The Christmas Mansion Mystery ( Part Four )

Chief Inspector Lampard was pacing up and down his office, rubbing
his hands together and staring at the phone, he was waiting for that all
important call from the hospital, his daughter was due to give birth.

Although he was supposed to be having a day off, being as it was a
Saturday, he had some paper work to finish off, from a case he had
been on. He didn't particularly want to hang around, but he had asked
the hospital to ring him at the office, so he felt obliged to stick around.

Just at that moment his partner in crime...Detective Brentford walked in. “Sir!”Lampard always hated it, when Brentford called him Sir! He knew it would be another case to solve.

“Sir...there's been what looks like a murder, a phone call has just come in.”

“What! Oh hang on a minute Brentford.” This was the last thing Inspector Lampard needed, he picked up the receiver and dialled the hospital. After a moment, he got through.

“Can I speak to the maternity unit please.” There was a pause on the line and then he was through.

“Hello! Yes this is Inspector Graham Lampard, my daughter Debbie Greaves is due to give birth...can you please tell her that I'm thinking of her and I've had some flowers delivered to her, Oh yes, also can you phone the front desk at the police station to let me know of any changes, the number is 555431, just leave a message, so I know that she's fine and baby too...yes that's right, thank you.”

He put the receiver down and turned to Brentford. “Right then...what's all this about?”

“Sir, we've had a phone call, of a suspected murder, a woman has reported that a man has been discovered dead...with a knife through his chest just this morning.”

“So where has this suspected murder taken place?” enquired Lampard,
heading for the door.

“At number 20 Upper Belgrave Road Sir, not far from here.”

“Quite a posh area,” replied Lampard as they made their way down the
corridor of the station. “You drive Brentford, my mind is on my daughter, you know this is worse than when my wife gave birth, at least Joyce was only in labour for five hours, it's been fourteen hours since Debs went into the hospital and she thought it would be easy.”

Walking past the front desk, Lampard informed John one of the other
policemen, that their would be a phone call from the hospital about his
daughter and could he take a message. “We will be on are way to Upper
Belgrave Road, so we won't be too far away.”

It didn't take long to get there, just a short distance away. When they
finally reached the house, getting out of the car Brentford stared up at the mansion, “quite a bit of money in this neat pad Sir.”

“Yes! It looks like we could be in for a long haul, with this case, almost
makes me wish I'd stayed at home instead of coming into the office.”

“Yes but Sir, we could have got a worse case, if we'd waited till Monday.”

“Well that's true Brentford, but I do get fed up with these murder cases,
there's always so much paper work involved and you know how I hate
paper work.”

Parking the car opposite the house, they crossed the road and walked up
the driveway, noticing that the forensics were already on the scene.

After pressing the buzzer, a woman in her late thirties appeared at the
door. “Hello I'm Chief Inspector Lampard and this is Inspector Brentford about the suspected murder.”

“Please do come in, my name is Mrs Henvey, my husband's body is in the dining room.”

Lampard and Brentford made there way down the hall and into the dining room.

The body was still in the same position, slouched forward on the couch,
with a knife protruding from the chest.

“Okay! Mrs...sorry I didn't quite catch your name?” enquired Lampard.

“It's Mrs Henvey...Alice Henvey.”

“Mrs Henvey, have you any idea who might have done this?”

“My husband had a lot of enemies, but no...I have no idea, I was asleep
in bed, my husband had stormed out of the house last evening, after an
argument, I didn't hear him come in, it was my cleaning lady Nancy who found him and alerted us.”

“Well Mrs Henvey, I guess we have a murder investigation on our hands. Can I have your husband's full name?” Brentford was standing behind Lampard, note book in hand, ready to write down the information.

“My husband's full name is Andrew John Henvey. Inspector do you think I could sit down? I've had such a terrible morning, what with
all this and strangers going through my house.”

“Well of course, I need to speak to forensics, find out if they have any information or a lead. A cup of tea would go down a treat, what about
you Brentford?”

“Yes I don't mind if I do.”

Lampard walked over to where the Geoff from forensics was taking
samples, he stared over at the body, noticing that the victim was wearing a very expensive pair of shoes, just the kind Lampard could
never afford.

“Well...Well Geoff, we meet again so soon, what was it about two weeks ago? I've only just written up the paper work on the last case.
So what have we got?”

“I've collected some hair samples and we found some plastic washing up gloves in the rubbish bin in the kitchen, with blood on.”

“The person who did this, isn't hiding themselves very well, to leave gloves with blood on in the kitchen rubbish...in less! they wanted us to find them.”

