“So, it looks like a suicide?”
Mills nodded. “But I’m not sure. Something doesn’t sit right.”
“You’ve got good instincts, Mills. If you say something’s not right, I believe you.”
He seemed to relax slightly then, giving a little nod. “Sharp might not be best pleased.”
“I’ll handle Sharp,” I assured him. “You just fill in, quick as you like.”
We stood in the entrance of the house, a large, open-spaced foyer of polished white and black tiles. A desk took up most of the room, the wall behind it lined with shelves to mark it out as the reception. But everything else was a perfectly preserved time capsule. I clocked Smith heading up the stairs and followed Mills through a set of wide doors into a drawing room where three women sat. The elder, her silver hair tied back in a neat bun, was talking to a constable, her hands fluttering, face flushed. The other, younger, with a face like a silent movie actress, sat stock still, her pale face staring unblinkingly at the fireplace.
“Josephine Goddard,” Mills muttered to me, indicating the older woman. “She manages the museum. Rita Jones,” the younger girl, “works here. The body was found by the cleaner,” he pointed to another woman who stood at the window, clutching herself. “Nia Jenkins. She called it in.”
“I’ll talk to them later,” I decided. “Let’s take a look first. I want to speak to Crowe before she leaves.”
Mills nodded and let me through the interconnecting rooms, each one beautifully curated, and I felt a small pinch of remorse that I’d never get to live in a place like this. We passed through a room shrouded in sheets, the fireplace slightly dismantled.
“The dining room,” Mills told me. “Closed off to the public for some repairs.”
I nodded, and we walked through to a long, windowed hallway. A few more doors, cleverly hidden in the panelling, had opened to reveal access downstairs. But it was the centre of the room that drew my eye.
A rope hung from the sturdy-looking chandelier, taken, it appeared, from the heavy, long curtains that lined the wall. Beneath it, a girl lay. Dr Crowe knelt beside her in her white plastic suit. She glanced up as we drew near, feet loud on the stone floor, her face drawn with an unusual amount of sympathy. Dr Crowe was long used to examining bodies, so I could not help but wonder what about this had conjured such a response from her.
“Viviane Charles,” Mills recited for me. “Twenty-nine years old. She’s worked here for about six years.”
I crouched down beside her. She wore a plain, smart black dress, a cardigan over the top. Her feet were bare, her shoes left on the floor where they must have fallen off. Her brown hair had been pushed back from her face, her skin grey. She had no jewellery, save for a ring on her pinkie finger and a small watch, but her neck was marred with a terrible red band. Hanged.
“When?” I asked Dr Crowe.
“Around seven,” she told me. She lifted the girl’s wrist slightly to show me the smashed watch face. I nodded.
“The cleaner found her?” I asked Mills.
“Came in this morning to do her usual deep clean of the place. They’re closed Sunday and Monday. She came through to head downstairs.” He nodded to the open door. “Found her up there.” He nodded to the rope again. I winced, my heart going out to the woman to have to find such a thing. “Called it in once she could. Would have been around ten, half ten.”
“And the manager?”
“Cleaner called her once we were on route. Rita too, they both knew her well, and the house.” He looked around at the historical maze. “Which might come in handy.”
I gave him a brief nod of approval and turned back to Crowe, who had begun to pack her things away.
“Suicide?”
“I’m with Mills,” Crowe told me. “Said we ought to give you a call. I can’t prove anything yet,” she held a finger, “more of a feeling. Angle’s not quite right.” She ran a hand just above the line around Viviane’s neck.
“We can investigate it as a murder,” I said, whether or not Sharp agreed. “But the sooner you get us the right evidence, the more access we’ll have.”
“I know,” she chided me. “This isn’t my first rodeo.” She stood up, looking around the room with a scowl.
“What is it?” I asked her gently.
“It’s one thing to kill someone,” Lena muttered in a much darker tone than usual. “But to stage it up? Make it look like they did it themselves?” She shook her head, irately unzipping herself from her suit.
