StillWaters:Book4oftheSophieGreenMysteries (7 page)

Sorry to be all melodramatic. But that’s how it is.

On the third day, Maria came in to see me and for the first time since I’ve known her, blushed.

“Erm, I’m going out. For the afternoon. To Newquay. So I won’t be here. Luke will. I rented some vids from Spar…”

I raised my eyebrows at her. “To Newquay? This wouldn’t be to do with a certain Aussie surfer, would it?”

Maria blushed harder. “You don’t mind, do you?” she asked anxiously.

“No! No, you go. Have fun. Get wet.” I waggled my eyebrows at her.

“I see a near-death experience has not robbed you of your dirty mind.”

“The salt water made it scruffier.”

“I won’t be late back,” she promised.

“I shall be disappointed if you’re not.”

She skipped off, looking happy, and I congratulated myself on encouraging her. I’ve never been good at taking other people’s romantic success to make myself happier. I’m such a jealous cow.

Luke and I spent the day watching videos—Maria, knowing my taste, had picked out a feast of teen movies. I loved them, and Luke hated them. He spent the day picking spots off everything, so exhausted by the time we got to Clueless that he was reduced to ridiculing the size of their mobile phones.

“So what do you want to do tomorrow?” he asked as the credits rolled.

“Find out who the dead girl was and how she died.”

Luke sighed. “Why are you so bothered?”

“Curiosity.”

“And you know where that gets you.”

“Do I look like a cat to you?”

Luke declined to comment.

“She probably just killed herself,” he said.

“Yes, or she could have been killed.”

“Check out Detective Sophie.”

“Hey, are you making fun of me? Don’t, I’m all injured.”

“And whose fault’s that?”

I stood up, swaying slightly because I still wasn’t a hundred percent sure on my feet, and did my darnedest to stomp up the stairs to my bed. Luke’s bed. Whatever.

“Sophie.” He followed me and stood in the doorway as I flounced into bed and pulled the covers up to my chin. I turned on my side—careful to avoid the lump on my head—and ignored him.

“Come on, Soph.” He came over and bobbed down by the bed and reached out to touch my face. I turned over, wincing. “Don’t be a baby.”

“I’m not being a baby.”

“Yes, you are. Look, you did something stupid—”

“But I
didn’t
.”

“Right, and you can prove this how?”

“I don’t know,” I said, frustrated, and felt my eyes prick with tears.

Luke sighed. “It’s just,” he said, “you do sort have a record of doing stupid things.”

“Name one.”

“Well—how about when you shot Docherty and slammed him in a cell, with no good reason?”

“I thought he’d tried to blow me up.”

“And did you have any proof?”

“Can we not talk about this?”

I sensed a monumental amount of restraint in Luke as he didn’t point out that I’d started it.

“Are you staying up here?”

“Yes.”

He stood up. “’Night, then.”

I glared at my pillow. “’Night.”

He left, shutting the door, and I turned over, feeling damn stupid. Not that it was a new feeling. I always seem to be doing something risible. I’m famous for it. A day without humiliation is not a Sophie day.

But listen. I wasn’t being stupid this time. I didn’t fall and hit my head. I had good boots on and a flashlight and I was watching where I went.

I just wish I remember what happened.

Morning came, announced by the seagull outside who decided it was her personal business to announce her presence every thirty seconds with a loud “CAW!” And just in case I missed this, she added a head butt every now and then, because apparently she thought that I was, you know, a threat or something. CAW CAW
bang
. From behind the window. CAW CAW
bang
. And the curtains. CAW CAW
bang
. Asleep.

CAW CAW
bang
.

Well, not any more.

I glared at my watch. Eight-thirty. Not too bad, considering I'd been asleep for twelve hours. I picked up my book and tried to focus.

CAW CAW
bang
.

My eyes weren’t as dry as they had been and blinking was no longer a torture. Neither was swallowing. Yesterday, Luke had fetched fish and chips from the chippy up the road, and I’d actually managed to eat most of mine (with some unseen help from Norma Jean). It had taken me three days, but I was on solid foods now.

Oh well, look at the bright side. I must have lost loads of weight.

CAW CAW
bang
.

Where the hell was my gun?

Luke knocked on my door about ten o’clock.

“Are you staying here all day?”

“Might do.” I still wasn’t happy with him for the whole believing I was an idiot thing.

