A Spider on the Stairs (16 page)

Bethancourt nodded and went to put a hand on Rachel's shoulder.

“Come and sit down,” he said, moving her gently to the kitchen table. “Would you like anything? A glass of water or some tea?”

Rachel dragged a hand across her face, wiping away tears.

“I think I'd rather have a drink,” she said. “There's a bottle of Bell's in that cupboard over there.”

Bethancourt nodded and fetched it together with a glass from the dish drainer while Gibbons settled himself opposite Rachel at the table. She sniffed, took the drink Bethancourt handed her, and had a healthy swallow of it.

“There,” she said, making an effort to pull herself together. “All right. Tell me what happened.”

“Miss Farraday was killed on Christmas Eve,” said Gibbons.

“But how?” asked Rachel. To Bethancourt's ear, her tone betrayed bewilderment. He slid into the chair on the other side of her, leaning an elbow on the table so that he could see her face.

“She was the victim of an attack,” replied Gibbons. “We believe she had an altercation with whomever she was meeting that night, during the course of which she was struck. The blow may
or may not have knocked her out, but it disabled her enough for her attacker to strangle her.”

While he spoke, Rachel's hand sought her throat, and her eyes, now full of shock, brimmed with tears.

“That's horrible,” she whispered. “Poor Jody.”

“Yes,” said Gibbons. “It was a very violent crime. Do you know of anyone who might have wanted to harm Miss Farraday?”

Rachel shook her head at once. “Everyone always liked Jody,” she said. “There's no denying she was an oddbod, but nobody ever seemed to mind. I can't imagine anyone wanting to kill her. It wasn't,” she added, “just a mugging then?”

“No, ma'am,” said Gibbons. “I'm afraid there's no chance of that.”

“How long had you known Miss Farraday?” asked Bethancourt. “Were the two of you close?”

Rachel hesitated for a moment before replying, “I think, actually, I was her closest friend. At least I was the oldest—we met at school in Haxby when we were eight.”

Gibbons raised an eyebrow. “At school?” he asked. “We understood from Mr. Rhys-Jones that Miss Farraday was homeschooled.”

“Part of the time,” agreed Rachel. “Although I think that had more to do with where she and her mother found themselves—they moved around a lot. Anyway, she was only at my school for three years. But that's an eternity when you're eight.”

“True,” said Bethancourt. “Still, it's a long time to keep up with someone, particularly if you don't live in the same place.” He was mentally riffling through a list of his acquaintances, but could not think of anyone from the second form with whom he still kept in touch.

“Well, yes,” agreed Rachel slowly, as if she had never really thought about it before. Then she shrugged. “But things are never the way they usually are if Jody's involved. It's like she's a jinx on anything normal.” She gave a half laugh, which turned into a hiccup,
and she ended by sniffling and sipping the whisky Bethancourt had poured for her.

“Being such an old friend,” said Gibbons, “would you know of any family Miss Farraday might have? I understand her mother passed on some years ago.”

“Yes,” affirmed Rachel. “I went to the funeral. But there aren't any other relatives—there never have been. It was always only her mother and Jody.”

“Her mother had no other family?” asked Gibbons.

“She may have had,” said Rachel, “but she never spoke of them. The story I heard was that she had been abused as a child, and had run away when she was fourteen. So far as I know, all contact was broken off. At least, Jody never met any of them. And,” she continued, forestalling Gibbons's next question, “I don't know anything about Jody's father and I'm not sure she did either.”

“He was never around?” asked Gibbons.

“Jody never even met him,” said Rachel. “Her mother always maintained he had died shortly after Jody was born—it was a rather romantic story, really. But later on, after I grew up, I did begin to wonder how true it all was. I wouldn't be surprised to learn he simply deserted Doris when he found out she was pregnant. But I don't really know.”

Gibbons absorbed this silently. “In that case,” he said at last, “would you be willing to identify the body?”

Rachel looked considerably startled by this request, and Gibbons added, “We believe our victim is Miss Farraday, but positive identification has thus far been difficult. We've only one rather bad snapshot of her, and have been unable to find dental records or DNA samples. In fact, so far as we can determine, she's not even been reported missing.”

“I could certainly identify her,” said Rachel, recovering herself. “But it's difficult, just now, to get any time away from the hospital. Is she still down in Cornwall?”

“No,” answered Gibbons. “She was killed here in York. Did you not know she was in town?”

Rachel sat back, all grief apparently forgotten in her amazement. “Jody was
here
?” she demanded.

“Yes,” said Gibbons. “She didn't let you know of her plans?”

Rachel shook her head emphatically, but then paused as a thought struck her.

“Yes?” prompted Gibbons hopefully.

“I wasn't here,” she said. She spoke half to herself and her tone was one of sorrow and regret. “My family always spends Christmas at my grandmother's in the Lake District. Jody knew that, of course. And she probably came up on the spur of the moment—it was the way she did most things. In fact . . .”

Her voice trailed off as she looked about the room. Gibbons waited patiently until at last she looked back at him.

“I'm just wondering,” she said, “if she was here after all. She had keys and she would have known I was away. There were a few things out of place when I came back, but my neighbors had been in to feed the cat so I didn't think anything of it. But it could have been Jody.”

The mention of keys struck a chord in Gibbons's mind. “Rhys-Jones said Jody kept a collection of keys. . . .”

“True enough,” agreed Rachel. “It was totally pointless to try and prevent her from adding your house keys to her collection.” She sighed. “I always wondered what a psychiatrist would have made of those keys.”

