The Malcontenta

2

Kathy had hung back as the others filed out at the end of the early Monday morning briefing. Detective Inspector Tanner threw the last file behind him on to the table he was half straddling, and made some comment to one of the sergeants as he passed. They both laughed, and the other man replied, saying something about snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. Kathy waited for them to finish, their easy banter making her feel even more uncomfortable.

‘You watch the match on Saturday, Sergeant Kolla?’ Tanner asked suddenly, looking back over his shoulder. The other sergeant smirked and looked at his feet.

‘No,’ she said. ‘No, sir, I didn’t.’

‘No … well. You want me?’

‘I’d like a word, if you’ve got a minute, sir.’

She was very careful with her words, with the tone of her voice, with the expression on her face as she answered him. He had never been overtly rude to her, always listened to what she had to say, always given a reasoned response. Yet from the very first time they had met, she had felt his hostility. At that stage she had had no opportunity to give offence, yet it was palpably there from that moment, and had continued, unprovoked and unacknowledged, ever since. It was a chilling undercurrent to the formality with which he treated her and lack of interest in what she had to say. There was something rather frightening about it — the unreasonableness, the pointlessness of it and, worst of all, the way in which it had gradually inspired in her an equally unjustified aversion. She resented being forced to protect herself by allowing this feeling to grow, of antagonism towards someone she hardly knew, of being drawn towards a confrontation that lacked any reason. He was an admirable officer in many ways — he worked longer hours than anyone else at Division and, like Kathy herself, he had driven himself up the ranks without the benefit of a higher education. He had made no attempt to modify his broad Tyneside accent, which he sometimes seemed to exaggerate as a point of pride. He was tough, experienced and proficient. And he made Kathy’s skin crawl whenever she found herself in the same room with him.

The other sergeant left, closing the door behind him, and Tanner turned to face her. ‘Speak.’

‘I wondered if you would consider a change in my duties, sir.’

He stared at her for a while, his face expressionless, then lowered his eyes and picked at a thumb-nail. ‘Why would I do that?’

She took in a deep breath, steadying her voice. ‘Since I’ve been here, for the past six months, I’ve been working with Sergeant Elliot in Family and Juvenile Crime. I wondered whether I could have some time in other areas. Maybe with Sergeant McGregor in Serious Crime.’

‘Don’t you get on with Penny Elliot?’ He brought his eyes back up to hers as he completed the sentence, looking for her reaction.

‘We get on fine. It’s not that. I’ve learned quite a bit from working with her. She’s very good at it. But it’s not really the kind of detective work that I’m interested in.’

‘That you’re interested in,’ he repeated. ‘Wouldn’t you call domestic violence and child abuse serious crime?’

‘Of course. But I’d hoped to get some experience in organized crime — some murder investigations perhaps — while I’m here.’

‘Murder investigations,’ he again repeated her words, managing, without any particular emphasis in his voice, to make them sound vaguely absurd and self-indulgent.

Kathy flushed. When she spoke again, her voice was harder. ‘Under the terms of my transfer to County…’

‘I’m quite familiar with the terms of your transfer, Sergeant,’ he broke in, without raising his voice, ‘according to which you go wherever, in my best judgement, I think you should.’

He paused, giving her more of the cold eye. ‘What’s so special about murder investigations? You think they’re glamorous?’

She was about to tell him that she had already led one murder investigation while she’d been with ED Division at the Met, then remembered he knew that.

‘You don’t have some kind of unhealthy obsession with death, do you?’ he went on. ‘Some kind of fetish?’ He gave her an unpleasant little smirk.

There was a knock on the door. Without turning, Tanner barked ‘In’, and the sergeant he’d been speaking to earlier put his head round. He handed Tanner a note. ‘I’ll take it if you like, Ric.’ He was pulling a coat on over his jacket.

‘No.’ Tanner read the note, the sergeant waiting motionless with one arm in the coat. ‘No, Bill. I want you to stay with the cars.’

‘Shall I give it to Arnie?’

‘No. Sergeant Kolla here is very interested in unnatural deaths. This should appeal to her.’

The sergeant glanced at him, then at Kathy, shrugged and left. Tanner handed her the note. It read: 0855 hrs, 19 October. Request for CID assistance. Suicide hanging at Stanhope House Clinic, Edenham. Patrol car at scene. Police Surgeon notified.

