“Your instincts are usually good. If there’s anything to find, we’ll find it.”
Ryan gave a slight shake of his head.
“I can’t afford to rely on instinct, not when there’s a pile of other cases waiting for me back at CID. They deserve at least as much attention as an old man who might have lost his footing.”
Phillips heard the irritation in his voice and wondered what else was causing it. It wasn’t like Ryan to doubt himself.
“Everything’s taken care of,” Phillips said. “There’s a capable team manning the fort and if something crops up, you can easily step in.”
Ryan nodded, his eyes straying upward to where Lionel Gilbert watched them from a window on the first floor. He didn’t shy away from the scrutiny or raise a hand to wave.
It was unnerving.
“If Swann’s home hadn’t been ransacked, I would have signed it off as accidental death pending the post-mortem,” Ryan lowered his voice so that they could not be overheard above the sound of the pattering rain. “But Yates tells me they found a stack of compromising photographs in Swann’s bottom drawer, all of Cassandra Gilbert.”
“In the buff?” Phillips exclaimed, with his usual finesse.
“For God’s sake, keep your voice down. There are eyes and ears everywhere in this place,” Ryan muttered.
“Maybe that’s what the intruder was looking for? Cassandra might have been embarrassed to think somebody would find them, so she tried to recover them before we found them, or asked somebody else to do it,” MacKenzie suggested.
“It’s possible,” Ryan said but he was dubious. “The thing is, both Yates and Lowerson agree the photographs weren’t hard to find, especially considering our unknown perp pulled out almost every drawer in the house. He must have seen those photographs and discarded them.”
They watched the rain for a moment while they considered other possibilities.
“All the same, it’s a bit saucy, isn’t it?” Phillips pronounced.
“More importantly”—MacKenzie gave him a withering look—“it calls her credibility into question because when we took another statement from her less than an hour ago, Cassandra was adamant she barely knew Victor Swann beyond social niceties and the usual employer-employee relationship.”
“Either she’s telling porky-pies or Swann got hold of those photographs some other way,” Phillips said.
“He could have stolen them,” Ryan agreed. “Which calls his integrity into question and forces me to wonder what else Victor Swann might have done to upset person or persons unknown.”
His eyes strayed up to the first-floor window again but this time it was empty.
“I don’t know that the circumstances of his death justify me bandying around accusations about what could have been a private dalliance that has no bearing on Swann’s death. If I raise it with Cassandra Gilbert, we could cause a lot of embarrassment and potential trouble with her husband.”
“It’s not for us to judge people’s private affairs,” MacKenzie agreed but Phillips shook his head.
“I dunno, love. Living in the nineteenth century with no telly, gaddin’ about the countryside in their birthday suits… they seem mad as hatters, if you ask me.”
“Eccentric,” Ryan gave him a quick slap on the back. “Not mad, old boy. Rich people are always eccentric.”
Their laughter echoed around the stone walls as they bade each other farewell but when Ryan turned away to make the short journey back to his rental cottage he felt the same creeping sensation return, trailing its way up his back.
*
Alice Chapman didn’t notice the rain, or that she’d worked long past her contractual hours. Within the cosy confines of Cragside’s uppermost turret room, she had become engrossed in the intricate business of returning an old painting to its former glory. Her hair hung in a shining curtain down her back, tucked behind her ears with two clips at either side, and her face was covered by a jeweller’s headset complete with visor and built-in magnifying lens. Her jeans were crusted with drying paint and the scent of turpentine was ripe on the air. Shifting slightly on the wooden stool she’d positioned at an angle to the window, Alice considered the painting on the easel in front of her. When Dave Quibble had first commissioned her to restore the portrait, it had been coated in a brownish-yellow tint which she knew had been caused by natural degeneration of the original varnish. Since then, it had taken several days inside a borrowed laboratory to meticulously clean away the discoloured varnish and dirt with cotton swabs, peeling away the delicate layers to reveal the true image beneath. It had taken almost as long to blend the right oils to match the original colour palette, systematically checking individual colours against UV light, or their chemical reaction with varying degrees of solvent to find just the right blend.
Thankfully, she was a patient woman.
Four years studying Art History at Cambridge and a further three as apprentice to one of the best restorers in London had taught her perseverance. Slow and steady hands were required to do justice to great masterpieces and hers would have made any surgeon proud.
Today, she had finally begun the process of repainting the damaged areas of the portrait and, because it was the part she enjoyed the most, time had slipped by without her noticing. It was only when she heard the crack of thunder outside that she realised it was well after six o’clock and the light was no longer good enough to use. Reluctantly, she set her paintbrush down and stepped away from the easel, regarding it with a critical eye.
“Two more minutes,” she promised herself, reaching for the brush again.
Fifteen minutes later, she found her throat was bone dry. Looking across to the window ledge, she spotted a cup of cold coffee she’d left untouched hours earlier. A milky skin now floated on top, next to the half-eaten sandwich she’d also neglected to finish.
“Time to go,” she murmured, stretching her arms above her head to ease her cramped muscles.
It took another twenty minutes to pack away the equipment and clean her paintbrushes, by which time her stomach was rumbling and she had the beginnings of a dehydration headache. Alice grabbed her summer coat and started to shrug into it as she left the room, pausing to collect the dirty dishes and lock the door securely behind her. She made her way down a narrow flight of stairs and emerged onto the galleried landing to find it silent and empty but for the sound of the rain hammering against the windows. She wondered where everybody was.
“Hello?”
They’ve probably gone home already, she realised.
The Gilberts were nowhere to be seen, either, and she wondered whether she should look into the main rooms to let them know she was still there.
Deciding against it, she made her way down to the ground floor and dipped her head inside the staff common room, which bore the remnants of a forensic search earlier in the day.
That, too, was empty.