This excerpt is from the book entitled The Black Hill Hotel Mystery an English Murder Mystery book set in the winter countryside, starring two policemen who have been working together for a few years and get along well.
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Wanda took Anne back to the hotel to have a stiff drink and to get warm again. Barnes ran up the road to call for the Forensics Team to come to the hotel. Knowles looked down at the hand poking out of the snow. There were no rings on the hand, which was hairy, definitely a man’s hand. Knowles could see the body was wearing a black jacket, with possibly a purple sweater underneath.
“I do hope this isn’t Robert Wooster,” thought Knowles, “he’s been here a couple of days and I’m not sure how he would have come here so quickly from Leicester.” He resisted the temptation to dig the body out of the snow as he could destroy vital evidence if he were to do this. He crouched down and tried to work out the lie of the land; the body appeared to be in a small channel by the side of the road and would have been covered up by the first fall of snow on Tuesday.
He stood up as he saw Sergeant Barnes hurrying back towards him.
“Forensics are on their way, sir,” said Barnes, “they’re going to use a four-wheel drive to get up the hill from the Scoresby side, so they should be here in 25 minutes.”
“Yes, they will be, but however long they take it’s too long for him, poor man,” replied Knowles.
“Any ideas who it might be?”
“Well, you’d think it would be Robert Wooster, but I have my doubts, as I don’t think Mr Wooster was wearing a black jacket when he left the train at Leicester, if memory serves.”
“It’s not the missing prisoner is it?”
“I don’t think so, the hand belongs to an older man, in my opinion,” replied Knowles pushing up his collar as the snow fell in increasing amounts.
“We will need someone to identify him; he must have been coming to the hotel to see someone, so how do we handle this?”
“I don’t know a good way of doing this – we ask Andrew and Annette to come and see the body and establish if they know who he is and then we take a picture of the face and show the photo to everyone else at the hotel? That’s all I can think to do.”
“I suppose we can’t ask the guests and staff to come out here in the snow and queue up stare at him for a few seconds to see if they know him.”
“No, not the best plan, I agree, anyway wait here and I will see what’s going on at the hotel. I hope Anne hasn’t alarmed any of the other guests,” said Knowles and walked down the slight slope towards the Frisby Hill Hotel.
When he arrived at the front door he was met by Andrew Croft.
