Death Of A Diva

by Derek Farrell

  “I need to get some air,” Dominic announced.

  “Don’t let him wind you up,” Jenny counselled.

  “Wind me up? He’s talking about taking my research – my research – and throwing it out so that he can write a hagiography of Lyra. Make it respectful,” he says. “As though mine – my true story of what and who Lyra Day was – would be disrespectful.”

  “Well, sweetie, if you were going to tell the whole truth, it might be a bit, well, harsh for some. Ill of the dead and all that...”

  Mouret shook his head. “The only disrespect you can show the dead is to write a biography that airbrushes out who they were.”

  “Who was she really?” I mused.

  “A bitch,” Jenny provided for me.

  “Talking of which,” I said as Caz swooped in, put an arm around Jenny’s shoulders, slapped on a broad and totally artificial smile and began propelling the confused girl towards the kitchen.

  “Caroline,” Jenny cast a concerned glance at me as I fell in step beside them.

  “We need to talk,” Caz announced and waved the card in front of Jenny, who turned green, opened her mouth in a wordless ‘O’ and promptly fell into a half-swoon.

  Dominic reached for her and Caz put up a hand to fend him off, whilst continuing to propel Jenny towards the kitchen.

  “Where–, where did you get that?” Jenny demanded.

  “Oh you wouldn’t want to know,” Caz announced, depositing Jenny on a kitchen chair.

  “More importantly,” I pressed, “why did you send it?”

  “What is that?” Mouret demanded.

  “Me? I didn’t...”

  “Jenny, you were a lousy liar at school and you’ve not improved.” Caz lifted the card and read “Lyra, I hope the show displays you as you truly are. And I hope” she flipped the card over, “that you die screaming you worthless fucking whore. Die Bitch!”

  Jenny slumped. “I’m so sorry,” she whimpered. “I didn’t mean it. I was so angry. She was doing everything she could to mess things up for me and Dom.” Her eyes sought and held Mouret’s. “Then, when she started on the bloody wedding dress, started trying to take over my bloody wedding day... Well, I just snapped.”

  “And that’s even before you caught her snogging your fiancée,” I added.

  Three pairs of eyes turned to me in surprise. “What? It’s my pub and if I happened to be accidentally passing when she put the moves on him and if I happened to see you threaten to kill her, now I come to think about it, then it’s not something I’m going to feel ashamed about.”

  Jenny stopped and a hand went to her mouth. “Wait! You don’t think I...”

  “Well,” Caz waved the card in front of her face. “If I were you, I’d start getting your alibi together.”

  “Alibi?” Jenny looked from Caz to me to Dominic as her face changed colour from green to putty grey.

  “Jenny’s already got her alibi,” Mouret piped up. “We were together constantly. She couldn’t have even spoken to Lyra without my being present, let alone throttled her.”

  Jenny sniffed, her shoulders locking back into a straight upright position and wiped her cheeks dry with the back of her hands. “Yeah,” she said, “I’ve got nothing to hide. She was vile to me and I sent her a nasty card. But I didn’t kill her.”

  “Well,” Caz announced, fixing a beady eye on Mouret, “that’s a handy little alibi. Amazing what love will do. But you see, Jenny, I’ve just remembered something else. I was telling Danny here about our school days and in particular about a little stabbing incident.”

  Jenny blanched again, her shoulders slumping. “Caz... what that was...”

  “I’d got it wrong. Mixed up names and things. The girl at school; the one who stabbed the other one,” Caz continued, “well it wasn’t Janis Chiles. Janis was the girl who got stabbed. The girl who did the stabbing – the one who couldn’t control her temper – was you Jenny. Janis was vile to you, always teasing you; and you finally snapped on a camping trip and went for her. No real harm done – that time – but you are quite capable of violence when you’re pushed too far.”

  “All very interesting, Miss Marple,” Mouret responded, standing behind Jenny and putting his hands on her shoulders, “except, like we’ve just said, Jenny and I were together all night. There’s no way she went upstairs and strangled her stepmum.”

  Something sparked in my head; something Caz had said about mixing up names.

  And suddenly, there it was!

