‘That’s not a bad idea,’ said Harold. ‘At least you won’t be going over any landmines.’
‘The nearest village is only a few miles away across the ranges.’ The doctor appeared to be considering things. ‘If you have no luck at the old mine today, then I will leave first thing tomorrow. With any luck, the army manoeuvres will have finished by then. I don’t see that we have any choice in the matter now anyway. Votes in favour of me going?’
One by one, the others raised their hands. Midge was in the middle of a complicated cross stitch and so failed to lift hers in time, not that it seemed to matter anyway.
‘Right, that’s unanimous, then,’ said the doctor.
‘I still don’t see what the big rush is,’ pouted Noah. ‘Can’t we all just wait until the road reopens and then walk? That might be tomorrow, or maybe the day after, but we’ll probably never get an opportunity to experience a paranormal intervention like this one ever again.’
‘A man is dead! Upstairs and decomposing as we speak!’ shouted Dr Mortimer, banging his fist down on the table. ‘Grow up, boy. This isn’t a game.’
Noah raised his head and stared back at the doctor, his eyes blank. ‘I can assure you, I have never taken anything more seriously in my life.’
Chapter31
The doctor’s words had aggravated the feeling of displacement Midge had awoken with. While she embroidered, her mind wandered back to the discovery of Rendell’s body. Shuffling back over her memory of the bathing room, she had a feeling one of the items catalogued from the murder scene did not fit – and for Midge, that only ever meant one thing. The scene in the bathing room was staged. Of that she had no doubt.
Midge found herself slipping into her usual routine, thinking about the hows rather than the whys as she drew the cotton through the material. If something was staged, then inevitably, at some point, an object would be out of its natural place. All she needed to do was work out which object.
Leaving the others to bicker over the last sausage, and feeling more purposeful than she had in some time, she made her excuses, packed up her stitching and returned to the bathing room. Taking a deep breath, she opened the wooden door and stepped inside.
Rendell’s eyes were fixed forward, staring directly at her as she entered, the rest of his body blanketed in snow, like some grotesque parody of a snowman. For a moment, she was overwhelmed with memories of the younger detective and grabbed on to the door to steady herself, feeling comfort in the grain of the wood. Forcing her eyes to the ground, she moved slowly over to the side of the bath, taking care to avoid the water on the floor. With a groan, she knelt. On the floor just next to Midge’s protesting knee was the tiny brass door key, as she remembered. Therehad been something about it that had jarred with her when they had first found the body. Now, looking up at the door from where she knelt, her suspicions were confirmed.
The wood was heavily splintered where Rona had broken the lock but the keyhole was still visible. Midge reached inside her pocket and regretfully pulled out a delicate candlewick-embroidered handkerchief that she had been particularly proud of. Swivelling on her throbbing knee, she gently picked up the key with the handkerchief, taking care not to touch any part of it with her fingers. Grunting slightly, she leaned forward and inserted the key into the lock from the bathroom side. It was almost entirely swallowed by the keyhole. Midge tried moving it around. The key was so tiny it was unable to trigger any of the locking mechanism.
A thought suddenly occurred to her, and she rummaged through her trouser pocket to find her own bedroom key. Once she had it, she shuffled round to the corridor side of the door and gently placed the bedroom key inside the lock on the outside of the door. It fitted but wouldn’t turn.
Instead of removing it, Midge gritted her teeth against the pain and shuffled over the tiles back round again to push the smaller key from the floor into the other side of the keyhole. She moved her hand away.
They could both fit in at the same time.
Midge carefully pulled out the smaller key with the handkerchief and tucked it into her pocket, satisfied that she had found the object that didn’t belong.
Now Midge had a real problem to sink her teeth into.
Where had this false key come from? And who had put it there?
Chapter32
Midge had decided to spend some more time on her embroidery in her room, a task that often helped her think. She was on her way back from the kitchen after collecting her stitching bag when she was surprised to hear raised voices coming from the drawing room. Instead of entering, she paused and slipped into the library beside it, leaving the door wide enough to hear. The room was lit only by a solitary shard of sunlight poking through the drapes and the air was so cold that a heavy layer of damp clung to the embroidered chair that Midge settled herself in to listen.
‘I’ve told you, no more...’
It was Dr Mortimer talking.
Clutching her bag, Midge leaned forward, struggling to make out all of the words.
‘Please,’ to her surprise, she could hear Rona, who appeared to be pleading, ‘you have to help me.You’re the only one who can.’
‘I don’t have to do anything. You think I don’t know it’s you behind it all?’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about...’
‘Once a junkie, always a junkie. I should have known better. Stay away, or you’ll regret it!’
Dr Mortimer’s voice got louder as he moved towards the door, slamming it shut before footsteps could be heard in the corridor. After a moment, a second pair followed.
Midge was about to make her way out when something caught her eye by the window. The outer wall was the only one in the library not furnished from floor to ceiling with bookshelves.Instead, several large paintings of Atherton Hall through the years hung from the panels. In the middle of them, to the left of the curtain hanging over the sash window, was a rectangular portrait of Charles Atherton sitting on a horse, a fine example of oils which Midge had noticed on their first tour of their accommodation.
