Simpson asked.
“Only that he owns The Annex Chop Shop.”
“What about other women?”
“I haven’t got a clue. You’ll have to ask Barbara Webb or someone else.” She met Simpson’s gaze, “I’m sure if there was one, there were many, many more. I’m having a hard time adjusting to what I’ve heard and facing the fact that I didn’t know my husband at all.”
Simpson raised a quizzical eyebrow.
“Barbara Webb said Reverend Robertson took his private papers to the manse. Where are they, and what volume of paper are we talking about?”
Did she have to admit her ignorance? “I’m not sure.” She hazarded a guess. “Two, maybe three filing cabinets.”
“How many drawers in each one?”
Time to own up. “Actually, I haven’t any idea. This is going to sound bizarre, but Paul keeps his clothes and personal papers and belongings in a locked bedroom, and I’ve never been inside. I could have—his keys are in his downstairs study—but we’d made a deal, and I respected his wishes.”
Simpson eyebrows rose, and she peered over her tortoiseshell glasses. “You can show me or give me the key. I’ll arrange to have the papers moved to the police station. Two more questions. Did your husband leave a large estate, and who benefits from his death?”
Ah-ha. The key questions: was there enough money to motivate murder and who would inherit? Her hands trembled again. Simpson would think she was guilty. She crossed her arms and tucked the offending hands out of sight. “His mother left him a sizable amount when she died more than twenty years ago. The invested income allowed him independence from the church. Since we were in the process of divorcing, I imagine if I was the beneficiary, I no longer am.” Time to clarify her position. “I’m aware money is a motive for murder, but I earn a good salary and someday . . .” She unfolded her arms, reached forward and superstitiously touched the wooden table, “someday, I’ll come into a sizeable amount from my mother, who’s a very successful chartered accountant.”
“Try to find the will—it may be important.”
Important to her too—Ms Simpson had not moved her to the bottom of the list, and she didn’t like her current status. She’d do her own digging.
From Rhona’s point of view, Hollis remained a suspect, and she intended to follow up on the information Hollis had provided. But it was time to attend Paul Robertson’s autopsy at the Municipal Hospital.
After she’d parked, she hurried to the rotunda and followed the main concourse thronged with patients and staff before she turning into the basement corridor leading to the morgue. No sign directed those unfamiliar with the building. Whether patients or professionals, no one wanted a reminder the hospital dealt with death as well as life.
In the autopsy room, the pathologist, a bustling woman in her mid fifties, nodded a greeting. Dr. Victoria Axeworthy loved the scientific precision made possible after death. Apparently she’d returned to medical school to qualify as a pathologist after three years spent in general practice had soured her on the imprecision of the human species. Hang nails identified as life threatening crises and far advanced invasive cancers as small discomforts had taught her humans could not define their own condition. As a pathologist, she catalogued the evidence presented by the mute, uncomplaining corpse, analyzed it and identified the cause of death and a thousand other relevant and irrelevant facts.
Victoria ordered her surroundings and set everything she needed at hand. From experience, Rhona remembered Victoria talked in the third person as she dissected, removed, siphoned and bottled.
The examination began as Victoria dictated a description of the body: “A male Caucasian of middle years in good, no, make that, very good physical health. Not overweight, but well developed.” She continued from visual inspection and notation through the opening of the body and ended with a minute examination of vital organs. Throughout the examination, she noted her observations with precision and care. She said, “The healthy pink tissue of the lungs indicates the subject probably never smoked and worked in a relatively pollution free environment.” After she had removed and examined a section of lung, she observed: “A long knife entered the body, followed an upward trajectory, and collapsed the right lung before it punctured the heart and caused death. Such a wound was not self-inflicted.”
Rhona risked a question. “Would it have taken great strength?”
The pathologist’s hands didn’t stop as she answered. “No, a reasonable amount, but more important, whoever did this probably had a good knowledge of anatomy.” Her voice took on a resonating timbre, as if she were addressing a class at the medical school. “Theoretically, many people possess the skill to kill this way, but there’s a tremendous gap between knowing how and actually doing it. From the angle of the thrust, I’d say he was a right-handed person.”
Dr. Axeworthy continued the autopsy. The whole performance, and it was an admirable exhibition of skill and confidence, gave Rhona no other useful information.
“Thank you, Dr. Axeworthy. The body may be released. I’ll tell his wife,”
On her drive to police headquarters Rhona chain smoked two cigarettes before she parked in the underground garage, locked the car and walked through the ranks of private vehicles, unmarked cars, police cars and paddy wagons to the station’s caged entrance. Police vans drove into the cage where the police, surveyed by video cameras, removed the prisoners to the holding cells under the station.
She continued past the cells and stopped at the vending machines lining the lower hall for a coffee, double-double, and an O’Henry bar. In her office, she threaded her way through four regulation beige filing cabinets, an old wooden table crowded with computer paraphernalia and a second tall spindly table with a slide projector directed at a pulldown screen. She set her coffee down on a Formica topped desk and sorted through the contents of her “in” basket.
An envelope of marathon pictures attracted her attention. The lack of fingerprints on the handle of the knife had suggested the perp had worn gloves. Not knowing if runners commonly wore them, she’d requested file pictures of marathons. A quick skim of the clippings confirmed her suspicion that gloves and lightweight jackets, particularly in Ottawa in May, were not unusual. Early on, she’d given a constable the task of scrutinizing each waste basket along the route, looking for discarded gloves. If the searchers retrieved them, DNA traces would help convict the murderer.
In the afternoon, she’d interview Staynor. No doubt a butcher could slice and chop with the best of them. For lunch, she sorted through the Glebe possibilities, dismissed one flashy Chinese and two upscale Italian restaurants as too expensive and settled on Turkish Delight, a cheap café located next to Marshalls, a smoke and magazine store. Because she liked to read while she ate, she stopped first at Marshalls—famous not only for the quantity and variety of magazines but also for the number of winning lottery tickets it sold—and bought the daily paper.
Front-page coverage of the murder dwelt on Robertson’s support of radical causes and on the murder weapon, a black handled boning knife. She turned from the front page to the death notices and read that donations to City church, the AIDS hospice, and St. Mark’s refugee fund were requested in lieu of flowers. Had the Christian gay community appreciated Robertson’s flamboyant campaign on their behalf?
When she’d finished the last buttery
