Killing Time by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles Read Free Book Online Page B

but set back so that only the end of it was within reach, was a coffee table on which stood a whisky bottle – White Horse, almostempty – and an empty glass, an ashtray with five cigarette ends in it, and an untidy pile of papers and magazines. Back against the wall was an elderly sofa of the armless couch type, covered with what was nowadays known as a ‘throw’ in a vaguely Polynesian pattern of mutually hostile colours – not so much a throw as a throw-up, Slider thought. Against the wall nearest the door was a large and ugly sideboard in pale highly-varnished oak with bulbous legs, dating, judging by its style, from the nineteen-fifties. On it was a collection of framed photographs, mostly black and white, of Busty and Jay in their separate high moments: Jay with Jeremy Haviland in a dinner suit; Busty with a celebrity so blurred it could have been David Nixon or Richard Nixon for all Slider knew; Busty in a lineup of Windmill girls; Jay in an Arran sweater against a wild sea from a knitwear catalogue – and so on. Some of the frames were as old as the photos. Slider touched one gently and its wonky foot slithered on the highly polished surface and collapsed.
    ‘If anyone had bumped against that, the pictures would have fallen over,’ Hart said.
    ‘So?’ Slider encouraged.
    ‘So no fight. The villain must have took him by surprise. Crept up on him and whacked him from behind.’
    ‘But the villain kicked the door in. Wouldn’t you think he’d have heard that?’
    ‘He might’ve been asleep. People do drift off in front of the telly.’
    Slider grunted non-committally. ‘Does anything strike you as odd about that ashtray?’ he asked her. She looked, bent close to peer, and shook her head. ‘There are five dog ends in it,’ he said, ‘but no ash. How did he manage that?’
    ‘He didn’t. Look here,’ Hollis said. Between the coffee table and the couch there were traces of cigarette ash on the carpet, and an area where it had apparently been rubbed in, with a hand or a foot. ‘And there’s whisky been spilled here too,’ he added, sniffing. It was a damp patch which smelled strongly. ‘Chummy’s had the table over.’
    ‘Hang about, what’s that?’ Hart said. It was another glass, on the floor beside the other armchair, but standing upright, as though it had been placed there by someone sitting in the chair. ‘Maybe the whisky come from this glass.’
    ‘But you can see table’s been knocked over,’ Hollis said impatiently. ‘Look at the impressions in the carpet where it stood before. It wasn’t put back in exactly the same spot.’
    Hart said, ‘The table could have been knocked over any time. It didn’t have to be the murderer.’
    ‘True,’ Slider said. ‘But it strikes me that everything is very neat and tidy here. Clean, dusted and polished. Would such a houseproud person knock the table over and then just rub the ash into the carpet? Wouldn’t he clean it up properly?’
    ‘All right,’ Hart conceded, ‘but if it was the murderer done it, why would he pick everything up again, put the dimps back in the ashtray and all that?’
    ‘No offers,’ Hollis said with a shrug.
    ‘Well,’ Slider went on at last, ‘there’s a few things to think about, anyway. Bag up the whisky bottle and the glasses. And we’ll take the ashtray and contents as well.’
    Certainly, Slider thought, further pondering the room, Jay Paloma was killed there, in that spot, and probably in that chair. Apart from no signs of a struggle, there were no bloodmarks anywhere else. No reeling about locked in mortal combat à la Reichenbach Falls. There was blood on the chair, and on the carpet around it, some smears on the end of the coffee table, and a few specks on the TV screen. But why had Paloma sat there and let himself be killed? Asleep, maybe – but wouldn’t the kicking in have stirred him, wouldn’t he at least have been struggling to his feet?
    The worse possibility was trying to suggest