by Sara Rosett
I shrugged. “I’ve told you about Mr. Blakely’s conflict with Elise. It would be a bit hypocritical to keep back my own little dispute with him.”
Byron inclined his head a bit as if acknowledging the point. “When did you last see the victim?”
“At the hotel. He said he was going to have breakfast.”
“What time was that?”
“Probably, around seven thirty, maybe a little later. I’m not sure, exactly.”
“And where did you go after that?”
“Alex and I left together. We went to get a coffee, but ran into an old friend of his, so we talked to her for a little while before we went our separate ways. He went to photograph the Royal Crescent and the Circus. I came back here and photographed the Abbey, the square, the pedestrian walkway, and the Baths.”
“How long did you spend in each place?”
“Oh, I don’t know. It was probably eight by the time I got back here. I spent quite a bit of time photographing the Abbey. It’s so dramatic, it will be featured in the documentary. I know it was a little after nine-thirty when the Baths opened, and I was the first person in. I had another coffee at a café on Stall Street while I waited.”
“You must like coffee.”
“Can’t live without it.”
“So you’ve been here the entire time? Since nine-thirty?” he asked, a shade of disbelief in his voice.
“It’s a fascinating place. I have to take photographs as well as notes on each location.” I lifted a shoulder. “And the museum portion is interesting. I got caught up in some of the exhibits,” I said. “I could have moved more quickly through that portion as we probably won’t use that area, but I wanted to read the details about the displays. I was actually on my way out when I saw the sock.”
“Yes, the sock. It appears we’ve come full circle. I think that will be all for now.” He handed me a business card. “Let me know if you think of anything else that you forgot. Sometimes people remember things later. We’ll be in touch.”
Chapter 5
BYRON SIGNALED TO A POLICE officer. “Please escort Ms. Sharp to the exit.”
The officer motioned for me to follow him around the area that had been cordoned off.
As I left, Byron turned to another officer who had been hovering, who said, “Still haven’t found the shoe, sir.”
“Curious. You’ve searched the whole area?” Byron asked.
“Yes, should we expand to the rest of the facility?”
As their voices faded, I followed the officer to a raised wooden walkway on the other side of the circular pool. I had been near the end of the tour when I saw Cyrus’s body, but there were still several other areas of the Baths to see after the circular pool. The dark rooms were deserted and silent as the officer and I passed quickly through them. We came to an area where audio guides were to be returned, clearly the end of the tour. He pointed to a set of doors. “Exit through there. The door on your left comes out on Stall Street. The Pump Room is straight ahead.”
I thanked him, and he waited until I had left the Baths. I wasn’t sure where the rest of the scouting party was, I realized. Were we still meeting in the Pump Room? Would they still be there? I checked my phone as I walked. I had several texts from Alex, asking if I was okay as well as a terse one from Elise. Come directly to the Pump Room ASAP.
I looked up from my phone and found myself in a bright oval room designed with neoclassical restraint and clean lines. A chandelier glittered overhead. Niches outlined in elaborate trim held Wedgwood displays. It was so different from the ancient baths that I felt as if I had stepped forward in time several hundred years. The low murmur of conversation, the clink of silverware, and muted classical music came from the larger room straight ahead. On one side of the oval room where I’d paused, a woman in black pants, a long-sleeved white shirt, and patterned vest bent over a large book, the hostess for the restaurant, I realized. I approached to ask for the scouting party. Two long curling strands of honey brown hair swung on each side of her face as she straightened.
“Oh—you’re from the hotel,” I said. “I’m sorry, but I’ve forgotten your name.”
“Mia Warren,” she said with a smile. “I work breakfast at the hotel, then come here to work the lunch rush, then it’s back to the hotel to finish the rooms. You must be looking for your group. They’re on the side by the windows that overlook the Baths. Let me show you.”
I followed her into the adjoining room and had a quick impression of elegant columns that soared to the high ceiling, tall windows, and an even grander chandelier, before Elise blocked my view. She grabbed my arm and pulled me back into the oval room.
Mia paused. “Oh, I guess you’ve found each other…uh, well. Have a lovely lunch.” She retreated to the reservation book. Elise shoved something into my hand. “Hold this.”
It was a phone.
Alex emerged from the doorway to the Pump Room and came directly across to me. “Are you okay?”
He wrapped an arm around my shoulders. I leaned into him, a tension inside of me, relaxing. It felt so good to lean against the solidness of his chest. “Yes, I’m all right.”
“We’re all shocked about Cyrus,” Alex said, his chin moving against my hair.
“I’m not,” Elise said. “Not surprised at all.”
I stepped back from Alex and glanced up at him. “Elise thought he’d had a heart attack or a stroke or something,” I explained.
“Oh, that,” she said. “That was when I thought he’d died from natural causes. It would make sense that he’d work himself up into some sort of frenzy and bring on an attack of some sort. But now that I know it was murder—that’s a completely different situation. I’m not at all surprised someone killed him. He liked to poke and prod, get under people’s skin. He was foolish and poked someone who struck back.”
“But the inspector didn’t say it was murder. It might have been an accident,” I said, but my voice lacked conviction. That dent in the back of his skull hadn’t been a glancing blow.