‘Looks like the angels were listening to you, Sergeant.’ Tanner’s smile was very tight. ‘The angels of death, perhaps. It’s all yours. Your very own investigation. Take that sleepy bugger Dowling with you.’

He turned, swept up his files and walked out of the room. She had spoken to Penny Elliot about Tanner. Penny didn’t particularly like him, thought him fairly unsympathetic on a personal level, but couldn’t fault him in his dealings with her. Although he wasn’t much interested in the areas of domestic crime that she was concerned with, he had made sure that she had received a fair — and in recent years a growing — share of resources. She had experienced none of the animosity Kathy felt.

‘So it’s not common-or-garden sexism; it must just be me; Kathy had said, and Penny Elliot had smiled.

‘Well, he does like to control things. Maybe he doesn’t like the fact that you really belong to the Metropolitan Police and are only here for a year.’

Maybe. Kathy stared gloomily out at a wood of dark pines that flashed past the car window. Dowling was skirting the edge of Ashdown Forest on the way to Stanhope House. Making a report on a suicide wasn’t exactly what she’d had in mind when she’d finally worked herself up to approach Tanner. She wondered why the uniformed branch couldn’t have dealt with it themselves. ‘What is this place we’re going to, anyway? Any idea?’

She hadn’t worked with Dowling before and asked the question as much to make conversation as anything, as he’d been very quiet since they got in the car. He chewed his lip for a moment, concentrating on a bend.

‘Er … some kind of health farm, I believe, Sarge.’

‘Call me Kathy. You’re Gordon, aren’t you?’

‘Er … yeah, that’s right, Sarge.’

Sleepy Dowling, Kathy said to herself. Thanks a lot, Inspector Tanner.

There were puddles by the road from the recent rain, and the woods looked sodden. Through Edenham, a small market town whose streets were still almost deserted this Monday morning; lights on in the two glass-fronted supermarkets which had pushed their way in among the old brick and halftimbered houses of the high street; the largest building in the street a pub, formerly a coaching inn, the Hart Revived, whose painted sign of a deer drinking from a pool was suspended over the pavement. Beyond the town, more belts of dark conifers; then high hedges closed in on either side. Sporadic patches of mist crossed the road and Dowling slowed, peering forward through the windscreen.

‘Somewhere around here …’ he muttered. Then, with satisfaction, ‘There!’

A signpost marked STANHOPE indicated a narrow lane branching to the right. More hedges, then a cattle grid, beyond which the hedges stopped abruptly, opening up a rolling landscape of sheep-cropped grass dotted with small copses of oak and beech. They came to a river, maybe ten yards wide, which they followed until a bridge appeared, a single high arch of weathered grey stone decorated with elaborately carved balusters and urns.

‘Wow,’ Kathy said, and then repeated herself a moment later as Dowling carefully steered the car up to the crown of the arch, and a panorama of Stanhope House, half shrouded in a bank of silver mist, presented itself before them. A pale-grey cube made of the same stone as the bridge, in the same classical style and embellished with a tall pedimented portico, the Palladian villa’s original simplicity and symmetry had been ruined by a later wing grafted on to the left side, like the single ungainly claw of a hermit crab thrust out of a perfect shell.

On the far side of the bridge the metalled road curved away to the right, and a gravel road branched off it towards the house. Beside the junction stood a dark-green sign with white lettering, STANHOPE NATUROPATHIC CLINIC, beneath a symbol based on the design of the front portico of the house. The winding gravel road took them around the edge of the meadow which lay in front of the house, and soon revealed a red-brick stable block among the trees further to the left. Perhaps thirty cars — Jaguars, BMWs and Mercedes accounting for more than half — stood in the area between the stables and the house.

‘No sign of the patrol car,’ Dowling said, and then spotted a uniformed officer standing under the trees. He slowly rolled forward and Kathy lowered her window, filling the car with cool morning air sharp with autumnal smells of damp and rotting leaves.

‘You follow that path’ — the man pointed to a gravelled way leading off through the trees between the stables and the house — ‘past the staff cottages to a turning circle at the end. You’ll see the patrol car there. The body’s in another building in the grounds on the other side of the main house.’ He sounded cheerful. ‘Young male. One of the staff, apparently. My partner’s round there waiting for you with the bloke that found him and the Director of this place. I’ll stay here for the doc’

Kathy nodded. ‘Why did you call for CID?’ she asked.

