Evanly Bodies - By Rhys Bowen Page 0,21

he feuded with? Any rows with the neighbors?"

"He didn't get along with old Colonel Partridge next door, but that was over silly, petty things. The colonel complained if the dog barked or if they played music with the windows open. And, of course, Professor Rogers wasn't going to let the old man get the better of him so he complained right back. The colonel was getting deaf, and he'd started to turn his radio up loud enough to hear. Professor Rogers would telephone him and tell him to turn down the noise." Mrs. Ellis played with the edge of her pinny, twisting the fabric nervously in her fingers. "But you don't go killing somebody for trifling little things like that, do you?"

"What about his work at the university? Did he clash with any of his colleagues there?"

"I couldn't tell you that, sir. I only go there one morning a week. I've no idea what the Rogers do with the rest of their lives. Mrs. Rogers is not one to gossip, so I really don't know much about them apart from what I see with my own eyes."

Inspector Bragg stood up. Evan followed suit, giving the old lady an encouraging smile. "Thank you, Mrs. Ellis. You've been most helpful."

"I must telephone poor Mrs. Rogers," she said, as she escorted them to the door. "I expect she'll need some help with the cleaning if there have been policemen all over the house. She'll be so upset with all that mess, I shouldn't wonder."

"This Rogers sounds like a right sod," Bragg commented as they got into the squad car and drove away. "It's looking better by the minute that it was the wife who pulled the trigger. She had enough motive, didn't she? Bad-tempered bastard of a husband and enough money and a nice house if she was rid of him."

"Yes, but . . ." Evan began. He instinctively liked Mrs. Rogers. He admired the well-bred way she was handling her pain.

"But what?"

"If Mrs. Rogers did it, why not set up a better alibi for herself? After all, we've only got her word for it that she took the dog for a walk and her husband was killed while she was away. Why call us so soon? Why not shoot him and then be gone for several hours, or plan an overnight trip to a relative so that it would be harder for us to determine the actual time of death?"

"Lucky for us, criminals aren't always too bright," Bragg said. "She probably didn't think it through well enough. She may even have thought we'd take her at her word that she was out walking the dog. Well, I suppose we should hear what Wingate has to report on the gardener, and then it's on to the university. If he behaved like that to his wife and his cleaning lady, I don't suppose he was a saint to his colleagues. Someone there might have had an even better motive than his wife for wanting him out of the way."

The gardener, it turned out, went to the Rogers's once a week. He did all the heavy work; turned over the beds, clipped the hedges, and mowed the lawns.

"Mowed the lawns, you see." Bragg sounded triumphant. "So why did she decide to get the mower out this morning?"

"I suppose the noise of a mower would muffle a shot pretty well," Wingate voiced what Evan had been thinking, "especially a temperamental mower that was hard to get started, according to the gardener. It probably coughed and backfired a few times, so that nobody would notice the sound of a shot."

Bragg nodded as if he agreed with this theory. "So she started the mower, called her husband down to breakfast, shot him, put the mower back in the shed, and then took the dog out for his walk as if nothing had happened," Bragg said. "Cool customer."

"One more thing," Evan said. "If your scenario is right, she went inside to close the window."

"And to make sure he was really dead, I should think."

"But this is all supposition," Evan said. "We've no real evidence. We can't jump to conclusions like this until we know more about Professor Rogers and his life. If Martin Rogers really was that annoying to live with, she could always have left him. She's still young and able-bodied. She could start a new life easily enough, and he'd have to have paid her alimony."

"I suppose you've got a point there," Bragg said. "As she said