A Medal For Murder: A Kate Shackleton Mystery

by Frances Brody

  ‘What?’

  ‘She knows I’ve helped you.’

  ‘Dylan you didn’t . . .’

  ‘No. But I could tell. She made it plain. Your grandfather must have set her on to look for you.’

  Lucy’s eyes widened. She had thought only of the police, and that he would not contact them because of the threat in the note. And now this. ‘How dare he send someone looking for me? It could be dangerous. For all he knows I’m in the hands of horrible . . . I don’t know, bloodthirsty bandits or something.’

  ‘Well, Mrs Shackleton has worked it out somehow.’

  ‘Oh Lord.’ Lucy put a hand to her mouth. ‘If they’ve been in my room he’ll have found the magazine I cut the note from. But he never goes in my room.’

  ‘I suppose today was a bit different.’

  Lucy stamped her foot. ‘Dash and bletheration. I won’t give up.’ She sat down heavily on the folded blankets. ‘Have you brought food?’

  He opened his hands and with a stricken look said, ‘I’m sorry. I’ve brought nothing. I came as soon as I could, and I don’t have long.’ He looked around the tower room. ‘I must have been mad to agree. You shouldn’t have spent the night here. A tramp could have broken in. Anything could happen. Come back with me now, on the bike.’

  ‘No!’

  As he spoke, a distant church bell tolled noon. ‘Go home. Say you managed to escape. Anything. Say it was a joke.’

  Lucy wound her fob watch thoughtfully as the chimes died away. ‘Are you mad? I should have had my inheritance on my twenty-first birthday, just like Anna did in the play. Granddad won’t give it to me because he knows I shall leave, but I’ll make him.’

  Dylan shivered. ‘It’s so cold in here. It’s lovely and warm outside.’

  ‘I don’t want a weather report.’ She patted the space beside her on the blanket. ‘Come and sit beside me, Dylan.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because I have to get back to work, and because if I sit beside you, you’ll get round me. You’ll make me go on helping you when I know it’s no use.’

  ‘At least Granddad didn’t go to the police. For all he and Mrs Shackleton know, those magazines could have been put under my bed by someone else. Anyhow, perhaps they didn’t find them and she’s just guessing by coming to see you.’

  Dylan knelt on the ground sheet, facing her. ‘Come away from here. Let me cycle you back. I saw gypsies in the lane. This is just the kind of place they’d come to. Rip out the floorboards for firewood.’

  ‘Let them! I’ll help. And I would rather run away with the gypsies than give up and go back now.’

  ‘If anything happens to you, it’ll be my fault.’

  ‘No it won’t. I’d have done this with or without your help. Just forty-eight hours and I’ll be free. Mrs Shackleton should be on my side. She does what she pleases with her life. Why shouldn’t I?’

  ‘I hurried here soon as I could. Now I have to go. Lucy, give it up. Please.’

  ‘Never.’

  Dylan lowered his head. ‘Oh God, what have I done? This is all my fault for showing you the tower.’

  ‘Don’t be a ninny, Dylan. Just fetch me a flask of tea and a cheese sandwich, or jam, or anything.’

  Dylan sat back on his heels. He looked away, through the narrow window. ‘There’s something I haven’t told you.’

  Lucy waited. She was becoming impatient. Dylan had seemed the ideal person to help her. Now she wished she had been able to do this all alone.

  He said, ‘You wanted to get away from Mr Milner didn’t you?’

  ‘Don’t ask me to go over and over this that and the other. It’s too late.’

  Dylan gulped. ‘There’s no need to worry about Mr Milner any more.’

  Lucy’s eyes widened. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Mr Milner’s dead.’

  ‘That is not clever. If you’re saying that so I’ll give up . . . I thought better of you.’

  ‘It’s true!’

  ‘How? When?’

  ‘Last night, after the theatre. He was found dead in a doorway. It’s all over the town.’

  ‘How did he die?’

  ‘Horribly.’

  She waited, but he seemed reluctant to say more. ‘How?’

  ‘Someone said a gun, someone said a knife. The police are interviewing everyone. I expect they’ll want to talk to you and your granddad, so everything’s bound to come out.’

