The Malcontenta (4 page)

Dowling and Parsons were sitting talking on the steps at the front of the temple. They scrambled to their feet as they saw her come pacing down the aisle.

‘Mr Parsons, would you take a seat inside, on one of those chairs? I won’t be a moment.’

She drew Dowling away down the steps. ‘Gordon, get on the car radio and send a scene-of-crime team out here. The photographer in particular - right away. Also a mobile generator - there’s no light down there.’ She looked around. ‘It’ll have to stand out here, so they’ll need plenty of cable.’

He was startled by her energy. ‘What’s going on, Kathy?’

‘Looks like we’ve got a suspicious death, Gordon.’ She grinned at him. ‘Something to brighten up your Monday morning, so get moving. Oh, and Gordon … try not to get Inspector Tanner when you radio through.’

He looked blank, then turned and scrambled off down the path.

Kathy went back into the temple. She was wearing her black woollen winter-coat, which almost reached her ankles, with the useful deep pockets. From one she drew out a small dictating machine and checked the tape. ‘Mr Parsons -’ she pulled a chair round to face him and showed him the machine in her hand - ‘I’ll use this if you don’t mind. My shorthand’s hopeless.’ Big smile. He gave her a worried look, alerted, like Dowling, by the light in her eyes.

‘How are you feeling now?’

A non-committal shrug. He still looked very pasty.

‘I’d like you to describe for me exactly what you did this morning, leading up to discovering the body, and then afterwards.’

‘I …’ he cleared his throat. ‘I got up as usual, around six-thirty, got dressed and then came out.’ More throat-clearing. T was on my way to the stable block, but I came here first to open up the temple - Dr Beamish-Newell likes it to be open during the day for patients to come in and sit if they want, and to try to air the place.’

‘The doors were locked as usual?’

He nodded, ‘Yes, I’d locked them myself last evening. It was just getting dark, about a quarter to five.’

‘And what time was it when you came to open them this morning?’

‘Oh … about eight. I’m not sure exactly.’ A fit of throat-clearing. ‘Sorry.’ He wiped a hand through his hair.

‘And there isn’t another door into the building?’

‘Yes, there is. Down in the lower chamber. There’s a service door from a flight of outside steps at the back. That door is bolted from the inside.’

‘All right, so you opened this glass door.’

‘Yes. I don’t normally spend any time here when I open up. This time I just noticed a couple of chairs that were out of line, so I came in and straightened them.’

‘Which chairs?’ Kathy interrupted.

He hesitated, ‘Those two, over there, at the end of the first row. Anyway, then I thought I could see the organ light showing in the floor grille, there. I went over and saw the loop of rope. I didn’t understand what it was. I couldn’t really make it out through the grille, so I went downstairs. Then I saw him.’

‘Did you recognize the rope?’

‘The rope?’ Parsons blinked with surprise.

‘Yes, the type. Have you seen anything like it around here?’

‘Er … I’m not sure.’ He sounded confused. ‘Can I think about that? Offhand … I don’t think so.’

‘All right. Did you recognize the man straight away?’

‘Yes … well, no, not straight away. The light was behind him. I had to get fairly close.’ Parsons was breathing heavily, his face stark white.

‘You were sure that he was dead?’

‘Oh yes. He was so cold!’

‘So you touched him?’

Parsons nodded. ‘His hand …’ He was beginning to look as if he might pass out. Kathy reached forward to steady him. ‘Suppose we get you a drink of water, or tea?’ Parsons nodded, sagging.

‘Put your head between your knees. Go on. That’s right … Better?’

The bowed head nodded.

Kathy called out to the patrol officer and sent him off to find some water. ‘And tell Dowling to hurry up and report back to me,’ she shouted as he ran off.

She had to contain her impatience as the minutes passed. Parsons remained stooped with his head between his knees. Eventually the doctor reappeared at the door. He examined Parsons briefly, then nodded to the patrol officer, who had followed him in with a flask. While Parsons drank, the doctor indicated to Kathy to step out under the portico of the temple.

‘More police brutality?’ he asked.

She smiled. ‘That’s right. But you won’t find any marks on his body.’

‘Unlike the one downstairs. I got through to Pugh. We were lucky. He’ll make himself available right away. About twenty minutes, he says. I’d like to stay if you don’t mind -see the Welsh Wizard in action.’

