“I found the key for you,” she said, handing it over. “Naturally, nobody’s been in.”
“Brilliant, thank you…” I trailed off suggestively.
“Oh, of course. Helen,” she introduced herself. “Helen Wells.”
“Thank you, Ms Wells. We won’t be too long.”
“I’ll call over to the house whilst you’re up there,” Helen said, walking us to the stairs. “Let the baroness know about the situation.”
“Much appreciated. Which room?” I asked, halfway up the stairs.
“The Ivy Room. End of the corridor.”
I thanked her again then carried on up the stairs, Mills right behind me.
Five
Thatcher
The age of the building showed upstairs, the floors uneven and the wall bending inwards. Floorboards creaked under our feet despite the rug that ran the length of the corridor. Paintings hung along the walls the whole way, landscapes of the local area, a few portraits and old maps. Mills stopped and examined a few that we passed, the history buff, but we reached the Ivy Room a moment later, so I had to drag him from him perusing.
“This is it,” I said, sticking the key in the door and pushing it open. It was a nice room, spacious, built into the eaves of the roof. A grand, almost luxurious bed sat pushed against one wall, a small wardrobe in a corner, a desk, an armchair and another door into the en-suite. The walls were papered in pale florals, easy on the eye, and a large rug dominated almost the entire floor. The bed had been made, the corners tucked in neatly, but the cushions had been left on the floor in a little stack. Riggs’s small leather suitcase sat on the desk, the contents neatly folded.
“Laptop,” Mills said cheerily, picking up the device from one of the bedside tables. There was a phone charger laying on it as well, though no phone, and a glass of water.
“He was planning on coming back, by the looks of things,” I said, walking slowly around the room. I opened the wardrobe door, finding his uniform hung up tidily.
“Must have driven up in it,” Mills said over my shoulder, “not the sort of thing you’d leave here if you weren’t planning to come back.”
“No,” I agreed, reaching in to check the pockets and, finding them empty, closed the door again. “Anything in the bathroom?” I asked.
“Just the usual. A bag of toiletries, razor, that sort of thing.”
I hummed thoughtfully, turning to look at the room again. I walked over to the desk and looked down at a pad of paper on the top. The edge was jagged like someone had ripped a page off, the indents of a pen pushed into the page underneath. I picked it up, trying to see if any of the writing could be made out, but no such luck. The desk was opposite the window, the view out towards the river itself. There was a farm just beyond it, a flock of sheep making the most of the dry day before they were taken in for the winter. I put the pad down and looked to the floor. The chair had been dragged slightly, the rug caught underneath it, the edge curled up, a shoe mark scuffed on the fabric.
I bent down, looking under the desk and then to the other side. The bed was the sort with the fabric hanging over the sides, brushing the floor, but part of it was caught up, hastily shoved up into the frame and not properly pulled down again. I shuffled over on my haunches, peering beneath the bed. Things got dropped. A ball of paper sat in the dust towards the middle of the bed, and I had to get down on my stomach and stretch my arm out to grab it and pull it out, getting my sleeve nicely coated in dust as I did so. Mills walked over, giving me a hand up to my feet. I carefully flattened out the paper and walked over to the desk, matching the torn sheet to the notepad.
“What in God’s name does that day?” Mills asked incredulously. It was a series of marks, dashes and symbols.
“Code?” I suggested. “Do you know any code?”
“A little morse from my dad but nothing like that,” Mills answered, peering in closer to look at the markings. “Something he learnt in the military, perhaps?”
“Perhaps. We’ll have to call in an expert,” I sighed, knowing that it would slow things down.
“So, he wrote something in code, tore it off the pad, then crumpled it up and shoved it under the bed?” Mills pieced together. “Why, what was he doing?”
I looked back down at the scuff mark, moving my own shoe to try to replicate it.
