by J. R. Ellis
It was over in seconds; a ligature was passed around his neck and tightened. Penrose struggled and grabbed at the choking cord. He stumbled to his feet, then crashed on to the wet floor. He flapped and floundered like a fat pig caught in a noose, until at last he lay still. The ligature was removed and the assailant flitted away noiselessly.
There followed a strange period of calm and quiet. Penrose remained where he’d fallen, staring across the damp floor of the hot room. Small rivulets of water ran down his face and dripped off the end of his nose. The fragrant steam continued to pour out of the steam room.
In reception, Carol sat behind the desk, glancing at her newspaper and waiting for the rush at nine fifteen. Shirley had almost finished her cleaning and was standing outside having a smoke at eight forty-five when Steve Monroe, one of the attendants and masseurs, arrived for work. He was in his early thirties and very handsome, so Carol gave him another of her wide smiles when he came through the door.
‘Hi, Carol, anybody in?’
‘Just Mr Penrose.’
‘Right, I’ll go down and get things ready. Has Shirley finished?’
‘Think so – she’ll be off in a minute.’
Steve clattered down the steps, but it seemed only seconds later that he called out urgently for Carol to come down. She hurried down the stairs, to find Steve, grim-faced, standing over a body.
‘Steve!’ she screamed.
‘It’s Mr Penrose. He’s dead.’
‘Oh my God! Are you sure? I’ll call an ambulance. He might have just fainted in the heat, you know. I’ve always said they have the heat turned up too high down here and there’s steam everywhere.’
‘No, he’s definitely dead. I tried to find his pulse. But Carol . . .’ Steve looked at the receptionist, puzzled and shocked. ‘He’s been murdered, strangled. Look, there’s a horrible red line round his neck.’
‘I’ll call the police!’
‘Did you let anyone else in?’
‘No, no one’s been in except you and Mr Penrose.’
‘Has anyone come back up from here?’
‘No.’
‘Then I don’t know what’s going on. I’ve looked absolutely everywhere and the emergency exit hasn’t been touched. There’s no one else down here.’
One
Harrogate is the queerest place with the strangest people in it, leading the oddest lives of dancing, newspaper reading and dining.
Charles Dickens, 1858
Detective Sergeant Andrew Carter was enjoying a slow start to his day at West Riding Police Harrogate Division HQ, drinking a cup of coffee and eating a croissant. He still found the pace of things in Harrogate very relaxing after his frenetic days at the London Met, although the latter was now beginning to seem quite a while ago. Unfortunately, his morning peace was disrupted by the call from the Royal Baths. He left immediately, taking a detective constable and a couple of PCs with him.
There was a queue of puzzled people outside the Baths waiting for them to open, and the arrival of the police provoked a buzz of conversation. Inside, Andy found a shocked Carol Ashworth and Shirley Adams being consoled by Steve Monroe at the reception desk. Howard Barnes, the manager of the Baths, a stocky, balding man, had also arrived following a desperate call from Carol. Andy quickly established what they had discovered.
‘So the body is still down there?’
‘Yes,’ replied Steve. ‘I turned him over, tried to find his pulse, but there was nothing.’
‘Has anyone else touched the body?’
‘No. Only Carol and I and Mr Barnes have been down, and they only looked at him.’
‘Is that correct?’
Carol and Barnes nodded.
‘So three people have been down to where the body is?’
‘Yes, but only Steve touched anything,’ repeated Barnes, tight-lipped and serious.
‘You wouldn’t get me down there for anything,’ said Shirley, before asking if she could go outside for another fag.
‘Have you called for the ambulance?’ asked Andy.
‘No, we haven’t,’ said Carol. ‘When he was dead, we just thought . . . I’m sorry.’ She couldn’t continue.
‘Not to worry, we’ll get forensics.’ He nodded to another PC, who called a number.
