Blood in Grandpont (7 page)

‘Three or four times.’

‘That’s very good of her.’

‘Yes, she’s very kind.’ Marjorie shut her eyes, and made a grimace. Holden took this as her cue to stand up.

‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘I’ve intruded enough on your kindness.’

The ill woman’s eyes opened again. ‘Lucy likes to talk about her mother. You see, Christine and I were friends before she was born, and when she was born of course. Lucy was only one when her mother died, so she likes to ask me about her. What was she like? What sort of young woman was she? What did she like wearing? Indian skirts or Laura Ashley, miniskirts or jeans, stilettos or flats? What was her favourite perfume? She couldn’t talk to her father about her, not after he had married Maria. So I think maybe that was why she liked visiting me. We could sit here in absolute privacy and say anything and everything. It was liberating – for me as well as her.’

Holden swallowed. She had been prepared to leave, yet now the woman lying so pale and drawn in the bed had become animated. So she took her chance. ‘Did Lucy get on well with Maria?’

‘Oh, Inspector!’ Mrs Drabble grinned up at her. ‘Never one to lose sight of your goal, I can see. Ask the key questions come what may. A very admirable quality, though not perhaps one that will win you many friends.’

‘I’ll go in a minute,’ Holden said quickly.

‘Just as soon as I’ve answered, eh?’ She laughed, but the laugh was followed by a cough, and then a bout of coughing that had Holden on her feet and hurrying to pass her a glass of water. She gulped at it desperately, and then lay back as she regained control of herself.

‘I’ll go now,’ Holden said firmly. She had found out as much as she was going to about Lucy’s timings that night, and some other information besides. Best not to push any harder.

But Marjorie Drabble hadn’t finished. ‘Considering they were stepdaughter and stepmother, they didn’t get on too badly, as far as I could see. Mind you, perhaps I should explain that I didn’t see a lot of either of them. When Maria came along and took Christine’s place, I didn’t approve. It had all happened too quickly. Alan and Maria must have sensed it, because none of us made any attempt to keep in touch socially. Alan was my GP, so I kept in touch with him that way, but it was as if a glass wall had come down between us. We saw each other when I had a medical problem, but we never really communicated.’

‘So how was it that Lucy started to visit you in hospital?’

Again, Marjorie Drabble shut her eyes. Holden could see that she was tiring, but some part of her brain refused to be convinced. To be too tired to answer this question would be very convenient for Mrs Drabble. Could Lucy really have come and visited her in the hospital just because she felt sorry for her? Somehow, she couldn’t believe it. It didn’t add up.

But she wasn’t going to get an answer out of Marjorie Drabble, not now. For the hospital patient had pressed the bell to call the
nurse. ‘I need to rest,’ she said firmly. Immediately the door opened, as if the nurse had been waiting outside with nothing else to worry about except meeting Marjorie Drabble’s every need instantly.

‘Time’s up, I think, Inspector,’ she said.

Holden nodded, thanked Mrs Drabble, and got up to leave.

Cornforth College is situated on the western side of the Woodstock Road, three or four hundred metres to the north of what used to be the Radcliffe Infirmary. The building had started life as a pair of
semi-detached
family residences, though of a size and magnificence that ruled them out of the reach of all but the most affluent of Oxford families. Their ownership had passed from senior university academics to businessmen, and then finally to Gerald Cornforth, a former public school headmaster who had grown frustrated with the irksome interference of a board of trustees and decided to set up his own educational establishment. DS Fox had driven past it on a number of occasions, and had noticed the blue and white board outside it which proclaimed its name, but beyond that he knew nothing of Cornforth College. This was not his part of the city, and he was certainly not a man who had ever felt the need or desire to seek out a private education establishment. A lack of offspring and a determinedly working-class outlook had ensured that.

Fox had parked the car in a side road, shortly after dropping Holden outside the Raglan Hospital, for their destinations were only a few hundred metres apart. He had then walked back down to the Woodstock Road, and turned left. Inadvertently, he found himself following two young women, with uniform blonde hair, white blouses and short dark skirts. They themselves turned left when they reached the college, walked up to the arch-shaped green door on the left-hand side of the building, and entered. Fox followed them, but once inside he stopped. The female students were already half-way up the wide wooden staircase which dominated the entrance hall. He looked around, and immediately saw someone he knew.

