Betty Church and the Suffolk Vampire (A Betty Church Mystery Book 1)

by M. R. C. Kasasian

  Superintendent Browning made a beeline for me. He had been introduced to us all as chairman of some committee or other.

  ‘He-llo.’ He put out a hand so high I thought he was making a grab for my left breast and maybe he was, but I managed to divert it in a clumsy shake. ‘Nice to see a bit of glamour in the force.’

  ‘Yes, it would be,’ I agreed.

  He stepped back to appraise me. ‘Nice legs.’

  I stepped back to appraise him. ‘Not quite as nice as yours, sir.’

  Browning took two steps forward and dipped his head until it almost rested affectionately on my shoulder. ‘Heard talk about you.’ He lowered his voice to seduction level. ‘And the general feeling is you’re not quite as good a copper as you think. Sharkey, he’s a good solid officer, worked his way up from the ranks.’ So had I but I didn’t get a chance to say so. ‘He’s sent in a couple of worrying reports—’

  ‘About what?’ I broke in, but Browning tapped his nose in an infuriatingly Pookyish manner.

  ‘The whisper is that the only reason you got promotion is because you stole Heartsease’s case by—’

  ‘Chief Inspector Heartsease gave me that case because he was getting nowhere and thought I wouldn’t either,’ I burst out, quite a bit louder than I had intended. I was aware of voices stilled and heads turning.

  ‘The only reason,’ Browning continued as if I hadn’t spoken, ‘you weren’t kicked out for getting yourself crippled is because you are Grice and Middleton’s bastard child.’

  There were too many things to object to in that sentence so I homed in on bastard and was about to tell him he better fitted that description than me when a chief superintendent breezed between us like a boxing referee and, like any good referee, stopped the fight before it got too bloody.

  ‘I see you two have already met, splendid. Chivers is the name.’ He grasped my hand firmly and looked at me straight with his bright harebell eyes. ‘I believe you know my daughter?’

  ‘Dodo? Yes, very well.’

  ‘Dodo?’ He had a light easy laugh. ‘Is that what she calls herself now? She’s always been Dolores to me – at least that’s what she chose to call herself.’

  ‘Chose?’ I wondered. There was something puzzling about his puzzlement.

  Fido Chivers nodded thoughtfully. ‘This coffee tastes like it came out of a camel’s arse.’

  ‘I’ll take your word for that, sir.’

  ‘Fido,’ he insisted.

  ‘Betty.’

  ‘Fancy a proper drink?’ he said brightly. ‘They’ll spend the first hour reading the minutes of last month’s meeting and congratulating each other. The bar should be open in the members’ lounge – the only reason I joined this stuffy mausoleum in the first place.’

  We were in the Guildhall of the Ancient Order of Shrivers, though it had lost any religious significance a very long time ago.

  ‘Sounds good to me.’ Some women don’t know when they’re being picked up. I do and this was not one of those occasions.

  The bar was all dark oak and deserted, apart from ourselves and a barman who looked like he might have been an original feature. We settled into two worn, sagging but very comfortable leather armchairs by a bay window overlooking Tavern Street. There was no need to cross these windowpanes with tape; they had been crossed with lead about four hundred years previously.

  A waiter brought us two large whiskies with a silver jug of water.

  ‘Wouldn’t pay too much attention to Biffo Browning.’ Fido raised his glass in an unspoken toast. ‘You were supposed to flutter your eyelids and giggle like all his typists do.’

  ‘I’m not much good at fluttering.’ I raised my glass in reply.

  ‘I don’t suppose you are.’ We both took a slug. ‘I hope the war ends before this runs short.’

  I rolled it around my mouth. ‘Old Pulteney?’

  ‘You know your whiskies.’ He raised an impressed eyebrow. ‘So how are you finding life in Sackwater?’

  ‘You know I was born there?’ I asked. He nodded and I continued, ‘Not as strange as I thought I would. I expected to keep bumping into childhood friends and finding it awkward but because I went away to school—’

  ‘Roedene Abbey.’

  ‘You’ve done your homework.’

  ‘Good coppers like us always do.’

  I accepted the compliment with a smile. ‘Most of the men have accepted me surprisingly quickly.’

  ‘Except Inspector Sharkey?’

  ‘I don’t think we will ever be friends.’

