“What did Smith want?” Mills walked in, yanking his tie loose and pulling the door closed.
“Rita’s brother, Freddie, is here. According to him, she would have been home in our window. He didn’t leave the house until just before eight.” It was a convenient alibi, arrived in the nick of time, but it matched what Rita had told us about Saturday night.
“Think he might be lying?” Mills stuck his hands in his pockets, resting one shoulder against the wall.
“To help his sister, it’s very likely. I don’t doubt him, or her for that matter,” I added through my teeth with a nod in Rita’s direction. “Plus, everything he said lines up with what she originally told us, anyway.”
“He did take a while to get back to us on that.”
“Not everybody jumps at the chance to call the police station,” I pointed out.
“For your sister, you think you might make a bit more of an effort.”
“Seemed keen to rectify it now,” I answered. “Claims she couldn’t have done it. The killing anyway, she might still be a thief.” She had seemed surprised when we showed up at the house this morning, and it might explain her nerves around us, her hesitation around Viviane.
“As does everyone else who walks in those doors. She thinks she’s being framed,” Mills told me quietly. “Do you think she might be right?”
“I think on paper, we have a lead suspect. But it’s not right. Why would she steal the music box? What was she planning on doing with it? And why kill Viviane over it? Doesn’t add up, Mills,” my voice darkened at the end.
The room was quiet for a moment, only the clock ticking behind us, filling the space.
“I agree with you, sir,” he finally said in a quiet voice. “I think something’s not quite right about it.”
“We’ll have to see what forensics turn up, but otherwise, Sharp thinks that we’re done here. Wants it wrapped up.”
“What are the odds of finding fingerprints, though?” he asked. “It was wrapped up in cloth.”
“She’d have had to have handled it at some point. And if it was in her bag for a while, we should be able to pick on something. Some DNA, maybe. With it, we’ll have enough. Without it, we can let her go, buy ourselves a bit more time.”
“No confession and no real hard evidence, other than the music box, that won’t be easy.” Mills nodded and raked his hair back from his face. “Especially in court.”
“We need hard, strong evidence,” I agreed. “Either that Rita definitely did do it, or that someone else did.” I wasn’t sure where I wanted to start with it all.
“What about Harry Cuthbert?” Mills asked. “Rita claims he’s the man from the restaurant. Maybe he and Viviane were seeing each other.”
“It’s possible, and since she technically works for him, you can see why he might want to keep that under wraps.”
“If someone were framing her,” Mills began slowly, “it would be someone else with access to the house, someone with access to her bag.” I turned to look at him and could tell we were thinking of the same certain someone.
“Why, though?” I muttered, turning away. “We have means, very clear ones, but no motive. There’s no hurt, no competition, nothing. Unless it was money, but nothing’s left Viviane’s accounts, according to Wasco.”
“There’s the ex-girlfriend,” Mills suggested. “If there was enough history between them, she could be our killer. She’d know about the collection, know her way around the flat and the house, most likely. And if Viviane was seeing someone new…” He shrugged.
“Wouldn’t be the first time someone’s died over something like that,” I agreed in a dull voice. But my brain looped back to Josephine Goddard. She clearly didn’t like Rita, and she was the one suggesting some romance between Rita and Viviane, mentioning her distrust of her. By all accounts, Josephine was pushing Rita further into suspicion every time she opened her mouth. She’d had her bag with her at the counter and nobody else with her. She had files on her employers, so she knew where Viviane lived. But why? I voiced as much to Mills, and he shrugged.
“Jealousy? For either of them, really,” he added with a nod to Rita. “Viviane was evidently close to Harry. That might be enough to ruffle a few feathers.”
I hummed in agreement, looking back through the window. Rita was slumped in her seat, staring at the wall with a sullen face, her eyes bright with tears. She looked, more than anything else, defeated, tired. I jumped from the thoughts as my phone rang, and I answered it quickly.
“Thatcher.”
