Sandrine's Case (9780802193520) by Thomas H. Cook

would not leave me, the curious tableau that had greeted me when I’d gone into the bedroom, expecting to find one scene but astonished to find a quite different one.
    â€œCan you describe what you saw to the jury, Officer Hill?” Mr. Singleton asked.
    This: Sandrine, lying on her back, her dark, wavy hair swept up and over to her left so that it seemed to float above her, as if she were immersed in water. Sandrine with the white sheet pulled down to expose one perfect breast, its small pink nipple, the round white orb, even in death, oddly erotic. Sandrine with her right arm in repose upon the sheet, her fingers delicately holding the dried rose that had once rested in a small vase in the scriptorium. Sandrine with her lips painted and her cheeks lightly blushed, her eyes open slightly, drowsily, as if on the verge of sleep.
    It was a scene that had been reflected in the glass bottles and single crystal decanter that rested on the small wooden table beside the bed, a sinister tableau that surely must have given pause to Officer Hill. Had it looked to her, I wondered now, as if Sandrine’s body had been purposely arranged in this way, a peaceful death in appearance but, in reality, something else?
    The answer to this question was not long in coming.
    â€œNow Officer Hill, confronted by this . . . scene . . . did you ask Professor Madison if this was exactly the way he’d found Sandrine Madison?” Mr. Singleton asked.
    â€œYes.”
    â€œWhy did you ask him that question, Officer Hill?”
    â€œBecause it just seemed strange to me that a woman who was going to kill herself would put on makeup,” Officer Hill answered. “And the way everything looked, the bottles, for example. It just seemed like things had been set up. There was something that didn’t look natural about it. It was more something you’d see like maybe in a movie.”
    Arranged “like maybe” in a movie indeed, I thought, and so it had certainly been Officer Hill’s duty to explore the possibility that Sandrine’s death might have something of ritual about it. Had she tentatively entertained the possibility that we’d been members of a satanic cult, Sandrine a human sacrifice?
    â€œWould it be fair to say that it was because of these things that you began to view the bedroom as a possible crime scene?” Mr. Singleton asked.
    It would indeed be fair to say this, for as her continuing testimony made clear, Officer Hill had done just that.
    â€œWhen you returned to the Coburn police station, did you make these observations known?” Mr. Singleton asked.
    â€œYes, sir.”
    â€œTo whom did you speak?”
    â€œI spoke to the duty officer, and he called Detective Ray Alabrandi,” Officer Hill said. “Detective Alabrandi subsequently came to police headquarters and I told him what I’d seen in Mrs. Madison’s bedroom.”
    â€œAnd what was Detective Alabrandi’s conclusion?”
    â€œSame as mine, that the coroner should be called right away,” Officer Hill responded. “That’s what he told me he was going to do.”
    â€œYou felt the coroner should be called in right away?”
    â€œYes, I did.”
    â€œBut the coroner would have been called for in any event, wouldn’t he, Officer Hill?” Mr. Singleton asked. “Because Professor Madison had already mentioned that the yellow piece of paper beside her bed might have been a suicide note.”
    â€œYes,” Officer Hill answered. “If there’s any reason to suspect a suicide, then there has to be an autopsy.”
    â€œBut you wanted to make sure that this official inquiry began right away, didn’t you, Officer?” Singleton asked.
    â€œYes.”
    â€œWhy is that?”
    â€œI don’t know,” Officer Hill answered. “It was just an . . . itch.”
    Singleton smiled. “Thank you, Officer Hill, for your work on behalf of the