by LJ Ross
“Yes, I’m based out of Northumbria CID.”
“Of course!” Cassandra raised a delicate hand to her mouth and her eyes widened dramatically. “All that business with the serial killer…”
“Depends which one you mean,” he said lightly. “There have been quite a few, over the years.”
“Oh, I mean the one last April, that awful man who broke out of prison and killed that poor young girl—”
Sensing their unease, Cassandra broke off and gave them an apologetic smile.
“Well, if anybody can guess the murderer in tonight’s game, it will be you,” she said. “I’m so sorry my husband won’t be joining us this evening but he’s come down with a touch of flu. Probably the long-haul flight, last week,” she said, tutting. “It’s the air-conditioning on the plane, I’m sure of it.”
“Sorry to hear that,” Anna said. “I hope he recovers soon.”
“Thank you. Now, go on upstairs and help yourself to champagne. Tonight, we’re celebrating.”
As Cassandra turned to greet some new arrivals, Anna and Ryan followed a series of cardboard placards directing them to the mezzanine level of the house, halfway between the first and second floors. Its layout reminded Ryan of a rabbit warren: higgledy-piggledy, with only a few large reception rooms offset by various smaller interconnecting anterooms, countless staircases and corridors, as well as an old lift shaft currently not in use.
Anna lifted her skirts and hauled them up the main flight of wide oak stairs until they reached a long gallery on the mezzanine level where the party was already well underway. Ryan swept an assessing eye over the crowd and estimated around thirty or forty people had turned out, most of them household or ground staff, conservationists and elderly volunteers working at the tea rooms or as tour guides on days when the house was open to the public.
“Anna, Ryan, glad you could come!”
They turned to greet a man in his mid-fifties who was dressed in a flamboyant green velvet smoking jacket with matching cap and pinstripe trousers. He was brandishing fluted glasses of champagne in his outstretched hands.
“Thanks, Dave.”
The conservation manager raised his bushy grey eyebrows.
“Tonight, I am Lord Quibble of Newcastle,” he corrected them with exaggerated hauteur. When he wriggled an enormous false moustache, Ryan realised the man was actually enjoying himself.
It took all sorts.
“You should be in your element,” Dave continued, scooping up another champagne flute from a passing tray. “Wouldn’t it be funny if you guessed the murderer wrong? No hope for the rest of us, eh? Mysteries are your forte!”
He bellowed out a hearty laugh and Ryan cast around for something polite to say but was forestalled by Anna’s smooth interruption.
“He’s been so excited about the party, haven’t you, darling?”
She turned to him with innocent brown eyes and he could happily have throttled her.
“Mmm.” Ryan gave her a toothy smile before delivering his coup de grâce. “Not as much as you, darling. I know you’ve been dying to find out about the plans for renovating Armstrong’s old electrical room.”
He took a fiendish delight in her shocked expression and wriggled his own eyebrows.
“Well, you’ve come to the right place!” Dave exclaimed, blissfully unaware of any nuance in the conversation. “I can tell you all about the electrics. Why don’t I give you a quick tour?”
In short order, Anna found herself being led off in the direction of one of the smaller wings of the house by a velvet-clad enthusiast. Ryan had no time to congratulate himself when, scarcely thirty seconds after her departure, a gaggle of female staff took their chance to strike before he had time to deploy any evasive manoeuvres.
“Hello, dear!”
“Looking so handsome this evening—”
“Just like Sherlock Holmes!” came the inevitable commentary.
“Now, girls, don’t embarrass the poor man.” A woman of around seventy he recognised as Maggie, the housekeeper, rescued him with the natural ease of lifelong experience. “Where’s your lovely fiancée, Ryan?”
“Ah, she’s looking at the renovations,” he replied and thought belatedly that the prospect of being bored to tears by a historical aficionado was looking more attractive by the minute.
“Oh, Maggie, here comes your fancy-man!” one of the women said in a stage whisper.
