“You liked her, didn’t you?” A smile slowly spread across her face. “I could tell, you blushed. And Mills looked like he was planning your stag do.”
“We spoke for about fifteen minutes, Sharp.”
“And?”
“And…” I trailed off, lifting and dropping my arms with exasperation. “Why are you meddling?”
“Because you’ve been moping around ever since Jeannie Gray took off, and I thought you might enjoy the company of someone less flighty.”
I rolled my eyes, caving in. “She was lovely.”
“But?” she asked tartly, picking up on the resignation in my voice.
But? Where to begin. I spent all my free time at the coaching house and with Elsie, with Sally, or even Mills. The last girl I had been with had ended things after one too many calls into the station at ungodly hours of the day. And, though I’d never admitted out loud, I hoped that Jeannie would come back.
“She gave me her card,” I told Sharp eventually. “When we wrap this case up, I’ll see where we are.”
Her eyes narrowed, but she nodded, knowing that that was likely the best she would get from me. “Hop to it then.”
Ten
Thatcher
We sent word to Viviane’s co-workers to meet us at the museum. They were closed on Monday’s, but now the place was a murder scene. It might be a while longer before it was up and running as per usual. We arranged to meet them in just under an hour, giving them time to reach the house from wherever they were. As we waited, we joined Smith at her computer, watching the hours of Saturday fly past. The cameras in the house weren’t great. They were in the corners of the old rooms, angled towards the important features, the expensive and irreplaceable items. There were blind spots and, annoyingly, no cameras on in the rooms that were closed to the public. Not the dining room, the hall in which Viviane was murdered, or the morning room beside it. Smith had found a few cameras that might be useful for seeing someone come in or out, but I imagined we were to put too much hope in the footage.
“They would know, wouldn’t they?” Smith was asking me. “The staff? They’d know about the blind spots, where the cameras are on and where they aren’t?”
“They would,” I confirmed, and my doubts around the group of women in the museum grew as we watched Rita giving a tour around the library. Mills and I both leant forward, unable, somehow, to recognise the girl on the screen from the one we had met. She was alive in the footage, smiling beautifully at her group, hands folded before her gently when she wasn’t pointing something out.
“Thought you’d want to see this bit,” Smith said, having taken us to the exact moment. As we watched, Viviane herself walked into the room, a clipboard in her hand. She stopped for a moment, watching her colleague talk. At one point, Rita smiled over the crowd to her, and Viviane drifted away into another room. There was no hostility there that I could pick up on.
“Viviane goes upstairs, then starts doing a check of all the rooms. Spends most of the afternoon in the library, doing inventory,” Smith told us.
“What about Rita?” I asked.
“She does a few more tours and, after that, circulates some of the room. The manager stays at the desk for the most part, but now and then she goes into a room, chats to one of the girls.”
“What about the end of the day?” I asked. “Take us there.”
Smith obliged, speeding through the hours. We watched from the camera in the entrance as Rita stood before the desk saying something to Viviane as she pulled her coat on. She went for the door, and almost paused, but let herself out into the evening. The manager followed next, and once the last straggling group of visitors left, we watched Viviane lock up the inner and outer doors. She moved away then, locking upstairs and coming down where we lost her in the dining room. Smith hit pause as she slipped from the library, and we looked at the time.
“Half six,” Smith muttered.
She’s about to die, I realised. Barely any time at all. Between then and seven, someone else came in. We looked at the other cameras, but there’s nobody in any of the other rooms.
“The only other access into the house is through the kitchen,” Smith said, “nothing there all day. Looks like a dead-end into the alley, anyway.” She showed us all the same, and sure enough, nothing but an urban fox shows up outside the doors.
“Must be another way in,” I muttered, rubbing my hand along my jaw.
“It’s time to go, sir,” Mills told me, looking at his watch.
“I’ll keep looking,” Smith assured me. “See if I notice anything new.”
I clapped her on the shoulder and stood, pulling my coat on. “Thank you, Smith.”
Mills and I headed down to my car, and once inside, he reached forward and turned down the radio.
“Surely there must be other doors in and out of the house?” he wondered as I pulled away from the station. “The dining room or morning room, perhaps?”
“Maybe. But in places like those, they all get sealed off over time. Especially when they become museums,” I pointed out. “Also means they’d need less security all round. Only two ways in, cuts that problem in half.”
“But we have no idea how our killer got in.”
“As Smith said, they must know where the cameras are.”
“The staff,” he muttered. I nodded, keeping my eyes on the roads ahead as I navigated us through the rainy streets to the townhouse. His phone buzzed as I pulled up to the curb.
“SOCO’s at Viviane’s flat, doing a once over. They’ll be in touch if they find anything.”
Sharp does work quickly, I thought, cutting the engine and climbing out.
“How do you want to do this, sir?” Mills asked, joining me where I stood on the pavement, looking up at the house. The rain turned my hair and collar damp, but at least it wasn’t the endless torrent it had been yesterday.
“We’ll address them together, then speak to them alone. I want to see how they react,” I added. “And how they react around each other.”