Steve turned to Andy. ‘The first thing I thought was the murderer must still be down there, so I looked all over in the steam rooms, the changing rooms and everywhere, but there’s no one, and Carol says I was the only person, apart from Mr Penrose, to go down there.’
‘Right, well, we’d better get down and have a look. Is there any way down other than these stairs?’
‘Only the emergency exit on to the street, but that’s not been touched.’
Andy turned to one of the PCs. ‘Seal these stairs off. Stay on guard at the top; no one unauthorised comes down.’
‘OK, Sarge.’
Andy and DC Robinson went down. It was hot, misty and eerily quiet everywhere. They passed the swimming pool, empty and still – apart from some disturbance from the pumps circulating the water – and entered the steam room area. Andy examined the body.
‘Strangled,’ he announced somewhat redundantly as he exposed the deep red line around Penrose’s neck.
He looked round carefully for hiding places. There were not many possibilities; the room was open-plan, and there were only bare benches in the steam rooms. Andy went into every changing cubicle but found nothing. There was a door into some kind of boiler room, which was open. It was a warm room with a dirty floor and walls, littered with oily rags and a few tools on a small bench. There was the loud hum of the operating boiler. A search revealed no people and no weapon. Then, in a corner of the changing rooms, Andy saw a large wicker basket. Eagerly he turned it over and emptied the contents out but there was nothing except dirty towels.
‘Damn!’ he swore to himself and put the basket upright again. Unless the two who’d reported the crime had also committed it, this was looking like a case for DCI Oldroyd, Andy’s boss, who seemed to specialise in solving impossible crimes.
Andy looked briefly around the rest of the areas, including the little cold plunge pool and swimming pool chamber, with its high ceiling clearly recently renovated with a modern take on a Turkish pattern. Everywhere was deserted.
‘OK, let’s go back up,’ he said to DC Robinson.
When he got back to reception, he called his boss.
At 9.45 a.m., DCI Jim Oldroyd was standing in his underpants in front of the bathroom mirror and brushing his teeth when the call came from Andy Carter. It wasn’t exactly an early start, but he tended to keep his own hours these days. He put in so much time on cases late at night that he indulged in the occasional lie-in without any feelings of guilt.
‘Yes?’
‘Andy Carter, sir. I’m at the Royal Baths. There’s been a murder.’
‘Good Lord, is nowhere sacred? That’s supposed to be a place of calm and tranquillity.’
‘Not today, sir. There’s a big bloke dead on the floor in one of those hot room things, strangled, I think. It’s bloody hot down there and stinks of menthol or something. Do people get high when they’re down there?’
‘No, it’s to clear the sinuses, you big ignoramus,’ joked Oldroyd, and Andy laughed.
‘Anyway, I’ve got them to turn everything off. He’s got a great big red mark round his neck where the ligature was and no rope here or anything, so it couldn’t be self-inflicted. The SOCOs are here taking pictures and Mr Groves is on his way.’
Tim Groves was a forensic pathologist who had worked with Oldroyd for many years.
‘Good work, Andy,’ Oldroyd said. ‘I’ll be there as soon as I can.’
‘OK, sir, but I might as well tell you, it’s not going to be straightforward, or I wouldn’t have called you.’
‘Things are never straightforward when you’re working with me. You know that by now.’
‘I do, sir.’
‘So what’s the problem?’
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br /> ‘Well, he’s definitely been murdered, but no sign of the murderer. He was down there by himself; he’d booked a private session. Damian Penrose. A crime writer, apparently.’
‘There’s irony for you.’
‘Yes. The receptionist let him in, then later on a bloke who works here went down and found the body. But they both say there was no one else in the building apart from the cleaner, who was upstairs near reception, and we can’t find anybody. So unless the people who found the body are the murderers, it’s another of those disappearing acts.’
‘I see. Well, tell me more when I get there.’
