Merry Murders Everyone

by David W Robinson

  Pouring two beakers of tea, he strode across to her and sat down.

  “Joe Murray. I believe you’ve been looking for me.” He put the beaker across to her, and shook hands.

  “Lucy Emerson,” she introduced herself. “The police told me you were the man to speak to about my granddad’s death. I was all over this rotten town on Saturday looking for you, and some woman in a shop told me that this was your place.”

  “Every square inch of it,” he confirmed with an encouraging smile. “Lucy – you don’t mind if I call you by your first name, do you? – Lucy, I don’t know what the police have told you, but I have been making enquiries, and quite frankly, I’m no nearer a solution than they are. Someone was in your grandfather’s house that night, but we don’t know who. It’s also beginning to look as if his death may have been more of an accident.”

  Lucy shook her head, the ponytail wagging from side to side as she did. “Someone pushed him. That’s what the police told me. That, Mr Murray—”

  “Please call me Joe.”

  “That, Joe, is manslaughter. Someone should be held to pay for that. I can’t just let it go.”

  Joe sympathised. “I’m in total agreement with you, but from all DI Craddock has told me, there’s a mass of forensic evidence, and none of it points in any particular direction. You don’t mind if I speak honestly, do you?”

  “You’re going to tell me that my granddad was a miserable, bad-tempered old sod. I already know it. A lot of people think he was just off his trolley, but he wasn’t. He was in full charge of his faculties, but he had anger issues.”

  He could see the pain in her eyes. Never speak ill of the dead was probably good etiquette, but of absolutely no use in a murder (or manslaughter) investigation.

  Joe made an effort at diplomacy. “I never met him, Lucy, so I don’t know, but the picture you just painted is the one I get from other people.” He delivered a lopsided smile. “I can’t criticise. If you want grouchy, you should see me first thing on Monday morning.”

  Lucy cradled her beaker in both hands. “Granddad had good cause. The police never got to the bottom of my mother’s death.”

  Her announcement reminded Joe of his visit to Vanessa Dixon. “Ah. Right. This has been mentioned to me before. I’ve just come from the police station and checked with them, and they don’t have many unsolved ...” He almost used the word ‘murders’ but checked himself. “… suspicious deaths.”

  Lucy sniffed disdainfully. “Typical plod. Sorry. The woman I spoke to at the police station told me that she was your niece.”

  Joe drank a mouthful of tea, allowing her a moment to calm down. “You want to tell me about your mum and what happened to her?”

  A misty look came over the woman’s face and as she spoke, her eyes sparkled with the threat of tears. “She was a lovely woman. My dad treated her badly, and then in the end, she threw him out. If I didn’t know different, I’d swear blind it was him who killed her, but I do know different. She was on her own for about five or six years, and then she took up with another man. A hell of a nice guy… so we all thought. Granddad and me, we were really happy for her, she was the happiest I never seen her. She had a heart problem, and she was on regular medication for it. As long as she didn’t overdo things, she was in no danger. Then, about four years ago, she had a heart attack. We’d been worried about it for a long time, me and Granddad.” A wistful smile played upon her lips. “Everybody thinks Granddad was a miserable old sod, but not when he came to visit us, he wasn’t. He loved his daughter, and he loved me. Anyway, Mum came home, and she was fine for a couple of weeks, but then she had a second heart attack. That was it. She was dead.”

  As she spoke on, an awful feeling of déjà vu came over Joe.

  “We had no problem with it, but what Mr nice guy did next was appalling. He took her insurance, and without even asking, put the house up for sale. We can do anything about it, obviously, but when he sold it, he took every penny for himself, and disappeared.”

  Joe was trembling.

  “Then, while later… maybe a year, maybe two, maybe less, I can’t remember, the police got an exhumation order, and took her up. There’d been no post-mortem, you see, because she’d been in hospital just two weeks before her death. Anyway, they carried out an autopsy, and it concluded that she’d been poisoned by the very drugs that were supposed to keep her alive.”

