Page 90 of Ticket Out

“He Crane, do you think?” he asked Drummley.

Drummley gave a quick shake of his head and a lift of his shoulders in reply.

Neither of them went into the room, leaving it for the pathologist.

James moved past the door, down a wide hallway and into the kitchen. His eyes widened at the sight of another man lying dead there, too, slumped over the kitchen table.

He looked to be at a similar stage of decomposition to the man in the sitting room. He edged around the table, and stopped dead at the sight of a second man, lying on the floor.

Drummley joined him, and something changed in his demeanor at the sight of the body on the floor.

“Your Clubs and Vice man?” James asked.

Drummley didn’t answer, but the horror on his face said it all. He moved away, walking into the mudroom, and gave a cry of surprise.

“Not another one?” James couldn’t believe it. He carefully stepped across the kitchen to join him, and forced himself to peer into the small, tiled room that led out to the garden.

A man lay collapsed across a bench in his stocking feet, with a pair of Wellington boots beside him. He was as bloated as the other two.

“There’re his shoes,” Drummley said, pointing to a smart pair of leather loafers to one side.

They moved carefully back into the hall and James stood with Drummley for a moment.

“You all right to carry on?”

Drummley nodded. “Kershaw was a damned fool,” he said, “but bent copper or no, no one deserves that.” He coughed, putting the handkerchief back up to his mouth and nose, and then looked up at the stairs.

James processed the horror and shock of four dead bodies as he started up. He concentrated on the balustrade, which was made of a highly polished dark wood, and the carpet that ran down the middle of the steps, which had a crazy pattern on it, probably from some famous designer he had never heard of.

“Never seen anything like it,” Drummley muttered as they trudged upward, and James didn’t think he was talking about the decor.

This wasn’t usual. This was an outrageous crime.

He heard gagging noises from the front door, and Drummley turned.

“Outside if you’re going to hurl,” he shouted to his people. “Outside!”

Someone muttered a response, and when James reached the top, he caught the same, gagging smell, and gave Drummley a meaningful look.

“Another one?” Drummley asked, sounding numb.

“Smells like it.” James carefully pushed open the first door they came to, but it looked like it was a spare bedroom, all pale greens and lemon yellows and empty. The next door hid a bathroom, and then they came to what had to be the master bedroom.

It was a curious mix of the masculine and the feminine.

A dark maroon carpet and heavy leather furniture, with a pink frilly dressing table beneath the window. There were two dressing rooms, one off to each side, but it was the four poster bed, a fanciful affair with gauzy white curtains gathered at the corners, and a white silk canopy, which drew his eye. Or rather, the body that lay on the bed.

“Mrs. Crane?” He could barely speak. His throat felt like it had locked up.

Drummley looked from the body to him. “I think you said your suspect has no problem killing.” He waved a hand at the body. “That’s not killing. That’s something else.”

chapterthirty-eight

Gabriella made the espresso,impressed, despite the situation, with Paul Devenish’s La Pavoni espresso machine. It was beautiful, and worked like a dream.

She poured the coffee into a shallow bowl to cool, then turned back to make herself a cup.

She probably shouldn’t rev her nerves up any higher, but she didn’t care.

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