“Oh, these were easy to do on site. I had a couple of catering staff to take care of the cooking and the serving, I just fiddled with things here and there and directed them where to go,” she laughed.
“They arrived at six?”
“Yes. At around six-thirty, Cassie came through to the kitchen and invited us to have a drink with them. She asked Charlotte and Dave to join us too, and we all went into the library. It turned into more of a soirée. Cassie’s never been one for too much pomp and circumstance; it doesn’t suit her.”
“How long did the, ah, soirée last?” MacKenzie wasn’t overly familiar with the usual running time of a soirée.
“They chatted for a good long while,” Maggie said. “You know what Lionel can be like once he gets going. And Dave, for that matter. Get him started on all the little things that need doing in this house and you’re in for a long night.”
MacKenzie smiled politely.
“I popped in and out with the serving staff, so the dinner wouldn’t be ruined. When the main courses came, we left the Gilberts to their guests. Charlotte and Dave went off to the staff room for a chat, I think.”
“Do you remember where you were when the lights went out?”
“Oh yes,” Maggie said. “I was clearing some of the dirty dishes from the table in the library and everything just went black. I panicked a bit and dropped one of the plates on the floor in the hallway outside, which left a bit of a mark,” she said worriedly.
“Did you see anyone else?”
“I couldn’t see much, love, but I could hear the serving staff shrieking in the kitchen and I think I heard somebody’s footsteps heading down to the fuse box. The flooring in the servants’ corridor is stone, so you can hear everything.”
“You didn’t see anybody going upstairs?”
Maggie shook her head.
“I didn’t see a soul.”
*
While MacKenzie listened to the housekeeper extol the benefits of knitting for relieving stress in the workplace, Lowerson and Yates were being educated about ‘the good old days’ by the master of Cragside house. They were seated in the morning room on the first floor, which was a replica of the library beneath it and enjoyed views of the woodland leading down to the burn from a huge bay window spanning one wall.
“Always knew Henderson was fishy,” Lionel surprised them all by saying.
“You were telling me just last week how good it was to have him here to help manage the estate,” Cassandra argued.
“Doesn’t mean I wasn’t keeping my beady eye on him,” he snapped, while the two detectives listened with interest. “Why d’ you think I never signed those papers he kept pushing at me? I wanted to look at it myself. I wasn’t about to sign away acres of land just on his say-so!”
Lionel let out a booming laugh.
“Wasn’t surprised at all when your colleague called me earlier,” he said as he turned back to Lowerson and Yates. “Turns out Martin was cooking the books, eh? Some men just can’t help themselves.”
“Or women,” Cassandra put in, for the sake of equality.
Lionel made a dismissive sound.
“Fact is, if the little blighter had swindled me, I’d have been tempted to throw him down the lift shaft myself.”
“Lionel!”
“Oh, stop flapping, woman. They want the truth, don’t they?” He gestured an imperious hand to where Lowerson and Yates sat with their hands in their laps.
“All the same, he’s dead, and at our house…”
“That’s another blasted liberty, if you ask me,” Lionel bellowed, very much back to his former self now his flu had cleared up. “Sullying my house with death so that you can barely move without tripping over the fuzz.”
He eyed Lowerson with obvious dislike.
“That’s another thing,” Lionel blustered, thinking of the younger generation. “In my day, we didn’t have things like selfies—whoever heard of such a thing!—or onesies, whatever the hell they are.”
“Ellie bought you one in the shape of a banana last Christmas,” Cassandra muttered.
Lionel scowled and turned back to Lowerson.
“Well? Don’t just stand there looking sheepish, tell us who’s been going around turning my house into a bleedin’ mortuary!”
Lowerson was finally given a chance to speak and he decided to use it wisely, since the opportunity might not come around again.
“Mr Gilbert, it would help us to know your precise movements last night, particularly between five to and ten past nine.”
Lionel turned a slow shade of red.
“I hope you’re not having the impertinence to suggest I’d do off with somebody in my own home?”
Yates raised an eyebrow and wondered if that meant he would happily ‘do off’ with somebody elsewhere.
“They have to ask, Lionel,” Cassandra told him.
He drew in a laboured breath and gave them a look of extreme sufferance.
“Well, I was in the library the whole time. The lights went out and we all wondered what had happened this time. Cassie went off to investigate.”
Lowerson and Yates turned their mild gaze onto the mistress of Cragside, who looked startled.
“Well, yes, I told you in my statement, I went off to see what had happened.”
“And you were gone a bloody long time, too!”
Cassandra sent him a frustrated glare, while Yates calmly brought up a digital copy of her statement from the previous evening.
“Mrs Gilbert, last night you said you were in the library throughout the blackout, until everyone went out into the hallway together.”
There was an awkward silence.
“I—I must have made a mistake.”
“Would you like to amend your statement now?”
“I—yes, I think I’d better.”
*
Phillips made his way through the myriad terraced streets running parallel to the River Tyne on the eastern edges of Newcastle. He felt an odd sense of homecoming, having grown up on the city’s western edge in a working-class area that was a mirror image of the one he drove through now. It had none of the gloss of the city centre; there were no chic wine bars, upmarket restaurants or expensive shops. There was an aura of disillusionment that permeated the walls of the cheap pre-fab houses that had been built temporarily following the Second World War and had never been replaced by anything better, despite the promises of successive governments. One day, they said.
No amount of new brickwork or community centres could replace the loss of an industry that had been the lifeblood of almost every family in the neighbourhood. Though nearly forty years had passed since the old shipyards closed their doors, the sense of abandonment was still keen. As Phillips drove further into the industry’s old heartland, it was impossible to suppress a feeling of grief when the sight of a single crane suddenly came into view, and impossible not to remember a time when there had been dozens.