Murder on the Hour (8 page)

“Oh, well, I expect that'll be it, then,” said Mrs. Lloyd. “Florence is a great patron of the library, but me, I prefer my magazines. I have subscriptions.”

They sipped their tea and Jean nibbled at a biscuit. The silence stretched on and even Mrs. Lloyd, usually never at a loss for words, seemed unsure how to break it. And then Jean spoke.

“Yes, anyway, I recently started a new position at the library. I live in the Junction and I've been coming to work on the bus, but they're too unreliable and too infrequent. Plus, they take so long, when you add in the bus time, a half-day job becomes a full-day job, if you know what I mean. By the time you get ready and factor in wait times.”

Mrs. Lloyd nodded. “Indeed I do know what you mean. I was the postmistress here in Llanelen for many years and my husband owned the green grocer. We always walked to work. It's by far the best way.”

“Exactly,” said Jean. “So I saw the advertisement in the newsagent's window for a room to let and I thought that might do me while I looked around for something more permanent. This is a pretty little town and I quite like it. I had come round to see if the room would suit me, and that's when I, well, you know the rest.”

“Actually,” said Mrs. Lloyd, leaning forward with an ingratiating smile, “we don't know the rest but we'd love to hear about it, if you're up to telling us, that is. Wouldn't we, Florence? Now I've had an idea. What if you told us everything you can remember and Florence here writes it all down, and when the police come, you'll have already done it, so you won't have to go through it all again with them?”

Jean looked confused.

“Oh, I don't know about that, Evelyn,” said Florence. “We are not trained interviewers and I'm sure the police would want to ask their own questions.”

“Well, maybe so,” snapped Mrs. Lloyd, “but at least it would be a start. And Jean here can tell us what she saw before she forgets anything.”

“Oh, I don't think that's very likely,” said Jean. “I keep going over everything in my mind. I can't stop thinking about it.” She scrubbed at her eyes with clenched fists. “In fact, I wish I could erase what I saw from my memory.”

“If it would help you to talk about it, you'll find me a very good listener,” encouraged Mrs. Lloyd, with a sympathetic smile.

“But if you'd rather not talk about it, that's all right, too, of course,” said Florence.

“Well, the buses being what they are, I arrived at the house a few minutes late and I hoped that wouldn't give a bad impression to the lady,” said Jean. “In fact, I saw you,” she looked from one to the other, “walking down the street just as I arrived. You must have just passed the house. And when I went to knock on the door, I was rather surprised it wasn't closed properly. So I thought, well, she's expecting me, so she's left it open for me, so I pushed it open and went in.”

“That's an important clue,” said Mrs. Lloyd. “Write that down, Florence. The door was slightly open so she went in.”

“I never agreed to write anything down,” muttered Florence, pretending to reach for her little notebook.

“Go on,” said Mrs. Lloyd eagerly. “The door was open slightly, so you went in. And then you probably called out, ‘Hello? Is anybody home?'”

“I don't think you're supposed to tell the witness what she probably did,” Florence said to Mrs. Lloyd. “It's called ‘leading' the witness, I believe.”

Mrs. Lloyd shot her a dark look with an accompanying little noise of disapproval and then turned back to Jean.

“Go on,” she repeated. “Tell us what happened next. After you called out, ‘Hello? Is anybody home?'”

Jean let out a little howl and her shoulders began to shake. She covered her eyes with her hands as if trying to block out the image of what she had seen.

“She was lying on the floor in the sitting room. I'm pretty sure she'd been hit with something. Her head…” Jean raised her right hand to the side of her head. “Just here. It was covered in blood. I'd never seen anything like it. It's like something you see on telly but never expect to experience in real life.”

Mrs. Lloyd nodded wisely. “Was the room disturbed in any way?” she asked. “Lamps knocked over, that sort of thing?”

“No,” said Jean slowly. “I don't think it was.” She took a sip of tea, savoured it for a moment, and then drained the cup. “Oh, that's such good tea,” she said. “I didn't realize how much I needed that.”

“Very restorative,” agreed Mrs. Lloyd.

*   *   *

Recently promoted Detective Inspector Bethan Morgan slowly descended the stairs in Catrin's home. When she reached the bottom, she waited in the small entranceway for DCI Davies to join her. “Anything?” he asked.

