Lucy had been snatching a hasty breakfast before setting off for work, and she had taken the call in the kitchen. She said it was quite all right to be ringing; was anything wrong?
‘Probably not. But we need your help, Miss Trent, and I’m afraid this might be a distressing call for you.’
Lucy asked what had happened.
‘I’m ringing about your cousin, Edmund Fane,’ said Fletcher, and Lucy felt a stab of apprehension.
‘Nothing’s happened to him, has it?’
‘Not as far as we know. But we need to talk to him quite quickly.’
‘Why?’
A pause, as if the inspector was deciding how much to say. Lucy waited, and then Fletcher said, ‘Last night Michael Sallis telephoned me to make a statement. He says that earlier in the evening Edmund tried to kill him.’
For a moment the words made absolutely no sense to Lucy. Edmund tried to kill Michael Sallis. She tried them over again in her mind. Edmund-tried-to-kill-Michael-Sallis. This time the words fell into the proper pattern, but even though Lucy understood them, she did not believe them. But with the idea of trying to establish a degree of normality, she said carefully, ‘When you say “kill”, do you mean in a car? A road accident of some kind?’
‘I’m afraid not,’ said the DI. ‘It seems that Mr Sallis drove up to your aunt’s house yesterday—Your aunt Deborah Fane, I mean—’
‘Yes, I knew about that.’ Here, at least, was something reasonably ordinary and understandable. ‘Some of the furniture was being given to CHARTH – that’s the charity Michael Sallis works for.’
‘While they were at the house, there was an injury to Mr Sallis’s hand. It meant he couldn’t drive, and he stayed at the house for the night. He’s made a statement, saying that while he was in a room in the front of the house Edmund Fane came in through a back door, very quietly and furtively, and turned all the gas rings of the cooker fully on. And then stole out again, locking the door behind him.’
‘Leaving the gas escaping into the house? With Michael locked in?’
‘Yes.’
‘But that means,’ said Lucy, wanting to be sure she had not misunderstood, ‘if Michael hadn’t realized what was happening, he would have been gassed?’
‘Almost certainly.’
‘But – but this is ridiculous. For one thing Edmund hardly knew Michael. Why on earth would he try to kill him?’
‘We don’t know yet that he did, although so far there’s no reason to doubt the substance of Mr Sallis’s statement – or his integrity. As far as we can make out, he’s a perfectly sane person, quite highly regarded by the charity he works for, with no axe to grind against Edmund Fane.’
‘But so is Edmund sane and highly regarded,’ said Lucy at once. ‘He’s the most correct, most law-abiding person—It’s a family joke, how correct he is. And he’s – he’s devoid of nearly all the emotions! Aunt Deb used to say he was entirely passionless.’ At least Deb had been spared this. ‘What’s happening now?’
‘Well, we’ve certainly got to talk to Mr Fane as soon as possible,’ said Fletcher. ‘The immediate problem is that we don’t know where he is. I drove up here in the early hours, and we went out to his house shortly after seven. But there’s no sign of him, his car’s gone, so it looks as if he either went off somewhere very early or he’s been out all night. Normally in this kind of situation we’d check with neighbours – perhaps the staff at his office – but I’m loath to do that yet in case there’s some innocent explanation for all this. I thought I’d talk to you first.’
‘In case I might know where he is?’ said Lucy. ‘Or in case he might be here? Well, I don’t know where he is, and he certainly isn’t here.’