William pulled up outside his mother’s house in Eden Street and looked through the windscreen at the ‘For Sale’ sign planted in her front yard. A diesel motor hummed behind him and his eyes darted to the rear view mirror. A silver-grey Landcruiser turned into a neighbouring driveway. He knew the pathologist who performed the autopsy on his mother was a neighbour and he watched as the Landcruiser came to a stop and Ashleigh Taylor stepped down from the vehicle.
William opened the car door and walked up the uneven footpath towards her. Ashleigh was standing by the letter box flicking through her mail. She looked up and recognised William Phillips immediately.
‘Hello, Mr Phillips.’
‘Hello Doctor Taylor, I hope you don’t mind me coming here like this.’ He turned and looked back at his mother’s house. ‘I came to take a look at my mother’s house, then I saw you pull up and...’
‘No, that’s okay. I understand. Today must have been tough on you.’
William nodded and rubbed the knot at the back of his neck.
‘You look like you’ve got something on your mind.’
‘Well, I have as a matter of fact.’
‘Better we talk inside than stand out here on the footpath... the neighbours…’ she nodded in the direction of the Blake house where Edi Blake was standing in the front yard watering the garden.
William smiled as he looked behind at Edi Blake. Rose had told him about the Blake sisters when she first arrived in Eden Street and how friendly they had been towards her. He was surprised that they were still alive.
Ashleigh unlocked the front door and William followed her down the timber hallway through the galley kitchen. She opened the back sliding door and showed him out onto the covered deck. The smell of freshly cut grass drifted up from the backyard.
‘Red wine okay?’
‘Sounds good, thanks.’
Ashleigh carried the bottle to the table and poured the wine into two glasses.
‘Well, fire away, what would you like to know?’ Ashleigh took a sip of wine and looked at him. She remembered what she had said to Rimis about him having a motive. William Phillips didn’t look like the type who was capable of murder and she realised that she may have misjudged him. Ashleigh looked hard into his dark eyes and could see the confusion in them. He looked like he hadn’t slept for days. He was unshaven, but after looking beneath the haggard, tired face she could see that he was a good looking man with a strong jawline and a warm open face. He had thin lips and a perfect set of teeth, no doubt a result of expensive dental work.
‘Ashleigh, there’s something that’s been troubling me with this whole terrible business. I wanted to ask you about my mother’s blood alcohol reading. It was high wasn’t it? Zero point two-one, you said in your report.’
‘Yes, from memory, that’s right. To be honest, I was quite surprised, but as I said in Court, when alcohol is combined with a drug like Sinequan as it was in this case, a more intoxicated state can occur and if your mother was drinking just before she died, then the level would be higher than if she had stopped drinking say, a few hours beforehand. The combination of Sinequan and alcohol in these proportions can cause excessive sedation and eventually, death. She had also taken Noctamid, a prescription drug used for sleep apnea on the afternoon that she died.’
‘The problem I have reconciling all of this in my mind is that my mother never drank. She was a teetotaller all her life. I never knew her to drink alcohol, she wouldn’t touch the stuff, not even at my wedding. Her father had a history of alcohol abuse and violence against her mother. One smell of it and it would mess with her head.’
‘The police report said they found empty beer bottles at the side of the house.’
‘Ginger beer. She went through a stage years ago of making her own.’
‘Oh, I see.’ Ashleigh nodded and realised that in her line of business it never pays to make assumptions.
‘What’s bothering me is that if you are going to commit suicide why would you bother to get up from the table and rinse your glass and an empty bottle and then leave them both to drain on the kitchen sink? Does that make any sense to you?’
‘Well, I must admit it does sound a bit odd but she was an old lady and old habits die hard.’
‘The way my mother’s did.’
Ashleigh looked at William and saw something written on his face. Guilt or sadness or perhaps it was both. ‘William, I’ve seen cases where some people go to extremes to clean up after themselves, not wanting to leave a mess behind for their loved ones to have to deal with.’ They were quiet for a moment before Ashleigh asked what he knew about Kevin Taggart.
‘Not a lot,’ he replied. ‘A bit of a loner I gather, but according to my wife Suellyn, he did help my mother out from time to time. He invited her in for cups of tea but I don’t think she ever took him up on his offer. I know that he tried to sell her some of his paintings a few years back but she didn’t buy any of his work, even though I think she felt sorry for him.’
‘I know you don’t think your mother committed suicide but sometimes especially when you are old and...’
‘I just can’t believe that she would do something like that. To take her own life is just so out of character. She was such a proud woman.’
‘What, so if you don’t think she committed suicide, do you think she was murdered?’
‘That’s the problem. Who would want to kill her and why? The police seem to think that all the evidence and especially your report, support the idea that it was suicide or at least an accidental combination of alcohol and drugs. She was a proud and stubborn old woman who kept to herself. I didn’t know what was going on in her life, I’m ashamed to say. When I heard that she was taking antidepressants I was really surprised. The only thing I can think of is that she could have started taking the antidepressants because of the thought of having to leave the house and having to move to a retirement village. I don’t really know how long my wife had been pestering her to move out of the house. Maybe that was enough reason to drive her to drink. But, then again, why not simply overdose. I just think there has got to be something more to all of this, my legal mind tells me that there is more to this.’
William sighed and looked down at his hands. ‘I blame my wife for all this.’ He drained his glass. As he placed it on the table he thought of the jam jars in his mother’s kitchen and felt ashamed. Ashamed of himself for not knowing about the life his mother had been living while he sat back in his beachside apartment, drinking expensive wine from crystal glasses. He stood up and slid his chair back from the table. ‘Thanks for hearing me out Ashleigh and for handling my mother’s autopsy so sensitively. It’s some job you’ve got.’ William wondered how she could stand dealing with the dead every day, wondered how she coped.
Ashleigh led William up the hallway to the front door. ‘If you have any more questions you know where to find me.’
After William left, Ashleigh leant against the closed door. She shut her eyes tightly, thought of Rose, then thought of her grandmother. It was two years ago to the day that she had found her floating in the bath tub. She had been dead for a week.