  Joe was not certain he could control his voice. “And that was atropine. Wasn’t it?”

  All trace of emotion left Lucy’s face, superseded by amazement. “How did you know?”

  “I need the answer to two questions. Your mother’s name, and where did all this happen?”

  “Deirdre Ullsworth, and it was in Ripon. Where I come from. Where Granddad came from. He moved down to Sanford sometime after the war, because there was no work in Ripon. I think he spent some time in places like Leeds, Bradford, Wakefield and Pontefract before he moved here. You see, Mr Murray, Granddad wasn’t as bad as he was painted. The real bad people were Mum’s partner, and the woman he’d been with before her. Some French redhead… or should I say a redhead who pretended to be French. She was the one who killed mother. I’m sure of it.”

  Joe was struggling to keep his excitement under control. “If I showed you photographs, could you identify this man?”

  She shrugged. “Hard to say. Same goes for the woman. We never actually saw her, but Granddad had seen her picture in the paper when she was supposed to have disappeared seven or eight years earlier.”

  “Mervyn Nellis and Francine Varanne, only he was living with your mother under the name of Marlon Newman.”

  Once again, Lucy was astonished. “How did you know?”

  “Believe it or not, I’m looking into the matter for North Shires Insurance, the people who paid out on your mother’s death. It’s one of two cases I’m investigating, and until you told me just now, I didn’t realise they were linked.”

  Joe took out his phone, accessed the photo gallery, and scrolled through the pictures until he came to one of Martin and Sheila. He opened it, laid the phone on the table, and turned it to face Lucy.

  “Is that Marlon Newman?”

  She fell into silent, intense thought, scrutinising the image, trying to make up her mind. “It looks like him, true, but I can’t be sure. Bear in mind, it’s a few years since I’ve seen him, and he had a beard when he was living with Mum.” She gave the phone back to him. “It’s not him you should be looking for. It’s her. His tarty piece. If you could find her, she’d identify him.” She looked into Joe’s eyes. “You don’t think he’s living in Sanford, do you?”

  “I do. What’s more, I think he’s targeting his next victim.” Joe brought his jackrabbit thoughts under control. “Where are you staying, Lucy?”

  “I’m not. I came to Sanford on Saturday morning to see the police, and they put me onto you, and I spent the afternoon looking for you. When I couldn’t find you someone told me about this place, so I went home, and I drove here this morning.” She cast a glance at her wristwatch. “Yes, I’ll have to think about getting back. I have a husband and two children to think about. My mother-in-law’s looking after the kids while I’m here.”

  “Right. Fair enough. Before you go anywhere, you need to go back to the police station. I’ll come with you, and trust me, Gemma will listen to you this time. But we have to move quickly… before he murders someone else.”

  Lucy reluctantly agreed, and Joe gave Brenda a brief overview before throwing off his whites once again, leading the younger woman out through the back door, to the parking area where he climbed into his Vauxhall, and she jumped into her Fiat, and followed him.

  Twenty minutes later, they joined Gemma in her office, and she listened to Lucy’s expanded tail. At length, she took a formal statement from the young woman, and allowed her to go on her way.

  “If anything comes of this, Mrs Emerson, we’ll be in touch, but we may need you to come back to Sanford to identify them. But
for now, you can go.”

  As Lucy left, Gemma concentrated on Joe.

  “It’s not enough, Joe. She couldn’t identify Naylor from your photograph, and if we pull him in again, he’ll have us for harassment.” She chewed her lip agitatedly. “What we really need, is a line on this Frenchwoman, this Francine Varanne. I don’t know how many French nationals we have living in Sanford, but I’ll bet it’s more than one or two.”

  A light bulb lit in Joe’s head. “You’re probably right. But I know where I can find a French-speaking woman.”

  He got to his feet and as he hurried out Gemma called after him. “Where the hell are you going?”

  “I’ll be back later. Just trust me. This is your Uncle Joe speaking.”

