Crazy Lady

by James Hawkins

  “Well don’t just mope, Dad. If you love her that much get her back.”

  “But how? She won’t talk to me. I don’t even know where she is.”

  “Have you ever heard of scripting?”

  “What?”

  “Scripting. You write down what you want to happen. You centre on exactly the kind of future you want, and who you want to share it with, and you carefully script it.”

  “Sounds like hocus-pocus…” he begins, then reminds himself that he didn’t believe in the possibility of past lives and spirits until he felt the masked man’s presence on the island of Ste. Marguerite.

  “Look. You’re writing a book anyway,” she explains. “Not anymore,” he says dejectedly. “Why?”

  “Because it has a sad ending.”

  “And you want a happy ending?”

  “Everyone does, Sam. Everyone does.”

  “Well it’s your book, Dad. Write it the way you want your life to turn out.”

  “But my book is about what happened three hundred years ago. I can’t change history just because I’ve been jilted.”

  “So you were there were you?”

  “No.”

  “Then how do you know for certain what happened?”

  “But I’d have to rewrite the whole book. I’d have to change the story. It will take months.”

  “Dad, do you want Yolanda back or not?”

  “Of course I do.”

  “Then start writing. Script the story of the Man in the Iron Mask the way you want your life to turn out.”

  “With a happy ending… with Yolanda.”

  “Unless you prefer to die a miserable old bachelor.”

  “So there I was behind the Germans’ lines,” Daphne is rabbitting on as she pours herself a third cup. But her wartime experiences, and her visit, are wearing on her host and she senses it. Peter Symmonds has checked his watch half a dozen times. The tea is cold and he’s made no offer of warming it.

  “I really must tell you about the time I saved my life with a packet of chocolate digestive biscuits,” she continues enthusiastically, trying to spice up the conversation, but Symmonds has heard enough.

  “Some other time, Daphne,” he says, rising and pointing at the mantelpiece clock. “I’m afraid I have to get ready for an engagement.”

  “Oh, silly me,” she says, but as she stands a muffled crash makes them jump.

  “What the hell was that?” demands Symmonds. “Probably my chair,” Daphne replies quickly and tries to reproduce the noise, but Symmonds isn’t fooled.

  “Stay there,” he commands and runs for the stairs to his basement.

  “Trespass; burglary; aiding and abetting; conspiracy…” Superintendent Donaldson reels off a list of charges that add up to a life sentence as the two women stand in front of him in the charge room at Dewminster police station. “What the hell were you doing breaking into his basement?”

  “I am a Canadian private investigator,” states Trina loftily, but Daphne digs her in the ribs and puts on a smile for Donaldson.

  “Ted…”

  “It’s Superintendent at the moment, Ms. Lovelace.”

  “Right,” she says sheepishly. “The thing is that I — we — suspect that the Creston children were murdered.”

  “Stop right there, Daphne,” says Donaldson, shaking his head in despair. “We’ve been through this. Natural causes, remember?”

  “But there are no records.”

  “Because there was nothing to record.”

  Daphne still has the newspaper clipping in her handbag that gives lie to Donaldson’s assertion, but she decides to leave it there for now.

  “Anyway,” continues Donaldson, “you’re lucky that the good doctor doesn’t want to press charges.”

  “Does that mean we can go?” asks Trina already inching towards the door.

  Donaldson pulls her up sharply. “No. Not until I’ve formally warned you. You may be a foreign visitor, Ms. Button, but if you or Ms. Lovelace try another stunt like this you’ll get a guided tour of a British prison. Understood?”

  “Understood.”

  “Hah! Private investigators,” he scoffs as he shows them the street.

  “Did you get anything?” asks Daphne excitedly as soon as they are out of range.

  “Think so,” replies Trina as she ferrets down the front of her pants. “Good job they didn’t strip-search us.”

  “What happened?”

  “Stupid book,” she moans, complaining of her investigator’s manual, which suggested that professional burglars open a cabinet’s bottom drawer first and work their way up so they don’t have to close one before opening the next, adding that closing drawers takes time and makes noise.

