Bronson braced himself to look at the image, but the picture wasn’t anything like as bad as he’d feared. Again, the photograph had been taken from just inside the hall, and had probably been intended only to show the position of the corpse in relation to the staircase. Jackie’s face was not visible, and Bronson found he was able to study the picture almost emotionlessly.
“Reconstructing the sequence of events,” the officer continued, “it seems clear that she ran up the stairs but lost her footing near the top and her slippers fell off as she tumbled down the staircase. We found a small patch of blood on the banister rail with three hairs adhering to it, and the pathologist has matched those to Signora Hampton. The cause of death was a broken neck, caused by a violent sideways impact to the right side of her head with a blunt object. It seems clear that when she lost her footing on the stairs she hit her head on the rail.”
Bronson nodded. The conclusion seemed logical enough based on the available forensic evidence, but he still had some unanswered questions.
“Were there any other injuries on the body?” he asked.
The officer nodded. “The pathologist found several bruises on her torso and limbs that were consistent with an uncontrolled fall down the staircase.”
He riffled through the papers and selected a page containing outline diagrams of the anterior and posterior views of a human body. The drawings were annotated with a number of lines pointing at areas of the body, and at the end of each was a brief note. Bronson took the sheet and studied it.
“May I have a copy of this?” he asked. “It will help me explain to Mr. Hampton exactly what happened to his wife.”
“Of course. This copy of the report is for Signor Hampton.”
Ten minutes later Bronson closed the door behind the police officer and walked back into the kitchen. He spread the pages and photographs out on the table in front of him and read the report in its entirety.
Halfway down the second page he found a single reference that puzzled him. He looked carefully at the injury diagrams to cross-refer what he’d read, but that merely confirmed what the report stated. He walked out into the hall and up to the top of the stairs, and looked very carefully at the banister rail and the stairs themselves. Frowning, he returned to the kitchen to look again at the pathologist’s report.
Half an hour later he heard the sound of movement upstairs, and shortly afterward Mark walked into the kitchen: he looked a lot better after a couple of hours’ sleep. Bronson poured coffee and made him a ham sandwich.
“You’re probably not hungry, Mark, but you have to eat. And then we need to talk,” Bronson finished.
“What about?”
“Finish that, and I’ll tell you.”
He sat quietly as Mark drained his cup and sat back in his chair.
“So talk to me, Chris,” Mark demanded.
Bronson paused for a second or two, choosing his words with care. “This won’t be easy for you to accept, Mark, but I think we have to face the possibility that Jackie didn’t die from a simple fall.”
Mark looked stunned. “I thought the police said she’d hit her head on the banister.”
“She probably did, but I think there’s more to it than that. Take a look at this.”
Bronson got up and led Hampton across to the kitchen door. He opened it and pointed to the compressed area of wood on the frame close to the lock.
“That mark was made by a jimmy or something very similar,” he said. “When I checked the lock on the inside of the door, I found that all the screws had been pulled out. But the lock had then been refitted on the door and the screws replaced. Someone broke into this house and made every effort to keep that fact a secret.”
“You mean a burglar?”
Bronson shook his head. “Not unless it was a very strange kind of burglary. I’ve investigated dozens back in Britain, and I’ve never encountered one where the criminals tried to hide the fact that they’d broken in. Most thieves take the easy way in, grab whatever they can, and get out again as quickly as possible. They’re interested in speed, not stealth. I’ve looked around the house and I haven’t found any sign of anything missing. It’s difficult to tell, because of all the work being done, but your TV sets and computer are still here, and there’s even some jewelry and money lying on the dressing table in the master bedroom. No thief would ignore stuff like that.”
“So what are you saying—someone broke in but didn’t take anything? That doesn’t make sense.”
“Exactly. And the other thing I’ve found relates to Jackie. I’m really sorry about this, but we need to consider the possibility that she didn’t just fall. She may have been pushed.”
Mark studied his friend’s face for a moment. “Pushed?” he echoed. “You mean someone . . . ?” Bronson nodded. “But the police said it was an accident.”
“I know, Mark, but while you were asleep an officer brought the autopsy report to the house, and after he left I studied it very carefully. There’s one thing that doesn’t make sense.” Bronson selected one of the sheets of paper and showed it to Mark. “Jackie’s body had numerous bruises on it, obviously caused by her fall down the staircase, and I’ve no doubt that what actually killed her was hitting her head on the banister. But this one injury here really worries me.
“On the left side of her head the pathologist found a single compressed fracture of the skull: that’s on the opposite side to the more severe injury. In his opinion, that wound had been caused by a roughly spherical object about three to four centimeters in diameter. It would have been a painful injury, but certainly not fatal, and had been inflicted at about the time death occurred.”
Mark nodded. “She probably hit her head on the stairs or something when she fell.”
“That’s obviously what the local police thought, but that injury bothers me. I’ve looked all the way up the staircase and in the hall, and I can’t find anything of the right size and shape to have inflicted the wound, and which she could possibly have hit when she fell.”
For a few moments Mark didn’t reply. “So what are you suggesting?” he asked eventually.
“You know exactly what I’m suggesting, Mark,” Bronson said. “Take the fact that someone has obviously broken into the house, and that Jackie had an injury on her body that I don’t think could have been caused by her falling, and there’s only one possible conclusion. I think she disturbed the burglars, and was hit on the head by a bludgeon or something like that. And then she fell against the banister rail.”
“Murdered? You mean Jackie was murdered?”
Bronson looked at him steadily. “Yes, I think she was.”
8
I
“What do you know about ciphers, Cardinal?” Mandino asked.
The two men were sitting at a busy pavement café in the Piazza del Popolo, just east of the Ponte Regina Margherita, people bustling past on the street. Vertutti would under no circumstances allow the man to enter the Vatican: it was bad enough having to deal with him at all. This time Mandino had three men in attendance. Two were bodyguards, but the third was a thin, bespectacled man with the air of an academic.
“Virtually nothing,” Vertutti confessed.
“Neither do I, which is why I’ve asked my colleague—you can call him Pierro—to join us.” Mandino gestured toward the third man sitting at their table. “He’s been involved in the project as a consultant for about three years. He’s fully aware of what we’re looking for, and you can rely on his discretion.”
“So this is someone else who knows about the Codex?” Vertutti demanded angrily. “Do you tell everyone you meet, Mandino? Perhaps you should publish information about it in the newspapers?”
Pierro looked uncomfortable at Vertutti’s outburst, but Mandino appeared unruffled.