“Inspector, this is Philips from forensics. We’ve given the object a sweep for fingerprints. None matching Rita Jones.”
“Any prints on there at all?” I asked.
“A few. None that match any on the system either.”
I let out a tense breath. “The cloth?”
“Same story there, sir. We found some traces of DNA, a hair caught up in it, but it’s not Rita’s.”
“Thanks, Philips.”
“We’ll get the full report up to you,” he promised, hanging up after. I tucked my phone away, Mills watching me expectantly.
“No fingerprints. Nothing to tie it to Rita,” I told him. He looked a little relieved, as I myself secretly felt.
“We have to let her go then. Sharp won’t be happy about that.”
“Nope, but at least it gives us more time. I’ll walk Rita out, and you can talk to Sharp,” I told him happily, clapping him on the shoulder. He glowered at me, heaving the door open and heading off woodenly to her office.
I shouldered open the door to the next room, and Rita raised her eyes as I walked in, heading directly to the table, gathering up the images we’d left on the table. She’d been studying one of them, the picture of the box that Viviane had kept, a small crease between her eyebrows.
“Miss Jones,” I greeted her.
“It looks heavy,” she murmured, the words catching in her throat. “The music box.”
“Oh?” I raised an eyebrow, tucking the folder under one arm.
“There was nothing heavy in my bag,” she said in a quiet voice. She looked up at me from beneath dark eyelashes. “Am I getting arrested?”
“Not right now,” I told her. “Forensics have checked the music box. There’s no sign of your fingerprints on it.” She took a moment going over my words and then closed her eyes briefly, shoulders sagging in relief. “We’re letting you go for now but be advised that it’s best if you don’t leave the city, Miss Jones.”
She blinked away the tears, wiping her nose with her sleeve and stood up. “I won’t. Got nowhere to go anyway. What happens next?”
“You’re still a suspect,” I informed her honestly. “And we continue our investigation. Is there anything you want to tell me before you leave?”
Rita looked at the folder under my arm, something I could quite read flashing through her eyes. “Viviane’s ex-girlfriend was called Frances Beacon. She worked at the Theatre Royal last I knew.”
I was somewhat taken aback by her telling me this, wondering what had sparked it.
“You asked about her,” she explained. “Figured you might want to know.”
“Do you know how their relationship ended?” I asked her in a gentle voice.
She shook her head. “Viviane never wanted to talk about it at work.”
“What about current relationships? You saw her with Harry Cuthbert in the restaurant. Do you suspect anything there?”
“I did think she was seeing someone,” she told me after a moment’s thought. “Thought maybe that was why she wanted to swap shifts, to go on a date or something. You’d have to ask him, though.”
“I plan to.” I stepped back, holding the door open. “Don’t be surprised if we get in touch again soon, Miss Jones.”
“Okay.”
“Your brother is here,” I told her, leading her from the room. “Cleared your alibi for Saturday night.”
He was there as we rounded the corner, sipping his tea and r
eading an old country lifestyle magazine. As we approached, he scuttled to his feet, eyes looking over his sister from head to toe, a frown deepening between his brows. I didn’t blame him. She wiped her lipstick off on a tissue, and with the smudged makeup around her eyes, she looked unwell.
“I found this.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a crumpled receipt. “Found it in my wallet.”
I took it from him, smoothing it out, mindful of smudging the ink. It was a cinema ticket dated for Saturday night, the starting time reading 20.05. Strange time for a film to start, but cinemas were odd like that. At least it proved when he was there, but not when he left, or what happened before he left.
“Thanks, Freddie. Mind if I hold on to it?”
He waved a hand, looking at his sister.
“She’s free to go for now, but we might be in touch, and she shouldn’t leave the city,” I told him.
Freddie nodded as Smith wandered over with Rita’s things. She yanked her coat on, and her brother wandered over, smoothing down the hair she had mussed up.
“You alright?” he asked her quietly.
“Fine. I just want to go home.”