I reached over and placed a hand on her shoulder. “It’s a good thing you were here then. To correct that.”
Lena looked up and met my gaze with a fierce light in her eyes. “I’ll find your evidence.” She looked down at the body. “Doubt it will be too hard. You’re the ones who have to find the mad bastard that did it.”
Mills smiled at her, his eyes drawing down to the girl. Crowe nodded to some of her team, who shuffled over and began preparing the body to take away. Mills and I waited, hands behind our backs as Viviane was carefully, gently wrapped up and carried from the house. Once she was gone, Crowe in a flurry behind her, I strode back into the centre of the room.
“Thin rope,” I murmured, pulling on a glove and picking up an end. It had a purpose for opening the curtains, but the velvet rope was built for style more than anything else. Not what I would think strong enough to hold a body, especially overnight.
I looked up. The fixture was old, but strong. I yanked gently on the rope. It didn’t budge. I yanked harder, and still nothing. Muttering to myself, I looped it around my arm a few times, and pulled myself up off my feet like a one-arm push-up. It held me for as long as I could hold myself. Definitely strong enough to take the weight of someone the size of Viviane. I suppose I had more to learn about curtains.
“There’s no chair,” Mills muttered, standing beside. “No box or stool. How’d she get up there?” We both stopped and looked around. A bloody good point, surely enough to rule out suicide, but it wouldn’t have been suggested for no good reason.
The piece of rope I held was long, looped up and over the light. Unusually long. It went up, along, back over to the windows where it had been, somehow, secured on its own railing. I walked to the side, and it came with me, all the way over to a window seat. The right length to reach this far, the right length to leave her where Nia Jenkins would have found her this morning. Complicated, but doable. Especially by someone who knew about the house, the structural integrity of it all.
“She’d have stood up here,” I realised, climbing up myself and imaging looping the rope around my neck. “And then stepped down.” I jumped myself, letting go of the rope. Mills frowned, looking at where the seat was, to where Viviane had been lowered.
“Bit of a swing,” he acknowledged with a small amount of shock. “Though, that might explain her neck. Why it left such a mark.” He reached up a hand and scratched the back of his neck, concerned.
“Plausible. All plausible… but Crowe’s right about the angle,” I added to reassure him of his sudden doubts. “The mark went down, not up.”
Mill’s phone rang, and he pulled it out, a worried glance going from me to the screen.
“Ma’am,” he answered while I busied myself with the rope.
“Yes… Yes, ma’am… Of course.” Mills paused for longer. “Sir?”
I looked over. Mills held the phone out with a sheepish face. I sighed and took it from him.
“Good morning, Mara,” I said sweetly into the phone.
“You’re at a crime scene?” Her clear voice cut through me.
“It’s my job.”
“Uniform said it looks like suicide,” Sharp said curtly. “Mills is more than capable of handling a suicide.”
“I know he is. Very capable.”
“What is it then?” I could picture her exasperated face.
“It doesn’t look like one to me, ma’am. To either of us, or Crowe.”
“Crowe?” There was a pause, the sor
t Sharp used to rub her fingers against her temples whenever I annoyed her. “Does she have evidence?”
“Not yet.”
“So, no?”
“Ma’am—”
“I trust you,” she interrupted me, “and I trust Mills. But sometimes, Thatcher, a suicide is just a suicide. Treat it like one. Learn about her, find out why she would have done this.”
“Something’s not right about it,” I told her, looking up to the ceiling. “It’s all plausible. Just doesn’t make much sense.”
“Your job is to make it make sense, not to find a conspiracy,” Sharp snapped. “Finish up there and then get back to the station. It’s supposed to be your day off.”
“Until it’s a murder, I’m just here to oversee,” I said with a wink at Mills. “I shall be very relaxed watching Mills work.”
She sighed down the phone. “Don’t push your luck, Thatcher. Get to work.” She hung up quickly, and I passed the blank phone back to Mills.
“Well? You’re not really going to stand over me and watch, are you?” he asked as he tucked his phone away.
