The Case of the Fallen Hero (An Inspector David Graham Cozy Mystery Book 3)

by Alison Golden

  Janice Harding arrived, looking slightly flustered but with her uniform characteristically neat. “Sorry, sir. Car wouldn’t start, would it? On this, of all mornings!”

  Graham smiled a little distractedly and bid her sit down. “Morning, Sergeant.”

  “You know, sir, I don’t want to say the wrong thing or speak out of turn but…”

  “There have been two mysterious deaths,” Graham interjected, “within six weeks of each other,” he added, “and both immediately following my arrival in Gorey.”

  Janice was a little red-faced to have it pointed out so bluntly. “Er, yes, sir.”

  “Am I a suspect, Sergeant?” he asked, turning to her with a weary look.

  “No, sir!” she exclaimed. “I just meant…”

  “Then let’s leave coincidences and what-ifs to the conspiracy nuts and perhaps engage in some police work,” he said, a little pointedly.

  “Sorry, sir.”

  “It’s okay, Janice. I was just looking forward to a peaceful Sunday under blue skies, and now I’m going to be interviewing distraught, teary relatives and listening to Tomlinson go on about compound hip fractures and intra-cranial hemorrhaging. Come on, let’s go. I fancy taking in the view from the top.”

  They made their way up to the top of the castle via a narrow, stone, spiral staircase.

  “I wouldn’t fancy going up these in the shoes I was wearing last night, sir.”

  “This castle dates back to the thirteenth century. I don’t think they envisaged Jimmy Choo’s back then, Janice. Probably didn’t figure in the architect’s plans.”

  Janice couldn’t decide whether to chuckle at Graham’s dry humor or be astounded that he knew what Jimmy Choo’s were.

  “I can assure you, sir, that my wages don’t stretch to buying such fine, luxury items, but if you’re willing to rectify that, I’m willing to accept your generosity…. Ah, here we are. Phew.”

  It was still chilly, a welcome respite from the dustiness of the castle stairwell. They walked along the battlements and caught their breath.

  “He fell,” Graham said simply. “That’s all we know.”

  “Falls,” Harding explained, mostly to refresh her own memory, “tend to fall, if you’ll pardon the pun, into three categories, according to the textbooks. There are accidents, for one.”

  “He wasn’t all that drunk. The battlements are secure, with good footing, and it didn’t rain last night,” Graham intoned.

  “You’d need to have the worst possible luck to end up pitching over these walls. They’re nearly five feet high and two feet deep,” Harding added. “Unless this was a category two fall, and the victim was pushed over one of these window-thingies.”

  Graham smiled. “They’re called crenellations. The gaps were there for the soldiers to shoot through when defending against an attack.”

  They walked on some more, admiring the view despite themselves.

  “We can’t prove anyone else was up here. There are no surveillance cameras,” Graham said, looking around, “and no witnesses report being here or hearing anything.”

  “Which leaves us with the third category: suicide.”

  “Hmm.”

  They walked back down to the castle’s administrative area, just by the maze where the marquee had already been struck down, leaving the quadrangle fetchingly green and open. Stephen Jeffries was at his desk, staring out of the window at the quadrangle, and jumped slightly as Graham knocked at the door.

  “You startled me,” he admitted, and then collected himself. “Please, won’t you sit down?”

  “Mr. Jeffries, this is Sergeant Harding. She will be assisting me in this investigation.”

  Jeffries looked horrified. “Investigation?” he breathed. “So you think…”

  Graham raised a cautioning hand. “Let’s not jump to any conclusions,” he said, grimacing inwardly at the unfortunate turn of phrase. “We are trained to observe the facts and then allow the prevailing circumstances to tell us what the body cannot.”

  At Harding’s urging, Jeffries described in detail the events of the wedding, right down to the canapés and the music. “Everyone seemed happy. There were no arguments… except, well…”

  “Except?” Harding prompted.

  “I’m sure it was nothing, but the mother of the bride did give one of my staff a chewing out about the tiniest thing: the arrangement of the wine glasses for the champagne. She wanted them in a particular pattern… you know how mothers of the brides can be.”

