A Spider on the Stairs (28 page)

Gibbons hid a sigh, thinking of the coffee he would not now have time for, and fell in behind MacDonald.

“Who are we going to see, sir?” he asked.

“Sanderson's sister,” replied MacDonald. “Name of Lydia—she lives alone out in Nun Monkton. Bit of an oddball, so I understand, and just the opposite of her brother—reticent where he was expansive and so on.”

“I see,” said Gibbons. “Is she a suspect?”

MacDonald snorted. “Everybody's a suspect, lad.” He glanced back at Gibbons, who was frowning as he went through his pockets. “Lose summat?”

“I think Redfern must have the panda keys,” answered Gibbons, drawing up. “I'll run back and fetch them.”

“Nay, don't bother.” MacDonald looked amused. “I'm not riding around in that little bit of a thing in this weather—we'll take my Land Rover. And I'll be doing the driving, Sergeant—it takes a countryman to get along on these roads. Let's make a dash for it then.”

Bethancourt had planned to have a lie-in that morning, but was thwarted by his aunt, who saw no reason why he should not help her install the children at St. Peter's.

He had not slept well, having been plagued with visions of Marla, and did not wake well, having something of a hangover from the scotch at the Heywoods'. He was thus impatient with his charges as he tried to settle the two girls into their house, earning him disapproving looks from the housemistress.

“Did you say Mrs. Keems would be checking in as well?” she asked with steely politeness.

“That's right,” said Bethancourt, who was carting in a large trunk and not inclined to stop. “She's just seeing to the boys over the way.”

The housemistress's eyebrows rose. “Boys?” she asked. “I was not aware the Keems had any boys at school here at this time.”

“They're not hers,” retorted Bethancourt, and turned his back on her to heave the trunk up the stairs.

He escaped as rapidly as he could, electing to have Bernadette tell Evelyn he had left rather than telling his aunt himself, and set out to walk back to St. Saviourgate. It was a walk often undertaken in his youth and still tolerably familiar, but one that was just long enough to leave him completely drenched by the time he reached his front door.

He had planned to go back to bed, but a glance at the bags assembled in the hall told him his aunt would be returning before setting out for Ilkley, and he knew she would be in no very good temper with him. The better part of valor, he decided, would be to be absent when she arrived. So he changed into dry things, collected a large umbrella from the assortment in the hall stand, and set out for Mittlesdon's. He did not actually expect to garner any information there, but it had the advantage of being close-by and provided a convenient excuse for his absconding from his aunt at St. Peter's.

It was still raining in earnest, so he left Cerberus at home since otherwise the big dog's first act on entering the bookshop would be to give a mighty shake, liberally coating everyone and everything with a spray of water. Cerberus, having poked his nose outside, did not seem to mind.

The bookshop was quiet. Libby Alston was ringing up a customer's order at the counter while Rod Bemis shelved books in the narrow hallway beyond. It seemed unbelievably peaceful to Bethancourt, who propped his umbrella by the door, nodded to Libby, who smiled back, and then wandered in past the bestseller displays in search of nothing more than idle diversion. He turned toward the stairs that led to the children's section and Catherine's office above, pausing to examine the framed photographs that were clustered on either side of the doorjamb. He had looked at them, he remembered, on that first day in the shop with Gibbons, but at that time he had not known any of the principals, other than the more famous authors represented. Or at least he hadn't thought he knew any of them. Catherine Stockton was very prominent in a photograph with Brian Jacques, and Alice was pictured in two of the others, though he did not blame himself for failing to recognize her with only his memory of an eighteen-year-old girl to go on.

“Jody isn't in any of them, you know,” said Libby Alston softly from behind him.

He turned to smile down at her.

“No,” he said, “I don't see her. There's you there, though.”

He pointed to an older photograph, in which several members of the staff were pictured with an upright middle-aged man Bethancourt did not recognize.

“That's Malcolm Neesam,” said Libby, “the Harrogate historian. It's funny you should pick that photograph—if I remember aright, it was Jody who took it.”

Bethancourt looked back at the picture with renewed interest.

