One of the men lifted a hatch and climbed down and a minute later a tea chest rose through the opening. His companions heaved it out.
‘I didn’t realise there were so many files,’ I said.
The coastguardsman snorted. ‘Got three more on them, we do,’ he told me as the two men staggered ashore.
*
‘Oh darling, I am sorry, how stupid but you cannot blame them too much. They are only men,’ March Middleton mocked gently when I rang from Sackwater Central to thank her. Brigsy wasn’t overly happy about my using his phone but this was police business. ‘I told them to send you just the summary. It should be in a Grice’s Lilac folder with my stamp on it. I didn’t want to trust it to the post after they lost Harry Hobdell’s face. Lord knows where that ended up.’ She chuckled grimly. ‘Not in some unfortunate’s morning mail, I hope.’
‘So it’s all right if I use the phone to ring my aunty?’ Bantony rested his elbow on the desk like he was waiting for his pint.
‘When your aunty is Miss Middleton, yes,’ I told him.
‘When will that be?’ Brigsy mused.
Bantony’s normally immaculate jacket was bulging.
‘What’s that in your pockets?’ I questioned him.
Bantony patted himself in surprise. ‘Onions,’ he admitted at last.
‘Why?’ I had a feeling I knew the answer to that one already.
Bantony looked abashed. ‘Oy couldn’t get any garlic.’
‘There are no vampires in Sackwater,’ I insisted. ‘Take them out at once.’
‘Nippy ’as a crucifix under ’is ’elmet.’ Bantony emptied his pockets resentfully. ‘And ’im and Box and Bantony ’ave ordered leather collars.’
‘Well, you can tell them from me, if I catch anyone wearing one he will be strung up by it,’ I warned.
‘And Rivers carries a bokkle of ’oly water,’ Bantony declared in a great show of solidarity with his fellow officers. ‘And Serg—’
‘What’s taking so long with tha’ tea, Walker?’ Brigsy bellowed. ‘Making the water yourself?’ He stopped and lowered his voice. ‘Oh, tha’ dint come out quite right.’
I let his interruption pass. Quite honestly I didn’t care what anti-vampire measure Sergeant Briggs had adopted, so long as he wasn’t carrying a revolver loaded with silver bullets.
57
THE DESTRUCTION OF LININGS
The day after Sharkey set off on his adventure we were joined by identical twins, Constables Algernon and Lysander Grinder-Snipe – ungracefully tall and skinny with gangling legs and dangling arms, unpolished sapphire eyes and floppy long yellow hair, like badly painted poster boys for the Hitler Youth.
‘How will I tell you apart?’ I asked.
‘We ’ave different names,’ one explained.
‘I’m Lysander and I don’t like being called Sandy,’ the one I was going to call Sandy, whether he liked it or not, introduced himself.
‘I’m Algernon and I don’t like being called Algy,’ the one I was going to call Algy, whether he liked it or not, introduced himself.
Their accents did not quite match the gentility of their names.
‘Where are you from?’ I found their letters of transference on my desk.
‘Lancashire, ma’am,’ they chorused and, being from the north, they correctly pronounced it mam rather than marm but made it sound like I was their mother.
‘Whereabouts in Lancashire?’ I pressed.
‘Parbold, mam,’ they chorused.
‘A small village,’ Sandy explained.
‘Near Wigan,’ Algy clarified.
‘Born—’ Sandy began.
‘And bred,’ Algy completed.
‘Oh I have been to Parbold,’ I remembered happily. Aunty M had been raised in the Grange, on the top of Parbold Hill, and I had enjoyed some lovely holidays there. ‘You must know of March Middleton.’
The twins looked at each other in alarm.
‘Must weh?’ Sandy asked.
‘Nobody told us we ’ad to,’ Algy protested.
‘Ohhh dear,’ they chorused.
‘No, I meant that you probably have.’
‘Phew.’ They wiped their brows in exaggerated relief.
‘We ’aven’t ’eard of ’er,’ Sandy confessed.
‘At all,’ Algy confirmed.
I was surprised because it was a small village and my godmother was the only famous person to come from it, except for Joshua Beetle who invented a device for putting the stones back into olives but lost his fortune manufacturing it.
I tried again. ‘Is the Stocks Tavern still open?’
