The Case of the Screaming Beauty

by Alison Golden

  Graham pinched the bridge of his nose. “So, within moments of your being told of Norah’s good fortune, you decided to bully her into getting your new company started.”

  “Like I said, not my best moment,” Lloyd admitted.

  “You’re a hapless twerp, Tim,” Graham told him. “Nice enough, but bloody hapless.”

  Harris was surprised yet again, but then Graham set up the finale Harris and the others had all been waiting for.

  “But not a murderer.”

  Amelia turned to Graham and begged, “So, who on Earth did it?”

  Graham took a deep breath. “Someone who needed money even more desperately than Tim. Someone friendly and respected enough to feel that he might simply be given a chunk of Norah’s winnings for being a nice chap. Someone whom the police would never suspect.”

  Still confused, Amelia turned to her husband. “Cliff, what’s he talking about…” she began, but the truth dawned with a shuddering, horrid certainty. “Oh, my God.” She grasped his hand as he stared mutely at the tablecloth. “Cliff, tell him he’s wrong. There’s no way…”

  “Amelia…” Cliff said softly.

  “I won’t believe it! That lovely young woman. You couldn’t have, Cliff…” Tears came, smearing her eye makeup. Around the table, as the truth became clear, the expressions of stunned amazement became those of uncomprehending horror that this man whom they respected could be capable of such a thing.

  “I’m sorry…” Cliff managed, his voice tight. “It was slipping away from me. My dream, my plans for retirement.” Amelia’s hands were at her mouth as though suppressing a scream. “You said it too many times, Amelia… ‘next year,’ or ‘in a while.’ And I’ve worked like a bloody slave for this place, after forty years of day-in, day-out grind… I couldn’t cope with it, love.”

  “But…” Amelia stuttered, “murder, Cliff? Over something as meaningless as money?”

  “I needed her to share it with me,” Cliff explained, almost sotto voce. “Just enough to get us loose from this place, get settled over there.”

  “Over where?” Sykes demanded. “What was so damned important you had to put everyone through all of this?”

  Amelia said it for him. “Mexico. A retirement in the sunshine. It’s what he’s always wanted. And now…” she said, but stopped and dissolved in tears.

  Clifford Swansbourne, his years now heavy upon him, stood with such aching slowness that Sergeant Harris felt no need to restrain him. There was not the least spark of escape or violence in the man. “I’ve done the most terrible thing,” he confessed. “I saw what was happening to my life, to our dream. We all deserve a little comfort later in life, and that’s all I wanted. But I went about it as though I’m an evil man. But I’m not. I’m really not.”

  Amelia said nothing, despite Cliff’s imploring eyes.

  “I bumped into Norah in the hallway on that Sunday. She was going down to the garden to read, and she was just so happy, so jolly. I asked how she was doing, and she told me, whispered it, that she’d had this lottery win. She didn’t say how much, but I knew it was more than a tenner, you know.” Nobody laughed.

  “And then?” Graham prompted, writing continuously.

  “Well, I congratulated her, as anyone would,” Cliff remembered. “She went to read in the garden, and I went back to the kitchen, but the thought wouldn’t leave me alone. Just five percent, maybe, of her winnings would have set us up. Enough to invest in one of those high-interest accounts, and then let someone else worry about it while we enjoyed the rewards.”

  Sykes was glaring at him as though Cliff were the worst imaginable evil. “The devil’s work,” was all he muttered.

  Cliff pressed on. They could all see his need to unburden himself, however painful it might be, especially for Amelia, who was pale and dumbstruck in her seat. “Later, before dinner, I somehow found the words to ask her. I can’t say she was receptive, you know, I’m virtually a stranger to her. I told her about working all those years, unable really to save much, but she just stared at me.” He wiped his eyes with his sleeve. “Then she said something terrible.”

  Harris prompted him. “Go on, sir.”

  “She said, ‘It’s men like you, the takers, the scroungers, who make me sick.’ That’s what she said.”

