Death Scene Read online

  He must see it her way. He simply must. Cissie would tell him straight, be honest with him, and that would be that.

  Having decided on this course of action she left the house, checking rather guiltily to see that she was not observed. She really didn’t think she could contend with casual conversation this morning, or with enquiries as to where she might be off to.

  Seeing that there was no one in sight she set off, slender fingers gripping her leather clutch bag, and the terrible weight of guilt upon her shoulders and in her heart.

  ELEVEN

  Henry had stayed in London overnight and collected Mickey from Scotland Yard the morning following the post-mortems. He found him in the fingerprint bureau, in the narrow room at the top of the building overlooking the Thames.

  So far nothing concrete had emerged.

  Henry and Mickey drove back down to Shoreham. Mickey did the driving while Henry looked through reports that had been delivered by messenger first thing.

  The first were the post-mortem records for both Cissie Rowe and Jimmy Cottee and he and Mickey were already familiar with the contents, though Henry skimmed them again just to be sure that they had missed nothing.

  ‘It’s a sad business,’ Mickey commented. ‘Two young lives, both wasted.’

  Henry, as was his usual practice, reprised the main points as Mickey listened.

  ‘So, we were correct in our assumption that she was concussed and then smothered. Fibres from the pillow were found in her mouth and throat and the PM report suggests that the pillow was pressed down hard. It’s likely that her assailant knelt, with his knees on either side of her body, actually pinning her hands to the bed. The hands are both bruised. The powder in her throat, now that is interesting.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘Not a sleeping draft, Mickey. It was cocaine.’

  ‘Cocaine? I didn’t expect that. Was she an addict?’

  ‘The report suggests not. Perhaps a casual user. But you’ll admit that it adds to the puzzle.’

  ‘And the second report?’

  ‘It seems,’ Henry said, ‘that we may have found this mysterious Philippe. And that he has a record.’

  ‘Ah, now I’m interested. Tell me more.’

  Henry scanned the pages. ‘A partial fingerprint that was found at the scene matched one that related to a man called Philippe Boilieu, so it seems this Philippe must have visited Cissie at her home. The print was found on the little table, the one from which the photograph was missing. Index finger, right hand.’

  ‘And his sheet says?’

  ‘Well, there’s quite a list. Scotland Yard are contacting the French police but on this side of the Channel we have extortion and blackmail, robbery including threats of violence. Primarily, though, it seems our man Philippe Boilieu likes to target young women who have perhaps made mistakes in their lives.’

  ‘And what sort of mistakes are we talking about? Do they involve a presentable young Frenchman?’

  ‘We don’t know that he’s presentable,’ Henry argued.

  ‘No, but we can guess. A certain degree of attractiveness is necessary to attract the average young woman. So are we talking pictures taken while in a state of undress, or compromising letters, or something in a similar vein?’

  ‘Any or all of the above.’

  ‘And someone like Miss Rowe, who is almost famous, would be a sweet target for such a man. But would he kill her?’

  ‘That might depend on whether she threatened him. If she said she would go to the police, expose him in some way … I can imagine a young woman like Cissie Rowe, almost famous as you say, having a great deal to lose. She might risk going to the authorities when another might not.’ Henry frowned. ‘The thing that puzzles me is that there seems to be only the one fingerprint of his found in the bungalow.

  ‘The bungalow was clean, but there was inevitably still some dust present. We know she can’t have dusted for at least two days, so shall we say three days’ worth of dust, or four just for the sake of argument. And so let’s speculate that he visited her at her home perhaps four days before she died.’

  Mickey laughed. ‘That,’ he said, ‘is advanced level speculation. But all right, let’s go with that thought. It’s a very close and small community and the bungalows are built within spitting distance of one another, so unless he visited after dark – in which case someone might still have heard him knocking on the door, and that might in itself have aroused suspicion – then it’s possible someone might have seen him four or five days before she died, might remember seeing him.’

