She frowns as she taps her diary again.
“It says here that Sophia is a sweet, charming neighbor.” She looks up at me with earnest eyes. “Stylish clothes, not a hair out of place. She’s always driving about in that Fiat of hers. But she’s really secretive about her private life. I’ve grumbled about this to my husband before. He said that I ought to mind my own business and that I shouldn’t really be sticking my nose—”
“When did Miss Ayling move in next door?”
“Let me see…October of 2013. She looked like a nice improvement from the previous occupant.”
“Does she ever have visitors?”
Martha Brown’s eyes are vacant. She sighs, reaching for her diary once more.
“Tried visitor and neighbor,” she says a few moments later. “Nothing, I’m afraid.”
“When was the last time you saw Miss Ayling?”
“Let me see…Sophia handed Rufus back to me two Fridays ago, before catching an evening train to London.”
“Did you not see her more recently, then?”
“Er…I may have.” Consternation flits across Mrs. Brown’s face. “But if I did, it must have been a forgettable encounter. The sort not worthy of a diary entry. If anything, I certainly didn’t see her yesterday. By the way, you’ve showed up twice in Grantchester this morning, Inspector. You went inside her cottage the first time you dropped by. Did something happen to her? Something bad?”
“I cannot say. Sorry. Thank you for your time.”
“I hope nothing has happened to Sophia,” Mrs. Brown calls out behind me as I walk out of her cottage. “She really is a sweet, charming thing. Even though she feeds Rufus behind my back.”
Best not to reply, I think. Especially as my impressions of Sophia Ayling thus far do not fall within the “sweet, charming” category.
Sophia’s heavy front door presents a stubborn challenge again, but I eventually manage to squeeze through into her living room. I’d noticed five main things when I conducted a perfunctory search of her cottage earlier this morning:
Her living room contained only two items of furniture: a plush red leather sofa and a lacquered coffee table. There were no paintings on the walls. No magazines on the table. No rugs on the floor. Nothing decorative whatsoever.
The oil painting above her bed depicted a nude blonde reclining on a Persian divan with a sultry, come-hither expression and parted legs. The blonde looked very much like Sophia herself.
She had placed her iDiary atop her dressing table next to a bottle of Chanel No. 5 and an English translation of the Kama Sutra. To my surprise, her diary did not require a password when I flipped it on. Neither was it fingerprint-protected. This made me wonder if she had deliberately planted it there for someone to read or if she didn’t give a damn about privacy in the first place.
She kept a small stack of books on her bedside table. All were written by Mark Henry Evans; most had charity-shop price tags. A well-thumbed paperback copy of his novel On Death’s Door lay on top of the pile, open at pages 44 and 45. My skim of the two pages had confirmed that Evans favors florid, over-the-top adjectives and a liberal use of active verbs.
There was a half-empty bottle of vodka on her kitchen counter and a small packet of raspberry-flavored Brie in her refrigerator.
This time, I study the coats hanging on the hooks behind the door. There are three in total, all made of luxurious woolen fabrics. I check their labels. Dior, Prada, and Moschino. All are size 8. This confirms my suspicions about the extra-large Aquascutum trench coat draped around the body: it did not belong to her.
I stoop down to examine the contents of the shoe cupboard. Fourteen pairs of killer stilettos are lined up inside, all in bold, brash colors. Blood-red Jimmy Choos with four-inch heels. Electric-blue Manolo Blahniks, just as gravity-defying. Canary-yellow Christian Louboutins, towering as high. The brand names are still legible on the soles. But Sophia was wearing a pair of flat-heeled Lanvin boots when we found her this morning. In sedate black, too. She must have put on her only pair of practical shoes before setting out from her cottage. I wonder why.
I stride into the kitchen, put on a pair of gloves, and begin opening the gleaming white cupboards one by one. Before long, I uncover a small stash of cat food in a bottom drawer. So Mrs. Brown was right about Rufus.
Next up: the bedroom. I head for the giant mahogany wardrobe in the corner and peer inside. Musky bergamot fills my nostrils; the space is crammed with clothes. I pick out a blouse and two dresses at random. Their luxurious, tactile fabrics caress my palms. I check their labels: Elie Saab, Missoni, and Alexander McQueen. All are size 6, which indicates that their owner had favored coats a size larger than her clothes. Certainly not coats of the extra-large variety.
I move over to the mahogany dressing table at the other end of the room and begin rummaging through its drawers. My search reveals the following:
An enormous tray of makeup items, featuring two dozen shades of scarlet lipstick and a dozen similar variations of nail varnish.
An impressive stash of lingerie. I’m not an expert on this particular front, but Sophia had a clear preference for fancy lace and satin intimates.
A drawer of sex toys, including a pair of pink Ann Summers jiggle balls, three bullet vibrators, and two Rampant Rabbits. There are also seven lace eye masks, all in black.
A locked wooden box measuring nine by twelve inches. I shake it. Something papery rustles inside.
A dusty photo album at the back of the bottom drawer. I flip through its pages to discover numerous photographs, taken in and around Cambridge, of a brunette in her early twenties. She reclines in a punt next to two delirious-looking girls in minidresses, holding a bottle of Champagne. She sprawls on the grass, head nestled in someone’s lap. She waves from a bicycle outside the university library, backpack bulging with books. She angles a carving knife at a roast beef, wearing a paper crown from a Christmas cracker and a black college gown.