Death in an Elegant City

Book 4: Murder on Location

by Sara Rosett

Genres: Cozy Mystery; Female Sleuths; Amateur Sleuth; International Crime & Mystery; Traditional Mysteries; Crime & Mystery

Synopsis

Sightseeing can be murder...

Location scout Kate Sharp is thrilled to be part of a scouting trip to the historic city of Bath, England to research the location for a Jane Austen documentary. But before Kate gets a chance to stroll the elegant boulevards where Austen once lived, murder cuts the sightseeing short. Now Kate must rearrange her itinerary and find the killer before she and the production are shut down permanently.

Perfect for fans of British detective mysteries, Death in an Elegant City blends the puzzle of a whodunit with the mystique of Jane Austen. It is the fourth installment in the popular Murder on Location series, a collection of traditional British cozy mysteries. Escape into a quintessentially English cozy with a Sara Rosett mystery today!

Release date: April 30, 2016

Publisher: Sara Rosett

Print pages: 226

Sample

CHAPTER 1

 

 

THE TRIP DIDN’T START WELL. It should have been a short, easy drive from Nether Woodsmoor in Derbyshire to Bath in Somerset. It wasn’t far in miles—only about a four-hour drive when you begin at three in the morning—but the tension inside the van was palpable, and I was already dreading the next three days of non-stop togetherness that our location scouting trip required.

 

I had been able to tune out the almost constant sniping in the van, managing to snatch a few hours sleep, but Elise DuPont’s strident tone had carried from the driver’s seat to the back row, jerking me out of my drowsy state. I saw the outline of a city glowing in the distant darkness and checked the time. Almost six, so it had to be Bath.

 

Alex stirred beside me on the bench seat and straightened. Catching a glimpse of a sign that stated Bath was only a few kilo‐ meters away, he muttered, “Thank goodness,” and stretched his arm along the back of the seat, casually wrapping my shoulders. He glanced toward the front of the van. “Despite the atmosphere, it’s good to be together again,” he said, in his relaxed, easy way.

 

I found myself smiling back at him. “Yes, it is,” I said and wondered why I’d been so worried about seeing Alex again face-to-face.

 

The last few months had been a little rough for our burgeoning relationship. The Jane Austen documentary produc‐ tion that we worked for had completed its first three episodes and gone on hiatus in June. With no guarantee that more episodes would be ordered, both Alex and I had looked for new location scouting jobs. Alex had landed a job working on a fantasy film, which had taken him to Croatia for two months during the summer in July and August. I was a temporary trans‐ planted American and didn’t want my time in England to be over, so I’d stayed in the little village of Nether Woodsmoor and managed to pick up a few location scouting jobs in the surrounding area, one of which was for a BBC crime drama that filmed two episodes in Derbyshire, but the work petered out after that.

 

I was barely scraping by, doing occasional scouting for a couple of print ads when my hypochondriac mother, who lived in the States, had actually become ill, an event that shocked both of us. I moved out of Honeysuckle Cottage, which had been my snug and cozy home for several months, and returned to Southern California to take care of her.

 

She had made a full, but slow, recovery from a serious bout with pneumonia. Even on her worst days she tried to engineer meetings between me and any male medical professional who had the misfortune to be assigned to her case. While she had once thought only doctors were worth consideration in the matrimo‐ nial stakes, she had now broadened her view to include respira‐ tory therapists, hospital administrators, and male nurses.

 

Once I was sure mom was out of danger, I’d taken some loca‐ tion scouting jobs that old friends had thrown my way, adding a couple of print ads as well as a music video to my resume. When the news came that the Jane Austen documentary production had been renewed for three more episodes, I immediately booked an

airline ticket, despite knowing that the logical thing to do would be to stay in California, which had more job opportunities.

