Chapter Seven

“Hang in there,” she said, squeezing the person’s hand. “I’m going for help. I’m so sorry I’m not wearing a coat … I don’t have anything to cover you with. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

She raced to the back door and tried the handle. Locked. She lifted the knocker and banged it three times, then stepped back and bouncing lightly on her toes, waited for someone to open the door. “Come on, come on,” she muttered. When she thought she couldn’t wait one more second and was about to run back the way she’d come, to the scullery entrance, the door opened.

“Penny! What are you doing out there? You look half frozen,” Gwennie exclaimed, as Penny brushed past her into the hallway, desperate for the warmth of the house. “Where have you been? We waited ages for you to bring those pay packets—I finally went looking for you.”

“Oh! The envelopes,” said Penny, holding up her empty hands. “I don’t know. I might have left them in the scullery.” She shivered. “But never mind that now. There’s someone out there, and he’s hurt. Badly, I think.” She hurried down the passageway that led to the kitchen as Gwennie trotted along beside her. “Please tell me Bethan’s arrived. Has she?”

“Yes, she has. She’s talking to Emyr now. But the hotel staff are still waiting for their pay packets, so we need to …”

Penny interrupted her. “Sorry, Gwennie, there’s no time for that now. Please call an ambulance. Someone’s injured outside the back door. And he’s really cold. We need blankets.” By now they had reached the kitchen, where Mrs. Lloyd, who had been speaking to Florence, broke off and turned to Penny.

“I was just asking Florence how much longer she’s likely to be. Thomas and Bronwyn offered to drive us home, but I told them to go on and we’d get a ride home with you and Victoria. I hope that’s all right.”

“That’s fine, Mrs. Lloyd, I guess. Sorry, don’t mean to be rude, but I’ve got to speak to Bethan right away,” she said over her shoulder as she flew by. She hurried through the kitchen, past the three tired, bored waiters and a startled Victoria, and down the main corridor to the sitting room where Emyr and his girlfriend, Jennifer Sayles, were talking to a professional-looking woman in navy blue trousers with a matching jacket. A uniformed police officer sat at the side of the room, his legs crossed and a notepad balanced on his knee.

“Oh, Bethan!” exclaimed Penny. “I’m so relieved you’re here. Look, I’m sorry to interrupt, but there’s someone lying on the path near the back door. He’s still breathing, but just barely. He’s badly injured.” She waved an arm wildly in the direction of the kitchen. “I told Gwennie to call an ambulance. I don’t know who it is. It’s so dark out there I couldn’t see properly, but his clothes are soaked and he may have been out there for some time. We need blankets.”

Inspector Bethan Morgan of the North Wales Police and the uniformed officer with her sprang to their feet. “It’s dark out there,” Penny repeated. “You’ll need a torch.”

“Have you got one?” Bethan asked Emyr. “Would be faster than going back to my car to get ours.”

“Yes, there should be one or two in the butler’s pantry. Or somewhere,” he replied. “Gwennie’ll know. She’ll get one for you.”

As he and Jennifer seemed poised to follow her, Bethan motioned to them to remain where they were, and then beckoned to the uniformed officer. “Jones, you’re with me. Let’s go.”

Penny sat on the pale-green sofa while Emyr and Jennifer walked to the window and, with their backs to her, exchanged a few quiet words. As Penny contemplated them, Victoria and Mrs. Lloyd entered the room.

“Bethan told us we’re to wait in here with you,” Victoria said, “and the waitstaff are to remain in the kitchen.” She sat beside Penny on the sofa, and Mrs. Lloyd, her face a mask of eager confusion, sank into a chair beside an occasional table covered with family photos in silver frames.

“Will someone please tell me what’s going on?” she said. “Everybody’s rushing about, but nobody’s really telling me anything.”

“Someone’s been injured,” said Penny. “I found him outside. Gwennie called an ambulance.”

“Oh, dear,” said Mrs. Lloyd. “That doesn’t sound good. Do we know who it is?”

Penny shook her head, and after that, a mantle of silence settled over the room until Bethan returned, with Florence and Gwennie behind her. All eyes turned toward her, but the look on her face answered their unspoken question.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “He was beyond help.”

“Oh, no. That’s terrible,” said Mrs. Lloyd. “The disappearance of the Black Chair was bad enough, but now a man’s been found dead? What on earth happened?”

“We don’t know yet, Mrs. Lloyd.”

“The person,” said Penny. “Is it …” She had difficulty saying the name. “Is it Lane Hardwick?”

“No,” said Bethan.

Penny let out a sigh of relief. “Oh, thank goodness.” Bethan gave her a sharp look. “Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for that to sound so callous. It’s just that Lane, well, you remember him,” Bethan nodded. “Of course you do. That’s how you know it’s not him.” Bethan had interviewed Lane earlier that year in connection with an incident at the castle where he had been working as a volunteer gardener.

