Chapter 19
The Old Man Guesthouse turned out to be an old water mill sitting abreast a pretty stone bridge over the River Brathay.
This part of the Lake District was quieter due in part to its inaccessibility and tiny little narrow roads which led to the Furness Fells.
The houses there were built from local slate, which had been mined since the twelfth century.
Coniston Old Man still had scars of the mining industry and Honister was a working mine selling about ten million pounds worth each year.
It left the surrounding countryside nestled inside a bygone era.
Building was difficult because of the protected status of the land and the rugged nature of the surrounding forests and hills.
In short, it was a stunning getaway, and it jarred Kelly to be here for a murder case.
The Langdales were just along the valley, past Chapel Stile, and Angelina would have known this part of the Lakes well.
They knew little about Angelina Robbins, and that’s what they hoped to change today. She’d instructed Kate to lead a team to her private residence too.
The guesthouse was privately owned, which made it uniquely intimate. Kelly guessed that’s why it was chosen.
They were expected, and Kelly saw a forensic van parked in the small carpark.
The SOCO was already here, having a head start on them from the scene in Grasmere, and she and Fin got out of the car and made their way to the entrance.
A young receptionist looked worried and was trying to balance guest queries with managing the movement of forensic officers around the communal spaces.
A couple of uniforms had done a great job managing the situation, but the young woman looked tense.
She promised to find the manager and Kelly chatted to one of the uniforms in the meantime.
He told them that they’d taken a statement from the staff on shift today and they’d secured the contact details of others who weren’t here today but who might have come into contact with the young woman in room 13.
A man older than Kelly expected approached and held out his hand.
‘Sorry about the intrusion,’ Kelly said. She introduced herself and Fin and the man told them the whole thing was bringing on his eczema.
Kelly apologised again.
He introduced himself as Tommy and explained that room 13 was upstairs.
‘It’s a beautiful place you have here, Tommy,’ Kelly said. They followed him out of reception and upstairs. The floor creaked and the ceilings were low. ‘Did you meet Mr Robbins, who checked his sister in on Friday?’
‘I did. I admired his car. It was a limited edition. We get wealthy folk here, but he was on another level.’
‘Really?’
‘He paid in cash, and he gave me brand new-notes, in twenties. He paid for the room for six months, upfront, no questions.’
‘Right. That’s a long time. Were you aware of why Ms Robbins was staying so long?’
‘I told your lot on the phone. She was private. Secretive, you know? My wife thought she was pregnant.’
When he said the word, he hushed his voice, like old people did when a woman was with child out of wedlock. Kelly’s mum used to do it. That generation were almost gone now, and it saddened Kelly that some of their sayings were too.
‘So, she didn’t work for you?’ Kelly asked.
Tommy laughed. ‘She didn’t need to work, the way her husband flashed around the cash.’
‘Her husband?’
‘The guy in the flash car.’
‘Oh.’
‘He had work to do and was coming back for her. Has he been told she’s missing? Poor sod.’
‘Actually, Tommy, I’ve got terribly sad news. The young woman was called Angelina, and she was found dead in Grasmere on Monday.’
Tommy stopped. ‘Oh, my Lord, that’s just awful.’
‘And Jamie, the man who paid for her room, was her brother. I was hoping you could help us piece together her time here.’
They carried on walking, but Tommy’s shoulders sank a little lower. Then he stopped.
‘Was her brother?’
They paused in the corridor; there was no easy way to say it.
‘That’s how we found her. He passed away yesterday and it led us here.’
‘How terribly sad. I thought they were a couple. Here we are,’ Tommy said, stopping outside a door, a little less bright than he was outside. Bad news did that to people: it let air out of them and made them smaller.
‘He told me she was here to paint. She was an artist. That’s what he said.’
Kelly recalled the dark inky substance on Angelina’s fingers.
Room 13 was open and the SOCO was inside. Tommy glanced around and shook his head. They thanked him and he left the same way he’d come, no doubt to deal with inquiries about why the police were crawling all over the hotel. She hoped he didn’t lose business over it but there was little she could do.
They pulled on gloves and masks and covered their shoes.
Their first impression was that room 13 was a mess. Drawers were pulled out, the bed was in disarray, glasses were smashed, the contents of a wardrobe were scattered all over the floor, and the TV was cracked. The SOCO stepped over some of the detritus and greeted them.
Kelly spotted a heavy lamp stand on its side and knew she’d found the assault weapon.
Remnants of what looked to her like human tissue clung to the base and Kelly reckoned the broken shaft might be responsible for the hole in Angelina’s hand.
Her throat constricted and her stomach tightened as she imagined a sustained aggressive attack on Angelina in here where there was nowhere to hide.
‘This would have caused a hell of a noise,’ Kelly said. ‘And yet nobody heard a thing.’
‘The interesting stuff is in the bathroom.’
Kelly’s heart sank. She followed the SOCO to the small bathroom and was shown pooling stains in the shower cubicle. They were brown and dried.
‘I’ve done prelim swabs. Kastle-Meyer test was positive,’ the SOCO told her.
The test was the most common indicator of blood at a scene when it couldn’t be seen easily with the naked eye. It was obvious to Kelly that some form of liquid had been spilt and smudged all over the bathroom, but they must be certain. It could turn out to be coffee.
They all knew it wasn’t.
‘Did you see the lamp?’ the SOCO asked. Kelly nodded gloomily.
