Orchestrated Death by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles Page B

lock. It was
     a very old Yale, and the door had shrunk in its frame, leaving it loose, so that the tongue of the lock was barely retained
     by the keeper. He shook his head.
Morceau de gateau,
opening that.
    The door opened directly into a large attic room furnished both as living-room and bedroom. It was indecently tidy, the bed
     neatly made. Slider was sitting on it playing back the answering machine, which stood with the telephone on a bedside table.
    He looked up as Atherton came in. ‘Three clicks, and a female called Only Me saying she’d call back. Get anything from the
     old lady?’
    ‘Nothing, again nothing. The girl went out in the morning and didn’t come back. The rest is silence.’
    Slider shook his head. ‘She must have come back at some point – there’s her violin in the corner.’
    Atherton looked. ‘Unless she had a spare.’
    ‘Oh. Yes.’
    The violin case was propped on its end in the corner of the room nearest the window. In front of it there was a music stand
     adjusted to standing height, on which stood open a book of practice studies. From a distance the music looked like an army
     of caterpillars crawling over the page. On the floor was other music scattered as if it had been dropped,and on a low table under the window was yet more, together with a metronome, a box containing a block of resin, two yellow
     dusters and a large silk handkerchief patterned in shades of brown and purple, three pencils of varying length, a glass ashtray
     containing an India rubber, six paper clips and a pencil-sharpener, and an octavo-sized manuscript book with nothing written
     in it at all It was the only untidy, living, lived-in corner of the flat.
    Apart from the bedsitting room there was a kitchen and a bathroom. Together they went over every inch and found nothing. There
     were clothes in the wardrobe and in drawers, including three black, full-length evening dresses – her working clothes, Atherton
     explained. There were a few books and a lot of records, and even more audio-tapes, some commercial, some home-made. There
     were odds and ends and ornaments, a cheap quartz carriage clock, a plaster model of the leaning tower of Pisa, some interesting
     sea-shells, a nightdress case in the shape of a rabbit, a sugar bowl full of potpourri – but there were no papers. Diary,
     address book, letters, bills, personal documents, old cheque books – anything that might have given any clue to Anne-Marie’s
     life had been taken.
    ‘He got the lot,’ Atherton said, slamming an empty drawer shut. ‘Bastard.’
    ‘He was very thorough,’ Slider said, ‘and yet Mrs Gostyn said he was only here five or ten minutes. I wonder if he knew his
     way around?’
    The bathroom revealed soap, face cloth, towels, spare toilet rolls, bath essence – she seemed to have had a preference for
     The Body Shop – and no secrets. The medicine cabinet at first appeared cheeringly full, but it turned out to contain only
     aspirin, insect repellent, Diocalm, a very large bottle of kaolin and morphia, travel-sickness pills, half a packet of Coldrex,
     a packet of ten Tampax with one missing, a bottle of Optrex, four different sorts of suntan lotion, and three opened packets
     of Elastoplast. On the top of the cupboard stood a bottle of TCP, another of Listerine, a spare tube of Mentadent toothpaste,
     unopened, and right at the back and rather dusty, another packet of Elastoplast.
    ‘No mysterious packages of white powder,’ Slider saidsadly. ‘No syringe. Not even a tell-tale packet of cigarette papers.’
    ‘But at least we have established some facts,’ Atherton said, dusting off his hands. ‘We know now that she was female, below
     menopausal age, travelled abroad, and cut herself a lot.’
    ‘Don’t be misled by appearances,’ Slider said darkly.
    The kitchen was long and narrow, with the usual sort of built-in units along one wall, sink under the window, fridge and gas
     stove. ‘No washing machine,’ Atherton