He lowered his head in reflection and pressed a thumb and forefinger to his eyelids.
“We asked her why she took their clothes off,” he murmured, ‘and she said they had to be naked or she couldn’t see where to make the cuts through the joints. I think Geof then asked her what she had done with the clothes.”
He fell silent.
“And?”
He looked up and rubbed his jaw pensively.
“I don’t think she gave an answer. If she did, I can’t remember it. I have a feeling the information about the scraps in the incinerator came in the next morning when we made a thorough search of the garden.”
“So you asked her then?”
He shook his head.
“I didn’t, though I suppose Geof may have done. Gwen had a floral nylon overall that had melted over a lump of wool and cotton. We had to peel it apart into its constituent elements but there was enough there that was recognisable. Martin ID’d the bits and so did the neighbour.” He stabbed a finger in the air.
“There were some buttons, too.
Martin recognised those straightaway as being from the dress his wife had been wearing.”
“But didn’t you wonder why Olive took time out to burn the clothes? She could have put them in the suitcases with the bodies and dumped the whole lot in the sea.”
“The incinerator certainly wasn’t burning at five o’clock that night or we’d have noticed it; therefore disposing of the clothes must have been one of the first things she did. She wouldn’t have seen it as taking time out because at that stage she probably still thought dismembering two bodies would be comparatively easy. Look, she was trying to get rid of evidence.
The only reason she panicked and called us in was because her father was coming home. If it had been just the three women living in that house she could have gone through with her plan, and we’d have had the job of trying to identify some bits and pieces of mutilated flesh found floating in the sea off Southampton. She might even have got away with it.”
“I doubt it. The neighbours weren’t stupid. They’d have wondered why Gwen and Amber were missing.”
“True,” he conceded.
“What was the other question?”
“Did Olive’s hands and arms have a lot of scratches on them from her fight with Gwen?”
He shook his head.
“None. She had some bruising but no scratches.”
Roz stared at him.
“Didn’t that strike you as odd? You said Gwen was fighting for her life.”
“She had nothing to scratch with,” he said almost apologetically.
“Her fingernails were bitten to the quick. It was rather pathetic in a woman of her age. All she could do was grip Olive’s wrists to try and keep the knife away. That’s what the bruises were. Deep finger-marks.
We took photographs of them.”
With an abrupt movement Roz squared her papers and dropped them into her briefcase.
“Not much room for doubt then, is there?” she said, picking up her coffee cup.
“None at all. And it wouldn’t have made any difference, you know, if she’d kept her mouth shut or pleaded not guilty. She would still have been convicted. The evidence against her was overwhelming. In the end, even her father had to accept that. I felt quite sorry for him then. He became an old man overnight.”
Roz glanced at the tape, which was still running.
“Was he very fond of her?”
“I don’t know. He was the most undemonstrative person I’ve ever met. I got the impression he wasn’t fond of any of them but’ he shrugged ‘he certainly took Olive’s guilt very badly.”
She drank her coffee.
“Presumably the post-mortem revealed that Amber had had a baby when she was thirteen?”
He nodded.
“Did you pursue that at all? Try and trace the child?”
“We didn’t see the need. It had happened eight years before.
It was hardly likely to have any bearing on the case.” He waited, but she didn’t say anything.
“So? Will you go on with the book?”
“Oh, yes,” she said.
He looked surprised.
“Why?”