“Nothing up there seems disturbed. Found a few financial records in a drawer. Boxes of what looks like keepsakes in the smaller bedroom. The bigger bedroom looks as if nobody lives in it. Cupboards are empty.”

“Hmm, could be a robbery gone bad, I suppose. Well, unless you can think of anything else, I think we've done all we can do here until the pathologist arrives. He said he wouldn't be long. We'll leave the rest of it to forensics and hope they come up with some good leads.”

He opened the front door and spoke to the uniformed officer. “The pathologist's on his way. Show him in when he arrives.” He closed the door and returned to the sitting room.

“What does this room say to you?” he asked Bethan. “Does it look like the room where a fairly young woman would live? She wasn't that much older than you. Would you do up a room like this?”

Bethan shook her head. “No. It's her parents' room. Maybe even her grandparents'. It hasn't changed much since the seventies, I'd say.”

The door opened and the pathologist poked his head around the doorway.

“Ah, Gareth, what have you got for me today?”

Davies gestured at the woman's body on the floor. “Fortunately, this is a good scene. As far as we know, nothing's been moved or touched.”

The pathologist bent over the body. “Well, I can tell you that this lady was at the
Antiques Cymru
show earlier today.”

“Really?” said Bethan. “You can tell that just by looking at her? How do you know that?”

The pathologist laughed. “I'm not Sherlock Holmes. I know because I saw her there. My wife made me take her to the show, and I have to say I was rather enjoying it. Until I got your phone call, of course.”

He examined the head wound, and then peered at the raised slate hearth of the old fireplace. “You'll want your forensics people to take a close look at that,” he said. “She may have fallen and hit her head on it when she went down.”

He lifted the victim's head slightly and made a little tutting noise.

“Well, I won't be able to tell you too much more until I've done a proper postmortem, but it looks as if she was struck with something first, and then, if she hit her head on something as unforgiving as that hearth, it certainly wouldn't have worked in her favour.”

Davies's eyes slid over to the set of brass fireplace tools on the hearth.

“We'll want those bagged and sent to the lab,” he said.

The pathologist sat back on his haunches, his gloved hands between his knees, and looked up at Davies. “Right. I've seen enough. We can move her out now and let your people take over.”

He stood up and pulled off his gloves. Giving Davies a sly grin, he said, “If she was struck with one of those tools, in all my years doing this job, I've never actually known anyone killed with a poker. Have you?”

Davies shook his head. “Bit of a cliché, really, isn't it?”

The three stepped outside and peeled off their protective clothing. As he handed it over to the uniformed officer Davies said to him, “If you give me your crime scene log, we'll sign out.” He checked his watch. He scribbled a signature on the clipboard, thanked the pathologist, and then turned to Bethan.

“Right. Time now to see if our key witness is up to speaking to us.” The two walked in silence toward the end of the close to pick up the path that cut through to Rosemary Lane.

“What a shame,” said Bethan. “So awful to see a life end like that. You never get used to it, do you?”

“No,” said Davies, “you don't. But the best thing we can do for her now is find out who did this. Do we know who she is?”

“I have an idea from the bank statements, but they weren't in a woman's name, and judging from the dates, they were probably her father's. I expect Mrs. Lloyd will know who she is. And if she doesn't, then Penny's bound to.”

“Penny?” His voice sounded a little sharper than he meant it to. He and Penny had been close a while back and although she'd indicated that for her, the relationship was now over, the torch he carried burned brightly and he expected it would for some time.

“Yes, Penny. The woman's had a manicure recently and her hair's been professionally coloured and styled. Probably at Penny's salon.”

“Of course.” He grinned at her. “We'll make a detective out of you, yet.”

A few minutes later Florence showed them into the sitting room where Jean Bryson had finished her second cup of tea and was looking composed.

“I've just brewed another pot,” Florence said. “I'll get a couple of extra cups, shall I?”

Davies gave her a grateful nod and turned his attention to his key witness. “Now then, I'm sure these ladies have been taking good care of you. Do you feel up to answering a few questions? Let's start by you telling me your name.”