He hesitated a moment, then, ‘Just to be on the safe side, Sarge.’ He grinned and stepped back to let them continue.

Once through the trees, they passed four identical brick cottages set out like doll’s houses along the curve of the drive, each fronted by a narrow bed filled with recently pruned rose bushes. Between the houses they caught glimpses of the high brick backdrop of a walled garden. Soon they saw the patrol car ahead of them, the driver’s door open, a man in uniform sitting behind the wheel, looking up from his notepad. A dozen paces away stood two men, watching them approach, waiting.

Kathy got out and walked briskly to the patrol car as the officer got to his feet. She introduced herself, keeping her voice low. ‘What’s going on?’

‘We answered a 999 call timed at 0832. Arrived here at 0845. The Director of the clinic, over there, Dr Stephen Beamish-hyphen-Neweir — the policeman spoke with a strong cockney accent and pronounced the name laboriously, raising one eyebrow, as if there were something dubious about it — ’met us at the front of the main building and brought us back here to a building they call the Temple of Apollo’ — again the raised eyebrow — ‘behind the trees over there.’ He pointed with his chin towards a dense thicket of rhododendron, yew and laurel, through the upper part of which Kathy could just make out a stone parapet. In contrast to his partner’s cheerfulness, this man’s forehead was scored with worry. He referred back to the notes on his pad.

‘The other bloke, name of Geoffrey Parsons, is the Estates Manager, looks after the grounds. One of his jobs is to open this temple each morning. Apparently, this morning he found a member of their staff, a Mr Alex Petrou, hanging in there. Stone cold, no chance of resuscitation. He ran back to the main house, found the Director. They both came back out here, then back to the house to ring for us.’

He tore the sheet of notes off the pad and handed it to Kathy, then closed the pad and looked at her uneasily.

‘Why did you ask for CID?’ she asked.

‘I think you should have a look down there, Sergeant. Without those two, I might suggest.’

‘OK.’ She looked over at the two men. There didn’t seem much doubt which was which. One was wearing an old tweed jacket over a thick sweater, and brown corduroy trousers tucked into green gumboots. He wore a tweed cap on his head, which was bowed as he slowly shifted his weight from foot to foot. The other man wore a black double-breasted suit, grey polo-neck sweater and black shoes. His thick black hair stood up from his scalp like a long crew-cut, and the neatly trimmed goatee beard on his chin had a silver streak. He stood motionless, staring intently at Kathy, with his hands clasped in front of him, black leather gloves adding to an effect both theatrical and funereal.

She walked over and he held out his gloved hand. His eyes were very dark, unblinking and hypnotic. She thought what an asset they would be in an interrogation.

His handshake was firm, his voice soft and, surprisingly, almost as broadly cockney as the patrol officer’s. She guessed he was in his forties.

‘I’m Stephen Beamish-Newell, Director of Stanhope, and this is our Estates Manager, Geoffrey Parsons.’

‘Detective Sergeant Kolla and Detective Constable Dowling from County CID, doctor. I understand you’ve both seen the victim and that he is known to you both?’

‘Of course. Alex Petrou.’

‘What can you tell me about him?’

‘Age about thirty, I’d have to check his file to be precise. He came to us last spring, around April I’d say. I took him on as a general physiotherapy assistant. We’re deeply shocked. I don’t think either of us was aware of any problems that might have led him to this.’

He glanced at Parsons, who merely shook his head.

‘I’ll need to get some more details from you, sir, but it’ll probably be more convenient in your office, with your records. I’d like to see the body first, and wait for the doctor. When I’m finished I’ll come back to the house and see you there.’

Beamish-Newell hesitated a moment, as if about to suggest something else, then nodded and turned to go. Parsons made to follow him.

‘I’d like you to stay with us if you would, Mr Parsons. To show us around.’

Parsons hesitated, nodded, lowered his head. Kathy looked more closely at him. Under the cap his face looked white. He was younger than she had first assumed, early thirties perhaps.

‘Are you feeling all right, sir?’

