Cragside: A DCI Ryan Mystery (The DCI Ryan Mysteries Book 6)

by LJ Ross

  “Thirty guests in total, twenty-two remaining by the time Swann died,” Yates repeated, making a swift note in her book. “Does that include Lionel Gilbert?”

  “No, that would make thirty-one.”

  “Ah-ha.” Yates amended the note. “And, it was too dark to tell who might, or might not, have been absent while Swann made his way down to the fuse box?”

  Ryan gave a brisk nod.

  “We’ll re-interview everyone over the next couple of days while it’s fresh in their minds but I can tell you it was like a cave. You could barely see more than a few metres in front of your own hand, let alone be able to tell who might have slipped out of a room this size. I can start by listing who was in my immediate vicinity and we can ask the other guests what they can remember but that’s the best we’ve got.”

  “I suppose it’s too much to hope for any CCTV?”

  “You suppose correctly,” Ryan confirmed. “The Gilberts prefer to keep everything authentic, as close as possible to how things would have been during the Victorian era.”

  Yates opened her mouth to ask another question but Ryan’s attention was immediately drawn elsewhere as he spotted Anna and MacKenzie entering the room.

  He flashed a smile and strode across to greet them.

  “This is a very pleasant surprise,” he said, leaning in to bestow a kiss on Anna’s upturned face.

  Turning to MacKenzie, he couldn’t fail to notice the weight loss and general air of exhaustion but he had the Chief Constable’s words ringing in his ears from earlier that morning and felt optimistic that her arrival was a big step in the right direction.

  “Are you sure you’re ready to come back to work?”

  MacKenzie lifted her chin.

  “I’m going to start with part-time duties and see how it goes.”

  Ryan searched her face and whatever he read there seemed to satisfy him.

  “That sounds sensible but don’t be shy to tell me if you change your mind.” He gave her a warm smile. “Welcome back, Mac.”

  “Thanks,” she said and felt a weight lift from her shoulders.

  Behind them, the floorboards creaked beneath the weight of two pairs of feet and Phillips entered the drawing room with Lowerson at his heels.

  Their footsteps slowed when they caught sight of MacKenzie.

  “Denise?” Phillips’ jaw fell open.

  Uninhibited by the crowd of onlookers, he hurried across the room.

  “Are you alright? I tried to call you—”

  MacKenzie stifled a sigh.

  “I’m sorry, Frank, I left my mobile phone at home. Anna came to see me and we drove out here together.”

  Phillips sent Anna a frustrated glare.

  “Out here? To the woods? Surely—”

  “I asked her to,” MacKenzie put in firmly. “It’s time I started living again. I can’t hide away forever.”

  He had questions, a lot of questions, but he decided to save them for when they had less of an audience.

  “That’s good.” He rubbed his hands up and down her arms and then stepped back again, giving her the space she needed. When they were at work, Denise remained his superior officer and Phillips was always careful to respect that distinction.

  “Hasn’t been the same without you,” Lowerson put in, with a wide smile.

  “There’s no telling what mischief you’d get up to, left to your own devices,” she teased.

  At the other end of the room, Yates watched them with a stab of envy. They were bonded together, a close-knit team of colleagues who behaved more like family, whereas she was on the periphery. She wondered if she would ever be welcomed with open arms, without the cool, professional formality Ryan employed as a default.

  As if sensing her observation, he turned and gestured for her to join them.

  “Yates?”

  She hurried forward.

  “I think you’ve all met PC Melanie Yates but I don’t know if you’ve met my fiancée, Anna?”

  Yates pasted a friendly smile on her face and held out a hand to the tall, slim woman with the face of an angel.

  “Doctor Taylor,” she said, politely.

  Anna laughed but it wasn’t an unkind sound.

  “Please, call me Anna. Only my students call me ‘Doctor Taylor’. Or Ryan, when he’s being facetious.”

