Gareth took a bite of his biscuit and smiled at her. “I’m sure we’ll all sort out something nice for Christmas.”
“Of course we will,” Penny said brightly. “You and Bethan will come to us here-Victoria and me.” She looked at Victoria, who nodded. “Right, now that that’s all settled,” Penny began eagerly, “let’s move on. You must know more by now about what happened at Conwy Castle. What else can you tell us? Do you know who the victim is?”
“Ah,” said Gareth, “that’s a bit tricky, and the answer, I guess is yes and no.”
The two women leaned forward.
“We’ll need formal identification, of course, and I have no idea who will be able to do that. But I saw the body myself and I recognized the man I met at Mrs. Lloyd’s open house, who was calling himself Harry Saunders. But he had no papers on him and we don’t know yet where he was living. So we don’t know for sure if Harry Saunders was even his real name. I doubt it was. It was likely one of many. The body will be fingerprinted and we’ll get on to the American embassy and see if they know who he is. We’ll also try dental records and DNA, if we have to.”
“Yes, I remember you had your suspicions about him,” Penny said. “That’ll be that policeman’s instinct we hear so much about.”
Davies tapped his nose. “Sometimes things just don’t smell right. And I’ve been doing this a long time, remember.”
“Well, you’ll be speaking to Mrs. Lloyd, of course,” said Victoria. “She knew him better than anyone and was becoming very fond of him, by all accounts. I think she had high hopes there.”
Davies groaned. “I haven’t spoken to her yet, but that’s what brings me to Llanelen tonight. I just wanted to have a word with you first, to see if you’d remembered anything else that you didn’t think at the time worth mentioning to Bethan.”
Penny shook her head. “No, sorry. Just what I told her.”
“Then that’s going to be a problem, I’m afraid. No one really saw anything.” He set down his mug. “But someone certainly saw something.” He started to rise from the sofa, but Penny laid a hand on his shoulder. As he glanced over at her, she tilted her head and raised an eyebrow.
“What do you mean ‘someone saw something’? How do you know? The stairs were really slippery and I’m sure it was just as bad up there on the wall walks. Signs were posted everywhere warning people to be careful. And you know those open spots in the wall are really low. I thought how easy it would be for someone to fall over the side. You just lean over a little too far… He could have slipped over the side.”
Davies nodded.
“Well, nine times out of ten a fall is just a fall. But not this time. Unfortunately for him, he had some help going off that wall. In fact, until we get the results of the postmortem, we won’t know for sure, but it may not even have been the fall that killed him.”
The room became still. Penny was aware of Victoria’s quiet breathing.
“Are you saying he was pushed?” Victoria asked. “How can you tell that?”
“Pushed? Well, maybe, but certainly he was given a helping hand over the side.” He looked from one to the other.
“When the officers on site got a closer look at the body, they found something pretty nasty in his back. A letter opener that had once apparently belonged to one Arthur Lloyd.”
Penny gasped.
“No! Surely you’re not suggesting that Mrs. Lloyd had anything to do with this!”
“I’m not suggesting anything,” Davies replied smoothly. “We’re just following up and going where the investigation leads, and the letter opener is certainly leading us in a certain direction. For now, at any rate.”
He drained the last of his coffee, handed the empty mug to Victoria, and stood up.
“Right, well, thanks for the coffee, and I’m sure you’ll let me know if anything else comes to mind. Sometimes we remember things later. Every little bit of information helps, remember, no matter how trivial it might seem to you.”
“You’re on your way to Mrs. Lloyd’s house now, aren’t you?” Penny asked, handing him his coat. “You’re meeting Bethan there.”
Davies put on his coat and headed for the door.
“I have to speak to her, yes. And Bethan will be present.”
Penny closed the door quietly behind him and then, frowning, returned to Victoria. The two women looked at each other.
“There must be an explanation,” said Victoria. “Mrs. Lloyd? That can’t be right.”
“Never in a million years,” agreed Penny.
Fourteen
“Oh, it’s you. You’d better come in, then.”
Florence stood aside as Davies and Bethan Morgan crowded into Mrs. Lloyd’s hallway.
“Give me your coats,” she instructed. “And from the look of your boots, best if you took them off. If you don’t mind,” she added. The two visitors dutifully bent over, removed their boots, and set them down neatly, side by side, on a plastic tray.
“I expect you’ll be wanting a word with Evelyn. She’s in the sitting room, but she’s pretty shaken up. Come through.”
Mrs. Lloyd, her face creased with anxiety, stood up as the two police officers entered the sitting room. A cheerful fire blazing away did its best to dispel the gloom that seemed to hover around her. She waved her hand in the general direction of the sofa and the two officers sat down. As Bethan took out her notebook, Davies addressed Mrs. Lloyd in a neutral, calm voice, as Florence remained standing in the doorway.
“Now, Mrs. Lloyd, I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but pending formal identification, we believe that your, um, friend, Harry Saunders, died at Conwy Castle this afternoon.” Before he could continue, Mrs. Lloyd’s shoulders sagged as she held her hand over her mouth, trying to stifle the sobs desperate to escape. Bethan reached out to pat her hand, and the two police officers waited for a few moments as Mrs. Lloyd struggled to control herself.
“I know this comes as unpleasant news,” Davies continued, “but I’m afraid I have to ask you about your whereabouts at the castle this afternoon.”
Mrs. Lloyd said nothing. Florence disappeared and returned a few moments later holding out a box of tissues. Mrs. Lloyd gave her a weak smile, pulled two or three from the box, and dabbed at her eyes.
“I had gone to the castle with my friend, Bunny,” she said. “I had hoped to see Harry over the weekend, but he never arrived, because of the weather, you see. You know what the roads were like. It was your lot advising everyone to stay off them.” She looked from one to the other. “So when Penny said she had just seen him heading toward the rear part of the castle, the inner ward I believe it’s called, naturally I hurried after him. I needed a word with him. But when I got there, he was not to be seen.”
“I need to be very clear about this. You didn’t see him on the lower level,” Bethan repeated. “Is that correct?”
“No, he was not there.”
“So what did you do then?”
“Well, I thought maybe he had gone up on the wall walk, so I went up there. They had signs posted about how slippery the stairs and walkways were, so I took my time going up there I can tell you, clinging onto that rope railing for dear life, and when I didn’t see him at the top of the stairs, I came down again. It was very windy up there. I didn’t want to risk walking along the wall walk. It’s all right in summer, I suppose, but not this time of year. Not for me. I’m very frightened of falling, and looking back on it now, I was daft to go up those stairs in the first place.”
The two police officers had discussed whether this would be the right time to ask Mrs. Lloyd about the letter opener and had decided to take a wait-and-see approach, depending on how the interview went.
Davies was thinking about introducing it into the conversation when Bethan’s eyes turned to Florence, who was now perched on a small chair beside the door just inside the room.