 

On the personal side, I enjoyed being with Alex, but we were so different—he was relaxed, easy-going, and had an effortless charm that drew people to him. I, on the other hand, was a tad more structured and analytical, which meant that the whole time we were apart I was running through the possible outcomes of our relationship and kept coming back to the inescapable conclusion that we were too different to work as a couple. But despite all the logical misgivings I had about our relationship, when the news came about the new episodes my heart overruled my mind, and I’d raided my savings account. I had just enough to cover the airfare to escape the smoggy dry heat of California and return to cool, green England and pre-production.

 

Alex and I had done our best to stay in touch during the months apart, but any separation takes its toll, and after four months of echoey phone calls and fuzzy video chats, everything felt slightly awkward. We’d only been back on the same continent for a few days, and I’d decided it was too much to expect that we would be perfectly comfortable with each other right away. Things were definitely different. We weren’t quite where we had been in the spring. Our easy camaraderie had faded a bit, and things felt slightly strained, but snuggled into the curve of Alex’s arm felt like exactly the right place to be.

 

A deep voice from the front of the van drew my attention back to the present. “We can easily work in a couple of references to Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility,” said Cyrus Blakely, the production’s newly assigned director, whose deep tone and crisp aristocratic accent conveyed exasperation. The headlights of a passing car flickered over the inside of the van, momentarily lighting the longish golden hair that he combed straight back from his high forehead. With his fine flyaway hair floating around his face and his large brown eyes, he reminded me of a lion. He had a King of the Beasts attitude to match the look, and had spent the first moments of the early-morning hours strutting around the van, informing us where we would sit, how to load the luggage, and which route to take.

 

I wasn’t a huge fan of our producer, Elise—we’d gotten off on the wrong foot initially, but had now settled into a truce—but I couldn’t help feeling a bit sorry for her. Apparently, the backers of the documentary wanted Cyrus attached to the project, and Elise had little say in the decision…or at least that was the rumor that my friend Melissa had heard. And she usually had all the info about that sort of thing.

 

“Still arguing,” Alex marveled, his American accent contrasting with the clipped British voices coming from the front of the van. Like me, Alex was an American, although he had lived all around the world while growing up because of his father’s diplomatic job.

 

“I know,” I said quietly. “I thought they would run out of steam by Birmingham.”

 

Elise didn’t reply to Cyrus’s comment about Pride and Preju‐ dice. Instead, she kept her gaze on the road and gave a sharp shake of her head, which dislodged another strand of her streaky gray-blond hair from her bun. Elise wasn’t one of those women who worried about her appearance. She was the lowest mainte‐ nance woman I’d ever met. She wore black every day, but not because it was chic. She’d told me once that a single color meant she didn’t have to fuss about wardrobe choices. Today she had on a cavernous black cape with black jeans and black ankle boots. Each day her saggy bun was held in place with whatever skewer-like implement was handy. Today it looked like a drinking straw was doing the job.

 

“We’ve been over this ground before, Cyrus,” Elise said in an accent just as posh as Cyrus’s. “The documentary has already covered Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility. Jane Austen wrote more than two books during her lifetime, and we are documenting her entire life.”

 

We had wound our way through the more modern outskirts of Bath to the center of the city. I tried to ignore the bickering at the front of the van as I took in the elegant boulevards lined with buildings of the golden-hued local limestone, but the van was such a confined space that I couldn’t escape hearing the argument.

 

Cyrus shifted and his seat creaked, his every move conveying annoyance. “Viewers like Elizabeth and Darcy and—”

 

“Which we delved into,” Elise said, sharply. “In fact, we delved into it so deeply that I don’t see how we could find anything else to say about them.”

 

I heard a snuffling noise and glanced at the row in front of Alex and me. Felix, our cinematographer, started and jerked awake. He rubbed his hand across his face and struggled to a more upright position. Felix usually had the sartorial splendor of a crumpled piece of paper, but with the travel and the early start, he now looked like a crumpled piece of paper that had been run over a few times…and left in the rain.

 

“Still at it, are they?” he asked. I sent Felix a quelling glance. He wasn’t exactly diplomatic. In fact, he seemed to thrive on conflict, almost enjoying it. I was glad he’d slept almost the entire drive. Who knows what state Cyrus and Elise would be in if Felix had been goading them on for hours.

