Lewis rings the bell at the front door and steps back, scanning the front of the house. Hathaway takes a final drag on his cigarette and flicks it away, moments before the big door is opened by a man in a dinner jacket. "Good evening, gentlemen?"
They show their warrant cards and Lewis gives their names. "We're searching for a neighbor of yours who has gone missing, Lady Monteith? It's our understanding Lord and Lady Hungerford may know her. We'd like a word with them and any staff who are available this evening."
"I see. Please wait in the morning room." He directs them to a room immediately off the entryway. It is rather stiffly decorated in formal, ornate furniture. Lewis scans the room with distaste.
After several minutes, the man returns and informs them that both His Lordship and Her Ladyship will speak to them. He guides them up the broad staircase to a sitting room, decorated in the same formal style as the morning room. The detectives are formally introduced and offered tea, which they decline.
After nearly an hour, Lewis and Hathaway can tell their efforts will yield them nothing. Neither Lord and Lady Hungerford nor anyone on their staff can remember seeing Lady Monteith for at least a week. Nothing unusual happened during the past few days. No visitors have come to the house.
By now, the detectives have interviewed almost everyone present in the house and the footman is taking them down to the kitchen for one last interview, this one with the cook.
Lewis tugs on Hathaway's arm to stop him for a moment. He mutters into James's ear. "No one is giving us any real answers, have you noticed? It's not that they haven't seen her, they can't remember seeing her. It's all a pack of lies."
"I had noticed. I wish we could get His Lordship and Her Ladyship separated and question them one at a time. He definitely knows something."
Lewis shakes his head. "I'm not doing anything that's going to get me in hot water with the Chief Super, not until we know something more concrete."
A throat is cleared. They look up to see the footman is waiting for them, tapping his fingers on his folded arms. "This way, gentlemen, if you please."
The footman escorts them into the kitchen, where a rather short and plump woman of indeterminate age is stowing a few packages in the industrial-size refrigerator.
"Alice?" The footman waits until she looks up at him. "These men are policemen. They want to ask you some questions. Give them your best answers. Make Milady proud of you. Alright?" She smiles and nods nervously. It occurs to Lewis that her mental ability likely falls far short of her age.
"And Alice? When they are done, show them out the back way. Understand? You're the last one they need to talk to, so they can go out right here. No need to drag them back through the house." He turns with an imperious air and leaves without saying anything to the visitors.
Lewis smiles in a friendly way and approaches Alice more closely. "Alice? I'm Inspector Lewis and this is Sergeant Hathaway. We just want to ask you a few routine questions, alright?"
She smiles and nods again. The answers she gives through the course of their interview leave little doubt that she functions at the level of a ten-year-old child, at best. They ask her about her day, what the other people in the house did, and if there were any visitors.
"Oh, yes, Sir!" She answers to the last.
They glance at each other, and Hathaway takes over on the questions. "How many visitors, Alice?"
"Two." She nods to punctuate her answer.
"Could you describe them to us, please?" Hathaway is certain that at last they are on to something here.
A frown of confusion crosses her face, as though she is being asked what is obviously a trick question. "Well, they're you two, of course."
"Ah. Of course. Thank you for your very honest answer." He smiles at her, and she beams in response. Utter waste of time. They've spent nearly an hour here, and have nothing to show for it.
Lewis gives Hathaway a look of patience beginning to run out, and the younger man takes the cue.
"Thank you, Alice, I think that's all the questions we have for now. Is this the way out?" James gestures toward an exterior door.
"Yes, Sir. Just go out there and you'll be outside." She smiles brightly, leaning firmly and somewhat protectively against a stainless-steel door set into the wall of the kitchen.
Lewis stops and turns. Something about her manner strikes him as odd.
"Alice? What's behind that door?" He nods in her direction.
She suddenly looks nervous again. "This door? It's the freezer."
"Can we just have a peek inside?"
She looks from one detective to the other. "I suppose you can." She pulls open the door and opens it a little way. "There's no light. It's gone out and Fredrick hasn't replaced it yet."
The ice-cold room is narrow, maybe only eight feet wide, but considerably deeper than that and the light from the open door does not reveal much beyond the first few feet.
Lewis pulls out his little electric torch and steps in further. It doesn't help much, and so he goes in three more steps, probing the depths of the room with the narrow beam of light. Impatient with this, Hathaway pulls out his own, much larger, light and pushes past Lewis. They can see something in the corner hanging from a meat hook that is a great deal more colorful than the sides of beef and packages wrapped in white paper. A woman's body.
The freezer door slams shut.
They charge back to the door and Hathaway tries the inner handle but it won't click. She's locked it from the outside.
"Alice? Alice, this is serious, you're interfering with a police investigation. Alice, please let us out!" Hathaway strives and mostly succeeds at keeping the panic out of his voice. He runs the light over the wall around the doorway, searching for an alarm or emergency switch of some sort, but the walls are smooth and uninterrupted by anything that might be of use to them.
"Shit." Lewis can only mutter the expletive in response to the helplessness he feels. Hathaway pulls out his mobile and thumbs the buttons. His shoulders sag in surrender and he exhales a long breath.
"No signal."
Lewis resists an accusatory comment, and digs out his own mobile, but the result is the same. "Shit," he repeats, shutting off the useless device and slipping it back in his jacket pocket.
Hathaway retreats to the far recesses of the freezer, concentrating on the body hanging there. There can be no dispute that it is Lady Monteith, and the marks on her neck confirm the other evidence—bloodshot eyes, tongue protruding between her teeth—indicating she was strangled.
