A Medal For Murder: A Kate Shackleton Mystery

by Frances Brody

  ‘It’s lovely here, Meriel.’ I felt relaxed and glad to be alive.

  ‘They have excellent musicians. Harrogate city fathers believe music banishes anxious cares and encourages a cheerful outlook. And I do feel cheerful. Look at this.’ She thrust a newspaper under my nose. Just like home then, with Mrs Sugden devouring tales of folly and crime. But this was Harrogate after all. The item in Wednesday’s Herald comprised a list of names – this week’s visitors to the Spa, set out according to which hotel they stayed in. She pointed to a name. ‘See! There he is.’

  ‘Burrington Wheatley?’

  ‘The very one.’ She glanced around the tables, as if to make sure the man himself was not within hearing distance. ‘A funny butterball of a man with a face the colour of a blazing cinder, pure white hair, snowy moustache and flyaway black eyebrows. You can’t mistake him.’ As she spoke, she drew moustache and eyebrows on her face with her fingertips, to drive home her description.

  A suspicion sprouted. ‘Why would I not want to mistake him?’

  The waiter set down our salads. Meriel waited. ‘Because, dear Kate, I want you to praise me to the sky when you sit next to him this evening. He is the well-known Manchester theatre impresario.’

  ‘What does an impresario do?’

  She looked at me as though I were the worst kind of innocent. ‘He produces plays of course, tours productions across the country, into the best venues. If he likes my work . . . Well, let us say this could be the making of me. Clap till your hands hurt. An hurrah or two would not go amiss.’

  I said doubtfully, ‘I didn’t know I was to be your standard bearer.’

  She closed her eyes, stretched her neck and pulled back her shoulders. ‘My life is going to change. I can feel it in my toes.’

  As we ate, we caught up with news of a mutual friend at whose fancy dress party we had met last New Year’s Eve.

  Meriel ordered more bread, and surreptitiously slipped a slice into her bag, along with a tomato. ‘Harrogate has been lucky for me. Who would have thought I could have a spell at the Opera House for an amateur production at the height of the season? It is too good to be true. I tried to get a foot in the door in London, and it just did not happen. I was assistant to an assistant wardrobe mistress. Every moment was torture – an utter squandering of my talents.’

  I listened to her accounts of costume making until the young waiter set down our cakes and ices. The ice cream was already melting in the heat of the afternoon.

  Meriel asked the waiter’s name, then said, ‘Well now, Malcolm, can you tell me what’s playing at the Opera House this week?’

  ‘Why, it’s an adaptation of an Arnold Bennett novel, madam. Anna of the Five Towns.’

  ‘What have you heard about it?’ she demanded.

  He blushed and looked for a means of escape. ‘Well?’ ‘I’m not sure of the tale,’ he admitted. ‘But I was told that the best-looking lass in Harrogate is taking a good part.’

  ‘Thank you. That is an excellent recommendation.’ His answer seemed to satisfy her. ‘It doesn’t matter what they say, Kate, as long as they are talking.’ She turned the page in the newspaper. ‘Read this review.’

  I scanned the piece. Her production had indeed earned a glowing review.

  Meriel dabbed a dribble of ice cream from her chin. ‘You know why I chose this story, Anna of the Five Towns?’

  ‘It does seem a difficult choice. I would have gone for a ready-made play myself.’ I bit into my chocolate éclair.

  ‘I chose it because it reveals hypocrisy, meanness, oppression, tyranny.’ She waved her spoon, flicking a dash of ice cream onto the hat of the woman at the next table. Given the meltiness, it was an impressive hit. As Meriel talked about the play, she drew a good deal of attention to our table.

  The café was busy. While customers were not exactly being hurried out, we were encouraged not to dawdle. The waiter brought the bill. Meriel snatched it from me. ‘This is my treat.’

  She opened her copious bag and began a search. ‘Do you know, I’ve left my dratted purse in the theatre. How annoying!’

  I took the bill from her.

  ‘But what I was saying, Kate, about Anna of the Five Towns, it has a heroine who has no way of fighting back because she has always lived under tyranny and does not have the language or the ability to fight her corner, and say what she wants. And in Lucy Wolfendale, I have the most perfect Anna.’

  ‘You have cast someone similar in character?’

  ‘Heavens no! Lucy could not be more different.’

