The Sandringham Mystery, page 20
I open the cellar door and see for the first time that the light suspended over the stone staircase has been switched on. I tell myself that the police forgot it. I look over my shoulder, suddenly fearful that the noise I thought I heard when roused from sleep was not part of a dream, but the sound of an intruder. I push the door back as flat against the hall wall as its hinges allow and secure it with the kitchen doorstop. I edge on to the first step of the cellar stairs and look over the banister. Although I shout out with the shock of it and for several seconds what I see dances in a black and yellow dizzy haze before my eyes, within the deeper reaches of my mind I know I knew as soon as I awoke that this was what I was going to find. Joanna is lying spread-eagled to one side of the foot of the staircase, face down, her neck resting at an unnatural angle, her arms and legs splayed. Of course, although I rush down the steps, kneel beside her, raise her into my arms and cradle her head while trying to find a pulse in her neck, I have realised from first seeing her that she is dead.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Ricky was the first to arrive on the scene. Though he had agreed as a courtesy to leave Kevan and Joanna de Vries on their own for the night, Tim had asked Ricky to stay as near to Laurieston House as possible. Accordingly, he had taken the solitary room available for hire above the Quadring Arms. It was a scrupulously clean room, but as ascetic as a monk’s cell and with a very hard mattress on the narrow single bed. Ricky had therefore been dozing uncomfortably when his mobile rang. It was Tim, informing him tersely that an accident had been reported at Laurieston House, a message that had just been relayed to Tim himself from Spalding police station.
Ricky’s car had been locked in the stable yard at the back of the pub for the night. In order to retrieve it, he would have had to knock up the landlord, who lived in a small adjoining cottage. It would be a three-minute walk at most to cross the green and cover the few yards along the main road, which Ricky deduced would be the swifter option. He dressed swiftly and ran down the pub stairs to the small entrance lobby. In passing, he noticed that two pairs of chairs had, rather quaintly, been placed in front of the entrances to the kitchen and the bar, as if that would deter overnight residents from entering them.
With the key that the landlord had given him, he quickly let himself out through the front door of the pub and sprinted across the green, his way guided by a night sky bright with stars and a gibbous moon. As he neared Laurieston House, he saw that the downstairs lights were on at 1 Laurieston Terrace, Harry Briggs’s house, and wondered if Kevan de Vries had summoned Briggs to help. He ran as fast as he could up the driveway to the house, his movements impeded somewhat by the depth of the gravel. As he rang the doorbell, he thought he could hear the siren of an ambulance sounding far away in the distance.
Kevan de Vries opened the door almost immediately. He was wearing a towelling dressing gown whose belt had come adrift, so that it hung loose to reveal a crumpled shirt beneath it. De Vries was both bare-legged and barefoot. His long comb-over was ruffled and lop-sided, either displaced by sleep or because de Vries had been raking his hands through it. His face was sallow and haggard, his eyes sunk deep into their sockets with ugly shadows beneath them. His expression was one of utter despair. Until he spoke, Ricky thought that he might have completely lost his reason.
‘I thought you were the ambulance. Where’s the ambulance?’ he demanded. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘The ambulance is on its way. I’ve just heard it,’ said Ricky, as soothingly as he could. ‘Would you mind letting me in, sir? DI Yates asked me to come. He said there’d been an accident.’
‘I suppose that’s correct. It’s Joanna – my wife. She’s somehow managed to fall down the cellar stairs. I’ve checked for a pulse and can’t find one. I called 999 for an ambulance. I suppose the operator sent for you as well?’
‘I’m not sure about that, sir, but I’m here now. Let me see her.’
‘Of course. She’s… but you know your way to the cellar, don’t you? It’s because of you people that all this business with the cellar started.’
