‘Use a handkerchief,’ said Midge, before firmly adding, ‘Your own one.’
Midge was already opening up the other drawers with her daisy-stitch hankie. They were all empty apart from the bottom one, which had an old-fashioned key box inside it. She carefully pulled out the key tray, taking a moment to appreciate the array of neatly labelled keys hosted within their individual compartments. Library, study... everything present and accounted for except for one unoccupied compartment at the back, empty of everything, even dust. The label was still there, though: ‘BATHINGROOM’. Well, that key was on the tiled floor now, destined to become evidence in Rendell’s murder.
‘I’ve found his wallet,’ announced Harold, fingering a worn, brown leather wallet.
‘Why are you opening it?’ she asked.
Harold shrugged, placing it back down on the desk but still open. ‘It’s what they do on the TV, isn’t it?’
‘To establish identity, yes,’ replied Midge. ‘But we already know who he is.’
Or did they? Midge felt a jolt of surprise on seeing a photograph tucked inside the inner pocket. It was a crumpled picture of a woman and two young children, both, judging by the thick heads of curly hair, related to Rendell. She had no idea that he had children of his own and the idea jarred so oddly with her own experience of him that the row of faces staring up at her blurred into one, making her feel lightheaded. When Harold’s back was turned, she quickly reached out to touch the photographic paper and steadied herself, her foot scuffing against a large rectangular dent in the carpet when she moved.
‘I need a quick wee,’ said Harold, who had picked up another of Rendell’s newspapers. ‘Won’t be a minute.’
Unaccustomed as she was to people announcing that they wereabout to relieve themselves, Midge took so long considering her response that fortunately Harold had closed the bathroom door before she’d replied with an uncertain, ‘Good luck.’ Wrinkling her nose, she continued her search around the room. It felt peculiar to be at the frontline of the evidential trail after all these years of simply receiving and processing it. Her brain raced through all of the possibilities behind Rendell’s last few moments in the room, everything he may have touched or moved. One by one, the items took up residence in carefully labelled bags – ‘NEWSPAPER: DATED 19 DECEMBER. LOCATION: LEFT SIDE PILLOW’ – all neatly stored side by side inside the property shelves of her mind – a mental register preserving the chain of continuity. She was so absorbed in her work that she didn’t hear the flushing of the toilet as Harold reappeared.
‘Maybe one of the others knows what’s happened to the phones,’ he said, glumly, when they had finally given up their search and were leaving the room a few minutes later. ‘This has been a busted flush, no pun intended.’
Feeling slightly breathless as she ran her finger along the edge of Rendell’s family photograph, where it was now sequestered deep inside her pocket, Midge couldn’t help disagreeing with him.
Chapter20
So far it had taken Dr Mortimer, Harold and Noah twenty minutes to dig a path down to the gates. Midge, who had been watching them from Gloria’s bedroom window, had observed that the first ten minutes of that, at least, had been spent arguing amongst themselves about who was doing what. It reminded her of the excruciating team-building workshops she had been forced to endure in the police. Until, to everyone’s relief, Health and Safety had stepped in and queried the wisdom of having Midge hoisted several feet above the ground in a tree-climbing harness.
The Mortimers had secured themselves one of the biggest rooms in the hall after Rendell’s, albeit one now slightly messier than Midge would have expected. The bickering outside had taken Gloria’s mind momentarily off the dead body, as she provided Rona and Midge with a running commentary on the progress, or lack thereof, of the path-digging.
Harold said that if the doctor was as good at digging as he was standing around pointing out the bloody obvious then the driveway would be clear a lot sooner, which made Noah laugh, but the doctor said that having to explain to Noah which end of a shovel to hold hadn’t helped. Noah replied that he didn’t understand why they had to conform to the patriarchal norms of men doing the heavy work. Which was when the doctor announced that he had known handing the phones over to Rendell was a ridiculous idea in the first place and Noah said that ‘of course he did’, because he was a ‘know-it-all’. At which point Harold, finally, climbed into the coach to give it a start and discovered that it wouldn’t move.
‘What’s going on now?’ asked Rona, sitting forward in her armchair. She had changed out of her kaftan and was now wearing an odd mixture of khaki cargo trousers and a silk blouse.
‘It looks like the engine won’t start,’ said Midge, who would have started with the engine before all else.
‘Didn’t they try that first?’ asked Rona.
‘No, it’s running,’ said Gloria. ‘I can hear it. What’s wrong?’ she shouted out of the window.
Harold had jumped out and was looking at the tyres at the back of the coach. He called over the doctor and Noah and showed them something.
‘What is it?’ asked Rona. ‘What can you see?’
‘They’re all looking at the tyres,’ said Gloria. Midge watched as they took a step back and Harold scratched his head. ‘Oh dear, it doesn’t look good. They’re coming back in.’
Harold glanced up at the window as they walked back towards the front door.
The three of them waited in silence until the men made an appearance in the room, Harold striding immediately over to the radiator to begin warming his hands.
‘Well?’ asked Rona.
Dr Mortimer shook his head as Harold spoke. ‘All of the tyres are flat and I’ve got no spares. That coach isn’t going anywhere.’
‘“No spares” sounds like piss-poor planning to me,’ said the doctor.
Harold glared at him. ‘Rendell was supposed to check the bus.’
‘How convenient! Blame the dead man,’ said Dr Mortimer.
They were all silent for a moment, thinking about the body in the bath only a few doors away from them.