  At the theatre, I made a beeline for the box office, while Meriel chatted to the doorman.

  The white-haired bespectacled box office attendant handed me my complimentary ticket for that evening. I thanked her and asked, ‘Do you know whether a Mrs deVries has booked to see the play? I came across from Leeds without her address and hoped she may be here tonight.’ It was a good try, but failed.

  The woman shook her head. ‘Half Harrogate’s seen the show, but that name rings no bells.’ She frowned. ‘deVries? Sounds Belgian. The Belgies form a bit of a clique if you ask me.’

  The final curtain fell on Anna of the Five Towns. The cast had taken bow after bow, to rapturous applause.

  Bravos greeted the young leading lady as she stepped forward, a young man on either side of her: one who had won her hand, and one who had died tragically. Anna took a solitary bow.

  Mr Burrington Wheatley, Meriel’s velvet-clad impresario who sat to my right, applauded loudly.

  At the interval, he and I had moved from the front row of the stalls to the back, to escape an obnoxious fellow theatregoer who arrived late, blew cigar smoke up at the cast, and gave me his running commentary while rustling a bag of mint humbugs.

  When the applause subsided, Mr Wheatley and I squeezed out of the auditorium, pausing in the crush of the lobby at the foot of the stairs that led to the dress circle and bar. He turned to me. ‘The girl who played Anna . . .’

  ‘Lucy Wolfendale.’ I remembered her from our photographic session.

  ‘She’ll leave a trail of broken hearts and empty wallets in her wake, rely upon it. An actress like that comes along once in a generation. She is a natural.’

  A growl came from behind. It was the humbug-eating cigar smoker we had escaped from earlier. With a good deal of annoyance, he snarled, ‘An exquisite creature like Miss Lucy Wolfendale comes along not once in a generation but once in a lifetime.’

  Mr Wheatley gave me an amused wink. He said, ‘I comment only on her acting abilities, sir. I mount theatrical productions that tour the provinces. I would have Miss Wolfendale in my company tomorrow.’

  The cigar smoker’s nose twitched with distaste. He kept in step as we climbed the broad staircase. ‘Miss Wolfendale will tread no one’s boards. Her future is here.’

  Mr Wheatley raised a mischievous eyebrow. ‘You’re her father?’

  ‘Her father?’ The cigar smoker stopped in his tracks. For a moment I thought he would strike Mr Wheatley. He bit on the cigar. Out of the side of his mouth, he said coldly, ‘I am Lawrence Milner, an old family friend. Miss Wolfendale is a respectable girl. A turn on the amateur dramatic stage with friends might be acceptable. The professional theatre is out of the question.’

  Attempting to defuse the situation, I said, ‘The young chaps were very good.’

  ‘One of them is my son, Rodney,’ Lawrence Milner said. ‘And he will have no more time for this sort of thing.’

  He had made that point during the play, and the likeness was clear. Younger and older Milners had the same reddish-blond hair.

  I decided to ignore him. ‘Did you not think, Mr Wheatley, that Dylan Ashton acted the part of Willie superbly? He seemed entirely in love with Anna.’

  ‘That wasn’t acting,’ Mr Wheatley murmured in a kindly voice.

  Mr Milner pushed past us and elbowed his way towards the bar.

  Mr Wheatley took my arm. ‘Miss Jamieson’s talent as a director is to know what
to cut and what to play.’

  ‘Oh and what did she cut?’

  Meriel and I were the last to leave the theatre. She had to make sure nothing had been left in the dressing rooms. She thanked the doorman effusively, as we followed him to the stage door, saying she would never forget all his small kindnesses.

  ‘A tip wouldn’t go amiss,’ she whispered to me. ‘With all the junk in this bag, I can’t find my purse.’

  The instant we left the theatre and stepped into the little back street, great drops of warm summer rain turned to stair rods. I hurried into the nearest shop doorway, diving into my overfull bag. ‘I’ve an umbrella here somewhere.’

  Meriel pulled a hood over her head. ‘You’ll have to let me carry the brolly. I’m taller.’

  My heel touched something. I looked down, stepping back with a sudden gasp, fearing I had trodden on some sleeping tramp.

  ‘Is he drunk?’ Meriel took the umbrella from my hand, opening it with a swish.

