Search of Puffin Cottage and Discovery of the Blood Sample and Hair

The search of Puffin Cottage turns a concealed cache into a decisive line of inquiry: among ordinary food and fragments of a damaged life, Kate Miskin and Francis Benton-Smith find Nathan Oliver’s blood sample, a hair sample, and birth certificates that point toward a hidden question of paternity. The discoveries give physical form to the case’s most consequential secret, but the search is not finished quietly. Someone watches from the kitchen window, then blocks the door from outside, leaving the detectives’ breakthrough entangled with immediate danger.

Timing and Entry

The investigators delay searching Puffin Cottage until the hour is right. Before daylight, a light in an otherwise dark cottage could act as a warning beacon, alerting Dan Padgett and giving him the opportunity to remove or destroy the blood and hair if they are still inside. Kate Miskin and Francis Benton-Smith therefore wait through the slow early hours, then leave Kate’s apartment and cross the headland quickly and quietly. The cottage door is locked, but the keys Rupert Maycroft has given them are clearly labelled, allowing them to enter without forcing it.

The scene carries an additional tension for Kate. Searches have always made her uneasy: she dislikes violating the privacy of the dead by rummaging through what they have left behind. Here, however, that familiar discomfort gives way to anger and hope. Remembering Adrian Boyde’s mutilated face, she feels ready to tear the place apart. The urgency is practical, not merely emotional: they need to find the evidence before Padgett can move it, while documenting anything they uncover carefully enough for it to be used.

The Hidden Documents

In the dark bread oven, the investigators find the first concealed cache. Francis Benton-Smith uses his penknife to work at the grouting between the bricks; after about a minute, one brick comes away, revealing a cavity behind it. Inside an envelope are two birth certificates: one for Bella Martha Padgett, born on 6 June 1962, and one for Wayne Daniel Padgett, born on 9 March 1978. On the latter certificate, the space for the father’s name is blank.

The papers do not, by themselves, establish the full story behind the blank entry. Their concealment does, however, make the missing paternal identity a concrete question within the investigation. That question will become significant alongside the other material hidden in the cottage. The oven’s sealed cavity also makes the contrast plain: the documents have not been left among the room’s everyday contents but deliberately tucked out of sight, where an ordinary search might miss them.

Blood and Hair in the Kitchen

The kitchen appears clean, simply furnished, and little used. Its modest contents—a wooden table, two chairs, a pint of semi-skimmed milk, half a loaf of wholemeal bread, and a tub of spreadable butter—seem out of step with a room that looks unused for weeks. Kate considers that Padgett may have stopped cooking for himself after his mother’s death and relied on the staff dining room for his meals. The small freezer compartment is empty, and the eight remaining slices of bread are fresh, but nothing has been pressed between them.

The butter proves to be the hiding place. At Kate’s request, Benton-Smith fetches a meat skewer. When it enters the butter by less than half an inch, Kate realises something is concealed inside and orders photographs to be taken before they proceed. She scrapes the top layer onto the lid, then finds foil beneath it and two small packages wrapped separately in foil. One contains a vial labelled with Nathan Oliver’s name and date; the other contains a hair sample wrapped in tissue paper.

The label and date make the vial identifiable, and the sample is the blood that had gone missing from the investigation. Benton-Smith notes that the written label should allow clear identification even though Padgett did not retain the paper detailing the tests Guy Staveley had wanted. The two detectives recognise the importance of what they have found, but control their reaction: Benton-Smith photographs the evidence, including the contents of the rubbish bin, while Kate places the vial, hair, and butter tub in an exhibit bag. Both sign its label. Careful recording and sealing matter because a discovery is only useful if the objects’ identity and handling can be established.

Interruption and Significance

The rubbish bin contains broken china figurines and torn pages from one of Oliver’s paperbacks. One figurine, a woman with a hoe, has been decapitated; its head rests on the torn pages. The destruction joins Padgett’s mother’s possessions and Oliver’s book in the same discarded heap, a juxtaposition that sharpens the significance of the concealed certificates and Oliver-labelled blood. Together, the objects make the cottage more than a place where evidence has been stashed: it holds traces of Padgett’s relationship to both his mother and Oliver, though the search itself does not settle every question those traces raise.

As Kate and Benton-Smith finish documenting the finds, they glimpse a shorn head and two terrified eyes at the kitchen window. The figure vanishes before they can be sure who they have seen. They rush to the door, but someone has blocked it from outside with his own key; Kate loses several seconds trying to identify and insert the right one. The discovery has therefore changed the immediate stakes. The detectives have secured evidence linking Oliver to the cottage and uncovered documents bearing on Padgett’s parentage, but someone now knows the search is under way—and has acted to keep them inside.