‘Mrs Russell!’ The administrator, who had been making her way from her office to try to locate the senior tutor, looked at the man looming in front of her.

‘You haven’t come to see me, have you?’ she said defensively.

‘No,’ Fox said, noting the alarm in her voice.

‘That’s just as well,’ she said quickly, ‘because I am very busy at the moment.’

‘I need to speak to Joseph Tull,’ Fox said mildly. ‘Perhaps you can track him down for me?’

‘It’s not very convenient, coming at this time of the morning,’ the administrator replied acidly, her poise recovered.

‘To be quite frank with you, I don’t actually care how convenient it is for him or indeed for you,’ Fox retorted. He had no intention of being pushed around, especially in a place like this. ‘I need to speak to him, and I need to speak to him now. And I need a room to do it in.’

‘I see,’ she replied. ‘In that case, I suppose you’d better use my office.’

She turned briskly on her heel, and without any further word led him back down the corridor from where he had seen her come, and ushered him through a door to the left. ‘If you wait here, I’ll go and see if I can find Tull.’

The task of tracking down Joseph Tull cannot, in the event, have been too difficult for Sarah Russell, because he appeared in the doorway little more than a minute later.

‘What is it?’ He spoke with an accent and arrogance that immediately pressed several of Fox’s buttons.

‘Well, I’m not here to enrol as a student, that’s for sure.’

‘I’m not sure they’d let you in. They are rather fussy.’

‘So am I.’

‘And it costs a packet.’

Fox said nothing back. He didn’t like Joseph, but he knew from experience that he had to avoid getting sucked in if he was going to keep control of the interview. And besides, it was as plain as a pikestaff that Joseph was a clever little shit who’d always have a
smart-arse answer up his sleeve. He went and sat down at the desk, gestured Joseph towards another chair, and waited for him to subside into it. Only then did he speak.

‘The night your mother was killed, you were at a party. In Southfield Road as I recall. I need a list of people who can verify that you were there.’

Joseph put his hand to his head and pushed back the hair that had flopped across his face. ‘That could be a problem,’ he said.

‘Why?’

Again the hand pushed at his hair, which had already fallen back across his face. ‘Because I didn’t go to it.’

‘So you lied.’

‘I had to. Because I had told my father that that was where I was going.’

‘So where were you, and what were you doing?’

‘I just went out. To the pub.’

‘Which pub?’

‘In town. Does it matter which one?’

‘Of course it bloody matters. Which pub?’

‘The Three Goats Heads, in St Michael’s Street. But only for a while.’

‘And is there anyone who can verify any of this? Because from where I sit, you’ve got an alibi that’s worth bugger all.’

‘My mate Hugo. Hugo Horsefield.’

‘Just him?’

‘Yeah.’

‘And is Hugo Horsefield a pupil of Cornforth College, too?’

Joseph Tull said nothing at first. He chewed his lower lip, and looked apprehensively across at Fox, as if weighing up his options. Eventually he replied.

‘He used to be.’

‘What exactly do you mean by that?’

‘He got expelled, two weeks ago.’

‘Did he now! And why was that?’

‘What’s that got to do with anything?’

Fox smiled. He’d got the measure of this arrogant prick. ‘Drugs, was it?’

Holden had just sat down with her pistachio ice cream and Americano coffee when Fox walked in. ‘Treat yourself, Sergeant,’ she said cheerfully.

‘No thanks,’ he replied, sitting down opposite her. ‘Not ice cream weather, in my book.’

She made a face, and took a bite out of hers.

‘Master Tull’s alibi has gone AWOL,’ he said.

‘AWOL? In what sense?’

‘In the sense that he wasn’t at that party he claimed to have been at. He went out to score some drugs, and his only witness for the evening is a guy who has just been thrown out of Cornforth for selling coke to the other students.’

Holden took a lick of her ice cream as she considered this information. ‘So he had the opportunity. What about the motive? Killing your mother is pretty extreme. Drugs I can believe, but.…’

But Fox had had time to consider this, and had his reasoning ready. ‘Suppose he hadn’t got enough money. Suppose he was desperate for a fix, so he went to meet her after her lecture, got into an argument, and when she refused him money he stabbed her.’

‘It’s possible,’ Holden admitted, ‘but it’s all speculation. What exactly do we know about him to support that idea?’

