The Zachery Case (A Markham Sisters Cozy Mystery Book 26) Read online

  “Susan, it’s Janet. Is Robert available?”

  “I’m sorry, but he’s in Little Burton today. I can ring him if you need him, though. He’s meant to be working through six months worth of paperwork, and I’m certain he’d much rather be interrupted.”

  “We’ve been clearing out the carriage house and, well, I’m afraid we’ve uncovered a skeleton tucked up behind a pile of boxes,” Janet said, feeling as if she’d just stepped into one of the cosy mysteries that she enjoyed reading.

  “A skeleton?” Susan echoed. “Do you think it’s a human skeleton?”

  “I have no idea. I didn’t take a very close look, actually, but Michael is here and he believes it’s human.”

  “I suppose he should know, being that he was a chemist. They must study anatomy, mustn’t they? I’ll ring Robert. I’m certain he’ll be on his way to you as soon as he hears and he’ll probably ring for a full crime scene team, as well.”

  “There’s no immediate panic. Whoever is back there has been there for some time,” Janet said.

  “Yes, I suppose you’re right. I’m sorry, but this is my first skeleton and I’m not entirely certain what to do. I’ll ring Robert immediately.” She rang off before Janet could reply.

  “Susan is going to ring Robert. He’ll probably come here as soon as he hears,” Janet told the others.

  “I don’t suppose we can keep sorting boxes,” Joan replied.

  “I don’t think we should move anything else, not until the crime scene team has been and done whatever it is they do,” Michael said.

  “It isn’t necessarily a crime scene,” Joan argued. “Maybe the skeleton has been there for hundreds of years. Maybe the carriage house was built on top of an old cemetery or something.”

  Janet could hear how upset Joan was from her tone. Michael clearly heard the same thing, because he quickly walked over and put his arms around her.

  “We’ve done all that we can by ringing for the police,” he said soothingly. “They’ll be the ones who determine what happened to the man or woman we’ve discovered.”

  “I can’t believe that’s been there for the last two years and we never realised it,” Janet said, shivering.

  “We should have cleared out the carriage house immediately after we bought the house,” Joan snapped.

  Janet swallowed an angry retort. Emotions were running high, but there was no point in arguing with Joan. “Perhaps we’ve found the skeleton of our ghost,” she said instead.

  Michael raised an eyebrow as a strong wind suddenly blew through the building. The door slammed shut and the lights went out. Janet and Michael had their torches on within seconds. Janet used hers to get to the door and switch the lights back on.

  “If you are the ghost, then you should be happy that we’ve found you,” she said loudly. “We’ll see that you get a proper burial and that your family and friends find out what happened to you.”

  As she finished speaking, the carriage house door slowly swung open.

  Janet looked at Michael and then at Joan. Joan opened her mouth and then shut it again, leaning forward to rest her head on Michael’s chest. Feeling rather left out and alone, Janet walked to the door.

  “Who could it have been?” she asked as she waited for Robert.

  “I don’t think we’ll be able to answer that until we find out how long he or she has been dead,” Michael replied.

  “I think I need to sit down,” Joan said.

  “Take her into the house,” Janet suggested. “I’ll wait here for Robert and then join you. He can take our statements in there, as it’s a good deal more comfortable than the carriage house.”

  “The crime scene team will want us out of the way, anyway,” Michael said. “We’ll be in the kitchen making tea and coffee for whoever arrives.”

  Janet nodded. Making hot drinks would keep Joan busy for a short while and hopefully keep her from worrying about what they’d found. As Michael and Joan disappeared along the path that wound through the gardens to the house, Janet began to wonder if maybe she should have another look at the skeleton.

  It had been scary and upsetting, but she also hadn’t been expecting anything of the kind. Maybe, now that she knew what she’d be seeing, she should take a closer look. She was unlikely to ever find anything else similar again, after all. Her friend, Bessie Cubbon, on the Isle of Man, seemed to find dead bodies and skeletons everywhere that she went, but this was something of a new experience for Janet. When she and Joan had visited the island, they had found two dead men, but those had been bodies, not skeletons.

  Before Janet could work up the nerve to take another peek, she heard footsteps approaching. She was expecting Robert to come around the corner, but it was Stuart who appeared on the path a moment later.

  “I just popped into the house to get a cuppa and Michael told me what you’d found out here,” he said. “I’ve been working on the other side of the gardens or else I probably would have heard you screaming when you found the body.”

  “I didn’t scream,” Janet told him. “And it isn’t a body, it’s a skeleton.”

  Stuart shrugged. “They’re much the same, though, aren’t they? You’ve found a dead person. If I were you, I’d probably have screamed.”

  Janet smiled. “I wasn’t even certain what I was seeing, and then I was hoping that it was going to turn out to be a dog or a cat or some other animal.”

  “That would make more sense than a person being in there.”

  “But Michael is pretty certain it’s a human skeleton.”

  Stuart looked around. “I might just take a quick look,” he said in a whisper. “I mean, I know I won’t recognise anyone or anything, but it can’t hurt to take a look, can it?”