  “Where’s Doris?” I demanded.

  “What?” All three chorused, their puzzled faces turning to me.

  “Doris Chapel, Lyra’s sister. She said ‘Barry! Doris said ‘Poor Barry’s in an iron lung!’ She knows where he is. Where’d she go?”

  “Barry?” Jenny and Dominic looked at me like I’d lost my mind.

  “Lyra’s first manager,” Caz chimed up. “Tried to strangle her once.”

  “What? You know about a man who tried to strangle her once already and you’re hassling me about a fucking card?”

  “And the stabbing!”

  “I slashed her cagoule! It’s hardly Jack the Fucking Ripper!” Jenny, eyes blazing, turned on Caz, who shrugged helplessly.

  “And you think this Dolly knows where Barry is,” Dominic demanded.

  “Doris,” I corrected, “and it could be any Barry, but I’m willing to bet it’s Barry Haynes.”

  “Well where is she?” Dominic stood on tiptoes and scanned the room and I realised that, as we’d been engrossed with Jenny, the house had acquired even more visitors so that the whole place was now jammed with people.

  “I can’t see her,” I admitted. “But she was getting a refill, so she can’t be far.”

  “Right,” Mouret pointed to the door to the living room. “I’ll check the living room. You check the hall and upstairs. Caz, wait here and grab her if she turns up. Jenny? Are you OK to check the garden, in case she’s gone walkies?”

  Jenny nodded. “Good.” Mouret fixed Caz with a stern glare, “Then let’s find this woman and put this ridiculous accusation against you to bed for once and for all.” And so saying, he stalked off towards the living room.

  I looked at Caz and Jenny, nodded and headed off to the hallway.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  The crush in the entry rotunda of Casa Day was heaving. The sonorous tones of a well-known Shakespearean actor, discoursing on the state of the arts today mingled with a group chorus of ‘My old man said follow the van’, and a fog of alcohol fumes hung over the assembled mourners (not many of whom appeared heartbroken).

  I scanned the mob for Doris, but saw nobody resembling her.

  “’Scuse me,” I caught the arm of one of the Music Hall singers, “I’m looking for Doris. Doris Chapel?”

  “Doris?” He turned his head over his shoulder. “’Ere, Lil: you seen Dumpy Doll?”

  Lil paused in the act of providing percussive accompaniment to the tune using a pair of salad tongs and squinted at me. “Inside,” she said, jerking her head towards the living room and resuming the beat. “She’s ‘angin’ out with the nobs.”

  I shook my head. “Not there anymore.”

  “Sorry love,” Lil shrugged and – amazingly – performed a perfectly executed drum roll using only the silverware, as the gang segued into “Waiting at the church”.

  I turned and headed up the stairs, pausing halfway to scan the crowd, but there was no sign of Doris.

  Mouret walked through the living room door, crossed the hallway, caught my eye and shrugged as if to say No joy, then vanished into the crowd.

  I trudged to the top of the stairs, where the sheer scale of the place became apparent.

  A hallway stretched before me into a gloomy distance. To my left and right, corridors led to guest wings and, even up here, people were dotted around.

  The first doorway I opened led to a darkened bedroom and, on hitting the light switch, I discovered a couple of well-known comedians engaged in an a
ct that looked more enjoyable than their usual stand-up. I beat a hasty retreat.

  I began, after that, to knock, but not a sign of Doris did I find.

  I paused at the last door in the corridor and was just about to knock when it opened and Liz Britton stepped out, saw me, and jumped about five feet in the air.

  “You!” she gasped. “What are you doing here?”

  “I was just going to ask you the same question,” I answered. “Party’s downstairs.”

  “It’s a funeral,” she remonstrated.

  “Memorial service,” I clarified. “Body’s still with the police, isn’t it?”

  “So?” She demanded. “If everyone’s downstairs, what are you doing up here?”

  “I’m looking for Lyra’s sister.”

  “Doris? What the hell would you want with Doris?”

  “She knows where Barry Haynes is.”

  “Haynes? The manager you were looking for?”

  I nodded. “She mentioned him, said enough to make me think she knows where he is right now.”

