The Whitby Murders (A Yorkshire Murder Mystery) J. Ellis (distant reading TXT) 📖

Two of them pulled some rotting planks from on top of their friend and helped him up. He was filthy but unhurt. A third went to look at what had fallen out of the skip. Amongst the empty paint containers and broken furniture he saw something alarming.

‘Oh God! What’s that? It stinks,’ he cried.

The others turned to see their friend looking at something rolled up in some kind of old sheet. The smell hit them.

‘Oh shit! That’s hair!’ The girl pointed to the end of the rolled-up thing. ‘It’s a body!’

They screamed, turned away and sprinted back home, not knowing or caring that the search for Hugh Preston, owner of the Dracula’s Lair Escape Room, was over.

‘He’s been there for some time, over a week according to a cursory examination. The cause of death was a stab wound to the chest.’

Inspector Granger and Oldroyd were at the scene of the children’s gruesome discovery. It was a chilly, dark day with a heavy grey sky. Blue-and-white tape cordoned off the skip, and a police constable was on duty. A quantity of rubbish, which had fallen from the skip with the body, lay strewn around.

‘He must have been in a nasty state,’ Oldroyd said. ‘Not a nice experience for those kids.’

‘No, I agree,’ said Granger with a grim smile. ‘That’ll teach them to climb onto things like this when they’ve been told not to. They were sent away with a severe warning not to play on skips like that.’

‘Right, I suppose it’s called learning the hard way. They’ll certainly never forget this. So I assume his killer hid his body in here, believing that the skip would be taken to the tip and the body would end up lost in a massive pile of landfill rubbish.’

‘Yes, I think so. But apparently this skip is used for general rubbish that accumulates around the industrial park. So it’s not emptied very often. That’s why it took some time for the body to be discovered.’

‘Lucky for us. We needed a break in our investigation. And I was saying only yesterday that we probably wouldn’t get any more leads here in Whitby,’ observed Oldroyd. ‘I think we can assume his murder is connected with the case though you’ll need to check that there are no other people around with a motive to kill him.’

‘It would be a great coincidence if there were, wouldn’t it?’

‘Yes, I’m thinking he was killed because he knew about the trick sarcophagus. We were clearly never meant to find his body or work out how the trick worked.’

‘They reckoned without you, sir,’ said Granger teasingly. ‘That still doesn’t necessarily mean that the obvious solution to the case is wrong. Holgate could have murdered him after he was told about the sarcophagus.’

‘In theory, yes, but in that scenario Holgate premeditates the killing of two people and then himself; he’s a violent, deranged murderer and suicide who carries weapons. No one we’ve spoken to has seen any sign of him being like that. Also how would he have known Hugh Preston? There’s no evidence that Holgate ever came to Whitby before last week.’

‘The problem with that is neither did the rest of the group. In fact, only Barnes, who was killed, came regularly to Whitby.’

‘Hmm, so who did Preston tell about the trick sarcophagus?’ mused Oldroyd.

‘Whoever it was clearly holds the key to this mystery.’

They were sauntering back to Granger’s car when Oldroyd suddenly stopped. ‘Wait. I’ve got an idea. Let’s go back to the escape room. I’ve got a feeling we didn’t look there carefully enough.’

Dracula’s Lair seemed even creepier when it was dark and deserted than when it had been full of police officers. Granger managed to find a light switch and opened the creaking door into the game’s first room, but Oldroyd strode on past the reception desk.

‘Let’s look in here first.’

To Granger’s surprise, he opened the door to the toilets and went in. ‘Yes,’ she heard him cry. ‘I thought so.’

She followed him in. There was a narrow anteroom with doors marked ‘Men’ and ‘Women’ for the toilets.

‘What is it, sir?’

‘There’s another emergency exit door in here,’ he said, pointing to a third door. ‘I think we’ll find that this leads out onto the street, not far from the exit door from that room with the sarcophagus.’

‘So someone could have moved quickly between the two?’

‘Yes, without going through the rooms set up for the game.’

‘You’re thinking of Elaine Pesku? The receptionist?’

‘I am. If I remember rightly, Louise said in her statement that when she got to reception to raise the alarm, Pesku was just coming through the door to the toilet. That’s a very effective cover. She could have been returning from that storage room which held the sarcophagus. We’ve focused too much on the main characters in this drama, looking for motives and we’ve overlooked others.’

‘So you think she was lying when she told Hampton she knew nothing about the sarcophagus?’

‘I do. What made me think about her was when you said whoever knew about that trick could hold the key to the mystery and she’s the obvious person when you think about it. Preston must have told her. Then I remembered what Louise said. There was no one else in reception so she could easily have used the two emergency doors to go to the room where Holgate was. She’s involved in this somehow. We need to get after her.’

‘Do you think she murdered Preston?’

‘Maybe, but if she was involved we know that she was working with at least one other person because there’s no way she could have stabbed Barnes.’

‘What about motive, sir? We’ve nothing to link her to anyone in that group, never mind the actual victims. The only person who had any connection with her was the actor Philip Owen and he had no link with anyone else either.’

‘We may have to consider him again too, but the urgent need is to find Pesku before any news