They looked down at a recent photograph of the former valet provided by Maggie, then compared it with pictures Faulkner had snapped of him as he’d lain at the foot of the stone staircase.
“To recap, on Saturday evening, Anna and I attended the staff murder mystery party at Cragside house. It’s an annual party that Lionel and Cassandra Gilbert have thrown every year since they first bought the place in ‘98. It was supposed to be an evening of harmless fun but, at around eleven o’clock, the lights failed. I can bear witness that Victor Swann volunteered himself to go downstairs, from the drawing room where we were all assembled, to check the fuse box. The house was completely dark but Swann did have a small torch he kept on his person and there was some solar-powered lighting on the exterior stairs.”
Ryan paused and leaned back in his chair, casting his mind back to the events that night.
“At the start of the evening, it’s been confirmed there were forty people at the party, including Cassandra Gilbert. Her husband, Lionel, was present in the house but states that he remained in his room the entire evening. By the time the lights went out, there were twenty-two people present in the drawing room—twenty-three people still in the house including Gilbert.”
“How can you be sure of the number?” Yates asked.
“We have to rely on witness statements. Having gone through all of them, I’ve eliminated people who left the house at least an hour before the power failure.” Ryan said. “There’s always the chance that somebody pretended to go home and doubled back. That’s a secondary line of enquiry but we have no way of knowing for sure given the fact there’s no CCTV around the house and nobody other than Victor himself to tell us otherwise.”
“We found no trace evidence around Swann’s body,” Faulkner chimed in. “The lab is testing his clothing and we’ll compare the swabs we took from his body against the DNA samples provided to us by the people at Cragside, as soon as we have them.”
Ryan nodded. That was an urgent job for tomorrow morning.
“Thanks Tom.” He turned to the rest of them and spread his hands. “As you can see, it looks a lot like accidental death up to this point. I’m waiting to receive Jeff Pinter’s pathology report and that will likely shed some light on cause of death and tell us the extent to which foul play was involved.”
“Why else would somebody raid his locker and house?” Lowerson asked.
“That’s where Alice Chapman comes in,” Ryan flicked a page and looked down into the open, smiling face of a young woman who had been destroyed, along with her incredible artistry.
“Her body was discovered at around seven-fifteen this morning by the head gardener, Charlotte Shapiro. A fingertip search was made throughout today, in expanding circles from where her body was found.”
Ryan turned to a list of items recovered by the search team.
“Various small items and clothing have already been identified by Lionel and Cassandra Gilbert as belonging to Victor Swann. One or two items were recovered still within a blue and white plastic carrier bag which had become entangled in the undergrowth. I think this points to a strong possibility that Alice, or her attacker, was in possession of the missing items taken from Victor’s locker sometime in the early hours of Sunday morning.”
“D’ you reckon she might have done away with Swann and then killed herself?”
Phillips dunked another custard cream into his lukewarm coffee.
“Until Pinter gives us his report, we don’t have any evidence to suggest Alice was attacked and thrown from the bridge, so suicide can’t be ruled out yet,” Ryan was obliged to say. “But, in my opinion, it doesn’t fit the wider circumstances or the girl’s behaviour.”
He nodded toward Yates, who sat up a bit straighter in her seat.
“We spoke with Alice in the staff room, yesterday. What were your impressions?”
“She seemed a very steady sort of person, sir. Quiet, studious, very dedicated to her work. Although she was saddened by Swann’s death, she didn’t exhibit any unusual behaviour that would give cause for concern.”
“I came to the same conclusion. And there’s something else to consider. Alice Chapman was one of the party-goers who left early on Saturday night, over half an hour before the power failure and Swann’s death, so it’s even less likely she was responsible.”
The table fell silent for a long moment until Phillips spoke up again.
“The thing is, guv, I can’t see what was so bloody important that somebody would kill an old man and then snuff out somebody else just to keep it quiet.”
“We may not have found the answer to that yet, but there was obviously something and it was obviously highly motivating. Until we hear from Pinter and the lab, we need to focus on the paper trail and a process of elimination.”
“Alice’s body was exposed to the elements last night and, apart from the rain damage, there was a lot of animal contamination. We’ll do our best,” Faulkner assured them, “but I need to manage expectations.”
Ryan steepled his fingers and looked at each of them in turn, the light of battle shining in his eyes.
“Looks like we’ll have to use our little grey cells.”
*
By the time they were settled at a table in the late afternoon sunshine, MacKenzie was feeling much better. When a friendly waiter approached their table with a cocktail menu, she felt even better still. “I could get used to this,” she sighed, rubbing absently at her knee. It was throbbing after the fall and she wondered if she ought to look out some antiseptic cream.
The waiter asked to take their order and, after feigning indecision for the sake of appearances, she ordered a caipirinha.
“It’s happy hour,” they were told, “two-for-one, until seven p.m.”
“I’m driving,” Anna said, with considerable regret, and ordered its non-alcoholic equivalent. When the waiter departed, she rested an elbow on the table and cupped her chin in her hand.
“How’s your knee?”
MacKenzie made a sound of frustration.
“It’ll be fine. I didn’t fall flat on my face—I managed to do it in stages.” She smiled weakly. “It’s mostly the embarrassment that gets to me.”
Anna pursed her lips.
“Are you speaking to anyone about the panic attacks?”
MacKenzie shrugged a shoulder.
“I went to the GP and got some beta-blockers but I’ve been doing a cognitive behavioural therapy course online, while Frank’s at work. It works better when I’m alone,” she explained.
“That’s good,” Anna said, encouragingly. “Do you think it’s helping?”
MacKenzie thought about how to answer.
“Hard to say. Yes, I think it helped me through a hard patch because it trains me to focus my mind on the good things in life, rather than harkening back to…to what happened.”
She paused briefly as her cocktail arrived and she took a generous sip.
“I haven’t needed to take any medication for two days now,” she added, tapping a fingernail against the edge of the glass. “Actually, ever since you swept into my house like a force of nature and told me to get a grip on myself.”