Before it did, Gloria had started screaming.
As the steam clouds parted, they revealed Rendell in the bath, his throat slit and the bloodied water steadily pooling on to the tiles below him.
Chapter17
Dr Mortimer was a man who liked to take charge. He told them so himself. In Midge’s experience, people who had to tell you they were taking charge often weren’t. His first action was to insist on checking for signs of life, which got very messy, very quickly. Harold said, ‘I’m no expert but even I can see he’s dead as a dodo’ – which Midge couldn’t help agreeing with. But Andrew, despite Gloria begging him to just get on with it, said that ‘Rendell isn’t bloody dead until I say he’s dead’, at which point Harold said that ‘He certainly doesn’t look very well, then’. Then Noah piped up to ask whether ‘he’s supposed to smell that bad’, and Harold replied that it was the decomposition because he was absolutely, definitely dead. Which was when Midge could see Dr Mortimer wishing they would all get out and she couldn’t help agreeing with him. That’s the problem with taking charge. It involves other people.
‘Bloody hell,’ Harold kept saying. ‘What the bloody hell?’
Noah threw up again, like he did at the sheep.
‘It’s blood,’ he explained. ‘I’m hemophobic.’
‘Thought you were a bit more woke than that,’ muttered Harold. He caught Midge’s eye. ‘Sorry, gallows humour.’
There was a lot of blood. The open wound had mixed with the water, leaving a bath of red liquid which dripped over the sides, spilling on to the floor. Thankfully, Harold had switched the taps off.
‘What about our phones?’ asked Rona, suddenly. At first, Midge assumed Rona wanted to alert the police, but just as she wasabout to remind her that Rendell had confiscated their phones, to Midge’s surprise, Rona continued, ‘My life is on that phone... a lot of very personal information. If that falls into the wrong hands...’ She paled.
‘There’s a dead body in front of you and all you’re worried about is where your bloody phone is?’ Noah shook his head in disbelief. ‘Surely you haven’t got any personal information left anyway, have you? From what you said, your boobs are pretty much public property.’
‘Well, there’s nothing to stop us searching his room afterwards, I suppose,’ suggested Midge, who was relieved to steer the topic away from Rona’s bosoms again.
‘Rona, please can you take Gloria back to her room,’ said the doctor, standing up and looking at his wife. ‘You’ll only distress yourself.’
Gloria moved away from the bath before being swept out into the corridor by Rona.
‘Why would he do this?’ asked Noah when they had gone.
Midge blinked. ‘Do what?’
‘Kill himself.’
‘What makes you think he killed himself?’ she asked. The steam, although almost gone from the room, was making her feel both lightheaded and hot.
‘Uh, the bloody great slash mark on his throat?’ said Harold.
Midge leaned closer to the body. There was a cut-throat razor on the edge of the bath, but it was far larger than the wound itself.
‘And the door was locked,’ said Harold. ‘From the inside.’ He was right: there was a small brass key on the tiles next to the splinters of wood, inside the bathroom.
‘What are you doing, woman?’ Dr Mortimer said, washing his hands in the sink. ‘Move away from the body.’
Midge walked over to the window, which was shut and also locked. ‘He didn’t strike me as suicidal.’ She took a moment toconsider everything in the room, analysing the position and condition of each object, recording it to memory.
‘Well, he certainly didn’t strike me as happy.’ Harold shrugged. ‘Who can tell what’s going on in someone else’s mind?’
‘That’s true,’ muttered the doctor.
‘We can’t leave him here.’ Noah looked a queasy shade of green.
What we need to do is preserve the scene, thought Midge, but she was reluctant to say so. Fortunately for them all, the doctor was busy ‘taking charge’.
‘We need to preserve the body for the police,’ he said, echoing Midge’s thoughts.
‘Keep him in the bath?’ suggested Noah, his hand over his mouth. ‘We’ve no idea when we’ll be able to get help.’
‘He’ll be all shrivelled like a prune,’ commented Harold. Midge glanced down at the body as Noah tried to float a flannel over the corpse’s modesty. It occurred to her that it was only the second time in her life that she had seen a naked man, and on both occasions, it had been Rendell.
