Six Pack of Sleuths: Comedy Mysteries

by Barbara Silkstone

  Mrs Latimer swirls her teaspoon in her tea and looks at Mrs Fitzgerald for a moment.

  ‘I have a proposal for you. The animals in my care are well loved and well looked after. That is your main concern and you agree that I have met all your standards?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘While you’ve been investigating me, I’ve been investigating you. I like you, Mrs Fitzgerald, and I have nothing to fear from you.’

  ‘Very well.’

  ‘One of your investigators has been working for the wife of one of my employees, trying to trace him since his disappearance. I’ve been paying the bills so you’ve been working for me indirectly. You may know that already.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I would like to hire you to trace another missing person, which is linked to the disappearance of the elephant, Sorrel. If you accept, I will tell you about Serum 10, on the understanding that any information I give you must be protected by client privilege, as rigorously as if information were passing between a solicitor and a client.’

  ‘Very well. In that case let me set out my position clearly. Any information you may give me that falls within the remit of my original investigation into the welfare of your animals, I will act upon. I will respect the confidentiality of any other information, unless it is illegal or unethical, in which case I will use my judgement and act accordingly.’

  ‘I respect your judgement. Here’s my story: My business relationship with Emphglott is very rewarding. They supply me with dog food in return for publicity. They sponsor the dog shows I enter and win. I win on merit, every time, but they are my sponsors nevertheless. The relationship is close, I accept that, but I’m doing nothing wrong by exploiting it.

  ‘Emphglott developed Serum 10 and had to abandon trials when they proved inconclusive. I agreed to continue to trial it, unofficially, together with its upgraded version, Serum 11. Serum 11 hasn’t been trialled anywhere so its presence won’t have been picked up by any lab you’ve asked to investigate it. Neither substance is banned in Britain. OK so far?’

  ‘Yes.’ Mrs Fitzgerald nibbles at her Danish pastry and signals the boy for another cappuccino.

  ‘I think it’s increasingly hard for men to find a role in society, don’t you agree?’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘You and I, Mrs Fitzgerald, we’re successful business women. Everywhere you look, there are successful women.’ Mrs Latimer’s gestures, their theatricality restricted by the environment, take in a greasy youth reading the Sun and an elderly man eating scrambled egg from a yellow plate with cracked enamelling. ‘Men have nothing more relevant to offer society than inane commentaries on soccer, or a fight after a skilful of lager on a Saturday night.’

  Mrs Fitzgerald, still nibbling, thinks of Paul McCartney, Tony Blair, Bill Gates, Damien Hirst and the Archbishop of Canterbury. She thinks of Gary Barlow, Ted Hughes, Stephen King and Quentin Tarantino.

  ‘Single parent families are the norm, these days. Women are perfectly capable of bringing up children alone. We need men to provide us with sperm, that’s all.’ Mrs Fitzgerald colors slightly at ‘us’. ‘Soon, in twenty years or so, we won’t even need them to breed. Scientists will be able to manufacture sperm. We need to find a role for men in the future. All this has a bearing on what I’m about to tell you, Mrs Fitzgerald.’

  ‘Why have you allowed your employees access to Serum 10 and 11?’

  ‘At first it was a mistake, of course. Some of the kennel lads have been experimenting with the animals’ drugs. It’s one of the hazards of modern working life. People who work in offices pilfer stationery and pens. People who work with animals steal their food and medication. It has some kind of psychotropic effect, heightening their awareness of color. It stimulates the release of serotonin so they are very cheerful all the time. I noticed that it modified their behaviour. They are more pleasant, more docile and well-behaved. I’d like to find a way to manufacture it in large quantities and trial it only on men. I need to work with a woman I can trust, someone with business experience who also understands the way things work on, um, on the street. We could sell it at soccer matches and check its effect on crowd aggression. With findings as valuable as this, we could be famous.’

  We? Is Mrs Latimer inviting Mrs Fitzgerald to join with her in dealing drugs at soccer matches as some kind of social science experiment? Mrs Fitzgerald, whose lifelong struggle has been to seek justice for people and liberty for animals, is being invited to participate in this …. madness.

