Preface to Murder Read online

‘Dead as a dodo,’ said the officer, then blushed at his unfortunate turn of phrase.

  ‘Let’s hope it’s not that quiet,’ said Bridget grinning. ‘I’ll just check on her, then you two can be off.’

  They gave her a grateful smile. She crunched across the gravel and rang the bell beside the gloss-black front door. The bell chimed deep inside the house, but there was no answer. Bridget peered through the large bay windows to the side of the door, but the curtains were still drawn. If Diane had slept in after Bridget had got up so early, she would be annoyed. Mystified, she stepped back onto the driveway and looked up at the window belonging to the master bedroom. The curtains were drawn there too. She pushed the bell once more, holding it down with her thumb for half a minute, and when there was still no answer, walked round the side of the house to the back door.

  The sight that met her stopped her in her tracks.

  The back door to the house hung open, swinging on its hinges in the early morning breeze. In the kitchen beyond, shattered glass covered the floor, sparkling in the first light like spilled diamonds.

  Bridget sprinted back to the front of the house as fast as she could. The two officers saw her coming and jumped out of their car.

  ‘What is it, ma’am?’

  ‘She’s not answering the door. And there’s been a break-in at the back.’

  They paled at the news. ‘You want us to break down the front door?’

  ‘It’s too solid,’ said Bridget. ‘We’ll go in the back way. One of you come with me, and one of you stay here.’ She looked expectantly at the taller of the two, wishing that Jake was with her.

  She made her way round to the back of the house again, the big policeman right behind her. This was a crime scene now, but there was no time to worry about contaminating the scene. A woman was in danger. Being careful not to touch anything, Bridget stepped carefully over the broken glass and made her way into the kitchen, calling out, ‘Diane!’

  No answer.

  She continued on into the house. After quickly checking that the downstairs rooms were empty, she and the constable made their way upstairs. The house was silent.

  The door to the master bedroom stood ajar. Bridget pushed it fully open with her gloved fingertips and crept into the room.

  The bedroom was dim with the curtains closed, but light enough for Bridget to make out the shape of Diane Gilbert lying in her king-size bed.

  ‘Dr Gilbert? Diane?’

  The woman appeared to be fast asleep. But something wasn’t right. She was too still. There was no rise and fall of the duvet to show that she was breathing. Bridget touched two fingers to Diane’s neck, but felt no pulse. Her skin was cool to the touch.

  The writer who had been unafraid to tackle controversial subjects and who had scorned the death threat she had received, was dead. And she had been killed while under Bridget’s protection.

  2

  ‘Anything yet?’ Bridget demanded impatiently.

  The forensic medical examiner, Dr Sarah Walker, was beginning her investigation of Diane Gilbert’s body to determine the likely cause of death. Meanwhile, the head of the SOCO team, Vikram Vijayaraghavan – Vik to his friends – and the other Scene Of Crime Officers were busy combing the house and gardens to gather evidence. Bridget knew that the process would take many hours to complete and couldn’t be rushed, but she was itching for one of them to give her some initial clue as to what had happened to Diane Gilbert.

  After all, this had taken place while Bridget was in charge of the writer’s safety and security, even though she hadn’t personally been present when the woman was murdered. It was only a matter of hours since she and Jake had escorted Diane home and made sure that everything was in order before bidding her goodnight. Two officers had searched the grounds of the house and had remained on guard all night. And yet someone had broken into the house, murdered its sleeping occupant and escaped without anyone hearing or seeing anything. What had they missed that had allowed such a tragedy to occur?

  ‘We’ve only just got started,’ said Vik.

  Sarah shook her head. ‘I’ll let you know when I’ve made my preliminary assessment.’

  Unable to contain her energy, Bridget stomped outside, taking care to use the front door this time to avoid having to step over the broken glass in the kitchen.

  The officers who had been on duty overnight, PC Sam Roberts and PC Scott Wallis, were in the front garden smoking. They hastily stubbed out their cigarettes when they saw Bridget approaching.

  ‘Let’s run through this again,’ she said.

