Murder most fancy, p.3
Murder Most Fancy, page 3
‘Dr Bailly? Where’s Dr Oldham?’ Rope wanted to know as she approached.
‘Dead,’ she said flatly, pulling on a pair of surgical gloves. ‘Myocardial infarction last Tuesday.’
Dr Bailly opened her case. I saw an array of brushes, powders and small containers, but no false eyelashes, Dior lipsticks or Chanel eyeshadow palettes. I was disappointed. The joy of shiny blue, black and gold cosmetic cases and their happy, coloured contents never failed to delight me.
‘What?’ Detective Rope asked in shock. ‘He’s dead? You’re kidding?’
‘No,’ Dr Bailly said in a tone that did not invite further rhetorical questions.
‘I didn’t know that,’ Rope grumbled, unimpressed at being swindled out of Dr Oldham, whoever he was. ‘No one told me that,’ he persisted.
‘You are a detective,’ she said without malice or sarcasm, surveying the body, which was still half covered by Grandmother’s oriental lilies with his bottom half protruding onto the lawn. ‘You should have known that.’
The police officer on guard by the body stifled a laugh. Rope shot the Tyvek-covered woman a dirty look, which she didn’t notice, then gathered himself and began barking.
‘What took you so long?’
‘You called me out here on a Sunday afternoon. I don’t work Sundays. I was at the pet show buying a Symphysodon discus,’ she said, eyeing the general area in which Rope stood but not Rope directly. ‘You interrupted me.’
Rope obviously had no idea what a Symphysodon discus was (neither did I), but her annoyance clearly brought him joy. He continued with a distinctly more pleasing demeanour. ‘Can you give me time of death?’
‘If I puncture the liver to take body temperature, I might damage it. What if he was stabbed in the liver? I could compromise evidence.’
‘He was homeless. I don’t think he was stabbed in the liver,’ Rope retorted.
‘You—’
‘I’m willing to chance it,’ Rope said, cutting her off. ‘Body temp?’
‘You don’t think homeless people have liver damage?’ she persisted.
Good point. Not to generalise, but I’m going to generalise and say the words homeless guy, alcohol and liver damage go together like the words socialite, cocktails and rehab.
‘Well then, Dr Bailly, do it the other way,’ he said and jerked his head to the left, pointing his pointer finger upwards. ‘You know.’
‘You want me to insert a thermometer into this man’s rectum? Here? In the open?’ And although she did not make eye contact with him, she folded her arms in a gesture that made it clear she had zero intention of doing as he asked.
I glanced around at the array of spectating staff members.
‘He’s dead,’ Rope said with a shrug.
‘He’s a person,’ she said evenly.
‘He was a vagrant, for Chrissake!’ he shot back. ‘I don’t think his family will object.’
Dr Bailly looked like she wanted to take Rope’s temperature the other way, but said nothing.
‘You might want to avoid interfering with the body like that in front of Bettina,’ I put in, although why I was speaking at all was a mystery to me. Do not speak, Indigo. Get away as quickly as possible and do not get involved. ‘She can be rather sensitive.’
Yes, what he was proposing to do to that poor dead man in front of a dozen onlookers was awful, but was it my problem?
‘She actually is a Lady,’ I persisted. ‘Her grandmother is Dame Elizabeth Holly.’
Mental head thump.
A wave of recognition passed over Detective Rope’s face. He and I glanced over at Bettina who, sedated or not, was clearly using every gram of socialised strength she possessed to not kill Detective Winters. The paramedics were packing up. The moment that gorgeous paramedic stepped into his ambulance and drove away, all hell was going to break loose. Nice, polite Bettina would be gone along with him. I wondered if they even knew they had been getting nice, polite Bettina.
Oh dear. They were in for a surprise.
‘Jesus! Don’t do it then!’ Rope exclaimed. ‘But if we can’t get a decent time of death because you’re too precious to take a temperature, it’s on you. Just go and collect some trace. Hands, nails, you know.’
‘Now?’
‘No, at Christmas. Yes, now,’ he growled.
‘It’s best if we bag this man’s hands, feet and head, and do swabs and run trace back at the FM triple C. We run the risk of cross-contamination if we cut or scrape or swab out here in the open,’ Dr Bailly said.
