The Case of the Screaming Beauty

by Alison Golden

  “Still refusing to join the twenty-first century, then, Detective Inspector?” Bert asked, poking fun at Graham’s notebook.

  Graham was in no mood to have his idiosyncrasies pointed out and gave as good as he got. “Still scraping around at the bottom of the league table?” he shot back with a mischievous grin.

  Bert thumped his chest with a stern fist. “Charlton ‘til I die, DI Graham, as you well know. It’s just a run of bad form. They’ll be back in the premiership in no time.”

  Graham scoffed. “Codswallop. We’ve got more hope of solving this one by dinner time.” Then his professional center returned, and he introduced the still slightly ashen Cliff Swansbourne. “I want you to meet Dr. Bert Hatfield. One of the best pathologists in the business.”

  Arrangements were made for the body to be moved once Hatfield had made his initial inspection of the body and the scene. “Sergeant Harris will take photos of the scene, and we’ll both be conducting interviews” Graham explained to Cliff as they escorted the ambulance crew out, “but then we’ll be out of your hair. Another forensic crew will be along this afternoon, to clean up. Standard procedure.”

  Cliff offered his thanks to the three professionals. Perhaps it was better that Amelia had missed the entire incident. With no cell phone, she had been out of reach. Cliff shuddered as he imagined the effect of a death – possibly a murder, at that – upon someone so used to order and precision.

  Bert spoke briefly with Cliff, offering condolences for the morning’s tragic events, returned to his old BMW, and followed the ambulance down winding country lanes. It was an unashamedly rural part of the country, undisturbed by the spate of house-building on “green field” sites that had blighted the verdant areas surrounding London. The lanes were flanked by tall hedgerows. Smart, green sign posts gave distances to the half mile, indicating places so tiny and hermetic that few non-locals would ever have cause to visit. The local hospital at Carrowgate was twelve miles away and just large enough to be suitable for the postmortem.

  Bert’s first tasks, as ever, were to establish the time and cause of death. With no other marks on her body except the scars from a childhood appendectomy, the blunt-force trauma to the back of her skull was a leading contender for cause of death. Bert drew blood for toxicology screens and requested a full work-up of the lab results, which would show, among other things, whether Norah was pregnant, taking drugs, drunk, or poisoned.

  He generally operated under guidelines which discouraged the shaving of the victim’s head, but in Norah’s case, it proved necessary. The impact wound was just to the right of the base of her skull, a rectangular indentation. There was another mark, on her left temple; she’d hit the bath tub on the way down. Using his phone, Bert checked his own photos of the crime scene and began to piece together the violence that had deprived the world of the lovely Norah Travis.

  Computing the time of death was straightforward. Coagulation and other factors showed that at least twelve hours had passed, which put her death at some time very late on Sunday night. Bert returned to the wound, took photos, and examined it closely. There was a marking of some kind, parallel horizontal lines… He leaned closer and searched his memory for similar patterns. It took a moment or two, but before long he was comparing the breadth and height of the wound to those of a very familiar object. Bert looked up some example dimensions online and within moments, he could say with certainty how Norah Travis had been killed.

  * * *

  Sergeant Harris was an experienced, dedicated officer. He had long since developed an immunity to the strange, tragic fragments of life left behind when someone dies violently, but in this case there was an unavoidable sadness. Norah Travis had been young and beautiful. If she had been murdered it was, in all probability, over nothing of any real consequence. Harris finished taking the last photos, and just as he was packing away his camera, Doris Tisbury appeared in the doorway. “You asked to see me, Sergeant?” she said. She was all business, with a touch of defiance in her tone from the outset.

  “Yes, thanks,” he said, far more mildly. He’d gotten further in investigations using charm and wit than he ever had with threats and intimidation. “I’m sorry you had to be the one to find her this morning,” Harris continued. “It’s never an easy thing, but you did everything right.”

  Doris accepted the praise gracefully. “But all the prudence in the world isn’t going to bring her back.”

