Money Never Sleeps

by Whitelaw, Stella

  Fancy’s wheelie suitcase, briefcase and lecture notes were found, safe and sound, stored upstairs in an admin office. She wanted to put them straight into her car but Jed stopped her. Not yet, he said. She was beyond arguing. She knew she couldn’t drive till her feet felt they could use the pedals.

  ‘We could take my things back to Castleton?’ said Fancy.

  ‘Sure,’ said Jed. ‘We’ll put them in my car instead.’

  They were standing at the window in the Lakeside room opposite 425. Somewhere in the distance, far beyond normal sight, was the North Sea. The room had been made up for the next occupant: hospitality tray refilled, fresh towels and soap laid on the bed. They did not touch anything.

  Fancy could see an oblique view of her beloved vintage car in the higher car park, or from this distance what looked like her car. It was the only small brown car in an empty space and a long way off, so it must be hers. She clenched Jed’s hand.

  ‘Is this going to be all right?’ she asked. ‘Can we go now?’

  ‘Of course. Everything is in hand.’

  ‘I don’t understand any of this, but I’m trusting you,’ she said.

  ‘Trust me some more. Are you any good at acting?’

  ‘Very good at acting. Oscar-nomination class. Do it all the time.’

  ‘I want you to come down with me now and pretend to say goodbye to me in the car park.’

  ‘Is that all? A fond goodbye?’

  ‘A very fond goodbye would be acceptable. But don’t get any ideas. Then I want you to go round to your car and pretend to get in it. The door will be unlocked. But don’t actually get in. Don’t in any circumstances get in it. Open the door, switch on the ignition, pretend to have dropped something, then immediately duck round the back and roll over the perimeter brick wall.’

  ‘Roll over the wall? In my state? With my bruises? You’re joking.’

  ‘I’m not joking. Get over that wall and crouch down, flat on the ground if you can make it, hands over your head. Do exactly as I say, Fancy.’

  ‘This is ridiculous,’ said Fancy, irritated. ‘I don’t understand a word.’

  ‘It may well be ridiculous in which case you can have a good laugh. We will both have a good laugh. And I’ll help you back over the wall. Do you really want to be scared for the rest of your life, always looking over your shoulder, anxious to see who’s following you?’

  ‘No, I don’t.’

  ‘Then do this one last thing.’

  They went downstairs in the lift and out of the back entrance to the top car park. It was a gloriously sunny day, one of the last of the summer, with a light, caressing breeze playing through the trees. The scent of the flowers, roses and lavender, wafted across from the garden and mingled with the sharp freshness of cut grass.

  ‘Well, goodbye, Jed,’ said Fancy, reaching up to give him the briefest kiss on the cheek. It felt a little rough, as if he had not had a good shave that morning. ‘It’s been nice meeting you.’

  ‘If that’s a fond goodbye, then I can’t wait for the other kind,’ said Jed dryly, patting her on the shoulder like a pet dog. ‘Take care, sweetheart.’

  ‘I’m nobody’s sweetheart,’ she said, turning away. It wouldn’t rate as a scene from Casablanca.

  Fancy walked across to her car, awkwardly in the thermal socks. The tarmac was hard. The Vanden Plas looked a bit different but perhaps her eyesight had been affected by the darkness in the tunnel. It looked more polished than her old vintage, which had lost its shine. Same colour, same shape, even the same make.

  She opened the unlocked door. It was different inside. The walnut facia and leather-covered steering wheel had gone, replaced by boring grey plastic. This was not right. She wanted to protest, to say something to Jed, but he had walked away and was going back into Lakeside. She turned the ignition key as told, and ducked down to pick up an imaginary handkerchief.

  She hurried round the back, stumbling up a bank and rolling over the brick wall. As she hit the ground below, she heard a roar and an explosion. Flames shot into the air and Fancy hid her face from the heat and noise. The brick wall protected her from the explosion. She was shaking with fear and with indignation. Her car was on fire, a wreck, a smouldering mass of twisted metal.

  How dare Jed expose her to this danger. She could have been killed. He must have known the car might be booby-trapped. Yet he let her go within yards of the car, her beautiful little vintage car, now wrecked and burning.