‘You wanna wait to get him back to the lab ’cause you’re worried about contamination? It’s a bit late for that; both these girls have already fallen over this guy.’ He nodded towards me, as if I had not been standing next to him for the past few hours, and then towards Bettina as she said goodbye to Mr Ambulance.
Girls? Rope held none of the social or biological qualifications that would allow him to use that designation when referring to Bettina or myself.
Dr Bailly acknowledged my presence with a nod of the head. She then eyed my hands. ‘Has someone processed you?’ she asked.
Although I didn’t know what she meant by ‘processed’, I was sure I would have known if it had been done to me and that I would not enjoy it. I considered my brand-new manicure. ‘Maybe,’ I said. ‘Maybe I have. Yes, I think I have.’
‘Has this woman been processed?’
‘Nope, that’s your job. And then do the body.’ With that, Rope walked off towards Winters and a simmering Bettina.
‘He’s not a wise man,’ Dr Bailly said to herself when Rope hit the hedge.
Unlike Bettina, Rope was nowhere near slim enough to squeeze between two hedges. When, after several aggressive, hippo like attempts, he failed to wedge his substantial girth through them, he heaved himself onto the poor shaped shrub and leaned into the next garden. I waited for the sound of snapping branches. Nothing. Claire was an excellent gardener.
‘Jem Bailly,’ Dr Bailly said to me by way of introduction while squatting by her metal box. ‘I’m from the FM triple C.’
FMCCC? That didn’t sound like a laboratory, it sounded like a radio station.
‘I don’t know specifically what the FMCCC is,’ I said, feeling somewhat simple.
‘The Forensic Medicine and Coroners Court Complex,’ she said plainly. ‘FM triple C. I’m a forensic pathologist. I’m going to take swabs and nail cuttings, okay.’
Although the word ‘okay’ was included in her sentence, it was clearly not a question.
‘A pleasure to meet you, Jem Bailly,’ I said, even though discovering a body and meeting a forensic pathologist on a sunny Sunday while trying to borrow a master painting or two was not my idea of pleasure. ‘I’m Indigo Hasluck-Royce-Jones-Bombberg. Indigo.’ Out of habit, I offered her my hand.
She stood with a plastic vial in one hand and nail clippers in the other, peering at my outstretched hand. Right. Had I learned nothing in the past few hours? No one shakes the hand of the woman who finds the body. Or touches the body. Or falls over the body.
‘Doctor,’ she said to the clippers. ‘I am Doctor Jem Bailly. You can call me Bailly.’
‘Me too,’ I said, before clarifying. ‘Not doctor. My first name is actually Indigo-Daisy-Violet-Amber.’
A microsecond micro smile nipped across her face and she briefly looked me in the eye. ‘Your name is Indigo-Daisy-Violet-Amber Hasluck-Royce-Jones-Bombberg? There’s no way Detective Rope is going to be able to remember that. Or spell it correctly in his report.’
Searing remembered it. Then again, Rope was clearly no Searing. I had been spoilt by the quality of the homicide detective I’d had investigating me.
Bailly’s eyes went down to the plastic vial in her hand. She expertly flipped the lid off with her gloved thumb and turned it sideways, assessing the blank label. ‘I don’t think the name Indigo-Daisy-Violet-Amber Hasluck-Royce-Jones-Bombberg will fit onto the evidence container labels. Your name is a problem.’
Preaching to the choir.
She efficiently swabbed my hands and cut my nails. I was in the midst of bemoaning the unexpected and rather brutal death of my manicure when I had an unexpected flashback. I recalled being in the back of an ambulance, racing to the hospital after the fire. My mother was there. And someone, I suddenly realised, just like Dr Bailly was swabbing my hands and clipping my nails. Swish, swish. Pat, pat. Clip, clip.
‘Can you smell smoke?’ I asked her.
She sniffed, her nose in the air like a rabbit, carefully analysing its contents.
‘No.’
‘It must be me.’
‘We’re done,’ she said. She closed her case, bagged the minutely labelled vials, then binned her gloves, booties and suit and put on new ones.
My nails were cut to the quick and a complete mess. I could have done a better job if I had gnawed them off. Or had a beaver do it.