Getting there was no more than a pleasant walk from his flat across the Stray, past Bettys Tea Rooms and down Parliament Street to the Royal Baths. He arrived to find that Andy had everything under control, and accompanied the DC down to see the crime scene. They found Tim Groves and his team at work.
‘Good morning, Jim,’ said Groves, his tall frame stooping to examine the body. ‘I don’t think this one’s much of a problem. Strangulation: strong, thin ligature, something like nylon rope. We may find a few strands of whatever it was back at the lab. He’s not been dead long; not more than a couple of hours, I’d say. How are you going to classify this one?’
Oldroyd smiled. He’d developed a kind of taxonomy of murders over the years, which amused his colleagues: BM for blackmail, LJ for Lust and Jealousy, and so on. ‘It’s early days for that, Tim, I’ve only just got here, but I know he was a controversial figure in the world of crime writing. It could be PH for Professional Hatred.’
Groves laughed. ‘That’s a new one! Well, you’d better get after the culprit while the trail is warm.’
‘Thanks, Tim, but according to Andy, there is no trail. No sign of the perpetrator.’
‘Oh, not again! You’re beginning to specialise in solving the impossible. Are you a detective or a magician?’
‘A rationalist, Tim. There’s always an answer if you think carefully and never give up.’
‘Well, you always seem to get there in the end, so I’ll leave you to it. I must say, it seems an odd place to murder someone. Anyway, I’ll send my report in as soon as I can, but I’m not expecting anything unusual.’
‘Thanks, Tim.’
‘OK, that’s fine.’ Andy was speaking on his phone to the PC guarding the stairs. ‘That attendant wants to come down to get that wicker basket of towels,’ he said to Oldroyd.
‘I presume you’ve checked it?’
‘Yeah, we emptied it on to the floor and there was nothing but wet towels.’
‘Hmm . . . OK.’ Oldroyd looked round the steam and hot rooms, the plunge pool, the swimming pool and then into the boiler room. The elaborately decorated Turkish arches and the tiles in a variety of vibrant colours gave the place a weirdly exotic feel. ‘So only Penrose, the receptionist, the manager and that attendant came down here?’
‘So they say.’
‘So, on the surface, those three would be the obvious suspects. We’ve only got their word for what happened.’
Steve Monroe arrived and went to get the wicker basket. Oldroyd was still in the hot room area looking at the ceiling and the shower fittings. He saw Steve come out of the changing rooms with the basket.
‘Just double-check that basket, Andy.’
‘It’s just towels,’ said Steve, and he pulled them all out again. ‘I need to get them to the washing machine.’
Andy felt around right to the bottom of the basket and found nothing. ‘OK,’ he said. Steve lifted the basket on to his shoulder, carried it up the stairs and put it into a room near reception, which acted as both store and laundry.
‘So what makes you think they’re not the killers?’ asked Oldroyd.
‘It seems a very poor scheme: murder someone in a way that puts suspicion firmly on you. And then there’s the question of motive: I don’t think any of them really knew the man, although it seems he was a regular here when he was in Harrogate. We’ll find out more when we question them.’
‘OK. Good. I remember the time when you’d have wanted to rush in and arrest them because they’re the obvious suspects: they had the means and there’s no indication of how anybody else could have done it. But you’re using your brains and your instincts a bit more.’
‘Thanks, sir.’ Andy grinned. Ever since he’d come up from London to work for Oldroyd, he’d wanted to impress his boss.
‘And I agree with you. There’s more to this than meets the eye, so to speak. Nevertheless, we do need to question them carefully. Come on.’
Back upstairs, Howard Barnes ushered the two detectives into his office. ‘Of course, I understand we have to close the Baths for the foreseeable future?’
‘That’s right, I’m afraid, until we’ve done all the necessary tests and searches. Can you send the receptionist in? Carol, is it? And then the cleaner.’
‘Yes. Carol Ashworth and Shirley Adams.’
Carol came in looking very apprehensive. Oldroyd beckoned her to sit down.
‘So, is it Mrs Ashworth?’
