In another ten minutes the team finished upstairs. No signs of violence there, they informed Diamond. The aggro seemed to have been confined to the kitchen.
He went to see for himself.
The Nobles favoured a rather lurid pink for their bedroom, slept in a standard size double bed and had a portable TV on the chest of drawers Glenn used for most of his clothes. Trish Noble had a wardrobe and a dressing table to herself. She was reading Catherine Cookson and the Bible and Glenn had been into one of the Flashman books. If the quantity and variety of condoms in Glenn’s bedside cabinet was any guide, their sex life hadn’t been subdued by Trish’s religion.
The second bedroom contained a folding bed, an ironing board and various items the couple must have acquired and been unwilling to throw away, ranging from an old record-player to a dartboard with the wire half detached.
He glanced into the bathroom. Nothing caught his attention.
“What’s in the back garden?” he asked Bignal.
“Plants, mostly.”
“Don’t push me, Derek. Have you been out there?”
“Personally, no.”
“Has anyone thought of looking for a murder weapon, footprints, a means of escape?”
“Not systematically,” Bignal admitted. “It was already dark when we got here.”
“Not systematically,” muttered Diamond with heavy sarcasm. “It backs onto the railway, doesn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“Tomorrow, early, I want a proper search made. In particular, I want to know if there are signs that anyone got in or out by way of the railway embankment.”
Bignal’s eyebrows peaked in surprise. “You think someone else is involved, as well as the wife?”
“That’s the way they would have escaped.”
“They?”
“He, she, they or nobody at all. Let’s keep an open mind, shall we?”
4
Julie Hargreaves may have expected a roasting for having failed to notice the stab wounds, but she need not have troubled. Diamond was more interested in roasting Trish Noble. “She had the kid-glove treatment from me yesterday,” he summed up as they drove out to Trowbridge. “Today she’s got to be given a workover.”
“Do you see her as the killer?”
“Do you?”
She paused for thought. “It would be unusual, a woman using a knife as a weapon. The teapot, I can believe — but why would she hit him with the teapot if she’d already stuck a knife in his back?”
“To finish him off.”
“Ah.”
“However, there could be a second person involved.” Diamond casually tossed in some information he’d received that morning from the SOCOs combing the back garden at Twerton. “There’s evidence that someone climbed over the fence to the railway embankment. Two slats are freshly splintered at the top.”
“An intruder? Nothing was stolen.”
“Yes, but if she had an admirer, for instance...”
Julie didn’t buy the idea. “That’s pretty unlikely, isn’t it?”
“You mean with her religious convictions? I said ‘admirer,’ not ‘lover’.”
“No, I mean he wouldn’t need to climb over the fence. She’d let him in. And they would have to be real thickos to stab the husband and then go down to the nick and report it.”
He responded huffily, “I didn’t say it was a conspiracy. Unrequited love, Julie. The admirer is obsessed with Trish. She’s unattainable while her husband is alive, so this nutter breaks into the house and knifes him. Trish comes home and finds Glenn dying, but mistakenly thinks he’s drunk.”
“And bashes him with the teapot?”
“Exactly. I think she told the truth yesterday. By now she may have something else to tell us.”
“I wonder,” said Julie. “I find it difficult to believe in this crazy admirer.”
Diamond said loftily, “You may understand better when you meet Trish Noble. She’s on the side of the angels and bloody attractive. Dangerous combination.”
“That would explain everything,” murmured Julie in a bland tone. “Shall I organize house-to-house to find out if anyone was spotted on the railway embankment yesterday afternoon?”
“It’s under way,” he told her. “Two teams.”
Trish Noble’s sister lived in a semi-detached on a council estate north of Trowbridge. But it was the bloody attractive young widow herself who answered their knock. In jeans and a white tee-shirt, with the height and figure of a pre-teen schoolgirl, she looked too frail to use a knife on a chocolate cake, let alone a man. The hours since the killing had taken a toll. Her big eyes were red-lidded and they seemed to have sunk deeper into her skull. Julie must have wondered at Diamond’s ideas of attractiveness.
He introduced her and said there were things he needed to ask. Trish calmly invited them in, explaining that she had the house to herself because her sister was at work. In a narrow sitting room, watched by two unwelcoming spaniels, Diamond took the best armchair and launched straight into the workover. “You didn’t kill your husband with the teapot, Mrs Noble. He was stabbed in the back.”
She frowned and stared.
Julie said, “Why don’t you sit down?” She stood behind the second armchair until Trish Noble acted on the advice.
“Did you stab him?” Diamond asked.
Trish seemed to have difficulty taking in what she had just been told — or she was making a convincing show of being stunned by the news. She shook her head.
Diamond said, “If you’d like to explain how it happened, we’re ready to listen.”
She said, “Stabbed?”
“Twice, in the back.”
“That’s impossible. He was sitting in the kitchen.”
“Your story.”
“It’s true! He was at the table when I got in. I’ve told you this.”
“You didn’t stab him yourself?”
“That’s insulting.”
“We’d like a clear answer, Mrs Noble.”
She said vehemently, “No, I did not stab my own husband.”
“That’s clear, then.” Diamond glanced across at Julie, who had found an upright chair by the sideboard. “Got that? She denies it.”
Julie opened her notebook.
“If you didn’t stab him yourself,” Diamond plunged in again, “we’ve obviously got to look for someone who did. Was there anyone else in the house when you got home from the hospital?”
The tired eyes widened. “No one.”
“You’re sure? You can’t be sure, can you? Let’s take this in stages. Did you see anyone?”
“No. This is unbelievable.”
“Or hear them?”
“No.”
“Is there anyone else living in the house?”
“What do you mean — a lodger? No.”
“Does anyone have a key?”
“What?”
“Some friend, perhaps?”
“We don’t give keys to our friends.”
“I’ll tell you what I have in mind,” Diamond offered. “If someone let himself into the house unknown to your husband, he could have taken him by surprise and stabbed him shortly before you came in.”
“Who would do that?” she said, and there was a note of scorn in the voice. She was getting over the shock.
“Do you have a lover?”
She reddened, but that wasn’t necessarily an admission. Almost anyone would have blushed at the question. She told him with a glare, “You should wash out your mouth.”
“Would you like it rephrased?” Diamond said. “A boyfriend? A fancy man? A bit on the side? Come on, Mrs Noble, you work in a hospital. Life in the raw. I don’t have to pick my words with you, do I?”
“I am a married woman — or was,” she answered primly. “I took vows before the Lord.”