The Sound of Broken Glass (11 page)

Pointing at the top photo, he said, “It was bigger than the original Crystal Palace, the one they built in Hyde Park.”

“You've been swotting,” she said. “It was for the Great Exhibition, wasn't it? The original one. In—”

“In 1851. But when they rebuilt it, it had twice as much glass as the first one. And it took twenty-three months to build,” he ventured, glancing at her to see if she looked bored. “It was 1,608 feet long, 315 feet wide, and 108 feet high.”

A little crease appeared between Nadine's brows as she frowned. The bridge of her nose was slightly pink and there was a dusting of freckles across it. Even Andy, with his fair coloring, had gone brown as a nut in the past few weeks.

“I thought they just took it down and put it back up again,” she said. “Like one of those conservatory kits people buy for their gardens, only bigger.” She was teasing him a bit, he could tell by the tone of her voice, but he liked it. “Did you learn all that in school?” she asked.

“No.” When she waited for him to say more, he made a G chord on the neck of the Höfner and ran his thumb over the strings ever so lightly. “The library,” he admitted, a little reluctantly. Then, having confessed, he owned up to worse. “I like it there.”

“Hmm. I like libraries, too.” She smiled, and from her voice he could tell she meant it. “They're quiet,” she added. “And nobody bothers you.”

He relaxed, feeling that she understood, but he still couldn't bring himself to tell her that it was the one place he felt free from the worry about his mother. They never talked about personal things—he didn't even know where Nadine worked—and he somehow sensed that there were boundaries he shouldn't cross.

Nadine turned to the second photo, this one of the palace's interior, showing the great arched dome filled with fountains and pools, statues, even trees. She traced the pool in the photo with a fingertip, then said softly, “‘In Xanadu did Kubla Khan a stately pleasure-dome decree: where Alph, the sacred river, ran, through caverns measureless to man, down to the sunless sea.'”

A cloud passed over the sun and Andy felt a cooler breath of air lift the damp hair on his forehead. “What is that? Did you make it up?”

“No, it's Coleridge. You won't have had that in school yet, will you?” said Nadine, shaking her head. “Not until secondary school. But that's what it made me think of, this great crystal palace—Coleridge's poem. As if they tried to enclose paradise, like Kubla Khan.” She handed the papers back to him. “I wish I could have seen it, the Crystal Palace. What happened to it?”

“It burned. In 1936.” Although he knew that perfectly well, saying it aloud made him feel funny inside. Hollow. For a moment he wasn't sure he trusted himself to say more without his voice going wobbly. Then, gripping the Höfner a little more tightly, he added, “You could see the fire from eight counties. And when the sun rose the next morning, the palace was gone, all of it. There was nothing left but rubble.”

After talking to the SOCOs, Gemma left the basement and found an irritable and frustrated Shara MacNicols in the hotel reception area.

If the place had been unappealing that morning, it was now considerably less so. The cheap tables were littered with plates of drying sandwich crusts, glasses, and scummy half-drunk cups of tea. The staff were no longer huddled together, but had migrated to different parts of the room, as though fearing contagion.

Shara MacNicols, studying an antiquated hotel register at the reception desk, looked up in surprise when Gemma entered through the interior door. “Guv. Where did you come from?”

“Downstairs. I came in through the fire door. Mike and Sharon have almost finished processing the scene. Any progress up here?”

“We've taken details from the guests and let them go. There were a couple of commercial travelers, and a few unlucky tourists. No one else had a room in the basement. Apparently ‘Mr. Smith' asked for that room particularly when he stayed here. That's why the cleaner assumed it would be empty first thing this morning, because he never stayed the entire night.”

“Did he ask for that room because of the fire door?” Gemma wondered aloud. “And if so, did he know the latch was defective, or did he just have the women wait outside until he could open the door and let them in?”

Shara nodded towards the staff in the reception area. “You won't get this lot to admit it if they knew the fire door was wonky.” Raymond, the young, spotty-faced clerk, was hunched over his mobile, texting as if his life depended on it. Mrs. Dusek, the manager, was chewing a cuticle as she watched them anxiously. The cleaner, still in her smock, stared vacantly into space. “They've all gone completely dumb,” Shara added, sounding disgusted. “There is a handyman, but it seems it's his day off. Very convenient. I've put that green constable—Gleason—on tracking him down, but I suspect he'll have been warned.”