‘He’s good, is he?’

‘By repute.’

‘Can I continue with Parsons?’ Kathy asked.

‘Oh yes. It’s just mild shock. I could give him something, but he’s OK. I might go and wait for Pugh in the car park.’

Somewhat restored, Parsons completed his account of finding Petrou’s body, running back to the house to tell Beamish-Newell, returning to the temple for the Director to see for himself, and then remaining on the temple steps for the police to arrive. While he was talking, Dowling returned and gave Kathy a thumbs-up.

‘All right, Mr Parsons, I’ll let you get off and have a cup of tea. Just before you go, though, could you give me a quick run-down on this place? How big, how many people, and so on?’

‘Well, the Director will have accurate figures, but the estate covers almost a hundred acres. It used to be much bigger, but most of the land’s been sold off. The meadows that remain are leased to a farmer; the rest is the house and grounds - about twenty acres roughly.’ Parsons had become animated, clearly relieved to change the subject.

‘We have sixty-two guest rooms in the upper floor of the house and west wing, plus treatment and common rooms and kitchen and offices and so on in the ground floor and basement. There’s six staff rooms in the attic of the house, and there’s the four staff cottages - one for the Director, one for the family of one of the married staff, and one each shared by four male and four female staff.’ It came out in a rush and he stopped suddenly, breathing heavily.

‘So there are sixty-two patients here?’

‘Well, that’s the number of rooms. Some are double. The most we can accommodate is seventy-four, but at this time of year, I don’t know, there might be fifty or sixty.’

‘And how many staff?’

‘In the brochure we say it’s one to one.’ Parsons phrased it carefully.

‘What, seventy-four staff?’

‘Well … maybe if you count all the part-time cleaners and cooks and gardeners and the like…’

‘Come on. Realistically, how many staff have been in and out of this place in the last twenty-four hours?’

He shrugged, ‘I don’t know … Thirty? Forty? The Director or the Business Manager would be able to tell you.’

‘Yes, I’ll get to them. I just wanted an idea. And of those staff, what, about a dozen live in the grounds?’

Parsons counted in his head. ‘Yes, six in the attic and nine or ten in the houses, plus the Director and his wife.’

‘And what about you, where do you live?’

‘In the attic’

‘And Petrou?’

‘Yes, in the attic too.’

‘So when did you last see him alive?’

Parsons’ face clouded anxiously again. ‘I don’t know … I’ve been trying to remember. Last night - Sunday night -staff often go out. There’s always a recital or something for guests in the house after dinner. I had to spend all my free time over the weekend studying for this course I’m doing. I don’t remember seeing Alex last evening at all, not at dinner or anything. Before that … I don’t know … my mind’s a blur.’

‘Don’t worry, relax, it’ll come back to you. We’ll be asking everybody that question, so give it some thought. What was he like?’

‘Alex? Well … we weren’t close friends or anything. He hadn’t been here that long.’

‘About six months, the Director said. You’d been living next door to him for six months. Two single men. You were both single, weren’t you?’

Parsons flushed. ‘Yes, though I’m engaged. I tend to spend most of my spare time with Rose, except just lately when I’ve had all this studying. Of course, when he first arrived we chatted. But once he’d got settled … We didn’t have much in common, I suppose.’

‘Did he have friends on the staff? Was he sociable?’

‘Yes … he was quite … outgoing. Went out a lot. Several of the girls were interested in him. He was sort of … glamorous, you know, him being a Mediterranean type, and with his accent and that.’

‘He was foreign?’

‘Yes. He came from Greece.’

Through the glass doors Kathy noticed a movement of lime-green Day-Glo jackets down the path. She turned back to Parsons. ‘All right. We’ll leave it there for the moment. What you might do for me now is go to the house, tell Dr Beamish-Newell that I may not get to see him for another hour or so, and ask him if he could start organizing a list of everyone who was in the grounds over the past twenty-four hours, in categories - staff, guests, others. OK?’

‘Yes …’ Parsons hesitated. ‘Is this normal?’ he asked timidly. ‘I mean, all these procedures … for a suicide.’

‘Any sudden death has to be thoroughly investigated. Don’t worry, we’ll be out of your hair soon enough.’

