Page 148 of Road Trip
“Sonofabitch,” she muttered as she snapped a photo of it with her cell phone. “No wonder you took a bite out of that bastard.” She took one of the dog’s biscuits from her pocket and tossed it to the cocker spaniel. “Good going, Sinead.”
Muldoon still hadn’t returned her call, so she decided to pay him an in-person visit.
The cop wassitting at his desk, slurping tea from a mug and watching something on his laptop. When Maeve entered the substation he closed the lid of the laptop in a hurry.
“I was just gettin’ round to call you,” he said. “Busy morning here. New developments in our investigation.”
“I’ve had a busy day too,” she said. “Geoffrey Rossington dropped by the inn earlier, to tell me he plans to sue us over his sister’s estate.”
“Did he now?”
“Sinead went berserk when she saw Geoffrey. She actually attacked him, bit him on the shin so badly he was bleeding, which made him even madder than he was at me.”
“Dare say,” Muldoon replied. “That dog of Esme’s is small but fierce.”
“Under normal circumstances, Sinead is gentle as a lamb. But here’s the thing. When I went down to the lobby to speak to Geoffrey, he was having a pint from the lobby lounge. Holding the glass in his left hand. And he kept his right hand stuck in the pocket of his jacket. Wouldn’t even shake my hand when I stuck mine out.”
“Antisocial type. Like his sister,” Muldoon said, shrugging. “Means nothin’.”
“It’s more than that. After Sinead attacked him, he touched the wound and his hand came away bloody. His right hand. The one he’d been hiding. And the back of it was all scratched up.”
“So now you think it’s Geoffrey who killed his sister, and not Reggie, who you insisted was the killer.”
“Did Reggie have any scratches on his hands? The kind he might have gotten from strangling an old woman who would have fought back? I don’t remember seeing any, but I was kind of busy not getting slashed to pieces.”
“The only injuries Reggie had were the blunt force trauma you inflicted on the back of his head with that candlestick,” Muldoonadmitted. “At the hospital we took nail clippings, and there was nothing there—except an appalling amount of dirt.”
“Maybe you should take a look at Geoffrey Rossington’s hands and his fingernails,” Maeve said. “Esme’s too, if you haven’t already. But there’s something else. When you didn’t call me back earlier, I went over to the gardener’s cottage to have a look around the toolshed where you found Esme. And Sinead.”
“You’ve no right,” Muldoon said sternly. “That’s an active crime scene you were blundering about.”
“The crime scene seal on the door had been broken and the padlock was lying in the grass. I didn’t touch anything. I just looked. And documented what I found.”
She pulled out her cell phone and scrolled through her photo roll. “Look at this,” she said, tapping the first photo.
Muldoon squinted and frowned. “Is that a pile of dog shite?”
“And this,” she said, tapping the next photo.
“A button,” he said. “Which proves what?”
“You found Esme and Sinead locked in that shed Friday morning. Sinead is housebroken. She’ll whine and scratch and bark when she needs to go out to take care of business. I think that poop proves they’d been in the toolshed for hours and hours. Maybe overnight.”
“Hmm. And the button?”
“Geoffrey Rossington was wearing a Harris Tweed jacket when he came to see me today. It was an old one, probably expensive when he bought it new. And I bet, if you look at that jacket, you’ll find a button missing, probably from the sleeve.”
Muldoon sat back in his chair. “I was over at the hospital questioning Reggie again when you called earlier. And the reason I went to speak to him is that the coroner called me first thing this morning to tell me that they found poison in Esme’s bloodstream and her stomach. Rat poison it was.”
Maeve’s eyes widened. “She was poisoned and strangled?”
“Curiouser and curiouser,” Muldoon said. “I sat down and had a nice chat with Reggie just now. Still insisting he never put his hands on Esme. He admits he was furious with her after their lastfalling-out. For years she’d been taking advantage of him, paying him nuthin’, insinuating he would inherit the cottage when she was gone. And then you and your sister turn up and everything changes. She kicks him out of his squat, and then he overhears Esme on the phone talking to McCracken, telling him she wants to make arrangements to change her will. This time he knows things are different, and desperate times call for desperate actions.”
“He poisoned her?”
“He claims he just wanted her to get sick enough that she’d call him to take care of her. Realize how invaluable he was to her. So he tips a little rat poison in her glass of gin. Maybe some more in her morning coffee. And at first she did feel poorly, but then she perked back up.”
“Rat poison,” Maeve repeated. “I’d think any amount of it would kill you.”