‘Yes.’ His voice was weak and he cleared his throat. ‘Got a bit of a shock. Just catching up with me, I think.’

‘Of course. Do you want to sit in the car for a while?’ He shook his head, cleared his throat again. ‘No, no. It’ll help if I walk.’

He led them to a narrow gap in the wall of vegetation and into a tunnel of dripping rhododendron branches. It led out on to a lawn which stretched away to their right, down to the rear facade of Stanhope House. Ornamental pools and terraces were laid out on the axis of the house, and carefully clipped yew hedges and pergolas contained the gardens on the far side.

Parsons turned left, leading them towards a classical temple front, now visible on a knoll, facing the house. They climbed the stone steps of the plinth up to a row of four columns supporting the pediment. Tall glass-panelled doors formed an opening in the stone facade. Parsons pulled out a thick bunch of keys and, with some difficulty, unfastened the lock.

‘I’d better hang on to that key, Mr Parsons,’ Kathy said. ‘Why don’t you wait out here with my colleague while the constable shows me round? I’d like you to think over the sequence of exactly what you did before and after discovering the body, so we can take a statement from you.’

Parsons nodded and removed his cap to wipe his forehead with his sleeve. His hair was lank, sandy-coloured, thinning on top. It was plastered to his head with recent sweat.

The interior of the temple was lit by a dim green light. It smelled strongly of damp and mould, and the air was warmer than the outdoor chill. Rows of wooden chairs were set out on each side of a central aisle within the narrow chamber, whose walls were lined with columns and panels of marble — dark green and black and, in a few places, the startling blue of lapis lazuli. Overhead a plain vault ran the length of the building and was punctured towards the far end by a dome with a small lantern toplight in its centre.

Kathy and the patrol officer walked down the aisle until they stood beneath the dome. In front, a brass rail separated them from what in a church would have been the chancel. Here, however, Kathy was surprised to find that the floor was cut away, revealing a lower chamber. On the wall on the far side of the void hung a large oil painting, so faded that Kathy had to peer to make out the figure of a naked youth on an open hillside, gesturing towards a glowing cloud. Puzzled, she looked round, her eyes coming to rest on the series of heavy brass gratings set into the marble floor. With a shock she realized that the biggest one, on which she was standing, was cast in the pattern of a large swastika. A red nylon rope was looped round the centre of the broken cross.

‘That’s where he is,’ the uniformed man murmured. ‘Under your feet.’

‘Oh.’ Kathy’s voice echoed up into the dome. ‘How do we get down there?’

He took her to one side of the chamber, where a door opened into a narrow spiral staircase leading to the lower level.

‘Aren’t there any lights?’ Her voice sounded muffled within the stone shaft.

‘Apparently the wiring is dodgy — they’ve cut everything off except one small light at the organ console, and a heating circuit to keep the damp out of the organ chamber. Watch your step at the bottom here.’ He flashed his torch at the stone floor at her feet. She was now standing in the lower chamber, below the oil painting.

‘There’s an organ?’

‘Yeah. The main part of it — the pipes and so on — are in a pit below the floor of the hall upstairs. That’s what the floor grates are for — to let the sound out. This area down here is where the choir or orchestra or whatever would be. The idea apparently was to fill the space upstairs with sound, without the audience being able to see where it was coming from.’

‘Bit weird.’

‘Yeah.’

He turned, and the beam of his light swept round the wall to a recess below the brass rail at the end of the upper floor. The body of a man was suspended there.

Kathy froze, staring at the figure, taking it in.

The space beneath the grating was almost as high as a normal room, and she could make out the stops and foot-pedals of an organ console behind him. The organist’s stool was lying on its side below his feet, as if kicked away. Her eyes traced the taut red rope from the back of his head of thick, black, wavy hair, up the short distance to the underside of the grille, then diagonally down to a series of loops tied around part of the body of the console. He was dressed in a green tracksuit, with bright white Reeboks on his feet.

There was something odd about his posture, she thought, although she had never seen a hanging in the flesh before. He didn’t look slack, like the photographs she had seen on detective courses, where the bodies looked like pathetic sacks of potatoes. He seemed hunched, his right arm half drawn up across his body, and his legs didn’t reach to the same length.

‘Was he handicapped, do you think?’ She found she was speaking in a whisper.