‘I’ve given it a cursory examination and it’s also positive for blood protein, and somebody tried to wipe it off. I guess whoever did it panicked. It’s not clean and tidy. It’s not professional. She fought back. She crawled here and here.’
Kelly wracked her brain to see if there was any scenario that would make sense to her that Jamie had done this and then killed himself.
There wasn’t.
The SOCO walked her through the trauma blow by blow.
‘Then she fell here, hitting something on here.’ She pointed to the bathtub. ‘Then there’s handprints here and here. Finally leading to the inside of the shower cubicle where blood pooled significantly.’
‘This explains why there wasn’t much blood at the dump site,’ Kelly said.
‘Poor bugger. It looks like she died here. All the splatter and drop patterns suggest the same thing.’
Kelly glanced at her feet. ‘She wasn’t dead when she was dumped. I attended the autopsy yesterday. She drowned.’
‘Oh Christ. Bastard.’
Kelly stared at the floor.
‘Are those prints?’ she asked. The SOCO nodded.
‘They look similar to our prints at the Heron Hall Hotel, but then generic men’s boots are notoriously common at crime scenes,’ Kelly added.
‘We’ve scanned them,’ the SOCO confirmed.
‘Anything else? I’m looking for a paper trail; it’s a possibility she was hiding something here and died protecting it.’
The SOCO nodded. ‘No laptop or electronic equipment, that explains that then. No phone. We’ll continue looking. Thanks for the heads-up; we’re taking down the panels on the wall.’
‘What panels?’
‘Look.’
The SOCO led Kelly back to the bedroom where Fin was chatting to an officer. They were peering under the bed and the forensic officer had pulled it up, supporting it with his strength while Fin looked underneath. There was a large hole in the mattress and Fin pulled something out and held it up.
‘What is it?’ Kelly asked.
‘It’s a slim box file.’ Fin opened it, and inside he found several neatly arranged folders. Kelly followed the SOCO, who removed a panel in the wall closest to the bed.
‘How did you know that was there?’
‘The owner.’
‘Tommy?’
The SOCO nodded. ‘Tommy told us that the room was booked specifically because of the legend of the place.’
‘Which is what?’
‘Skelwith Bridge is haunted by those who travelled by coach through it on the way to steal mining secrets for Queen Elizabeth the First, four hundred and fifty years ago. They bunked here for the night on their way back and their whole coach fell into the river, and they drowned.’
Kelly blinked and spread her hands. ‘Who knew? I suppose this story is on their website, luring unsuspecting tourists to pay for a tour and buy merchandise?’
‘Obviously,’ the SOCO chuckled.
‘So, what has that got to do with this room?’
‘Tommy told us that one of the mining experts got away but was tracked down by German mercenaries and shot with a pistol and buried in these walls. There you have the legend of Skelwith Bridge.’
‘So, this spy stayed in room 13?’ Kelly asked. Her voice dripped with scepticism. ‘Next you’ll tell me he consorted with witches too, who stayed in room 666.’
The SOCO shrugged. ‘Some people believe anything.’
‘OK, joking aside, Tommy told you Jamie Robbins knew about this legend when he booked?’
‘That’s what he said.’
‘And have you found anything in there?’
‘We did.’
It was said with triumph.
The forensic officer showed Kelly a bagged suitcase.
It was almost identical to the one found in Jamie’s room, but she guessed this one wasn’t full of porn.
Now she wondered whether the one in Jamie’s room was a decoy.
If anyone went to Heron Hall looking for Jamie and his secrets, they’d find a bag full of porn instead of what they were really looking for.
‘Did you look inside?’
‘Yep. We haven’t had time to look closely. Loads of scientific papers and some letters that mean absolutely nothing to us but I’m pretty sure they’ll be valuable to you. Also, we reckon about five hundred thousand in twenty-pound notes. Oh, and some incredible artwork.’
‘Nice,’ Fin said.
‘Well done, good work. God, what a mess,’ Kelly said.
She looked around the spacious room and peered out of the window. In ordinary times, this room – except for it being haunted by a Tudor spy – would be a perfect getaway to relax surrounded by the beauty of the Lake District. Today it was a murder scene.
And they now had a potential motive.
Before she left, she went to find Tommy, who was sitting in the pretty garden at the rear of the hotel, staring across the river.
‘Hi, Tommy,’ she said gently.
He moved up and she sat next to him on the bench.
‘I hate being the bearer of bad news,’ she said.
‘Poor lass. It’s so sad.’
‘I was wondering if you saw or heard anything strange in the village recently? Anything. If you think of anything, please give me a call. You know, a stranger acting nervously or loitering, that kind of thing.’
Tommy shrugged his shoulders. ‘We have tourists from all over the place; they’re all a bit weird.’
She laughed. ‘I believe you.’
‘But I guess there was one thing. There was a bloke who was walking Potter at the weekend, Saturday I think.’
‘Potter? Is he a local chap?’
‘He’s a dog.’
‘A dog?’
‘The post office dog.’
Kelly was puzzled.
‘On Saturday, I saw him with a bloke I’d never seen before. I shouted out, because Potter wanted to come over here, I could tell.’
‘And that was strange?’
‘Yes, because when I went over to the post office on Monday, I asked Bill, and he said Potter had gone missing for most of the day on Saturday and they’d never heard of the bloke I described.’
‘And who was he?’
‘No idea. Big bloke. It was difficult to see his face because he was wearing a baseball cap.’