The doctor straightened up from his examination. He was a middle aged, balding man in a dark suit. Paige could see the slight sheen of sweat on his brow that came from worry.
“You’re not to stress Mrs. Estrom any further than she already has been,” he said, in a tone that didn’t allow for any argument. “At ninety years old, her health is quite delicate enough without all of this.”
“We’ll be as brief as we can be,” Paige assured him. She had no wish to make today any worse for the older woman if she could avoid it. At the same time, though, there were things she needed to know.
She looked over to Christopher, who took the lead.
“Mrs. Estrom?” he said, stepping in front of the older woman. “My name is Agent Marriott. This is my associate, Paige King. I was hoping to go through things with you again, if that’s all right.”
Paige saw Mrs. Estrom nod, although she could also see the strain in her eyes. Paige guessed that it had to be difficult for her to go over and over all of this. Each time would be like reliving it.
“Can you tell us what you remember about last night?” Christopher asked.
The older woman hesitated for several seconds, her hand gripping her cane tighter. When she spoke, it was obvious that she was forcing the words out.
“There isn’t much to tell,” she said. “I normally go to sleep around half past ten at night. I woke up last night because I heard something.”
“What kind of something?” Paige asked.
“I don’t know,” Mrs. Estrom replied. “I think it was the sound of something being knocked over, or maybe it was the window. It’s hard to say. The next thing I heard was…” she trailed off for a moment or two, and Paige could see tears in her eyes. “I heard Marta scream. I heard her scream, and there was nothing I could do to help her. I called for the police, and I tried to help, but it took me forever to get down the stairs. That’s when I found…”
This time, she didn’t complete the sentence. She didn’t need to, because Paige could guess what she’d found. Her personal assistant lying dead in the drawing room. Paige had seen the photographs in the file Christopher had shown her, and she knew better than anyone the effect of seeing something like that on a person. She’d been the one to find her father after he’d been murdered, after all.
“Did you see anything that seemed out of place when you came downstairs?” Paige asked. “Anything that was where it shouldn’t be, or that seemed strange to you?”
Mrs. Estrom shook her head, though, sharply, as if trying to dismiss the image from her mind.
“When you saw Marta’s body,” she asked, “was she missing anything? Any small items of jewelry or personal possessions?”
Lars Ingram hadn’t taken trophies, but perhaps whoever had done this wanted something. It was a different killer, after all, and perhaps something like that might lead back to him.
“No, nothing like that.”
“How long had Marta worked for you?” Paige asked.
“Perhaps two years. Ever since my family gave me an ultimatum. I could get live in help, or I could move to a retirement home.” There was a note of anger in her voice at the thought of it that made it clear exactly what she thought of that suggestion. “Marta is… was so good to me. She was there for all the medical things, of course, but she also helped out so much around here. She never made a fuss, and she was always so cheerful about her job.”
Paige had the feeling that this counted as high praise from the older woman, of a kind that she wouldn’t normally give to most people.
“Did she ever talk about having any enemies?” Christopher asked. Paige understood that it was a question that he had to ask. While this looked like the work of Lars Ingram, since they knew it couldn’t be him, maybe someone was using his MO as a way to disguise their crime. Maybe someone who knew Marta more personally and had an equally personal reason to want her dead.
Paige didn’t think it was that, though, not if another young woman had been killed the same way just a couple of days ago, but she also knew that Christopher had to check.
“No, nothing like that,” Mrs. Estrom said. “I can’t imagine her having enemies. People always liked Marta so much. I found that I relied on her more and more for that kind of thing, dealing with people. Oh, what am I going to do now?”
“What are you going to do now?” Paige asked. “Will you go somewhere else? Perhaps stay with your family for a while until all of this is sorted out?”
She saw the older woman shake her head, though. “And leave this house? No, whatever has happened here, this is still my home. They’ll have to carry me out.”
There was a level of determination there that Paige guessed wouldn’t be talked down by any doctors or family members. Not that there were any members of Mrs. Estrom’s family there. She imagined that had to be lonely, being in a house this size with only one assistant for company. And now she’d had to listen to that assistant being murdered while she was helpless upstairs, unable to do anything to help.
Paige imagined that had to be horrifying for her and wished that she could do something to help. She had to remind herself that she was trying to help. She was trying to catch the man who’d done this and give Marta justice for her murder.
Paige could see that the older woman was getting pretty stressed now, and out of the corner of her eye, she could see the doctor starting to edge closer again, obviously ready to move her and Christopher on.
“Thank you for your time, Mrs. Estrom,” Christopher said, gesturing to Paige that they should back away.
She nodded and stepped back. They’d obviously learned everything they were going to get from Marta’s former employer. The old woman hadn’t been in a position to see more.
What they’d gotten didn’t amount to much. They’d confirmed the time the murder had taken place, and that Mrs. Estrom had heard but not seen it. They hadn’t found some obvious piece of evidence to point to a killer, and it seemed that Marta didn’t have any enemies.
They weren’t going to get a conclusion to this case that easily. Paige just hoped that there would be more when they looked at the other murder, the one that had taken place a couple of days ago.