“I think he kicked it. Maybe not on purpose, we can’t know that. Finding out what it says is our priority right now,” I added, taking my phone out to take a picture of it. “Signal out here is awful,” I muttered, snapping a quick picture.
“Maybe he went out to make a call,” Mills suggested.
“That late at night? Without shoes on?” I pushed. Mills shrugged. “There’s Wi-Fi,” I pointed out, “so if he’d needed to talk to his sister or someone, he could have used WhatsApp or Skype.”
“Fair point,” Mills said, opening the laptop and turning it on. A password bar, no surprise that it came up at once. “Could we get into trouble for asking Wasco to hack into a military officer’s laptop?”
“Potentially, but if they want a killer found, they’ll just have to let us. Look at the stickers on the front, though,” I said, nodding to the lid. “That doesn’t look like a work device to me.”
“No,” Mills agreed, pulling the lid back down so we could take a look at the stickers. Charity ones mostly, environmental conservation, Help for Heroes.
“What this one?” I asked, pointing to what looked like a flag.
“I think it’s a pride flag,” Mills said.
“Aren’t they rainbow?”
“For asexuality,” he told me.
“Ah. Rules out a crime of passion then,” I remarked, sliding the sheet of paper into the laptop to keep it secure. “Just no phone.”
“No coat either,” Mills added, looking around the room. “Not in the wardrobe, not on the back of the door, not over the chair. Who’s going around without a coat at this time of year.”
“Maybe he left it in his car?” I suggested, “after driving back from his sisters?”
“If his coat is in there, maybe his phone is too. Maybe,” Mills said with sudden enthusiasm, “he went outside in his dressing gown and no shoes to grab it.”
I grinned, “now we’re getting somewhere. Where are his keys, though?” I asked, looking around us.
“Where do you keep your car keys when you stay in a hotel?” Mills asked.
“In my coat pocket,” I said. “God, I really hope he didn’t lock his keys in the car.”
Mills chuckled and pulled open the drawers in the desk. Most of them were empty, but the top one rattled as he pulled it open, sticking his hand in and triumphantly pulling it out with a set of keys in his hand.
“Nice one, Isaac,” I cheered, shoving all the drawers closed.
I picked up the laptop, and we gave the room another quick sweep over before leaving it. I locked the door behind us and followed Mills back down the stairs. Helen wasn’t at the desk, probably somewhere where she could get signal, so I left the key there for her, and we headed back out to the car park.
We went to Mills’s car first, digging out an evidence bag for the laptop and stowing it safely in the boot before walking to Riggs’s car. Mills unlocked it, and I walked round to the driver’s seat, pulling the door open. There was a road map on the passenger side, the edges and corners well-thumbed and faded, a packet of gum in the glove compartment along with a reusable coffee cup and some spare change for parking or something. The air freshener that hung from the mirror smelt of board wax, filling the car. Little else, though. I twisted around to check out the backseat. Empty. The hope that we’d come out here with was starting to fizzle out. I climbed out of the car and walked around to join Mills at the boot. He’d popped it open to reveal an umbrella, a trug with a wetsuit and rash vest, both covered faintly with sand, a pair of sturdy boots, an emergency breakdown kit and some shopping bags.
“No coat,” Mills muttered irritably.
“No coat,” I a
greed, swinging the boot shut. “But it was a bloody lovely theory,” I told him, clapping him on the shoulder.
“Just a worthless one.”
“Don’t beat yourself up,” I told him. “Come on, think. The coat wasn’t with the body, not in the room, not in the car. So, where is it?”
“The killer has it?”
“Why would a killer keep a coat?”
“Souvenir.”
“Very bleak. Think more realistically.”
“They wouldn’t,” he answered. “They’d get rid of it. Especially if it had his phone in the pockets.”
“But if it was in his room, they probably wouldn’t have bothered, would they? The laptop was still there. Nothing else was stolen.”
“He was wearing it when he died?” Mills asked, realisation dawning on him.
