The Skeleton Room (10 page)

Jason Wilde reached down and produced a can covered with beads of moisture: well chilled. ‘Have a beer.’ He held the can out
temptingly and Sam stepped forward and took it.

‘Thanks. Cheers,’ Sam said as the ring-pull gave a satisfy ing hiss. He poured the icy liquid down his throat. It felt good.

Jason took a swig from his can. ‘You met Brenda yet?’

‘The cleaner? Yes.’

‘What did you think?’

Sam didn’t know what he was expected to say.

‘She’s not bad for her age, is she, and she’s always grateful for a bit of attention, if you see what I mean.’ Jason winked
suggestively. ‘She nicks things, you know. I’ve told Auntie Carole about her, but will she listen? She feels sorry for her
and she says it’s hard to get cleaners these days so she doesn’t mind the odd thing going walk about.’

‘Perhaps she should tell the police?’

Jason looked at Sam as though he was being particularly naive and snorted. ‘And have the pigs crawling all over the house
and poor old Brenda hauled off to Holloway or wherever it is they send them? No way.’ He took another swig from his can and
put it on the ground. ‘I think Auntie Carole feels obliged to keep her in work. All that Lady Bountiful stuff. Middle-class
guilt – doing her bit.’

‘Does Brenda just work for your aunt or . . .?’

‘Oh, no. She cleans for some old couple who live in a lighthouse and she works at one of the hotels my mate’s dad owns as
well. She does okay for herself.’ He grinned unpleasantly and scratched his bare torso.

‘Good,’ was all Sam could think of to say. He felt awkward, as though he were being assessed for some unspecific purpose.
‘Are you at uni, then?’ he asked, trying to make conversation.

Another snort. ‘No way. I’ve just finished school and I’m buggered if I’m going back. My dad’ll give me a job. He owns Nestec,
the computer firm. Have you heard of them? I’d be no good on the technical side – Dad employs nerds to deal with that sort
of thing. I reckon marketing and PR would be right up my street.’

Sam smiled. Jason’s last statement was probably true.

‘I’m taking a break at the moment,’ Jason continued. ‘I told Dad I wanted to think things over. Me and Olly have been over
at the new place his dad’s bought . . .’

‘Olly?’

‘Oliver Kilburn. We know each other from school. His dad owns Kilburn Leisure. You’ve heard of them, I presume?’

Sam had but he wasn’t going to admit it.

‘They’ve just bought a place called Chadleigh Hall near Millicombe which has its own private beach. There’s a shipwreck there
and a load of archaeologists are down there making nuisances of themselves . . . or so Olly’s dad says. Olly and I have been
helping them out.’

‘That sounds interesting.’

Jason raised his eyes to heaven. ‘It’s bloody boring, actually. They record everything, measure it, film it, photograph
it and clean it. I wouldn’t mind but they’re only finding rusty old iron and soggy wood so it hardly seems worth all the effort.
Olly’s dad reckons there’s loads of gold down there but I think someone’s been having him on.’

‘My dad told me they’d found a skeleton at Chadleigh Hall.’

‘Works for Kilburn, does he?’

Sam detected the hint of a sneer in his voice. ‘No. He’s a policeman.’

This was a conversation stopper. Jason took a long drink from his can.

‘I’d better get back to work. Thanks for the beer.’ Sam began to push the mower towards the crumbling brick
outhouse, but Jason leaped up from the sun lounger. ‘I’ll

put that back for you. Might as well make myself useful.’

Sam let him take the mower and watched as he opened the flaking green door, suspecting that Jason hadn’t suddenly decided
to help out of the goodness of his heart.

It was more as if there was something in the outhouse he didn’t want him to see.

Steve Carstairs had received a phone call from Harry Marchbank but there wasn’t much he could do about it now. On the chief
inspector’s orders he was stuck in the carpark gazing out on Monks Island. The dead woman’s car had been taken away long since
and the remaining police officers were questioning arriving visitors, hoping that somebody had been there the previous Friday
and remembered seeing Sally Gilbert.

Steve sat in the driving seat of the unmarked police car with DC Trish Walton beside him, watching the proceedings. A steady
stream of cars was arriving. Word had got around. Trish put her hand on the door handle. ‘Come on. Let’s go and give the uniforms
a hand.’