“Oh. So you won’t want to come and talk to the pathologist waiting downstairs?”

I dropped my book. “The what?”

He grinned. “Dr. Lucy Denver. Very nice. Lives a couple of miles away, in Port Gaverne—”

I don’t give a flying fuck where she lives. “Did she examine the cave body?”

He nodded.

“And she’s here?”

He nodded again.

“How—why—?”

“I made a few calls last night. Cornish police are very accommodating. Dr. Denver agreed to come out here, seeing as you’re incapacitated.”

“I am not—let me get dressed.” I felt at my hair. “God, Luke, there’s still
seaweed
in my hair!”

“I didn’t think it would be polite to point it out to you.”

“I need a shower.”

“I’m sure she’s seen worse.”

I flung back the covers. “Yes, but not on the living. Are there towels in the bathroom?”

I clomped down the stairs, ricocheting to a halt when I registered a small, pretty woman with curly brown hair, sitting on the sofa, reading my Cosmo.

“You must be Sophie Green,” she said, smiling.

She looked clean and neat and she smelled nice. In other words, the opposite of me.

“I have to take a shower,” I mumbled, and legged it to the bathroom. “Oh—I need clothes…”

“I’ll get them,” Luke said, grinning widely, and jogged down the stairs to the creepy cherub room to get some. He came back up with a pile of clothing for me and I took it and locked myself in the bathroom. Bastard could have warned me.

Although, it was jolly nice of him to get her to come over. Wonder if he sent a photo of himself to encourage her?

I shampooed my hair twice with Maria’s shampoo because it smelled stronger than mine and might mask the seaweed stink more, double conditioned it, lathered myself all over with Olay Body Wash (they should rename that: I am not a body. Not in the corpse-like sense) and shaved my legs and underarms. It felt so nice to be clean, to smell good.

I even put on a bit of makeup to stop myself looking so pasty. I got out my big bottle of cheap and cheerful body lotion and blobbed that all over myself. And then I got dressed.

At least, I started to. Then I wrapped a towel around myself, opened the door, and said, “Luke, did it occur to you I might need a bra?”

He looked up from his conversation with Dr. Lucy.

“Can’t you manage without one?” he asked, quite hopefully.

“Not since I was thirteen,” I said. I pushed open the door a little further. “Okay, I’ll get one myself—”

Luke took me in with a lightning glance, leapt to his feet, and said, “No, I’ll do it. Stay there, for God’s sake cover yourself up.”

I looked down at myself. Towel covering me from armpit to thigh. It wasn’t the most elegant of outfits, but it was at least decent.

He dashed past me and down the stairs, and I offered a weak smile to Dr. Lucy.

“Sorry. I—I’ve been ill…”

“So he told me. I hope you’re feeling better now?”

I nodded. “Yes. Thanks.”

Silence, while she looked at her nails and I studied the wall opposite the bathroom door.

“Luke?” I called.

“Could you give me a few pointers as to where?”

“Suitcase?”

Another silence. I met Dr. Lucy’s gaze.

“Have you been together long?” she asked politely, and my eyes bulged.

“We’ve been broken up for four months.”

“Oh! Oh. I see. But you’re—I see.”

A blatant lie.

Eventually Luke came back up, holding one of my bras like it was hard porn.

“Thank you.” I tried not to blush as I closed the door, locked it to be on the safe side, and finished getting dressed. Luke had brought up my blue jeans—my brown ones having been lost somewhere in the hospital—and a bobble-knit sweater. I was quite pleased to discover my jeans were slightly looser than before. I must try this drowning lark more often.

I emerged, feeling slimmer, brighter, and a hell of a lot cleaner, and went into the kitchen.

“Coffee?”

“I made you some,” Luke said, gesturing to a mug on the table. “Feeling better?”

“Yes. Thanks.”

“Remind me not to go too near that cave,” Dr. Lucy said.

“Didn’t you go near it when—when you—”

“No, I never saw the body when it was found,” she said. “First I knew of it was a note in my pigeonhole.”

“So?” I asked, curling into the chair by the TV, coffee warming my hands. “Did she hang herself? Can you tell?”

Dr. Lucy took a sip of her coffee and let out a sigh. “It’s not really so cut and dried,” she said. “What I can do is present the facts to the police—and to you of course.”