“I’d put good money on it, Mills. This means he definitely left the inn and was quite possibly wearing shoes. Which means he had his coat and shoes removed before going in the river. Which means?”
“He was definitely murdered.”
“Again, good money,” I said, taking the keys from him and locking the car. “At least we have this, though. This is handy,” I said, putting the keys in the back of his car with the laptop.
“Is it possible he left his coat at his sisters?” Mills asked. “Just for the sake of argument?”
“It is. And maybe once the shock wears off, we’ll get a call from her telling us just that, but it doesn’t seem likely to me. He didn’t drink that night, as Ernest told us, and military men are not usually so forgetful. Plus, he’d have had his room in there as well. He couldn’t have come back here without it.”
“I’m guessing that’s still with it as well?”
“Odds are. People don’t often empty their pockets on a regular basis, especially if they’ve only the one coat and they’re not going anywhere.”
“He was going somewhere,” Mills pointed out, his hair blowing around his face from the wind.
“But not somewhere that he had to drive.” I pointed out with a nod to the car. “Let’s look at what we’ve got. Yesterday, Major Alexander Riggs returned from his sister’s house at, let’s say, around nine pm. He gets in without anyone seeing him, changes into his comfy clothes, dressing gown and at some point, writes a bunch of code down on a piece of paper and leaves the inn. We know he had some cigarettes with him and his lighter, so maybe he was going out for a smoke. Maybe he was going out to make a phone call, perhaps both. And sometimes around then, he ends up dead and in the river. So, did he go down there on his own, did he walk, or was he dragged?”
“We don’t know,” Mills answered.
“No,” I went on. “Nor do we know where his coat, phone or shoes are, but given that they’re nowhere around here, it’s safe to say he was wearing when he left, and now they are gone. Where did they go?”
“Taken,” Mills said.
“By who?”
“The killer.”
“The killer, who knew he was outside,” I pushed, pacing around a small circle in the car park, partially to keep myself going as I spoke and partially to ward off the cold. “So maybe he came outside because of whatever he wrote on that piece of paper.”
“The code.”
“Something happened,” I said. “He learnt something, saw something. Maybe something up here, or maybe something that followed him here from Devon. Either way, he felt the need to write something, in code no less, then leave it behind.”
“On purpose?”
“Possibly. Or he didn’t mean to drop it.”
“Then he was in a hurry,” Mills said. “He was scared?”
I nodded, clapping my hands together. “Major Alexander Riggs,” I murmured, looking over at the green car. “What had you so rattled?”
“Inspector?” We both jumped as Helen stuck her head out of the side door again. I walked over, happy to step foot inside the warm building again, shaking my arms and legs to get the blood going in them. Mills squeezed himself into the corridor beside me, and Helen smiled warmly, handing me a slip of paper.
“I called the baroness and told her what was going on. She’s very keen to speak to you herself. That’s the directions up to the house,” she said, pointing to the paper. “When you get there, drive round to the back, it’s where they keep the cars, and someone should be out there to meet you. Most likely Una, she’s the baroness’s assistant.”
“Thank you, Helen. I left the key on your desk for you.”
“Thank you,” she said with a smile, folding her hands together. “I hope you found something useful.” She shook her head. “That poor man.”
“We hope so. We appreciate your cooperation with all of this,” I added. “Can we ask that nobody goes into that room or moves anything until the investigation is complete?”
“I’ll make a note of that and ensure everyone sees,” she said, still smiling.
“You’ve been a big help,” I told her. A figure at the end of the corridor moved in the corner of my eye, and we all turned to find Daisy standing there with a laundry basket on her hip, piled high with sheets. She froze, then hoisted the basket out of the way, signing something one-handed. Helen replied, then turned to us.
“Sorry, I’ve locked the poor dear out of the laundry room. Let me know if I can help in any other way.”
“We will, and here,” I pulled a card from my pocket and handed it to her. “In case you see or think of anything that you think we ought to know.” She took it, pocketing in it carefully and nodded.
