Six Pack of Sleuths: Comedy Mysteries

by Barbara Silkstone

  ‘This?’ asks Phoebe, pointing to the dog.

  ‘There’s enough here to weave you a jacket,’ Alison tells Phoebe as she collects the fur from the carpet. ‘They should have called him Rumpelstiltskin.’

  ‘Alison,’ Mrs Fitzgerald is on the phone. ‘How are you doing for money, my dear?’

  ‘Not very well.’

  ‘I thought you might be struggling with that wee baby to support. You haven’t been working much, lately. I’ve got a nice easy job for you with a big bonus at the end of it. You have to find a missing person but it should be easy enough. I’ve got some ideas about how you can find her. In fact I’ve already started making some enquiries. All you have to do is have sight of her, make sure she’s the right person, bash out a quick 500 word ‘health, wealth and happiness’ report and the fee and the bonus are yours. I should warn you that I have accepted the assignment on your behalf with some misgivings.’

  ‘What misgivings?’

  ‘There are some elements of Mrs Latimer’s operation that I must turn over to be investigated by the police. Do you have a moment to talk about it? She says she wants to breed men as pets.’

  ‘That’s insane.’

  ‘Yes. I have an old friend from the Met. Let me talk to him and find out how to handle this. In the mean time, I suggest you find this missing person quickly and earn yourself some money, before Mrs Latimer gets herself arrested.’

  Alison thinks as she puts down the phone, as she always does when she talks to Mrs Fitzgerald, that her boss is wise and kind. There is something else that Alison picked up in the tone of her voice today, some lightness in her mood that hasn’t been there before.

  ‘I am not mad,’ Mrs Fitzgerald is thinking, the phone still in her hand. ‘I have stared into the face of publicity-seeking Venetia Latimer and I have seen madness. I am not mad. If I continue to avoid any kind of publicity I will be safe.’

  Jeremy’s hands are very tanned. Deep in thought, he traces his forefinger over the architectural drawings. The fine hairs on his arm catch sunlight with the movement. He looks up at his friends, watching him silently.

  ‘This will be the performance of a lifetime. We’ll be creating art, we’ll be making a political protest, we’ll be investing in the future of the planet.’

  ‘Couldn’t we do something at the Millennium Dome? We could paint a message there so it could be seen from space.’

  ‘Why? No-one will see it except a handful of astronauts. Everyone is trying to stage a protest at the Dome. Besides there are circus performers there as part of the exhibition. It wouldn’t be much of a protest if we got mixed up with them. My plan is much better. We’re going to hold to ransom one of the most easily recognisable images in the world.’

  ‘Will we wear black? Black clothes and balaclavas?’

  ‘No. Let’s dress up in our brightest costumes. It’s gonna be the biggest circus in town.’

  ‘Yeah, we’re celebrating.’

  ‘Yeah, we’re gonna stop the traffic. Listen, I’m serious now, the only thing that matters more than looking good for the performance is our personal safety. I’ll climb to the top first, then I’ll run lines down for the rest of you. Not one of you climbs until your line is secure, understood?

  ‘When are we going to do it?’

  ‘Soon. Before the end of July. The light at the top of the tower only shines at night when the Commons is sitting so we have to strike before their summer recess, to ensure we can see what we’re doing. I think we also need to choose a night when the moon is full so we’ll improve visibility even more.’

  The meeting disbands and Jeremy is left alone with Jane. Jane sometimes finds Jeremy’s naivety irritating. He is always protesting about something, either standing in the road in everyone’s way or making nuisance phone calls. His head is so filled with principles that he doesn’t even seem interested in her. No wonder he drips with pheromones, his sexuality leaking out through his pores as it has no other outlet.

  Jeremy is pulling at a locket on a chain around his neck, sawing it left and right, left and right. It looks like the kind of medallion with a picture of a saint on it that a religious or southern European person would wear. Jane is very tall. She stands face to face with Jeremy, very close, as she prizes open the locket and inspects the faded photo of Sylvia glued inside it.

