“Should you finish before I get back, please shut the door and make sure it’s locked. I don’t have an alarm to worry about.” Potter went back out through the kitchen, and when he started his car it sounded like a diesel bus.
“It’s a shame, really,” Vander said as he lifted two bottles of chemicals from a box. “This could be a very nice house. But inside it’s not much better than a lot of slums I’ve seen. Did you notice the scrambled eggs in the skillet on the stove? What more do you want to pick up here?”
He squatted on the floor. “I don’t want to mix this up until we’re ready.”
“I’d say we need to move as much, out o€ here as we can. You’ve got the picture. Kay?” Wesley said.
I got out Robyn Naismith’s scene photographs “You’ve noticed that our professor friend is living with her furniture,” I said.
“Well, then we’ll leave it here.” Vander said as if it were common, for furniture from a ten-year-old murder scene to still be in place. “But the rug’s got to go, I can tell that didn’t come with the house.”
“How?”
Wesley stared down at the blue and red braided rug beneath his feet. It was filthy and curling up at the edges. “If you lift up-the edge, you can see that the parquet is just as dull and scratched underneath as it is everywhere else. The rug hasn’t been here long. Besides, it doesn’t look very well made I doubt it would have lasted all this time.”
Spreading several photographs on the floor; I turned them this way and that until the perspectives were right and we could tell what needed to be moved. What furnishings were original to the room had been rearranged.
As much as it was possible to do so, we began to re create the scene of Robyn’s death. “Okay, the ficus tree goes over there, I said like a stage director. “Right, but slide the couch back about two more feet, Neils. And that way just a little bit more. The tree was maybe four inches from the left armrest. A little closer. That’s good”
“No, it’s not. The branches are oar the couch.”
“The tree’s a little bigger now.”
“I can’t believe it’s still alive. I’m surprised anything could live around Professor Potter except maybe bacteria or fungi.”
“And the rug goes?” Wesley took off his jacket.
“Yes. She had a small runner by the front door and another small Oriental under the coffee table. Most of the floor was bare.”
He got down on his hands and knees and began to roll up the rug.
I went over to the television and studied the VCR on top and the cable connection leading into the wall.
“This has got to go against the wall opposite the couch and the front door. Either of you gentlemen good with VCRs and cable connections?”
“No,” they answered simultaneously.
“Then I’m left to my own devices. Here goes.”
I disconnected the cable and the VCR, unplugged the TV, and carefully slid it across the bare, dusty floor. Referring to the photographs again, I moved it a few more feet until it was directly opposite the front door. Next I surveyed the walls. Potter apparently collected art and was fond of an artist whose name I could not quite make out, but it looked French. The sketches were charcoal studies of the female form with lots of curves, pink splotches, and triangles. One by one they all came down and I propped them against the walls in the dining room. By this point, the room was almost bare and I was itching from the dust.
Wesley wiped his forehead on the back of his arm. “Are we about ready?”
He looked at me.
“I think so. Of course, not everything is here. She had three barrel chairs right over there.”
I pointed.
“They’re in the bedrooms,” Vander said. “Two in one bedroom and one in the other. Do you want me to bring them out?”
“Might as well.”
He and Wesley carried in the chairs.
“She had a painting on that wall over there, and another one to the right of the door leading into the dining room,” I pointed out. “A still life and an English landscape. So Potter couldn’t live with her art but didn’t seem to have a problem with anything else.”