Her head with the dreadful dark tracks beneath each eye was turned towards the door, as if watching for someone to come in and find her. But she could not be watching for anything because she was dead, and even if she had not been dead, she could not have seen anything, because—
Because someone had re-created Ashwood’s brutal legend exactly. Some time between Monday night and today, someone had stabbed Trixie through the eyes, first the right and then the left, using a skewer. Francesca knew this, because she could see the skewer that Trixie’s murderer had used, sticking out of the left eye.
The entire studio began to blur, and Fran backed away, banging into the sheeted mounds, making stupid ineffectual movements with her hands as if to push away the sight of the terrible thing sitting in the chair.
‘For Jesus Christ’s sake get her out,’ said Liam’s voice angrily, and Fran heard her own voice saying she was all right, but she had better have some air—
And then, blessedly, she was outside, with the night coldness on her face, and Michael was telling her to take slow deep breaths, and his arm was around her, which was a good thing really, because Fran thought she might have fallen over otherwise.
‘I’m sorry – didn’t mean to make a scene. I really will be perfectly all right in a minute—’
‘I know you will. Devlin’s phoning police and ambulances, and in a minute I’ll get you somewhere where you can have a drop of brandy or something.’ He paused. ‘Francesca, I’m so sorry you had to see that.’
Fran managed to straighten up at last, and discovered that the world had at least stopped spinning. ‘Michael, she – she was dead, wasn’t she?’
He understood at once. ‘Yes,’ he said quietly. ‘Yes, she was dead.’
But neither of them said there was no means of knowing whether Trixie had still been alive when her murderer left her here, or how long it might have taken her to die in the dark and lonely studio.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Edmund thought it could be assumed that somebody somewhere would miss Trixie Smith reasonably soon, and that inquiries would be put in hand. He wondered how long it would take for people to work backwards to the visit to Ashwood Studios. A week, perhaps? Yes, a week seemed a reasonable length of time. On this basis, he set himself to expect a call by the weekend, and he thought it would be interesting to see if his psychology had been sound and if the crime was put down to someone with a fixation on that old case.
But whatever the police decided, once they had found Trixie, they would presumably want to talk to Edmund himself. His fingerprints would be on the main door of Studio Twelve, of course, and the forensic people might find one or two of his hairs – you had only to read a detective novel nowadays or watch a television police drama to know all about that particular tripwire! But that would be perfectly in order because he had openly been inside the place. He went over everything he had done, and he knew he had not left any evidence at Ashwood that might damn him.
He had not left any evidence in Deborah Fane’s house that might damn him either, but he was not going to take any chances on that count. It was a big old house and it had belonged to the family for a good many years, and Edmund could not be absolutely sure that there were no dangerous fragments of the past still tucked into any of its corners. After the funeral he had cleared out all of the cupboards and desks, conscientiously labelling everything as he went. The missing share certificates and title deeds had finally turned up, and he had placed them in a folder which he had taken to the bank.