Endpeace. Jon Cleary
Medicine and ran the day-to-day routine of the city morgue; normally she would not respond to a call for a government medical officer in a homicide. ‘Shall we go in?’
‘I’ll bet she fingers the curtains first,’ Clements told Malone. ‘Then she’ll look at the kitchen. Then she’ll look at the corpse.’
Malone was glad there was nobody close enough to hear the banter. Outsiders might not appreciate that no disrespect was intended, just that murder was part of the day’s work. They went in through the open door, beneath a carved stone replica, like a coat-of-arms, of the Huxwood Press logo: an open book marked with a bookmark, inscribed Only the Truth. The wide hallway inside seemed crowded with people standing around looking lost. It reminded Malone of a theatre lobby and latecomers wondering if seats were still available.
Kate Arletti pushed her way into Malone’s path. ‘Morning, sir. The Rose Bay officers are here and between us we’ve got a few facts. Can we go into that room there?’
It was the library, where Sir Harry last night had said his beliefs had turned to water. The room now had none of last night’s shadows; the summer sun streamed in through the big bay window. Out in the tiny bay a small yacht rocked daintily in the wake from a passing ferry. Then a launch hove into view, crowded with photographers trying to capture the house from the water. Two uniformed policemen appeared down on the shoreline and waved them away. With the policemen was an elderly gardener holding a spade like an axe. Malone nodded, condoning the gardener’s threat of assault and battery.
‘The body was discovered at seven o’clock this morning,’ said Kate Arletti. ‘The butler went up with his morning tea. What’s the matter?’
‘I shouldn’t be grinning. But all this sounds like something out of Agatha Christie. Butler, morning tea ... We don’t get many crime scenes like this, Kate. How did he die?’
‘A gunshot wound to the side of the head, left temple. It looks like death would have been instantaneous. Dr Clements will confirm that, I suppose.’
‘How are the family?’
‘Shattered, those I’ve met. All except the eldest son, Derek. He’s got some men from the Chronicle out in the garden room, he’s organizing how the homicide is to be reported. He strikes me as cold-blooded. Sorry, I shouldn’t be making comments like that so early in the piece.’
She was small and blonde, a little untidy in her dress but crisp in everything she did. She was dressed in a tan skirt and a brown cotton shirt; somewhere there would be a jacket and Malone would bet she had already forgotten where she had left it. She was pretty in an unremarkable way, her face not disfigured but lent character by the scar down her left jawline. When she had been a uniformed cop a junkie had tried to carve her up with a razor and she had retaliated by breaking his nose with the butt of her gun. Six months ago, when Malone had first met her, she had been in uniform, neat and tidy as a poster figure. Since coming into Homicide, into plainclothes, her natural untidiness had emerged. All that was still neat about her was her work. With a sartorial wreck like Russ Clements setting an example, Malone had never had the heart to ask her to do up a button or roll up a loose sleeve.
‘What about Lady Huxwood?’
She hesitated. ‘Composed, I guess would be the word. She’s pretty – formidable?’
‘That’s another good word. I was here for dinner last night, I’ll tell you why some other time. They’re a weird mob, Kate. Don’t entertain any preconceived notions about them. Take ’em bit by bit, inch by inch.’
‘It sounds as if you didn’t enjoy last night?’
‘I’m not going to enjoy this morning, either.’
They went out into the hallway, which was less crowded now. Clements came towards them, biting his lip, an old habit when his thoughts did not fit as they should. Whether it was because Romy had dressed him or he had known, subconsciously, that he would be coming to this elegant house, this morning he was not his usual rumpled self. He wore an olive-grey lightweight suit, a blue button-down shirt and a blue silk tie with club or regimental stripes; though he had not belonged to a club in fifteen years and never to a regiment. His broad face, just shy of being good-looking, had a harried look, an expression unusual for him.
‘I’ve had only a glance at the family so far – that’s enough. Listening to ’em ...’ He shook his head. ‘Keep an eye on ’em, Kate. We’re going upstairs.’
He and Malone climbed the curve of the stairs. Halfway up Malone paused and looked down: this was the spot where Lady Huxwood had told her children she should have aborted the lot of them. It was an elevation for delivering pronouncements; he wondered how many other insults and dismissals had been hurled from here. Then he went on after Clements, following him into a bedroom off the gallery.
It was a big room with old-fashioned furniture: a four-poster bed, a heavy wardrobe and a dressing-table that could have accommodated at least two people. A large television set, in an equally large cabinet, stood in one corner. On a table by the two tall windows was the only modern note, a computer.
Romy, in a white coat now, was drawing off a pair of rubber gloves. She gestured at the body on the bed and nodded to the two men from the funeral contractors. ‘You can take him to the morgue now. Tell them I’ll do the autopsy.’ Then she crossed to join Malone and Clements by the windows. ‘Time of death is always guess-work, but I’d say he’d been dead ten to twelve hours. I’ll take some fluid from his eyes when I get back to the morgue, check the amount of potassium in it. That gives a bit more precision in the timing, but don’t expect me to pinpoint it.’
‘Any sign of a struggle?’
‘None. He could have been asleep when he was shot, I don’t know. There are powder-marks on a pillow, looks as if whoever killed him used it to muffle the shot.’
Malone walked over to the bed to take a last look at Sir Harry before the contractors zipped him up in the body bag. The democracy of death had done nothing for Sir Harry’s arrogance; a last spasm of pain looked more like an expression of distaste at the world he had just left. Malone nodded to one of the men and the zip closed over Sir Harry Huxwood, like a blue pencil through one of the many editorials he had written.
‘There’s this –’ Romy pulled on one of the rubber gloves, took a small scrap of paper from the pocket of her white coat. ‘Looks like he had a cadaveric spasm. It happens – the muscles tighten like a vice. It’s usually the hand that spasms, but sometimes the whole body does, though that’s pretty rare.’
Malone held the piece of paper with the pair of hair-tweezers he always carried. Clements said, ‘It’s a torn scrap, looks like it’s been torn off the corner of a letter or a memo. Good quality paper. Evidently whoever did him in tried to take the whole paper, but he wouldn’t let go. If they shot him in the dark, maybe they didn’t know it was torn till they got outside.’
‘Why would he be holding a letter or a memo in the dark?’ Malone held up the fragment. ‘There’s one word on it in red pencil. No – N – O, exclamation mark. Got your French letter?’
Clements produced one of the small plastic envelopes he always had in his pockets, grinning at Romy as he did so. He slipped the scrap of paper into the envelope. ‘I’ve never used these as condoms, in case you’re wondering.’
‘I shouldn’t be surprised at anything he did before we met,’ she told Malone, taking off her white coat and folding it neatly. ‘I’ll see Ballistics gets the bullet when I’ve done the autopsy.’
‘How’s business? Can you do him this morning?’
‘They told me before I came out here there’d been six homicides last night, plus four dead in accidents. He may have to take his turn.’
‘He hasn’t been used to that. Put him at the head of the list.’
‘Inspector –’ All at once she was not Mrs Clements but the Deputy-Director of the Institute of Forensic Medicine. Her