  ‘My sister. She’s the one who made me leave the circus. She’s spent her life savings on a run down farm. She said it will come to me when she dies but it doesn’t really compensate for the loss of a life that I loved. Sometimes I wish I hadn’t left the circus.’

  ‘What if you die first?’

  ‘Why should I die?’

  ‘Because you take risks. You lost your security when you were young. No wonder you’re trying to control something as impossible as the traffic. You may as well try and command the waves.’ When Jane gains some kind of insight into other people’s psychological motivations, it always puts her in a better mood.

  ‘Alison? It’s Sheila. I’ve had another message. It came to me while I was reading this report in the paper that Rosy gave to me. Listen to this: “Dolphins have been sighted up and down one of the most unspoiled stretches of the south coast of England for the first time in fifty years, taking advantage of the unseasonal warmth of the seas caused by the recent hot weather.” The dolphins have been coming right up to the shore and playing. I’d like to make my picture of Roy somewhere on that coastline. Rosy says that it will be the perfect location to try and get in touch with extra terrestrials, with the dolphins nearby to help us.’

  ‘Well, I’ve got to head off in that direction some time soon anyway, on a missing elephant enquiry. I can take you with me, if you like. I’ll bring my daughter if I can’t get a babysitter, if you don’t mind. When were you thinking of going?’

  ‘When there’s a full moon because the tides are high and also there will be plenty of light on the picture at night so it can be seen from the sky.’

  ‘Don’t they have those very powerful beams of light from space ships? I wouldn’t think it would make much difference whether there was a full moon or not for people in, um, inter-planetary craft. I take your point about the high tides, though, I suppose it will enable the dolphins to float closer in to the shore.’

  Chapter Thirty-Four ~ The Bridges

  Jane Memory is on the phone to a features editor. Whenever Jane telephone this editor from her house, he always has the impression that she’s doing something else while she’s talking to him. He pulls at the hairs on his leg just above the line of his sock and visualizes her depilating her legs in the bathroom, ladling on hot wax with a spatula.

  ‘I want to write about people who are yummy and attractive on the outside but who are empty inside.’ Jane is lying on her bedroom floor, a blue and green checked pillow under her head. The Editor imagines her leaning forward at her bathroom mirror, tweezering away stray eyebrow hairs. ‘What do you think? The research would be easy. I’ve got a friend chasing all over town looking for something to give his life meaning so I could write that up, thinly disguised. It would be quite amusing.’

  ‘I was hoping to get you to do us an evaluation of the first salon in London to offer a Brazilian bikini wax.’

  ‘Is that where they pull all the hairs out of your bum?’

  ‘Every last one, apparently.’

  ‘Let me write my piece about empty people and I’ll do it.’

  ‘We’re on a suicide watch,’ announces Taron.

  ‘Are we?’ Joey and Hugo are dressed for the pub.

  ‘I’m worried about this man who’s going to jump off a bridge into the Thames. We have to go and stop him.’

  ‘OK. Which bridge is he on?’ Hugo jingles his car keys in his trouser pocket, ready for action. He was in the rugby team at school and has lost none of his strength or speed.

  ‘That’s just it. I don’t know. It’s a vision my mother keeps having. If we patrol the bridges we’re bound to find him.’

  In practic
e, the three don’t patrol all the bridges, just the more scenic and convenient ones. They like Waterloo bridge because it leads directly to the South Bank with its choice of coffee shops and clean toilets among the complex of theatres and recital halls. They become a familiar sight to the beggars lining the footbridge, who say nothing and look preoccupied when they pass, having learnt that Taron prefers to dispense advice rather than cash.

  ‘We three work,’ says Taron, plucking a pound coin from Hugo’s fingers as he crosses to a youth in a sleeping bag and thrusting it deeply and intimately back into Hugo's pocket. ‘There is no point sharing the profits from it. We should share the insights. If you belonged to a really cool drinking club, would your friends thank you for smuggling out some of the Japanese rice crackers that had been put out on the bar, or would they prefer you to tell them how to get in and snack for free for themselves?’

  ‘But the money markets?’

