Upon A Dark Night

He got a curt nod from Julie.

Outside, the darkness had set in and the grey mass of the Crescent appeared to merge at the top with the night sky. Unusually for such a well-known building there was no floodlighting. The reason was that it was residential, and residents in their living rooms have no desire to be in the spotlight to that degree. So the only lighting was supplied by those pseudo-Victorian lamp-posts painted black and gilt, with their iron cross-pieces supposedly to support the lamplighter’s ladder.

‘He claims not to have climbed onto the roof for a thorough look,’ Diamond went on. ‘Why not? We climbed out ourselves. You’ll agree with me that it’s as easy as getting into a bath. In spite of what he suggests, there are parts of the roof you can’t see from inside the attic. She could have been up on the tiles behind him. Or she could have moved along the balustrade over one of his neighbours’ houses. Wasn’t he interested enough to check?’

‘You can’t blame him for that,’ Julie found herself saying in the man’s defence. ‘His house had been taken over. He was concerned about what was going on inside.’

‘Fair point,’ Diamond admitted. ‘There’s some good stuff there. Antique ornaments. Period furniture. A beautiful music centre in the living-room with hundreds of CDs. If it had been my house full of strangers whooping it up, I’d have been going spare.’

‘Perhaps he was. He can afford to be cool about it now it’s over.’

He turned to her again. ‘Julie, you’re so right. He’s not making an issue of what happened, as Treadwell is. He’s incredibly blase. What happened was okay by Allardyce, perfectly understandable. That’s the impression I got. Did you?’

‘Well, yes, now it’s over.’

‘But was he so happy at the time, I wonder? There’s a ruthless young man behind that smooth exterior. You don’t get results in business simply by being charming. Public relations is dog eat dog.’

‘Being tough in business is one thing. Murder is something else,’ she said, far from convinced.

‘Hold on. I doubt if this would stand as murder,’ he told her. ‘Manslaughter, maybe. This wasn’t premeditated. It was an impulse killing. What I picture is Allardyce made angry by events – extremely angry – in complete contrast to the PR front he was presenting this afternoon.’

‘Mr Right as Mr Raving Mad?’ she said, meaning it to be ironical.

He seized on that. ‘Spot on. He’s all fired up. He goes up to the attic and sees the woman seated on the balustrade. He has a wild impulse to push her. He climbs out of the window and starts towards her, but she hears him. She half-turns. Instead of giving her one quick shove in the back, he has a fight on his hands. That’s when the shoe falls off. He doesn’t notice that, of course. He’s totally involved in forcing her over the edge. Nobody has seen him and luckily for him the woman falls into the well of the basement. It’s a dark night, and she isn’t noticed by any of the people leaving the house. It’s daylight before she is found. The rest I’ve explained, his problem with the shoe, and so forth. Is it plausible?’

She could almost feel the heat of his expectation. ‘So far as it goes, I can’t see any obvious holes. The only thing is…’

‘Yes?’

‘This vicious side to his character is difficult for me to picture.’

‘You called him Mr Raving Mad.’

‘Just picking up on what you were saying. I didn’t agree with it.’

‘So he’s Mr Nice Guy, is he?’

‘Mr Right, anyway.’

‘You must have been out with men on their best behaviour who suddenly turned nasty when you didn’t let them have their wicked way.’

‘Not homicidal.’

‘I’m glad to hear it.’

She said after an interval for reflection, ‘My experiences with men have got nothing to do with this.’

‘Just making a point,’ he said. ‘We’re all prisoners of our hormones – you know that.’

‘Bollocks.’

‘Those, too.’

She was forced to smile. ‘Am I mistaken, or is the window steaming up?’

He rubbed it with the sleeve of his coat. ‘Well, it’s all speculation up to now. Unless we catch him with that ruddy shoe, we’ve got nothing worth making into a prosecution. Even then, I doubt if it will stick. A half-decent barrister would get him off.’

‘So are we wasting our time here?’

‘Not at all.’

But as it turned out, they were. After almost two hours of waiting, he radioed Manvers Street and asked for someone to take over.

And the blue BMW stayed where it was in Brock Street until Monday morning, when Allardyce drove to work.

Monday morning in Manvers Street Police Station brought John Wigfull to Diamond’s office. And when the two detectives had finished discussing every facet of the Royal Crescent incident, they were forced to agree that little more could be achieved until they had a post-mortem report on the victim.

The priority was to identify her. Diamond’s press release appealing for information had been distributed, but because the local news machine grinds to a virtual halt on Sundays, a response couldn’t be expected until the story broke at midday in the Bath Chronicle and on local radio and television.

‘It’s strange that nobody who was at the party has come forward,’ Wigfull commented. ‘Word must have got around the city that someone was found there. The papers may not have been printed yesterday, but the pubs were open, and most of the people at the party were only there because they happened to hear about it in a pub.’

‘They haven’t had the description,’ Diamond said.

‘What is she like, then?’

‘Apart from dead? Dark-haired with brown eyes, about thirty or younger, slim build, average height.’

‘Good-looking?’

‘Do you know, John, it must be something lacking in me, but I find it hard to think of corpses as good-looking. She had one of those trendy haircuts, shorn severely at the sides, and with a thick mop on top that soaked up quite a lot of the blood from the head wound. Is that good-looking? Oh, and she painted her fingernails. They were damaged, some of them, whether from hitting the ground or fighting off an attacker I wouldn’t know.’

‘We could publish a photo if all else fails.’

‘And put it out on TV about six-thirty when people are just sitting down in front of the box with their meat and two veg. Isn’t it marvelous what they find to show you about that time? Mad cows, magnified head-lice and battered old ladies appear on my screen night after night, so why shouldn’t we show them a face from the morgue? But do me a favour and choose a night when I’m not at home.’

Wigfull had never been able to tell when Diamond was serious. He said, ‘That dead farmer I’m investigating is no picnic.’

‘Your farmer at Tormarton? Haven’t you put that one to bed yet?’

‘Just about.’ Wigfull hesitated in a way that told Diamond the Tormarton farmer had not been put to bed. ‘Virtually, anyway. The post-mortem hasn’t been done yet.’

‘What’s the hold-up?’

‘Identification. I was trying to get a relative, but we haven’t traced anyone yet. It looks as if we’ll be using his social worker and maybe one of the meals-on-wheels people. He didn’t have much to do with his neighbours. Nothing is ever as simple as it first appears, is it?’

Diamond said, ‘Surely there’s no question that the corpse is Daniel Gladstone?’

‘You know me by now, Peter. I don’t cut corners.’ Wigfull brought his hands together in a way that signaled he wanted an end to the discussion.

‘Speaking for myself, I like to get on with things,’ said Diamond. ‘I don’t want a delay on the Royal Crescent woman. Full publicity. Someone who knows her will read about her in the paper and we’ll get a PM this week.’

‘Speaking of people coming forward…’ Wigfull said in a tentative manner.