Lewis twists an ironic smile. "See? I told you they were lying to us."
James casts the beam of light around the freezer. There is nothing else unexpected here. Boxes and wrapped bundles line the shelves, sides of beef and slabs of bacon hang from large hooks. James hangs his torch from an empty hook so its light spreads in a small pool on the floor. Lewis's torch lacks a loop for hanging, so he lays it on the floor, shining toward the door.
At first, they both feel merely foolish. But after ten minutes or so of examining their prison for any means of escape, they begin to experience a growing concern. And they begin to feel rather cold.
Hathaway inhales. "I don't suppose you told dispatch where we were going."
"Me? Why is that suddenly my job?"
"I'm not saying it's your job, I'm only trying to find out if anyone else might know where we are."
Lewis doesn't answer directly. "I guess that means you didn't tell dispatch either."
"I told them we were going to the Duckling. That was the last thing I told them."
Lewis feels an inescapable knot of dread rising in his throat. "Shit," he whispers to himself. In an effort to push away his fear, he turns snappish.
"Why did you follow me in here, anyway? You gave her the perfect setup."
"No way could you see anything with that little torch of yours. I was only trying to help. Mine's a lot bigger than yours." He can't help smirking at the unintended way that came out.
Lewis rolls his eyes. "Size isn't everything, you know, Sergeant."
"I'm sorry, Sir, but yours isn't big enough to penetrate properly. The darkness, I mean."
This draws a real scowl. "Hathaway, I am capable of following both of your meanings on me own here, y'know. I don't find either one very amusing, given our present situation. If you'd stayed out in the kitchen, this wouldn't have happened."
"It's not my fault the cook is a psychopath. I had no way of knowing that."
Lewis shakes his head. "Procedure, Hathaway." The men lapse into silence for some time, clutching their knees and shivering a little. Both try to think of something to do, and both are equally out of ideas.
"Anyway, how would you know if yours is bigger than mine?" Not that it matters, he tells himself, but Lewis has always suspected his sergeant is generously endowed.
Hathaway gives him a sly, sideways look. "Hobson told me."
"She never!" Lewis stares at him. "She hasn't seen my—" He adds in a low voice, "Won't see it, unless she gets called on to examine our frozen body after this. And I very much doubt she's seen yours." Then he sees the smirk. "Oh, another wind-up. Very constructive."
By now they have been in the freezer about thirty minutes. Hathaway realizes they need to maintain their body temperatures in order to stay conscious until someone finds them or until they think of a way out.
"We need to get moving, Sir. Exercise. Get the blood flowing."
The inspector considers this with more than a little skepticism. But he can't find any flaw in his sergeant's logic. He stiffly gets to his feet.
"Alright, what do we do to get active in this little cell? Can't be more than twenty feet long."
Hathaway strips off his necktie and unbuttons the top button of his shirt. "Jog in place?" He begins to do so.
Lewis follows his lead, and soon the two are puffing and sweating slightly.
Hathaway is in practice, maintaining a fairly regular schedule of early-morning runs along the towpath. But Lewis has never worked at getting in shape and his age and relative lack of muscle tone soon catch up with him.
"Aw, man, I can't do any more." He's breathing hard and out of energy. He sways in place a bit, then sags to the floor.
"Survival of the fittest, you know, Sir." James's eyes light up with the tease. "Looks like my chances of surviving this are much better than yours. Is it okay if I eat your flesh to prevent my dying of starvation?" He grins.
"We didn't need to wear ourselves out for the difference between our physical conditions to be obvious, Sergeant." But Lewis takes the ribbing good-naturedly. And he watches as James switches to doing jumping jacks, his long legs and arms cutting measured arcs through the open space of the freezer.
Although he is unaware of it, Lewis's slight perspiration fairly sucks the heat from his body, and he cools far more rapidly because of the moisture.
Hathaway keeps at it for quite a while. Focusing on the rhythmic movement of the jumping jacks is especially helpful in keeping his thoughts from dwelling on their situation. At last he, too, is worn out, and as he settles to sit down, he notes with concern the curled body of his senior officer, motionless on the freezer floor. A slow fear creeps into his heart.
"Sir? Inspector Lewis? Are you alright?"
Lewis's eyes open and it takes him a moment to focus.
"Hathaway?" His teeth are chattering, but he manages to hiss a pointed question. "What the hell are we gonna do?"
"We have to keep warm, Sir." He gets down on the floor by Lewis's back. "We need to get together for warmth. Alright? I don't mean anything weird by this, but we need to hug."
Lewis merely grunts his assent. Hathaway curls up behind him, nesting his knees into the crook of Lewis's legs and tucking his arms under Lewis's arms and around the older man's chest. His breath is warm on the back of Lewis's neck, and Lewis can feel the other man's heat seeping through his back, slowing his shivering.
"God, you feel so warm." And he can't help smiling a little. The heat from his sergeant's long body is very nice.
"That's because I was exercising. We'll need to each get up every now and then and warm up that way."
But not just yet. Tendrils of cold twine around them, sapping their strength of will and numbing them from any feeling of urgency. Soon they both are asleep. The temperature of James's skin, where not pressed against the other man, is cooling rapidly. He has so little body fat that nothing protects the blood in his extremities from the frigid temperature that penetrates his skin. Their bodies spasm uncontrollably with their chills, out of sync with each other.