Victor Swann was in his late seventies but could easily pass for twenty years younger, with a shock of white-grey hair brushed back from a tanned face sporting a designer beard and a pair of bright blue eyes framed by deep laughter lines. Clearly, he was in demand as the estate’s resident lothario, which Ryan could only admire.
“Good evening, ladies!” Victor doffed his hat and executed a small bow. “May I say, you all look ravishing.”
There ensued a maelstrom of giggles and Ryan gulped his drink, searching the room for any sign of an emergency exit.
* * *
Two hours crawled by, during which time Ryan was subjected to a lengthy performance of The Mysterious Case of the Disappearing Duchess by a troupe of amateur actors who approached their task in much the same way as a Christmas pantomime at the London Palladium. Amid cries of “Send ’im down!”, Ryan found himself enlisted to enact the part of the murdered duchess’s wayward lover. After it was all over, Ryan slumped back in his chair at the long dining table and prayed for a real murder to take him away from it all. He checked his mobile phone again but there was no message from the Control Room.
So much for his so-called friends, who had abandoned him in his hour of need.
Returning the phone to the inner pocket of his blazer, Ryan made a leisurely observation of his surroundings. The drawing room was the largest reception room in the house and had originally been built for a royal visit, over a hundred years earlier. The style was opulent, with dark red damask walls and plaster panels on the coved ceiling leading up to a long skylight through which the setting sun had blazed during dinner. Now that darkness had fallen, the room was an odd mixture of shadows, relieved only by a central chandelier and a few scattered side lamps, all of which shone a weak, low-wattage glow. The air smelled of musty furniture and it had grown chilly since there was no roaring fire set beneath the vast chimneypiece dominating the southern wall.
At the head of the table, Cassandra Gilbert was engaged in polite conversation with a small group of staff and, catching his eye, she smiled and raised her glass.
Ryan raised his glass in return.
Small groups of staff huddled together, according to their respective roles on the estate. The horticultural staff occupied a position near the door, whereas the older volunteers were seated comfortably in the mid-section of the long dining table. Conservation staff were the most animated and chattered happily about scientific advances in their respective fields from a seating area at one end of the room. The housekeeper stood chatting to Victor, who Ryan knew to be Lionel Gilbert’s personal valet.
There was a polished grand piano sitting lonely in the corner and Ryan was considering tinkling the ivories when he spotted Anna weaving through the crowd in his direction. He smiled at the sight of her, as much at home in elegant silks as she was in scuffed jeans and walking boots.
“Nearly over,” she murmured, slipping into the chair beside him. “A few people have already made a run for it. We can head off any time you like.”
They were halfway out of their seats when a thin, balding man wearing by far the most glamorous outfit they’d seen all evening joined them. Martin Henderson was the new estate manager, charged with overseeing the smooth running of Cragside’s agricultural interests, which were substantial. Soon after he’d arrived in his electric BMW sports car, Henderson had issued a string of demands that had not endeared him to his colleagues. His choice of dress this evening was calculated to reinforce his status and, when Ryan enquired politely as to the red fur cloak and regal-looking sash draped across the man’s che
st, he was informed that the ensemble had been modelled on Edward VII’s coronation robes.
“I had the jacket hand-made,” Henderson boasted. “And the fur is real, too. None of that tree-hugging faux stuff.” He belched and reached across the table for a decanter of wine to top up his glass. “Well, who d’ you think dunnit?”
Henderson addressed his question to Ryan, innate misogyny leading him to assume Anna had no thoughts on the matter.
“It’s always the butler,” Ryan replied breezily, rising in one fluid movement and holding out a hand to help Anna from her chair. “You’ll have to excuse us, Martin, it’s been a long day and we must be getting back.”
They had almost made their escape when the room was plunged into darkness.