“Anyway, Lane was helping out at the dinner and then disappeared, so when I stumbled across the person out there, I was afraid it might be him, but it was so dark, I couldn’t tell. In fact, that’s what I was doing out there. When I found the door of the scullery open, I stepped out to see if Lane might have gone out that way and was lurking about somewhere in the garden.

“So while I’m terribly sorry for whoever’s out there, part of me’s glad it isn’t Lane. And that’s all I really meant.”

“Well, I can tell you that it’s not Lane, but I don’t know yet who it is.” Bethan held up one of the white pay envelopes Penny had retrieved from the butler’s pantry and then left in the scullery before she went outside.

“This was left over when Gwennie distributed the pay packets amongst the waitstaff and might provide a lead to the person’s identity. Apparently one of the waiters disappeared during the dinner, and this envelope is intended for him, so there’s a chance this missing waiter is the person out there. He was dressed in a black suit, like the other waiters.”

“Can you who tell us whose name is on the pay packet?” asked Penny.

“Rhodri Phillips.” Bethan looked from one face to the next. “Name mean anything to anyone?” As everyone exchanged blank looks, Penny asked, “How old would you say he was?”

“Hard to be precise, but I’d say late teens, early twenties.”

“It’s just that our receptionist is called Rhian Phillips, but I don’t think she has a son.”

“No,” agreed Victoria. “She has a daughter, a bit older than that.”

“Of course a lot of people around here share the same surname without being related,” said Bethan. “Just think how many folks are called Jones. Or my name, even. Morgan’s a really common surname.”

Recently promoted from sergeant, Inspector Bethan Morgan had known Penny and Victoria for several years and turned to them when she needed extra insight or felt she’d exhausted all official lines of inquiry and was running out of ideas. In her late thirties, with copper-coloured curls and blue eyes that could sometimes appear cold and steely and other times warm and sympathetic, Bethan’s approach to her work was methodical and measured. She was ambitious, and Penny believed she had a great future in policing ahead of her.

“So who hired the waitstaff?” Bethan asked.

“I did,” said Penny. “At least, I asked Mrs. Geraint at the Red Dragon Hotel if she could send over some staff for the evening, and she sent the ones who worked here tonight.”

“But you didn’t actually recruit them? That is, take applications, do interviews, take up references, and so on?”

Penny shook her head. “No. Mrs. Geraint assured me they were all good workers and were on her books, so that was good enough for us.” She glanced at Emyr, then turned back to Bethan. “Why? What are you thinking?”

“Oh, it’s way too early in the investigation for me to be thinking anything,” she replied smoothly. “It’s early days. Very early days. And anyway, you should know by now I’m not one to speculate. I go in the direction the evidence leads me.”

“Do you think the theft of the chair and the murder are related?” Victoria asked.

Bethan lowered her head, gazed at Victoria through narrowed eyes, and frowned, but in a tolerant, almost amused sort of way. “What did I just say? But the two may very well be connected. We’ll see what the investigation turns up. But until we know more, we treat this as a suspicious death.”

She directed her next words to Emyr. “That means you’re in for the full forensics, I’m afraid. The team is on its way to seal off the area where the body was found, and the pathologist has been notified. And although we’ll try not to disturb you, there will be big, bright lights overnight. We’ll be starting as soon as we can.”

“But why?” asked Emyr. “Can it not wait until morning?”

“No,” said Bethan. “It cannot. We don’t want to lose any bits of forensic evidence that might be out there, and the rain we had earlier isn’t helping. Oh, and we didn’t see any CCTV installations. You don’t have that as part of your security arrangements?”

Emyr grimaced and made a little noise of dismay. “Erm, well, we don’t really have any security measures like that in place,” he said. “We never thought we needed them. Times have changed, I guess.”

“CCTV would have been incredibly helpful. I recommend you get that seen to,” Bethan advised, with droll understatement. “And while you’re at it, get some better lighting out there. Motion detection sensors, the lot. Burglars love back doors with poor lighting. Or in your case, almost no lighting, which suits intruders even better.”

Mrs. Lloyd, who had been following all this with her mouth slightly open, reached down one side of her chair and then the other. “My handbag,” she exclaimed. “I must have left it in the kitchen.” She stood up and hurried out of the room.

“Now then,” Bethan continued, “the constable’s with the waitstaff and we’re making arrangements to drive them to the station. It’s late and they’re tired, so we may not get much out of them, but we have to separate them and talk to them as soon as we can while their recollections are fresh. And that’s the only staff? Just the three waiters?”

“Well,” said Penny, “depends who you call staff. I’m assuming you don’t consider Gwennie and Florence staff. There was a sous chef helping Florence in the kitchen with preparation, but he left before dinner service started, and a butler was hired for the evening.” Her eyes sought out Victoria’s. “Gosh, I can’t remember the last time I saw him. There’s been so much going on.”

