The man was naked with numerous bruises, weals and cuts all over him, particularly his face and upper arms, but most striking of all was the sight of his throat. It had two puncture wounds about an inch apart on the left-hand side. I turned the woman’s head and found two similar injuries in her neck too. I drew a breath. It was becoming increasingly difficult not to believe in the Suffolk Vampire when I kept coming across his victims.
Both were spread-eagled, waxy-grey skins glistening with straw-coloured serum seeping around great gouts and clotted streams of blood. They had been tied with braided cord by the wrists and ankles to the brass bedstead. Both had soiled themselves.
The couple’s mouths had been stuffed with what looked like their stockings. His was held in place by a blue tie with yellow diagonal stripes, knotted round the back of the head. From the depth the cords had cut into both the victims’ flesh and the way the headboard was tipped forward it was apparent that they had struggled desperately during their ordeals. His arm was still hot too.
‘Are yow all right, mam?’ Bantony called anxiously.
‘Yes. I’m looking for her handbag.’
Bantony got an arm through and gave me a wave like he had just spotted me at a party. ‘Oy don’t fink she’ll be needink it.’
‘No,’ I agreed, ‘but I do. There are more secrets in the average woman’s handbag than in a filing cabinet in the vaults of the War Office.’ I was gabbling, I knew, but I had to say something to break the silence of death. A brown leather strap curled from under the dressing table. ‘Ah there it is.’ I rooted through. She would have hated me doing that.
A heavy chest of drawers had been pushed behind the wardrobe. I grabbed one side and managed to rotate it away. ‘Try the wardrobe now.’
Part of the problem, I discovered, was a rucked-up rug and I did my best to hold it straight with my foot as I pulled on the wardrobe while Bantony strained again, heaving it round far enough to force his way into the room.
He stopped. ‘Probably best if Oy stay on guard, ma’am.’
‘What?’ Was the whole force going mad? If I had had any doubts they were about to be dispelled.
There were sounds of raised voices and feet trampling upstairs. I went to the doorway. Sandy and Algy were frogmarching a man along the corridor.
‘You said to stop anyone we found,’ they chorused, as proud as two cats bringing in pigeons.
‘Ruddy maniacs.’ Constable Rivers hobbled between them. ‘Take months for my back to recover from this.’
*
I went downstairs. Bantony, being the one I distrusted least, had taken all the staff’s and victims’ details.
‘Did you check their identity cards?’ I asked the receptionist.
Gillian Andrews cleared her throat. ‘Well, of course. Mr Grant Herring and Mrs Elizabeth Herring.’ She turned the guestbook for me to read. ‘See. I made a note of his number. She forgot hers but they were together so it didn’t matter.’
‘Yes it did and no she didn’t.’ I showed her the card I had found in the handbag. ‘She was a Mrs Timothea Cutter.’
‘Was?’ The receptionist’s jaw muscles tensed. ‘What has happened?’
‘They have both been murdered.’
Gillian Andrews sat down heavily. ‘I thought it must be something like that.’ She looked distinctly queasy. ‘Have you caught the murderer?’ She jumped nervously. ‘Is he still in the hotel?’
‘He got away through the window.’
‘But it’s on the second floor.’
‘I am aware of that,’ I snapped. ‘But are you aware that, in barring every exit, you have broken enough fire regulations to get this place closed immediately and land you and your husband in court?’
‘It’s all his doing,’ she protested, disloyally but probably – in view of what George had muttered – truthfully.
‘If we could have got round the back it is possible we could have stopped the murders and caught the criminal but, because of your actions, two people died who might have been saved and their killer has escaped,’ I reminded her, though she could hardly have forgotten.
‘Oh dear God.’ Gillian Andrews clamped a hand over her mouth and strained her head forward as if she was going to be sick. ‘I didn’t know. I didn’t think.’
‘The law is there for a reason,’ I told her firmly. ‘I shall not make trouble for you over this but I can’t guarantee the courts will not.’
‘I wasn’t to know that would happen,’ she cried.
‘And do you know when there will be a fire and how guests can escape?’ I demanded.
