This Private Plot

by Alan Beechey

  “But you’d known for a year that he was a blackmailer?”

  “Obviously.”

  “Did you know he had other victims?”

  Culpepper shrugged. “We never tried to find out. We just needed him to keep quiet about Angus Snopp, so we paid him. And then we left him alone.” He placed his long hands on his knees. “His murder has been a distinct inconvenience.”

  Effie’s eyes narrowed. “Then he was murdered? Oliver’s been right all along?”

  “Yes, your boyfriend was right,” Culpepper conceded, after a brief hesitation. “Breedlove was murdered. It was impossible for him to hang himself like that. In fact, the pathologist is pretty sure he was dead before he was hauled up that tree. Throttled first, then hanged to cover it up. But I wanted the world at large to think it a suicide.”

  “After all, Uncle Dennis was only a filthy blackmailer, he’s better off dead,” Effie snapped, remembering Oliver’s anger when he thought he was facing the same official indifference. “The killer’s a hero, doing us all a favor. So who cares if this murder is unsolved? Does that account for the law’s delay, in this case?”

  “You didn’t let me finish. I wanted his death to be seen as a suicide until we had the murderer under lock and key. A public investigation risked drawing too much attention to Reg, as you and Superintendent Mallard have already proved.”

  “That’s why you told Oliver to stay out of it. You knew it would make him even more determined to find Breedlove’s murderer, while you hid in the background and waited for an amateur detective to do your job for you.”

  Culpepper was already shaking his head, amused at the outburst. “No, I told Oliver to stay out of it because I wanted him to stay out of it.”

  “Then why did you show him that letter?”

  “Having the body discovered by two Scotland Yard detectives presented a challenge. I couldn’t risk your getting too involved in the investigation. The letter was vaguely worded, like so many blackmail notes, and didn’t name names. I thought if I could convince you and Mr. Mallard that it was written to Breedlove and not by him, then you’d believe he’d topped himself and leave everything to me. I was really showing the letter to you, Effie. The inquisitive Oliver just happened to be there.”

  “So who was it sent to?”

  “It wasn’t sent. I really did find it on Breedlove’s desk.”

  “But you hid the envelope. You know who it was really meant for.”

  “There was no envelope.” Culpepper studied his long fingers. “Look, I apologize for deceiving you, but it was necessary.”

  “Well, more fool you anyway, because despite your attempts to wrong-foot him, Oliver still got to the truth about Breedlove.”

  “Has he identified the murderer?”

  “He’s found all the blackmail victims, which is more—”

  “Has he identified the murderer?” Culpepper repeated, holding her gaze with his dark eyes.

  “No,” she admitted.

  “Then maybe this is as good a time as any to remind you and Mr. Mallard that, as serving police officers, you’re bound by the Official Secrets Act. And if ever there was an Official Secret, this is one.” He leaned forward. “You can’t tell Oliver anything.”

  Effie took in the instruction, already aware of a growing urge to shout this particular official secret to the entire world. “Was it you, then, who attacked Oliver outside the house?” she asked.

  “No. And I don’t know who did. Honestly.”

  Mallard stood up, buttoning his jacket. “Since Breedlove was murdered, Captain, do you have any idea yet who was responsible?”

  Culpepper seemed relieved that Mallard had shifted the focus of the conversation. “We got some prints off those cut-off skipping rope handles, although we haven’t found a match yet. But I’m not convinced that one of the blackmail victims would suddenly turn on Breedlove after steadfastly paying up for two, three, four years. And I can personally assure you that Reg is innocent.”

  “That’s the first time I’ve heard that from a copper,” said Thigpen.

  “He’s not a copper,” said Effie, stone-faced. “‘Captain Culpepper’ sounds more like a pirate.”

  Culpepper smiled. “I’ve been following some other leads,” he continued. “Dennis Breedlove was a member of a shadowy organization known as the Priory of Synne.”

  “Really?” said Mallard, checking his watch.

  “There are reports of its existence as far back as sixteenth-century France. Perhaps Breedlove ran afoul of some ancient protocol and was, uh, suspended. There’s something a little ritualistic about being hanged from an ancient gibbet, after all. We believe one of the Priory’s present-day operatives has been in the area recently, although nobody seems to know the man’s name or what he looks like. They choose their people well.”

