Phantoms Can Be Murder: Charlie Parker Mystery #13

by Connie Shelton

  “Watch for the Brown Monk,” she cautioned. “He is often seen in and around the grounds of the Abbey.”

  Before anyone could spend much time in finding him, she’d headed toward the huge building of the cathedral itself. On our right appeared a row of doors set into a massively proportioned three story stone building that seemed part ancient, part relatively new—as new as anything in this town. I guessed only four or five hundred years old.

  “These are the Cathedral Cottages,” Louisa said quietly, lowering her voice. “They have been converted to modern residences, so we must be considerate of the current occupants.”

  I noticed that only a few lights shone at windows.

  “A monk—many believe him to be the Brown Monk—often pays visits to these homes. Women have reported awakening in the night to find him sitting at the end of their beds. He never makes a move, never says a word. Then he vanishes.”

  Okay, I have to admit that a little chill went through me at that point. When the German couple moved closer I didn’t object to the company.

  The group tightened a bit more when Louisa led us into the graveyard. Again, even though I’d been there in daylight, the black mounds of earth seemed larger now. And did that one beyond the big tree actually move a little?

  “Here on our left, Saint Mary’s Church is the burial place of Queen Mary Tudor, daughter of King Henry the Eighth,” she told us. She went into some of the history, and it seemed to me that she lingered a bit long over the queen’s famous nickname, Bloody Mary. As we strolled past, she went on with a tale of a clergyman in the 1930s who believed he could contact his long-lost twin through séances. The leap in time was pretty far, and I realized that my mind must have wandered. I found myself thinking of Dolly Jones and how she’d become convinced that something supernatural was happening in her shop.

  “. . . of course the entire story of the Grey Lady was later revealed to be pure fiction, a story written as an historical novella in the 1800s. Even so, there are still people who see things that cannot entirely be explained away.”

  By this time we had traversed the graveyard, on the path under the heavy overhang of trees, and emerged—thankfully—onto the street. A passing car provided a dose of modern reality and one of the women giggled in nervous reaction to it. Louisa caught my eye, behind the backs of the others and gave me a wink.

  “All right, folks. You shouldn’t need your torches anymore,” Louisa said. “We will be on lighted streets from this point onward.”

  Those who had been using them switched them off and Louisa stowed them in her tote bag.

  “We next take a look at two well-known landmarks here in Bury. The Dog & Partridge Pub, and then in a few minutes, the Theatre Royal.”

  Once more, since I’d already been to the pub and walked past the theater on a number of occasions, I found my thoughts focusing on Dolly. I ticked through the incidents in the shop—the mysterious footprints, the admittedly unexplainable fact that tea had gone hot and cold, and the ruined lit candles—which may have been the proverbial straw that sent Dolly beyond sanity.

  “Several of these shops on Whiting Street experience regular visitations from the spirit world,” Louisa was saying. “Knocking and tapping sounds . . .”

  I thought of the night we’d spent in the cellar at Dolly’s. How easy it might have been for anyone else in the building to construe our small attempt at digging up what we thought was treasure to be something caused by ghosts. I sent sidelong glances toward my fellow tour-goers, feeling a shot of disdain for their rapt attention and utter belief in things that were so easily explained away. If I could make noise in the cellar of a building, surely anyone could.

  “At this next intersection we’ll see The Nutshell Pub, Britain’s smallest pub and home to a particularly sad ghost, that of a little boy. He has been seen several times in a tiny upstairs room, sitting alone at the table as if waiting for his parents to return for him.”

  The women looked stricken, and I have to admit that the way Louisa told it, anyone with a heart would have felt sorry for the child. I looked toward the curved glass corner window. The place was quiet, with only a small nightlight illuminating the rich wooden bar and walls.

  “Whether or not you are fortunate enough to see the ghost, simply stopping in for a drink and to see the artifacts is well worth your time. Tim and Sean, your drinks will have to be sodas, I’m afraid.”

