‘Shit!’ said Vera. ‘We’ll need to get someone to take care of the animals.’ She wondered if she might persuade Percy to take them until the family got home. Though it might be more a case of persuading Susan.
There was a big scrubbed pine table. The kitchen was tidy and everything gleamed, but it wasn’t Homes & Gardens. None of the chairs matched and the crockery on the dresser was old and some of it a bit chipped. The rug on the tile floor was made of rush matting. Presumably the cleanliness was Susan’s work. If Randle had lived in the flat in the attic, Vera supposed that he’d have his own kitchen there.
They wandered on through the house. There was a formal dining room, which felt cold and looked as if it was hardly ever used. Dark paintings of Victorian gentlemen in dull gilt frames. French windows led to a terrace of flagstones and then to a lawn. Vera wondered if cutting the grass was part of the house-sitter’s job description. Then a family living room. A fireplace with bookshelves in the alcoves on either side, old sofas scratched by generations of dogs, photos on the mantelpiece. One of a handsome young man in uniform standing next to a young woman in a floral dress; others of the same people as they got older: with two children on a beach, standing outside a college at a son’s graduation, in smart clothes at a daughter’s wedding. The last picture must be recent and showed the two of them sitting on a white bench outside this house. They were probably in their mid-seventies, but wiry and fit. The man looked at the woman with the same adoration as in the first picture.
‘The portrait of a happy marriage,’ Joe said.
‘Man, that’s a bit profound for you.’ Vera kept her voice light, but she was moved too. A tad jealous. She didn’t have any personal experience of happy families. ‘It’s easy enough to be taken in by appearances.’
A wide polished staircase led to the first floor. The bedrooms were big and airy. Old-fashioned furniture, sheets and blankets and floral quilts. None of that duvet nonsense, with cushions on the beds that you only had to throw off before you went to sleep. Two double rooms and two twins – the twin rooms still decorated for children. One with a train set on a big table and a moth-eaten rocking horse. Vera wondered if there’d been grandchildren. There’d surely have been photos, and they hadn’t seen any downstairs. Perhaps the Carswells were waiting in hope for their children to produce offspring. They found one family bathroom with a deep old enamel bath, and a more recent shower room, built in what might once have been a cupboard in the main bedroom. The only gesture towards modernization. No toiletries in either room to indicate they were used by a young man. And still there was no sign of disturbance, nothing that could be considered a crime scene.
‘Where did our victim live then?’ Joe was getting impatient, but Vera didn’t mind taking her time over this stage of the investigation. It was getting the feel of the place. Like setting a scene in a story. You learned a lot about people from the place they lived, and the Carswells might have been halfway around the world when this man was killed, but he was staying in their house.
Joe looked across the bannister and down to the hall below. ‘I mean, you said he lived in the attic, but I can’t see any way up.’
He was right. There were no stairs leading from the first floor. But there definitely was an attic. Vera had seen the windows from outside. ‘They’ll go from the kitchen,’ she said after a moment’s thought. ‘The staff quarters. You wouldn’t want to see the minions in the main body of the house. Not when this place was first turned into a domestic residence.’ She hoped the Carswells wouldn’t hold that attitude. She liked their house and had a picture of them as friendly people. Open-minded. Though, as she’d told Joe, appearances could be deceptive and she needed to keep an open mind too.
They found the stairs in the kitchen, hidden by what they’d thought was a cupboard door. It was painted white, like the door leading into the walk-in larder on the other side of the range. Behind, steep and very narrow stairs twisted their way up. There was a switch inside and a bare bulb screwed into the wall gave the only light. Perhaps once there’d been access to the first floor, but it seemed that must have been plastered over. Vera thought the work had been done when they’d installed a shower in the cupboard in the main bedroom. But now the stairs continued up and the light hardly reached here. The passage was wider, but still, because of her bulk, she had the nightmare thought that she might get stuck in one of the tight twists, that she’d suffer the indignity of Joe trying to pull her out.
She was starting to feel panicky and claustrophobic by the time she reached the top. The crime-scene suit didn’t help. Behind her Joe was breathing evenly, but she was already out of breath. Another white wooden door. She pushed against it and nothing happened. She pulled it and had to squeeze against the wall because it opened towards her.
‘The maids must have been skinny little things in the old days.’ She gave a little laugh, trying to make light of her discomfort, stepped into a cramped hall and stretched. Bare whitewashed walls. A pair of wellingtons. A scarf and a duffel coat on a hook. The only light came from a small window in the roof. Joe joined her and they took up all the space. She paused for a moment before opening another door into Patrick Randle’s flat.
It was big and light and must have stretched over half the house. This had more the feel of a city loft apartment than a home in the country. The walls sloped, but big windows let in the last of the evening light. The floorboards had been stripped and polished and the doors were open, so Vera could see right to the gable end. There a window was open and they heard the outdoor sounds of woodpigeons and water. Close to the entrance there was a small bathroom. A crumpled towel on the side of the bath. An electric razor on the shelf over the sink. Vera caught her reflection in the mirror and turned away quickly.
The rest of the space was divided by one wall. A large open-plan kitchen and living room took up most of it. In the kitchen section a fridge and a slim cooker. A cup and two plates washed up on the draining board, two more mugs still dirty in the sink. Did that mean that Patrick Randle had entertained a visitor? The rest of the room was furnished with cast-offs from downstairs: a squashy sofa and a scratched dining table. The room wasn’t a mess, but there was clutter. Last week’s Observer on the arm of a chair, a couple of books on the table.
Vera walked on towards the open door that led to the bedroom. The room faced west and it was bright, inviting. It seemed to glow. She stood at the door, aware that Joe was opening drawers in the room behind her, making a first check of Randle’s possessions. Inside the room there was a double bed, low to the floor. The mattress very thin, so she thought it’d be hard to get a good night’s sleep. In one corner a huge, heavy wardrobe. She thought that must have been built up here; you’d never get it up those narrow stairs. In fact all the furniture must have been in place before the door to the first-floor bedroom had been plastered over.
Then she thought it was odd the way your mind worked, because as soon as she’d looked into the room she’d seen the man lying on the floor under the window. So why had she focused on the trivial matter of the furniture? Why had her attention been caught by a monstrous wardrobe? She forced herself to look again. To concentrate, because sometimes first impressions were the most important. In shock you picked up details that you could miss later. This was an older man. Middle-aged. Grey hair, grey suit. A civil servant of a man. He lay on his back and his spectacles were still in place on his nose, though tilted so that he would only see through one of the lenses. His white shirt had been slashed into shreds by the sharpest of knives. The shirt was no longer white, but reddish-brown, and what looked like blood had soaked into the stripped wooden floor beneath him.