  None of the others needed to be told how Cliff had reacted, but he felt they had to know how his temper had simply snapped. “Right then, I saw Mexico slipping away, receding over the horizon. I knew I’d never get there. I knew I’d die under a cloudy sky in some nursing home, and I just couldn’t...”

  “Oh, Cliff,” Amelia said finally. But that was all.

  “I keep a spare driver around for chasing animals – cats, foxes – out of the garden,” Cliff explained. “I couldn’t sleep, you know, mulling things over. Worrying about the future. And thinking to myself how other people always,” he said, his fists bunching, “always get all the luck.”

  Graham was nodding slowly. “You were angry with her. Angry at what she said and at her good fortune.”

  “I still don’t know how that driver got in my hands, and I can’t remember walking to her room.” He was shaking now. “I don’t know why she opened the door again, at that late hour. But...” He began to sob, the memory of his terrible crime overwhelming him. “I lost control,” he tried to explain through his tears. “Never in my life have I done anything like it. Not once before.” Tears streamed down his lined face, and they knew that he was finished.

  Graham found Sergeant Harris at his shoulder. “Sir,” he said to his boss, “would you mind?” he said. Graham nodded. “Mr. Swansbourne, once it was over, why didn’t you take the ticket as your own?”

  Cliff said nothing, his eyes downcast once more. But Amelia knew. “I’d never have believed it, Sergeant,” she explained. “Cliff had a problem, a long time ago, with gambling. He made me a promise then, and he’s never broken it. Not in thirty years. If he’d presented that lottery ticket as his own, it wouldn’t have been credible. I’d have known in an instant something was up.”

  “Like he’d just murdered someone?” Tim Lloyd said bitterly. “Just goes to show, we never really know each other.” Harris glared at him, and Lloyd fell silent.

  “You were planning a sunny retirement, Mr. Swansbourne. But now,” Graham said, completing the thought, “you’re going to spend your last years behind bars.” He turned to Harris. “Sergeant?”

  Harris placed a strong hand on Cliff’s shoulder. There was no resistance, not now. Cuffing the murderer’s hands behind his back, Harris saw no reason to delay. “See you in the car, sir. Mrs. Swansbourne, you’ll want to follow in your own car. Might be best,” he said, leading Cliff to the door, “to call a lawyer.”

  Graham stood and tried to enjoy the moment as Harris guided Cliff to the car and put him in the back seat. There was satisfaction, of a sort; the kind of closure one might feel upon paying off a mortgage, or completing a dissertation. But there was no surge of excitement, no urge to celebrate the victory. Content though he was to have gotten his man, he was, in the final analysis, just too bloody sad.

  * * *

  Sergeant Harris handled the paperwork at the station, assisted by the desk sergeant, and within the hour, Graham’s responsibilities as an investigator in this case were over.

  “Sir,” Harris said, catching Graham as he was about to leave and head back once more to the silence of his home. “I just wanted to pat you on the back, you know. Hell of an investigation.”

  Graham looked drawn, even a little deflated, after his bravura performance. “You were the consummate professional, Sergeant Harris,” he said, shaking the older man’s hand. “One of the best I’ve worked with.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Harris said. “This one’ll make the papers. Might even get you a promotion.”

  Finding his car keys, Graham replied, “Actually, I’ve been having some thoughts about the future.”

  “Oh?” Harris said. He had hopes this success might do hi
s boss some lasting good.

  “Time for a change of scenery, I’d say,” Graham told him. “I think I’ll get out of town for a while. Do something different.”

  “Out of town? Whereabouts, sir?” Harris asked.

  Graham did something he’d barely done at all in months: he smiled, just slightly. “There’s a quiet little police station, overlooking the sea, on the island of Jersey. A friend of mine is helping make the arrangements.”

  Harris nodded, a little surprised but pleased for Graham. “Sounds really very nice.”

  “I have the feeling,” Graham said, pushing open the police station door, “that it’s going to be perfect.”

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  INSPECTOR DAVID GRAHAM WILL RETURN…

  WOULD YOU LIKE to find out how life unfolds for Inspector Graham as he moves on from the death of his child and breakdown of his marriage? Find out in the next book in the Inspector Graham cozy mystery series, The Case of the Hidden Flame. You’ll find an excerpt on the following pages.

