A Spider on the Stairs, Page 3

  Bethancourt straightened up as he returned the phone to his pocket and looked around for the dogs. They were nowhere in sight.

  “Bloody hell,” he muttered, and began to stride up the path in search of them.

  3

  In Which a Complication Arises

  Mittlesdon’s Bookshop was closed on Christmas Day, like everything else, but Mervyn Mittlesdon found reason to visit his shop anyway. His wife was accustomed to say that he preferred the company of his books to that of his family; she meant it as a joke, but there was a kernel of truth to it. The books were always in the back of his mind, calling to him like a siren on the rocks beckoning to a sailor, and he found it impossible to resist their song.

  He didn’t try very hard, if the truth were told. His little house in Victor Street was a bustle of activity during the holiday, with his daughter and her husband and their new baby arrived for the celebrations, his son home from university, as well as his sister-in-law popping in and out from her own house in North Street. Mittlesdon was very fond of his family—even his sister-in-law—but he disliked having his usual habits interrupted, and during the holidays the bookshop became his haven.

  Especially once its doors were closed and the public’s frenzied search for presents had faded away, leaving only the calm hush of the books. There was a little space of time between opening presents and eating Christmas dinner, so Mittlesdon quietly absented himself and walked briskly through the rain to his shop. He let himself in by the back door, breathing in the slightly musty smell common to all bookshops like a perfume, and carefully locking the door behind him again. It was very dim inside, but he did not bother with lights, making his way without fuss through the narrow passage until he reached the front room of the shop. It, too, lay in shadow, the light from both the skylight and the windows muted by the inclement weather.

  Here he paused, considering the disorder left when he had shooed his employees out the night before. Mittlesdon was by nature a very reserved man who did not possess the knack of easy camaraderie with his staff, but he was also considerate. He knew that the long hours required of retail employees around Christmas curtailed their own celebrations, and he made allowances where he could, like he had yesterday afternoon when he had dismissed his staff without first having them tidy the store as was usual. He himself had collected all the books left laying about by the customers, and this was the disorder he currently confronted: several higgledy-piggledy piles on the counter and an overburdened cart parked nearby. He spent a few minutes sorting the books into their sections, then took up a small stack and made his way to the stairs. There was a bookshelf on the landing, and as he bent over to replace a book there, he saw a spider sitting comfortably in one corner.

  “Araignée du matin—chagrin,” he murmured, but despite the old proverb, he did not kill it. Instead, he set down the books he carried, shook out his handkerchief, and scooped the spider into it. Then he carried it back down the stairs and released it outside the back door. The spider, a plain British brown, did not seem best pleased to find itself out in the cold drizzle and scuttled away quickly. Mittlesdon was not a superstitious man, but he was to remember this incident later and wonder to himself if there was more to proverbs than he had previously believed.

  This chore accomplished, he returned to the staircase and his books, shelving two on the landing and then continuing up the stairs and shelving the rest in the first room there, which held the philosophy section. Then he took out his keys and let himself into the office.

  He knew at once that something was wrong, though there was nothing immediately evident. But this was the heart of his domain and he could not mistake any change in its atmosphere. He paused just inside the door, surveying the cramped space filled with desks and stacks of books, but there was nothing apparently amiss. His mind leapt to the one very special book he had in the shop at the moment and he fled to his office, where the safe was kept.

  It was a massive, ancient thing at the back of the little room, nearly as big as the old pedestal desk that sat squarely in the opposite corner. Mittlesdon’s heart rate eased a little upon seeing that the safe was still closed, but he did not relax entirely until he had opened the heavy door and seen his treasure still sitting securely within.

  So great was his relief that he began to think he had been mistaken in his earlier uneasy instinct, his nerves merely prey to the stress of the season. Still, he did not immediately turn to the unfinished work on his desk, but retraced his steps to the outer room.