  “Well she’s not in there,” Liz jerked a thumb at the door behind her. “She’s probably downstairs, which is where I should be.” She pushed past me, and walked off down the hallway.

  I turned to the door opposite.

  The room inside was almost totally filled with a huge four poster bed covered in a snow white sequinned coverlet. A black and white portrait shot of Lyra filled the wall facing me. Doris – unless she had crawled under the bed – wasn’t here. I checked, just in case.

  She wasn’t.

  I left the room, retraced my steps to the landing and began to search the west wing.

  Forty minutes after I’d begun the search, I trudged back down the stairs. The joint was jumping harder than when I’d gone upstairs and even the Shakespearean thesp had joined in the singing and was baritoning ‘The boy I love is up in the gallery’ whilst cradling an overflowing brandy glass in one hand, a chorine of indeterminate gender in the other and a still clattering away Lil on his knee.

  I rechecked the hallway and stalked across to the living room, where I bumped smack into Doris.

  She weaved, wobbled, gasped for breath, hiccupped, pulled herself upright, squinted at me, swigged from her empty glass, peered suspiciously at it, parked it on a passing tray, snagged an obscenely overfilled brandy balloon and shot me a filthy look.

  “Don’t wanna talk to you!” She slurred. “Bloody killer!”

  Christ! She was wasted. Just what I needed: another blotto old bird. And one, to boot, who’d clearly been got at by someone; Doris had switched from flirtatious to hostile in the time she’d been missing.

  “Listen, Doris,” I caught her elbow as her knees sagged and pulled her upright, “what say we get something to eat? Nice sausage roll?”

  She attempted to shrug me off, squinted into my face again, swigged from the brandy balloon and jerked a finger at me, splashing my shirt and jacket in VSOP as she did so. “You, shwee’hear’, can take yer fuggin sausage roll and poke it up yer...”

  “Dear me,” I attempted my trademarked avuncular young man smile, which had got countless old dears on my side in previous situations and guided a clearly befuddled Doris back into the living room, which was now dominated by an even bigger version of the black and white Lyra portrait from her bedroom.

  Christ, I thought, can this afternoon get any weirder?

  “What d’you want?” Doris demanded, as I spotted a corner space, ushered her towards it, wedged her into the right angle, beckoned a white jacketed waiter over, relieved him of his tray of canapés, shoved one in my gob and attempted to make Lyra’s sister consume what – for all I knew – were the only solids she’d ever taken.

  “Have a fish stick, Doris!”

  “Fuggin’ hate fish,” she grimaced, holding the brandy balloon in a white knuckled grip of death and downing another few units in one mouthful. “’Cept whelks.”

  I was not about to enter into a debate about the difference between bivalves and fish, nor to attempt to locate some pickled whelks in the room.

  “Doris?” I had to say her name three times – the third one almost shouting, before she focussed on me, her heaving bosom going ninety-to-the-dozen.

  “Oh,” she smiled – or at least her eyes smiled, the muscles in her face having long since lost the power of independent movement – and turned her face up to me. “Yes dear?”

  This is good. At least I’m not a murderer any more, I thought. “Doris, I need to talk to you about Barry. Barry Haynes?”

  “Big Baz?” She sniggered “Ellie’s nickname f’rim. Poor Ellie.” She suddenly acquired a maudlin look about her, even as her décolletage took on the appearance of a prize fight between two highly over-developed Stafford Terriers under a black lace blanket. “Big Baz...”

  She drifted into a reverie, then jerked her head up at me, her eyes no longer focussed, “Spittin’,” she rambled, before focussing over my shoulder at the picture of an insanely young Lyra, before the surgery, the fame, the drugs and the booze had turned her into a plastic doll. A black and white shot taken by an unnamed photographer that showed a young woman with a long nose, deeply dimpled chin, gapped teeth, heavy eyebrows and spirit, smiling at the camera, with a magnificent future laid out before her.

  “That’s how I wanna remember her.” She gulped down a sob, struggled for breath, moved her rambling gaze into my eyes as her head began to jerk back and forward in an effort to gasp in air, let her gaze drift past me and over my other shoulder, frowned, straightened up and said “Barry?”

