“Any of those bus stops near a café called the Town House Garden?” I called to Mills, taking the receipt over to our board, finally filling a gap for Viviane’s morning.
“Hang on,” he answered, flicking between browser pages. “Was she there?”
“Saturday morning, eight o’clock. Ordered to stay in.”
“Eight? Her shift started at nine, that works out. Found it, one sec.” He glanced between two pages on his computer. “This is why I don’t take the bus,” he muttered as he looked. “So bloody confusing.”
I grinned, perching on the edge of my desk.
“Yep! Would have been the fourth stop. She could have hopped off and on again, no problem. This route,” he tapped the screen, “would take her to just a street away from the house.”
“I didn’t think there’d be many bus stops directly outside it,” I said. “Well, at least we know where she was.”
“Why go there, though? Why not her usual place, especially since she was clearly a valued customer?” He’d wandered over to my desk and was glancing at the almost full loyalty card.
“Maybe she was meeting someone, and that was more convenient.”
“We should head out there, see if anyone remembers serving her and if she was alone.” Mills was perking up, and admittedly, so was I. We were getting closer to figuring out what Viviane had been doing, and the sooner we did that, then the sooner we figured out what the hell happened to her.
“We will. Anything from the auction sites?” I asked, following him back to his desk.
“Nothing on a music box, but I’ll keep an eye on it. Mostly vases, more than anything else.” He frowned at the screen where the bid for one such item was an eye-watering amount. “Never much saw the allure, personally. What do you even do with a vase like that?”
“Put it somewhere obvious, so when people come over, you can bore them to death about it. Whatever else?”
“Is that why you have that map of Middle Earth in your hallway?” he asked me. “So that you can tell people all your bizarre knowledge of J.R.R. Tolkien?”
“That knowledge wasn’t bizarre when it helped us to win that pub quiz, was it? And no, anyway. It’s there because it’s the only wall large enough.”
Mills chuckled, looking down at the website again as the numbers slowly climbed higher and higher. “What would you do with a music box?” he asked quietly, thoughtfully. “Other than to show it off?” He looked up at me, and I could see where his mind was going.
“A rival collector?”
“Not impossible”
“Nor improbable. Remember what Dr Dorland said about our thief having a brain cell and stealing the paperwork to go along with it? It’s almost worthless without it, so they wanted something important, historical value, but also something pretty.”
“Something to show off. Another collector or another place like the house who wants some new items to bring in a crowd. Places like that must always have a bit of competition, especially when they’re private places. Not National Trust or anything.”
“We’ll look into that,” I decided, returning to perch on my desk. “See if there are any similar properties, any sort of discord between them.”
“Professional rivals,” Mills started typing away. “Stranger things have happened.”
Nor would it be the first time we had had a body on our hands from a matter of professional rivalry either. People got their egos hurt out there, constantly in competition, always wanting the bigger client or the best sale, maybe even the best trinket to put on a shelf and draw in a crowd or to donate to a museum for the better credit. Food for thought.
Our office door opened, and Smith stuck her head in.
“Dr Crowe wants to see you both,” she told us. “Said it’s important.”
Nine
Thatcher
“Did she tell you why?” I asked Smith, pushing away from my desk. She shook her head, holding the door open for us.
“Said to hurry up, though,” she told us. I took the door from her, and she wandered back to her desk, Mills appearing by my side.
“Think she found something?” he asked as we made our way across the floor, heading downstairs.
“God, I hope so,” I muttered. Getting an official statement on what exactly happened to Viviane should, by all accounts, help us narrow down some leads, cross off a few options. At least we knew where she had been that morning. That was something.
We headed into Crowe’s lab, where she stood by Viviane’s body, pulling a pair of clean gloves on. Her report sat on a little metal table by her hip, but neither one of us moved to take it. Instead, Mills and I positioned ourselves opposite her.
“Lena,” I greeted her.
“You’re in luck, boys,” she told me, pulling a metal trolley with various bowls and tools on it over to her. “We’ve got a murder.”
I felt a loaded weight flood out from me, only to have its place taken by another. I glanced at Mills, whose pale face and bright eyes told me he was feeling much the same. I almost smiled at him, him and those good instincts, but instead focused my attention on Crowe, whose face was uncharacteristically drawn. I recalled what she said at the scene of the crime, to dress a murder up as a suicide was a low, disrespectful thing to do.
“What have we got?” I asked her, hoping that launching into her usual spiel of medical terms might shake the grim expression from her face.
“The bruises on her body weren’t consistent with any usual violence. No hits, no finger marks around her neck or wrists, so it’s likely that she was subdued in some other way, and that’s where that comes in.” Crowe nodded at the angry mark that still livid on the victim’s neck.
“Don’t those always occur in a hanging?” Mills asked as I bent down, taking a closer look at Viviane’s neck. It was an angry-looking thing, looking rather like something had dug painfully into her neck. I was surprised, from looking at it, that her neck hadn’t broken, and from Crowe’s face, she had gone down the same trail of thought.