  It was then, from this different angle, that he saw it, on the floor over by the windows. It was so unexpected, so out of place, that at first his mind refused to take it in. He walked slowly over as if in a dream and stood staring down at the dead body, not quite believing it. When at last the reality registered, he nearly swooned, and was forced to sit heavily in the nearest chair for a moment before rising shakily and going downstairs to ring the police.

  Gibbons was feeling useless, not a thing he was accustomed to at his job. It was more than a little irksome and—combined with his lack of sleep—was making him irritable, which he tried to hide from his colleagues.

  He and Brumby had stayed up into the wee hours, going over the crime-scene and lab reports exhaustively. Brumby had mentioned that the rest of the team would join them in the morning, but considering the season, Gibbons had been unprepared for their arrival before 8:00 A.M.; they had caught him in the midst of his first coffee of the day.

  They had driven up with a mobile unit, a quiet, serious group of people who listened expressionlessly to the briefing Brumby gave them, apparently soaking the information up like sponges, and then went about their work without further ado. They were a practiced, well-oiled team, and that did not really leave any place for Gibbons. He rather wished that Brumby would send him back to London, where he might pick up another case, one more suited to his abilities. But until that happened, he was left to kick his heels, watching other people work. It did not sit well with him.

  It was midmorning when Brumby got off an extended phone call and, looking around the room, his eyes lit on Gibbons and he beckoned him over.

  “I’ve had another call from Superintendent MacDonald,” he said, frowning. “He thinks he may have a second Ashdon killing.”

  Halfway across the room, Detective Inspector Howard looked around, startled.

  “A second murder?” he demanded, incredulous.

  Brumby’s lips thinned as he nodded. “If it’s true,” he said, “it would be a major breakthrough.”

  “One that I’m damned if I know what to make of,” said Howard, coming over. “Two killings so close together would be a complete deviation from the pattern.”

  “Would you like me to go over and take a look, sir?” asked Gibbons, trying not to sound too eager.

  “Yes,” muttered Brumby, clearly disconcerted by this chain of events. “Yes, Sergeant. I’ll come with you—Howard, you hold the fort here.”

  Howard nodded. “Do ring as soon as you know, sir,” he urged. “It would really be most extraordinary . . .”

  “I know,” said Brumby. “I’ll ring. Come along, Sergeant. Do you happen to know where Fossgate is?”

  Gibbons did.

  Superintendent MacDonald was no longer at the address he had given them, as a somewhat sheepish uniformed constable informed them when they arrived.

  “He’s left Detective Constable Redfern inside with the witness,” he offered a little diffidently, as if acknowledging that Redfern was hardly a substitute for a detective superintendent.

  Brumby raised a brow, but Gibbons said genially, “Is Redfern the only other detective not down with flu?”

  The policeman sighed. “It seems like it, sir,” he said.

  Mittlesdon’s Bookshop was housed in several old buildings that had all been knocked together, little bit by little bit throughout the shop’s history, giving it a quaint, cozy air. The storefront was standard enough, if a little wider than most of those on the stre
et, with two display windows on either side of the door and a small counter and cash register at the back of the front room. There was a small Christmas tree on the counter and tinsel was draped along the top shelves in the front room, but beyond that there was not much in the way of holiday decorations.

  Immediately beyond the front room was a small area with a skylight, its two solid walls lined with shelves, and two leather armchairs set in the center.

  In one of the chairs sat a round-faced, balding man, very neatly dressed, but clearly in distress, his silver-rimmed spectacles discarded in his lap while he dabbed at his face with a white handkerchief. Beside him sat Constable Redfern, looking sympathetic.

  The constable looked toward the door as it opened to admit Brumby and Gibbons and then leaned forward to pat the other man’s shoulder, saying, “I told you it wouldn’t be long. Here’s Scotland Yard to sort it all out.”

  The middle-aged man blinked and fumbled for his glasses while Redfern rose and came to meet them.

  “Hello again, Dave,” said Gibbons. “This is Detective Superintendent Brumby.”

