The ensuite, like the rest of the honeymoon suite, was technically a crime scene. But there was nowhere else to hold a private conversation, and nobody, not even Sherlock Holmes, was going to be in a lab analysing fibres and fingerprints any time soon, judging from the snow still being thrown against the windows. Phone in hand, Lestrade locked himself into the little bathroom, listening for a moment to John trying to calm down Stewart Hayden. So far Sherlock hadn't ventured a word, but that wasn't a bad sign. It meant he was mentally busy.
Commissioner Tom Hale was easygoing and got on well with Lestrade, on the half-dozen or so occasions that they'd spoken in person. He even, theoretically, got on with Sherlock Holmes. That said, Lestrade imagined that nobody would be impressed with being woken at half-past three on New Year's Day to be told about a murder that had happened nowhere near his jurisdiction, and his instincts were right on the money.
"Unless you can find someone there who outranks you," Hale said once he'd taken in what had just happened, "you need to head up this investigation, Lestrade. No time to be lost."
Lestrade gritted his teeth. Even though he outranked Donovan, she was procedurally and professionally capable of heading up the investigation herself. She'd just in the last week found out she'd lost a promotion to Detective Inspector to Eamon Alexander, the Met's biggest lick-arse, and would probably jump at the chance to have another Solve on her record to rub in Alexander's face. He decided at the last second not to point this out to Hale and bring it up with her later. "Yes, sir," he said instead. "I've got Detective Sergeant Donovan and Detective Constable Dyer here with me. Sherlock Holmes and John Watson, too."
"What are you all doing in bloody Yorkshire? Party, is it?"
"Wedding, sir. Mine."
"Oh." Hale stifled a yawn. "I had no idea you were on leave. Well, I'm sorry to hear it, but it's hardly my fault you're snowed in for the foreseeable. Not such balmy weather down this way, either—cold as a witch's tits, if you don't mind the expression. What do you need to get on with this?"
"A forensics team and twenty detectives," Lestrade said wryly. "But since the roads are all closed and nobody's allowed in or out, I suppose I'm going to have to make do. So I need authority granted to deputise suitable civilians for investigative work."
"Ah, see, that one's difficult, because-"
Lestrade rolled his eyes. "So far as I can see, there's no connection between the other wedding party and mine," he said.
"Not that you know of, but that's what an investigation is for, if I've got it right. And it's going to be damned awkward if you deputise one of your guests and it turns out they're the long-lost sibling of the bride and murdered her for an inheritance or something."
"Marriage invalidates any standing will, so I don't think that's likely." Lestrade heard the irritation in his own voice, but couldn't quite bring himself to pull it back. "What's more likely is that with almost no resources, the killer will get away with this. And depending on their motive, they may go at it again. While we're all locked in with him, her, or, God help us, it."
This last possibility wasn't as far-fetched as it first sounded. A year before Sherlock had met John, Greg had employed his services on the case of a murdered woman in Kensington. She'd been found in her own home, dismembered, with her nose, lips and eyelids ripped off and her eyes gouged out. The culprit had turned out to be the woman's (supposedly) tame pet chimpanzee, who'd been having a bad day on top of a difficult adolescence and had turned on her when she'd tried to lock it in for the night.
Down the line, Hale sighed. "Lestrade-"
"Or," Lestrade continued, "I could just shut the room up with the body in situ on the floor, and do nothing until the roads are open and we can get techs in to examine the evidence."
"That sounds like a cock idea."
"Of course it's a cock idea. The case will be stone cold by then, and the less we say about what the body will be like the better. My idea is to get onto things right away, especially while the only consulting detective in the world is literally a captive audience. I need human resources. Sir. And since I can't get them from outside this place, the next best thing would be to get them from among people I know and trust."
Hale sighed again. The late hour and horrible weather was working to Lestrade's advantage; more than anything, Hale wanted to get off the phone and go back to sleep. "Right," he finally said. "Deputise whoever you need to. And keep the court case in mind at all times."
However roughly he put it, Lestrade had to admit that Hale had a point. If he caught the alleged murderer and this went to trial, he'd have to get up and explain to a defence team and jury just whom he'd allowed to be involved in the investigation, and why. It could, done badly, be a godsend to a defence team. All they had to do was argue that he'd been biased, that he'd deputised someone who was biased or incompetent or who had slipped up, and the entire thing would be thrown out of court on a technicality.
There was a laminated printed sign next to the bathroom mirror asking guests to please go easy on the plumbing, as it was believed to be original and installed in the 1890s. He wrapped his hand in a dry flannel and turned the squeaking, groaning tap on. The water that eventually came out of it was icy, but that was exactly what he needed to splash on his face to wake himself up before he opened the ensuite door again.