“Let’s go then.” Freddie slung his arm through hers. Inspector,” he bid me farewell with a fairly stiff nod.
“Freddie,” I responded. “Rita.” She gave me a pained smile and let her brother steer her away towards the stairs.
I watched them leave, Rita leaning against her brother’s arm and breathed in deeply. We had a name for Viviane’s girlfriend now, and the possibility of a romantic entanglement with Harry Cuthbert. All of which was useful on its own, but none of it helped me figure out why someone killed her. Jealousy, perhaps, just as Mills had suggested. But that music box had made its way from Viviane’s flat and into Rita’s bag somehow. Figuring out whose prints were on it would be useful. At least they weren’t Rita’s, I supposed, at least I had more time to follow my own instincts, not that they were overly helpful these days.
“Here,” Crowe startled me, appearing by my elbow with a folder in hand. “Philips asked me to drop this up.”
“Thanks,” I replied, flipping it open.
“She could have worn gloves,” Crowe suggested casually.
“Could have done,” I agreed.
“Couldn’t have hoisted Viviane Charles up, though, not on her own.” I glanced down at Crowe. She had a lab coat thrown over a bright yellow jumper, holding a cup of herbal tea.
“No?”
“She might have gotten help,” she added, staring in the direction that Rita and her brother had just vanished down.
“That’s surprisingly not as helpful as you think it is,” I told her, wandering off to the side. She trailed after me.
“Why’s that?”
“I’m more interested in why someone killed her at this point. And I struggle with that, to be honest, Lena. Usually, it’s the easiest part. But not with this one.”
“It was dressed to look like a suicide,” she reminded me. “Don’t forget that. Someone did that. Does Rita Jones strike you as the sort of person to do that?”
No, she didn’t. Not at all.
“It’s personal,” I murmured. Someone did that to Viviane for a reason beyond putting off an investigation. They knew it would likely be something of a dead end. It was cruel to do it, and people were rarely so cold when it was a matter of business or pride. This was personal, and as far as I could tell, Rita had very little interest in Viviane’s personal life. This wasn’t just a question of getting someone out of the way. This was tarnishing the memory of her left behind. I opened the file from Philips again, and Crowe glanced at it over my shoulder.
“A man,” she announced.
“You’ve changed,” I replied. She swatted me on the arm and pointed to the page.
“The DNA from the cloth. Male. Did she have a boyfriend?”
“Not that we know of. An ex-girlfriend, though.” Frances Beacon at the Theatre Royal. It was as good a place to start as any. I thought about what else Rita had said, about the music box looking heavy, and closed the folder. “Philips still in?” I asked.
“Most likely. Idiot never stops for lunch,” Crowe muttered.
“Thanks, Lena.” I squeezed her shoulder and headed to the stairs, jogging down towards Philips’s lab. It was smaller than where Crowe worked, smelt better too. The white shelves were lined with vials and bottles, a lot of them locked behind glass doors, nasty looking symbols on the labels.
“Thatcher,” Philips sat at his computer, craning around to look at me. “Crowe gave you the report?”
“She did,” I replied, “thank you.” I walked over to the table where the music box stood, looking a little dismal under the fluorescent lights. “May I?” I indicated the box.
Philips nodded and tossed me a pair of gloves. I snapped them on and walked towards the box. I hadn’t paid much attention to it at the house and was more focused on the fact that it was there, in Rita’s bag, to care all that much about it.
“Does it open?” I asked Philips.
“Not without the key. And I’m not the one to go busting into antiques,” he said. “I may have the rugged good looks of Harrison Ford, but I’m not an idiot. That’s someone else’s expertise, that is.”
I had someone in mind, and once we were done looking it over, I had every thought of taking it to Liene Dorland and seeing what her expert eye could make of it. I thought about heading back to Viviane’s as well, taking a look around for the key.
I picked the box up carefully and found it to be much lighter than I thought it would be. Perhaps the mechanisms inside weren’t as heavy as I imagined them to be.
