Doctor Who_ The Banquo Legacy - Andy Lane [16]
Had anyone else been conducting the investigation things would have rested with the suicide verdict, but not Hetton. He was a big, bluff man whom I had worked beside in K Division when we were mere sergeants. He was promoted to inspector long before I was but had remained there because of the injuries he had received in the Scotland Yard bombing several years earlier. He had been left with seven fingers, a scar on one cheek and a deep fear of alarm clocks. Nonetheless, he was a good detective. Too good to pension off.
A minor inconsistency in Mrs Seavers’s statement had alerted Hetton to something amiss. She told him that her husband had entered his study to open the post, minutes before his death. Checking a list of the contents of the study, Hetton found that an empty envelope had been found addressed to Seavers. The postmark was obscured by blood because the envelope had been found beneath Seavers’s body. Of the letter there was no sign. The first person in the study had been John Hopkinson: if anyone had removed that letter, then it was he. He had informed Hetton that he would be at his London lodgings for a few days more and thereafter could be contacted at Three Sisters. He and the deceased Gordon Seavers had been invited to stay with a certain Sir George Wallace for a few days.
Banquo Manor. It stood gaunt and alone about a mile from the village and the same from the station, forming the third point of a rough equilateral triangle. I had occasionally seen it in my rambles around the area, glimpsed through the trees where I had not expected to see it, although on reflection it was in the right place, and I was the one who was lost. I had never met the owner. The house itself was… unusual. There was something about the design that made one want to grit one’s teeth and look away. I do not know what it was – it may even have been a psychological effect due to the local gossip. According to my aunt, a particularly grisly murder had taken place there a century before. The then owner of the house had been butchered and drained of his blood by a lunatic cousin freshly escaped from a nearby asylum. They never found her. Whatever the reason, I didn’t like Banquo Manor. The opportunity of finally meeting the residents did nothing to quell my unease. Nothing at all.
I shivered, and looked out of the window again. The sun was setting over a snow-capped copse of trees, layering the clouds in scarlet and orange. I stared so hard at the fading rays of sunset that Three Sisters caught me unawares. As the train slowed majestically to a halt I started in surprise, then grabbed my case, shoved the report into a side pocket and made for the door. Within a few minutes I was walking down the well-remembered but now snowbound road to the village of Three Sisters.
Although the sky had been crystal clear throughout the journey, the first traces of a ground mist began to swirl through the trees and about my legs as I trudged along. The snow was only an inch or so thick, but the weather remained cold enough to keep it on the ground. There seemed to be little or no danger of an immediate repeat but I hoped we would not be in for an encore of the previous year. That winter had been disastrous, the worst in living memory.
It was some minutes before I noticed the ground mist was now thick enough to blot out all but the few nearest trees along the side of the road. I had never seen mist over snow before; the effect was strange and not altogether pleasant. I was sure my aunt would have some country rhyme to explain it. She usually did.
I soon passed the offshoot of road that led to the gates of the Manor. It wasn’t signposted, but at least one person had managed to find his way, judging from the footsteps that veered from my path and headed into the mist. Hopkinson perhaps? The footsteps were set between the tracks of a cart, presumably the one they had sent for his luggage. Then why didn’t he use the cart as well? There was no real point in speculating