  ‘I’m not sure it would be wise to be his.’ Chief Superintendent Chivers tossed down his drink while I was still halfway through mine, and most people would agree I can knock it back. ‘How’s Vesty getting on?’ He asked this slightly too casually for my liking.

  ‘His doctor tells me he should be out soon,’ I lied. Dr Jackson had told me he was having doubts his friend and patient would ever be well enough to return to work.

  ‘He was a good man in his time,’ Chivers mused. ‘If he did have to be invalided out it would be with honour.’ He waved a hand impatiently at himself. ‘’Nuff said.’

  ‘I presume you have heard about the kidnapping case.’ I watched the chief superintendent slip a fat cigar out of a triple-tubed cigar case.

  ‘Lavender Wicks? Who hasn’t?’

  ‘Essex Police are not being very cooperative,’ I complained.

  ‘Nor will they be.’ Chivers rustled a fat cigar between his thumb and first two fingers under his bulbous nose. ‘Chief Superintendent Drinkwater has taken charge of that case. Rest assured he would resist an invasion by the Suffolk Constabulary more vigorously than if we were crack German troops. You’ve met the famous Thurston, I take it?’ He slipped the cigar away without even clipping it. ‘Break a few ladies’ hearts if they found out about him.’

  ‘Being married?’ I asked in surprise. ‘I thought that was common knowledge.’

  ‘Being a fairy,’ Fido corrected me. ‘Never had a girlfriend, though they used to get various starlets to attend functions with him. Rumours were still rife, though, so Thurston was told to get himself a wife. Then he was photographed with a German diplomat a few years back. All had to be hushed up, of course, but the studios got wind. They were terrified it would get out and they would lose their investment, so they told him to make himself scarce for a few months until it blew over.’

  That, I supposed, explained why he and Lavender had set up home in remotest Suffolk.

  ‘And did it?’ I asked.

  Fido shrugged. ‘Don’t really keep up with showbusiness gossip but I gather the film-makers found they didn’t miss Thurston as much as they thought they would and gave his part to someone younger who could actually act.’

  For a man with no interest in gossip, Chief Superintendent Chivers seemed to know a lot of it.

  ‘Crispin Staples,’ I recalled.

  He chuckled, then fell silent, shuffling in his seat so much I was half-expecting him to get up and go when he asked suddenly, ‘How’s Dolores getting on?’

  I hesitated. ‘Have you asked her?’

  ‘Good fudging.’ He grinned. ‘I don’t need to. Dolores tells me she is getting on splendidly. She sings your praises to the heavens.’

  ‘And yours,’ I assured him.

  ‘Let me make this easy for you.’ He tipped a little more water from the silver jug into his Scotch. ‘She’s bloody hopeless, isn’t she?’

  ‘Well…’

  He put up a hand. ‘You don’t need to deny it.’ Chief Superintendent Chivers puffed and unpuffed his cheeks. ‘When Dolores tried to join, I rang the applications board chairman to insist that I did not want her to be given special treatment. He obviously took this as a veiled threat and they accepted her. How the hell she got through the medical beats me.’

  God and Inspector Church knew the answer to that but one of us wasn’t telling.

  ‘To be fair, she was very good in a crisis,’ I told him.

&nb
sp; ‘The railway station murder?’

  ‘She acted very quickly to try to save his life,’ I told her father. ‘But she is – how can I put this – an unusual person.’

  ‘Well, there’s an understatement. Drink up.’ He signalled to the barman for two more.

  ‘I’ll fall asleep during a lecture at this rate,’ I warned.

  ‘Why not? I always do,’ he snuffled. ‘Anything worth knowing goes into the leaflet they send to every station anyway.’

  ‘Dodo never mentions her mother,’ I ruminated.

  ‘Hardly knew her.’

  ‘Did your wife die when Dodo was a baby?’

  Fido Chivers looked at me curiously. ‘You don’t know, do you?’

  I swirled my whisky in the tumbler.

  ‘What don’t I know, Fido?’ I urged softly, though I knew this must be the main point of our tête-à-tête.

  ‘Dolores’s birth name was Drusilla.’ He sat back to let the penny drop. ‘Vernon Willowdale, the Camden Vampire. She’s his daughter.’

  Oh poor Dodo.

