Curse of Weyrmouth (Curse of Weyrmouth Series Book 1)

by David Longhorn

  “Let's take a good look, work it all out. I admit it seems clear cut but–”

  Deighton rolled her eyes.

  “I've heard that before. What doesn't feel right?”

  It was Carr's turn to shrug as he led the way into the study. It was cold, of course, and rain had blown in, dampening the carpet. The window was a conventional sash variety. Carr put on disposable latex gloves and checked to see if it had been painted shut, but the window slid up easily.

  “Your spider sense tingling, Sherlock?” asked Deighton.

  “Stop mashing up pop culture imagery and just take time to look at stuff,” he said. “This is where an intelligent twenty-eight year-old woman, undeniably distraught with grief, apparently decided to kill herself. Does it look right?”

  “Oh, bollocks,” said Deighton, “do your stuff, Poirot. I'll watch.”

  Carr stood in the center of the room and scanned shelves, furniture, looking for anything anomalous. He pointed at the desk.

  “She was sitting at her dad's desk, presumably working on his laptop.”

  Deighton looked from her colleague to the desk and back.

  “How can you tell – oh, I get it. D’oh!”

  She walked over to the chair, crouched beside it, as if sitting on an invisible chair.

  “Maspero was quite a bit taller than his daughter, I'm guessing?”

  Carr nodded.

  “The professor was roughly my height, judging by what they scraped off the road this morning. Diane was at most five foot five, I'd say. So she would have adjusted the chair. It's clearly raised too high for a bloke of average height.”

  “So we have to check the laptop?” sighed Deighton. “You know what the chief will say.”

  “Budgetary considerations!” boomed Carr in a familiar parody of his superior's manner. “Getting a computer analyzed costs almost as much as the biscuits at a meeting of the regional police committee.”

  “Maybe she left a note?” said Deighton, putting on a pair of disposable gloves.

  “Seems likely,” agreed Carr. “People announce their suicides on social media these days. But somehow–”

  “She didn't seem the type?” finished Deighton as she disconnected the laptop.

  Carr made an affirmative noise and continued to look around the room. There was something else that was not quite right, setting off a kind of silent alarm. It was just barely credible that someone would calmly sit down to write a suicide note then hurl herself through a closed window.

  “What else doesn't scan?” asked Carr. “Apart from all the wet footprints.”

  Deighton did a double take, looked at the floor.

  “Those aren't our footprints,” she said, putting the laptop down. “Too many, and too small. I make it at least four people. Women, looks like. Or kids.”

  The detectives hunkered down and studied the tapered damp patches on the worn gray carpet.

  “Nobody else been in here?” asked Carr.

  “No,” said Deighton. “I kept the uniforms out – wasn't sure if we needed to dust for prints.”

  “We'll have to now,” he sighed. “No way Diane Maspero made all those. Those budgetary considerations are piling up.”

  “They look like they were made by bare feet,” said Deighton, taking out her phone. “Maspero had shoes on. She didn't make any of these.”

  “The neighbor said nothing about other people?” asked Carr.

  “No,” said Deighton as she snapped a few pictures of the fading footprints.

  “Well,” said Carr, “our suicide wasn't alone when she jumped. If she jumped.”

  Deighton stood up, put her phone away, and picked up the laptop.

  “Could be we'll find a lot more on this than we bargained for,” she said.

  Carr grunted in agreement, stood, and went to the window. Looking down at the rain-swept street, he could no longer see the human-sized patch on the pavement. The gawkers had almost dispersed, foul weather finally prevailing over morbid curiosity. The last of them, a couple of kids in hoodies, were disappearing into an alley as Carr turned from the bleak scene.

  Chapter 4: The Morning After

  Erin woke up with a hangover and no idea how she got to bed. She disentangled herself from the sheets and discovered she was still half-dressed. She opened the curtains of her room and a shaft of pure autumn sunlight hit her in the face. Cursing the undeniably beautiful morning she yanked the curtains shut again.