  ‘I will arrange to have his pictures wired to the local police. We’ll let them do the legwork on it. Local faces are more likely to elicit a positive response, I think.’

  ‘It also occurs to me,’ Mickey said, ‘that the fingerprint was found on that little table and that there is a photograph missing from that same table. And everyone we speak to, who had opportunity to see it, tells us that the picture was of an older couple and a boy. Is it too much of a stretch to think that Philippe might be that boy? That this is a friend come from the past?’

  ‘Who then took the photograph away.’ Henry nodded. ‘On one level that would make sense, on another it does not. Removing the photograph – and I have no doubt that you are right and Philippe Boilieu was the one who did that – would only serve to point to the perpetrator. Who else would take that picture away? It is … incautious, would you not say?’

  ‘I would say only that it sounds very human,’ Mickey commented. ‘Repossess the photograph and you, in some way, repossess the memory. If this friendship was important to either of them, then the picture would remain so.’

  ‘And so today,’ Henry said, ‘we make a re-examination of the scene and we interview Mr Selwyn Croft, assuming that our colleagues have found him.’

  ‘Well,’ Mickey said, ‘if they have not they will take us from bank to bank and shout his name until he appears.’ He smiled, and from his expression Henry gathered that he rather liked the idea.

  ‘One flaw in that plan,’ Henry reminded him. ‘It’s Saturday. The banks will all be closed.’

  ‘Ah, so they will,’ Mickey agreed reluctantly. ‘Then we’ll have to visit the young man in his home. I’m sure we’ll try and be discreet under the circumstances.’

  Their colleagues in Shoreham had indeed found the address for Mr Selwyn Croft.

  Henry spent a little time in contacting the central office and arranging for photographs to be wired so that their Shoreham colleagues had pictures of the mysterious Philippe. He was assured that they would get these printed up and taken out by Monday at the latest. It might, Henry was told, be difficult to find a printer able to produce them on the Sunday but they would do their best, and Henry had to be satisfied with that.

  He and Mickey walked back to Cissie Rowe’s bungalow. Two constables that he did not recognize were on duty and reported that it had been a quiet night though they had had to drive off three reporters earlier that morning. One, they said, had been taking photographs with a little pocket camera but there was little anyone could do about that. From the description, Henry guessed this had been Sophie Mars. He had been relieved and surprised that the local press had not been more intrusive. The police presence on the footbridge, the easiest crossing point on to this spit of land, had probably put some of them off. Though he fully expected the story to be on the front page of some of the Sunday newspapers.

  Cissie Rowe was far too photogenic and the story of her life far too romantic to be of no public interest. He wondered where her funeral would be held, there being no family to bury her, and assumed that the studio would probably take charge of this and almost certainly turn it into a big event to which the local population and the press would be drawn.

  Mickey had not seen the devastation, only the photographs that Henry had taken, and he was shocked at the transformation of their crime scene.

  ‘This was not a mere search,’ he said. ‘This was an act of wilful violence. Whoe
ver did this was angry, furious even. If, as we speculate, he had only a few minutes, ten or fifteen at the most, then why waste time overturning the furniture and smashing the lamps when he could have taken what he came for and got away and we’d probably be none the wiser?’

  ‘Perhaps he didn’t find it. Perhaps the fury is because he didn’t find it, but I agree with you there is an unnecessary amount of chaos being caused and the only thing I can think is that he hoped it might slow us down. Lead us to assume that there was a reason for it, other than simple malice. If there was any thought behind this violence at all, then I would say it is thought of misdirection. So, what I hope we might do is to try and read his actions. See where he actually searched, where he did not, and try and find whatever it was he was looking for. If you or I had come into a place like this, Mickey, where would we look first?’

  ‘I’d look for loose boards. In fact, I did look for loose boards but found none. I would look beneath drawers to see if anything had been fastened there. I did that, but found nothing. I did miss one thing and that was the snake bangle. To me it was just another gee-gaw; it was you who thought to look for hallmarks.’