  Harris took one more look at the spattered floor and took his leave, beckoning for Doris to follow. They went to the room next door and took seats in the armchairs by the window, where Harris brought out his tablet. “Can you tell me exactly what happened when you found Norah?” Harris began.

  Doris relayed the events as clearly as she could. Seeing her feet, worryingly still and lifeless, and then realizing that she’d been dead for some time. “Several hours,” Doris estimated. “I’d say she’d probably laid there all night,” Doris said with a sad frown. “No one to help her.”

  Recognizing the need to push on, Harris asked, “Did you touch anything or remove anything from the crime scene?”

  “Of course not,” Doris answered at once. “I know better than that. Watch endless police dramas on TV. You know, CSI and all those. Love a good mystery.”

  Harris tapped the tablet. “As do I, Mrs. Tisbury.”

  “Besides, I don’t meddle where I needn’t. My back wouldn’t tolerate it,” she said, reaching for an obviously troubled spot at the base of her spine.

  Harris nodded compassionately. “Only one more question, and it’s just routine,” he said, his usual pacifying preface for what was often an awkward inquiry. “Where were you between dusk yesterday and dawn this morning?”

  Doris inflated slightly. “Me?”

  “Just routine, like I say,” Harris assured her.

  “I was at home,” she almost snapped. “With my husband and two of our grandchildren. Playing Trivial Pursuit. Then I watched some TV with Dennis and went to bed.”

  “Thank you, Mrs. Tisbury. I didn’t mean to intrude.”

  She brightened quickly. “Not at all, Sergeant. You’ve got a job to do.”

  Harris stood and escorted Doris to the door. “Would you do something for me? Let Mr. Lloyd know that I’d be grateful for a minute of his time.”

  * * *

  “Thanks, Bert. Good work.” Graham ended the call and turned to Harris. “Well, Sergeant, the post mortem is over, and the results are in. Now, who had “golf club” as their answer for the murder weapon?”

  “Not me,” Harris admitted, rather surprised. “Doesn’t really belong in a bathroom.”

  Graham shrugged. “That’s the thing about murder, isn’t it? They never quite happen as one would prefer. For the most part, they’re crimes of passion, committed suddenly and without much planning.”

  “I remember that part of the training course, sir,” Harris told him. “All we need now is to find the blessed thing.”

  “Indeed.” Graham was troubled. He had been since the investigation began. No element of it was straightforward. That said, much as every police officer dreamed of open-and-shut cases, detectives, for their part, relished the lengthy chase, the complex back story, and the teasing clues that led only to more clues. Or to dead ends. “Let’s speak with Mr. Lloyd and see where that gets us.”

  * * *

  If Doris was a plain-spoken, straight-talking interviewee, then Tim Lloyd was as slippery as an eel. Harris found his answers evasive and short, the signs of someone with a secret. He kept at it, determined to find the connection between Lloyd and Norah somewhere in the man’s background. Harris thought that Lloyd looked like a lawyer, maybe, or a schoolteacher, slightly pale, with that foppish black hair swinging around his eyes as his head turned. He struck Harris as nervous, maybe even just a touch guilty.

  “So, when did you first meet Mrs. Travis?”

  Tim blew out his cheeks. “Would you mind if we just call her Norah?” he asked. His hands were fidgety,
as though he were aching for a cigarette. “We worked in the same building near Marble Arch,” he said. “We got coffee from the same machine sometimes and struck up a kind of friendship.”

  “And how close did you become?” Harris asked. He might have put it more delicately, but he was tiring of Tim’s demeanor.

  “I don’t know that has anything to do with…”

  “Please, Mr. Lloyd,” Harris said, for the third time that evening. “Just answer the question.”

  “We’d had coffee a few times, out of the office,” he explained. “But that’s all.”

  “And you recommended that she stayed here,” Harris prompted.

  “Yes. The Lavender is my home away from home. My parents brought me here first when I was seven, you know. Lots of memories. Besides, Amelia and Cliff are just brilliant.”

  “I’m sure,” Harris said, rising. “That’s all I need for now, sir.”

  “Look, I’m as determined as you are to find who did this,” Tim blurted. “I’ve worked on criminal cases before.”