“He fell off the viewing platform and just happened to tumble into that rather hidden location?” Elise said. “I don’t think so.”
“It is unlikely,” I admitted. “But the police haven’t completed their investigation. They’ve barely begun, in fact.”
“All the more reason for us to get moving,” Elise said. “By the time they officially declare it a murder, I want all our alibis wrapped up in a neat little package that I can present to them.”
“Alibis?” Alex asked.
“Yes,” Elise said. “Clearly, they’ve already started the process of checking up on each person in the scouting party. Byron asked you about your movements this morning?” Elise asked me.
“Byron?” Alex asked.
“Inspector Byron,” I explained. “Yes, he did ask where I had been, but surely that’s routine.”
Elise gave me a pitying look. “Kate, you of all people should know the drill here. You’re a veteran of these sorts of investigations. The police will look at each one of us carefully, probably me more than anyone else,” she said with a sigh. “I shouldn’t have let Cyrus get to me this morning. If we hadn’t argued so publicly…well, I would look a lot less like a suspect. But we can’t change what has happened. Must press ahead and get everyone’s alibi sorted. Ideally, I’d like to present the inspector with a few other leads as well.” She pointed to the phone I had been holding. “You take that mobile, and—”
“Elise,” I said, speaking over her. “That’s a job for the police. They won’t be happy if you intervene in their investigation. That’s one thing that I have learned, as a veteran of police investigations.”
Elise had been intermittently tapping on her phone as she spoke to us, but at my words, her head jerked up. She focused all her attention on me. “Kate, you haven’t thought this through. I understand you found him, and it was quite shocking, but we have to think long-term. Cyrus is dead. That fact alone puts the production in a precarious pl
ace. If anyone else from the scouting party is linked to his death—even if they are only under suspicion—it makes it even more likely that the production will fold. If I become the prime suspect, then we might as well all go home. We’re done.”
I wanted to argue with her and tell her we should mind our own business, but she was right. The murder of the newly appointed director wasn’t good. If someone, especially Elise, were thought to be guilty of the crime…then Elise was right. Most likely we were done. I’d certainly seen projects fold because of less—a lot less.
I glanced at Alex. Our lives and schedules were finally aligned again, working in the same place. If the production went under we’d be back in limbo again, searching for a way to be together. He sent me a crooked smile. “Buck up. It’s not as bad as Elise is making it out to be. Some of us have alibis, so that will help.”
“Do you?”
“Yes, I ran into Viv again on my way to the Royal Crescent. She offered to go with me and show me a couple of other places we might be interested in.”
“Great,” I said, then murmured to myself, “Although I’m not sure I’d call that good news.”
“What?” Alex asked.
“Nothing. Just thinking aloud. So you have an alibi,” I said. “I don’t, unless the Baths have closed circuit monitoring.”
“That’s something to check.” Elise bent over her phone, tapping again. “I’ll get Paul to look into that. It’s most annoying that Paul went off on his own after he took that call. I can’t believe that both he and I are now without an alibi. And, of course, Felix is incredibly unhelpful as well. He also arrived here early, but all he can say is that he thinks it was around eleven. But Paul and I didn’t see Felix when we went through the entrance, so Felix had to have arrived either before eleven or slightly after.” In an aside, she said, “I really must assign more work to everyone. I had no idea everyone would finish early. Of course, Bath is a compact city and everyone was doing a brief overview of their locations this morning.” She gave an impatient shake of her head and refocused on our conversation. “I have Paul creating a spreadsheet to track our movements. You’ll need to check in with him later to give him yours. Right now, I need you to look at the last text,” she said, eyeing the phone I still held.
I hit the button to bring the phone to life. A summary message on the first screen had a list of recent activities, which included two missed calls from a phone number that I recognized as a London number as well as a text from the same number. At the Royal Crescent Hotel. Rm 10. Must speak to you.
“Who is it from?” I asked Elise.
“I have no idea. That’s Cyrus’s mobile,” Elise said matter-of-factly. “Go to the hotel and find out who is in room—”
I glanced quickly around the oval room, but it was still empty except for the three of us and Mia. “How do you have Cyrus’s phone?”
“It was in the outer left pocket of his sports jacket, where he always keeps it. I’ve been around him enough these last few weeks during the forced meetings to know that.”
“Elise, you’re not saying that you took this phone out of his pocket at the Baths?” I replayed the scene over in my mind—the speculative look on her face, then her rush to his side, how she’d hunched over him, and how Dr. Attenbury had to pull her away.
Elise could have removed the phone. If she was fast and went directly for that pocket, which had been exposed so that she could reach it. And once she had the phone in her hand, all she had to do was tuck her hand under the edge of her voluminous cape, which was always billowing around, and slip the phone into a pocket.
“Of course I did. We need information so we can control the situation.”
I shoved the phone back at her. “I don’t want anything to do with this. I can’t believe you’d rifle through—”
“Kate,” Elise said sharply and glanced at Mia, who quickly looked down at the reservation book. “Careful what you say.”
