“I think he will be of that family. Allingham is not a large village, there cannot be many Westwoods.”
“I know only the one family in the village of that name.”
“I see. Were you and your wife happily married?”
“Very. We hadn’t been married long and we were enthusiastic about our union, wanted children. Yes, yes, we were happy.”
“You know of no one who’d want to harm your wife?”
“No one at all. She was well liked, much respected.” Richardson opened the door of his Range Rover.
“Where will you be if we need to contact you, Mr Richardson?”
“At the farm. Penny Farm, Allingham. Large white Georgian house, easily seen from the village cross.”
“Yes, that is my husband,” Marina Westwood said, and she said it without a trace of emotion. Then she put her long hair to her nose and sniffed. “Chlorine.” She turned to Hennessey. “The constable said I could dry but not shower. I was in the pool you see, when the constable came, told me I was needed to identify someone. I wanted to shower the chlorine out of my hair but that takes an hour. So he said I couldn’t. Smells of chlorine. Shower when I get back.”
Detached, utterly completely detached. Hennessey was astounded, frightened even. This smartly dressed woman with long, yellow hair, high heels to compensate for her small stature, was looking through a pane of glass at the body of her husband and all she was concerned about was the chlorine in her hair. “Yes,” she said, “that’s Dominic. He looks like he’s sleeping, sort of floating. I thought you were going to pull him out of a drawer.”
And the nurse, used to many and varied emotions at the viewing of the deceased for purposes of identification, could only gasp at Marina Westwood’s lack of emotion.
Hennessey nodded his thanks to the nurse who shut the curtains and seemed to hurry from the room — to escape Marina Westwood? To tell her colleagues what she witnessed? Hennessey thought probably both.
“Your husband died in mysterious circumstances, Mrs Westwood.” Hennessey and she remained in the viewing room for a few moments.
“Oh?”
“He was found deceased in the company of a woman identified as Wendy Richardson, of Penny Farm, Allingham.”
“Oh.”
“Do you know her?”
“Yes... no... know of her, not speak to.”
“Do you know of anyone who’d want to harm your husband, Mrs Westwood?”
“I don’t. Dominic had no enemies. Rivals perhaps, but no enemies.”
“He was a businessman?”
“He had a computer company. Software.”
Whatever that is, thought Hennessey, who was proud to be the last surviving member of the human race who didn’t possess or know how to use a computer.
“A farm worker found the bodies,” Hennessey confirmed. “He thought they were two lovers, though it was a bit early in the morning for that sort of thing. Also thought they were a bit long in the tooth for it as well, but left them at it. When he returned, retracing his steps an hour later, saw they hadn’t moved, he took a closer look. And we are here.”
“I was getting a bit curious.” She sniffed at her hair. “I wondered where he’d got to when he didn’t turn up last night. I thought he had had too much beer again, and stayed somewhere rather than drive home. He’s done that before. He’s sensible like that.”
“Who would benefit from his death, do you know?”
“Me, I suppose, I’m his wife. I’ll get everything. Everything that’s paid for anyway. Debt didn’t seem to bother Dominic.”
“Were you happily married?”
She shrugged her shoulders.
Yellich drove home to his modest new-build house in Huntingdon, to his wife and son. His wife explained that Jeremy had been “impossible” all day and she needed “space”, so she put on a hat and went for a walk. Yellich went into the living room. Jeremy, cross legged and sitting far too close to the television set, turned and beamed at his father. Yellich smiled back. Jeremy was twelve years old, he could tell the time and point to every vowel sound letter in the alphabet, including the letter “y”.
Hennessey too drove home, to his detached house in Easingwold, to a warm welcome from “Oscar”, his brown mongrel. Later in the evening, he stood in the landscaped rear garden which had been planned by his wife shortly before she died, suddenly, inexplicably, as if she fainted, but it was life, not consciousness, which had left her. “Sudden Death Syndrome” was entered on her certificate, “aged twenty-three years”. And in the thirty years since her death, her garden, where her ashes were scattered, had matured to become a place of tranquillity. Each day, winter and summer, rain or shine, Hennessey would stand in the garden telling Jennifer of his day. “Just lying there,” he said to the grass, to the shrubs, to the apple trees, to the “going forth” at the bottom of the garden, where lived the frogs in a pond, “the farm worker thought they were lovers at first. Don’t like the widow of the deceased male, haven’t made up my mind about the widower, but the widow, she’s an odd fish and no mistake.”
Tuesday
Hennessey held the phone to his ear. “They drowned?”
“That’s what I said.” Louise D’Acre trapped her phone between her ear and her shoulder, using both hands to read through her notes. “In fresh water, or they had had a heart attack.”
“I’m sorry, Dr D’Acre, I don’t follow.” Hennessey moved the phone from one ear to the other as he “heard” Dr D’Acre smile down the phone.
“I’m the one who should be sorry, I’m not making a great deal of sense, am I? I was puzzled because the cause of death was apparent upon investigation, both corpses show evidence of vagal inhibition of the heart, which brought on a fatal heart attack. Death from such causes is often associated with shock, especially in the frail elderly, but as I pointed out, both died at exactly the same time. So what caused two young and healthy people to die of shock at the same time? That had me foxed. And if their deaths hadn’t been linked, if their bodies had been found miles apart for example and at different times, I probably wouldn’t have looked for a link, and so put death down to heart failure, cause by vagal inhibition. But they were clearly linked, so I had a closer look and found the answer in the marrow of the long bones.”
Thus far Hennessey had written “heart attack” on his notepad but continued to listen patiently.
“I found diatoms in the long bones.”
“Diatoms?”
“Wee beasties, as a Scotsman might say. Micro-organisms that live in the water, they get into the marrow of the long bones of a drowning victim. They differ from salt water to fresh water, these are fresh-water diatoms. The victims blood has expanded in the veins caused by the fresh water joining the blood stream, salt water doesn’t do that, so they drowned in fresh water. And I would guess a struggle for life induced vagal inhibition, which brought on a heart attack. No signs of violence though, except for small areas of light bruising round the ankles of both victims. Both of her ankles, and one of his ankles.”
“The ankles?”
“They were held face down in a large body of water by someone holding their ankles. The water was clean, not polluted, and heavily chlorinated. A swimming pool, for example.”
“Funny you should say that.”
“Why, is that significant?”
“Very.”
“Well, diatoms differ from one body of water to another; if you could obtain a sample of water from the pool in question, I could tell you if our two friends here drowned in that pool.”
“What are you looking for, boss?” Yellich drove out to Oast House, Allingham.