“And I remember the occasion rather well,” continued Libby with a laugh. “You can't see it because Veronica's sitting in front of me, but I was pregnant with my youngest at the time.”

Bethancourt froze, struck for the third time by the old-fashioned name, and this time he remembered where he had
encountered it before. He pushed his glasses back up on the bridge of his nose and peered at the very ordinary English girl seated in front of Libby Alston in the photograph.

“That's Veronica?” he asked. “Didn't Alice tell me something had happened to her?”

“Yes, it was very sad,” said Libby. “She had been gone from here for some time by then, of course. Oh, excuse me—there's a customer waiting.”

“Wait—” yelped Bethancourt, swiveling around, but she was already bustling off. “Damn,” he muttered. He thought for a minute and then went off in search of Alice.

After scouring most of the endless rooms, he found her on the top floor, shelving a carton of used books. The room was rather dim, giving it a musty air, and the rain beat against the old-fashioned mullions in a steady tattoo. Alice sat near one corner on a footstool with the box of books beside her on the floor. She looked up from her work as he came in, but when she saw who it was, she smiled with a distinct lack of enthusiasm.

“Hullo,” he said. “I've been looking for you.”

“Oh, hello,” she said, and looked back at the book in her hands.

Undaunted, he squatted beside her in one smooth movement.

“I need to ask you something, Alice,” he said.

She gave a little laugh, but it had a desperate sound to it, and her eyes as she looked at him were tinged with sadness.

“I can't do that anymore, you know,” she said.

“Eh?” he asked, taken aback. “Do what?”

“Get down on the floor so easily like you just did,” she answered. “How did you stay so young while I got so old?”

“What?” he said, feeling completely at sea. “Alice, what are you talking about? We're exactly the same age—we always have been.”

“No.” She shook her head. “No, we're not, not in the ways that matter. I realized that when I met your Marla.”

“I told you not to take any notice of her,” said Bethancourt.
“She has atrocious manners. Look here, Alice, can we talk about this later? I really need to know something.”

Alice waved a hand. “Oh, don't mind me,” she said unconvincingly. “What did you need?”

“This Veronica girl who used to work here,” said Bethancourt. “What exactly happened to her?”

It was Alice's turn to be surprised. “She was murdered,” she answered. “Didn't I tell you that?”

“I think you did, but I wasn't paying proper attention,” said Bethancourt. “Tell me again.”

“I don't really know that much about it,” said Alice. “Veronica worked here for a year or so, maybe less, and then she moved south to take care of her mother or aunt—some elderly relation at any rate who needed someone to live in. She'd been gone for some months when we heard she'd been murdered. They thought it was by a boyfriend at first, but then it turned out to be a random crime.”

“Do you remember any other details?” asked Bethancourt.

“I'm afraid not,” answered Alice. “None of us had kept up with her after she left the area—we were all shocked to hear she was dead, but all I remember now is that it was a very gory killing. Why is it important?”

“I'm not sure that it is yet,” said Bethancourt. “I've got two more questions. When was she killed?”

“Oh, two or three years ago now,” said Alice, who had been drawn out of her funk and was now evincing curiosity. “What's the other question?”

“What was Veronica's surname?”

“Oh dear.” Alice frowned in an effort to remember. “Matthews, I think,” she said in a moment. “Something like that at any rate. Phillip, what's this all about?”

“I don't know what it all means yet,” said Bethancourt. “But I think your Veronica was Ashdon's first victim. That's not for publication, though.”

Alice's eyes had widened. “No,” she said. “No, of course not. I understand.”

Bethancourt leaned forward and kissed her cheek.

“Thank you, Alice,” he said. “I promise we'll talk later. Right now, I have to ring the police.”

He rose and strode swiftly out of the room and in a moment she heard him clattering down the stairs.