I watched her walk to the body and open her case again. I had no idea how she was going to get a substantial nail sample.
‘He’s had a very recent manicure,’ I said to her, again speaking before I intended. ‘The manicurist did an excellent job. His nails look exactly two point five millimetres long. Not a lot left for clipping.’
I was, unfortunately, in possession of this intimate nail knowledge due to the sheer number of times I had fallen on him.
Without raising her head, Bailly said, ‘Yes. You’re correct. Very observant, Indigo-Daisy-Violet-Amber. Why do you think the manicure was recent?’
There was no note of sarcasm in her voice. Her memory was impressive.
‘The nail is buffed to a shine. That only lasts a few days,’ I answered.
Who was I, Nancy Drew?
She examined his hands. ‘Huh.’ She then leaned into the oriental lilies and examined his face.
‘He’s had a very neat shave quite recently,’ she said.
I didn’t know if she was speaking to me or not, but I had nothing else to do and it was more pleasant than dealing with Detective Rope.
‘He has had regular cutthroat shaves. I would say he had one yesterday,’ I said to her. ‘Not many people do that themselves.’
This is mainly because giving oneself a cutthroat shave is ridiculously difficult and perilously dangerous. Richard was one of the best reconstructive plastic surgeons in the country, possibly the world, and when he attempted to use a cutthroat razor, he looked like he’d had a run-in with Sweeney Todd.
Bailly turned slightly towards me. ‘Why do you say that?’
‘A shave that close is definitely a cutthroat razor and it has hardly grown back. The skin on his lower face is in perfect condition. No tears, no rash, no ingrown hairs. So, not his first time. I would say he, or his barber, uses a hot towel.’ I had no idea why the poor deceased man was so endlessly fascinating to me. I tried not to look while I was down there.
‘And he smells of Atkinsons California Poppy Hair Oil,’ I continued. My grandfather’s barber used to use the same product on him. I felt surprisingly satisfied to be so helpful before wondering why I felt the urge to be so helpful. Was I even being helpful? And was the familiar scent of Grandfather’s California Poppy Oil the thing that had prickled something in my memory earlier?
‘Huh,’ she said, quietly crab-walking from her squatting position near the head down to the end of the body. She examined his feet. ‘No chronic wounds,’ she said to herself. ‘Peripheral debris only.’ She stayed in that position for a long time. From where I was standing, his feet did not seem that interesting. They were covered in lawn, dirt and tiny pebbles, which seemed about right for a homeless person.
I rapidly lost interest—I was literally watching someone stare at the dirt on the feet of a dead vagrant. Ten seconds later, Bailly had my attention again. She was sniffing the body. I was about to ask her what she was doing when Bettina began actively yelling, demanding a lawyer and threating to sue. Rope had managed to tip her over the edge, and without her emergency service man in attendance, Bettina had no reason to be reasonable.
Although I could not condone Bettina’s behaviour, I was two minutes from pulling the lawyer card myself. It had been a long afternoon.
As if on cue, Dame Elizabeth appeared in the melee, her PA Andrew Saxton and her driver whose name I didn’t know trailing close behind. The onlooking staff parted like the Red Sea, allowing her immediate access to Bettina, Rope and Winters.
To the unaccustomed, meeting Dame Elizabeth Holly was a bit like meeting a younger version of the Queen. Educated in the days of governesses and finishing schools, when five different forks were used at dinner (salad, fish, dinner, dessert and oyster) and polite women married when and where they were told, Dame Elizabeth had an air of stoicism mixed with genuine grace and highly bred patience that was rare and refined.
Dame Elizabeth went immediately to her granddaughter, gathering Bettina in her arms, cooing and kissing the top of her head. Bettina, for all her huff and puff, broke down in her grandmother’s embrace. Once Bettina was breathing at a normal rate, without asking for permission, Dame Elizabeth silently handed her off to a household staff member, who promptly escorted her away.
Detective Winters immediately comprehended he was dealing with someone well above his political pay grade. Was he impressed by her staff’s deference? Did he recognise her from one of her many philanthropical endeavours? From her portrait in the National Gallery? Her sculpture in the foyer of the Opera House? Whatever the motivation, he did not object to Dame Elizabeth excusing Bettina. Detective Rope, witnessing this, was silent. If he was not fully aware of Bettina’s grandmother’s high power and potency before, he was now.
