Faraday 01 The Gigabyte Detective

by Michael Hillier

  “Did your maid go into any other nearby rooms at the same time on that evening?” enquired Charlotte sweetly.

  “Pardon?” Montessori blinked. “I do not understand.”

  She pointed out, “Room 307 is in the middle of a corridor. Was the maid working her way down the corridor when she into this room?”

  Paulson broke in. “Or was she finding out if Cynthia Adams and her friend had finished their hanky panky, so that you could relet the room for cash to late arrivals?” He took a breath in the sudden silence. “In other words, Mr Montessori, had the maid been sent up there on your specific instructions to see if the room was empty?”

  “No!” The man’s eyes slid away from his face. “I - I do not remember exactly what happened. You must remember - it is now one year since the murder.”

  “All right.” Charlotte leaned forward. “Now, this is very important, Mr Montessori. I don’t want you to rely on your memory. I want you to go and check your records, talk to any of your staff who were here at the time, and obtain the following information:-

  Firstly, the dates and room numbers of the two previous bookings Cynthia Adams made and whether the room number was given to her at the time of booking.

  Secondly, whether the other rooms were relet later that night. Did you send the chamber-maid in to check whether the rooms were clear? What time did she enter the room?

  Thirdly, do you know what time Cynthia left the hotel and the route she took when she left the hotel on the first two occasions? Did she hand in the key to reception as she left? Was she on her own?

  Fourthly, when clearing the rooms prior to re-letting, was anything found in any of them or can anyone remember anything unusual about the state of the rooms or the bathrooms? For example, had the baths been used? Had any of the other equipment been used? Had anything been taken or lost?

  Finally, do any staff remember seeing anyone, probably a man, entering or leaving the corridor or using the staircases at either end of the corridor, or the lifts nearest to the rooms which Cynthia Adams had booked?

  Do you understand all that?”

  Montessori nodded wordlessly.

  “It’s printed out on this sheet of paper.” She handed it to him. Inspector Paulson will be coming to collect the information from you tomorrow afternoon at, say, two o’clock. He will want to interview anyone who has provided you with any of the information which I’ve asked for. Is that clear?”

  The manager nodded again. “I will do my best.”

  Charlotte rose to her feet and leaned over him. “It is essential that you do. The alternative is for us to visit your head office and try to obtain the information from them.” She shook her head. “They might not be very happy if we started asking searching questions. Goodbye, Mr Montessori.”

  The unhappy man said nothing. He regarded her with a sickly grin as she turned and left the office.

  Charlotte smiled to herself as she imagined Paulson thinking “the bloody woman seems to be going over the top about the information likely to be gained from the manager’s flawed memory”.

  * * * * * * * *

  Susannah was sitting in her usual seat at the cafe at coffee time. She didn’t expect to see Richard today. He had said he would have other work to do, although he hadn’t volunteered what that was. However she thought there was a possibility that he might come along if he finished his other work.

  She admitted to herself that her feelings for Richard were somewhat confused. She found him very attractive, and most of the time he was a delightful companion. But there were also times when she felt he had switched off from her and she didn’t know what he was thinking. Perhaps it was the memory of his tragic experiences in the area which had overwhelmed him.

  When that occurred she felt as though she was being shut out by him - as though she was no longer important to him. And yet a few minutes later he would be full of consideration for her feelings or her welfare.

  The trouble was that her day with him yesterday, exploring the beautiful South Devon scenery, had awakened her to the fact that she had been living a very lonely life and she didn’t want that to continue. She was no longer willing to play the part of a luxuriously caged bird. She wanted to get out into the world and experience some life, even if it might not all be painless.

  In fact she might as well admit that she wanted to experience a lot more of life with Richard. She knew that Stephen would never be happy to give up his life in London in order to share her parochial pastimes. She had come to acknowledge, after a lot of thought last night, that they weren’t cut out to be a happily married couple. She had simply been enjoying the luxury of living comfortably off Stephen’s wealth and there was really no future in that.