‘Maybe he was beaten.’

‘Why do you say that?’

‘Look.’ He moved closer to the figure, pointing the torch at its head. Although the stark contrast of light and shadows from the flashlight obscured it at first, Kathy soon made out what he was talking about. The flesh looked puffy and distorted, its colouring blotchy, with a strong pattern of white and dark-purple areas.

‘Could be bruising, do you think?’ the officer asked.

‘Mmm. The doctor will tell us. Anything else?’

‘Down there, in the corner.’

He swung the beam away from the body and down into a narrow space at one end of the organ console. All Kathy could see was something black.

‘I can’t make it out,’ she said. He handed her the torch without a word. She knelt down within a couple of feet of the thing — two things, she realized, both black, made of leather. One was a bunch of thongs, with a handle shaped like a phallus.

She straightened up. ‘I see. What’s the other thing, with the whip?’

He frowned, shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I didn’t touch anything. I thought it might be a glove, or a hood. I’m assuming that the two who found him didn’t spot them. Without a torch you wouldn’t pick them out. They only had the organist’s console light to see by. That’s the only light in the whole building. Apparently it was on when Parsons came in this morning. He noticed the faint glow through the grating.’

‘Who turned it off?’

‘They did, when they left to phone us.’

It seemed an odd, parsimonious gesture.

‘The switch is over near the foot of the stairs.’ With his torch he showed her the white line of a new length of cable which was tacked to the wall and ran to a switch. She went over and turned it on. There was just enough light to illuminate the organ controls. Kathy could imagine Parsons’ shock as he went down the stairs and saw the dangling figure silhouetted against the glow.

They heard the creak of the front doors opening, and the voice of the other uniformed constable echoed above them, ‘Sergeant… Hello … You there?’

‘We’re down here,’ Kathy called out.

‘I’ve got the doctor.’

He was young, fresh-faced and almost completely bald. He shook hands with Kathy enthusiastically and followed her over to the body.

‘Can we have more light?’

‘I’m afraid not. At least, it may take half an hour or more for me to arrange it. We can get some more torches, though.’

‘Yes, that might help.’ He held the corpse’s wrist for a moment, peering at its head. ‘Long gone.’ ‘How long?’

The doctor shrugged. ‘Twelve hours at least, I’d guess. But that’s only a guess. I’d like to take his temperature, but …’ He took the torch from the uniformed man and looked closely at the head and hands. Finally he stepped back and shook his head. ‘I’m not going to touch this,’ he said. ‘You’d better see if Gareth Pugh is available. If he is, he’ll want to see it undisturbed. If he isn’t, then I’ll do it.’

‘Gareth Pugh?’ Kathy asked.

‘He’s the County’s Senior Forensic Pathologist. Professor Pugh. Haven’t you come across him? I’m sure he’ll want to do the post-mortem if he can. I’ll try to call him from my car if you like. And I think you should get some lights fixed up for him.’

Kathy nodded. ‘And some SOCOs?’

‘Well, that’s up to you, really, but I’d say so. Certainly a photographer. In fact, you’ll probably need everything.’

‘You think the circumstances are suspicious?’

He shrugged. ‘Looks pretty odd to me.’

For the first time Kathy let the sense of anticipation that had been building in her since she first saw the body, come to the surface.

‘Good. You go ahead and contact the pathologist, then, doctor. I’ll get things organized down here.’ She turned to the two uniformed men, telling one to remain there and touch nothing, and the other to return to the car park to direct people to the temple as they arrived.

‘Several people have come over and asked me what’s going on while I’ve been stood out there,’ the cheerful one said.

‘Don’t tell them anything. And both of you, don’t mention anything about the things in the corner — to anyone.’ She saw him smirk. ‘I mean that,’ she glared at him. ‘Not a soul.’

Dowling and Parsons were sitting talking on the steps at the front of the temple. They scrambled to their feet as they saw her come pacing down the aisle.

‘Mr Parsons, would you take a seat inside, on one of those chairs? I won’t be a moment.’

She drew Dowling away down the steps. ‘Gordon, get on the car radio and send a scene-of-crime team out here. The photographer in particular — right away. Also a mobile generator — there’s no light down there.’ She looked around. ‘It’ll have to stand out here, so they’ll need plenty of cable.’