‘Guests?’ Gillian Andrews spread out her hands to indicate the vast hordes not milling around us. I took her point. This was the Royal George Hotel, Sackwater, after all, not the Ritz, Paris.
‘From what George told me, I take it you have nobody else staying here.’
Gillian Andrews gestured to the book. ‘Another man did come in but he went straight out again,’ she told me. ‘He said he had the wrong hotel.’ She gritted her teeth. ‘More likely he took one look and decided to go to the Grand. Wouldn’t be the first time it’s happened to us either.’
I looked at the sign over the passageway to the right of the desk:
NON-RESIDENTS WELCOME
‘What about the bar?’ I asked. ‘Did that have any customers?’
Gillian Andrews made a piffing sound. ‘Three,’ she said. ‘Mr Simms, the headmaster of St Joseph’s School, and his wife, plus a woman.’
I hardly needed to ask from the way she expelled the last word. ‘What kind of a woman?’
‘The kind that hangs around hotel bars,’ she replied. ‘Stayed about an hour with a port and lemon, then left.’
‘By herself?’
Gillian Andrews sniggered. ‘I think Mrs Simms would have had something to say if she wasn’t.’
‘I’m glad you find humour in the situation,’ I said sourly. ‘I will need to speak to you and George another time,’ I pressed on, ignoring her indignant gasp. ‘In the meantime, you must write down everything that happened this evening. I don’t care how trivial, irrelevant or embarrassing it may be.’
‘Embarrassing?’ She looked blank.
‘If you had sex or went to the WC,’ I said. ‘And get George to do the same – in separate rooms with no conferring.’ I watched her hand tremble as she picked up her pen. ‘If I find even a hint that you have colluded with each other, I will see you prosecuted for perverting the course of justice.’
‘I’ve learned my lesson,’ she vowed and, looking straight into those troubled eyes, I believed that she probably had.
71
THE CREEPING OF NECROSIS
The constables stood behind the desk in a row, like naughty children.
‘Right,’ I began. ‘We are going to get invaded by half the East Suffolk Constabulary and most of the British press today. A double murder and another vampire scare…’ I paused. It was just the long night that had made me feel dizzy. Where was I? Oh yes. ‘But before we go into details of how we are going to deal with the situation, there are serious problems within the station itself and last night proved that I cannot keep ignoring them.’
‘Can’t we do this separate?’ Bantony pleaded.
‘I am not going through this four times.’ I marched up and down, inspecting them. ‘What’s wrong with you all?’
‘Well, I’ve got a sore shoulder,’ Algy told me.
‘And I’ve got a chill in my stomach,’ Sandy added, ‘and a stubbed toe.’
‘And I—’ Bantony began, not to be left out.
‘I mean as people,’ I broke in before I was subjected to an encyclopaedia of symptoms. They looked blank. ‘Are you all snivelling cowards?’ I demanded.
‘We are,’ the twins chorused.
‘That’s why we became policemen,’ Sandy confessed. ‘We knew there was a good chance of a war coming.’
‘And we was terrified of being called up,’ Algy explained.
‘It can still
be arranged,’ I threatened. ‘And you, Constable Bank-Anthony – wanting to guard the door indeed.’
‘Well, it works for Box.’ Bantony jerked a thumb at his colleague.
‘You rat.’ Box clenched his massive fists.
‘Unclench them,’ I said. ‘Explain yourself, Bank-Anthony.’
Bantony hung his head. ‘Oy know Oy put it about that Oy was transferred because Oy’m a bit of a ladies’ man.’ He swallowed. ‘And Oy am,’ he added defiantly. ‘But the real reason Oy left Dudley was…’ He swallowed again. ‘Oy don’t like blood. Oy mean Oy really don’t like it.’ His Black Country was getting so thick I had trouble translating it.
‘But you were all right at the railway station.’
‘Oy didn’t really look at ’im,’ Bantony admitted. ‘Oy just shot quick glances and then concentrated moy attention on yow well-turned ankles, begging yow pardon, ma’am.’
‘Oh good grief.’ I took a quick stroll around him clockwise.
‘So why weren’t you just made to resign?’