  “That makes sense,” admits Daphne. “No it doesn’t,” bleats Trina. “’Cuz when all the drawers are open the weight tips the whole thing on top of you.”

  “Oh dear,” titters Daphne.

  “Plus,” continues Trina, “Creston starts with C and was in the top drawer anyway.”

  The file is thin — too thin to properly record the lives and deaths of three children, according to Daphne. “There should be more than this,” she says as she surveys the scant pages pulled from Trina’s pants: copies of the death certificates and a few handwritten pages of notes.

  “All there was,” says Trina with a quick check.

  “That’s interesting,” says the elderly woman, scanning the forty-year-old handwriting. “I can never be sure if my doctor’s prescribed Aspirin or hemorrhoid cream, but I can read this without glasses. Weak lungs; bronchitis and asthma attacks; coughs; colds; pneumonia-like symptoms…” She looks up. “All three had weak chests according to this.”

  “Let me see,” says Trina taking a couple of the pages, then she pumps a fist in the air. “Yes!”

  “What?”

  “OK,” she explains. “This one is John Creston.”

  “That was Janet’s first son, the one with the other guy.”

  “Correct. Well his notes are all signed by Roger, the old doctor, Peter Symmonds’ father, and they are in blue ink.”

  “Yes,” says Daphne peering over her shoulder.

  “And this is Giuseppe’s file, the second son, and all the entries are signed by Peter Symmonds in black ink.”

  “Yes.”

  “And the third one, Johannes, is back to the father. But look at the handwriting.”

  “It’s different from the first one.”

  “Yes,” says Trina, “and you’re not even an expert like me. I’ve studied this in my manual. It says that people who forge documents disguise the size and shape of their letters but can’t change the slope or spacing. I’d have to put them under a magnifying glass, but I’m pretty sure the second and third ones were both written by the same person.”

  “That interesting…” begins Daphne, still unsure, but then she has a revelation. “Wait a minute,” she shouts. “Why did Symmonds let us get away with them?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Look, he knew that I was inquiring about the Creston deaths. So when he found you in the basement with an upended filing cabinet, why didn’t he check to see if they were missing?”

  “They were all over the floor.”

  “So he calls the police. We get arrested and then what?”

  “Then he had time to check.”

  “And to tell Donaldson that the Creston papers were missing.”

  “And he didn’t.”

  “Why not? That’s what I’d like to know.”

  Doctor Peter Symmonds knows the answer. So does Joseph Creston Jr.

  “Shit, Peter, this is a bloody mess,” fumes Creston as he sits opposite the old doctor in the study of Creston Hall a couple of hours later. “Are you sure she’s got them?”

  “I’ve been through the whole lot.”

  “Why the hell did you keep them?”

  Symmonds gives the irate man a quizzical look. “Because it might have seemed a tad suspicious if
anyone came calling from the ministry and I couldn’t produce them.”

  “All right, all right,” says Creston as he pours himself a very large single malt from a crystal decanter.

  Symmonds doesn’t have a drink, and although his troubled expression suggests that he could use something to bolster him, the local laird isn’t offering.

  “So what’s the damage?” asks Creston, slumping into a buttoned leather chair and slugging back most of his drink. “What can they find out?”

  “I don’t really know. It was forty-odd years ago. I’ll stick with my story and my old father isn’t around to contradict me.”

  “So. Do we have a problem?”

  “We may,” says Symmonds guardedly. “The Lovelace woman has been talking to Amelia.”

  “Oh.”

  “She still loves you. You know that.”

  “Yes. Don’t remind me. But she’s not going to say anything, is she?”

  “Probably not,” agrees Symmonds. “But what about Janet?”

  “Leave her to me,” says Creston, draining his glass, and minutes later Craddock is woken by his cellphone as he daydreams in his car a few hundred yards from Clive Sampson’s house in leafy North Vancouver.

  Despite Trina’s warning to Clive Sampson to keep his hands to himself he smiles warmly as he strokes Janet’s cheek while they snuggle in front of a movie.