“Keys or no, she couldn't have still been staying here on Christmas Eve,” put in Bethancourt practically. “We haven't found any of her things, and surely you would have noticed if she had left a bag here.”

Rachel frowned and nodded. “That's true,” she said. “No, there was nothing left here. But I can't think where else she would have stayed.”

“But you would have expected her to come to you if she had arrived before you left for the Lake District?” asked Gibbons.

“Oh, yes, certainly.”

“And when did you leave?”

“On the twenty-third,” Rachel answered. “Jody couldn't have been in York before then.”

“What about Rhys-Jones?” asked Bethancourt. “Might she have stayed with him?”

“I don't think so,” said Rachel. “They were still on friendly terms, but he had gone back to his old girlfriend and Jody knew that. I don't think she would have intruded.”

“There wasn't a lot of animosity over the breakup then?” asked Gibbons.

“Not on Jody's part,” said Rachel. “She liked him, but she never thought it would work out for the long term. Jody, well, she had trouble trusting people very far—you had to prove yourself over time.”

Gibbons nodded. “Can you think of any other friends here she might have rung up? Mr. Rhys-Jones mentioned some other people. . . .”

He consulted his notebook and read off the names Rhys-Jones had given them. Rachel identified them readily as people she had introduced Jody to and supplied surnames and phone numbers.

“And Wilfrid,” she said with a laugh, “that would be Wilfrid Jenks. He's another one from our school days. But I don't think he lives around here anymore—he was probably visiting when Gareth met him. I don't know, he was never a particular friend of mine, but he was someone Jody kept up with sporadically.”

She paused for a moment, thinking, and then added a couple of others, including Tony Grandidge, the young man who single-handedly managed Mittlesdon's stock room.

“That was how Jody got the job at Mittlesdon's,” she said. “She ran into Tony at a café and the two of them got talking. I think
they went out once or twice, though it was never anything serious.”

Gibbons noted this down and then asked, “You've said that both Miss Farraday and her mother moved around a lot. Was there any reason for that? I mean, did you ever have the impression they were running from something or someone?”

“No.” Rachel shook her head. “They were just very odd people. Jody always seemed to me to be afraid of getting tied down, of having anything regular in her life.” She looked wistful. “Although when I last spoke to her, I thought she might be mellowing a little. She talked about maybe getting a dog, and that's definitely a responsibility.”

“Yes, indeed,” agreed Bethancourt.

“And you can't think of anyone who might have had a grudge against Miss Farraday?” asked Gibbons. “Sometimes even a small thing will lead to murder.”

Rachel began to shake her head, but then paused.

“Have you thought of someone?” asked Gibbons as the silence lengthened.

“Not someone,” said Rachel slowly. “But Jody liked to know things, including other people's secrets. She never told,” she added hastily. “But she did find out things—she'd surprise me sometimes with something that she had known but never mentioned.”

“So if I follow you,” said Gibbons, “you're thinking somebody found out she knew a secret she shouldn't have. And they decided not to trust her discretion.”

Rachel nodded. “It's all I can think of,” she said. “Just hearing about her and how eccentric and independent she was, you might think that would have made her enemies. But it never did. I couldn't tell you why, but people always accepted Jody—her odd bents just made them chuckle and shake their heads.”

Which, thought Bethancourt, seemed an appropriate epitaph.

Gibbons was excited to find some trace of Jody before her arrival in York and headed off to the police station to pursue this lead. Bethancourt, who had no patience for that kind of research, left him to it and went to keep his luncheon appointment with Alice Knowles.

The warming weather together with the cessation of the endless winter rain had brought the holiday crowds out in force, and he dodged impatiently around them, making his way through the busy streets. He paused once, when his mobile rang, and moved out of the stream of foot traffic to answer it, thinking it must be Gibbons. But when he looked at the caller ID, he saw it was Marla.

“Hell,” he said, pressing the End button and returning the phone to his pocket.

He endeavored to dismiss the call from his mind as he hurried on. He had been brought up always to arrive before his date, and he strove to meet this goal, though in fact he rarely achieved it.

Nor did he in this case. Loch Fyne was a large establishment with a broad bar at the back of the high-ceilinged room. Alice was waiting for him there, seated in one of the high bar chairs with her legs crossed, nursing a glass of white wine. She had clearly dressed with some care, discarding the tweed skirt and comfortable flat boots she had worn to the bookshop the day before in favor of heels and a dress in a flattering shade of blue.

She smiled at him as he came up, slightly breathless and tugging his coat open in the sudden heat of the restaurant.

“Sorry to be late,” he said, smiling back. “I see you've got yourself a drink.”

“I don't usually indulge so early,” she said with a little laugh. “But this is sort of a special occasion, isn't it? I hope you're going to join me.”

Bethancourt, looking down at her, thought that a drink—or perhaps several—was an excellent idea, and said so.

“But let's get a table, eh?” he said, holding up a hand to attract
the bartender's attention. “I'd like to have a look at the menu, perhaps order a bottle of wine, if that's all right with you?”

They got themselves settled at a quiet table off to one side. Discussion of the meal to come and the wine offerings got them through the initial stages, but it was not long before the first reminiscence of their school days was introduced. Bethancourt was exceedingly relieved when the bottle of wine arrived.

It was not that he particularly wished to avoid discussion of his years at St. Peter's, or even that he disliked reliving anecdotes from that time; it was only painting the period in rosier colors than it deserved that he objected to. In his view, there had been good times and bad times, and he had moved on from both.