  Lucy felt some subtle change inside herself, a kind of bracing for what would come next. ‘I’m not sorry he’s dead. The only thing I’m sorry about is that if Granddad really doesn’t have money for my ransom, he could have got it from Mr Milner. Now he won’t be able to.’

  She saw the shocked expression on Dylan’s face. Immediately her own look softened, as she reached out and touched his cheek. ‘Poor Dylan. Now you know what I’m really like. It’s up to you whether you go on helping me. But I shall stay here until Monday morning, and then I shall go and collect my ransom, if it’s there. If it’s not, I don’t know what I shall do. But whatever happens, I’ll be leaving.’

  Slowly, Dylan rose to his feet. He walked back down the uneven stairs, treading heavily, as if hoping the world would give way beneath his feet.

  Lucy followed.

  He left without speaking.

  She locked the door behind him.

  He had gone without promising to bring food. She would show him. She would show them all. Lucy needed no one. Lucy would come through. Later, she would go out into the meadow. There was clover in the meadow, she could gather and eat clover. There were blackberries in the hedgerow, the stream not far off.

  She felt angry with Dylan for being so ready to give up. Her head had begun to ache. She needed a pee.

  Lucy pulled down her drawers and squatted over a gap in the broken boards. And then it happened. The key fell from her hand through the space to the hard ground far below. She pulled up her drawers quickly and looked down, to see whether the key was visible. Down, down, to nothing. Down to a hard earth floor strewn with years of debris, straw, dead leaves, the droppings of rodents.

  She hurried back up the stairs, one storey, two, and another to the battlements. She somehow missed her footing, tried to right herself and twisted her ankle. Her cry of pain bounced back to her from the thick stone walls. ‘My ankle. Dylan!’ she screamed. ‘Come back,’ knowing he could not hear her now.

  He would be pedalling back towards Harrogate.

  She pressed her hand into the cool stone wall for support and made a wish, that this was just a trial, like in the fairy stories, and there would be some way through, and she would find it.

  If she were Rapunzel, she could let down her long hair. But Lucy’s hair was a neat, short bob. Besides, who could climb down her own hair? The thought made her smile. Dylan would come back.

  Dylan climbed on his bike. He felt too heavy for the saddle. His leaden feet did not want to push the pedals. He was stupid to have helped Lucy, idiotic for taking her to the tower in the first place. The road dipped on a downward camber as he rounded the bend. The vehicle coming towards him was going too fast, on Dylan’s side of the road, taking no account of the bend. The driver did not see him. As Dylan veered towards the grass verge, his eyes locked onto the eyes of the motorist in the last second before the collision. I’m invisible. I’m dead.

  I mounted the stairs to the arcade mezzanine room where Geerts’s dancing school held sway. A reasonably good pianist played a tune I had danced to long ago. What was it? Just as I thought the name would come to me, the music stopped abruptly.

  Monsieur Geerts had dropped all attempts to sound like the Potteries burgher he had played in Anna of the Five Towns. I hesitated by the door, listening.

  ‘Rrrun smoothly on the toes! Let the music leeft you. For the foxtrot, first slow walk, two counts to a step, one, two! Watch me! Now a trot, you copy the gait of the ’orse, one count, one step. Again! One-two-one, one-two-one. Smile! Trot
like ’appy ’orse.’

  I pushed the door open a fraction. A dozen young couples, boys and girls aged between thirteen and sixteen, were standing about the room, eyes on Monsieur Geerts, one boy trying not to giggle. A slender young assistant stood beside the dancing master, smiling encouragingly at the couples nearest to her. In the corner by the window, upright as her piano, the grey-haired pianist waited patiently for her cue to begin again. Monsieur Geerts tapped his stick three times. Music filled the room. The happy young horses began their foxtrot. Now I recognised the tune. ‘Foxtrot Murder’.

  Monsieur Geerts sighed heavily, and then noticed me. ‘May I have a word, Monsieur Geerts?’

  He waved to his young assistant to take over, and stepped out with me onto the mezzanine.

  ‘Sorry to disturb your class. I’m looking for Lucy Wolfendale. I thought she may be helping with your classes today.’ It was a spur of the moment lie. And one name would be enough. Find Lucy, and I would find Alison.

  His eyes brightened at Lucy’s name. ‘Sometimes she does teach a class. She is very good dancer, good with the younger children. They hang on her words, she mesmerises.’

