Blood in Grandpont (DI Susan Holden 2)

‘No, I don’t think so. I don’t know many people in Cumnor, actually.’

‘Sir,’ Fox interrupted, ‘what about any patients? I guess you must have a lot of those, and they’d always recognize their doctor.’

Again the look of innocent incomprehension as he tried to come up with a more satisfactory answer. ‘Sorry, I really didn’t meet anyone I know.’

‘That’s fine,’ Holden said quickly, taking the reins back. ‘There is just one other thing. Did you by any chance make a phone call to Jack Smith yesterday morning?’

For the first time that morning there was a look of genuine surprise on Dr Tull’s face. He peered at Holden his eyes narrowing. ‘No, I didn’t,’ he said firmly, before adding, ‘though the shower is leaking.’

‘It could be him,’ Fox concluded tersely, after Dr Tull had asked to be excused and gone out of the room. ‘No alibi.’

‘It could be,’ Holden replied. ‘But who made the phone call?’

Joseph was the next of the Tulls to arrive home. His hair flopped across his face, and every gesture and word exuded the same disgruntled note, a young man at odds with the world and himself. He had been at college all morning the previous day, he insisted. He had had two classes, and the second had finished at 12.30, and then he’d gone home and played on his X-Box for a while and then he’d had to write an essay because it was late and he’d been given a bollocking about it by his tutor. And no, he hadn’t rung the bloody plumber. If the shower was dripping a bit, so what!

It was rather a relief to Holden when Lucy Tull arrived. Fox intercepted her in the hall, and invited her straight into the study. She took off her black coat and scarf, hung them neatly on the coat stand in the hall, and went and sat down opposite Holden. Holden couldn’t help but compare her with her half-brother. Whereas he had slouched in the chair and given every impression of total boredom, she sat upright and tense, her hands clasped tightly together on the table, and her eyes looking so directly at Holden that she might have been practising the pose. Look at me, she was saying, giving you absolutely one hundred per cent attention.

‘I’m sorry if you’ve had to rush home, Lucy.’

‘Our last appointment didn’t turn up, so it didn’t matter.’

‘I’ll try to keep it brief. We need to know where you were between 12.00 noon and 2.00 p.m. yesterday.’

‘Work for some of it. I was in the surgery till about 12.45. We were running a bit late because we’d had to fit an emergency in. Then I went out, and I came back just before two o’clock.’

‘That’s a long lunch break.’

‘Not really. You see, at least twice a week we catch up with the admin at lunchtime, so then it’s a short break. So on other days I get longer.’

‘And what did you do while you were out?’

‘I went to get a new bell for my bike.’

‘Where from?’

‘There’s a little shop on the Botley Road. I always use it. They specialize in Bromptons.’

‘And then what?’

‘Gosh, you do ask a lot of questions. Let me see, I put the bell on the bike, and I cycled back towards town, only it was really chucking it down so I stopped by that church on the right, near Osney, and sheltered in the porch while I ate my sandwich. Oh, yes, I nearly forgot,’ she continued, with sarcasm now transparent, ‘I read my book while I was waiting for the rain to ease off – Daphne du Maurier’s My Cousin Rachel – and then I made my way back to the surgery.’

‘So that all took you an hour and a quarter?’ Holden had no intention of being distracted from her task.

‘Roughly speaking.’ She made a face, and Holden saw in it a flash of her brother’s disdainfulness. Did they both get that from their father, then? Or was that the product of money and class. ‘Maybe it was only an hour and ten minutes. I wasn’t counting the minutes. But you can always check with Geraldine.’

Holden yawned. She too could play the ‘I’m bored with all of this’ game. But right now it was merely a distraction technique. The real game was altogether more serious. She ran her forefinger up and down the side of her nose, rubbing a non-existent itch.

‘Did you ring Jack Smith yesterday morning round about eight o’clock?’ If Holden hoped the suddenness of the question would throw Lucy off her guard, she was quickly disillusioned by the immediate and sure-footed response.

‘Yeah!’

‘Why was that?’

‘Because the shower was leaking. Why else?’

‘So you rang the man who had had an affair with your stepmother, in order to get him to fix a leaking shower?’

‘Sure. He installed the damn shower, so he could fix it. You don’t think I was going to call out another plumber who’d charge daddy at least fifty quid when it was Jack’s responsibility to fix it for free. And besides, do you really think Jack Smith was the only person who’d slept with Maria? Because I don’t.’