Trouble in the Town Hall

by Jeanne M. Dams

  Table of Contents

  By Jeanne M. Dams

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  By Jeanne M. Dams

  The Dorothy Martin Mysteries

  THE BODY IN THE TRANSEPT

  TROUBLE IN THE TOWN HALL

  HOLY TERROR IN THE HEBRIDES

  MALICE IN MINIATURE

  THE VICTIM IN THE VICTORIA STATION

  KILLING CASSIDY

  TO PERISH IN PENZANCE

  SINS OUT OF SCHOOL

  WINTER OF DISCONTENT

  A DARK AND STORMY NIGHT

  THE EVIL THAT MEN DO

  THE CORPSE OF ST JAMES’S

  MURDER AT THE CASTLE

  TROUBLE IN THE TOWN HALL

  A Dorothy Martin Mystery

  Jeanne M. Dams

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  First published in the United States of America in 1996

  by Walker Publishing Company, Inc.

  eBook edition first published in 2013 by Severn House Digital an imprint of Severn House Publishers Limited Copyright © 1996 by Jeanne M. Dams The right of Jeanne M. Dams to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.

  ISBN-13: 978-1-4483-0073-0 (ePub) Many people helped with the research for this book, but I owe special thanks to Sir Robert Bunyard, retired Chief Constable of the County of Essex, for his invaluable expertise about the intricacies of English police procedure. If I’ve made mistakes, it is despite his excellent advice.

  Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons is purely coincidental.

  This eBook produced by

  Palimpsest Book Production Limited,

  Falkirk, Stirlingshire, Scotland.

  To my mentor and biggest fan,

  my wardrobe adviser and best friend,

  my surrogate mother—

  to the woman who is all those things,

  my sister, Betty

  Prologue

  THE CLOUDLESS HEAVENS had just begun to pale over the ancient cathedral town of Sherebury. As the last few stars flickered out in the brightening sky of that midsummer dawn, England turned its worshiping face to its oldest god, the sun—which divinity, with a beaming benevolence rare in those latitudes, poured out his blessings upon the city. The warm tide of light, paying tribute first to the newer creed, flowed over the topmost cross of the cathedral, washing its cool stone with golden glory, splashing down the spire. Treetops and chimney stacks were warmed and brightened, as were the roofs of the university on the hill and the clock tower of the Town Hall. The clock face showed 4:57.

  Minute by minute, as the sun rose higher, its golden rays reached deeper, bathing the humbler roofs, the walls, the windows. In east-facing bedrooms, springs creaked and snores were interrupted as sleepers shifted to keep the brilliance out of their eyes.

  The light at last reached the humble, dusty window of a broom closet, shining straight into the open eyes of the man on the floor who lay unblinking, unmoving.

  The sunlight, indifferent, continued its stately progress.

  1

  THE JUNE DAY had started off normally enough with the cats’ demands to be fed and let out. They’d been up very early—the birds’ response to a brilliant midsummer sunrise had wakened all their hunting instincts—but there was, unfortunately, nothing unusual about that. By six I was functional myself and trying to do something about my flower beds, to the astonishment of my next-door neighbor. She restrained herself, however.

  “Quite a job of work you’ve got there, Dorothy,” she said mildly, leaning on the back gate and surveying the dejected-looking flower bed over the top of her glasses with a Churchillian frown.

  “Jane Langland, don’t you start making caustic remarks.” I sat up, with sharp cracks from both knees, and looked over my scraggly flowers and flourishing weeds. “I know I’ve never been much of a gardener, and maybe I’m a little old to start now. But I’ve wanted an English garden all my life. Your climate in this country gives people pneumonia, but it does wonders for roses.”

  “Not doing much for yours,” retorted Jane with brutal candor. “Why not find a gardener?”

  “Even if I could afford it, the midwestern work ethic would protest. Frank and I always did things ourselves.” And together. I brushed a sudden treacherous tear from my cheek, careless of the mud on my gloves, and Esmeralda woke from her nap in a patch of catnip and came over to rub her comforting, furry gray bulk against my legs.

  “Frank loved gardens, too,” Jane pointed out briskly. “He told me so, when you two were first thinking of moving here from the States. Said the flowers were the best thing about England. Expect he’s up there shaking his head over the hash you’re making of this.”

  “Probably.” I managed a grin in appreciation of her unsentimental sympathy. “Anyway, I don’t want to commit myself to a gardener while everything is so unsettled. I thought this morning, when those miserable beasts wanted out at the crack of dawn, that I should put in a cat door. But I can’t do even a simple thing like that until I own the house, and I’m not going to buy it unless I can fix it up, and it looks to me as if this planning thing is going to go on forever.” I waved away a heavy, furry bumble-bee and bent to my work again, viciously attacking a clump of large leaves while Samantha, my Siamese, chased the bee.

  “Planning permission takes weeks,” Jane pointed out, “especially for a listed building. I’d engage that gardener, meanwhile. Planning committee’s more apt to believe you intend to preserve the character of the house if the garden is lovely and traditional. Which it won’t be under your tender care.” She chuckled richly in a deep baritone. “That ‘weed’ you just murdered was a delphinium, you know.”