He was startled by her energy. ‘What’s going on, Kathy?’

‘Looks like we’ve got a suspicious death, Gordon.’ She grinned at him. ‘Something to brighten up your Monday morning, so get moving. Oh, and Gordon … try not to get Inspector Tanner when you radio through.’

He looked blank, then turned and scrambled off down the path.

Kathy went back into the temple. She was wearing her black woollen winter-coat, which almost reached her ankles, with the useful deep pockets. From one she drew out a small dictating machine and checked the tape. ‘Mr Parsons — ’ she pulled a chair round to face him and showed him the machine in her hand — ‘I’ll use this if you don’t mind. My shorthand’s hopeless.’ Big smile. He gave her a worried look, alerted, like Dowling, by the light in her eyes.

‘How are you feeling now?’

A non-committal shrug. He still looked very pasty.

‘I’d like you to describe for me exactly what you did this morning, leading up to discovering the body, and then afterwards.’

‘I …’ he cleared his throat. ‘I got up as usual, around six-thirty, got dressed and then came out.’ More throat-clearing. T was on my way to the stable block, but I came here first to open up the temple — Dr Beamish-Newell likes it to be open during the day for patients to come in and sit if they want, and to try to air the place.’

‘The doors were locked as usual?’

He nodded, ‘Yes, I’d locked them myself last evening. It was just getting dark, about a quarter to five.’

‘And what time was it when you came to open them this morning?’

‘Oh … about eight. I’m not sure exactly.’ A fit of throat-clearing. ‘Sorry.’ He wiped a hand through his hair.

‘And there isn’t another door into the building?’

‘Yes, there is. Down in the lower chamber. There’s a service door from a flight of outside steps at the back. That door is bolted from the inside.’

‘All right, so you opened this glass door.’

‘Yes. I don’t normally spend any time here when I open up. This time I just noticed a couple of chairs that were out of line, so I came in and straightened them.’

‘Which chairs?’ Kathy interrupted.

He hesitated, ‘Those two, over there, at the end of the first row. Anyway, then I thought I could see the organ light showing in the floor grille, there. I went over and saw the loop of rope. I didn’t understand what it was. I couldn’t really make it out through the grille, so I went downstairs. Then I saw him.’

‘Did you recognize the rope?’

‘The rope?’ Parsons blinked with surprise.

‘Yes, the type. Have you seen anything like it around here?’

‘Er … I’m not sure.’ He sounded confused. ‘Can I think about that? Offhand … I don’t think so.’

‘All right. Did you recognize the man straight away?’

‘Yes … well, no, not straight away. The light was behind him. I had to get fairly close.’ Parsons was breathing heavily, his face stark white.

‘You were sure that he was dead?’

‘Oh yes. He was so cold!’

‘So you touched him?’

Parsons nodded. ‘His hand …’ He was beginning to look as if he might pass out. Kathy reached forward to steady him. ‘Suppose we get you a drink of water, or tea?’ Parsons nodded, sagging.

‘Put your head between your knees. Go on. That’s right … Better?’

The bowed head nodded.

Kathy called out to the patrol officer and sent him off to find some water. ‘And tell Dowling to hurry up and report back to me,’ she shouted as he ran off.

She had to contain her impatience as the minutes passed. Parsons remained stooped with his head between his knees. Eventually the doctor reappeared at the door. He examined Parsons briefly, then nodded to the patrol officer, who had followed him in with a flask. While Parsons drank, the doctor indicated to Kathy to step out under the portico of the temple.

‘More police brutality?’ he asked.

She smiled. ‘That’s right. But you won’t find any marks on his body.’

‘Unlike the one downstairs. I got through to Pugh. We were lucky. He’ll make himself available right away. About twenty minutes, he says. I’d like to stay if you don’t mind — see the Welsh Wizard in action.’

‘He’s good, is he?’

‘By repute.’

‘Can I continue with Parsons?’ Kathy asked.

‘Oh yes. It’s just mild shock. I could give him something, but he’s OK. I might go and wait for Pugh in the car park.’

Somewhat restored, Parsons completed his account of finding Petrou’s body, running back to the house to tell Beamish-Newell, returning to the temple for the Director to see for himself, and then remaining on the temple steps for the police to arrive. While he was talking, Dowling returned and gave Kathy a thumbs-up.