  Chivers continued, ‘She had a bad time when her father was hanged. She was sent to St Jerome’s, a particularly brutal workhouse in the East End. There was no attempt to hide her true identity and she was bullied terribly. I had no role in the case but Rea, my wife, heard about the little girl, made enquiries, visited her and brought her straight back to our home. Dolores was a sweet child. We fell in love with her instantly and adopted her but then my wife died – consumption.’

  ‘Does Dolores remember all this?’

  ‘Oh yes, she was seven at the time. As I say, we gave her our surname but it was Dolores’s idea to change her Christian names.’

  I finished my first drink. ‘Did you ever ask if she was used – wittingly or unwittingly – as a decoy?’

  Fido breathed heavily. ‘How can you ask a child a question like that?’

  I poured a little water from the jug and tried not to think about it.

  ‘Poor Dodo,’ I said aloud at last. When I was seven my biggest worry was if I would get the doll I had seen in Palmer’s Toys of Anglethorpe.

  ‘She’s a lovely person,’ Chief Superintendent Chivers assured me. ‘Very loving and loyal.’ He chuckled. ‘I’m making her sound like a pet poodle.’ His face became serious again. ‘I sometimes think she behaves so childishly because she still wants the childhood she never had. Her father was a brute, by all accounts.’ He finished his second drink – I had hardly started mine – and stood up. ‘I have to go to give a report now but, if I were you, I wouldn’t bother going to any of the meetings – seriously. Finish your drink and have another on me, if you like.’

  ‘I’m sorry, sir,’ the barman called, ‘but there’s no unaccompanied ladies in the members’ lounge.’

  ‘An excellent rule,’ Fido Chivers told him wholeheartedly. ‘But there is no such thing as a lady police officer.’ He winked at me. ‘Dolores told me you said that.’ His voice dropped. ‘I just wanted you to be aware in case anybody else finds out and makes trouble for you both.’ He smiled grimly. ‘You are swimming with piranhas and they will strip you to the bone given half a chance.’ I stood and we shook hands. ‘Anyway. Tell her not to forget me.’

  ‘I hardly think that’s likely,’ I assured the chief superintendent. ‘She thinks the world of you.’

  ‘Be nice if she turned up occasionally to tell me that in person,’ he commented wryly.

  But Dodo told me she had, flicked through my head. But maybe he was like my parents, complaining about me neglecting them when they were the ones who made no effort.

  Fido Chivers rebuttoned his jacket and I wondered if I or any woman would ever get a crown on their epaulette.

  ‘Anyway, enjoy your drink,’ he was saying. ‘You are obviously a connoisseur.’

  ‘Shall I tell you a small truth?’ I broke down and confessed. ‘I saw the bottle.’

  I didn’t finish my drink but I did spend a long time peering into it. As usual, there were no answers there.

  ‘Oh Dodo,’ I said, unintentionally aloud. So little and wide-eyed even now. What must you have been like then? I lit a cigarette.

  I had been so mean to her, treating her as a silly soppy girl when she had endured a tougher, nastier world than I could even imagine.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I whispered.

  ‘That’s all right, miss,’ the barman reassured me. He was polishing the next table and staring at my legs.

  I didn’t bother asking what he thought I was apologising for.

  ‘Inspector,’ I corrected him.

  ‘Yeah.’ He winked. ‘But only for the duration.’

  ‘And what will you do,’ I enquired nicely, ‘when the real barmen get back from the war?’

  88

  THE CAT AND THE CANARY

  Back in Sackwater I decided to take the twins for a walk.

  ‘Ohhh, mam, but our feet are so very footsore,’ Algy moaned.

  ‘Chin up, Algernon,’ Sandy urged. ‘I’ll mek you a nice mustard bath when we get ’ome.’

  ‘For goodness’ sake,’ I said. ‘We’re hardly halfway there yet.’

  ‘’Alfway?’ Algy staggered sideways like I had caught him with a spiked mace. ‘I think I’m going to ’ave one of me little turns.’

  ‘With a nice mug of ’ot milk,’ Sandy promised and his brother calmed down.

  ‘Let me tell you something’ – I increased my pace – ‘that policemen do not have – ever.’

  ‘Oh no, please mam, let uz guess,’ Algy begged.

  ‘Rolls-Royce cars,’ Sandy tried.

  ‘No.’

  ‘But they don’t,’ Sandy objected.