  THE CASE OF THE HIDDEN FLAME

  Chapter One

  CONSTABLE JIM ROACH made quite sure that he wasn’t being watched and then took a long moment to assess his appearance in the mirror. There would be only one chance, he knew, to make a first impression, and he was determined to single himself out as a man of both neatness and integrity; someone to be entrusted with the most challenging, perhaps even the most dangerous investigations. The new boss could well be his long-awaited passport to promotion. He might – the thought made his breath catch in his throat – even get to see a dead body for the first time. That was certainly worth a minute’s close attentiveness to ensure that his tie was straight, his uniform spotless, jacket buttons gleaming, and his hair neatly in place under his blue constable’s cap.

  There. Perfect. He grinned conspiratorially at the face in the mirror and returned to the tiny police station’s reception desk, where he busied himself with a quite unusual energy. “Shipshape and Bristol fashion,” he muttered as he straightened the lobby chairs and then belatedly flipped over the calendar of fetching Jersey shoreline postcards from August to September. Behind the desk, there was a smattering of filing waiting for him, put off repeatedly for weeks, but accomplished in about six minutes, once he put his mind to it. The perennially available deck of cards was slid into a desk drawer. “No solitaire this shift, Constable Roach,” he admonished himself. “The new boss wouldn’t like it.”

  Familiar footsteps could be heard strolling into the reception area from the small hallway beyond, where the “new boss” would have his office. These were followed by an even more familiar voice, its Cockney accent robustly unchanged despite six years in Jersey.

  “Bloody hell, Jim.” The man stopped and stared. “Are we trying to win a contest or something?”

  “What’s that, mate?” Roach asked from behind the flip-top reception desk.

  “I’ve never seen the place so tidy before,” he explained. “Expecting company, are we?”

  Barry “Bazza” Barnwell loved nothing more than needling his younger colleague, especially when Roach let slip his desire to get ahead in the Constabulary. Barnwell was older than Roach but he was as content as could be to remain what he called a “beat cop,” while Roach had dreams of a sergeant’s stripes and then much more. Scotland Yard. Detective Inspector. Chasing down terrorists and drug runners and murderers. That was where the action was. Gorey, pleasantly unchallenging as Barnwell found it, was merely a stepping stone for Constable Roach.

  “It never hurts to put your best foot forward,” Roach explained, continuing to tidy stacks of paper behind the desk.

  “What do you think, eh?” Barnwell asked, leaning on the desk. “Once Mister High And Mighty arrives, you’ll be immediately seconded to the bloody SAS or something?” he joked. “‘Our man in Tangiers’ within a month, is it?”

  “Bazza,” Roach replied wearily, polishing the much abused desk top with a yellow duster. “You may be happy on this little island, but I’ve got aspirations.”

  “Have you, by God?” Barnwell chuckled. “Well, I’d see a doctor if I were you, mate. Sounds painful. Not to mention a likely danger to yourself and others.”

  Roach ignored him, but there was little else to occupy them during this relaxed, summertime midmorning. Besides, Barnwell was having too much fun.

  “I don’t know if you’d be cut out for armed police or the riot squad, you know,” he was chattering. “Chap like you? What is it now, a whole, great big, overwhelming five arrests… And three of those for tax evasion?”

  This got Roach’s goat. “There was that plonker on the beach who was trying to do things to that girl. Remember that, eh? Saved her honor, I did.”

  Barnwell doubled up laughing at the memory. “Oh yeah, first-rate police work, that was. She was only there because he’d already paid her a hundred quid, you wazzack. And he was only trying,” Barnwell added, between convulsions of mirth, “because he’d had a skin full at the Lamb and Flag and could barely even…”

  Saved by the phone. It was an old-fashioned ring – Roach had insisted – not one of those annoying, half-hearted ones that went beep-beep but a proper telephone.