‘All right, Mr Parsons, I’ll let you get off and have a cup of tea. Just before you go, though, could you give me a quick run-down on this place? How big, how many people, and so on?’

‘Well, the Director will have accurate figures, but the estate covers almost a hundred acres. It used to be much bigger, but most of the land’s been sold off. The meadows that remain are leased to a farmer; the rest is the house and grounds — about twenty acres roughly.’ Parsons had become animated, clearly relieved to change the subject.

‘We have sixty-two guest rooms in the upper floor of the house and west wing, plus treatment and common rooms and kitchen and offices and so on in the ground floor and basement. There’s six staff rooms in the attic of the house, and there’s the four staff cottages — one for the Director, one for the family of one of the married staff, and one each shared by four male and four female staff.’ It came out in a rush and he stopped suddenly, breathing heavily.

‘So there are sixty-two patients here?’

‘Well, that’s the number of rooms. Some are double. The most we can accommodate is seventy-four, but at this time of year, I don’t know, there might be fifty or sixty.’

‘And how many staff?’

‘In the brochure we say it’s one to one.’ Parsons phrased it carefully.

‘What, seventy-four staff?’

‘Well … maybe if you count all the part-time cleaners and cooks and gardeners and the like…’

‘Come on. Realistically, how many staff have been in and out of this place in the last twenty-four hours?’

He shrugged, ‘I don’t know … Thirty? Forty? The Director or the Business Manager would be able to tell you.’

‘Yes, I’ll get to them. I just wanted an idea. And of those staff, what, about a dozen live in the grounds?’

Parsons counted in his head. ‘Yes, six in the attic and nine or ten in the houses, plus the Director and his wife.’

‘And what about you, where do you live?’

‘In the attic’

‘And Petrou?’

‘Yes, in the attic too.’

‘So when did you last see him alive?’

Parsons’ face clouded anxiously again. ‘I don’t know … I’ve been trying to remember. Last night — Sunday night — staff often go out. There’s always a recital or something for guests in the house after dinner. I had to spend all my free time over the weekend studying for this course I’m doing. I don’t remember seeing Alex last evening at all, not at dinner or anything. Before that … I don’t know … my mind’s a blur.’

‘Don’t worry, relax, it’ll come back to you. We’ll be asking everybody that question, so give it some thought. What was he like?’

‘Alex? Well … we weren’t close friends or anything. He hadn’t been here that long.’

‘About six months, the Director said. You’d been living next door to him for six months. Two single men. You were both single, weren’t you?’

Parsons flushed. ‘Yes, though I’m engaged. I tend to spend most of my spare time with Rose, except just lately when I’ve had all this studying. Of course, when he first arrived we chatted. But once he’d got settled … We didn’t have much in common, I suppose.’

‘Did he have friends on the staff? Was he sociable?’

‘Yes … he was quite … outgoing. Went out a lot. Several of the girls were interested in him. He was sort of … glamorous, you know, him being a Mediterranean type, and with his accent and that.’

‘He was foreign?’

‘Yes. He came from Greece.’

Through the glass doors Kathy noticed a movement of lime-green Day-Glo jackets down the path. She turned back to Parsons. ‘All right. We’ll leave it there for the moment. What you might do for me now is go to the house, tell Dr Beamish-Newell that I may not get to see him for another hour or so, and ask him if he could start organizing a list of everyone who was in the grounds over the past twenty-four hours, in categories — staff, guests, others. OK?’

‘Yes …’ Parsons hesitated. ‘Is this normal?’ he asked timidly. ‘I mean, all these procedures … for a suicide.’

‘Any sudden death has to be thoroughly investigated. Don’t worry, we’ll be out of your hair soon enough.’

They stepped out under the portico. Head down, shoulders stooped, Parsons set off across the grass towards the house. A light drizzle had set in, making the rhododendron leaves glisten behind the two men pulling the generator up the path. Beyond them a second pair burst through the trees. Kathy recognized the doctor, pointing the way to a lean, hawk-faced man and having difficulty keeping up with his long stride.

Kathy looked back to Stanhope House.

A hundred people, she thought, ninety-nine of them about to begin twittering about what happened to glamour boy.