Steve didn’t move. ‘Bloody ghouls,’ he muttered. ‘They’ve only come ’cause they heard on the radio that there was a police
search here.’

‘So they want to bring a bit of excitement into their dull lives. It doesn’t mean they weren’t here last Friday. Someone might
have seen something.’

Reluctantly Steve left the comfort of the car, clutching a clipboard with a picture of Sally Gilbert on the front. ‘Did you
see this woman here on Friday afternoon?’ He was expecting the answer to be ‘no’ every time.

He touched Trish’s arm, wondering whether this was his opportunity to try his luck with her at last. But he knew he had to
watch his step. One false move would make him the laughing stock of the station canteen. He knew what Rachel Tracey and her
feminist cronies were like.

He straightened his collar and gave Trish what he
considered to be an irresistible smile. ‘We’d better go and talk to some ghouls, then.’

They began to stroll across the carpark, their clipboards clutched to their chests, when Steve’s mobile began to ring.

He looked down at the instrument, hoping it wasn’t Harry Marchbank again. He really didn’t have time for Harry right now.
He had other irons in the fire.

‘So Sally Gilbert was either a candidate for sainthood, a devious little schemer or a tragic romantic heroine, depending on
who you talk to.’ Wesley Peterson flicked through the statements taken from the dead woman’s colleagues at the hotel, feeling
rather overwhelmed by the wealth of conflicting information.

‘Is any of this stuff any use, do you think?’ Gerry Heffernan sounded disappointed.

In the two hours they had spent questioning the staff of the Tradfield Manor Hotel, they didn’t seem to have learned much
more about Sally than they knew already. She worked on reception. She spent money as if it were going out of fashion. She
went home to her nice house and her boring husband. She had left the same boring husband after an affair with an unknown man.
She didn’t gossip much about her private life, more’s the pity. Lisa Marriott knew her best, but even she had only received
the edited version of Sally’s triumphs and woes. People knew only what Sally Gilbert wanted them to know.

There was still no clue to ‘Mike’s’ identity. Wesley rather favoured the manager Mike Cumberland in the role of the phantom
lover, but Heffernan had his misgivings.

Wesley pushed the pile of statements to one side. ‘I was always taught that one of the first rules of detection is find out
all you can about the victim. And from what we know so far, it seems likely that her death’s just a crime of passion; either
the jealous husband or the mysterious Mike.’

‘Don’t forget the Nestec connection, Wes. If Trevor
Gilbert was involved in the hijacking then Sally might have been abducted to keep him quiet.’

‘But to kill her . . .’

‘Something went wrong. They panicked.’

Wesley shrugged. It was possible. He thought for a moment. ‘Whoever killed her couldn’t have known her that well.’

Heffernan looked at him, puzzled. ‘How do you mean?’

‘If that mysterious letter she received was summoning her to some sort of meeting with her killer, we have to remember that
it was posted to the house she shared with Trevor first. He forwarded it on. The murderer didn’t know she’d left her husband.’

‘If the letter’s relevant. It might have nothing to do with it. Trevor thought it was from a solicitor. Get someone to have
a word with all the local firms, eh; see if anyone had been writing to Sally. If we find out that she’d been to see about
a divorce and it was a letter connected with that, I think we can forget the letter theory. She said she’d have something
to celebrate: perhaps that something was her freedom from Trevor.’

‘But the address . . .’

‘She might not have known how long she’d be staying with Lisa. And she knew that her tame, well-trained husband would meekly
forward it on to her wherever she was.’

Wesley nodded. He couldn’t fault his boss’s logic.

Heffernan scratched his head. ‘We’ve got to find this Mike character.’

‘I still think Mike Cumberland’s the best bet. They worked closely and . . .’

Heffernan looked him in the eye. ‘Wesley. Have you led a sheltered life?’

Wesley looked puzzled.

‘Mike Cumberland wouldn’t be interested in Sally Gilbert if she lay on the hotel reception desk stark naked.’

Wesley opened his mouth to answer but the phone began to ring before he could speak. Heffernan answered it and,
after a brief conversation, looked up at Wesley with a satisfied smile on his lips.

‘They think they’ve found where Sally went into the sea: on the cliff top at the far side of Monks Island – signs of a struggle.
I want to get back there now. Coming?’

