Free Mistress Murder by Bernard Knight Page B

especially as the steering wheel has pinned her back so that her head couldn’t ram the windscreen. Unless there’s some odd projection inside the car to cause it, I don’t see how the crash can be responsible.’
    â€˜You think it’s a deliberate blow, then?’
    Soames back-pedalled slightly.
    â€˜Ah well, the first thing a pathologist learns is never to say anything is impossible. But my opinion, for what it’s worth, is that it’s a blow. In court, any defence counsel worth his fee would tear me to shreds if I said that without any corroborating evidence.’
    â€˜Have we got any?’ asked Benbow.
    â€˜Those leg injuries are very bad indeed – both main arteries torn across. Yet the sergeant here tells me that there wasn’t much blood at the scene of the crash and certainly her kidneys and heart show not the slightest sign of severe haemorrhage. So I wouldn’t be surprised if her circulation wasn’t going when she hit the bridge – dead already, in fact.’
    He made a final run-through with his comb in front of the tiny mirror. ‘And the last things, of course, are the alcohol and suspicion of drugs.’
    Soames picked up his black instrument bag and made for the door.
    â€˜Let’s have a look at this car then, shall we?’
    The whole posse drove the mile to the police station and went round the back to where the wrecked Sunbeam was garaged.
    As they walked across the yard, Benbow raised the question of the yellow thread. ‘What’s the significance of that?’
    The forensic expert shrugged. ‘Maybe nothing at all, but it was driven down from the surface into the scalp wound. It may be a contact trace for the thing that hit her, unless we find lots more of it in the car – upholstery fibre or some such thing.’
    They reached the Sunbeam and clustered around it. Soames squinted inside and looked around the windscreen area.
    â€˜Nothing there – no fancy mirrors or spotlights sticking out. Anyway, it was too heavy a smack for anything flimsy like that to have caused the wound.’
    â€˜Any idea what it could have been?’ hazarded Bray.
    â€˜Almost anything heavy – up to about an inch wide. Seems to have been a regular shape, but I can’t say any more than that. There’s more bullshine talked about the shape of blunt instruments than anything else in this game!’
    Bray had wandered around to the back of the Alpine and was peering into the open boot. The crash had so distorted the bodywork that the lid was jammed wide open.
    â€˜What about this?’ he called.
    The others joined him and he pointed to a wheel brace lying loose in the back.
    Soames shook his head. ‘Too big and too round … it would have punched a bigger hole than we’ve got … but that might do.’
    He indicated the long, slim starting handle clipped into supports near the spare wheel.
    Hooper bent down to look more closely at it.
    â€˜Nothing to see but you never know … I’ll take it and the brace, just for the laughs.’ He slid the two metal tools into large plastic bags, taking care not to disturb any prints or foreign material on the shafts.
    The party soon broke up, Eustace Soames to his Saturday golf and the police to their homes.
    On the way back to London, the keen young Bray challenged his boss. ‘Well, sir, have we or have we not got a murder on our hands?’
    Soames sat regally back in the police Wolseley, his podgy hands folded in his lap. ‘I think so, lad, I feel it in me bones. But a lot will depend on you, Jimmy.’ He turned his head to Hooper, sitting alongside him. ‘If you find blood on those tools, or if you find enough booze or drugs in her blood to make it obvious that she was too far gone to have been able to drive, then we’re away.’
    â€˜When will we know that?’
    Jimmy Hooper scratched his nose thoughtfully.
    â€˜Weekend now …