Aucoin followed Sime’s eyeline. ‘Oh that’s her place.’
‘Kirsty Cowell’s?’
‘That’s right.’
‘You mean they lived in separate houses?’
‘No, that’s the house she grew up in and inherited from her parents. She and her husband both lived in the big house that Cowell built. They had the old place renovated. Used it as a summerhouse, or guest house, apparently. Though according to the folk we’ve spoken to, they never had any. Guests, that is.’ He glanced back at Sime. ‘She’s in there just now, with a policewoman. Didn’t want her messing up the crime scene.’ If he expected some kind of pat on the back, he was disappointed when it didn’t come. He added, ‘At least, not any more than she already has.’
‘What do you mean?’ Marie-Ange spoke sharply and for the first time. Suddenly this was her territory.
Aucoin just smiled. ‘You’ll see, ma’am.’ His importance to them would pass quickly. He was determined to make the most of it while it lasted.
They parked outside the house next to what was presumably Cowell’s Range Rover. Patrolmen from Cap aux Meules had hammered in stakes and stretched crime scene tape between them as they had no doubt seen in the movies. It fluttered and hummed now in the stiffening breeze. Marie-Ange got her trunk down from the roof and changed into a suit and hood of white tyvek, slipping bootees over her trainers. The others pulled on plastic overshoes and snapped their hands into latex gloves. Aucoin watched with admiration and envy. Marie-Ange chucked him some shoe covers and gloves. ‘I know you’ve probably tramped all over the place already, but let’s try not to fuck it up any more than you already have.’ He blushed again and glared at her with hate in his heart.
The team moved carefully into the house through sliding doors that took them into a tiled sun room with a hot tub. They passed through it to the conservatory lounge, which was littered with recliners and glass tables, one of which was smashed. Shards of broken glass crunched underfoot. Then up two steps to the main living space, avoiding a trail of dried bloody footprints.
A vast area of polished wooden floor delineated a space that rose up into the arched roof. A large dining table and chairs stood off to the left, and at the far side an open-plan kitchen was partitioned from the main entrance by a standing dresser. A staircase dog-legged up to a mezzanine level on the right, and to their left another three curved steps led up to a sitting area with a grand piano and three-piece suite set around an open fireplace.
Almost in the centre of the floor a man lay on his back, one arm thrown out to his right, the other by his side. He was wearing dark-blue slacks and a white shirt that was soaked in blood. His legs were stretched straight out, slightly parted, his feet in their Italian leather shoes tilting to right and left. His eyes were wide open, as was his mouth. Unnaturally so. But the most striking thing was the way his blood was smeared across the floor all around him. In streaks and pools and random patterns. Bloody footprints seemed to circle him. Naked feet, which had left a trail leading away from the body towards the kitchen and then back, fading on the return before picking up fresh blood to track away to the conservatory and down the steps. The main body of blood was almost dry now, oxidised, sticky and brown in colour.
‘Jesus!’ Marie-Ange’s voice came in a breath. ‘When you said mess you weren’t kidding.’
Aucoin said, ‘This is how it was when we arrived. Mrs Cowell claims she attempted CPR and tried to stop the bleeding. Without success.’
‘Obviously.’ Marie-Ange’s tone was dry.
Aucoin shifted uncomfortably. ‘The footprints are hers. She ran over to the kitchen to get a towel to staunch the flow of blood. One of my men found it lying out there in the grass at first light. When she couldn’t revive him she ran down the hill to a neighbour’s house for help.’ He paused. ‘That’s the story she told them, anyway.’
Marie-Ange moved around the body like a cat, examining every pool and spatter of blood, every footprint and smear on the floor. Sime found it difficult to watch her. ‘There are other footprints here,’ she said. ‘The tread of a shoe.’
‘That would be the nurse. She came when the neighbours called. She had to ascertain that he was dead. Then she called us.’
‘If the wife attempted CPR she must be covered in blood herself,’ Crozes said.
‘Oh yes, sir, she is.’ Aucoin nodded gravely.
‘I hope you haven’t allowed her to wash or change.’ Marie-Ange cast him a look almost as acid as her tone.
‘No, ma’am.’
She turned to Lapointe. ‘We’ll need to have her photographed and medically examined, checked for fibres and injuries. I’ll want samples from beneath her nails. And you’ll need to bag her clothes and take them back with you to Montreal for forensic examination.’ She returned her attention to Aucoin. ‘Is there a doctor on the island?’
‘No, ma’am, just the nurse. There’s two of them. They come week about.’
‘She’ll have to do then. And I guess I’ll have to be the examining officer, since it’s a woman.’
Blanc said, ‘Was there any sign of a break-in?’
Aucoin’s laugh was involuntary. But he quickly caught himself. ‘No. There would be no need to break in. No one on the island locks their doors.’
Lieutenant Crozes clapped his hands. ‘Okay, let’s get started. Have you interviewed the wife, Sergeant Aucoin?’
‘No, sir. I took statements from the neighbours, that’s all.’
‘Good.’ Crozes turned towards Sime. ‘Why don’t you and Blanc set up in the summerhouse and take an initial statement before we do the medical exam?’
CHAPTER THREE
The sound of her voice was almost hypnotic. Monotonous, unemotional. She recounted the events of the night before as if she were reading them off a printed account for the umpteenth time. And yet the images they painted for Sime were vivid enough, filled as they were with detail that he supplied himself from his own picture of the crime scene.
But it was a picture that came and went, in sharp focus one moment then blurred the next. Everything about her distracted him. The way her hair fell to her shoulders, limp now but still animated by a natural wave. So dark it was almost black. The strangely emotionless eyes that seemed to drill right through him, to the point where he had to break contact and pretend he was thinking about his next question. The way her hands lay folded in her lap, one inside the other, long elegant fingers pressed together with tension. And her voice with its lazy Canadian drawl, not a hint of French anywhere present in its intonation.
The clouds he had seen earlier were massing now out in the gulf to the south of the islands, and the sun came and went in fleeting moments that fired up the ocean in occasional patches of dazzling light. He felt as much as heard the wind beating against the house.
‘I was preparing for bed,’ she said. ‘Our bedroom is downstairs, at the far end of the house. French windows open on to the conservatory, but the lights were out there. James was upstairs in his study. He had arrived home not long before.’
‘Where from?’
She hesitated momentarily. ‘He’d flown over from Havre aux Maisons and picked up his Range Rover at the airfield. He always leaves it there.’ She paused to correct herself. ‘Left, I mean.’
Sime knew from professional experience how hard it was for someone to refer suddenly to a loved one in the past tense.
‘I heard a noise in the conservatory and called out, thinking it was James.’
‘What kind of noise?’