Chapter 6
Time seemed to stand still and the silence was eerie as Mr Langford put a hand against his wife’s pale cheek.
“She’s cold,” he muttered. “Not breathing. Where’s Heather?” His head whipped up as he called out for his daughter. When no reply came, he looked at Jamie. “Heather was supposed to be here to take care of her. No wait, she said she might not manage it this morning.”
“Is she definitely not breathing?” Jamie asked, moving beside him.
“I don’t think so,” Mr Langford said, looking desperately at Jamie.
“I’m not really sure what to do.” Most of his medical knowledge had been gleaned from TV.
He pressed his fingers against her neck but couldn’t find a pulse and there were no signs she was breathing.
Her eyes stared unseeing up at the ceiling.
“Maybe, I should . . .” Slowly, Jamie reached out and closed her eyelids.
“Sorry,” he said, not quite sure who the apology was aimed at.
“What about CPR?” Trisha called frantically from the doorway. “You could try that?”
Jamie grimaced, his gut telling him it was too late for that.
“How long have you been out?” he asked Mr Langford, trying to gauge how long she might have been lying there.
“I left early,” he said, clutching his wife’s hand. “Just after seven. She was still asleep. I go early for a round of golf so I can be back to make us a late breakfast. Heather usually stops in before work to check on her.” A sob escaped him and he clamped a hand over his mouth.
“Can’t you do something?” Trisha said, eyes on Jamie.
He kept his attention on Mr Langford. “I’m not a medic but I think she’s already gone. I can try CPR if you want?”
Please say no, please say no. He was fairly sure he couldn’t make things worse for Marguerite, but he was certain he could make this a far more traumatic memory for Mr Langford.
He shook his head. “Wait for the ambulance. They’ll know what to do.” He bent his head, pressing his wife’s hand against his face. “My poor Marguerite.”
The ten minutes before the ambulance arrived seemed to take an eternity. Jamie breathed a sigh of relief when the paramedics took over, and then another when it became clear that him attempting CPR wouldn’t have helped.
Not quite sure what to do with himself, he ended up backed into the living-room doorway listening to the paramedics mutter about rigor mortis and lividity. One of them radioed for the police, then explained to Mr Langford that it was routine to involve the police in an unexpected death.
“I need to call Heather,” he said, finally moving away from his wife’s body and slipping into the kitchen with his phone against his ear.
Jamie took a few steps into the living room.
Trisha joined him, saying they should wait to speak to the police.
Ten minutes later, the room got a little more crowded when Mr Langford led two uniformed police officers in, and even more so when Heather arrived sobbing hysterically.
Her dad seemed to pull himself together then and calmly soothed his daughter with the help of a police officer.
The taller of the officers took Trisha into the kitchen to ask her some questions. When she came back it was to offer her sympathies to Heather and Edward and tell them to get in touch if they needed anything.
Jamie wasn’t sure he’d ever envied anyone more when she scuttled out of the room and then the house. All he could think about was getting back home and collapsing on the couch.
The imposing police officer – PC Robertson – caught his eye and discreetly tipped his head towards the kitchen. Jamie followed him.
“So you were the one who found her?” he asked.
Jamie forced himself to focus on the question rather than the sound of crying coming from the next room.
While he answered questions about his morning, the officer scribbled away on his notepad.
He didn’t react much until he asked how Jamie had come to be in possession of the secateurs.
That led to him mentioning his gardening session yesterday, and then to him adding that he’d fixed the banister rail too.
That was when PC Robertson looked up from his notepad, eyebrows raised.
“You fixed the rail?” he repeated.
“Yeah.”
He jabbed a thumb in the direction of the hall. “Not that one out there which is now on the floor beside Mrs Langford?”
“Yes. That one.”
“Right.” He dragged in a breath and muttered something about him not doing a particularly good job.
“It was fine yesterday,” Jamie protested. “Absolutely solid. I tightened up the screws, and I put all my weight against it to test it. It didn’t budge.”
“Okay. Is there anything else you need to tell me?”
Jamie tilted his head. “Like what?”
“Any details which you can remember from when you found Mrs Langford?”
“No. I told you everything I can think of. The neighbour was here, and then Mr Langford. It wasn’t only me who found her.”
He wrote something on his notepad. What was he writing? It probably wouldn’t be prudent to ask.
“Can I leave?” he asked instead.
“Not yet. It shouldn’t be too long, though.”
“Too long for what?” Trisha had left – why couldn’t he? Again, that didn’t feel like the right thing to ask.
“We just need to wait for CID. See if they want to talk to you.”
“CID?”
He nodded, as though Jamie was merely clarifying what was happening, rather than clarifying exactly what CID meant. He’d watched enough police TV shows to be reasonably certain he was talking about detectives, but acronyms weren’t his strong suit.
“What’s CID?” he asked.
“Criminal Investigation Department.”
“Right,” Jamie said. “That’s detectives, is it? Why are they coming? Where’s the crime exactly?”
PC Robertson held his hands up in a gesture which seemed to tell Jamie to calm down. “It’s standard procedure, no need to get all wound up.”
“I’m not wound up!” His tone said otherwise. “Maybe a bit,” he added, lowering his voice. “But only because Mrs Langford is lying dead in the hall.”
“I’m sure you’ll be able to leave soon enough.”
Jamie looked longingly out into the garden. “Can I at least get some fresh air?”
The officer looked thoughtful.
“I’m not going to run off,” Jamie said. “I didn’t do anything wrong. I was actually trying to help.”
Finally, the officer gave a curt nod. “You can go outside, but don’t go farther than the patio.”
After locating the key for the back door, Jamie inhaled the fresh air and flopped into a chair on the patio. He checked his phone, hoping to find a message from Violet. A bit of normalcy would be nice about now. Better not try and call her though, in case the detectives turned up.
He shook his head. The day really wasn’t turning out how he’d expected.