  Effie had guessed from Mallard’s fidgeting that he was running late for his last rehearsal before that evening’s performance. She stood up, ignored Culpepper, and extended a hand to Thigpen. “A pleasure to meet a true historical figure, Mr. Thigpen.”

  “Yes, Reg,” said Mallard, “it’s been nice seeing you again.”

  “You haven’t seen the last of me today, Mr. M. Or should I say I haven’t seen the last of you. Captain C told me you were performing at the RSC tonight, so I insisted he get us tickets. Front row!” He smiled graciously at Culpepper, who scowled in return.

  “I know every word of Hamlet,” Thigpen went on. “Hey, maybe I should have that plastic surgery, after all. If I looked a bit more like Laurence Olivier, I could take to the stage and leave Angus Snopp behind.”

  “A consummation devoutly to be wished,” muttered Culpepper.

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Saturday afternoon (continued)

  Oliver followed Sidney Weguelin into a small sitting room, with curtains drawn and the lights on. Another person was sitting on a couch, watching television. It wasn’t Lesbia; it seemed to be a man. In fact, it was Sidney. Another Sidney, albeit a Sidney with, mercifully, no moustache or goatee or glasses, but with a large surgical dressing taped across a swollen and discolored nose.

  “He found out,” said the first Sidney.

  “You idiot, he’s bluffing,” snarled the other Sidney.

  “No,” replied Sidney One, turning off the television and looking at Oliver. “He knows.”

  Sidney Two didn’t answer, but glared at Oliver. There was an awkward silence.

  “Is it broken?” Oliver asked.

  “It bloody hurts, that’s all I know.”

  “Sorry. Have you seen a doctor?”

  “How could I go to a doctor? If I’d stepped outside looking like this, you’d have been waiting with your binoculars and your notebook and Christ knows what else. Then you’d know it was me who’d attacked you.”

  “I said I was sorry.” Oliver leaned in and showed the side of his head. “Look, you bruised my ear. It’s still ringing a little.”

  “Good. I was only trying to warn you off, you know.” Sidney Two sighed. “It doesn’t matter anyway, since you seem to have rumbled our little secret. All that spying finally paid off, did it?”

  “No. Until a few moments ago, I was still convinced there was only one of you, playing two roles.”

  “Then how did you find out?” asked Sidney One, cautiously removing the goatee and moustache and placing them in a small pouch. The organist looked surprisingly younger.

  “Oh, I was given a conundrum,” Oliver explained. “How can two people have different fingerprints but identical DNA? The answer: because they’re identical twins. We happen to have a set in the family.”

  Sidney One let out a brief laugh. “But you were right, Oliver. Today, I am both Sidney and Lesbia. At least while my sibling is indisposed. I’ve just come from organ practice as Sidney, and according to the timetable, Lesbia is due to meet
with the vicar in about half an hour to discuss the annual fete. So you’ll have to excuse me. My real name’s Robin, by the way.”

  Oliver was left to the malignant glare of the other twin.

  “So, blackmail,” said Sidney Two at last, with disgust.

  “Blackmail,” Oliver confirmed. “I’d have left you alone otherwise.”

  “You’re very professional. And very persistent.”

  “Thank you. I will, of course, be the soul of discretion. Nobody in the village need ever know. You two can just carry on doing…whatever it is you do.”

  The injured organist let out a snort of mirthless laughter. “That’s the way it works, is it? All right, how much do you want?”

  “What?”

  “How much money do you want?” repeated Sidney Two impatiently.

  “I don’t want any money,” protested Oliver, puzzled by the reaction.

  “What kind of a blackmailer doesn’t want money?”

  “Blackmailer? I’m not a blackmailer.”

  “Oh, you may choose to call it something less distasteful, but blackmail is what it comes down to. You’re here to arrange payments. Am I wrong?”

  “No!” Oliver cried. “I mean, yes, you’re wrong. I’m not here to blackmail you. You’re already being blackmailed!”

