The Mason Murders

The Mason Murders


One

Charlotte Mason was found dead on the evening of the last Sunday in April.

The forty-two-year-old International Director of the charity ‘Help Children Now!’ and wife of the UK’s Home Secretary William Mason was killed in the couple’s constituency home that they shared. She had been bludgeoned to death in what was clearly a brutal, savage murder. The residents of the little village of Bishopsgate, located a couple of miles outside of the historic city of York, were soon alerted to the sound of sirens from the emergency services after a call had been made by the Mason’s daughter to 999. The teenager had discovered the shocking scene of her mother’s slaying. She made a desperate and frantic call for help. The Home Secretary soon arrived after racing from his nearby constituency office where he had been holding meetings that evening. With him came one of his police protection officers as well.

Also in the house alongside Charlotte and her only child was another one of those specialist policemen assigned by London’s Met. Police as bodyguards for the Home Secretary. He was found to be in a distressed state. He was incoherent and apparently confused about where he was. He had blood on his clothes too with no sign of any injury of his own. Through the house’s living room there were signs of a struggle: broken furniture and smashed household items. Outward signs on Charlotte’s corpse suggested that she had suffered a sustained attack with a household object which lay next to it. A heavy, blood-stained iron rested on the carpet.

An immense scandal would afterwards commence following this incident.

Started lurking here again a few weeks ago and I've noticed he's been "branching out" so to speak in terms of content, between his Canadian Alaska oneshot and a couple straight British political thrillers. I appreciate it; not that I'm tired of WW3 in any way, but it's nice to see him trying new things

It shouldn't be. I have written and posted on other subjects.




Nice to see you.
Oh, I always have plenty of ideas. I am just famous/infamous for one particular subject matter!


Ah, everything is not what it seems and will continue to not be.
The title The Mason Murders is a deliberate thing.

Three

DC Keane had been taken to York Police Station by officers with North Yorkshire Police. He had not been placed under arrest nor initially forcibly detained. During that car ride and then inside the station where he was escorted into an interview room, Keane several times become agitated. He repeatedly asked for his personal weapon – SO1 officers, unlike the majority of British policemen, are armed on a regular basis – and stated that he had to return to his duty guarding the Home Secretary. A colleague of his who had been sent up from London as well as locally-based Special Branch officers now were forced to restrain him. They had questions for him starting with what had happened inside that house in Bishopsgate. Keane said he had no idea as to what occurred. When told that Charlotte Mason had been killed and he was found not just present but covered in her blood too, he broke down in tears. He was muttering under his breath comments that the policemen asked him to repeat but he wouldn’t. Keane then declared his love for the Home Secretary’s wife. When pushed on how far that went, he made the claim to the soon startled officers present that the two of them had been engaged in an affair of a sexual nature. How long had this been going on? The answer to that was that this had moved to the physical starting in the New Year but for three months previously they had been ‘involved’. Following the opening interview – there would be several –, a police doctor was called in to take samples of Keane’s blood as well as his urine too due to an expressed concern by several police officers that he might be under the influence of drugs, either prescription medication or illegal substances. He was all over the place and this was a worry.

Away from York, several of the sleeping William Mason’s Cabinet colleagues had their personal security teams reinforced with extra officers during the night. Both the Foreign & Defence Secretaries, in addition to the Northern Ireland Secretary who always had an enlarged presence of protection officers due to the nature of his Cabinet brief, already had regular-assigned SO1 officers. However, them and their families were guarded by more personnel during the night as caution was employed in what was still an unknown situation where no one knew what might come out of the investigation ongoing in Yorkshire. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, long speculated in the media to be a Prime Minister in-waiting (as Mason was as well), usually didn’t have any protection officers. He’d always refused to have any bodyguards. Tonight, he had no choice in this matter. Counter-terrorism plans were put into place until some more answers came out of Yorkshire. There remained a conceivable threat to life of the nation’s top politicians and their families.


