Death of a Gentle Lady - M. C. Beaton [59]
Mark lived in a small converted Victorian warehouse fronting on to 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 recognized 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 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