The Glass Wall (26 page)

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Authors: Clare Curzon

BOOK: The Glass Wall
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Markham was absolved of any major crime, but he had still been violent to Sheena, and could be so again, yet she would not have him charged with assault. Ramón must have smothered his suspicions for days, and was guilty of concealing a crime, whether knowingly or not. Z sighed. And now, with most of the paperwork done, they had this new domestic murder to work through, a husband killing his terminally ill wife – but never a mercy killing, and not at her demand. Otherwise why the need to tie her hands?
Z was glad she hadn't mentioned the case to Alyson when the nurse phoned earlier to declare her faith in Martin Howard's good intentions. Dr Stanford, she remembered, was the doctor Alyson had praised for treating Emily with such compassion. How easily people deceive us.
Driving past the college she saw the penthouse lights still blazing and a figure seated by the great window. On an impulse she pulled up, got out and buzzed for admission.
‘Is it too late to call?' she asked of the entry phone.
‘Oh good, it's you. No. Come on up.'
Alyson put out glasses and opened a bottle of Merlot without asking. ‘Pointless to go to bed,' she said. ‘So much has happened. I can't believe it. To think of Emily being in such danger. And this was days ago.'
Z nodded. So perhaps Alyson hadn't yet heard about Dr
Stanford. No need to pile that extra agony on.
They drank in companionable silence, and then the buzzer sounded again.
Alyson went through to the CCTV viewer. ‘It's Mr Fitt, of all people,' she called back, going to let him in. Z listened as she met him stepping from the lift.
‘You've heard?' Alyson said. ‘I'm so truly sorry.'
‘Mr Yeadings rang me, so I came at once. I must apologize for the late hour, but I needed to reassure you, if I can.'
Coming through, they appeared to be countering apology with apology, each of them taking blame for what had been allowed to happen.
‘This is Detective Sergeant Zyczynski,' Alyson introduced her.
‘We have met. I'm glad to see you here, my dear. This is a distressing time for Miss Orme.'
He took the seat between them. Alyson produced a third glass and poured him wine. ‘I feel terrible,' she said, ‘allowing all these people to get in and put Emily in danger.'
‘The blame is mine,' he insisted. ‘I so regret not warning you fully,' and he explained how security had twice been breached at his office; once when Emily's strongbox key disappeared, and again when Martin must have got in on some pretext and taken the headed stationery.
‘When you told me that Rachel Howard had been here at that time I guessed she had used some excuse to visit the office in my absence and help herself to the key, using a false name. Then the bogus insurance man visiting to view the collection: another deceit I should have been able to prevent. It seemed logical to me later to suppose Martin was behind it, checking whether Rachel had occasioned any mischief here. He is in a curiously ambivalent position, being a co-director with her in the family firm, but well aware of her animosity to her grandmother.
‘I decided to trust him, and sent him a duplicate key to the strongbox, against the possibility of my not being in a position to defend it.'
Z leaned forward, ‘Couldn't it have been Martin who helped himself to the original key?'
‘If he'd done so, then he'd have had no need to check that Emily's collection was the same as when she left Edinburgh with it. No; his concern was for her security.'
‘This key,' Z considered. ‘I believe it featured in another case,' and she explained how she'd found one such hidden in Micky Kane's trainer.
‘A few days later a witness saw the boy being chased by a woman answering to Rachel Howard's description. Suppose he'd somehow acquired the key – snatched her bag or picked it up when she'd dropped it. Despite the different way the boy was dressed later she could have recognized him as someone being close when she lost the key. But he got away over a fence and she couldn't follow.'
‘So where is this key now?' Fitt asked.
‘I have it, together with the clothes he wore when he was first picked up unconscious. I was about to send them back to his parents, but I could drop in tomorrow and show it to you.'
Days passed while early March falsely promised the arrival of Spring. Martin Howard was to be arraigned on a charge of manslaughter. He was proving cooperative and to a point his story made sense. Warned by Timothy Fitt of Rachel's first visit to the penthouse, which coincided with the loss of Emily's strongbox key in his office, Martin had employed an Edinburgh PI to watch her closely, fearing some move against Emily whose principal heir she was.
Alerted to her second visit south, he had followed her from Edinburgh, forged the letter of introduction to Alyson by photocopying the firm's headings from Fitt's letters, and faked his signature. His concern was to ensure that Emily and her valuables were adequately protected.
He later admitted his deceit to Fitt who had guessed the identity of the self-styled insurance appraiser and posted to him the replica key, while retaining the strongbox with its catalogue of the art collection and Emily's latest will. Recent occurrences had convinced the old solicitor that his office was not as impregnable as he'd believed.
Martin had hidden nothing about attacking Rachel as she attempted to smother the sleeping Emily with a pillow. Nobody had witnessed her enter the apartment. Perhaps Sheena and the man hadn't properly closed the door behind them on leaving. Or Rachel had some means of picking the lock. Absorbed in appraising Emily's pictures, Martin had known nothing before a sudden clatter from the bedroom. He'd gone in to find her there, bent over the old lady, intent on murder.
He had seized her violently by the neck from behind, shaking her until she dropped the pillow and slumped, unconscious, at his feet. Desperately he had tried resuscitation, but without success. The woman was dead, with Emily staring wide-eyed at him as he bent over the body.
He had panicked, seeking some way to hide what he'd done. He couldn't carry the body out into the street. It had been mad to push her from the window, but he wasn't rational then. He still
denied any further involvement. He had fled the penthouse in horror, leaving Emily unguarded with the door wide open and the woman's body God alone knew where down below …
And the window open, Ramón had claimed in his statement. He had gone in, found no one in charge and closed the gaping glass panel for fear Emily should take a chill. He had not reported the circumstances to Alyson Orme because he was new to the job and did not know what would be expected of him.
This had not satisfied the detectives interviewing him, but Ramón stood firmly by what he'd said, and collusion with Martin Howard was unlikely. The man was a foreigner and had poor spoken English in any case. The situation as he'd found it could have been too complicated for him to describe at the time. Strange, all the same.
It still remained to find who had discovered the body in the warehouse yard, broken into the Nissan and used it for transport to the college. Some knowledge was required of the layout there, and that the porter's lodge had electronic control of the staff lift and roof access. Although once an external student, Oliver Markham had pleaded ignorance of this. Also he had been elsewhere that Sunday evening, and eventually Sheena had provided his alibi. Not that the body had to be removed that same night. Weather conditions made it impossible to tell with any accuracy how long the body had lain unnoticed among rubbish in the dark corner of Elston's yard.
 