  Harris towered over Tim. For a strange second, Tim wondered if Harris’ uniform might burst open to unleash the Hulk-like, bear-monster within, but the sergeant simply glared at him. “I believe DI Graham has already given you direction on that matter.”

  Tim gulped slightly. “He has.”

  “Leave well alone,” Harris said, just for a little reinforcement. Then, he was once more the helpful bobby with a solemn duty. “Thank you for your time, sir. We’ll be in touch if we need you,” he said, tapping the cell phone in his breast pocket.

  * * *

  Harris caught up with DI Graham at the reception desk. “Two down, two to go, sir.” There was no one else here last night.” Harris turned the guest register around to show his boss. “Just the two rooms, Lloyd’s and the victim’s. A group of seniors checked out the day before yesterday, something to do with a bowling competition.”

  Graham’s eyebrow rose in curiosity. “Bowling? With the lanes and the strikes and what have you?”

  Harris saw the funny side but kept his laughter in check. It wouldn’t do for Graham to believe he was being made fun of. “Crown green bowls, sir. With the little white one and the…”

  “The jack,” Graham told him, receiving a quizzical look. “Just pulling your leg. My grandparents played. Got pretty good, too.”

  Harris checked his tablet, which seemed as indispensable to him as a pen and notepad might have been to an officer from two generations earlier. Or even one, Graham reflected. It was easy to come off as a dinosaur these days, he felt, if you hadn’t handed over the running of your life – and the basic duties of your profession – to a couple of gadgets. Graham was more “old school,” he’d explained to a young officer the other day, tapping his forehead. The younger man had simply shrugged and returned to his phone.

  “It's just Mr. and Mrs. Swansbourne to be interviewed, sir.”

  “Let’s do ‘Mr.’ first,” Graham told him. “He was in the house when the body was found, right?”

  Cliff confirmed his earlier version of events and added some details including warning Tim to keep away from the body and having heard voices coming from Norah’s room the evening before. “I wish I could be more helpful, Inspector” he said.

  Amelia, though, was quite another matter.

  “A scream?” Graham wanted her to confirm.

  “Clear as day,” Amelia promised him. “From Norah’s room, or close thereabouts. But I could have sworn,” she said, fist in her palm for emphasis, “that it came right from her room.”

  “What kind of scream?” Harris asked.

  Puzzled for a second, Amelia said, “An uncontrolled shout,” she tried. “I don’t know what she’d have said, if it had been spoken, not screamed. That’s what I’ve been trying to remember.”

  “Could it have been ‘help’?” Harris asked.

  “No, I don’t think so. More like, ‘Ahah!’ like a discovery or a surprise of some kind,” she continued.

  “A good surprise or a nasty one?” Graham muttered.

  “Hard to say,” Amelia replied. “It’s difficult to think of it as a happy sound, now that she’s…”

  Harris had learned to quickly recognize when his interviewees needed a little re-direction. “You were out in the garden, you say, when you heard the scream?”

  “Yes,” Amelia said. “Sunday morning’s a big gardening time for me. Not that you’d be able to tell, today.” She cast a rueful glance at a cluster of wayward leaves, though Harris thought the gardens damned near perfect.

  “It’s looking spectacular,” Graham told her. “A real achievement.”

  “I didn’t win in any of the categories at the Horticultural Society last year,” she remembered bitterly.

  Graham waved away the concern. “Those things are always fixed. It’s a racket. Decades of domination by organized crime syndicates,” he added with a wink. “It’s like a mobster’s ball.”

  The two police officers enjoyed watching Amelia laugh herself silly for half a minute, then finished their notes, and stood to take their leave.

  Amelia composed herself quickly. “Do you really think it could have been murder?” Violence was an incongruity entirely unwelcome in the quiet, restrained world of The Lavender.

  “I’d say so,” Graham replied. “I know it’s not what you want to hear, but everything’s pointing that way, at the moment.” Shaking her head at the callous interruption to their quiet lives, Amelia left the two men to their work. But Graham was bothered by something. “It makes me nervous,” he told Harris, “when there isn’t even the whiff of a suspect. Tends to mean that there’s a juicy back story I haven’t heard yet.”

