The Royal Baths Murder

by J. R. Ellis

  ‘Whoa! Calm down. What on earth’s going on?’ He went over and put his arm around her shoulders. ‘You surely don’t think I had anything to do with Penrose’s murder?’

  She was weeping now. ‘Well, I don’t know what to think sometimes. It’s just that he’s dead, and you hated him and . . . I just don’t want anything horrible to happen to us.’

  ‘If you’re feeling this bad, maybe you should go back on the tablets. It’s better than drinking.’

  ‘I’m not taking those again. The side effects were awful.’

  ‘Then you’ve got to be firm with yourself. These things are all in your mind.’

  She put her hand on his arm. ‘I know, but you know what I’m like when I get an idea in my head.’

  ‘I do, but everything’s fine.’ He smiled, stroked her hair and felt her become more relaxed. Then he saw the letter on the table and his expression changed.

  Patricia Hughes sat in a corner of the lounge at The White Swan, nervously sipping at a gin and tonic. There was a raucous group of people at the bar getting steadily drunk as they discussed books and writers and tried to outdo each other in making deliberately outrageous and provocative comments.

  As she’d dealt with the repercussions of Penrose’s murder, the one thing she’d not really given any thought to was who might be responsible; after all, that was the police’s job. Until now. This evening, while she was still at the hotel on late duty stewarding one of the festival events, a jolting realisation had suddenly hit her. Of course there was something she knew that might be relevant to Penrose’s murder. Why had she not remembered before? She’d been too preoccupied with other things. It could be important. She went into the bar to sit down and consider what to do. The group at the bar were annoyingly loud, and she found it difficult to think. Should she contact the police? Maybe that was premature when she wasn’t sure. There was someone she should ring first. She consulted her Contacts folder, touched the screen and waited. The noise from the bar would be quite useful in concealing her voice as she spoke on the phone.

  ‘Hello?’ Her pulse raced but she held her nerve in the conversation that followed. She explained her concerns and received reassurances. Then she made another mistake in addition to not contacting the police. The person she was calling remarked on the noisy background and asked her where she was. Patricia joked that she was in the bar at The White Swan, surrounded by drunks.

  She felt relieved at the end of the call. The outbursts of laughter from the group at the bar were becoming louder and more frequent, so when she’d finished her drink she left the hotel to begin the walk home.

  It was a warm night but the clouds that had covered the sun all day were now obscuring the moon and stars, so it was dark on the tree-lined avenue that led from the hotel towards the centre of Harrogate. Patricia passed the large model of a white swan on a wooden pole that formed part of the hotel sign. The swan creaked slightly in the gentle breeze and she noticed for the first time that the heavy model was chained to the metal sides of the sign so that it couldn’t be blown off. There was something creepy about this, and she shuddered as she left the grounds and the lights that illuminated the hotel. On the quiet avenue, swifts swerved and screeched around the solid stone buildings which were set back from the road. Unluckily for her, the street was also deserted. She could just hear the sound of music coming from the hotel behind her as the light faded away. There was a jazz evening in progress. Ahead she could hear the soft sound of traffic in the town centre.

  But she never made it to the more open, better-lit streets near The Crown Hotel, because when she was halfway down the avenue, a figure emerged silently from behind a large plane tree and struck her a deadly blow on the back of the head. She fell on to the grass verge. The killer paused to check there was no one around, then stooped over the body, grabbed the victim’s handbag and ran off.

  Incident tape surrounded a section of the grass verge and the crackles of police radio could be heard as Oldroyd and Andy arrived at the scene of Patricia Hughes’s murder. Tim Groves was removing his rubber gloves as the body was stretchered into the ambulance.

  ‘Morning, Jim,’ he said in his usual urbane, unflappable manner. ‘Our old friend the blunt instrument to the back of the head. Been dead a good ten hours, I’d say; must have been attacked last night in the dark. Actually, I wasn’t expecting to see you here. Does this mean she had something to do with that murder at the Royal Baths?’

  Oldroyd was looking at the ambulance as the doors were shut. It was a very ironic end for a person whose working life had been devoted to organising events for the creators of fictional crime. He needed a new acronym for this demise. Maybe it could be TSTF: Truth Stranger Than Fiction. He turned to Tim Groves.

