Angel reread the pertinent facts and grunted unhappily. He could see nothing in the report that would immediately indicate the identity of Harrison’s murderer. He nodded as he considered that the victim’s assailant, if it was one person, would almost certainly have very bruised knuckles. He sighed and began pushing the report back into the envelope when there was a knock at the door.
It was Ahmed. He came in waving an evidence envelope. ‘DS Taylor dropped these in, sir. Mrs Prophet’s address book and a Christmas card list. He said you were expecting them.’
Angel took them eagerly. ‘Right, lad. Thank you.’
Ahmed went out.
Angel opened the envelope and tipped the two items out onto the desk. He looked carefully down the Christmas card list, which wasn’t dated, then looked through the address book. It was a small but thick, leather-backed book with many crossings out, additions and alterations. He looked firstly at the B’s for Blessington to no avail, then at the C’s, just in case she had been entered under C for Cora, but there was no entry there either. He leaned back from the desk and shook his head.
There was a knock at the door. It was DS Gawber.
Angel looked up. He was pleased to see him. ‘Feeling OK.’
‘Bit of a sore throat, sir. All that smoke.’
‘Yeah. Yeah. Sit down.’
‘Have I missed anything, sir?’
‘I was just looking in Alicia Prophet’s address book for an entry for Lady Blessington. Of course, there isn’t one,’ he said glumly. He pointed at the chair and rubbed his chin.
Gawber sat down. He nodded his understanding at Angel’s disappointment.
Angel’s eyes narrowed. ‘This case is really infuriating me, Ron,’ he said, grinding his teeth. ‘We are just not getting anywhere. Let’s kick it about a bit.’
Gawber nodded. That’s what Angel always did when he’d reached an impasse.
‘A so-called friend of the family, Lady Blessington,’ Angel said, ‘with a title, although we now know that’s false, and also there’s no entry of her in Mrs Prophet’s address book or on their Christmas card list, called every month. She collected … or took money from Mrs Prophet, a blind woman … a thousand pounds every month for the last six months.’
‘That sounds like rent or blackmail, sir,’ Gawber said.
Angel nodded to him, then continued. ‘But on Monday last, she arrived with a handgun and murdered her.’
‘Killed the goose that laid the golden egg?’
‘Exactly, but why?’
‘Does Lady B stand to inherit anything, sir?’
‘No Ron, she doesn’t. It all goes to the husband. That’s another one of the things that doesn’t make sense. Lady B hasn’t a motive. If she does, I don’t know what it is. If she was milking Alicia Prophet to the tune of a thousand quid a month, why kill her? The husband says he knew Lady B only slightly. However we know that he took a photograph of her, having tea with his wife on their patio. I have the very photograph.’
He plunged into his pocket and took out the photograph still covered in polythene and placed it on the desk.
‘Anyway, Lady B arrived on Monday afternoon by taxi, having been picked up from the baths on Wells Street. She was seen walking up the garden path and entering the house. About an hour later, she was seen running from the house to the taxi. The taxi driver says he took her back to Well Street Baths where she then disappeared into outer space and has never been seen since.’
‘But she shot Alicia Prophet, sir?’ Gawber said decisively.
‘Without a doubt. There’s nobody else. The husband would be the expected murderer. But he has an excellent alibi. He was working in his office with his secretary.’
‘Very beautiful secretary, you said, sir,’ he said pointedly.
‘Yes, all right. Very beautiful secretary,’ Angel said irritably. ‘Now there are several witnesses to Lady B dashing out of the house only a minute or so before Mrs Prophet’s dead body was found by Mrs Duplessis, a neighbour, on the settee, with orange peel scattered hither and thither.’
‘Same MO as Reynard.’
‘No prints or DNA left by the murderer. There is £6.56 in cash found on the draining board. Fresh oranges, bought locally, are found in the dustbin … two bags of shopping in the pantry doorway. And Lady B looks like an older version of the model in a painting found on the wall of Margaret Gaston’s bedroom.’
‘Who is she, sir? The girl in the painting?’
‘An unknown model from the 1930s.’
‘It couldn’t have been Lady B when she was younger?’
‘No. She would have had to have been born in 1910.’
‘Of course. Could it have been her mother?’
Angel blinked. ‘Witnesses put Lady B between forty and sixty. Yes. If you stretch things a bit, it’s possible. I suppose it could be her mother, but that doesn’t give us a motive for her murdering Alicia Prophet? Nor an indication as to where she has disappeared to.’
Gawber shook his head. ‘No sir. But there must some reason why this picture turns up at this time. It’s telepathy. It’s a telepathic picture of the murderer. Do you think somebody or something out there is … trying to tell us something?’
Angel pulled a face and ran his hand quickly through his hair. ‘Don’t let’s get carried away, Ron. You can’t solve murders with a ouija board, tarot cards and magic smoke writing!’
‘But there must be an explanation,’ Gawber said forcefully.
‘Yes,’ Angel said animatedly. ‘I am sure there is. I don’t know what it is yet, but there will be a reason, and I bet it’s a damn good reason too.’
‘Or it could be coincidence.’
‘Coincidence?’ he yelled. ‘Coincidence! How many times have I told you, Ron. When you look for evidence in a murder case, there’s no such thing as coincidence!’
Gawber didn’t reply. He didn’t want to annoy Angel further, so he decided to stay silent.
There was an awkward silence.
Angel was a little embarrassed by having allowed himself to be unnecessarily irritated and worked up over what he considered to be Gawber’s unorthodox attitude to coincidences. He considered briefly whether to apologize or not, decided against it, then returned to the original problem in hand. He rubbed his chin thoughtfully.
Eventually, he broke the silence and said: ‘What’s so fascinating about blue, Ron?’
‘Blue, sir? The colour blue?’
‘Yes. Lady Blessington is always seen in the same blue dress.’
‘Maybe she’s only got one best dress? She’s hard up. No shame in being poor, sir.’
‘No. None at all. Still I think if she’s visiting Bromersley, and been around here for six months, you’d think she’d want to show the world an alternative dress … if only to follow the seasons round?’
‘I expect so, sir. Even I have two suits. Sunday best, and second best.’
‘In the winter, if she only had one dress, she could wear something – a coat or a cloak – over it, I suppose, couldn’t she?’
‘That dress would show under her coat.’
‘Aye. Why does she wear such a long dress, Ron? After all, it’s the middle of summer. The temperature has … sometimes … been in the eighties.’
‘Maybe she’s got lousy legs, sir.’
‘You mean muscular?’
‘Don’t know what I mean. I’m just thinking aloud, sir.’
‘Do you think she was sporty?’
‘Yes, sir. She caught the taxi to and from the swimming baths on Wells Road. Maybe she was a swimmer?’
‘I don’t know. She wasn’t seen in the pool on the CCTV, you know. But some sporty women have powerful limbs that are not necessarily attractive.’
‘That dress covered her arms as well.’