  What a night, she thought, taking a couple of painkillers before heading for the bathroom. She turned on the shower, gulped down a couple of glasses of water to re-hydrate her throbbing brain. As she took off her remaining clothes, she looked in the mirror, stuck out her tongue, and quickly put it back in.

  Wow, that looked so disgusting. But, hey! With a wrecked body and significant memory loss, I must have had a great time in little old Weyrmouth.

  The hotel shower was typical of its kind, prone to freeze or scald the unwary guest. With her mind working at less-than-optimal efficiency, Erin managed to do both before getting the temperature right. Then she luxuriated in the cascade of steaming water. After a few minutes, she began to feel properly alive again.

  Did I really get offered an actual job last night?

  The thought prompted a moment of panic. Erin reasoned that there was no way her booze-raddled mind could have invented the call from Louise.

  If only I can remember the details. Something about coming in for a chat?

  With a sinking feeling, Erin checked the time. It was already eight forty-two. She had no idea what time she was due to meet the director at the museum, but guessed that she was liable to be late. She checked her phone and found a text message from Louise.

  'You sounded a little merry last night! Let's make it ten?'

  “God bless you, boss!” said Erin.

  She noticed the preceding message, the one with the weird photos of her first day in Weyrmouth. Erin paused, almost opened it, but decided to ignore it for now. Maybe she could ask someone with a bit of digital expertise to check it later.

  Keith would ace it, she thought. Ironically enough, he'd be the go-to guy. Only computer nerd I know in England.

  But that was one step she was not prepared to take.

  After throwing on some smart-casual clothes, Erin hurried down to breakfast. It had to be coffee, juice, and cereal given her still frail condition. The hangover diminished but refused to die, the dull throb of pain persisting between her eyes. There were only a few other guests in the brightly-lit breakfast room. They mostly looked like business types.

  Not many tourists around here in November, she thought. Or any other month, probably. Still, better try and think positive about my new hometown.

  Erin wondered if she could face some toast and started woolgathering, staring out at the sunlight erasing the night's rain.

  “The Shadow Council is watching you,” hissed a voice.

  Erin looked up to see a young waitress standing over her.

  “Sorry?”

  “You like a full English breakfast?” smiled the girl. “Eggs, bacon, sausage, hash browns, and beans?”

  Her accent was European, maybe Spanish. Nothing like the voice Erin had heard a moment before. The hissing tone might have been that of a man or a woman, but it had a definite British accent.

  “Oh, er – no, no thanks. Just some toast. Wholegrain, thanks,” said Erin.

  As the waitress walked off, Erin looked around to see if anyone else had been close enough to hiss the bizarre phrase into her ear. The nearest breakfaster was three tables away.

  Shadow Council? What is this, Harry Potter and the Hungover Woman?

  Erin's toast arrived and she buttered a slice and took a bite. Then she toyed with it while her mind tried to explain two odd occurrences. First, the email images, and now this peculiar auditory hallucination.

  Was it my subconscious trying to warn me? Did it try to blow the interview yesterday? Am I sabotaging myself? Crazy person losing it
after a bad break up?

  “Nah,” she muttered to herself. “I heard what I heard.”

  And anyway, she thought, it didn't sound like a warning. If anything, it seemed as if someone was trying to reassure me.

  ***

  Holy Joe was out in the sunshine, and enjoying it as much as he could enjoy anything. His mind – as he well knew – lacked discipline, his emotions were chaotic. He half-understood the cause of his confusion and despair. He could think of only one way to end it. Sometimes the temptation to head for one of the river Weyr's bridges was almost unbearable.

  And that would be a sin, old son - self-murder is a mortal sin. My life is God's, and not mine to destroy.

  “But oh, Lord, why must life be so hard?”

  As often happened, Joe did not realize he had howled the thought aloud until he saw a young woman draw her little girl closer to her, and switch to the other side of the street. He felt a pang of guilt, then.

  To cause any suffering to a child! To a mother.

  Inevitably, the thought triggered fragmented memories of his own children, and their mother. Would he ever see them again? Could he bear to face them, now that he was a man on the margins, an outcast, a ranter?