  That comment drew a titter from the crowd, but it helped to disperse the gloomy mood over the sad child-ghost.

  “Come forward for a moment,” Louisa said, leading us up to the glass-fronted building. “It’s hard to get full detail in the dim light, but do note the mummified cat hanging from the ceiling. In times past, it was considered prudent to bury a cat within the walls of a building as it was constructed. Cats kept vermin away and acted as a good-luck symbol. No one knows exactly where this particular cat was found or how long it has been hanging here.”

  I glanced in the window. The walls were papered with currency from many countries in many denominations and there were so many other oddities hanging on the walls that at first I had a hard time spotting the rigid figure or recognizing it as feline. I figured this was one tradition that I could skip if I were ever to build.

  “In the next block, the Suffolk Hotel was quite nice in its day. Its history goes back as part of the Abbey property as far as the year 1295, and it was licensed as an inn in 1539.” She gave us North Americans a moment to absorb those dates. “But the reports of haunted happenings are much more recent, clear up to the time the hotel was closed in 1996 and converted to shops.

  She stopped on the sidewalk and motioned to the large white building on the opposite side of the street, where I recognized the bookshop and clothing store where I had shopped earlier in the week.

  “Couples who met at the hotel for extra-marital trysts were often vulnerable to the pranks of the ghosts. Noises in the rooms were common as soon as the lights went out, but when the light was turned back on again, the rattling would stop. One guest complained to a porter that his lover refused to stay the night. She apparently leaped from the bed, dressed, and fled the property before he was quite . . . um, finished.”

  A picture of Archie Jones’s face came to me. Not the shell-shocked Archie of two days ago, but another version. I shook my head. It didn’t make sense. I turned my attention back to Louisa who was on the move once more. We were back on Abbeygate Street in a couple of minutes, the shopping district that I recognized from my explorations around town.

  The German couple was speaking quietly with Louisa, most likely asking her to clarify a question, and the Americans were looking ready to get out of the chilly night and find themselves either a drink or a cup of something warm. I’d noticed that the teen boys had hung toward the back of the group ever since Louisa pointed out the mummified cat—did they want a crack at getting in there to take it? But I stuck with them and they never found their opportunity to break away.

  “Our final stop on the tour puts us back here at the Angel Hotel, where I know several of you are staying. You might be interested to know a couple of legends associated with the hotel.”

  She gave them the same information she’d told me about the tunnel system under the town and the fact that one of the tunnels was known to have originated in the cellars of the Angel. She ended the tale with the story of the fiddler who went into the tunnels to determine where they went, only to disappear forever.

  “So, sleep well tonight,” she said, “but be sure to let someone know if you hear fiddle music in the quiet hours before dawn.”

  She dismissed the group, and the Americans from Indiana quickly climbed the front steps of the hotel, no doubt hoping that the hotel bar would still be open. While Louisa conversed easily with the Germans, I noticed that she kept an eye on the teens until a car arrived and a man tapped the horn.

  “Your dad, Tim!” she called out to him, giving the man a wave as the boys got into the vehicle.


  I took a spot on one of the concrete benches in front of the hotel, hands in pockets for warmth, my mind swirling as I thought about the fact that we would soon be attending Dolly’s funeral.

  Chapter 16

  Monday morning dawned—barely—a day of heavy gray clouds and mist hanging in the air. It seemed fitting for the small gathering at St. Mary’s. Although Archie said that Dolly wished to be cremated and have her ashes scattered over the Dover coastline where they had once vacationed, he thought it appropriate to have a little service at the church and for the vicar to say a few words out in the ancient graveyard. We huddled under our umbrellas and, mercifully, the man really did keep it to a very few words.

  The gathering could hardly be called a crowd—Archie, Gabrielle, Louisa and myself plus two other women that I guessed might be customers of the knit shop. Both wore handmade sweaters and scarves. As he had on Friday, Archie stared vacantly through the mist, a hollow-looking man.

