Death in an Elegant City: Book Four in the Murder on Location Series

by Sara Rosett

  “Of course,” he continued as if I hadn’t spoken, “it would be a shame if you had to run off to the States unexpectedly. I’m sure when you were ready to return there wouldn’t be room for you in the production, if that should happen.” He sipped from his cup. “So important to know exactly where one stands, isn’t it? Then there are no questions, should anything…arise.”

  “Kate?”

  I turned and realized Alex was standing beside me. I had been so focused on Cyrus that I hadn’t heard him approach. Alex took one look at my face and said, “We have to be going.”

  “Fine, yes. Good,” Cyrus murmured as he consulted a menu card tucked between a small flower vase and a set of salt and pepper shakers. “I believe I’ll have the full English breakfast before I embark on my tour of Bath,” he said.

  Alex put an arm around my shoulders and steered me out the door. “Let’s walk.”

  “Good idea,” I said, and we turned onto the main pedestrian walkway. I set a quick pace. After a few minutes I’d walked off my fury and came back to my surroundings enough to realize that the wind was cold on my cheeks. I slowed. “I think I need that coffee now.”

  “Let’s go over there.” Alex nodded to a corner café. I got a table while Alex placed the order. He returned with two large mugs of coffee and a plate with two oversized blueberry muffins.

  He set them down and took a seat. “What happened?”

  “I discovered that Cyrus is a manipulative, mean person.”

  I recounted what Cyrus had said, and Alex shook his head. “One look at your face, and I knew it was bad,” Alex said. “I have heard rumors about Cyrus…nothing specific, only that people have vowed never to work with him again or left productions he’s been involved in.”

  “It doesn’t bode well for the rest of this production.” I broke the muffin in half and jelly oozed out of the center. I gobbled a bite before continuing, “That comment he threw at Felix about the bar—it was the same thing, either a taunt to see if he could get a reaction from Felix or a warning that he knew something that Felix would rather the rest of us didn’t know. And he’s certainly not going out of his way to make things easy with Elise.”

  “Cyrus seems to have got on the wrong side of everyone within a few hours—even Paul.”

  “You noticed that, too, in the van?”

  Alex nodded. “No idea what happened, but Paul isn’t one to act like that.”

  “He’s certainly not.” I brushed crumbs from my fingers. “At least we’re all on our own this morning. I better get back to the Abbey and the Baths.”

  “No full English breakfast for us,” Alex said as he gathered up the muffin wrappers.

  “It was delicious. Just what I needed.”

  As we left the café I bumped into a young woman on her way inside. I stepped aside, but she stopped in her tracks, her gaze fastened on Alex.

  “Alex?” Her head was tilted to one side and her forehead was wrinkled into a frown.

  Alex had been holding the door for me, but at his name he focused on the woman. “Viv!”

  “It is you,” she said and surged toward Alex, embracing him quickly. She stepped back, brushing the trailing strands of her reddish-brown hair out of her face. Most of her hair was caught back in a loose braid that fell to her shoulder blades. She had a round face with an upturned nose. She wore no makeup, not even lipstick, and had a fresh-faced, earthy beauty. She wore jeans with rips in the knees and a black tank top under a plaid shirt and a vest lined with sheepskin. Leather bracelets wrapped her wrist and several silver rings encased most of her fingers, even her thumbs. A bike helmet dangled from one hand. “I thought it was you,” she said, her face lighting up with delight. “You’ve hardly changed.”

  Another customer came to the door that we were blocking, and we all stepped out of the doorway and paused on the sidewalk. Alex touched my shoulder. “Kate this is Viv. I knew her back in my snowboarding days. Viv, this is Kate, my colleague and girlfriend.”

  Viv widened her blue eyes. “Colleague and girlfriend. Impressive. I was dying to fill that girlfriend slot, but Alex wasn’t interested,” she said with a quick smile, aimed at him.

  Her frankness was disarming. When she’d wrapped Alex in a hug, my reaction had been an instinctive urge to tell her to back off, but my initial feeling of territorial protectiveness fell away as I looked at her open face.