  Three weeks ago she would have recoiled at the touch; she would have flayed herself at the feet of Wayne Browning, begging forgiveness for her wanton ways, begging absolution for craving both a man and a movie. And she would have suffered, as God intended. But isn’t that what women are supposed to do? Doesn’t the Bible ordain that women should suffer? Shouldn’t a woman kneel at her master’s feet? Shouldn’t an adulteress be stoned to death?

  But Janet is not an adulteress — not with Sampson, anyway. And if she ever worried that being penetrated by Browning violated the vows she made to her husband, the cult leader was quick to point out that it wasn’t his penis inside her, it was merely an instrument of God, and that sex for him was no more exciting than the administration of a priestly sacrament.

  “I have sacrificed all worldly pleasures for my God,” the preacher sermonized as he pumped furiously with a smile on his face. “I am doing this for your sake, Daena.”

  “Do you think you could love me?” whispers Sampson tentatively, but Janet isn’t sure she’s allowed.

  “I’m still married…” she starts, then takes stock. Clive is older — at least fifteen years — though his eyes still sparkle and his brain is alive. “Maybe,” she admits. “But I’ve nothing to offer you. Even these clothes are from Trina and her daughter.”

  “We’d manage,” Sampson is saying as the doorbell interrupts. “Who could that be at this time?” he wonders aloud, and is on the point of answering when he looks at Janet. “You’d better hide.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know,” he admits, “but Trina said we ought to be careful.”

  The bell rings again with seeming urgency and draws the elderly man to the spyhole. “Who is it?” he questions loudly and puts an ear to the door.

  Another ring, and Clive Sampson is readying to quiz the unrecognized visitor again when a shoulder bursts through the panelling and he is thrown to the floor.

  Another dawn in St-Juan-sur-Mer comes without sunshine for Bliss. “Klaus is probably here by now,” he tells himself dejectedly, with Billie Holiday crooning “That’s Life I Guess” in the background, as he scans the town roofs from his balcony.

  St-Juan-sur-Mer is not a big town, not like nearby Cannes or Nice, and it lacks the pizzazz and ritz of Monte Carlo further along the coast. It’s just a neglected backwater famous only for a brief, though triumphant, visit by Napoleon in the early 1800s after he escaped from exile on the island of Elba. But amongst the tight seventeenth-century lanes and crowded twentieth-century apartments, there are a thousand places that Yolanda could be. Bliss is tempted to search for her, but what if he finds her hand in hand with Klaus? At least he can still preserve her image unsullied by the presence of another; he can still picture her naked in his arms.

  He picks up the phone — Samantha again.

  “Oh God, Dad. I’m trying to work,” she complains from her office in drizzly London. “Just do what I told you. Write the damn book and make it come out the way you want it.”

  “But what if she doesn’t come back, Sam?”

  “That’ll be her loss. Anyway, you’ll have the book. And think of the publicity. I can see the headlines in the Times Literary Review now: ‘Heartbroken detective writes novel to win back his lost love.’ You might even make international headlines with a story like that. Christ, Dad, I wish someone would write a novel for me.”

  “Aren’t you happy with your Peter?”

  “Of course. But he’s not exactly Casanova. Anyway, my point is that publishers and the media will love it. Just do it.”

  ”Rewrite the whole thing?”

  “Yes, if that’s what it takes. Yes.”

  As Bliss is putting down the phone in his Côte d’Azur apartment, J.C. Creston is getting an update from his man in Vancouver.

  “We had to give her a sedative,” explains Craddock, adopting a partner to boost his credibility and his final invoice. “But she’ll be OK.”

  “And what happens now?”

  “Well, my people on the inside will let me know when the heat’s off. As soon as everything’s cool we’ll move her.”

  “Not back to Beautiful.”

  “Shit, man. That’s the first place they’ll hit. In fact you’d better warn your man there to expect a visit.”