  Janice let her gaze fall on her empty ring finger. “Not really. Did she speak much with the groom?”

  “No more or less than normal,” Jeffries replied. “I’ve seen a hundred weddings, and it’s surprisingly common for the two sides of the aisle to keep almost to themselves, certainly until the ceremony is over. It’s later, when everyone’s had enough booze, that the barriers tend to crumble. That’s usually when the bridesmaids find themselves in an unfamiliar bed or the groomsmen decide that streaking through Gorey in the small hours is a simply excellent idea.”

  Graham made a note in his book: booze. They hadn’t discounted a drunken mishap as the cause of George Ross’ unfortunate demise. It would hardly be the first time a young man had drunk himself into a stupor and met with a grievous injury in the hours after his wedding.

  “Well, Mr. Jeffries, we’re keen not to disrupt things here at the castle, but we do need to interview a good number more of the guests,” Graham explained.

  “Background information, mostly,” Janice clarified. “Building a picture of the relationships, the tensions, you know. A bit of history.”

  Jeffries shook his head. “Oh, there’s not a lot going on today, and I’ve already done my best to preserve things as they were. We’ll close the gates to visitors, of course. Someone should already have done that. The construction crews have Sunday off, and there are no other functions planned.”

  “Construction?” Harding asked.

  “Yes, just some shoring up in the lower levels. This place needs constant maintenance, as you might imagine. I made sure they stopped drilling and hammering before the guests arrived yesterday, otherwise we wouldn’t have been able to hear the ‘I dos,’” he smiled.

  Graham asked Jeffries to photocopy the guest list, annotated with room numbers. “And we’ll need to speak with your night security guard, if he’s still here.”

  “She,” Jeffries pointed out, “is actually waiting in the Great Hall. I told her she might be needed, so she stayed on a little longer than usual.”

  Jeffries led Harding and Graham up to the Hall, a giant space with a dozen long, ancient tables, perfect for lavish feasting. They had only been partially cleared, Graham saw, with stacks of dishes and piles of cutlery still waiting to be carried away. Then he noticed the stocky blonde in a dark blue uniform who was obviously waiting for them. “Terrible, isn’t it?” she said, shaking both their hands. “I’m Sam. Night security.”

  “It is, Sam. Absolutely tragic,” Graham agreed. “Why don’t you tell us what you saw?”

  Sam shrugged. Not a great sign, Graham thought. “The wedding went off without a hitch. Lots of drinking, partying, dancing, the usual. People were filtering away by about midnight. The couple were already gone by then, you know,” she said with a slight smile, which vanished as she remembered that half of that same happy couple was now on a mortuary slab. “There was one drunken woman, dancing by herself, until the DJ left at about two.”

  “Any disturbances?” Harding asked. “Fights? Arguments? Drunken brawls?”

  “Oh, no,” Sam reported. “Drunken brawls are my specialty, and there wasn’t even a sniff of one.”

  Graham found himself smiling at the unswerving honesty of this tomboy character. “And what about this morning? At the time of George’s fall?”

  Another shrug. Come on, Sam…

  Harding interjected. “I have to ask… There was a scream, the arrival of an ambulance, a crowd of people… Where were you during all o
f this?” she asked, trying to be delicate.

  “Yes. I don’t remember seeing you at all,” Graham added.

  Sam didn’t shrug, this time. Instead, it was a resigned sigh. “Asleep,” she admitted. “I’m on a new medication. You know. For my mood. Makes me sleepy sometimes.”

  “Where?” Graham asked, making a note in his ever-present notebook.

  “I was crashed out on the couch in Mr. Jeffries’ office.” She gave them both a worried glance. “You won’t tell him, will you?”

  “Mum’s the word,” Harding promised before Graham could say anything. She knew a genuine soul when she saw one.

  “Thanks,” Sam said, her shyness rather affecting after the brawny bravado of earlier. “Wish I could help more.”