  “No, we’re not.”

  “Well, not now, but you were. Do you deny that Dennis Breedlove was blackmailing you?”

  “That old coot who hanged himself last week? He wasn’t blackmailing us.”

  “Yes, he was.”

  “No, he wasn’t. Nobody’s been blackmailing us except you!”

  “But I’m not blackmailing you.”

  “Not yet, you’re not.”

  “But you’re Tweedledee and Tweedledum!” yelled Oliver, and stopped, breathless. “You must be,” he added softly, as Sidney Two stared at him with incomprehension. Of course, Oliver considered, the Weguelins may still deny being Breedlove’s victims, because they don’t want to be suspects in his murder. But from what he could see of the face staring back at him, around the bandages, the bafflement seemed genuine.

  “Tweedle—?” Sidney began and then broke off to laugh. “This is all because you thought—?” the organist cackled between gasps for air. “But then we thought—” Again, convulsive laughter ended the sentence. And Oliver joined in.

  “My name’s Kim,” said Sidney Two, stretching out a hand. “I shouldn’t laugh so much, it hurts my nose.”

  “Yeah, I’m really sorry—”

  “Oh, no hard feelings. Sorry about your ear. Do you want a drink?”

  As they entered the kitchen, Lesbia spun around from a mirror propped on top of a counter—or rather, it was almost Lesbia, complete with cassock and thick cosmetics, but without the black-framed glasses and shiny wig. Kim reported what Oliver had revealed, and Robin joined them in the general merriment, punctuated by the opening of three bottles of beer. Free from their fears, the twins were friendly and good-humored, a marked contrast from their characters of Sidney and Lesbia, about whom Oliver was hearing.

  “It’s performance art,” explained Kim. “We’re identical twins, Kim and Robin Essiss, playing a prissy married couple, Sidney and Lesbia Weguelin, the verger and organist in the Cotswold village of Synne. Life imitates art imitating life.”

  “But there are two of you,” Oliver noted. “Why has nobody seen you together?”

  “Plenty of people have seen us together,” said Robin, sliding the wig into place. “But we do minimize our joint appearances, in case someone spots any similarities. At parish meetings, we sit on opposite sides of the room.”

  “So normally, you, Kim, are Sidney, and Robin is Lesbia?”

  “Oh no,” said Kim. “We swap regularly. It’s an artistic statement about the malleability of human identity in modern life. Of course, we have to keep each other briefed, so that if I’m Lesbia one day, I’m not caught out by something Robin learned when playing Lesbia the day before.”

  “Then when I first met Lesbia, coming out of the church…”

  “That was me,” claimed Kim. “And that was me, too, as Sidney at Dennis Breedlove’s funeral.”

  “But when I saw Lesbia next, in my parents’ kitchen, she reacted as if she had never met me before. Because that was you, Robin?”

  Robin, now almost fully Lesbia, nodded. “Kim hadn’t fully informed me about Sidney and Lesbia’s earlier encounters, but I still should have improvised better. That’s what makes this performance so much fun.”

  “You keep this up full-time, then?”

  “Well, not once we’re home and behind closed doors,” Robin continued, swigging from the beer bottle and stuffing some folders into a large purse, which had been used to hold the mirror up. “Our impersonation of a married couple doesn’t go all the way to the bedroom.”

  They both chortled at the idea, and Oliver was relieved. It would be hard to think of a term for a pair of incestuous gay transvestites, an unlikely threefer.

  “How on earth did this all start?” he asked Kim, after Robin/Lesbia had scurried out of the front door.

  “With our mother. She treated us identically, dressed us identically, made us go everywhere together. When we showed some musical talent, she couldn’t wait to parade us out onto the concert platform in identical costumes, playing four-handed pieces on the piano.”

  “It’s not unusual for parents to dress twins that way, even if they’re nonidentical.”