 

But Elise had heard Felix’s comment. “No, it’s settled,” she said in an imperious voice. “Cyrus must get it through his head.” She glanced quickly over her shoulder to look at Felix, then she gave Cyrus, who was seated on the first bench seat, a significant look before refocusing on the road. “The subject is closed. There are plenty of Jane Austen related sites to explore in Bath and none of them have anything to do with either of those books. Paul, show him the spreadsheet,” Elise commanded, and Paul’s lanky form shifted in the front passenger seat.

 

Paul was the production’s first assistant director, or A.D., as he was called for short. He always had a pencil stuck behind his left ear, and he was usually a whirlwind of action and motion. But he’d been so still and quiet that I’d forgotten he was in the van. He reached out a boney Ichabod Crane-like arm and held out a computer tablet toward Cyrus, but Cyrus waved it away with a sniff.

 

“I never touch those things, my lad. That’s why I have you around.”

 

“You made sure of that, didn’t you?” Paul said in a tone so bitter it drew my attention away from the view. I didn’t know Paul all that well. He was constantly on the go, but he was always a soothing presence compared to Elise’s acerbic personality. I’d never heard him use a tone like that. Now that I thought about it, he’d also been subdued this morning when we loaded the van. I’d assumed it was the early hour, but as Paul glanced back, I noticed that he looked…angry, I realized. Cyrus didn’t notice Paul’s hostile look.

 

“Just one big happy family, aren’t we?” Felix muttered, his voice pitched low so that it didn’t carry to the front of the van. He stretched, and his already half untucked dress shirt pulled out of the waistband of his pants. “Yep, Northanger Abbey and Persuasion—now there’s a recipe for cancellation, if I ever heard one,” he said slightly louder.

 

He ignored the searing glance that Elise directed at him through the rearview mirror and turned his profile with his prominent brow to the window. I watched Felix for a second, wondering briefly what had happened to make him such a curmudgeon. He was only in his thirties—possibly late thirties— but had the grumpy disposition of a set-in-his-ways elderly man. It must be the early start. It had put us all in a bad mood, I decided, determinedly suppressing the uneasy feeling. The odd hours and extended time spent together on a scouting trip usually brought on a sort of giddy esprit de corps, which, granted, was often brought on by the enforced togetherness and lack of sleep, but still…this trip felt nothing like that. There were too many bad vibes.

 

We had reached the central area of Bath, and Elise expertly spun the steering wheel, guiding the van into a parallel parking slot beside a rusticated stone wall over seven feet tall. A substan‐ tial stone balustrade ran atop the wall, high overhead.

 

Elise threw the van into “park,” climbed out, and stalked across the street to a smaller road, a pedestrian walkway, that branched off the road perpendicularly. The cobblestone street she walked along was lined with shops, hotels, and restaurants, all with neoclassical façades. Elise went to the white doorway with a beautiful fanlight glowing brightly. A brass plaque by the door read, “Bath Spa Hotel.”

 

The rest of us climbed out of the van more slowly. After the warmth of the van, the chilly November air was bracing. I fastened the top button on my peacoat. Felix surveyed the dark street, hands in his pockets, then he doubtfully studied the hotel. “Doesn’t look like it will have a bar.”

 

Cyrus, his sport coat flapping as he moved quickly around the van, threw open the back doors. “I’ve known Dominic and Annie Bell for years.” The wind whipped his long hair around, causing it to stand on end. “I always stay with them when I’m in town. Excellent hotel. One of the finest boutique hotels in Bath.”

 

I scanned the street we’d parked on, then took a few steps toward an open paved courtyard that began where the high stone wall ended. The towering Gothic spires of a church were visible against the sky, which was slowly brightening, transitioning from black to navy. “That must be Bath Abbey,” I said, taking in the flying buttresses, the pointed arch windows, and the rose window at the front of the church.

