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Lucas did not want to say so, as he was wondering if the crisis was all in their imagination, or rather in Stoney’s. And because they cared for him, they were looking for some answer to his obsession, and to their own grief. It hurt like a knife turned in a wound to think that a magnificent mind could have drifted into such a loss of reason in his old age. Or was it possible that hundreds of thousands of pounds were being embezzled and laundered through MI6? Whose money? And why secretly, if it was empowered by the government?
“What, then?” Josephine pressed.
“I don’t know yet.”
“You didn’t answer me,” she pointed out. “Do you think he was killed? Or do you think he had a heart attack or stroke sometime late yesterday evening?” She made it only half a question. Clearly, she intended to answer it herself. “He was still dressed, so say it was before eleven at night, definitely before midnight.”
“Possibly,” he conceded. “Go on.”
“And hit his head when he fell at the top of the stairs?”
“Yes, you can see slight scrape marks. And it would perfectly explain his bruises and the faint mark on the wallpaper at the side. I did notice it,” he admitted.
“And the smear of blood on the bottom step,” she added.
“So?” Lucas was not certain what she was driving at, but it chilled him to think there was anyone else involved in Stoney’s death.
“I know.” She bit her lip. “But it would not explain the blood marks in the potting shed.”
“In the potting shed?” He was lost. “What are you talking about?”
“Haven’t you noticed how beautifully Stoney’s garden is kept? He did it himself. Haven’t you looked at his hands? No matter how many times, no matter how hard he tried to clean them, the earth stayed in his fingers.”
He looked at her more intently. Her face was creased with sadness. He knew her so well. She was seeing in her mind the care a lonely man gave to his flowers, the beauty he had a part in creating.
“He cut himself.” He offered the obvious explanation. “He probably put a plaster on it, so there’s no blood in here. I’ve seen enough of the papers. I’d have seen any blood.”
“Unless it was dark,” she said.
“Stoney wouldn’t have been working in the dark,” he argued. “There’s no lighting out there, not unless he’s put it in very recently.”
“He hasn’t, I looked. He doesn’t have anything tropical, and there’s no heating.”
Lucas thought for a moment. “Then he cut himself on whatever it was before dark.”
“And if he has no cut?” she asked.
“What? You think he hit his head? You think the blood in the potting shed was from his head wound?”
“Yes, I do.” Josephine was quite certain. It was unmistakable in her face. Dr. Hardesty would have noticed a cut. “To bleed this much—and scalp wounds do bleed badly. It was a hard abrasion that we saw, bad enough to have killed him. We are only assuming it was a heart attack, and that the wound was a result of his fall. Lucas, what if he was attacked out in the potting shed and carried inside, cleaned up from the earth and compost he had been working with, then thrown down the stairs?”
“Aren’t you bending the facts to fit the pattern you imagine?” he asked, but gently. She looked so earnest.
She was not fazed in the least. “A theory has got to fit all the facts, Lucas. The blood in the shed has barely congealed. It’s from, at latest, last night; it certainly wasn’t several days ago. And it has to be from before dark, because he wouldn’t work out there after dusk. There’s nothing else there with blood on it. I looked. But there are certain tools you’d usually expect to find in a potting shed, and they aren’t there. Particularly, a small spade.”
“Perhaps he didn’t have one.”
“Yes, he did. Apart from the space where it would have been hung on the wall, and two empty rails it would hang on, the kind of garden work he did would need one. I have one myself and I know what I use it for, which jobs. It took me a while to work out what must have happened. Someone hit him with a spade pretty hard. It probably killed him outright. They carried him inside, washed his hands, changed his shoes to indoor slippers. They probably took the spade with them.”
“Why not simply wash it?” he asked, playing devil’s advocate, but he knew the answer.
“Not easy in the growing darkness to be sure of washing off every speck of blood, not if they were in a hurry. Blood seeps into a wooden handle, between the cracks. It would seem unnecessary to them for it to be spotlessly clean if it was found in a week or so. Who would be surprised? Gardeners get all sorts of cuts and bruises and scratches, and it would be too late to look at the body for the wound.”
“Wouldn’t Hardesty have noticed that the body had been moved?” Lucas persisted.
“It had fallen all the way down the stairs,” she pointed out. “The one thing it couldn’t have done is carry itself from the potting shed to the back door, through the kitchen, and up to the top of the stairs, ready to be in the right place to fall.”
“Are his boots at the back door?” he asked.