  ‘She was the organiser of the Crime Writing Festival, and on our list of suspects in the Penrose murder.’

  ‘I see. Well, the plot thickens, as it were.’ Groves chuckled to himself at his little joke. ‘I’ll be off, then, and I’ll send you my report.’ He got into his car.

  Oldroyd turned to the DC who’d been called to the scene. ‘So the body was found by Amanda Rigby?’

  ‘Yes, sir. Her assistant, I understand.’

  What a terrible shock for her, thought Oldroyd. ‘Any sign of a struggle?’

  ‘No, sir. It was a vicious blow from behind. She must have been unconscious before she hit the ground.’ He glanced down to where blood stained the grass. ‘Her handbag’s missing. It could have been an overzealous mugging.’

  ‘Maybe. OK, carry on.’ Oldroyd turned to Andy as the DC returned to supervising the crime scene. ‘Do you think that scenario’s likely on a summer’s night in genteel Harrogate?’

  ‘Not impossible, sir,’ said Andy.

  ‘No, but it’s a bit of a coincidence, isn’t it? I think it’s much more likely either that she was involved and the plotters have fallen out, or that she was innocent but knew something and so she’s been silenced. Come on, we’d better talk to her unfortunate assistant.’

  The two detectives walked the short distance to The White Swan, where they found a distraught Amanda Rigby sitting in Barry Evans’s office. As she drank from a cup of coffee, her hands were shaking. Her white face was tear-stained. Oldroyd gently asked her to tell them what had happened.

  ‘I was walking down Swan Avenue towards the hotel. We base ourselves here during the festival and we always get here very early to start preparing for the day’s events. I live out at Rossett. I get the bus into town, get off at the bottom of Cold Bath Road and then walk up to here. I was halfway down when . . .’ She stopped and looked as if she was about to cry.

  ‘Take your time,’ said Oldroyd.

  ‘It looked like a pile of clothes, then I saw a leg, and I thought a homeless person was lying there under the tree. When I got close, I saw it was a . . . a woman. And there was blood. I managed to get a look at the face, and it was Pat.’ She burst into tears. Oldroyd and Andy waited. ‘I knew she was dead,’ Amanda continued through her sobs. ‘I touched her skin and it was cold. Her eyes were staring. It was horrible!’ She covered her face with her hands.

  ‘So did you come straight into here?’ asked Oldroyd.

  ‘Yes, I ran into Barry’s office; I was nearly hysterical. He called the police and calmed me down. I don’t know what happened after that. I’ve been in here all the time.’ She took a sip of her coffee. ‘I still can’t believe it.’

  ‘Was she OK yesterday? Did she seem her usual self?’

  ‘Yes. It was a busy day as usual during the festival. We don’t get a lot of time to chat, but I didn’t notice anything wrong. We take it in turns to stay for the evening sessions. There always needs to be someone on duty in case there are any problems. It was her turn, so I said goodbye to her at about five thirty and that was the last . . .’ She shook her head and couldn’t carry on.

  ‘What time did the evening event end?’

  ‘It was scheduled to finish at nine thirty, but you can’t leave straight a
way. I know Pat often went to the bar for a drink to wind down before she went home.’

  ‘What was that event about?’

  ‘It was a discussion about originality and the issue of plagiarism. A panel of two writers and a publisher.’

  Oldroyd raised his eyebrows: the panel topic was certainly interesting in view of the controversy surrounding Penrose. ‘Did Pat have any enemies that you know of? Anyone who would want to do her harm?’

  ‘No. The only person I ever saw her really angry with was Damian Penrose, and it couldn’t have been him, could it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘But that man always made her life difficult. I can’t help thinking this is his fault somehow.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  She looked angry and desperate. ‘I don’t know. He was a curse on the festival and now it’s ruined. This is what he wanted. What on earth are we going to do without Pat?’