  ‘I noticed it primarily because of Cynthia’s. And we still don’t know if it has any bearing on Cissie Rowe’s death. We know only that it is an out-of-place thing.’

  ‘But our search was logical. We are practised at this. So we should not be asking what we might look for, we should be asking what someone in a hurry looks for.’ Mickey nodded as though to reaffirm his own statement. ‘But of course you know that, so what you’re really asking is what wouldn’t we do. We wouldn’t come in here and start throwing furniture about, that’s for sure. There are bungalows close by where people might have heard noise.’

  ‘We know that Dr Clark was not present. And at that time no one else was home. Mrs Clark had taken the children along the beach.’

  ‘And on the other side?’

  ‘The next bungalow along is empty. It’s another summer let. I’m told that fewer people live here full-time now than did five years ago, and fewer still than a decade ago when the studio was operating at full strength. After the fire, production was cut right back. It’s a miracle that it still continues, and there are certainly fewer theatrical types along the coast now than a few years ago.’

  ‘So again the indications are that it is someone local, someone who can observe without being observed, without being noticed, because he is simply part of the local scene.’

  ‘Mickey, what if this was not a search at all? What if this was simply anger, rage at Cissie or perhaps even at the person who killed her? What if we are reading this under a misapprehension?’

  ‘It’s possible,’ Mickey agreed. ‘So we process our scene in two ways. We look for evidence of a search and for evidence of rage. If it is rage then it’s more likely there will be fingerprints. Someone committed to a thorough search is more likely to have worn gloves, or that would be my assumption anyway.’

  They divided the scene and this time Sergeant Hitchens took the bedroom and Henry began in the small kitchen. A lamp had been smashed and glass shards covered the floor. The smell of paraffin was very strong in here and Henry suddenly wondered if the intent had been to set a fire but the would-be arsonist had run out of time. Henry had, after all, arrived back before the constable and that would have narrowed the window of opportunity quite considerably from the maximum of ten or fifteen minutes the perpetrator might otherwise have had.

  As in a lot of the bungalows, cooking was done on a two ring burner and the fuel for that burner was paraffin. Henry realized that this too had been emptied and splashed across the walls.

  He went back into the living room to inform Mickey of his discovery only to discover that his sergeant had come to a similar conclusion.

  ‘Do you burn what you love or what you hate?’ Mickey asked. ‘Or what you have loved? We were right in our second guess, there was no search here. There was only anger. So my guess is we look for an angry young man.’

  ‘An angry killer too?’

  ‘My betting on that would be even,’ Mickey said. ‘It’s my experience that young women who look like Cissie Rowe tend to leave a trail of broken hearts behind them, even if they have no intent to do so. Especially if there is a little bit of glamour to be had by the association. And I’m not just talking about young men here; young women can be just as drawn and just as violent in their actions, and we already have one woman implicated in sending the false message, drawing your constable away. Jealousy can also be a bitter thing.’

  ‘It can indeed,’ Henry agreed. ‘As can loss.’

  Sergeant Hitchens nodded. ‘I don’t think we can look for just one solution here,’ he said. ‘The death may have one answer and this quite another. For now I suggest we close the doors and leave this place as it is. We would be better served in going to talk to this young Selwyn fellow, see what he has to say for himself. I think when we find a possible suspect for this mess we should bring them here, confront them with it, see what they have to say. I think that might be more enlightening.’

  Henry agreed. They left, reminding the constable to make notes of anyone that came near, and Henry left his second, older camera with the constable. The man took it cautiously, as though afraid it might explode, and Henry talked him through the very simple controls. ‘If you see anything unusual, then photograph it. If any member of the press comes by, take their picture as well. They may object but you are the law here, not them. It will be of little use in the dark, so leave it with the desk sergeant when your shift has been relieved.’

  ‘You think that’ll do any good?’ Mickey asked as they walked away. ‘Most like we’ll get lots of pretty pictures of seagulls,’ he said morosely, and Henry realized that he was a little put out that someone else had been trusted with his boss’s camera, even if it was the older one.