  She had already heard their story once, but a retelling would do no harm. Perhaps there was something she – or they – had missed the first time.

  The two constables exchanged glances. They were both clearly distraught at what had happened, and no doubt fearful of the prospect of facing a disciplinary hearing, but right now Bridget was less interested in assigning blame than in finding out what had happened. However much she may have personally disliked Diane Gilbert, she was still Bridget’s responsibility. More to the point, a fellow human being had lost their life.

  The officer who had accompanied her into the house – PC Sam Roberts – was the first to speak. ‘It’s like we said last night, ma’am. We arrived about fifteen minutes before you did yesterday evening. We walked all around the property, checking that the doors and downstairs windows were locked, looking in the garage, and searching the grounds. There was no one here, and no signs of any disturbance.’

  ‘And you didn’t fall asleep or leave your post at any time?’ She knew from experience how easy it could be to snatch a quick shuteye when on an all-nighter, especially when the job in question appeared pointless.

  ‘No, ma’am,’ said the other officer. ‘We were here the whole time, and we had a clear view of the house and the driveway. No one entered or left. I swear.’

  Bridget studied the two men’s faces. From their haggard appearance she was inclined to believe that they really had stayed awake all night.

  The only entrance to the property was via the gravel drive that led from the street. A tall side wall separated the house from its neighbours.

  ‘If no one came through the front entrance,’ mused Bridget, ‘could they have gained access from the rear of the property?’

  Scott shook his head. ‘No, ma’am. There’s a door in the rear wall at the back of the garden, but it was locked last night, and it’s still locked now. No one came in that way.’

  ‘Then could they have been hiding in the garden last night?’ The garden was large and the shrubbery extensive.

  ‘No,’ said Sam. ‘We searched the grounds thoroughly before you came. If there had been anyone there, we’d have found them.’

  ‘But somebody got inside, murdered the occupant, and then escaped again. They even broke the glass in the back door without you hearing anything.’

  The two men paled further, if that was possible. But the story they told was the same as before, and Bridget didn’t think they were concealing anything from her.

  ‘All right, you can go home. I’ll need a written report from both of you. But get some sleep first.’

  There was no need to throw a ton of bricks at them. She would soon have Grayson doing that to her, no doubt. She had already had to deal with the flak from Jennifer Eagleston, the publisher, who had inconveniently arrived within five minutes of Bridget discovering the body. Initially, Jennifer had been thoroughly shocked by the news, although not, Bridget noted, as visibly upset as she might have been. Perhaps Bridget wasn’t the only one to have felt a personal animosity towards the dead writer and academic.

  But on learning what had happened, the publisher’s shock had very quickly given way to anger, all traces of the gratitude she had expressed to Bridget the previous evening burned away by outrage. ‘I thought you people were supposed to be keeping her safe! Wasn’t that the point of all this police protection?’ She waved an accusatory hand in the direction of the police car still parked on t
he street in front of the house. Her nails were painted the same crimson shade as her lips.

  It was perfectly understandable that Jennifer was angry, but not entirely fair to place the blame for everything at Bridget’s feet. ‘We’ll be conducting a full enquiry into what happened,’ she said, ‘but I can assure you that uniformed officers remained on duty outside Diane’s house all night.’

  ‘For all the good it did!’

  Bridget waited for Jennifer to calm down a little before asking any questions. ‘Can I ask if you’ve noticed anything unusual about Diane recently?’

  ‘Apart from her receiving a death threat, you mean?’

  ‘Apart from that. Has there been any change in her behaviour?’

  ‘Well, in truth I didn’t know Diane all that well,’ conceded Jennifer. ‘Not personally, I mean. Obviously, we’d met a number of times, and had plenty of telephone and email discussions, especially in recent months as we neared publication. But no, I hadn’t noticed anything odd about her.’

  ‘Did she talk to you about the death threat?’

  ‘She showed me the letter when it arrived, but she didn’t seem unduly worried about it.’

  ‘What did you talk about, then?’