I lowered my voice to a harsh whisper “…a dead man’s pockets.”
Elise lowered her voice as well and spoke with a set jaw. “I’ve already told you. I’m doing this for the good of the production. If we go under, we are all out of a job. Do you want that? And what have I done, really? I’ve only borrowed this. I can’t put in a passcode—I don’t know it—I simply wanted to see if there was something on it that we could use to point out another place for the police to focus.”
“I’m sure they would have made that assessment on their own. Don’t you realize you’ve made things so much worse? They’ll look for his phone and when they realize you took it—”
“Oh, they won’t find out I took it.” She leveled a look at me. “Unless someone tells them. I will give it to the police and tell them I found it in the van. It probably slipped out of his pocket this morning,” she said, going for an innocent look.
“What are the time stamps on the incoming calls?” Alex asked, reaching for the phone, his face set.
“Fingerprints,” I said warningly. “Don’t you touch it, too,” I said, but it was too late. Alex had already taken the phone.
“I think we’re a little past the point of worrying about fingerprints,” Alex said with a sharp look at Elise. “First missed call is at ten fifty, then another at eleven. Then a text came in a few minutes later.” Alex used the edge of his scarf to polish the screen of the phone. “It’s going to look odd that he didn’t check the calls and text message.”
“He must have been already…gone…by then,” Elise said, looking a little uncomfortable, but then she pushed her shoulders back and returned to her normal, confident tones. “Besides, he never answered his calls or replied to texts himself. He said that’s what assistants were for. He would have had Paul answering them this afternoon.”
“Then how did you know where he usually carried his phone?” I asked. My thoughts and emotions were careening wildly around, but that small discrepancy caught my attention…maybe so I wouldn’t have to focus on other things like Elise coolly taking items from Cyrus’s dead body.
“He would look at the notifications when he got a call or message, but he never responded. He’d check his phone then put it back in his pocket. Once, I even told him we could wait if he needed to return a call, but he said he didn’t do secretarial work.”
Alex had moved on to running his scarf carefully over the back and sides of the phone. He handed it back to Elise, gripped between the layers of material. “Still, it’s something the police will think about.”
She reached for the phone with her hand inside her cape, but Alex said. “Your fingerprints had better be on it. Otherwise, it will look even stranger.
“Yes, of course.” She grabbed the phone, then withdrew her hand back under the cape. “Now, Kate, you get up to the Royal Crescent Hotel. See who is in room ten. Bribe the desk clerk, whatever you need to do.”
“Elise…” Words failed me for a moment then I said, “We can’t. We can’t set up our own little investigation. It’s just…crazy. The police will do their job. We should stay out of their way. We have stuff to do…locations to scout, a city to tour.”
“The locations won’t matter if the whole project is canceled. You of all people should know what can happen when the police get an idea in their heads. Even if they’re wrong, it can take them a while to get on the right course. Time matters here. We establish our alibis, and give the police a few new suspects for them to look at. If we do this, we may actually still have jobs come Christmas. All I’m asking you to do is go to the hotel and see who is in room ten. Fine,” she said, studying my face, which must have shown how reluctant I was to participate in her scheme. “Consider it in-depth location scouting, which is part of your job. Do I need to remind you of that?”
I closed my eyes. I didn’t want to do it, but I knew Elise. She was so determined. If I didn’t, then she would. And she’d go about it in a reckless and clumsy way. I glanced at Alex resignedly. He looked about as happy as I did.
“Okay, I’ll go to
the hotel,” I said. “No guarantees, though. I’ll see what I can find out, but it may be nothing.”
“I’m sure you’ll do better than that. Now, Alex, I need you—”
“I’m going with Kate,” he said in a voice that didn’t allow for argument.
Elise frowned as she looked at his face. “Fine. Call me when you find out who it is. I’m going to check for something in the van, then I suppose I will have to make a quick trip to the police.” She patted the pocket where she’d stowed Cyrus’s phone before she stepped between us and left through the door to Stall Street.
Alex and I looked at each other for a moment. I shook my head. “I hate to admit it, but she is right about a few things. She’s exaggerating some about the police…a little.”
“Yes, a bit, but I know what you mean. If the police focus on us, then we could all be out of work very shortly.”
“And you know she would go to the hotel herself and that would be…”
“A disaster.” Alex said. “Come on, let’s get it over with.”
We started for the door, but then I grabbed his elbow and veered to Mia.
She looked up, clearly curious. How could she not be when the three of us had been whispering at the side of the room for several minutes?
“Hi, Mia,” I said. “You said you serve breakfast at the hotel. Did you happen to notice one of our group, the tall man with sandy colored hair, having breakfast this morning?”
“Oh, yes. He had the full English breakfast, but without the beans.”
“I see.”
Mia leaned over the reservations book. “He’s the one…who…you know…got killed?” she asked with a glance at the connecting passageway to the Baths.
“Yes, I’m afraid so.”
“That’s terrible,” she said with relish. “And he was so lively this morning. Was it an accident?”
“Umm, I’m not sure. The police are investigating.”
“How exciting. Did they question you? Did you see anything?” Her eyes sparkled as she asked the questions.