  She shook herself. As she lifted her coffee cup to her beautiful lips she realised she wanted to change all that.

  * * * * * * * *

  Druce’s Hill House turned out to be a great Victorian pile in the middle of two acres of walled and heavily wooded gardens. Just to one side of the semi-circular entrance bay with its large stone piers, stood the quaint old lodge. The paint was now peeling on the ornate fascia boards. Ivy was climbing up the decorative chimney in the centre of the roof. At first sight the place seemed deserted.

  They knocked at the front door of the lodge and waited. All seemed quiet. The only sound was the occasional swish of a car along the road outside.

  “It looks as though they’re out,” said Paulson as he knocked again.

  But at that moment there came a shuffling noise from the side of the house and a bent old man appeared.

  “That door ‘asn’t opened in ten year,” his high-pitched Devon brogue explained. “Us always uses the back.”

  “Mr Burrows?” asked Charlotte, and when he nodded she continued, “we’re police officers - C.I.D.” She showed her warrant card. “Can we talk to you?”

  ”’Bout the missus bein’ dead?” he quavered. “Us ‘ave already talked to the police. It were a cocky young sergeant-bloke.”

  “DS Mallinson,” said Paulson.

  Charlotte approached the old man. “We still haven’t found Mrs Adams’ killer, Mr Burrows. There are a few additional questions we’d like to ask. Can we come in and talk to you for a while?”

  “Course ‘e can, my dear. But you’ll have to come round the back. That door an’t been opened in ten year.” He turned and shuffled round to the back of the house. Charlotte and Paulson followed him.

  ”’Twere a long time ago it all happened,” he complained. “You won’t never find the bugger what done it now. Still I’ll give ‘e what ‘elp I can.”

  “Is your wife home?” asked Charlotte.

  He reached the back door and turned to her. “Course she is on a Wednesday afternoon. ‘Er’s in the kitchen. Us’ll stop in there and ‘er’ll get us a cup o’ tea.” He pushed the handle and led them into the kitchen. Emily Burrows was at the sink preparing some food. She turned to meet them as they came in.

  “Us’ve got the police again,” announced her husband. “I told ‘em we already talked to the police. But they still wants to come in.”

  “I’ll get a ‘e cup of tea.” Emily was a plump, busy little thing. She had pink rosy cheeks and her silver hair was pulled back in a bun. She seemed to be much more alert than her husband. As she busied herself with putting on the kettle, she asked, “What d’you want to be askin’ us, then?”

  “Mainly about what you remember about Mrs Adams in the last few weeks before she died,” said Charlotte. “Were you still working for her then?”

  Mrs Burrows drew herself up. “Course I was. I was just about all she had left. I remember in the old days when there used to be four or five of us working there. But by the time she died there weren’t no-one left but me. An’ old Stanley here of course. But all he did by then was potter about in the garden and do a few odd jobs.”

  “The past sounds very grand.” Charlotte was puzzled. “We’ve met Mrs Adams’ son, Giles. He told us that he took over the business
from his father. But it doesn’t seem big enough to pay for a great big house like this and for five servants.”

  “Oh no.” Emily shook her head. “The accountants wasn’t his father’s real business. Mr Adams was something big in the City. We didn’t hardly used to see him in the week. He was always up in London. The missus used to complain about it. But, as he said, you’ve got to be where the money is.”

  Charlotte exchanged glances with Paulson. There was something which needed explaining here. But she guessed Emily Burrows wasn’t the one to explain it. Instead she said, “What exactly did you do for Mrs Adams.”

  “Towards the end I done everything.” The old lady shrugged. “I done a bit of cooking, some cleaning and housekeeping. She didn’t pay a lot, but we had the house here. I liked to do things for her. She were a nice lady.” She busied herself with filling the tea-pot.

  “Did you go in every day?”

  She looked up from stirring the pot and nodded genially. “Nearly every day - ‘cept at weekends.”

  “Did Mrs Adams have many visitors.”

