* * *
A few more curious onlookers had joined the crowd gathered on the wall walk peering down at the body, and one or two were pointing at it.
“Would have been interesting if he’d gone over the side at the western end near those two towers,” said a man holding a guidebook and pointing off to his right. Stunned faces turned toward him.
“Those things, those stone structures projecting beyond the parapet of the main curtain wall between the two western towers. They’re called machicolations. Murder holes.”
“Who said anything about murder?”
The small crowd that had gathered to peer over the parapet turned around to see a young policewoman, dark curls tucked into her bowler-style hat with its distinctive navy-blue-and-white-checkered band and a North Wales Police silver cap badge, holding a notebook in one hand and a pen in the other. She looked from one cold, pale face to another.
“Who said anything about murder?” Bethan repeated.
“I was just saying that those things are called murder holes,” the man with the guidebook said defensively. “It says here that those defending the castle could pour boiling water or large stones down them to kill the invaders below.”
“Right, well, never mind that now. Was anyone here when it happened? Did anyone see anything? If you did, I’ll need your names and we’ll want to interview you,” Bethan said.
The crowd started to speak all at once and Bethan held up her hand.
“If anybody saw anything, please go and stand over there and do not talk to each other,” she ordered, pointing a little way down the wall walk. “If you did not see anything and cannot help with our inquiry, then you are free to leave and I would ask you to do so.”
Nobody moved.
“Who was the first one here?”
The man with the guidebook raised his hand. “Right,” Bethan said. “What’s your name?”
“Huw Bowen.”
“Good. Now then, Mr. Bowen, can you tell us what you saw? Did you see someone go over the wall walk?”
“No,” Bowen replied. “But I arrived soon after it happened. I was the first one to spot the body and I raised the alarm.” Bethan noted this. “Anything else you can tell me?”
He shook his head. “I was looking for my wife. I wonder where she’s got to.”
As he spoke, police officers on the ground began erecting a screen with a roof on it around the body to hide it from public view and cordoning off the area with blue-and-white crime-scene tape.
Thirteen
“Tell me everything that happened,” Victoria said that evening, reaching for the glass of red wine Penny was holding out to her. “From the beginning and don’t leave anything out.”
At first, Victoria hadn’t been too keen on the idea of Penny’s taking off the best part of a weekday to attend the Stretch and Sketch Club Christmas party but had agreed when Penny pointed out that most of the club members were either customers or potential customers, so it would be good if she went. Victoria had then suggested that Penny take business cards with her and be sure to hand them out.
Victoria had dropped in on Penny on the pretext of a few documents that needed signing, but they both knew the papers could have waited until the next day and that the real reason for Victoria’s visit was to hear all about the events at Conwy Castle.
“Well, I didn’t really see much,” Penny replied. “I was at ground level sketching, and the other members of the group were roaming all over the castle. I have no idea where they were. In fact, some of them might even have gone home, for all I know. Anyway, a few people were wandering about, and then I saw Harry Saunders stroll past. A few minutes later Florence hurried after him, and then Mrs. Lloyd and her friend Bunny showed up, and then Mrs. Lloyd rushed after Saunders, hoping to catch him up, I think. She seemed very determined and quite agitated. I didn’t get a sense that she knew that Florence was there. And a few minutes after that, the commotion started. A scream came from somewhere”-she raised her arm and made a fluttering motion-“and then the next thing I knew, a man came running out of the Great Hall area shouting that someone had fallen. I didn’t realize until I got up there that it was Huw Bowen. Anyway, I called the police and then I climbed up the prison tower stairs.” She winced. “They were very slippery, by the way, those stairs were. I hate heights and I really had to force myself to keep going up those terrible, narrow stairs.”
After a sip of wine and a moment spent gathering her thoughts, she continued.
“Let me see. Where was I? Oh yes, and then Bethan arrived and joined us up on the wall walk and more police arrived and started taping off the scene on the ground. People had to be very careful coming down those awful stairs. So slippery. I was terrified on them. And besides, everyone was quite shaken up, as you’d imagine.”
