Thirty-Eight

Ricky was the first to arrive on the scene. Though he had agreed as a courtesy to leave Kevan and Joanna de Vries on their own for the night, Tim had asked Ricky to stay as near to Laurieston House as possible. Accordingly, he had taken the solitary room available for hire above the Quadring Arms. It was a scrupulously clean room, but as ascetic as a monk’s cell and with a very hard mattress on the narrow single bed. Ricky had therefore been dozing uncomfortably when his mobile rang. It was Tim, informing him tersely that an accident had been reported at Laurieston House, a message that had just been relayed to Tim himself from Spalding police station.

Ricky’s car had been locked in the stable yard at the back of the pub for the night. In order to retrieve it, he would have had to knock up the landlord, who lived in a small adjoining cottage. It would be a three-minute walk at most to cross the green and cover the few yards along the main road, which Ricky deduced would be the swifter option. He dressed swiftly and ran down the pub stairs to the small entrance lobby. In passing, he noticed that two pairs of chairs had, rather quaintly, been placed in front of the entrances to the kitchen and the bar, as if that would deter overnight residents from entering them.

With the key that the landlord had given him, he quickly let himself out through the front door of the pub and sprinted across the green, his way guided by a night sky bright with stars and a gibbous moon. As he neared Laurieston House, he saw that the downstairs lights were on at 1 Laurieston Terrace, Harry Briggs’s house, and wondered if Kevan de Vries had summoned Briggs to help. He ran as fast as he could up the driveway to the house, his movements impeded somewhat by the depth of the gravel. As he rang the doorbell, he thought he could hear the siren of an ambulance sounding far away in the distance.

Kevan de Vries opened the door almost immediately. He was wearing a towelling dressing gown whose belt had come adrift, so that it hung loose to reveal a crumpled shirt beneath it. De Vries was both bare-legged and barefoot. His long comb-over was ruffled and lop-sided, either displaced by sleep or because de Vries had been raking his hands through it. His face was sallow and haggard, his eyes sunk deep into their sockets with ugly shadows beneath them. His expression was one of utter despair. Until he spoke, Ricky thought that he might have completely lost his reason.

“I thought you were the ambulance. Where’s the ambulance?” he demanded. “What are you doing here?”

“The ambulance is on its way. I’ve just heard it,” said Ricky, as soothingly as he could. “Would you mind letting me in, sir? DI Yates asked me to come. He said there’d been an accident.”

“I suppose that’s correct. It’s Joanna – my wife. She’s somehow managed to fall down the cellar stairs. I’ve checked for a pulse and can’t find one. I called 999 for an ambulance. I suppose the operator sent for you as well?”

“I’m not sure about that, sir, but I’m here now. Let me see her.”

“Of course. She’s . . . but you know your way to the cellar, don’t you? It’s because of you people that all this business with the cellar started.”

He continued to speak, but Ricky was barely listening. He brushed past de Vries and sped down the cellar steps. Kneeling beside Joanna de Vries, he tried to find a pulse in either her wrist or her neck, but he knew it was just a gesture and that the action was futile. It was clear to him that she’d been dead for some time. The body was already cooling. They needed to get Professor Salkeld here as soon as possible. He called Tim, who sounded considerably more awake and less irritable than when they had spoken ten minutes before.

“What exactly has happened?” Tim asked. “I couldn’t get much from the Boston switchboard. Some garbled story about a fall.”

“That’s correct,” said Ricky. “It’s Mrs de Vries. She seems to have fallen down the cellar steps – or even over the banister, judging from where she’s lying now. I’d say that her neck is broken.”

“You’re quite sure that she’s dead?”

“Positive. There’s absolutely no chance that she can be revived – the body’s getting cold. There’s an ambulance on its way, though.”

“What was she doing in the cellar? I asked Superintendent Thornton to tell de Vries that no-one was to go down there – and I left it carefully taped.”

“You did, sir. I don’t have an answer to that. I’d ’ve said that would be the last place she’d want to go.”

“Where’s de Vries now?”

“Upstairs somewhere. He didn’t want to stay here with me. I’m not surprised, poor bloke.”

“Yes. Well, don’t let him leave the premises. I’m coming straight there myself. And don’t let the paramedics move the body or, it goes without saying, attempt to take it away. I’ll try and get Stuart Salkeld there – though he won’t thank me for wrenching him from his bed at this hour.”

“I was going to suggest contacting him myself, sir. That’s partly why I called you.”

“Yes, well, perhaps you’d like to call him and get his customary earful when his sleep’s been disturbed. But on second thoughts I’d better do it myself. If you call him, he probably won’t come at all.”

“I’ll see you shortly, then, sir. Good luck.”

Ricky terminated the call, a gleam of amusement in his eye despite the circumstances. DI Yates had a few failings, most of them venial ones, and among the most endearing was his belief that he and only he could persuade difficult colleagues to co-operate. If he only knew, Ricky ruminated, how often Juliet Armstrong had smoothed his way to success.