Gibbons was at that moment sitting in the Land Rover with an extremely frustrated MacDonald. Nun Monkton, the small village to the northwest of York where Brian Sanderson's sister lived, lay at the confluence of the Nidd and Ouse rivers, neither of which was cooperating with MacDonald's plans. The torrential rains which had begun yesterday had continued throughout the night and were still pouring down, causing the rivers to flood their banks and, indeed, making rivers out of any low-lying bit of roadway. If there was a way through at one place, it was blocked farther on, and MacDonald, who knew his patch intimately, was aggravated by the fact that even he could not find a water-free route to Nun Monkton. He and Gibbons had now spent quite some time in driving this way and that, trying to come at the place from different angles, but MacDonald had at last had to admit defeat. It had not put him in a good temper.

“What the bloody hell is that?” he demanded, as Gibbons's mobile began beeping. His tone was that of a man who suspected that someone else had found a way to get to Nun Monkton.

“It's just my phone,” replied Gibbons, who had decided the best way to deal with MacDonald in a temper was to say as little as possible in a calm, even tone. “It's only my friend Bethancourt,” he added, closing the phone again.

“Well, you might as well answer it,” said MacDonald. “For all you know, he's sitting in Nun Monkton having tea with Lydia Sanderson.”

“I'm pretty sure he's stuck in York with the rest of us,” said Gibbons genially, but he obediently flipped the phone open and scrolled down to Bethancourt's name.

“Are you alone?” asked Bethancourt when he answered.

“No,” said Gibbons. “Superintendent MacDonald and I are on our way back to headquarters.”

“Oh,” said Bethancourt.

“You aren't by any chance in Nun Monkton having tea with Lydia Sanderson, are you?” asked Gibbons.

MacDonald snorted loudly.

“What?” demanded Bethancourt. “Why on earth would I be in Nun Monkton? And who is Lydia Sanderson?”

Gibbons sighed. “I thought not,” he said.

“Then why did you ask?”

“Just to eliminate a possibility,” said Gibbons. “What did you want?”

“I've got news,” said Bethancourt, a little hesitantly. MacDonald was, to him, an unknown factor, and he didn't like to have the distinction made between what he came up with and what Gibbons discovered himself.

But Gibbons was impatient. “Well?” he demanded. “Are you going to tell me what it is, or am I supposed to guess?”

Bethancourt threw caution to the wind. “It's about Veronica Matthews,” he said, “Ashdon's first victim.”

“Right,” said Gibbons. “I'd forgotten the name. What about her?”

“She used to work at Mittlesdon's,” Bethancourt told him.

There was a moment's stunned silence before Gibbons said sharply, “What?”

“I know,” said Bethancourt, answering the feeling rather than the sense of the question. “I don't know what to make of it either. But surely it's too fantastic to be a coincidence.”

“No,” said Gibbons flatly, “it can't possibly be coincidence. How did you find out?”

Bethancourt briefly ran through the events that had led up to his discovery, ending with, “So Veronica had been living down there for less than a year before she was killed.”

“Yes,” said Gibbons. “I remember that. But it was assumed her killer—they weren't calling him Ashdon yet, then—had stalked her there, in Essex. The Yorkshire angle was never investigated to my knowledge, though I'll have to check with Brumby about that. I don't think his team was brought in until after the second murder.”

“But Ashdon doesn't kill his victims in situ,” said Bethancourt. “And Jody was definitely killed in the bookshop.”

“I know,” said Gibbons, who was as perplexed as Bethancourt at this piece of news. He was also acutely aware of MacDonald's growing impatience beside him. “Let me pass this on,” he said, “and we'll talk later.”

“Right,” said Bethancourt at once. “Ring me when you can.”

“That friend of yours seems to make himself very useful,” said MacDonald as Gibbons rang off.

“He likes to take an interest,” said Gibbons distractedly. “Sir, he's just found out that Ashdon's first victim worked at Mittlesdon's.”

MacDonald squinted at him. “I think I would have remembered if a serial killer had struck on my patch,” he said.

“No, not here,” said Gibbons. “She had left Mittlesdon's and gone to live in Essex before she was killed. I don't remember exactly, but I think the case file said she had been living with her grandmother there for about five or six months when she was murdered.”

MacDonald was silent as he guided the Rover through the rain.