by Sara Rosett
“Retrace his steps, you mean.”
“Yes, but I’m sure the police are already doing that,” I said. “And if he didn’t stop to talk to anyone, if he just wandered around the city until he went to visit the bath complex then that won’t help us. The next important thing is what time he actually died.”
“Ah, yes. If we knew the exact time, then it might winnow the possible suspects even more. Elise would like that bit. Okay, so let’s see…he left the hotel around eight and was found at what time?”
“I’d looked at my watch a little before I found him, and it was about eleven thirty. I knew I needed to finish up and get over to the Pump Room. But the Baths didn’t open this morning until nine thirty, and I was in the first wave of tourists, so he had to arrive sometime after me. Let’s say at least nine forty, which narrows it down even more.”
“Okay, so sometime between nine forty and eleven thirty Cyrus was hit on the head,” Alex said. “Let’s see, if I still have…yes, here it is.” Alex took out his copy of the spreadsheet from an interior pocket and studied it. “We have eliminated absolutely no one.”
“In fact, all of us were either in the vicinity of the Baths at some point during that time or could have been.”
“Not me,” Alex said. “I have yet to see the Baths. The closest I came was the Pump Room.”
“Which is connected to the Baths. That oval room where you met Elise and me, the door at the far end goes to the bath complex. If someone wanted to slip in that way, I’m sure they could. They’d only have to wait until Mia—the hostess, you remember—was busy escorting someone to a table or making a reservation.”
“That’s disheartening. I was enjoying being the only person in our group in the clear. Well, what should we do now? Try and help Paul?”
“No, we have a new commission from Elise.” I tilted my head toward the Abbey. “The Abbey’s interior. So much for not scouting.”
Alex and I stood as a few sprinkles spattered around us. “Now looks like a good time to get indoors,” he said as we moved to the pointed arch doorway to the Abbey.
“Alex,” a female voice called, and I experienced a sense of déjà vu.
Viv hurried across to us, her auburn braid slapping her flannel-covered shoulders. “I thought it was you two. Imagine running into you again like this.”
“Quite a coincidence,” I said faintly.
“I had a super short shift today at the bike shop. It’s so slow,” she said, with a glance at the gloomy sky. “I was on my way home, but then I saw you,” she added happily, her gaze focused on Alex.
“It’s—ah—great to see you again, Viv, but Kate and I are working.” Alex motioned with his camera, which was around his neck, at the Abbey.
“Oh, you’re scouting the Abbey?” Her blue eyes widened. “That is so exciting. I’d love to see what you do.”
“I’m not sure…” Alex began.
“I know a couple of the guides. I think Thomas is working today. I’ll see if I can get him to take us up for a private bell tower tour.”
Alex looked at me, and I knew he was weighing the offer. Elise wasn’t going to be happy that we’d verified Octavia’s alibi and had firmly placed me as well as everyone else in our group at the crime scene. A private behind-the-scenes tour of the Abbey might make her a little less cross when we reported in.
I lifted a shoulder. “That could be interesting.”
Viv was as good as her word and went to track down her tour guide friend after we dropped off a donation and entered the church. I snapped a few discreet photos of the soaring fan vaulted arches and the impressive stained glass window at the far end of the church, which glowed with bright and cheerful colors even on this dim day. The stone plaques that lined the floor and the walls of the building caught my attention next. “They’re crypts,” I whispered to Alex as I worked out the Old English, reading aloud, “Here lies The Body of Mrs. Hannah—”
“This is Thomas,” Viv said in a voice that seemed too loud for a place of worship.
He was a young man with thick black hair falling down to his brows. “I’ve got permission to let you join the tour I’m about to start. There’s only a few other people on it, so it’s practically a private tour.”
I wanted to take some photos of the stone plaques, but thought it might be disrespectful so I didn’t. Viv, Alex, and I fell into line between a family with twin boys, who looked to be about ten years old, and an older couple with gray hair.