  ‘Her book. She was passionate about it, and there’s a lot for a writer and a publisher to discuss when a new book is launched. The type of book Diane writes is never the easiest to sell. That’s why it’s so important to get the marketing right.’ She checked her watch, as if remembering where she was supposed to be. ‘Oh God, BBC Oxford are waiting for us to arrive. What am I going to tell them?’ she asked, as if Bridget might have any bright ideas.

  Well there certainly wasn’t going to be an interview on Radio 4 now, although the airwaves would have plenty to talk about once news of Diane’s death was announced. But that was the last thing Bridget wanted to happen. It was always a sensitive time when a body had only just been discovered, the cause of death not yet established, and the next of kin still to be informed. Bridget urged Jennifer to be discreet for now and to tell the BBC that Diane was indisposed.

  The publisher nodded her agreement while rummaging in her copious tote bag for her phone. She had already dialled and had the phone glued to her ear by the time she reached the end of the driveway. Bridget let her go. She had more immediate matters to worry about.

  The most vexing question was how anyone could have gained access to the house without Sam and Scott noticing. Leaving Sarah to continue her work in the master bedroom and Vik to examine the break-in at the back door, Bridget made her way back inside the house. She climbed the stairs to a guest bedroom that overlooked the rear garden. If, as Sam and Scott swore, the intruder hadn’t gained entry to the house from the front, then logically they must have approached from behind.

  The large garden behind the house was mostly laid to lawn with neatly clipped bushes along both sides. It looked like the sort of place where nature was never allowed to get the upper hand, unlike Bridget’s own tiny garden which had long since turned into a wildlife habitat. She wouldn’t have been surprised if several endangered species had made it their home.

  A line of paving stones led across the grass to a door in the tall brick wall that surrounded the garden. From here, it looked as if the door led out onto a narrow lane at the back. Sam and Scott had sworn that the door was locked both before and after the murder. Since the glass in the kitchen door had been broken to gain entry to the house, it was unlikely that the intruder had a key for the garden door. Bridget tried to estimate the height of the wall. Could someone have climbed over it? Bridget could never have managed it herself, but she supposed it was just about possible for someone who was taller and fitter than she was. She went downstairs and put the idea to Vik.

  ‘Let’s take a closer look, shall we?’ he suggested.

  They went outside together, Bridget following him along the line of paving stones that led to the end of the garden. The air was still chilly, and early morning dew glistened on the grass to either side. The wall that enclosed the area stood well over six feet tall and was topped with a layer of moss and lichen.

  ‘If someone had scaled a wall of that height,’ said Vik, ‘you’d expect to find signs of disturbance – footprints in the soil where they jumped down, or the marks from a ladder – especially when the ground is soft like it is today. There’s been a lot of rain recently. But there’s nothing out of the ordinary as far as I can see.’ He crouched down, examining the ground in front of the back wall. ‘Unless they jumped with cat-like accuracy and landed on the paving stone right in front of the gate.’ He stepped back and viewed the top of the wall above the gate where the moss was at its thickest. ‘It doesn’t look as if anyone has disturbed that part of the wall, but I’ll get someone to climb up with a ladder and take a closer look.’

  ‘It was just an idea,’ said Bridget. ‘They must have reached the kitchen door somehow.’

  ‘From a neighbouring property?’ suggested Vik.

  ‘It’s possible,’ said Bridget, but the walls that separated the garden from the houses either side were just as tall as the rear wall.

  She and Vik walked around the perimeter of the garden, checking the ground carefully for tell-tale marks, but at the end of their perambulations, Vik stopped and shook his head. ‘No one has climbed over these walls in the past few days.’

  ‘Could someone have been hiding in the garden shed?’ asked Bridget. They walked over to the wooden structure, but the door was securely padlocked and when Bridget peered through the window, she saw that there was barely enough room for the lawnmower and other gardening equipment, never mind for someone to hide.

  ‘I guess not,’ said Vik.

  Still puzzling about how the intruder had gained access to the house, Bridget followed him back inside. Since Vik had no answers for her, she returned upstairs, hoping that Sarah Walker would have some by now. When she poked her head around the door to the master bedroom, she found the medical examiner kneeling by the bed, peering closely at Diane Gilbert’s exposed torso. Sarah must have heard her enter, because without turning she said, ‘Come and take a look at this.’

