A Spider on the Stairs

by Cassandra Chan

  “I’ll give you that,” agreed Gibbons, sighing.

  “And now,” said Bethancourt, “she thinks I was chatting her up just to get information about Mittlesdon’s.”

  “Oh,” said Gibbons, enlightened. “Is that what she was on about?”

  “I’m afraid so,” said Bethancourt.

  “Really,” said Gibbons, with a mock air of admiration, “your life is very complicated, isn’t it? Who on earth was that Sanderson man, and why did you tell him about me?”

  “I didn’t, not exactly,” answered Bethancourt. “I ran across him at that cocktail party I went to—I told you about it. He’s Sanderson Carveries.” Something came back to him. “I think Tony Grandidge is his nephew or cousin or some such. At least, I’m almost certain that’s what he said that night.”

  Gibbons nodded. “It explains why Mittlesdon is so ready to let him into the back.” He raised a brow. “Any other personal connections with my murder investigation that you’ve forgotten to tell me about?”

  Bethancourt sighed. “I’ll go, shall I?” he said resignedly.

  “No, stay,” decided Gibbons. “There’s nothing to say you shouldn’t shop here, and I have to run off in any case to speak to Mittlesdon’s accountants. Do try not to get further involved in anyone’s personal life, if you can manage it.”

  “I won’t,” said Bethancourt, rather lamely.

  He watched Gibbons go and then looked down at the book in his hands, surprised to find he was still holding it. Feeling much chastened, and wondering if there was any way he could set things right, he plonked himself down in one of the easy chairs and began to read about the latest American diet craze.

  9

  In Which Bethancourt and Gibbons Receive a Late-Night Summons

  It was past one o’clock in the morning and the rain made a steady patter against the darkened windows. Gibbons sat at the kitchen table with his laptop open before him and an array of case files and notes spread out all around it. He had been hard at work in the two days since he had returned from Cornwall, but no matter how he added it up, he did not seem to be much farther forward.

  He looked up as a door across the room opened and Bethancourt came up the stairs from the cellar. His appearance was slightly disheveled and there was a muddy streak across his cheek.

  “There’s a bit of damp,” he said, “but no flooding yet. I think we may make it through.”

  “But it’s still raining,” Gibbons reminded him.

  “Well, yes, there is that,” admitted Bethancourt, coming to join his friend at the table. “I can’t do anything about it, however.”

  Gibbons grunted, having returned his attention to his computer. Bethancourt eyed him, lit a cigarette, and inspected the cold remains of the cocoa in the mug he had left on the table. Sighing, he rose to reheat it in the microwave on the worktop, and then, having given Gibbons those few moments of quiet, he asked, “Anything interesting?”

  “No,” said Gibbons with a sigh, pushing back from the table and rubbing his head with both hands. “Constable Redfern’s been rummaging around, but he hasn’t come up with much more than I have. This,” he waved at the computer, “is to say that rumor has it your Catherine slept with her superior to get her assistant professorship at York University. Which in turn led to her getting the job at Mittlesdon’s, out of which she has done quite well.”

  “She’s not my Catherine,” replied Bethancourt automatically. “Alice,” he added, “told me the same thing, but I put it down to jealousy. Sorry.”

  Gibbons shrugged. “It’s not as if it makes a very compelling motive for murder, even if it’s true,” he said. He paused and then asked curiously, “Does Alice know you’ve been dallying with Catherine?”

  “I think she’s figured it out,” said Bethancourt resignedly. “There’s definitely an edge to her conversation lately. Although that might be because I’ve been leading her on to the point of leaving myself open to a breach-of-promise suit.”

  “Her information has been very helpful,” said Gibbons.

  “But it hasn’t really got us anywhere.” Bethancourt slumped back in his chair and held up a finger. “Item: we’ve found out that Tony Grandidge was a scamp at university and was actually arrested for trespass, and that he’s carrying more debt than he probably should be. He has been pursuing Catherine Stockton for some time, but she has remained cool to his advances, as she likes to keep a firm line between business and pleasure.”

  “Still not talking to you, eh?” asked Gibbons.

