Literally. When he stopped and saw what he’d done he was horrified.
That calmed him down, so when he bought the washing line off Grainger he seemed distant, resigned, his mind already made up.
Then he went to the woods and . . .”
“But what about the damage inf licted on Silbert’s genital area?
Doesn’t that suggest to you a sexual motive?”
“Perhaps.” Annie pushed her half-empty plate aside. “It’s nothing we haven’t seen before, though, is it? If there’s sexual jealousy in-8 2 P E T E R
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volved, the killer will go to the area that symbolizes it. Maybe they argued about Hardcastle going to London with Wyman, or about Silbert going to Amsterdam? We might never know. It still doesn’t mean that someone else did it. Whatever the motive—jealousy, infidelity, criticism of drinking habits, some antique Hardcastle might have broken—the result’s the same: an argument turned violent and one man was left dead. The survivor couldn’t bear what he’d done, so he committed suicide. There’s nothing sinister or unusual about that at all. Sad to say, but it’s very commonplace.”
Banks put his knife and fork down and sighed. “I suppose you’re right,” he said. “Maybe I am just trying to justify losing my weekend.
Or maybe
Annie laughed. “Well, at least you’re thinking along the right lines.”
“Come on,” Banks said. “Let’s go have a shufti around Silbert’s house. The SOCOs should be pretty much done there by now. Then we’ll have another word with Edwina at the Burgundy. I get the impression that she’s got something else on her mind, too. We’ll see if we can find out something to shed a little more light on these matters.”
“Sounds like a plan to me,” said Annie.
A C O U P L E of SOCOs were collecting the remaining trace evidence in Silbert’s upstairs drawing room when Banks and Annie arrived there early on Sunday afternoon, but apart from them, the place stood empty.
“We’ve had a good look around,” Ted Ferguson, one of the SOCOs, told them, “and there’re no hidden safes or compartments anywhere in the house. The only rooms with any personal stuff and papers in them are this one and the study down the hall.” He handed them some latex gloves from the crime scene bag on the f loor near the door. “We’ve got a few more things to do downstairs, but we’re done up here for now. We’ll leave you to it. Wear these.”
“Thanks, Ted,” said Banks, opening the seal and slipping on the gloves.
A L L T H E C O L O R S O F D A R K N E S S
8 3
The SOCOs went downstairs, and Banks and Annie stood on the threshold and took stock.
Even though the body and the sheepskin rug it had lain on were gone, the blood spatter left on the walls and the traces of fingerprint powder on every surface now marked it as a crime scene. The framed photo under the shattered glass still lay on the f loor. It showed Mark Hardcastle smiling, standing next to Silbert. Banks picked it up carefully, brushed off some of the fingerprint powder and studied Silbert’s face. Handsome, certainly, cultured, slender and fit, and seeming much younger than sixty-two, he had a strong cleft chin, a high forehead and clear blue eyes. His dark hair had thinned just a little at the temples, and showed traces of gray above his ears, but it suited him.
He wore a light blue cashmere jumper and navy chinos.
Annie pointed out the framed blowup of Hindswell Woods on the wall. Most of the blood had been wiped off, though a few drops had smeared here and there. “Not a bad effort,” said Banks. “Whoever took it had an eye for a picturesque woodland scene. The way the light filters through the leaves and branches is beautiful.”
“That’s the tree Mark Hardcastle hanged himself on,” Annie said, pointing out the oak. “It’s very distinctive.”
They both gazed at the picture for a few moments, Banks remembering what Edwina Silbert had said last night about walks in woods full of bluebells. Then they started the search.
Silbert’s computer showed nothing out of the ordinary on a cursory examination carried out by Annie, but it would have to be checked thoroughly by technical support if the evidence pointed toward a killer other than Mark Hardcastle. The desk drawers held only station-ery, holiday snapshots and a few files full of business receipts, along with telephone and utility bills.
A set of keys in the middle drawer opened a locked antique wooden cabinet on the f loor beside the desk. Inside, Banks and Annie found the deeds to the house, bank statements, checkbooks and all the other papers they needed to discover that Silbert had been in the millionaire-plus bracket. His civil service pension certainly didn’t account for it, but regular checks from Viva and its various subsidiaries did. There were also a few large transfers from foreign 8 4 P E T E R
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bank accounts, Swiss mostly, the nature of which remained unclear, but on the whole the mystery of Silbert’s wealth was solved. There was no will, so Silbert had either left one in the keeping of his solicitor, or he hadn’t made one, in which case his fortune would go to his mother.
On the bottom shelf of the cabinet, Banks found a small bundle of personal letters held together by a rubber band. The first was dated September 7, 1997, and was from someone called Leo Westwood at an address in Swiss Cottage. Banks read through it quickly, Annie looking over his shoulder. It was written in a neat, sloping hand, by foun-tain pen, judging from the varying thickness of the ink strokes.
Most of the content dealt with the death of the Princess of Wales and its aftermath. Westwood seemed to have little patience for Diana’s brother’s attack on the Royal Family in his funeral oration the previous day, finding it “inappropriate and ill-advised,” or for the general outpouring of grief from “the hoi polloi, who love this sort of thing