  ‘I can imagine.’ He seemed such a nice man. In my statement for Inspector Charles I had pointed him out as someone who could be suspected of murder: the jealous husband. ‘Have you taught dancing since you came to this country, Monsieur Geerts?’

  ‘When we first come, as refugees from Belgium, we stay in a room the authorities give us. But a man must do something.’ He chuckled, at a fond memory. ‘We ’elp with the wounded soldiers, the sick soldiers. Some officer organise a Charlie Chaplin look-alike competition. That is when I get the ’ang of English sense of humour. The soldiers, they look like Chaplin but not move like Chaplin. I show them, this is ’ow you move like Chaplin.’

  He twirled his cane and did a few Chaplin steps along the mezzanine landing, then back towards his dance studio, shuffling ahead of me. One moment more and he would disappear back into the land of foxtrot.

  ‘Lucy came to your house after the performance and party last night.’

  He shook his head vigorously. ‘No, no, no.’

  One no would have been enough.

  There was no way to keep this tactful. ‘She and Alison were seen at your house, and not seen since.’

  He tensed, his jaw tightened. ‘Who says this?’

  ‘I just need to speak to them. It will save time and trouble if you tell me the truth.’

  ‘Lucy was not at my ’ouse.’

  We faced each other for a long moment.

  ‘Monsieur Geerts, I’m sure you don’t need more troubles than you already have.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Inspector Charles had asked me not to say anything, but I felt sure Geerts already knew about Milner’s murder, just as Mr Croker had known.

  Monsieur Geerts’s look was wide-eyed and innocent, as though he was not a man who had been cuckolded by the murder victim.

  ‘Two girls go missing, on the night of Mr Milner’s murder.’

  He turned pale. ‘The police do not think . . . Not Lucy . . .’

  ‘I do not know what the police think. I have been interviewed, and you will be too. The police will also want to speak to Lucy and Alison. And I think you know where they are. Wouldn’t you rather tell me than the Scotland Yard inspector?’

  He pushed his hands into his pockets, so that I would not see he was shaking.

  ‘Go back to your class, if you would rather speak to the police about Lucy and Alison.’ I turned away, taking a chance that he would not let me go.

  Suddenly he was behind me, one-two-one-two. ‘Where do you go now? If Lucy is missing, I worry.’

  ‘Where do you suggest I go?’

  He ran his tongue across dry lips. His fingers reached for his moustache as though he had been told of clinging crumbs. ‘Wait. It is all around the town about Mr Milner. I know the police. Two and two together and they think they tango.’

  I waited.

  A thin film of sweat broke out on his forehead. ‘I ’old nothing against Mr Milner. The advertisement in the play programme for our dancing school, ’e insist to pay for that.’

  ‘My concern is to find Lucy and Alison.’

  He shook his head. ‘Lucy? I don’t know. Alison, go see my wife.’

  ‘I shall. The address, Monsieur Geerts?’ I took out my notebook.

  He looked at his feet for inspiration, and then gave me his address.

  ‘Thank you.’

  His long slender fingers touched my wrist. ‘She . . . she ’as not been out of the ’ouse today, my wife, so . . . Mr Milner’s death, she does not know.’

  In the room behind us, the pianist stopped playing. From the ground floor came the sound of a child’s cry. Was Monsieur Geerts asking me to tell his wife about Milner’s death, or not to tell her? It seemed he did not know himself.

  ‘My class,’ he murmured, and turned away.

  Watching my step, looking at my sensibly shod feet, I made my way down the wrought-iron spiral staircase to the ground floor.

  I wished I had not known about Mr Milner and Madam Geerts. I wished I hadn’t felt obliged to tell the inspector that Monsieur Geerts almost certainly saw them together in the dressing room.

  ‘Good morning, Mrs Shackleton.’ The voice startled me out of my reverie. As if I had conjured him up, there was Inspector Charles. ‘Don’t tell me, you’ve been enquiring about dancing lessons?’

  I smiled in what I hoped was a beguiling fashion. ‘I already dance very well.’

  He tipped his hat. ‘I’m sure you do.’ And with that, he mounted the stairs.