They looked at their watches.
‘Not at this time,’ Sandy told me.
‘Of day,’ his twin contributed.
They stood to attention, shoulders thrown so far back in an effort to puff out their puffed in chests that they were leaning slightly backwards.
‘At ease,’ I said and they flopped, arms hanging loosely, backs bent, heads lolling.
‘So what brings you to Suffolk?’ I tried and they exchanged we’ve-got-a-right-one-here looks.
‘Nothing brings uz ’ere, mam,’ said the one I was almost sure was Sandy – for they had taken my at ease as an invitation to shuffle about while I was looking through their paperwork.
‘We’re already ’ere,’ the one who was probably Algy explained, because Sandy seemed to be the one who always spoke first.
I gave up and announced, ‘We’ll put you on patrol together to start with.’
‘Huzzah,’ they cried with peculiarly emphasised ‘h’s.
I battled on. ‘Constable Walker can show you the route, then you can take over the seafront beat.’ I felt a bit guilty giving them that. Nobody liked it but somebody had to do it. Even in the summer the promenade could be windswept. In the winter it was lashed by gales straight from Siberia, bringing whatever little treats their climate had to offer.
‘Hoorah,’ Algy piped, breaking the Sandy-speaks-first rule the moment I had made it.
‘Hooray,’ Sandy chirped and they both clapped hands three times.
I suppose I should have been glad of anything we were given but, with Sharkey being away and Vesty seemingly on the brink of nervous collapse, we had gone from being top-heavy to top-light. As the only inspector at Sackwater Central, I had one sergeant – Briggs – and six constables – Dodo Chivers, the Grinder-Snipe twins, Nippy Walker, Bantony and – when he turned up – Rivers. Clearly Brigsy couldn’t man the desk twenty-four hours a day and I didn’t like leaving a constable in charge to deal with any more imaginary spies and certainly not in the unlikely instance that we had a real one.
We really needed one or two more sergeants but – while there was no shortage of people who were lucky to have their jobs – there was nobody I felt able to recommend for promotion.
Unfortunately Cressida was too far out for me to be readily available so there was only one thing for it – I would have to stay with my parents again at Felicity House.
*
‘But where would you sleep?’ My mother ran a finger over the hall table, cutting a shining canal in the grey landscape of its surface. ‘You can’t have Dear Dodo’s room now that she’s settled in.’
‘That still leaves four empty bedrooms,’ I pointed out.
My mother drew her toe over the floor as if setting up the oche for a game of darts. ‘It’s not very convenient – all that extra bedding to wash.’
‘It’s a lot of extra work for your mother.’ My father blew through his empty meerschaum. ‘She might even have to start cleaning the house soon.’
My mother welcomed this news as a personal affront, shuffling her folded arms under her bosom.
‘I still have my sleeping bag in the attic,’ I reminded them. ‘I can use that.’
‘But we have it all so nice and cosy here,’ my mother moaned. ‘And you know your father needs a good night’s sleep, now that he’s decided to try being nice to patients. He won’t get that with your
coming and going at all hours.’
‘I wouldn’t disturb you.’ I sniffed. ‘I have my own key.’
There was an odd, not very pleasant aroma on top of all the horrible dental smells I had grown up with.
‘Ah yes.’ My father inserted a fluffy cleaner into the mouthpiece. ‘I was coming to that. It would be much easier if Dear Dodo had her own key.’
‘I can get another one cut for her,’ I offered.
‘I do think you’re being rather unfair’ – my father pulled the cleaner out – it was thick with tar and dried spittle ‘expecting poor Dodo to live with a superior officer.’
‘Only superior in rank,’ my mother chipped in.
I sniffed again. ‘What’s that smell?’
‘What smell?’ my mother asked edgily.
‘I can’t smell anything.’ My father blew a cloud of ash out of the bowl. Years of Whisky Flake had destroyed the lining of his nose.
‘Like rotten eggs.’
‘The drains,’ my mother said, a little too abruptly, I thought.
‘You should get them looked at.’
‘Always bossing us about.’ My mother tried to rub the oche line out with her foot but made it into an uncoiled spring.
The front door opened. ‘Hello, Motherkins and Fatherkins, your fairy princess is returned to the nest.’ Dodo skipped in. ‘Oh hello, Inspector.’