  Redfern and Brumby shook hands and Redfern indicated the man behind him.

  “This is Mr. Mittlesdon,” he said. “He owns the shop and found the body when he came in this morning.”

  Brumby nodded, glancing around. “I thought the superintendent said he’d leave the body in situ?”

  “Oh, he has,” Redfern assured him. “The doctor wouldn’t be here yet, anyway—he’s dealing with a double murder down by the river.”

  Brumby was frowning. “But then where is the victim?” he asked.

  “Upstairs in the office,” replied Redfern, pointing to a narrow staircase opposite the counter. “It’s kept locked, but I have the key.”

  “In the office?” repeated Brumby incredulously. “But Ashdon’s entire MO is to leave the bodies on display.”

  “Perhaps,” suggested Gibbons, “he was interrupted? If he killed her in the office—” he broke off. “But,” he finished, “Ashdon doesn’t kill them on site.”

  “He doesn’t strike this frequently, either,” muttered Brumby. He was still frowning. “Let’s get upstairs then and see for ourselves.”

  He glanced over at their witness, who was leaning back in his chair, clearly trying to regain his composure.

  “We’ll speak to him once we’ve seen the body,” decided Brumby. “You’d better have the uniform in to keep him company while we’re upstairs.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Redfern.

  The policeman having been summoned from outside, Redfern led them up an uneven flight of stairs. At the top was a small room with a banister blocking it off from the stairway and a short landing. To their right, the stairs continued, while ahead was a closed door with a quite modern lock on it and a sign saying STAFF ONLY.

  “This is apparently always kept locked,” said Redfern, fitting a key on a fine silver chain into it, “and Mittlesdon confirms it was locked when he arrived this morning.”

  The door opened on a larger room with a row of windows along the opposite wall. It was filled with four wooden desks and boxes and stacks of books all over. There were two doors at each end of the room, all of them closed. Redfern threaded his way through the maze toward the windows, stopping just past the edge of the last desk.

  “Here we are, sir,” he said.

  Gibbons, following in Brumby’s wake, felt his heart sink as he took in the scene. Unlike the outré setting of the Ashdon killings, this was simply a body, left where it had fallen once the life had been choked out of it.

  She had been a tall woman, lanky and lean, with sun-streaked carroty hair. Her face was discolored and bloated, but there were freckles sprinkled across her knuckles, and Gibbons was willing to bet that she had sported a good many on her face as well. From the hands and the lines of her body, he thought she had been young, probably in her twenties.

  But even to Gibbons’s inexperienced eye, there was no possibility that this crime could be put down to Ashdon’s account.

  Beside him, he felt Brumby trying to restrain his temper, which he managed rather well once he finally spoke.

  “Did Superintendent MacDonald say why he thought this might be one of Ashdon’s victims?” he asked.

  Redfern looked a little discomfited.

  “He didn’t say, sir,” he answered. “I expect it was mostly because of its being a shop and all.” He looked at the body. “It doesn’t look much like the other one,” he admitted.

  “No,” said Brumby evenly, “it doesn’t.”

  They stood in silence for several long seconds.

  “Right then,” said Brumby at last, drawing a deep breath, as if for fortitude. “Constable, would you mind going back and safeguarding our witness? The Sergeant and I will just have a look around and be down directly.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Redfern, sounding relieved.

  There was silence again once the constable had left. Gibbons broke it by saying, “Am I wrong, sir, or is this definitely ruled out as a possibility for Ashdon?”

  “Oh, you’re not wrong, Sergeant,” Brumby assured him, shaking his head as he stood over the body. “My preliminary impression is that this is probably a fairly simple case. It doesn’t look to me like this murder was premeditated. What do you think?”

  “It doesn’t seem that way,” agreed Gibbons. “It looks almost as if once the killer realized she was dead, he simply panicked and ran out.”

