Ryan flicked his eyes back to Dave’s face, which was a comical mask of surprise. He turned to Alice, who gave a startled shrug of incomprehension.
“Yates? I want to know where Victor lived. If somebody’s cleaned out his locker, it’s possible they also paid a visit to his home.” Ryan turned to the other two people in the room. “Unless either of you happen to know his address?”
“It was somewhere in Rothbury,” Dave piped up. “But if you ask the Gilberts, or Maggie, she might know exactly. I think she’s working down at the tea room today, helping out because one of the staff is off sick.”
“Maggie?” Yates queried.
“The housekeeper,” Ryan provided. “She and Victor were close, I think.”
Alice nodded her agreement.
“It was nice to think of two people finding love later in life,” she said wistfully. “Sort of makes you think it’s never too late. But I suppose accidents happen all the time.”
Her sentiments echoed Ryan’s own thoughts when he’d found Victor the previous evening. But if Victor’s death was an accident, why had somebody broken into the dead man’s locker?
He came to an instant decision.
“Yates, I’m bumping this back up to ‘suspicious’. See what else you can dig up around here and have a word with the Gilberts to make them aware. Make sure nobody touches that locker in the meantime, or any of them, for that matter. I’ll be back shortly.”
With that, he made a beeline for the tea room.
CHAPTER 6
Ryan walked along a narrow access road from the main house toward a grand cluster of buildings which had formerly been the stables but was now an education centre and a tea room. He entered the latter and found Maggie arranging scones on a frosted glass display plate on the stainless-steel countertop running along one wall. She was dressed in the ubiquitous black and white uniform of a waitress and her hands moved deftly as she fiddled with sachets of butter, turning them so their little cow-faces could be seen. The tea room was full of visitors enjoying a mid-morning snack as they wandered the vast grounds of the estate and there was a pleasant aroma of baked goods and minced meat which foretold of shepherd’s pie on the lunch menu.
Sensing his presence, Maggie looked up from her task and gave Ryan a watery smile.
“Hello, pet. Why don’t you take a seat? I’ll be with you in a minute.”
Ryan selected a chair beside the window and waited while Maggie hung up her apron, exchanged a quick word with one of the other waitresses and joined him at the table. She seemed to be full of energy and her feet were quick but he noticed a pronounced hobble to her gait. Reading his thoughts, she tapped a hand against her right hip.
“Rheumatoid arthritis,” she explained, settling herself opposite him. “I need another hip replacement but to be honest I can’t face it.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s just a fact of life. Not that I should be complaining, after what happened to poor Victor.” Fresh tears welled in her eyes and Ryan noticed they were a very pale blue. He found himself wondering if they had been a bolder shade in her youth, and whether their pigment had faded with the passage of time.
Ryan gave her a moment to compose herself.
“I know you gave a statement last night but I was hoping to ask you a few more questions, if I may.”
Maggie blew her nose into a cloth handkerchief and Ryan was reminded of his grandmother, who had always kept one tucked inside her sleeve.
“I’ll do my best,” she said, her voice muffled by the material.
“Tell me a bit about your relationship with Victor.”
She tucked her handkerchief away again and gave him a no-nonsense look.
“We were friends,” she said emphatically. “Oh, I know everyone else around here thinks there was more to it but, really, it’s ridiculous. At our time of life—”
“Don’t tell me you’re a day over forty,” he put in, with the flash of a smile.
“Oh, go on!” She made a dismissive gesture but the fine lines at the corners of her eyes crinkled and she flushed with pleasure. “You could charm the birds from the trees.”
Ryan had heard ‘grumpy’ and ‘bastard’ used frequently in the same sentence when describing his character but seldom ‘charming’.
He came back to the point.
“Can you tell me anything about Victor’s family? We’re having difficulty locating his next of kin.”
Maggie shook her head sadly.
“I asked him if he’d ever been married or whether he had any children but he told me he’d always been happy living alone. I think life as Lionel’s valet suited him and he loved to travel, which was a big perk of the job.”
“Any brothers or sisters?”
“He never mentioned any.” Her hands flapped as she tried to remember. “I’m sorry, love, but Victor was one of those people who could talk about everything and nothing. He knew all about the history of the house and grounds and he could write a book about art and culture. But when it came to the everyday stuff, he just clammed up.”
Ryan considered the little he had seen of Victor Swann and thought it was an accurate description.
“He never spoke of anything troubling him? Nobody who had given him cause for concern?”
Maggie’s eyes widened a bit.
“No, nothing like that. Why? I thought…I thought it was an accident?”
Ryan reached across to clasp her hand, which had started flapping again as the enormity of his question struck her.
“These are all routine questions I have to ask. There’s just one more thing, for now. Do you know where Victor lived?”
Maggie put a shaking finger to her temple and squeezed her eyes shut.
“Yes!” Her eyes flew open again. “It was in one of those new-builds on Windy Drive in Rothbury,” she referred to the nearest town, a couple of miles away. “I seem to remember him saying he’d painted the front door bright red. He has a room in the big house but he decided to buy a place of his own in one of those sheltered housing estates. He was long past retirement age and I think he knew there would come a day when he’d have to stop.”
“He didn’t live in, like you?”
She shook her head.
“The Gilberts only ever spend four or five months of the year at Cragside,” she explained. “The rest of the time, I keep the home fires burning for them and it makes sense for me to live in. But Victor travelled everywhere with them and used a spare room whenever he needed one. Since they’ve started spending longer periods at home, he decided it was time to buy his own place nearby. I suppose I’ll have to think about that, one day,” she said. Time had a worrying habit of marching on.
Ryan gave her hand a final squeeze.
“Thanks, Maggie. Save one of those scones for me.”