‘Anything?’ Meston asked the young woman.
‘No sign of cause of death.’
Caroline Dickson stood transfixed as she looked into the room. She remembered it when it had been bright and smelt of her mother’s perfume. Now it was dark and musty after decades of neglect. ‘What about the putrefaction, the pungent smell, the rotting carpet, the sign of insect infestation?’ she said.
Isaac looked; the woman was right.
‘Your mother was only put there after the process had completed,’ Meston said.
‘Then where was she?’
‘We’re checking the cellar now.’
‘I want to see.’
‘It may help your investigation,’ Isaac said to Meston.
‘As part of my time at university, I spent a month with a pathologist,’ Caroline said. ‘There was one murder, an old man who had been shot. I was friendly with the crime scene team. They allowed me to go along.’
‘A family member is not the same as an old man you never knew.’
‘I know, and I’m sick to my stomach. What went on here? What had my father done? And what about my mother? It’s as if my whole belief system has been destroyed.’
‘It’s not confirmed as murder yet.’
‘My father is, though. Why kill him?’
‘Because of your mother?’
‘But who knew? We never did.’
***
‘My father’s wine cellar. Also, the boiler for the hot water used to be down here,’ Caroline said.
A wooden staircase led down – it creaked. At the bottom, the crime scene team had set up a floodlight, which gave an eerie glow throughout the cavernous area. On either side, a row of wine racks. ‘Some of the wines are worth a lot of money,’ Caroline said. ‘My brother and I used to sneak down here and help ourselves to a bottle occasionally.’
‘Your father?’
‘He knew, but he never said anything, as long as we didn’t take the vintage wines.’
From one end of the basement, ‘Over here,’ one of the CSIs said.
The three visitors walked over to where the man was standing. ‘What is it?’ Meston said.
‘The soil’s been disturbed here. A long time ago, but we believe this is where the body was.’
‘That doesn’t make sense,’ Caroline said. ‘We searched the house for days afterwards.’
‘Did you?’ Isaac said.
‘We weren’t professionals.’
‘It depends what happened. It’s possible your mother died elsewhere. Would you suspect your father of killing your mother?’
‘No. They were devoted.’
‘We’ll follow through,’ Meston said. ‘It’s a cold case at the present time. Your father is more immediate.’
‘It will be nice to give our mother a proper burial. I can never believe that my father acted other than honourably towards my mother.’
‘It’s best that way,’ Isaac said. If, as appeared to be the case, Gilbert Lawrence had been the only person in the closed-off part of the house since the door was bolted, it did not bode well for the man.
Chapter 3
Emma Lawrence arrived at Challis Street Police Station two days after her brother, Gilbert, had died. It was early morning, and it was raining heavily. ‘I demand to see someone,’ she said.
‘Miss Lawrence, finally,’ Isaac said as he met her at reception.
‘Why wasn’t I informed?’
‘We had no idea where you were.’
‘I am in the phone book. And besides, you’re the police. You should have been able to find me.’
‘We had three addresses for you from Caroline Dickson, plus a couple of phone numbers. We checked them all.’
Isaac knew the woman to be seventy-nine, and not close to her brother. She had also remained elusive for some years, not that anyone had gone looking for her. She was colourfully dressed, not like her brother who had adopted drab and dreary as his fashion statement. Lawrence’s body was with Pathology, and so far, there was nothing more than the usual. A knife wound in the back, heart failure coupled with blood loss, exposure to the cold weather.
Emma Lawrence, an articulate woman, even if her repetitions about why she hadn’t been contacted were annoying, was someone that Homicide had wanted to meet. She was of the same generation as Gilbert and Dorothy Lawrence, and her knowledge of the pair could well be more useful.
Wendy Gladstone, Isaac Cook’s sergeant, and in her fifties, could sympathise with the old woman who walked with the aid of a stick, the effects of arthritis. Wendy instinctively liked a woman who still maintained a resilience about her, a woman who did not allow age or infirmity to impede her any more than necessary. It was Wendy who put her close to a heater and gave her a hot mug of tea.
Once Emma Lawrence was settled, Isaac and Wendy questioned her about her brother and his wife.
‘I’m sad that he’s dead, even though we have not seen each other for many years,’ Miss Lawrence said.
‘Is there any reason why not?’ Isaac asked.
‘As children, Gilbert was always intense, always wanting more, not wanting to share.’
‘And you?’
‘I was easier going, more like my mother. That’s why I embraced the hippy movement, an original flower child, even if I was older than most.’
‘Free love,’ Wendy said.
‘Plenty of that back then. Alas, nowadays nothing is free, and as for love, that’s a faded memory.’
‘You’re still active for your age.’
‘That’s as maybe, but life has a finality. Soon, I’ll be reunited with Gilbert and his wife. Then we can get back to what we did best.’
‘And what’s that?’
‘Arguing.’
‘Is that why you hadn’t seen him for so long?’
‘A stupid dispute over our father’s inheritance.’
‘Did your father have money?’
‘Not as much as Gilbert, but we were wealthy. Our father owned an engineering firm, and we lived well. When he died, the money was to be divided between the two of us.’
‘And there was
