The Ghost of Christmas Past: A Honey Driver Murder Mystery (Honey Driver Mysteries Book 8)

by Jean G Goodhind

  ‘The man you saw with my daughter. We know him as Professor Jake Truebody. Are you saying it was Eamon Mallory’s son?’

  He nodded. ‘Yes. He looks just like his father, though twenty-odd years younger of course. I worked with the two of them back in the old days at Mallory and Scrimshaw. I’m hoping to retire shortly, and I know I’m getting on, but my memory is still good and I’ve seen the old photographs Clarence kept. There’s no doubt in my mind. That person you call Jake Truebody is Crispin Mallory.’

  Doherty ordered the accountant to sit down. ‘This son. Where has he been up until now?’

  ‘In the United States. I think his mother was an author based in Idaho. I understood that he died with his father in a house fire, but it’s obviously not true. He looks just like Eamon. There’s no doubt about it.’

  Honey sucked in her breath.

  Doherty thanked him. The moment the door closed, he was punching in numbers on his phone.

  ‘Get me what you can from the FBI on a Crispin Mallory.’ He gave what details he could.

  The information would be a while coming through. Although Honey was desperate to find her daughter, she didn’t know where to look. However, things had been clarified. Just as Anna had pointed out, Jake Truebody had avoided being seen. They had presumed he was avoiding her or the police. Now it seemed that he had, in fact, been avoiding the older employees of Mallory and Scrimshaw simply because he looked like his father!

  Honey spotted her mother, her outfit shining like a sardine in the moonlight.

  Patricia Pontefract was reading her story, her voice rolling over the words as though she’d bled every one onto the page. She looked full of herself, puffed up to twice her size.

  A lectern was provided that put the readers’ two steps up from the audience. Patricia Pontefract stood tall and erect.

  Honey sat down next to her mother and whispered in her ear. ‘Exactly how much detail about me did you put on that website?’

  Her mother shushed her. ‘I’m listening.’

  There was no way of moving her when she’d made up her mind and she never took the blame for anything.

  ‘You could have put your granddaughter’s life in danger.’

  Her mother frowned and looked at her. ‘I can’t see how. It was only family things.’

  Honey shook her head in exasperation. This conversation was going nowhere. She got up.

  ‘Where are you going?’ whispered her mother.

  ‘To find my daughter.’

  ‘I’ll come with you.’

  ‘No. Stay there. It might be dangerous.’

  ‘You’ve just told me my granddaughter’s in danger. Of course I’ve got to come.’

  ‘No. This is police business. Stay here and enjoy the readings. Mary Jane will want you to.’

  ‘OK. But as soon as it’s over, I’ll follow on. Mary Jane will drive me. She’s only had a sherry or two, so she’ll be OK.’

  Having experienced Mary Jane’s driving whilst sober, the idea of her driving under the influence – even of a small sherry – was too terrible to contemplate. She advised her mother to stay put and wait for them to call.

  ‘No news yet. Is something wrong?’

  The sound of applause came from the dining room preceding the emergence of Patricia Pontefract, her face pink with satisfaction.

  ‘That showed them!’ Her statement was delivered with confidence and pride. ‘I need to speak to you.’

  Her demand was aimed at Doherty who wasn’t entirely sure who she was.

  Honey filled in the details.

  ‘Patricia Pontefract. She’s an author. Mallory and Scrimshaw were her publishers.’

  ‘Ah!’ Doherty indicated that she take a seat.

  Patricia Pontefract didn’t move. She stood there taking up a large amount of room. It wasn’t hard for her to do. She was a big woman and presently wearing a voluminous dress capable of housing the crowd scene from A Midsummer Night’s Dream. A gang of chains rattled around her neck. They rattled because her bosoms were heaving up and down like a pair of giant bellows.

  Her eyeshadow was luminous and deep purple. Her deep set eyes looked as though they were set in amethyst. She narrowed them further when she turned her gaze on Honey.

  ‘We can do without you. This is a private conversation.’

  Just as Honey expected, Doherty didn’t respond well to Patricia Pontefract’s sharp attitude. His mouth straightened. His shoulders stiffened.

