Morning didn't see Hathaway dealing with a disgruntled boss but a crying teenage girl. Unlike Lewis with his "hold on a minute" to Morse, Hathaway had no way to improve the way things were going. Briony Grahame's father was dead, she was alone in the world, and no 'hold on a minute' was going to change that. He got what he could from Briony and left her to the constable as quickly as he could without making things worse than they were.
Outside he found DCS Innocent had arrived on scene—and what had brought her out? The death of an estate manager wouldn't have been enough to warrant her presence…but two deaths in a matter of days at a place like Crevecoeur certainly might have done.
Hathaway nodded a greeting to Innocent and handed Lewis one of the crime scene suits he'd picked up on his way past Forensics. "From all I've been able to get out of her, Titus dropped her off around midnight….she assumed her father had gone to bed, so she did the same herself," he reported.
"Just her, is it?" Innocent asked. "No brothers or sisters?"
"Just her," he confirmed. "The mother walked out on them nine years ago without a by-your-leave. Came back one day, she'd just cleared out."
"Hard on the girl, I suppose," Innocent noted.
Hard on the girl…yes, he'd certainly expect so, Hathaway thought. "I wouldn't have thought there was any suppose about it…" he spit out. At Lewis' warning look he quickly tacked on a 'Ma'am', but he had both the chief superintendent and the inspector throwing him concerned looks over that.
Titus, the son and heir of the Mortmaigne estate, pulled up on his motorbike outside the police circle.
"Go and see what he wants," Lewis directed Hathaway. The sergeant knew he was being sent away and didn't appreciate it one bit. He all but threw his scene suit in Lewis' face and stalked off.
Behind him, Lewis tried to excuse his sergeant's rudeness to their boss, "Been working him a bit hard, Ma'am…"
His effort wasn't really necessary; Innocent might have made the drive out to the estate over two deaths on a very prominent bit of real estate, but she'd also come to check up on the young Hathaway.
"This Zelinsky business can't have helped," she said.
Lewis clicked his tongue quietly and said, "I don't…suppose so. No, Ma'am." With a look Innocent warned him to keep an eye on his sergeant and left him to get on with his investigation.
Lewis and Hathaway donned their blue, crime scene suits, ducked under the tape, dodged SOCO, and arrived finally at the body.
"Suicide?" Lewis asked Dr. Hobson who was kneeling beside it taking temperature readings. Hathaway wasn't the only one having a bad morning as she quickly let them know.
'''Good morning' wouldn't go amiss," she said in place of an answer.
Suitably chastised, or wise enough to know he'd better if he wanted his report, Lewis said, "Sorry."
The doctor was not mollified. Still frowning she said, "I should think so…I'm a game girl, but picking through brain and bone before breakfast I call above and beyond." Since that was the job she'd signed up for—though who knew why anyone would want it—neither of the detectives felt all that sorry for her. Missing their telling look above her head, she went on, "But, yes, nothing to say otherwise. A preliminary swab for gunpowder residue suggests he'd recently discharged a firearm."
"Don't suppose he left a note?" Lewis said and wondered if that 'suppose' would get him in trouble one way or another, but it passed unnoticed.
"Well, nothing in his pockets. Time of death…an hour or two before ten pm? If that helps." She'd stood up by then, and perhaps her morning coffee had started to kick in for she'd lost a lot of her surliness as well. Lewis leaned against the hay and relaxed a bit. Hathaway had gone off on a long-legged prowl of the barn, and Lewis had a moment before it would be time to hit the day running. She was still sharp, still that quick, but no longer aimed at him.
"Well," he said, "I called in here about eight…couldn't raise anyone, so…" Hathaway came back then, and it was time to move on. "When you've finished here, I'd like all the rest of the estate swabbed," Lewis told Hobson as they were leaving.
He could tell by the look on her face that she had something to say about that, but Hathaway saved her the trouble. "It's a working estate, Sir. Likely as not, as least half the subjects will test positive."
"Well," Lewis said unperturbed by either of their protests, "that would rule out the other half, wouldn't it?" He nodded to Hobson and headed back to speak to the girl.
"I wouldn't read too much into the absence of a 'goodbye, cruel world," Sir," Hathaway told him on the way. "Statistically, the incidence of suicide notes in Grahame's demographic is in the twelve to twenty per cent range."
Lewis looked at him and said, "Where do you get this stuff?"
"The back of cereal boxes…" was his less-than-serious sounding answer. Lewis couldn't be sure if he was being facetious or not…Morse had claimed to get that bit about suicides and glasses off the back of a matchbook, and he'd sounded more than serious.*
"Some days I'm grateful you're on our side," Lewis said and left it at that.
The hurt in the room was almost palpable as they talked to young Briony. She fought down tears and avoided looking at them for the most part. Lewis would have liked to gather her up in a comforting hug and tell her everything would be all right; Hathaway would have liked to have been anywhere else doing just about anything else. But, both of the men stayed where they were—just as Hobson had signed up for a job that occasionally had her digging through blood and bone before breakfast, they'd signed up for one that was at times excruciatingly painful.
Lewis spoke in his quiet, gentle way asking things that sixteen-year-old girls shouldn't have to answer…
"How had your dad been recently? Nothing worrying him or I don't know…financial troubles?"
Her aloneness ate into Hathaway. He cut into Lewis' questions to ask his own, "Is there anyone I can contact for you? An aunt? Uncle? Grandparents? Anyone I can notify? A school?" But there had only been the two of them and she was waiting to hear back on a place at music college.