  Jed leaped over the wall and crouched down beside her. His body protecting her. But from what? He was too bloody late.

  ‘Are you all right?’

  His arms were close round her but she was quivering, not from fright, but with fury. She fought him off with what strength she had left, mindful of what still hurt and was painful.

  She turned on him fiercely, eyes blazing. ‘No, I’m not all right. How dare you! How dare you put me through that! What a nerve. I could have been killed. You knew it was booby-trapped, yet you told me to go and turn on the ignition.’

  ‘Calm down,’ said Jed, holding her close. ‘You’re safe. I would have pulled you into Lakeside if you hadn’t gone behind the wall. We weren’t sure. We only guessed it might be booby-trapped and that they would use a mobile phone to detonate it remotely. But only if they saw you appearing to get into the car and turn on the ignition. We had to have proof. The bomb wouldn’t go off instantly; there’s usually a time lapse on these things. There were vital seconds that gave you time to take cover.’

  ‘How could you? I’ll never forgive you, you beast, you horror.’ Her eyes were smarting with tears.

  ‘Yes, you will, because now you’re going to be safe.’

  There seemed to be a lot of activity in the car park. Several police officers arrived, running, dousing the flames with fire extinguishers. Then she saw two more police officers coming out of Lakeside, holding a man between them. His hands were behind his back, handcuffed. He looked vaguely familiar. Late forties, short grey hair, tweedy clothes.

  ‘That’s Leo Cousseau, who blew up his own car in case anyone noticed the French number plates. This is the man who has been wandering round the conference all week, wearing a white badge that he was not entitled to wear. He’s been eating with you, drinking with you, wandering about but not going to any lectures, planting nasty things to scare you.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ said Fancy. ‘Who is he?’

  ‘He kidnapped you yesterday, bound and gagged you and drove you to Pennyroyal, dragged you down all those steps and left you to die in the heart of a disused lead mine.’

  ‘It was him? But why? There was a woman, too,’ said Fancy, still trembling. ‘I heard lighter footsteps.’

  ‘We know. And here she is, in the custody of Detective Inspector Morris Bradley. I’m sure he will have read her the Miranda rights.’

  DI Bradley came out of Lakeside, a struggling, handcuffed woman in tow. WPC Richmond was escorting her, her hand firmly on the woman’s arm. Dorothy craned her head and caught sight of Fancy. She nodded. A couple of police cars were screeching to a halt at the top of the car park. Cousseau was being down-headed into the back of one of the cars. It was like a scene from a film.

  He was pale-faced, ashen, shaking.

  The woman was also being taken to one of the police cars. She was in jeans and a T-shirt, her face wreathed in fury.

  ‘How did you get out?’ she shouted at Fancy, dragging back from her escort. ‘We made sure you would never get out. You were supposed to die down there. Got a broomstick or something? Going to write a sequel to Harry Potter now, are you? You and your idiot Pink Pen Detective. You’re nobody, you’re nothing. My mother was worth a hundred of you. She deserved every penny. And she would have got it if it hadn’t been for your stupid magazine, stirring up an old, dead story.’

  She was bundled into the second police car, WPC Richmond getting in beside her. The woman glared at Fancy through the window.

  DSI Bradley had his mobile phone in
his hand. He clicked it off. ‘Recorded all that?’ asked Jed. ‘She always did talk too much.’

  ‘You need no introduction to that woman,’ Jed went on. ‘You know her as Jessie Whytely, the writers’ Conference Secretary, but she is also Jessica Cousseau, the only daughter of Thelma Marchant, one of the twin sisters, and now rightful heir to the brewery millions.’

  Fancy felt faint. ‘Jessie?’

  ‘Nothing to be afraid of any more. Those two are going down on two counts of murder and attempted murder. Forensics will find evidence to link them with Grace’s murder. Then there’s counts of arson and administering a prohibited drug. We can prove the kidnap, the lead mine and the booby-trapped car. And guess what we found in the boot of their car? Some of the seed pearls from your top. They’d been torn off. We’ll trace their mobile phone records, find evidence of journeys to London. The attempts in London will be more difficult to prove, but we’ll get there.’

