistake. And it’s usually the clever ones who make it.”

He had finished his preliminary examination, wiping his thermometer and replacing it carefully in its box. Then he said: “Time of death, between seven and eight last night. That’s judging by body temperature and the extent of rigor. I may be able to narrow it down after the autopsy. I suppose it’s urgent? With you it usually is. I could fit it in tonight but it will be late, probably eight to eight-thirty. I’ll give you a ring.” He took a last look at the body. “Poor woman. But at least it was quick. This one knew what he was about. Hope you get him, Adam.”

It was the first time Dalgliesh had ever heard Miles Kynaston express a hope about the success of a case.

As soon as Kynaston had left, the SOCOs set to work. Dalgliesh moved away from the body, leaving clear the vital area between it and the kitchen and bathroom. Kate and Piers were still interviewing the tenants. They had started with Miss Kemp but it was forty minutes since Dalgliesh had heard her door finally close and their footsteps descending the stairs. They were taking longer than he had expected and he hoped this meant that the chore was proving productive. He turned his own attention to the details of the flat.

The most prominent feature was the bureau set against the right-hand wall. It was obviously one Mrs. Carpenter had brought with her to the flat, a solid working desk in polished oak, disproportionate to the size of the room. It looked to be the only piece of furniture which wasn’t new. The two-seater sofa against the wall, the round, drop-side table with four matching chairs, the single armchair facing the television set installed between the windows, all looked as unused as if they had just been delivered. They were modern, conventional and unexceptional in design, the kind of furniture one would expect in a three-star hotel. There were no pictures, no photographs, no ornaments. It was the room of a woman who had shed her past, a room which provided the essentials necessary for physical comfort and left the spirit free to inhabit its own unencumbered space. The small bookcase to the right of the desk held only modern editions of the major poets and classical novelists: a personal library, carefully selected to provide solid literary sustenance when required.

Dalgliesh moved into her bedroom. It was little more than nine feet square with a single high window. Here spare comfort had given place to austerity: a single bed covered with a light counterpane, an oak bedside cabinet with a shelf and a lamp, an upright chair, a fitted wardrobe. A plain brown handbag was on the floor beside the bed. Inside, it was as well ordered as Venetia Aldridge’s had been, with nothing superfluous. He was surprised, however, to find that she had as much as £250 in crisp ten-and twenty-pound notes in her wallet. A dressing-gown in fine patterned wool hung from the single hook on the door. There was no dressing-table. She probably brushed her hair and made up in front of a mirror in the bathroom, but the bathroom was out of bounds until Ferris had finished with it. Except for the carpeted floor, the room could have been a nun’s cell; he almost felt the lack of a crucifix above the bed.

He returned to the desk and, opening the lid, seated himself for a search, although with no clear idea of what he was looking for. This rummaging among the detritus of a dead life was for him a necessary part of the investigation. A victim died because of who she was, where she was, what she had done, what she knew. The clues to a murder lay always in the clues to a life. But it sometimes seemed to him that his search was a presumptuous violation of a privacy which the victim could no longer protect, and that his latex-gloved hands moved among her belongings as if merely by touching them he could hope to reach out to the core of her personality.