Dead Alone (29 page)

The first thing Jessie noticed about Haverbrook Hall was that it had no moat, lake or river running through it. It was a dry plot, high on a hill in Oxfordshire. Little use for a punt. The family had won the land through typically nefarious means, a hodgepodge of illegitimate offspring and royal affairs. Like the Fitz in Fitz-Williams. Jessie did not have a good feeling about this. And then she saw the police. There must have been five local constables standing around. She sent Niaz over to glean a few details.

When she spotted the mortician’s estate, Jessie knew for sure that Cosima Broome was dead and probably had been for some time. She cursed herself for being too slow. There were other cars: an old roller, and a silver Audi with a potentially lethal pheasant on the bonnet. She looked back to the house. The front door was open. Jessie decided she couldn’t wait. She was making her way through the pillared hall when Niaz caught up with her.

‘The body was found in the Wendy house,’ he whispered.

‘What?’

‘A small gazebo-like garden dwelling that accommodates children.’

‘The Wendy house?’ repeated Jessie.

‘There is possibly a Peter Pan connection there.’

‘With Cosima?’

‘No, with the name. Wendy.’

‘What are you talking about, Niaz?’

‘Never having to grow up, always being a child.’

‘Shh.’ Jessie heard a clatter of ice on glass and glass on silver. From behind a set of double doors came the sound of a woman sobbing. Jessie knocked gently and pushed the door open. Coral Lennox-Broome looked up at Jessie. Her cheeks were awash with blue-black tears. Her slim frame was dressed in a charcoal cashmere dress, knee-high boots and wide silver bracelets on both wrists. She was an attractive woman. And had probably looked a million dollars until the body was found.

‘Who are you?’ she sniffed.

‘Detective Inspector Driver. We spoke on the phone. I’m very sor—’

‘You knew this was going to happen,’ the woman said. ‘Why didn’t you tell me it was serious!?’

‘I did try –’

‘No you didn’t. You didn’t tell me what was going on, you didn’t say she’d been …’

‘Been what?’

Coral lifted the crystal tumbler to her mouth and drank. Desperately. The way Christopher Cadell drank.

‘I don’t think I’m the one who has been keeping things back,’ said Jessie calmly. For a second, the woman looked as if she was going to explode in indignant fury. But she collapsed instead.

‘You don’t know what it’s like. I couldn’t tell you.’

‘Tell me what?’

The door behind her creaked open. Coral shrank from her husband. Jessie introduced herself.

‘I’m afraid you were right. She had been in a rehabilitation centre. It didn’t work. I find these things difficult to talk about.’

‘What happened?’

‘She passed out drunk in the Wendy house. It was very cold. Hypothermia, I believe they call it.’

Jessie watched Coral drink the chilled vodka like water.

‘It is no secret that Cosima and I didn’t have a …’ He stumbled over the words. ‘I never understood her, you see. But I didn’t want it to end like this.’

‘This may not be Cosima’s fault, sir. Those other women I told you about, they were killed because someone knew what was going on behind the scenes.’

‘This has nothing to do with those other people! This is my daughter you are talking about. It was an accident.’

‘I’d like to see her,’ said Jessie.

‘The doctor has already done all that. And the police,’ said Viscount Lennox-Broome.

‘I’d still like to see for myself.’ She pointed at the French doors. ‘Is this the way to the garden?’

‘Yes,’ said Coral. ‘Follow the path round to the left.’ She returned to her drink as soon as the words were out of her mouth.

Jessie put her hand on the door.

‘This is a private matter,’ the Viscount protested again.

‘Not in this century, sir.’

The doctor and local detective were startled to see her. More so when she produced her badge and informed them that she’d had Cosima down on her missing list for some time. The Viscount had obviously failed to tell them about her call. Jessie wondered what he had told them.