“Watch your step here,” Thomas said, “the floor is a bit uneven. Graves don’t make for the best foundation. Just through here. Make sure to close the door behind you. Thank you. Now, up we go.” He touched a length of rope that ran down the central column that the circular stairs curved around. “You can use the cord—it’s a rope once used to ring the bells—if you need something to hold on to. We’ll do the two-hundred-and-twelve-step climb in stages, not all at once.”
Thomas went first, then Viv, then Alex. Above me, around a couple of the twists of the staircase I could hear Alex and Viv laughing and chatting easily, then the pitch of Alex’s voice changed, and I caught a few words, including Cyrus and police. Viv’s sharp exclamation, “Blimey, that’s grim,” floated down to me. The higher pitched voices of the twin boys sounded below me.
Alex paused and I caught up with him. “Doing okay?” he asked, barely winded.
“And I thought I was in good shape.”
He grinned and looked up. “Only a few more stairs to go.”
“That’s good news.”
Thomas escorted us into a small room where we saw the back of the fan vaulting and learned how the vaults were built, then we crossed an open area of the church’s roof, dodging raindrops, to the bell tower. “Before climbing the final flight of stairs to the tower roof, we’ll pause here,” Thomas said as we stopped off in the room where the bells were rung. The ropes hung in great loops from the ceiling. Thomas showed off the modern gadget that allowed them to program the bells so that the church didn’t have to depend on human bell ringers to climb the stairs each day.
Then we ducked our heads through a low doorway and took a catwalk through the darkness above another section of the vault ceiling to look at the deceptively simple gears at the back of the clock. I’d fallen in at the back of the group, and I was one of the last to make my way into the tiny space where the light flooded in through the clock face.
“Did you get any good shots?” I asked Alex when he passed me on the catwalk as he returned to the ringing room.
“I don’t think so. Too many people.”
“I’ll wait until the twins clear out and get some pictures.”
The boys’ fascination with the gears faded quickly when their parents wouldn’t let them touch the machinery, and they left. I took several shots of the area, including the catwalk and checked my compass app so I’d know which way the window faced. The voices of the family with the twins faded as I jotted down my notes. I tucked my Moleskine notebook into my tote bag and walked back along the catwalk to the ringing room. I grabbed the handle at the end of the catwalk, but the door didn’t budge.
Chapter 12
FIGURING THE DOOR WAS STUCK, I tugged and pushed and pulled. Nothing.
I just stood there for a second, stunned. They had forgotten me.
I pounded on the door and yelled, but I didn’t hear a returning shout. I glanced behind me along the catwalk to the dimness that cloaked the curves of the vaulted arches, feeling a tad uneasy. I was alone—at least I thought I was alone. The corners of the room where the vaults dropped away were in darkness. Someone could be lurking back there.
I gave myself a mental shake. There wasn’t anyone back there. I’d only been left behind…somehow. How long was it until the next tour? An hour or so? But that was crazy. Of course Alex would miss me and come back to look for me.
My cell phone. I was more shaken up than I wanted to admit because it was the first time I thought of it. I took it out and was happy to see it
had service. I was dialing Alex’s number when the door flew open, and banged against the wall.
Alex stood in the doorway, his face puzzled. “What happened? Are you okay?” His gaze scanned the catwalk and the dim recesses over the arches.
“Yes, I’m fine. Glad to see you, though. It’s a little…creepy in here alone. I don’t know what happened. The door wouldn’t budge. Someone must have closed it and not realized I was still looking at the clock.”
Alex ducked his head back out the small door and called, “I found her.”
I followed him out the door, pausing to close it behind me. The handle worked fine on this side.
“It wasn’t the handle.” Alex nudged a doorstop with his toe. It was a few inches away from the door. “The door didn’t open the first time I tried it, then I saw this wedged up against it.”
“That couldn’t have been an accident. Who puts a door stop against a door that’s already closed?”