  BUT I TOILED stubbornly for the rest of that gorgeous, increasingly hot morning, until the phone call from Alan rescued me. I was delighted to accept a last-minute lunch date with Sherebury’s chief constable, who had been so busy with constabulary duties that I’d hardly seen him for the past couple of weeks. So I dolled myself up in a smart new black-and-white dress and my best black straw hat, and sallied forth to do a little shopping before lunch at the new Indian restaurant we’d been wanting to try.

  Or at least I tried to sally. A morning spent on my knees hadn’t improved either them or my back, and black patent heels are impractical walking shoes for a woman of any age, let alone one who’s—well, old enough to know better. So if sallying implies a certain briskness of pace, mine was more of a meander.

  It suited the day, anyway. Sherebury High
Street was, I thought critically, looking somewhat better than in recent months. The weather had brought out shoppers in droves, and the baskets full of petunias and geraniums hanging from the lampposts looked festive. The cathedral spire, just visible over the shops across the street, positively sparkled against the perfect blue sky.

  There was still a certain gap-toothed look to the street, though. Every month or so another shop closed “for renovations” and never reopened. The depressed economy of my adopted town was showing, and I worried about it.

  The worst blight of all was the poor old Town Hall, decaying from dry rot and the deathwatch beetle, and most of all from lack of money for repairs. Nothing could spoil its generous Elizabethan proportions, or its exquisite materials and workmanship, but with official city business having moved to a hideous new Civic Centre, the Town Hall exuded the bereft air of the abandoned. The great tubs of flowers that used to flank its studded oak doors had been taken away, the papers fluttering from the notice boards were torn and faded. Streaked, uncurtained windows looked in on a once busy, now deserted interior.

  But it wasn’t deserted. I stopped just as I was about to pass the building, and stared. I could have sworn I’d seen movement behind one of the windows—there it was again! I moved closer and peered into dimness; I thought I caught a glimpse of something, but then it was gone.

  I tried the door—locked, just as it should be. Certainly it was no business of mine, but a confirmed snoop is never put off by a little thing like that. I knocked.

  The shadow came closer. “Round to the side door! I ’aven’t got me key to the front!”

  The voice, female and strongly Cockney, reassured me utterly. Obviously she belonged there (and I did not), but I was committed now. Feeling silly, I went obediently to the side door, a dreary little portal I had never noticed before, opening onto the narrow passageway between the Town Hall and the modern building next door.

  A large gray-haired woman stood in the doorway, dustcloth in hand. Appraising my going-out-to-lunch dress and hat, she spoke doubtfully. “Was you wantin’ somethin’, madam? On account of, there’s nobody ’ere no more, you know.”

  “I know,” I agreed apologetically. “I’m sorry to bother you, but when I saw someone in here I wondered—I mean, I didn’t know the building was still being kept clean, Mrs.—?”

  “Ada Finch. And as for keepin’ it clean, that’s in a manner of speakin’, that is. Come in, then, luv.” Seizing the opportunity for conversation, she led me round to the staircase in the front hall, settled herself with a comfortable grunt on the third step, and took up where she’d left off. “In the old days I’d ’ave bin ’ere at ’alf past five, to get everything spic and span for them as worked ’ere. Now, o’ course, it’s just keepin’ the woodwork nice for them as is goin’ to move in, so I only ’as a day now and again, and ’oo knows ’ow long that’ll keep on.” She fetched a gusty sigh from beneath the layers of sweaters that covered her ample bosom. “Breaks me ’eart, it does, to see the place like this after all the years I looked after it lovely.”

  “The woodwork is still beautiful, though. The carving on that staircase is in perfect condition.”

  “Never a crack in it,” said Mrs. Finch triumphantly, giving the elaborate spiked newel post an affectionate rub with her rag, “for all it is ’undreds of years old. Lovely piece of work, that staircase is. Carved all the way to the top, and every landin’ different. Makes a lot of work, but I keeps it nice. You should ’ave seen the job I ’ad, too, cleanin’ it proper when I first come to work ’ere. More years ago than I care to remember, that was, and me just a young girl workin’ under that sour old Mr. Jobbins.” She sniffed. “More concerned about gettin’ ’is tea regular than keeping the place up to snuff, ’ee was. Young I might’ve bin, but I knew better than to let the dust pile up in all them crevices. I bin trained right. Went at it with a nail file, I did, and sometimes a toothpick, month after month, until I ’ad it lookin’ like new. Polishes up a treat, don’t it?”

  “It’s magnificent,” I said sincerely. “It’s such a pity—”

  “That’s wot I says,” Mrs. Finch broke in eagerly. “Terrible shame it’ll be if that Mr. Pettifer and them pull it all about and turn it into one of them malls. I don’t ’old with shoppin’ malls. Give me proper shops, where you could ’ave a talk with the butcher, or greengrocer as it might be, friendly-like, and maybe get a nice little piece of liver for the cat, or a wilted lettuce, and do ’im a favor next time out.

  “Ah, well, them days is gone forever; you’ve got to move with the times or get left behind. Speakin’ o’ time—” Mrs. Finch looked at the man’s wristwatch shoved far up on her left arm. “I always ’as me a cuppa just about now. Would you like one, Mrs.—?”