Bantony smirked. ‘Isabella, the chief constable’s daughter, took a bit of a shoyne to me. She said, if they sacked me she would strip off starkers on the town ’all steps.’ He went a bit dreamy. ‘Almost be worth getting sacked fer that.’
I perambulated around Box. ‘And you?’
Box stared straight ahead over me. ‘Well, I int bothered by any old drop of blood,’ he said gamely. ‘You could bring a bucket of it in here, you could, ma’am, and I wouldn’t go swooning like a soppy Dudley girl – no offence, Bantony. It’s bodies I can’t tolerate – dead ones, I do mean – I’m not bothered by living ones.’
‘So that’s why you always stand outside.’ I stopped to look in his big blank eyes. ‘So why weren’t you dismissed?’
‘Don’t like to boast, ma’am.’
‘Try,’ I urged.
Box blushed. ‘Got the KPM,’ he confessed.
‘The what?’ the twins queried.
‘The King’s Police Medal,’ I explained, much impressed. At most 120 were issued every year throughout the whole country, empire and Commonwealth. ‘What did you get it for, Constable Box?’
Box turned a brighter red. ‘Got some children from a fire in Bury St Edmunds, I did, but it int much.’ He coughed.
‘I think it must have been,’ I argued but it was obvious that Box didn’t want to give any more details. ‘So why did you get transferred?’
‘New superintendent,’ Box said. ‘Orders me into a morgue, he do. I refuse. He puts me on a warning – official hearing – the full works.’
‘But they can’t sack a hero for cowardice so they dump you here, out of the way,’ I concluded in disgust.
‘What about you, ma’am?’ Bantony probed, now that we were getting all confessional.
‘Hush now, boy.’ Box flapped a hand, then whispered – they kept doing that. Had somebody put it about that I was deaf? – ‘You know about her trouble.’
I would have thought it was a bit obvious what my trouble had been until Bantony tapped his nostril and said, ‘Oh yes. Oy’d forgotten that for a mo.’
There was something about the way he said ‘that’ with never a glance at my pinned-up sleeve that made me uncomfortable.
‘Forgotten what?’
Box shifted uncomfortably. ‘Tint none of our business what trouble you got up to with takin’ bribes and things.’
‘Bribes and what things?’ I demanded. ‘What things?’
‘Well just bribes mainly, I think,’ Box mumbled. ‘But we int here to judge you, ma’am.’
‘Where did that story start?’ I looked Box straight in his troubled face.
‘Well, everyone sort of know it,’ he mumbled, ‘but I do think it was Inspector—’
‘Sharkey,’ I pounced. ‘Well, let me tell you, and I hope you will spread this truth as readily as you spread the lie. I have never taken or even been accused of taking a bribe. If Sharkey told you I had, he is a shit-faced liar.’
The bit about his face probably wasn’t very professional but I was not feeling very professional at that moment.
I ripped off my jacket, wincing as I jarred my stump. ‘Want to see why I’m here?’ I unpinned my shirtsleeve and pulled it up, the dressing flapping loose as I did so. ‘That is why I am here. That and no other reason.’
Bantony staggered back and shielded his eyes like a sinner on Judgement Day but Box slipped on his old wire-framed glasses and bent over to take a closer look.
‘Does that bit o’ bone normally stick through your skin, ma’am?’
I was feeling hot and sick already and the arm was hurting like hell and I got quite a shock when I saw the state of it but, if Box hadn’t accidentally poked the wound, I probably wouldn’t have fainted.
*
Mr Cactopopus washed his hands and I couldn’t help but notice how he did that much more thoroughly after he had examined me than before. He had not had Tubby’s scruples about hurting me when he prodded the stump about.
‘A great pity they didn’t take it off at the elbow.’ He tutted. ‘A tragedy.’
‘It wasn’t a surgical procedure,’ I reminded him. Besides, I was rather glad to have retained my forearm. It might come in useful if ever I got used to that damned prosthesis.
He had a cairn of scabs on the side of his nose, with tiny yellow and orange fungi sprouting on its slopes.