  “Actually, you probably shouldn’t. We don’t want to do anything that might contaminate the crime scene,” Janet said, grateful that Stuart hadn’t caught her taking her own sneaky peek.

  Although he looked as if he wanted to object, Stuart just sighed and then sat down on the nearby bench. “Who could it have been?” he asked.

  “I’ve no idea. I don’t know how long it takes for a body to turn into a skeleton and I’ve no idea how long a skeleton would remain intact after that. The person might have died ten years ago or a thousand years ago or anywhere in between.”

  “Or considerably more recently,” Stuart suggested.

  Janet frowned. “He or she can’t have died since we bought Doveby House. We’d have noticed if someone moved all of the boxes to hide the body along the back wall.”

  “But it could have been someone that Maggie Appleton knew. She had a lot of, well, interesting friends and they seemed to come and go all the time. If one of them dropped dead, it would have been easy enough for her to simply throw the body behind a stack of boxes and leave it there to decompose.”

  Janet stared at him for a moment. “Why would she do that?” she asked eventually.

  “I can think of a great many reasons. The police are going to want to see if any of her boyfriends ever simply disappeared. She had quite a few of them, and most of the were married to other women.”

  Janet nodded. She’d heard as much about the woman, who’d been in her sixties when she’d died after falling in a nightclub in Ibiza. Not only that, Janet had also found letters from some of Margaret’s lovers in the files Margaret had kept in the library. Some of the letters were quite explicit and had made Janet blush. More than one of the writers had mentioned a wife in the letters, as well.

  “Maybe it was one of the men or women that Edward Bennett sent here, or, more likely, someone who came to get rid of one of the men or women that Edward sent. He used the place as a safe house and he would have done anything and everything to protect those men and women.”

  Janet took a deep breath. Was Stuart suggesting that Edward might have killed someone and hidden the body? It certainly sounded that way to her. Before she could manage a reply, she heard someone approaching. This time it was Robert who came around the corner
.

  “Good morning,” he said before glancing at his watch. “And it is still morning, although only just.”

  Janet gave him a tight smile. The constable was in his mid-twenties. He was an attractive man with brown hair and a genuine smile. She thought he did an excellent job handling his considerable responsibilities. “Good morning,” she replied.

  “I’m told you’ve found a skeleton,” he said.

  “Behind the last of the boxes,” Janet explained.

  “I’ll take a look before I ask you anything else,” he told her.

  Janet stepped back to let him into the carriage house. He switched on the large torch that he was carrying and then looked around the room.

  “You’ve cleared out a tremendous amount of boxes,” he remarked.

  “We’ve been working out here every day for weeks,” Janet replied. “Joan is a bit obsessed with getting the building cleared out so that we can use it for other things.”

  “Such as?”

  Janet shrugged. “She’s hoping to turn it into a self-catering unit, although there’s some debate as to what we’ll use the unit for if we actually have the work done.”

  Robert nodded. “One section of boxes isn’t right up against the wall.”

  “I never really noticed that before today, but the skeleton is behind the boxes that stick out.”

  “If you never noticed it before today, is it possible that they used to be against the wall and were moved recently?”

  Janet frowned and tried to think. “I doubt it. Nothing looked any different when we came in this morning to how it had looked when we left yesterday. There’s so much dust everywhere that I think we would have noticed if anything had been moved.”

  Robert ran his torch’s light along the row of boxes. Janet could see the layer of dust that covered them. Of course, she’d moved the top two boxes from right in front of the skeleton, which made it more difficult to tell if anything had been moved recently.

  “They don’t stick out that far,” Janet pointed out. “Maybe a foot or so. It was unnoticeable when the room was full of boxes, of course, and it’s really barely noticeable now, unless you’re looking for it.”

  “Let me see what’s back there, then,” Robert said. He crossed the room and leaned over the boxes. Janet held her breath, her imagination running wild. What if he turned around and said there was nothing there? That happened in books all the time, bodies disappearing and then reappearing. Maybe the skeleton was fake or a medical school study aid or something. Perhaps she and Michael should have done more to determine what they’d found before they’d rung for the police.

  “I’m going to get a crime scene team down here,” Robert said as he turned away from the wall. “They’re going to have to go over the entire room, including checking the contents of the remaining boxes.”

  “We cleared out at least a dozen boxes this morning. Will they want to see what’s in all of those as well?”

  “Someone will have a look at everything that was taken out of here today, yes,” he said. “How much did you remove yesterday?”

  “Goodness, I don’t know. Maybe fifteen or twenty boxes? We’ve been trying to empty the space and we’d just about given up on finding anything worth keeping. Joan still insists that we go through every box of papers, but things like water-damaged books are simply going straight into the bin.”

  “Papers could be helpful. They may help us determine a date for when the body was left back there.” Robert pulled out his phone and then sighed. “There’s a very good chance that someone from Derby will be coming in and taking over the investigation. I’ve never investigated a murder case before.”

  Janet opened her mouth to reply, but she was interrupted by a loud buzzing noise. She pulled her mobile out of her pocket and looked at the screen. “Edward,” she told Robert.