  ‘You knowingly allowed your employees to experiment with these substances?’

  ‘It was amazing, given a period of time for the effects to develop. The men became more docile and obedient. Like pets. That’s my breakthrough. That’s the role for men for the future. We can keep them as pets.’

  ‘The differences between the species were blurred, so that the dogs became more like men and the men became more like dogs?’

  ‘Men need to become smaller, softer, cleaner, more docile. If they were to be kept as pets their world would shrink, possibly to the four walls of a single girl’s flat in town, with a walk in a park or an outing to a pub once a day, so they would need to be unquestioning of their surroundings.’

  ‘Men as pets?’

  ‘Remember, Mrs Fitzgerald, this is an extraordinary breakthrough. You must respect my need for discretion.’

  ‘Have you had any of your findings verified?’

  ‘It’s almost impossible. I haven’t measured the doses taken by the men. I haven’t documented what they were like before the changes – how do you measure changes like that? – I haven’t got a control. I know I’m doing it all wrong. All I have is the idea, a vision for the future. I do like men, don’t you? I’d hate to see a world without them. This is a way to help them survive the future.’

  ‘What was the original use for the drug?’

  ‘It was supposed to make the dogs more docile and more adaptable to their confined conditions and therefore easier to handle.’

  ‘Is any of this connected to your missing person enquiry?’

  ‘No. A woman who used to work for me stole £15,000 and the elephant from me. I want you to help me find her and recover the money. There’s a large bonus in it if you do so.’

  ‘I’ll take the missing person enquiry. Have you tried to find this woman before?’

  ‘Yes. When Sylvia first disappeared I hired a private detective but he couldn’t find her. That’s what happens when you ask a man to do something important, they’re useless. I’d do it myself but I don’t know where to start.’

  ‘I think, if I may say so, that the other detective merely approached this the wrong way. It can be very difficult to find one person among nearly sixty million people, especially if they don’t wish to be found. However, if we treat this as a missing elephant enquiry, everything becomes much simpler. Sylvia must be obtaining specialist supplies and medical care for the elephant and we can find her through that.’

  ‘That’s very astute. And you’re right about Sorrel. She will be eating up to forty pounds of hay and forty-five pounds of fruit and vegetables a day by now and unless Sylvia is growing these herself, she’ll be buying them somewhere.’

  ‘I have an operative who can get to work on it straight away. As for your other proposition, I’ll get back to you.’

  Chapter Twenty-Three ~ Bandits

  Taron and her friend Joey Latimer are crouching by the side of the road, surrounded by colored plastic pails of water, handkerchiefs tied over mouth and nose, like bandits. Joey has pushed a hollow tube between the roots of a roadside tree and Taron is filling it with water to the top, watching the level slowly sink, then filling it again. They are absorbed in their task, like children making mud pies, their fingers grimy from the dust thrown up by the passing traffic. Hugo Fragrance, in his city suit in his lunch hour, stands awkwardly to one side, holding a bucket and a sponge as if between bouts at a boxing match.

  ‘One thousand cars pass along the Li
mehouse Link every quarter of an hour when the traffic is at its busiest,’ Taron tells Hugo.

  ‘Have you heard about carbon neutrality?’ he asks Taron. ‘You can get someone to calculate how much damage you’re doing to the ozone layer and then you can buy trees to compensate. The theory is that the trees repair the damage, eventually.’

  ‘It’s like a penance,’ says Joey. ‘Like rich people buying prayers for their immortal souls.’

  ‘Really?’ says Taron. She removes the handkerchief so they can see she is saying it scornfully.

  As Taron waits for the bus back home, her mother calls her on her mobile phone. ‘Are you feeling OK?’

  ‘Yes’

  ‘I feel terrible. I wonder if it’s the left-over chicken satay you brought round from that party the other night. It’s playing havoc with my psychic abilities. Whose party was it?’

  ‘My friend Joey’s mother’s.’