 

Alex looked at me critically. “We better get you some coffee.”

 

I threw him a grin. I was not at my best in the morning, especially before coffee. “I mean, obviously that’s the Abbey…so…”I swiveled slightly, looking back at the high stone wall, “those must be the Roman Baths behind the wall.”

 

I’d used the time on my long flight back to England to prep for the scouting trip, reading guidebooks and paying special attention to the areas Jane Austen had frequented as well as the locations she’d used in her books. The Roman Baths and the more modern Pump Room figured prominently in both her life and her writing.

 

“Indeed it is,” Cyrus said as I removed my camera from its case and snapped a few quick shots of the Abbey. I didn’t have to get my camera out of my luggage because I almost always carried it with me, something I’d picked up from my first boss when I was learning the ropes of location scouting.

 

“Brilliant location,” Cyrus said. “Can’t be beat. Ah, here is Dominic, the proprietor.”

 

A tall, broad-shouldered man came out of the hotel’s open doorway, temporarily blocking the light. He trotted down the steps and hurried across the street with a long stride to greet Cyrus and take his suitcase.

 

A petite woman with curly ginger-colored hair followed him out, but remained on the hotel’s top step leaning on a pair of crutches. Her right leg was in a cast from her knee to her foot.

 

“And here’s Annie,” Cyrus announced in ringing tones. My friend Melissa had told me Cyrus had started his career as an actor, then later switched to directing. I believed her. His voice would have carried to the back row of any theater and he had probably woken any still-sleeping residents farther along the street.

 

I took a final shot of the Abbey then reached for my suitcase, but Alex beat me to the suitcase handle.

 

“Allow me,” he said, and I gladly stepped back. Lugging equipment was one of the downsides of scouting trips.

 

We crossed to the open doorway where everyone had stopped.

 

“Annie, darling, what happened?” Cyrus asked as he planted a quick kiss on Annie’s cheek, then stepped back and gestured at the crutches.

 

“I’m an idiot, is what happened. Tripped on the basement stairs, and now I have to pay for it. Weeks with this thing,” she lifted a crutch and shook it at Cyrus. “A terrible fate for someone who hates to slow down.”

 

“A terrible fate for all of us,” Dominic amended in his deep voice, and Annie rolled her eyes at him.

 

“Come in, all of you.” She tucked the crutch under her arm and turned with an economy of motion and swiftness that made it clear she had mastered the use of her crutches.

 

The bright light of the entry highlighted Annie’s ginger-colored curls as she said, “Welcome to Bath Spa Hotel. You’ll have the whole place to yourself for the next few days. Please let us know if you need anything at all.”

 

The wainscoted entry was quite small. Annie thumped her way over to an interior door that separated a tiny office from the entry area. A window had been cut into the wall that separated the office from the reception area and I could see a desk and filing cabinet through the opening. Annie put her crutches aside and deftly switched places with Dominic, who had been collecting keys from a row of pigeonholes behind the desk. Annie hopped on her good foot and took a seat behind the desk. She waved a hand toward the adjoining room. “Breakfast service begins at seven in the dining room, which is beyond the parlor there, and we can help you book a table at a restaurant or a tour, but it sounds as if you’ll be quite busy.”

 

Because the entry was so crowded, Alex and I stepped into the connecting room. The parlor was more spacious with bow windows that overlooked the cobblestoned street. Club chairs and small tables were scattered around the room. A kitchen was the next room on the ground floor, and beyond it, I could see women moving around a dining room, setting up for breakfast.

 

The rich smell of coffee permeated the air, and my mouth watered.

 

Cyrus tapped Felix on the shoulder and pointed to the back of the parlor where a small wooden bar filled one corner beside a door to what looked like a courtyard garden. “There’s your bar,” Cyrus said as he finger-combed his hair that had been tossed around by the wind off his high forehead. “What did I tell you? Everything you need. And we all know you need a bar to be fully functioning.”

