Page 100 of Marble Hall Murders

‘Of course you can, Detective Inspector. And there’s no need to keep calling me Ms Ryeland. My name’s Susan. If you’ll just wait a moment, I’ll get the keys.’

I went to the bowl on the kitchen counter where I usually kept the keys, but they weren’t there. I looked on the windowsill, but they weren’t there either. Annoyed with myself, Istood where I was, trying to think what I’d done with them. I noticed the coat I’d worn the night before, lying on a sofa. I picked it up and felt the pockets. The keys were inside.

‘It’s just round the corner,’ I said.

‘One moment.’ I’d made an enemy of Detective Constable Wardlaw and now she was taking her revenge. ‘Were you wearing that coat last night?’ she asked.

‘Yes.’ There was no point denying it.

‘Well, if you took the tube, how come the car keys were in your pocket?’

There was no easy answer to that. ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I did some tidying up before I went to bed and I remember picking up the keys. If I don’t put them away, the cat steals them. I must have put them in my pocket and forgotten them. I often do things like that.’

Wardlaw looked doubtful.

‘Let’s see the car,’ Blakeney said.

We trooped out of the house together. I had left the MG round the corner, next to a fence. The streets were reserved for residents’ parking, but I’d already discovered that with so many extended families living in the area, half of them with more than one car, I often had to fight for space. I don’t know why, but I had a horrible thought that the MG wouldn’t be there when we turned into the next road and I was relieved to see it sitting where I had left it, bright red and reliable.

‘Can I have the keys?’ Blakeney asked.

‘Sure.’ I handed them to him. ‘But this is completely unnecessary.’

He opened the car while Wardlaw examined the exterior. For once, there was nothing inside. I often left books,manuscripts, notepads and newspapers strewn over the back seat, but with only one novel – the Nordic noir – on my desk right now, my life was less chaotic than usual. Blakeney leaned in but there was nothing for him to see.

‘Sir …?’

Wardlaw was at the front of the vehicle. She had disappeared from sight. Blakeney walked round and I followed. The DC was squatting on the road, her hand splayed out on the bonnet of the car, her face close to the grille. She looked up sharply. ‘There’s some damage to the radiator grille,’ she said.

It’s extraordinary, but right then I was more concerned about the car than anything else. I peered over her shoulder and saw that she was right. There was a visible dent in the metalwork.

‘And there’s something caught inside.’

She was wearing blue latex gloves. She must have put them on as she walked along the pavement. I watched with a certain fascination as she carefully removed something from one of the air channels above the number plate and held it up for Blakeney to see. It was a tiny piece of cloth. I had no idea how it had got there, but right then I heard the screech of wheels, the thud of my car hitting Eliot as he staggered across the road, his jacket getting torn, some of the fabric – bloodstained, obviously – getting caught in the radiator grille. Except that it hadn’t happened. The MG had never been anywhere near the party. I hadn’t taken it the night before.

‘Are you quite certain you didn’t drive this car last night, Susan?’ Blakeney asked. At least he had used my first name.

‘Of course I am.’

‘After a few drinks, you might have forgotten how you got home.’

‘Even after half a bottle of wine, I can tell the difference between a car and a tube train,’ I said.

‘So you admit you consumed a lot of alcohol,’ Wardlaw remarked spitefully.

I felt a spurt of annoyance. ‘That’s not what I meant. I had one glass of champagne. That’s all. Then I was asked to leave.’

‘You weren’t asked, exactly. You were trashed in front of a whole crowd of people and then escorted out by security. You must have been very angry.’

There was no point discussing it with her. I watched as she pulled an evidence bag out of her pocket and carefully placed the little piece of material inside. It was about the size of a fingernail. I could see a red stain in one corner. The fabric was a dark shade of green. Now that I thought about it, I remembered that Eliot had been wearing a velvet jacket that was the same colour. Could someone have stolen my car and driven it? No. That was impossible. I had two sets of keys. One had been in the back of my kitchen drawer, well out of sight.

The other had been in my coat pocket.

I didn’t want the ground to open up beneath my feet and swallow me. But it felt as if that was exactly what it was doing.

‘We are impounding the vehicle under the Road Traffic Regulation Act 1988,’ Blakeney said. At least he had the decency to sound regretful.

‘We’re going to need both sets of keys,’ Wardlaw added.

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