  Harris saw his cue. “Should I invite Mr. Lloyd to join us again, sir?”

  * * *

  Back in the guest room neighboring Norah’s own, Graham and Harris continued their interviews. And, if anything, Tim Lloyd was becoming even less co-operative now that he had two officers to contend with. “Her husband wasn’t a nice guy,” Tim was explaining. “He wasn’t good for her.”

  Graham let Harris do most of the talking. His natural gruffness and gravity gave the questions an edge, and his tone was one that warned Tim that lying was extremely inadvisable. “So why did Norah marry him?” Harris asked.

  Tim shrugged theatrically. “There’s no logic to some women, Sergeant.”

  “Hang on,” Graham interjected. “Your earlier statement makes Norah sound like someone you occasionally had coffee with. Who knows, maybe a quick taxi back to your place to play hooky for an afternoon. And now,” Graham continued, raising a silencing hand against Tim’s objections, “you’re an expert on her marriage, its trials and tribulations, and you were acting as some kind of amateur marriage guidance counselor.”

  “I never said I was an expert… She just told me a lot about her situation was all, and I saw her need to get away from it all. So I recommended this place.” He stopped, eyes down. “And now she’s dead.”

  Harris gave Tim a moment before asking his next question. “What can you tell us about her husband?”

  Tim took a deep breath and seemed to space out for a few seconds, glancing out of the window. Then, he spoke with sincerity. “Nasty piece of work, like I said. She should have divorced him years ago. Should never have married him in the first place, she sometimes said.”

  “Go on,” Harris said, typing continuously.

  “He was never happy with anything she did. Always wanted her to change her appearance, her hair, you know, always looking for the next model to upgrade to. And he’s a nobody,” Tim said, the frustration giving his voice a serrated edge, “a layabout, a benefits cheat. A con artist, and not even a very good one.”

  “Sounds like a real charmer.” Graham commented, wryly. Also sounds a bit like the pot calling the kettle black. After all, the towering Adonis that is Tim Lloyd is hardly catch of the day, either. Especially considering Norah’s looks. She could have had any man in the world….r />
  “He’s scum,” Tim Lloyd told them with surprising vehemence. “I’d bet my goddamned house that he did this.”

  “Steady on there, Mr. Lloyd,” Harris said. “This will go more easily if everyone remains calm.” Another standard pacification line, straight from the manual, but it nearly always worked.

  Graham pushed slightly away from the doorframe against which he had been leaning. “Do you play golf, Mr. Lloyd?” he asked.

  “Golf?” was Tim’s answer to the surprising non sequitur.

  “Yes, sir. You know, little white ball, St. Andrews, the Ryder Cup, nineteenth hole….”

  “Of course I play golf,” Tim snapped. “What of it?”

  “Your clubs. Where are they?” Graham persisted.

  “In the clubhouse,” Tim told him. “Why do you ask?”

  “Merely routine,” Graham replied. “And a final question, Mr. Lloyd, if you don’t mind. Can you account for your whereabouts on Sunday evening?”

  Tim gave them both a sheepish look, and then said, “I was in my own room, across the hall.”

  “Not with Norah, then?” Sergeant Harris wanted to confirm.

  A timid shake of the head. “I was… How shall I say?” Tim said. “In the dog house. Said a couple of stupid things. All my own fault. I slept on my own, at her request.”

  Graham jotted down his usual detailed notes and made to leave. “Thank you for your time. Sergeant, shall we?”

  The two men walked out together, with Cliff closing the door behind them. It was nearly 4pm, and neither man had found time for lunch amid the interviews, photos, speculation, and idiocy they’d spent their day dealing with. Harris got his phone out and found directions to a pub in a neighboring village, where David Graham was less likely to be recognized as one of their own by the locals, and where they could mull things over in peace. The Fox and Fable was just about perfect and not at all busy yet. Over a quiet drink and a bowl of Mary-Anne’s famous hand-cut homemade fries, they weighed the case so far and found it very thin.