  ‘You’re probably right,’ he agreed. ‘It’s unlikely he’ll have the skill.’

  Mickey Hitchens nodded, his pride now satisfied.

  TWELVE

  Selwyn Croft looked like a bank clerk, Henry thought. Even at the weekend he wore a clean white shirt with a detachable collar and the sleeves of his shirt were held up with expandable suspenders. He was still struggling into his jacket as his mother led the officers into the front parlour and twittered about tea.

  Mickey thanked her and said that would be lovely, as much to get her out of the way as because he actually wanted to drink any.

  Selwyn Croft’s hair was slicked back with far too much grease. He had a premature widow’s peak above rather a handsome face. His eyes were blue and Henry wondered if his hair was actually quite fair beneath the brilliantine.

  He stood nervously on the hearth rug, his back to the unlit fire and his hands behind his back as though he wasn’t quite sure what to do with them.

  ‘You’ve come about Cissie – I mean, Miss Rowe? I suppose I knew someone would come and talk to me about her. I heard, I heard …’ He broke off and Henry could see that he was genuinely upset.

  ‘We understand that you were a good friend of Miss Rowe. Perhaps a little more than a friend?’

  Selwyn Croft’s cheeks coloured and it struck Henry that the young man was almost delicately pale.

  ‘I hoped once that we might be more,’ he said. ‘But Cissie had other ideas. She preferred someone else.’

  ‘Would that someone else be Jimmy Cottee?’ Mickey Hitchens asked. His sergeant sounded slightly surprised, Henry thought.

  Selwyn Croft shook his head vehemently. ‘No, though Jimmy was dead sweet on her. And Cissie, she was kind to him, I suppose. She was never mean, not Cissie. Never mean to anyone, or cruel. But she never took Jimmy seriously.’

  ‘Then who did she prefer?’ Sergeant Hitchens asked him.

  Selwyn Croft was at a loss, it seemed. He shook his head. ‘I don’t know who he was,’ he said. ‘Only that there was someone. She mentioned his name once. Geoffrey something or other, and he had a car. A blue coup
é, but I couldn’t tell you what make. She pointed him out one day when he was driving by, but I didn’t recognize the make, only that it had a mascot on the front. It looked like a leaping horse, something like that.’

  ‘He was driving by – where was this? And did he see you, acknowledge Cissie?’

  ‘No, he can’t have seen her, I don’t think. She noticed him and she pointed to the car and said, “Oh, that’s Geoffrey”. And then she bit her lip as though she’d said something wrong. It was a funny habit she had, you could always tell when Cissie was unsure of herself, or when she thought she’d made a mistake. She’d bite her lip. It was kind of … kind of sweet.’

  Henry and Mickey exchanged a look.

  Mrs Croft came in with the tea tray and her son leapt forward to take it from her. He set it down on the butler’s table beside the fireplace and then, his hands once more empty, went back to looking awkward.

  Mrs Croft hovered, clearly uncomfortable with having two policemen in the house and not sure if she should stay to pour the tea or if she should leave. Mickey rescued her.

  ‘No need to detain you, Mrs Croft. I’ll be mother. I thank you kindly.’

  ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Oh. Then I’ll leave you gentlemen alone, shall I? If you need anything I’ll be …’ She backed out of the room, casting an anxious glance at her son.

  ‘Don’t worry, Mrs Croft,’ Henry said. ‘Your son isn’t in any trouble. He is merely helping us with our enquiries.’

  ‘Oh, oh I see. Well, thank you. Thank you.’ She disappeared into the hall and shut the door behind her.

  ‘Did you hear that Jimmy Cottee was found hanged?’ Sergeant Hitchens asked.

  The pallor of the young man’s face increased, so that even his lips looked grey.

  ‘Sit down before you fall down, young man,’ Mickey told him. ‘I’ll take it that’s a no, then? You didn’t hear about his death?’