Cosima was curled up under a blanket. Jessie could tell from the smell that she had been dead for a couple of days. Stacked up in the corner of the wooden hut was a box of croquet mallets, leaning against the wall were the metal hoops painted white with pointed rusting ends. The layer of dust was several autumns deep. There was no furniture in the hut, just spider webs and the skeleton of a decapitated mouse. Owl’s work. The only sign of life in the Wendy house was the pathway in the dust from door to corpse, cleared by the soles of her busy family. All that coming and going merely confirmed Jessie’s suspicions. She bent down to peel back the grey woollen blanket. Cosima was naked; there were marks around her wrists and her feet were black and swollen. Her femoral artery, however, had not been cut. Jessie sat back on her knees.

‘She’d been drinking heavily,’ said the doctor. ‘Look at the red wine stains –’

‘Are you a pathologist?’

‘No.’

‘Then how can you be sure?’ said Jessie, crouching next to the corpse.

‘I am a very –’

She waved him away. ‘Yes, I’m sure, a very good friend of the family. What did he tell you? Drugs? That she took drugs. And drank in excess. That she was out of control. Hush it up, there’s a good fellow.’ The doctor stepped back. ‘You think the marks around her wrist were self-inflicted? You think this looks like an accident?’

‘She had a history of self-harm, she used to cut herself a lot. I’ve treated her many times.’

‘For what?’

‘Cuts, bruises, burns, you name it.’

‘And you never questioned that the injuries were
self
-inflicted?’

‘Her father wouldn’t lie about such …’ His voice trailed off. ‘He is a fine man.’

‘What did Cosima say?’

‘That she –’ he coughed into his handkerchief – ‘she deserved it. She hated herself, you see.’

Jessie looked up at him. ‘What do you really see here?’ She paused. ‘And this time, think before you answer.’

‘She got drunk, passed out and died of hypothermia.’

‘Wrong.’

‘Accidental drug overdose.’

‘Wrong again.’

‘Positional asphyxia?’

‘Here?’

‘Yes.’

‘No, Doctor. Not here.’

‘Where, then?’ he asked challengingly.

‘I don’t know. But not in the fucking Wendy house, I know that much.’ Jessie stood up.

‘She drank. She was out of control,’ insisted the doctor.

‘I don’t think so. Niaz, guard this site and let no one in except me. You, Doctor, will accompany me to the house. There are a few inconsistencies I’d like to clear up.’

‘I really should be –’

‘I don’t remember saying please,
Doctor
.’

He followed her across the saturated lawn, her leather boots slipping on the frictionless blades. She was relieved to get on to the stone path. Either side of the path were beds of purple and blue heather, neatly clipped and well tended. A perfect country house. Jessie returned to the drawing room. Coral was smoking now. Her husband’s voice could be heard from behind another oak door.

‘Please ask your husband to join us,’ said Jessie. The red-rimmed eyes made Coral look more like a rabbit caught in the glare of an oncoming car. A sick rabbit. Sick and scared. Coral returned empty-handed, so Jessie went through to the study, walked up to the telephone, cut him off and returned to the drawing room. He was furious.

‘I have had enough of your –’

‘Why did you move your daughter’s body?’ she said.

Coral let out an involuntary squeal.

‘You are upsetting my wife,’ bellowed the Viscount.

‘Not as much as I will, if you don’t start telling me the truth.’

‘Coral found her this morning. She is very upset.’

Jessie turned to Coral. ‘Is that true?’

Coral nodded but didn’t speak. She turned the wide silver bangle on her wrist nervously.

‘In the Wendy house?’

‘Of course in the Wendy house,’ he answered for her.

‘I’m not talking to you,’ said Jessie without looking at the man. ‘Viscountess?’

She nodded again. ‘Call me Coral.’

‘Why did you go to the Wendy house?’

Coral looked at her husband.

‘She was taking the dogs for a walk.’

Jessie turned on the older man. ‘Stop lying. Your daughter was strung up somewhere. The blood collected in her legs and feet –
anyone
in the profession could have told you that.’ She could feel the doctor shrink without even looking at him. ‘You can’t cover this up. This isn’t another little scandal that you can control.’

