‘Then we’d never have seen the flowers, might not even have linked it to the Seaton case.’ She came back to the point which had troubled her at the lighthouse. ‘Is that what the murderer wanted? Was it a private ritual? Or did he gamble on the body being found earlier?’
‘Hey! Don’t ask me. I deal with dead bodies not live minds.’
She watched the post-mortem through the glass screen, not because she was squeamish but because she was conscious of her size and was always worried that she was in the way. There were so many people gathered around the stainless-steel table – the technicians, the photographer, Billy Wainwright.
They unwrapped the corpse from the polythene sheeting and to the flash of continual photography they began to undress Lily Marsh. They removed the blue cotton skirt and the embroidered white shirt. Vera saw she was wearing matching white bra and pants. But hardly virginal. The bra was deep cut, lacy, revealing. The pants had little red-silk bows at each side, a red-silk crotch. While Billy Wainwright bagged each garment, Keating gave a commentary, glancing at her occasionally to check that she’d noted the significance of what he was saying. ‘There was little disturbance to the clothing. No apparent sign of sexual assault.’
Unless he dressed her afterwards, Vera thought. Let’s wait for the results from the vaginal swabs before we come to a decision. But there’d been no evidence of sexual assault on Luke and she was already certain that the cases were linked.
Keating continued. ‘No bruising. No lacerations. Can we have photographs of the eyes and lids, please. Note the petechiae.’
Vera had already noted them, had seen them at the crime scene – the pinpoint haemorrhages caused by obstruction of the veins in the neck. The classic sign of strangulation.
‘Not manual strangulation,’ Keating was saying. ‘No finger marks. See the line around the neck. It hasn’t broken the skin, so not wire, unless it was plastic-coated. Fine rope, perhaps.’
And that too was the same as in the Armstrong case.
She watched as he continued his external examination, saw Billy take all the samples – a trace of lipstick left even after her submersion in seawater, fingernail scrapings, a clip of pubic hair – but her mind was buzzing with theories and ideas. What could connect these two very different young people? Keating began his dissection and still her thoughts were racing.
When it was over, she sat with him again in his office. Outside, it was just getting light. Soon the hospital staff on early shift would be arriving. There was more coffee. Chocolate biscuits. She realized she was starving. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d eaten.
‘I don’t think there’s much else I can give you,’ he said. ‘There’s nothing to suggest she was assaulted before she was strangled. She’d been sexually active, but not recently. No pregnancy and she’d never had children.’ He paused. ‘She had all that ahead of her. Such a shame.’
‘She didn’t struggle,’ Vera said. ‘Did she know the murderer?’
‘Not necessarily. He could have surprised her.’
‘It could have been a woman.’
‘Oh yes,’ he said. ‘Physically a woman could have done it.’
But Vera could tell he didn’t really believe in a woman as a killer. He was a chivalrous and old-fashioned man. Women who missed the opportunity of childbirth were to be pitied. I suppose, she thought, that he pities me.
Chapter Thirteen
The press hadn’t yet tracked down Lily Marsh’s parents, or if they had they were showing more than their usual restraint. The young police officer waiting with them said there’d been no phone calls, no visitors apart from the rector from the village church and Mrs Marsh’s sister.
‘I don’t think it’s sunk in yet,’ he said. ‘The way the mother talks, it’s as if the girl’s just gone away for a while and will turn up any time.’
The couple were more elderly than Vera had expected. Phyllis had been forty-four when Lily was born and her husband five years older. ‘We’d given up, Inspector. It was like a miracle.’
Almost hope for me, then. But Vera knew she’d never have children. And the aching for them had almost passed anyway.
Lily’s parents lived in a neat semi. They’d lived there since they were married. Phyllis explained this as she made them tea. ‘It’s all paid off. We thought it would be something to leave to our daughter. We’ve no other savings.’ For the second time in a week Vera was listening to a bereaved mother talking too much, fending off thoughts and memories with words. When Vera and Joe arrived, the husband, Dennis, was in the small greenhouse in the back garden and they let him escape back there once they’d introduced themselves. Phyllis greeted Joe Ashworth like a friend, but Dennis was finding it harder than his wife to hold himself together. He had a blank, wild look on his face. ‘I’ll come out and chat to you in a bit,’ Vera said, ‘when I’ve had my tea.’
Through the window of the small living room they saw him perched on an upturned box, staring into space.
‘He’s always had trouble with his nerves,’ Phyllis said. Vera thought she caught the hint of accusation in her words. Now, when she most needed support, her husband was falling apart, still making demands on her.
The three of them sat clutching cups and saucers. Phyllis apologized for forgetting the sugar, though none of them took it, and jumped up to fetch it from the kitchen. She was a small, energetic woman, in her late sixties. She wore her hair in a tight white perm. ‘I was always worried that one of us would die before Lily was old enough to be independent,’ she said. ‘It never crossed my mind that she would go first.’ She had to talk about Lily being dead, otherwise she wouldn’t believe it.
Everywhere in the room there were reminders of her daughter. She kept getting up to point things out to them. The certificates for ballet and tap dancing, for piano. ‘She got as far as grade five then she stopped taking lessons. Too much school work. But she was still a lovely little player. She was going to start it up again. She said it would be useful in teaching.’ There were photos on the mantelpiece, the window sill, the upright piano. Lily at a birthday party, aged five or six, grinning out over a cake shaped like a hedgehog. The official school photos. By the time Lily was fourteen she was already so attractive she’d turn heads in the street. Even with a school sweatshirt and no make-up. That was something she had in common with Luke Armstrong. They were both physically beautiful. In all the chat, Vera was listening out for anything else which might provide a connection, but it seemed there was nothing. Then, in an enlarged, framed photo hung on the wall, there was Lily in her hired cap and gown on graduation day, head thrown back, a wide smile.
‘It looks as though she was enjoying herself there,’ Vera said. ‘Did she like being a student?’
‘She loved it,’ Phyllis said. ‘Every minute. I was so glad for her. Not that I wanted to let her go, of course. I missed her something terrible. But there was nothing much for her here. No brothers and sisters. Hardly any young people left in the village. And her father with his moods… He wanted her to live at home, travel in every day on the bus, but I knew that wouldn’t do. I said to him, “Be grateful that she didn’t end up in Kent or Exeter.” They were universities on her list. “It’s time she had some freedom.” He saw sense in the end.’
‘Did she work while she was at college?’ Vera asked. ‘Most students have to these days, don’t they?’
‘She worked in the holidays. Saturdays in term time. She got a flat in town with a couple of other lasses. In West Jesmond. A lovely flat. I wasn’t sure how she could afford it, but apparently it belonged to one of the other girls’ dad. He’d bought it, like, as an investment and rented it out to them. We helped her out as much as we could. Dennis got a bit of redundancy from the slate works when that closed so we had some savings.’