Amendment of Life by Catherine Aird

Author:Catherine Aird
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Press

Chapter Ten

‘We had to let the husband go earlier,’ explained Superintendent Leeyes regretfully when Sloan got back to the police station in Berebury.

‘He was only reporting Margaret Collins missing, sir,’ said Detective Inspector Sloan fairly. ‘Nothing more.’

‘That’s as may be,’ said Leeyes.

‘Quite so, sir,’ said Sloan. He forbore to remind the Superintendent that merely reporting anything was not yet a chargeable offence in anyone’s eyes but his. Not in England, anyway. He couldn’t answer for some police states.

‘You’d better take this,’ said Leeyes, waving a piece of paper in front of him. ‘You’ll need it.’

Sloan read over the written report of what David Collins had told the police about his wife’s disappearance.

Leeyes sniffed. ‘The man said he was going back to work and that they’d know where to find him if we wanted him.’

‘They did know,’ said Sloan. ‘We wanted him to take a look at the body of this woman who’s been found in the maze at Aumerle Court.’

‘No grounds to detain him on, of course,’ carried on the Superintendent, for whom it was axiomatic that all husbands were guilty of killing their deceased wives unless it could be demonstrated otherwise. ‘Not at this stage anyway.’

‘We had every reason, though, to suppose that the body found in the maze is that of his wife,’ said Sloan, ‘in that she answers to his description of her.’ He had taken a conscious decision to bide his time before he conducted an indepth interview with Captain Prosser. One military aphorism that he was sure about was that time spent in reconnaissance was seldom wasted. ‘But we needed a positive identification as soon as possible, sir, and we got it from the husband. Dr Dabbe is on his way back to the hospital now to do the post-mortem.’

Leeyes grunted. ‘And what does our friendly neighbourhood pathologist have to say so far?’

‘Dr Dabbe isn’t willing, sir, to be dogmatic about the time of death until after he’s performed the postmortem.’

Superintendent Leeyes puffed out his cheeks. ‘You won’t ever catch him being helpful, Sloan.’ The Superintendent suspected the opinions of all specialists on principle.

‘But he’s prepared to narrow it down to after the victim was last seen alive.’ He didn’t know yet whether the woman was a victim of someone else or herself – or just of intolerable pressure.

‘And to just before she was found dead, I suppose, as usual?’ interrupted Leeyes sardonically.

‘And to over twelve hours ago,’ finished Sloan patiently. It meant that the woman had been dead before ten o’clock that night before, which it was helpful, in police terms, to know.

‘That means we’re talking about yesterday, Sloan.’

‘Sunday,’ agreed Sloan, not sure where this was leading.

‘Bad day for family relationships, Sunday,’ opined the Superintendent. His own Sundays were invariably spent on the golf course. ‘If the woman was driven over the edge, that is.’

‘We can’t say about that yet, sir.’

‘How did Dr Dabbe get in and out of the maze without being airborne?’

‘Dyson and Williams solved that one for us, sir.’ The two men were the police photographers.

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