  “No,” replied Bethancourt, and held up a second finger. “Item two: we have discovered that Catherine Stockton leads rather a more risqué life than her co-workers and employer are aware of, which might, in the case of the true sociopath, be a cause for murder. Unfortunately, she was verifiably in Avon on Christmas night.”

  Gibbons raised a brow. “Unfortunately?” he asked. “Do I detect a trace of bitterness?”

  Bethancourt ignored him and raised another finger. “Item three: Libby Alston’s husband had an affair a couple of years ago. She appears ignorant of this fact, but you never can tell.”

  “She might have flown into a rage upon learning of his infidelity,” said Gibbons. “I could see it happening—in fact, I’ve known such things to happen before, and there’s no doubt she’s very protective of her family. But I can’t seem to find a plausible scenario in which Jody, on returning to York to finally settle down, decides it’s a good first move to inform Libby of her husband’s affair.”

  “Even if she did,” put in Bethancourt, “it’s even less likely that she would do it on Christmas Eve at the bookshop. I mean, why, for God’s sake?”

  “No,” agreed Gibbons, “it doesn’t make sense.”

  “Item four,” continued Bethancourt, and then paused. “Are we counting the Dominic Bartlett thing?” he asked.

  “We can count it,” said Gibbons, “but I don’t see that it will do us any good. He’s obviously very embarrassed about being scammed by the youthful object of his affections, but I can’t see him having the gumption to kill Jody. And that’s assuming she would ever have told anyone about it—Rachel Morrison says not.”

  “It does seem out of character,” agreed Bethancourt. “Very well, item four can be that friend of Rachel’s who got arrested for possession of cocaine.”

  “And again we run up against a reason for Jody to have threatened him with revealing it,” said Gibbons. “After all, it was several years ago, and he got off with parole, which is long since over. There seems no earthly reason for Jody to have brought it up.”

  “True,” said Bethancourt, who was becoming discouraged.

  “So long as we’re taking stock,” said Gibbons, “we really ought to count Rhys-Jones in, too. He could easily have done it, and he does have motive.”

  “Mark him down as item five,” said Bethancourt. He paused to sip his cocoa and consider. “That’s it, isn’t it?” he said. “It’s not much for two days’ work.”

  “There’s also Jenks,” said Gibbons. “It remains perfectly possible that he lied about the nature of his relationship with Jody, and killed her in a fit of jealous rage. Only I still can’t account for their being at the bookshop.”

  “There’s not an iota of proof either,” pointed out Bethancourt. “And if he lied about their relationship, well, so did Jody. She told your Mrs. Haddam he was just an old friend. Still, we can have him as item six if you like.”

  “We have ruled out a few things,” said Gibbons, trying to stay positive. “Mittlesdon’s accountants swear there’s never been even a hint of irregularity in the bookshop’s accounts, and if Mittlesdon himself has a secret vice, I certainly haven’t been able to uncover it. Rod Bemis—the nerdy student fellow—leads a life free from any complication greater than being a bit late with his assignments sometimes. And we’ve confirmed all alibis, for those who have them.”

  “And you’ve tracked down most of Jody’s old friends here,” said Bethancourt.

 
; “I haven’t looked at them as closely,” said Gibbons, “so there might still be something there, although thus far they all deny knowing she had returned to York. I should probably just let Rowett look into them for me, but I don’t want to pile extra work on Brumby’s team.”

  “They don’t seem to mind,” said Bethancourt.

  Gibbons started to reply, but was interrupted by his mobile phone, which was buried somewhere on the table beneath the case files and notes.

  “Damn,” he said, leaning forward to shift the papers around in search of it.

  “Who could be ringing now?” asked Bethancourt uneasily. “It’s past one A.M.”

  “I don’t know.” Gibbons was frowning as he patted the various piles in search of the phone. “There!” he exclaimed at last. He swept away a stack of crime-scene photos and seized the phone, snapping it open and bringing it to his ear in one motion.

  “Still up then, Gibbons?” came MacDonald’s voice. “Good lad. There’s been an odd sort of development at one of my crime scenes. Thought you might want to take a look.”