  “Martin, Dorothy Martin,” I said hastily. “I’m sorry, I should have introduced myself. And thank you, but I’m supposed to be meeting someone; I really have to—”

  “You’re American, ain’t you?” she said as she clumped to a closet behind the stairs. “I’ve ’eard as ’ow they don’t drink tea. Dunno ’ow they get through the day. Time was when I could ’ave a nice cuppa with me mates, the rest o’ the cleaners, sit in comfort in a room they give us, put me feet up and ’ave a bit of a gossip. Now I keeps me tea things in the broom cupboard and ’as to make do with sittin’ on the stairs by me lonesome, but still, tea’s tea.”

  She opened the door as she spoke and took one step into the tiny room before she caught her breath in a sharp gasp and screamed.

  SO IT WAS that, for the second time in six months, I found myself staring into the eyes of a dead man. The first experience, in Sherebury Cathedral on Christmas Eve, was something I didn’t care to remember; I’d made a nuisance of myself to all concerned, including my new acquaintance Chief Constable Alan Nesbitt. But perhaps familiarity softens these blows. More likely, I was too taken up with Mrs. Finch’s hysterics to have time for any of my own.

  After the first frozen moment of shock, poor Mrs. Finch collapsed against the paneled wall of the hallway, gasping and whimpering, and I could get a good look.

  On the whole, I wished I hadn’t. The man was young, no more than a boy, really. His eyes, horribly, were wide open. I’d seen only that much when we were interrupted.

  “Mrs. Finch! What is it?” The voice from somewhere behind us was loud, peremptory, and male, and I yelped. When I turned, heart pounding, and he came closer to our gloomy corner, I recognized him. Oh, marvelous. Archibald Pettifer, city councilman, real estate developer, and self-appointed minder of everyone’s business. Just what we needed.

  “Mrs. Finch! Mrs.—er—madam! What is the trouble?”

  His stentorian bellow finally got through to the cleaning lady, who hiccuped and wobbled away to the stairs, sniffling into her apron. Mr. Pettifer stood for a moment looking down at the body on the closet floor. Then he shook his head like a bull ready to charge and took over.

  “Now, then, what is all this?”.

  His shaking voice and dirty-ivory face belied his pompous attitude, and I nearly giggled. I’ve met Pettifer on only a couple of occasions, which was enough; he irritates me simply by existing. He must have noticed that I wasn’t impressed, because he glared at me and cleared his throat.

  “Madam, I am Archibald Pettifer, and I asked a question. What—”

  I drew myself up. “I heard you, Mr. Pettifer, and we’ve met. Dorothy Martin, since you don’t seem to remember. I didn’t answer because I have no more idea than you. Mrs. Finch opened the door and found that man lying on the floor. He is apparently dead. I don’t know who he is or what he’s doing here.” Two could play the pompous game.

  He seized on my last words. “Ah! And what are you doing here, may one ask?”

  I caught my temper by the tail just as it was about to lash out, claws fully extended. “I saw Mrs. Finch in here, through the window, and came in to make sure there was no problem. And may I point out, sir, that we should be taking care of Mrs. Finch and calling the p
olice instead of questioning each other? I haven’t asked why you are here, or how you got in.”

  His look this time ought to have turned me to stone, but he did offer an explanation of sorts. “I—er—heard a scream and came in the side door, which Mrs. Finch had no business to leave unlocked. Furthermore, I have legitimate business here. And I was about to suggest that, if Mrs. Finch insists on having hysterics, you take her to some place where she can sit down properly—” he looked about as if expecting a chair to materialize in the hallway “—and then summon the police. Unfortunately, no telephones remain in the building, and someone must stay here with the—to—er—must stand guard.”

  I seized at the idea of escape. There was a public phone at Debenham’s, the big chain department store across the street, which also had a tearoom. I thought I’d have trouble moving Mrs. Finch, but once she took in the word “tea” she forged ahead like a horse nearing its stable.

  When I had her settled at the one free table with a pot of tea and some biscuits, I slipped away to the phone. After the emergency 999 call I asked for Alan—an entirely separate office, since his job is purely administrative—and was told he was out to lunch.

  Oh, good grief, of course he was—he was waiting for me. That call took a little longer.

  “Alan, thank God I found you!” I babbled in relief. “I couldn’t remember the name of the restaurant, so I had to talk to your secretary, and she had to call for the number, and—”

  “Dorothy.” His voice was sharp, official. “Tell me.”

  “There’s been a murder, Alan! At least I think so. It’s at the Town Hall, and I was there when—”

  “I’ll be there.”

  He hung up and I went back to Mrs. Finch, who had finished one cup of tea and recovered her volubility.

  “And wot I’d like to know,” she said with a sniff, pouring another cup of repellent black brew and copiously adding milk, “is, ’oo is ’ee, and ’ow did ’ee come to be in my cupboard?” Her chins quivered with outraged dignity and her voice rose. “’Ooever ’ee is, ’ee’d no call to come and die ’ere! Look at the trouble ’ee’ll cause! And no more than a layabout, to look at ’im.”