  Yates watched a smile pass between them and something lurched in her stomach. She nodded as the others drew her into conversation but her eyes strayed back to where their two dark heads leaned together, fingers touching now and then in the kind of natural gesture that spoke of two people who were supremely comfortable with one other.

  When Anna excused herself to return to her own work, Yates raised a friendly hand to wave her off.

  * * *

  Ryan guided his team on a walkthrough of Victor Swann’s movements the previous evening. As they moved from room to room, daylight filtered through the windows and lent the house a different character but it was still easy to imagine the forbidding atmosphere once night fell. “That’s another thing,” Ryan said, and turned to them as they stepped outside into the courtyard where Victor’s body had been found. “I want to know why the lights failed and whether it was by accident or design.”

  “You think somebody might have deliberately fused the lights and used the darkness as a cover to push him down the stairs?”

  MacKenzie had always been a quick study.

  “There are three possibilities, as far as I can tell.” Ryan tapped the index finger of his left hand. “First, Swann’s death was entirely accidental, as was the electrical failure. But, if that’s the case, why was his locker and house ransacked?”

  “Opportunism?” Lowerson and Yates spoke in unison, then turned to one another in awkward surprise.

  “It’s possible,” Ryan agreed. “In which case, we need to dig a bit deeper to understand why. None of his valuable possessions has been taken, so what did Victor have that was so important?”

  He tapped his middle finger.

  “Second, somebody fused the lights deliberately to provide cover for themselves. But how did they know Victor would offer to check the fuse box? It could easily have been me, or Dave Quibble…any number of people.”

  “Might have been a case of mistaken identity,” Phillips put in. “Easy enough to mistake one person for another, especially in the dark.”

  Ryan nodded.

  “That’s another possibility, if an assailant mistook Swann for somebody else. But who?”

  He shook his head and tapped the third finger of his left hand.

  “Finally, the lights fusing was sheer coincidence and somebody took the opportunity to slip out and kill Victor Swann. Once again, we have to ask ourselves why.”

  There was a short silence while they digested each possibility and Ryan swept his gaze over each of their faces.

  “Let’s start digging.”

  CHAPTER 8

  By late afternoon, the rainclouds had migrated from the city to settle heavily over Cragside. They brought with them a strong summer wind that buffeted against the white forensic tents and threw up dust from the long gravel driveway. It howled through the uppermost layers of the trees until their branches swayed wildly against the darkening sky and rattled the windows of the old house which, like its master, remained defiant against the gathering storm.

  Conscious that the day was slipping away, Ryan dispatched Lowerson and Yates to oversee a thorough search of Victor Swann’s house in Rothbury, always hopeful that it might turn up something useful. Phillips and MacKenzie stayed to supervise the work at Cragside, taking secondary statements from its remaining staff and the Gilberts, who looked on with mounting disapproval as their home was invaded. Crime analysts had been instructed to conduct a search of their intelligence databases, just in case Victor Swann had a sheet. The old valet might have seemed the quintessential country gentleman, too refined to have embroiled himself in anything untoward, but if Ryan had learned anything during his time as a police
man, it was that appearances could often be deceptive.

  While those investigations were underway, Ryan went in search of Dave Quibble and a tour of Cragside’s electrical systems. He found the conservation manager hunched over a computer in his office, cataloguing what appeared to be a plank of wood.

  Ryan rapped a knuckle against the door, which had been left open to visitors.

  “Got a minute?”

  Dave leaned back in his chair and removed his glasses, blinking a couple of times to clear the glare from his computer screen.

  “Of course,” he said as he gestured Ryan inside. “What can I do for you?”

  Ryan looked around the tiny office space. It was full to brimming with what looked like pieces of junk to the untrained eye but were probably artefacts of great historical importance.

  “Working on a Sunday?”

  Quibble slid his glasses back onto his nose and indicated the boxes stacked beside his desk. “Always something to keep me busy,” he said. “Alice is working on one of the family portraits upstairs and I had another couple of students cataloguing the old nursery upstairs but they’ve been sent home. What can I help you with?”