Mills nodded and reached forward, opening the outer door and let me through to knock on the closed inner. It wasn’t long before it opened, Josephine Goddard standing aside to let us in.
“We’re in the library,” she told us as Mills shut the doors. “Got some tea there, as well.”
“Lovely, thank you, Ms Goddard.” We followed her through to where the others were. Nia sat on an uncomfortable-looking desk chair, cradling a cup of tea. Rita was on the sofa, her legs curled up underneath her, an untouched cup on the little table by her elbow. She didn’t have any makeup on today, and her black hair was hidden underneath a fifties style kerchief. She looked up as we entered, her eyes lined with shadows.
“What can we do for you, Inspectors?” Josephine asked, taking her seat in an armchair. “I take it this is about Viviane?”
“It is,” I confirmed, pulling another chair over to sit where I could see them all. Mills stood behind me, leaning against a chest of drawers. “There’s been a new development. And I’m very sorry to have to tell you that we have reason to believe that Viviane Charles was murdered here, on Saturday night.”
The silence was cutting, the shock evident on all their faces. Josephine Goddard placed her cup down with shaky hands as Nia lifted her hands to her face. Only Rita stayed still, staring at us with wide eyes, her skin losing all colour.
“Murdered?” Her eyes flickered over to the dark dining room beyond and the hall beside it. “Viviane?”
“I don’t understand, Inspector,” Ms Goddard leant forward, dabbing at her face with a napkin, her head bowed so that I couldn’t quite see her face.
“Who would want to do that to her?” Nia exclaimed, her skin turning pink, eyes watering. “She was such a lovely girl!”
“How?” Rita asked, her low voice steady. “She locked the house up.” She was calm, and I wondered if it was shock, or something else.
“That’s what we’re now trying to ascertain, Miss Jones. Given t
he new circumstances, we wondered if there was anything else you might be able to tell us about Viviane. Anything that might help. Or as you left that night,” I suggested, “did you see anything unorthodox on the streets?”
“It was quiet,” Ms Goddard told us. “Not much around here on a Saturday night for people. The closest pub is ten minutes away.”
“We will need to speak with you all about your whereabouts Saturday,” I told them. “Miss Jones, if we could start with you?” She looked up at me from the rug she had turned to study and nodded uncertainly, pushing herself from the sofa. We went to the other side of the room, leaving Mills with the others, to two chairs that faced inwards beside a window, a chess table in between.
“We understand that you left before the house closed on Saturday?” Rita nodded, twisting a silver ring on her finger.
“I offered to stay,” she told me, “keep her company until the last visitors were gone. But Viv said no, said that they wouldn’t stay much longer, so I left.”
“And where did you, Miss Jones?”
“Took the bus home. My stop’s two streets over, outside the bookshop?” I nodded, knowing the one she meant. “Stayed at home. Not much of a going-out person,” she added with a weak chuckle.
“Can anyone vouch for you, Miss Jones?”
“I live with my brother,” she said. “He can for most of the night, but he went out to the cinema.”
“But he can vouch for you coming home and staying there?” She gave a little nod. “Can I have his contact details, Miss Jones, to confirm this with him?”
She rattled off his number by heart, and I quickly jotted it down.
“How did Viviane seem when you left?” I asked, putting the number away.
“She seemed normal. She’d been in a good mood all day, that’s why…” She shrugged and let the sentence fall short. Why she couldn’t understand how Viviane might have taken her own life was what she wanted to say.
“She didn’t seem worried, scared?”
“No.”
“What about you?” I turned my attention to Rita. She had been studying the chessboard, but she looked up now, meeting my gaze. “Were you happy to leave her here?”
“I wanted to stay with her. I don’t much like being in this place on my own at night,” she admitted, rubbing her arms. “But Viv was tough. I wasn’t worried about her.”
I nodded and gave her a wry smile. “Thank you, Miss Jones.”
She nodded, standing and heading back to the sofa where Nia handed her a fresh cup of tea. She took it this time, taking slow little sips. Mills met me halfway across the room.
“Well?”
“Went home after work, was there all night. Lives with her brother,” I told him, “who can vouch for that. But he went out at one point.”
“She offered that up easily,” Mills commented.
“We’ll figure out the timeframe from him,” I said, looking away from her. “Anything from them while we were gone?”
“Nothing much.” He stepped closer, angling us away from them. “But Josephine Goddard was keeping a close eye on Rita. I don’t think she’s all that trusting of her.”
I couldn’t really blame her. From Rita’s nerves on Sunday to her utter calm today, it was difficult to get a bearing on what she really made of all this.
“Let’s speak to Nia, get that done. I’ll talk to Goddard last.” Mills nodded and crossed back over to the group as I returned to my chair by the window. Nia trod softly over, settling into the chair with a tissue pressed to her face.
“Thank you for this, Mrs Jenkins,” I told her softly. “All I need to know is where you were on Saturday night.”
“I was home, with the husband and children.”
“You have children?” I asked, hoping that talking about them might settle her nerves a bit.
“Two,” she said with a weak smile. “Girl and a boy.”
“You didn’t leave home at all, say between six and eight?”