  So do I. You have no idea how much. “You’ve been very helpful. Maybe get yourself home for some rest,” Graham suggested, snapping his notebook shut before indicating this rather fruitless interview was over by looking around him intently.

  The Great Hall was among the rooms sealed off by Jeffries in his efficient zeal to preserve the record of the previous evening’s events, lest they shed some light on the case. Jeffries returned now to check whether he’d done the right thing.

  “Few would have been so thoughtful, Mr. Jeffries,” Graham told him, hugely impressed for once. “You say that no one has been through here since the end of the dinner?”

  “We have a policy,” he said, “of letting our staff get themselves home at eleven. The bus service stops, and cabs are a nightmare in Gorey on a Saturday night, as you might imagine. Instead,” he explained, gesturing to the piles of dishes and glassware, “we clean up during a ‘blitz,’ we call it, the next morning. Everyone comes in for three hours. We put on some music, I make big pots of coffee, and we get it all done.”

  “And this morning?’ Graham asked, walking toward the top table.

  “As soon as… Well, as soon as it happened, I called around and told them they weren’t needed. If necessary, I’ll clean up myself. Won’t be the first time I’ve had these hands in hot water,” he joked. “But I knew it’d be easier for you to work with fewer people here. Having twenty kitchen staff running about… Well, it didn’t seem right under the circumstances.”

  Harding made notes. “You did the right thing, Mr. Jeffries. We’re very grateful.”

  Graham was already at the top table, where the dishes seemed to have been left undisturbed since the previous evening. “This was George’s place?” he asked. Jeffries nodded. “Would you be good enough to grab me a new box of zippered bags from the kitchen?” he added. “And a new pair of rubber gloves?”

  Jeffries followed the request, and Graham began bagging up the dessert plate, the silverware, and both the water and wine glasses from George’s plate setting.

  Harding was by his shoulder. “Poison?” she asked quietly. “Not poison, again?” She had the image of George, crippled by stomach pain and wracked by confusion, tottering over the battlements to his death.

  Their headline-making investigation, only six weeks earlier, had poison at its crux, but Graham was in no mood to infer anything before gathering all the facts. “Let’s see. I’m hoping to hear from Tomlinson soon.” Then, to the events manager, “Mr. Jeffries, could we bother you to show us the bridal suite?”

  It was a room fit for a President or a King. Or, perhaps, a newlywed couple with deep pockets. Huge, and with a breathtaking view of the Channel and the French coast beyond, the bridal suite was beautifully appointed, complete with a four-poster canopy bed and all the finery a young couple in love could dream of.

  “Not bad,” Harding allowed. “What kind of, erm, cost are we talking, per night?” she asked, bracing herself for an answer bordering on the insane.

  “About two thousand,” Jeffries answered offhandedly, as if asked the question by virtually everyone who visited the suite, which, of course, he was. “Depends on the time of year.”

  Harding suppressed a whistle of amazement and began taking in the details of the room. By her side, Inspector Graham was doing the same, but in that extraordinarily thorough way that he had made his own. She watched him absorbing the details, his eyes smoothly moving between each object, to the floor and across to the curtains, up to the ceiling and then down to the bed. Graham’s ability to gather, store, and analyze visual data was a finely honed mechanism. It was something of a thrill for Harding to watch these remarkable skills being exploited at full tilt.

  “Notice anything, Sergeant Harding?” Graham asked, pulling out his notebook to complete the habituated acts of observation and recording.

  “Well…” She looked around more closely. “It appears to be a bridal suite, laid out very beautifully, awaiting the happy couple.” Then she stopped. “But… They were supposed to have been here hours ago… Before midnight, Sam said.”

  “Precisely,” Graham agreed.

  “The bed is still perfectly made… I mean, what couple…”

  “Even bothers to properly make their own bed at home, let alone in a hotel where you’re paying a month’s wages to stay for one night?” Graham discounted the notion. “They didn’t sleep here, Harding. They didn’t touch the Champagne,” Graham said, gingerly lifting the bottle from amid a cold pool of melted ice in the bucket. “They didn’t even nibble so much as a chocolate-covered strawberry, for heaven’s sake.”

