passing the end of the Lane might assume that it had been built as a service alleyway or mews, yet a second look would show that the shop fronts at the base of every building were original, and that it had always functioned as a thoroughfare. It was in recognition of this that a local by-law was enacted in 1893 to erect the bollards at the south end of the Lane to close it to wheeled traffic, and to repave it in York stone slabs. That was the last, unsuccessful attempt to gentrify Jerusalem Lane.
‘It must be twenty years since I was last in this street,’ Brock said as he got out of the car. ‘And it doesn’t seem to have changed at all. I’m sure that was there then. Just what I need in fact.’
He was gazing at the window of Rosenfeldt’s Continental Delicatessen, which stood a few metres up the Lane on the left.
‘Yes. That’s number 22. The sisters live upstairs.’
‘I’ll interrogate Mrs Rosenfeldt after we’ve seen upstairs, then.’
‘She was closed yesterday. She lives on the other side of the block.’
‘About her sausages, I meant.’
‘Yes, sir.’ Kathy smiled as Brock strode purposefully to the shop front, pulled out his glasses and peered through the window. After a moment’s inspection he turned regretfully and grunted, ‘Come on, then, let’s visit the scene of the alleged crime.’
They pushed open the front door, a bright pillar-box red, and climbed up to the first-floor landing. The carpet was threadbare in places, and there was an old-fashioned, homely smell in the air, a mixture of teak oil, lavender and fried onions. A very young uniformed constable stood by the door to Meredith Winterbottom’s flat.
‘Everyone’s finished up here, sir. DC Mollineaux told me to wait here for you, case you needed anything. He’s with the door-to-door team. The two old ladies are upstairs if you want them. And Dr Boter left a message that he can see you after his morning surgery at 10.30. His rooms are just down the street at number 11.’
‘Botev,’ Kathy corrected him. ‘All right, we won’t need you. We’ll lock up after we’re done.’
He handed her some keys and left with a salute aimed tactfully at neutral ground between the two of them.
The flat was as Kathy had described, cosy, peaceful and unruffled, and immediately improbable as the scene of a violent crime. It was tidy, but not obsessively so, and the two half-opened drawers in the main bedroom might easily have been left that way by Meredith. The clothes inside had not been disturbed, and there were no empty cash boxes or purses hidden among them. The furniture dated mostly from the fifties and sixties, with a few more recent things such as the large TVs and videos in both the main bedroom and the living room. There was no sign that anything was missing. In the small spare bedroom a filing cabinet contained only household accounts and personal papers. There were no books.
‘She liked German sausage too, sir,’ Kathy called from the kitchen.
‘Perhaps Mrs Rosenfeldt did it,’ Brock grunted. He was leaning out of the living room window and taking a photograph of the synagogue which stood facing on to Marquis Street on the other side of the entrance to the Lane. Although built of white Portland stone, it had turned the same grey-black colour as the brick buildings around. It was surrounded by a narrow yard fenced in by stone pillars and iron railings.
Brock came in and settled himself at the kitchen table.
Kathy sat opposite him. ‘I don’t know. I’d half convinced myself yesterday, but coming back again today, it doesn’t feel much like a murder scene. I’ve heard of fatal accidents with plastic bags, and suicides too, but no plastic bag murders.’
‘It was a favourite murder weapon of the Khmer Rouge,’ Brock said. ‘Very cheap. Well now, I suppose she might have had a pile of cash or something hidden somewhere, that someone knew about, let’s say in her bedroom, and let’s say she wakes up while they’re taking it. But then there would have been signs of a struggle, and bruising, and surely they would have used the pillow, say, or thumped her on the head, or strangled her. Where would the plastic bag have come from?’
Kathy opened her mouth to speak, but Brock continued.
‘Yes, all right, the money was in the plastic bag… And maybe she just began to wake up, and they panicked, tipped the money or whatever it was out and slipped the bag over her head before she could begin to struggle.’ Brock screwed his eyes up at the ceiling and scratched his beard.
