Elizabeth Duncan - A Killer's Christmas in Wales

“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.

“And you, Florence, what about you? Did you see anything?”

Mrs. Lloyd turned sharply and looked at her companion.

“You were there, Florence? Whatever for?”

Florence straightened the collar of her blouse.

“How do you know I was there?”

“I recognized you at the edge of the crowd that had gathered on the wall walk, Florence,” said Bethan. “But you left before I could speak to you.”

“Well, yes, I was there,” Florence admitted. “I spotted him on the train coming from Chester, and when he got off at Conwy, I decided to follow him to see what he was up to. I managed to keep him in my sights as far as the castle, but by the time I had bought my ticket and found my way inside, he was quite far ahead of me. I thought I spotted him going down the length of the place, but he just seemed to disappear. I don’t see as well as I used to, to be honest, and I didn’t know where he’d got to, so I thought I’d just take a wander round, and look for him. I was trying to work out what business he had there because he certainly didn’t seem like the sightseeing type to me.” And then she added, “But I guess he could have fancied visiting an old monument. There’s no accounting for taste, is there?”

Mrs. Lloyd glared at her and started to speak, but Bethan raised her hand, silencing her before she could say anything.

It was now Davies’ turn to speak.

“Mrs. Lloyd, do you own a gold-coloured letter opener with the name Arthur Lloyd engraved on it?”

“Why, yes, I do! It was given to Arthur as his Pineapple Award by the fruit and veg vendors association back in the 1980s. How do you know about it? Has it turned up? We misplaced it, oh, what Florence, a couple of weeks ago? I can’t remember exactly, but one day we went to open the post and it was nowhere to be found.” A puzzled look crossed her face. “But why do you ask? Where is it?”

She stood up and walked over to the little desk where she kept her bills, thank-you notes, and other small bits and pieces of correspondence. She pointed to a small, blue, glass jar that held pens and pencils. “It used to live right there in that blue jar, but we haven’t seen it for a while. I thought maybe Florence had stuck it in a drawer or something when she was dusting. Odd that it never turned up, but now that I think about it, we never really looked for it, did we, Florence? Not properly, I mean.”

Florence nodded glumly.

Mrs. Lloyd returned to her seat.

“Florence, do you know where the letter opener is?” Davies asked.

She shook her head. Her eyes betrayed a dawning fear.

Watching her intently, Davies told the two women that the letter opener had been found and then, his eyes moving quickly from one to the other, told them where. In Harry Saunders’s back.

Mrs. Lloyd touched her hand to her cheek and recoiled. She looked as if she had been slapped.

“I don’t think I can take that in,” she said. “Harry stabbed with my letter opener? O dear Lord.” Across the room, Florence rose from her chair, hesitated, and then sat down again.

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Lloyd,” Davies continued, “but at some point, we’re going to have to show you the letter opener, just so we can be sure we’re talking about the same one. We’ll need you to confirm that it is, in fact, yours.”

Mrs. Lloyd nodded.

“I expect I’ll have to go to the station to do that, will I, Inspector?”

“Yes.”

“But not tonight, surely? It’s getting a bit late and I don’t feel up to looking at something like that, knowing that it…”

“No, Mrs. Lloyd, not tonight. We’ve covered enough for now.”

“Well, I’ll say good night, then. Florence will show you out.”

As the three of them turned toward the door, Mrs. Lloyd spoke.

“Inspector, there’s something I need to ask you.”

Davies gave her his full attention.

Mrs. Lloyd hesitated. “No, it’s all right. It doesn’t matter. It can wait.” The detective chief inspector turned his head slightly. “No, really,” Mrs. Lloyd said. “It’s nothing.”

“Mrs. Lloyd, if you know something, you must tell us what it is. Did you see something? If you have information and you’re not sure if it’s important or not, tell us and we’ll decide if it’s relevant.”

She pinched her lips together.

“No, I was just going to ask you something, that’s all.”

Davies put on his coat. “I don’t need to tell you two that this situation is very serious, and we haven’t finished with either of you yet. You have confirmed that the murder weapon belongs to you, Mrs. Lloyd, you were unable to account for its whereabouts, you were both at the castle, and neither of you seems to have an alibi.”