  “Yes, but Mother went further. She simply refused to accept that we were two different people, separate souls. And so as we got older, Robin and I would joke about how we could make ourselves look as different as possible. For a start, one of us would change sex. One of us would keep our slim build, while the other would pad up, and so on. And we’d always be ready to swap roles, which made it fun. Thus were Sidney and Lesbia born, two characters as unalike as we could make them. Originally, it was a routine we did to amuse our friends. Then, as an experiment, we tried to set up a household in Finchley. And then one day, we both decided we wanted a break from London and our jobs as professional musicians, and, well, here we are, living in Synne. Next year, we’re getting a film crew to make a documentary about the project.”

  “I should have guessed that there was an element of fantasy about your lives,” Oliver said, with a smile. “After all, who’s called ‘Lesbia’ in real life?”

  “Our mother,” Kim informed him. “Another beer?”

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Saturday afternoon (continued)

  “Can you believe what we’ve just heard?” Effie fumed.

  “Unfortunately, yes,” said Mallard, opening the passenger-side door for her.

  “I’m speechless.”

  “No, you’re not,” he assured her.

  “And we’re supposed to walk away and do nothing, say nothing, with the certainty that our present government connived with the permanent Whitehall Mandarins to keep themselves in power? By callously manipulating public opinion.”

  “Isn’t that what ‘spin’ is?”

  “Here’s what spin isn’t, Tim,” she stated, pacing along the gravel like a caged tiger, ignoring his invitation to get into the car. “Faking a murder and spending the taxpayer’s money on the cover-up, while accusing union agitators of crimes they haven’t committed. It smells to heaven.”

  “There’s nothing you can do about it. Unless you want to lose your job, never work for a public entity again, and probably be prosecuted for treason.”

  “Treason?” she yelled. “Winning a general election on the back of a blatant, calculated, deliberate lie, that’s treason! The people should know. The press should know.”

  “Not from us.” He grabbed her elbow to keep her in one place. “Like it or not, Effie, when you became a police officer you did indeed sign the Official Secrets Act
.”

  “So you’re siding with him.” Effie shook herself free from his gentle grip. “With Long John bloody Simon bloody Culpepper. Mr. James sodding Bond and his official secrets.” She kicked the tire on Culpepper’s adjacent car.

  “Wrong government department, I believe. Simon wasn’t obliged to be so frank with us. It was perfectly clear he was not in sympathy with the morality of the exercise.”

  “Yeah, he was only doing his job,” muttered Effie. “Only obeying orders.”

  “That’s a little unfair—”

  She spun toward him, eyes blazing. “But remember what he told us—Oliver isn’t covered by the Act. If his amateur investigation were somehow to lead to the truth about this strange eruption to our state, independently of any hints we might drop, I bet we could get it into the newspapers.”

  “Leave Oliver out of this. Captain C wasn’t giving us a hint, he was giving us a warning. As far as Oliver’s concerned, this morning we visited Angus Snopp, leprosy sufferer, who demonstrated, beyond all doubt, that he’s innocent of Breedlove’s murder. End of story.”

  Effie stared at her mentor. “Where’s the outrage?” she demanded. “You don’t seem shocked at all.”

  “Oh, I’m shocked,” Mallard replied. “But I’m not surprised. And I do know that if you use Oliver to channel your anger to the public, you can probably say goodbye to his freedom and possibly his life.”

  He walked up to her and hugged her tightly, pulling her head into the crook of his neck and bending forward to whisper through her curls. “Simon’s department doesn’t work with single spies,” he told her. “We’re all going to be under some scrutiny now, because of what we’ve discovered. You and Oliver are both very, very dear to me, and I want to keep you. So for once in your life, Effie Strongitharm, play by the rules. Okay?”

  She didn’t answer, but he could feel a slight relaxation of the resistance in her body, and it was enough. He let her go and opened the car door again.

  “No, I’ll walk,” she said. He nodded. As he drove away, Effie looked up at the Hall’s bilious brickwork, unsure which of the mullioned windows were Thigpen’s apartment but certain that Culpepper was watching her through one of them. She found a footpath through the overgrown gardens and made her way back to the main road. In five minutes, she was skirting the Square, noting the village landmarks. The Seven Wise Virgins, with its dilapidated dovecote. The post office. The ugly bus shelter. The pointless memorial obelisk. The Square’s single bench, with Oliver asleep on it…