  Once a working man. Respectable! Skilled craftsman, steady job – am I shouting again? No.

  Joe simply walked for a while and tried to savor the feel of a pleasant autumn day. The female copper – Layton, was it? - had given Joe some new clothes from the station's 'lost and found box'. They, like his body, were pleasantly clean. The change pleased him, as did the memory of a small kindness. His path inevitably took him to Monk's Green, in front of the cathedral. He could not go for a day without visiting the scene of his fall from grace.

  I know it happened here. I just don't know what!

  As he grew closer, he felt his heart start to race. The tower loomed over him, its shadow cast eastward by the morning sun. Joe stopped short of the long shadow, shivered. He stood staring up at the ornately-decorated structure, with its gargoyles and life-size statues of saints.

  How can a symbol of divine goodness make me so afraid?

  Someone walked past him, stopped, turned to look.

  “You okay, sir?” asked the woman.

  “An American!” he exclaimed.

  “Guilty as charged! But hey, I didn't vote for that guy!” she said, raising her hands in mock-defense. “So you're okay?”

  The woman was young – at least to Joe – perhaps thirty or so. She had a dark coffee-cream complexion, large dark eyes, a wide mouth.

  Not pretty, but beautiful perhaps, he thought. Or she might have been, when I thought about such things.

  “I am as well as can be expected, young lady,” he said, trying to sound dignified. “Given my somewhat trying circumstances.”

  The woman had a pleasant, throaty laugh.

  “That makes two of us!” she said. “I'm walking off the mother of all hangovers. Thought I'd take a look at the main attraction.”

  She turned back to face the cathedral.

  “It's amazing. I wonder if local people realize just how amazing it is.”

  Joe shook his head.

  “They don't really see it,” he grunted. “Let alone think about it. About its power.”

  The woman looked puzzled, raising a thick black eyebrow, then turned to gaze up at the tower.

  “Power? That's a word I've never heard anybody use about a cathedral before. But you're right. It's powerful. It's got presence. Why do you think that is? I mean, it's not just the sheer size, is it?”

  Joe was struggling to put his tumbling thoughts into words when he saw the first of the Seven. The hooded child was crouched on a ledge halfway up the tower. The boy waved, then put a finger to its half-hidden lips.

  She's looking straight at him, he thought. Coincidence?

  “I must go before the rest come!” he said, and walked, stifling an impulse to run.

  “Before who–” he heard the woman say. “Okay, see you later, maybe!”

  Someone said to the American, “That's just Holy Joe, he's harmless enough, but he's got a bee in his bonnet about the cathedral.”

  A conversation began, but by then, Joe was out of earshot and could not hear what the American woman was being told about him.

  ***

  “Okay,” said Jen Deighton, putting her tray down on the canteen table. “Anybody know what a quincunx is?”

  “Animal, vegetable, mineral?” parried the duty sergeant.

  “I'll give you a clue – it's basically geometrical,” said Deighton.

  “Ooh! New type of sexual service on offer in that Park Lane massage parlor?” hazarded Carr.

  “I hope not,” replied Deighton. “It's in the title of a file on Maspero's computer. Last thing he was working on.”

  “So open the file and find out?” suggested sergeant.

  “Give that boy a Smartie!” replied Deighton.

  “Encrypted?” asked Carr.

  The junior detective shook her head.

  “Not according to the tech team. It seems to be corrupted, somehow. But they're working on it.”

  “Ah,” said Carr, prodding at a fish stick. “That means they'll faff about for a few weeks and then tell you it's hopeless.”

  Deighton shrugged.

  “Maybe. But I did Google quincunx. And there's a phrase I never thought I'd use.”

  After a moment, the duty sergeant said, “Well? What does it mean?”

  Deighton dipped a finger in a puddle of ketchup and put four dots in a square on the tabletop, then added a fifth in the middle.

  “Oh,” said the sergeant, losing interest. “The cleaners will be after you for that, you realize?”

  “So it's a pattern,” said Carr. “But one we don't understand.”