She shook her head firmly. “Saturday night is family night. We watched a film, and I let them order a pizza. My husband,” she said, “he’ll tell you.”
“Thank you. If you give his contact information to Mills, we can get that all sorted quickly.”
She nodded, and I offered her a gentle smile as she stood and headed over. A moment later, Josephine Goddard joined me.
“Inspector,” she greeted me, taking a seat. Her eyes were slightly red, but she held herself upright as she sat and waited.
“Ms Goddard. I’m aware that the three of you took turns locking up the house at night?”
She nodded swiftly. “We do. We’ve had the same routine for a while now. Everyone has shifts that suit them better. They didn’t tell me,” she added in a lowered tone, “that they had swapped. Not until that evening.”
I looked over her shoulder to where the others were. Rita was sitting up straight now, holding Nia’s hand as they spoke to Mills.
“Did they often swap?” I asked the manager.
“No. Never needed to before.”
“It was Viviane who asked to?” I recalled from our first meeting here on Sunday.
“So I’m told,” she answered, a tart tinge to her voice.
“You don’t believe that?”
“I don’t know what to believe, Inspector.”
I nodded, unsure of how to follow that. “You left at five on Saturday, yes?”
“Yes. I went home for a bit and then met a friend in the pub. Horse and Cart, we met at about half seven. Maybe a bit before, I like to be early,” she added. The Horse and Cart was an old pub, almost on the other side of the city. She’d have had to be quick to make it all the way over there for half seven if she’d also just spent time dealing with Viviane.
“Can your friend confirm this?”
“Oh, yes. He had a drop taken that night, but he’ll confirm it.”
“Thank you. Ms Goddard, other than the main entrance and the kitchen, are there any other ways into the house?”
“There was a door from the dining room,” she told me, “but that was sealed off sometime in the late 1800s when they started building the houses behind us. Other than that?” She shrugged. “The windows? But they open to what would have been locked rooms.”
“Very true. Did Viviane ever talk to you about her personal life?” I asked. “About any hobbies, courses or anything?”
“No.” She sighed slightly. “She was a private girl, all in all. Liked to keep things to herself.” She spoke with a touch of pride, like it was a quality she looked for in her employees.
“Is that the case with both of your employees?” I asked her. She peered over her shoulder.
“Rita’s secretive too,” she said with a slight nod. But now she said it darkly, with disapproval.
“Is there anything else about Viviane you can tell us? Anyone here that day that seemed unusual?”
“We get a few strange ones in here from time to time. History buffs or those people who fancy Mr Darcy, but nobody ever bad. Nobody suspicious.”
“I see. Thank you, Ms Goddard. Please don’t hesitate to call us if you think of anything.”
I walked her back over to the others, reiterating my words to the other two, not that I imagined any of them actually would. But they had alibis, and that was what we came for. I told them we’d leave them to it and would show ourselves out with a brief glance in the hall before we did. As suspected, there was nothing to catch our interest there. No scuff marks or nail marks, no boot prints or mysterious woollen sacks. A little deflated, we headed to the front doors and were squished into the vestibule when the inner door opened again.
“Inspector!” Rita stood there, looking a little breathless. “I saw Viviane a few weeks ago in a restaurant with a man. I think she’d been seeing him a few times.”
“Do you know the man? Or the restaurant?”
Rita shook her head. “Not him. It was an Indian restaurant, not far from the University. Sorry if it’s useless, but
you said if I think of anything. I just remembered, Nia mentioned making a curry tonight and.” She shrugged.
“Would you know him again if you saw him?” Mills asked from over my shoulder, close enough that I could smell his aftershave.
“I think so,” she said slowly. “He was dressed pretty snappily.”
“Thank you, Rita.” She nodded and let the door close, returning to the library. Mills opened the outer door, and we both stumbled onto the wet pavement.
“A new partner?” he suggested, righting his coat.
“Could be. Let’s check the café, see if Viviane saw somewhere there.”
“The café is not far from the University either, sir,” Mills said as we climbed back into my car.
“And they do like their antiquities in universities,” I muttered. “Don’t they, Mills?”
Eleven
Thatcher
We left the museum behind us, heading for the café where Viviane had been the morning she died. Rita’s words bounced around my head like an old pinball machine, and it seemed Mills was having the same trouble as he piped up.
“Do you think she was telling the truth?” he asked. “Rita, I mean. Do you think she saw Viviane with a man?”
“I can’t see why she should lie,” I muttered, focusing on the road, “other than to throw the scent off herself. But we ourselves were betting on Viviane not being alone. Could be a partner in the antiques market.”
“But there are no recent calls on her phone,” Mills pointed out. “None from any repeating numbers, anyway.”
“Maybe she preferred emailing,” I suggested. “Send Wasco a text, see where he is on getting into her emails, some of her other files.”
Mills nodded, bending over his phone as I followed the navigation through the city. I had never liked driving in the city, preferred the roads out in the countryside, as bumpy and winding as they could be. I found a place to park a few streets over from where the café was, and as we made our way there, Mills had a quick check of his map for local restaurants.
Dangerous Relics (A DCI Thatcher Yorkshire Crimes Book 3) Page 9