Design for Murder Read Free Page B

arrive until a quarter past twelve.”
    “What delayed you?”
    “I don’t really know. I mean, I had several things to do and the time just slipped by. When I did get here I found Oliver exactly as you’ve seen.”
    “So what did you do then?”
    “Well, as we explained to you in the studio, Tim Baxter turned up a minute or two later. He dialled 999 while I went over to the Hall to tell Sir Robert.”
    “You say that Baxter ‘turned up.’ Were you expecting him?”
    “No.”
    “Why had he come, then?”
    “He didn’t get around to telling me. I suggest that you ask Tim yourself.”
    “Oh, I will. Does he often drop in at your studio?”
    “No,” I said, and added, “not often.”
    Neil seized on my slight hesitation. “Has he in fact ever come before?”
    “Oh yes.” He had done once, I remembered. Not to see Oliver or me, though, but because someone in the estate office had told him that he’d find the agent, Ralph Ebborn, with us.
    “How did Baxter and Medway get on with each other?” asked Neil. “Were they friends?”
    “Not exactly friends,” I hedged.
    “What would you call them, then?”
    “Well, acquaintances, I guess. I suppose you know that Tim runs a small vineyard here on the estate?”
    “So I’d heard.” Neil made a few more notes, then sat back in his chair. “That’s all you can tell me, then? There’s noth ing you’d like to add at this stage?”
    “How do you mean?”
    His frown contradicted his patient tone. “Did you happen to touch anything in the studio this morning? The body, per haps?”
    I shivered slightly. “I did just touch Oliver’s cheek.”
    “Why did you do that?”
    “To see if he was still alive, I suppose. I hardly know what I thought, when I found him like that. It was such a shock. The light wasn’t very good, and I hadn’t properly seen the ... the terrible wound at the back of his head.”
    That all went down in the notepad.
    “It rather looks,” he said, “as if Mr. Medway was killed only minutes before you arrived. Yet you saw or heard nothing that might help us?”
    I flushed as I suddenly remembered what I’d intended to report at once. “As a matter of fact, just as I was getting out of my car, I did hear something ...”
    “Describe the sound. Where did it come from, which direction?”
    “I didn’t really think about it at the time, but it was like someone hurrying down the other staircase.”
    “The one that goes directly down from this flat?”
    “Yes.”
    “But that staircase leads into the courtyard, too,” he observed. “So wouldn’t you have seen whoever it was as they emerged from the door?”
    “I would already have been inside by then, coming up the stairs to the studio.”
    Neil raised his eyebrows. “You didn’t feel there was any need to investigate?”
    “No, why should I have? I just thought that it was someone who’d been to see Oliver.”
    “A man or a woman, would you say from the footsteps?”
    I thought for a moment. “Honestly, I’ve no idea.”
    “That’s a pity. Now, I’d like you to tell me about the bronze statuette. I assume it belonged to the victim?”
    “Yes. Oliver used to keep it on top of those bookshelves by the drawing table.”
    “A rather bizarre object to have on open view, isn’t it?”
    Actually, I agreed. Oliver had bought the thing a couple of months ago from the bric-a-brac and souvenir shop in the village, and he’d chosen to display it in the most prominent position he could find. I’d told him it was childish to get such perverse pleasure out of shocking people. But Oliver had only laughed, and asked how anybody could object to such a splendid example of primitive art.
    “It was a bit of harmless amusement, that’s all.”
    This time Neil raised just one eyebrow, otherwise his squarish face remained maddeningly impassive.
    “Did you touch the statuette at all?”
    That jolted me, and I parried, “Whatever makes you think I might have done?”
    “We’ve checked