He continued to speak, but Ricky was barely listening. He brushed past de Vries and sped down the cellar steps. Kneeling beside Joanna de Vries, he tried to find a pulse in either her wrist or her neck, but he knew it was just a gesture and that the action was futile. It was clear to him that she’d been dead for some time. The body was already cooling. They needed to get Professor Salkeld here as soon as possible. He called Tim, who sounded considerably more awake and less irritable than when they had spoken ten minutes before.
‘What exactly has happened?’ Tim asked. ‘I couldn’t get much from the Boston switchboard. Some garbled story about a fall.’
‘That’s correct,’ said Ricky. ‘It’s Mrs de Vries. She seems to have fallen down the cellar steps – or even over the banister, judging from where she’s lying now. I’d say that her neck is broken.’
‘You’re quite sure that she’s dead?’
‘Positive. There’s absolutely no chance that she can be revived – the body’s getting cold. There’s an ambulance on its way, though.’
‘What was she doing in the cellar? I asked Superintendent Thornton to tell de Vries that no one was to go down there – and I left it carefully taped.’
‘You did, sir. I don’t have an answer to that. I’d’ve said that would be the last place she’d want to go.’
‘Where’s de Vries now?’
‘Upstairs somewhere. He didn’t want to stay here with me. I’m not surprised, poor bloke.’
‘Yes. Well, don’t let him leave the premises. I’m coming straight there myself. And don’t let the paramedics move the body or, it goes without saying, attempt to take it away. I’ll try and get Stuart Salkeld there – though he won’t thank me for wrenching him from his bed at this hour.’
‘I was going to suggest contacting him myself, sir. That’s partly why I called you.’
‘Yes, well, perhaps you’d like to call him and get his customary earful when his sleep’s been disturbed. But on second thoughts I’d better do it myself. If you call him, he probably won’t come at all.’
‘I’ll see you shortly, then, sir. Good luck.’
Ricky terminated the call, a gleam of amusement in his eye despite the circumstances. DI Yates had a few failings, most of them venial ones, and among the most endearing was his belief that he and only he could persuade difficult colleagues to co-operate. If he only knew, Ricky ruminated, how often Juliet Armstrong had smoothed his way to success.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Tim arrived at Laurieston House about three quarters of an hour after Ricky MacFadyen. An ambulance was already parked in the drive, dwarfing Joanna de Vries’ small Fiat. There were lights on in all the downstairs rooms and, Tim noted, in both the downstairs and upstairs rooms of 1 Laurieston Terrace.
Jackie Briggs opened the door to him. She looked close to tears, as if she had been crying. She was dressed in a black jumper and trousers, which accentuated her gauntness. A coincidence, Tim wondered, a macabre fluke that had happened when she’d pulled on the first clothes that had come to hand when she was awakened? Or had she gone home to change when she’d realised that Joanna de Vries was dead? She shouldn’t have been there at all, strictly speaking: the fewer people who were admitted to the house now, the better. He could quite understand, however, that Ricky had found it impossible to exclude her once she had turned up, especially if Kevan de Vries had asked her to come. Somewhat incongruously, he saw that she was once again wearing her old-fashioned piece of costume jewellery, the brooch with the big stone. She’d pinned it to one side of the neck of her jumper.
Ricky met him in the hall.
‘The two paramedics are waiting in the kitchen, sir,’ he said. ‘I knew you wouldn’t want them to remove the bod… the deceased.’
‘Where’s Mr de Vries?’
‘He’s in his bedroom. He said he’d come down to see you when Ms Rook arrived.’
‘He’s called his solicitor? He’s been a bit quick about it, hasn’t he?’
‘I suppose so. He called her soon after I came – from the phone in the hall.’
‘Was that before or after the paramedics got here?’
‘Before – but only just. They’d arrived before he’d put the phone down.’
‘What did he say to her?’
‘He was quite terse. I think he said, ‘Jean, you’d better get over here as quickly as you can. I think that Joanna’s just died.’’
‘That was all? And he only said that he ‘thought’ that she’d died? Don’t you think it was strange that he was having the conversation at all if he wasn’t sure that his wife was dead?’
