‘Which is probably at the bottom of a river or under tons of concrete by now.’ Lambert grinned sourly. ‘You know what I’m going to ask you next.’
The bearded one’s grin was as acrid as the policeman’s. ‘Time of death. And I’m going to tell you that I’ll have a better idea after I’ve cut him up and done my work in the lab.’
Both of them glanced automatically towards what had so lately been a living, breathing man and was now just meat and bone, waiting to be butchered and analysed. ‘Give me some idea. You’re not going to be held to it in a court of law.’
‘I’d say he’s been dead fifteen hours at least.’
‘Last night, then. Some time during the evening rather than in the small hours of today.’
The thin face winced at such speculation. ‘Try to find when he ate his last meal. If you can give me that, I’ll give you a more accurate time of death when I analyse the stomach contents. We’ll give the autopsy priority. No problem with a suspicious death.’
Lambert thanked him and walked into the hall of the house. The scene of crime team had collected various items, principally from the room where the body had fallen and the study upstairs where Preston had spent most of his time. ‘We’ve got prints from the back door handle,’ said the man in charge. ‘Probably they’re just from the occupants of the house, but we’ll need to match up in due course.’
Lambert drove thoughtfully back into Oldford. He was already fairly certain that Preston had been killed at some time on the previous evening or in the early hours of the night. When he entered the CID section, he had his first piece of positive encouragement from DI Rushton. It had come from a man who was about to be charged with breaking and entering. It was the first useful by-product of petty crime that Rushton could recall. A black or dark-coloured car had driven into The Avenue and possibly to the house of the murder at a crucial late evening time.
It should have been exciting, but Ros Barker found herself unable to concentrate upon the work in hand.
She and Kate were deciding which pictures to select for the exhibition in Cheltenham. Ros had already settled on the major ones, which would be in the most eye-catching positions as people entered the gallery. Harry Barnard had been an invaluable guide to commercial considerations in that. But there were still another twenty smaller paintings to be selected for display. The choosing of them should have been a pleasurable task.
But Kate Merrick had done their shopping in Oldford and come back with the news that the high street there was buzzing with rumours. A major crime, apparently, with extra police being mustered to make up the team of investigators. A local sensation in prospect; such dramatic outrages were to be expected in Gloucester and Hereford and Cheltenham, and all kinds of things went on in the major city of Bristol to the south, but they were almost unheard of in sleepy Oldford. It was merely a historical convenience that a major police centre had been established in Oldford, a happy accident that the now nationally famous Detective Chief Superintendent John Lambert should be a local.
To have a gory crime on even the outskirts of the town would be a splendid bonus for most residents of this normally peaceful, even sleepy, rural area. And if the victim at the centre of all this excitement should turn out to be a local celebrity, that would be bliss indeed. There was a good chance of that, for the centre of the investigation was rumoured to be The Avenue.
Kate Merrick was a local, and a very human one. She brought a little of the excitement that was building in Oldford back to the studio with her. Ros Barker, as the older and senior of the partners, tried to pour the appropriate cold water upon such gossip. But she was thirty, not seventy, and the sight of an animated Kate, with her fair skin flushed and her kittenish features so animated beneath her dishevelled fair hair, brought feelings of pleasure rather than irritation to her.
And both of them knew very well who lived in The Avenue, though for some curious reason neither of them chose at this moment to mention it.
Ros listened to the news of the gossip as it poured from her excited partner, made her ritual protest, then settled for running her fingers down the back of the tremulous Kate, feeling the vertebrae and the active muscles around them as Kate said, ‘A strangling, that boy in the butcher’s said. Someone else came in and said they’d heard it was a whole family. I do hope there aren’t any children mixed up in it.’
‘Mmmm!’
‘And you can stop that maternal stuff immediately.’ But she didn’t move.
‘Mmmm! It isn’t maternal.’
‘But you can stop it nonetheless. Work first, play later.’
‘Mmmm! Promise?’
Kate scrambled hastily away from her partner and on to her feet. ‘Why does the young one always have to provide the work ethic round here?’
‘I suppose because I’ve always responded to discipline. When it comes in your shape, it’s positively irresistible. The more you accuse me of being an idle old trollop, the more I like it. I suppose I’m just a helpless decadent in my private life, the way all good artists are.’
‘Good artists who are idle never became successful ones. And I want you to be successful, Ros. Don’t ever have the illusion that I’m with you for your art. You need big money to keep me around and don’t you forget it.’
She dodged a half-hearted attempt by Ros to recapture her kitten and they set about selecting which pictures should be among the privileged twenty to be displayed in the Barnard gallery at Cheltenham. Half an hour later it was Kate who said, ‘I think this one should go in, Ros. It’s different from the others.’
It was a nude of Kate lying on the sofa on which they sat every day, but with a light blue drape beneath her. There was a window frame beside her, with a cat, which was not at all kittenish, looking in with bared fangs. A representative of the dangerous world outside, which always threatens the innocence that blooms in privacy, the blurb for the exhibition would explain.
‘You sure?’ It was one of Ros’s own favourites, but too personal for her to be able to say objectively whether or not it was one of her best. ‘People will recognize you, you know.’
‘You always said that wasn’t a consideration, that art comes first and overrides such petit bourgeois considerations.’
‘Did I?’ But of course she knew she had; she could almost hear her own voice saying it, in her most sententious vein. ‘Well, it seems different when it’s personal. It’s an invasion of intimacy. At least you should be consulted before being displayed in all your naked glory.’
‘How very petit bourgeois! When I was looking forward to all my teachers and the poor sods who used to try to be my boyfriends seeing me tits and all!’
‘Don’t be coarse, young Kate! Well, we’ll put it in if you really think we should. If you aren’t just being big and grown up when you don’t really feel it.’
‘We’re putting it in and that’s that! Preferably in a spot where it will get maximum attention from your admiring public.’
‘I’m not sure I’ve got a public, admiring or otherwise. And the prime spots have already been agreed with Harry Barnard. But I’m very happy to put it in. I suppose I had reservations partly because I like it myself. I always have reservations about putting what I think is the best of myself on display. It’s probably a fear of people being critical of it.’
‘Or even worse, of someone buying the painting. I remember you telling me about when you sold your first painting. You felt as though someone was carrying away a part of you and locking it away for ever.’
‘You remember far too much, young Kate.’
‘I remember that if you’re going to make a living you have to sell everything you possibly can, until you’re well established.’
‘Now you’re beginning to sound like Harry Barnard. I shall defer to your sordid money-grabbing instincts in all my selections. Anyway, I seem to remember the experts in these antiques programmes saying that nothing sells as well as an attractive nude lady.’