Death at Rainbow Cottage, Jo Allen [top 100 books of all time checklist .TXT] 📗

of fading crocuses among the blue of grape hyacinth and glory-of-the-snow. Jude turned through the gate and up the path. Behind the opaque glass panel in the front door a figure shimmered, wrenching it open and interrupting his survey of the property.

‘The police?’ A man some six inches shorter than Jude himself but with a physical presence more than reinforced by a barrel chest and a bull neck, bounced onto the doorstep. He was probably in his forties, once-dark hair dusted with grey and receding at the temples. The rolled-up sleeves of his checked shirt revealed capable forearms. Energy sparked from him, every movement short, sharp and full of purpose.

Jude flashed his warrant card. ‘DCI Satterthwaite. I’m sorry to have left you hanging around. I needed to get the investigation up and running before I spoke to you. Mr Blackwell, is that right?’

The man held out his hand as if it were a social visit. ‘Yes. Claud Blackwell. No worries, Chief Inspector. Your people did offer to leave us a policewoman when they saw how upset Nat was, but I guessed you’d need every hand to the pump up there. And there was no way Nat would have been able to tell them anything. Anyway, she has me to look after her.’

‘Is your wife all right?’

‘I think so. Very shaken up to start with, but she’s calmer now. She’s taken something.’ Claud Blackwell stepped back and held the door open, motioning Jude through the narrow hallway. ‘She’s in the living room. Would you like coffee?’

Jude declined the coffee and headed through. Natalie Blackwell was sitting straight-backed in an armchair by the unlit fire, gazing across the dual-aspect room and out towards the village. Her face was turned away from the flurry of activity at the end of the lane. When Jude entered the room she rose and turned towards him, extending a hand. She’d showered and changed, and was dressed in jogging bottoms and a baggy sweatshirt. Her dark blonde hair, twisted into a tight bun, was damp and the fresh aroma of shower gel, mint and strawberry, clung to her. She looked ageless, anywhere between fifteen and fifty but judging her — probably inaccurately — by the age of her husband, she might have been in her forties.

‘Chief Inspector.’ Her voice was barely a whisper, but he heard music in it.

‘Mrs Blackwell.’ He shook her hand. She was as tall as he was, a good six feet, and she looked him calmly and levelly in the eye, a gaze from which any curiosity had been wiped away by shock and medication. ‘Are you all right?’

Her hand fluttered in front of her breast. Despite the shower, the fingernails on the right hand were still picked out in red and she spotted him looking at it and held it out, as if for inspection. ‘I’m like Lady Macbeth, aren’t I? What, will this hand ne’er be clean?’ Her eyes were veiled, her soul hidden. ‘Yes. Very shaken. And I’m so sorry. I moved the body.’

‘Oh?’ He took the seat to which Claud motioned him, and watched Natalie as she resumed her seat in the armchair, snatching a fearful eye at the goings-on outside before returning her attention to him.

‘Yes. I know you aren’t supposed to touch anything, but I’m afraid I panicked.’ She folded her hands on her lap. ‘He was still alive. I thought I might need to do CPR. Then I realised there was nothing I could do and he was going to die. I wanted to hold him, so he didn’t die alone, so he knew there was good in the world as well as evil. The poor man. A stranger.’ A tear glimmered in her eye. ‘He died and I panicked. I don’t remember exactly what happened.’ Her hand fluttered upwards again, but whatever she’d taken to calm her had rubbed the inflections from her voice as easily as it had wiped the nuance from her expression, so her whole statement offered nothing but a sense of emotionless anti-climax. ‘I was covered in blood. So much blood.’

‘Did the police officer who spoke to you ask you to keep your clothing?’

Claud twitched in what looked as if it might be vindication but Natalie’s look was blank. ‘She did, but I put it in the washing machine. Claud said I should keep it like she said, but I couldn’t bear to see the man’s blood. And it doesn’t matter, does it? It isn’t as if I killed him.’

‘I’m sure it doesn’t matter, Nat.’ Jude sensed resignation in Claud’s voice. ‘I’m sure it was just a precaution.’

Just a precaution. Who knew what forensic evidence had clung to Natalie’s clothing as she’d cradled Len Pierce in his death throes? In the background, the hum of the washing machine made a mockery of procedure, but there was nothing to be done. ‘Don’t worry about moving him, Mrs Blackwell.’ It happened. It was frustrating, and sometimes it cost a conviction, but Jude was human. The clothing was different — infuriating, evidence contaminated or lost — but you couldn’t blame someone for trying to save a life.

She was still gazing down at her hand. ‘Did I kill him?’

‘I beg your pardon?’

Claud’s expression was somewhere between outrage and stupefaction. ‘Nat—’

‘I moved him, but he was so badly hurt. Did I kill him? Tell me he didn’t die because I moved him?’ She turned her blank expression towards Jude and that fluttering gesture of desolation ghosted once more in front of her body.

Jude shook his head. He didn’t need a medical report to tell him Len’s injuries had been so severe they’d have been almost instantly fatal. Nevertheless, he struggled to suppress a sigh of irritation as he flipped open his notebook. ‘I don’t think there was anything anyone could do for him.’ He paused. ‘Can you try to talk me through what happened?’

‘Of course.’