Bond - 27 - Never send flowers by John Gardner Read Free Book Online Page A

to give in and make a full statement. This man is a maniac. I am no forensic specialist, but it is certain that the decapitations are performed in a frenzy, and the two medical examiners who have helped me on this case are both of the opinion that the girls died from the blows to the neck in other words, died from decapitation. I dread another missing persons' report.
    What he feared occurred in the last week of August. Janet Fellowes, aged twenty-one, blonde as they came. However, Janet was different. Her friends spoke of her, not unkindly, as the Pony Girl `Because she let anyone have a ride,' one of them said. Also, Janet talked. On the night she went missing she told Annie Frick who, the Superintendent noted, was probably a member of the same pony club, that she was really having some fun with a stuck-up young man. `I been teasing him stupid,' she was reported to have said.
    `Keeps saying he's in love with me, but I know what he wants and he'll get it tonight.
    Janet had also said that he would be okay for a good time, but he would not be around for a while.
    The reason, she told Annie, was that he was a student: `Says he's up at Oxford University. Has to go back for the new term." Those words constituted the first, and final breakthrough.
    There were twenty-four undergraduates in the Preston area. Only fifteen of them were up at Oxford. David March was the third young man to be interviewed by Superintendent Seymour.
    Giving evidence at the trial, at which David March pleaded guilty by reason of insanity by then, his only true option Seymour merely said that after a number of questions, March had admitted to the offences.
    Bond had been right.
    Not everything came out in open court. The Superintendent's official report told the entire chilling story.
    The March family lived in a large eighteenth-century house, standing in four acres of garden on the outskirts of Preston. Behind the main house were substantial outbuildings, one of which originally had been a coach house. This, David's father had completely restored and made into a roomy two-storey cottage so that David, having obtained a scholarship to Christ Church, Oxford, could have his own privacy, and not be tied to his family during the vacations.
    David was packing, getting ready to return to university when Seymour arrived, accompanied by a detective sergeant, and his first impression was that here he had a well-set-up young man: a quiet, good-looking, scholarly type; confident and with a high IQ. He was later to confide that he had immediately scratched March from the list.
    They sat and talked in a large, book-lined living-room, and the detective began a gentle probing, showing him photographs of the girls, taken in life; talking of David's future; and slipping in questions about his activities on the significant dates. At the same time, Seymour had the opportunity to look at the books on the shelves. Most were concerned with law, but one whole section was taken up by books on the occult and comparative religion.
    David March behaved perfectly normally for the first thirty minutes or so: eager to answer questions, apologizing for the mess, offering coffee. Then, Seymour noticed a sudden change in him. He seemed to be distancing himself from the two policemen, his head cocked on one side, as though listening for something or someone near by. In the middle of answering a question regarding his hobbies and other activities at Oxford, David suddenly said, `They say you've come to look after them." His voice had changed to a dreamy monotone.
    `Who?" The Superintendent realized that he could have simply answered in the affirmative.
    `The oracles. They're not all gathered yet-but you know that.
    Isis says there must be at least six. I have only gathered five.
    `Does Isis speak with you often, David?" The policeman was interested in Egyptology, so was familiar with the facts. Isis was possibly the most important goddess of the ancient Egyptians, and among March's occult