  “Of course, if you think it worthwhile, sir,” replied Gibbons, inwardly quite bewildered. “Are you there now?”

  “Have been since half eleven,” answered MacDonald. “But the complication has just come to light. I’ve held up everything, pending. You just buzz round and tell me what you think, and I’ll be grateful for it.”

  Gibbons badly wanted to ask exactly what things were pending on, but held his peace and took down the address, which proved to be somewhere called Upper Poppleton.

  “Do you know where Upper Poppleton is?” he asked Bethancourt.

  Bethancourt, who was listening avidly to Gibbons’s side of the conversation, nodded. “Certainly,” he said.

  “I’ll be there shortly, sir,” Gibbons told MacDonald. “The friend I’m staying with will probably drive me out, if that’s all right with you?”

  “The more the merrier,” said MacDonald absently, and Gibbons could tell that his attention was already elsewhere. “See you soon, Sergeant.”

  He rang off.

  “What’s happened?” demanded Bethancourt.

  “That was MacDonald,” said Gibbons, putting down the phone thoughtfully, “and I don’t quite know. He wants me at another crime scene, but he didn’t say why. Just that there had been an odd development. I wonder . . . Well, the quickest way to find out is to go there. How long will it take?”

  “Ten minutes or so, unless the road’s flooded out,” answered Bethancourt, downing the last of his cocoa. “What the devil is in Upper Poppleton?”

  “I haven’t the slightest idea,” retorted Gibbons, “except that a crime happened at this address.” He waved the piece of paper he had jotted it down on. “Is it a village?” he asked as they made their way out to the hall.

  “Upper Poppleton?” responded Bethancourt. “That’s right—it’s northeast of the city center. None of the bookshop people live up there, so I can’t imagine what the connection is.”

  “Are there shops?” asked Gibbons.

  “I expect there are,” said Bethancourt, zipping up his coat. “Why?”

  “I was only thinking,” said Gibbons, “that perhaps it was to do with Ashdon and not with the Mittlesdon case. Although,” he added, “another killing so close to his last would be quite out of character.”

  “Oh.” Bethancourt called Cerberus to heel and opened the door, wrinkling his nose at the rain. “Let’s run for it, shall we?”

  Gibbons agreed and they dashed down the length of the garden, through the gate, and then around to where the Jaguar was parked. They were very damp by the time they slid into the car, and Bethancourt flipped the heat on.

  “Let’s get over the river here, where we know we can,” he said. “I think we should be all right after that. At least, there’s only one dicey bit up by Clifton Ings and Water End. But after that, the road draws away from the river onto higher ground.”

  “Whatever you say,” replied Gibbons, fastening his safety belt.

  They set off into a dark and very wet night, but Bethancourt’s prediction held true. The water on the roads slowed them down, but they encountered no serious flooding. The address MacDonald had given them led to a large property on the outskirts of the village, where an old grange had been renovated and added to in order to make a modern country home for a well-to-do man. The drive was currently choked with police cars and vans, but there seemed not to be much movement among them. Bethancourt nosed the Jaguar as close to the house as he could get before drawing over to the side and parking beneath an old beech tree.

  “Can I come in?” he asked as he shut off the engine.

  “Come along,” answered Gibbons. “I told MacDonald you’d be with me. We’d better leave Cerberus, though.”

  Cerberus, who had gone to sleep in the backseat, did not appear to mind this arrangement overmuch, and they left him there while they jogged through the rain to the front door.

  MacDonald awaited them in the front hall, sitting with his coat open on a bench amidst his forensics team. Beside him was a small, balding man with black-framed glasses, and on a chair opposite sat Constable Redfern.

  “Ah, here they are,” said MacDonald, looking round as Gibbons and Bethancourt came in. “We’ll soon be set to rights now, lads. And who’s this sterling addition to my investigation team?”

  “Phillip Bethancourt, sir,” said Gibbons. “He was kind enough to drive me up here.”

  Bethancourt smiled engagingly and held out a hand. “I doubt your team really needs a chauffeur, sir,” he said, “but I was curious, and Jack didn’t think you’d mind my having a look-in.”