CHAPTER 2
Muffled shrieks and drunken guffaws about the ghost of a murdered duchess echoed around the room. People stumbled into one another, bumping into occasional furniture in their haste to find an alternative light source. Taking matters into his own hands, Ryan made his way to the door using his phone as a torch, intending to feel around the wall for a light switch, and barrelled into somebody.
“Sorry,” he muttered.
He found the switch and tried it a few times, to no avail.
His eyes adjusted to the darkness and he realised it was the head gardener he had bumped into. She was standing beside him leaning against a marble-topped side table, breathing a bit unsteadily. Her eyes were wide and frightened in the light of his phone torch and Ryan struggled to remember her name—Charlotte?—but guessed she was somewhere around fifty, with short blonde hair topped with a long peacock-feathered fascinator.
“Are you alright?”
“I’ll be fine. I just had a bit of a fright,” she explained. “I hate dark spaces. I think I might have dropped a glass of wine on the carpet—”
Ryan looked around the floor and picked up the errant glass, setting it back on the table next to a large porcelain lamp.
“They’ll clean up the spillage later. Here, sit down on this chair,” he offered, drawing her down into one of the antique easy chairs set back against the wall.
“Thank you,” she said, a bit embarrassed. “I don’t know what came over me.”
“It’s been a long night,” Ryan said, with feeling.
When he was satisfied that the woman was comfortable, he turned back to the room at large and raised his voice above the din.
“Alright, listen up!”
It took a few seconds but eventually its occupants fell silent.
“Does anybody know where to find the fuse box?”
He waited to hear from Dave, the self-confessed electrical expert, but was surprised to find it was the valet, Victor Swann, who made his way forward.
“I know where it is. Down on the ground floor next to the kitchen, near the main entrance.”
“I’ll come with you,” Ryan offered but Victor shook his head.
“No, you stay here and look after my Maggie!” He looked over his shoulder to where she stood beside a group of other staff, his lascivious wink made sinister by the light of Ryan’s phone torch.
“Here, take this,” he started to hand it over but Victor produced a nifty LED torch from his trouser pocket and flicked it on.
“Always come prepared.”
He stepped through the doorway into the murky hallway beyond and threw a final, prophetic request over his shoulder.
“If I’m not back in five minutes, send a search party!”
* * *
In the end, Ryan gave him ten minutes. Leaving the remaining crowd of revellers, he made his way through the long, silent corridors of the old house in search of Victor. Although he was not prone to an overactive imagination, it was impossible not to experience a distinct sense of foreboding. Floorboards creaked underfoot as he made swiftly for the main staircase at the end of the gallery and painted images of long-dead aristocrats stared down at him from shadowy portraits. The darkness was complete; thick and black with no friendly moon to guide the way, only the single beam of his phone torch flickering against the walls.
Reaching the staircase, he ran lightly down to the ground floor and emerged into the entrance hallway. There was still no sign of another living person but wind whistled through gaps in the old oak doors, sending them creaking on their hinges.
“Victor?”
Ryan’s voice reverberated around the walls and he paused at the foot of the stairs, listening for a response.
There was none.
He struggled to recall a map of the house in his mind’s eye, then spotted a rack of guide books sitting on one of the hallway tables. Gratefully, he snatched one up and studied a diagram of the house printed on the inside cover, then headed for a nearby servants’ corridor.
He found the fuse box easily enough and fiddled with a few switches until the small bulbs lining the dank corridor beside the kitchen blinked on again. A cheer sounded from upstairs and a smile played around his lips before his face fell once again into focused lines. He shed his playful persona for the evening and was, once again, all cop.
The hairs on the back of Ryan’s neck prickled as he walked slowly through the maze of rooms, scanning every corner.
There was still no sign of Victor.
Stepping inside the mammoth kitchen, his polished dress shoes clicked against a stone floor that had been worn smooth by the tread of countless feet. The windows were darkened by the night sky and against the glow of the lamplight he saw his own reflection from every angle; a man whose skin was drawn tightly across the hard planes of his face, eyes darkened to a stormy grey as he stalked around the room. A vintage clock on the wall chimed the quarter hour, its tinny sound magnified by the silence surrounding it.
