lodger Yolanda wanted to get her mitts on. Or would she?
Barbara said, "We'll take this into consideration."
"You damn well bloody will," Bella said. "It's motive loud and clear and make no mistake. Big as life. Right before your eyes." She leaned across the table, her palm flat on the front of the Daily Express. "He's been engaged five times, mind you. Five times and what does that say about him? Well, I'll tell you what it says. It says desperate. And desperate means a man who'll stop at nothing."
"And you're talking about ... ?"
"Paolo di Fazio. Who else?"
Anyone else, Barbara reckoned, and she could see Winston was thinking the same. She said, Right yes, they would have a word with Paolo di Fazio.
"I should certainly hope you will. He's got himself a lockup somewhere, a place where he does his sculpting. You ask me, he dragged that poor girl into that place and did his worst and dumped her body ..."
Yes, yes, whatever. All of this would be checked out, Barbara assured her, nodding towards Winston to indicate that he'd been scrupulously taking notes. They'd be having a word with all of the lodgers, and that did include Paolo di Fazio. Now as to Frazer Chaplin -
"Why do you want to make this about Frazer?" Bella demanded.
Precisely because you don't, Barbara thought. She said, "It's a matter of putting a full stop to every possibility. It's what we do." It was part and parcel of the job. Trace, interview, and eliminate.
As Barbara was speaking, the door leading down to the basement flat opened and shut and a man's pleasant voice called, "I'm off then, Mrs. McH."
Winston got to his feet. He went out into the corridor that led towards the back of the house and said, "Mr. Chaplin? DS Winston Nkata. We'd like a word please."
A moment. And then, "Sh'll I ring Duke's and let them know? I'm expected at work in thirty minutes."
"Won't take long, this," Nkata told him.
Frazer followed Winston into the room, which gave Barbara her first close look at the man. Dark as the night. Yet another, she thought. Not that she intended to give credence to Yolanda's ravings. But still ...He was a stone and he couldn't be left unturned.
He looked round thirty years old. His olive skin was pock-marked but that didn't detract, and while his shadowy stubble could have covered the scars if he'd grown them into a beard, he was wise not to have done so. He looked piratical and a little dangerous, which, Barbara knew, some women found attractive.
He locked eyes with her, then gave her a nod. He was carrying a pair of shoes, and he sat at the table and put these shoes on, lacing them up and saying no thanks to Bella McHaggis's offer of tea. It was an offer that, pointedly, she did not make to the other two. Her attention to the man - she called him luv - in addition to what Abbott Langer had told them about his effect on women made Barbara want to suspect him on the spot. Which wasn't exactly good police work, but she had an automatic aversion to men like this bloke because he had one of those unmistakable I-know-what-you-want-and-I've-got-it-here-in-my-trousers expressions on his face. No matter the difference in their ages, if he was giving it to Bella on the side, no wonder she was besotted.
And she was. That much was clear, far beyond the luv and the darling. Bella looked upon Frazer with a fond expression that Barbara might have considered maternal had she not been a cop who'd seen just about every permutation of human entanglement in her years on the force.
"Mrs. McH has told me about Jemima," Frazer said, "that she's the one from the cemetery. You'll be wanting to know what I know and I'm glad to tell you. I expect Paolo will feel likewise, as will everyone who knew her. She's a lovely girl."
"Was," Barbara said. "As she's dead."
"Sorry. Was." He looked something between bland and solemn, and Barbara wondered if he felt anything at all for the fact that his fellow lodger had been murdered. Somehow, she doubted it.
"We understand she had a bit of a thing for you," Barbara said. Winston did his part with the notebook and pencil, but he was watching Frazer's every move. "Balloons at Valentine's Day and all the et ceteras?"
"What would those et ceteras be? Because as I see it, sure there's no crime in an