‘I honestly don’t think there was anything sinister about that, sir. When you see the deceased, you’ll realise that he could have been in no doubt that she was dead. I suppose that the way he put it was just a kind of softening of the reality of it.’
‘How did he seem to you, when he let you into the house?’
‘Distressed, but not hysterical. I asked him if I could check on his wife. He told me that I knew where the cellar was and said I could go down to look at her if I liked, but that he’d appreciate it if I didn’t touch her. As I went down the cellar steps, I called back to him that I was a qualified first-aider and he said, quite quietly, that she was beyond my help.’
‘So you went down immediately?’
‘Yes, but I didn’t stay long. It was clear that what he’d said was correct. Despite what he said, I felt her neck for a pulse, but it was obvious that she was dead.’
‘And when you came back up, he was calling Jean Rook, and then the paramedics arrived?’
‘Yes. Do you want to see the paramedics now?’
‘Yes, but I’d like you to stay here, if you would. I want to know immediately Jean Rook arrives. I don’t want her to get to de Vries on her own before we see him.’
‘He’s going to insist that she’s there with him.’
‘I know. And although that’s a nuisance, it’s his prerogative. I just want to make sure that Ms Rook doesn’t have the chance to prime him on what to say. I think it’s odd that he wants his solicitor present if he’s asking us to believe that this is an accidental death.’
‘You don’t think it is?’
‘I don’t know. What do you think?’
‘I doubt that Kevan de Vries has murdered his wife. I can’t think what motive he could have had, for one thing; and, for another, he seemed to be devoted to her. She’d have been more likely to murder him, if you ask me.’
‘Why do you say that?’
‘Just a hunch – not based on much except their body language when I saw them last night; I know you told me to stay clear, but I thought I’d just call in to see that all was well and he invited me in for a moment to see that they were both fine. I noticed the way she shrank away from him when he tried to put his hand on her arm. Once she gave him a really hostile look.’
Tim wasn’t convinced. He realised that they were wasting time by straying ever deeper into the realms of speculation. He was, however, struck by Ricky’s initiative and decided not to reprimand him for disobeying his instructions. He might very well have done the same himself.
‘I’m going to find the paramedics. They’re in the kitchen, you said?’
Ricky nodded. As Tim edged past the open cellar door, he added: ‘It goes without saying that you’re not to let anyone down there. I’ve asked Stuart Salkeld to come as quickly as he can. I don’t want anyone else in the cellar before he arrives. I’ll wait for him, too; I don’t intend to go down there myself just yet.’
The two paramedics were standing awkwardly by the kitchen range. Between them and the door, Jackie Briggs was seated at the large deal kitchen table, her head in her hands, sobbing quietly. The older of the two, a large middle-aged woman with straw-yellow hair done up in a high ponytail, seemed as if she was herself close to tears. Her colleague was a man in his thirties who looked fit and strong, as if he probably worked out regularly. His expression had been impassive when Tim entered the room, but became more animated when he saw the policeman. Tim guessed that they hated getting caught up in the emotion of occasions like this – and that they probably didn’t have to, very often. In most situations they drove away, bearing with them a sick person or, less frequently, a corpse. ‘I’m Detective Inspector Yates, South Lincolnshire Police,’ said Tim. ‘Thank you for waiting. I’d like to ask you a few questions. Then we can probably let you go.’ He took out his notebook. ‘First of all, I’d like your full names.’
‘Sharon Julie Kerensky.’
‘Richard Venables.’
‘Thank you. Are you able to give me the time at which you arrived at this house? The more exact you can be, the more it will help me.’
‘O three seventeen,’ said Richard Venables. ‘Sharon logged it just before we parked the ambulance.’
‘You went straight to the cellar?’
‘Yes. We found a woman lying to the left of the staircase.
We ascertained immediately that she had died. There were no vital signs.’
‘Did you move her?’
‘Sharon lifted her arm to try to take her pulse.’