  However, neither Wayne Browning nor Joseph Creston need worry yet. Clive Sampson is telling no one of Janet’s abduction and won’t be talking at all unless a neighbour, or the mailman, investigates his smashed door and unties him from his bed. In any case, Janet doesn’t officially exist. In fact, officially Janet Creston, née Thurgood, has never existed in Canada. She was shipped into the country over forty years ago by private jet, and not a single government official has ever recorded her name. She’s not alone. Beautiful is not the kind of place where record keeping is encouraged, although since Janet’s disappearance, Wayne and a couple of his most trusted angels have been quietly shredding everything that could be linked in any way to the Creston foundation.

  “So where have you got her?” asks Creston thoughtlessly and Craddock explodes.

  “Christ, man. Are you shittin’ me?”

  “Mr. Craddock —”

  “Craddock.”

  “Craddock. Will you please stop taking the Lord’s name in vain.”

  “Sorry, man, but this is an open line for Christ… Jeez… What in hell am I supposed to say? Hey. She’s safe, OK? That’s all you need.”

  “All right. Keep her that way. I’ll have to decide what to do.”

  Janet’s safety is not at stake. Being bound and gagged in the back of a van parked inside Craddock’s garage may not be comfortable but, in many ways, it is no worse than the privations of Beautiful.

  Trina Button’s confidence in her private investigator’s manual, and her own abilities, may be unswerving, but Daphne Lovelace would rather consult a professional over the handwriting on the doctors’ records, and she stands in front of the mirror in the tight hallway of her Westchester home and works her way through her hat rack as she prepares to visit one in London. Flouncy, lacy, and white are out, and she finally settles on a staid bowler with its serious edge taken off by a slender pink ribbon and a silk rose, then she shrinks at her partner’s millinery choice.

  “We are going to the City, you know,” she reminds Trina a touch acerbically at the sight of the other woman’s Yankees baseball cap, but the Canadian shrugs it off with a laugh.

  “Oh, Daphne. Sometimes you can be so… Miss Marple, so Agatha Christie. Me, I’m more of an Ian Fleming.”

  Mark Benson is an ex-MI5 operative who never came close to anyone resembling J
ames Bond during his service. He’s a spindly, pencil-sharp figure with Coke-bottle glasses and a taut mouth who spent his time as a spy in a back room poring over ciphers, until he discovered that there was more capital and less politics in private practice.

  Daphne and Trina find the document examiner’s garret office from the brass plaque beside a door in a narrow backstreet behind the Central Criminal Court — the venerable Old Bailey — from where he caters to the hurried needs of defence lawyers.

  “In my opinion, based on a cursory examination,” Benson advises them over the top of his bi-focals, once they’ve laboured up four flights, “at least one of these documents may not be precisely what it seems.”

  “A definite maybe,” suggests Daphne under her breath, but Trina is less pessimistic.

  “I knew it —” she starts, but Benson cuts her off with a warning hand.

  “Ms. Button. Document examination is an art, not a science. There is always an element of subjectivity.” Then he eyes the papers critically. “An ink analysis will show that two different types were used, but we can see that by the colour. As to whose hands were holding the pens at the time, that will always be open to a degree of speculation.”

  “We’d be happy to accept whatever you can give us,” says Daphne, while Trina wanders the room, nosing at various pieces of equipment as if she is conversant with their uses.

  “It’ll take me a day or so…” Benson starts, and then he firmly removes a calibrated magnifier from Trina’s hand and gently replaces it on his workbench. “Very delicate,” he warns as Trina pulls out a chequebook.

  “We only have a couple of hours,” she says with pen poised. “How much would that be? Say, five hundred dollars?”

  “I thought he was going to faint,” laughs Daphne a few minutes later as they wait in a nearby coffee house from where they can see the scales of justice atop the renowned court’s dome.

  “I’m sure it’s the same writing,” says Trina. “And I’m pretty sure that our Doc Symmonds knows more than he’s letting on.”

  “But how we will get him to talk? You won’t buy him off with a few hundred quid. Fixing death certificates has got to be a serious crime.”