They stepped out under the portico. Head down, shoulders stooped, Parsons set off across the grass towards the house. A light drizzle had set in, making the rhododendron leaves glisten behind the two men pulling the generator up the path. Beyond them a second pair burst through the trees. Kathy recognized the doctor, pointing the way to a lean, hawk-faced man and having difficulty keeping up with his long stride.

Kathy looked back to Stanhope House.

A hundred people,
she thought,
ninety-nine of them about to begin twittering about what happened to glamour boy.

Professor Pugh looked closely at her as he shook her hand. There were little laughter creases at the corners of his eyes, and in his voice she heard the lilt of his Welsh boyhood.

‘So you have something interesting for me, do you, Sergeant?’

‘I hope so,’ she replied, and led the way down to the lower chamber, where Dowling and the uniformed man were in a huddle around the body. Dowling looked shocked. She sent them upstairs to help get the lights fixed up and assist the SOCO team.

Until the floodlights finally burst into life, she held the torch for the pathologist, who peered at Petrou’s head and neck through a pair of horn-rimmed glasses without touching any part of him. In the full light, the right side of his face, partly obscured by his glistening black hair, seemed distorted or squashed. It was impossible now to recognize any of the ‘glamour’ the girls had once seen in him.

Pugh stepped aside, folded the glasses and tapped them against his teeth, thinking. ‘It’s warmer in here than I would have expected,’ he said, ‘for such a damp place.’

‘Apparently there’s some kind of background heater installed in the organ chamber behind the console there, to keep the organ working.’

‘Ah, the organ,’ he nodded. ‘Splendid. Well, now, has he been photographed?’

‘No, sir. The photographer’s due any minute.’

‘Better get that done first.’ He turned away and took his bag to a far corner of the room, where he pulled out some blue nylon overalls and a packet of surgical gloves.

The photographer arrived a moment later, manoeuvring his bag of equipment with difficulty down the spiral stairs. He nodded to the pathologist, who, after a politely deferential glance at Kathy, instructed him on the shots he wanted of the body. Kathy added her own requests, including the objects on the floor and general views of the room.

While they waited, Kathy was able to examine the other features of the place, now brightly illuminated by the temporary lights. The service door which Parsons had mentioned was visible now, on the side wall near the foot of the spiral stairs, its two bolts securely in place. The painting on the end wall was also clear and obviously in need of attention, with the canvas sagging in its frame. Otherwise the walls were bare, efflorescing with damp. On the floor below the other side wall a small panel of white marble had been set flush with the paving slabs. No inscription explained its presence.

‘Now,’ said Pugh when the photographer was done, ‘let’s have another look.’

He put on his glasses and gave the body a further close scrutiny, gently pulling the collar and hem of the tracksuit top away from the flesh, and then drawing the waistband of the pants down to look at the right thigh. He felt each of the limbs with his gloved hands and stepped back, nodding.

‘Rigor is generalized,’ he said, ‘so between ten and forty-eight hours, say.’ He turned to Kathy. ‘Do we know if anyone saw him yesterday?’

‘Not yet.’

‘Mmm. I wouldn’t like to risk losing this, you see.’ He was talking half to himself, or to an imaginary tutorial group of students.

‘Lose what, sir?’ Kathy asked.

He turned and gave her a little smile, eyes bright. ‘The pattern of compression of the muscles, you see? All down the right side as far as I can tell - the face, right shoulder, hip and so on. The flattening has been fixed by rigor mortis, which starts in the face and jaw, then the upper limbs, and finally the hips and legs. It disappears in the same order. I want to have a proper look at that pattern. Is that what you were concerned about, Anthony?’ He turned to the doctor.

‘Well, and the lividity,’ he replied, stepping forward.

‘Yes, yes, the lividity, of course.’ Professor Pugh puckered his lips, staring at the drooping head.

‘The bruising?’ Kathy asked.

‘Well, it’s not bruising in the normal sense. When the heart stops pumping, blood gradually settles into the lowest vessels of the body, like oil settling into the sump of a car when you switch off the engine. That creates the dark patches you see; it’s called hypostatic or congestion lividity. But if the flesh is pressed against something, the blood is excluded, which produces the white patches.’

‘But…’ Kathy hesitated, then decided to state the obvious. ‘The patches are on the side of his head.’