‘How long would it take, I wonder? We’d better speak to Sundeep.
‘Alternatively,’ he continued, ‘there was no secret treasure, and the killer came specifically for her. Someone who knew her, maybe. In which case again, why a plastic bag? And why not make it look more obviously like someone had broken in, someone without prior knowledge? In fact that applies in both cases.’
Brock nodded and got to his feet. ‘All the same, I wouldn’t give up yet, Kathy. Dr B may just be right. Let’s go upstairs.’
One door on the landing on the top floor had a neat label Peg Blythe, and the other Eleanor Harper. Kathy picked the latter.
With her dark hair, straight posture and bright, attentive eyes, she looked younger than her sixty-nine years. Her flat was much smaller than Meredith’s, occupying only the rear half of the building, and it was simply and economically furnished so as to make full use of the space of the main room, which served as a living, dining and study area. One wall was completely lined with bookshelves. Books and papers were piled on the desk against the window which looked out on the jumble of outbuildings, fire escapes, brick walls and ramshackle extensions which had grown up in the rear court of this west side of Jerusalem Lane. Kathy noticed that the room hadn’t been dusted for some time, and that Miss Harper too looked in need of a scrub. Her hair was dull, and Kathy had the thought, of which she was slightly ashamed, that the old lady’s underwear probably wasn’t all that clean.
The women sat on two ancient leather armchairs, stuffed hard with horsehair, which stood on each side of the gas fire, while Brock pulled over an upright chair from the small dining table by the door to the kitchenette. Eleanor sat stiffly upright, her hands clasped on the lap of her dark wool skirt.
‘Peg is lying down at present, officers, but I’ll wake her if you wish. She didn’t sleep last night.’ She spoke with a low, firm voice and articulated the consonants precisely.
Kathy answered, ‘We’d prefer to speak with you first, Miss Harper. Perhaps we can see her later. I’m sorry to have to disturb you again so soon. You must be very tired, too.’
They could both see the dark shadows under her eyes.
‘Detective Chief Inspector Brock here is from Scotland Yard. He’s an expert…’-she hesitated a moment-‘from the Serious Crime Branch.’
Her expression didn’t change, but the hands twitched on her lap. ‘I find it so hard to believe,’ she said. ‘I really don’t know what to make of Dr Botev’s notion. Are you certain that he’s right?’
‘No, we’re not. We want to be sure, one way or the other, so to begin with we’ll look into it as if it’s a real possibility.’
‘Poor Meredith. On her own… There’s no point in it, I know, but I keep thinking over and over that if only we’d stayed home with her yesterday.’
‘You saw her just before you went out?’ Brock asked.
‘Yes. The three of us had lunch together in Meredith’s flat-we usually do on a Sunday. Meredith likes to cook a roast, and afterwards apple sponge and custard. She’s been making the same Sunday lunch for years. First for her husband, Frank, and then, when he died, for us.’ She frowned, then shook her head and continued, in a voice quieter and more strained than before. ‘Afterwards Peg and I often like to go for a walk, and Meredith likes to watch the races on the television. Yesterday she said she was very tired. She hadn’t been sleeping very well lately.’
‘Had she complained of feeling tired before this?’
‘Yes, because of not sleeping well, you see. That’s why we insisted Dr Botev give her a complete check-up. He gave her some medicine, but said she was basically quite fit.’
‘Could she have been worried about something?’
‘She had been unsettled. I believe she had got herself into a pattern of broken sleep, waking up after a few hours and not being able to get back again, and then feeling tired all day-you know. So yesterday she said she would rest after lunch, and she looked so drained we insisted she take one of Peg’s sleeping pills to make sure she had a good rest.’
‘You didn’t mention that yesterday, Miss Harper,’ Kathy said.
‘Didn’t I? It was all such a shock yesterday.’
‘Did she not have sleeping pills of her own?’ Brock asked.
