The Death Chamber by Lesley Thomson

Author:Lesley Thomson [Thomson, Lesley]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781786697196
Publisher: Head of Zeus

31

The first thing was to ‘secure a point of egress’. Jack had half an hour. Brice had told his caller that he’d be there in ‘ten’. Twenty minutes’ return travelling time. Twenty to do the estimate. Forty minutes. Jack shaved off ten to be on the safe side. Enough time to get his bearings and find a ‘guest-space’.

One thing he’d learnt from Stella was to be methodical. Stella tackled murder cases according to the lore of her cleaning manual, ‘stain by stain’. Jack’s ‘stains’ were, Establish Egress, Scope Premises, Hunt for Clues, Establish Guest Space. Stella liked acronyms. ESHE, not that Stella could know. She’d never countenance him being a fly on Brice’s wall. In this way Jack entered a property without bothering the host.

He started in a brick lean-to off the kitchen. Washing machine, drier, a rack held upturned wellington boots, rubber waders, above hung high-vis waterproofs. The vandals hadn’t caused Brice to hide the window key. It lay on a shelf beside a bottle of turps. Jack unlocked the casement, tried it and shut it without locking it. Egress Established.

He started the Scope of Premises from the top floor to ensure where the occupants were or that he was alone. True Hosts generally lived by themselves. They couldn’t make relationships. Soundlessly, in his rubber-soled brogues, Jack tested the staircase for creaks.

The bathroom suite was brown, a legacy of the seventies. Two bedrooms. Brice used the larger one at the front for carpentry. There was a lathe on a bench. Peg-boarded walls were hung with saws, a wrench, hammers and other fearsome instruments that Jack didn’t recognize. A gleaming petrol-powered chainsaw was propped against a wall. Brice took care of his tools.

The claw hammer looked new. If Brice had killed Cassie Baker, he wouldn’t have kept the hammer he’d used to smash in her head. The room smelled of sawdust and glue, a pleasant smell. Was it the smell of a murderer’s lair?

In the bedroom next to a single bed, a chair served as a bedside table, carrying a radio, a new retro Bakelite alarm, and a cassette of dental floss. No cigarettes. If Brice was their stalking smoker, he didn’t smoke in bed. Nor did he read. The room lacked anything personal, there were no photos of family or Brice himself. The stark décor wasn’t the minimalism Stella favoured, it felt temporary. Brice had lived there for thirty years, but his bedroom looked no more than a billet.

Jack returned to Brice’s lair, certain this was where he’d find a clue. He opened plastic drawers in a cabinet labelled with fixings of Brice’s trade: ‘screws’, ‘nuts’, ‘rawl plugs’. The contents matched each legend. Fifteen minutes. No time for a meticulous search, he’d look if Brice went out for longer.

Jack couldn’t resist the tin of loose-leaved Earl Grey from Betty’s Tea Rooms in Harrogate that was on top of the cabinet. He kept a biscuit tin in his house for his treasures. Were these Brice’s treasures? So far the house was a disappointment.

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