“But you didn’t actually see anything?” Victoria asked. “You didn’t see him go over the side or anything like that?”
“No, I wasn’t anywhere near.” She shifted in her chair. “I don’t even know who it was, but I have my suspicions.”
A knock on the front door halted the conversation. As Penny went to answer it, Victoria set her wineglass down on a side table and waited. A few moments later she heard voices at the front door and Detective Chief Inspector Gareth Davies entered the room, with Penny following, holding his coat.
“Evening, Victoria. How are you?”
She smiled at him. “Good, thanks. You?”
“Fine.” He looked around a little uncertainly.
“Bethan not with you?”
Davies shook his head. “No, she’s just gone to get something to eat, but we’ll be meeting up in about, oh”-he consulted his watch-“half an hour.”
Penny draped his coat over a chair, and they sat down close to each other on the sofa.
“Can we get you anything?” Penny asked. “We’ve just opened a bottle of wine, but somehow I doubt that’s what you came for.”
“No, no wine, thanks, but it’s been a long day and I could murder a cup of coffee.”
Victoria jumped up. “I’ll get that. I know you came here to speak to Penny.”
Gareth nodded gratefully as Victoria disappeared into the kitchen, and then he called after her, “And a couple of biscuits if there are any going.”
“Right.”
“I can’t tell you very much,” Penny said, and then recounted what she had told Victoria.
“Well, it’s early days yet, of course,” Gareth replied, “and I expect it’ll get complicated, this case. Outdoor ones often do, with so many people milling about.
“And then there’s the business with the witnesses. Everyone talking to everyone else and pretty soon people don’t recall what they actually saw, they start repeating what someone else told them as the way they remember it.”
He sighed and settled back into the sofa, stretching his legs out in front of him. “Oh, yes, there have been lots of studies done on that.”
His face looked drawn and tired. The corners of his mouth were turned down, making him look older.
“You look knackered,” Penny said.
Davies nodded. “I am, a bit,” he agreed. “But it’s more than that. It’s bad enough when people die at Christmastime, but now we’ve got a major investigation to run and, frankly, the timing is terrible. If we don’t get this sorted by Christmas, I’ll have to assign young officers to this case-ask them to give up time that they should be spending at home with their wives and children.” He glanced at Penny beside him, her face glowing from an afternoon spent in the fresh air doing something she enjoyed.
“And of course, there’s my own agenda here, too. I was hoping to take some time off and that maybe we, that is, you and I, could go away somewhere nice for a few days. I’ve been on the Internet… there are hotels in Chester or Bath that do lovely Christmas breaks and I thought perhaps this would be something you’d enjoy. We’d arrive the afternoon of Christmas Eve, warm mince pies and a glass of mulled wine in front of a crackling
fire…”
He stopped as Victoria entered bearing a small tray with a mug of coffee and a couple of digestive biscuits on a small, violet-patterned plate.
“I think I got the milk and sugar the way you like it.”
“If it’s warm and wet, it’ll do.” He took a grateful sip and told her it was just fine. Sensing that she had interrupted something, Victoria gave an apologetic shrug.
“It’s all right, Victoria,” Penny said. “We were just discussing Christmas, and Gareth was saying what with all this business at the castle that he might not be able to take any time off.”
Gareth took a bite of his biscuit and smiled at her. “I’m sure we’ll all sort out something nice for Christmas.”
“Of course we will,” Penny said brightly. “You and Bethan will come to us here-Victoria and me.” She looked at Victoria, who nodded. “Right, now that that’s all settled,” Penny began eagerly, “let’s move on. You must know more by now about what happened at Conwy Castle. What else can you tell us? Do you know who the victim is?”
“Ah,” said Gareth, “that’s a bit tricky, and the answer, I guess is yes and no.”
The two women leaned forward.