“I shall certainly give you a call if anything comes up,” she said. “Good luck.” She turned and walked over to Daisy. The young girl looked back at us with an unreadable expression, lifting her hand in a wave. I waved back, then turned and stepped outside again, walking over to the car with Mills in tow.
“Ever met a baroness before, Isaac?” I asked.
“Can’t say that I have, sir,” he replied, sliding into the car. “Does my hair look alright?”
“A bit windswept, but she can’t fault you for that,” I told him with a smirk, clicking my seatbelt into place. I looked at the directions Helen had given us, ready to guide him along the road.
“Do you really think we’ll get anything from this?” He asked, reversing out of the space. “I mean, I feel like we’re just wasting time here.”
“She does own the place,” I pointed out. “And we don’t want to go around ruffling any feathers. If she wants to see us, we go before Sharp gets the wrong end of it.”
Mills grimaced but looked to me, ready for the directions.
Six
Thatcher
Leaving the inn, we followed the road back through the village, up past the church and along a lengthy lane that wound up towards the massive house that ruled over the estate. As we drew near to it, Mills whistled slowly.
“You can see why Downton Abbey fans like to come,” he said, slowing down so that he could gaze up at the architecture.
“It really is something. Imagine having to heat the place, though,” I muttered. Or clean it, I thought, exhausted by the very thought. It was no wonder that back in the day, they used to have huge teams of maids to keep the place tidy. It would take a small army to change all the lightbulbs or clean all the windows.
Mills drove us around the back of the house, as Helen had instructed, to where a few cars were parked in a small yard, protected by tall walls outside a side door. I could picture the servants out here a hundred years ago, using this door to move things in and out without being seen by the family. We parked up and climbed out just as the side door opened and a young woman strode out. She was wearing a pair of high waisted trousers that made her look like she’d walked out of the forties herself and a knitted cardigan hanging off her shoulders.
“Detective Chief Inspector Thatcher?” she called in a clipped voice.
“At your service,” I answered, stepping forward to meet her. She reached out a hand, and I shook it. “This is Detective Sergean
t Mills.”
“Nice to meet you both.” She shook his hand too. “Terrible circumstances. I’m Una, Lady Lavinia’s assistant. She was quite horrified to hear what had happened.” Una led us into the labyrinth of corridors that made up the downstairs of the house. “We’re all very fond of the inn here. It’s a staple of the community. He was a guest there, I believe?”
“He was,” I confirmed as she shut the door and began to walk along the stone passage to a flight of stairs. “You’re a local girl yourself?”
She smiled at me over her shoulder. “I know I don’t sound. I grew up in the house,” she said. “My dad worked for his late Lordship, and it was easier to let us live in the rooms upstairs. I still do, but yes, local. Everyone loves the inn.”
“The baroness is concerned by all this then?” Mills called from behind me as Una led us upstairs and through a hidden door in the wall.
“Oh, very much,” she said. “If there’s trouble on her estate, then she cares very much.” She stepped out, holding the door open for us both, and we walked into the hall with mouths agape.
“Bloody hell,” Mills muttered, shooting a look at Una. “Sorry.”
“Not to worry,” she said, smiling again. “That’s a common reaction to seeing the place for the first time.”
It was extraordinary. The ceiling rose high above our heads, the grand wooden staircase curving around to the floor above. The walls were panelled in rich, honey-coloured wood, massive portraits hanging from frames of faces and places. A chandelier hung from the ceiling, a grand Turkish rug under our feet, bouquets of flowers somehow blooming through this horrid weather on tables and stands, an old-fashioned phone on the table by the inner door.
“This way,” Una said softly after letting us have a good gape.
“Those flowers are incredible,” Mills said, holding in a sneeze, blinking his eyes. Hay fever in winter, what a tragedy.
Buried With Honours: A DCI Thatcher Yorkshire Crime Thriller Page 5