I heard a stifled giggle and looked over Alex’s shoulder to see the twin boys whispering. The dad leaned over them. “Did you do that? Did you lock that nice lady in the clock tower?”
Both boys shook their heads. The parents exchanged a glance, then the mom took a hesitant step toward me. “I’m so sorry, if they—”
Viv pushed through their group. “Oh my gosh. What happened? Where were you?”
I took pity on the mom—she looked so embarrassed—and said, “It’s okay. The door must have gotten stuck…or something.” I watched the boys, but they both fixed me with a double whammy of wide-eyed innocent looks.
Viv said, “We looked around, and it was like you’d just vanished. So weird.”
“Yes. Very strange.”
“And the rest of the tour was anticlimactic,” I said as we finished dinner later that night. The scouting group was gathered around a table in O’Toole’s Pub. Except for the dark beams overhead, we could have been dining at a Chili’s. The menu had everything from a chicken club sandwich to a variety of salads. Televisions in the corners broadcast sports, but it was soccer instead of football or baseball.
“I imagine everything comes as a letdown after being rescued,” Melissa said. She’d finished for the day at the Fashion Museum and had joined our group for dinner. I thought she’d added a new eyebrow ring since the last time I’d seen her, but her short hair was still blond, except for her bangs, which were dyed fuchsia. Today she wore a leather jacket with steampunk overtones along with dress pants in a houndstooth check and ankle boots.
“But did you get anything useful for a possible feature?” Elise asked.
“Yes, there’s plenty there we can use. The stained glass and vaulted ceiling are gorgeous,” I said. “And we can use the views from the tower for some panoramic scenes of Bath. You can see so much from there—even down into the Roman Baths.”
“Good,” Elise said. “Email me a report before tomorrow morning.”
I glanced at Alex. I knew what we’d be doing the rest of the night.
“Now, about tomorrow,” Elise said. “Since no one has had any success in establishing an alibi—and some of us have even taken a step back in that area,” she said with a glance at Alex and me, “I want each of you to retrace your steps exactly, tomorrow morning. I hope that revisiting the same places at the same time of day will give you a better result,” she frowned at us as if it was our fault that we couldn’t find someone to document all our movements that morning. “Felix, you’ll be glad to know that in the afternoon, we’ll get back to work. The weather is supposed to be good, so we’ll visit Box Hill and then check some hotel possibilities.”
Box Hill was the picnic site in Emma, and while we weren’t exactly close to it in Bath, we were closer than we would normally be in Derbyshire and Elise wanted to take a look at it. It was one of the excursions that Cyrus had objected to, saying we shouldn’t waste our time traveling about the countryside and should focus on Bath, but now that he was gone it was back on the agenda.
The waitress cleared our plates, and we began to bundle into our coats. “Where are my gloves?” Elise asked of no one in particular as she patted her pockets. “I must have left them in the hotel,” she muttered as we moved to the door.
“The last time I saw them was in the hotel,” Paul said.
I’d tried to engage Paul in conversation during dinner, but he’d been distracted and withdrawn. He said he hadn’t received a call to provide a statement to the police, so I thought he was still worried about that.
“Well, they’ll turn up,” Elise said. “They have my initials embroidered on them so I doubt someone else took them by mistake. They are probably still on the table in the parlor at the hotel.”
On the street outside the pub, Elise left our group, saying she was meeting a friend for a drink. As we strolled back to the hotel, Alex set a pace that separated us from Paul, Felix, and Melissa. The Christmas lights were up, strung across the street from rooftop to rooftop, but not lit. “I wish the lights were on. It would make some great photos,” I said.
“Nothing we could use for the documentary.”
“No, they’d be pictures just for me.”
“Anyone up for a drink?” Felix called as we turned onto the street with the Bath Spa Hotel. We turned back to see the three of them had stopped in front of a bar.
Alex looked at me with raised eyebrows. I shook my head. “I’d rather put that report together for Elise with a clear head. You go ahead if you want. I’ll do a rough draft, and you can proof it.”