  ‘Is he your boyfriend?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I keep seeing a man standing on a platform, high above the ground. I feel that he’s facing some sort of danger.’

  ‘Is it a diving platform?’

  ‘Let me think. No, I don’t think so. He’s got his clothes on.’

  ‘Who is he?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Well, it must mean something to someone, I’ll ask around. Thanks for the warning.’

  In her flat in Brixton, Sheila is waiting in vain for another message about Roy. The Sky satellite dish installed outside the house, the forest of television aerials inside, the cutlery wind chimes above the phone, the sheets of tinfoil at the windows, all have had no noticeable effect for several days. Wearily, Sheila removes a tinfoil cap from one ear and reaches for the phone to call Alison. She tells her about the advertisement she has seen in the window of the newsagent’s shop on Brixton Hill:

  Close Encounters Group

  Share information about extra terrestrials

  Meeting every Thursday 6.30 PM

  When Thursday comes, Alison and Sheila are there. The meeting is held in a private room on the third floor in St Matthews Church in Brixton.

  Alison and Sheila do not remove their coats, they sit on plastic chairs at the back of the room and try to follow the proceedings.

  ‘Dolphins are much cleverer than humans,’ asserts a woman wearing a maroon cardigan. She emphasizes all the nouns in her sentences as if worried that her listeners will be unable to follow the key points she is trying to make. The effort makes her drawl. ‘Dolphin speech patterns have been developed to communicate with aliens. They keep talking to humans because they’re waiting for us to catch up with them and understand what they’re telling us.’

  ‘Sounds like typical English tourists,’ whispers Alison, cheerfully.

  ‘Wherever there are dolphins, there is alien activity. That’s why there are so many of them in the oceans near California and Mexico. It’s also where the majority of space ships have been spotted, and where most abductions are reported.’

  A man in a Nike sweatshirt and Reebok trainers gets to his feet. ‘We need to follow the example of our ancestors and attract the attention of extra terrestrials with diagrams and patterns large enough to be seen from their space ships. Did you realize that there are prehistoric stone formations in the desert that can still be seen from the air? If we want aliens to make contact, we have to be just as persistent as our ancestors. We have to let them know we’re here and we want to talk to them.’

  ‘The Millennium Dome would be a good place to hang out, if you wanted them to see you,’ offers a thin man in his twenties with a cowlick in his dark hair. He is also wearing sports clothing, although he favours Adidas. Everyone looks at him as if he’s an idiot, so he sits down again.

  ‘Does anyone have any questions?’ asks the woman in the maroon cardigan. Alison leans across Sheila’s lap and then leans back again without the need to speak, having satisfied herself that the woman is wearing jogging pants and trainers.

  Sheila stands up, bends to place her handbag at her feet, then straightens and addresses the room. ‘If we were going to build a diagram to attract a space ship, where would we build it?’

  ‘In a field.’

  ‘On a ley line.’

  ‘On a beach,’ says the woman in the maroon cardigan, with authority. ‘Is anyone interested in doing it? What picture shall we make?’

  ‘A crocodile.’

  ‘A hunter.’

  ‘A circle.’

  ‘A face,’ says Sheila, bending again and taking a photocopied poster from her handbag. ‘My husband, Roy. I think they’ve taken him.’

  ‘You want to construct a missing persons advertisement, featuring your husband’s face?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Sheila’s proposal seems to go down very well with the assembled company, generating an excitement that breaks down the awkwardness and inhibitions between the group members, whose defence of entrenched positions (dolphins, prehistoric man, Millennium Dome) is apparently part of an ongoing weekly battle.

  ‘We could plot the face on a graph and use light and dark stones to build up the likeness and shade in the features,’ suggests the lad with the cowlick.

  ‘It would be like using pixels on a computer image,’ enthuses the man wearing Reeboks.

  ‘Or a knitting pattern.’

  ‘Like Myra Hindley’s face made from children’s handprints.’ Alison has not yet entered into the spirit of the meeting.

  ‘I’m Rosy,’ says the woman in the cardigan.

