4. A Matter of Life and Death #3
Imogen disappeared in 1995, thirty years ago.
Assuming we have a serial unaliver on our hands, and assuming the killer was at least twenty years old at the time of the actress’s disappearance, it would put them in their mid-fifties.
And if Helga’s right, and Peter’s death wasn’t a tragic accident as it had been reported, we’re looking at a person in their sixties, minimum.
Of course, we could be looking at more than one killer. A copycat or copycats.
Fuck, this is so exciting.
“I have so many questions,” I say, trying to hide my grin under a few surreptitious moustache strokes. “Do you know which room Imogen Savona was staying in at the time of her disappearance, and have you any idea of her final movements?”
Helga’s face morphs into a deep frown. She puffs out her cheeks, and I’m certain she’s about to tell me to jog on. To ask me what relevance a missing person has to an exorcism, but instead she lifts her features into a smile.
“You’re standing in it.” She holds out her arms in a ta-da fashion, no doubt a relic from her glamorous assistant days.
“Imogen always stayed here. Though the sofas are new to the room and the bed used to be over here.” Helga points to where the dressing table is now.
“Our interior designer thought it would make a bigger impact to place the bed under the chandelier. In all fairness, since we put the photos online, we’ve received an influx of enquiries.
At the moment, I’m all for anything that will bolster our guest numbers. ”
“And do you know what time Imogen was last seen? And by who? Did she come down for dinner? Go for a walk?”
Again, Helga pauses before answering me, like she’s combing through the information in her brain.
“Well . . . let me think . . . Yes, she was at dinner. She always came down to the restaurant to say hello to her fans, and yes, usually she’d take a walk afterwards with her dogs.
Corgis, I think they were. Fat little fluffy things.
Gorgeous. But I remember that night she filmed an interview for some daytime TV thing instead of going out.
And that was it, I guess. That was the last time anyone saw her. ”
“When was she found to be missing?” I ask.
Helga puffs out a breath. “One of my colleagues realised she wasn’t in her room the next day when they went to clean it, but she hadn’t checked out, and she never returned to her London home either.”
“What was the interview about?”
Helga sighs, almost as though she’s asking me how much longer we’ll be discussing Imogen. “Some new programme she was working on,” she replies with an uninterested shrug.
“What happened to the dogs? Were they still here?”
“Well, that’s the thing. They disappeared too. If she’d been murdered like her relatives kept suggesting, surely the dogs would’ve been left in her room?”
“Unless they killed the corgis too,” I suggest.
“No.” Helga shakes her head. “Nobody would be that cruel.”
Outwardly I agree with her, but in my twentyish years of amateur sleuthing, I’ve come to realise that nothing is too cruel for the human mind. There are some lines you’d hope would never be crossed, and yet later discover that not only had they been crossed but obliterated entirely.
“Besides, they were such noisy things. Bark at anything. I couldn’t go within five metres of Imogen without the dogs screaming bloody murder at me and trying to bite my fingers off.”
Interesting.
“One last question about Imogen,” I say. “Were you working the night she went missing?”
Yep, that’s it. That’s the cutoff point for Helga’s patience on questions about the actress. “Yes, I was, but I don’t see what relevance Imogen Savona has to Peter—I mean, The Paragon Phantom.”
“I’m just trying to dot all the i’s and cross all the t’s.”
“Can we please focus on the ghosts we’re sure about?
” Helga marches out of the honeymoon suite.
I follow her. “Everything I know—knew about Imogen, I’ve already told the police.
Dave Davies. He’s a sergeant now. If you want more information about her, you should chat with him.
It was a sad case, but she was an actress.
It’s in their nature to be dramatic. She’d probably had enough of life in the spotlight and decided to pack it all in.
As someone from the industry, it’s not inconceivable to think that she just needed a break from it all. ”
It takes me a moment to realise by “someone from the industry” she’s referring to herself.
“Do you want the names of the other people who’ve died and went missing?” She’s already at the end of the corridor, running down the sweeping grand staircase.
I chase after her. “Helga. Mrs Roskelly, can I ask one more question?” I say once I reach the bottom of the steps. “It’s not about Imogen, I promise. It’s about . . . the ghosts.”
“Sure.”
On a keypad fixed to the wall, she types in a code. Two eight zero seven. She glances at me, and I look away.
“Why half a ghost? Seven and a half seems odd and highly specific.”
“Because . . .” she says, opening the door. “In two thousand and twelve, we found a . . . pair of . . . legs disembodied at the waist. Male legs.”