  Charles Derryvale and Esther Stevenson were indulging in Afternoon Tea at Bettys Tea Rooms, a local institution. They sat at a table overlooking Montpellier Hill and were served by waitresses in the traditional black-and-white uniform. A three-tier tea stand in the centre of the table was laden with small sandwiches, scones and cakes. Tea was served in a silver teapot, as it had been since 1919 when the café was founded by Frederick Belmont, a Swiss confectioner and baker. Derryvale poured the tea with difficulty, his large, clumsy frame contrasting with the daintiness of everything else.

  ‘There we are. Oh dear, I’m very sorry.’ He apologised for spilling some tea from the cup he passed to his companion, but the minor mishap did not affect his jolly mood. He loaded his plate with the sandwiches and kept popping them whole into his mouth throughout the ensuing conversation.

  ‘Well, I must say, Esther, I’ve never enjoyed a Crime Writing Festival as much as this one, and you know why.’ He couldn’t restrain himself from beaming at her.

  ‘Yes, I think I do,’ she replied. ‘I must admit it feels good not to have his baleful presence hovering over it all. Nasty man.’ She shuddered, took a sip of her tea and a nibble of her cucumber sandwich. Derryvale used the sugar tongs to plop three sugar cubes into his tea.

  ‘Things have turned out extremely well. If they hadn’t, I was half-inclined to go back to York, but now there’s such a frisson around here, such a fascinating atmosphere. I feel I could use it in a creative way. Imagine, here we are at the festival and an actual murder has taken place, and not any murder, but that of a famous and infamous writer.’ He rubbed his hands together. They were slightly greasy with butter. ‘If you wrote a plot like that, they’d accuse you of being totally unrealistic. Anyway, I’m definitely going to stay at the hotel for the duration.’ He was already moving on to the scones. He scooped strawberry jam and clotted cream on to his plate.

  Stevenson continued to sip her black tea but showed little interest in the food. ‘I must admit I do have this feeling of anti-climax,’ she said.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, I’ve spent so much time scheming and planning to bring the bastard down, and now that’s all finished. There’s nothing more I can do.’

  ‘Oh, the “Duncan is in his grave . . . Treason has done his worst . . . nothing can touch him further” sort of thing?’

  ‘Maybe. I’m not sorry he’s gone, but somehow I feel a bit cheated.’

  ‘You’d like to have seen him publicly humiliated in the courts and forced to pay out large sums of money to the writers from whom he stole. That was never going to happen, was it?’

  ‘I don’t suppose so.’

  ‘I must say, these scones are excellent. Can I tempt you?’

  ‘No, Charles, go ahead. I might just manage another small sandwich.’

  Derryvale’s greedy little eyes glistened as he helped himself to another scone. ‘Well, try to see the positive side,’ he said between mouthfuls. ‘Take my approach. You’ve got plenty of material to use. Your pursuit of Penrose and his subsequent demise could form the basis of a wonderful piece of crime fiction.’

  She smiled for the first time. ‘That would be audacious, to say the least, in the present circumstances, don’t you think?’

  Derryvale had finished his second scone and was turning his attention to the delicious-looking cakes on the bottom tier of the tea stand. He placed a small pink iced French Fancy on to his plate and took up a little silver cake fork.

  ‘I think it would be marvellous poetic justice if you could make money out of him after he cheated so many people, including you.’

  ‘Maybe,’ said Stevenson as she looked out on to Montpellier Hill. ‘Oh, look, it’s John!’

  Derryvale, who was sitting with his back to the window, turned to see John Sinclair looking through the tea room window. He was waving and saying something to them that wasn’t audible. Stevenson shook her head, and Sinclair pointed to the tea room door and walked off.

  ‘Looks like he’s going to join us,’ said Derryvale.

  In a moment Sinclair arrived at their table. ‘Well, that was fortuitous,’ he said. ‘I was about to ring you both.’ He paused, as if unsure how to continue. ‘It’s just that . . . someone’s told me that Patricia Hughes has been found dead. On Swan Avenue.’

  Derryvale was arrested in the act of manoeuvring a slice of Victoria sponge on to his plate. ‘Good Lord,’ he said, ‘intrigue upon intrigue.’

  ‘Charles! Really!’ said Stevenson.

  At the Royal Baths, the atmosphere remained very strange and tense. The whole of the downstairs area, including the pool, steam rooms, changing rooms and massage facilities, was closed. There was a line of incident tape blocking off the stairs, with a PC on guard at the top. The police were allowing rooms on the first floor to continue to be used for meetings, and a temporary space for massages had been established in one of these rooms.

