standing over Elliott.
The bedroom was very warm, much warmer than usual, according to Mrs Cutler; Elliott had probably turned up the central heating when he came in, shivering, running a temperature. And also according to Mrs Cutler, he had piled extra blankets on the bed.
By the time the police arrived at Eastwood Mrs Cutler had recovered to some extent from her initial shock. She had helped herself while waiting for the police to a couple of stiff brandies from the drinks cupboard in the dining room and was in a voluble and flushed state when Kelsey first spoke to her, alternating between bouts of tearfulness and shrewd, sharp-eyed observation.
‘Mr Elliott took two extra blankets from the linen chest in the second bedroom,’ she had told the Chief. She took him across the landing and showed him an oak chest with the lid thrown back, more blankets folded inside. ‘He didn’t bother to close the chest,’ she said. ‘He must have been feeling rotten.’ She had begun to sniff again; she took out her handkerchief and dabbed at her eyes.
Either the heat had after a while proved too much for Elliott and he had flung aside the bedclothes as he slept, or else his assailant had drawn aside the covers in order to raise the pyjama jacket and plunge in the knife. Leonard Picton had told them that when he entered the bedroom, the head and upper part of the body had been completely covered by the raincoat; he had also switched on the lights, he had found the room in total darkness. There was no sign of any struggle. It seemed very likely that Elliott had been deeply asleep when he was struck.
‘Difficult to say how long he’s been dead,’ the doctor had said. ‘The central heating, the extra bedclothes – it could have been any time in the twelve hours between, say, seven o’clock on Friday evening and seven on Saturday morning.’
Kelsey had asked Mrs Cutler about the raincoat. Had she ever seen it before? Did it belong to Mr Elliott? But she couldn’t be sure.
When the body had been removed Kelsey went in search of Mrs Cutler again. She had told them that a number of articles were missing from the house; various pieces of porcelain and glass taken from the open display shelves in the sitting room. He ran her to earth in the dining room where she sat at the table with her head lowered and her eyes closed, her hands linked in front of her on the polished top of the table. Leonard Picton was also in the room. He was standing by the window, staring out, his hands clasped behind his back.
Picton had earlier told Kelsey that neither he nor his wife had heard anything untoward from Eastwood during the evening or night of last Friday. They had gone to bed as usual around half past ten, hadn’t been awakened during the night by any unusual sounds. Neither of the Pictons had been able to offer any assistance about the raincoat or the knife. They had also said they had never seen or heard anything suspicious, no one hanging round the property, either recently or at any time during the eighteen months they had lived at Manor Cottage; nor had Elliott ever mentioned anything like that to them.
Picton turned now from the window and looked at the Chief with inquiry.
‘I think you’d better ring the college and tell them you won’t be in this morning,’ Kelsey said in answer to that look. ‘Something might crop up, we might want you. But there’s no need for you to stay here, you can get off next door. We’ll contact you if we need you.’
When he had gone Kelsey sat down opposite Mrs Cutler. ‘You’ve had a chance to look round further,’ he said. ‘Have you spotted anything else missing?’
She shook her head. ‘Not as far as I can see. But I’ve been thinking about that raincoat. There’s a wardrobe in the rear hall, there are some coats hanging up in it. I hardly ever go to that wardrobe but I think perhaps I might have seen a raincoat in there.’
Kelsey got to his feet. ‘We’ll take a look,’ he said.
The rear hall was a fair size with various doors opening out of it. Against one wall stood a mahogany wardrobe. Inside was a rail with several garments on hangers. An old tweed jacket, a fawn trench coat, a waistcoat of quilted nylon, a dark blue anorak. On the floor of the wardrobe was a pair of wellingtons, some black laced shoes, brown leather slip-ons. A shelf above the garments held a grey tweed hat and a pair of string-backed gloves.
‘Did Mr Elliott do any gardening himself?’ Kelsey asked.
‘No, he left all that to Jessup. Jessup comes here three full days a week.’
‘Can you say positively if the raincoat came from this wardrobe?’
She screwed up her face, staring in at the garments, then she reluctantly shook her head. ‘I’m sorry, I just can’t say.’ She put a hand up to her face. ‘It seems to me now I might have seen it hanging up at the back of the kitchen door.’ She shook her head again. ‘But there again, I can’t be sure.’
‘Don’t worry about it,’ Kelsey said. ‘You’ve been a great help to us.’ He closed the wardrobe door. As far as size went, the raincoat could certainly have belonged to the dead man. An ordinary enough garment, quite good quality, nothing special; charcoal grey, a straight unbelted style with raglan shoulders, a dark green plaid lining, a manufacturer’s label inside the front lap, a well-known make.
He stood rubbing his big fleshy nose. It was possible that Elliott had still felt cold after he’d gone back to bed with the extra blankets. He couldn’t be bothered to go into the other bedroom again, he just got out of bed and snatched up the raincoat – the first coat he laid hands on – from the wardrobe or the back of the door. He threw it down on the bed and jumped back under the covers.
He was probably pretty woozy by that time. A bottle of whisky, half empty, stood on the bedside table. Beside it was a beaker and a bottle of lemon juice, one-third full. An electric kettle stood on a metal tray on the floor by the bed.
Elliott’s wristwatch, his keys and wallet, were in a small drawer of the dressing table; they appeared undisturbed. The intruder – assuming for the moment that it was a burglar – could have approached the bedside table, looking for these things. Elliott could have stirred or groaned in his sleep, could have muttered something; the intruder might have struck out at him in panic, thinking he was waking up.
Mrs Cutler wasn’t able to be much more definite about the knife. She thought it was a ham knife but she couldn’t say with any certainty if it belonged to the house. It could be one of the knives from the kitchen drawer. She took the Chief into the kitchen and opened the cutlery drawer. Inside were various knives, none of them very new-looking, some with blades worn from long use and much sharpening over the years.
‘Nearly all the stuff here at Eastwood came from his father’s house,’ she said. ‘There’s some more cutlery in the sideboard in the dining room. That’s better quality, it doesn’t get used very often, Mr Elliott didn’t do any entertaining here.’ She rarely had occasion to look into the sideboard drawer and had only the vaguest idea about what might be in it. She certainly wouldn’t expect to be able to identify any particular piece.
Kelsey followed her into the dining room and looked in the drawer. Everything neatly arranged, of good quality, keen and serviceable. Two of the knives, a breadknife and carving knife, were of a design closely resembling the knife that had killed Elliott, but there was nothing uncommon about the pattern, half the houses in Cannonbridge probably had similar knives.
But Mrs Cutler had no doubts about the murderer. A burglar, of course. ‘I told Mr Elliott he was chancing it,’ she said, ‘keeping all that valuable stuff out on show. The lady at one place where I used to work, she kept everything locked away, she said it was asking for trouble, keeping it out. But Mr Elliott just