Fox made a face. He knew it was speculation, but as a theory he felt it wasn’t a bad one, so to hear Holden dismiss it so casually was irritating. God, she could be a pain up the arse at times. He had just blown a suspect’s alibi wide open, and her reaction was to play devil’s advocate. Thank you, ma’am!

‘We know he takes drugs,’ Fox said. ‘And we know he can lie.’

Holden took another lick, but made no comment. Fox wished that he had had something now. A woman had sat down behind Holden in his direct eye line. She had a round face, frizzy hair and oval glasses that made her look rather academic, and she had in her hand a cornet of dark-brown ice cream. He wondered how old she
was – maybe mid-thirties he reckoned – and then his eyes drifted from the ice cream to her left hand and he suddenly realized that he was looking to see if she had a wedding ring. She didn’t, not that that necessarily meant anything nowadays.

‘Is there someone you know over there, Sergeant?’ Holden’s words broke into his brief introspection, and he shook his head in answer.

‘Sorry. I was miles away.’

‘Do you want to know about Lucy Tull’s alibi?’

‘Yes, of course.’

‘Because I find it disconcerting, in fact bloody rude, when you stare over my shoulder to check out the talent.’

Fox bowed his head slightly, as if in apology. ‘So what did you fmd out about her?’ he asked dutifully.

‘Well, she was probably at the hospital till maybe 8.45 p.m. At least that’s what she wrote in the visitor’s book, and Mrs Drabble supports that sort of timing. But even so I reckon she could have made it to St Clement’s in time to kill her stepmother. So time isn’t an issue. I rang Oxford Cabs. She was picked up from here by a private hire car just after 10.00 p.m. So the key question is, was she here in the intervening period, as she claims?’

‘You’ve asked, presumably?’

‘Of course. But no joy. The manager can’t remember. He says he thinks he’s seen her in here from time to time, but there were a lot of people that night escaping the rain. And the two Poles who were working that night with him have just gone back to Krakow for a month.’

‘Great!’ Fox looked around the room, his eyes methodically scanning the four walls. ‘No CCTV?’

‘No.’

‘So she’s not got an alibi either.’

‘And neither has her father.’

Fox laughed, remembering again the photo of Jack Smith, naked and startled. ‘Well, the good doctor has certainly got motive. But maybe we’re missing the obvious suspect. A druggie desperate for
a fix, who saw her with her fancy bag, followed her into the car park, and stabbed her when she refused to hand it over.’

Holden said nothing. She was remembering the driving rain that night, and imagining Maria Tull walking as fast as her heels would allow down the St Clement’s pavement, maybe even breaking into a trot as she hurried to reach the shelter of her car. She would have turned right, into the alleyway, then across the car park towards her car, parked in the far right corner. Had the killer been waiting for her, someone who knew her and knew her movements that night, and knew that sooner or later she would return to her car? Or had some random addict seen her in the street and followed, or been hanging around in the car park and decided she looked good for cash. If only the CCTV had been working, they might have got some hard evidence to go on. As it was, they had only hunches. She shrugged – temporarily resigned to the impossibility of knowing – took another lick of her ice cream, and glanced across at her companion. ‘You really should take a chance one day, Sergeant, and try one of these. You might find you actually like it.’

When you’re lying on your back, your mouth jammed wide open and your upper lip and left-hand cheek stuffed tight with cotton wool, it is hard to engage in any sort of conversation, let alone a meaningful one. That fact, however, did not deter Geraldine Payne, BDS, as she leant over her first patient of that afternoon, Dr Karen Pointer. The conversation, in reality more of a monologue, had begun with the hectoring tones which many a patient of the good dentist would have recognized.

‘Now what did you have for lunch, Karen? A sandwich, I can see. Beef maybe?’ It hadn’t been beef, it had been roasted vegetables and humus, consumed messily in the car as she drove to her appointment, but that wasn’t the point. And in any case, no answer was expected or required. But the dentist had located detritus that the pathologist’s perfunctory brushing of her teeth had failed to dislodge, and the matter could not be allowed to go past without
comment. The dentist followed up a few seconds later with a
well-practised
click of the tongue. ‘Really, Karen! What are we going to do with you? At this rate, by the time you hit fifty, I’ll be measuring you for dentures.’