  Carol Ashworth was spending most her time on the phone explaining to people that the Baths were still closed and that, no, she didn’t know anything about who had killed Damian Penrose. She rightly concluded that most of these calls were nothing to do with the Baths and when they might reopen; they were from people trying to satisfy their curiosity about the murder by asking silly questions.

  Steve Monroe and Sid Newman had little to do at the moment. Steve was bored anyway. He felt his life had got into a terrible rut and lacked any kind of risks, challenge and excitement. He was capable of far more than was involved in this job.

  Carol saw him lackadaisically sweeping the steps down to the baths area. ‘Hi, Steve,’ she said, ‘do you fancy a coffee?’

  ‘Thanks.’

  Carol went behind the office into a little kitchen area and made two mugs of instant coffee. Steve sat behind reception on a chair next to Carol’s. She handed him his mug.

  ‘How are you today? It’s all weird, isn’t it?’ she said.

  ‘Too right. I haven’t got enough to occupy me and keep my mind off finding that body.’ He shuddered and took a drink of his coffee.

  ‘That was such a shock, finding the body like that. I think you were very brave.’

  He shook his head. ‘Thanks. I still can’t believe there wasn’t anybody else there.’

  ‘No, and neither could the police. Look, you need a break. Have you got any leave coming up? How’s Jade? You two need to go off on holiday together.’ Jade Darton, the PR freelancer, was Steve’s girlfriend.

  ‘It’s a good idea, but Jade’s busy at the moment. She’s doing a bit of work for the festival and she’s also got this contract with a hotel chain. She’s spending quite a bit of time in London. Maybe later in the summer, if she can spare the time.’

  ‘Yes, there might be some last-minute deals. You can fly off to somewhere hot and relax.’

  Steve grinned. ‘Thanks, Carol, you’re very thoughtful. I’d like to get away from here, to be honest. It feels like a haunted mansion, and we’ve no idea when we can open again and get things back to normal, have we?’

  ‘No, I think the police are just as
puzzled as we are, and they won’t let the public in while down there’s a crime scene, and one they can’t explain.’ The phone rang again. Carol sighed and answered it. ‘Hello? Oh, hi, Shirley. I wasn’t expecting . . . What? You’re joking! No . . . That’s terrible . . . Yes, I will . . . OK. I’ll see you tomorrow.’ She put the phone down and looked at Steve with a shocked expression. ‘That was Shirley. She knows someone who works at The White Swan. There’s been another murder.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Yes. A body was found this morning on Swan Avenue, near the hotel. Apparently people were saying it’s the woman who organises the Crime Writing Festival. Isn’t that Patricia Hughes? It can’t be her, surely. I’ve known her for years. If it is, that’s two people to do with the festival who’ve been killed.’ She shook her head.

  ‘God,’ said Steve, gripping his mug tightly. ‘Do you think there’s a connection? If her body was found in the street, it sounds like a mugging to me.’

  ‘Maybe it was. What’s the world coming to when you can’t walk the streets of Harrogate without someone attacking you?’

  Carol closed her eyes to try to shut out the horror of that prospect.

  Back at Harrogate HQ, Oldroyd was unpacking a bag of materials sent up by the London Met. He intended to spend much of the afternoon going through them. The bag contained documents discovered in Penrose’s London flat that could be relevant to the case. There were lots of bank statements and letters from publishers and his agent, but nothing to suggest that he’d been in any financial difficulties. There was a folder haphazardly stuffed with correspondence from his solicitor about his divorce from Clare Bayliss, but the emotionless legal language conveyed nothing to Oldroyd.

  What he was much more interested in was a number of volumes of what was clearly Penrose’s diary, written in Moleskine notebooks, those jotters beloved by writers since the time of Ernest Hemingway. He was grateful to the thoughtful London detective who had selected them for inclusion. They were very likely to contain personal information that might furnish Oldroyd with important clues. Penrose had not had the opportunity to alter or even destroy them before he was murdered, so here were the famous writer’s unedited views and opinions.