  ‘Chief Superintendent Browning has two,’ I lied. ‘Anyway, you’re supposed to guess what I was going to say.’

  ‘But ’ow can we do that when we don’t know?’ Algy puzzled.

  ‘A camel,’ Sandy speculated. ‘Or does Chief Superintendent Browning ’ave a gaggle of them?’

  ‘Don’t be silly, Lysander,’ his brother scolded. ‘Camels come in flocks.’

  ‘Herds,’ I said as we made our way down Featherstone Lane.

  ‘So is that the answer?’ Sandy curled up his lip in disgust. He and his brother had asked permission to start growing moustaches the previous day and were already putting Brigsy to shame with quite promising flaxen adornments.

  ‘No.’ I toed a pine cone back into the dunes.

  ‘Goal!’ the twins shouted, slapping each other’s backs and running towards me with arms outstretched before thinking better of it.

  ‘A notepad,’ Algy guessed.

  ‘Well, that was a more sensible suggestion,’ I encouraged him, ‘but, if you think about it for a minute, you have both got notebooks and so have I.’ I tapped my breast pocket and looked from one to the other as they exchanged guilty glances. ‘You do have notebooks, don’t you?’

  I stopped and they did too.

  ‘Well…’ Sandy screwed up his face like he was sucking on a lemon. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Indeed,’ Algy concurred uneasily.

  I thrust out my hand. ‘Show me.’

  ‘Well, we didn’t say we ’ad them on uz.’ Sandy dragged his words out carefully.

  I dropped my hand onto my hip. ‘Explain.’

  ‘Well, they rub,’ Algy obliged.

  ‘We ’ave very sensitive nipples,’ Sandy expanded.

  ‘Do you seriously think that your nipples are more sensitive than—’ I just managed to stop myself saying mine – not a conversation I wanted to enter into with my constables, ‘anybody else’s?’

  ‘Yes,’ they insisted in unison.

  ‘We could never wear starched cassocks when we wuz altar boys,’ Sandy recalled.

  ‘Well, why couldn’t you put them in your side pockets?’

  ‘We tried,’ Sandy said.

  ‘But they ruined the lines of our jackets.’ Algy patted his slender waist to emphasise the statement.

  ‘Listen.’ I strode on with them lollop
ing either side of me like a pair of Afghan hounds. ‘Regulations require that you carry a notebook and pencil at all times.’

  ‘Oh but pencils can be very sharp.’ Algy flapped.

  ‘For the very good reason that, in the unlikely instance of either of you arresting anyone, you will be required to produce your notebook in court.’

  ‘She said unlikely,’ Sandy pointed out to his twin.

  ‘That wasn’t very kind,’ Algy simpered.

  ‘I am not trying to be kind,’ I told them.

  ‘And not managing to be,’ Sandy murmured.

  ‘What did you say?’ I spun towards him, nearly toppling over my own feet and grabbing his lapel to steady myself.

  ‘Ohhh, Algernon,’ he shrieked, ‘mam is going to beat me up.’

  ‘Tell ’er you’ll bring your notebook in future,’ Algy urged.

  ‘I will,’ he vowed.

  ‘So will I,’ Algy promised and I released my grip.

  ‘What was the answer to your guessing game, mam?’ Sandy asked as we turned down Pinfold Lane.

  ‘Little turns,’ I replied. ‘Policemen never have little turns.’

  ‘Ohhh, that’s not fair,’ they chorused.

  ‘Because we do,’ Algy explained.

  ‘Then you are to stop it immediately.’ I came to a halt. ‘Have you stopped it?’

  ‘We’re trying.’ They wrung their hands like the poor widow with no fuel when it is snowing in the first scene of a melodrama.

  ‘Right, wait here.’

  ‘Which one…’

  ‘Of us?’

  ‘Both of you.’

  ‘Ohhhhh.’ They threw their hands up in as much despair as the widow being evicted by wicked Squire Jasper in scene two.

  ‘An old woman lives alone in that house,’ I explained. ‘What will she think if she sees three police officers marching up her drive?’

  They scratched their heads like Stan Laurel at his most perplexed.

  ‘It’s difficult for us to think what she’ll think,’ Sandy decided.

  ‘Because we don’t know ’er,’ Algy put in.

  ‘She will be alarmed,’ I said.

  ‘Do you know ’er then, mam?’ Sandy asked.