  “Hardly a one.” She frowned. “That useless son of hers never came round in the last couple of years. And she didn’t entertain much after Mr Adams died. Not like the old days.”

  “You don’t remember anyone coming to see her in the last week or two before she died?”

  Mrs Burrows stopped and thought, the pot poised in her hand, on the point of starting to pour out the first cup of tea. “I can’t think of no-one. She went out a lot though.” She gave a benign smile. “How do you like it?”

  “As it comes, please,” said Charlotte. “A little milk, no sugar.”

  The old woman looked at Paulson who nodded. “Same, please.”

  “Do you know where she went or who she met on those outings?” asked Charlotte.

  “No.” Emily’s face seemed to button up as she handed out the cups. “She didn’t never tell me things like that, and I never asked. I knew my place, you see. I think that’s what she liked about me.”

  Paulson weighed in. “Did anyone ever come to pick her up? Did you notice any unusual cars come in or out?”

  “I don’t think so.” She paused in the action of handing him his cup of tea. “I’m a bit deaf, you see. So I often don’t hear things that happen outside. Stanley might have heard them, of course.”

  “What d’e say?” asked the old boy when they turned to him. “No. I don’t remember nothin’ like that. I’d ‘ave told ‘e when I spoke to ‘e before, if I’d ‘eared something like that.”

  “So,” concluded Charlotte, “nothing at all unusual occurred during the couple of weeks before Mrs Adams death.”

  “Oh, I didn’t say that,” said Mrs Burrows.

  Charlotte noticed Paulson was suddenly alert. “What do you mean? What happened that was unusual?”

  Emily put her head on one side. “It’s not so much something what happened. It’s just the way the missus was behaving.” She looked directly at Charlotte. “It’s one of those things a woman understands. You see - she’d been very unhappy for some time since the master’s illness began. And then, for those last few weeks, it was as if she was young again. It was like she had something new to live for all of a sudden.” She ended lamely, “And then she went and died - was killed, I mean.”

  There was a long silence as they sat and sipped their tea. At last Charlotte said, “Do you have any idea, Mrs Burrows, what it was that made Mrs Adams seem young again?”

  “I told you, she didn’t never tell me nothing about these things,” she said. “But I seen lots of things change about her. She started wearing pretty dresses again. She went and had her hair done every week. She used to put on a lot more make-up. And,” her voice became low and conspiratorial, “she bought new, silky underclothes. I know, ‘cause I had to wash ‘em.”

  “What d’e say?” asked Stanley, but everyone ignored him.

  “There was nothing in Mallinson’s interview notes about this,” she said to Paulson. She turned back to Emily Burrows. “Why didn’t you tell the previous policeman about this?”

  “Oh, I didn’t like ‘e,” she said.

  ”’E were a cocky young bloke,” said Stanley. “You can’t say nothin’ to they cocky young blokes.”

  “Besides,” said Mrs Burrows, “that sort of thing’s women’s talk. I couldn’t say that to a policeman.”

  Charlotte took a breath. “All right, Mrs Burrows, I think we’ve got the picture. I guess we always knew there was a man involved. It’s also clear now that Cynthia Adams was in pretty deep. The question is - who was this man? You say you never saw anyone here and Mrs Adams didn’t tell you anything about who she was seeing. I take it you haven’t any idea who this man might have been?”

  “I’m sorry my dear.” Emily shook her head. “I haven’t the least idea.”

  “It was probably someone she knew in the past, who suddenly came back into her life,” said Charlotte. “How long have you worked for her altogether?”

  “Thirty-two years,” said the old lady. “She took me on when they bought the place, just after they was married and before they went to South America. Stanley was already the gardener here when the place was owned by Lady Caroline. That’s how we met.”