  ‘Sheila.’

  ‘Come to our meeting, same time next week, and we’ll plan the picture.’

  ‘I’ll collect the car and bring it round to the front,’ Alison tells Sheila, ‘and then I’ll drop you home. I’ll give you a shout when I’m ready, yeah?’

  ‘There’s no need to shout, I can hear you perfectly well.’

  ‘Alison?’

  ‘Taron? Whenever I think about you, you ring me.’

  ‘Beware of a man on a high platform.’

  ‘Are you still off the drugs?’

  ‘Yes. Although it turns out that I ingested some animal tranquilizers at that party the other week. I think I may have hallucinated the Doberman reading the newspaper. Sorry about that, I hope it didn’t affect your report on Joey’s mother.’

  ‘Never mind, I didn’t really believe you anyway. What’s this about a platform?’

  ‘My mother’s been having visions. Look out for a man on a platform. I suppose it could be someone about to jump. Check out the bridges whenever you cross the river to go into town. That’s what I’m doing. I’ll let you know if I see anything.’

  Chapter Twenty-Four ~ Dry White Wine

  Mrs Fitzgerald is reading Monica’s Story on the 137 bus. Reading while sitting in a moving vehicle always makes her feel queasy. Today is no exception. Mrs Fitzgerald fears for Monica Lewinsky’s mental health. She pities even those who court fame, especially the young. How can they understand the irreversible impact it will have on their lives? ‘Never, never, never, never’ says Mrs Fitzgerald aloud, her hanky at her lips. She feels as if the tentacles of the world’s press extend so widely that any innocent woman, even she, might be in danger of brushing against them and getting spun into some whirlpool of notoriety. Her head is full of sea monster and whirlpool, Scylla and Charybdis. She seems unaware that she is making a groaning sound as she shows her Travelcard to the conductor.

  Miss Lester and Jane Memory are a bit tipsy. They are drinking dry white wine in a wine bar at Miss Lester’s expense.

  Jane is looking round for a waiter and holding a conversation with Miss Lester at the same time. ‘I think, don’t you, that we’re all quite empty inside. This dating agency of yours is a sign of the times. We’re part of a generation - well, I call it the Donut Generation – we’re part of a generation that’s disappointed with life.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So you have prostitutes mingling with your clients at the dating age
ncy?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Are any of them transsexuals?’

  ‘No’

  ‘Are you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I really don’t think this story is going anywhere. I’m looking for something I can pitch for network TV.’

  ‘Oh yes, Jane, you’d be able to spend a bit on your hair.’

  ‘Yes, madam?’ The waiter is here at last.

  Jane Memory earns £45,000 per year plus expenses. She does her hair at home because she doesn’t want to pay the money to a hairdresser, not because she can’t pay. ‘Another bottle of wine, please.’

  ‘I thought you might be able to expand on your donut theory and interview some of my clients, with their permission of course.’

  ‘Thank you. I’m afraid there are so many empty people in London that I have no shortage of subjects.’

  ‘Oh well, it doesn’t matter. I really don’t like the genuine customers very much. The women are so desperate and the men are so crass. There is no tenderness or humanity in them. I much prefer the prostitutes. There is someone I’d like you to meet – Ella Fitzgerald, she runs a detective agency. She’s not empty at all; quite the opposite. She’s a very inspirational force - grand, capable and reassuring.’

  ‘Is she middle-aged? Maybe I could do something as part of my empire builder series. They do some lovely photos. I see her alone on stage, blinking in a spotlight, sequinned dress, noticeably past her prime. We could play with the idea that she follows and exposes people and we could expose her vulnerability.’

  ‘Sequins?’

  ‘It would be better than photographing her in a Dick Tracey outfit, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘Well, if that’s the choice. Maybe I should speak to her first.’

  Chapter Twenty-Five ~ Anthropologists

  Roy has placed a garden hose in a straight line on the ground. One end stretches out towards the sea. The other end leads back towards the tap on the stand pipe in the elephant’s quarters, where it is usually attached.