“Yes, but not usually so severely,” she explained. “A rope cuts off the airway if it’s not tight enough to snap the neck. You strangle, basically. But this is dug into her neck, almost piercing the skin.”
“A velvet rope wouldn’t do that,” I murmured thoughtfully.
Crowe nodded in agreement. “No, it would not. It would hold the body there, as it well did, and would have cut off her airflow. But we know her neck didn’t break, so we can assume, whether or not, she would have struggled up there, especially with an injury like that. It wouldn’t have been able to hold a struggling body for that long, certainly not until she was dead and then onwards through till morning.”
“Was it the struggling that made it so deep?” Mills asked her.
“Could have done,” Crowe allowed.
“But that’s not a definite sign of murder,” I pointed out. “There was something else around her neck, wasn’t there?”
“Clever lad,” Crowe praised me. “Looks to me like there was, and she would have struggled against something. You don’t suffocate easily, even if you do it to yourself. So, I needed to figure out what exactly she was struggling against. We checked the contents of her lungs and found these.”
She turned on her projector and slid a petri dish underneath, the image showing up blurrily on the white wall behind her. Crowe gave the old machine a thump, and the picture settled. Inside the dish were small, black particles, and I didn’t even bother to pretend I knew what they were.
“Fibres,” she told me, the energy slowly coming back into her body. “Wool fibres.”
“She suffocated?” Mills asked, looking sadly down at Viviane’s face.
Crowe nodded. “My guess is that the killer put something over her head, held it down around the neck. She would have inhaled the fibres whilst she was in there, and that’s probably why it dug in so much. No other marks on the body mean that you can put a rope there once she’s dead, and…” She trailed off with a shrug.
“And people assume suicide,” Mills finished. I crossed my arms, rocking back slightly on my heels. Our killer was strong enough to hold a bag around her head until she died and then secure her to the ceiling to stage it as a suicide. I wondered whether or not we were right about this being planned out or not.
“There’s this too,” Crowe went on. “Under her fingernails. Couldn’t figure out what it was at first, mostly a chemical component, but one that is regularly found in floor polish.”
“Were there any scratch marks on the floor?” I asked, wondering if SOCO had picked any up.
“No,” Crowe said with a shake of the head. “But I’m guessing the layer of polish was too thick. Viviane scratched at that, didn’t get through to damage the wood itself and even if she did—”
“Her nails were covered in polish,” I nodded.
“And her watch must have broken in the struggle,” Mills added.
Crowe nodded and flashed him a wink. “After a careful autopsy, boys, my professional conclusion is,” she smacked her folder into my hands, “you’ve got a homicide.”
“Is it weird that I’m somehow relieved by that?” Mills asked quietly, reaching up to tug his collar a little looser.
“Means we can actually do something,” I remarked. “Find a culprit. The fibres?” I looked at Crowe. “Any idea what they might be from?”
“Well, luckily, she wasn’t wearing any wool, so we know not from her. Best guess is some sort of bag or sack. Maybe a blanket? But something was secured around it, something thin,” she added with another glance at Viviane’s neck. “Thin and strong.”
“Wire?” Mills suggested. Crowe considered that and gave a small bounce her head,
“Cushioned by the fabric, maybe.” She looked at the projected image. “But definitely more than you find in anyone else’s lungs. That would have killed her eventually if the oxygen loss hadn’t.”
Like the factory children from the Victorian era, with their lungs all stuffed full of cotton.
“Thank you, Lena.” I held up the folder like it was the Holy Grail. “You are brilliant.”
“So, I have been told. Hard work’s up to you now. Got a murderer to catch.”
I took that as her dismissal, and we trailed from the room, her report in hand.
“We were right then,” Mills said as he caught up with me.
“You were right,” I corrected him. “I don’t think Sharp will ever second guess you again after this.”
“After we find her killer,” he pointed out. It would be easier than trying to figure out why she would have killed herself, and already, we had a stolen antique from her house, her whereabouts that morning and a small but steady list of suspects.
“You think we should have another talk with the co-workers now?” I wondered aloud. “They might have a bit more to offer, knowing that she was killed. Less personal, in a way.”
“They’ll have to know, anyway. Think any of them is the killer?” Mills asked as we headed back upstairs, beelining for Sharp’s office.
“Could be. Need to get a sense if any of them have the right motive for it first of all. Smith,” I called the constable over before we reached Sharp’s door.
“Sir?”
“Any word on that security footage?” I asked.
“Came in this morning, sir,” she reported. “On your desk.”
“Check it for us,” I ordered. “Let us know if you see anything.” We needed to be out soon, clearing up alibis and motives, and I would rather not spend hours hunched over my computer screen watching tourists roam around a museum.
I doubted Smith relished the idea either, but she blinked with surprise and nodded firmly. “Yes, sir.”