  “I’d like to take you up on that offer of a guided tour of the electrics but, if this isn’t a convenient time…?”

  Dave nodded sagely.

  “You want to know why the lights went out last night, eh?”

  Ryan inclined his head.

  “That’s easy enough,” Dave said, tapping a few keys to save his work. “How much do you know about electrical circuitry?”

  “Perhaps the question should be, ‘How much do I know about nineteenth-century electrical circuitry?’ In which case, my answer would be, ‘Not much’.”

  Quibble laughed and drew himself up.

  “Alright, let’s start from the top.”

  Ryan could already feel the beginnings of a headache.

  * * *

  Twenty minutes later, Ryan found himself looking at what could only be described as a giant, fifty-foot corkscrew. A short stroll downhill from the house had taken them along a winding driveway flanked by Douglas firs, conifers and thick rhododendrons until Quibble stopped beside a stone bridge. He pointed towards an enormous turbine leading down to a narrow river which snaked through the trees.

  “It’s an inverse Archimedes screw.” Dave raised his voice above the sound of the water bubbling furiously below.

  “How does it work?” Ryan rested his forearms on the edge of the bridge and watched the machine in action. A swathe of mist covered his face in a fine sheen of moisture.

  “Well, normally, an Archimedes screw pumps low-lying water upwards but, in this case, we’re taking water from higher ground and forcing it downwards.” Dave bobbed his head towards an expanse of water on the other side of the bridge. “Water from Tumbleton Lake feeds through the screw at the top and the weight of it forces the blades to turn, which allows the water to fall to the bottom and the screw rotates.”

  Ryan nodded, watching the powerful blades undulating in rhythmic motion as the water made its journey through the turbine.

  “Then what?”

  “The energy produced by the rotational action is harnessed in an electrical generator that’s connected to the main turbine shaft.”

  “How much energy are we talking about here?”

  They turned away from the bridge and began to walk back towards the house, while Dave removed his glasses and rubbed the lenses against the edge of his jacket to clear them of condensation.

  “If Cragside were your average house, the energy produced by that screw would be enough to power it for more than a year. That’s because the average house only has around twenty light bulbs, whereas Cragside has over three hundred.”

  Ryan looked up at the mansion and stood still for a moment, considering.

  “And each bulb has twenty or forty watts?”

  “No,” Dave stuck his hands in the pockets of his padded gilet. “The family wanted to use hydroelectricity, just like old Armstrong would have wanted it, and we use energy-saving LED bulbs to conserve power and maintain the historical ambience.”

  “What about the other electrics?”

  “The screw only provides enough power to light the house,” Quibble explained. “There isn’t enough hydro-power to operate large items, like fridges or washing machines. The house is connected to the National Grid, of course, so we can always rely on mains electricity for that. Sometimes, we produce excess power and store it in a giant battery but it’s not usually enough for a consistent output.”

  A light drizzle began to fall as their feet crunched over twigs and fallen leaves.

  “So, you’re saying you can choose whether to rely solely on hydro-power?”

  “Sure,” Quibble shrugged, as if it were obvious. “But the Gilberts prefer to avoid mainstream electricity wherever possible.”

  “When do they use it?” Ryan prodded.

  “Only on set days—usually Mondays and Fridays, which is when the housekeeper does the laundry and whatnot.” Quibble chuckled to himself. “That’s when we have the radio playing in the staff room.”

  “How about yesterday? Surely, mains power would have been needed to prepare dinner for the party?”

  Quibble scratched the side of his nose.

  “Ordinary cooking for the family or small parties can be done in the house kitchens but large-scale catering comes from the tea room in the old stable block. We keep that area connected to the National Grid continuously, so there’s never any disruption to visitors’ amenities. The best person to ask about that would be Maggie but I think the catering staff transferred the food and drink from the tea room across to the main house last night using the servants’ stairs.”