Any hopes he'd had that he was having a particularly vivid nightmare were fast fading. Elizabeth Hayden lay dead on the floor, exactly the way he'd left her. Stewart Hayden was nowhere to be seen—presumably either John had convinced him to leave or Sherlock had forced him to—but Donovan had made her way into the room and was standing alert and silent near the closed door. Beyond it, they could all hear Dyer practically begging distraught staff and guests to step away from the doorway. John knelt on the floor beside the dead woman, gingerly examining the rents and bloodstains on her negligee; but for some reason, Sherlock seemed completely uninterested in the corpse. He was prowling around the periphery of the room, examining the window, the curtains, the bed, the door frame.
"Right," Greg said. "So I just got onto Hale, who's in a right mood after being woken up, and apparently, I'm in charge of this investigation."
There was an unspoken, sarcastic coda: Even though I'm on leave, got married fourteen hours ago, and I'm supposed to leave for my honeymoon on Thursday.
"Congratulations," John said. "So does someone want to explain to me what the hell happened?"
Greg looked at Sherlock. "I wasn't here for the beginning of it," he said. "And I think Sherlock came even later. The victim's name is Elizabeth Hayden. Not sure of her age or origins yet, except that she got married here yesterday, an hour after Mel and I did."
Sherlock opened his mouth, as if to fill in those scintillating details, but then thought better of it and let Lestrade continue.
"Our room's next door… well, 'round the corner, anyway," he was saying. "Both of us, me and Mel, woke up to a hell of a racket—someone banging on the door, a lot of shouting. We both assumed at first that there was a fire. We came out to see what was going on and there was probably a dozen people in the hall already. One of the night staff—she's out there now, tiny blonde girl in a black shirt, I don't know her name—had the keys in her hand and was trying to open the door, but nothing doing, apparently."
"Could you hear anything from behind it?" Sherlock asked him. And then, seeing John's questioning look, "The night porter's name is Allison Marr, if anyone's interested in the facts of the case. She came and woke me—"
"Yeah, I asked her to," Lestrade interrupted.
"Yes, but my point is, by the time I arrived on the scene, the door had already been broken down and Stewart Hayden had run roughshod over the crime scene. I need to know what it was like before I saw it."
"I thought," Lestrade began slowly, "that I could hear a kind of coughing noise from behind the door, just for a few seconds, but it was kind of hard to hear over the commotion everyone else was making. I definitely got the impression someone was alive in there."
"And?"
"It all happened fast from the time I got there—half a minute, if that. One of the other staff members—I heard the young woman call him Tim—came through the crowd with a fire extinguisher and knocked the door in with it. We found Mrs. Hayden on the floor, pretty much like she is now. And here's the thing: she was on her own in here, and no knife anywhere near her. Or anywhere else in the room, as far as I can see. Stabbed to death alone, in a locked room, with an invisible weapon."
"That's impossible," Sherlock protested. He sounded as if he wasn't sure whether to be intrigued at what might be a Level 10 mystery, or annoyed that the universe had come up with something it shouldn't have.
"Of course it's impossible. But it happened, didn't it. I don't know about you, but I'm impressed."
Sherlock brushed aside the quip. He seemed to be deep in thought for a few seconds. "Were you first in the door?" he finally asked.
"Practically." Lestrade thought back. "The first person in was Elizabeth's mother, I think," he said. "But the husband reached her first. A young guy with red hair, that Allison Marr or whatever her name is, and another woman who I think was the bridesmaid. She sat down on the floor and started having hysterics. Mel's been with her since."
"No weapon," Sherlock repeated to himself, grey eyes gleaming with interest as the possibilities of the case presented themselves. "Behind a locked door…"
"Good one, isn't it?" Lestrade said amiably. "John, any thoughts?"
"Not many," John said from the floor, rocking back on his heels and gesturing to the dead woman. "Stabbed twice. Or at least, there's two holes in her clothing. Very little blood. Most of her bleeding was probably internal, and I'd say she died quite quickly. Here, you can see the blue marks around her mouth." He pointed. "Choked on her own blood, is my guess. We'll know more when Molly comes down to have a look."
Recruiting a heavily pregnant woman to examine a corpse at nearly four in the morning didn't sound like a great idea to Greg Lestrade, but since it seemed like a great idea to her husband and doctor, he decided not to give his opinion.
"Sir," Donovan said from the doorway, speaking up for the first time. "What do you want me to do?"
Over his career, Greg Lestrade had developed certain skills in how to control and move a crowd on the verge of becoming uncontrollable. After joining the police force in 1982, barely out of school, he'd spent the first eighteen months in a uniform and high visibility vest, usually on street patrol in the worst parts of Bristol's nightclub district or knocking on the same flat doors every week, breaking up drunken brawls and domestic violence incidents. He'd had a lot to prove, since he'd been conspicuously good-looking - almost beautiful - at eighteen. His first nickname on the force had been 'Pretty Boy', and he'd been the victim of some merciless and sometimes violent hazing.
But he'd got around all that by being easy-going and likeable, and distinguished himself professionally by being hard-working and persistent. After the eighteen months from hell, he'd been promoted to a Level 2 PSU officer, trained in Public Order and Riot Control. It had been Thatcher's Britain at the time, and the IRA were busy, too; it had been a relief when he'd finally earned his way out of the Uniforms and into plain clothes detective work, and finally into the Bristol Murder Investigation team as a Detective Constable, several months before his thirtieth birthday.