“Thank you.” I gave her a smile and knocked on Sharp’s door, swinging it open once her stern voice called us in. Mills and I filed in, and I slid Crowe’s report over her desk as we sat down. She opened it, her eyes roaming over a few pages, and then she closed it and leant back in her chair, reappraising Mills, her arms folded across her chest. He shifted a little under her stare.
“Not just a pretty face, are you, Mills?” she said at long last.
He opened his mouth, closed it, looking confused, and finally managed to say, “No, ma’am.”
“No,” she mused, sitting forward and propping her elbows on the table. “Good thing, too,” she added and turned her attention on me. “Goes without saying by now, but your Senior Investigating Officer on this case. We’ve got a murder, Thatcher. What have you got for me?”
“We know that Viviane Charles had a fairly distinguished collection of antiques and ancient artefacts and that one of them is missing from her home. The others in the cabinet were in a state of disarray.”
“Did she get rid of it in a panic?” Sharp asked, leaning back again and crossing one leg over the other. I hesitated. We hadn’t thought of that. Might have done, if something in that particular market indeed scared her, and a bad trade deal might be what got her killed.
“Our first suspicion was that it was stolen,” I told Sharp.
“Any sign of a break-in?”
“Not on first inspection.”
Sharp’s lips pursed slightly, and she cocked her head to one side. “Get SOCO down there, give the place a once over for fingerprints or DNA. Might be a bit late to find anything substantial, but it’s worth a shot.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“So, you’re leaning down on this antiques business, then?”
“We know it's a dangerous market,” Mills put in. “It could be that Viviane got herself caught up in the wrong side of it.”
“What did Liene tell you about your box?” she asked.
“Said that it could be worth a lot, or not much, she’d need to examine the artefact in person,” I told her. “But from the look of the other things Viviane has, it’s probably genuine. Though, not worth as much as some other things she had. Mills and I suspect it was taken as something to show off for its look, rather than its historical value.”
“By whom?” Sharp asked automatically.
“Maybe by a rival collector or a rival museum to the one she worked in,” Mills answered.
“Business competition?”
“It’s a likelihood.”
Sharp hummed in agreement. “What about the day she died, anything there?”
“We found a receipt in her things from a coffee shop she went to that morning that isn’t her usual. We think it’s why she was late to work, and it’s halfway between her home and the museum on her bus route,” Mills told her.
“We were going to go down there,” I added. “See if any of the staff remember seeing her and whether or not she was there alone.”
“You’ll need to head to her place of work again,” Sharp ordered. “Get some alibis from them all for Saturday night, her parents too. They’ll need to be informed.” She looked at me, eyes grazing over the pained expression on my face and let out a long sigh. “Fine. I will inform Mr and Mrs Charles, but I want to have something concrete to offer them.”
“Tell them we think it’s connected to her collection,” I said with a shrug. “They said she never much shared it with them, but people talk about different things when someone’s been murdered to when they’ve committed suicide.”
Sharp nodded. “I’ll see what I can get from them. Maybe a hint as to where she got most of her collection. How did she seem, by the way?” she asked abruptly.
“Who?” I asked.
“Liene. I haven’t seen her for a while. She got out of a breakup a few weeks ago. Did she seem alright?” I couldn’t read her face as she stared at me, and I hated it. I could hover, very much read the smug little expression on Mills’s face as he looked my way too.
“I’d say so,” I answered, clearing my throat. “Though I don’t know her well enough to tell.”
“Hm.” Sharp’s face still didn’t give anything away. “I’ll see her soon. So, we have a possible motive, and I’m guessing a few suspects?”
“She’d have had contacts in the antiques world,” Sharp said in agreement. “I’ll have Wasco take another good look through her laptop, see if he can’t pull up something more useful than an Excel spreadsheet.”
“The money!” Mills recalled suddenly with a snap of his fingers. “She was saving a lot of money; we should follow that. See where it was coming from and maybe what she was planning on doing with it.”
Sharp gave him a pleased nod. “Again, find some of her contacts. I doubt she was as solitary as she appears to be. If she was at that café with someone the morning she died, we need to know who. Go to the museum,” she decided after she spoke, “and head to the café afterwards.”
“Yes, ma’am.” I stood from the desk, Mills a second behind me and opened the door. I let him out, but before my feet could hit the doorway, Sharp called out.
“Max!”
I paused, glancing over my shoulder. She rarely called me Max, only ever on my birthday or when she wanted a favour. My eyes narrowed as she rose from her desk and walked around to face me, leaning against the table with her arms folded and a glint in her eyes that I was not a fan of.
“What?”
“I might have a more selfish reason to send you to Dr Dorland,” she admitted. “I know a few professors in historical artefacts.”
I let the door swing too and turned to face her fully. “Right.”
Dangerous Relics (A DCI Thatcher Yorkshire Crimes Book 3) Page 8