‘You have what we surgeons call creeping necrosis. It is working its way slowly but inexorably up your limb. We could remove the sequestra and trim the bone but we would have to do it again in a few months’ time. The kindest thing would be to amputate the rest before septicaemia sets in.’
This didn’t seem like a very kind thing to me.
I couldn’t take my eyes off that growth.
‘So right up to the elbow?’ I clarified with a horrible certainty that he would say yes.
‘Oh no,’ Mr Cactopopus said with a chuckle, to my relief, before he added, ‘up to the shoulder.’
For a split second, I thought it was his peculiar sense of humour – this, after all, was a man who wore checked trousers and was starting a botanical garden on his face – but then I realised he was laughing at my stupidity.
‘I shall seek a second opinion.’ I put my shirt back on and the jollity dropped stone dead at his feet.
‘I am the foremost in my field.’ His manner was menacing now, but I have dealt with a drunken mob of philatelists in my time so I am not that easily scared.
‘Nevertheless.’ I had not liked the way he had watched me unbutton my shirt and I didn’t like the way he watched me button it either.
‘If you do not take my advice you will die,’ he snarled so unpleasantly I half-thought he meant to do the job himself.
‘We shall all die, Mr Cactopopolopolus,’ I told him, getting all tangled up with my fingers, my buttons and my words. ‘But I would prefer not to at the hand’ – I was not going to acknowledge that he gloried in having two – ‘of an egocentric surgeon who cultivates slime mould on his nostrils.’
Mr Cactopopus touched his flourishing nasal rock garden in wonder. ‘Is that what it is?’ He tweaked it between his finger and thumb. ‘I’ve been worried sick about that.’ He opened the middle drawer of his desk and brought out some headed notepaper. ‘Thank you so much.’ His eyes welled with gratitude as he unscrewed the cap of his fountain pen. ‘Now, where would you like to be referred?’
72
THE DIFFERENCE
I should have been on sick leave but there was one job to do before I left and before Sharkey got the chance. I had been in touch with a Major Harris from the Great Molefield Barracks and had arranged for his men to be there at 9 a.m. but, when I turned up at half past eight, their truck was already parked outside the Sternes’ bungalow.
A dapper but stout officer strode towards me, swagger stick tucked under his arm.
‘Church? Harris.’ He touched his cap with his stick and I returned with the best salute I could muster.
‘You’re early.’ I had wanted time to prepare them.
‘Surprise, the first rule of attack,’ he rapped.
‘They are an elderly and much loved local couple,’ I informed him. ‘Not a division of panzers.’
‘The enemy is the enemy,’ he informed me. ‘And fraternisation is an offence.’
People like you are the offence, I thought but said, ‘I believe it is my job to detain them.’
‘Send a couple of men in with you,’ he decided, ‘and a couple round the back in case they make a run for it.’
‘Mrs Sterne can hardly walk,’ I told him. ‘I don’t need your men.’
I walked up the drive but before I could knock on it the front door opened.
‘Inspector Church.’ Sammy stood in a long black woollen coat and homburg hat. ‘Did you think we would put up a fight?’
I drew close and said quietly, ‘I’m sorry, Sammy, but I have to take you into custody and hand you over to the army.’
‘Mr Sterne,’ he corrected me and I nodded.
‘You are allowed one suitcase each, though they will examine the contents to make sure there are no weapons or radios. I believe you were sent a list.’
‘Tell me something.’ Sammy unbent. There was pain in his eyes. ‘What is different between what you are doing and what Hitler does?’
‘You are not being arrested for being Jewish. You are being detained because you are a German national,’ I pointed out unhappily.
‘To be imprisoned with all the Nazis?’ Sammy raised his voice and I was aware of some movement behind me. Two privates had come up the drive, rifles over their shoulders.
‘Get back,’ I snapped but they stood their ground and I knew I had no authority over them.
‘What?’ Sammy shouted. ‘Will you drag me out in chains?’
‘If you resist they might,’ I warned as Abbie Sterne hobbled into their hall on two walking sticks.
‘Shush now.’ She nudged her husband. ‘You asked her to come,’ she reminded him in a whisper.
Betty Church and the Suffolk Vampire (A Betty Church Mystery Book 1) Page 27
