Muriel Pablos managed a weak smile. She looked strained and tired, older than her forty-eight years. “Still the same,” she said quietly.
Vicky sighed. “Daughters are such a worry. It was always a pleasure to teach your Francesca… unlike some.” She looked at her charges whose volume was increasing with their restlessness. It was time to begin the tour before a minor riot broke out. “We’ll get started then, Muriel. Ready?”
Muriel watched, straight backed and silent, as Vicky brought some order to 8C. After the din had died down – and all chewing gum had been collected efficiently in a paper bag – she led the way slowly towards the house with a ragged procession of pubescent youth trailing behind.
The excitement began, from 8C’s point of view, when they were in the Great Hall. But it wasn’t the magnificent hammer-beam roof that grabbed their undivided attention. It was the scream… a desperate, primeval cry. It came when Muriel Pablos was in full flow, giving a colourful, fleas and all, description of Elizabethan life. The unearthly sound made her stop in mid-sentence.
“Sounds like someone’s being murdered, Miss,” a precocious thirteen-year-old girl speculated knowingly.
“Someone’s met the ghost, miss,” the smallest boy, who looked no more than ten, added with relish.
Then two crop-haired boys skulking by the window turned towards Vicky, their faces ash pale. “We saw him, Miss,” said one of them in an awed whisper. “He fell… like he was flying. He’s there… in the courtyard. Do you think he’s dead, Miss?”
Vicky and Muriel pushed their way through the crowd of children who were standing, still as startled rabbits. When they reached the leaded window which looked out onto the cobbled courtyard, Muriel knelt up on the window seat and her hand went to her mouth. “It’s Jonathan. He was working up in the tower room. I’ve always said that window was dangerous. I’ll have to call an ambulance… the police. The nearest phone’s in the office upstairs.” She scrambled to her feet, preparing for flight.
Vicky took a deep breath as she stood in the doorway watching Muriel hurry away up the great staircase. Then she turned to her class who had fallen uncharacteristically silent. “There’s been a terrible accident. As soon as Mrs Pablos gets back from calling the police, I’ll go out and see if there’s anything I can do. In the meantime can everyone stay away from the window,” she added firmly.
Surprisingly, 8C behaved with impeccable restraint until the police arrived.
“Suicide? Chucked himself from that open window up there?” Detective Inspector Anastasia Hardy looked up at the squat, square tower which glowered over the courtyard. “Not much mess, is there… considering?” She wrinkled her nose and turned away from the corpse of the fair haired, once handsome, man who lay at her feet in an untidy fashion.
The young doctor who was kneeling on the cobbles examining the body, glanced up at her. “Not suicide,” he said casually. “He was already dead when he hit the ground. That’s why there’s not much blood about.” He turned the body over gently. “Here’s your cause of death… look. Knife wound straight to the heart. And he’d been dead at least half-an-hour before he fell. Sorry to add to your workload, Inspector.”
Anastasia Hardy turned to the young uniformed constable standing a few feet away and gave him the benefit of her sweetest smile. She found charm worked wonders with subordinates. She herself had worked for a host of unpleasant superiors on her way up the career ladder and had always vowed never to follow in their footsteps.
“Constable Calthwaite, have you checked that window yet?”
“The door to the tower room’s locked, ma’am, and the only key was in the possession of Mr Pleasance… er… the deceased. I had a look through his pockets before the doc got here and I found it… a big old iron thing. With your permission, ma’am, I’d like to try it in the locked door… make sure it’s the right one,” said Joe Calthwaite, eager to make a good impression.
Anastasia nodded. She’d let Constable Calthwaite have his moment of glory… or disappointment. He was young and keen; his enthusiasm almost reminded her of her own when she had first joined the force… before paperwork and the exhaustion of combining police work with family life had set in.
Calthwaite chatted as he led the way up the winding stairs that led to the tower room. “Someone’s already talked to the staff, ma’am. It seems nobody was near the tower when Mr Pleasance fell. And everyone has someone to back up their story. There was a school party in the Great Hall and a couple of the kids actually saw him land in the courtyard. They heard a scream too. A costumed guide was with them… a Mrs Muriel Pablos: she called the emergency services. And their teacher, Mrs Vine… actually,” he said, blushing. “She used to teach me. I was in her class.”
“Really?” Anastasia smiled to herself. “So you can vouch for her good character?”
“Oh yes. She’s a brilliant history teacher. And I know Mrs Pablos too, but not very well. Her daughter, Francesca and I were in the same class at school. Francesca works at the museum now.” A secret smile played on the constable’s lips and Anastasia suspected that he’d once had a soft spot for Francesca Pablos.
“I think we’d better talk to the school party first then. They’ll be causing a riot if they’re shut up in that Great Hall for much longer.”
“Actually ma’am, they’re looking round the house. Mrs Pablos asked me if she could show them the other wing… the parlour, the kitchen and a few of the bedrooms. I didn’t think it could do any harm.” He looked worried, as though he might have made some dreadful mistake.
“You did the right thing, Constable. As long as they don’t go near the murder scene it’ll keep them out of mischief.”
“Here we are, ma’am… top of the tower.”
“Good,” said Anastasia. The climb had left her breathless. She told herself she should join a health club, take more exercise… if she could ever find the time.
PC Joe Calthwaite drew a large iron key from his pocket and placed it in the lock of the ancient door. It turned and the door opened smoothly.
The tower room was larger than Anastasia had expected; a square, spacious chamber lit by a huge window that stretched from floor to ceiling. A section of the window stood open, like a door inviting the unwary to step out into the air.
“Dangerous to leave that window open,” Anastasia commented. “Anyone could fall out.”
“Someone just has, ma’am.”
“And the doctor said he’d been stabbed… he’d been dead at least half-an-hour when he fell. Which means somebody threw or pushed the body out… not difficult… the window reaches to the floor.”
“But the door to this room was locked and the only key was in Pleasance’s pocket. He was locked in here alone. How does a dead man throw himself from a window in full view of a pair of spotty schoolboys? And he screamed, ma’am. Don’t forget they heard a scream.”
They stood in the middle of the room, looking round, noting every item, usual and unusual. A massive oak table with sturdy, bulbous legs stood against the wall opposite the window. On it lay piles of leaflets advertising the delights of Bickby Hall and other local attractions. In contrast, a large modern work table stood in the middle of the room. A painting, a portrait of a man in eighteenth-century dress, lay at its centre surrounded by an assortment of trays containing cleaning fluids and materials.
The curator of Bickby Hall had already told one of Calthwaite’s colleagues that the dead man cleaned and restored paintings. Jonathan Pleasance had divided his time and skills between the museum in the town centre and the various stately homes and art galleries round about. An evil smelling wad of cotton wool lay, marking the cheap plywood of the table: Pleasance must have been working, removing years of grime from the portrait, just before he died. Calthwaite sniffed the air. The chemical smell was strong. But there was something else as well.
Against the far wall stood a suit of armour, the kind found in stately homes and second rate ghost movies. As Calthwaite stared at it, it seemed to stare back. It leaned on a sword and the young constable’s eyes travelled downwards to the tip of the blade. “Ma’am. That stain on the sword. Looks like