“He was in the library for the unveiling of the chair, and I think that’s the last time I saw him,” said Victoria.

“Anybody?” said Bethan, gazing around the room. When there was no response, she cleared her throat before giving Emyr a meaningful glare. “It’s a shame the guests and apparently this butler fellow were allowed to leave. We would have liked to talk to everyone tonight. You’re going to have to give me everyone’s names and contact details.”

“Yes, I can certainly do that,” said Emyr, “but as I said to Penny earlier, no one left the dining room during dinner.”

“That doesn’t matter,” said Bethan. “They might have seen something at any time that could be relevant. They all need to be interviewed, so you’ll have to provide all their names.”

“I’m sorry,” said Emyr. “I wasn’t thinking clearly. Bronwyn was anxious to get home to Robbie—that’s her dog—and when she decided to leave, everyone else did, too. I asked them to stay, but, well, I couldn’t very well hold them all here against their will, could I?”

“I’m surprised they left,” said Penny, when Bethan did not reply to Emyr’s explanation. “You’d think they’d want to stick around to see what happens. I know I would have.” Her words evaporated into silence.

Finally, Emyr spoke. “Look,” he said, “I’m terribly sorry about the person who’s been found outside, this Rhodri Phillips, if that’s indeed who it is, but I’m desperately worried about the Black Chair. This is rather embarrassing, but it was on loan to me for a couple of nights, en route from the restorer back to its home at Yr Ysgwrn. Naturally, I assured the restoration committee that it would be perfectly safe here; I had no reason to think otherwise. Nothing like this has ever happened before.” He paused as his brows knitted together. “Although in hindsight, that kind of thinking seems foolish. It seems that I was a bit naïve.”

“More than a bit, if you don’t mind me saying,” commented Bethan.

Mrs. Lloyd, her handbag draped over her forearm, slid back into the room and returned to her chair.

“The thing is,” Emyr continued, “we’ve got to get that chair back. The Prince of Wales himself is coming to open the newly restored farmhouse, and it’s got to be in place for that.”

“And when is this due to take place?” Bethan asked. “The opening?’

“Three weeks.”

“Three weeks? In that case, we’d better get our skates on, hadn’t we? Well, now that I’ve seen what there is to see in the library, as I said before, forensics will be here to process everything. The library will be sealed tonight. So don’t go in there. Don’t touch the chair that was substituted for the stolen chair, and keep it under the black cloth. Unless the thieves are total idiots, which I doubt, given what happened here tonight, they were wearing gloves. And of course, people have been in and out of that room since the chair was taken, so I don’t think forensics will get much, but we might get lucky. You never know. Just leave everything as it is until we’ve finished up, inside and out, and we’ll let you know when that is.”

Her constable poked his head in the door and gave her a questioning look. She gave him a quick nod of acknowledgement and then turned her attention back to the people in the room. “Right, well, if nobody has anything else to tell me, we’ll be off. Got a long night ahead of us. We’ll be interviewing each of you over the next few days.”

“I’ll show you out,” said Emyr. He returned to the sitting room a few minutes later and said, “I’m afraid the police are going to focus on the death of that young man and the theft of the chair will take a back seat to that investigation. You hear all the time about the police having such limited resources. I mean, I can understand that someone’s death is more important than a chair, but still …”

“And those aren’t the only problems we’ve got,” said Penny.

Emyr groaned. “We’ve got a death and the theft of the Black Chair. Isn’t that enough?

“Lane,” said Penny. “Lane Hardwick’s gone missing.”

“Maybe he was upset because he dropped that tray in the hall earlier,” mused Gwennie. “He’s a very sensitive boy. You have to be very careful how you talk to him because he takes everything to heart so.”

“No, I think there’s more to it than that,” said Penny. “I know Lane. He didn’t run away because he dropped the tray. I’m pretty sure he ran away because he’s frightened. I’ve seen him do this before. He handles a bad or threatening situation the only way he knows how, by trying to escape it.”

“I hope he’s okay,” said Victoria, stifling a yawn. “But to be honest, I think we’d better call it a night. I’m sure we’re all exhausted and it’s time we were on our way. Since Bethan said to leave everything as it is, I’m just going to leave the harp there for now, and I’ll be back in the next day or two to collect it.”

“You can leave it here as long as you like,” said Jennifer. “It looks beautiful. It really suits this room, or maybe the room really suits it. Not sure which way round.”

The group stood up. “You’ll need to go out the back way,” said Gwennie, “so you can get your wraps.”

They trooped into the hall, and as they passed the library door, now sealed off with blue-and-white police tape, Penny paused.

“I can’t stop thinking about Lane. I’m sure he saw something tonight, or he knows something. And if the people responsible for this”—she gestured at the library door, meaning the space behind it where the Black Chair had stood—“if those people find him, he could be in real danger.”