  Bending, I touched the man’s warm cheek. He had lost his hat. Light reddish-blond hair fell onto his forehead. His jacket was undone, and missing a button. Later, I wondered how I could have focused on such small details. Perhaps something in me wanted not to look at the hilt of a dagger that protruded from his chest. By the glow of the alley gas lamp, I noticed a streak of blood, trespassing onto the starched white dress shirt.

  I stared blankly, wondering for a moment whether this was some tom-fool stage trick with a retracting dagger. The figure might leap at us and start to laugh. He did not. In the soft shadowy light, the features came into focus. The jut of the jaw, the broad nose. It was a handsome face, frozen in a look of angry surprise, as if his lips had not expected to be deprived so soon of their cigar.

  ‘It’s that fellow . . . the one who sat next to me. He’s dead.’

  Meriel shrieked. ‘Not my Mr Wheatley!’

  Pushing my bag into Meriel’s hands, I felt for a pulse on the man’s neck, knowing the gesture to be futile.

  Meriel backed away, fear in her voice. ‘It’s Lawrence Milner.’ I stood up and as we faced each other, I saw terror in her eyes. She said quickly, ‘That’s his motor, just on the Parade there.’ She hurried to look, as though what we saw in the doorway might be some trick of the light and the real Mr Milner would be alive and sitting at the wheel.

  ‘Somebody has slashed the tyres,’ she called.

  But that would no longer concern Mr Milner.

  I waited for her to walk back up the alley. ‘Ghastly, ghastly,’ was all she could say. The body lay behind me. Meriel blocked my way. For a long moment, I felt paralysed.

  One of us had to do something. Meriel seemed to have lost her grip.

  ‘Stay here, Meriel. I’ll get the doorman to call the police.’

  At that, she turned, and ran back towards the stage door, calling, ‘I’ll tell him.’

  She had taken the umbrella. I had the choice of standing in the lashing rain, back to the window, or sharing the doorway with the dead man. I chose the lashing rain.

  Lucy Wolfendale had triumphed in the part of Anna Tellwright. The applause made her feel as if she were floating. She felt her spirit inhabit the entire theatre, reaching out to everyone there, buoyed up on their applause. Afterwards, she wanted to drink champagne, and dance in some magnificent ballroom. Instead, she had made do with a glass of sherry in the theatre bar, while warding off the sick-making attentions of Rodney Milner’s lecherous old goat of a father. Ugh.

  If it were not for her good friends, she would have gone mad.

  Now here she was at close on midnight, on the back of a bicycle. Droplets of rain hit the back of her neck and trickled down her spine.

  ‘I didn’t imagine it would pelt it down for my big adventure.’ Lucy leaned into Dylan’s back. ‘I can’t bear being on a bicycle in the rain.’

  Dylan did not answer straight away. He pedalled along the bumpy road as if the devil were after them.

  At the turning for Stonehook Road, he slowed down. ‘It’s not going to let up. Do you want to turn back?’

  ‘No!’

  They continued in silence along the winding road. The rain stopped as suddenly as it had begun. Finally the tower loomed in the dark field, lit by the moon. Seeing it at night gave Lucy a jolt. It looked so very different. Menacing.

  Dylan slowed down. He brought the bicycle to a stop by the side of the road.

  Lucy climbed off, shaking away the raindrops. She hopped from foot to foot. ‘Just a mo . . . Let me . . .’ She leaned on his shoulder, shaking her leg. ‘Oh, oh, oh! Pins and needles!’

  The hem of her skirt was soaked from wheel splashes. Dylan leaned the bike against the hawthorn hedge. He unclipped the lamp from the handlebars. ‘There’s still time to change your mind.’

  ‘Don’t be a big baby.’ She took the lamp from him and began to look for the gap in the hedge. ‘My mind’s made up.’

  He followed, reaching out to stop her. ‘Do you have to? Why not be at home when the postman comes in the morning? Intercept the note before your granddad sees it?’

  ‘Dylan! Then I’d be a soppy drip.’ She shook free of him. Let him be a coward if he wanted. He looked the part, only a little taller than she was, skinny, and with something of the child about him still. ‘I can’t see the gap,’ she called. ‘We’ll have to climb the gate.’ Lamp in one hand, she put a foot on the second bar of the gate. ‘Don’t go all useless on me. You said you’d help.’

