CHAPTER 5 #3
“That tin has been in the office for eight months.”
“They’re sealed.”
“That does not make them food.”
He opened a packet. Vanilla escaped.
Romy reconsidered.
They ate stale custard creams beside a laptop containing the last documented movements of a dead man. People still got hungry. Kettles still boiled. Murder did not suspend ordinary life. It merely made ordinary life feel guilty for continuing.
Leo dipped a biscuit in tea.
It broke.
Half disappeared into the mug.
He stared at it.
Romy said, “Professional.”
“It was structurally compromised.”
“You held it there too long.”
“I was testing saturation.”
“You failed.”
He fished the collapsed biscuit out with a spoon.
Romy laughed.
Then her phone vibrated.
A local article notification.
She did not open it.
Leo noticed.
“Good.”
“What?”
“You didn’t read it.”
“I can read it later.”
“Or never.”
“Let’s not become unrealistic.”
He closed the biscuit packet.
“What next?”
“Everything again.”
His face fell.
“Why?”
“Because the first pass finds people. The second finds objects.”
That got his attention.
They returned to 6:31.
This time they ignored faces where possible.
Furniture.
Doors.
Bags.
Tools.
Serving trays.
Cameras.
Decorative objects.
Things that moved.
At 6:34 and 6:42, the brass plate-warmer remained in the dining room.
At 6:44, Celeste entered the Blue Study carrying only her phone. At 6:46, she came out.
At 6:48, Adrian opened the service corridor with a key and apparently no equipment.
At 6:52, Marcus carried the plate-warmer and felt toward that same corridor.
Romy stared at the photograph longer.
“What?” Leo asked.
“Nothing yet.”
He enlarged it.
The brass plate-warmer had curved sides and pierced sections designed to allow heat to circulate when historically used with hot plates or another warming element.
At Asterleigh it was decorative.
That was what Marcus had said.
A prop.
No approved live heating source.
Romy remembered the fire officer’s questions.
Portable heater?
No.
Gas appliance?
No.
Live fire?
Absolutely not.
Something produced carbon monoxide.
The plate-warmer was not itself a fuel source.
But it had been carried toward the room.
And later?
Romy searched photographs after seven.
Courtyard. Dining room. Entrance hall.
The plate-warmer was no longer on Harriet’s table.
At 7:18, the dining-room photographer captured the full setting: an empty rectangle where the brass warmer had stood. No burgundy felt.
At 7:26 and 7:31, the same.
Romy’s pulse picked up.
“Leo.”
“I see it.”
“Find any Blue Study image after Sebastian enters.”
They searched.
None.
The room door stayed closed in most photographs.
Then Leo found an image taken after the evacuation: the corridor, with the fire team preparing to enter. Through the partly open Blue Study doorway, only a narrow strip of carpet was visible.
No plate-warmer.
“Could be outside the frame,” Leo said.
“Yes.”
They went back.
6:52.
Marcus.
Brass object.
Burgundy felt.
Gold stripe.
Leo magnified the photograph until Marcus’s hands filled the screen.
The plate-warmer was larger than Romy remembered.
Not huge.
Large enough to conceal something placed inside it.
She leaned forward.
“What are you thinking?” Leo asked.
“I don’t know.”
“That’s not true.”
“I’m thinking an antique plate-warmer was carried into a corridor leading to a room where carbon monoxide later accumulated.”
“That sounds like something.”
“It is not enough.”
“Could it produce carbon monoxide?”
“Not by itself.”
“What if something was inside it?”
Romy looked at him.
Leo looked back.
Neither spoke.
Then Romy reached for her phone.
Ellis answered with less patience.
“I’m working.”
“So am I.”
“That is what worries me.”
“Was Marcus Fenn’s brass plate-warmer recovered from the Blue Study?”
Silence.
Romy stood.
“Ellis?”
“Where did you get that?”
“Leo’s 6:52 photograph.”
“What photograph?”
“The one you copied last night. Marcus is carrying the brass plate-warmer toward the Blue Study service corridor.”
Another pause.
“Do not call Marcus.”
“I wasn’t planning to.”
“Do not call anyone.”
“Was it in the room?”
“I’m not answering that.”
Which was an answer.
Romy said, “You found it.”
Ellis ended the call.
Leo watched her.
“He found it.”
“Probably.”
“In the Blue Study.”
“Probably.”
Leo turned back to the monitor.
His earlier excitement had vanished.
Good.
This was no longer an interesting exercise.
It was evidence.
He enlarged the 6:52 photograph again, moving past Marcus’s face to the object tucked against his side.
The brass plate-warmer.
The folded burgundy wool felt.
The narrow gold edge.
Marcus had looked harmless carrying them.
Useful.
Generous.
A man retrieving his own decorative property before giving a speech.
Romy thought of him in the dining room, joking about furniture, congratulating Leo on his placement, warning him that Romy needed to charge properly.
Then she thought of Sebastian entering the Blue Study five minutes later.
Alive at 7:01.
Messaging Vivian at 7:03.
Dead by 7:36.
Leo’s finger touched the screen.
“That brass thing in Marcus’s hands was in the room when Sebastian died.”