  Deighton nodded.

  “And maybe there's another pattern?” she suggested.

  “The Masperos?” frowned Carr. “Any progress on that?”

  “Our hypothetical intruders were very discreet, or invisible. No prints, no eyewitnesses, no CCTV footage. Nobody went into that flat between Maspero leaving yesterday morning and Diane letting herself in.”

  “So she did chuck herself out of a closed window?” asked the sergeant, his interest piqued.

  “Seems to be the only reasonable conclusion,” admitted Carr. “Coroner will have to say she killed herself while the balance of her mind was disturbed.”

  “But you don't buy it?” asked Deighton.

  Carr gave a little smile, and returned to his fish sticks and mashed potato.

  ***

  Saffron Weldon was delighted to see Erin again.

  Whatever she's on, thought Erin, I wish I had a bottle full right now.

  “Louise said to take you straight through, you know the way, right? Of course you do because you were just here yesterday!” burbled Saffron. “But I'd better go with you anyway in case Louise wants me for anything.”

  It was obvious that Saffron's real motive was to find out more about Erin, but the girl's inability to stop talking for more than a couple of seconds meant Erin got to hear a lot more about her. Walking along the museum's corridors for three minutes revealed that Saffron was 'between guys', not keen on having kids just yet, loved her cats Binky and Tibbs, and was seriously worried that she might have a mild allergy to chocolate.

  “Bummer,” said Erin as Saffron paused in her monologue to open a fire exit door, “I always break out when I eat chocolate. Still eat it, obviously. I'm not some kind of lunatic!”

  “Hah, no!” agreed Saffron. “We practically live on chocolate biscuits and tea. Though of course there's coffee, too – just instant though, not what you're used to.”

  “I've been here long enough to start appreciating tea,” said Erin. “It's just like your cathedral – strong but kind of understated.”

  “The cathedral?” Saffron paused. “Oh, I suppose you would be interested, being a historian and all that.”

  “Not your cup of tea,
old buildings?”

  “Not really, no – I find the past a bit boring,” said the girl, then put her hands to her face her mouth an O of dismay. “You must think I'm such an idiot!”

  No, I kind of intuited it, Erin stopped herself from saying.

  “Hey, we all need a job, right?” she said instead. “And let's not keep Louise waiting.”

  The Director of Museums was not alone. Seated to one side of Louise Tarrant's desk was the round-faced young man who had been writing to be interviewed yesterday morning.

  Ah, the internal candidate, thought Erin. This can only be awkward.

  Louise introduced Mike Smith, Assistant Director.

  “You'll be working closely with Mike, of course,” said Louise. “He'll show you the ropes, and give you some idea of our game plan. Such as it is.”

  Mike's handshake was a little too firm for Erin's liking, and his smile clearly insincere. She wondered if he was one of a familiar type she had dubbed 'whiny macho' – young white men who posed as liberal and tolerant until a woman or minority person got promoted ahead of them.

  Gotta be positive, girl, she told herself. Tea is on the way. Let's make small talk.

  “So, I'm looking for somewhere permanent to live in Weyrmouth?” Erin asked, looking at Mike. “Know any likely areas? Not too far out, for preference?”

  He shook his head.

  “Not really,” he replied, “I live quite far out, you see. Place called Chester-le-Street. Interesting name derivation, as it happens.”

  “Yeah,” said Erin. “It's obviously a hybrid name incorporating Latin, French, and old English, right? Chester from an original Roman fort, or 'castrum', of course, dating back at least as far as the fourth century CE. The 'le' would have been added following the invasion of William the Conqueror in 1066, and Street – well, that doesn't take much analyzing.”

  Smith stopped, looked at Erin with grudging respect.

  “Okay, that's right. But of course you could have looked all that up on Wikipedia just now.”

  “Could've,” agreed Erin, with a smile. “Maybe I did. Or maybe I just know my stuff. Time will tell, huh?”

  “Quite,” said Louise, with a smile. “As for accommodation, there are usually apartments to let near the cathedral. I can put you in touch with someone?”