Free The Diamond Rosary Murders by Roger Silverwood

wife were having their bits of trouble a few years back. But even then he wasn’t miserable. He was just angry, wild with anger. It was a difficult time for everybody ,I can tell you. I was glad when they separated and finally got divorced.’
    Angel rubbed his chin. ‘He was found this morning dead in the swimming pool. Have you any idea how this might have happened?’
    ‘No idea. Why should I know anything about that?’
    ‘Just asking. And you didn’t notice any change in him over the past week or so, any forgetfulness and so on, as if he had something on his mind … something troubling him?’
    ‘No, sir. As I have said, he was the same as always. The one good thing you could say about the boss in the years I worked for him was that he was consistent. Do what he wanted and there was peace, cross him and he’d cuss you from here to hell and back.’
    Angel nodded. ‘Right, Mr Rogers. Thank you very much.’
     
    Angel stopped the BMW outside the white-painted hacienda-style house on Creesforth Road, Bromersley; it was clearly a one-off, architect-designed house. He got out of the car and locked it. He opened the big, wooden gate and went into the front yard, past the pampas grass, round the fountain and up the six steps to the dome-topped door. He pressed the bell push and waited.
    The door was eventually opened slowly by a pretty girl of about seventeen.
    He smiled. She smiled back.
    ‘Could I see Miss Judy Savage, please?’ he said. He produced a card from his top pocket and offered it to her.
    From inside the house a raucous female voice like a hell-cat yelled out, ‘What is it?’
    The girl gasped, took the card and ran inside, leaving the door wide open.
    Angel peered down the wood-panelled hall and the highlypolished wooden floor. He heard the two female voices chattering briefly, then a strikingly tall woman in a white turban and a multi-coloured kaftan, holding a long-handled paintbrush in one hand and his card in the other, appeared framed in an open doorway at the other end of the hall. She looked across at him. She seemed to like what she saw. She smiled.
    Angel stared back. He noted the figure, the shapely hips, the long legs, the tiny waist and the bosom to suckle for Yorkshire. She had a face that could sell a shipload of beauty cream, with cheekbones higher than Strangeways clocktower.
    He pursed his lips. She must be Judy Savage.
    He couldn’t take his eyes off her.
    ‘Come in, Inspector. Don’t stand on the doorstep getting cold,’ she said, in a voice as sweet as a girl experiencing her first shot of cocaine. ‘Please excuse my maid. She isn’t used to er … answering the door to handsome young men.’
    He hesitated. He must be wary. He moistened his bottom lip with the tip of his tongue.
    She smiled broadly. ‘Will you follow me?’ she said, turning, and led him through an arch and along a corridor.
    Angel sailed along behind in a slipstream of perfume.
    ‘I’m taking you down to my studio. I am working at something very particular and I don’t want to leave it until it is finished. I can’t think what you want, Inspector. I don’t mean that you are not welcome, but I don’t owe anybody anything. I paid that speeding fine ages ago.’
    ‘It’s not about a speeding fine.’
    ‘I told the man I’d get a TV licence when I get a new cheque book. The service at my bank is dreadful.’
    They passed several doors and reached a large, airy room at the end. She floated in first and he followed her. When he looked round the room, his mouth dropped open. The walls were covered with brightly coloured paintings of every subjectyou could think of: pastoral scenes, ships, city buildings, children at play, portraits, naked men and women, and geometric shapes.
    On many of the paintings there was an arrow pointing at some feature followed by a roughly daubed sentence. One pointed at a man with no clothes and read, ‘Shivering because he is too poor to buy clothes.’ On another, a painting