  ‘It’s about empowerment. I’m not saying they should sit at a desk across from you at the bank. They need to know how to tap into their talents and get some money and some self respect.’

  ‘A spell in the army might sort them out,’ says Joey, laughing nervously and winking at Hugo, who is trying to mouth ‘fascist’ without Taron seeing.

  There is no sign of anyone trying to jump. When the drizzle of passers-by stops altogether in the evenings, they catch a cab to Chelsea Bridge. Taron looks west along the Thames while Joey and Hugo look east. While Taron is turned away, Joey and Hugo like to play ‘Titanic’, climbing on to a parapet along the structure of the bridge and taking it in turns to be Kate Winslett.

  ‘I’ve got a bit of a strange request, Taron,’ Joey says one night. ‘My mother needs to get hold of twenty grammes of speed. Do you know where she could get it?’

  ‘I’m sorry Joey, I’ve given up doing drugs. I’m just living on my memories.’

  ‘Yes, but do you know where I could get hold of it? If she can’t have speed, she said she’ll take thirty or forty tabs of LSD. She just wants something cheap, she’s not bothered about the effects.’

  ‘Joey, have you thought this through? Why are you doing this?’

  ‘Because she asked me to.’

  ‘Wouldn’t it be simpler just to tell her about Hugo, rather than trying to do everything she asks as a way of storing up her approval?’

  ‘It isn’t like that.’

  ‘When there’s something that’s worrying you, you should write it on a small piece of paper, fold the paper and put it in a matchbox on a piece of cotton wool, as if you were making a bed for a doll. Then throw it into the Thames and watch it float away.’

  ‘Do you think your mother is wrong?’ Joey asks Taron after a week. He knows there is something troubling her because when he was supposed to be watching the river he saw her casting a matchbox into the river from Westminster bridge. ‘We’ve spent every night looking and we haven’t seen one person who has given any indication that they are going to jump.’

  ‘No. Maybe. But maybe we’ve been sending out such good energy that we’ve diverted someone from feeling like jumping. At any rate I think we’ve earned ourselves a holiday, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes,’ says Hugo. He jumps up and swings on every lamp post on the short walk to the nearest late night bar.

  Chapter Thirty-Five ~ The Circus

  ‘Why are you here?’ the clairvoyant asks.

  ‘I was hoping you could tell me that,’ Harvey replies, casting an eye around the flat in Josephine Avenue. The decoration is a little tired. ‘I’m constantly afraid. I feel that I’m missing out on something but I don’t know what. I don’t know how to tackle it.’

  ‘There is a cause that you should champion.’ The clairvoyant holds her hand up, palm forward, as if to signify a Native American peace greeting. Harvey takes it as an instruction not to speak. ‘I can’t tell you what it is. Once you identify it, you will find fulfilment.’

  Her advice is of very little use, so far as Harvey can see. And the woman has a cat. Luckily he took the precaution of swallowing an anti-histamine tablet before he came out. Why is it that mystic types always keep animals? The fabric of her blouse pulls slightly at the buttons. Harvey can see Dorothy’s freckled flesh in the gaps she makes in her clothing when she moves. He fixes his eye on the Lladro duck on her mantelpiece until it is time to leave.

  ‘One more thing. I can see a man falling from somewhere very high up. I’m not sure when it will happen but it is an event that is going to change your life.

  A little top has appeared on Clapham Common. A little top is like a big top in every respect except its size. A line-drawing of an acrobat advertises a one-man show on red and white posters pasted on local telegraph poles. A poorly drawn moustache garnishes many of the posters, courtesy of an anonymous local graffiti artist.

  Venetia Latimer sits on the hard bench in the little top in her finery and thinks about Sylvia. She thinks about the way Sylvia looks when she washes her hair in the bath. Her face, naked without makeup, tilted upwards against the spray of the showerhead, her eyes closed to keep the water out. The freckles visible on Sylvia’s nose and across her cheeks under long brown eyelashes pressed together in a semi-circle, catching drops of water on their ends. Pale eyebrows, pink lips, white teeth, unlined skin. Sylvia looks younger than her thirty-nine years. Mrs Latimer is remembering her the way she was at thirty-one when she first came to live in her house.