“You've been watching conspiracy theories on the telly,” said Gemma, and was rewarded with a faint smile. She started to say, “Good work, Shara,” but stopped herself, knowing that her detective constable would take it as patronizing. Instead, she thought for a moment, then said, “Let's see if we can find any other guests who've stayed in one of the basement rooms recently—assuming that they've actually given their real names and details. Someone who doesn't have a vested interest in lying about the door.”

“Do you think it really makes a difference, guv?” asked Shara, eyeing the hotel register with distaste.

“I don't think we should just assume that Arnott's killer came to the hotel with him.”

“What?” Shara gave her a look that said she thought Gemma was daft. “You mean you think some random nutter might have walked in the fire door, tied Arnott up, and strangled him? And Arnott just said, ‘Well, have a go, then'?”

Gemma shrugged. “It's possible. Anything is possible at this point.” Seeing that Mrs. Dusek was straining to hear her and that the spotty clerk had looked up from his texting, Gemma turned away from them and lowered her voice. “Say Arnott brought a woman here. Say the woman had a jealous husband who followed them. The husband—or boyfriend—could have waited until the woman left, then surprised Arnott. Maybe he threatened him with a knife or a gun. Maybe he hit him over the back of the head and the wound wasn't visible. Just don't theorize in advance of the facts.”

“La-di-da,” Shara muttered, turning back to the register with a scowl.

Gemma bit back a retort. She knew from experience that a reprimand would make Shara go silent and sulky, but it wouldn't change her mind. And that was the thing that was likely to keep Shara MacNicols from ever being a really good detective, no matter how hard she worked and how badly she wanted to get ahead in the job. Shara wanted things to be black and white and she got stroppy when you tried to get her to see past the obvious, because she felt you were wasting her time.

“Just do it,” said Gemma with a sigh. “Have the other basement rooms been searched, just in case our killer took advantage of the vacancy? He—or she”—she put in before Shara could correct her—“could have left something behind.”

Having told Shara that once the SOCOs were finished and the other basement rooms searched, she could seal off the downstairs and let the hotel return to normal business, she walked back along Church Road, intending to meet Melody at the Arnotts' house.

But as she neared the White Stag, she saw Melody standing in front of the pub, phone to her ear.

Disconnecting as Gemma reached her, Melody said, “Boss, I've requested all the CCTV footage for the area. I had another word with Reg”—she nodded towards the pub—“and he says the whole of Crystal Palace was blanketed with fog last night, so I don't know how much good it will do us.”

“Worth a try. Any luck with your guitarist?”

“He's not my guitarist.” Melody gave Gemma an odd look. “But I did talk to him. He says he didn't know Arnott. Arnott gave him a dressing down over the punch-up with a drunk punter. Then he says he played another set and his manager took him home.”

“Did you double-check with the manager?” Gemma asked.

“In the flesh. He was at the studio as well. Odd little chap. He confirms Andy's—the guitarist's—story. Neither of them recollect seeing Arnott after the incident.”

“A dead end, then?” asked Gemma.

“Maybe.” Melody frowned and shook her head. “The thing is, I could swear the guitarist was lying about something. I'm just not sure what it was.”

Doug Cullen stood on Putney Reach, staring out at the gray expanse of the Thames below Putney Bridge. Not even the hardiest of scullers was to be seen on the river today, and he couldn't blame them. It was only his restlessness that had driven him out for a walk.

He and Melody had been planning their DIY project—painting his dining and sitting rooms—for weeks, and he was disappointed by her absence. Not that he didn't understand—the job was the job, and a murder inquiry always took precedence.

But still, nothing these last few months had turned out quite the way he'd imagined. Not that he'd expected to like working on Superintendent Slater's team while Duncan was on family leave, but he'd never dreamed they'd stick him with doing data entry. It was a murder team, for God's sake, and he was a detective sergeant, an experienced officer. When he'd complained, Slater had told him he was “making a valuable contribution,” with a smirk that let him know his new boss meant his assignment to be demeaning.