“Lightweight,” I muttered, turning it in the light.
“I know,” Philips wheeled away from the computer, pulling himself along to the table, his blonde hair turning white in the light. “I thought it would be heavier,” he remarked.
So did Rita Jones.
Seventeen
Thatcher
I left Philips’s lab only to be summoned to Sharp’s office. Mills was already there, sat sheepishly at the desk, resting his head in one hand. He looked up at me sideways as I walked in and shut the door, dropping into the chair beside him. Sharp waited, her elbows propped on the desk, fingers folded together.
“Rita Jones?” she asked simply.
“Her brother confirmed her alibi for Saturday night,” I told her, pulling the cinema ticked from my pocket and placing it on her desk. “And we didn’t find any fingerprints on the music box, or any DNA on the cloth.”
“Dr Crowe told me it’s unlikely that Rita could have managed to kill Viviane by herself. Maybe her brother helped.”
“I don’t think it was her, ma’am,” I stated slowly and carefully.
“You think she’s being set up?” Sharp asked.
“The killer already set up Viviane as a suicide. Why not do this as well?”
Sharp sat back in her chair, sighing through her nose and lifted one hand to rub her temple with her eyes closed.
“I was thinking about taking the music box to Dr Dorland,” I told her. “Get her to give it a quick analysis for us. Check if it’s real.”
“You doubt it?” Sharp opened her eyes, curiosity sparking there.
I shrugged. “It’s lighter than I thought it would be.”
“If it’s not genuine,” Mills decided to put in carefully, “we could be looking at an actual motive for her murder.”
Sharp and I both turned to look at him, his quietly proud face focused on the paperweight on the desk.
“Spending a lot of money on a fake artefact would be enough to drive someone there,” Mills noted. “Like we said from the start, it’s a dangerous market to be involved in.”
“Do we know where she even got the music box?” Sharp asked exasperatedly.
“Not yet. But we have the name of her ex-girlfriend and her last known work. We can head down there and see if she can fill in a few of these gaps.”
�
��She might know about how Viviane’s collection began,” Mills added.
“Fine,” Sharp waved a hand, “but we are keeping a very close eye on Miss Jones.”
“And Josephine Goddard,” I added.
Sharp frowned. “Why her?”
“She had access to the house, would have known Viviane’s address. Plus, she was the one who found it in Rita’s bag.”
“What was she doing going through Rita’s bag in the first place?” Mills added supportively.
“What about the man? From the restaurant?”
“Harry Cuthbert. We have a few more questions for him, but he’s accounted for all weekend.”
“His assistant got in touch with Smith,” Mills told us both. “We know he was gone the whole time.”
“Doesn’t mean he wasn’t involved somehow,” Sharp pointed out. She glanced to the window, breathing in deeply. “Where does the ex-girlfriend work?”
“The Theatre Royal, according to Rita. At least she worked there back then.”
“And you believe her?” she asked suspiciously.
“Won’t be hard to find out,” I replied.
Sharp nodded and waved a dismissive hand. “Go on then. But bring me back something useful, Thatcher, I mean it.”
I gave her a jaunty salute, swinging the door open and letting Mills out first, striding out after him.
“You can drive,” I told him, quickly fetching my coat and pulling it on. Mills rolled his eyes with a smile, and we made our way back downstairs to the car.
“I feel like we’ve been in and out of the place all day,” he muttered, climbing into the car. “Like a bloody jack-in-the-box.”
“Without the horrible music,” I added.
He looked at me in the mirror. “What’s wrong with the music?”
“It’s creepy.”
“It’s for children. How can it be creepy? Did you have some unfortunate childhood experience with a clown or something, sir?”
“Just drive,” I warned him. “No more talk of clowns, please, sergeant.” Mills chuckled and pulled away from the station, into the city streets once more.
DCI Thatcher Yorkshire Crime Thrillers: Books 1-3 Page 64
