The Woodcarver [Peter Turnbull] (fb2) читать постранично, страница - 2

here." She indicated the hi-fi. "I haven't checked my jewellery, but there's no indication of the house having been ransacked, as you see."

"The door was ajar?"

"Yes."

"No sign of it having been forced?"

"No ... well, see for yourself. He's in his dressing gown. He must have opened the door to pick up the mail. He would have switched off the alarm before opening the door. You see, my husband, his ... he was ... a businessman, an estate agent. ... He was frightened of petrol being poured through the letter box and set alight, so he had one of those metal postboxes attached to the outside of the house.... You probably noticed it."

"I did, in fact. Confess I've been toying with the idea of having one fixed to the outside of my house for the same reason. You know, Britain is one of the few countries in the world where folks' mail is pushed through a flap in their front door. It's good to pick up your mail from the hall carpet rather than having to leave the house to collect it, but it does make you feel vulnerable."

"Doesn't it? I was very pleased when Lucian had the metal box fitted."

"Petrol has caught up with the letter box. The Victorians invented the things and the twentieth-century criminal mind saw the possibility of pouring petrol through them, but I digress. Your husband ... he sounds as if he was a frightened man."

"He was cautious rather than frightened. He said that anticipation was essential to a successful business career. Preventing petrol being poured through our letter box was just an example of his farsightedness, not a reaction to a specific threat or fear."

"I see, so he'd open the front door wearing pyjamas and dressing gown and at that point it seems that he was attacked and retreated back into the house."

"It seems that way. He's not a large man. I'm taller and heavier than him . . . but he survived because he had the killing streak that small men have, a sort of built-in aggression that comes from being pushed around too much during his childhood . . . it's a need to compensate, but it made him a driven man and he achieved a lot for someone who's still in his twenties."

"So it seems." Hennessey glanced around the room.

"It's fully paid up; the mortgage, I mean. We don't owe a penny. We've got a holiday home in Wales and we both have a Mercedes Benz. His is a huge saloon. So he's come a long way in a short time; humble beginnings, both of us have, despite his fancy name. But he didn't take a single prisoner en route, not Lucian. He was utterly ruthless."

"So he had enemies?"

"Oh yes, sold his first house when he was just nineteen. He said people on the way up make enemies; it's folk going nowhere that make friends. But I still don't know of anyone who'd want to murder him."

"Thanks." Hennessey walked into the kitchen. He saw the corpse and thought Sophie Crybacce had been kind when she described her husband as "not a large man." He was, in fact, very small, suffering, it seemed, from dwarfism.

The forensic pathologist glanced up at him but showed no emotion. "Afternoon, Inspector," she said.

"Dr. D'Acre." Hennessey spoke softly, as he found he tended to do in the presence of a corpse. "Have you been able to ascertain the cause of death? It appears to my untrained but experienced eye to be multiple stab wounds."

The tall, slender, short-haired woman stood. "Well, I would say that your untrained eye is quite correct. The amount of blood could only have come from a body whose heart was beating when he was stabbed, and there's no other indication of possible cause of death. I'll have to do a full postmortem, of course, but twenty-plus stab wounds ... if I was a betting lady, I would bet large sums of money that the man was stabbed to death, and in a frenzy by all indications."

"Emotionally driven?"

"Passion, yes, definite passion, but of a negative nature, hate . . . that sort of passion. The wounds have a distinct semicircular pattern ... see.... I'd say the murder weapon was a chisel."

"A chisel?"

"Yes. Some chisels have a round blade when viewed in cross-section, carpenters use them for very delicate work. . . . Here, as you see, a small, narrow blade, only about half an inch from tip to tip, but with a distinct concave shape."

"As you say." Hennessey pondered the wounds. "Most to the body, a few to the face."

"Yes. . . . But I still think this is an emotionally driven murder. I know that there is a rule of thumb that states that murders of passion tend to feature injuries to the face because the murderer is attacking the personality, whereas murders which do not involve passion, such as aggravated burglary and serial killing, for example, tend to involve injury to the body because the murderer doesn't recognise the personality of the victim. But that's a rule of thumb and not absolute. ... Mainly, I see this as a passionate murder because of this. ..." Dr. D'Acre knelt. "This bruise, on the neck, under the chin, and here and here ... fingertip bruising. You see, if I put my fingers close to the bruises like this . . . you'll see how my forearm covers the man's face...."

"I see."

"My guess is that the man suffered facial injuries as he was being overpowered, probably near the front door—there is some blood splatter in the hall. Then, eventually, he was pinned to the floor here with the murderer's arm covering the face but the chest exposed, thus explaining the concentration of stab wounds to the chest. But if you've seen all you need to see, I'll have the body removed to York City for the P.M."

"Please carry on." Hennessey left the kitchen and returned to the living room, to a stunned and shaken Sophie Crybacce. "Mrs. Crybacce?"

The woman forced a smile and nodded as if to say, Yes?

"Where is your husband's place of work?"

"He has premises in York, in St. Peter's Gate, and an office in Selby, but he works at the York office."

"Business partner?"

"No.... He was a one-man band. Had employees, but no partner as such."

"And you don't think any of his business associates would have cause to murder him?"

"No ... like I said. He wasn't popular, but that's the way he liked it. He seemed to thrive on being unpopular. . . . But I can think of no one who'd want to murder him. He probably wasn't easy to work for. At home he was a bit of a control freak, everything had to be his way. ... I think that was because of his size, he was a bit self-conscious about it... had a chip on his shoulder."

"Socially?"

"A quiet social life. . . . Golf club for the clubhouse but he didn't play. He saw the club as a place to make business contacts."

"Family?"

"He was a classic rags-to-riches boy. Illegitimate, abandoned by his mother after he was born; children's home, a series of foster placements which failed; all of which made him bitter. But he provided a good home. Money is important. If you come from poverty, money is everything."

"He was an animal." The woman was slender, bespectacled, red skirt and blazer, black shoes. "I was on the verge of leaving. Not many people stay in his employment for more than six months."

"That's true." The second woman was dressed like the first, in what Hennessey deduced was the uniform of Lucian Crybacce's employees. They sat at desks in an office with schedules of property for sale on the wall or pinned up in the window. Most of them, Hennessey noted, were very upmarket.

"He went on all the time about offering a service to his clients, but he wasn't above overcharging and underselling to his wife."

"He did what?"

The two women glanced at each other. The first said to the second, "Go on, you may as well tell him."

"Tell me what?" Hennessey allowed an edge to creep into his voice.

"We didn't like what he did."

"Just tell me."

"He'd cheat his clients out of their money if he could.  You see, what he'd do was, if someone came and asked him to sell their property and they clearly didn't know what it was worth, especially if it was ripe for