  “Weird,” Harding almost whispered.

  “I was married once,” Graham said. “And immediately after the wedding breakfast, I had three things in mind.” He ticked them off his fingers. “Food, because I’d barely eaten a thing amid all the socializing and well-wishing. A glass of something strong, because I’d been too scared to drink, in case I overdid it. And… well, bed.”

  Harding blushed at this uncharacteristic outpouring of personal information, something that Jeffries caught, responding with the faintest of smiles. “I think most married couples have those same priorities, sir.”

  “Although not always in the same order,” Jeffries added. “But what does it tell you about the couple that they didn’t even come back here?”

  “Or open their luggage?” Harding said next, opening the walk-in closet to reveal two suitcases.

  Graham once more shut his notebook. Even after weeks of teasing by his two constables, he had resolutely refused to begin using a tablet. He found the leather-bound volume reassuring, a bulwark against the tides of constant change. “I really don’t know, Mr. Jeffries,” Graham admitted. “But it tells us something. I guarantee you that.”

  CHAPTER 4

  THE SIGN STATED, in terms not uncertain: EXHIBIT UNDER PREPARATION. NO ADMITTANCE. But, to Leo Turner-Price, this was like a red rag to the proverbial bull. “Seems like an invitation to me.”

  “What does?” Emily asked, eyeing the sign. “They’re working on that part, Leo,” she said, as though to an errant seven year old who just had to see everything. “Let’s head back up. I want to see the Great Hall.”

  Leo was unmoved. “You don’t want to see what exhibit they’re ‘preparing?’” he asked. “That doesn’t pique your curiosity?”

  “Nope,” Emily replied.

  “Mine’s kinda piqued,” Marina admitted.

  “Why?” Harry asked. “I mean, it’ll just be another preserved jail cell or something, right?” If the truth were told, he was enjoying the cool, dark surroundings, which were giving him welcome relief from the effects of last night’s alcohol.

  “Just a little look, and then we’ll head up and see the Great Hall,” Leo promised. “I want to see it too. I just want to see this first.”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake,” Emily sighed, admitting defeat. She helped Leo shift the sign aside and slide the bolt back on the heavy wooden door, which opened with a spectacularly long, deeply ominous creak. “Okay, now even I’m kinda curious,” she admitted.

  The room was dark, but there was a light switch on the wall by the door, just sufficiently illuminated by the bulbs that lit the main passageway. Leo
flicked the switch and a single bare ceiling bulb came on. “Looks like they’re still working on the lighting too.” Then he saw what the room contained. “Oh… No way…”

  “Wait a minute, isn’t that a…”

  “Yep… I believe it is…”

  A six-foot tall iron maiden, a human-sized metal cabinet offering perhaps the least comfortable method of incarceration, stood open by the wall, spikes protruding from every angle. Beside that was a worryingly authentic-looking rack, complete with a naked mannequin who seemed doomed to suffer painful stretching for all eternity. In the corner was a set of wooden shelves that held torture instruments of every description. “Oh man, they need to get this opened up straight away. The museum would be way cooler if this were all on display,” Leo declared.

  It warmed Emily’s heart that such an esteemed and much-cited historian was reduced to childish glee at the sight of a few old torture methods, and it stirred in her the affection she’d felt for this complex, clever man since their undergraduate days. She’d been quietly furious with him for threatening the integrity of the quartet by disappearing like he did for four long months and was much relieved when he made contact once more. His reappearance had been tentative, much like a badger emerging from his sett, but the warm welcome he received from the group had been so joyous that the awkwardness of the situation was soon confined to the past.

  Leo was examining a tapestry that adorned the far wall. It was perhaps sixteen feet square and very dusty, but he could make out a stylized battle scene of some sort, with horses in formation, their riders carrying pikes and swords. He lifted the material to examine it, and found that the tapestry had been placed to neatly cover a small, wooden door.