  Seeing Inspector Charles in the arcade, on his way to question Monsieur Geerts, upset me. Monsieur Geerts would think back to the night before, to seeing me in the corridor at the theatre as he searched the dressing rooms for his wife. He would know that one of two people had betrayed him: his own wife, or me. Put it out of your mind, I said. Scotland Yard are the murder squad, not you. Besides, I had confidence that Inspector Charles would not give me away. And if I knew about Lawrence Milner and Madam Geerts’s affair, then others would too.

  It was a street of identical terraced houses not far from the railway station. Standing at the front door, I could hear the doorbell ringing inside the Geerts’s house. No one answered. I made my way round to the back. Pots of mint, chives, parsley and thyme stood in the spotlessly clean yard. I knocked on the door.

  Geraniums sat on the window sill, turning leggy, some petals falling onto the scoured sill. The window blind was dropped. Through a small gap at the side of the blind, I could see into the neat kitchen with its square deal table and raffia-backed chairs. There was a cup, saucer and coffee pot on the table.

  I knocked on the door again.

  Stepping back into the yard, I looked up at the bedroom window. Was it my imagination, or did the blind move?

  After one more knock on the door, I searched my satchel for something useful. There it was. Earlier in the summer, when I was on the Braithwaite case, Hector, Tabitha Braithwaite’s fiancé, had given me his old scout knife, as a keepsake. I flicked open the blade, slid it under the window catch and edged it back. The sash window lifted easily. Carefully, I moved the pots of geraniums and climbed inside.

  The kitchen smelled of coffee, Cherry Blossom boot polish and a faint odour of yeast, like dough left to rise. A sudden bump and a scream came from beyond the door that led from the kitchen. Crashing into the long string of garlic bulbs that swayed from the clothes airer, I crossed the small room in a few strides, kicking the tin bath whose water was still warm enough to be sending up a cloud of steam.

  A figure lay at the foot of the stairs, doubled in pain, clutching herself, moaning.

  I bent down beside her.

  She looked up at me, her eyes full of tears, chubby round face filmed with sweat and distorted in pain. She was barefoot. Her nightgown was damp. Unpinned, her long hair stuck to her forehead and cheeks.

>   For a few seconds I did not recognise her, perhaps because I expected to see Lucy, or Madam Geerts. A tear fell, and the moaning turned into a sob.

  ‘Alison! What happened? Let me help you up. Can you stand?’

  ‘I think so.’

  Aware of another presence, I looked up.

  At the top of the stairs, Madam Geerts stood still and erect, frozen as a statue, beautifully dressed in a bias-cut blue linen skirt and white blouse, her hair immaculately coiffured in loops. ‘Poor girl,’ she said as, in her best dancer’s glide, she slowly descended the stairs. ‘She fell.’

  Alison’s sobs turned to a whimper as I helped her to her feet. ‘Did you fall?’ I asked.

  The answer sounded like oh, or no.

  Madam Geerts drew herself up to her full height of about four feet eleven inches. She stood three stairs above us, which allowed her to glare down. ‘Of course she fell. You say I pushed her?’ Madam Geerts moved to Alison’s side.

  The three of us stood in a tight knot at the bottom of the stairs, scarcely able to move.

  Madam Geerts tried to edge Alison up the stairs. ‘Don’t speak. You must lie down.’

  ‘I hurt, I hurt.’

  ‘Where?’ Madam Geerts demanded.

  ‘For heaven’s sake, woman,’ I said. ‘She’ll hurt all over. She’s just taken a tumble down a dozen stone steps.’

  ‘Fifteen steps,’ Alison whined.

  ‘Then march back up fifteen steps,’ Madam Geerts commanded.

  I ignored her, and helped Alison into the downstairs room that was kitchen and living room. Alison’s bare feet splashed into the water that had spilled on the floor from the tin bath.

  Madam Geerts followed. ‘Who let you in, Mrs Shackleton?’

  ‘Myself.’

  ‘But . . .’

  ‘You must have heard me knocking.’ I led Alison to the Windsor chair by the hearth.

  ‘So the Englishman’s ’ome is not a castle. There is a law to answer the door?’

  ‘There is a law against pushing a girl down the stairs.’

  ‘Push her? Push her?’

  ‘She . . . she . . .’ Alison’s voice came out in choking sobs. ‘She didn’t . . . I fell. I fell down the stairs and it didn’t . . . Did it . . .’