  Her gaze swept over me. “I can see why I was out of the running for girlfriend—I’m not nearly polished enough,” she said, pulling a face as she tugged at her worn jeans.

  I’d thought my white knit top and black jeans tucked into my calf-high brown boots with my peacoat was a casual look, but compared to Viv, I did look dressed up. Before I could make some self-deprecating remark, Viv pointed at the cameras that both Alex and I sported. “Here in Bath for some sightseeing, are you?”

  “No, Kate and I are location scouts.”

  Viv’s eyebrows shot up. “Really? How did you get into that?”

  “Through a series of accidents, mostly,” Alex said.

  Viv laughed. “Just like you got into snowboarding, then.”

  “Do you still snowboard?” Alex asked.

  “Oh, yeah, whenever I get the chance. Of course, not much of that here. I had to come back last year and get a real job.” She grimaced.

  “You’re from this area, right?” Alex asked.

  I had the definite feeling of being a third wheel as my gaze bounced back and forth between them.

  “Actually, I’m from a little village near Salisbury, but there’s no jobs there, so I’m here, working in the bike shop off Milsom Street. You should come by sometime. We run bike tours of the area in the summer.” She glanced at the sky, which was clear for the moment, but a few clouds lined the horizon. “Not a good time of the year for it now. I do get back to the slopes whenever I can. Do you?”

  “Not really. I have things that keep me here in England now.” Alex smiled at me.

  “Well, that’s…great, I guess. If you want that kind of thing, I mean,” Viv said, then quickly added, “And you do. Clearly, you do. You look great—so it suits you.” She took a step back. “But we should get together while you’re here. I’d love to hear more about this location scouting stuff and catch up. Maybe you could even get me a part in your movie,” she said in a joking tone.

  “It’s a documentary,” Alex said.

  “Not quite the same thing, is it?” She laughed.

  She and Alex exchanged cell phone numbers, and Viv went into the café.

  As we walked away, Alex said, “Viv is kind of a whirlwind.”

  “I can see that. Vivacious. Is that where her name comes from? Is it a nickname?”

  “No. Her real name is Vivian, which she can’t stand. She’d much rather have Vivacious.” Alex glanced toward the thin layer of clouds edging the horizon. “We’d better get at it.”

  “Yes. No cloudy pictures for Elise.”

  Alex gave me a rather thorough kiss, which I returned. “See you at the Roman Baths at noon,” I said, breathlessly before turning to retrace the path we’d taken from the hotel.

  I walked back down the pedestrian walkway, this time taking in the shops and the architecture. When I came to a colonnaded walkway with a frieze of neoclassical figures above it, I knew I was back at the city center.

  I turned and walked through the columns into the square. On my right was the entrance to the Roman Baths and the Pump Room, now closed with an iron grill rolled down over the door because it wasn’t open yet. Straight ahead on the far side of the square was Bath Abbey. A row of shops completed the square on my left, one of them an explosion of the red, white, and blue of the Union Jack. It was a tourist trap extraordinaire with postcards, trinkets, miniature red phone boxes, and even a life-size cardboard cutout of the queen in a tiara and evening gown.

  I snapped a few pictures of the kitsch, just for fun, then turned my attention back to the Abbey. It was still fairly quiet, and I wanted to get my exte
rior photos while there were less people around. I knew from my research that it was an example of perpendicular Gothic style architecture. Not being an expert in architecture, I probably missed the finer points of the style, but it was imposing with a huge stained-glass rose window between two turrets, or towers. A ladder with climbing angels ran along each turret all the way to the top.

  I set to work, photographing the Abbey from a distance, then moving in closer, capturing the angels—Jacob’s ladder, perhaps? Then I worked my way around the building, getting shots of each side of it. I made notes in my Moleskine notebook about the orientation of the Abbey so that later we’d know where the sun would be as we planned exterior shots then I turned my attention to the square in front of the Abbey.

  I captured it from all sides, then went back to the main pedestrian thoroughfare, Stall Street, and photographed it. I still had almost an hour to kill before the Baths opened, so I found a little café on Stall Street, ordered another coffee and muffin and made notes about what I’d seen so far. I lingered over my coffee until it was a few minutes before nine thirty. I walked back to the square in front of the Abbey, and by the time I arrived, a woman was rolling up the metal grill at the door to the Baths. I scooted over and was the first person through the door.