‘Inspector,’ my mother repeated pointedly to me. ‘That’s exactly what your father means.’ Before oozing, ‘Hello, Dodipops.’
‘Hello, Doadie-Woadie.’ My father grinned soppily.
‘Have ’oo had a howwid day?’ Motherkins took Dodipops’s jacket and put it on a hanger on my hook. ‘Shall Mumpsywoomp make ’oo your favourite mug of cocoa?’
I went to the stairs.
‘And where do you think you are going?’ my father demanded in his not-too-old-for-a-slap-young-lady voice.
‘To get my camping things.’ I was going to add a sarcastic Poppsywoppsy but my tongue had shrivelled and was unable to form the word.
58
THE HURTING OF THE HAT
It was time for tea – as if it wasn’t always – and I was enjoying mine with a smoke, made all the more welcome by it being one of Brigsy’s cigarettes, when he told me.
‘You do have had a couple of calls from Gregson of the Gazette asking if you’ll meet him.’
I greeted the news warily. A tame newspaper editor was a rare and valuable asset but the trouble was I had enjoyed being with Toby more than I should for a professional relationship.
The phone rang.
‘If that’s Mr Gregson tell him I’m busy but I’ll get back to him,’ I decided quickly.
Sergeant Briggs picked up the receiver like a bomb disposal expert might remove a fuse. ‘Sackwater Central Police Station.’
‘Why are we called Central when we are the only police station in town?’ Dodo asked loudly.
‘Shush.’ Brigsy put a hand over the earpiece.
I moved a few feet back.
‘Ohhh,’ Dodo sighed. ‘Have I made you cross as a Christmas tree?’
‘I see,’ Brigsy was saying.
‘No.’ Where the hell did she get these similes? I decided not to ask. ‘It’s just so that Sergeant Briggs can hear better.’
‘I see.’ Brigsy was making pencilled notes.
‘Oh, is moving away from people a cure for deafness?’ Dodo wondered.
‘No.’ I waited for her to shuffle towards me. ‘Apparently there used to be two police stations in town – Sackwater Coastal and Sackwater Central.’
Dodo waved a paw. ‘I think I can guess which one closed down.’
‘I see,’ Brigsy said twice more, then, ‘I do be about to replace the receiver now. Goodbye.’
‘That was a phone call—’ he began.
‘I think even Inspector Church could have worked that out,’ Dodo broke in.
‘From Ainnnglethorpe,’ he continued.
‘Even?’ I seethed.
‘About a handbag handed in on the nineteenth.’
‘Well, you aren’t odd so you must be even,’ Dodo reasoned.
‘Only they forgot to pass them on,’ Brigsy announced.
‘Though you do have a slightly odd number of hands,’ she pondered.
‘The message and the bag,’ Brigsy carried on, apparently unaware of any interruptions. ‘Though now they’ve passed the message on they’re sendin’ the bag today.’
‘Being minus half an arm doesn’t mean I don’t know when there’s been a phone call,’ I protested.
‘Eh?’ Brigsy said.
‘Handbag?’ I queried.
‘Yes.’ Brigsy took the phone off the front ledge of his desk, putting it down behind just in case anyone was thinking of using it or even looking at it.
‘Did they say whose it was?’
‘They?’ The sergeant scratched his cranial floor-sweepings. ‘There was only one person, madam.’
‘I think what Inspector Church means is did they say whose it was?’ Dodo clarified.
‘I do not need you to explain what I am saying,’ I snapped. ‘Especially when you haven’t.’ It came out a lot nastier than it was meant to but Dodo was unperturbed.
‘You do when you’re talking to Mummikins and Poppsicles,’ she argued and I wondered briefly if it was possible for my head to explode.
‘Did your caller tell you who the bag belonged to?’ I asked patiently. And please don’t just say yes.
‘Yes.’ Brigsy looked at me expectantly as if we were playing tennis and I was about to serve.
‘The inspector means Did your caller tell you who the bag belonged to?’ Dodo told him, having forgotten what I didn’t need almost as soon as I had told her I didn’t need it.
Brigsy consulted his jottings. ‘A Mrs Lavender Wicks,’ he announced. ‘They found a chequebook with her name on it.’