  “Gorey Police, Constable Roach speaking,” he said, ignoring Barnwell’s descent toward the reception room floor in a fit of his own giggles. “Yes, sir,” Roach said crisply. “Understood, sir. We look forward to meeting you then, sir.” He replaced the receiver.

  “You forgot the ‘three bags full, sir,’” Barnwell offered.

  “Get yourself together, mate,” Roach announced purposefully. “Our new overlord approaches.”

  “Who?” Barnwell asked, straightening his tie and biting off the remnants of his laughter.

  “The new DI, you unmentionable so-and-so. And if you show me up, so help me…”

  Roach became a whirlwind once more, carefully adjusting the time on the big wall clock in the reception area, one which looked as though it had done a century’s steady labor in a train station waiting room. Then, to Barnwell’s endless amusement, he watered the plants, including the incongruous but pleasingly bushy shrub in the corner, and trundled through to the back offices.

  “Mind the fort, Constable Barnwell,” he requested formally.

  The hallway led to the DI’s new office, hastily refurbished, which Roach already knew was in “shipshape,” and a second office that was occupied by Sergeant Janice Harding. Janice was their immediate superior but given the regular antics of the two constables, she often felt as much like a nanny or a middle school dinner lady.

  “Sarge, he’s on his way from the airport in a cab,” Roach announced.

  “I heard the phone five minutes ago, Roach,” she complained, standing suddenly. “It took you that long to tell me?”

  Normally immune to any kind of fluster, it was both unique and amusing to see Janice sent into such a tizzy over this new arrival. Roach suspected that her interest was less in the possibility of career advancement and more in the new DI’s reputation as a good-looking, old-fashioned charmer. There hadn’t been a lot of luck with the men lately, Janice would concede, a point of particular concern given Jersey’s limited supply of eligible bachelors. And, with Harding rapidly approaching her ‘Big Three-Oh,’ it was high time for that to change.

  Janice brushed down her skirt, and ignoring Roach’s looming presence in her doorway, tidied her hair in the mirror.

  “Well, Roach? Is the reception area looking…”

  “Shipshape and Bristol fashion,” Constable Roach reported proudly. “And his office is just how he asked for it.”

  “And what about Constable Barnwell?” she asked. She leaned close and whispered, “He hasn’t been drinking, has he?”

  “Not that I can tell,” Jim whispered back.

  “Good. We could all do
without dealing with that nonsense, today of all days.”

  She shooed Roach out of the way and carried out her own inspection of their small police station. Roach shrugged as she found a number of things to improve – straightening the framed map of Jersey on the main wall and the two portraits of previous police chiefs – and then he went to find Barnwell in the station’s equipment room.

  “Remember what I said,” Roach called out with all seriousness. “Professionalism and respect. You hear?”

  “Loud and clear, future Chief Constable Roach,” Barnwell quipped, hanging spare uniforms up in a neat line. “I’ll make sure there’s no getting off on the wrong foot.”

  Roach eyed him uncertainly. “You really want to be in here when he arrives or behind your desk where you belong?”

  As luck would have it, Roach was answering a phone call from a member of the public when the new DI walked in, a black suitcase in each hand and dressed in a smart, grey suit. It was a relief not to have to look busy as he noted down the details of a stolen bicycle, lifted during the night from a back garden shed a few miles away. Sergeant Harding handled the introductions.

  “Detective Inspector Graham, I’m so pleased to meet you and to welcome you to Gorey,” she smiled. “I hope your flight was smooth?”

  Graham set down the suitcases with a sigh of relief and smiled back, extending his hand. “Very smooth, thank you, Sergeant.”

  “Oh, you can call me Janice,” she said, five times more flirtatiously than she had planned and ten times more than Graham would have preferred.

  “And this must be Constable Roach?” he asked, approaching the desk with his hand out, just as the tall, red-headed man was finishing the call.

  “Pleasure to meet you, sir,” Roach said, just as he’d practiced.

  “Anything interesting?” Graham said, glancing at the phone.

  “Stolen bike, out near the golf course. Not unusual for this time of year. I’ll head over there in a moment and take a statement,” Roach said.