  The room still smelled of Diane Gilbert’s rather cloying perfume, lingering on even after her death. The scent brought the woman vividly back to life and made it hard to think of the body on the bed as no longer living.

  Sarah pointed to a spot just below the victim’s left breast. ‘Can you see that?’

  Bridget edged closer, stooping to examine the body. A tiny red dot was visible on the exposed skin. ‘It looks like a pinprick.’

  ‘Not a pin precisely,’ said Sarah. ‘It’s a mark from a hypodermic needle.’

  ‘A needle? Could this be what killed her?’

  ‘We’ll need a full toxicology report. But it’s possible that she was given a lethal injection. I can’t find anything else wrong with her. There are no stab wounds or strangulation marks, no bruising or signs of a struggle. I can’t rule out natural causes, but for a woman of her age she’s in very good shape. At least she was until she died. Roy will get to the bottom of it, I’ve no doubt.’ She turned away from the corpse and began to peel off her surgical gloves.

  A lethal injection, if that really was how Diane was murdered, raised all kinds of worrying possibilities. But Bridget’s interest was also aroused by Sarah’s casual reference to the senior pathologist, Dr Roy Andrews, by his first name, rather than by title and surname. She knew that Sarah and Roy had spent Christmas Day together, and Sarah had divulged the fact that Roy was a very good cook. Bridget’s nosy half wanted to quiz Sarah further about the nature of their relationship and how it had developed since Christmas, but the reserved medical examiner was never the easiest person to talk to, especially about her private life, and now really didn’t seem like an appropriate time.

  ‘I’ll get her bagged up and sent to the morgue,’ said Sarah.

  ‘How quickly do you think Roy will be able to do the post-mortem?’ asked Bridget. ‘Do you know if he’s
working this weekend?’

  Sarah regarded Bridget’s clumsy attempt to elicit further information about Sarah’s knowledge of the pathologist’s movements with faint amusement. ‘I’m sure he can be persuaded to put in a few extra hours on your behalf. Roy never says no to a corpse. But why don’t you ask him yourself?’

  ‘I will,’ said Bridget. But first she had another job to do – one that she dreaded even more than the prospect of attending a post-mortem. To notify the victim’s next of kin.

  3

  Marston had once been a separate village located some two miles northeast of Oxford, but it was now encompassed by the ring road and subsumed into the wider city. Its name was said to derive from “Marsh Town” on account of the River Cherwell’s habit of flooding the low-lying pasture land in winter. Not good for house insurance, Bridget supposed, but charming nonetheless.

  The village was only a few minutes’ drive from Diane’s house on St Margaret’s Road, but as Bridget turned off the Marston Ferry Road she felt as if she were leaving the city far behind and entering a rural idyll surrounded by fields and farmland.

  It had not always been this peaceful. From her time as a History undergraduate, Bridget knew that during the English Civil War, King Charles I had used Oxford as his capital, and when the Royalist stronghold fell to Oliver Cromwell’s Parliamentary forces, the treaty of surrender of the city was negotiated and signed at a house on Mill Lane in Marston.

  The old manor house that had witnessed that historic event was still standing, and was situated just a few doors away from the house that now belonged to Diane’s sister, Annabel Caldecott. The old stone cottage, one of a row of four, appeared very similar in age and style to Bridget’s own modest dwelling in Wolvercote. Both properties would have fitted comfortably inside the floorplan of Diane’s capacious Victorian villa with room to spare. The tiny front garden was abundantly planted and although it was still early in the season, was putting on a colourful show. Bridget was a very casual gardener, more inclined to admire other people’s efforts than to make any herself, and couldn’t have named half the plants on display if her life depended on it, but she did recognise some tulips and hyacinths alongside the fading daffodils. Some large hydrangea bushes were just coming into bud and would no doubt put on a spectacular display when summer arrived. She pushed open the garden gate with a squeak, knocked on the wooden door of the cottage and waited.