Quarter-past eleven.
Swinging around again, Ryan spotted a narrow staircase leading down to the basement and he started down into the cellar, setting aside any feelings of natural self-preservation. Before he’d reached the third step, he faltered and was forced to throw a hand out to save himself from a nasty fall.
His heart slammed against his chest in one hard motion as visions of broken legs—or worse—flooded his mind.
“Close shave,” he muttered.
Moving more cautiously, Ryan shivered as he entered one of the oldest parts of the house. The basement was another network of small spaces, all decked out for tourists with realistic models of raw meats in the game larder and lifelike waxwork mannequins propped against the wall in the scullery, their eyes staring at him unseeingly. His stomach quivered but Ryan moved past them, spotting the old lift shaft that had once been operational and the information boards explaining its mechanism, now rusting with age.
Eventually, he let out a long sigh and was about to retrace his steps when he spotted a back door leading to a courtyard area. Through its dusty panes, he could see a solar-powered light shining an eerie greenish-white glow onto what appeared to be a heap of old clothes. Narrowing his eyes, Ryan tugged open the door and felt a cold rush of air against his face as he stepped outside.
It wasn’t old clothes.
Victor lay crumpled at the bottom of a flight of hard stone steps, his body twisted and broken. His hat had rolled a few feet away to reveal a skull crushed like an eggshell, blood and brain matter spattered against the gravel beside him.
* * *
Ryan stopped several feet away from Victor’s body and wished fervently for more light. He risked contaminating the scene to check for a pulse but he knew death when he saw it. There was a deep gash on the man’s temple and blood seeped in a slow trickle across his chalky face, pooling in the hollows of his eyes and mouth. That was the most likely cause of death, Ryan thought, but it could equally have been a break in the neck bone which jutted against Victor’s skin at a sickly, unnatural angle. Ryan used his phone again, this time to take some photographs of the scene in the absence of a forensic team. While there were no obvious signs of attack, it was too dark to determine cause of death without an expert and y
ou never knew what sins remained invisible to the naked eye.
Next, he shone his torch onto the stone staircase and spotted a small clump of matted hair and blood clinging to the edge of one of the steps. Turning back to Victor, he thought of a man who had seemed so vital despite his advancing years. Tripping down a flight of stairs seemed such an ignominious way to die.
Accidents happen every day.
Yet, the staircase was lit by a series of solar-powered exterior lights that would have been unaffected by the power failure inside the house. Together with the little LED torch Victor had used, there should have been sufficient light to move safely downstairs, particularly since weather conditions were dry and mild.
How, then, did Victor fall?
The seed of doubt was planted and Ryan decided to put a call through to Tom Faulkner, the Senior Crime Scene Investigator attached to Northumbria CID. Ordinarily, the services of their most proficient forensic specialist were reserved for priority cases already deemed ‘suspicious’ but it paid to be sure.
After a brief conversation with Faulkner and the Control Room, he kept to the extreme edge of the staircase and retraced Victor’s steps back inside the house, scanning the stonework as he went. Ryan took a further two flights upward using the servants’ staircase until he re-entered the house and emerged onto the same floor as the drawing room.
Stepping into the carpeted corridor, he heard muted, angry voices. Ryan remained perfectly still, head cocked to one side until he could determine the direction. At the top of the servants’ staircase, the corridor forked. To his right, it led to the closest doorway to the drawing room, which had been used throughout the evening. To his left, it skirted around to a billiards room and, from there, continued toward an alternative entrance to the drawing room at its southern end. To his knowledge, nobody had used that doorway during the evening but now there were voices coming from that direction and possibilities began to roam his mind.
Soundlessly, Ryan took the left fork and padded along the plush hallway until he reached the closed door of the billiards room. A thin strip of light shone beneath and the voices grew louder as he approached.