“We’ll need formal identification, of course, and I have no idea who will be able to do that. But I saw the body myself and I recognized the man I met at Mrs. Lloyd’s open house, who was calling himself Harry Saunders. But he had no papers on him and we don’t know yet where he was living. So we don’t know for sure if Harry Saunders was even his real name. I doubt it was. It was likely one of many. The body will be fingerprinted and we’ll get on to the American embassy and see if they know who he is. We’ll also try dental records and DNA, if we have to.”
“Yes, I remember you had your suspicions about him,” Penny said. “That’ll be that policeman’s instinct we hear so much about.”
Davies tapped his nose. “Sometimes things just don’t smell right. And I’ve been doing this a long time, remember.”
“Well, you’ll be speaking to Mrs. Lloyd, of course,” said Victoria. “She knew him better than anyone and was becoming very fond of him, by all accounts. I think she had high hopes there.”
Davies groaned. “I haven’t spoken to her yet, but that’s what brings me to Llanelen tonight. I just wanted to have a word with you first, to see if you’d remembered anything else that you didn’t think at the time worth mentioning to Bethan.”
Penny shook her head. “No, sorry. Just what I told her.”
“Then that’s going to be a problem, I’m afraid. No one really saw anything.” He set down his mug. “But someone certainly saw something.” He started to rise from the sofa, but Penny laid a hand on his shoulder. As he glanced over at her, she tilted her head and raised an eyebrow.
“What do you mean ‘someone saw something’? How do you know? The stairs were really slippery and I’m sure it was just as bad up there on the wall walks. Signs were posted everywhere warning people to be careful. And you know those open spots in the wall are really low. I thought how easy it would be for someone to fall over the side. You just lean over a little too far… He could have slipped over the side.”
Davies nodded.
“Well, nine times out of ten a fall is just a fall. But not this time. Unfortunately for him, he had some help going off that wall. In fact, until we get the results of the postmortem, we won’t know for sure, but it may not even have been the fall that killed him.”
The room became still. Penny was aware of Victoria’s quiet breathing.
“Are you saying he was pushed?” Victoria asked. “How can you tell that?”
“Pushed? Well, maybe, but certainly he was given a helping hand over the side.” He looked from one to the other.
“When the officers on site got a closer look at the body, they found something pretty nasty in his back. A letter opener that had once apparently belonged to one Arthur Lloyd.”
Penny gasped.
“No! Surely you’re not suggesting that Mrs. Lloyd had anything to do with this!”
“I’m not suggesting anything,” Davies replied smoothly. “We’re just following up and going where the investigation leads, and the letter opener is certainly leading us in a certain direction. For now, at any rate.”
He drained the last of his coffee, handed the empty mug to Victoria, and stood up.
“Right, well, thanks for the coffee, and I’m sure you’ll let me know if anything else comes to mind. Sometimes we remember things later. Every little bit of information helps, remember, no matter how trivial it might seem to you.”
“You’re on your way to Mrs. Lloyd’s house now, aren’t you?” Penny asked, handing him his coat. “You’re meeting Bethan there.”
Davies put on his coat and headed for the door.
“I have to speak to her, yes. And Bethan will be present.”
Penny closed the door quietly behind him and then, frowning, returned to Victoria. The two women looked at each other.
“There must be an explanation,” said Victoria. “Mrs. Lloyd? That can’t be right.”
“Never in a million years,” agreed Penny.
Fourteen
“Oh, it’s you. You’d better come in, then.”
Florence stood aside as Davies and Bethan Morgan crowded into Mrs. Lloyd’s hallway.
“Give me your coats,” she instructed. “And from the look of your boots, best if you took them off. If you don’t mind,” she added. The two visitors dutifully bent over, removed their boots, and set them down neatly, side by side, on a plastic tray.
“I expect you’ll be wanting a word with Evelyn. She’s in the sitting room, but she’s pretty shaken up. Come through.”