“No, I’ll come with you.” Alex turned back to the group. “We’re ditching you slackers to get some work done.”
Melissa linked her arms through Paul’s and Felix’s elbows. “Then it’s just you and me, boys.”
Alex and I set up our computers in the parlor area and compiled the report for Elise. Then we spent the rest of the evening warming our feet at the fire that Dominic built for us and sipping a mug of hot chocolate, which Annie insisted we have. It had been a long day and the emotional strain, not to mention traipsing all over Bath, had worn me out. I was snuggled into my chair with my head tilted back, letting the fire mesmerize me.
Alex had gone upstairs to get a spare memory card for his camera when Annie came into the parlor and went over to the circular iron staircase that curved down to the basement. “Dominic?” she called then turned to me. “Sorry to shout—terribly impolite, but we don’t have an intercom.”
“It’s fine. You’re not bothering me.”
Annie tapped the railing for a second then muttered something about Dominic going out without telling her. She propped her crutches up on the wall and hopped down from the first step to the second on her good foot as she kept her leg with the cast tucked up at the knee.
I jumped up. “Can I help? That doesn’t look safe at all.”
“I’m sure it’s not,” Annie said, “but needs must and all that.”
“Well, you don’t need to. I’ll be happy to help, if I can. Can I bring something up for you or just check that Dominic isn’t down there?”
“Oh, he’s not down there. He did mention earlier this evening that he needed to run over to the pub next door for some flyers, so I’m sure that’s where he is. I need a stack of bills on the corner of the desk. If you could…”
“Of course. Not a problem.”
We changed places, and I went down the spiral with Annie leaning over the banister, apologizing for the inconvenience. As I reached the bottom step, she said, “When you come off the stairs, the WC is to the right, and the office is the door straight ahead. Is it locked?”
I tried the handle on the metal door with a rectangle of glass inset. “It’s open.”
“Good. Just go on in. A stack of mail should be on the corner of the desk under a paperweight. I need everything in that stack. Just bring up the whole thing.”
The desk had several untidy piles of paper on it, but only one had a thick square stone on top of them. “I see them,” I said, and removed the papers from unde
r the stone. “That’s some paperweight,” I called out.
“It’s a cobblestone,” Annie said. “Dominic talked one of the workers into giving it to him when they repaired the road last year. He’s quite proud of it. Take a look around while you’re in the office. Check out the vault. It’s the thick metal door next to the storage room. I’m surprised Dominic hasn’t given your group the tour—the two-bit tour I call it.”
The desk filled the space near the door, but on the wall opposite it were two more doors. One was made with aged wood and had an arched shape, but the panels looked solid. A shiny modern latch was affixed to the door, the bolt shot home into the doorframe—the storage room, I assumed. Next to it was a metal door about four feet high set into the wall. A circular silver handle was mounted at the center of the door. “That looks like something you’d see in a bank,” I said as I came out of the office, closing the door behind me.
“It is. This building was a casino once. All the money and chips were stored down there every night,” Annie said as I climbed the steps. “I’d open it for you, but Dominic has the key. The vault walls are several inches thick. Needless to say, it came with the building. This building was once a tannery, too, long before it was a casino. And it was divided into several residences at one point as well.”
“That’s fascinating, all the different incarnations it’s had,” I said, seeing that Alex had returned.
As I handed off the papers to Annie, she said to Alex, “Would you like to take a look downstairs? It’s not as old as the Roman Baths, but it is interesting.”
Alex declined, and Annie insisted on refreshing our hot chocolate before going to pay her bills.
It was after eleven when Melissa sailed into the hotel. She entered along with a gust of cold air and waggled a hand at Alex and me. “See you bright and early in the morning, darlings. I have very important nana—, mannequins,” she corrected, enunciating each syllable carefully, “to clothe tomorrow. Must get some sleep.”
