Page 98 of Marble Hall Murders

She stared at me. ‘I’m with him.’

‘Even so …’

I could see that I’d annoyed her, which was exactly what I wanted. If she was going to come knocking on my door before breakfast, she could at least smile. She took out a warrant card and thrust it at me like an offensive weapon.EMMAWARDLAW. She hadn’t photographed well, which didn’t surprise me.

I closed the door behind them and showed them over to the kitchen table, feeling grateful that the cat was out of sight. I’d had dealings with the police before, of course. Detective Superintendent Richard Locke had entered my life on two occasions and neither of them had been a positive experience. I was expecting rather more from DI Blakeney. He was looking round the flat approvingly. ‘Nice place,’ he said.

‘Thank you.’

‘Been here long?’

‘Just a few months. Would you like a coffee?’

‘Do you have decaffeinated?’

‘I think so.’

‘If you’re making one, that would be good. Black, please. No sugar.’

‘Not for me,’ Emma Wardlaw said.

I made the coffee, watched by the two police officers, who sat silently at the table. It took a couple of minutes and I needed them. I was making the most of the last vestiges of normality.

‘I’m afraid I have bad news for you,’ Blakeney said as I sat down. ‘You’re a friend of Eliot Crace?’

‘I’m working with him. Yes.’

‘I’m sorry to have to tell you, he was killed last night.’

It shouldn’t have come as a surprise. There was something about Eliot that had always told me he was doomed. But still the news shocked me, as death always does.

‘He was struck by a car in Kingston Street, just as he was leaving a party at which you’d been present.’ It was as ifWardlaw had insisted that she should be the one who told me. She had volunteered the information with a certain eagerness and I was sure I detected an element of malice in her voice. Or perhaps it was just her Scottish accent. I almost smiled at the way she twisted the words to suit her occupation: ‘…at which you’d been present.’ Who but a police officer would speak like that?

‘Have you found the driver?’ I asked. It was the first question that came to mind.

‘Not yet,’ Blakeney replied. ‘It was a hit and run.’

‘Someone must have seen something. What about cameras?’

‘There are nine hundred and forty thousand cameras in London,’ Blakeney agreed. ‘The average person is photographed seventy times a day.’ It was odd how he reeled off those figures as if they were common knowledge. Sitting next to him, Wardlaw was unimpressed. ‘But there are also a lot of cars and it may take a while to match the two hundred guests at the party with the driver, even with ANPR.’

‘ANPR?’ I asked.

‘Automatic number-plate recognition.’

‘Oh, yes. Of course.’

‘The car could have been borrowed or rented. The number plate may have been concealed. We’re looking into it, but in the meantime, we’re interviewing some of the people who were there.’

The implications of what he was saying finally dawned on me – but then I had only just woken up. ‘Are you suggesting that the driver of the car was someone at the party?’ I asked.

‘Mr Crace was struck down in the same street, fifty yards from the entrance …’

‘And they didn’t stop? You think it was deliberate?’

‘What do you think, Ms Ryeland?’

I knew exactly what I thought, but I wasn’t sure I should say it. ‘My grandmother, Miriam Crace … was murdered by one of the people who hated her … and one day, quite soon, I’m going to tell the whole world who it was. They’re in this room right now!’ I still heard Eliot’s voice echoing across the ballroom. He’d been the centre of attention, just as he’d wanted. And he’d done exactly what I’d warned him against.

---