Less than an hour before this time, she had identified that shattered head at the mortuary as belonging to her late spouse, James Albert Berridge. They had been prepared for extreme distress at the grisly sight. But the widow had apparently found the experience less disturbing than might have been expected. She had driven her own car to the mortuary, composed herself in five minutes alone after the identification, and refused the offer of a lift home in a police car. When she opened the door of the penthouse to admit them, the smell of percolating coffee drifted through from the kitchen behind her and she smiled at them as if they were welcome visitors, rather than outsiders intruding upon the intimacies of a widow’s grief. It was almost as though she had the apartment up for sale and was greeting prospective purchasers. The officers had so wide an experience of bereavement and its effects that nothing could now shock them. But they found Gabrielle Berridge’s reaction to this death interesting.