“No. This feels like a murder, so I’ll treat it like one.” I clapped him once on the shoulder. “Only it might be your name on the paperwork.”
He swore once, quietly, and we gave the room another look over.
“Let’s find out the usual locking up routine for Viviane,” I said, looking over the hallway once more. “See what her co-workers might be able to tell us about her.”
“I doubt much,” Mills said as we walked back through the rooms. “If she was suffering, odds are she’d have hidden it at work.”
“We need to start somewhere,” I replied grimly.
Three
Thatcher
We made our way from the windowed hall, through to the drawing room where the other women sat. As I entered, the constable, Reed, nodded to me and backed from the room.
“Good morning,” I called the attention of the women, spinning a chair around and planting myself on it. “I’m Detective Inspector Thatcher, and I understand you’ve already met Detective Sergeant Mills.”
“Detective Inspector?” Josephine, the manager whom Mills had pointed out, spoke up. “I didn’t think that Inspectors handled suicides.” Her arms were folded, her frame slightly drawn in, her eyes darting from my face to Mills’s.
“Until we have clarification on that, I’ll be here overseeing,” I told them. “Her name was Viviane Charles?”
“Yes, she’s worked here for six years.” The manager nodded.
“Did you know her well?”
The managers shrugged one bony shoulder. “As well as anyone could. We were only colleagues, Inspector. I didn’t see much of her outside work.”
“Did any of you?” I asked, turning to the other two.
“No.” The cleaner, Nia, dabbed at her face. Her eyes were red, cheeks slightly puffy. “I barely saw much of her at all.”
I nodded, not wanting to draw more from her today than was necessary, and turned to the younger girl, Rita. She was staring down now at her lap, toying with the sleeves of her chunky cardigan.
“Miss Jones, is it?” I asked.
“Rita.” She lifted her head, a black curl falling in her face. She shoved it back and nodded.
“How long have you worked here, Rita?”
“About three years,” she told me in a croaking voice. “Nearly four.”
“Did you know Viviane well?” I leant forward on my elbows, hoping that my voice was as gentle as I was trying to make it.
“We got on well,” she said with a weak smile, “but I never saw her much outside of work.”
I leant back, glancing at Mills, who stepped forward.
“Can any of think of any reason why she might have done something like this?” he began. “Was there any indication that she was struggling in any way? Any personal problems that might have come up?”
“She was always very professional,” Josephine announced. “Any problems she had she left on the doorstep.”
“Were there any recent changes to her mood or mannerisms lately?”
“If anything,” Rita spoke up, “she’s been in a better mood recently. She was cheery yesterday morning when she came in.”
“Late, though,” the manager added. “She’d had a doctor’s appointment. No clue as for what, though.”
“She wouldn’t have said,” Rita told us firmly. “Someone like Viviane, she wouldn’t have told us. Would have just been smiling and carrying on as usual.”
I gave her another, grateful nod and stood up from my chair, pacing a small circle around the fireplace and looked around the room.
“I understand she was the last one here last night?”
“She was,” Josephine confirmed. “Locking up. Though,” she narrowed her eyes towards Rita, “it was supposed to be your turn.”
“We swapped,” Rita directed her answer to me. “A few weeks ago. She needed to finish early for something, so we traded.”
“And she would have been here alone?”
“Yes. We have a very efficient process here, Inspector.” Josephine squared her shoulders proudly. “She would have had the place all locked and safe in under an hour.”
“What’s your security like here, Miss Goddard?” I asked. “You don’t have a security team?”
“No. We’ve never much needed one. We have a few cameras,” she indicated one in the corner of the room, “and our alarm system is top of the range. If anyone broke in, they’d be locked in until the police came.”
That was interesting. If we were dealing with a homicide, I would wager that our killer would have had to know that. I looked at Rita again, who had her knees up to her chest, rather looking like she was trying for all the world to sink back into the sofa.
“Might we take a look around the house?” I asked Josephine. “See if there’s anything of interest to us?”