  ‘That was on a sunny day,’ he said lamely. ‘It seemed a good idea.’

  She was on one side of the gate, he on the other, not moving. She put her hand on his. ‘I have to do this. I only want what is mine.’

  It was that June Sunday afternoon when they rehearsed together. She had sworn him to secrecy. When she told him she wanted to train as an actress, and had applied to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, she hardly dared hope anything would come of it. When she was offered an audition, she feared she would not find a good enough lie to cover her two-day disappearance, or she would not scrimp together the fare to London. Her grandfather was such a miser, like the miser in the play. But being Lucy, she did find the money. Being Lucy, she was offered a place at RADA, and she intended to take it up.

  On her twenty-first birthday she had asked her grandfather outright for the legacy she knew to be hers. He refused.

  Lucy got the idea for the ransom note from one of Miss Fell’s library books. A thousand pounds would pay her fees at RADA, and her board and lodgings in London.

  Now here she was on this wet August night, struggling to make her dream come true, and with only Dylan to help. He was turning out to be a wet blanket, a cowardy custard.

  ‘What if your grandfather works out that you sent the ransom note?’

  ‘Well then, let him. He’ll know I mean it.’ She began to stride across the field.

  Dylan climbed after her, hurrying to catch up. ‘He’ll call the police.’

  She turned. The moon lit their way. She saw that Dylan was looking at the ground, trying to avoid stepping on buttercups and daisies. ‘Granddad won’t call the police. He will pay up because he is afraid.’

  ‘Of what?’ Dylan asked.

  They were so close that Lucy had the sudden picture in her mind of the two of them as a pair of bedraggled scarecrows in a field. They would cling together against all the birds of prey in the world. But she would have to do the protecting. Dylan had not one ounce of courage or initiative in his body.

  ‘I’m not sure what Granddad is afraid of. Scandal I suppose.’

  Even as a little girl she had known that her grandfather did not want to draw attention to himself. Her low heels sunk into the soft ground. Dampness from the grass tickled her ankles through her stockings.

  Lucy shone a light on the lock in the old oak door. Dylan inserted the heavy iron key and turned it. With a noisy creak, the door opened. They stood stock still. Lucy shuddered. ‘It’s black as pitch in here.’

  ‘That’s what I’m
saying. You’re not going to like it. It will be scary at night . . .’

  She stepped inside. The beam from the lamp showed cracked floorboards, and a dark void beneath. He said, ‘Stop! The boards are giving way. There’s a ten-foot drop to nowhere.’

  She tugged at his sleeve. ‘Then let’s go up the stairs. Don’t look down.’

  Dylan sniffed. ‘That stench! This lower floor must have been used to store something that rotted. That’s why the floorboards are breaking, cracking.’

  A straight staircase with two missing treads led to the floor above.

  ‘Steady, Lucy!’

  ‘Don’t fuss.’

  A mullion window, its glass cracked, let in a smidgen of moonlight.

  When her eyes became accustomed to the gloom, Lucy saw that everything was in place, just as she had left it: blankets, bottle of water, biscuit tin with food, candles and matches. She struck a match and lit a candle.

  Dylan took a sharp breath. ‘This place would go up like a tinderbox. I wish I’d never . . .’

  ‘It will be all right.’ She lit a second candle and let the grease drip to the floor, then fixed the candle in its own wax.

  ‘It’s madness,’ Dylan moaned.

  ‘Sometimes madness is best. And you won’t say that when it’s all over. I’m only demanding my due. One thousand pounds might sound a lot, but not if you say it quickly. For heaven’s sake, if a fictional character like Anna Tellwright in the play can come into fifty thousand pounds . . . And there’ll be something for you, for helping me.’

  ‘I don’t want any money.’

  ‘Nothing bad is going to happen. Anyway, I can let myself out at any time, so stop worrying.’ She reached out a hand. ‘Let’s look at the moon. Let’s count the stars. Let’s dance on the battlements. Is that what they’re called?’ She led the way to a narrow spiral staircase. ‘Come up to the top. I’ve brought a compass. I’ll give you the lie of the land.’

  He followed reluctantly. ‘I know the lie of the land, and I don’t feel like dancing.’

  ‘You see, these stairs are quite firm.’