‘You didn’t try to turn the body? Didn’t attempt CPR?’
‘There was no point. She was already cooling. I reckon she’d been dead for at least an hour.’
‘That was the other question I was going to ask you. So you reckon you arrived an hour or so after death?’
‘At least,’ Richard Venables repeated.
‘Did anything strike you as odd?’
Richard Venables gave him a quizzical look.
‘I’m not sure what you mean, sir. It’s odd enough finding a fully-dressed woman lying dead in a cellar in the middle of the night, isn’t it?’
‘Sorry, you’re right, of course. I’ll put it another way. Did you think there had been an accident, or did you think that she might have been attacked in some way? Pushed, for example? Or fallen as the result of a struggle?’
Venables shrugged.
‘I can’t say that I did. I assumed she’d fallen. I suppose it crossed my mind to wonder what she was doing in the cellar at all, especially when I noticed the police tape when I came back up again.’
‘You didn’t notice it when you first arrived?’
‘Too busy concentrating on the job. We never think about anything besides getting to the patient quickly, even if we’ve been told they’ve got no chance. Sometimes people are wrong about that.’
Tim nodded.
‘Thank you. What about you, Ms Kerensky? Was there anything about this that struck you as different from similar situations you’ve witnessed?’
‘I can’t say that I’ve ever seen a patient in a cellar before. I’ve seen fall victims, though. I’d say that the way she fell – awkward, like – wasn’t unusual. Unlucky, but not unusual. My guess is that she broke her neck. Poor woman,’ she added. She put her hand to her mouth. Tim hoped that she wouldn’t cry and, in the process, noticed that Jackie Briggs had raised her head and was watching them. She seemed to have mastered her tears. Tim caught her eye and was certain in the split second that elapsed before she looked down that he glimpsed some kind of recognition there.
‘Are you okay, Mrs Briggs? Did you want to tell me something?’
‘No,’ said Jackie Briggs tremulously. ‘It’s just that cellar. It...’
There was an urgent knock on the kitchen door before Ricky MacFadyen appeared, evidently in a hurry.
‘Ms Rook is just arriving, sir,’ he said to Tim. ‘She’ll be coming through the front door any minute now.’
Jackie Briggs scraped back her chair and rose to her feet. ‘I’ll go and let her in,’ she said.
Five minutes later, Tim and Ricky were seated on the small sofa that faced the fireplace in the drawing room of Laurieston House. Jean Rook was sitting in one of the fireside chairs. Jackie Briggs had placed a tea-tray on the coffee table that separated them, but no one had troubled to set out the cups and saucers. Nobody spoke. All were waiting for Kevan de Vries to appear. Jean Rook had tapped out two or three rapid messages on her Smartphone. Tim did not doubt that she was communicating with de Vries, but knew that there was little he could do about it. De Vries was not under arrest, after all.
Jean Rook stood up suddenly and walked across to the door. It opened a minute or so later. Kevan de Vries entered the room, somewhat hesitantly. He was casually dressed in an open-necked blue shirt and pale chinos. His hair clung damply to his forehead, as if he had just taken a shower.
Jean Rook embraced him rather ostentatiously. Tim noted that de Vries accepted the gesture courteously, but quickly disengaged himself from her grip. Ms Rook took hold of his arm and guided him to the armchair at the opposite side of the fireplace from where she had been sitting. He sank into it wearily. Now that Tim could get a proper look at the business-man’s face, he was shocked at de Vries’ harrowed, stricken expression. The man was literally grey with grief.
‘Would you like tea?’ his lawyer asked, addressing herself only to de Vries.
‘No. Thank you, Jean. But do pour some for my guests.’
‘Thank you. Not for me, either,’ said Tim. ‘But it is kind of you. Mr de Vries, may we say how sorry we are for your loss?’ Kevan de Vries met his eye. Tim could detect no gleam of the spirited irony that he had registered at their previous meetings, but he thought he could still discern some residual contempt.