  And with that, he was gone.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Not for the first time Joe cursed the nose to tail traffic on the main roads in and out of Sanford. It seemed to him that while he was in a hurry, everyone else was happy to take their time. It was, after all, just two days to Christmas, and many people were already enjoying time off work. So why should they rush?

  And when he eventually pulled up outside the long, white painted hut, it was to find the place locked up for Christmas.

  There was a phone number on the notice to one side of the entrance. Hands shaking, partly from the cold, partly from the urgency, the need to get this case closed as quickly as possible, he punched in the numbers, and made the connection.

  “Archie Hepple.”

  “Archie. It’s Joe Murray. I know you’ve shut down for Christmas, but I need to speak to your missus. Urgently.”

  In stark contrast to the determination and assuredness of the auctioneer, Archie was pleasant and contingent. “Come to the house. We’re not going anywhere until Boxing Day… And even then, it’s only a bit of shopping. You know where we live? Leeds Road. The house on the corner of Lingwell Street. You can’t miss it, and you’ll see the cars parked in the front yard.”

  Joe checked his watch. Two o’clock. “I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”

  He jumped back into his car, and tore away from the auction room, spinning the car round further along the little industrial estate, and accelerating back to the main roads. Once again, traffic hampered him. If he’d been half as paranoid as all Billy Trelfus appeared to be, he would swear that the cars, vans, lorries, buses were deliberately trying to hold him up. And while he waited in the traffic, he broke the rule of a lifetime, and accessed the web on his mobile.

  For many seconds, he fooled around seeking the correct site, and then dreaming up something he could put into it. A blast from a horn behind, brought him to his senses. Up ahead the traffic had moved on fifty yards. He put the car into gear, and accelerated quickly to catch up.

  The hold-up was created by a recalcitrant set of traffic lights at a five-way junction another hundred yards ahead, lights which took an age between changes. Joe took advantage of the delay to complete his work on the Internet, and then looking at the results, rehearsed the phrase time and time again. By the time he reached the lights, and stopped again at the head of the queue, he was word perfect… Well, as perfect as he could be in an unfamiliar language.

  Speeding along Leeds Road, driving past the block of flats where he lived, he picked out the Hepples’ house from a distance of a hundred yards. A three-storey, Victorian/Edwardian edifice, complete with stone bay windows and a large open yard at the front, where Archie’s Ford and his wife’s Renault were parked.

  Parking in Lingwell Street, Joe hurried to the front door, part of his mind contemplating the similarities and disparities between himself and Archie. Joe had inherited his business from his father, and likewise Archie. Joe had no clue on the size of the auction room’s turnover, but he imagined it would be comparable with The Lazy Luncheonette. And yet, Archie lived in this grand mini-mansion while Joe, even allowing for its temporary nature, inhabited a council flat and was preparing to move into nothing more grandiose than a terraced house.

  Telling himself that it was irrelevant, that he had never been one for the fripperies and trappings of an above-average income, he rang the doorbell, and a few seconds later, Archie opened up and invited him in.

  A day off, and the auctioneer had dispensed with his usual business suit, preferring instead a pair of baggy jeans and a loose-fitting sweater. He greeted Joe amiably, and showed him through to a large kitchen/diner at the rear of the house, where Frankie was mulling over the morning newspapers over a cup of strong, black coffee.

  Like her husband, she was casually attired. Her hair, which had been carefully brushed into place when he saw her at the auction room, was mussed, in a state of disarray, as if she had just got out of bed (which was possible), and she, too, wore a loose top, and a pair of white slacks.

  She looked up and beamed a smile on Joe. “Archie said you wanted to see me.”

  Joe took out his phone and enunciated carefully. “Je benen vallen eraf.”

  Frankie laughed but a frown crossed her forehead. “I’m sorry, Joe. I don’t understand.”

  “Okay. Suppose I said…” Joe checked his phone again, and in a poor imitation of a French accent, said, “Tes jambes tombent.”

  She laughed again, more nervously this time. “My legs are falling?”