  “Exactly.” Brumby sighed and turned away. “And MacDonald strikes me as far too intelligent an officer to have made such a mistake. I think he’s a man with too much on his plate at the moment, and he jumped at the chance to hand this one off.”

  Gibbons agreed.

  “But I’ve found that it pays to foster goodwill with the locals,” continued Brumby. “I mostly end up working on their patches, and they’re far more accommodating if one has a good reputation. What would you say to helping out on this one? I can have the med team come over and do the autopsy, and the scene-of-the-crime officers will be done with their first sweep of our site by this afternoon—they might as well make themselves useful and go over this place as well.”

  Gibbons asked nothing better than to be given this opportunity to investigate on his own.

  “I’d like that very much, sir,” he said. “To be honest, I think I might be of more use here than over with your team.”

  Brumby nodded. “You get started here then,” he said. “I’ll speak to MacDonald and—hell! I forgot poor Howard.” He pulled out his mobile and began dialing. “He’s probably on tenterhooks waiting to hear if we have an anomaly or not. Carry on, Sergeant—check in with me once you’re done here.”

  Brumby made his way to the door, while Gibbons turned back to the body and pulled out his notebook. He made a preliminary sketch of the scene, taking notes of anything that seemed out of the ordinary. He was a naturally observant man and had always been good at this part of his job, able to pick incongruities out of even apparently chaotic backgrounds.

  Here nothing struck him as out of place except for the immediate area around the body, where there had clearly been a struggle. A small hooked rug was rumpled up beneath the body, and a potted plant which had presumably lived on the windowsill had fallen to the floor, cracking open and spilling out half its dirt. To the other side, there were several books on the floor, apparently knocked from the edge of the desk nearest the windows.

  But the rest of the room seemed undisturbed. All the desks held papers and files and stacks of books as well as the ubiquitous computers, and it combined to give the impression of a business with not quite enough storage space, but there was nothing else that spoke of violence.

  Gibbons inspected the door to the corridor: it had a regular latch, which was set to lock automatically when the door was closed. Gibbons could see no sign of its being forced, though if it had been picked he would not be able to tell just by looking.

  He turned to the four doors leading off the room.
To the right, nearest the windows, was a private office with a large black safe sitting in one corner and a bookcase standing half empty. The door next to it was the lavatory, and, on the other side of the room, the door opposite led to a cupboard filled with office supplies. The fourth door opened onto a small stockroom, with room enough for a few boxes of books and several tall filing cabinets. Gibbons doubted that all the stock passed through here—it was not big enough for that, nor did there seem any way for deliveries to be made—but clearly some organization was done in the room.

  Having given the layout a cursory inspection, Gibbons left the office and went to interview his witness.

  Mittlesdon had not gained any composure in the time Gibbons had been gone: he still looked distressed and quite pale. Redfern, hearing Gibbons’s footsteps on the stairs, came to meet him at their foot and said in a low voice, “I’m getting a little concerned about him, sir—I think he may be going into shock.”

  Gibbons eyed the middle-aged man and agreed.

  “He could no doubt do with something hot,” he said. “I saw a kettle upstairs, but we don’t want to disturb anything up there until after forensics has been and gone.”

  “There’s a B and B just down the street, sir,” said Redfern. “I could pop in there and ask for a cuppa. I doubt they’d mind.”

  “Do that then,” said Gibbons. “I’ll go over what happened with Mr. Mittlesdon while you’re gone, and if all’s well, we can send him home.”

  He was eyeing the bookshop proprietor as he spoke, mentally weighing the possibility that a man of that size could have strangled a tall and what looked to be athletic young woman. He didn’t think it very likely, but he supposed stranger things had happened.

  He introduced himself and sat down with Mittlesdon, who shook his hand automatically whilst peering myopically at him until he remembered the spectacles in his lap. He put them back on, hooking them carefully over his ears, and then dabbed at his forehead with the handkerchief.

  “You must forgive me,” he said. “It’s been a shock, such a very great shock. And it’s Christmas, too.”