"We need everybody out," he said to Donovan. "Well out. In the hall downstairs where they had the reception. All of them, together. But try to make sure nobody's talking too much—stirring things up or trying to get their stories straight. From there, we'll run a few preliminary interviews, identify the most likely suspects, and concentrate further on them, narrow things down."
Donovan nodded. "What about our lot?" she asked. "I don't mean Jake and me, either. I mean, your normal guests, like, your family and Mel's friends."
For a second, Greg had almost forgotten that there even were other guests. "Okay," he said, exhaling. "The best thing would be to instruct all our guests to go back to their rooms and stay there for the time being. Except I want Matthew to go to Lorraine, and Hayley to head down to Molly and offer to look after Charlie while Molly's helping us here."
Donovan blinked. "She's going to love that," she warned. "Suitable job for a woman, and all that."
"I don't care. She's not a police detective, consulting detective, doctor, forensic psychologist or forensic pathologist, and Charlie knows and trusts her, so she's going to have to just cooperate for now."
"Good luck," Donovan muttered.
"And to you, since you're going to be the one to tell her," Lestrade said cheerfully. "I need to find Mel. And we all need to write down statements as to exactly what we were doing and what we saw from the time we woke up. Quickly. Before we all start doubting what we saw."
Donovan nodded. "I'll come down with you," she said. "I've lost my husband somewhere. He's probably still in the pub downstairs."
"That's the other thing." Lestrade stopped in the doorway with her. "This goes for everyone," he said, looking at Sherlock and then at John. "It's New Year's Day. A lot of drinking went on last night. I know I didn't crash until nearly two, and that was, what, just over an hour and a half ago? I feel all right, but there's no way I'm sober."
"I'd hesitate to get behind the wheel right now," Donovan admitted. "Had my last drink just past one, I think. Got any solid, medical ideas on how to sober up, Dr. Watson?"
John shrugged. "Sleep it off," he said. "Which, I know, you can't. Take a cold shower, drink a pint of water, get something to eat and some strong coffee. That's about all you can do without a saline drip and a stomach pump."
Lestrade ran his hand through his hair. "Yep, coffee right now sounds good," he said wearily. "I'll tell the staff that the best thing they can do to help the investigation is make sure we're all caffeinated..."
John was examining the rents in the dead woman's negligee again, and barely noted as Lestrade and Donovan left, shutting the door behind them. He did, however, hear Lestrade using his Public Order voice to give an order for rubberneckers and all other interested parties to clear from the hall immediately, Or Else.
"Having fun over there?" he finally said to Sherlock, who was over against the far wall, examining the windowsill.
"Bolted from the inside," Sherlock muttered.
"What?"
"The window. It's got a slide bolt, like the door, and it's bolted from the inside," he said. "And even if it wasn't, it's a third-floor window with an inch-wide sill and a sheer drop into a raging snowstorm."
"Circus performer?" John suggested, only half-seriously. Sherlock, straight-faced, shook his head.
"Not this time," he said. "No human being, not even a circus performer, can pass through a bolted window without damaging it."
"Chimpanzee?"
"John, can you even hear yourself?"
"Sorry." It was possible, John thought, that he wasn't as sober as he needed to be just then, either. Good thing Molly was. He kept his thoughts to himself for a few moments while Sherlock examined the curtains and the carpet around the window. Finally, he came over and dropped down on his heels beside John to examine the body. He took the dead woman's hand roughly, turning it palm-up and examining her nails for a few seconds.
"No defensive wounds," he finally said.
"Nope. Not that I can see," John agreed. "But that's more Molly's department than mine."
"I spoke with this woman a few hours ago," Sherlock muttered. "She told me someone had been threatening to kill her."
John's eyebrows shot up. "Really? Who?"
"If she'd told me, I'd probably have solved the crime by now."
"Oh." John flinched slightly from the verbal finger-slapping and subsided, reasoning that further details about Elizabeth's possible murderer would only come out when Sherlock was good and ready to give them. In any case, he was more interested in Sherlock now than in the body of Elizabeth Hayden. There was something in his heavy mannerisms that he didn't like. "Hey, Sherlock," he finally said, voice barely above a whisper. "What did you mean?"
"Hmm?"
"When you came and got me." John sought out eye contact with Sherlock, who seemed determined to look at just about everything in the room except his friend's face. "Just something you said. I asked you if there was something wrong. And you said not anymore, because we had a case."
"You know I enjoy my work."
"That's not the point I'm making, and you know it. What was wrong before this woman ended up dead?"
"Oh," Sherlock said. He sounded blank, but then paused for a few seconds, thinking this one through. "Well, you know," he said briskly, finally looking directly at John for a second. "Weddings. Not really my thing, I'm afraid. I was bored. This solved my boredom."
"…Yeah," was all John said. But in his tone was a distinct note of Why do I think you're lying to me, just a bit?
