‘Quite right. And?’ Joe was serious but encouraging.
‘Well, I thought it was a bit off, her taking nearly half an hour to get up here, so I asked about that. She was observed rendering assistance to the old lady who was feeling a little unsteady and that took up some of the time. She finally turned the old dear over to the care of an attendant whom I have interviewed, sir, then she went up to the reception desk where she joined a queue for some minutes to find out the number of this room – as she said, a large theatre crowd had just come in. Then she went up by the stairs. The lift boy has no recollection of a young lady in a silver dress taking the lift but he can’t swear to anything much as every lift load was a full one around that time. It would have taken her inside ten minutes to get up here and locate the room. I’ve just timed it, sir. Though she is a rather . . . um . . . athletically built young lady. She could have sprinted up.’
‘You’d really like to pin this one on Miss Westhorpe, wouldn’t you, Bill?’ said Joe, amused.
Armitage flushed. ‘I can’t deny the thought has its attractions, sir.’ He grinned suddenly. ‘And wouldn’t you give a lot to hear her exchanges with the judge! Can’t say I haven’t tried to work out how she could have done it but . . .’
‘But you keep coming back to the picture of Tilly Westhorpe in spotless gloves and gown (apart from the hemline) snooping around the crime scene?’
Armitage sighed and nodded. ‘We’re looking for someone covered in blood, sir, with an emerald necklace, a jemmy and a bloodstained poker concealed about his person.’ He grinned. ‘Constable Westhorpe’s get-up didn’t even conceal Constable Westhorpe!’
‘No indeed. As you say – an athletically built young lady! But how likely is it that it was the murderer who got in through the window?’
‘Somebody broke in and he didn’t come to change a light bulb! I’ve looked at that window. Those marks were made from the outside. The glass shattered inwards. Look at the way the shards have fallen. Could you fake that?’ He shook his head impatiently. ‘Do you think we’re playing at detectives, sir?’ he burst out in some anxiety. ‘Over-egging the pudding? Poncing about being clever when all we should be saying is it’s a burglary gone wrong? I must say, common sense says that’s what it is.’
‘I’d like to come to that conclusion,’ said Joe, ‘but there is something distinctly odd about this set-up and I think you’ve seen it too. Constable Westhorpe certainly has. I’ve heard from her. Now you stop poncing about and tell me clearly what are your impressions.’
‘It’s the violence I don’t like, sir. Cat burglars don’t kill. We all know that. If our lad had got in in the hope of lifting the odd necklace left lying about while its owner was in the bath and he’d been disturbed, he’d have legged it back the way he came or even, if he had the nerve, said, “Excuse me, madam, wrong room!” and strolled out of the door. It’s been done.’
‘Westhorpe thinks the Dame caught him at it and went for him with the poker.’
‘Could have something there,’ said Armitage grudgingly. ‘But he could still have run. I must say, face to face with a poker-wielding, six-foot redhead, I’d scarper. And, anyway, one blow would have incapacitated her, wouldn’t it? Why go on and on? Did you count the wounds? Four or five, I’d have said. Sort of damage you get in a domestic altercation, sir. No, there’s more to it than just a burglary.’ Armitage sniffed the air. ‘It’s gone now but it was still lingering when I got up here to find the body. Can’t explain it scientifically, sir, but . . . well . . . you remember in the trenches how you could smell . . . I mean really smell fear?’
Joe nodded.
‘The air in here was thick with – not fear, no – the opposite, violence and anger . . . yes, anger. It was a red smell, sir. As though there’d been a blazing row. I think the killer got in through the window but it wasn’t an opportunistic, random visit in the line of burglary. It was surely someone who knew and hated her, you’d say.’
‘Her emeralds were stolen but he hadn’t searched the room professionally,’ Joe commented. ‘Westhorpe found a diamond necklace secreted in a rather obvious place.’
‘He took the emeralds because they were easy to snatch to make it look like a burglary.’
‘And disordered the clothes to add the extra dimension of rape, to exercise the coppers’ minds?’
‘Ripping the dress to make it look like a sex crime? Bloody amateur! Who does he think he’s fooling?’