The Riverboat Mystery (Jenny Starling #3)(67)

‘Everything . . . done?’ she asked delicately.

Rycroft grunted. ‘When we got to the station, David Leigh forbade his wife to make a statement and immediately got on to some big-shot silk he knows in London. A QC who’s never lost a case, or some such thing. When we left, Mrs Leigh had been charged, and was awaiting the doctor. I thought it best to call one in.’

Jenny nodded. ‘A good idea,’ she concurred.

Sergeant Graves, who’d left to purloin the solid chairs that were still sitting out on the starboard deck, returned at that moment and very firmly set them up.

The cook took the hint and sat down, resting her packed suitcase at her feet.

‘Now then, Miss Starling,’ Rycroft began, settling himself back in a chair, for all the world like a boy scout settling around a camp fire, all set to hear the best ghost story ever told. ‘I want to know exactly how you deduced that Dorothy Leigh was the killer. Or was it just a good guess?’

‘A good guess?’ she squeaked, so indignantly it set all her magnificent flesh aquiver.

It was, Sergeant Graves had to admit silently to himself, a most impressive sight.

‘Sorry,’ Rycroft said hastily, realizing he’d rather badly overstepped the mark. ‘But I do want to know how you knew she was the culprit.’ He himself had never seriously even suspected her.

Jenny sighed, but was mollified. ‘Well, for a long while I didn’t know it was her,’ she began, scrupulously honest, even to the last. ‘Even when I discovered how the murder had been committed, it didn’t tell me the identity of the murderer.’

‘Yes,’ Graves broke in, unable to contain himself. ‘But just how the Dickens did you get onto that in the first place?’

Jenny shrugged. ‘Well, right from the first, I found that rope and boot very suspicious. As a way to drown a man, it seemed so far-fetched and needless. Why not just cosh Olney over the head and heave his body into the river? That made much more sense. It could be argued that Mr Olney had somehow fallen overboard, banged his head on the side of the boat on the way in and drowned. But the rope and boot was so theatrical. Tying a man up by his ankle, dangling him over the side of a boat and drowning him. It was so outlandish. And when I saw the body for myself the second time, and I was able to take a more detailed look at it, and could detect no bumps on the head . . . well, I began to doubt the scenario the killer had set up even more. So, when the medical examiner confirmed that Gabriel hadn’t been drugged either, I was absolutely convinced that the rope and boot had been deliberately planted.’

‘The classic red herring so beloved of classic detective fiction, in fact,’ Rycroft murmured appreciatively. Now that the murder had been solved, he could afford to relax and be magnanimous.

Jenny nodded. ‘Yes. Exactly. But the police surgeon told you that Mr Olney had, in fact, drowned.’ She paused. ‘And his corpse was undoubtedly wet, and had left a pool of water in the cupboard. So, the facts pointed to drowning as the murder method. But not in the way the murderer wanted us to think. It was obvious, then, that I had to think of another way in which the murder had been committed. How else could Gabriel Olney have been murdered by drowning?’

‘And you came to the conclusion that he must have been drowned in the freshwater butt,’ Graves murmured, his excitement every bit as intense as that of his superior now.

Jenny smiled. ‘I didn’t just grab that conclusion out of thin air, you know,’ she said, trying to curb their eagerness. ‘I did have a few clues pointing me in that direction.’

Rycroft leaned forward in his chair. ‘It had something to do with the way you sniffed the body, didn’t it?’ he demanded, his rather indelicate way of putting it making the cook colour slightly.

‘Er, yes,’ she agreed. ‘I was puzzled by the fact that I couldn’t smell the river on him, you see. Even a river as clean as the Thames smells . . . well, like a river.’

Rycroft leaned back in his chair, his expression sublime. ‘Ah. That’s what you meant when you asked me if I could smell anything. And when I said I couldn’t . . .’

‘Exactly,’ she said. ‘Only fresh water would leave no odour at all. And then there was the fact that Mr Olney’s body had dried out in such a clean way. I looked and looked at him, but I couldn’t see a bit of river weed, or slime, or even a smidgen of river mud on him.’

‘So that’s why you stared at him with such a puzzled look on your face,’ Rycroft mused.

Jenny nodded. ‘Exactly. So, because there was no river smell on him, or weed or mud, I came to the conclusion that he must have drowned in clean, fresh water, and not in the river at all.’

Graves nodded and, like so many police officers before him, said thoughtfully, ‘It all makes perfect sense, now that it’s been explained to me.’

‘Yes, but I still don’t see how you came to suspect Mrs Leigh,’ Rycroft said impatiently. ‘Why not her husband? Or Lucas? Or any of the others. They all had equally strong motives.’

Jenny nodded. ‘Yes, they did. And that’s what started me off looking in the right direction,’ she added, once more confusing the other two. ‘You remember when we discussed how risky it all was, how the murder itself smacked of such desperation?’

Both men nodded.

‘Well, I kept asking myself, what made the killer so sure that he, or she, could possibly get away with it? On the face of it, the murderer seemed so reckless and very willing to take as many risks as he or she needed to. Anybody could have caught them out. I asked myself, if I were the murderer, would I be so willing to leave everything to chance, even if I were as desperate as desperate could be? And I came to the inescapable conclusion that no, I wouldn’t.’