ARTHUR BUCHANAN MYSTERIES

3.- Wendy Dunbar, the main suspect

Wendy Dunbar woke up that December morning, covered by blood, in her bedroom of the hotel where she had spent the night in Bournemouth. She had met Steve Yates seven weeks before and they had begun an extramarital relationship. Now, that winter morning, she had discovered his corpse beside her and she didn't know how to carry that happening.

She was the DCI Arthur Buchanan's wife and also the mother of those beautiful, sweetie and happy fraternal twins named Cedric and Serena Buchanan. For this reason she had to think a lot about what to do before calling the police which arrived quickly led by the Southernshire Police DI Jasmine Tomkins, who had been a Special Agent in the California Bureau of Investigation before becoming the new DCI Alan Bakewell's right-hand woman.

The problems hadn't finished for her given that they just started: first of all the scientist police found her fingerprints in the assumed murder weapon, in second place his death had happened around midnight, in third place the security cameras had filmed her committing the crime, and the last evidence they had against her was a witness who had testified that Steve Yates had argued with Wendy Dunbar during the dinner and that Mr. Yates had decided to go upstairs to the bedroom without finishing the dessert.

Jasmine Tomkins decided to arrest her to interrogate Wendy in the police station. She also confiscated her police badge and handcuffed her to prevent an escape of her prisoner. Wendy phoned his lawyer Samuel McBeth who advised her to ask if her husband could carry on the case despite the Northernshire Police hadn't jurisdiction in the Southernshire county.

When Arthur knew about his wife's affair with Steve Yates he accepted to help her despite the fact that he would divorce from Wendy after finishing to solve the case. He would help his wife only for his children. Arthur took the first train to Bournemouth that afternoon and he met with Alan Bakewell in the railway station.

"Hi, Alan! This is my Detective Sergeant Peter Shankland, my right-hand man, and I am Arthur, Wendy Dunbar's husband!" he said when he saw Bakewell waiting for them on the platform. "What's about the case and the victim?" he also asked him while he was taking his luggage to the taxi that Alan had paid for them.

For Alan the case was easy to solve: they had a lot of evidence which demonstrated the guilt of Wendy Dunbar. Nevertheless, for Arthur, that case was not easy as it was seeming to be. They had only one thing clear: the victim was a poet who was forty years old and whose name was Steve Yates. He was employed also by the Secret Intelligence Service as an agent.

Steve Yates was also married to Mary Faber, a novelist from the north of England whose parents had founded a press named Faber & Yates Editors. She had arrived there when she had received the news about Steve's death. She seemed extremely sad for her husband's death despite knowing about his affair with Mrs. Buchanan.

Arthur supposed that Mary Faber had murdered her husband because she had known about Steve Yates affair with Wendy before the news of his death and now she was playing to avoid the suppositions of the police and that she had planned the killing to incriminate Wendy of the murder.

In that hotel were lodging Gerard Hayes, a fifty six years old man who was the owner of a Bank in Ireland, Olivia Caldwell, a lady who was the same age of Gerard Hayes and the owner of a Bank in England, and Phil Kearns, an owner of a hotel in Cork, Ireland who was dealing with Ollie Dashwood the purchasing of his hotel, too. Phil Kearns was thirty five and Ollie Dashwood was sixty three.

The witness who had testified against Wendy Dunbar was Ollie Dashwood's bellboy named Daniel Wadlow, who was forty years old as Steve Yates and Mary Faber. Those who had an alibi for the time of the crime were Mary Faber, Ollie Dashwood and Gerard Hayes. So Arthur decided to interrogate Olivia Caldwell, Phil Kearns and Daniel Wadlow again whilst Peter Shankland was interrogating Wendy Dunbar and Alan Bakewell was helping his subordinates to find the murder weapon.