‘Mrs Lavender Wicks,’ Dodo translated for me. ‘Lavender Wicks!’ She twirled around the room. ‘I told you she was the murderess.’
‘She told us she had lost her handbag on the very same day that it was handed in to Anglethorpe Police Station,’ I reminded her. ‘In what way does that make her guilty of anything other than carelessness?’
‘Don’t you see, ma’am?’ She skipped backwards, tripping over the ridge in the lino and sitting down heavily on the middle bench. ‘Owsy-wowsy.’
‘Are you all right?’ I hurried over.
‘She int never all right, she int,’ Brigsy informed me.
‘Ouchy-wouchy.’ She rubbed her right ankle. ‘I seem to have strained it.’
‘Sprained.’
‘Oh.’ She looked alarmed. ‘Do you really think so?’
‘Can you put your weight on it?’
Dodo put her foot up on the front bench. ‘I left my weight at home.’ She flexed her macaroni arms. ‘See how it has built up my biceps?’
‘Can you stand on that foot?’
‘I used to be able to,’ she cogitated. ‘Let me see.’ She put her right foot on the floor. ‘Crikey,’ she screwed up her little face, ‘that hurts like a hat.’
‘We need to get a doctor to look at it,’ I decided despairingly. I didn’t have time to take her and I couldn’t spare Brigsy. We would be a constable down now and, hopeless as she was, at least Dodo Chivers made up our numbers.
Dodo put her foot up again. ‘Talking about Lavender Wicks,’ she said chattily, ‘I still think this points to her guilt.’
‘Why?’ I paced the room.
‘Because,’ she explained simply, ‘she was telling the truth, which murderers do to throw you off the scent. I think we should visit her, boss, to see how she tangles herself up in the web of her own truthfulness.’
‘Well, you are in no state to walk that far,’ I told her.
Constable Bank-Anthony was coming up the right-hand corridor from the back door, probably in the hope I wouldn’t see him arriving twenty minutes late.
‘Then will you go?’ Dodo begge
d.
‘Anyone can return her handbag.’
Bantony spotted me, stiffened, then carried on with exaggerated nonchalance.
‘Yes but she needs to be asked penetrating questions like Where did you get the sack from? Then we can see if she remembers to ask which sack you mean,’ Dodo insisted. ‘She’s guilty, boss, even if she is rich and kind to her maid and breathtakingly beautiful.’
‘Oy can take ’er bag back, if you give me ’er details,’ Bantony offered gallantly.
‘You can take Constable Chivers to hospital,’ I told him. ‘She has sprained an ankle.’
‘Oh dear.’ Bantony crouched to have a closer look. ‘Oh that does look sore.’
It looked the same as the other ankle through her stockings.
‘It is ever so poorly-sorely,’ she told him.
‘Put your arms round my neck,’ Bantony told her. ‘Let’s get yow up.’
Bantony put his arms round Dodo and she struggled up. ‘Don’t let go of me.’
‘Oy won’t.’ He held her very close. ‘Can yow put your weight on it?’
‘I left that at home.’
‘Oh yow poor little thing.’ Bantony swept Dodo up.
‘Oh it’s just like being carried over the threshold,’ she chirped.
Her dress had risen over her knees and fallen up her thighs but Bantony can’t have noticed, even though he was looking down intently, otherwise he would have told her to pull it down again.
59
MAYHEM ON SPECTRE LANE AND JIMMY IN WONDERLAND
I never understood why camp beds, which seem like the pinnacle of luxury living when you’re in your teenage years in the middle of a field, feel like they actually are that field when you’re in your thirties and indoors. The frame – when I managed to assemble it – had gone wonky and the canvas was sagging in the middle.
The sleeping bag was too small for me now but I couldn’t get into it in my skirt anyway and I was not going to strip off with the threat of a beat officer coming back for a not-very-quick cuppa, especially as I had to keep the office door open to listen for callers. I used the bag as a mattress, hung my jacket on the coat stand and lay on my back wondering if the cracked ceiling was likely to collapse on top of me and whether I would survive if it did. Toby Gregson might sell a few extra copies if I didn’t.
Betty Church and the Suffolk Vampire (A Betty Church Mystery Book 1) Page 22