  The water swells and dulls Sylvia’s bright yellow hair and makes it look soft and grayish, like wet feathers. Venetia removes the shower attachment from its hook on the wall above the bath and takes it in her right hand. The nubs of the individual vertebrae are visible through Sylvia’s skin as she leans forward, her knees drawn up, her spine curving slightly, while Venetia directs the shower away from her towards the back of the bath, adjusting the temperature, darting her left hand back and forth into the water to test it.

  Venetia takes her left hand and puts it flat against Sylvia’s forehead where her hairline begins, then makes a curve with her hand and presses it hard to fit against the curve of Sylvia’s head, following her hand with the spray of water. When she reaches the ends of Sylvia’s hair she squeezes it gently. She repeats this process several times until the shampoo is rinsed away completely and the water coming from Sylvia’s hair runs clear. Then Venetia brings her hand to the top of Sylvia’s head once more and digs her fingers in through her hair, massaging her scalp.

  At first when she used to help Sylvia wash her hair, Venetia used to kneel at the side of the bath but the effort made her breathe heavily and her weight on her knees made them uncomfortable. One day she found a three-legged milking stool in a bric-a-brac store in the village and that made the task much easier.

  When she looked at Sylvia in the bath, pink nipples resting on the shelf of white skin where her stomach jutted outwards from her belly button, Venetia used to think that Sylvia looked as if she had been packed for a long journey by a thoughtful god or other supreme being. She had spares of everything. As she sat sideways on, facing the taps, the roll of fat under her bosoms looked like a shadow set, in case the first should go missing. When Sylvia stood in the bath, before she bent to pull the plug, Venetia could see scoops of fat at the tops of Sylvia’s thighs which, with her buttocks, make a shape like butterfly wings.

  Finally Sylvia would turn and shake the water from her body before stepping into the embrace of the extra large white bath towel that Venetia held up for her, clean and warm from the airing cupboard.

  Venetia Latimer opens her eyes and stops remembering just as the audience breaks into applause for the circus performer in the little top in front of her.

  Venetia wanted to feel closer to the circus, by being close to Sylvia. Sylvia was easy to confide in because she absorbed everything, apparently without judgement, and told nothing in return. Venetia gave away so much of herself to Sylvia, hoping to plant some part of herself in Sylvia and make it grow, as if they were living in a less educated era
when women, even married women like Venetia, were rather vague about where babies come from. She used to watch Sylvia with pride, fat and getting fatter, walking around her house apparently swollen from all the love and attention she received from her mentor, as if she really might give birth at any minute to a miraculous circus child engendered by love alone.

  The next day is the anniversary of the first visit to London of animal trainer Rudolph Knie. An advertisement appears in the personal column of The Times newspaper.

  “It doesn’t matter about the elephant. Please come back. V.”

  Chapter Thirty-Six ~ Prince Albert

  Sheila meets up with other members of the alien encounter group at the Albert Memorial in Kensington Gardens. She sets off at dusk in the pouring rain. It is an easy journey to Kensington Gardens from Brixton. Sheila could have taken the Victoria Line, which is modern, clean, quick and efficient, changed on to the District Line (which is not) and stepped off the Tube at South Kensington. She has chosen to drive. There are plenty of parking spaces on Exhibition Road next to Imperial College, its windows giving a view to basements filled with heavy machinery, work benches, pulleys, metal tubing the diameter of a man’s height, all assembled to study and measure invisible things, like pressure and temperature and sound waves.

  Sheila walks up the steps to Kensington Gardens from the pedestrian crossing in Kensington Gore and meets the other members of the Encounter Group on the chequered stones, black, brown and white, in front of the Albert Memorial. The ground is freshly wet but it has stopped raining and the sky is clear.

  In 1868 the architect Sir George Gilbert Scott, inspired by the shrines of medieval times, designed an ornate memorial to Queen Victoria’s husband Albert, prematurely dead at forty-two in 1861 and sadly mourned by the Queen until her own death in 1901.