One of Us Is Dead

43 Monday 3 October 2022

Three painful hours later, as they stood in the bathroom, Grace squeezing toothpaste onto his electric brush, Cleo said, ‘I’m sorry to inflict them on you. You’re very patient with them.’

‘I am?’

‘You are.’

He shrugged. ‘Family is important. You’re lucky to have so many relatives still alive. Make sure you ask them everything you could ever think of that you might want to know one day — because when they’re gone, all their knowledge is gone too.’

‘Sound advice as always, my fearless detective!’ She kissed him on the cheek. ‘So how was your day — before you arrived home and it all went south?’

Grinning, he replied, ‘It was fine. Yours?’

‘A bit sad, actually. We had a professor from Brighton Uni who died of anaphylactic shock — possibly from a wasp sting. You know, it’s strange how things go in cycles.’

‘Cycles?’

She nodded. ‘We have weeks — months — when all the victims brought into the mortuary are sudden deaths from heart attacks, strokes, falls, road traffic accidents. Then in the space of less than a month we have two fatal mushroom poisonings and now a wasp sting — which is a kind of poisoning too. At least two of them accidental.’

‘There’s nothing accidental about Barnie Wallace’s death,’ he said.

‘Have you made any progress?’

He yawned. ‘I think we might have done.’

When he’d brushed his teeth, he padded out in his dressing gown to check on Noah and Molly, then stood for some moments, reflecting on what Cleo had just said.

At least two of them accidental.

He went back into the bedroom and closed the door. Cleo was already curled up beneath the sheets, her bedside light off — unusual, because she normally filled in her five-year diary then read for a while. Probably she was exhausted by their house guests, he thought, as he climbed into bed, kissed her, then lay back against the pillow, suddenly feeling very wide awake.

At least two of them accidental.

Lottery winner Pauline Ormonde’s death, in a fall down her stairs, had been seemingly accidental. Until CCTV footage of Rufus Rorke approaching her house had emerged. There were two prior cases of apparent accidental deaths possibly linked to Rorke that Operation Stenographer had uncovered. One was a wealthy man who’d been having an affair, who’d fallen to his death from the balcony of his Kemp Town apartment while his wife was sunning herself in Majorca.

The other was a retired postman, whose refusal to sell his central Brighton cottage was blocking a development of over two hundred townhouses from taking place. He’d been knocked down and killed cycling home from his local pub, in a hit-and-run that was never solved.

After Rorke’s death, with their resources stretched, the police had not pursued either as there had seemed no chance of a conviction. Grace made a mental note to look at the files again in the morning.