  When Gabrielle extended an open invitation to come by the shop for coffee and cake everyone accepted in sympathy for the widower. Rumor was that Archie planned to close the shop as soon as possible and that he would soon be moving out of the apartment. I wondered if the two shop patrons were simply eager to see if there might be bargain prices offered on the yarns.

  For myself, I had two motives for stopping by. One was to learn the official cause of death. The coincidence between all the events that had so badly upset Dolly, and her death just hours after the last one . . . well, I couldn’t let that go without at least asking. My other motive was simply to get out of the rain.

  Gabrielle assumed the role of hostess. The table holding the partially burned candles had been cleared and converted to a spot for a variety of bakery-made cakes, plus an urn of coffee and a pot of tea. She sliced the cakes and served them up on paper plates. The other women began openly browsing the yarn bins and when Archie let them know they could have anything for half price even Louisa joined in.

  I nibbled at a slice of Battenberg cake, described on the wrapper that I spotted nearby as “a chequerboard of moist sponge wrapped in almond flavoured paste.” All I knew was that the cute little pink and yellow squares tasted delicious. I debated sneaking another one but I saw my chance to speak to Archie, who was standing alone near the sales counter at the moment. I expressed my condolences once again, then posed my real question about the cause of Dolly’s death.

  “The coroner’s inquest ruled that it was an overdose of her sleeping medication,” he said. He looked stricken. “I just can’t believe she would do it.”

  “Did she often—?”

  “Take a sleep aid?” he jumped in, knowing where I was going with this. “Often enough. My wife sometimes had trouble sleeping.” His face seemed to go slack. “If only I’d watched more carefully.”

  Dolly had once told me she was a light sleeper.

  I opened my mouth to ask whether the coroner thought it was a suicide, but Archie turned away and greeted one of the women who’d walked over with her arms full of yarn balls.

  There really wasn’t a delicate way to quiz the new widower about his wife’s drug habits so I backed away. All right, I’ll admit that I backed right over to the cake again and took another slice of that Battenberg, asking Gabrielle where she’d bought it while I watched Louisa and her cronies plundering the yarns.

  By the time my aunt had paid for a rather large bag of new needlework projects I’d exhausted any possible conversation with Gabrielle and I’d found the spot where they’d stacked the damaged candles and marked them at eighty-percent off. I mentally ran through the list of things that had happened to upset Dolly—the hot and cold tea, the mysterious muddy footprints in the shop, the mixed up coins in her register and scrambled yarns on display. Those things seemed real and tangible and yet we’d found no cause. And then there were the ethereal things—the unexplained noises, shadows and ghostly images, the cold drafts through the store. Although Dolly seemed like a pretty indomitable force, maybe she’d simply reached her limit.

  Out on the street, the rain had stopped and the clouds seemed to be thinning. We walked toward Louisa’s home, avoiding the larger puddles, and I told her what I’d learned from Archie—that Dolly had died from her own sleeping medication.

  “I couldn’t bring myself to ask Archie any more detailed questions. Such as, I wonder if the police would investigate this as a suicide.”

  “An inquest would be a matter of public record,” Louisa said.

  “Mind if we duck in and ask?”

  She helped talk our way into the coroner’s office where I asked to see a copy of the record on Dolly’s death. A straight-spined doctor in a stiff white lab coat handed me the death certificate. It pretty much said just what Archie had told me.

  “Is there any way to tell if she accidentally took this much or if it might have been a suicide?” I asked the doctor who’d handed me the report.

  “No way to know ma’am. There was no note, no other obvious signs of suicidal thoughts. Her husband said she’d suffered several upsets in recent weeks but everything was just fine that night when they went to bed.”

  Fine, as in throwing a fit because her entire stock of candles was ruined.

  But I didn’t say it.

