Free Murder on the Hour by Elizabeth J. Duncan Page B

entranceway for DCI Davies to join her. “Anything?” he asked.
    â€œNothing up there seems disturbed. Found a few financial records in a drawer. Boxes of what looks like keepsakes in the smaller bedroom. The bigger bedroom looks as if nobody lives in it. Cupboards are empty.”
    â€œHmm, could be a robbery gone bad, I suppose. Well, unless you can think of anything else, I think we’ve done all we can do here until the pathologist arrives. He said he wouldn’t be long. We’ll leave the rest of it to forensics and hope they come up with some good leads.”
    He opened the front door and spoke to the uniformed officer. “The pathologist’s on his way. Show him in when he arrives.” He closed the door and returned to the sitting room.
    â€œWhat does this room say to you?” he asked Bethan. “Does it look like the room where a fairly young woman would live? She wasn’t that much older than you. Would you do up a room like this?”
    Bethan shook her head. “No. It’s her parents’ room. Maybe even her grandparents’. It hasn’t changed much since the seventies, I’d say.”
    The door opened and the pathologist poked his head around the doorway.
    â€œAh, Gareth, what have you got for me today?”
    Davies gestured at the woman’s body on the floor. “Fortunately, this is a good scene. As far as we know, nothing’s been moved or touched.”
    The pathologist bent over the body. “Well, I can tell you that this lady was at the Antiques Cymru show earlier today.”
    â€œReally?” said Bethan. “You can tell that just by looking at her? How do you know that?”
    The pathologist laughed. “I’m not Sherlock Holmes. I know because I saw her there. My wife made me take her to the show, and I have to say I was rather enjoying it. Until I got your phone call, of course.”
    He examined the head wound, and then peered at the raised slate hearth of the old fireplace. “You’ll want your forensics people to take a close look at that,” he said. “She may have fallen and hit her head on it when she went down.”
    He lifted the victim’s head slightly and made a little tutting noise.
    â€œWell, I won’t be able to tell you too much more until I’ve done a proper postmortem, but it looks as if she was struck with something first, and then, if she hit her head on something as unforgiving as that hearth, it certainly wouldn’t have worked in her favour.”
    Davies’s eyes slid over to the set of brass fireplace tools on the hearth.
    â€œWe’ll want those bagged and sent to the lab,” he said.
    The pathologist sat back on his haunches, his gloved hands between his knees, and looked up at Davies. “Right. I’ve seen enough. We can move her out now and let your people take over.”
    He stood up and pulled off his gloves. Giving Davies a sly grin, he said, “If she was struck with one of those tools, in all my years doing this job, I’ve never actually known anyone killed with a poker. Have you?”
    Davies shook his head. “Bit of a cliché, really, isn’t it?”
    The three stepped outside and peeled off their protective clothing. As he handed it over to the uniformed officer Davies said to him, “If you give me your crime scene log, we’ll sign out.” He checked his watch. He scribbled a signature on the clipboard, thanked the pathologist, and then turned to Bethan.
    â€œRight. Time now to see if our key witness is up to speaking to us.” The two walked in silence toward the end of the close to pick up the path that cut through to Rosemary Lane.
    â€œWhat a shame,” said Bethan. “So awful to see a life end like that. You never get used to it, do you?”
    â€œNo,” said Davies, “you don’t. But the best thing we can do for her now is find out who did this. Do we know who she