“That's Jean Bryson,” said Mrs. Lloyd, “and we've already started the questioning for you, Inspector. And Florence has written down the answers. ‘Taking a statement,' I believe it's called.”

“Very thoughtful of you, Mrs. Lloyd,” said Davies, “but we prefer to take our statements ourselves. We have our own ways of doing things, you see. We're peculiar like that.” Bethan smiled into her notebook. “In fact, Miss Bryson, we'd like to drive you home and we'll take your statement when you're in the comfort and safety of your own home. You'll be more relaxed there, I'm sure.”

Seeing Mrs. Lloyd's disappointment, Bethan said to her, “There is something you might be able to tell us. Who lived in that house?”

“Catrin Bellis. She lived there with her parents. They both died fairly recently and she'd decided to rent out one of the bedrooms. That's how this lady came to find the body.”

“Did she have any sisters or brothers?” Bethan asked. “Do you know who her next of kin would be? Anyone we should contact?”

“I believe she was an only child, but I'm pretty sure she has a cousin,” Mrs. Lloyd said. “He'd be a relative, but whether he's her closest relative I don't know.”

“Do you know his name?”

She thought for a moment, and then shook her head slowly. “No, sorry. I expect it'll come to me, but off the top of my head, no, I can't think of it.”

Bethan turned her attention to Jean Bryson. “And you had arrived to view the room but had not met the victim before, is that right?”

“That's correct.”

“And you two,” Bethan looked from Mrs. Lloyd to Florence, “just happened to be passing by, were you?”

“We were on our way home from the Antiques show,” Mrs. Lloyd said. “The bus dropped us off in the town square and we had just passed the house when we heard Jean's screams and turned to see her running up the street toward us, in obvious distress, so we rang the police and when you lot arrived, we offered to bring her here.”

“And very kind of you that was, too,” said Jean.

“And you didn't see anybody in the street, walking or driving in either direction?”

“We weren't really paying attention,” said Florence, “but all the streets are practically deserted today, because everyone in town is up at the Hall at the Antiques show.”

“That's right,” agreed Mrs. Lloyd.

Davies stood up. “Well, let's leave it there for now.”

“Time to get Miss Bryson home. But if you do remember anything else, no matter how trivial it might seem to you, give me or Bethan a ring. Give the ladies one of your shiny new cards, Bethan,” he said with a faint smile.

Florence saw the police officers out and said a quiet good-bye to Jean Bryson.

“I hope you won't have too many bad thoughts, for too long,” she said, adding she hoped to see her soon at the library. She closed the door quietly and returned to the sitting room. She started gathering up the tea things but Mrs. Lloyd asked her to stop for a moment and sit down.

“This has been quite an eventful day,” she said. “You discovered you've got some sketches worth a small fortune and someone else discovered a body.”

“Very nicely summed up,” said Florence. “That's exactly the size of it.”

“I don't know what to make of this. Why would someone want to kill Catrin? What's she ever done to anybody?”

“I don't know,” said Florence. “I expect you could say that about a lot of murders and yet they keep happening, don't they?”

“Well, we'll get to the bottom of it,” said Mrs. Lloyd. “This is our murder, Florence. We'll show that Penny Brannigan she's not the only amateur sleuth around here. We were first on the scene of the crime and we interviewed the most important witness before the police, even. We've got a huge head start. This is quite a coup for us, Florence.”

The rattling of the tea cups as she gathered them up and set them on her tray was Florence's way of telling Mrs. Lloyd exactly what she thought of that idea.

 

Twelve

“It's been a hugely exciting day,” said the executive producer as he thanked the
Antiques Cymru
team. “Definitely one of those rare and special days that far exceeded our expectations. We had some wonderful surprises, but probably the biggest find of the day was the John Lennon sketches. Something I never would have thought possible, and yet, there they were. That's going to make a brilliant segment. It'll make the national news for sure, so keep it under your bonnets for now. Thank you all, everybody. Now let's get packed up as quickly as we can so we can all be off home.” The crew began de-rigging the set, taking down signage, rolling up cables, and replacing everything into their shipping boxes ready for loading onto the transport vehicles. They had done this many times and worked efficiently, tidying up as they went. The appraisers, too, were packing up their laptops, reference books, and notes.