  MacDonald shook his hand, giving him an appraising glance. “Nay,” he said, “you may as well come and see the show. Have you met Biddulph here, Sergeant? He’s my genius electronics man.”

  Biddulph appeared unimpressed by this praise. He rose to his feet, revealing distinctly bowed legs, and shook hands with a nod, but very little change in expression.

  “It was Biddulph called my attention to this little conundrum,” said MacDonald. “Tell Sergeant Gibbons, Biddy.”

  “It were a professional job, that’s all,” said Biddulph. “Don’t get much of that.” He eyed Gibbons. “I can describe how it was done if you want.”

  “God, no, Biddy,” interrupted MacDonald before Gibbons could reply. “He’s a detective, not an electrician—he doesn’t want all your gobbledygook. Just get to the point.”

  Biddulph gave a much-tried sigh. “The point,” he said, “is that the last time I saw an alarm system buggered this way was at Accessorize when we found the Ashdon victim.”

  Gibbons just stared at him for a long moment. Then he turned to MacDonald and asked, “Who was killed here, sir?”

  “That’s just it,” said MacDonald. “It wasn’t a young lady at all. In fact, it was one of our leading citizens—a middle-aged chap named Brian Sanderson.”

  Both Gibbons and Bethancourt started in surprise.

  “Ah,” said MacDonald, “I see you’d already encountered our local guiding light. Well, there’s no denying he got around. Where did you find him?”

  “He was a regular customer at Mittlesdon’s,” answered Gibbons, his mind racing.

  “I met him at a cocktail party,” offered Bethancourt.

  MacDonald raised a brow but said nothing in reply to this.

  “There are some other similarities,” he said. “Come have a look at the body.”

  Bethancourt followed the two detectives down the hallway with some trepidation. Normally he did not see the scene of the crime until long after the body had been removed, and he was not particularly eager to see this one now. But it seemed to be assumed that he would accompany them, so he did, hoping it would not be too gruesome.

  The door to a large room at the back of the house stood open, and as they approached, the brilliant flash of a camera blazed out into the corridor. Inside, the room was fitted out as a kind of study-cum-lounge, w
ith a desk and file cabinets in one corner and a large couch and television on the other side. Sanderson’s body was sprawled on the floor by the couch, looking to Bethancourt’s eye oddly unlike a corpse: he was certainly pale, and very still, but he might have been merely unconscious. There was, however, the faintest smell of blood, a trickle of which ran down Sanderson’s face from his ear, with a much larger stain appearing on his trousers. He was dressed in an unfortunate paisley waistcoat, and this somehow struck Bethancourt as sad and rather poignant.

  An older man whom MacDonald introduced as Dr. Somersby, the medical examiner, came forward to meet them, while his younger assistant hovered in the background and the cameraman continued to snap pictures of everything in the room from every possible angle.

  Somersby briskly shook hands with both Gibbons and Bethancourt, then turned impatiently back to MacDonald. “I’ve done all I can here,” he announced. “Am I taking the body or not?”

  MacDonald shrugged. “That’s what Sergeant Gibbons is here to determine,” he answered. “Tell him what you’ve found so far.”

  “He was killed this evening, between six and nine o’clock,” Somersby recited. “His wrists and ankles were bound whilst he was still alive, and it looks like he was beaten, though I can’t be sure of that until I get him stripped and on the table. His genitals were cut into with a very sharp knife, and afterwards he was killed by the insertion of a sharp, serrated knife into the left ear, where it probably penetrated the brain stem.”

  Bethancourt found that he had inadvertently dropped his hands to cover his nether regions, and firmly returned them to his pockets while Gibbons drew a sharp breath.

  “That sounds like Ashdon, all right,” he said. He looked at MacDonald. “But there are differences, too. Do you think we’re dealing with a copycat killer?”

  “It was my first thought,” admitted MacDonald. “But then I thought Brumby might like to make that call himself. What do you think, Sergeant? Would he be interested in my little country-house murder?”

  “Yes, sir,” said Gibbons decidedly. “Without a doubt. Whatever’s going on here, the superintendent will want to see it.” His eyes swept the room before he looked back at MacDonald. “Would you like me to ring him?”