"That your thing, is it? Music?" Lewis asked and something about the question almost brought the tears she was so desperately fighting.
"My mum put me to when I was little. We didn't have a piano then, but His Lordship let me practice on the one in the summer house," she managed to tell them.
"That's good of him," Lewis said.
"Yeah. He's been very kind since Mum…she used to take me down there a couple times a week," Briony said the unshed tears thick in her throat. It was almost as though she was mourning her mother who'd been gone so long instead of the father she'd only just lost.
"How old were you when she left?" Lewis asked.
"It was just before my seventh birthday," Briony answered and began crying in earnest.
Her tears brought Lewis squatting at her knees, he took her hands to comfort her, she jerked away, and there they were. Long, red scratches up both her arms.
"What have you done to yourself?" he asked, gently and without accusation because it was all too obvious.
"It's nothing," the girl cried. Lewis looked to Hathaway for help, but Hathaway was standing, saying a hurried 'excuse me', and all but running from the room.
Lewis turned back to the girl. "All right," he said. "…we just need to clean this up a bit. All right?" He motioned the PC assigned to stay with Briony until social services arrived forward and left the girl in her able care. Then he went looking for his sergeant. He found him chewing out DC Hooper…
"The girl is sixteen years old," Hathaway was all but yelling into Hooper's face. "Whatever her mother's fall out with Grahame was about, she has a duty to her. Find her. Make that clear." Before Lewis reached them, the sergeant stalked off.
Hooper, not particularly phased by Hathaway's anger, asked Lewis, "What's bitten His Holiness' backside?"
Lewis, with the troubled girl and the obviously upset sergeant both to deal with, was in no mood for Hooper. "Same thing as will bite yours if you don't step to," he said to Hooper as he hurried after Hathaway. "Hey," he called after him.
Hathaway turned his way and angrily asked, "You do realize what's going on there?"
"Yeah, I have got eyes. But it's not an excuse for you to go dishing it out to the troops…now, come on what's up?"
"I'm fine," Hathaway said. It sounded not unlike Briony's 'It's nothing'. "Really," Hathaway said and walked off leaving Lewis to go back into Briony on his own—which all things considered was probably for the best. There was little left to ask the girl that Lewis judged wouldn't wait until she wasn't quite so raw; he gave her shoulder a gentle squeeze and headed toward the Hall.
Along the way, he looked into the chapel and found his sergeant sitting with his head bowed in one of the wooden pews. Lewis sighed and took a seat beside him. Hathaway turned his head to look at him, and Lewis raised his eyes a bit in acknowledgment. They sat there a moment, but only for a moment. Churches had never been Lewis' thing and there was work to be done.
He rubbed a finger under his eye, sniffed, reached out and patted Hathaway's shoulder, and said, "Thought I'd have a word with the Mortmaignes; see if you can get anything useful from Mr. Hopkiss, will you?" Hathaway nodded his assent, and Lewis left him sitting there.
The interview with the Mortmaignes and Philip Coleman was unfruitful—they were shocked and saddened and full of gossip that Mrs. Grahame had scarpered off with one of the labourers who'd been about at the time working on the Millennium Grant Project. Nine years on, that hardly seemed relevant.
Hathaway, too, found his interview with Paul Hopkiss filling in more about Linda Graham than about her husband…and all with the formal 'sir' tacked on at every opportunity.
"There's really no need to call me 'sir', Paul," Hathaway finally told his old friend, but Hopkiss felt it inappropriate to 'presume to familiarity on the basis of a childhood association'.
"Do you think back much, sir, to those days?" Hopkiss asked.
"It was a long time ago," Hathaway told him. He hadn't realized how much he had forgotten of his time at Crevecoeur until he'd arrived and every time he turned around he was reminded of something else he hadn't thought of in years. Paul had mentioned how they'd played hide and seek in and out of all the old sheds and barns, and Hathaway might have joined him in his reminisces if not for that; he'd just come from the body of Ralph Grahame lying in the main barn where they'd played away a good many afternoons.
"Yes, but happy days," Paul said, "as I remember them." He opened the door for Hathaway, and they nodded their farewells.
The next stop for Hathaway was Lonsdale College where he had an appointment with Professor Pelham, the art fellow who'd been out at Crevecoeur the day Dr. Black had been killed. After that, he helped Lewis rummage through the piles of papers and books filling Black's flat.
"What are we looking for exactly?" he asked.
"Anything that links Black with Ralph Grahame," Lewis said. Within minutes, Hathaway had not only briefed Lewis on his interview with Professor Pelham, but also found just what Lewis had asked for…
"We found a bunch of letters at Dr. Black's home. Love letters…appear to be from Linda Graham," the inspector informed DCS Innocent later.
"Appear?" she asked looking them over.
"Well, we don't have any writing to compare them with, but there were some snaps of her in with them. Including one with Briony," he answered.
She looked at the photos and said, "So, what's the theory: Grahame tracks down the man his wife ran off with, gets him to Crevecoeur Hall on some pretext or other, kills him, and then does himself in before you can put two and two?" She could read Lewis' reservations on his face. "What?"
"Well…I don't know, Ma'am…just seems too neat, almost. You know?"
"Murder and suicide? It's not uncommon."
"No...no. I suppose not."
"So that's that then," she pronounced as though both cases were as good as closed. The inspector was not so quick to jump to that conclusion.
* Service of All the Dead Inspector Morse…again