MI-5 sent Louise Saunders up to York. She arrived in the middle of the night after being alerted earlier in the evening that something big was up and thus dragged away from her family that Sunday. Her job at Thames House was to assist in the Security Service’s domestic anti-extremism fight and this had seen her work before with the Met.’s SO1 as well as those who guarded royalty and foreign diplomatic premises. She well understood the type of police officers who took on those jobs. The majority did so for career progression and the perks which came with what many would regard as an easy posting. A few, just a few, were different though. They really believed in the ideas that important people needed to be protected. All involved took at least a year-long posting. They completed firearms training, undertook advanced driving courses and had access to generous amounts of paid overtime. Following assignment to SO1, they could move further onwards with their careers to supervisory roles or serve with armed response units. Others would stay with SO1 for many years though, moving between guarding different people. It was a bore for them, Saunders had been told, and did put a strain on their personal lives with the long hours and much travel. MPs in the Government generally had two homes in different parts of the country – one in London and another in their constituency – and therefore the travelling with many nights away from home was hard on them. Some of them had been known to address those strains in manner which the Met. wouldn’t approve of: drinking, gambling and even having affairs with each other. There had been occasions where the bodyguards got too close to their charges as well. Her suspicion in arriving in Yorkshire, being told what little she did on the way, was that there would be something along those lines here with this case. Keane was off-duty, wasn’t he? So what was he doing in the Mason family home alone with the wife of the Home Secretary?

She observed the opening interview conducted with Keane. When the police officers in the room showed shock on their faces at his revelation that he and Charlotte Mason were having an affair, Saunders didn’t. She’d heard of similar things before. That had been cases of relations between SO1 officers and the politicians though there had been a female officer who’d been involved with the wife of a previous foreign secretary. Saunders had Wentworth – Keane’s partner – come to the police station. Another SO1 officer up from London was guarding that house where William & Amy Mason were spending the night. It was put to Wentworth what Keane had said about Charlotte Mason. Was this true? It was. Wentworth said that she had discovered this but wasn’t aware that her partner knew that she had become aware of what he and Charlotte were up to. It was a private matter, the policewoman said, and none of anyone else’s business. She hadn’t reported it to any superior officer because they weren’t harming anyone. Saunders asked too about where William Mason was at the time of the murder of his wife. Wentworth said that she was with him. The consistency office in Bishopsgate was several streets away from the family home. She was there with the Home Secretary for much of the day. Did she know where Keane was at the time? Off-duty, Wentworth confirmed, and she hadn’t any clue as to fact that he had been with Charlotte Mason that evening.

Saunders imagined that Wentworth was going to be in hot water with New Scotland Yard. The unprofessionalism she had shown when it came to Keane and the Home Secretary’s wife was going to see her career brought to a screeching end no matter what she said about it being a private matter. Saunders moved her mind as to where to go with this investigation next. She knew that she needed to talk to Keane herself and also William Mason. Furthermore, she decided that she needed to talk to the teenage daughter of the Home Secretary too.

Amy Mason couldn’t be left out of this.

Ah geez, the plot thickens.

I'm of the opinion (so far) that the Home Secretary has a hand in his wife's death. You write him as being seemingly nonchalant about his wife's death; while that might be explained as him simply shutting down in an attempt to deal with his wife's sudden death, one line about him sleeping "soundly" in the aftermath seems particularly suspicious. Couple that with the revelation that she was having an affair DC Keane and you have a solid motive for the Home Secretary to commit murder (or hire someone else to do it for him).

On the other hand, DC Keane definitely looks suspicious, and even little Amy seems a tad suspect; I could very easily see her behavior being interpreted as potentially guilty (her being apparently the first person to find her mother's body, her general agitated state afterwards, and then fleeing the premises), though it could just as easily be read as a scared and traumatized young girl trying to cope with her grief in the only way she knows how.

In any case, it's your story and I'm not trying to dictate what happens; just putting out what I think now based on what's given.

As an aside, you don't typically write romance, but whenever you incorporate it into your works it always seems to end in tragedy. For example, the doomed incestuous affair that helps start World War III in National Volksarmee, the poor girl who gets seduced into spying for the KGB in For Queen and Country, and I seem to remember one or two other instances that just aren't coming to mind now.

Is Charlotte Mason named for Charlotte Mason?

Maybe the lass was involved in murdering her mother and worked with her father or an outside actor to do it? While I don't think the husband did it, I agree that the line about him sleeping soundly is suspicious.

Five

That afternoon, DC Keane was arrested and charged with the murder of Charlotte Mason. He had awoken from a late morning nap just after lunch – finally getting some sleep – and refused to talk any more to the police detectives from North Yorkshire Police nor those who had come up from London either. Keane seemed much more aware now of what was happening. If he had been drugged – the results from tests on that note had yet to come back –, then any effects from such a thing had worn off by now. He seemed to understand what was happening. Therefore, Keane informed those with him that he no longer had anything to say and wanted to leave as well. The Detective Inspector heading up the ongoing investigation gave the go-ahead to arrest him. Things were already going in that direction following preliminary results which had already come in from forensics tests at the house in Bishopsgate. It was Keane’s fingerprints, bloody fingerprints too, which were on the murder weapon which that iron was and it was the blood of the Home Secretary’s wife on his clothing too. The DI was planning to arrest Keane soon enough before confronting him with this evidence against him because there was the need to make that formal. When this all eventually came to court, everything had to be have been done right or there would be no successful prosecution of Keane.