  ‘A private conversation concerning what?’

  ‘A crime, of course! I need to speak to a policeman. You are a policeman, are you not?’

  ‘I am and if this is about a crime, then yes, you can talk to me.’

  ‘Fine.’ She turned to Honey. ‘Please leave.’

  Doherty refused to be intimidated.

  ‘This is Mrs Driver’s hotel. She is also the official Crime Liaison Officer for Bath Hotels Association and is working on this case with me. I insist that she stays.’

  ‘No. Absolutely not.’

  ‘Yes. Absolutely yes.’

  They were like two bulls about to lock horns – except that Patricia Pontefract was female and would thus be a cow. The description fitted her pretty well.

  Doherty stood his ground. If he had been a bull and a matador had been present, Honey’s money would have been on the bull. Doherty didn’t give in easily.

  The voluminous tent seemed to expand to greater proportions, then contract when Patricia Pontefract heaved a huge and defeated sigh.

  ‘You know that Clarence was a pagan, do you?’

  ‘Do you mean he dressed up in white robes and danced around at Stonehenge twice a year?’

  Patricia Pontefract pursed her lips. ‘Pagans take their religion very seriously, Mr Policeman. The old religion is embedded in this island, even in the Christian calendar. Even Christmas was established at a time of year when the pagans celebrated the Winter Solstice. They feasted and gave thanks around this time of year, just as we do.’

  Doherty wasn’t too hot on the religious front. Honey could see he was trying to surmise where this was going. ‘So you’re saying that Mr Scrimshaw viewed Christmas as humbug for a very good reason; he wasn’t a Christian. He was a pagan,’ said Doherty.

  ‘That’s what I’m saying. I think you should bear that in mind in your investigations. You may find it useful.’

  She spun on her heel and marched out, her gown billowing like a giant wind sock behind her.

  ‘Well,’ said Honey. ‘So Scrimshaw wasn’t Scrooge, he was a pagan.’

  Doherty looked sceptical. ‘I don’t believe it.’

  ‘I quite fancied investigating the world of nature worship and dancing around a fire at midnight,’ Honey mused.

  ‘Keep your clothes on. Wait till summer and we’ll fly out to Corfu.’

  The overbearing author had disappeared into the ladies cloakroom.

  Honey looked at the closed door. ‘That’s a woman who believes in herself.’

  Doherty made no comment. He was examining a text message he’d just received.

  Honey craned her neck, but at that angle, the screen was too small to read.

  He raised his eyes without raising his head; such a simple action making him look both threatening and alluring. Honey felt her toes curling up, and her stomach trying to get friendly with her spine – it was that taut.

  ‘Where would you suppose the professor’s gone?’

  Honey felt herself turning cold. ‘He could be anywhere.’

  His eyes locked with hers, and then he was moving.

  ‘Crispin Mallory and Professor Jake Truebody are one and the same. He was serving sentence under the name Wes Patterson. Our friend is known to the FBI as a murderer and a liar. To put it in their words, he’s like a chameleon and can change his spots to suit. He’s had dozens of identities over the years, but the name he was born with was Mallory – Crispin Mallory. Jake Truebody was murdered by Crispin and an accomplice. The accomplice too has disappeared.
Probably buried in cement somewhere.’

  Honey could tell just by the tone of his voice that there were more details that would fill her with less than glad tidings.

  ‘What else?’

  ‘Let’s get to the car and I’ll tell you. Right now, we have to find Lindsey.’

  ‘Let’s go.’ Grabbing her old padded jacket from behind the bar, she pushed past Doherty and headed for the outside world.

  ‘Honey, we don’t know where they’ve gone.’

  ‘He’s got no reason to kill Lindsey.’ She sounded confident. Inside she was mush. ‘Why would he?’

  Doherty hadn’t brought his car and response at the skeleton-staffed police station was understandably slow.

  They hailed a taxi. Doherty told the driver to drop them off at Manvers Street. His aim was to initiate a search, though where they would start searching was sheer guesswork.

  Honey sat on the edge of her seat. Doherty sat silently. Only the driver, an Asian guy with a skinny beard, attempted to strike up a conversation.