Wesley stood up. ‘Yeah. Any objections to stopping off on the way? We’ll be passing Chadleigh Cove and I want a word with
Neil.’

Gerry Heffernan took his jacket from the coat stand and said nothing.

Neil Watson was only too glad to leave his waterlogged artefacts and drive the short distance to Chadleigh Hall. At least
Oliver Kilburn and Jason Wilde hadn’t turned up on the beach that day, which meant he didn’t have to worry about leaving them
unsupervised with the finds and equipment. He didn’t trust them, and as far as he was concerned they could stay away for good,
but he hardly liked to say that to Dominic Kilburn.

‘Here we are,’ Wesley announced as they pulled up outside a grand Georgian mansion, half hidden by a network of scaffolding.

Neil opened the car door, climbed out and stretched.

‘I didn’t tell you, Wes. I’ve found out that the captain of the
Celestina
was related to the family who lived here.’

‘So there’s a link between your wreck and the hall?’

‘Looks like it.’

Gerry Heffernan, who had been uncharacteristically quiet, slammed the passenger door. ‘Here we are, Wes. Your mother-in-law’s
alma mater. I would have thought St Trinian’s was more her style.’

Wesley ignored him and made for the grand portico; the main entrance designed to impress.

‘So what is it we’re supposed to be looking at?’ Neil asked. He walked beside Wesley, his hands stuck firmly in the pockets
of the combat jacket he was still wearing in spite of the warmth of the July sun.

‘I wanted to show you where the skeleton was found. I’m looking for anything that’ll give us a date.’

‘What you mean is that we need to identify the newest thing in the room. If we find, say, a coin from 1900 the room could
have been sealed up later than that but not earlier.’

‘Exactly. The room’s pretty bare but it’s worth a look.’

Gerry Heffernan looked a little confused but nodded sagely.

They reached the room that once served as Miss Snowman’s study in the distant days of Della’s youth. Wesley ducked under the
blue-and-white tape that decorated the crime scene and Neil followed. But Gerry Heffernan hung back; he had no wish to enter
that chamber of death again. It stank of death: slow, agonising death. He walked away and looked out of the window onto the
pleasant parkland scene outside. He could make out the glistening sea through the trees: it was nearer than he had thought.
He mentioned something to Wesley about going outside for some fresh air and ambled out of the room.

Wesley handed Neil the torch he had brought with him from the car and allowed him to enter the skeleton room first. He said
nothing to guide him. It was best that he came to his own conclusions.

The two men moved silently about the tiny chamber. Wesley spent some time examining the chair, looking for any telltale signs
that might date it. It was a roughly made, solid wooden chair with a tall back and no decoration, the sort that was sometimes
found polished up by the fire in country pubs. He touched the seat that the corpse had sat on and withdrew his hand quickly,
not having the benefit of a forensic team’s plastic gloves.

Neil had turned his attention to the area near the door. He knelt down in the dust and began to run a filthy finger along
the gap between floor and wall.

‘Gotcha,’ he said with a smile of triumph, pulling a tiny object from its hiding place.

He handed it to Wesley. ‘There’s your answer. Someone was in here between 1960 and whenever the coins went decimal and they
left the evidence.’

Wesley stared at the small, dusty, strangely shaped coin in his hand. ‘What is it?’

‘My mum used to have a box of old coins . . . the ones before everything went decimal. If I’m not mistaken this one was known
as a threepenny bit. Funny little thing, isn’t it.’

There was a shuffling outside in the main room. Thinking Gerry had returned from his wanderings, Wesley stepped through the
doorway and saw Marty Shawcross, one of the workmen who had made the initial grim discovery, standing awkwardly in the middle
of the floor, shifting from foot to foot as if waiting in a queue. When he saw Wesley he straightened himself up and cleared
his throat.

‘Can I help you?’

Marty hesitated as though trying to find the right words. ‘Er, I was . . . er, it’s just that . . .’

Wesley assumed what he supposed to be an encouraging expression. ‘Go on.’

‘I asked Ian and he said I should tell you. It’s just that . . . Well, the hole we made in the wall . . .’

‘What about it?’ Wesley knew that he had to be patient. It would all come out eventually.

‘It’s just that it wasn’t old plasterwork . . . not as old as the house. That hole; it was already a doorway and Ian and me,
we reckoned it hadn’t been blocked off that long ago.’