  I paid my entrance fee, grabbed a brochure for the tunnel tour, and went straight to the second story exterior terrace, a walkway that enclosed the square outdoor pool, the Great Bath. I worked my way quickly around the whole thing, getting photos of the pool where steam curled up from water the color of a Granny Smith apple. I wouldn’t have wanted to bathe in it, but people had traveled from far and wide to bathe in the odd colored water since Roman times, including Jane Austen’s family.

  I managed to get photos of the statues of famous Romans that lined the exterior terrace and the entire area before the first tourists, a group of school children surged onto the terrace. I returned inside and wound my way through the exhibits, taking time to gaze at what was left of the pediment of the temple that had been part of the bathing complex. It was only a few chunks of what I assumed were marble.

  I had plenty of time before our meeting at noon in the Pump Room, so I moved through the rest of the displays at a more leisurely pace. I lingered over a diorama which showed that in ancient times the Great Bath, which I’d photographed first and was now open-aired, had once been enclosed with a massive vaulted roof. Other more technical displays showed how the water had been piped throughout the bath complex.

  I headed off to wander around the various rooms where Romans had soaked, steamed, and cooled off. I didn’t take many photos because it was too dark. The cavernous rooms with jumbled stones were dim and slightly creepy with only the distant sound of voices penetrating the gloom. Filming would be a challenge in these areas, and Elise had already mentioned that we would confine ourselves to the more well-known areas of the bath complex like the Great Bath.

  By the time I neared the end of the museum portion of the baths, it was nearing eleven-thirty. I had to meet everyone in the Pump Room, which was attached to the bathing complex, so I zipped through the last displays, only pausing to look at a well-preserved head of Minerva, gilded in bronze, that had hung over the sacrificial altar.

  After a moment I hurried on, reemerging on the ground floor and took more pictures of the Great Bath from that level, then looped around to the opposite end of the rectangular pool and photographed a portion of the original roof, an arch of narrow bricks. The clouds had indeed rolled in, giving these photos a suffused light, but I had enough of the Great Bath in bright sunlight that I would be okay.

  The sound of flowing water drew my attention, and I moved to the far corner where a narrow channel of water swished along. I dipped a finger in it, and it was not just warm, but hot. I crossed the little walkway over it and climbed a viewing platform where I could peer down into the original Sacred Spring through arched windows. The spring was a smaller version of the Great Bath with the same greenish water with steam rising from bubbles.

  I turned, and paused a moment so my eyes could readjust to the darkness, then went down the steps of the viewing platform to another dimly lit area with more of the original baths. Those Romans had sure like their baths, I thought as I snapped a few photos. Of course, if you were from Italy, England must have seemed awfully cold, and they probably looked forward to their warm soaks and steamy sauna rooms.

  The sides and back area of the next portion of the Baths had thick pillars that enclosed a circular cold plunge pool. It had a set of graduated ledges that ran all the way around the pool so people could step down, easing their way in, I guessed. The water looked dark, but I could see lots of coins winking in the depths as I took a few pictures. This pool seemed especially dark and chilly. I couldn’t imagine wanting to take a dip in it. I snapped a few photographs, more for myself than for Elise. I checked them on the screen as I always did before moving on, but I paused as something caught my eye in one of the photos.

  The flash had illuminated what I couldn’t see in the gloomy light. I frowned over my camera.

  It looked like a sock—not a sock that was flattened on the ground, but a sock stretched over a foot.

  Chapter 3

  THE SOCK WAS HALF HIDDEN behind one of the pillars that encircled the pool. Chunks of rock were scattered around the dimly lit area between the columns and the pool. Beyond the columns, the viewing platform with its two arched openings overlooking the Sacred Spring let in some light, but it backlit the space, making the area directly below it almost completely dark.

  I peered into the dim recess around the pool, but the layer of clouds had sapped what little natural light there was. With the arched windows above the platform creating a sharp contrast to the shadows below, the area where the photo showed a sock looked as dark as night.