  ‘Hey. How is that hotel? OK, is it?’

  ‘Fine.’

  Usually when asked about the Green River Hotel, Honey responded giving the full marketing spiel. But not today.

  Undeterred by her silence, the taxi driver continued.

  ‘Pretty zany in there. I mean, I pick up some pretty cool characters; pretty off the wall ones too, but the passenger I picked up in there a few days back took the biscuit. A horse! Would you believe I picked up a horse as a passenger? Not a real horse, of course. A purple pantomime horse with yellow spots, the sort two guys get inside to make it happen. Dig? Well, this cute honey behind the reception counter got a barman to help me out with it. Can’t understand what a cute girl is doing working in a hotel; should have been a model. Though perhaps she’s decided to split; know what I mean? Perhaps she’s escaping. She got in my cab earlier with this cheesy older guy. No horse though.’

  Honey suddenly tuned in with what he’d just said.

  ‘My daughter! You’re talking about my daughter! Where did you take her?’

  ‘Hey, I can’t divulge where passengers want to go. It’s private.’

  Doherty waved his ID in front of the driver’s eyes.

  ‘Police. Now tell me. Where did you take them?’

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Snow began falling at around four in the afternoon. Evening closed in with it. The flakes were big and came in flurries, just like those depicted on Victorian-style Christmas cards; the mail coach outside a snow-covered inn.

  Those that had ventured out to walk off their festive food were fast disappearing. A warm house, more food, and a glass of mulled wine were beckoning, that and repeats of favourite television programmes.

  Cobblers Court was deserted.

  Lindsey Driver was stripped to her underwear and already shivering.

  ‘Take a good look,’ he’d said to her. ‘See how cold it is? A few hours and you won’t even notice how cold it is. You’ll be dead. I’ll come back and retie you to suit the scenario; the evidence will point that you had had kinky sex with your lover – Jake Truebody. But it got out of hand and you ended up dead like deep frozen belly pork.’

  Lindsey stared wide eyed out of the upstairs window which was ill-fitting and let in the draught. He’d placed her in the coldest part of the room.

  Unlit windows stared back at her from buildings turned into grey phantoms by the mist. Snow was falling with it. How was that for Victorian atmosphere?

  It was easy to imagine a time when gas lights flickered in dark streets and horses hooves and wagon wheels clattered over the cobbles and Jack the Ripper had roamed Whitechapel in London.

  The snow was falling fast. The weather forecast for later that night was that the snow would stop, the sky would clear and the temperature would drop to minus five.

  Regard for the weather was a very British thing. Lindsey tried to steer her mind away from the forecast and her probable fate. She had to keep positive.

  ‘Priests don’t call themselves John Smith,’ she murmured, angry that the low down swine she’d come here with had trussed her up like a Christmas turkey.

  Whatever this guy was, and who he was, she didn’t believe he was a priest. Neither did she believe he was Professor Jake Truebody, but then he’d already admitted he wasn’t, so no need to go there.

  The fact was she’d never seen any priest in such fine physical shape as this guy. He had to have been following a gruelling exercise regime for some time to achieve the body he had; not that she’d seen it without clothes of course. She considered herself extremely observant and her imagination was second to none. Beneath that conservative jacket, that guy had abs to die for.

  So he wasn’t Father John Smith and he wasn’t Professor Jake Truebody; so who was he?

  She looked appealingly at him.

  Jake, John, whoever, was sensitive enough to work out what her eyes were asking him.

  He was totally dismissive, shaking his head in mild rebuke.

  ‘It’s your own fault. You snooped. If you hadn’t started asking so many questions, we wouldn’t have had to do this.’

  We? Who was we?

  He smiled. ‘Sorry, honey, but no time for hugs and kisses. Don’t want you getting warmed up by a hug and lasting longer than I’d planned. Anyway, I have to be going. Nice knowing you. Might have taken pleasure in knowing you more,’ he said, his fingers leaving an icy trail across her shoulders. ‘Shame, but no way. You know too much, still, under the circumstances, I’ve got a few minutes so might as well tell you the rest, right?’

  No! She shook her head and squeezed her eyes tightly shut. She’d be a witness – if she lived.

