‘You pay their fees, I’m guessing?’ he asked.
‘Of course. School and university. I don’t want Roly saddled with student debt, and I’ll be doing the same for Marcus as well.’
Dixon tapped Louise on the shoulder. ‘My colleague here will just go and have a word with Samantha, if that’s all right.’
‘Check my alibi, you mean.’
‘That’s exactly what I mean, Sir,’ replied Dixon. ‘We have questions we have to ask, boxes we have to tick.’
‘Of course you do.’ Baxter opened the door of the utility room, letting two black Labradors into the kitchen. ‘I might as well let them out for a few minutes, while we’re here,’ he said, the dogs jumping up at him. ‘Am I allowed to ask how Deirdre was killed?’
‘She was strangled. It wouldn’t have taken long in a person of that age.’
‘That’s something, I suppose.’ Baxter opened the back door and let the dogs out into the darkness, a motion-activated light coming on outside.
‘Does the name Michael Allam mean anything to you?’ asked Dixon.
Baxter was standing in the doorway, trying to keep track of his dogs in the gloom, occasionally waving his hand to flick the outside light back on. ‘I’m afraid not. Who is he?’
‘Another elderly person killed in his own home.’
‘Sounds like you’ve got your hands full.’ A whistle and the dogs came running back into the kitchen, Baxter managing to throw an old towel over one of them before it shook water everywhere. ‘Listen, I don’t suppose you happen to know who Deirdre’s executor is?’
‘It’s you, as it happens, Sir.’
‘Really? You do surprise me. When will I be able to get into the house, do you know?’
‘It’s a crime scene, so it’s unlikely to be for a while,’ replied Dixon. ‘We’ll let you know.’
‘Thank you.’
The door on the far side of the TV room opened, Louise appearing, closely followed by Samantha.
‘Right, well, we’ll leave you to it,’ said Dixon. ‘You can get back to the pub.’
‘We might give it a miss,’ replied Baxter, turning to Samantha. ‘I’ll give Neil a ring.’
‘One last question, Sir, while I think of it,’ said Dixon, just as Baxter was showing them out into the rain.
‘Of course.’
‘Where did you go to school?’
‘What do you think?’ asked Louise, as Dixon turned out into the lane.
‘We’ll see what the company search says, and check with his bank, but we can rule him out if he hasn’t got any financial worries.’
‘Doesn’t look as though he has, does it?’
‘He could be mortgaged up to his armpits, and with interest rates going up . . .’ Dixon flicked his lights to full beam, accelerating along the foggy lane, deep rhynes on either side. ‘How did you get on with Samantha?’
‘Her story matches his. I even got chapter and verse of what they got up to in the shower, which I could’ve done without, to be honest.’
‘I shouldn’t think for a minute someone like that would get his hands dirty anyway, so an alibi is fairly meaningless.’ Dixon was staring into the fog, flicking his lights between dimmed and full beam. ‘What’s more important is that there’s nothing on the face of it to connect him to Michael Allam. Baxter went to the wrong school.’
‘Or the right one,’ said Louise.
‘I’ll drop you back to your car, then go home, Lou. Get some sleep.’
‘Yeah.’
It was just after ten when the rattle of Dixon’s diesel engine started Monty barking.
The lights were on in the living room at the cottage and the curtains open, the dog sitting on the window seat. He spent most days sitting there, when he wasn’t out and about with Dixon, waiting patiently for someone to come home, although he was just about old enough now to realise that someone always would.
Jane was standing in the open kitchen door when Dixon slid out of the driver’s seat of his Land Rover.
‘How’d you get on?’ she asked.
‘The stepson’s a bit of a pillock, but I don’t think he killed Deirdre and there seems to be no obvious connection between him and Michael Allam, even if he did.’
‘Have you eaten?’
‘Not since that baguette.’