“And the facts are?”

Another pause. “Molly Stanton—your cave body—did not die by hanging. What killed her was the water in her lungs.”

“She drowned?” My nausea made a reappearance.

“There are various ways to tell whether the victim was dead before or after she was put in the water,” Dr. Lucy said. “In Molly Stanton’s case, there were diatoms—microscopic algae—present in her kidneys and liver.”

Luke and I looked at each other, then back at her.

“In English?”

“If she had been dead when she entered the water, then her heart would not have been beating, yes? Therefore her circulation would not have been able to carry these diatoms to other systems in her body.”

Clever.

“Her lungs were distended and—well, there are other things. But it was quite clear to me when I examined her that she had drowned.”

“So why did everyone think she was hanged?”

“Well, it might have had something to do with the rope around her neck,” Dr. Lucy said drily. “To look at her, yes, it did appear she’d hanged. The rope was made into a tight noose and tied securely to one of the hooks in the roof of the cave—”

“What hooks?” Luke asked.

“There were maybe half a dozen,” I said. “I guess a pulley system when it was used to take things up to the pub cellar.”

He looked grudgingly impressed.

“But I’m quite sure the noose didn’t kill her,” Dr. Lucy went on. “By the time she came to me the rope was tight—rope shrinks and flesh swells—and frayed, and there were claw marks around it.”

Claw marks? I almost asked, but then I realised. “Like she’d tried to get it off?”

“Yes. Although that can be a reflex, even in a suicidal hanging. Sometimes the victim is still trying to pry the rope loose after consciousness has been lost. But I’d say she was still conscious a long time before she drowned. There was a general lack of evidence of a hanging.”

“So she definitely drowned?”

“That’s what I put on the death certificate.”

I tried to put this together. The shower seemed to have cleared more than sweat and sea water from me—my head felt clearer, like washing away a hangover.

Molly Stanton had not been hanged, or hanged herself. She’d been suspended from a hook in the ceiling, but she hadn’t died from asphyxiation. She’d drowned.

“
Why
didn’t she asphyxiate?” I asked. “I don’t understand. If she was hanging from a hook, surely she wouldn’t have been able to breathe? I mean, that cave’s got to be…what, fifteen feet high? I don’t know how tall she was—oh, but how long was the rope?”

“About three feet,” Dr. Lucy said.

“Which leaves us a good six feet between her feet and the floor,” Luke said, the first time he’d spoke in a while. “Well, Soph. Looks like another murder.”

I’d suspected as much, but that didn’t mean I was exactly pleased about it.

Dr. Lucy declined our offer of lunch—just as well, because I don’t think there was anything to eat in the house—and walked down to her car in the harbour.

“Oh yes,” she said, “before I leave—there was one more thing. A contusion on the back of Miss Otis’s head.”

“Miss Otis?” I frowned. “I thought—”

“Just a nickname,” Dr. Lucy said. “Forgive me my habits, I spend all day with dead people.”

“Miss Otis like in the song? But she was lynched…”

“What are you talking about?” Luke said, looking confused.

“I’ll tell you later. What was this contusion?”

“A bruise on the back of her head,” Dr. Lucy said. “Inflicted before she died.”

“Are you sure?” Luke said.

“It had started to heal—the blood was beginning to clot—never mind. But she was definitely hit on the head before she died. It could have been something floating, or it could have been more deliberate. It’s not for me to tell. But it looks to me like she might have been hit over the head, then strung up to die.”

“You think it was murder?”

“I’d be very surprised if it was suicide.” She smiled. “Just like one of those puzzles, eh?”

Luke thanked her and shut the door behind her, then he turned to me.

“Guess I was wrong about suicide,” he said, “Although don’t tell anyone—Sophie? Soph? You okay?”

He tilted my chin up to him and peered anxiously at me. “You’re not having a relapse, are you? Algae in the liver or something?”

I shook my head. “I just remembered,” I said, and my voice sounded very weak.

“Remembered what?”

“What happened. On Saturday night. I didn’t hit my head. Someone hit it for me.”

Chapter Five

The castle at Tintagel was no more than a few walls and rocks, half ready to tumble into the sea. You could walk right to the edge of the cliff—not a sharp, sheer corner like in films, but a gradual fading away into concave rock. Too close and you’d die.