‘You may find some more pictures on the computer, now I come to think of it,’ he said stiffly. ‘It had slipped my mind. One afternoon I happened to see Marion get on a bus in Piccadilly. On impulse I hailed a taxi and told the man to follow the bus. I said my daughter was on board, and I wanted to make sure she got to her destination safely, without her being aware of me fussing. He probably didn’t believe me. We followed her to Hampstead, a pleasant little mews cottage. I didn’t stop. I took a picture and told the driver to drop me at a tube station.’
‘Do you know the address?’
‘Um, I believe I do recall. It’s 43 Rosslyn Court.’
‘Did you go there at other times?’
‘Certainly not.’
‘We shall find out if you’re lying again, Nigel.’
They left to the twitch of curtains in the neighbouring houses, a heavy red sun sinking in the cold western sky, and made their way back into town, to the offices of the publishing house where Ogilvie worked. There they searched his desk and confiscated his computer. His work colleagues seemed rather excited to discover that dull Mr Ogilvie was a man of mystery, of interest to the police. Kathy waited with the team until it was finished, impatient to move on, to discover if they really had found Marion’s refuge at last. ten
W hile the patrol car and van sped off back to West End Central, Kathy headed up to Hampstead. The mews was a secluded street not far from the heath, number forty-three a small detached two-storey, red-brick house with Victorian sash windows and ornamented chimneys.
The bell tinkled faintly through the stained-glass panel in the front door. There were no lights on in the house. Kathy was fairly well hidden from neighbours by trees in the street and a trellis arch at the front gate, and the streetlights were dim and far apart; a discreet entrance. When there was no reply she used the bunch of keys they had found in Marion’s bag to open the door.
The house had a mildly stale, musty smell, as if no one had opened a window for a while. Kathy trod softly down the carpeted hall, checking a room fitted out like an office on the right, then a sitting room and kitchen at the rear, overlooking the tiny paved courtyard. Then she went back to the stairs in the hall and quickly made sure there was no one in the two bedrooms and bathroom above. Everywhere she had an impression of brand-new, stylish fittings and furniture, and an almost obsessive tidiness.
She returned to the ground floor, to the kitchen. It was small, but immaculately fitted out with the latest Miele appliances. She found a light switch, suddenly bathing the granite worktop in light. Everything was in its place apart from some things left out on the bench beside the sink-a six-pack of juice bottles, two removed, one of which stood open beside a half-filled glass of orange liquid, a saucer containing a small amount of white powder sitting on a set of kitchen scales, and a teaspoon. They were the only things in the whole house that weren’t neatly stowed away.
She pulled latex gloves from her pocket and crouched to take a closer look. The powder was crystalline, more like fine sugar than flour. Would Marion have added sugar to the juice because of her diabetes? But there was something about it that didn’t look quite like sugar either. She straightened and backed away, then got on the phone for a scene-of-crime team. ‘I’ll wait outside in the car,’ she said, and made her way back down the hall, taking with her the half-dozen envelopes she found in the wire mail basket hanging at the back of the front door. They were all advertising material, only one, from a local hair salon, addressed to Ms M. Summers, the remainder to The Occupant .
The forensic team had been on stand-by, and arrived quickly. Kathy briefed the Crime Scene Manager at the front steps. ‘This is the home of Marion Summers, the woman who was poisoned in St James’s Square on Tuesday. I’m interested to know if anyone else has been living here or visited her recently. Also, there’s some white powder and bottles of juice in the kitchen. I’d particularly like a chemical analysis. It’s possible there may be poisons here.’
She put on disposable overalls along with the others, and showed them the powder in the kitchen.
‘Not sure what it is,’ the manager said, squinting at it.
‘No. I might phone our pathologist. He’s been looking into this.’
‘Good idea. We’ll keep out of here until he’s seen it.’
Sundeep was very interested. ‘I’ll come straight over, Kathy. And you must be careful about fumes. Best you stay away until I get there.’
She rang Brock, then began a closer inspection of the house, starting with the ground floor room at the front, which Marion had clearly been using as her office or study. The walls were white, the furniture and fittings modern pale timber and chrome, functional, elegant, and very new. In front of the tall sash windows overlooking the front garden and street there was a large table, on which were several neat stacks of books and papers. One of the other walls was lined with shelves of books, volumes of poetry, art and history, among which she noticed Tony da Silva’s Dante Gabriel Rossetti.
A third wall was dominated by a large pinboard covered with postcards, photographs and stick-on notes, circled and connected by threads and felt-pen lines of various colours. The notes bore names, with brief comments and dates, mostly from the nineteenth century, and Kathy assumed that they were people connected with Marion’s thesis; several of the names were familiar from Tina’s list. A portrait drawing of Rossetti, looking poetically windswept, was pinned in the centre, with the dates 1828-82, and connected by red lines to several women’s faces, as well as to William Morris, 1834-96. A number of the small photographs were postcards of Pre-Raphaelite paintings, including, she noticed with a small buzz, the Millais Ophelia. Alongside it Marion had written neatly, Lizzie Siddal 1852.
She began searching drawers and shelves for a personal address book, but without success, then moved on to the rear sitting room, a cosy little room with Victorian patterned wallpaper and curtains and a marble and black cast-iron fireplace. There was a small dining table there, with only two chairs facing one another across the polished mahogany.
Upstairs there was a similar contrast between the styles of the front and rear rooms, the front bedroom plain and modern with white walls and blinds, the other plush and period, right down to the ornate gilt frame around the huge mirror on the ceiling over the bed. Kathy stared at it, wondering. It reminded her of another such mirror on the ceiling of the bedroom in a flat a boyfriend of hers had once borrowed. It wasn’t how she’d imagined Marion at all.
The scene-of-crime officer working in that room gave a chuckle and said, ‘Yeah, bit of a challenge if you’re not young and beautiful. Looks like there were two completely different people living in this house-Plain Jane at the front, and Naughty Nancy back ’ere. Take a look at this stuff.’ She showed Kathy a drawer of lingerie.
Another female voice came from the en suite bathroom, a very plush affair with marble tiles and an elaborate double spa unit. ‘I’d have said this one might have been an expensive hooker, except there ain’t no condoms. There’s always boxes of condoms.’ She sounded as if she knew what she was talking about.