  ‘Here goes. The truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth; so help me God.’

  He laughed at that. ‘I was abandoned as a kid, believing both of my parents to be dead. Fact is, only one of them was dead, but I didn’t know that. It was down to Scrimshaw. News got to him that I was still alive, but he hid the truth from my mother for years, which is possibly the reason for me growing into such a wayward boy. I had wits. I lived on my wits and yeah, OK, I ended up in prison. While I was there, I got interested in genealogy. I traced my parents, did the research, and plotted revenge, because, you see, the fire that killed my father had been started deliberately. Scrimshaw never forgave my father for stealing the woman he loved away. He hired somebody to kill him. The house was burned to the ground. I was always a bit of a wanderer and had wandered miles that day. Nobody knew who I was. Nobody knew where I came from and I was only about five years old. I ended up in an orphanage; prison followed later on, though not that often. As I said, I lived on my wits. I found out all kinds of things. Great thing, the internet, don’t you think? That’s how I located my natural mother. I told her what I knew, and she told me the rest. To say she was furious is an understatement.’

  This man, whom she now knew was Crispin Mallory, threw his head back and laughed.

  ‘And my father? Did you really know him?’

  ‘I used to clean his boat for him,’ he said as he began to wind a gag around her mouth. ‘Your father was responsible for getting me my first jail sentence. He got me arrested for stealing a few dollars. I won’t lie about it, I wanted revenge, though not as much as I did on Scrimshaw. But that was back then. It was sheer chance that I punched in his name and your mother came up on some zany dating website. It did cross my mind to seduce your mother, but when I saw her reaction to me saying I was a friend of your father – well, she wasn’t pleased to see me. Guess they didn’t get on too well, huh?’

  He sat there smiling into the flashlight, scraping back his hair with the blade of the knife he was holding. It was incredibly ornate, its blade thin, its handle encrusted with semi-precious stones.

  Lindsey closed her eyes for a moment, reminding herself that he wouldn’t use the knife to kill her. He’d trust the cold to do that.

  He turned round at the sound of a footstep on the stairs
outside.

  Lindsey tried to turn her head to see who it was. She couldn’t move, though she needed to move. She was freezing to death. Goose pimples erupted on her skin and she began to shiver.

  ‘Well. I can’t sit around here chatting,’ he said. ‘I have to go.’

  ‘Come on,’ somebody hissed.

  Lindsey shivered and took a deep breath. She smelled perfume. Expensive perfume.

  What she wouldn’t give for a blanket. This place was as cold as a tomb. Clarence Scrimshaw had kept this place in the dark ages, only improving those facilities he had to by order of the local authority. Central heating and double glazing hadn’t rated high on his list of priorities.

  ‘Crispin!’ There was warning in the hissing voice.

  ‘OK, I’m coming.’ He leaned over her and kissed the top of her head. ‘Sorry to cut short our relationship, but I’ve got work to do. We’re looking for a very valuable Bible that old Clarence had just bought. Don’t suppose you know anything about it, do you?’

  He shook his head. ‘No. Of course you don’t. So you just sit tight there and I’ll have a looksee around. Enjoy the view – while you can.’

  Two sets of feet clumped their way down the stairs. The sound of the main door hushing shut drifted up the stairs. A blast of cold air came with it.

  Her shivering intensified. He’d made her take off her socks and tights. What was left was incapable of keeping her warm. From what he’d told her, she wouldn’t be found wearing underwear. He’d only left it on for now. Strange that he hadn’t stripped everything off. Was it out of respect for her, or perhaps for the other person – whoever that was?

  She panned the window in front of her. If she could break a pane of glass, someone below might see the falling debris and raise the alarm – if there was anyone around – which didn’t seem likely.

  She tried rocking the chair on its legs, anything to keep moving, but the chair was heavy. It wouldn’t budge.

  Sweat broke out on her forehead. If she couldn’t move, she wouldn’t live. All she could do was wait and shiver, getting colder by the minute, more light headed as her systems began shutting down as hypothermia set in. The night was getting colder, the snow heavier. She needed a miracle, an angel in disguise.