The post mortem on Audrey Stanford confirmed that a ligature had been applied with some force to her wrists. Examination of the plastic bag brought up only one set of fingerprints. These proved to be her husband's, and a search of the Stanfords' home produced a pair of corded curtain ties with tasselled ends. These had been purchased by him on the day before her death and paid for with his credit card.
‘How could he have been so stupid?' Z asked.
‘Bought them before he knew how he was going to use them,' Salmon overrode her. ‘It was a crime of sudden passion. He used whatever came easily to hand. There's no doubt at all. Stanford killed her.'
Yeadings lingered over the specimen bag containing the cords. ‘One is cut through,' he observed. ‘Presumably when it was removed from her wrists.'
‘Path lab found on it microscopic flakes of skin matching the dead woman's,' Salmon claimed promptly. ‘We've got it all sewn up.'
Yeadings returned to the computer terminal in CID office and read back the report on finding the cut cord. Both cords, together with the scissors used, had been found crammed at the back of a drawer near where Audrey's body had lain.
Yeadings sat pondering a while. He hadn't known the Stanfords as well as Nan, but he'd agreed that Keith as a killer was a hard one to swallow. ‘Audrey,' Nan claimed, ‘was one very mixed up lady. There was a streak of malice there which her illness had done nothing to improve.'
Yeadings reminded himself of that earlier suicide attempt, genuine or not. Malice, he considered. Well, why not?
He rang through to the DI. ‘I haven't seen the scissors listed among the exhibits for the Stanford murder case,' he said. ‘Do we have them?'
‘They weren't considered necessary as an exhibit for court,' Salmon told him. ‘Beaumont will know what became of them.'
‘Yessir, they were bagged and then put aside,' Beaumont confirmed when Yeadings went to the CID office to tackle him. ‘I could probably find them if it's vital.'
They arrived on Yeadings' desk still in the original forensics bag, with contents and provenance printed on the label. ‘Send them to fingerprints,' he ordered. ‘This shouldn't have been overlooked. I won't accept sloppy practices.'
 