  Maybe I’d been mistaken. I went back to my camera and looked at the image again.

  I hit the zoom button, enlarging the photo on the little screen. The image became slightly blurry as I enlarged it, but it did look like a sock. It had an argyle design of gray and black—and it was definitely not an empty sock.

  I made sure the flash was on and aimed the camera at the pillar again, clicking the shutter a few times.

  The light of the flash illuminated the pillar, and I caught a glimpse of the argyle pattern and something flesh-colored above it, but the pillar blocked the rest of…whatever it was…from my view.

  I swallowed and looked around. I was alone by the pool. I could hear voices of other tourists, but no one was in the immediate area. I returned to the platform next to the Sacred Spring, but this time instead of looking toward the windows, I went to the opposite side, and peered down into the area around the circular pool.

  From this angle I could see more of what was behind the pillar, and it made my stomach flutter like it had when I looked out my hotel room window.

  It was a man. I could tell by the sport coat and tailored pants. I gripped the railing for a few seconds. The sight seemed unbelievable, but it was a person, his back to me, unmoving. I glanced around again, but there weren’t any guides or anyone associated with the Baths. It wasn’t like some art museums I’d visited with docents watching the paintings in each room.

  I could hear the voices of a group of tourists getting louder as they drew closer. I gripped the handrail and threw a leg over, thinking that they could get help while I waited with the man. I dropped down onto the narrow area beside the pool and picked my way carefully over to the man, my eyes adjusting to the gloomy atmosphere. “Hello? Are you okay?”

  There was no answer, no movement as my voice echoed faintly around the enclosed space. I inched closer, and that was when I saw the long tawny-colored hair that fell to the collar of his sport coat, but my gaze jerked away the moment I saw the bloody dent at the back of his skull. I sucked in a breath as a sick feeling came over me. The man was lying partially on his side, and I forced myself to look back and study what I could see of his face. It was definitel
y Cyrus. His haughty look was gone, and a startled expression seemed to be imprinted on his face.

  I forced myself to step closer and touch his shoulder. “Mr. Blakely?” I whispered. “Cyrus?”

  I touched his shoulder. He didn’t respond. I applied a bit of pressure, but his shoulder was stiff and the body didn’t move.

  The body. The thought reverberated around my mind like my voice had echoed against the stones a few seconds earlier. It was a body. Cyrus was dead.

  “Oy!” A voice shouted above me, and I started. “You’re not supposed to be down there.”

  I stood and gestured at Cyrus, words failing me for a second as I looked up at the man on the platform. He stepped forward and caught sight of Cyrus. “Is he hurt?” he asked, his tone more subdued.

  I cleared my throat. “He’s dead.”

  The man obviously didn’t believe me because he pulled in his chin and shook his head. “Surely, the bloke just tripped.”

  “No. I’m afraid there’s no doubt about it.” I closed my eyes briefly, an effort to block out the image of the damage to Cyrus’s skull.

  Another group of tourists tromped onto the platform, and instead of heading for the windows to view the Sacred Spring, they came to the railing and peered over.

  “Do you work here?” I asked the man. “Can you get help?”

  “I’m just tourin’ the place, but I can tell you that no one is supposed to be down there.”

  “Well, can you go find someone who does work here? They should be notified as well as the police.”

  The man backed away, palms up. “I’m not getting involved in anything. We’re doing the tower tour at the Abbey in a few minutes.”

  A woman who had joined the line at the railing looked from me to Cyrus’s form. “Is there a problem? I’m a doctor. Perhaps I should take a look.” She vaulted over the railing and landed with much more finesse than I had. I traded places with her on the narrow walkway area at the edge of the pool.

  The woman squatted beside Cyrus. She looked him over, pausing a few moments as she studied the head wound, then she checked for a pulse. Without moving him, she ran a hand down the side of his body that was tilted slightly away from the ground, lightly tracing her fingers from his shoulder down to his hand, then she did the same from his hip down to his socked foot. I noticed that his other foot had a shoe on it. I glanced around, looking for a lone shoe, but I didn’t see it anywhere.