Meanwhile, Bailly had been methodically occupied, gently paper-bagging the man’s extremities and carefully sealing them with police evidence tape. This sounds a lot less traumatic than it looks. Unless it sounds extremely disturbing and traumatic, in which case, it’s accurate.
I turned away as the man in the lilies was placed, pre-sealed, into a navy blue body bag. The crinkle of the body bag’s tent-like material, the swoosh of the zip and the crack of the plastic tie tag sealing his fate were like auditory daggers.
I was astonished to be at all affected. I didn’t even know this person! Rope said he was homeless. Well, a homeless person with an excellent, longstanding barber and a fabulous manicurist. Was that even possible? While I was not up to date on the current costs of barbering, I was extremely well acquainted with the costs of personal maintenance, and they were high. If you could not afford a home, what were the chances you could afford daily personal grooming? Not wonderful, I would have thought. And why did Bailly smell him? And what on earth was he doing in Grandmother’s backyard? Admittedly, there was a battalion of homeless people in Kings Cross, but it was Kings Cross, the home of seedy nightclubs, neon signs, teenage intoxication and twenty-four-hour eating establishments. Geographically close, yes, but worlds away. There was not a high homeless population in any of Sydney’s other elite Eastern Suburbs, and especially not here in the closed community of Vaucluse. Lachlan and Sarah Murdoch lived on this street. What was a meticulously groomed hobo doing here?
I was awoken from my reverie by a voice so clear and strong, so refined in its tone, it tinkered on the edge of British royalty. ‘What a tragic way for us to have met, Detective Winters. It is kind of you to say though. I am humbled it has brought you and your family such joy. It has been my great privilege to—is that Indigo Hasluck-Royce-Jones-Bombberg standing in full sun? Surely she has not been there all this time? Detective Winters?’
‘Detective Rope?’ asked Detective Winters, simultaneously passing the buck and throwing his partner under the bus.
‘Well … err,’ Rope said.
Dame Elizabeth looked embarrassed for them. ‘Dear, oh dear, oh dear.’
CHAPTER 3
GRAND REQUESTS
Ignoring all policing etiquette, Dame Elizabeth patted Winters kindly on the arm and, in a biblical move, she seemingly walked through the immaculate boxwood hedge separating the two gardens and strolled up the stone pathway to me. I, along with the detectives, stared in astonishment. Then I heard a small rustle and caught the movement of greenery swinging closed behind her. Click. There was a false section of boxwood hedge in the boxwood hedge. Dame Elizabeth had unlocked it and swung it open, like a solid, leafy-green farmgate, giving her immediate access to Grandmother’s garden.
‘My dear girl!’ she exclaimed.
‘Dame Elizabeth,’ I said, smiling.
‘Pish!’ she said, rolling her eyes. ‘Your grandmother’s not here to chide us. Please do call me Aunt Lizzy as you did when you were a child.’
‘Yes, Aunt Lizzy,’ I said, too polite to point out that while Grandmother did discourage me from using less formal forms of address, it was Bettina and Gilly’s fierce objections to my using familiar terms with their grandmother that caused me to habitually call her Dame Elizabeth.
The physical resemblance between Dame Elizabeth and Bettina was striking, although Dame Elizabeth was slightly taller, with Helen Mirren-white hair, a naturally straighter nose and she smiled more frequently.
She gathered me in her arms, just as she had done with her granddaughter minutes earlier. ‘What a terrible thing! You must be in shock.’
I could recall only two occasions when my own grandmother had hugged me. When her son, my father, had died and when the police tried to arrest me for a double homicide. By contrast, Dame Elizabeth hugged me almost every time she saw me. Well, every time she saw me in private. Still, she was hundreds of hugs up on Grandmother.
While Grandmother’s taste in orchids and fine art was impeccable, she possessed almost no maternal instincts. Since Grandfather’s death, the Hasluck-Royce corporation had thrived under her ferocious stewardship. She enjoyed psychological warfare and technical wizardry and disliked misogynists and post-postmodernism.