  Jed helped Fancy to her feet and over the wall. She could not look at her car, still smouldering under mountains of foam. She couldn’t speak.

  ‘Time for more coffee, I think.’

  He guided her through Lakeside and back into the garden as the two police cars sped towards Derby. And prison cells. For a very long time.

  TWENTY-THREE

  Epilogue

  ‘Jessie drowned her own aunt?’ Fancy was incredulous. She was sitting on the grass, rubbing her feet. ‘It’s unbelievable. Grace was her aunt.’

  ‘That’s what people will do for money. A lot of money. They do horrible things.’

  ‘But I don’t understand. And then all those happenings to scare me in London and again here at Northcote. The hand in a biscuit tin, the scarves, the fire in a bucket, the date-rape drug, everything that has happened to me? Who did them? And why?’

  ‘Mostly the invisible man. No one knew he was here or in London or took any notice of him. He’s merely a middle-aged, grey man, wandering about. It’s too easy to infiltrate a conference. There are no real checks. How many white badges can you read? The writing is usually so small and illegible, you’d need a magnifying glass. Did you ever check the identity of the person sitting next to you in the dining room or the bar or at a talk? It was too easy for him to mingle.’

  ‘And I suppose he slept in Jessie’s room.’

  ‘She had a room in the oldest part of the house, lots of corridors to get there and a big bedroom with several beds. He could slip along late at night. The maids would never notice one more body. They don’t do a bed count.’

  They were sitting on the lawn again. There was still the same sunshine, but now it was a different air, more relaxed, a scent of freedom. Fancy could still smell the burning Vanden Plas. She grieved for her beautiful old car.

  The admin office, alarmed by another fire in the car park and all the police activity, were thrown from their usual guest turnaround routine. Everyone was huddled in groups, gossiping. The housekeeper ordered a tray of coffee to be sent out to Jed and Fancy on the lawn. It arrived with a plate of chocolate cake, home-made oatmeal biscuits and a pot of coffee. A feast indeed. But they had no appetite for food. They were both high on adrenaline.

  ‘So Leo Cousseau was smuggled in by Jessie,’ Jed went on, ‘arriving here as if he were Melody’s farmer husband from Cornwall. But he arrived too early. That was their first mistake. I got road traffic to check the first possible arrival time, even if he had driven at sixty miles per hour the whole way, without a stop. He arrived at least an hour too early. At the time, it didn’t mean that much.’

  ‘We all thought, poor man. We were sympathetic.’

  ‘Then the lack of grief. DI Bradley interviewed him first and it didn’t seem natural, even if they hadn’t been getting on as a couple. The man was a cold fish even when they took him into Derby to identify the body.’

  ‘He never mixed. We didn’t even realize he was Melody’s “husband” at first, then we thought he wanted to be left alone. But as you say, he wasn’t the husband.’ Fancy sipped more coffee. She was beginning to calm down.

  ‘The next mistake was setting fire to Clousseau’s car. They suddenly realized it had French number plates and someone might have noticed and queried it. But instead of removing them or changing them, they set the car alight. The fire officer said it was arson, a small incendiary bomb ignited from a mobile phone, he said. But he noted the plates and we checked them.’

  ‘A bit like my lovely vintage car,’ said Fancy, trying not to sound accusing. She was still angry about its destruction.

  Jed leaned forward and took her hand with his good one. His skin was warm and smooth. His eyes behind his glasses were glinting with warmth. ‘Don’t fret, Fancy. I know vintage when I see it. I had your Vanden Plas towed away last night. It’s safely locked in a staff garage. The car that was blown up today was some unidentified abandoned vehicle from our police pound, very similar, but no licence, no insurance. It would have gone to the scrap yard eventually.’

  Fancy felt ashamed of her feelings. She could only nod her thanks and squeeze her gratitude. Her car was safe. ‘Thank you, Jed, thank you.’

  ‘Thelma had spent her whole life seething with indignation and fury that Grace had got both her husband and her share of the fortune, planning revenge. But she didn’t know what to do without disclosing her own duplication. She had staged the blood spatters, the disappearance, in the hope that Rupert would be charged with her murder and found guilty.’