  Charlotte leaned forward. “Now this is something I want you to think very carefully about, Mrs Burrows. In fact, I don’t want you to give me an answer straight away. I want you to think about it for a few days. The question is, can you remember anyone who seemed to get on especially well with Mrs Adams in the past? - before Mr Adams died, I mean. I’d like you to think about it and write down the names and approximately how many years ago she knew them. It can be just anyone you remember who might have come here a lot in the past, any close friends that she or her husband had - anyone at all - men or women.” She smiled at the old lady. “Can you do that for me? - and I’ll come back in a few days to find out who you’ve remembered.”

  The old lady nodded. “I’ll do my best, my dear. I’m afraid my memory isn’t what it was once upon a time. But perhaps our Stanley can help me.”

  “That’ll be lovely.”

  With that they left the Burrows to reminisce together.

  * * * * * * * *

  Charlotte finished entering the last of the data she had collected that morning onto the computer and arched her back to ease her aching shoulders. She got up, walked over to the window and casually looked down into the car park. She was just in time to see two cars pull in to a pair of the marked bays below. A young uniformed officer got out of the small one which was light blue and bore no police identification markings. From the other large, white car with the police stripes emblazoned down the side stepped Detective Chief Superintendent Lasham.

  “Oh, hell,” she said softly, “the blighter’s come to check up on me already.” With a sigh she went back to the computer and started printing out a precis of the information collected to date.

  Sure enough Lasham walked through her door five minutes later. “Afternoon Faraday. Your car’s parked downstairs at the back.” He tossed the ignition keys on to her desk and looked round. “What have you done with Paulson?” She noticed he had left the door open so that everyone in the general office could hear.

  “I don’t need anyone to help me this afternoon, sir.” Charlotte stood up but couldn’t easily get round Lasham’s bulk to push the door closed. “Everybody else in the section is working on other cases today.”

  “Solved the bloody thing already, have you?”

  She managed a smile. “No, sir. I’ve just finished the preliminary stage of linking together all the data which has been collected so far. You can see that a summary is being printed out at the moment.” She paused and then decided to plunge on. “The computer will then highlight gaps in our data and likely sources for that information. It will also suggest the most fruitful future lines of enquiry so that we can concentrate our resources in the most productive way possible.”

  “What a load of bunkum,” Las
ham burst out. “Somebody up the top needs their head read. Fancy splashing out all this money and time doing what any bright copper could do on the back of an envelope.”

  “With respect sir …” Charlotte began, but was cut off before she could get any further.

  “Respect, my foot. Don’t try your London clap-trap on me, Faraday.” He pointed a finger at her. “Now listen to this and listen well. When Lord Harry gets some strange notion in his head it takes a bit to shift it. I don’t know what you’ve done to persuade him that you’re the best thing since sliced bread. But I’m afraid I’m not impressed by some fancy bird he’s picked up at the Chief Constables’ three-day bash.”

  Charlotte was shocked into responding. “What on earth are you suggesting.”

  “I’m suggesting that all this rubbish,” he indicated the computer and the peripherals with a sweep of his hand, “is a load of cods-wallop dreamed up by you, along with your short skirts, to advance your career in the Met. Well, I can tell you it won’t wash down here.”

  “That is scandalous misrepresentation!”

  The chief superintendent continued to wag his finger at her. “I will be keeping a very close eye on your progress over the next few weeks, Detective Chief Inspector bloody Faraday. I’ll be making it my job, in that time, to shoot you down in flames. If you don’t come up with the goods, I shall take great pleasure in running you and all this expensive trash off my patch in double quick time. Do I make myself clear?”

  “Perfectly sir.” Charlotte had recovered her composure now. She continued in cold fury. “It’s quite clear that you’re a bigoted, narrow-minded bully and that you wouldn’t understand a good idea if it hit you between the eyes. Fortunately I’ve only come across a very few people like that so far in my time in the force. They give a bad name to the police force and to themselves and I have nothing but contempt for them.”

  “You seem to have forgotten that I outrank you, Faraday” spluttered Lasham.

  “Furthermore,” she said, “I would not be in the least worried about playing the recording I have been taking of this conversation to anyone in authority in either the local force or in Scotland Yard.”