None of the team had welcomed him, and he'd begun to sense something at the Yard—an atmosphere, a feeling that people were whispering behind his back. He could put it all down to paranoia, except that he so seldom saw Chief Superintendent Childs, who was Duncan's direct superior as well as Superintendent Slater's. Not that Childs had ever been one for fraternizing, but one had always known he was there, and now somehow his large presence seemed to have diminished.

With his fingers and toes numb from the cold, Doug glanced at the sky and realized he'd only a few hours left of the pale winter light. If he was going to paint in the best conditions, he'd better buck up and get at it. He didn't need Melody's help, he told himself firmly—he was perfectly capable of doing a bit of DIY on his own.

Walking the short distance home briskly, he surveyed his preparations. He had already covered the few bits of furniture Melody had helped him pick out for the sitting room. Now he arranged a canvas cloth over the floor in the center of the room and placed his ladder atop it. Opening the cream paint, he stirred it, then placed the tin on the ladder shelf. Brush in hand, he climbed carefully up, cursing the Victorians and their ten-foot ceilings. It had seemed sensible to start at the plaster rosette surrounding the chandelier and work his way outward, but he found that he had made a slight miscalculation in the positioning of the ladder. Still, he could reach the rosette if he stretched.

Doug dipped his brush, wiped the excess on the edge of the paint tin, and began. This wasn't so bad, he told himself, as the work went quickly and half the rosette was soon finished. Maybe this was just what he needed, a little instant gratification to counter the frustration of the job. He leaned out a bit farther, certain he could reach the other side of the plasterwork without moving the ladder.

And then the ladder lurched. He swung his arm, trying to counterbalance, and the paint tin went flying. It seemed to topple in slow motion, the rich cream paint drifting out in a perfect fan. Doug watched it in an instant's frozen fascination, then time clattered back with a rush and he realized that he, too, was falling.

When Melody and Gemma reached the Arnotts' house again, a Toyota sedan that Melody recognized as belonging to DC Marie Daeley, the family liaison officer, was parked behind Melody's Clio.

“Good. Reinforcements,” said Gemma, and Melody knew she hadn't been looking forward to dealing with Mrs. Arnott on her own.

When they rang the bell, it was Daeley who answered. The detective constable was in her forties, with neat, graying hair, sensible clothes, and a brisk take-charge manner that usually seemed more comforting to the bereaved than outright sympathy. She was also a sharp officer who could be depended upon to inform the murder team of anything she learned that might be pertinent to their investigation.

The house smelled of coffee and seemed indefinably more welcoming than it had that morning.

“She's next door,” Daeley told them as they came into the hall. “With the neighbor. Thank God for a sensible woman.” Marie Daeley, it appeared, had found a kindred spirit in Mrs. Bates. “We've rung the sister in Florida, Sara Bishop. She's trying to arrange a flight for tomorrow, but even if she can manage, she won't arrive until Monday.”

“How's Mrs. Arnott holding up?” Gemma asked as they followed Daeley into the kitchen.

Daeley poured them coffee, and Melody was glad of the cup to warm her hands.

“She's very confused, and it's obviously more than just the shock,” answered Daeley, leaning against the worktop and sipping from her own mug. “I don't know how the husband managed as long as he did.” She waved a hand in a gesture that took in the kitchen and surrounding rooms. “There are little lists and notes for her everywhere. He was a barrister, according to Mrs. Bates?”

“So it seems. We'll be contacting his chambers as soon as possible.”

“It must have been difficult for him when he was in court,” mused Daeley. “He had her routines all worked out for her, and he rang her at regular times during the day. According to Mrs. Bates, he was very patient with her, but he must have known he couldn't go on much longer.”

“Why such determination to keep her at home?” Melody asked, trying to meld the devoted husband with the man who picked up women on a regular basis—and who had shouted at a guitarist in a pub without any apparent provocation. “Was it concern for her, or was he ashamed of his wife's illness? I'd be curious about how much his colleagues knew.”