  Chapter 3

  “I can leave now and be there in three hours,” Edward said when Janet answered the phone.

  “Don’t be silly. You’re coming tomorrow anyway, aren’t you?”

  “Yes, of course, but I don’t want you to be on your own during a murder investigation.”

  “First of all, I’m quite capable of looking after myself. This isn’t my first murder investigation, either. Besides, Joan and Michael are here, and I have complete confidence in Robert’s abilities.”

  “But you found the body.”

  “Yes, and I was badly shaken for a few minutes, but I’m fine now. You’ll be here tomorrow.”

  Edward sighed. “I won’t argue because I have a great many things to complete here before I leave in the morning. If you change your mind and you decide you need me, just ring, and I’ll come immediately.”

  “That’s very kind of you, but you do what you need to do there and I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  “From what I was told, the skeleton has been there for some time.”

  “It would certainly seem so. Robert is waiting for the crime scene team to arrive now. I would imagine they’ll need to take a great many photographs of everything before they actually remove the body, er, skeleton.”

  “What else can you tell me?”

  “Nothing, really. We were simply clearing away boxes when I noticed that one stack of the boxes was slightly away from the wall. Once I’d taken off the top two boxes in the stack, I took a look behind the remaining boxes and, well, found our skeleton.”

  “There’s very little that can be done before the police determine how long the skeleton has been there,” Edward said thoughtfully. “I hope they can work that out fairly quickly, but it may not be an easy job.”

  Voices behind Janet made her turn around. Several men and women, most of them carrying cases of equipment, were making their way along the path towards her.

  “The crime scene people are arriving. Maybe I should ring you back later,” Janet told Edward.

  “If I don’t hear from you in a few hours, I’ll ring you back. I’m quite worried about you.”

  “I’m absolutely fine, and Robert is on the case. Please don’t worry. You’re the one who was stabbed last month.”

  “And I’m completely recovered, with only a small scar. Remember that it’s very unlikely that the skeleton tucked him or herself behind those boxes. This is a murder investigation, and it’s entirely possible that the killer is still out there and about to get a shock.”

  “Whoever did it has no reason to come after me. Please don’t worry. I’ll ring you later.” She pressed the button to end the conversation and then dropped her phone back into her pocket.

  Robert smiled at her. “He’s right to be worried. The killer may well still be out there.”

  “The skeleton might have been there for decades,” Janet argued. “We found papers from thirty or forty years ago and books that were even older in some of the boxes we’ve already removed. This was the last row, furthest from the door. The boxes there could have been there sixty or seventy years.”

  Robert nodded and then crossed over to speak to the small team of people who’d gathered near the carriage house door. Janet was just thinking about going back to the house when he turned back to her.

  “They’re going to need hours to process the room properly. I’ll come up to the house with you and take your statement now.”

  Janet nodded and then led the man back to Doveby House.

  “I hope Stuart is here,” Robert said as she opened the back door. “I lost track of him while we were in the carriage house.”

  Stuart was sitting with Michael and Joan at the small kitchen table. Joan jumped up as Janet and Robert walked into the room.

  “The kettle just boiled,” she said. “Robert, would you prefer coffee? There’s a fresh pot.”

  “Coffee would probably help,” he said. “I didn’t get enough sleep last night.”

  Janet found a packet of biscuits and piled several onto a plate. She put the plate in the middle of the table and then sat down and helped herself. Joan put her teacup in front of her a mome
nt later.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  Robert took a sip of coffee and then cleared his throat. “I’m going to need statements from each of you and it’s best if we do things strictly by the book. I’ll talk to each of you in turn, individually. Janet, as you found the, um, skeleton, I’ll start with you. Can I use the dining room, please?”

  Joan nodded. “Of course you can.”

  Janet picked up her teacup and the plate of biscuits and followed Robert into the dining room.

  “Just take me back through your day, please,” Robert said after he’d sat down and opened his notebook.

  It didn’t take long for Janet to tell the man everything she’d done that day. When she was finished, she sat back and ate a biscuit.

  “When did you start going through the boxes in the carriage house?” was his first question.

  “We’ve been going through them since we bought the house, really, but only one or two boxes at a time each week or so. We so often found piles of boring paperwork that needed to be sorted that it became a chore that both Joan and I disliked.”

  “I need to ask you a lot more questions about the carriage house and what you’ve found in there, but I’m going to wait until we have more information about the skeleton to do that. I’ll take preliminary statements from everyone for today and then we can discuss things more thoroughly once we have an idea of what we’ve actually found.”

  Janet nodded. “Shall I send someone else in, then?” she asked as she got to her feet.

  “Michael, please,” he replied.

  “He’d like Michael next,” Janet told the others as she walked back into the kitchen.

  “This is silly,” Joan said as Michael left the room and Janet sat back down at the table. “There’s no way any of us had anything to do with that skeleton.”

  “I suppose that rather depends on when the person died,” Stuart said.

  “He or she must have died many years ago,” Joan told him. “It takes a long time for a body to decompose, doesn’t it?”

  Janet frowned. “I think there’s a book in the library on that very subject,” she said. “I’ll see if I can find it.”