Mrs. Lloyd, her face creased with anxiety, stood up as the two police officers entered the sitting room. A cheerful fire blazing away did its best to dispel the gloom that seemed to hover around her. She waved her hand in the general direction of the sofa and the two officers sat down. As Bethan took out her notebook, Davies addressed Mrs. Lloyd in a neutral, calm voice, as Florence remained standing in the doorway.
“Now, Mrs. Lloyd, I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but pending formal identification, we believe that your, um, friend, Harry Saunders, died at Conwy Castle this afternoon.” Before he could continue, Mrs. Lloyd’s shoulders sagged as she held her hand over her mouth, trying to stifle the sobs desperate to escape. Bethan reached out to pat her hand, and the two police officers waited for a few moments as Mrs. Lloyd struggled to control herself.
“I know this comes as unpleasant news,” Davies continued, “but I’m afraid I have to ask you about your whereabouts at the castle this afternoon.”
Mrs. Lloyd said nothing. Florence disappeared and returned a few moments later holding out a box of tissues. Mrs. Lloyd gave her a weak smile, pulled two or three from the box, and dabbed at her eyes.
“I had gone to the castle with my friend, Bunny,” she said. “I had hoped to see Harry over the weekend, but he never arrived, because of the weather, you see. You know what the roads were like. It was your lot advising everyone to stay off them.” She looked from one to the other. “So when Penny said she had just seen him heading toward the rear part of the castle, the inner ward I believe it’s called, naturally I hurried after him. I needed a word with him. But when I got there, he was not to be seen.”
“I need to be very clear about this. You didn’t see him on the lower level,” Bethan repeated. “Is that correct?”
“No, he was not there.”
“So what did you do then?”
“Well, I thought maybe he had gone up on the wall walk, so I went up there. They had signs posted about how slippery the stairs and walkways were, so I took my time going up there I can tell you, clinging onto that rope railing for dear life, and when I didn’t see him at the top of the stairs, I came down again. It was very windy up there. I didn’t want to risk walking along the wall walk. It’s all right in summer, I suppose, but not this time of year. Not for me. I’m very fri
ghtened of falling, and looking back on it now, I was daft to go up those stairs in the first place.”
The two police officers had discussed whether this would be the right time to ask Mrs. Lloyd about the letter opener and had decided to take a wait-and-see approach, depending on how the interview went.
Davies was thinking about introducing it into the conversation when Bethan’s eyes turned to Florence, who was now perched on a small chair beside the door just inside the room.
“And you, Florence, what about you? Did you see anything?”
Mrs. Lloyd turned sharply and looked at her companion.
“You were there, Florence? Whatever for?”
Florence straightened the collar of her blouse.
“How do you know I was there?”
“I recognized you at the edge of the crowd that had gathered on the wall walk, Florence,” said Bethan. “But you left before I could speak to you.”
“Well, yes, I was there,” Florence admitted. “I spotted him on the train coming from Chester, and when he got off at Conwy, I decided to follow him to see what he was up to. I managed to keep him in my sights as far as the castle, but by the time I had bought my ticket and found my way inside, he was quite far ahead of me. I thought I spotted him going down the length of the place, but he just seemed to disappear. I don’t see as well as I used to, to be honest, and I didn’t know where he’d got to, so I thought I’d just take a wander round, and look for him. I was trying to work out what business he had there because he certainly didn’t seem like the sightseeing type to me.” And then she added, “But I guess he could have fancied visiting an old monument. There’s no accounting for taste, is there?”
Mrs. Lloyd glared at her and started to speak, but Bethan raised her hand, silencing her before she could say anything.
It was now Davies’ turn to speak.
“Mrs. Lloyd, do you own a gold-coloured letter opener with the name Arthur Lloyd engraved on it?”
“Why, yes, I do! It was given to Arthur as his Pineapple Award by the fruit and veg vendors association back in the 1980s. How do you know about it? Has it turned up? We misplaced it, oh, what Florence, a couple of weeks ago? I can’t remember exactly, but one day we went to open the post and it was nowhere to be found.” A puzzled look crossed her face. “But why do you ask? Where is it?”
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