  Joe took a seat opposite her. “According to the Internet it should translate as ‘your legs are falling off’. But that’s not the point, Frankie. The point is you didn’t understand when I said it in Dutch, and yet you claim to come from Knokke-Heist. According to my research, Knokke-Heist is in Northeast Belgium, not far from Zeebrugge, and it’s a Flemish community. I’m not saying they wouldn’t understand French, but they predominantly speak Dutch.”

  Joe was satisfied with the way her colour drained and the shock crossed her face.

  “Now don’t you think it’s time you told me the truth about Francine Varanne.”

  For one horrible moment, Joe worried that he had pushed too far. She almost swooned, and her hands leapt to her breast, as if the mention of the name had given her palpitations.

  Archie, his normally pleasant features now a mask of concern, hurried to the sink, for a glass of water, and gave it to her. She gulped a mouthful down, hiccupped, and set the glass shakily on the laminate table.

  Joe, confident that she was all right, pressed his case. “Billy Trelfus must have recognised you when you knocked on his door. And you recognised him, didn’t you? The woman who murdered his daughter. That’s why you never dare knock again.”

  She shook her head. “No. No, Joe. You’ve got it wrong.”

  Joe relaxed. He was on the final stretch, and his concern for Sheila’s welfare was receding with every passing moment. “In that case, put me right.”

  She took her time regaining her composure, drank from the glass again, her shaking hands now under better control, and for a few moments, she stared through the rear window at the grave, miserable day beyond.

  “It’s true that the old man did recognise me, and yes, he accused me of killing his daughter. ‘You and that Newman’. Those were his precise words. I didn’t know what he was talking about, but a few days later, the old fool managed to get the story into the Sanford Gazette, and they syndicated it to one or two national dailies. That’s when I panicked. That’s when I decided I could never go near him again. He’d seen the redhead woman who murdered his daughter, but he was wrong. I had nothing to do with his daughter’s death, but the piece in the papers carried a photograph of the poor woman and her partner, Marlon Newman. I recognised him right away. When I was married to him, he was Mervyn Nellis.” The first hint of tears sparkled in her eyes. “He was the man who tried to murder me almost ten years before.”

  The announcement drew Joe up short. A few minutes previously, his concerns for Sheila’s welfare had all but disappeared. He had Billy Trelfus’s killer, he had Deirdre Ullsworth’s murderer, Martin Naylor was (in all probability) innocent. Now Frankie had thrown a fresh spanner in the works. All bets
were off.

  “Keep talking,” he insisted.

  “What can I tell you? You’ve already worked out that I’m Francine Varanne, and French by birth. I met Mervyn Nellis when he was on holiday in the area where I grew up, the Dordogne. I came from a town called Bergerac and we met when I was on a day trip to Bordeaux, where he was staying. He was charming, gentle, fun to be with, and it was a case of love at first sight. Three months later we were married, and I agreed to come to England… Darlington. I spoke good English, and France was only a couple of hours away by air. It was a good time. Everything in the garden was wonderful, as the English say.”

  She drank more water, and held out the glass for Archie to refill. When he had done so, she went on.

  “It didn’t take long for matters to turn sour. I have expensive tastes.” She gave a humourless little laugh. “Ask Archie. He’ll tell you.” She held her husband’s hand. “Mervyn wasn’t as tolerant as his lovely man, and fights were frequent. They got so bad, so noisy that the neighbours complained. And then, suddenly, I became ill. Stomach troubles. I couldn’t understand it. I have a stomach of cast iron, I never, never have problems of that nature. And then one day, I happened to see him adding something to my food. I don’t know what it was. Washing-up liquid, bleach, disinfectant. Even real, genuine poison. I don’t know, but it was enough for me. I left him. Ten minutes after seeing what he was doing, I was out of the door, and gone. I had no clothing with me, and not much money, and I daren’t use a cash machine for fear that he might be able to track me down. So I phoned Papa, and he wired money to me. Enough to get me on a ferry to Zeebrugge, where he picked me up, and drove me down to Bergerac. And there I stayed, in hiding for the next seven years.”