“The murder weapon will be looked at carefully and from the way the
knife went in, I would say the victim was knifed from behind, but then
I could be wrong, we won't know until we do further investigations.
Also the victim must have been very drunk, the smell of alcohol on his
breath was very strong, but we will know more, when we get him back to the morgue. We're just about to take photo's of the victim and finger
printing, then we'll be finished and the body can be taken away.”

“I'll let you get on and be in touch.” The Chief Inspector turned to walk
into the hallway, just as Alice, was approaching with his tea. “Ah! Lovely cup of tea, just what the doctor ordered. I will need to speak to everyone in the house, also I will need phone numbers of everyone that your husband has contact with, business and social, in fact anything you can find, that might give us a clue as to who did this. You said your husband had a lot of enemies?”

Alice stared at the detective and smiled, brushing the hair from her eyes. “My husband had many enemies, he was a very impatient man, who thrived constantly on bossing people about...he seemed to get pleasure from watching people cower under him.”

“And were you one of those people Mrs Henvey?” enquired Lampard.

“I would say yes, but I wouldn't want you to think for one moment,
that I had anything to do with his murder, because I can guess that's
what your thinking,” replied Alice.

Lampard smiled back, “your words, not mine Mrs Henvey, but I will
need to interview you properly.”

“Of course! I understand completely.” replied Alice nervously. Just at that moment the phone rang in the hallway. “Sorry about this Inspector, I'll need to answer that.”

“Of course...but I will need to know who it is, we will be tracking all
further calls coming in and out, just as soon as we set everything up.”

As Alice went to answer the phone, Lampard turned to Brentford, “I need you to go back to the station and pick up all the phone tapping equipment, I've decided it's best no one leaves the house, until we have interviewed them all." Brentford wondered just how quickly they would solve this case.

Alice came back into the room, “I've just had the strangest phone call,
someone asked where Andrew was and why he hadn't turned up for their meeting, when I told them Andrew was dead, they just hung up.”

“Well I have to say, your husband sounds a bit of a shady character, yes
the mystery deepens.”

The Inspector wanted to know if there was a room, where he could
interview each person living at the house, it was going to be a long
day. Alice told him that he could use the library, she showed him in.
They entered the room, there were book shelves completely
surrounding the room.

“Your husband was quite a reader Mrs Henvey.”

“Yes he was Inspector, these books were his pride and joy, no one was
aloud to touch them, but him, some of them are bound in leather with
gold writing on, he collected original volumes which he paid a lot of
money for, the only person he let near them, was Nancy the cleaner,
she would have to take them down carefully and dust each book
separately under his watchful eye once a month, she seemed to enjoy
this job and got on quite well with my husband.”

It wasn't long before Brentford was back with the equipment, already to
set up, the library seemed to have everything they needed. It was a long
day and each member of the household was interviewed. Alice was the
last. “Please come in Mrs Henvey, sit down.” Alice sat down at the table opposite the Inspector, she had been dreading this moment, she tried to keep her mind on everything that had happened, she'd had her list of notes she'd written down, but she could not very well bring them into the interview, so she just had to hope she could remember all she had written down.

Brentford took notes. “So Mrs Henvey, can you tell me what your
husband did for a living?”

“Yes he worked in banking, also finance, he had his finger in a lot of
things, he also dealt in stocks and shares. He did a lot of travelling,
keeping his eyes and ears open for any good deals. One thing about
Andrew, he was very good with finance.”

“Are you sure he didn't do any dodgy deals?” enquired the Inspector.

“I don't know...but then he never really talked to me about work, he
always said, 'I wouldn't understand,' I suppose he was right up to a
degree, but then I've always believed that the man is the breadwinner
and the woman takes care of the home, so I just left him to it.”

Alice felt a cold shiver run across her back, when she thought of how he traced his fingers through her hair, before he pulled her across him, eager to make passionate love, before they fell asleep, that was two nights ago, the last time they had been really close.

Detective Lampard continued to ask Alice questions about times and
did she have any body that could back up her statement? She told the
Detective, that only her, Cherish and Nancy had seen the body that
morning, the last time she had seen her husband was just before she
fell asleep, but that he wasn't there when she awoke.

There wasn't much anybody could do for the rest of that day, but Lampard told Alice that she and the others of the household, would need to come down to the station on Monday, to answer more questions and be taped, so that they would have a record of their statements.

When the two detectives had gone, Alice and Cherish spent the rest of the day, making lists of who they would need to phone on Monday, it was late and tomorrow was Sunday, so they wouldn't be able to get in contact with the solicitors, or the family doctor, there would be a lot to do come Monday, people to phone...funeral arrangements, Alice felt it was very inconvenient to have to go to the station, but there wasn't much they could do about it.