  “So, the police aren’t looking at this as a crime?” I wasn’t really sure how else to phrase the question. She wasn’t attacked by a ghost? She wasn’t snuffed out by a phantom presence in the room?

  “No, ma’am. You’ll notice that it’s been called an accidental death.”

  And that was that.

  We left the office, and started toward Louisa’s house.

  “That’s complete poppycock,” she said.

  “What? Why do you think so?”

  “I might not have known her a long time but I knew Dolly well enough to know that she didn’t kill herself. And she certainly didn’t take that many pills accidentally. One time we were the only two who showed up for knitting group, so we talked about things a little more personal. She had a sister who died of an accidental overdose when she was just in her twenties. Dolly never got over it. Said she was very careful about every medication she ever took.”

  “Archie indicated that she took them pretty regularly. Maybe she’d taken a dose while they were watching TV, then there was the incident with the candles and she was so upset that she either forgot she’d already taken them or she figured she’d never get to sleep unless she took more.”

  Her eyes flashed. “This is one thing I know. Charlie, I’m sure of it.”

  “But the inquest—”

  “I’m just saying. Something got those pills into Dolly, but she didn’t do it herself.”

  “I don’t know . . . She was pretty rattled over the things that happened to her in the store . . .”

  “Can you look into it, Charlie? Please? Just ask around and see if anyone knows anything? She didn’t have many friends. I just feel—” Her voice cracked.

  That much was true. The pitiful turnout at the service, the number of complaints on record at the police department. Was this a case of a disagreeable person’s karma catching up with her, or was there truly a more sinister set of events that had turned against Dolly Jones?

  Chapter 17

  We grabbed a quick bite for dinner, then snuggled in for the night with the gas fire lit against the bone-chilling damp. Louisa found a comedy on the television but I couldn’t concentrate, even with the canned laughter interrupting every few seconds. I spent a restless night, still torn by the pull of going home.

  The next morning at breakfast I brought up the subject with Louisa.

  “Don’t go, Charlie. You’re the only one who can possibly find out what really happened to Dolly. The authorities have closed the file. Archie is a mess—poor man can’t even think straight.”

  “You don’t actually believe that some supernatural presence killed her, do you?”

  She rearranged the toast on her plate. “Well, of course, not in so many words. B
ut Dolly was a strong woman. I can’t see that she would kill herself because she became frightened.”

  I had to agree with that. Although I’d seen Dolly pretty shaken up, she always came back by either brushing off the scare or charging through in spite of it.

  “She would have simply moved her shop when the disturbances became too much bother,” Louisa said, “or she’d have seen her doctor if she didn’t feel well.”

  Probably true on both counts. Either the coroner was correct or there was only one other possibility. Someone had killed her.

  The police would normally look at the family members. I’d watched enough investigations up close to know that. So if there were any reason to suspect Archie, they would surely be questioning the heck out of him. Plus, just looking at the man yesterday—he was genuinely in shock.

  So, who else might have it in for Dolly?

  Well, let’s see . . . At least a dozen complaints had been lodged against her. Among that group, someone must have taken his or her problem much more seriously than the police did. I supposed I could ask a few more questions, just see where it might lead.

  Louisa sat across the table from me, sending a hopeful gaze my direction.

  “Okay, I’ll stay. I can ask some questions.”

  “Bethany is back at work and I’ve taken the rest of the week off. I’ll help you,” she said with a delighted smile.

  There wasn’t much way of dissuading her as she bustled around the house, gathering some notebooks and pens, a flashlight, a magnifying glass and an antique walking stick with a dagger-like concealed tip.

  “No idea what we need,” she said, “so I’m bringing it all.”

  “I think just the paper and pens will handle it,” I told her. I really didn’t want to mention that I carry a pistol at home, or that more than a few of my investigations have put me face to face with killers. I had no intention of letting this case go that far. We would ask a few questions. If we found any real evidence at all . . . I would immediately bring the authorities into it.