 

Felix looked perturbed at this statement. Cyrus’s tone was joking, but there was something else there, too, a cutting, almost malicious undercurrent as well. Felix was a grouch, but I’d never known him to have any sort of problem with alcohol, which seemed to be what Cyrus was insinuating. I glanced at Alex, and he lifted a shoulder, his expression conveying that he didn’t know what Cyrus was trying to say either.

 

Dominic handed the bundle of keys to Elise, who had also moved into the parlor area where she was consulting with Paul. Paul had his ever present clipboard balanced on his computer tablet. He took the pencil from behind his ear and checked off room numbers as Elise distributed keys. “Cyrus,” she said, “you’re by yourself in Room Two. I have Room One. Paul, you’re in the single, Room Four. Alex, you and Felix have Room Three. Kate, you’re in Room Five, with Melissa—whenever she shows up,” Elise finished, her tone indicating that Melissa might never arrive.

 

“She’s already here in Bath,” I said. “She texted me yesterday. The Fashion Museum wanted them to begin setting up yester‐ day.” Melissa had worked in Continuity during the first three episodes we’d filmed, but she was interested in fashion and wanted to move to Costuming. Her personal wardrobe was inventive and quirky, and I’d told her shifting over to Costume was a perfect fit for her. She’d rolled her eyes at my pun, but said that she felt more in her element than she ever had in Continuity.

 

When Elise mentioned that she had a contact at the Fashion Museum in Bath who was interested in running a special exhibit related to the Jane Austen documentary, Melissa had jumped at the opportunity to be a liaison between the Fashion Museum and Parkview Hall, a stately home that was one of our go to shooting locations for the documentary. Parkview Hall had an extensive range of period clothing tucked away in their storerooms, some of which they had kindly let us borrow when we’d filmed several scenes depicting Regency life on location there. They were just as generous to the Fashion Museum, lending them several examples of Regency attire for the exhibit. I didn’t expect to see much of Melissa since the preview party for the exhibit was scheduled for Saturday evening, only two days away.

 

“Good,” Elise said shortly then looked at Paul. “Get in touch with Melissa. See if everything is on-track. We’ll need to go there, probably tomorrow, and see if we can use the exhibit for a Jane in the Modern World feature.”

 

Paul nodded, switching to his computer tablet.

 

Elise turned to speak to the group. “Drop your bags in your rooms and meet me back here in ten minutes.”

 

Dominic’s large figure moved through the parlor to the area that opened to the kitchen. He clasped his hands together. “Before you scatter, a few things…we are a Grade II historic building, so that means we haven’t been able to install an elevator. Insert groans here,” he said with a smile. “However, Annie and I—”

 

“You mean Mia,” Annie called out from the reception area as she waved her crutch and used it to point to a young woman in her late teens who appeared from the kitchen. Mia wore an apron over a polo shirt with the hotel’s name embroidered on it. Her thick chestnut bangs ended just above her bright green eyes. The rest of her long hair was pulled back into a ponytail, except for two curling tendrils that framed her dimpled smile.

 

“I’m staying put right here with my book,” Annie said, gesturing to a paperback copy of Northanger Abbey that rested on the ledge of the office window. “I’m getting quite a lot of reading for my book club done lately,” Annie said ruefully.

 

“Right. Mia and I,” Dominic said, “are happy to carry your bags to your rooms. Just a couple of things before we do that. Here is your code for the night latch.” He handed out slips of paper to all of us with a short string of numbers. “Use that to get in, if you’ll be out after eleven. That way, Annie and I don’t have to wait up for you until the small hours of the morning. You’re free to party until dawn, if you like. Dining room, here.” He gestured behind him. “Bar in the back. WC down those stairs there in the basement.”