  I jerked my head around, trying desperately to see which of the busload of locals was Barry Haynes and, at that moment, Doris pitched forward, emptied what remained of her brandy down my left leg and, as both her arms spastically jerked upright, knocked the tray of canapés out of my hand.

  I scanned the crowd as fish sticks, blinis, a selection of dried fruits and what was either day-old hummus or baby spew rained down on my shoulders, then jerked back just in time to catch the full weight of what I would later discover was Doris Adelaide Kryszczynski, nee Chapel, of 93 Tamurlaine Gardens, under the armpits.

  My eyes bulged, my biceps strained, my knees bowed and we both went down in a heap of lace, canapés and stained-beyond-redemption designer suiting.

  In falling, I’d hoiked Doris up so that, perpendicular, we were face to face and I was staring now into a makeup smeared, sweat drenched face, the young seeming eyes – as though looking from inside a mask, darting desperately around.

  They focused on me momentarily, swivelled blindly round the room, settled on something in the crowd, moved in the direction of the portrait and, in a harsh whisper that was inaudible beyond my ears; Mrs Doris Kryszczynski breathed her last.

  Then, all hell broke loose.

  Chapter Forty

  It was raining when, next morning, Ali opened the pub door and DC Nick Fisher strolled in, a light veil of mist in his wake. I straightened up from the shelves I’d been filling and my heart sort of jumped.

  Tragic, I know, but there you go: I was falling in love with him, as he nodded at me.

  “Danny,” he said, in a tone that made my knees weak. Then, over his shoulder appeared Reid, his beady little eyes dancing with a joy that suggested that my neck was, once again, in the noose, and my ‘Morning gorgeous’ died in my throat.

  “Morning, Mr Bird,” Reid leered, sliding past Nick and settling his lardy arse on a bar stool. “Lovely morning for it.”

  Ali looked over her shoulder. “Should I call the council and have them send round the vermin team?” She asked, slamming the door shut and sliding the bolt up.

  “Inspector Reid,” I nodded at him and turned my eyes to Nick, who frowned at me sadly and shifted his gaze to a beer mat. “What can I do for you?”

  “You can confess. To killing Lyra Day and – yesterday – murdering her sister.”

  “So she was murdered, then,” I said.

  “Poisoned,” Nick answered,
his eyes finally finding mine.

  “After you and her had been heard having a barney and after you announced that she knew who murdered Lyra.”

  “She what?” This was news.

  “Get your coat,” Reid announced, sliding his bulk off the seat. “You’re nicked.”

  I contemplated making a run for it, then decided that though I’d easily escape Reid’s lumbering bulk, Nick was more sprightly. Besides, I was innocent. Just like I was innocent of Lyra’s murder.

  I was lead out of The Marq and into a waiting police car, which went straight to the local cop shop, where we were met by Dorothy Frost, who appeared to have come straight from doing her Christmas shopping. “This better be good,” she snarled at Reid, pushing a small flotilla of shopping bags at Nick and putting an arm around my shoulder, “I’ve just had to leave Mr Frost to choose the stilton for Christmas Day and if we end up with something nasty, sweaty and wrapped in cling film, I will be coming back to you.” She raked her glare up and down Reid and pursed her lips threateningly.

  We entered the interview room, Reid directed me wordlessly into my chair, switched on the tape machine and collapsed his bulk into the audibly straining chair facing me. “Oh, Dot,” he chuckled, “it’s better than good; it’s golden.”

  Dorothy turned to me and spoke sotto voce. “You OK, Danny?”

  I nodded, my glare fixed on Nick, who at least had the decency to blush.

  “Well just leave this to me,” she replied, settling herself into her chair.

  “Right, Danny, suppose you tell us a little about Doris Kryszczynski,” Reid suggested after he’d intoned the usual introductions to the tape machine.

  “I don’t think Mr Bird has anything of use to say to you, Mr Reid,” Dorothy interjected before I could speak.

  Reid raised an eyebrow. “Really? Nothing? What about the fact that Doris told you she knew who killed Lyra Day?”