“Certainly. Would you like me to show you around?”
I waved her off. “That’s alright. Some keys might be useful, though.”
“Certainly.”
“And if there’s anything of Viviane’s here that we could take a look at, we’d be very grateful.”
“Her things from yesterday are still here,” Rita said, standing up. “She didn’t keep much else here.”
I couldn’t look away from her. Her hands were curled into fists, the sleeves of her cardigan balled in her fingers, which twitched as she spoke. Her shoulders hunched in, her eyes looking anywhere that wasn’t someone’s, particularly my, face.
“Smith!” I called through the doorway.
“How do you know Smith is here?” Mills asked, flipping his trusty notebook closed and sticking it back in his pocket.
“Saw her as we came in,” I said with a smug grin. Not a moment later, Smith appeared like a shot, standing stock straight. ‘Please go with Miss Jones here to take a look at the victim’s belongings. We’ll need it all taken back to the station as well.”
“Yes, sir.”
As Rita walked past her into the hallway, I caught Smith’s arm. “Keep a watch. Let me know what you think.”
Smith’s eyes widened in surprise, but she gave me a trustworthy nod, and I released her to follow after the girl.
“What was Viviane’s role here?” I asked Josephine as she fished a large ring of keys from her pocket.
“She was an assistant curator,” she told us. “But mostly in this place, it’s talking to the public. Giving tours, that sort of thing.”
“And Miss Jones?”
“The same. She’s better with the tours than Viviane, though. Likes to talk about the history.”
I had a little trouble envisioning that from the nervous woman who’d been sitting here a few moments ago, but I tucked it away for later, taking the keys from the manager.
“Is there anywhere in particular that might be worth looking at?” I asked. She looked like she wasn’t going to answer but drew in a stiff breath and looked up the high ce
iling.
“She liked the Blue Room upstairs and the music room. But she wouldn’t have left anything,” she said hastily. “She cared about the integrity of the house.”
“Just to give us more of an idea about Viviane herself, Ms Goddard,” I assured her. “I doubt we’ll find anything physical here that shouldn’t be.”
Other than the dead girl in the hallway.
“And it would be a great help if we could get access to your security footage,” I added.
She nodded, still looking somewhat apprehensive, perhaps at the thought of letting two detectives amble around unguided. But she looked to Mrs Jenkins and placed a gentle arm around her.
“I’ll see that sorted, Inspector. Let’s get you a cup of tea,” she murmured gently to the rattled cleaner. “We shall be downstairs in the kitchens, should you require us.”
“Thank you, Ms Goddard.”
We watched as they wandered off. Once they departed, I looked around the room with a quiet whistle, bouncing the keys in my hand.
“Let’s start upstairs,” I said, heading for the entrance and the large staircase that swept up. “Fill me in on a few things, Mills.”
“Such as?” he called after me.
“Nia Jenkins. You have her statement?”
I could hear him rustle for his notebook as we walked, flipping through a few pages.
“Mrs Jenkins arrived at the museum at about nine,” Mills recounted. “Unset the alarms, went around switching on lights and whatnot. Made her way through the rooms to the hall, found Miss Charles hanging from the ceiling.”
“Poor woman,” I muttered.
“She took a while to compose herself, as you would, and once she calmed down enough, she called it in. Waited in the entrance for us.”
“Did she see anything as she arrived?”
“Nothing. The place was quiet, not a hair out of place. The usual Sunday routine, in all cases.”
As we talked, I found the Blue Room and unlocked the door, wandering in. It was beautiful, another time capsule. The tall ceiling was painted white, the walls papered in a pale blue that I rather fancied for the coaching house. A four-poster bed took up most of the room, but it was the view that was most captivating. The windows looked out onto the churchyard behind the house, all spring blooms trying to grow the wet soil and little paths meandering around. No sign of ugly seventies buildings or telephone wires. The view was as historic as the house itself.
DCI Thatcher Yorkshire Crime Thrillers: Books 1-3 Page 53