Murder in Hampstead by Sabina Manea (read this if txt) 📕

to hold down her job, flitting around purposelessly. And, just as she thinks she’s got her life back on track with the Professor, the bombshell is dropped. It would be enough to tip a more mentally stable person over the edge. So, she plots and waits. The opportunity presents itself at the impromptu tea party – given the knack for making enemies that the victim had, it’s a rare event, not to be missed. There’s a sufficiently large number of possible suspects, some with potential motive, some without. It’s the perfect set up for Emilia to disappear in.’

‘The way she did it was nothing short of masterful,’ said Nina admiringly. ‘So simple, yet so effective.’

‘Wasn’t it just.’ Lucia felt she needed to expound the method again, so as to persuade herself that a human being had actually been cruel and devious enough to put it into practice. ‘It was the tiny speck of plastic stuck to the rim of the Professor’s champagne coupe that gave it away. A not quite perfect murder.’ Lucia remembered, not without pride, how Carliss’s jaw visibly dropped when she explained her theory. ‘The inside of the glass was covered in transparent spray-on film, the kind you can buy in any hardware shop. It’s normally used to protect the paint on cars, and it peels off in seconds without leaving any marks. I’ve got some in my van, which is why I thought of it. Besides, the glass was ornately decorated, so any imperfections or suspicious opacity would have been masked by the pattern. Emilia knew she only had seconds to dispose of the evidence after the Professor collapsed. To remove the glass any earlier would have risked insufficient ingestion of the poison or could have drawn unwanted attention to the item. Once the desired effect was achieved, there wouldn’t have been enough time to remove the glass and wash it out, but Emilia could dab the remaining champagne with a tissue, whip the film clean off and pour a little fresh drink back in to fool the police. Except not all the film came off. The speck must have got stuck on a portion of the rim that didn’t touch the Professor’s mouth. Since the rim wasn’t contaminated with the 1080, forensics consequently found nothing.’

‘A bold move, and prone to so many screw-ups,’ remarked Carliss wryly. ‘You showed me the trick – it’s childishly simple if you keep calm and know what you’re doing. And what about Adam? Where does he fit in?’

‘Adam was collateral damage, not to mention Emilia must have hated him – the adopted child that took her place in the Professor’s admittedly short-lived affections. Nina’s psychological assessment is most likely correct. He was sleeping with Emilia, so sooner or later he was bound to come across something incriminating. He found the doll, and from there he dug around until he uncovered the truth. With his professional connections, he must have been in the perfect position to pull plenty of strings to get access to the incriminating paperwork. He may have even confronted Emilia. He must have deduced she had a very strong motive for the Professor’s murder, which is why Emilia had to get rid of him. The fact that he was a cocaine addict made it ridiculously easy. She had kept back some poison, just in case, which she now deployed. It was an even more audacious move than the Professor’s murder, as Emilia could have been a prime suspect, but by then she was desperate and running out of time. On the other hand, you could say she hedged her bets. She had worked out that the police had Adam down as the Professor’s killer, so guilt-induced suicide fitted the bill. He was a known drug user, after all.’

‘What escapes me, Lulu, is how she messed up and left foundation on the inside of the tin,’ asked Nina.

Lucia recalled the glitch. ‘The foundation tube was cracked. She must have kept in her bag the disposable gloves that she used to open the tin. A little foundation got smeared on the gloves, which in turn was transferred to the inside of the tin as she reached to collect the poison. Another small, but this time fatal error.’

‘And Glover?’ the inspector asked curiously.

‘I would venture to say that he and Emilia seem closer than first impressions would suggest. For all we know, Emilia could have confided in him when she found out about the Professor’s real past. What’s to say that the connection to Belarus didn’t bring back the memory of his fiancée’s death? It can’t have come as a surprise that the maths faculty in Minsk was a hotbed of KGB spies. Then he remembers the brooch, and suddenly it all falls into place.’

‘The Professor died as she lived – malicious, scheming, self-obsessed,’ concluded DCI Carliss. ‘She seemed to leave a trail of destruction wherever she went.’

Aside from Adam, cut out of Professor Kiseleva’s life on a selfish whim, just like Emilia had been, Lucia also thought of John Walker, the blackmailed barrister, and of Mrs Byrne, the long-suffering housekeeper.

‘How did you know it wasn’t Glover?’ said the policeman.

Lucia smiled victoriously, even though she had exhausted her last reserves of energy. ‘His stiff fingers you mentioned after you met with him at his surgery. Most likely arthritis. He can’t have easily got the poison out of the tin – it was quite an effort to open that lid, as I now know for myself – nor spray the film on the coupe and remove it fast enough for nobody to notice.’

‘You’ve done enough. You need to rest, Lulu,’ decreed Nina as she signalled to Carliss that they should leave their friend in peace.

Chapter 35

Saturday, 17th October

(six weeks after the murder)

The weather forecast of an Indian summer over the weekend had been received with universal disbelief. Cafes and restaurants opened their doors cautiously, not