He didn’t pick Jessie up on the use of the word ‘another’.

‘Cosima has marks on her wrist.’

‘My daughter had a history of self-harm. So, for the last time, my wife found her in the Wendy house,’ said Geoffrey Lennox-Broome. Slowly and clearly.

‘I’ll give you one more chance. We are going to
take the body and perform an autopsy. From that we will be able to determine how and in what position she died. I know what the outcome of that investigation will
not
be. It will not be that your daughter died of hypothermia lying on the floor of a disused Wendy house having passed out from ingesting too much alcohol. Then I will come here with an arrest warrant. It is a criminal offence to pervert the course of justice and I don’t give a damn what high-powered judges you may think you have in your fraternity, I will not rest until this goes to court.’

‘You’ll be hearing from my lawyer,’ he barked.

‘Your daughter was murdered. Here. On this property.’

‘My daughter died after a drinking binge in the Wendy house.’

‘Why would your daughter crawl naked into a dirty, empty Wendy house in the middle of the night?’

The Viscount looked at his wife with scorn. ‘There were a lot of things my daughter did that I didn’t understand.’

The door to the drawing room opened. Jessie swung round angrily. Sally Grimes stood in the doorway holding a plastic phial in her hand.

‘Sally!’ exclaimed Jessie, relieved to see a kindred soul. ‘How did you –?’

‘I changed my mind.’

‘Have you seen the body?’

‘Yes. Lady Cosima Lennox-Broome drowned,’ said Sally.

‘Drowned?’ came the simultaneous response.

‘Where? There isn’t a lake here,’ said Jessie.

‘Not where. In what.’

‘What?’

‘I’m sorry to tell you this, sir, but your daughter drowned in alcohol. I used an
in situ
test we do at crash sites. Your daughter’s blood-to-alcohol ratio was off the scale.’

Jessie’s eyes widened. She knew what that meant.

‘It is impossible to drink that much and stay conscious,’ said Sally.

‘What do you mean?’ asked Coral, who was walking towards Sally, her eyes focusing through the vodka, adrenaline-induced clarity.

‘She means,’ said Jessie, ‘that Cosima was force-fed alcohol until it was running through her veins.’

Sally continued, ‘That amount of additional liquid to the system would ordinarily have caused her brain to swell, and that in itself would have killed her. But she was cut on the soles of her feet and drained of blood. What little blood she had left in her system would not have been able to carry the oxygen to her brain. She drowned.’

‘Sit down, Coral,’ said the Viscount firmly.

Jessie kept her eye on the rapidly ageing blonde. ‘All you’d need is a plastic tube, a funnel, and a large quantity of alcohol – wine, for instance,’ she said, taking hold of Coral’s arm as she walked past. ‘Oh, and somewhere to tie her up.’

‘Get your hands off my wife,’ shouted Lennox-Broome.

‘Somewhere like a cellar,’ said Jessie. ‘Imagine how scared she’d have been. Tied up, force-fed … She’d have vomited and urinated on herself.’ Jessie dropped Coral’s arm. ‘But you know all this, you found her. Now, I’d like to see your cellar.’

‘We don’t have a cellar.’

‘Yes you do. I saw the windows through the grate in the ground. If you lie to me again, sir, I shall arrest you for obstruction. This is a murder case. Show me your cellar.’

Jessie, Sally and Niaz followed the couple into the subterranean level of the house. The doctor had opted to stay near the drinks cabinet. An earthy, damp corridor stretched out in the darkness, running the full length of the house. The smell of alcohol intermingled with damp and dust. Their footsteps were swallowed whole by the dense stone below their feet. Off the central corridor were skinny archways opening to brick-lined antechambers. Those on the right had dirty windows to the outside world above, those on the left did not. A few naked light bulbs glowed a pale orange, but the brickwork seemed to suck up their weak light as it had absorbed the sound of their footsteps. It was an eerie place, thought Jessie. No place to die.