There were more reasons to move ahead with making everything formal with Keane by arresting and charging him. He did preempt that by his sudden clarity of the situation he was facing, but things were already moving that way. Other forensic examination of the house showed no evidence that there had been any forced entry into the Mason family home. The panic button in the living room and the one upstairs in the main bedroom each hadn’t been used. This all pointed to no one else having been there. From the autopsy, the murder weapon was confirmed to be the one with Keane’s fingerprints on it. There was evidence under two of her fingernails that she had scratched someone. The police detectives had seen the scratch on Keane’s neck and they were waiting on the DNA match there but it was enough for now to move forward. One of the junior detectives did point out that they had yet to have a motive. Why had he killed her? The physical evidence all appeared to be in place and with Keane wanting to leave their custody this all suggested guilt… but a reason for him to have done this would have been helpful. We’ll get to the motive once we question him under caution was the reply to that.

Upon being arrested, Keane resisted. He pushed one detective, punched another and tried to make a run for it. He was inside the police station and, while not in the custody suite, it still wouldn’t have been easy for him to get out of the building. Keane didn’t get very far. Several other officers tackled him before the investigating detectives caught up. Handcuffed while being cautioned, Keane was then taken down to the custody suite where he would be processed and then charged in the proper manner.

While these dramatics were going on, there was a different form of police activity ongoing in relation to the proceedings of the Mason investigation. The Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) made a direct request to the media to not broadcast any information about the disappearance of the Home Secretary’s daughter. There had been leaks made with great haste about that just like the ones concerning the murder of her mother. Those leaks would be looked into with the intention of finding out who the police officers involved were but before then, the ACPO wanted to silence word getting out into the public arena that they were looking for this teenager. It was explained that there was a possible danger to life on this. There was no legal power behind the request made. The media could have ignored it and carried on trying to get the latest scoop to out do one another. However, all of the mainstream media organisations did so; newer, alternative news outlets online didn’t but they had less reach than the bigger ones. The media could come back to the Amy Mason issue later. In the meantime, they had something else to focus on. The co-founder of that charity which Charlotte Mason fronted spoke live to BBC News and what she had to say changed so much.


Elizabeth Flint was a television personality. She was someone who people liked or hated. She brought forth polarising opinions because of her often outrageous antics in front of the cameras. Last year she had moved into charity work and the pairing up with such a respectable person as Charlotte Mason shocked many. However, when Flint threw herself into her charity work, she was able to make many of those who had disgust for her antics temporarily forget much of what she had done before. She was doing good work and it brought her respect. Still… Flint was always Flint. The BBC News camera crew caught up with her at Heathrow Airport after she’d arrived on a hurried flight home from Moldova. They knew that they were going to get a reaction from her in the typical Flint fashion and weren’t about to be disappointed.

Flint declared that William Mason was a philandering husband and he was a violent bully too. He’d cheated on Charlotte. He’d hit Charlotte. Tears ran down her face as she said this. She looked like she was telling the truth. Moreover, she had something else to add too. Cutting off a question asking if she had any proof about this, Flint went on. If anyone had killed Charlotte, it would have been her husband, not anyone else. William had murdered his wife, Flint told the watching world in this live broadcast, and she’d always known that he would eventually do that.

The Home Secretary was one of those watching. He was with two of his Home Office staffers who’d come up to Yorkshire. There was departmental business to be done, he told them, and they should all get on with it. The police were still all over his house and were now out looking for his daughter but he was working. The television was on at the time though Mason turned up the volume when Flint came on the screen. In reaction to her words, he had some words of his own for her image on the television. This all would have been called ‘un-parliamentary language’ had it been uttered in the House of Commons. What he called her would have shocked anyone who thought they knew him too: he was always so polite and wouldn’t be someone thought to use such language. Those with him had to stop their jaws from falling open. He muted the sound afterwards, tossed the remote control to the floor and then took his phone with him as he went to the bathroom upstairs. The two staffers exchanged alarmed glances once he was gone yet neither really could think of anything to say to each other nor in response to the policeman who put his head around the door asking what was going on. What could be said?