Dr Stanford, distraught and confused, had been held twenty-four hours for questioning and then allowed to return home on bail with his passport confiscated. He knew that by then his arrest would be common knowledge throughout town. His immediate concern was for his patients, and Emily among them. But above all he agonized over what Alyson must think of him. If she accepted the police view of Audrey's death, then he was truly past all hope.
Alone in the house – become an alien place, no longer home – he considered, and abandoned, the idea of phoning. Alyson must not be dragged into his disgrace. Anyone learning of his interest in her could distort it into further scandal.
The police searches had left the place in disorder but he hadn't the heart to start putting things straight. He supposed that Edna Evans would automatically have abandoned the household at the first scent of suspicion. Under steady rain the garden looked sodden and uninviting, and there was nothing to busy himself with in the garage because both cars had recently been serviced. He had no alternative to facing the situation he was in and trying to account for it. He went through to his study and surrendered himself to bitter recrimination.
The shrilling of the doorbell startled him. He was in no mood for company, but a glance from the window showed Nan Yeadings's people-carrier in the driveway and he couldn't turn her away.
‘I don't want to bother you,' she said, ‘but I guessed the fridge might need some restocking.' He took the heavy carton she'd dumped on the doorstep and waved her ahead of him into the hall.
‘No, I'm not staying. I've got young Luke with me, and sorting this lot will give you something to do.'
Briefly he marvelled that she understood, but then suddenly he needed the sane ordinariness of her. ‘Please stay,' he said. ‘Bring Luke in. If you can spare the time, that is.'
He made coffee for them both and unearthed some Jaffa cakes to go with the little boy's orange juice. Between them they sorted the groceries and put them away, all normal activities that made him feel almost human again.
‘It's a nightmare, isn't it?' Nan said, and again he was overwhelmed.
The phone rang and he had courage enough to answer it. ‘Alyson? How are you? I've been thinking so much about …' Too late he knew he should have taken the call elsewhere. Nan would think the worst. A police superintendent's wife! He really knew how to condemn himself.
He forced the animation from his voice. ‘It's kind of you to ring,' he said formally. ‘Good to know some people still have some faith left in me. How's Emily?'
She had picked up the change in tone. ‘Of course we believe in your innocence. The whole thing's crazy. Emily's well, considering we've had quite a little showdown here with a member of her family. It's too complicated to explain now. I just wanted you to know how sorry we are and we're with you all the way.'
They said goodbye and she rang off. ‘One of my patients,' he excused himself lamely.
‘Well, I must be off. Thanks for the coffee, Keith. Luke, what do you say?'
The little boy grinned. ‘Thank you for my orange juice and the bikkit.'
‘I've made you a beef casserole and set the right temperature. All you have to do is switch on and put it in when the red light goes out. Give it forty minutes. It should last you two days.'
‘Nan, I don't know how to thank you.'
‘Just be certain it'll all sort itself,' she said briskly, gathered up Luke and departed.
Will it? he wondered. Was that an oblique message from Yeadings himself? There'd need to be plenty of sorting. Audrey had been so clever in tying him into her death.
 
Ramón had made lunch, sliced chicken breasts and mixed vegetables tossed in a wok. Facing him across the kitchen table, Alyson was still uneasy about his part in the Rachel business. So preoccupied with the awful situation Keith was in, she hadn't at the time properly considered the explanation Ramón had given to the police. It alarmed her that he had kept silent about the unguarded apartment, the disarray in Emily's room and Sheena's absence when he arrived to take over.
He hadn't exactly lied, though. When she'd asked if the insurance appraiser was still there, he'd said, ‘Nobody was there.' The strict truth, but a little short of what he should have said. And once she had started to doubt, she remembered something else: that when she was considering employing him he'd told her he attended an English for Foreigners course at the college. He'd
started some weeks back, so surely he'd be familiar with the building's layout? Even know how to reach the roof?
No, she told herself; it was too fantastic to imagine that because he'd closed the panel in the window, he'd gone further in tidying up, and removed the body. It was the inscrutable face that gave her such ideas of secret planning going on behind.
 
‘I'm home!' Yeadings called, letting himself in, dripping rain. Nan and the children came from the back of the house where they'd finished watching a video.
‘Good day?' Nan asked as he bent to kiss her cheek.
‘Quite productive. How was yours?'
She gave an account of various encounters at the school gate and in the supermarket while he fixed them drinks. ‘All very small fry,' she excused it. ‘And I dropped in on Keith Stanford who's feeling pretty down.'
‘Wouldn't you, in his circumstances? Actually he'll soon have cause to perk up. There's good news on its way.'
‘You can't leave it at that, Mike. What's come up?'
He teased her, shaking his head knowingly. Then, ‘Audrey's fingerprints on the scissors used to cut the cords off her wrists. Hers and no others.'
‘But only his on the plastic bag, Mike.'
‘Quite easily done if she handled it through some kind of fabric. And as for the business of cutting herself out while tied up, I had some practice this afternoon with Z.'
‘Bondage with junior officers? I hope you didn't have your wicked way with her.'
‘I'll show you. Sally, love, pop up and get the cord belt off Daddy's dressing-gown, will you?'
When she brought it he folded it double and wound it round Nan's joined wrists. ‘Now do it yourself. Thread the loose ends through the loop and pull tight. Right. Now imagine you've tied the ends to something above your head, and slumped long enough to cause the cord to bite into the wrists and later leave marks on the flesh. Now when you take the pressure off, the cord will shake loose because there's no knot. Finally you cut through the cord at some point and hide both cord and scissors. Who's to
know you weren't tied up and released by a second person?'
‘Can you prove she did it herself? Suppose those weren't the scissors used. She could even have used a knife.'
‘But she didn't. There was a silky thread from the curtain ties caught in the join of the scissors. This was a clever attempt to pass suicide off as murder.'
‘Clever, yes, but wicked too. How bitter she must have felt to do this to her own husband. Even if he was looking sideways at someone else.'
Yeadings grimaced. ‘I never heard that, Nan. I only hope there's a chance of happiness left for the poor beggar. He deserves it after all this. And if, as you imply, there's someone he's fond of, I just hope they make it together as well as we do.'

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