  The same staircase Victor had tumbled down, Ryan thought.

  “But the main part of the house was entirely disconnected from the National Grid?”

  “Yes, that’s right.”

  “One final question, Dave. Who knows when the house will be connected to mains power and when it won’t?”

  Quibble gave him a searching look.

  “Well, everybody, I suppose. It’s part of the initial staff training, to prevent people turning on a dishwasher and inadvertently fusing the circuit. All the family and staff know which days are safe to use large electricals. The only possible exception would be when the Gilberts decide to use mains electric on a different day and forget to tell anybody about it but that rarely happens.”

  Ryan fell silent as the drizzle turned to fat raindrops and soaked through his thin cotton shirt. He looked up at the whimsical house that appeared like a mirage, hazy and fantastical with its turrets and towers, and wondered what festered beneath its picturesque exterior.

  * * *

  “Found anything interesting?”

  Melanie Yates looked up from her inspection of the chest of drawers in Victor Swann’s bedroom as Lowerson sauntered into the room. “Not yet,” she replied, turning back to her search. “Just clothes and trinkets. You?”

  Lowerson cleared his throat in what he hoped was a manly fashion.

  “It’s more a question of what I haven’t found,” he said. “There’s hardly any photographs around the house and no letters or cards from family. Bit weird, don’t you think?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Victor certainly liked the finer things in life, didn’t he?” Lowerson went on, taking in the upscale furnishings and extravagant clothes hanging in the wardrobe. “I didn’t realise valets were paid so well.”

  “I wouldn’t have a clue,” Yates admitted, then made a small sound of surprise when her fingers brushed against something hard. She pushed aside a mound of folded boxer shorts and grasped a brown, A4-sized envelope.

  “What’s that?”

  Lowerson came to stand beside her, leaning in a little too close for comfort. Yates took a subtle half-step away, so she would not be suffocated by the overpowering scent of whatever aftershave he’d doused himself in that morning.
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  “Looks like photographs,” she said, then pulled out a wad of colour prints with a gloved hand.

  The first few images were innocent enough, just snapshots of a garden and of the house at Cragside. The prints seemed to be a few years old judging by the yellowing edges and general hue, but they had been carefully stored away from the light so their quality was preserved.

  As she turned to the next print, the content changed dramatically.

  The images that followed were all of Cassandra Gilbert in various poses, out on the lawn or beside the trees, mostly in the nude or half-dressed. At a glance, they might have been taken at least ten years earlier.

  “Well—”

  “Ah—”

  Lowerson and Yates looked at each other in a combination of startled embarrassment and genuine surprise.

  “Who said the younger generation have all the fun? Judging by these photos, it’s the older ones who like to let loose.” Lowerson tried for levity but his attempt fell on deaf ears.

  “Do you think Victor took these photos?”

  Lowerson shrugged.

  “Impossible to say for sure.”

  Yates returned the photos to their envelope and looked across at him.

  “Why else would Victor have these pictures? It puts a different slant on Cassandra Gilbert’s relationship with her husband’s valet, doesn’t it?”

  “Let’s not go jumping to conclusions, pet.” His tone was ever-so-slightly condescending and he immediately wished he could snatch the words back. Perhaps he should do himself a favour and stop talking altogether.

  “I am not your pet.”

  Too late, Lowerson thought weakly.

  Yates raised a single, unimpressed eyebrow and then stalked out of the room with her spine ramrod straight.

  After she’d left, Lowerson slapped a palm against his own face and blew out a long, frustrated breath.

  “And I wonder why I’m still single,” he muttered, before trailing after her to issue an apology.

  CHAPTER 9

  The rain continued for the rest of the afternoon, casting a daytime shadow over the landscape so that it seemed much later than five o’clock when the CSI team packed away their equipment and Cragside closed its doors to the outside world.