  ‘But he wasn’t. He was acquitted. She must have been gutted.’

  ‘She was. She then spent years plotting and planning how to get the money. Somehow along the way, and we don’t know with whom, she acquired a daughter, Jessica. There’s no record of a father or a marriage. Thelma went to live in France with Jessica, where she made a modest living acting in dubious French movies and television, using the name Melody Marchant. It seems to be a popular name in that family.’

  ‘So Jessica was brought up in France. Once I heard her say, “Bonne chance” or something, and I thought how clever, she’s bilingual.’

  ‘I also once heard her use some French expression, and thought, like you, it was neat. But no, it was her native tongue. For years she was indoctrinated by her mother that the brewery fortune rightfully belonged to her. It was part of their life together. Jessie met and married Leo, and they also both believed that the money rightfully belonged to Thelma and that it would eventually pass to them. Quite a strong motive. Must be worth millions by now.’

  ‘Then Thelma was killed in a road accident and all the DNA came to the surface. You told me about the unidentified Jane Doe.’

  ‘Jessica and Leo panicked. Thelma was already declared dead. She could not die twice. They could not identify her. They let her stay in the morgue with a Jane Doe tag on her toe.’

  ‘How horrid. Her own mother.’

  Fancy’s head was spinning. But she wanted to know more. ‘How did my magazine come into all this?’

  ‘Thelma had been getting it for the last few years. She’s on your subscription list. I checked. Slightly different name, but Jessie’s French address. As long as The Missing Cover Girl stayed a mystery, she was safe. But when we started prodding around, she knew that she had to do something about it. And her solution was to get rid of you. With you out of the way, the magazine would flounder and die. No more cold cases to be solved.’

  ‘But Thelma was killed in a road accident.’

  ‘One of those things, stepping off a kerb in a busy street without looking. Could happen to anyone. And she carried no identification. But she had a daughter who took up the cause. Jessie vowed that no one would ever know the true story. And at the same time, she had her eye on the money. She would inherit if she came forward as Thelma’s daughter.’

  ‘Were there any more mistakes?’

  ‘We found a roll of duct tape in the glove compartment of Jessica’s car, which exactly matches the type of tape used to secure your wrists and ankles. And a white flower was found in the ca
r park, which I’m told you were wearing in your hair at the dregs party. There will be forensic evidence in the boot as well. The most minute fibres from your clothes, strands of hair, and the seed pearls from your top. They planned it, the two of them. They planned to leave you to die in Pennyroyal.’

  ‘I might have died.’

  ‘Yes, you could have died.’

  ‘The Pink Pen Detective saved me. She told me what to do. How to get out and save my life.’

  ‘Good for her. That reminds me, Fancy. Our next stop is the A&E department, to get them to look at your feet.’

  ‘What will happen to the brewery millions?’

  ‘I don’t really know. It depends on what Grace put in her will. She may have left it all to her husband and his sheep, or perhaps left a trust for an annual writing prize. Children’s stories, of course. She may even have left a legacy to the conference. They’re always short of money.’

  Fancy sat back on the lawn, the coffee growing cold in her hand. She had come to some sort of calming decision. ‘I’m not going to write any more crime books,’ she said. ‘I’ve had it with crime. It’s all too complicated. Who would ever think of a plot like that? Never. My Pink Pen Detective has gone to ground. She’ll spend her retirement in the Bahamas, sunning herself, meeting wonderful men and drinking piña coladas.’

  Jed watched her closely, for evidence of extreme shock or mental disturbance from the blow on her head. But there was none. It was reassuring. His clever and wonderful Fancy Jones was as right as rain, her eyes sparkling, ready to start writing again, to take up life, to live it to the full.

  ‘So what are you going to do?’

  ‘Maybe I’ll move to Castleton, buy a cottage in the village or a small bungalow on the outskirts. I saw several this morning as we drove through. They looked really pleasant. Something with a bit of a garden to sit in with an iced drink. Get a dog and a cat. Maybe that tabby needs a home. I’ll write funny, chick-lit romances. Always wanted to write funny books. Books that will make people laugh and feel happy, feel good.’