Aftermath Read Online Free PDF Page A

riding.
    â€˜Yes, ma’am, so far. All are confined to this area, this walled garden.’
    â€˜Kitchen garden.’ Dr D’Acre allowed herself rare and brief eye contact with Hennessey. ‘This type of walled garden close to the main house is called the kitchen garden. It’s where the vegetables would have been grown in the heyday of this estate.’
    â€˜I see . . . well, we still have to clear the garden then use dogs to cover the remainder of the grounds, but we have indication that if any more bodies are here they will be in this area . . . the kitchen garden.’
    â€˜What indications, may I ask?’
    â€˜The doorway to the kitchen garden was found to be freed up with residual traces of lubricant, pretty well all other locks in the house and the outbuildings were found to be in a seized or at least semi-seized condition.’
    â€˜Fair enough. So regular access needed without making undue noise?’
    â€˜That’s our thinking, but very early days yet.’
    â€˜For all of us Chief Inspector. Well, my early days can tell you that all five bodies are female . . . adult human female, and that they were brought here at intervals, and by that I mean intervals of many months separating each victim. They are at different stages of decay, from the fully skeletonized to the corpse over there which still has traces of scalp hair and major organs. It seems that the state of decomposition decreases the further from the door-way. See, nearest the door is the skeleton, three in fact; furthest are the corpses with residual organ remains. The overgrowth will have reduced the rate of decomposition,’ she indicated towards the end of the garden, ‘once you have cleared that lot you may find very well-preserved remains.’
    â€˜Yes, but we are going very slowly . . .’
    â€˜Of course . . . a crime scene . . . it has to be treated with great delicacy. I fully understand.’ Dr D’Acre glanced at the skeletons. ‘No obvious cause of death and they were alive when they were brought here, no point in restraining or gagging a corpse.’
    â€˜None at all.’
    â€˜Northern side of the garden, the sun would have baked them if they were here in the summer, in the sun all day, no shade, no remnants of clothing to indicate that they were clothed. If they were not kept alive they would have succumbed quite rapidly to dehydration.’
    â€˜Thirst?’
    â€˜Yes. Horrible death. What people have been known to drink because of the ravages of thirst . . . petrol . . . stagnant water alive with insects . . .’
    â€˜So I have heard.’
    â€˜If they were abandoned in the winter it would have been an easier death, very painful at first, but quick and pain free in the end,’ she paused, ‘but all that is pure conjecture, not scientific observation.’
    â€˜Whatever, but it does not bear thinking about, particularly the summer death, that would have taken days.’
    â€˜Yes, and all but the first would have been chained to a corpse or corpses . . .’
    Hennessey asked Dr D’Acre how long she thought the corpses had been there.
    â€˜Years . . . the skeletons could be twenty years here, the fourth and fifth victims less time. They did not all disappear in a small time frame, so their disappearances might not have been linked. Is the occupant of the house implicated, can I ask?’
    â€˜No. Late occupant in fact.’
    â€˜I am sorry.’
    â€˜Ninety-seven years old . . . he had a good run . . . but he was housebound and led a hermit-like existence in the last twenty years of his life.’
    â€˜Twenty?’
    â€˜So we believe. This business . . .’ Hennessey pointed to the skeletons, ‘this business seems to have gone on right under his nose but in his complete ignorance.’
    â€˜So