 

He pointed to a set of iron circular stairs in a corner of the parlor. “If you have extra bags or equipment, we can store it in our storage room down there.” He paused, glancing around our group. “No takers on that? Right, then. Let’s begin the climb.” He picked up Elise’s bag and moved through a kitchen area with two counters, a sink, and an impressive-looking cappuccino machine to another set of narrow circular steps. “We had to make the most of every bit of space,” he said over his shoulder, “so the path to the rooms takes you through the kitchen. We only serve breakfast and have quite a few locals who stop in for breakfast or coffee, but after about ten we won’t be in your way too much.” The staircase he trotted up was wooden and carpeted.

 

Mia snatched up my bag and said, “Room Five?” “Yes, but I can carry that.”

 

“Oh, no worries. I do it all the time.” And she must have, because she skimmed up the tapering circular steps quickly to the top floor. Along the way, we passed Cyrus and Elise, who had stopped at their separate rooms on the first floor above the ground floor. We also left Alex, Felix, and Paul behind on the next floor. One more twist of the staircase brought Mia and me to the top of the building and Room Five.

 

After stooping over to reach the keyhole set low in the door,

 

Mia set my suitcase down at the foot of one of the two single beds. A bright wallpaper of butterflies filled one wall. It was so dazzling and busy that it was hard to look away from it, but I managed to scan the rest of the room.

 

A dressing table stood in one corner and a small window seat completed the room’s decor. There wasn’t room for anything else. I’d read enough Regency literature to know that the sloping ceiling meant that this was a former servant’s room.

 

“The loo is through here,” Mia said, pointing to a door with a raised step, which opened into a tiny bathroom. “Oh, and I’m to remind you that there isn’t a safe in the rooms, but if you have something valuable—watches, jewelry, something like that,” she said, her gaze darting from my wrist to my earlobes to my tiny, rather beat-up suitcase, “Dominic will put it in the vault down‐ stairs…if you have anything,” she finished uncertainly. “Perhaps your camera? It does look expensive.”

 

I’d forgotten I had slipped the camera strap around my neck. I used my camera so often that it was almost a part of me. “It is, but I’ll keep it with me.” I stepped to the side so she could get by me to leave the room.

 

She paused on the landing. “I know it’s the smallest room and at the top of the stairs,” she said in a conspiratorial whisper, “but it’s also the quietest because it’s at the back of the house…less street noise. And at this time of the year, no worries about it being too hot.” She smiled, deepening her dimples before clattering down the stairs.

 

I closed the door and went to kneel on the window seat, pulling back the shutters from the window. I peered down to the small square of concrete that must be the courtyard garden, but my stomach fluttered, and I transferred my gaze to the rooftops. I couldn’t see much of Bath—mostly other rooftops, but it was Bath, a part of England I’d never explored. The sun was higher now, spreading a golden light across the city, and I wanted to get out there.

 

I tucked my room key and a map of the city into my tote bag, checked that I had some spare batteries for the camera, an extra memory card, and my Moleskine notebook, then stepped into the hall. Feeling a bit like Alice in Wonderland, I stooped over and locked the door with the real key—no key cards at a Grade II listed building, apparently—then headed for the stairs and a cup of coffee.

 

 

 

CHAPTER 2

 

 

I TOOK THE STAIRS A bit slower than Mia. The steps were quite narrow, and I wasn’t as sure-footed as she was. The foot of the stairs opened into the kitchen area where Dominic, Annie, and Mia were working. I crossed through the kitchen and was the last to arrive back in the parlor. Elise hadn’t waited for me. A few locals had arrived, and Mia was busy at the cappuccino machine. I heard the clink of silverware from the dining room and wanted to slip in there to search for coffee, but Elise was already speaking.

 

“We need to get started straightaway. The weather forecast is not good. It’s supposed to cloud over and rain this afternoon. We’ll split up so we can cover as much ground as possible.”

 

Alex stood on the outskirts of the group. He tilted his hand away from his leg as I approached, and I slipped my hand into his.

 

Elise said, “Felix, I need you to take a look at Pulteney Bridge and the river, see if it would be feasible to shoot there.” Elise consulted her list. “Alex, you have the northern area, the Crescent and the Circus. Get exterior shots while the light is good. If you have time, also go by the Assembly Rooms.”