‘Yes.’
‘OK, Mrs Ashworth. Just take us through what happened this morning. In your own time.’
‘Well, I came in early to work at seven fifty because on Thursday mornings there are the private sessions and I was on duty.’
‘Do you have a rota for that amongst the reception staff?’
‘Yes.’
‘There must be someone else who gets here even earlier than you, to open things up and turn things on.’
‘The technician, Sid Newman, gets here first. He comes about five thirty a.m. and starts everything up – you know, the heating, steam generators and all that stuff – and then goes off. Shirley, the cleaner, arrives a bit before me, and she lets me in.’
‘OK. Go on.’
‘Mr Penrose was booked in and he arrived at eight a.m.; that was the time of his booking. He pressed the bell. I saw him and let him in. We said good morning and then he went straight down.’
‘So there’s security on the door?’
‘Yes, when there’s only one of us here. We only let people in who are authorised. I recognised Mr Penrose.’
‘Did you notice anything unusual about him? Was he anxious or preoccupied or anything?’
‘No. He just seemed his normal, cheerful self.’
‘So he went down and what happened then?’
‘Nothing. At least nothing strange. I sat here. There were emails to answer from people making enquiries, so I sent off replies. I also sent texts to some friends. Shirley was cleaning this office and then she vacuumed the carpet in the entrance. After that she went out for a smoke and just at that moment Steve arrived.’
‘So, for the period between Mr Penrose arriving and Steve Monroe getting here, you and Shirley were here, together, in the reception area?’
‘Yes.’
‘And neither of you left?’
‘No.’
‘And what time did Mr Monroe arrive?’
‘At quarter to nine. We open to the public at nine fifteen and he has to check round and see if everything is OK.’
‘So you let him in?’
‘Yes, and he went straight down.’
‘And how long was it before he raised the alarm?’
‘Just seconds, less than a minute, I’m sure.’
‘So he wouldn’t have had time to kill the victim?’
Carol looked shocked. ‘Steve? No, he wouldn’t do anything like that, but he definitely wouldn’t have had time anyway.’
‘OK. And then you went down and he was there with the body?’
‘Yes.’ She winced. ‘It was horrible seeing Mr Penrose like that. I . . .’ Andy noticed a box of tissues on the desk and passed one to her. She dabbed her eyes. ‘Thank you.’
‘You came back up here and phoned the police?’
‘Yes, I did.’
Oldroyd paused to let her recover. ‘I take it you knew Mr Penrose because he came here regularly?’
‘Yes, and I’ve read a lot of his books; they’re very good, so it was nice to meet him, if you see what I mean.’
‘You didn’t know him in any other context?’
‘No.’
‘Thank you, that’s all for now. An officer will take a written statement from you. Then I think you should go home. I’m sure your manager will let you.’
‘Yes.’
‘When you go out, please ask Shirley Adams to come in here.’
Shirley was shaking and looked as if she already needed her next cigarette.
‘Please try to be calm,’ said Oldroyd with a smile. ‘We just want to know what happened this morning, so tell us everything you did.’
She looked anxiously from one detective to the other.
‘Well, I got here at seven. I always do. I’ve got a key to let myself in at the side door, and I did all my jobs.’
‘Where’s the side door?’
‘It’s just over there in the room with the washing machine and stuff. It leads to a side street. That door’s only for staff and it’s kept locked. There’s a key at reception but me and Sid Newman have our own so we can get in early.’
‘I see. You can’t get down to the baths from there?’
‘No. You have to pass reception.’
‘OK. Go on.’
‘I let Carol in at the front door at ten to eight. She was here early because there was a private session.’
‘And you clean this office?’
‘Yes, and the staff toilets and the carpets by the door and up the stairs to the meeting rooms and in those.’
‘You don’t go down to the baths?’
‘No, that’s Steve’s area. He does the cleaning down there; has his own stuff. I never go down those stairs.’