Cold Is The Grave

Banks could see a knot of reporters outside the station. He looked at his watch: almost opening time. Pretty soon they’d all be ensconced in the Queen’s Arms padding out each other’s expense accounts. Riddle’s suicide was the kind of thing that got the London dailies this far up north. No official statements had been issued yet, and the Riddle house was still under secure guard. Of course, they could have a field day with this one: CHIEF CONSTABLE COMMITS SUICIDE WITH POLICE GUARD ONLY YARDS AWAY. They could spin that to read whatever way they wanted.

Rosalind was going down to stay with her parents in Barnstaple when she had made the funeral arrangements. Then, she had told Banks just before she left the previous evening, she would sell the house and decide what to do next. There was no hurry – she would be well provided for – but she would move as far away from Yorkshire as possible. Banks felt for her; he had absolutely no conception of how awful it must feel to lose a daughter and a spouse in the space of only a few days. He couldn’t even imagine how terrible it would be to lose Brian or Tracy.

Banks’s ancient heater hissed and sputtered as he sat down and thought over the previous evening’s conversation with Rosalind. One obvious point was that, by telling him what she had, she had inadvertently supplied him with a motive for getting rid of Emily. Or was it inadvertent? He had no doubt that Rosalind could be devious when she wanted to – after all, she was a lawyer – but he had no idea as to why she would want to incriminate herself that way. Put simply, though, if Rosalind wanted to keep Ruth’s existence from her husband, and if Emily was a loose ca

And, by extension, she had an even better motive for wanting Ruth Walker out of the way permanently.

Since Riddle’s suicide, though, it was all academic. The money, the status, the celebrity, the possibility of political life – they had all vanished into thin air. Nothing remained for Rosalind except Benjamin and Ruth, and Banks doubted she would have anything more to do with Ruth after all that had happened. It was enough to prove the writer of Ecclesiastes right when he wrote that all is vanity.

Banks couldn’t bring himself to believe that Rosalind had actually given her own daughter cocaine laced with strychnine, or that she was right now plotting the demise of her other daughter, but at the same time he had to bear in mind that there was no love lost between any of them and that, once, Rosalind had given her child away to strangers and moved on to the wealth and power and their trappings she seemed to need so much. And when it came right down to it, no matter what Bank’s gut instinct told him, we are all capable of murder given the right incentive.

Whichever way he looked at it, Ruth Walker’s sudden prominence in the case was a complication he could do without. While A

When his telephone rang, he thought it was Ruth’s boss calling him back, but it was the other phone call he’d been waiting for, Burgess’s the one that gave a green light for the second interview with Barry Clough. And not before time, too; they could only hang on to him for another couple of hours at most.

It seemed a pleasant enough neighborhood, A

Number 39 was much like the other houses. As Whitmore had said, there was no indication whatsoever of the tragedy that had taken place there. A

“Help you, dearie?”

A

“Only you look like you’re lost or something.”

“No,” said A

“Did you know the Walkers?”

“No.”

“Only you were looking at their house.”

“Yes. I’m a policewoman.” A

“Tattersall. Gladys Tattersall,” the woman said. “Pleased to meet you, I’m sure. Don’t tell me you’re opening an investigation into the fire after all this time?”

“No. Do you think we should be?”

“Why don’t you come inside. I’ll put the kettle on. I’m at number thirty-seven here.”

It was the semi adjoining the Walker house. “It must have been frightening for you,” A

“I was more frightened during the bombing in the war. Mind you, I was just a lass then. Come in. Sit down.”

A

“Was it you who called the fire brigade?”

“No. That was the He

“I’m sorry to hear it.”

“Oh, it’s all right, lass. It was a blessing, really. It was in his lungs, though he was never a smoker. The painkillers weren’t doing him much good toward the end.”

A

Mrs. Tattersall shook her head. “We were lucky. The walls got a bit warm, I can tell you, but the fire brigade sprayed the exterior with enough water to start a swimming pool. It was August, you see, warm weather, and we’d left a window open, so a bit of it got inside and did some damage to the walls – peeling paper, stains, that sort of thing. But nothing serious. The insurance paid for it. Perhaps the worst that came out of it for us was having to live here while the people that bought the house after the fire hammered and banged away all hours of the day and night.”

“The renovators?”

“Yes.” The kettle boiled. Mrs. Tattersall disappeared for a few minutes and returned with the tea service on a tray, which she set down on the low table in front of the electric fire. “You haven’t told me why you’re asking,” she said.

“It’s just a routine check. Nothing to do with the fire, really. It just seemed like an easy place to start.”

“Routine? That’s what you always say on telly.”

A

“Is she in any trouble?”