M.C. Beaton - Death of a Gentle Lady

“I thought maybe you might have had time to think of something.”

Hamish studied her covertly. Could she be the murderer? Could she be trying to protect someone?

Her face was Botoxed into expressionlessness. She stared at him for a long moment. Then she said, “It was the usual business, my mother-in-law demanding we all run around her, hinting that if she did not have the correct amount of grovel, she’d leave her money elsewhere. Mark was oiling about. Then he suddenly got furious. He’d got the news that she planned to change her will. He was talking a lot to Irena. Then he suddenly seemed to get cheerful again. Oh, he made one odd comment. He said, There’s a bastard in every family and a skeleton in every cupboard, isn’t there, Auntie?” Mrs. Gentle went quite white with rage.”

“I think I might pay a call on him,” said Hamish. “Where is he?”

“I’ll write it down for you. It’s a garage in Peckham.”

♦

Hamish looked up the address in a battered old copy of the London A to Z he had brought with him. He found the nearest tube station on the map and set off.

It was a cold, dusty, windy day. London seemed much dirtier than he remembered.

When he found the garage, it was closed. He asked around and was told it had been closed for the last week. No one knew where the workers were.

He pulled out his phone and asked Kylie where Mark Gentle lived, hoping it would be somewhere nearby, but Kylie gave him an address in East India Dock.

It took him an hour and a half to get there. Mark’s flat was in the middle of what had been damned as Yuppie Town. Nothing but flats for the City workers. No shops or pubs or churches.

Mark lived in a small converted Victorian warehouse fronting onto one of the old docks. Hamish rang the bell, but there was no reply. He rang all the bells until a woman answered, and he said, “Police. Let me in. I’m looking for Mark Gentle.”

She buzzed him in. He mounted the stairs to Mark’s flat and hammered on the door. He could hear the sound of rap music coming from inside. He knocked again.

He took out a bunch of skeleton keys and fiddled with the lock for half an hour until he got the door open. His heart sank as he recognised the smell.

He walked in through a small hall into a large living-room-cum-kitchen. Mark Gentle lay sprawled on the floor. The back of his head was matted with dried blood, and there was a pool of dried blood on the floor. He still had a wineglass clutched in one hand; over by the window, a bottle lay on its side.

Rap music was belting out from a stereo. Hamish switched it off.

He pulled on a pair of latex gloves. He could do nothing for Mark now. The man looked as if he had been dead for at least a few days. He would need to call the police, but he wanted to search first.

There were two bedrooms. One had been turned into an office. The drawers in a large desk had all been pulled out, and papers were spread over the floor. He examined a computer and found that the hard drive had been taken.

Hamish knelt down and began to go through the papers but they seemed to be all to do with the garage: receipts, orders for spare parts, and wage slips.

Even the wastepaper basket had been emptied out on the floor. His eye was caught by a crumpled sheet of pink paper. He picked it up and smoothed it out. It was a letter. He glanced down at the signature. Margaret Gentle! She had written:

“Dear Mark, You can come and stay if you like, but I am going to change my will. I am leaving everything equally to Sarah and Andrew. You have only yourself to blame by thinking you could blackmail me.”

So he knew about her plans to change the will before he even went there, thought Hamish. Had he decided he needed an alibi because he had something more sinister in mind than blackmail? I’ll never know now, he decided. He carefully wiped the front door in case he had left any fingerprints.

He wondered what to do. If he phoned the police and waited for them, he would be in grave trouble with them for arriving on their territory without telling them. Strathbane would be furious. Blair would make the most of it.

The woman who had buzzed him in had not seen him. His flaming red hair was covered in a black wool cap, which he had put on when he had walked from the Docklands Light Railway station.

His footprints would be all over the place. But if he wiped the floor, he would be destroying evidence. Mark Gentle had known his killer. The bottle and glass seemed to tell Hamish that he had poured himself a drink with his back to his visitor when he had been struck down. He wished he had not called out “Police!”

He sighed. He would have to do his duty. There was no getting away with it. He remembered seeing a surveillance camera over the door. The only lie he would tell was that he had found the door unlocked.

♦

Hamish was grilled by the Metropolitan Police for two days, periodically being questioned when he wasn’t actually being shouted at. Orders had come down from Strathbane that he was, on his return, to stay at his police station, suspended from duties, until a disciplinary hearing.

The surveillance camera over the door turned out to be empty of tape. At first it was thought that the murderer might have removed it, but it was found to be only cheapness on the part of the landlords.

Hamish did not tell anyone that Jimmy Anderson had known what he was doing, considering that one of them in deep trouble was enough.

It was at the end of Hamish’s second day in London that the atmosphere suddenly thawed. It was actually said that the Met thought he had done good work and were prepared to forgive and forget. He was told that on his return, he should go back to his normal duties. There was to be no disciplinary hearing.

He was just leaving Scotland Yard when a familiar voice said, “Hamish!”

He turned round. Anna Krokovsky stood there, smiling at him. “We go for dinner,” she said.

“I’m rushing off to the airport to try to catch the plane,” said Hamish.

“Nonsense. You owe me dinner after all I have been doing for you.”

“Oh, that’s why…You spoke up on my behalf.”

“Of course I did. The fools. It would have taken them ages to find that body. There is a good Italian restaurant near here.”

Hamish gave in. It was turning out to be an expensive trip. In the short time between bouts of questioning, he had had to run out and buy a clean shirt and underwear. He had been lodged in a police flat with a large boozy constable who had a vehement hatred of the Scots and said so at great length.

“Why are you still here?” he asked Anna when they were seated in the restaurant.

“I am nearly finished. I leave for Russia next week.”

“Why did you go to the trouble of having Irena’s body flown home?”

“That was on the instructions of Grigori Antonov, her former protector. Strangely enough, he still seemed to retain an affection for her. Odd. He could have bought any pretty female he wanted. Now, from your investigations, it seems that Mark found out something about Mrs. Gentle that she did not want known.”

“There was that ‘bastard in every family’ remark,” said Hamish. “Could it be that Mrs. Gentle had had at one time an illegitimate child?”

“They are still searching the records.”

“The footprints in the flat were size seven,” said Hamish, “or so they told me. That surprises me because I’m convinced our murderer is still in the north. How long had he been dead?”

“A week. But you came down, planning to be here only for the day.”

They ordered their food.

“I did not for a moment think I would find another dead body,” said Hamish. “I was still looking for thon mysterious woman. I went to talk to Kylie Gentle again. She said something about Mark talking to Mrs. Gentle about a bastard and a skeleton in the closet.”