Page 3 of The Unseen
“I inherited this house when my uncle died three months ago. Prostate cancer. He went rather quickly, poor dear, but he said he preferred it that way. Didn’t want to linger and cause any more suffering than was strictly necessary. Uncle Michael was very unassuming.”
“Did he live here?” Quinn asked. The house was not one an unassuming man would choose to live in.
“Lord, no,” Melissa exclaimed. “He inherited it from my grandmother on her death in 1977, but he never lived here. He was a musician, a violinist. He toured nine months out of the year with the orchestra, and when he returned to London, he stayed at his girlfriend’s flat. She is a cellist, and they had been together for three decades but never made it legal. Too Bohemian for such nonsense, he liked to say. Anyway, he never liked this place and rarely set foot in it. He never did anything to modernize it. He never had any children of his own, so I, being his only niece, inherited the lot.” She looked toward the window, her eyes sparkling with unshed tears. “He was a lovely man, Uncle Michael. I miss him.”
“I’m very sorry for your loss,” Quinn said softly.
Melissa nodded and went on. “Once Paul and I took possession of the house, we agreed that we’d use some of the money my uncle left to completely revamp the place. Modern, light, and minimalist. That’s what we like. And we were going to make a studio for Paul—he’s an artist—and a study for me. I’m a graphic designer. I have my own firm but work from home. It would be convenient for us to have a London base again, although we’re not at all sure we’re ready to leave Dorset.”
Darren, a cameraman who worked on the program, appeared in the doorway. He must have been filming upstairs. It was just like Rhys not to waste time. Darren positioned himself in such a way that he could film both Quinn and Melissa without any difficulty. The interview would be made to look like an informal chat. Paul excused himself and moved away, leaving Melissa alone on the settee.
“How did you come to find the remains, Melissa?” Quinn asked, putting on her professional persona.
“We brought in an architect to remodel the house, since we planned to do considerably more than give the walls a lick of paint and buy new appliances. We intended to knock down walls and combine some of the rooms. Anyway, I digress,” Melissa said with an impish smile. “This project is something of a dream come true for me.”
“I would enjoy a project like that as well,” Quinn replied, wishing she had her own house to remodel, or at least decorate.
“When Grady—that’s the architect—looked at the blueprints we found in the library, he pointed out that the measurements of one of the bedrooms didn’t match the original scale. It seemed there should have been a dressing room or a bathroom attached to the bedroom, but the wall was smooth, and there was no doorway where one should have been. Grady found it, of course. The door had been cut directly into the wall and was operated by a spring mechanism, so there was no doorframe or a handle. The panel had been blocked by a heavy wardrobe. Once he and Paul moved the wardrobe, the panel was easy enough to open. And that’s when we found the remains.”
“Can you describe what you saw?” Quinn asked as Darren panned to Melissa, who seemed to enjoy the prospect of being on television and ran a hand through her hair playfully.
“The room was an old-fashioned bathroom. Of course, everything in this house is old-fashioned, so it wasn’t any different than the rest, except that it didn’t have electricity. Electricity had been installed at some point in the 1920s, I believe.”
“Can you describe the room?”
“There were no toiletries or even a dressing gown. Several towels hung on a rack. They must have been white once but were now yellowed with age. The tub was tightly covered with a sort of tarpaulin tied down with twine. Paul and Grady removed the tarpto see what was underneath. The skeleton was there in the tub, positioned as if the person had been taking a bath.”
“Was there anything in the tub? Traces of blood, perhaps?”
“No, but there was a white powder beneath the tub and on the rim.”
“A white powder?” Quinn asked, leaning forward. Now this was interesting.
“Yes. I thought it might have been soap powder, or tooth powder, the type they used before the invention of toothpaste, but I didn’t touch it.”
“Was there any moisture?”
“No. I suspect it had evaporated over the years.”
“Did you find anything that belonged to the person? Clothes, jewelry, purse?”
“No, nothing. There wasn’t a scrap of evidence to the person’s identity. The police checked. The coroner certified this wasn’t a recent crime, which was when we rang the hotline.”
“Hotline?” Quinn asked, perplexed.
“Yes, theEchoes from the Pasthotline,” Melissa answered. “There was a number to call at the end of each episode.”
“You created a hotline?” Quinn turned to Rhys, who was hovering just behind Darren. Darren stopped filming and glanced at Rhys, smirking. Seemed he didn’t know about the hotline either.
“I certainly did. What better way to get the viewers involved and find new subjects for our program?” Rhys replied, looking pleased with himself.
“Right. May I see the remains now?” Quinn asked.
“Of course. The room is upstairs.”
Melissa set down her cup and invited Quinn to follow her toward the staircase. Paul Glover remained where he was, by the window, looking out at the dreary day.
Melissa led Quinn up the stairs and toward a large bedroom at the end of the corridor. It was a masculine bedroom with maroon bed hangings adorning the heavily carved four-poster bed, and a maroon and navy-blue carpet that matched the heavy drapes at the window. The furniture was made of walnut, and old-world gas lamps with glass lampshades stood on bedside tables. One almost expected a valet to come striding into the room, ready to help his master dress for the day or for an evening out on the town. Quinn noted that there was no light switch in the room. It wasn’t wired for electricity, unlike the rest of the house.
